Everyone must pitch in to save the earth
Over three quarters of Coloradoans support taking action to reduce our pollution but essential life style changes are not being made. It is not enough to verbalize that we need a change. It takes conscientious efforts from individual citizens to make a positive impact realizing our carbon footprints and acknowledging that we can begin to rescue our consumption is a phenomenal place to begin.
Americans as a culture are extremely wasteful and understanding that we must change to ensure our survival can be an example for the human race. Colorado should be the state that supplies solutions to Global warming and motivation to carry those plans to completion. We as a state have already demonstrated bold leadership in transferring our energy consumption to more renewable sources and we should continue our efforts to create a low carbon economy!
It begins at local efforts and trickles up to legislative efforts. Governors Ritter is essentially the voice of all Coloradoans and the public is demanding a solution. Developing a plan to reduce our pollution levels and ensure a simple as adopting the Clean Cars Program or supporting the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act proposed by the Senate.
Now is the time to make a change, the Earth supports and tolerates our existence. It is about time we give back. Do something about this very important issue; make a change for our future as a race.
This letter has not been edited.
Lets see, I traded in 17mpg truck for 35mpg car, installed $3000 worth of energy efficient windows, rode a bike the 15 mile roundtrip to work about 150 times over the last 3 years, changed almost all my incandesant light bulbs to the compact flourescents, planted trees for shade on the southside of my house, installed programmable thermostat and set it for 65 or lower all winter long, added insulation to the roof, what am I forgetting????
Posted by Kel on November 7, 2007 03:17 PMI agree that we should place a great deal of attention on innovative research to what we can RESPONSIBLY do to limit pollution and dependence on foreign oil. Be it wind, solar, biofuels (not corn based ethanol though), clean coal, oil shale, or nuclear, we really should do as much as we can.
What I absolutely do NOT agree with is this statement: "Global Warming is present threat to our everyday lives" in no way, shape or form is that statement true. If referring to climate models, when used in "reverse" the model predictions do not correlate to physical, observable historical data. Thousands of generations have lived through Medieval Warm Period or Optimum(when Greenland was actually green), to the Little Ice Age, the climate of the Earth has cycled normally.
But don't take my word for it. And PLEASE understand the function of the IPCC. I know that most of our readers here do no more research than what they read in the mainstream media, or those that are firm faith believers in Anthropogenic Global Climate Change, will go to places such as "globalwarming.org" or "environmentaldefense.org" (non-scientific organizations that lead the charge of misinformation to serve their own specific purpose), it is important to stay up to speed in the ever changing world of AGW. For those that will take the time to actually read and can comprehend abstracts and full articles, read 'Science' or The International Journal of Climatology, where physical observations and data contradict the modeling of scientists such as Hanson, or those the IPCC relies upon to issue their reports on what politicians should do because of AGW.
Don't believe me? Here are some excerpts and where they come from:
16 March 2007 issue of Science by Shepherd and Wingham (2007), when discussing rising sea levels due to the melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland state "...conclusion that the current “best estimate” of the contribution of polar ice wastage to global sea level change is a rise of 0.35 millimeters per year." Which over a century amounts to only 35 millimeters., or less than an inch and a half. Nothing close to the 2 - 18 foot sea rise that Sen. Gore predicts in his movie.
Dulgokencky et al. report, “atmospheric methane's contribution to anthropogenic climate forcing is about half that from CO2 [when direct and indirect components to its forcing are summed (Hansen and Sato, 2001).” In addition, “all methane emission scenarios considered by the IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios (Nakicenovic et al., 2000) resulted in increasing atmospheric methane for at least the next 3 decades, and many of the scenarios projected large increases through the 21st century (Prather et al., 2001).” In reality, however, it now appears that a large portion of the anticipated global warming problem may have simply disappeared, rather than gotten much worse.
But please, don't take my word for it. And please, also don't believe that the alarmist view is the only view. I have copied a few article references for anyone that would like to review what the scientific community is actually OBSERVING. Enjoy the reading:
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Anderson, J.B. 2007. Ice sheet stability and sea-level rise. Science 315: 1803-1804.
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Bekki, S., Law, K.S. and Pyle, J.A. 1994. Effect of ozone depletion on atmospheric CH4 and CO concentrations. Nature 371: 595-597.
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Buddemeier, R.W., Lkeypas, J.A. and Aronson, R.B. 2004. Coral Reefs & Global Climate Change: Potential Contributions of Climate Change to Stresses on Coral Reef Ecosystems. The Pew Center on Global Climate Change, Arlington, VA, USA.
Carricart-Ganivet, J.P. 2004. Sea surface temperature and the growth of the West Atlantic reef-building coral Montastraea annularis. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 302: 249-260.
Charlson, R.J., Lovelock, J.E., Andrea, M.O. and Warren, S.G. 1987. Oceanic phytoplankton, atmospheric sulfur, cloud albedo and climate. Nature 326: 655-661.
Chen, X. and Gao, K. 2004. Characterization of diurnal photosynthetic rhythms in the marine diatom Skeletonema costatum grown in synchronous culture under ambient and elevated CO2. Functional Plant Biology 31: 399-404.
Church, J.A., White, N.J., Coleman, R., Lambert, K. and Mitrovica, J.X. 2004. Estimates of the regional distribution of sea level rise over the 1950-2000 period. Journal of Climate 17: 2609-2625.
Clausen, C.D. and Roth, A.A. 1975. Effect of temperature and temperature adaptation on calcification rate in the hematypic Pocillopora damicornis. Marine Biology 33: 93-100.
Coles, S.L. and Coles. P.L. 1977. Effects of temperature on photosynthesis and respiration in hermatypic corals. Marine Biology 43: 209-216.
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COHMAP Members. 1988. Climatic changes of the last 18,000 years: Observations and model simulations. Science 241: 1043-1052.
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owling, S.A. 1999. Plants and temperature - CO2 uncoupling. Science 285: 1500-1501.
Crabbe, M.J.C., Wilson, M.E.J. and Smith, D.J. 2006. Quaternary corals from reefs in the Wakatobi Marine National Park, SE Sulawesi, Indonesia, show similar growth rates to modern corals from the same area. Journal of Quaternary Science 21: 803-809.
Davis, M.B., Spear, R.W. and Shane, L.C.K. 1980. Holocene climate of New England. Quaternary Research 14: 240-250.
De Luis, J., Irigoyen, J.J. and Sanchez-Diaz, M. 1999. Elevated CO2 enhances plant growth in droughted N2-fixing alfalfa without improving water stress. Physiologia Plantarum 107: 84-89.
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Dickson, A.G. and Riley, J.P. 1979. The estimation of acid dissociation constants in seawater media from potentiometric titrations with strong base. I. The ionic product of water - KW. Marine Chemistry 7: 89-99.
Dlugokencky, E.J., Dutton, E.G., Novelli, P.C., Tans, P.P., Masarie, K.A., Lantz, K.O. and Madronich, S. 1996. Changes in CH4 and CO growth rates after the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo and their link with changes in tropical tropospheric UV flux. Geophysical Research Letters 23: 2761-2764.
Dlugokencky, E.J., Houweling, S., Bruhwiler, L., Masarie, K.A., Lang, P.M., Miller, J.B. and Tans, P.P. Atmospheric methane levels off: Temporary pause or a new steady-state? 2003. Geophysical Research Letters 30: 10.1029/2003GL018126.
Hansen, J.E. and Sato, M. 2001. Trends of measured climate forcing agents. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 98: 14,778-14,783.
Dlugokencky, E.J., Masarie, K.A., Lang, P.M. and Tans, P.P. 1998. Continuing decline in the growth rate of the atmospheric methane burden. Nature 393: 447-450.
Dlugokencky, E.J., Walter, B.P., Masarie, K.A., Lang, P.M. and Kasischke, E.S. 2001. Measurements of an anomalous global methane increase during 1998. Geophysical Research Letters 28: 499-502.
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Francey, R.J., Manning, M.R., Allison, C.E., Coram, S.A., Etheridge, D.M., Langenfelds, R.L., Lowe, D.C. and Steele, L.P. 1999. A history of ð13C in atmospheric CH4 from the Cape Grim Air Archive and Antarctic firn air. Journal of Geophysical Research 104: 23,631-23,643.
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ok you first by cutting your co2 emmissions ZERO and I wont fart ever again.
I am still waiting for the ice age of 2000 that all of algores buddies said was coming and now they have changed their minds. what are we to think? oh i forgot nothing as algore will tell us what to do and all of the morons who follow him can cry the sky is falling.
Posted by on November 7, 2007 03:33 PMEveryone must pitch in to save the earth
Wednesday, November 7 at 12:08 PM
Jessica Chavez of Denver writes:
Hey Jessica I did my part. Last week when my neighbor was out of town I dug a hole in his back yard and dumped about 8 gallons of old motor oil and another 4 or 5 gallons of antifreeze, then I filled the hole. At least this will keep it from winding up in the landfill.
I also left a big carbon footprint in my undies after I chowed down on a couple of spicy bean burritos.
Posted by on November 7, 2007 03:48 PMThanks for the info Dan2,
I'll certainly be reading some of your referenced material, maybe I'll get a little bit more information on all sides of this debate.
However I'm waiting to see how our resident experts CL and Bangalore Skank will try to degrade or debunk your comments along with the references provided.
Jack,
Thanks, and I hope you do read some of the references. I have 329 other references that I could have posted, but didn't want to "hog" all the space.
Mr. Skank is a scientist by education, although I do not recall at this time what his field of expertise is.
I'm sure CL will just copy and paste a link to environmentaldefense.org, those bastions of scientific knowledge, or comment that all of these scientists and studies must have been conducted for the oil or energy companies and the conspiracy is the collusion of evidence AGAINST AGW.
What I find most compelling about the CO2 argument is that when models are reversed to reflect observed data, forcing with CO2 alone is unable to replicate actual data. When the "unknown" is factored in (i.e. atmospheric H2O and aerosols) than that data is accurate, which leaves the question, how much, if any, will CO2 doubling actually do to the climate and especially surface temperatures? We are able to observe what a doubling of CO2 since 1900 has done, and has not produced an increase in isotopic temperature, but instead a Global Mean DECREASE of 1.2 degrees C(Alley et al 2007). Blows the whole theory out the window, don't you think?
Posted by Dan2 on November 7, 2007 04:15 PMI did my part I pitched a greener over a wall and into the sea of Japan. First its the suns burning out then a new Ice age then CO2 then DDT then Fish then Bugs then Trees now polar bears and global warming. I can say one thing being old lets you hear all the shisters up front. save the world get rid of greeners feed them to sharks.lowers the population and feed the sharks. of course the sharks will probly get cancer from all the THC. The French were right on one thing....
Posted by Joe on November 7, 2007 04:33 PMDan2,
Absolutely, like I've said in a previous post, I can make a computer model to show how rich I am when in fact I'm just getting by. It would make me feel good but doesn't proove anything. Models are written by humans to determine an outcome - sometime preconcieved in my opinion. Also, if these global warming models are that accurate than how come the ECMWF and European models and GFS can never agree on local short term and long term forecasts and when they do how come those same weather forecasts aren't spot on or at least close?
Another thing about all of this CO2 that you just mentioned is that it lags heat (does not retain it) so how does an increase in the amounts of CO2 contribute to a warming effect? Something smells and it isn't fish, I think it is a major political agenda that has taken deep root and will now take many years to reverse if people would just research all sides of this issue.
I realize there have been some climate changes - just how much of it is human caused is where I differ in opinion from many of the posters on these blogs. Based on my readings I believe this is a natural cycle that has been proven to be the case in past cooling and heating cycles of the earth prior to the arrival of human kind.
I now realize that alot of the hysterical posters on this blog don't like to hear anything other than the crisis reporting on this issue. They listen to the mainstream media as you said and then run with that.
There is so much information out there about this subject that is not of a politcal nature I just don't see how anybody is sold on the purely AGW theory.
Good letter Jessica. I hope it gets you that extra credit that everyone else in your sixth grade class is working toward.
Meanwhile, ManBearPig is devouring people across the country.
Posted by B on November 7, 2007 04:49 PMhay jessica,I'm going to start throwing bottle rockets at the sun for you.When are the politicials going to realize if we blow up the sun there will be no more global warming.
Posted by Keith on November 7, 2007 06:11 PMRemember when the scientific concensus was that forest fires were bad? So we put them all out as quickly as possible. It turned into a disaster, making fires worse than ever before. All over maintaining the status quo and the natural beauty that were our forests. Now, a lot smarter, we let fires burn, as they are a necessary part of the forest ecosystem.
So now the same arrogant idiots think that they know better and want to stop any changes of the Earth itself. Yup, that's the ticket. Screw with the planet itself with absolutely no idea what they are doing.
Posted by clyde on November 7, 2007 09:11 PMPsst. Al Gore was convicted in a British court of lying. Pass it on.
Whatever you do, promise me you -won't- read the judge's opinion.
I'm doing a study on global Ice sickels. How they are damaging my flower garden. My neighbors all agree that it is a world wide problem. In forty-two billion years all the flowers will be GONE. My college professors gave me all the evidence I need 30 yrs ago on Global cooling. There was a scientist there too.
I need your help with my new movie to stop this global disastor. Just send your much needed check to BR-549 I need a private jets to help melt those evil sickels.
Please help me get rich, for the worlds sake, Please
We DO have to work together to save the Earth.Klendathu is throwing asteroids at us and the sky is falling.
Posted by Jimminy on November 8, 2007 08:34 AMSo Jay,
It looks like Dan2 has posted some Peer Reviewed articles here for you!
I started reading Ms. Chavez's letter, but then I had to fire up my SUV and commute downtown to work, where my office was too warm so I cranked up the AC and it was kind of dark so turned on a few more lights.
Now if you'll excuse me, got to get a Diet Coke in a plastic bottle from the refrigerator. Doing my part to keep CO2 out of the air ... until I belch, that is.
Posted by prima facie on November 8, 2007 11:18 AMWe arent concerned with the future only NOW. Once we die of old age who cares? Let our children and grandchildren figure it out, its their problem not ours. we have plenty for the next 20 to 50 years.
Posted by Republican Minds on November 8, 2007 02:57 PMDan2:
Oh please!
I'm sure CL will just copy and paste a link to environmentaldefense.org, those bastions of scientific knowledge...
I think you have mistaken me for someone else, I've never linked to environmentaldefense.org. Perhaps you confused me with "Mr Wizard" on this thread:
http://blogs.rockymountainnews.com/denver/letters/2007/10/warming_a_real_threat.html
I did post a bit below that with links to CIRA (out of CSU) and The American Meteorological Society - I'd say those are a bit better than environmentaldefense.org.
... or comment that all of these scientists and studies must have been conducted for the oil or energy companies and the conspiracy is the collusion of evidence AGAINST AGW.
Baloney. I encourage folks to read the journals themselves and even better research the cites to the journal articles and follow where that research is going (the journal letters are good for that). So, when it comes to you list of references - my response is to go for it! The original sources are much better than some pro/anti this or that website like environmentaldefense.org or co2science.org.
Now where I may have a problem is what you say the research says. This caught my attention:
We are able to observe what a doubling of CO2 since 1900 has done, and has not produced an increase in isotopic temperature, but instead a Global Mean DECREASE of
1.2 degrees C(Alley et al 2007). Blows the whole theory out the window, don't you think?
Isotopic temperature is a derived (is a proxy) from the ratio of different isotopes (ie Oxygen-16 & Oxygen-18). That's how they determine the age of the ice in ice cores.
Assuming that Alley et al 2007 is the article you cited as:
"Alley, R.B., Anandakrishnan, S., Dupont, T.K., Parizek, B.R. and Pollard, D. 2007. Effect of sedimentation on ice-sheet grounding-line stability. Science 315: 1838-1841."
I wondered what Alley was doing with isotopic temperature in a study on sedimentation and ice sheets and how that got tied to a "Global Mean DECREASE of 1.2 degrees".
So, I pulled the article, and it doesn't seem to be in there. Reading through the article, I don't see anything about isotopic temperature or decreases in the global mean.
So, either this isn't the right article (did you mean to cite something else?) or I'm just missing it - if I'm missing it what page & paragraph is this discussed?
Put Impeachment ON The Table of the House Judiciary Committee
This week Dennis Kucinich led an heroic effort to put the impeachment of Dick Cheney ON the table by requesting a floor vote on H.Res. 333. As expected, BushDemocrat Steny Hoyer moved to table the bill. And then all hell broke loose as 165 Republicans voted with Kucinich and 85 brave Democrats to force a debate on impeachment over the objections of Nancy Pelosi. To block that debate, Hoyer moved to send H.Res. 333 back to the Judiciary Committee, and this motion passed. Watch David Swanson explain the events to Paul Jay of The Real News .
So what do we do next to move impeachment forward?
1. Email all of the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee:
http://www.democrats.com/topelosiandjudiciary
and call them:
http://www.democrats.com/house-judiciary-democrats