one side of the story?

I think I'll let Richard handle this...

It should also be noted that the author of that piece doesn't actually have any scientific qualifications, he has a degree in journalism.

Yes, he was a weather presenter on TV, and did co-found the Weather Channel, but relying on him for scientific advice is like asking George Clooney for medical advice because he was a doctor on TV.

Just sayin'.

John Coleman

I don't why anyone thinks it's only one side of the story being presented. The Internet is full of climate deniers, science deniers, etc. The government is also full of both climate and science deniers. If there's an issue on anything, there's deniers claiming that none of it's true.

Seems to be the same way it's going here, Wpedia. We're getting ready for Monsanto and Dow to dole out that nice new pesticide 4, 2D (active ingredient in agent orange) on all of our food, which they don't want to label as GMO.

I frankly don't think it matters a damned anymore if it's going to warm or ice over. At the rate our leaders and corps are taking us over the cliff, humans aren't going to exist by the time anything drastic happens climate-wise.

Well, GLOBAL WARMING and GLOBAL COOLING have been proven to be WRONG! If every "scientist" on the planet disputed that, I guess we would simply have no scientists. The fact is that GLOBALLY, the weather MIGHT have gotten more extreme, MAYBE! We are hearing of cases of it being colder, as much as hotter. HECK, I have PERSONALLY experienced both. I was unlucky enough to be in Europe in 1989 and some of the days I was there were claimed to be the hottest on record. Where I live now, I once came close to getting frostbite. For ME, that is UNHEARD of, for lots of reasons. Apparently I was exposed to temperatures lower than -17F(-27C)

OK, so what about CHANGE? I mean I just admitted to THAT, didn't I? Well, it does NOT show a clear movement, and devices used to do such measurements have been TAINTED! Buildings have been painted the wrong way, or wrong color, because we are no longer in the 19th century, populations got larger, so things have been built up, etc.... So measurements are DIFFERENT! HOW? WELL, for example, painting a building black instead of white WILL affect the suns effect on the internal temperature. SORRY, it is a proven and very well known and established fact. Using latex instead of whitewash does the same thing. If you change the method in a non conforming way, YOU LOSE ACCURACY AND/OR HISTORY!!!!!!! The people that created the standards KNEW all this, and setup standards to follow BUT, apparently, as is so often the case, PEOPLE DIDN'T FOLLOW THEM! WHY paint a building X times if you can paint it ONCE?

If the US decided to go to 100% Celsius, instead of Fahrenheit, people could just convert the numbers, and their would be no problem. Suppose some of the measuring devices were, accidentally replaced with the other scale? NO number could be used on a region to reliably convert it. What has happened is even WORSE! The EXPOSURE has been changed and changed in a non uniform way. The history and accuracy has been LOST! We have the past, and have the present, but have no way to reliably line up one set of numbers with the other.

Steve

Whether the earth is warming or cooling isn't the point to me. The problem is pollution.

There's no doubt there are serious problems. You can't dump billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every day and expect a healthy planet. That carbon dioxide comes from the burning of fossil fuels.

Here's the thing that bothers me. We have and have had the technology to fix this for a long time. There have been several threads on this board that contained the answers. The first thing is capturing kinetic energy. Plates can be placed in the roads and when cars run over them a small amount of power is generated and channeled to storage batteries or directly into the power grid.

Multiply that plate by millions or billions of them placed on all the roads in the world and you dramatically reduce the amount of oil used in power plants. They’re using these things in Europe on a small scale and they’ve proved to be very promising. But that's only the start.

Earlier this year IBM announced that they had been part of a project where scientists have developed a solar dish 2000 times more powerful than anything that came before it. They went on to say that they believe they could wire the entire planet with these dishes and that they would supply humanity (the entire planet) with as much energy as we need. The need to burn fossil fuel for electricity would be dramatically reduced. This is not some little flaky penny stock green energy startup. It's IBM.

We could also add hemp to the mix and greatly reduce the number of trees harvested every year. That would leave them to suck up some of the CO2 and return O2 to the environment. Hemp is one of the most, if not the most versatile plants for fiber. You can make clothes and paper and rope and dozens of other products with it. There has been a bill before congress that would allow Americans to grow industrial hemp for eight years that has gone absolutely nowhere.

There are millions of people out of work and millions of acres of land in this country that would support hemp production and we import it from China. What the hell is wrong with this picture? New energy technology would threaten the oil and timber industries, that's what. Though back when we went from vacuum tubes to printed circuits it was Motorola and RCA and Westinghouse and other electronic giants that picked up the baton and not only did they not lose a dime they made a fortune. The same thing could happen with green energy. Companies already operating would lead the way.

The party in power is supposed to be the party that wants to save the planet. But it's the same ole same ole. If Obama wanted to go down as a great president he could have provided tax breaks for companies that would develop kinetic and new solar power technology and electric cars and lots of other things. It could be an age of new prosperity with millions of people returning to work and new products springing up everywhere. All of it helping humanity and giving a much needed reprieve to our tired mother, the earth. But he hasn't. We can't even pass a stinkin' industrial hemp bill.

So as usual, American politicians talk a good game but don't do a damn thing to truly effect change. Their answer to these problems is to lay guilt on people for having too large a carbon footprint. That way they can restrict the use of fossil fuel and create a market where we trade credits while we continue to foul the planet with oil and it's derivatives. That’s their answer, folks. We could have greatness but instead we elect a bunch of pimps and whores pulling the same strings they’ve been pulling for the last hundred years. And it’s the people and the planet that suffer.

Both parties make me want to vomit.

Just to add my 2 cents:

Himalayan snow capes do decrease in volume, this can be clearly seen on space photos for the last decade or even two. Mekong is not as powerful as it used to be, and this river provides water for a quarter of Asia. If something does not change in your town - it does not mean nothing changes globally. Deforestation means less water vapor - less snow - more deserts. Sahara grows each year, as well as the Gobi desert. Europe saw unusual weather really often for the last decade. Sunny summers in London, which used to be covered with smog for decades... Cold winter with frost in Central Europe, cold summers in Eastern Europe. The climate is changing, that's for sure

I am on neither side. Some wise man expressed a great idea here - nobody knows what awaits us, as theory misses the real events for some odd reason. Climatologists proclaim a warm winter - and winter is freezing cold. They proclaim a sunny summer - and we are wet for 2 months, all sweaty for 2 weeks and freezing for the next two. Then it's warm again in September.

I do believe deforestation is a crime against nature and forests should be regrown where possible. Earth lived in balance for billions of years... now we are changing that balance really fast and nobody cannot predict the outcome

> one side of the story?

Back to Kay's OP...Yes, many do only consider one side of the story concerning carbon-based energy, which is climate change. They don't consider things like health, the environment, or national security, which are also part of the equation.

Many don't evaluate risk vs gain very well or factor in intangibles such as living a few years longer (and healthier) or the costs of health care due to poor air and water quality, either.

BTW it is a MYTH that air is oxygen and that people can live in a pure oxygen environment. We CAN'T! SCUBA equipment does NOT have OXYGEN TANKS. They are AIR. Hospitals have oxygen, but it is used sparingly, etc... Being in a pure oxygen environment can even lead to BLINDNESS! Oxygen toxicity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia AIR is only about 20% oxygen.

And if the air didn't have enough carbon dioxide, most animals, including humans, would suffocate, and plants would die.

Steve

George Washington Carver showed that legumes (peanuts and beans) will help put nitrogen back into the soil.

Native Americans also used legumes to help put nitrogen back in the soil. I knew about SW Indians using this technique, and recently read that Eastern US Indians also used it. They would plant corn, beans and squash together.

The beans would use the corn, which grows faster and higher than the beans, as a "bean stalk". The squash would spread out below the corn and beans and help maintain moisture in the soil.

These three plants supplied them with all the basic nutrition they needed. Just as importantly, the noots one plant removes from the soil, are replaced by the other two.

There isn't a single cause to the problems of fertilizer, nor is there a single solution. But using a combination of things such as eating less meat and more beans, using fertilizer and insecticides more efficiently, doing a better job with water treatment, etc., can do a lot to help reduce the problem.

Global warming is real, but that's how the earth works. It has happened before, and will happen again. What is fake is the media over hyping it for the sake of profits. The media are the best affiliates on the planet.

People were freaked out when it was cold last winter, but the last ice age ended about 10k years ago, which is minutes ago, in earth years. Where there is ice, there once was tropics and vise versa, that's how the earth works.

Yeah we have an impact on the earths climate, but the earth does what it wants regardless if we are here or not. Is global warming real? of course it is, just check your history books. Will going 100% green stop the next global warming? of course not. There is enough methane gas in the worlds oceans to trigger a thousand more global warnings.

The Weather Channel: Climate Change Is Real | Mediaite