Researchers from Texas A & M University compiled results from a survey of over 1000 Americans on how much they knew about global warming and how they felt about it. Specifically, the research team looked at public informedness of the risks of global warming and the public confidence in climate scientists.

The goal of the study, posted in the Risk Analysis Journal, was to test the general assumption that the scientific assessment of the risks is both correct and objective, and that, by implication, the publics perceptions of the risks are both inaccurate and subjective.

According to the survey, more informed respondents and those with high confidence in scientists both feel less personally responsible for global warming and also show less concern for global warming.

From the New York Times article "Global Warming Paradox" by John Tierney............

But why would people who trust scientists not be as concerned when they hear so many scientists warning of the perils of global warming? “Though this effect differs from our expectations,” the researcher write, “it is consistent with the notion that people trust that scientists will be able, somehow, to devise technical solutions to any problems that arise because of global warming and climate change.” Dr. Kellstedt elaborated on this point by telling me:

More broadly, and again quite speculatively, I think that Americans have a great deal of faith in technology and technological solutions to problems. We have seen science do things (like send people into outer space, and to miraculously save them, Apollo-13 style, when things go badly) unimaginable for 99.9% of human history.

You can read about the study in depth right here.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

A group of climatologists say that greenhouse gas emissions will have to be eliminated completely in order to stabilize the earth's climate and prevent temperatures from rising. Current efforts/plans to just stabilize emissions will not be enough.

Damon Matthews, from Concordia University in Canada, and Ken Caldeira, from the Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, USA, used a global climate model to study how greenhouse emissions would need to change in order to stabilize global temperatures over the next few hundred years. Previous studies have only looked at what happens when emissions are stabilised, according to the report in NewScientist.

So far industrial emissions total around 450 billion tonnes. "Even if we eliminated carbon dioxide today we are still committed to a global temperature rise of around 0.8 degrees Celsius lasting at least 500 years," says Caldeira.

Roger Pielke, a climate policy expert at the University of Colorado in Boulder, agrees with the findings. "This research makes the case that simply stabilising concentrations is insufficient to stabilize temperatures. Their argument, if widely accepted, raises the bar on what it means to mitigate climate change," he says.

The group says that current emissions targets for 2050 are not enough to avoid substantial future warming and that eliminating emissions or actively removing CO2 from the atmosphere is the only way to go.

"It is technologically challenging, but not impossible. The biggest challenge will be to get political consensus," says Caldeira.

You see, it always finds a way back to politics.

A follow-up to a post back in November that I thought was interesting......

John Coleman, the founder of the Weather Channel, was a guest speaker at the International Conference for Climate Change (ICCC), which is currently going on in New York City. A few months ago, John wrote a piece detailing his views about global warming. This time, John gets to the conference podium and personally slams the company that he founded back in 1982. In his speech, John is also highly critical of global warming alarmism. Here is the link to the Business and Media Institute story, along with a video clip of him speaking from the conference. By the way, John Coleman no longer works at the Weather Channel and is employed at KUSI in San Diego.

******Update******

Here are some of the latest viewpoints of the conference, which ends today....

Day 1, courtesy of the Heartland institute which is hosting the conference.

Day 2, courtesy of the Heartland Institute.

Andrew Revkin's reporter's notebook from The New York Times.

Andrew Revkin, a science writer for the New York Times posted an interesting article titled "Skeptics of Human Climate Seize on Cold Spell". There is no doubt we have been hearing a lot of this discussion recently from people who challenge human-induced global warming thanks to the notable drop in the global monthly temperature anomaly over the past year, and especially this past January. Revkin also posts a few temperature charts here.

I have had several requests to do a post on this, so here it is...........

Anthony Watts, whose work in checking surface observing stations, that I blogged about not too long ago recently compiled the four global temperature anomaly sets and noted that each set showed a fairly sharp drop of the global temperature anomaly over the past 12 months. You can see the charts right here on his site.

Keep in mind, this is just a 12-month period and the final plot of two data sets were still above normal, but is it the start of a new trend? I think it is way too early to tell, twelve months is a very short time when you are talking climate change. There is just not enough data yet to support the idea from some skeptical sources that the earth is now going to go into a longer term cooling trend. There could be a few reasons for this......La Nina, solar minimum.....check out the sun image below, do you see any sunspots?, and changing atmospheric wind currents. I just do not know for sure, and I do not think anyone really has the definite answer right now, but Anthony's work is applauded. It will be interesting to see how the global temperatures trend over the next couple of years.

Also, Anthony just attended the ICCC conference in New York and blogged about each day he was there. The New York Times John Tierney also writes about the conference. Here is the day 3 report from the Heartland Institute.

The quiet sun

UPDATE.........................

Dr. James Hansen, the director of the NASA GISS program offers his take on the recent cooling trend. You can read it here.

A new study by NOAA and the University of Hawaii states the least biologically productive areas of the oceans are expanding much faster than predicted.

Between 1998-2007, ocean deserts (expanses of saltwater with low surface plant life in the Pacific and Atlantic) grew by 15% or 6.6 million sq/km.The study notes that this is happening at the same time that sea-surface temperatures are warming about 1% or 0.02-0.04 degrees celsius a year.

Global ocean temperature anomalies (purple lines) since 1880, courtesy of NASA GISS.

This warming, according to the study published in the Geophysical Research Papers, increases stratification of the ocean waters, preventing deep ocean nutrients from rising to the surface and creating plantlife.

"The fact that we are seeing an expansion of the ocean’s least productive areas as the subtropical gyres warm is consistent with our understanding of the impact of global warming. But with a nine-year time series, it is difficult to rule out decadal variation," said Jeffrey J. Polovina, lead author of the study.

Using a sensor on a spacecraft, the research showed that the areas of low productivity in the Pacific are expanding from the center toward Hawaii. In the Atlantic, the least productive areas of the subtropical gyre are expanding at a more rapid rate eastward across the Caribbean toward Africa.

The black areas are the least productive.

In part two of this Headline Earth segment, Charles Komanoff, co-founder of the Carbon Tax Center, discusses the advantages of a carbon tax to the average person with our own Katie Fehlinger. Komanoff believes that the tax will need to be inacted at the federal level in order for it to be fully effective and put more money back in your wallet.

Katie also has a short piece on the International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC) that was just held in New York City.

Brett is going to be off for a few days, so that means that I'll temporarily be hosting the blog. I've followed Brett's blog fairly closely (I think he does a great job), but I haven't seen everything that he's posted lately, so I apologize if I post something that he's recently talked about.

One thing that I find disturbing about the debate related to global warming (or climate change) is the unfortunate marriage of global warming and politics. In some sense, it's difficult to separate the two since political decisions are often made based on beliefs related to global warming, and the concept of a carbon tax (discussed recently) is one such example. In that case, a discussion of politics is directly related to a discussion of global warming.

The part that I find disturbing is the fact that the global warming debate often becomes a political football, with the sides being largely divided along party lines. Democrats are supposed to believe certain things about global warming, and Republicans are supposed to believe other things. The result is that people, then, often use the discussion of global warming as an excuse to espouse their political views.

This is intented to be a blog about the global warming debate, not of political debate. So as I moderate the comments, I will not post any comments that are only about politics, and it goes without saying that I, like Brett, will also not post any comments that include name calling or hateful rhetoric.

Let me know what you think--but watch how you say it!

--Paul Yeager

Update from Indianapolis: I want to thank Paul for helping me out this week. My wife just gave birth to our third child and second daughter out in Indianapolis, Indiana early Saturday morning, while I was still in Pennsylvania with the blizzard stuck in between in Ohio. The baby came a lot earlier than expected, which explains why she was in Indiana for the Big ten tourney. I finally arrived in Indiana later Saturday afternoon. Mother and daughter are doing well. We may be here for a while, so I have no idea when I will return to this blog. I also wrote a more detailed summary of how it all unfolded Friday evening and early Saturday in my Accuweather.com Canadian blog.Thanks for your understanding. Brett

Back to the New York Times once again, but I suspect some of the skeptics will be pleasantly surprised by this piece from Science Times columnist John Tierney. In his article, John questions the critics of the recent International Conference on Climate Change, and their accusations that the sponser of the conference, the Heartland Institute, is just a front for the fossil fuel industry.

From Tierney's article..........

Here's a response from Joseph Bast, Heartland's president: "Donations from energy companies have never amounted to more than 5 percent of our budget in any year, and there is no corporate sponsor underwriting any of this conference. These criticisms are just a standard left-swing smear."

The skeptics in the minority start off with a disadvantage in getting their message heard simply because of the media's bias for bad news and horror stories. When there's a well-financed majority dominating the public debate, I find it odd to hear its members objecting to anyone else receiving money or attention, says Tierney.

Tierney is basically tired of this talk about the money and wants more focus on substance.What do you think?

AccuWeather.com's Elliot Abrams wrote a post recently about how global warming may be causing the tropics to expand--and the possible effects on weather and climate that this might have elsewhere across the globe. He notes that the "hypothetical effects and suppositions are subject to change as research continues."

Read his entire post here: Global Warming has Caused Expansion of Tropics.

Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey and the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, have developed a new way to estimate the thickness of sea ice (New Method to Estimate Sea Ice Thickness).

The method uses a new modeling approach--the only model based entirely on historical observations--"uses sea ice motion data to follow parcels of ice backward in time at monthly intervals for up to 3 years while accumulating a history of solar radiation and air temperature to which the ice was exposed."

The report shares information on Arctic sea ice data from 1982 to 2003 that was collected by this new method.

An article in the Environment Section of the New Scientist states that global warming might pose a threat to the hearing of tropical fish (Global warming poses deaf threat to tropical fish).

If you were like me, then you may not have known that fish actually hear; however, the coral reef fish, which are referred to in the article, need to "hone in on high frequency noises made by invertebrates like shrimp and sea urchins, and avoid the low-frequency noises made by crashing waves and adult fish."

Warming water is not the only concern, but it's also the increasingly acid nature of the water, which is also believed to be associated with global warming, that affects the development of the ear bones of the fish.

Roger Pielke, Jr. recently wrote a post on the Center For Science and Technology Policy Research Web site about what he calls "the deficit model of science communication." He refers to a research paper from the journal Risk Analysis, which states that says "the more information a person has about global warming, the less responsible he or she feel for it; and, indirectly, the more information a person has about global warming, the less concerned he or she is for it."

I certainly found that interesting--the more we know, the less we care. If this is something that you'd like to know more about, read Mr. Pielke's entire post (The Deficit Model Bites Back) or the Risk Analysis research, which is a PDF file that is linked to in Pielke's blog.

Brett has probably posted something similar to this in the past, but given the amount of discussion between skeptics and AWG proponents on this site, it's probably worth a read.

A BBC news report from last year (Climate Sceptisim: The Top 10) gives counter arguments to popular skeptic beliefs. The statements that were countered:

1. Evidence that the earth's temperature is getting warmer is unclear.
2. If the average temperature was rising, it has now stopped.
3. The earth has been warmer in the recent past.
4. Computer models are not reliable.
5. The atmosphere is not behaving as models would predict.
6. Climate is mainly influenced by the sun.
7. A carbon dioxide rise has always come after a temperature increase, not before
8. Long-term data on hurricane and arctic ice is too poor to assess trends
9. Water vapor is the major greenhouse gas; CO2 is relatively unimportant.
10. Problems such as HIV/Aids and poverty are more pressing than climate change.

It was an interesting read for me since I haven't followed the topic of global warming as closely as Brett has, but the information is certainly more of an overview than an advanced course.

I learned on thing that I definitely did not know before--that the British spell sceptic with a c, not a k. Who knew?

I know that Brett talked about John Coleman's opinions of Al Gore in a post a couple of weeks ago (Weather Channel Founder Sounds Off), but I don't believe he did a post about Coleman's suggestions that it might be a good idea to sue proponents of global warming, including Al Gore, and companies that sell carbon credits. This story may have been around for a while, but Foxnews.com has a headline on the story this morning (Weather Channel Founder: Sue Al Gore).

John Coleman, who founded the Weather Channel in 1982 and is no longer affiliated with the company, hopes that a legal debate will settle the global warming debate. Coleman believes that a court challenge could bring scientific testimony from both sides so that there could be a solid debate on the issue.

Do you believe that a legal case would help to answer the questions related to the science of global warming? Or, do you believe that talking about a lawsuit involving Al Gore is just a good way to get into the news cycle? Or, do you believe something else?

I know that I haven't been guest hosting (I feel as though I'm Brett's Joan Rivers for those of you old enough to remember Johnny Carson) this blog long enough for you to know that I'm a fan of the sports teams from good ol' Pittsburgh, Pa., so when I saw this article (Pirates unveil green initiative), I thought to myself that my lowly (oh, so lowly) Pirates, with 15 consecutive losing seasons, finally have the opportunity to be first at something.

Of course, being first has nothing to do with baseball. The Pittsburgh organization wants to be the leader in terms of being environmentally friendly. They have a comprehensive plan to recycle and reduce usage, ranging from the 760,000 aluminum cans and bottles sold to customers each year to requiring staff to print on both sides of paper (which is expected to save 500,000 sheets).

Personally, I commend them for it. Now, if they could only become that dedicated about trying to acquire talent.

A recent NOAA press release states that this winter has been the coolest since 2001 across the entire globe (NOAA: Coolest Winter Since 2001 for U.S., Globe). The numbers are for the climatological winter, not the calendar winter.

It's worth nothing that the word "coolest" is a relative term, so even though it was the coolest since 2001, temperatures across the United States averaged 0.2F warmer than the 20th century average. It's the same globally. While the combined land and ocean surface temperature was the 16th warmest on record, it was the coolest since 2000-2001.

There is a lot of information in the release, so I encourage you to read it yourself and make your own analysis.

Biofuels are often looked at as a possible significant solution to global warming; however, some studies have indicated the biofuels may actually be less green that good, old fashioned petroleum. An article in the environment section of Popular Science (Popsci.com) says just that (Is Petroleum the Greenest Fuel We Have?).

The article talks about a number of ways in which biofuels can contribute to global warming, including clearing land for the crops needed for biofuels, much of the which has resulted in deforestation of rain forests. It's also believed that scrub is more effective at absorbing CO2 than crops.

There may be a way around some of these problems, though. While corn has often been criticized as being a poor source of ethanol (including because of the resulting increase in many food prices), something called switchgrass, which is a native prarie plant, solves some of those problems.

Hi folks, AccuWeather.com Community Director and Meteorologist Jesse Ferrell here. As you may know, I write the WeatherMatrix Blog for AccuWeather.com, and I am helping Paul fill in for Brett. I found an article at MSNBC talking about how the National Research Council has warned civil engineers that they need to change road and bridge designs because of Global Warming.

The I-10 bridge between New Orleans and Slidell, La., remains
broken in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Friday,
Sept. 9, 2005, near New Orleans. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, pool)

According to MSNBC, the meteorological phenomena that they quoted were:

More Heat Waves
Rising Sea Levels
More Rainstorms
More Frequent Hurricanes
Thawing Permafrost

They even have a fancy equation for it!

But don't take MSNBC's word on it. You can read the actual 234-page report yourself [Homepage | Report PDF | Summary PDF | Press Release], and tell me what you think. I've not read it yet, and I may not have time to, but I'm curious to hear what you think, especially in regards to their sources on this information, since, as you know, some of the above effects have come into question before on this blog. Post a comment below, or post a diatribe on our Climate Change Forum. Thanks for reading.

The Earth's population may grow to 10 to 12 billion by the end of this century. Even without any potential effects of global warming, feeding that many people might be difficult. In the latest video, Katie Fehlinger talks to IPCC author Bill Easterling about what climate change might mean for the world's food supply. Both crop production and the economy are discussed.

Note: I originally posted the second part of the video series with Dr. Easterling here; I have changed it to the correct video. Both parts of the video will be available in a post in future post--Paul

The colder-than-average winter over some parts of the arctic has yielded an increase in new sea ice area, but wait a minute, the older (perennial) sea ice that lasts for several years has continued to decrease, according to NASA researchers.

NASA microwave data indicates that perennial sea ice currently covers less than 30% of the Arctic, compared to 50-60% in the recent past.

Very old sea ice that remains in the Arctic for at least 6 years covered 20% of the Arctic area back in the mid to late 1980's, but this winter that figure is down to just 6%.

The maps below shows the decrease in older sea ice by comparing the average February conditions from 1985-2000 with February of 2008. The image is courtesy of the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, says that this winter the ice cover is much thinner overall and thus in a more vulnerable state heading into the summer melt season.

This month, satellite data showed the maximum sea ice extent slightly increased by 3.9 percent over that of the previous three years, but it is still below the long-term average by 2.2 percent. Increases in ice extent occurred in areas where surface temperatures were colder than the historical averages. At the same time, as a result of the export of ice from the Arctic, the area of perennial ice decreased to an all-time minimum, according to the NASA article.

On a side note, I got back from Indiana a couple of days ago to get the kids back to school and get some work in at the house and at AccuWeather, but I will be driving back out to Indiana once again Thursday to be with my wife and new daughter into next week. Since the hospital and the location we are staying at does not have any wireless it will make it very difficult for me to post, but I can check in on the comments from time to time using the ancient hospital computer. Jesse and Paul will continue to tag team with additional posts into next week and I am very thankful for their tremendous help. In addition to the above post, I will try to do a couple more before I leave. Hopefully, the whole family can be back together in a couple of weeks. Regards, Brett.

A new study by German scientists says that earthquakes happen less often in areas covered by ice caps. The story can be found here from NewScientist.

The massive Alaska earthquake of 1964. Damage in Anchorage. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Using a computer model to test how geological faults respond when buried beneath several hundred metres of ice, the team found that the vertical stress placed on the earth's crust by a heavy ice sheet can supress many types of fault from slipping. Unfortunately, with the faults pinned down for a long period of time, stresses in the crust grow, so if the ice does melt due to global warming they conclude that earthquakes will occur more strongly and more frequently. Lead author of the study, Andrea Hampel says that Alaska is already starting to experience more earthquakes.

Jon Stewart on the Daily Show recently had archaeologist, historian, and author Brian Fagan on the show to discuss Fagan's book, The Great Warming. Fagan's take is that huge droughts might be the biggest problem associated with global warming, and he bases that prediction on past periods of warming.

By the way, my favorite line was by Stewart, who, toward the beginning of the interview, when talking about how the book has no political agenda said, "I didn't know you were allowed to write about global warming without some type of either denying or accepting political agenda."

When I posted Katie Fehlinger's most recent Headline Earth video, I linked to part of the discussion with IPCC Lead Author, Dr. Bill Easterling, so I have included links to both parts of the video today.

In the first, Dr. Easterling discusses the potential impact of global warming on the world's food supply, and in the second, he gives his personal experience with working with the U.N.

Sorry for the mix-up--look at it like it's a buy one get one free for Headline Earth.

Hi folks, Jesse here again. As I always do on the holidays, I curled up on the couch at my mother-in-law's house on Easter Sunday and read a paper (that's right!) edition of Wired magazine, a technological rag that I've followed since its inception in the early 1990's, AKA Ye Olde College Days. On page 25 (the online edition is not out as of this writing, check the Wired website in the near future for the article) was an article entitled "Cooling the Globe? Been There, Done That."

It was about a fellow named William Ruddiman, a retired climatologist, who says that humans started influencing the environment as early as 6,000 BC and that one of their biggest contributions was dying en masse around the year 1600, which reduced CO2 emissions by 10 parts per million.

Rice Paddies - Big Offender? (AP Photo)

Ruddiman's main points were that 1.) If we've been changing the climate that long, we should be able to steer it back on track and 2.) We should concentrate more on things like methane emissions from landfalls and rice farmers.

If a guest blogger replaces a guest blogger, does that make the new person a guest guest blogger?

With that in mind, here's a post from guest guest blogger Kate from our marketing department--she had seen the post I'd done about the green initiatives related to the Pirates (Finally, First at Something) and found a related topic.

Paul

While it seems the Pirates may be implementing green initiatives, The French news agency AFP reports Japanese professional baseball players have pledged to cut playing time by six percent, or 12 minutes, to reduce carbon dioxide emissions (Japanese baseball joins fight against global warming).

The Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) commissioners' office said that by reducing game time, it will reduce the amount of energy that must be produced to stage the game. This in turn will contribute to reducing carbon emissions.

For me, this is a great move. While I like to follow my Phils, games tend to drag.... How long should it take to walk up to the plate and swing the bat?

The NPB players agree it should take under 15 seconds. An AP article (Japan baseball looking to fight global warming with shorter games) explains that pitchers must throw within 15 seconds of receiving the ball when no runners are on base. Also, teams will be limited to 2 minutes and 15 seconds to take the field when switching from batting to fielding.

The measures to fight global warming coincide with Japan's pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. The nation has been behind in reaching its mark to reduce gasses by six percent between 2008 and 2010.

Now that I am back to work, I figured it was time to check back in with Dr. Hansen, who has consistently generated a ton of commentary on this blog over the two years that I have been doing this. I prepared this thread before I left for Indianapolis last week. Brett.

Dr. James Hansen, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who has been interviewed on Headline Earth and the subject of many of my blogs has chimed in on the recent cooling trend that has been talked about quite a bit over the past few months.

Hansen notes in his most recent pdf that the global cooling trend that began in 2007 is just a natural fluctuation or "noise" that will soon disappear. Hansen states that the cooling trend through the year was due to the strengthening La Nina and the unusual cold of January was aided by a winter weather fluctuation.

According to Hansen, the large short-term temperature fluctuations have no bearing on the global warming matter or the impacts of global warming that he discussed in an Illinois Wesleyan presentation back in February.

Do you agree with Hansen's viewpoint?

Here is another one of my posts that I had prepared last week before I left. Brett

One of the Argo system floating robots.

Several thousand aquatic robots that can dive 3000 feet down and measure ocean temperature have indicated that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past 4 to 5 years.

Even though some of the years since 2003 have been some of the warmest on record for the surface, its the oceans which really matter when it comes to global warming, says Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Up to 80-90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters, which hold a lot more heat than what the atmopshere can. Since 2003, the robots have recorded no warming of the global oceans, but in fact, a very slight cooling. Willis feels that we may be in a period of less rapid warming.

Sea level rises when the oceans get warm because warmer water expands. This accounts for about half of global sea level rise. So with the oceans not warming, you would expect to see less sea level rise. Instead, sea level has risen about half an inch in the past four years. That's a lot, according to the NPR article. Willis says some of this water is apparently coming from a recent increase in the melting rate of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica.

Willis says we cannot account for all of the sea level rise over the past 3-4 years, but one possibility is that the sea has warmed and expanded, but that scientists has misinterpreted the robot data.

So where is the extra heat going?

Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, says that it is probably going back out to space, or it may have gone even deeper into the ocean. Obviously, there are still a lot of unanswered questions in regards to this topic. Stay tuned.

Here is a link to the Argo homepage and the location of the robots across the oceans.

In a 60 minutes interview set to air this Sunday, Al Gore says that the tiny, tiny minority of man-made global warming skeptics are acting like fringe groups who once believed the world was flat or that the 1969 moon landings never happened.

You can watch a snippit of the interview, right here, courtesy of 60 Minutes.

Gore has donated significant profits from hisbook and Oscar winning documentary film "An Inconvenient Truth" to the Alliance for Climate Protection, which will begin a new 300 million dollar ad campaign on global warming next week, according to the 60 Minutes article.

By the way, Gore's Nashville home, which has been a target of criticism in the past, is now refitted with roof solar panels.

Our own long-range weather expert Joe Bastardi posted a strong response to Al Gore in his blog on AccuWeather.com Professional. I will post his response over the weekend.

Our own long-range forecast expert Joe Bastardi posted a strongly worded response to some of Al Gore's comments from the 60 Minutes Interview in his blog on the AccuWeather.com Professional site Friday . Here it is................

UNBELIEVABLE: Gore to 60 MINUTES: Doubting Global Warming Is Manmade Like Believing Earth Is Flat.

I am absolutely astounded that someone who refuses to publicly debate anyone on this matter and has no training in the field narrated a movie where frames of nuclear explosions were interspersed in a subliminal way in scenes of droughts and flood, among other major gaffes, can say these things and then have them accepted... by anyone.

The list of degreed meteorologists, climatologists, scientists, that signed the Manhatten declaration stating their disagreement with Mssr. Gore's premises grows by the day.

What gets me most is he goes on unchallenged one-on-one on this. Never in all my years of competition have I seen someone elevated to a level that he is, in any thing, without any face-to-face competition to establish credibility.

When someone gets a PhD, his or her thesis is normally attacked, for lack of a better word, in something known as the "orals," at least it was for those venturing into those waters at PSU.

In other words, a group of people still in a higher academic standing than you, one you want to ascend to, will try to get you to defend what you do in a way where you show what you know, not by some programmed unchallenged remark, but by competition with the people that are criticizing. Why? Because you can defend what you know, if you have worked hard enough. It is typical of the mentality of this person, that he thinks that he should be able to get something for nothing, just go on unchecked, hurling insults at people who have forgotten more than he will ever know.

You be the judge of this statement, and consider the source: Gore to 60 MINUTES: Doubting Global Warming Is Manmade Like Believing Earth Is Flat.

In fact, here is an excerpt : "...I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view, they're almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat," says Gore. "That demeans them a little bit, but it's not that far off," he tells Stahl.

I want to say that I have tried my best to be opened minded about this issue. But the more research I do, the more some of the claims of Bill Gray and John Coleman ring true.

However, I am all for non-carbon based energy as a way of increasing the quality of life, and that has nothing to do with what I consider grossly overstated scare tactics. Let me direct you to a site to keep an eye on: http://www.francis.edu/ActionCenter.htm I have been told they are developing some kind of home-based energy generator powered by wind. The idea is you store the energy created by wind. Given I live in the Boulder, Colorado of the East, count me in. As it is, we are getting a house with a geothermal unit in it that cuts electric bills by up to 50%. So I don't need to hear I am some kind of nut that thinks the Earth is flat, especially from a man who refuses to stand up one-on-one with anyone that can confront him fact for fact.

Last night I read an interesting story. GLobal warming is responsible for 770,000,000 people on Earth starving. Is that so? Never mind it could be a myriad of things, let's say that is right. The article also says that my 2085, that number may be 880,000,000.

These people have to assume that we are plain stupid. Seriously. The Earth's population has increased four-fold in the last 100 years. Suppose we assume in the next 80 years we only double the population. Right now the percentage of people starving because of global warming (and I am being nice in giving them their figure, even though any objective person would question that) is about 13 percent of the world's population. In 2085, assuming 12,000,000,000 people, (it's liable to be more) if only 880,000,000 million are starving because of the climate, that means the percentage has dropped to less than 8 percent. So if we use that reasoning, global warming would have increased the chance of feeding a greater percentage of people.

But you see what is done here. It's the same thing that is done across the board. Games played, and unless you look, you'll get taken.

It is funny. Lenin said, in his statement that was meant to say the ends justify the means as far as building his utopian society, that one has to break a few eggs to make an omelet. We can argue if that is valid, for one would have to assume almost a messianic quality to the person to know they are right about the future. Is Mssr. Gore assuming that about this issue? But if one destroys the entire egg itself, one cannot make an omelet (I hard boil my eggs and only eat the whites, so maybe that is why all this is hard for me to understand).

It's astounding, I am constantly reading and re-reading counter arguments to this idea. Let's remember, some of the major proponents with high powered doctorates that are on the other side, brilliant minds no doubt like Dr. Hansen and Dr. Mann, did not get their doctorate DEFENDING their global warming stance. It is not like there was a PhD dissertation with six PhDs, three pro and three con, challenging the assertions here. These come out of the natural curiousity and good will of these men, and I do not think they are anything less. However, you see the same thing with me in a way, when convinced of an idea on the future, because of hard work and research it's very tough to back away. There is a difference, though, of blowing the 3-inch line on a snowstorm, or that Omaha's winter was colder than I thought. We are talking issues that ORIGINATE WITH THE WEATHER, but have far reaching tentacles.

Now, anyone that believes he knows absolutely what is going to happen with the climate in the future, well you be the judge as to who is the card carrying member of the flat Earth society, that person, or the skeptic.

Nice way to start the weekend.

In the final part of Headline Earth's interview with Dr. Bill Easterling, Host Katie Fehlinger takes a closer look at recent research and whether biofuel benefits outweigh the associated carbon cost. What do you think?

Large cracks in the Wilkins Ice Shelf, Antarctica. Photo courtesy of the BAS.

I realize most of you are already aware (mainstream media) about the collapsing Wilkins Ice Shelf down in Antarctica, but I thought the link to the video was pretty cool. According to the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), a large part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf on the Antarctic peninsula is now supported only by a thin strip of ice hanging between two islands. According to the BAS press release, it appears that the ice shelf is ready to to break out from the Antarctic Peninsula.

Over the past week, satellite images of the ice shelf spotted a huge 25 x 1.5 mile berg (close to the size of Manhattan) that had recently broken away and was still moving. The BAS sent a Twin Otter aircraft out on recon to check the breakout....Here is a link to a portion of that video taken by Jim Elliot of the BAS.

"I've never seen anything like this before, it was awesome, said Elliot. We flew along the main crack and observed the sheer scale of movement from the breakage. Big hefty chunks of ice, the size of small houses, look as though they've been thrown around like rubble, it's like an explosion."

Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado says, "We believe the Wilkins has been in place for at least a few hundred years. But warm air and exposure to ocean waves are causing a break-up."