retreat!

[ABearWithFurniture]

Someone should invent a raft out of floating twinkies...I'll buy it.

 

Since a cat always lands on it's feet and a piece of buttered toast always lands buttered side down...in theory if you taped the buttered toast to the cat's back it should hover just inches above the ground forever (or until the cat dies). And since a falling cat twists it's body at what's been recorded by scientists as several yards per second, the cat/toast system should spin at a continuous rate while hovering. If you harnessed enough cats together you could probably build a perpetual motion machine, or at the very least a low-speed monorail system...

[whomper]

Since a cat always lands on it's feet and a piece of buttered toast always lands buttered side down...in theory if you taped the buttered toast to the cat's back it should hover just inches above the ground forever (or until the cat dies). And since a falling cat twists it's body at what's been recorded by scientists as several yards per second, the cat/toast system should spin at a continuous rate while hovering. If you harnessed enough cats together you could probably build a perpetual motion machine, or at the very least a low-speed monorail system...

 

 

did you make that up ?

[ABearWithFurniture]

did you make that up ?

 

I wish...every physicist on the planet plus half the aeronautical engineers have probably spent many man hours working on this.

 

It's probably all funded by liberals...

[pig devilz]

We are about to get our second snow accumulation this year in East Texas. I'm 36, and I don't ever remember having two separate snows that had any type of accumulation. We are lucky if we get to build a snow man once every 4 or 5 years. Twice in one year is just unheard of. My kids will be happy.

I hope this was intended to be sarcastic...if not you are very, very ignorant.

[tosberg34]

I hope this was intended to be sarcastic...if not you are very, very ignorant.

 

Yeah, yeah. we know that EVERY little bit of weather is considered GW with you guys. That way, you have ALL of your bases covered. Even with junk science.

[pig devilz]

quite the contrary...freak snows have nothing to do with global warming imo.

If Captain Conservative wasn't being sarcastic, but using a freak weather occurrence to prove

global warming could not be possible, well then he is ignorant.....shamefully so.

 

 

btw, when did you become his spokesmouth?

[Delicious_bass]

Since a cat always lands on it's feet and a piece of buttered toast always lands buttered side down...in theory if you taped the buttered toast to the cat's back it should hover just inches above the ground forever (or until the cat dies). And since a falling cat twists it's body at what's been recorded by scientists as several yards per second, the cat/toast system should spin at a continuous rate while hovering. If you harnessed enough cats together you could probably build a perpetual motion machine, or at the very least a low-speed monorail system...

 

This thread has(among other things) some pretty funny chit

[driveby]

Where's Al?

 

The 9 lies.

 

The claim: Melting in Greenland or West Antarctica will cause sea levels to rise up to 20 feet in the near future. The truth: The Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change concluded that sea levels might rise 20 feet over millennia -- and it waffled on that prediction. The IPCC envisions a rise of no more than 7 inches to 23 inches by 2100 [which follows the natural trend and is right where it should be]. Gore's claim is "a very disturbing misstatement of the science," John Day, who argued the British case, says in Not Evil Just Wrong. The judge said Gore's point "is not in line with the scientific consensus.

 

The claim: Polar bears are drowning because they have to swim farther to find ice. The truth: Justice Burton noted that the only study citing the drowning of polar bears (four of them) blamed the deaths on a storm, not ice that is melting due to manmade global warming. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, furthermore, found that the current bear population is 20,000-25,000, up from 5,000-10,000 in the 1950s and 1960s. Day says in Not Evil Just Wrong that the appeal to polar bears is "a very clever piece of manipulation."

 

The claim: Global warming spawned Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The truth: "It is common ground that there is insufficient evidence to show that," Burton wrote in his ruling. A May 2007 piece in New Scientist refuted the Katrina argument as a "climate myth" because it's impossible to tie any single weather event to global warming.

 

The claim: Increases in temperature are the result of increases in carbon dioxide. The truth: Burton questioned the two graphs Gore used in An Inconvenient Truth. Gore argued that there is "an exact fit" between temperature and CO2, Burton said, but his graphs didn't support that conclusion. Recent data also do not support it: The global temperature has been declining for about a decade, even as CO2 levels continue rising.

 

The claim: The snow on Mount Kilimanjaro is melting because of global warming. The truth: The melting has been under way for more than a century -- long before SUVs and jumbo jets -- and appears to be the result of other causes. Justice Burton noted that scientists agree the melting can't be blamed primarily on "human-induced climate change."

 

The claim: Lake Chad is disappearing because of global warming. The truth: Lake Chad is losing water, and humans are contributing to the losses. But the humans in the lake's immediate vicinity, rather than mankind as a whole using fossil fuels, are to blame. Burton cited factors like population, overgrazing and regional climate variability.

 

The claim: People are being forced to evacuate low-lying Pacific atolls, islands of coral that surround lagoons, because of encroaching ocean waters. The truth: By their very nature, atolls are susceptible to rising sea levels. But Burton said pointedly in his ruling, "There is no evidence of any such evacuation having yet happened."

 

The claim: Coral reefs are bleaching and putting fish in jeopardy. The truth: In his ruling, Burton emphasized the IPCC's finding that bleaching could kill coral reefs -- if they don't adapt. A report released this year shows that reefs already are thriving in waters as hot as some people say ocean waters will be 100 years from now. Burton also said it is difficult to separate coral stresses such as over-fishing from any changes in climate.

 

The claim: Global warming could stop the "ocean conveyor," triggering another ice age in Western Europe. The truth: Once again, Gore's allies at the IPCC disagree with that argument. Burton cited the panel in concluding that "it is very unlikely that the ocean conveyor ... will shut down in the future." The fact that the scientific understanding of how the conveyor belt works remains unsettled further exposes the flaw in Gore's claim.

 

Jeez you warmers are stupid.

[bpwallace49]

Growing low-oxygen zones in oceans worry scientists

 

WASHINGTON — Lower levels of oxygen in the Earth's oceans, particularly off the United States' Pacific Northwest coast, could be another sign of fundamental changes linked to global climate change, scientists say.

 

They warn that the oceans' complex undersea ecosystems and fragile food chains could be disrupted.

 

In some spots off Washington state and Oregon , the almost complete absence of oxygen has left piles of Dungeness crab carcasses littering the ocean floor, killed off 25-year-old sea stars, crippled colonies of sea anemones and produced mats of potentially noxious bacteria that thrive in such conditions.

 

Areas of hypoxia, or low oxygen, have long existed in the deep ocean. These areas — in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans — appear to be spreading, however, covering more square miles, creeping toward the surface and in some places, such as the Pacific Northwest , encroaching on the continental shelf within sight of the coastline.

 

"The depletion of oxygen levels in all three oceans is striking," said Gregory Johnson , an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle .

 

In some spots, such as off the Southern California coast, oxygen levels have dropped roughly 20 percent over the past 25 years. Elsewhere, scientists say, oxygen levels might have declined by one-third over 50 years.

 

"The real surprise is how this has become the new norm," said Jack Barth , an oceanography professor at Oregon State University . "We are seeing it year after year."

 

Barth and others say the changes are consistent with current climate-change models. Previous studies have found that the oceans are becoming more acidic as they absorb more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

 

"If the Earth continues to warm, the expectation is we will have lower and lower oxygen levels," said Francis Chan , a marine researcher at Oregon State .

 

As ocean temperatures rise, the warmer water on the surface acts as a cap, which interferes with the natural circulation that normally allows deeper waters that are already oxygen-depleted to reach the surface. It's on the surface where ocean waters are recharged with oxygen from the air.

 

Commonly, ocean "dead zones" have been linked to agricultural runoff and other pollution coming down major rivers such as the Mississippi or the Columbia . One of the largest of the 400 or so ocean dead zones is in the Gulf of Mexico , near the mouth of the Mississippi .

 

However, scientists now say that some of these areas, including those off the Northwest, apparently are linked to broader changes in ocean oxygen levels.

 

The Pacific waters off Washington and Oregon face a double whammy as a result of ocean circulation.

 

Scientists have long known of a natural low-oxygen zone perched in the deeper water off the Northwest's continental shelf.

 

During the summer, northerly winds aided by the Earth's rotation drive surface water away from the shore. This action sucks oxygen-poor water to the surface in a process called upwelling.

 

Though the water that's pulled up from the depths is poor in oxygen, it's rich in nutrients, which fertilize phytoplankton. These microscopic organisms form the bottom of one of the richest ocean food chains in the world. As they die, however, they sink and start to decay. The decaying process uses oxygen, which depletes the oxygen levels even more.

 

Southerly winds reverse the process in what's known as down-welling.

 

Changes in the wind and ocean circulation since 2002 have disrupted what had been a delicate balance between upwelling and down-welling. Scientists now are discovering expanding low-oxygen zones near shore.

 

"It is consistent with models of global warming, but the time frame is too short to know whether it is a trend or a weather phenomenon," Johnson said.

 

Others were slightly more definitive, quicker to link the lower oxygen levels to global warming rather than to such weather phenomena as El Nino or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a shift in the weather that occurs every 20 to 30 years in the northern oceans.

 

"It's a large disturbance in the ecosystem that could have huge biological changes," said Steve Bograd , an oceanographer at NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Southern California .

 

Bograd has been studying oxygen levels in the California Current, which runs along the West Coast from the Canadian border to Baja California and, some scientists think, eventually could be affected by climate change.

 

So far, the worst hypoxic zone off the Northwest coast was found in 2006. It covered nearly 1,200 square miles off Newport, Ore. , and according to Barth it was so close to shore you could hit it with a baseball. The zone covered 80 percent of the water column and lasted for an abnormally long four months.

 

Because of upwelling, some of the most fertile ocean areas in the world are found off Washington and Oregon . Similar upwelling occurs in only three other places, off the coast of Peru and Chile , in an area stretching from northern Africa to Portugal and along the Atlantic coast of South Africa and Namibia .

 

Scientists are unsure how low oxygen levels will affect the ocean ecosystem. Bottom-dwelling species could be at the greatest risk because they move slowly and might not be able to escape the lower oxygen levels. Most fish can swim out of danger. Some species, however, such as chinook salmon, may have to start swimming at shallower depths than they're used to. Whether the low oxygen zones will change salmon migration routes is unclear.

 

Some species, such as jellyfish, will like the lower-oxygen water. Jumbo squid, usually found off Mexico and Central America , can survive as oxygen levels decrease and now are found as far north as Alaska .

 

"It's like an experiment," Chan said. "We are pulling some things out of the food web and we will have to see what happens. But if you pull enough things out, it could have a real impact."

[Jimmy Neutron]

You got to give it to the right and left wing leaders wing leaders; they can effectively deceive and manipulate their bases for political purposes like no-ones business. It's almost admirable.

 

Fixed.