NASA and global warming:

I think he is absolutely right --

Humans today have to stop warming the planet for generations to come.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pinto Girl @ Jun 11 2007, 12:32 PM) [snapback]459587[/snapback]</div>

I'd say it's the Bush admin filling postions with those who agree. Under Griffin, the mission statement of NASA has been revised to remove the goal of "to understand and protect our home planet." See: http://thinkprogress.org/2007/06/04/griffin-nasa-mission/ or http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/12639/1102/

It goes hand-in-hand with Bush's un-funded mission of getting us to Mars or the moon again. Refocusing NASA's mission to those unreaslistic goals (IMO, as I can't imagine the funds needed being allocated) justifies cutting budgets for earth observation satellites, thereby slowing/impeding the gathering of information on how we are altering the climate.
Bush seeks funding cuts for Earth monitoring satellites
http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0502-aaas.html
http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2007/0430eos.shtml

 

I agree with him 100%! We has human have no right to decide the climate of the earth. I happen to think that if we do it will have dangerous and expensive consquences. We are unfortunately warming the climate, this is somthing that as all but a handful of scientists now agree with. I say it's time to stop.

 

Actually, it appears Griffin is already backing off the NPR comment he made at the end of May:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/09/science/...tml?ref=science

Dr. Griffin said that he regretted that the comments became a “distraction for NASA.†Whatever his personal opinion about climate change, he said that it has no effect on NASA’s role in providing the technical data on climate change.

“NASA’s role in climate change research is to conduct the space missions and do the model development, and do the data analysis and produce the results that everybody then uses to decide what the policies are going to be,†Dr. Griffin said. And on that score, he added, “I actually think we do our job rather well.â€

As for the fact that his comments became a rallying cry for global warming skeptics, he was characteristically blunt. “If someone says the Earth is not warming up, that seems rather silly,†he said.

 

No - really - in order to stop global warming and real issues - we need to ELIMINATE VOLCANOES (both underwater and land based)

Michael Griffin (NASA) - is right - we HAVE NO EFFECT ON CLIMATE - the CYCLES OF THE SUN have more effect than we EVER could. You DO know that the sun has it's own cycle right? That the source of ALL energy on earth is... you guessed it! the SUN.

You also know the Earth used to be alot hotter.. and alot colder.. and alot hotter.. then colder again.. and then hotter again..

All without cars... AMAZING!!!

O2 levels used to be over 90% of our atmosphere... NO WAI!!

I know that might be to difficult to grasp....so...

Lets talk small potatoes first...

Lets talk Volcanos....I'll leave the sun argument for when I'm talking to someone REALLY dense.. who thinks we can actually change the temperature of a planet by burning petro.

One eruption will spew more CO2 in 30 minutes than we can spew out in years...

Lets not forget about our friend SULPHUR - which is FAR more dangerous than CO2 - it is highly poisonious

to pretty much anything and everything......


ANNUAL AVERAGE GLOVAL EMISSIONS OF HCl, HF, And HBr, in TG



SOURCE HCL HF HBr
Volcanoes 7.8 .4 .078
OCEANS 300 .02 1
COAL COMBUSTION 1.8 .18 .08
PETROLEUM COMBUSTION .013 0 .00036
NATURAL GAS COMBUSTION .0022

Sulfur Emissions

Andres and Kasgnoc (1997) estimated the time-averaged inventory of subaerial volcanic sulfur emissions. There inventory was based upon the 25 year history of making sulfur measurements, primarily sulfur dioxide (SO2), at volcanoes. Actual measurements of subaerial volcanic sulfur dioxide emissions indicate a time-averaged flux of 13 Tg/yr sulfur dioxide from early 1970 to 1997. [Note: a Tg is equal to 10E12 grams]. About 4 Tg come from explosive eruptions and 9 Tg is released by passivedegassing, in an average year. When considering the other sulfur species also present in volcanic emissions, a time-averaged inventory of subaerial volcanic sulfur emissions is 10.4 Tg/yr sulfur.

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/Gases/

Thank you.. thank you very much

*bows*


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(bigmahma @ Jun 11 2007, 06:45 PM) [snapback]459772[/snapback]</div>

One more thing..


Gore repeatedly labels carbon dioxide as "global warming pollution" when, in reality, it is no more pollution than is oxygen. CO2 is plant food, an ingredient essential for photosynthesis without which Earth would be a lifeless, frozen ice ball. The hypothesis that human release of CO2 is a major contributor to global warming is just that -- an unproven hypothesis, against which evidence is increasingly mounting.

In fact, the correlation between CO2 and temperature that Gore speaks about so confidently is simply non-existent over all meaningful time scales. U of O climate researcher Professor Jan Veizer demonstrated that, over geologic time, the two are not linked at all. Over the intermediate time scales Gore focuses on, the ice cores show that CO2 increases don't precede, and therefore don't cause, warming. Rather, they follow temperature rise -- by as much as 800 years. Even in the past century, the correlation is poor; the planet actually cooled between 1940 and 1980, when human emissions of CO2 were rising at the fastest rate in our history.


Similarly, the fact that water vapour constitutes 95% of greenhouse gases by volume is conveniently ignored by Gore. While humanity's three billion tonnes (gigatonnes, or GT) per year net contribution to the atmosphere's CO2 load appears large on a human scale, it is actually less than half of 1% of the atmosphere's total CO2 content (750-830 GT).


THIS ONE IS IMPORTANT KIDDIES

The CO2 emissions of our civilization are also dwarfed by the 210 GT/year emissions of the gas from Earth's oceans and land. Perhaps even more significant is the fact that the uncertainty in the measurement of atmospheric CO2 content is 80 GT -- making three GT seem hardly worth mentioning.


*laughs* you guys are funny.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(bigmahma @ Jun 11 2007, 05:52 PM) [snapback]459772[/snapback]</div>

Right back at ya. Your whole argument debunked by ... gasp ... NASA ... back in 2004.
The complexity and
non-linearity of the climate system does not
allow such a simple statistical derivation of climate
sensitivity without a physical understanding
of the key processes and feedbacks.We thus
conclude that Shaviv and Veizer [2003] provide
no cause for revising current estimates of climate
sensitivity to CO2.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2004/2004_Rahmstorf_etal.pdf

 

Is this the same NASA that didn't want to spend the money or be bothered to see if a space shuttle had a hole in the wing? In the long term humans won't have much of an impact. When Mt. St. Helens or Yellowstone or any of the other active volcanoes erupt whoever is left will realize how puny Man is. Natural forces are self correcting. Sooner or later they will wipe out whatever we have engineered.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(JimN @ Jun , 05:42 PM)</div>

While I agree with you that nature is self correcting and a super volcano may well wipe out large part of, if not the entire human race (or a large meteor strike or any of a number of other things), does that excuse us from responsibility for our own self-destruction?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MegansPrius @ Jun , 11:18 AM)</div>

The problem is that NASA has shifted focus away from earth science an towards future manned missions to the moon & Mars. The money has been chipped away year after year from the existing earth science budgets, and perhaps more importantly, there are precious few future satellites in the plan, so that when the current slew of instruments run out their lifetime (or their funding), there will be little to replace them with. The few that are in the works (OCO, NPOESS) are riddled with technical and funding problems. We are running the risk of having an incomplete climate record, and there is NO PLAN to solve this problem, which Griffin admits.

And yes, Pinto, this shift in focus, and the hiring of Griffin to carry it out, is by design.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Dragonfly @ Jun 12 2007, 12:07 AM) [snapback]459943[/snapback]</div>

The Continuation of our Species is dependant on us finding another planet to live on.. eventually

an ice age will hit - or IRAN will nuke israel who will nuke iran and then we will nuke iran and pakistan will nuke india and then china will nuke pakistan and it's all over folks..

Or we will be hit with an asteroid.... or a series of volcanoes will erupt and knock out most plant life... which means human life...

We have more realistic problems than the temperature of the planet rising 1-2 degree centigrade...predicted by junk science...

More importantly.. we don't want the earth to COOL... that's the real effect we want to avoid...



Oh - BTW - I love Global Warming Panic... very profitable... ask Al Gore...

 

Your logic seem to be that since there are worse thing that can happen that we have no control over there is no reason to deal with the things we can control. To me that is a non sequitur. I like the volume in which you argue

 

I would ask who's to say it is or isnt.... the data is flawed as theres no records past the 1900's .. So what we have to go on is speculations & predictions regarding GW.. Or because Joe Blow sceintist says his predictions are correct so believe him!

Kinda reminds me of a weather man, he goes to college to be able to give speculations & predictions on what the weather will be from day to day... :mellow:

 

I agree the data and our models migh be flawed. But it's a question of risk!

If our models are flawed and we changed to a less energy intense society then we have wasted a lot of money

If our models are (even close to) correct but we choose to do nothing the consequences will be FAR more expensive on a scale that will collapse economies around the world.

It's like the risk of a nuclear war. Sure it might be remote but if it would happen we it would be a disaster so we better take all the precautions we can now to prevent it. If we wait

 

Another federal agency that needs to be cut from funding. They are a model of bureaucratic inefficiency. The only function of NASA now should be to be responsible for government satellites. This is good, because this is really all they are good for: an organic government ability to launch and maintain satellites. Every other mission they have can be better and more quickly done by private enterprise with government funding.

You want to have people living on Mars, doing useful and cool things while there? NASA isn't doing that? Give a fraction of NASA's budget to Robert Zubrin, or one of the myriad of other scientists and engineers who can do the things we want and that will inspire us.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(bigmahma @ Jun 12 2007, 08:06 AM) [snapback]460038[/snapback]</div>

How about the planet you came from?


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hycamguy07 @ Jun 12 2007, 08:22 AM) [snapback]460044[/snapback]</div>

I've given up even attempting to argue with ignoramuses who use terms like "Joe Blow sceintist (sic) or "junk science". Instead of making an attempt to learn more about things that you don't understand, you just dismiss all those fools who have spent years getting Ph.D.'s and researching these phenomena as "Joe Blows". And if you really can't understand the difference between WEATHER and CLIMATE, try looking it up in a dictionary.
If you had cancer, would you go to a "Joe Blow doctor". Treating cancer is much too complex and hard to understand, so it must be "junk science". Perhaps you'd be better off watching Pat Robertson on TV and letting Jesus cure you.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Army5339 @ Jun 12 2007, 08:33 AM) [snapback]460050[/snapback]</div>

You seem to like the idea of outsourcing government functions to corporations. How do you like the present administration's policy of privatizing the military and turning over jobs traditionally performed by soldiers to corporations such as Blackwater? After all, they are unencumbered by "bureaucratic inefficiency" such as the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(bigmahma @ Jun , 05:06 AM)</div>

No it isn't. It's dependent on us adapting to the Earth's conditions, whether natural or man-made.

 

Plain and simple park all your cars, buy horse & buggies. we can return to the 1800's and all live the simple life..

But then again the sceintists may then say horse poop emmisions is a factor in GW, as there are no cars to blam it on.. :lol:

In my book, they continue to draw straws with their speculations conclusions or predictions according to the data they have put together to support their findings.

Again who says they are rite? You? so Im to believe that, because you believe in what Joe Blow says is the truth.. :blink:

I guess the same could be said of religions..... Do this and be saved (what do some of you call it fear based?) :huh:

Scientists are pushing the GW Agenda based on the fear of what could happen if we dont follow... :mellow:

 

You seem to be saying the scientists are misleading us to an end goal of killing off cars. Why? What is the motive for the scientific community to do this? If they are up to no good, please tell me what they are up to then.

Again....I don't believe we can do a damn thing about GW and the problem will correct itself after peak oil/Arab embargo/or some other geopolitical factor finally forces us to kick the terrorist funding oil habit.
And this ongoing stupid debate with the same arguments each time is a complete waste of time that only serves to delay our preparedness for a serious energy problem looming on the horizon.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Darwood @ Jun 12 2007, 12:23 PM) [snapback]460187[/snapback]</div>

I agree with the bolded statment