I've always wondered just exactly why

Global 'warming' denialists are so adamant in declaring rapid climate change a liberal plot. I mean... WHY?

Well... I get comments.

SmarterThanYou tells me:

You pompous fools. Looking down your nose at the rest of the world while true science (aka GEOLOGY) shows there are natural reasons for any climate shifts. These consistent & tangible geological trends are nothing new. This has been well documented for decades but nooooooo, you phenoms are just so much more intelligent. Fools.

This one is from last week:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/22/scientist-retracts-paper-rising-sea-levels-errors/

This one is from 2001:
http://nodnc.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=60

Guess what?!?! They both state that sea level isn’t rising which implies the ice caps aren’t melting. Gee, I sure hope us silling wingnuts can wrap our heads around these findings by your beloved scientists.

Oh and now the heavy winter is your reasoning? I find that interesting b/c a few years ago when we had a mild winter, THAT Was the proof of Global Warming. Don’t believe me? Well here is one of those crazy conservative websites that shows soundbites illustrating my point.
http://www.floppingaces.net/2010/02/12/no-snow-global-warming-too-much-snow-global-warming/

You morons are willing to tax our industry to death with your “Green credits” over bad science. It’s b/c of fools like you that this country can’t keep industry within our own borders.

Ok. You cite geology as the one true science. Great, I know geologists and have taken geology. So... what do geological websites say about rapid climate change?

“The United States faces the potential for abrupt climate change in the 21st century that could pose clear risks to society in terms of our ability to adapt. A new report led by the USGS makes several conclusions about the potential for abrupt climate changes from global warming during this century.” Quoted from the USGS.

Twenty or so links to different articles within the last few years follow that quote.

So why on earth would you choose geology as the most reliable science above all others? Atmospheric sciences, Meteorology, Climatology, Oceanography? And then I found this. One meeting where global warming deniers could actually get their foot in the door and be heard. Apparently all other scientists and sciences were disproved by this one hilarious meeting. The fact you both quote geology as a true science yet then mock education and other sciences is truly illuminating. Geology follows the dictates and procedures of all other sciences.

So I suppose showing you satellite photos of glaciers in full retreat, or ice sheets snapping and floating away or Greenland's coastline appearing for the first time in centuries won't impress you? Telling you about the rising sea levels threatening North Carolina or Thailand or the Florida Keys or the islands of Tuvalu won't change your mind? The changing salinity of the oceans won't help?

No? Well, we'll just agree to disagree.

You really think acknowledging global warming will mean a loss in jobs? Really? It actually will mean a jobs increase. Besides cutting down on the need for foreign oil, why wouldn't being energy wise be a good thing in general?

But clearly that doesn't matter either. You finally get to the heart of the issue. It's all about beating up Mr. Smarty-pants Science guy, isn't it?

This actually exposes more about you than you realize. Have you asked yourself why?

The sad thing is.... those who are educated know more than those who look down on education and feel that knowledge is a weakness. Or said more correctly, educated people know they will always need to learn more, know how to accept new facts without dismay, know how to study a problem through the scientific process, how to combine two disparate concepts, work through a pile of incoherent data to find a kernel of truth. These people engineer your buildings, make your medicine, design your appliances, protect your food. You live with what scientists and educated people do every day.

Human beings will make mistakes, be in error, look backward, forget history, ignore advice. And, being human, of course scientists have been wrong, will be wrong. But those who understand and respect how science and education can evolve and shift with new facts will help people work with understood theories and concepts. These people will be able to look to the future and project incoming problems and events.

These are the people who will help humanity. Not those who mock the quest for knowledge.

And science is saying there is too much data out there showing that something of great import is happening right now.

Why ignore it?

But does it have its own stamp?

Iceberg 'size of Luxembourg' a threat to marine life:

A vast iceberg that broke off eastern Antarctic earlier this month could disrupt marine life in the region, scientists have warned.

They say the iceberg, which is 78km long and up to 39km wide, could have consequences for the area's colonies of emperor penguins.

The emblematic birds may be forced to travel further afield to find food.

The iceberg calved from the Mertz Glacier Tongue after it was hit by another huge iceberg, called B9B.

Very cool sequence shots by satellite showing the creation of the Luxembourgy iceberg.

As the ice melts at the Arctic much faster than projected

The oil and gas companies try to hide their delight over newly accessible oil fields and pretend to show concern over the environment:

Scientists link higher Arctic temperatures and melting sea ice to the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.

The Arctic is considered a type of early-warning system of climate change for the rest of the world.

"We know we're losing sea ice -- the world is all aware of that," Barber said. "What you're not aware of is that it has impacts on everything else that goes on in this system."

The loss of the sea ice is taking away areas for the region's mammals to reproduce, find food and elude predators, said Steve Ferguson, a scientist with the Canadian government who took part in the study.

Whale species previously not found in the Arctic are moving into the region because there is less sea ice to restrict their movements.

Climate change is also bringing more cyclones into the Arctic, dumping snow on the sea ice, which limits how thick it can get, and bringing winds that break up the ice, Barber said.

The study is part of the International Polar Year, a large scientific program focused on the Arctic and Antarctic. The scientists have not yet produced conclusions, but they expect to publish dozens of academic papers.

The cost of the Arctic's rapid melt will be $2.4 trillion by 2050 as the region loses its ability to cool the global climate, the U.S.-based Pew Environment Group said on Friday. The group released a report showing the Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the planet.

Both the Canadian government and the oil and gas industry are keenly interested in the possible environmental impact of development further north in the Arctic, said professor Louis Fortier of Laval University.

Currently, development is focused on mainland regions such as the massive gas fields in the Mackenzie River Delta on the Beaufort Sea. But receding ice levels may make the wider Arctic more accessible to ships and make drilling in more areas possible.

"Conclusions will come later, but ... up to now there's no indication that the impacts would be larger (further north) than elsewhere in the Arctic," Fortier said.

Secretly rejoicing in greenhouse gases melting the ice cap so that more petroleum can be drilled for ... making more greenhouse gases...

Glub glub blub berbble bubble....

The Greenland ice sheet is losing its mass faster than in previous years and making an increasing contribution to sea level rise, a study has confirmed.

Published in the journal Science, it has also given scientists a clearer view of why the sheet is shrinking.

The team used weather data, satellite readings and models of ice sheet behaviour to analyse the annual loss of 273 thousand million tonnes of ice.

Melting of the entire sheet would raise sea levels globally by about 7m (20ft).

[snip]

Another analysis of satellite data, published in September, showed that of 111 fast-moving Greenland glaciers studied, 81 were thinning at twice the rate of the slow-moving ice beside them.

This indicates that the glaciers are accelerating and taking more ice into the surrounding sea.

Melting on the ice sheet's surface acts as a feedback mechanism, Dr van den Broeke explained, because the liquid water absorbs more and reflects less of the incoming solar radiation - resulting in a heating of the ice.

"Over the last 10 years, it's quite simple; warming over Greenland has caused the melting to increase, and that's set off this albedo feedback process," he told BBC News.

Blog sprinkles

Bryan of Why Now? remembers the veterans.

Dogs and kids welcome back home returning soldiers while Senator Tom Colburn (R-OK) blocks a veteran's care bill. Losing vets who don't have health care.

David Horsey's cartoon is fantastic as usual:



Excellent interview with Vice President Gore about his new book.

The good, the bad, and the horrific about sex workers.

Blackwater's crimes beginning to be defined:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly comments on the collapse of the Senate as a functioning legislative body:

Facing extraordinary crises and challenges, the United States has a legislative branch that is barely able to legislate at all. The system can see the problems, but is struggling badly to address them. The first step in changing the way Congress operates is creating the demand -- most of the public has no idea that the Senate no longer operates by majority rule. Public frustration can lead to proposals, which can lead to debate, which can lead to solutions.

Phila of Bouphonia on the stupid Stupak amendment:

The idea that a woman must play second fiddle to a fetus, on the grounds that some enterprising sperm cell planted a man's flag inside her -- as though it were a submarine claiming drilling rights in the Arctic Circle -- is scientifically illiterate, theologically dubious, ethically unworkable, and morally incoherent. And I'm sick unto death of the idea that the ever-so-precious tax dollars of these oh-so-sensitive control addicts mustn't be spent on abortion. Especially since my equally strong feelings don't entitle me to opt out of funding two grotesque wars, or detention centers and border fences for immigrants, or the state oppression of women and gays; or paying the salary of a reactionary fuckhead like Bart Stupak; or providing high-quality healthcare to politicians who refuse it to others.

Phila's wonderful flag imagery reminds me of this:



Canadian teenager survives three days on an ice floe.... with polar bears.

Also from the Guardian:

The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.

The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.

The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation's latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow – which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies.

Steve Bates of The Yellow Doggerel Democrat keeps an eye on the promised closing of Gitmo.

15 funny pet videos.

Icebergs never looked so beautiful

And, what with the global warming, we may be the last generation to see their breathtaking majesty.

Update 9/24:

OSLO (Reuters) – Scientists are surprised at how extensively coastal ice in Antarctica and Greenland is thinning, according to a study Wednesday that could help predict rising sea levels linked to climate change.

Analysis of millions of NASA satellite laser images showed the biggest loss of ice was caused by glaciers speeding up when they flowed into the sea, according to scientists at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Bristol University.

"We were surprised to see such a strong pattern of thinning glaciers across such large areas of coastline -- it's widespread and in some cases thinning extends hundreds of kilometers inland," said Hamish Pritchard of BAS who led the study.

Blog sprinkles

Returning to the good ol' days when men were men and races wuz pure and wimmen knew their place....

Public Option Enemy No. 1:

Rick Scott ran a hospital company guilty of epic fraud. Now he wants to tell you how to fix the health care system.

Researchers Find Possible Environmental Causes For Alzheimer's, Diabetes:

A new study by researchers at Rhode Island Hospital have found a substantial link between increased levels of nitrates in our environment and food, with increased deaths from diseases, including Alzheimer's, diabetes mellitus and Parkinson's. The study was published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease (Volume 17:3 July 2009).

Led by Suzanne de la Monte, MD, MPH, of Rhode Island Hospital, researchers studied the trends in mortality rates due to diseases that are associated with aging, such as diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes and cerebrovascular disease, as well as HIV. They found strong parallels between age adjusted increases in death rate from Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and diabetes and the progressive increases in human exposure to nitrates, nitrites and nitrosamines through processed and preserved foods as well as fertilizers. Other diseases including HIV-AIDS, cerebrovascular disease, and leukemia did not exhibit those trends. De la Monte and the authors propose that the increase in exposure plays a critical role in the cause, development and effects of the pandemic of these insulin-resistant diseases.

Here's an unbelievable headline:

Michael Jackson to be buried without his brain

Oh noooooo! Will they have a funeral for this, too?

Iraq suffers more terrorist attacks.

Even when it's proved the detainees weren't the worst of the worst, some still say they should be locked up because it's obvious they were the worst of the worst or why were they locked up in the first place and besides they might become terrorists when they get out because they were locked up as if they were the worst of the worst... or even worse, tell everybody what happened while in the hands of the government while they were being treated like they were the worst of the worst. So there.

Left a really nasty scar: New Mexico Teen Girl Tasered In The Head By Police Chief

A Cat-erpillar:



Are men now extraneous?

LONDON (AFP) – A team of British scientists claimed Wednesday to have created human sperm using embryonic stem cells, in a medical first that they say will lead to a better understanding of fertility.

Researchers led by Professor Karim Nayernia at Newcastle University and the NorthEast England Stem Cell Institute (NESCI) developed a new technique that allows the creation of human sperm in the laboratory.

Arctic ice is thinning:

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Arctic sea ice thinned dramatically between the winters of 2004 and 2008, with thick older ice shrinking by the equivalent of Alaska's land area, a study using data from a NASA satellite showed.

Coleman for governor?

Sign of the end of days: Peeps get their own store.

Just a word of advice...

Don't buy a house near the beach. Buy the one on the hill, it will be beachfront property in a few years...

California's interagency Climate Action Team on Wednesday issued the first of 40 reports on impacts and adaptation, outlining what the state's residents must do to deal with the floods, erosion and other effects expected from rising sea levels.

Hundreds of thousands of people and billions of dollars of Golden State infrastructure and property would be at risk if ocean levels rose 55 inches by the end of the century, as computer models suggest, according to the report.

The group floated several radical proposals: limit coastal development in areas at risk from sea rise; consider phased abandonment of certain areas; halt federally subsidized insurance for property likely to be inundated; and require coastal structures to be built to adapt to climate change.

"Immediate action is needed," said Linda Adams, secretary for environmental protection. "It will cost significantly less to combat climate change than it will to maintain a business-as-usual approach."

From the same article, maps showing what will go underwater...

Because the Arctic ice cap is melting:

(CNN) -- It could be the ultimate test of human endurance: Three British explorers are risking their lives in subzero temperatures to measure the melting Arctic ice cap.

The team is on a three-month, 621-mile (1,000-kilometer) hike to their final destination at the North Pole. Along the way, taking precise measurements to determine exactly how fast the ice cap is disappearing.

[snip]

The unique expedition was prompted by this chilling prospect: The Arctic ice cap is melting at an unprecedented rate, which may lead to a dramatic shift in average global temperatures.

"In 2007, sea ice loss was the worst in recorded history," said oceanographer Kate Moran, professor of oceanography and ocean engineering at the University of Rhode Island.

The last time that scientists can say confidently that the Arctic was free of summertime ice was 125,000 years ago, according to the Web site of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.

All that could vanish within our lifetime, warn climate scientists, who predict that the Arctic sea ice in the summer season could be gone between 2013 and 2040.

Include Greenland and the Antarctic in that:

Scientists will warn this week that rising sea levels, triggered by global warming, pose a far greater danger to the planet than previously estimated. There is now a major risk that many coastal areas around the world will be inundated by the end of the century because Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting faster than previously estimated.

Low-lying areas including Bangladesh, Florida, the Maldives and the Netherlands face catastrophic flooding, while in the UK, the Thames estuary is likely to disappear by 2100. Cities like London will need new flood defenses.

“It is now clear that there are going to be massive flooding disasters around the globe,” said David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey. “Populations are shifting to the coast, which means that more and more people are going to be threatened by sea-level rises.”

And um... bulges of water roaring about the globe?

Scientists say the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would have such profound effects it would shift the planet's rotation, sending a bulge of water into the Northern Hemisphere.

The enormous ice sheet, which many experts believe could collapse as the climate warms, is so heavy that as it melts it "will actually cause the Earth's rotation axis to shift rather dramatically," reports a team led by geophysicist Jerry Mitrovica, at the University of Toronto. The scientists say the North and South poles would move about half a kilometre if the entire ice sheet collapses and shifts more water north.

Coastal regions from Washington to Vancouver could expect sea levels to rise at least six metres, Mitrovica and his colleagues report Friday in the journal Science. Much of Florida would be drowned as would low-lying areas in Maritime Canada, the Arctic and along the Pacific coast.

There is nowhere on the coast of Canada or the U.S. that the sea level won't rise to at least six metres, Mitrovica said in an interview.

He and his colleagues stress that the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, while a big concern, is not imminent and may not occur for centuries. "But these findings do suggest that if you are planning for sea level rise, you had better plan a little higher," says co-author Peter Clark at Oregon State University.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that a collapse of the ice sheet would raise global sea levels by about five metres - a figure that has led to the "simplistic" idea that water will rise evenly around the planet, says Mitrovica.

Learning how to swim and tread water might be helpful, but the best is to have an inflatable boat in your hall closet...

crossposted at American Street

If you aren't underwater, watch out for meteorites

And something about grabbing your ankles and kissing something...

WASHINGTON - An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years.

Greenland's ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer's end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by The Associated Press.

"The Arctic is screaming," said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government's snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo.

Just last year, two top scientists surprised their colleagues by projecting that the Arctic sea ice was melting so rapidly that it could disappear entirely by the summer of 2040.

This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions."

And while you're treading water, enjoy the light show:

What could be the best meteor display of the year will reach its peak on the night of Dec.13-14.

Here is what astronomers David Levy and Stephen Edberg have written of the annual Geminid Meteor Shower: "If you have not seen a mighty Geminid fireball arcing gracefully across an expanse of sky, then you have not seen a meteor."

The Geminids get their name from the constellation of Gemini, the Twins, because the meteors appear to emanate from a spot in the sky near the bright star Castor in Gemini.

Sorghum Crow of Sorghum Crow's General Store (from whom I hijacked the link) reminds us to think of the Wooly Mammoths ... and to use an umbrella!

I'd suggest you wait a bit before buying coastline property

Wait until we figure out where sea level will be:

Vast areas of snow in Antarctica melted in 2005, when temperatures warmed up for a week in the summer. Snow melts such as this may have ramifications for larger scale melting of the ice sheets if they are severe or sustained over time, NASA said on Tuesday.

A new analysis of satellite data showed that an area the size of California melted and then re-froze – the most significant thawing in 30 years, the US space agency said.

Duncan Wingham at University College London in the UK says the event is "notable". But he underlines that it is, for now, a single weather event and should not be confused with long-term climate change.

"If we were to start seeing this happen every single year, then we would have to say: 'Yes this [Antarctica] is not the sort of deep freeze we have been thinking'," he told New Scientist.

Unlike the Arctic, Antarctica has shown little to no warming in the recent past with the exception of the Antarctic Peninsula, where ice sheets have been breaking apart.