🚀 go-pugleaf

On 10 Oct 2004 17:39:19 -0500, Wm James
<wrjames.remove@spamreaper.com> wrote:

>I'd never ask anyone to take what I say on faith. Check it, recheck
>it, and check it again.  But what I say doesn't even matter. What
>matters is the totally blank list of evidence to support the global
>warming scam. I'm not claiming evidence to the contrary, the satellite
>data shows a slight cooling but too insignificant to be relevant.  My
>point is hat the party making the extraordinary claim has to show the
>evidence. 

http://www.ecobridge.org/content/g_evd.htm

Carbon Dioxide Increasing in Atmosphere
The atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas carbon 
dioxide, have increased since pre-industrial times from 
280 part per million (ppm) to 360 ppm, a 30% increase. 
Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are 
the highest in 160,000 years. Carbon dioxide is a by-
product of the burning of fossil fuels, such as gasoline 
in an automobile or coal in a power plant generating 
electricity.

Methane Also Increasing
Levels of atmospheric methane, a powerful greenhouse 
gas, have risen 145% in the last 100 years.   Methane is 
derived from sources such as rice paddies, bovine 
flatulence, bacteria in bogs and fossil fuel production.  

More Frequent Extreme Weather
The year 1999 was the fifth-warmest year on record 
since the mid-1800's; 1998 being the warmest year. 
According to Thomas Karl, director of the National 
Climatic Data Center (NOAA), the current pace of 
temperature rise is "consistent with a rate of 5.4 to 6.3 
degrees Fahrenheit per century." By comparison, the
 world has warmed by 5 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit since 
the depths of the last ice age, 18,000 to 20,000 years 
ago.

Disappearing Glaciers  Ice is melting all over the planet. 
Glaciers are melting on six continents. 

If present warming trends continue, all glaciers in Glacier 
National Park could be gone by 2030.  The park's 
Grinnell Glacier is already 90% gone.

Because of global warming, the glaciers of the Ruwenzori 
range in Uganda are in massive retreat. 

The Bering Glacier, North America's largest glacier, has 
lost 7 miles of its length, while losing 20-25% of parts of 
the glacier. 

Ice cores taken from the Dunde Ice Cap in the Qilian 
Mountains on the northeastern margin of the Qinghai-
Tibetan Plateau indicate that the years since 1938 have
 been the warmest in the last 12,000 years. 
 
The melting is accelerating. The Lewis Glacier on Mt. 
Kenya (In Kenya) has lost 40% of its mass during the 
period 1963-1987 or at a much faster clip than during 
1899-1963. 

The potential for floods and droughts is increasing."
....... the heating from increased greenhouse gases
enhances the hydrological cycle and increases the 
risk for stronger, longer-lasting or more intense 
droughts, and heavier rainfall events and flooding, 
even if these phenomena occur for natural reasons. 
Evidence, although circumstantial, is widespread 
across the United States. Examples include the 
intense drought in the central southern U.S in 1996, 
Midwest flooding in spring of 1995 and extensive 
flooding throughout the Mississippi Basin in 1993 
even as drought occurred in the Carolinas, extreme 
flood events in winters of 1992-93 and 1994-95 in 
California but droughts in other years (e.g, 1986-87 
and 1987-88 winters)," says Dr. Kevin Trenberth of 
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 
(NOAA). 

In southern Peru the rate of melting of the Qori Kalis 
glacier during the 8 year period 1983 to 1991 was 3 
times the pace of the previous 20 years, 1963 to 1983. 
"By the time we probably know what they are doing, it 
will be far too late to worry about it because they are 
going to be like galloping glaciers," says Ellen Mosley 
Thompson, climate expert at Ohio State University. 
The Qori Kalis is receding at about two feet per day. 
Sitting beside the glacier, one could witness the melting 
hour by hour. 

In a study that appeared in the journal, Science, September 
15, 2000, a team led by Lonnie G. Thompson, including 
Ellen Mosley-Thompson, both of Ohio State, analyzed ice 
cores that came from deep within a glacier more than 
20,000 feet high in the Himalayas. The results of their 
research showed that the past 100 years have been the 
hottest period in 1,000 years high in the Himalayas. 
Also their research supports other studies that 
demonstrated a dramatic decline in water levels of 
glacier-fed rivers, and that the high elevations are 
warming much more than the global average (one 
degree F). Mosley-Thompson says, "For these rivers 
to continue to flow year-round, they have to be fed by 
ice in the high mountains. The question then is where 
will the river flow come from during the dry season?"  
(Note: See Ohio State Press Release dated February 
18, 2001
 
 Greenland's glaciers are moving more rapidly to the 
sea, caused, perhaps, by melt water lubricating the 
base of the glaciers. See below for another look at 
dwindling ice mass in Greenland.

The Tasman Glacier in New Zealand has thinned by 
more than 100 meters in the past century. Glaciers in 
New Zealand have shrunk about 26% between 1890 
and 1998. 

The melting of the Gangotri Glacier in India is 
accelerating with an average rate of retreat of 30 
meters annually. The rate between 1935 and 1990 
was 18 meters per year and 7 meters annually between 
1842 and 1935. 

A glacier from which Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing 
Norgay set out to conquer Mount Everest nearly 50 
years ago has retreated three miles up the mountain 
due to global warming. The head of the Nepal 
Mountaineering Association, Tashi Jangbu Sherpa, 
says " that Hillary and Tenzing would now have to walk 
two hours to find the edge of the glacier which was 
close to their original base camp."  

Portage Glacier in the Chugach National Forest, south 
of Anchorage, is another casualty of climate change, say 
scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. These 
researchers found that melting glaciers are responsible 
for at least 9 percent of the global sea-level rise over 
the past century.

Melting Arctic Sea Ice
The Arctic, with an area about the size of the United 
States, is seeing average temperatures similar to the 
Antarctic, almost 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 
planet as a whole

Arctic sea ice has shrunk by 250 million acres -- an area 
the size of California, Maryland and Texas combined.

In a N.Y Times article (Nov. 17, 1999) it was reported that 
scientists have discovered that from 1993 through 1997 
average Arctic sea ice thickness was six feet. This 
represents a significant reduction in Arctic sea ice from 
1958 through 1976 when average thickness measured 
10 feet. This means that in less than 30 years, there has 
been a 40% loss of arctic sea ice.  In a Washington Post 
article (Dec. 3, 1999) it was noted that in the Arctic,  sea 
ice is shrinking at a rate of 14,000 square miles annually, 
an area larger than Maryland and Delaware combined.

According to a report by Norwegian scientists, the arctic 
sea ice in about 50 years could disappear entirely each 
summer. Researchers at the Nansen Environmental and 
Remote Sensing Center based their predictions on satellite 
pictures. These pictures showed that the Arctic winter 
icescapes decreased by 6% (a Texas-size area) during 
the last 20 years.   

Melting Antarctic Sea Ice
The Antarctic Peninsula has seen an increase in average 
temperatures of almost 5 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 50 
years. Heavy sea ice has been the norm in the Antarctic, 
but in the 1990's sea ice disintegration has begun, notes 
Robin Ross, a biological oceanographer with the University 
of California at Santa Barbara. During the year 1998, the 
Antarctic displayed a record low in winter sea ice.  

Greenland's Ice Sheet Melting
In a recent study by researchers from NASA's Goddard 
Space Flight Center shows that Greenland's ice sheet, 
about 8% of the Earth's grounded ice (Antarctica possessing 
91% of land ice), is losing ice mass. A NASA high-tech 
aerial survey shows that more than 11 cubic miles of ice 
is melting along Greenland's coasts yearly, accounting for 
7% of the annual global sea level rise. Measurements over 
the last century suggest that sea level has risen 9 inches, 
enough to cause flooding in low-lying areas, when a storm 
occurs. Sea level increase could worsen, if the present 
trend continues, says William Krabill, lead author of the 
NASA study.  

Tropical Diseases Spreading
A recent study by New Zealand doctors, researchers at 
the Wellington School of Medicine's public health 
department said outbreaks o f dengue fever in South 
Pacific islands are directly related to global warming.  
Global warming is projected to significantly increase the
range conducive to the transmission of both dengue and 
yellow fevers.  

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/nation/7725721.htm?1c

2003 tied for the world's second-hottest year, according 
to federal government data released Thursday.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/12/23/MN226990.DTL

At the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union 
in San Francisco earlier this month, a flurry of new reports 
examining evidence of global climate change all tell the same 
story.

If the trends continue unchecked, scientists say, rising sea 
levels will drown coastlines. Droughts in some regions -- 
and increased rainfall in others -- will alter harvests 
drastically. And other climate disruptions will destabilize 
regional ecologies and global economies. 

Some of these alarming phenomena may be due to the 
natural climate variability that the planet has seen over 
millions of years. But most scientists agree, after years 
of debate, that humans and their addiction to fossil fuels 
are at least partly to blame.

**********

Of course, the chemical companies continue to dispute
this.  Reports by Dow Jones are not impressive because
they have their own agenda.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits