"84% of earth's "extra heat" is being "stored" in the oceans"..

[SoCalDem]

so say Scripps scientists..

This is EXTRA, above and beyond what used to be dispersed into space and the atmosphere

This is why hurricanes are getting stronger and clustering.





http://sio.ucsd.edu/

[phantom power]

1. gasses are also less solvent in warmer water.

Gasses like... CO2. The oceans have also been helping us cheat on atmospheric CO2, by absorbing it in large quantities. Sooner or later that gravy train's going to end as well.

[hatrack]

4. Then there's the acidification of sea water . . . .

All those softening clams and corals and such . . .

. . . at least, that's what some researchers are now projecting under the business as usual scenario for CO2 - or, as the 19th Century scientists called it, carbonic acid.

[One_Life_To_Give]

2. Oversimplification

This is why hurricanes are getting stronger and clustering.

Thats overstating the case a wee bit, don't ya think.

There are a variety of factors that caused this Hurricane season to turn out the way it did. Not all of which can be contributed to planetary warming. Least of all that said warming caused atmopheric steering currents to "Cluster" storms.

[SoCalDem]

3. Not any ONE hurricane or any one season can be directly tagged

to it, but the overall gist of the research and the lecture i watched was that the "extra" heat in the oceans is generating stronger storms because the "cold trail" they leave behind, is so quickly replaced with "hot water" again..

You should watch the lecture and visit Scripps site for a more scientific explanation :)

[bananas]

5. watch what lecture? n/t

[Dr.Phool]

9. It's on UCTV on Dish. Channel 9413 I think.

I caught part of it. It'll be repeated later.

[SoCalDem]

10. oops.. thought the link was included.. it's here

Is Global Warming Strengthening The Power Of Hurricanes?
(#11247) http://g.msn.com/9SE/1?http://www.uctv.tv/index.asp&&DI=293&IG=e467df4df1734b0dac95fd873db2db69&POS=1&CM=WPU&CE=1&CS=AWP&SR=1

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have fueled debate over whether global warming is making tropical cyclones more powerful and whether human activity is to blame. Join a distinguished panel of experts from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and UCSD to learn more about the relationship between hurricanes and global warming and the potential economic impact.


http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/

lectures on demand...

http://www.uctv.tv/ondemand/

watch live link
http://www.uctv.tv/watch/

[stop the bleeding]

7. I agree with your point, me living in Florida and been through

a few of them. It is all about how hot the water is.

The hotter the ocean gets the more it needs to release that heat and that is achieved by the outflow of the storms. The only solution that I see(barring environmental conservation) is to go around to the hot zones in the ocean and pour big glasses of ice water in those zones.


We won't destroy Mother Earth, we'll just irritate her enough so that she gets rid of us.

[lovuian]

6. I think it has to do with the melting of the polar caps

less salinity of water is going to really play havoc with the World... Interesting times ahead!!!

[htuttle]

8. Good! Nothing in the ocean but a bunch of frozen methane hydrate!

Oh...

Oh, shit.

[rman]

11. lol, you opened a nice can of worms there

lets see if i can help some fish to bite.

The short version: it is rather likely that rising ocean temperatures will cause a sudden release of massive amounts methane hydrate (frozen mixture of methane and water in the ocean floors) to release methane gas (a green house gas), causing global warming to accelerate.

The stuff is barely stable at the right temperature and pressure, when a bit of is disturbed (ie by off-shore drilling) a large area can 'go off'. This manifests itself as a huge amount of gas bubbles rising to the surface, reducing the upwards pressure for anything that floats on the surface in the area, sometimes accompanied by under water fire - causing ships and oil rigs to sink. Video footage of these events is rare but does exist (i'm pretty sure Discovery Channel and/or National Geographic have a documentary on the subject).

If the temperature of the oceans increases, a lot of methane hydrate is likely to go off in a relatively short period of time.

[SoCalDem]

13. So... I guess that smoking & boating could become dangerous

:scared:

[bananas]

14. I think that was one explanation for the Bernuda Triangle n/t

[AZBlue]

12. Wow! It's such a good thing we don't have any Global Warming going on!

Bush was so right to pull out of the Kyoto Treaty and increase the energy companies' profits without asking for any environmental concessions. He's so smart!


:sarcasm:


:mad: :puke:

[mdfiasco55]

16. Kyoto was Clintons best legacy.

Even though former Clinton aides are saying now that Clinton signed a flawed treaty and severely limited Americas industrial power (hence all of our unemployment due to industry that relocated south during the time were involved)
I think that Bush should re-think our involvement in the treaty. We are destroying the atmosphere and causing bad storms. This is all Bushs fault.

[Warren DeMontague]

29. Kyoto was never signed here. Never implemented.

The senate didn't come close to ratifying it, unfortunately.

I agree it was a good idea, and a good start-- But your facts are wrong. FYI.

[AZBlue]

34. We're both saying the same thing: it was signed by US but not ratified.

Not ratified because of Bush and the Republican-controlled Senate.

The United States, although a signatory to the protocol, has neither ratified nor withdrawn from the protocol. The protocol is non-binding over the United States until ratified.

On June 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was to be negotiated, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95–0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98), which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States". On November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Aware of the Senate's view of the protocol, the Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol for ratification.

The Clinton Administration released an economic analysis in July 1998, prepared by the Council of Economic Advisors, which concluded that with emissions trading among the Annex B/Annex I countries, and participation of key developing countries in the "Clean Development Mechanism" — which grants the latter business-as-usual emissions rates through 2012 — the costs of implementing the Kyoto Protocol could be reduced as much as 60% from many estimates. Other economic analyses, however, prepared by the Congressional Budget Office and the Department of Energy Energy Information Administration (EIA), and others, demonstrated a potentially large decline in GDP from implementing the Protocol.

The current President, George W. Bush, has indicated that he does not intend to submit the treaty for ratification, not because he does not support the general idea, but because of the strain he believes the treaty would put on the economy; he emphasizes the uncertainties he asserts are present in the climate change issue. Furthermore, he is not happy with the details of the treaty. For example, he does not support the split between Annex I countries and others.

[Warren DeMontague]

35. Right. But the practical end result of all that is, Kyoto was never

implemented in the US.

So the other poster's (who I was responding to in the prev. post) contention about Kyoto's 'effects on US Industry' was incorrect- there were no effects because, although 'symbolically signed' by Al Gore, Kyoto was never ratified or implemented.

[Warren DeMontague]

15. Sure... if you believe in "Science", demon-worshipper!

You're obviously not from Kansas.

[mdfiasco55]

18. ?

Science is the reason we got involved with Kyoto to begin with. Clinton was right to sign the agreement. Are you saying that you agree or disagree with the Kyoto accord? I can't tell where you stand.

You seem pro-Bush on this point. I'm not a Demon Worshipper as you suggest, thanks.

[SoCalDem]

20. methinks the poster forgot this

:sarcasm:

[Warren DeMontague]

27. Yeh. I thought it was obvious.

Silly me.

"with Bush on this one"...

that'll be the day.

[SoCalDem]

19. Hah!..Born in Salina, Kansas

:P

[Warren DeMontague]

28. It must have been before they removed all that ungodly witchery

from the public school curriculum.

Oh, and Just in case it aint clear...

:sarcasm: :hippie:

[SoCalDem]

30. Yep.. they TAUGHT witchcraft back at school in those days

:sarcasm:

[KamaAina]

17. What's happening to the other 16 percent?

Let me guess... it's streaming out of the mouths of the OxyMoron, bin Reilly, bin Robertson and King Dumbass**?

[tjwash]

21. Imagine weather forecasts highlighting what pollution goes where.

Climate issues... Why are they always so terribly complicated? There is a buzz among scientists about "hydroxyl collapse", or, more technically, the breakdown of the oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere.

In a nutshell, no hydroxyl means we’re in serious trouble. Noxious gases like sulphuric and nitrogen oxides pile up without OH- bonding on to them and turning them inert. No hydroxyl, and smoke and soot just keep accumulating in the atmosphere.

And that could be where we’re heading. In the 1980s, NASA scientists came up with figures that suggested the amount of hydroxyl in the air has dropped by 25 percent since 1950. And in 2001, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted a 20 percent drop of hydroxyl activity in the century to come.

THE OXIDIZING POWER OF THE ATMOSPHERE

[SoCalDem]

22. In CA, we already have "particulate" forecasts

:(

[tjwash]

23. I know. We call them "air quality" forecasts

I have a lot of friends that work at the SIO. We have been over this a lot. They showed me the pictures of the Connecticut sized chunk of ice that broke off of the polar caps before they released it to the news.

Scary stuff.

[garybeck]

24. Global warming could provoke an ice age - must read this

How Global Warming May Cause the Next Ice Age...
by Thom Hartmann

While global warming is being officially ignored by the political arm of the Bush administration, and Al Gore's recent conference on the topic during one of the coldest days of recent years provided joke fodder for conservative talk show hosts, the citizens of Europe and the Pentagon are taking a new look at the greatest danger such climate change could produce for the northern hemisphere - a sudden shift into a new ice age. What they're finding is not at all comforting.

In quick summary, if enough cold, fresh water coming from the melting polar ice caps and the melting glaciers of Greenland flows into the northern Atlantic, it will shut down the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe and northeastern North America warm. The worst-case scenario would be a full-blown return of the last ice age - in a period as short as 2 to 3 years from its onset - and the mid-case scenario would be a period like the "little ice age" of a few centuries ago that disrupted worldwide weather patterns leading to extremely harsh winters, droughts, worldwide desertification, crop failures, and wars around the world.

Here's how it works.

If you look at a globe, you'll see that the latitude of much of Europe and Scandinavia is the same as that of Alaska and permafrost-locked parts of northern Canada and central Siberia. Yet Europe has a climate more similar to that of the United States than northern Canada or Siberia. Why?

It turns out that our warmth is the result of ocean currents that bring warm surface water up from the equator into northern regions that would otherwise be so cold that even in summer they'd be covered with ice. The current of greatest concern is often referred to as "The Great Conveyor Belt," which includes what we call the Gulf Stream.

snip

read the article:

http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views04/0130-11.htm

[SoCalDem]

25. Did you watch "Megaflood" last week?

Scary account of how the unusual ground formations in Montana happened..

Glacier nowhere near it, melted an ice dam and all the water from a dammed up river raced all the way to the Pacific..1000 ft deep in places..

[tjwash]

26. Another conversation with my friends at SIO, Kick starting an ice age...

We emit a lot of carbon dioxide, which plants and algae live on. They grow and grow, because there's plenty of the stuff around. Already, this effect is clearly seen in oceans, where algae and plankton thrive more than ever.

But say for some unforseen reason in the future, something kicks the balance off, and there is suddenly less carbon dioxide than the plants and algea that consume them. All those extra plants and algae will still be there, sucking up all carbon dioxide they can get. In a short period of time, they will suck almost all carbon dioxide out of the Earth's atmosphere.

That's hoe because of global warming, an ice-age can kick start because then, there will be no blanket of CO2. Like I said previously, clmate problems are terribly complicated things...

[Uncle Joe]

31. I believe they are filming Al Gore's speeches on this subject

for a documentary to come out in December.

[SoCalDem]

32. Where will the run? only on his channel?

Should be on PBS

[Uncle Joe]

33. This is what I know so far.

http://www.algore04.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=245&Itemid=78

From Grist
By Amanda Griscom Little

Al Gore, once derided by the right as a stiff, wooden Ozone Man, is now recasting himself as the fiery, headstrong Climate Avenger -- a blunt and passionate spokesperson about what he calls "a collision between our civilization and the earth." He is currently in negotiations to play a starring role in a big-budget, feature-length documentary on climate change.

Last Saturday in San Francisco, the self-described "guy who used to be the next president of the United States" delivered an hour-long multimedia presentation on the scientific evidence of global warming to hundreds of guests crammed into a tent for the culmination of the city's five-day-long U.N. World Environment Day celebration. The audience, peppered with celebrities, members of Congress, U.N. officials, and dozens of mayors from around the world, erupted into a standing ovation when Gore wrapped up his quasi-evangelical call to action.

Thrusting his fists skyward, he rattled off the seemingly insurmountable challenges civilization has overcome in the past -- slavery, communism, restricted suffrage, segregation, disease, apartheid -- and roared, "So now we are called to use our political institution, our democracy, our free speech, our reasoning capacity, our citizenship, our hearts, and talk with one another, reason with one another, see the reality of this problem, act as Americans, and understand that it's a different issue than any we've ever faced." Then the crescendo: "We have to make our stand!" he thundered. "This is our home! We must keep our eyes on the prize! Help solve this problem!"

Not all of the speech was so histrionic. There were frequent moments of comic relief, including parodic animation from the producers of The Simpsons about how global warming works. And Gore succeeded in telling the climate-change story with surprisingly good narrative rhythm and in accessible terms rather than overly wonky or academic language -- something few public figures have managed, or even attempted, to do.

Take the moment when Gore was trying to shed light on climate skeptics' denial of scientific fact: "When I was in 6th grade studying geography, one of my classmates pointed to the outline of the east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa, and said, 'Did the continents ever fit together?' The teacher said, 'That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard!' That child went on to become a drug addict and a ne'er-do-well. That teacher went on to become a science adviser in a presidential administration." He capped off the vignette with a paraphrased Mark Twain aphorism: "What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know, it's what we know for sure that just ain't so."

Other highlights of the presentation included a gasp-inducing photo montage of the "drunken" forests, collapsed homes, and ruptured highways that are among the casualties of melting permafrost, and detailed scenarios about the cities that would be lost given various potential changes in sea levels. When showing downtown Manhattan submerged, with the World Trade Center among the casualties, he alluded to the Sept. 11 attacks: "Never again, we said." Then added, "Is it only terrorists that we're worried about? Is that the only threat to the future that is worth organizing to respond to?"

Perhaps most persuasive was Gore's argument that mandatory caps on planet-warming emissions can give countries a big economic advantage in the 21st-century global marketplace, by driving innovation and boosting demand for hot new technologies related to renewable energy and efficiency. "We cannot even sell our cars in China because we don't meet their emissions standards!" he balked.

Google cofounder Sergey Brin, whose company was a World Environment Day cosponsor, reinforced this point later in the evening with a speech asserting that the coming paradigm shift toward clean technologies is an industrial movement that will dwarf even the digital revolution in terms of economic potential and historical meaning.

Cocktail hour commenced after Gore's presentation, and guests buzzed about the performance. "If only Gore had been that fired up in 2000!" said Janet O'Connell, a Bay Area attorney, while sampling organic wine and bruschetta. "It wasn't as though there were facts I'd never heard before, but the sum of all the evidence combined with the visuals just bowled me over," said Stephen Neely, a Silicon Valley executive. Former Republican Rep. Pete McCloskey said the performance was "Dynamite! If that isn't the kick in the pants that will galvanize the American public, I don't know what is." Culinary celeb Alice Waters added, "It should be required viewing for every person in this country."