The Nobel Prize (for propaganda)

trysail

Catch Me Who Can
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"Aliens Cause Global Warming," a speech by the late Michael Crichton:

http://www.michaelcrichton.com/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html

"...There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period...
...I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough... "





Chill out over global warming
By David Harsanyi
Denver Post Staff Columnist

You'll often hear the left lecture about the importance of dissent in a free society.

Why not give it a whirl?

Start by challenging global warming hysteria next time you're at a LoDo cocktail party and see what happens.

Admittedly, I possess virtually no expertise in science. That puts me in exactly the same position as most dogmatic environmentalists who want to craft public policy around global warming fears.

The only inconvenient truth about global warming, contends Colorado State University's Bill Gray, is that a genuine debate has never actually taken place. Hundreds of scientists, many of them prominent in the field, agree.

Gray is perhaps the world's foremost hurricane expert. His Tropical Storm Forecast sets the standard. Yet, his criticism of the global warming "hoax" makes him an outcast.

"They've been brainwashing us for 20 years," Gray says. "Starting with the nuclear winter and now with the global warming. This scare will also run its course. In 15-20 years, we'll look back and see what a hoax this was."

Gray directs me to a 1975 Newsweek article that whipped up a different fear: a coming ice age.

"Climatologists," reads the piece, "are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change. ... The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality."

Thank God they did nothing. Imagine how warm we'd be?

Another highly respected climatologist, Roger Pielke Sr. at the University of Colorado, is also skeptical.

Pielke contends there isn't enough intellectual diversity in the debate. He claims a few vocal individuals are quoted "over and over" again, when in fact there are a variety of opinions.

I ask him: How do we fix the public perception that the debate is over?

"Quite frankly," says Pielke, who runs the Climate Science Weblog ( http://www.climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu ), "I think the media is in the ideal position to do that. If the media honestly presented the views out there, which they rarely do, things would change. There aren't just two sides here. There are a range of opinions on this issue. A lot of scientists out there that are very capable of presenting other views are not being heard."

Al Gore (not a scientist) has definitely been heard - and heard and heard. His documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," is so important, in fact, that Gore crisscrosses the nation destroying the atmosphere just to tell us about it.

"Let's just say a crowd of baby boomers and yuppies have hijacked this thing," Gray says. "It's about politics. Very few people have experience with some real data. I think that there is so much general lack of knowledge on this. I've been at this over 50 years down in the trenches working, thinking and teaching."

Gray acknowledges that we've had some warming the past 30 years. "I don't question that," he explains. "And humans might have caused a very slight amount of this warming. Very slight. But this warming trend is not going to keep on going. My belief is that three, four years from now, the globe will start to cool again, as it did from the middle '40s to the middle '70s."

Both Gray and Pielke say there are many younger scientists who voice their concerns about global warming hysteria privately but would never jeopardize their careers by speaking up.

"Plenty of young people tell me they don't believe it," he says. "But they won't touch this at all. If they're smart, they'll say: 'I'm going to let this run its course.' It's a sort of mild McCarthyism. I just believe in telling the truth the best I can. I was brought up that way."

So next time you're with some progressive friends, dissent. Tell 'em you're not sold on this global warming stuff.

Back away slowly. You'll probably be called a fascist.

Don't worry, you're not. A true fascist is anyone who wants to take away my air conditioning or force me to ride a bike.
 
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Some Inconvenient Truths For Gore

Al Gore's documentary on climate disaster has been ruled a work of fiction by a British judge. In legal terms, his global warming hysteria has been assuming facts not in evidence.

Gore has long insisted that the debate over disastrous and imminent climate change induced by man-made global warming is over. A unanimous scientific "consensus" had formed, and the only doubters were "deniers" who also believe the moon landings were filmed on a movie lot in Arizona.

The British government apparently believed this, making Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" part of the British secondary school curriculum. The greenies were happy, if for no other reason than convincing impressionable children and future voters is easier than defending their theories before award-winning pioneers in the field.

Stewart Dimmock, a school governor in Kent, said the government's decision amounted to brainwashing of children. Justice Michael Burton of the High Court in London, while agreeing warming is man-induced, also supported Dimmock's view that "(Gore's film) is not simply a science film . . . but that it is a political film."

Burton ruled that the film could be shown to British students, but only on the condition it be accompanied by new guidance notes for teachers to balance Gore's "one-sided" views. Burton documented nine major errors in Gore's film and wrote that some of Gore's claims had arisen "in the context of alarmism and exaggeration."

The first error Gore made, according to Burton, was in his apocalyptic vision of the devastation from a rise in sea levels caused by melting polar ice caps. Gore's claim of a 20-foot rise "in the near future" was dismissed as "distinctly alarmist." Burton wrote that such a rise could occur "only after, and over, millennia" and to suggest otherwise "is not in line with the scientific consensus."

As we have noted, the scientific consensus is that sea levels might rise anywhere from 7 inches to 23 inches, but it would take a century for that to occur. Even the latest IPCC report suggested that it would take a thousand years of higher-than-historic temperatures to melt the Greenland ice sheet, the basis of Gore's claim.

On Gore's claim that the loss of Mount Kilimanjaro's snows was due to climate change, the judge said the scientific community had been unable to find evidence of a direct link. In fact, it found the opposite.

In 2002, glaciologist Lonnie Thompson reported that from 1953 to 1976, a period of global cooling that had some predicting a new ice age, a full 21% of Kilimanjaro's main glacier disappeared. It was caused not by man-induced warming, but by deforestation.

Burton said Gore's suggestion that the Gulf Stream that warms the North Atlantic would shut down also was contradicted by the IPCC's assessment that it was "very unlikely" to happen.

Burton also ridiculed Gore's claim that polar bears were drowning while searching for ice melted by global warming. The only drowned polar bears the court said it was aware of were four bears that died following a storm.

There is no word from Gore on whether he thinks Judge Burton was paid off by Big Oil, drives an SUV or thinks the moon landing was fake. For Gore, it's an inconvenient truth that in its first court case, the Industrial Revolution was put on trial and found not guilty on at least nine counts.

1553052913_2f3b379216_o.gif
 
Nice try, try

You do not present an accurate account of the judge's ruling, which supported the basic contentions of the film. Focussing on some minor issues like Kilmanjaro and particular polar bear drownings distracts from the main points, which i've bolded below. There is incidentally good evidence that polar bears are endangered.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/corporate_law/article2633838.ece




From The Times
October 11, 2007

Al Gore’s inconvenient judgment


Al Gore’s award-winning climate change documentary was littered with nine inconvenient untruths, a judge ruled yesterday.

An Inconvenient Truth won plaudits from the environmental lobby and an Oscar from the film industry but was found wanting when it was scrutinised in the High Court in London.

Mr Justice Burton identified nine significant errors within the former presidential candidate’s documentary as he assessed whether it should be shown to school children. He agreed that Mr Gore’s film was “broadly accurate” in its presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change but said that some of the claims were wrong and had arisen in “the context of alarmism and exaggeration”.

In what is a rare judicial ruling on what children can see in the class-room, Mr Justice Barton was at pains to point out that the “apocalyptic vision” presented in the film was politically partisan and not an impartial analysis of the science of climate change.

“It is plainly, as witnessed by the fact that it received an Oscar this year for best documentary film, a powerful, dramatically presented and highly professionally produced film,” he said in his ruling. “It is built around the charismatic presence of the ex-Vice-Presi-dent, Al Gore, whose crusade it now is to persuade the world of the dangers of climate change caused by global warming.

“It is now common ground that it is not simply a science film – although it is clear that it is based substantially on scientific research and opinion – but that it is a political film.”

The analysis by the judge will have a bearing on whether the Government can continue with its plan to have the film shown in every secondary school. He agreed it could be shown but on the condition that it was accompanied by new guidance notes for teachers to balance Mr Gore’s “one-sided” views.

The Government’s decision to show the film in secondary schools had come under attack from Stewart Dim-mock, a school governor in Kent and a member of political group the New Party, who accused the Government of brainwashing children.

The first mistake made by Mr Gore, said Mr Justice Burton in his written judgment, was in talking about the potential devastation wrought by a rise in sea levels caused by the melting of ice caps.
The claim that sea levels could rise by 20ft “in the near future” was dismissed as “distinctly alarmist”. Such a rise would take place “only after, and over, millennia”.

Mr Justice Burton added: “The ar-mageddon scenario he predicts, inso-far as it suggests that sea level rises of seven metres might occur in the immediate future, is not in line with the scientific consensus.”

A claim that atolls in the Pacific had already been evacuated was supported by “no evidence”, while to suggest that two graphs showing carbon dioxide levels and temperatures over the last 650,000 years were an “exact fit” overstated the case.

Mr Gore’s suggestion that the Gulf Stream, that warms up the Atlantic ocean, would shut down was contradicted by the International Panel on Climate Change’s assessment that it was “very unlikely” to happen.
The drying of Lake Chad, the loss of Mount Kilimanjaro’s snows and Hurricane Katrina were all blamed by Mr Gore on climate change but the judge said the scientific community had been unable to find evidence to prove there was a direct link.

The drying of Lake Chad, the judge said, was “far more likely to result from other factors, such as population increase and overgrazing, and regional climate variability”. The melting of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro was “mainly attributable to human-induced climate change”.

The judge also said there was no proof to support a claim that polar bears were drowning while searching for icy habitats melted by global warming. The only drowned polar bears the court was aware of were four that died following a storm.

Similarly, the judge took issue with the former Vice-President of the United States for attributing coral bleaching to climate change. Separating the direct impacts of climate change and other factors was difficult, the judgment concluded.

Despite finding nine significant errors the judge said many of the claims made by the film were fully backed up by the weight of science. He identified “four main scientific hypotheses, each of which is very well supported by research published in respected, peer-reviewed journals and accords with the latest conclusions of the IPCC”.
In particular, he agreed with the main thrust of Mr Gore’s arguments: “That climate change is mainly attributable to man-made emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide (‘greenhouse gases’).”

The other three main points accepted by the judge were that global temperatures are rising and are likely to continue to rise, that climate change will cause serious damage if left unchecked, and that it is entirely possible for governments and individuals to reduce its impacts.
 
I see no problem if we want to use less fossil fuels - they're running out anyway. But just why is it that the West should be the only countries to suffer. China, India and Middle East countries are increasing their carbon emissions faster than the developed world is reducing. The argument is that, to become an industrialised nation, you have to go through a period of being a fossil fuel economy.

Our environmental action group, 'Stick corks up cows assholes to stop them farting methane' was disbanded after we read a new scientific study that cows belch more methane than they fart. We are now going round trying to persuade cows to eat popcorn instead of grass.

There is little doubt that average global temperatures have gone up a bit in the last century, but no-one can prove why. Earth's temperature increase cannot be correlated to increases in industrial emissions and this woud not explain the increases in surface temperatures on Mars and Jupiter.

Climatologists are like the alchemists of the seventeenth century. There is little or no scientific discipline behind their statements. If a tulip comes out a week earlier than normal, all SUVs must be taken off the road.

We are coming out of an ice age - you expect it to get warmer. The scientific research showing increased surface activity on the sun gets no coverage.

When it rains - that is global warming. When there are droughts - that is global warming. When there is a summer heatwave - that is global warming. When there is a cold summer - that is global warming.

Our climate is certainly changing but I don't see that any of the snake-oil salesmen on Al Gore's side have the definitive science to back up their scares and global conferences.
 
Re: first post
As long as we're going to engage in the politics of distraction (that is, attack the messenger) here is an example of someone speaking about Mr. Harsanyi's style of presentation.

http://www.mikeditto.com/archives/david_harsanyi_betrays_reality


BTW, Mr. Harsanyi is a favorite guest for Fox News. Not saying that he doesn't make sense on certain issues, but I do think it is important to illustrate that he is a COLUMNIST, not a JOURNALIST. In other words, this is an opinion piece, not objective reporting.
 
The problem with this thread is that it tries to present a case to condem Al Gore's Climate Change position rather than for what the case was really about. This court case is about whether or not Britain can show the film in public schools, not about the efficacy of the science.

If you believe the headlines, the film is trash and should be thrown in the dumpster. In fact, that is not the outcome of this case. The real outcome is that Gore - a non-scientist - made nine statements in the film that may or may not be based on fact. Even with those nine potential errors, the film will still be shown in Britain's schools. That's a far cry from condemming the film.

As an additional note, all nine points have neither been proved nor disproved by science. I suspect they will be as the situation clearifies and new studies are completed.

It seems more reasonable to watch the Association of Concerned Scientists (http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/ipcc-highlights3.html) than some News hack.
 
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If you have any experience with complex computer models (which have all the built-in biases of their designers, most especially the all-too human tendency for extrapolation of recent experience), you know they are chock full of the potential for error. Time and time again, I have watched people draw incorrect conclusions because they were unaware of the subtleties involved. People are amazingly trusting of stuff produced by computer that the programmers know is either pre-ordained by the prejudices of the programmer or the selection of the data. I and many other intelligent observers (Freeman Dyson, William Gray, and Michael Crichton, among others) are not even close to being convinced that the evidence warrants the conclusions that are being accepted as gospel by a credulous media and given the patina of settled science to an even more gullible public.

Home Page- NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies – Surface Temperature Analysis
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/

Punta Arenas, Chile
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/g...py?id=304859340004&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

Alice Springs, Australia
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/g...py?id=501943260004&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

Clyde, NWT, Canada
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/g...py?id=403710900006&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

Christchurch, NZ
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/g...py?id=507937800000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

Kamenskoe, Siberia
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/g...py?id=222257440004&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

Rome, Italy
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/g...py?id=623162390011&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

Paris, Le Bourget
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/g...py?id=615071500001&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
 
trysail said:
I and many other intelligent observers (Freeman Dyson, William Gray, and Michael Crichton, among others)
No actual comment about the intelligence of observers just the connection made.

A quantum physicist, a hurricane 'expert', an author/producer/director and trysail.
 
elfin_odalisque said:
I see no problem if we want to use less fossil fuels - they're running out anyway. But just why is it that the West should be the only countries to suffer.
Suffer? In what way?

Dude, when oil prices rise, what makes you imagine it will only impact "the West?"
China, India and Middle East countries are increasing their carbon emissions faster than the developed world is reducing. The argument is that, to become an industrialised nation, you have to go through a period of being a fossil fuel economy.
It's not an argument, it's what they are doing.
Climatologists are like the alchemists of the seventeenth century. There is little or no scientific discipline behind their statements.

We are coming out of an ice age - you expect it to get warmer. The scientific research showing increased surface activity on the sun gets no coverage.
Actually, we should already be sliding into another. "Just coming out of an ice age" is horse hockey. There's no science? Wow. This will be crushing news to them.
Our climate is certainly changing but I don't see that any of the snake-oil salesmen on Al Gore's side have the definitive science to back up their scares and global conferences.
Except that like, there is. Note the statements of the judge fellow above. Dude, where do you get your information? The RNC?
 
gauchecritic said:
A quantum physicist, a hurricane 'expert', an author/producer/director and trysail.
Uh..., can we make that,

"A quantum physicist, a Ph.D. (with vast experience in computer modeling including pioneering long-range hurricane forecasting [that would suggest some familiarity with computing, climate and weather, would it not?), and a physician-scientist?"

As for myself, my academic credentials are a good deal more modest but include some post graduate work and (too damn much) computer programming.


 
Kunstler:

We have to transform retail trade. The national chains that have used the high tide of fossil fuels to contrive predatory economies-of-scale (and kill local economies) -- they are going down. WalMart and the other outfits will not survive the coming era of expensive, scarcer oil. They will not be able to run the "warehouses-on-wheels" of 18-wheel tractor-trailers incessantly circulating along the interstate highways. Their 12,000-mile supply lines to the Asian slave-factories are also endangered as the US and China contest for Middle East and African oil. The local networks of commercial interdependency which these chain stores systematically destroyed (with the public's acquiescence) will have to be rebuilt brick-by-brick and inventory-by-inventory. This will require rich, fine-grained, multi-layered networks of people who make, distribute, and sell stuff (including the much-maligned "middlemen"). Don't be fooled into thinking that the Internet will replace local retail economies. Internet shopping is totally dependent now on cheap delivery, and delivery will no longer be cheap. It also is predicated on electric power systems that are completely reliable. That is something we are unlikely to enjoy in the years ahead. Do you have a penchant for retail trade and don't want to work for a big predatory corporation? There's lots to do here in the realm of small, local business. Quit carping and get busy.
 
tree.jpg


Chicken Little said the sky was falling and nobody would believe him, and just look what happened ..... well ...... Ok ..... maybe thats not the best example to use but most propaganda contains at least some truth.

I think it is true, though slightly blown out of proportion by a man who thought he should have been president until florida got sucked away from him like a hurricane took it.

We need to protect the environment and understand that every billion dollars we spend doing so will be overshadowed and underscored by other countries dumping toxic waste in rivers ans oceans. We cannot force them to help, but we can make an effort ourselves and hope it is enough, and hope they will see the wisdom for themselves and do more.

Every debate and arguement can be tilted and twirled in the wind. Hence my sig line, no, not sweetsarahh's wisdom, but the remark that the answers we obtain are almost exclusively determined by the questions we ask. Albert Einstien made a similar remark, but I don't credit him because I don't remember his exact quote and I may have elaborated on it slightly to get what I wanted.

Anyways, what I am saying is that me and other intelligent observers like Chicken Little and Albert Einstien think there is some truth in it, but that Gore is full of hot air.

JMO

:rose:
 
trysail said:
Uh..., can we make that,

"A quantum physicist, a Ph.D. (with vast experience in computer modeling including pioneering long-range hurricane forecasting [that would suggest some familiarity with computing, climate and weather, would it not?), and a physician-scientist?"

As for myself, my academic credentials are a good deal more modest but include some post graduate work and (too damn much) computer programming.



The 'expert' was because I didn't know which William Gray it was that you were comparing yourself to. (or possibly equating yourself with)
 
trysail said:
I assume you're not holding your breath expecting me to post a curriculum vitae here!

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/g...py?id=156679640005&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
Nope, no global warming there.
Just send the CV privately, no need for everyone to see it.

You see... I dunno. You say 'no global warming there' and give us a temp chart we can barely read, let alone draw a median line through as some kind of evidence. The chart is of Bulawayo, in the middle of the African continent. Don't know how many charts you looked at, but I suggest looking at the temperature charts of coastal cities rather than central landmass cities. From the dozens of coastal city charts I looked at, across all continents, there appears to be different temperature gardients from adjacent landmass cities. Dunno what conclusion one can draw from that other than it is different from yours. ;)
 
Oblimo said:
It would help to be less alarmist than the alarmist people with which you disagree, trysail.
Good grief! I gave a bunch of links to various locations (there are hundreds more of 'em- that's why I provided the links). Y'all go have a look for yourself. http://forum.literotica.com/showpost.php?p=24504780&postcount=7

Oblimo said:
Just out of curiosity: What, exactly, is that chart showing about Zimbabwe, and is there a control chart of it somewhere?
It's time v. observed temperatures. Control for what?

neonlyte said:
Don't know how many charts you looked at, but I suggest looking at the temperature charts of coastal cities rather than central landmass cities. From the dozens of coastal city charts I looked at, across all continents, there appears to be different temperature gardients from adjacent landmass cities. Dunno what conclusion one can draw from that other than it is different from yours.

You can draw your own conclusion. I'm trying to get people to THINK for themselves rather than swallow regurgitated media pap. There's no question there have been rising temperatures in urban areas. Duh! They're heat sinks and they've been growing. But, if you look outside urban areas............

Hell, I just picked Bulawayo at random. Help yourself.


 
trysail said:
There's no question there have been rising temperatures in urban areas. Duh! They're heat sinks
I think you mean heat sources; sinks absorb, so would reduce temperatures.

BTW, why do you always shout so loud? I remember the urban myth about the politician whose speech notes read: "Argument weak, shout loud"...
 
trysail said:
You can draw your own conclusion. I'm trying to get people to THINK for themselves rather than swallow regurgitated media pap. There's no question there have been rising temperatures in urban areas. Duh! They're heat sinks and they've been growing. But, if you look outside urban areas............

Hell, I just picked Bulawayo at random. Help yourself.
Well... allowing for your misuse of 'sink' instead of 'source', you concluded the exact opposite from the message I intended. It kinda goes along with the premise that we see what we want to see and we'll distort the message if it suits our purpose. Reminds me of Religion... no, wait... Politics... no, that's not it... Fanatasists. Yeh... Fanatics. They see 'the message' writ large on the faces of the innocent.
 
trysail said:
Good grief! I gave a bunch of links to various locations (there are hundreds more of 'em- that's why I provided the links). Y'all go have a look for yourself. http://forum.literotica.com/showpost.php?p=24504780&postcount=7
I meant that, to me, you sound just as alarmist about the dangers of environmentalism as some environmentalists sound alarmist about the dangers of industrialism to the environment. :)
It's time v. observed temperatures.
That's useless without a measurement system analysis.
Control for what?
Statistical control.
 
You folks still chewin' on this ole bone?

Stop and consider...think for a moment about the rational, objective knowledge man has acquired about the Universe we live in, the Earth we inhabit.

Mankind is less than a hundred years into even beginning to understand the forces of nature that control our environment.

If you really want to worry and fret about something, consider solar flares or gamma radiation, extinction level events over which we have no control and no defense.

Science and the pundits and the media and of course, those with a political agenda, be strange bedfellows...

Intellectuals since the Industrial Revolution have been categorically in opposition to modernization and progress in society. The intellectuals in our society are truly upset and besides themselves that the common man has risen and the aristocracy of intellect has waned.

It did not begin with Malthus, like ZPG, ( zero population growth) a fad in the 70's. Global Warming will be soon forgotten as is and was Eugenics.

Many thanks, Trysail and others, for trying to bring a modicum of rationality in the craze...but you, we, face a generation of conveyor belt educated people who were never thought to think, but believe the propaganda dished out to them.

Fortunately, reality, with the passage of time, will awaken the believers and perhaps cast doubt upon their assumptions.

In the meantime, you fight the good fight, as I did, and do, and I applaud you for it.

Regards...



Amicus...
 
so trysail, what do you think is going on here.

from the site you suggest:

any cause for concern?

Thursday, August 9, 2007 - New historic sea ice minimum
Today the Northern Hemisphere sea ice area broke the record for the lowest ice area in observed history. The new record (3.98 million sq. km) came a full month before the historic summer minimum typically occurs. There is still a month or more of melt likely this year. It is therefore almost certain that the previous 2005 record (4.01 million sq. km) will not just be broken, but annihilated by the final 2007 annual minima closer to the end of this summer.

In previous record sea ice minima years, ice area anomalies were confined to certain sectors (N. Atlantic, Beaufort/Bering Sea, etc.). The character of 2007's sea ice melt is unique in that it is dramatic and covers the entire Arctic sector. Atlantic, Pacific and even the central Arctic sectors are showing large negative sea ice area anomalies.

While we use sea ice concentration data supplied by NASA via the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), there are some differences between the way we and NSIDC process our sea ice indices. NSIDC uses 10-day running means; we use 3-day running means. NSIDC will often report sea ice extent indices and records, we are reporting a new sea ice minima sea ice area. The ice area metric includes year-to-year variations within the central pack ice and not just variations in the southern sea ice edge. According to the NSIDC's metrics, this year has not yet crossed into record territory, although it is very close. Regardless of these differences, the rapid rate of sea ice melt this summer, along with the current negative sea ice anomalies, almost guarantees a record Northern Hemisphere summer sea ice minimum this summer, by any metric.

UPDATE: Thursday, August 16, 2007 - New historic sea ice minimum

One week after dipping below 4 million square kilometers Northern Hemisphere sea ice area and setting the new historic record NH sea ice minimum, there is currently 3.58 million sq. kilometers sea ice area. This new minimum is almost 11% lower than the previous historic minimum.

UPDATE: Wednesday, August 22, 2007 - New historic sea ice minimum

There is currently 3.22 million sq. kilometers sea ice area in the Northern Hemisphere.

UPDATE: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 - New historic sea ice minimum

While the pace of sea ice retreat has slowed, the Northern Hemisphere sea ice area continues to decline. There is currently 2.99 million sq. kilometers sea ice area in the Northern Hemisphere.

UPDATE: Thursday, September 6, 2007
 
Ok, whithout debating whether Gore is right or not...

...tell me again someone why he gets a peace price for work on an environmental issue?

Last year's award to Muhammad Yunus was a bit of a stretch. I mean yes, his microfinancing bank is a landmark in fighting poverty and bringing economic power to the masses, empowering women et al, and very worthy of recognition. But only indirectly related to promoting peace and ending conflict. I'd rather given hin the Economics price. It has gone to humanitarian thinkers before.

A Global Warming campaign? Other than in a very fuzzy "it's nice to see people coming together on an issue" way, I don't see how this will stop any specific violence anywhere.
 
Liar said:
Ok, whithout debating whether Gore is right or not...

...tell me again someone why he gets a peace price for work on an environmental issue?

Last year's award to Muhammad Yunus was a bit of a stretch. I mean yes, his microfinancing bank is a landmark in fighting poverty and bringing economic power to the masses, empowering women et al, and very worthy of recognition. But only indirectly related to promoting peace and ending conflict. I'd rather given hin the Economics price. It has gone to humanitarian thinkers before.

A Global Warming campaign? Other than in a very fuzzy "it's nice to see people coming together on an issue" way, I don't see how this will stop any specific violence anywhere.
Liar, I'm with you on that observation. By the way, here's an editorial from today's Wall Street Journal:
_______________________________________


Not Nobel Winners
October 13, 2007; Page A10

In Olso yesterday, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded to the Burmese monks whose defiance against, and brutalization at the hands of, the country's military junta in recent weeks captured the attention of the Free World.

The prize was also not awarded to Morgan Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara and other Zimbabwe opposition leaders who were arrested and in some cases beaten by police earlier this year while protesting peacefully against dictator Robert Mugabe.

Or to Father Nguyen Van Ly, a Catholic priest in Vietnam arrested this year and sentenced to eight years in prison for helping the pro-democracy group Block 8406.

Or to Wajeha al-Huwaider and Fawzia al-Uyyouni, co-founders of the League of Demanders of Women's Right to Drive Cars in Saudi Arabia, who are waging a modest struggle with grand ambitions to secure basic rights for women in that Muslim country.

Or to Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, who has fought tirelessly to end the violence wrought by left-wing terrorists and drug lords in his country.

Or to Garry Kasparov and the several hundred Russians who were arrested in April, and are continually harassed, for resisting President Vladimir Putin's slide toward authoritarian rule.

Or to the people of Iraq, who bravely work to rebuild and reunite their country amid constant threats to themselves and their families from terrorists who deliberately target civilians.

Or to Presidents Viktor Yushchenko and Mikheil Saakashvili who, despite the efforts of the Kremlin to undermine their young states, stayed true to the spirit of the peaceful "color" revolutions they led in Ukraine and Georgia and showed that democracy can put down deep roots in Russia's backyard.

Or to Britain's Tony Blair, Ireland's Bertie Ahern and the voters of Northern Ireland, who in March were able to set aside decades of hatred to establish joint Catholic-Protestant rule in Northern Ireland.

Or to thousands of Chinese bloggers who run the risk of arrest by trying to bring uncensored information to their countrymen.

Or to scholar and activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim, jailed presidential candidate Ayman Nour and other democracy campaigners in Egypt.

Or, posthumously, to lawmakers Walid Eido, Pierre Gemayel, Antoine Ghanem, Rafik Hariri, George Hawi and Gibran Tueni; journalist Samir Kassir; and other Lebanese citizens who've been assassinated since 2005 for their efforts to free their country from Syrian control.

Or to the Reverend Phillip Buck; Pastor Chun Ki Won and his organization, Durihana; Tim Peters and his Helping Hands Korea; and Liberty in North Korea, who help North Korean refugees escape to safety in free nations.

These men and women put their own lives and livelihoods at risk by working to rid the world of violence and oppression. Let us hope they survive the coming year so that the Nobel Prize Committee might consider them for the 2008 award.
 
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