<x-charset ISO-8859-1>> >If you stopped reading there—as most of the knee-jerk, >junk scientists do—you’d be terribly misled. > >NASA has been monitoring the temperature of the lower >layers of the atmosphere since 1979. Since this >encompasses the same “last 20 years” of the National >Academy of Sciences’ report of a “particularly strong” >warming trend, certainly balloon measurements in the >atmosphere should support this postulate.
>What the data shows is not warming but cooling: I found this essay no more useful than most others. Probably a little less useful, because the author starts off with this skepticism as to the cold spell in the Northeast and whether this can be held consistent with the emergence of any sort of global warming. For years, if not decades, I've heard that Global Warming theory predicts a temporary localized cooling in some areas including North America, and an increase in extreme weather events. I don't know if the modelers have been correct in these definitions of a global warming model, nor if those events are coming true, but the "it's cold so global warming can't be happening argument" doesn't seem to be sufficiently aware of basic theory. What I want to say is this: Many of us in this and other discussion groups have a strong interest in Earth Science if for no other reason than we find it darn fascinating. But I've come to this partial working-idea on Global Warming, that even if I consider myself to be a "decent" (if often-wrong) armchair science-follower, I think global warming questions are tough ones, and the haughty "what this shows" overly-confident conclusions of this fellow amateur are not wortwhile. They fail to show proper respect for the difficulty of the questions, and the apparent preponderance of opinion of serious disinterested (politically) scientists who just want to try and help themselves and us understand what's really happening to the Earth, its climate, etc. To try and understand such matters in a serious way is to have respect for the complexity of the matter, in my view. I've been thinking about the fact that we seldom if ever see much mention of the great CFC-Ozone debate that took place, and the fact that there *was* a cooperative global action that has taken place to try to correct this disputed (by some, at the time and perhaps now) problem. Could we have afforded to wait any longer? Not in my view, and evidently not in the view of enough other people so that we took action. Has the action taken proven to have been useful? So far as I know. I think the hope is that, over the years, we'll continue to see evidence come in that we did the right thing. But I just don't hear that many folks claiming that they would have preferred that we do nothing, or that they would have preferred that we all ignore the serious scientists who did indicate they thought a problem might arise and listen only to the serious scientists who thought that a problem mightn't arise. Now, the CFC-Ozone problem seemed a bit easier to predict and identify and nail down and try to do something about it. The assertions of CO2-linked and other-chemical-linked Global warming seem harder to implement a precautionary principle process if only because of the relatively greater (seeming) complexity and attendant uncertainty that we may associate with complexity. But I've just been meaning to point out that the Ozone-CFC actions, however imperfect, seem to have worked out a little. Why aren't they regarded as more of a precedent-setting baby-step... helping us have confidence that if we take specific actions to remediate-in-advance with respect to Global Warming, we might well turn out to thank ourselves that we did the right thing? >“The >lower [troposphere] data are often cited as evidence >against global warming, because they have as yet >failed to show any warming trend when averaged over >the entire Earth. The lower stratospheric data show a >significant cooling trend…In addition to the recent >cooling, large temporary warming perturbations may be >seen in the data due to two major volcanic eruptions: >El Chichon in March 1982, and Mt. Pinatubo in June >1991.” ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Send the freshest Valentine's flowers with a FREE vase from only $29.99! Shipped direct from the grower with a 7 day freshness guarantee and prices so low you save 30-55% off retail! http://us.click.yahoo.com/_iAw9B/xdlHAA/3jkFAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/index.php?list=biofuel Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuel/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ </x-charset>
