The Scare Tactics About Global Warming Continue.....

The politics and the media collusion concerning global warming and climate change continue. I forecast it will only increase in intensity. There is too much money to be made and lost. Witness this irresponsible article.....If these are not scare tactics, what is? MSNBC should be ashamed for publishing such sensationalistic so-called journalism.
Peter



Study: Warming will worsen inland storms
Twisters, hail, lightning 'likely to happen more often,' NASA expert says

Geography makes the central United States vulnerable to twisters like the one that ravaged the town of Greensburg, Kan., on June 4. A new study predicts more severe storms, and twisters, if global temperatures continue to rise.

WASHINGTON - As the world warms, the United States will face more severe thunderstorms with deadly lightning, damaging hail and the potential for tornadoes, a trailblazing study by NASA scientists suggests.
While other research has warned of broad weather changes on a large scale, like more extreme hurricanes and droughts, the new study predicts even smaller events like thunderstorms will be more dangerous because of global warming.
The basic ingredients for whopper U.S. inland storms are likely to be more plentiful in a warmer, moister world, said lead author Tony Del Genio, a NASA research scientist.

And when that happens, watch out.
"The strongest thunderstorms, the strongest severe storms and tornadoes are likely to happen more often and be stronger," Del Genio said Thursday from his office at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. The paper he co-authored was published online this month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Other scientists caution that this area of climate research is too difficult and new for this study to be definitive. But some upcoming studies also point in the same direction.

With a computer model, Del Genio explores an area that most climate scientists have avoided. Simple thunderstorms are too small for their massive models of the world's climate. So Del Genio looked at the forces that combine to make thunderstorms.
A unique combination of geography and weather patterns already makes the United States the world's hottest spot for tornadoes and severe storms in spring and summer. The large land mass that warms on hot days, the contours of the atmosphere's jet stream, the wind coming off the Rocky Mountains and warm moist air coming up from the Gulf of Mexico all combine.
Updrafts could be the keyDel Genio's computer model shows global warming will mean more strong updrafts, when the wind moves up and down instead of sideways.
"The consequences of stronger updrafts are more lightning and bigger hail," he said.
On a normal sunny day, updrafts are less than 1 mile per hour. In a big rainstorm that is not severe, it's about 2 mph. In a severe storm they could be 20 to 30 mph. The faster that updraft, the worse the storms.

The Southeast and Midwest lie in the path of most of the most dangerous of these storms.
However, the new study also forecasts danger for the Western United States. It predicts lightning will increase about 6 percent as the amount of carbon dioxide — the chief global warming gas — doubles.

Previous studies have shown that the West will get drier, making it a tinderbox for more wildfires. This study shows that there will be more matches in the form of lightning strikes to start those fires, Del Genio said. One general benefit of global warming is decreased wind shear, which is the speed of side-to-side wind as the altitude rises, Del Genio said. That would moderate the effects of updrafts.

However, during certain times of the year and under the right conditions in the Midwest and Southeast, wind shear will increase. Combine wind shear and updrafts, and damaging winds result, the scientist said. Related research, concernsOther pending and recent research, especially from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, point in the same general direction, said several scientists who weren't involved in Del Genio's study. But they said research in this area is so new that the NASA study is not the final word.

"It's certainly a plausible result," said Leo Donner, a climate modeling scientist at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab in Princeton, N.J. Donner earlier this year came out with a study predicting more heavy rain as temperatures rise. Harold Brooks, a top scientist at NOAA's severe storms laboratory in Norman, Okla., has soon-to-be-published studies finding results similar to the new NASA study, especially when it comes to hail. Some of the severe hail that should be increasing could be baseball-sized and come down at 100 mph, "falling like a major league fastball," he said.

He said it's not possible to predict more tornadoes will result from climate change, however.
Jerry Mahlman, who used to be NOAA's top climate model expert, said that a decade ago then-Vice President Al Gore asked if global warming could cause more tornadoes. Then as now, Mahlman said that's something that's just too detailed to derive from complex climate models.
Mahlman, a scientist who has long warned about the dire consequences of global warming, cautions against going overboard on climate change links: "I'm beginning to suspect that global warming is dynamically much less sexy than people want it to be."

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Media Junk? Where Does It Come From?

I am not a journalist. I never took a journalism course in college. I love the news, I read the paper or papers every day. Yet I wonder sometimes, who writes these articles, robots? Do they ever question their sources, question the information, ever ask who, what, why, when and where? Or do the just regurgitate what they're fed?

Here is an an example of what I consider nonsense. It is typical of what I read way too often. It is published here online, by MSNBC, possibly to be on the nightly news, featuring the puppet Brian Williams, (seems like a nice guy). Think about some of the nonsense being reported.
Peter



Eastern U.S. summers to be hotter, NASA finds
Study: Daily highs to be about 10 degrees warmer by the mid-2080s

WASHINGTON - Future Eastern United States summers look much hotter than originally predicted, with daily highs about 10 degrees warmer than in recent years by the mid-2080s, a new NASA study says.
Previous and widely used global warming computer estimates predict too many rainy days, the study says. Because drier weather is hotter, they underestimate how warm it will be east of the Mississippi River, said atmospheric scientists Barry Lynn and Leonard Druyan of Columbia University and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

"Unless we take some strong action to curtail carbon dioxide emissions, it's going to get a lot hotter," said Lynn, now a scientist at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "It's going to be a lot more dangerous for people who are not in the best of health."

The study got mixed reviews from other climate scientists, in part because the Eastern United States has recently been wetter and cooler than forecast."

The article goes on, and you can read the rest of it here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18601954/

But I think you get my point, it is nonsense. Hotter, wetter, drier.........these "scientists" have no idea, and they admit as much. They play games with their computer models and predict catastrophe, while the media eats it up and spews it out like fact. They sound like a group of children arguing about "who said what"! I can just see the cartoon now......."You see Martha.........I told you so....we'd better move from Florida soon or we'll all fry!" Unfortunately it seems a lot of people read and believe this junk, it scares the heck out of them, and then they vote based on their fear! Something is wrong.
Peter

Important New Website on Climate

Yesterday I discovered a great new website. They have an impressive list of contributing and supporting scientists. They address the issues of global warming from all angles, and as they say, "this is not about politics, but about science." From what I have seen so far, it's very good. Here is what they say on their homepage. http://icecap.us/index.php/go/about-us
Peter


About Us
ICECAP, International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, is the portal to all things climate for elected officials and staffers, journalists, scientists, educators and the public. It provides access to a new and growing global society of respected scientists and journalists that are not deniers that our climate is dynamic (the only constant in nature is change) and that man plays a role in climate change through urbanization, land use changes and the introduction of greenhouse gases and aerosols, but who also believe that natural cycles such as those in the sun and oceans are also important contributors to the global changes in our climate and weather. We worry the sole focus on greenhouse gases and the unwise reliance on imperfect climate models while ignoring real data may leave civilization unprepared for a sudden climate shift that history tells us will occur again, very possibly soon.

Through ICECAP you will have rapid access to our experts here in the United States and to experts and partner organizations worldwide, many of whom maintain popular web sites or insightful blogs or newsletters, write and present papers, have authored books and offer interviews to the media on climate issues. We spotlight new findings in papers and reports and rapidly respond to fallacies or exaggerations in papers, stories or programs and any misinformation efforts by the media, politicians and advocacy groups.

Included is a section called All About Climate where users are able to interactively access all the latest thinking on climate topics along with lists of references, stories, links and experts (with contact information).
ICECAP is not funded by large corporations that might benefit from the status quo but by private investors who believe in the need for free exchange of ideas on this and other important issues of the day. Our working group is comprised of members from all ends of the political spectrum. This is not about politics but about science.

We are an open society that welcomes your membership and appreciates your endorsement and support.
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