"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
posted on June 20, 2007 10:47:28 PM
Linda: Global warming means that weather will change, generally for the warmer. Some areas will cool, most will warm dramatically. Don't you understand anything about weather trends? Is that yet another hole in your teeny education?
_____________________
There is more to life than increasing its speed. --Mahatma Gandhi
posted on June 21, 2007 07:22:14 AM
Roadsmith don't you know Linda has a degree in every subject brought up here and knows a lot more than everyone else.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on June 21, 2007 09:01:40 AM
Nothing new Linda since it was shown how global warming could lead to COLDER climates 2 1/2 years ago. Where were you back then?
By Sarah Davidson, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 17 December, 2004 7:00 a.m. ET
Scientists hope new evidence of an ancient rise in sea level from a fresh water flood will tell them how global warming can lead to global cooling.
A global cooling event was caused by global warming? Sounds strange. But that is exactly what scientists say happened.
The Earth was emerging from an ice age 8,200 years ago. Seas were warming and life was heating up. Then quite abruptly and for a relatively short period of time -- about 100 years -- the entire globe chilled down again, by almost 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit (6 Centigrade).
One widely held theory for the chill was the sudden release of a substantial amount of fresh water into the northern Atlantic.
A lake twice the size of the Caspian Sea broke through an ice sheet that contained it over current day Minnesota and Canada, the evidence shows. It poured its fresh water into the salty Atlantic and changed the density of the ocean water.
The oceans work on a sort of conveyor belt method to circulate cold and warm waters, thereby helping control cold, moderate, and warm areas of the globe. (Earth's climate is only partly affected by land temperatures and sunlight. Oceans, which store vast amounts of energy and are slow to warm up and cool down, contribute greatly to climate.)
But what happens if that conveyor belt stops or slows down?
Cold, fresh water sinks, and warm salty water rises. The influx of fresh water into the Hudson Bay from Lake Agassiz provided a barrier against the warm, salty water struggling to move north on the conveyor belt. This effectively shut down the circulation of warm water in the Northern Atlantic.
With warm waters unable to move as far north the world became cooler. The amount of water Lake Agassiz dumped into the ocean is equivalent to how much the seas rose. Knowing these amounts will tell scientists how much fresh water could create this type of climate change nowadays, were a bunch of it to suddenly find its way into the ocean.
The oceans were able to find their balance relatively quickly in that ancient event, and the effects wore off in about a century, but a century of that kind of change today would create widespread havoc.
"There is nothing like Lake Agassiz today, but there are things that could have a comparable effect," said Torbjorn E. Tornqvist, an geologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "Places like the Greenland ice sheet are very sensitive to warming and a lot of fresh water could enter the northern oceans and mess up circulation."
Scenarios such as this are exactly why Törnqvist says investigations into past climate are vital to understanding current and future climate.
"What if patterns of precipitation change from global warming? Having more precipitation in one place than in another could freshen ocean waters and play a role in climate cooling," Tornqvist told LiveScience.
The research of Tornqvist and his students centered on peat deposits in the Gulf of Mexico, where they found samples that were 8,200 years old.
Tornqvist explained that peat is formed between sea level and high tide, and since there is very little influence from tides in the Gulf of Mexico, it is the perfect place to study changes in sea level accurately. The results of the research, which are detailed in the Dec. 11 online version of Geophysical Research Letters, showed a rise in sea level of less than about 4 feet (1.2 meters).
The rise might be even less, according to Tornqvist, and determining exactly how much less will provide a better picture of how fresh water influx affects the ocean conveyor belt and global climate.
With this new data, and previous evidence from ice cores in Greenland that also showed a rise in sea level at the same time, scientists hope they can narrow down how much the seas rose. Then they can calculate how much water flowed into the ocean.
Understanding these past climate changes will give scientists a better sense of what could happen today if similar events occurred.
"Climatologists urgently need this type of information to run their climate models in order to understand the conditions that can produce such an abrupt climate change," Tornqvist said.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on June 21, 2007 03:05:35 PM
roadsmith. The lack of logic on YOUR part is in not realizing that all scientists have the same basic education - and that some specialize. And THEY disagree.
LOL LOL Again it has NOTHING to do with me.
Although that appears to be all you radicals have to focus on when any discussion takes place . lol lol lol
30-40 Years ago they were arguing just the opposite. lol Got to keep those grants coming to keep them employed. And they'll always find fools to follow whatever they say....as long as it's the opposite of what's really the reason for the changes that have always occurred.
The fact that science is many years away from properly understanding global climate doesn't seem to bother our leaders at all. Inviting testimony only from those who don't question political orthodoxy on the issue, parliamentarians are charging ahead with the impossible and expensive goal of "stopping global climate change." Liberal MP Ralph Goodale's June 11 House of Commons assertion that Parliament should have "a real good discussion about the potential for carbon capture and sequestration in dealing with carbon dioxide, which has tremendous potential for improving the climate, not only here in Canada but around the world," would be humorous were he, and even the current government, not deadly serious about devoting vast resources to this hopeless crusade.
Climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thou-sand-year-long "Younger Dryas" cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6C in a decade -- 100 times faster than the past century's 0.6C warming that has so upset environmentalists.
View Larger Image
(See hardcopy for Chart/Graph)
Andrew Barr, National Post
Email to a friend
Printer friendly
Font: ****
The Deniers: The National Post's series on scientists who buck the conventional wisdom on climate science.
The National Post is a Canadian national newspaper. Here is the series so far:
Statistics needed -- The Deniers Part I
Warming is real -- and has benefits -- The Deniers Part II
The hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science -- The Deniers Part III
Polar scientists on thin ice -- The Deniers Part IV
The original denier: into the cold -- The Deniers Part V
posted on June 21, 2007 03:24:32 PM
Global warming: truth or propaganda?
Published: June 13 2007 17:09 | Last updated: June 21 2007 13:01
Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, argues in the Financial Times that ambitious environmentalism is the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity.
Mr Klaus writes that “global warming hysteria has become a prime example of the truth versus propaganda problem” and the issue “is more about social than natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature.”
Do you agree? Or do small climate changes demand far-reaching restrictive measures?
Following an overwhelming response from readers, Mr Klaus has answered a selection of questions from the hundreds that were submitted.
Vaclav Klaus: What is at risk is not the climate, but freedom
posted on June 22, 2007 07:04:43 AM
Majority view of climate scientists is that global warming is indeed happening
EDITORGardner states that the scientific basis of climate change is uncertain and that there are major differences of opinion among climatologists about whether climate change is likely to occur and its potential magnitude.1 Inevitably, with an issue of such complexity there is bound to be scientific debate, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which we quoted in our articles, is a major international collaboration: it has involved the participation of over 2500 scientists from around the world. Many of the most vociferous sceptics have received funding from fossil fuel industries, which clearly have a vested interest in opposing changes in policy that might result in shifts away from fossil fuels.2
The evidence that Gardner quoted against climate changethat satellite data have shown 0.13°C global cooling between 1979 and 1994 and that the Arctic has been coolingis mistaken. Satellite measurements are in good agreement with records of surface temperature for 1979-94.3 Once the transient effects of volcanoes and the El Nińo-southern oscillation are removed, upward global trends of 0.09°C per decade from satellite data and 0.17°C per decade from surface data are obtained.4 This is reasonable agreement, especially when one realises that the satellite measurement is a weighted average over the atmosphere column from the surface to 7 km altitude and temperature changes in the mid-troposphere may well differ from those at the surface. Furthermore, although temperatures have fallen in Greenland, they have risen by similar amounts over much of the remaining Arctic, notably in Siberia, northern Canada, and Alaska.5 There is compelling evidence that the average global temperature has increased by about 0.6°C since the industrial revolution. Indeed, nine of the 11 hottest years this century have occurred since 1985. More importantly, climate models suggest that substantial global warming (1.0-3.5°C) will have occurred by the end of the next century with projected increases in use of fossil fuels. This underlines the need for a precautionary approach to limit emissions of greenhouse gases as well as increased investment in research on climate change and its potential impacts.
Finally, we must emphasise that the prospect of large scale climate and environmental changes necessitates the contingent assessment of future risks. Epidemiologists (like agricultural scientists, hydrologists, urban planners, and others) cannot reasonably dispute the majority view of climate scientists. Rather, they must base their risk assessment on the climate change scenarios projected by those experts.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on June 22, 2007 07:10:03 AMVaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic
Now Linda is basing here views of gloabl warming from a politician instead of a scientist. If Bush said the same thing would it make your claim any more credible?
Václav Klaus entered politics soon after the Velvet Revolution in 1989 . As a member (and since October 1990, chairman) of Civic Forum he became the federal Minister of Finance. In April 1991 Klaus co-founded Civic Democratic Party (Občanská demokratická strana, ODS), the strongest and most right-wing of the post-Civic Forum splinter parties. He remained its chairman until the autumn of 2002.
His vocal enthusiasm for the free market economy and as exemplified by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman and practiced by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, together with his stated belief in Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand", soon became well-known (and also praised or criticized) and Klaus became a natural father of the Czechoslovak economic transformation. Others agreed with his free-market concepts, but pointed out that during his premiership he neglected the importance of law (in particular battling corruption), largely ignored the enforcement of property rights on stock market, and that his pet project, the voucher privatization, was poorly executed and didn't bring the economy responsible owners it needed. However, the companies privatized by this method were largely the least competitive ones that no investors wanted to buy and miracles shouldn't have been expected.
In June 1992 , ODS won the elections in the Czech Republic with a reform program; its partner in Slovakia for post-election debates was Vladimír Mečiar's nationalistic Movement for a Democratic Slovakia, a party with a rather different ideology. Moreover, it soon became apparent that Slovak demands for increased sovereignty were incompatible with the limited "viable federation" supported by the Czechs (most vehemently by then-president Vaclav Havel); both leaders assumed the premiership in their respective polities and quickly agreed, without a referendum, on a smooth division of Czechoslovakia and its assets under a caretaker federal government i.e. the so-called Velvet Divorce.
Klaus continued as Prime Minister of the Czech Republic after the 1996 election, but ODS's win was much narrower and his government was plagued by instability, mild economic problems, and accusations of corruption. He decided to resign in the autumn of 1997 after a government crisis caused by an ODS funding scandal, an event later called "Sarajevo Assassination" (sarajevský atentát) by his sympathisers, in analogy with the assassination in Sarajevo that has started the First World War, because the calls for him to resign occurred during his visit of Sarajevo at that time. The accusations that led to his resignation later turned out to be unjustified.
Czech President Václav Havel publicly referred to Klaus' economic policies as "gangster capitalism" and blamed the prime minister for perceived corruption surrounding his policy of voucher privatization and his côterie of close allies such as the dentist, politician, and entrepreneur Miroslav Macek or StB honcho Václav Junek. Havel profited from the sale of his restituted properties, including a ballroom in downtown Prague, so his critics[Who says this?] call him one of the major profiteers of the new gangster capitalism which he had decried.
ODS lost the parliamentary election in 1998 and Miloš Zeman, chairman of the Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD), succeeded Klaus as prime minister. The two traditional foes from the TV screens signed an "opposition agreement" (opoziční smlouva) and so Zeman's minority government was supported by ODS: Klaus became the chairman of the lower house of the Parliament, while Zeman's pre-electoral promise of "clean government" sailed into the sunset.
ODS was again defeated in the elections of June 2002; after long hesitations, Klaus, supposedly under pressure from his lieutenants, resigned as party chair in the autumn and was elected honorary chairman by a unanimous vote.
Unlike Havel, who was a self-described anti-communist, Klaus considers himself to be a "non-communist" but not an anti-communist, a label he rejects as a cheap and superficial posturing although he has warned against the traditional 'red scare' during two election campaigns against ČSSD. As a president representing the whole nation, he invites representatives of all parties including the communists, who were not allowed to enter the Prague Castle throughout the 13 years of Havel's presidency. Nevertheless, in 2005 and 2006 Klaus repeatedly stated that he would refuse to appoint a cabinet which depended on communist support either directly or indirectly.
Although many of his former foes, including the social-democratic leader Miloš Zeman, have recently come to respect Klaus, he has vocal opponents. Some[attribution needed] of them consider him arrogant, others[attribution needed] depict him as a narrow-minded pragmatist interested in lecturing about the technology of power and textbook economic precepts while practicing policies and approaches that are contradictory but materially convenient to his friends. As mentioned earlier, one of the contested issues is his relation to communism, both in the past and as a strong modern-day politician: Klaus has published articles praising "the grey zone" of the majority of ordinary people who passively endured the regime, while downplaying the importance of the small minority of dissidents like Havel because of their "haughtiness".
Klaus is often considered to be a Eurosceptic although he prefers the term "Eurorealist". Klaus' Euroscepticism - apart from some of his libertarian-like attitude to economics - is a defining policy position of his presidency, and he includes criticisms of the "democratic deficit" and "centralization" of EU in many public statements. Some European hosts viewed his statements as insulting and beyond proper diplomatic behavior - Latvia and Finland being two examples of this[citation needed]. He claimed that accession to the Union represented a significant reduction of Czech sovereignty and he chose not to give any recommendation before the 2003 accession referendum (77% voted yes).
Klaus became one of the most outspoken Eurosceptics, writing many articles and giving many speeches against what he views as the illiberal tendencies of the EU. He assisted in the publication of the Czech translation of a work by the Irish Eurosceptic Anthony Coughlan whose personal political career includes extreme left alignments and a record of campaigning against most of EU treaties. In 2005 Klaus called for the EU to be "scrapped" and replaced by a free-trade area to be called the "Organisation of European States". Klaus is occasionally chastised by journalists who want Klaus to admit that the EU should be more than a free trade zone. Although he sometimes concedes to this, his skepticism about the internal mechanisms of the EU is often very outspoken. For example, in 2005 he informed a group of visiting U.S. politicians that the EU was a "failed and bankrupt entity".
He has reversed Havel's policy of avoiding many countries like China. His first major visit was to Russia and in 2006 he hosted Vladimir Putin in a style which was described by some pundits as "borderline-sycophancy" including using the Russian language to converse with him: Klaus speaks many languages and is not ashamed of showing his skills. Klaus has tried to avoid conflicts with Russia and maintain friendly relationships with the former ally. He disagrees with some of the sharp criticisms of the recent developments in Russia, claiming that the situation is better than expected from a country with minimal democratic traditions.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
