19 of 23

Write now Article Tools

"Oh my God, we're all gonna die/drown!" (See "USA: Wanted for Crimes Against the Planet:" http://www.alternet.org/enviro nment/44359/)

With headlines like these, you'd think the game is over - but it's not.

Score one for the skeptics of the alarmist view of global warming. Consider some of the latest research - this report was released a few days ago:

http://www.freerepublic.co m/focus/f-news/1861531/posts

"S cientists who probed two kilometers (1.2 miles) through a Greenland glacier to recover the oldest plant DNA on record said Thursday the planet was far warmer hundreds of thousands of years ago than is generally believed. DNA of trees, plants and insects including butterflies and spiders from beneath the southern Greenland glacier was estimated to date to 450,000 to 900,000 years ago, according to the remnants retrieved from this long-vanished boreal forest.

That contrasts sharply with the prevailing view that a lush forest of this kind could only have existed in Greenland as recently as 2.4 million years ago, according to a summary of the study, which is published Thursday in the journal Science.

The samples suggest the temperature probably reached 10 degrees C (50 degrees Fahrenheit) in the summer and -17 C (1 F) in the winter.

They also indicated that during the last period between ice ages, 116,000-130,000 years ago, when temperatures were on average 5 C (9 F) higher than now, the glaciers on Greenland did not completely melt away."

Two points can be made:

1) human influence is not needed to raise the temp. of the planet up to 5 C/9 F degrees higher than what they are right now - other factors are obviously sufficient.

2) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently returned from Greenland where she says she 'saw firsthand evidence that climate change is a reality.' Not quite. New satellite data tell us that Greenland is shedding ice at the rate of 25 to 40 cubic miles per year. If Greenland lost most of its ice, sea levels would rise 20 feet or so. Greenland's total ice volume is 680,000 cubic miles, and it is losing four ten-thousandths of its ice per year. Do the math. That works out to 0.4 to 0.6 percent of its total mass per century.

Pelosi is falling victim to the current global warming hysteria, and that's a shame because I've been watch some of "Live Earth," and while the music is great, "Live Earth" is fueled by overblown fears, a black and white view of the nature of global warming, and an agenda that's far too "left of center" political/economic than environmental. In other words, a waste of precious time and money that would have been better spent elsewhere - see

http://www.copenhagenconsen sus.com

Learn more about this author, Christopher Calliope.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

Add your voice

Know something about Global warming: The scorecard so far?
We want to hear your view. Write now!