Letters to the Editor
droogoy
Published Letters: 608 Editor's Choice: 9
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No time to wait
[Read the article: Desperate times, desperate scientists]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]brightstar 56 wrote:
I just do not want fraudulent policies being enacted based on wishful thinking,
Wishful thinking??? Travel to Alaska - from Nome to Fairbanks and to the Seward Peninsula and Kodiak, and see how the Inuit have been affected, then talk that crap. There is no "wishful thinking" here, my friend.
When I was in Fairbanks in March, 2005, I watched a 150' ice tower collapse that was supposed to last the winter. Cause? Melting permafrost. This is also undermining the foundations of most of the homes, business bldgs. in the metro Fairbanks area.
Still in doubt? Travel to the University of Alaska - Fairbanks, Geophysical Institute and talk to those in Atmospheric Sciences and at the Arctic Research Center. Let them show you the ice core samples they have with trapped CO2 and explain them to you.
Global warming is here and it is metastasizing to tipping point levels - by which I mean inception of the RUNAWAY Greenhouse effect.
Only the most obdurate hardheads, ingoramuses, flat-Earthers or pro-oil shills refuse to get with it.
There is no time to wait for "harder evidence" because by the time you wait out getting to the 99% threshold of evidence (only 1% uncertainty as opposed to 10%) there won't be enough time to act to change anything.
All we will be able to do by then is look forward to the first global year of "no seasons" (now forecast for ca. 2031) and compose the epitaph for the planet we will then be handing to our children and grandchildren.
Whereupon they will curse us forever for sitting on our asses and using a faux skepticism as an excuse to do so.
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Brightstar the Bozo
[Read the article: Desperate times, desperate scientists]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Brightstar 65 wrote:
Listening to the hype mongers, one would think that if carbon dioxide moves up just a wee bit much, then suddenly there is NO natural process in place to balance it, that there is an IRREVERSIBLE tipping point at which the Earth will collapse into a scalding cauldron of boiling flesh and melting rock.
Not a "wee bit" - but certainly to the 550 ppm level and we are fucked. Right now, CO2 concentrations are around 367 ppm and increasing 10% per year. A recent Eos paper noted that there is good reason to suppose, using evidence of past ice core samples, thatat 420 ppm, there will be no more ice ages.
Carl Sagan (author of the Runaway Greenhouse effect papers to account for Venus' high temps.) noted in a 1989 interview that at > 550 ppm a runaway effect will set in.
With an increase at 10%/ yr. there is not that much time to reach the tipping pt.
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Akasofu & climate change comments
[Read the article: Desperate times, desperate scientists]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Solarpower wrote:
Dr. Akasofu: "The IPCC's report, on page 10, states that, "most of the present temperature increase during the last 100 years, from 1975, is due to a magnified greenhouse effect. But there is no basis for them to say "most," for they have not examined the natural component. So it's an assumption. Then, they say, computer models conforms to that, but that's not true. What's happening is that computers try to simulate the present increase, but computers can't do that. So it's not confirming anything; their computers are just trying to simulate the initial assumption."
Well, I was a research student of Akasofu when I was at the University of Alaska Geophysical Institute in 1985-86.
The research was in space physics, which is Akasofu's specialty (he developed some of the earliest and best models of magnetic substorms, auroral unloading energy formalisms) and NOT climate change.
Akasofu has about as much authority to speak on climate change as Stephen Hawking. In science, I am sorry, but one's speciality area counts, and one doesn't cross into disciplines where one has not published or honed one's skills.
Another thing, Akasofu retired his chair at UAF at least three years ago so he is not even an active researcher any more - even in space physics.
It helps to know about backgrounds!
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A perfect recipe for extinction
[Read the article: Desperate times, desperate scientists]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]salty3 wrote:
God is in heaven and His will be done. Let him handle it.
Sorry, there's no "God" and no "heaven". Childish myths. BUT anthropogenic global warming is no myth or fairy tale. If we humans don't use our allegedly huge brains and deal with it - it will "deal with" us, and that more than likely means we are removed from the planet within the next thousand years.
But - I guess for those who believe in afterlives and "heaven" that doesn't matter.