Global Climate - are you Cool, Hot, or dont give a Hoot ?

[skybum]

The worst he has seen in 58 years of sailing the arctic. Love it! NOVEMBER, 1922. which fits with the warming period up until the forties.

 

GW is going to brake development and greeny attitudes to water could well see the mass depopulation of the Murray-Darling basin. If the greenies were so serious about the man enhanced lake alexandrina they should pull up the barrage at the earliest. This idea of using up the storages as environmental flows is vandalism. I would go as far as saying a crime against humanity!

 

I have just finished watching Landline and am encouraged by the official opening of the meander dam for agricultural purposes. There has been a total change in think about our water over the last three decades. My Dad puts it down to all those free thinking greenie environmental studies students from Monash of the 70's have now secured high positions within the DSE Department of Scorched Earth. To see the likes of the Dartmouth empty out over just three or four bad seasons is just crazy. Australian hydrographers used to fully understand the storage must withstand the standard seven year drought. Eildon was deliberately dropped to allow works on the wall and spillway to withstand a 1 in 10,000 year flood??? right before this drought we have now. Great going guys:censored:

 

Landline just informed me that the pollies thought it a national disgrace in 1981 that the mouth of the murray was closing up for the "First Time" in memory and that there hadn't been a flow since two years before. lowest in 13 years. Pretty good drought that year.

 

I am singularly amazed that environmental scientists can say our rivers are stressed with hand over heart yet the river of my birthplace flows strong and clean. The Ovens as it passes through Myrtleford and how two little puddles fill to overflowing every year yet a valley across the puddle doesn't fill and is in distress. Politics is stopping the raising of the Buffalo to its designed height and can still prove there is so little water in the Broken to justify demolishing a storage system.

 

The lunatics are in charge of the assylum! And we are too dumb and complacent to do anything about it.

 

 

[Guest extralite]

Those sailors and hunters from 1922 had it tough. They still had ice. This year they could be swimming in the Artic as there's a 50/50 chance an ice free artic could happen this year (originally forecast to be in 2050..then2013).

 

IF the artic is ice free this year, would that convince everyone that something is a bit wrong, or would this still be considered natural climate change in some people's minds? If so, i doubt much would change their mindset.

 

Artic Ice Free in 2008.l You know when climate change is biting hard when instead of a vast expanse of snow the North Pole is a vast expanse of water. This year, for the first time, Arctic scientists are preparing for that possibility.

 

"The set-up for this summer is disturbing," says Mark Serreze, of the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). A number of factors have this year led to most of the Arctic ice being thin and vulnerable as it enters its summer melting season.

 

In September 2007, Arctic sea ice reached a record low, opening up the fabled North-West passage that runs from Greenland to Alaska.

 

The ice expanded again over the winter and in March 2008 covered a greater area than it had in March 2007. Although this was billed as good news in many media sources, the trend since 1978 is on the decline.

 

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn13779-north-pole-could-be-ice-free-in-2008.html

 

Maybe the heads of the asylum are listening more to what the vast majority of scientest have found rather than us laymen on a flying forum.

 

By the way, anyone know anyone from the Tyagarah flying club? I cant seem to contact the contact? Would like some info on joining to fly from there.

 

 

[Guest High Plains Drifter]

Maybe the heads of the asylum are listening more to what the vast majority of scientest have found rather than us laymen on a flying forum.

extralite, I've done a bit of research on the claims that a "vast majority of scientists" claim that Human CO2 emmisions will cause catastrophic global warming - I'm having trouble finding them... do you know where they are ? :)

 

extralite, you may want to revisit Bob Carter

 

- Climate Change - Is CO2 the cause? - Pt 1 of 4[/url] and if you missed it, heres Bill Kinnimonth on Ch9 - (and a blustering Flannery) will need to wait for the advert to finnish - Reid Bryson[/b] (the most cited climatoligist in the world)

 

“All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd, of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air.”

 

 

[Guest extralite]

:) I've already taken the bait too long and bowing out of this discussion and back to questions about aviation...like trying to find somewhere to park a plane near the Goldy. Hijacking the thread to ask is there such a thing as the Tyagarah Flying club and anyone know of anyone flying there?

 

 

[sain]

Please read the free e-book at:

 

http://www.withouthotair.com

 

Uses factual, numerical information rather than things like "CO2 pollution is a huuuuuuuge problem" or "CO2 pollution is a load of bullexcrement".

 

Provides useful information reflecting the realities of the situation and banishing many myths. Also shows (mathematically even) why many of the touted methods of reducing energy consumption wont work, or at least wont work alone.

 

And for those who don't believe that CO2 is likely to be a problem, it also has some very interesting graphs showing proportions of CO2 to other gases in the atmosphere (well, actually from core-ice samples presumably) since before the industrial revolution to today.

 

It also does some maths towards the end, comparing the effeciency of light aircraft to cars. Unfortunately he picked a crappy plane to do it with, but hey.

 

enjoy.

 

 

[Guest High Plains Drifter]

sain, I just had a quick flip through the draft of Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air book by David MacKay. Looks like an interesting read, and I'll have a closer look later.

 

I did note though that Professor David MacKay is not a climate scientist as such, but a professor of natural philosophy.

 

Another thing that concerns me is MacKay puts 'Hocky stick' Hansen on his recomended reading list ...MacKays book is still a work in progress though, so maybe there will be changes :)

 

 

[sain]

Its still a worthwhile read though. He likes to try and prove his theories based on real data where possible, though he does take a few shortcuts with the maths. Not all of what he puts in his book I agree with, but its a very interesting viewpoint.

 

 

[Yenn]

The journalists control what we read, and they pick which scientists to follow, which leads me to think we have the blind leading the blind.

 

It appears to me that we do have a climate problem, whatever it is caused by, and it would be a good thing to reduce our energy usage. (But I am not giving up flying) No matter what the cause it would be good for us to embrace renewable energy. I have solar hot water which saves a lot of money as well as energy, but the government should be embracing wind and solar powered electricity.

 

Nuclear is of course only to be used by the superpowers, as they are the only ones responsible enough to be trusted with it. Or should I say ready to use it on other people.

 

The present situation does not look good for recreational use of fossil fuels and I have decided not to look for a bigger plane as ten litres an hour may just keep me in the air whereas twenty may be too much

 

 

[Guest High Plains Drifter]

Having a further look through the David MacKay book, when this comment caught my attention - on page 326 - "Trees do not produce methane; don’t believe everything you read in Nature" just above on the same page MacKay writes - "Methane, for example,is a stronger absorber of infra-red radiation than CO2, but it lasts only a few years in the atmosphere before it is changed into another chemical (most likely CO2). The lifetime of methane in atmosphere (before it turns to CO2) is about 12 years"

 

The comment that trees do not produce methane would appear to contradict the observations of large plumes of methane hovering over tropical forests that several satellites have spotted, that a David Lowe (atmospheric chemist with the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in Wellington, New Zealand) makes some comments on - "That has been puzzling, and no one could explain it—but this provides an explanation, It's the trees themselves that are producing that methane." http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0111_060111_plant_methane.html

 

...and as some say, probably why the histerical records indicate a rise in CO2 levels after a rise in the temperature records - i.e. its warmer, more plants grow, more methane, etc...

 

I'm finding more and more "Hot air" in the MacKay book - but its still interesting :big_grin:

 

 

[sain]

Interesting - i thought the methane was generated by organic material being broken down in the absence of oxygen (i.e beneath the upper layers of fallen leaves/branches/trunks etc. Things you learn... Mind you it also says that a "large range of plants" produce methane, but not how many...

 

Mind you the graph itself is very interesting - the majority of australia's methane seems to be coming from the desert regions, northern NT, and northern queensland, while the south eastern regions (looks like from brisbane south and across to the start of the GAB) don't produce any. Nz looks to be about the same, with only a few small pockets of methane production.

 

 

[hihosland]

i understand that the termite mounds so common in the North are prodigious producers of methane.