hiya, jack. been doin' well? i heard yer glacier isn't receeding, it's migrating............
nov55.com/oceans.html
Just back from teaching 2 ISPA instructors' courses in beautiful BC, land of the retreating glaciers. Staying home until a brief trip to Yuma and San Diego. Next scheduled trip is a Yachtmaster Offshore instructors' course in late March. That should give me lots of time to keep you guys in order
There might be something to that article about ice over land.
Arctic sea ice has declined slightly less dramatically this year than in the past couple of years. But the seasonal minimum, reached this week, is still the third-lowest on record since satellite radar measurements began in 1979, reinforcing a marked 30-year downward trend in summertime ice extent.
And posted today
Quote:
Polar shipping routes have finally been unblocked, thanks to the virtual disappearance of the multiyear ice spanning the Arctic Ocean, according to an Arctic expert.
For centuries, enormous sheets of multiyear ice reaching up to 260 feet thick have impeded the way of ships looking for a short cut through the fabled Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
However, Canada’s Research Chair in Arctic System Science at the University of Manitoba, David Barber, noted that the ice is vanishing at an unbelievably fast rate.
In a presentation to Parliament, Barber said, "We are almost out of multiyear sea ice in the northern hemisphere."
The small amount of multiyear ice can be found shoved up against Canada's Arctic archipelago, quite a distance from any possible future shipping routes.
Scientists have found a connection between higher Arctic temperatures and melting sea ice to the greenhouse gas emissions that are held responsible for global warming.
It is clear from well documented evidence that we have been a period of "global warming" for the last 10,000 years. Prior to that, it was too cold for habitate most of the higher latitudes and the average planet temperature made extreme swings over short periods of time. At about 10,000 years ago the average planet temperature increased to about where it is today and importantly it has been relatively stable. This marked the end of the ice ages of the previous 90,000 years. This enabled all of man's recorded history and modern developement along with explosion in our population due to increase in our habitat and the ability to feed ourselves.
The only notable exception to the modern stable temperatures is the Younger Dryas period about 7000 years ago (little ice age). In this period the world average temperature dropped a whopping 2-1/2 degrees. The result was crop failures, starvation and mass migration. Generally, a very bad time was shared by all.
I don't doubt that modern man effects and exploits the envirinment and is wasteful of resources. We, however, have had very littlle effect on the current state of things. Had we never existed and never burned the first lump of coal the glaciers would still be melting. This is evident if you map the extent of the ice in Glacier Bay over the last 200 years. 200 years ago the ice extended to Juno and it the ice face was both wide and very high. 100 years ago John Muir obseerved the face from a mountain peak 30 miles further north. 100 years later, today, it has receded another 30 miles and we are being told to blame ourselves.
We have pleanty of very good reasons to conserve and do better with what we have. We need to find other ways to make our cars move and to carry on with life without burning carbon fuels. These resources have a much higher value as feed-stocks for the very things that make our modern lives possible (plastics, fibers, medicine etc. list is nearly infinite). What has happened is that the politicians have figured out how to tax it. We are now to a point where policy and technology decisions are being based on a myopic and false view of things. We are now teaching our children this world as fact. This will bind us into generations of people who will not be able to see the truth if they were drounding in it. Please don't tell them the world is flat and the sun revolves around the Earth. That took hundreds of years to fix.
Does anyone remember only a few years ago the scientific community was warning of of Global Cooling and the big freeze comming?
In the midst of this and the Federal spending like drunken pirates did you notice that the Fed ceased all funding to Hydrogen and Fuel cell research? Instead of, say, finding a way to generate hydrogen from solar cells for automobile fuel from your roof-top collectors, we will instead be mining and consuming heavy and toxic metals (imported) for exotic batteries. This will shift electric needs to power plants (coal) to recharge the things. We should be aiming to become the world leaders in hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen generation. We should aim to own this technology. Instead, we are waiting for the Chineese and Japanese to wrap up the technology so we can buy it from them. (with what?) If you want a surge in the US economy you must manufacture here.
For anyone who missed it, this recent Washington Post Op Ed piece was written by two firm believers in Global Warming -- individuals who are convinced that action should be taken to combat MMGW. Coming from these two, their assessment of Al Gore's "Cap&Trade" scheme is pretty damning, in my opinion.
For anyone who missed it, this recent Washington Post Op Ed piece was written by two firm believers in Global Warming -- individuals who are convinced that action should be taken to combat MMGW. Coming from these two, their assessment of Al Gore's "Cap&Trade" scheme is pretty damning, in my opinion.
I have always felt that Cap and Trade was a scam designed to line the pockets of investors and industries with deep pockets that could hire armies of lobbyists and politicians to shape the legislation and treaties to their financial and political advantage. The whole thing reminds me of those "everybody gets a share" schemes concocted by the character Milo Minderbinder in Joseph Heller's Catch-22.
But let's assume for argument's sake that MMGW exists and carbon emissions are the primary cause. The single most effective way to curtail carbon emissions is through conservation of "fossil" fuels. You can start conserving tomorrow morning -- you don't need legislation or treaties to do that. You and anybody else that believes in MMGW can make the pledge to not drive your cars one single mile more than you walk or ride your bike each year. Heck, I'm a skeptic, and I do that anyway. It's like your own personal cap and trade, with offsets no less.
But are there enough true believers?
I think the answer is: There are not enough true believers that are willing to modify their behaviour, no matter how loudly they cry for action. They want somebody else to fix the problem they helped to create and to which they continue to contribute. Turn down the thermostat? But it's cold out there.
Again, assuming for argument that carbon emissions are the cause of climate change, and assuming that even the MMGW zealots won't sell their mansions or change their behaviour, then the only other way I know of to ween people of fossil fuels is to raise their costs.
But I would not be in favor of any tax on end users unless the proceeds of that tax were allocated exclusively toward early reduction of U.S. national debt AND a balanced federal budget were in place that continued to pay debt obligations at the same rate as previous budgets. In other words, the tax proceeds could not be looted by congress for pork nor substituted for the normal, on-going debt payment -- it would need to be used in addition to it to achieve accelerated, early repayment of national debt.
Call it the Al Gore Carbon and Fossil Fuel Tax. All proceeds of which would go to the JohnRPollard National Debt Reduction Program. See now, carbon emissions go down, and so does the national debt. Everybody gets a share.
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Pacific Seacraft Crealock 31 #62
NEVER CALLS CRUISINGDAD BACK....CAN"T TAKE THE ACCENT
This is nothing but a shell game. They would like to convince you that someone else is going to put money in your pocket if you let government get their fingers into it.
JohnR- thanks for the link to the article, good explanation about why C/T is bad policy. It's classic example of government wanting to appear to be solving a problem when in fact they're just creating one (in this case a trillion dollar problem).
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John
SV Laurie Anne
1988 Brewer 40 Pilothouse
I just posted a new album. http://www.sailnet.com/photogallery/...ry.php?cat=649
Please refer to the three slides and my post of a couple of days ago. One can only conclude the whole thing is a hoax. Our so-called leaders want us to believe the sky is falling and that we should, against real historical data, relinquish our life-style, re-distribute our wealth and suffer poverty willingly.
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