Global warming.

[Gary Svindal]

from the Drudge Report:

HOUSE HEARING ON 'WARMING OF THE PLANET' CANCELED AFTER ICE STORM
HEARING NOTICE
Tue Feb 13 2007 19:31:25 ET

The Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality hearing scheduled for Wednesday, February 14, 2007, at 10:00 a.m. in room 2123 Rayburn House Office Building has been postponed due to inclement weather. The hearing is entitled “Climate Change: Are Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Human Activities Contributing to a Warming of the Planet?”

The hearing will be rescheduled to a date and time to be announced later.

[Digit]

Evening Beag, just read your links on GW. I'm puzzled. It's all very well for these people to say that higher sea temperatures are resulting in stronger hurricanes but they don't explain the science. Anyone know the answers?

[Forum Monk]

Evening Beag, just read your links on GW. I'm puzzled. It's all very well for these people to say that higher sea temperatures are resulting in stronger hurricanes but they don't explain the science. Anyone know the answers?

It is a well known fact the warm waters spawn (well at least sustain and intensify) hurricanes. This is why the season occurs during mid to late summer months. They are born in the warm ocean currents off west Africa and follow that mid-atlantic flow toward the carribean. I will give you some interesting links. Both links can explain the relationship. The first cites global warming, the second natural climate cycles.

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/sc ... hange.html

http://www.magazine.noaa.gov/stories/mag184.htm

I would be interested to hear your analysis. (If you intended just for Beagel to answer, I apologize.)

[Beagle]

Hi Digit, I didn't even read the link that you're referring to. As I said, I noticed that the article on the Doomsday Vault had some nice links.

Obviously though, Monk helped out there. Thanks Monk.

[Minimalist]

There has been a change in hurricane patterns though. It seemed that they used to form off the African coast near Cape Verde and then meander their way west.

Now, in many cases, tropical storms are growing into hurricanes on this side of the pond. What used to be a rarity has become commonplace.

Meanwhile, the storms which do form off Africa make it halfway across and are then bumped off to the north.

This is a change.

[john]

For what its worth, gang.......



The Context of Steelhead Fishing the Lower Hoh: February 2007

or

Steelhead as Just Another Canary in the Coal Mine of Global Politics



August 14/15, 1945: VJ, ended World War II. VE day - Victory in Europe - had happened several months earlier on May 7/8.

Why pick August 14/15, 1945 as the bellwether for the environmental collapse we now observe in 2007? Especially as systematic and wholesale industrialization of Western Europe and North America had been growing at an uncontrolled rate for at least a century previous?

I pick this as the date when industrial rapacity turned into politically enforced institutionalization of the Western military/industrial machine.

World War II was the first true World War. World War I, compared to World War II, is like comparing a normally aspirated straight six automobile engine to a fuel injected, big block V8. World War I was about Europe. World War II was truly about the world. Specifically, about control of the world’s people, territory and resources by a coalition of “first world”, western nations. Japan had their “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” (in response to their perception of Western control of Asian resources) Germany had their Wehrmacht (in their response to the limitations of the treaty of Versailles). Both were going for large scale control of resources, including people and nations. An unlikely coalition of the rest of Western Europe, Russia and the USA won the argument. But it was really Roosevelt and Stalin who were gambling each other for control of the whole world pie. 50 years later, when Communist Russia collapsed, the USA collected the chips thrown on the green felt of the table called Yalta.

Dwight Eisenhower’s greatest apprehension, post WWII, was about the unchecked rise of the “military industrial complex”. He was right, despite the fact that he is not included in any pantheon of Great American Liberals. He foresaw the coming disaster.

OK. So what is my thesis here? Actually, there are two, and they are parallel.

1.) The Western coalition took effective control of the world’s resources by the act of World War II, and have abused them unmercifully since then to create and maintain the status quo of wealth for the few and military power far above the rest of the world.

2.) Most of the rest of the world – the “third world” if you will, exploded exponentially in population due to various social factors and despoiled what little was left to them by the Western coalition.

The Raw Greed/ Raw Need Paradigm:

The concept that we humans have a limited and beautiful set of resources (the Earth) which we have a mandate to preserve and sustain has been systematically corrupted or eradicated by the twin evils of Western economic opportunism (continuously escalating profits) – otherwise known as raw greed - and raw need (created by population growth in the third world). Older, hunter/gatherer and agricultural societies had a pretty good concept and practice of sustainable living. Those societies have either been eradicated or decimated to the point of near-term extinction. There are plenty of very good accounts of this phenomenon.

To add to our woes, the beginning of the twenty first century is marked by a growing awareness in third world countries that they have been ripped off, now expressed in the form of armed, religious extremism. Within the context of traditional societies torn apart by religious/tribal factionalism, they want Western levels of wealth. Read up on Nigeria over the last decade. Mainland China has committed to building the biggest military industrial complex the world has ever seen, and to hell with any environmental consequences. Across the globe, third world populations are migrating en masse to first world countries under the misperception that they can “share the wealth”.

And the USA is committed to “holding the fort” of its economic and military domination no matter its estrangement from its own land and peoples, and the rest of the planet.

We are just beginning to realize the consequences of our physical abuse of the environment over the last century, I’m afraid.

I’ve been re-reading “A Sand County Almanac” lately. The “Round River” section is particularly, sadly, poignant. As a matter of fact, the whole damn book is that way. Aldo’s perceptions, written in the mid-forties are, unfortunately, uncannily accurate, and even more applicable today.


I wrote this in another context.


Now..........

Global climate change is somehow a cosmic accident? Right. Look in your bathroom mirror.

john

[Beagle]

I agree Min. that hurricane patterns seem to be changing.

And john, nice to see you again. It's been a while.

[john]

Once again -

This is not global warming.

This is global climatic change.

What you have is the rythms of the earth, offset by the indisputable impact of Homo sap. burning wood,coal, oil, nukes anything he can.

Complex subject.

Anybody here want to make the argument that having 7 billion people scuffling for a living doesn't make an impact?

Oil, coal, nukes have changed the atmosphere. For the worse.

Unless you are Dubya.

If you are Dubya, fossil fuel burning and extraction dont mean shit. Whagt does mean shit is conquering all them pesky third world nations that got a bunch of resources America needs.

Hokah Hey

john

[Minimalist]

If you are Dubya, fossil fuel burning and extraction dont mean shit.

Oh, it means that his oil company pals keep pouring money into Republican coffers.

[Forum Monk]

John,
Your first post is well written and to the point. But I don't agree with all your points. Your second, post I had to read twice.

Seven billion or what ever the number must make an impact but what many are questioning is, how big? I remember when Mt. St. Helens blew its lid, they were saying that it put out more pollutants than the entire industrial revolution to date. And St. Helens, relatively speaking doesn't make a pimple on the earth's allegorical butt.

[Forum Monk]

If you are Dubya, fossil fuel burning and extraction dont mean shit.

Oh, it means that his oil company pals keep pouring money into Republican coffers.

I suppose the Dem's are have no money, no PACs, no wealthy philanthropists. Nancy Pelosi and the whole lot of them probably have their hands stuck out under the tables on capital hill. Thats politics from the 1780s until now.

As for raping and pillaging the third world to get their resources, if that is the goal, we have a lousy track record. Every year prices go up, my buying power goes down and I haven't had a decent raise since the early '90s. Rome knew how to conquer, we seem to play at it.

[Digit]

Thanks for the links Monk. Unfortunately they don't answer my problem. Why does one mass of air rotate faster than another?

[Minimalist]

I suppose the Dem's are have no money, no PACs, no wealthy philanthropists.

There's quite a leap between that and putting oil company executives on presidential advisory boards to write new legislation to benefit the oil companies.

It's a question of scale, Monk. This administration is shameless in its pandering to business groups.

[Forum Monk]

Thanks for the links Monk. Unfortunately they don't answer my problem. Why does one mass of air rotate faster than another?

Rising air and the coriolis effect - its fairly simple actually:

In the beginning, a disturbance forms in the atmosphere, developing into an area of low atmospheric pressure. Winds begin to move into the center of the storm seedling from surrounding areas of higher air pressure. Warm water heats the air, and it rises as it nears the center.

The ocean feeds warmth and moisture into the developing storm, providing energy that causes the warm air in the center to rise faster. It condenses high in the atmosphere, creating thunderstorms.

If conditions are favorable, a tropical depression develops into a tropical storm, then finally into a hurricane, which is not unlike a giant swirling mass of thunderstorms.

As rising air in the storm's center condenses, it produces heat, forcing it to rise even faster. The air is pushed out the top -- much like smoke out the chimney of a fire -- and more air has to rush in at the surface to take its place. This kicks the ocean up more and, well, you can see that the storm essentially feeds on itself.

Warm Air, Warm Water Make Conditions Right for Hurricanes
Hurricanes start when warm, moist air from the ocean surface begins to rise rapidly, where it encounters cooler air that causes the warm water vapor to condense and to form storm clouds and drops of rain. The condensation also releases latent heat, which warms the cool air above, causing it to rise and make way for more warm humid air from the ocean below.

As this cycle continues, more warm moist air is drawn into the developing storm and more heat is transferred from the surface of the ocean to the atmosphere. This continuing heat exchange creates a wind pattern that spirals around a relatively calm center, or eye, like water swirling down a drain.

Structurally, a tropical cyclone is a large, rotating system of clouds, wind, and thunderstorms. Its primary energy source is the release of the heat of condensation from water vapor condensing at high altitudes, the heat being ultimately derived from the sun. Therefore, a tropical cyclone can be visualized as a giant vertical heat engine supported by mechanics driven by physical forces such as the rotation and gravity of the Earth.[1] In another way, tropical cyclones could be viewed as a special type of Mesoscale Convective Complex, which continues to develop over a vast source of relative warmth and moisture. Condensation leads to higher wind speeds, as a tiny fraction of the released energy is converted into mechanical energy;[48] the faster winds and lower pressure associated with them in turn cause increased surface evaporation and thus even more condensation. Much of the released energy drives updrafts that increase the height of the storm clouds, speeding up condensation.[49] This gives rise to factors that provide the system with enough energy to be self-sufficient and cause a positive feedback loop, where it can draw more energy as long as the source of heat, warm water, remains. Factors such as a continued lack of equilibrium in air mass distribution would also give supporting energy to the cyclone. The rotation of the Earth causes the system to spin, an effect known as the Coriolis effect, giving it a cyclonic characteristic and affecting the trajectory of the storm.

The factors to form a tropical cyclone include a pre-existing weather disturbance, warm tropical oceans, moisture, and relatively light winds aloft. If the right conditions persist and allow it to create a feedback loop by maximizing the energy intake possible – for example, such as high winds to increase the rate of evaporation – they can combine to produce the violent winds, incredible waves, torrential rains, and floods associated with this phenomenon.

Deep convection as a driving force is what primarily distinguishes tropical cyclones from other meteorological phenomena.[50] Because this is strongest in a tropical climate, this defines the initial domain of the tropical cyclone. By contrast, mid-latitude cyclones draw their energy mostly from pre-existing horizontal temperature gradients in the atmosphere.[50] To continue to drive its heat engine, a tropical cyclone must remain over warm water, which provides the needed atmospheric moisture. The evaporation of this moisture is accelerated by the high winds and reduced atmospheric pressure in the storm, resulting in a positive feedback loop. As a result, when a tropical cyclone passes over land, its strength diminishes rapidly.[51]

The passage of a tropical cyclone over the ocean can cause the upper ocean to cool substantially, which can influence subsequent cyclone development. Cooling is primarily caused by upwelling of cold water from below due to the wind stresses the tropical cyclone itself induces upon the upper layers of the ocean. Additional cooling may come from cold water from falling raindrops. Cloud cover may also play a role in cooling the ocean by shielding the ocean surface from direct sunlight before and slightly after the storm passage. All these effects can combine to produce a dramatic drop in sea surface temperature over a large area in just a few days.[52]

Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research estimate that a tropical cyclone releases heat energy at the rate of 50 to 200 trillion joules per day.[49] For comparison, this rate of energy release is equivalent to exploding a 10-megaton nuclear bomb every 20 minutes[53] or 200 times the world-wide electrical generating capacity per day.[49]

While the most obvious motion of clouds is toward the center, tropical cyclones also develop an upper-level (high-altitude) outward flow of clouds. These originate from air that has released its moisture and is expelled at high altitude through the "chimney" of the storm engine.[1] This outflow produces high, thin cirrus clouds that spiral away from the center. The high cirrus clouds may be the first signs of an approaching tropical cyclone.[54]

If these don't answer your question, I don't know what you're asking.

[Forum Monk]

There's quite a leap between that and putting oil company executives on presidential advisory boards to write new legislation to benefit the oil companies.

It's a question of scale, Monk. This administration is shameless in its pandering to business groups.

Don't disagree Min, but in a way its a stark realization that black gold drives the economy of the world. So in a way it makes sense to take advice from an industry that could take you into the dark ages if doesn't get protected. Its a shame we've allowed ourselves to be throttled by these greedy thieves. They've got us by the short hairs.