DailyTech – Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as 1979 – FYI.
Lies I say! Now Let’s All Sing! Laaaaaa! Rapid growth spurt leaves amount of ice at levels seen 29 years ago. Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months, global sea ice levels now equal those seen 29 years ago, when the year 1979 also drew to a close.
Ice levels had been tracking lower throughout much of 2008, but rapidly recovered in the last quarter. In fact, the rate of increase from September onward is the fastest rate of change on record, either upwards or downwards. The data is being reported by the University of Illinois’s Arctic Climate Research Center, and is derived from satellite observations of the Northern and Southern hemisphere polar regions.
Earlier this year, predictions were rife that the North Pole could melt entirely in 2008. Instead, the Arctic ice saw a substantial recovery. Bill Chapman, a researcher with the UIUC’s Arctic Center, tells DailyTech this was due in part to colder temperatures in the region. Chapman says wind patterns have also been weaker this year. Strong winds can slow ice formation as well as forcing ice into warmer waters where it will melt.
In May, concerns over disappearing sea ice led the U.S. to officially list the polar bear a threatened species, over objections from experts who claimed the animal’s numbers were increasing.
Perhaps the Dvorak.org should revisit this topic.
#59 – Paddy-O-Troll,
No. Like a neutered dog, you just don’t get it.
The subsidies are all well documented in my original post you total moran. Can you read?
Think that the military reduces oil production overall world-wide? Post a link dammit. It’s really not that hard. Even a troll can do it.
Tax Subsidies:
Gov’t Spending Subsidies:
See? Now you don’t even have to find the left button on your mouse.
There are other costs as well, as documented in the article you are unable to read. But, these are the most obvious direct costs.
If you plan your future only on the things you think are certain, it’s very unlikely that you make it to old age. A theory maybe speculative but any planning for the future requires speculation. Climate change is just a theory, but ignoring the signs, and waiting for it to become a certainty or not sounds reckless to me.
I blame Micheal Crichton and his book of lies!
Well, SOMEBODY must be subsidizing oil like a bastard. I remember the oil embargo of 1973, when oil went up over a dollar a barrel, and everybody freaked out. The gas stations had to replace all their pumps.
Now it’s $1.50. In 1973 dollars, that’s about $0.30/gallon. Where else can you find a (non-electronic) commodity that drops 78% in cost over 35 years?
#64 – Mister Mustard,
Well, SOMEBODY must be subsidizing oil like a bastard.
Hint: It’s you … and me … and ….
So just remember, if gasoline was $15 in 1998, and is likely much more now, with the Iraq war doing nothing to help it, when Joe Fuckhead fills up his Humper H2, we’re footing most of the bill.
I don’t mind paying toward other peoples’ kids’ education because that’s for the greater good, even though I have no kids. I don’t like that some poor guy who can’t afford a down payment on a home subsidizes my mortgage. But, paying for some shit-for-brains to fill up a stoopid and useless Naggravator or Land Hoover with low profile racing tires on it pisses me off a lot.
And, yes, that is exactly the way to view tax deductions. People who don’t get the deductions subsidize those who do. When publishing companies pay more than oil companies, they are subsidizing them.
Okay so I’ve lived thru “we’re going to have another ice age” and are still in we’re all going to fry though if this trend lasts another year or two they will no doubt be screaming about an ice age again.
The honest truth is nobody knows what the climate is going to do but so for it hasn’t exceeded known climate changes of the past.
#66–deowll==the rate of change is ocurring must faster than anything seen in the ice records. So–your point is not only irrelevant, it is also untrue.
Geezz guys! Did any of you actually READ the article linked in the headline? It says esentially the opposite of what the link says. Here is a sample paragraph:
“I do believe we are entering a new state,” says arctic researcher Julienne Stroeve at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. “Ice loss is happening faster than the climate models are showing.”
Since 2003, for instance, more than two trillion tons of land ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted, adding enough water to oceans to raise global sea level by one-fifth of an inch, NASA geophysicists reported at the conference.
Alaska’s low-lying ice fields are disappearing at two to three …. ”
There’s more for those who want to READ!!!
#64 – Mustard
>> I remember the oil embargo of 1973, when oil
>>went up over a dollar a barrel, and everybody
>>freaked out.
Woops. I meant gasoline went up to over a dollar a gallon.
a picture is worth a thousand words….great al gore photo
It was that Beano for cows that really made a difference
#72–Stars==Global Warming is a scientific theory therefor subject to falsification: go for it.
#72 0 S&B
>>There are certainly some religious zealots
>>that comment on this site.
Hey, be nice to the Atheists.
They may be irrationally exuberant in their evangelism, but only a few of them (and you know who you are) could be called zealots.
Form heartland.org
Unfortunately, this will not stop the purveyors of gloom and doom from creating similar false global warming scares and sensationalist predictions for 2009.
Keeping in mind the following 10 global warming truths will help us avoid falling prey to global warming scams in the upcoming New Year.
Global temperatures are not rising. The warmest year in the past century occurred a full decade ago, in 1998. Temperatures have been gradually and steadily falling for most of the past decade. Temperatures in 2008 were no warmer than temperatures in 1980.
The Earth is colder than its long-term average. For most of the past 10,000 years, global temperatures have been 1.0 to 3.0 degrees Celsius warmer than our current climate. Twentieth century temperatures appear unusually warm only when compared to the preceding Little Ice Age, which had the coldest global temperatures of the past 10 millennia. The rise of human civilization occurred in a much warmer climate than that of today.
Polar bear populations are not declining; they’re thriving. The global polar bear population has more than doubled since the 1980s. Moreover, polar bears had no problems surviving and flourishing in the much warmer temperatures that dominated the past 10,000 years.
Polar ice is not shrinking. Arctic sea ice has moderately declined in recent years, due in large part to a recent shift in regional wind patterns. But in the Southern Hemisphere, Antarctic sea ice has been growing at a record pace. Polar ice as a whole is right on its long-term average.
Global warming is not causing more droughts. Throughout the twentieth century and since, global precipitation has been increasing, as has global soil moisture. A recent paper in one of the world’s foremost peer-reviewed science journals noted, “the terrestrial surface is literally becoming more like a gardener’s greenhouse”–an environment that is great for plant growth.
Higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are not killing sea life. Numerous recent studies show that aquatic ecosystems become more productive and robust under higher carbon dioxide conditions. Assertions that higher carbon dioxide concentrations cause harmful ocean acidification are unsupported by real-world evidence, ignore the prevalence of shellfish during prior geological periods when there was much more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and would apply to only a small subset of aquatic creatures versus the vast majority of aquatic life that benefits from higher atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Global warming is not causing more extreme weather. The frequency of hurricanes, tornadoes, and other extreme weather events is no greater now than in prior decades and centuries. Even daily high temperature records were more frequently broken 70 years ago, in the 1930s, than they are today.
Global warming is not melting Mt. Kilimanjaro’s alpine glacier. Temperatures at Mt. Kilimanjaro have been slightly cooling since at least the middle of the twentieth century, and those temperatures virtually never rise above freezing. Scientists have long known that deforestation at the base of the mountain is causing the mountaintop glacier to shrink, by reducing the moisture and resultant precipitation in mountain updrafts.
Global deserts are not growing. On the contrary, the Sahara Desert and others like it have been retreating for decades.
Scientists do not agree on a policy of alarmism. More than 32,000 scientists have signed a formal statement, prepared by a past president of the National Academy of Sciences and co-authored by an atmospheric scientist at Harvard University, saying there is no global warming crisis. By contrast, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has only 2,600 participants, many of whom are not scientists, and counts the staff of activist groups Environmental Defense and Greenpeace as its lead authors.
“As parts of England and Wales struggle in sub-zero temperatures, BBC weatherman Liam Dutton explains the high and lows of Britain’s winter weather.
Europe cold weather map
Having worked at the BBC weather centre for about six years, I’m finding it hard to remember the last time I talked about cold weather constantly for such a long period of time – and that’s saying something, as I’m a bit of a winter weather fan.
The start of the meteorological winter is 1 December and last month proved to be the coldest December in more than 30 years, with the average temperature at 1.7C (35F), compared with the long-term average of 4.7C (40F) for the first part of the month.”
#65 Show one link to a gov site showing transfer of public money to the oil companies.
The only problem is that you can’t.
Ergo, no subsidy. Low taxes is not equal to subsidy. It is equal to not taking money that doesn’t belong to you in the 1st place.
Lose.
#82 – Paddy-RAMBO
Not even you could be that stupid. Not even you.
While there may be some legitimate items in your posted document Scott (read it many times now since you seem to enjoy posting it) there are many that are just ridiculous.
Not taxing, or reducing the tax of something is not a subsidy and it isn’t a cost to anybody. It costs us when we hand our money over to the government in hopes of getting something useful for it; it doesn’t cost them anything to not collect it, at least not in economic terms. This is the same nonsense when a lowered tax rate is called a “giveaway” when nothing is actually being given away, just less is being taken.
I’m also amused when they attempt to tack on maintenance of the transportation infrastructure because of an external cost to non-drivers from not being fully paid for through usage fees. Are these non-drivers really not gaining any useful benefits themselves by the existence of these roads and highways? How is their food delivered? How is it that the mailman manages to make it to their door every day? And they are worried about the opportunity costs associated with highway budgets? Really? How about the substantially decreased opportunity cost I experience because it only takes me 15 minutes to drive to work in the morning?
Others points like sprawl are specious at best too. I’m surprised that they haven’t attempted to included some made-up cost attributed to the health impact of people driving half a mile to McDonalds instead of walking.
#84, SL,
I disagree. A subsidy may be direct, ei the government handing a group a check, or it may be indirect, ei the oil companies or the phone companies.
Every other resource industry is taxed at much higher rates than oil and natural gas. The government has spent trillions of dollars through the military to ensure oil safely reaches us. Pipelines and drilling have consistently been given lower standards to operate under. Those Aircraft Carriers in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Arabia weren’t sent there to be good will ambassadors.
#79 – MikeN,
No need to read past your first line. “Form [sic] heartland.org” means you are getting your “facts” directly from ExxonMobil. I think anyone with half a brain knows that they are far from unbiased in the issue.
http://tinyurl.com/a5dy9a
#80 – Paddy-O,
Putting quotation marks around a paragraph does not make it carry more weight. Try naming the author and providing a link next time. Oh, I forgot that you don’t know how. My mistake.
#86, Fusion
Oh, I agree with you that our diplomatic and military efforts can be said to be, at least to a degree, a subsidy. Just like the local government granting easements to utility companies is a form of subsidy.
But it’s not a subsidy to simply not tax somebody. Food stamps given to the poor is a subsidy, them having a lower tax rate on their income than me is not.
#86, cont.
Unless you want to take a very broad meaning for the word subsidy and say that anything I receive benefit or utility from that I didn’t directly pay for myself was subsidized by somebody else. It’s really hard to apply that in any useful way though since we all benefit indirectly from the aggregate effort of us all.
#83 – Mister Mustard,
#82 – Paddy-RAMBO
Not even you could be that stupid. Not even you.
Clearly you are incorrect. He is indeed that stupid. First he asked for a link. Then he didn’t like that link so made the task harder. It would be difficult to find out from a government site exactly how much money the government is hemorrhaging to the various corporations that really run our country. So, that makes his argument perfect.
But, I’ll give it a try anyway. Not knowing exactly what government site to try, I searched the site of the little known Export Import Bank, a small institution (about a billion a year) with the sole charter of giving corporate welfare.
From this page: http://tinyurl.com/7h34vz
(cont’d)
From this PDF statement by ExIm http://tinyurl.com/9h5a43 please note on page 16 that the ExIm Bank has 7 billion in holdings in oil.
(cont’d)
From this statement by the ExIm Bank http://tinyurl.com/9qyu3b note the following quotes:
Boy this is getting tiring. That’s just the Export Import Bank, of course. Checking each arm of the government would take a lot longer.
Paddy-O, I fail to understand why you so steadfastly and actively resist any hope of learning.
# 90 Sea Lawyer said, “But it’s not a subsidy to simply not tax somebody.”
Not so fast. I was subsidized by a mugger the other day. He walked past me and didn’t rob me.
I just can’t figure how much I owe him…
#90 – Sea Lawyer,
But it’s not a subsidy to simply not tax somebody. Food stamps given to the poor is a subsidy, them having a lower tax rate on their income than me is not.
If being in the legal profession meant that you paid 5% in taxes while someone earning the same amount in say the programming profession paid 40%, that would indeed be a subsidy. Your example is of progressive taxation. Mine is of discriminatory taxation where some industries are taxed and others are not even when the income is the same.
#96,
Our entire tax code is discriminatory in favor of whatever preferred behaviors those in charge have the desire to promote, and that is the problem with it.
#96 You want to see equal protection under the law? Really?
Okay. Everyone has to pay the same amount in taxes with NO discrimination.