Monday, May 03, 2004
I love this guy. The guy being a friend who helps me out occasionally in my debates with my conservies. His forte is in his amazing research abilities. I've gotten pretty good at finding stuff on the Internet myself but to use a bird analogy, I'm a mere surface-skimming grebe to this Newfoundland diving bird. As in he goes deep. Yesterday my Newfoundland diving bird sent me a NASA Earth Observatory link which substantiates something I brought up in my August 27th blog. Comments in that blog were based on a 2003 article that appeared in one of my favorite magazines, ORION. In the article was a very interesting account of everything you ever wanted to know about contrails -- that cumulus white graffiti jets scratch across clear blue skies everyday. The section that related to the NASA link my friend found is where the author discusses what climatologists discovered following 9/11:
"People looked up. Climatologists in particular. They knew they'd been given a unique opportunity: the chance to see what would happen if you snapped your fingers and halted all airplane traffic over an entire continent for a few days. They gathered weather data collected during the hiatus and compared them with historical records. Their findings seem to bolster the theory of contrails as climate changers. Temperature swings in North America were about two degrees Fahrenheit wider than normal during those days. The anomalies were especially pronounced at locations under busy jet routes."
When I pointed this article out to my conservie acquaintances back in August, it was pooh-poohed as not scientific enough to be worthy of a read. When confronted with the NASA link that Diving Bird sent out yesterday, one of my conservies, a recently divorced computer nerd out in Southern California, wrote:
Dear Anna Bloviations,
I hope you now realize that applying some sort of factual basis to your arguments might make people take what you say seriously. You can thank Diving Bird for tirelessly scouring the net to back up your opinion from ten months ago.
As far as the contrail argument goes, one scientist's opinion doesn't make it so. If you want to have a debate on whether or nor ORION nailed it when they hinted that contrails cause global warming, then you have to establish the fact that there is actual "global warming." It's tough to prove that one thing can cause another when the latter is far from being proven.
Most scientists agree that global warming is a political hot button, not an actual, factual, provable occurrence. We all know Al Gore is on the bleeding edge of earth science and blames anyone who is a registered Republican for global warming. If global warming actually exists and is proven to be caused by humans (Republican humans), I wonder if Al Gore would probe into whether or not cigarette smoke has anything to do with it. I doubt that any of the millions of pounds of tobacco produced at Al Gore's plantations could cause global warming. Nor would his tobacco ever cause cancer.
Does anyone remember the ice age? Know why it happened? Did Republicans cause that? Does anyone here think that the earth is on its own course and we're just along for the ride?
Dear Conservie:
I beg to differ but there WAS factual basis to my argument i.e. Matt Rasmussen wrote it nine months ago. Diving Bird's findings in this instance are merely the cherry on top of the cake. Had you bothered to venture out of your four-by-four, this-is-how-I-want-to-see-life box, you might have discovered this yourself. Here is the abridged version of the article: Notes on the Subject of CONTRAILS: The day the sky stood still. Subscribe to ORION's glossy, gorgeous, germane magazine and you can have the whole article in its entirety. But just think Mr. Conservie. Had you listened to me back then, you could have been using some great pick-up lines on the Southern California babes out in your parts: "See that contrail up there...?" Because contrails make for great lines.
As to whether there exists or doesn't exist global warming due to man's abysmal track record in taking care of its environment, what if you're right? What if we are just along for the ride and nothing we are doing has any affect whatsoever on the world's inevitable climate changes? If this is your thinking then we have indeed arrived at a very interesting philosophical point in our discussions . Do we take an Oh-what-the-hell, Hummer-driving, chemical-spilling, McMansion-building attitude and live it up to the hilt because we're going down anyway? Or, even if we are aware that cosmically speaking we are mere peanuts in the grand scheme of things, we nonetheless make choices that we know will direct us to a more sustainable, enlightened, and environmentally-friendly way of living based on the scientific knowledge we have ascertained with certainty thus far. Which party, Democrats or Republicans (and unfortunately we only have two parties), has the better record?
Having just recently sent a concession email to Mr. XXX that Democrats are by no means exempt from environmental wrong-doing (Kerry's seven SUV's), I think it moot that you would further think it newsworthy that Mr. Gore is no saint either. Are we to just finger-point until we are all hanging-on-for-dear-life to the old Boston Custom House Tower whilst SUV's drift pass us upon the flooded shores of Massachusetts?
Diving Bird says I am in a 'funk' when I pronounce cockroaches and ants more deserved of the world than we humans. But really I can think of very few creatures, if any, that are so adept at destroying the earth that would sustain them as we humans are.
Too bad common sense isn't recognized as a science. It sure would spare us a lot of grief and destruction...
"People looked up. Climatologists in particular. They knew they'd been given a unique opportunity: the chance to see what would happen if you snapped your fingers and halted all airplane traffic over an entire continent for a few days. They gathered weather data collected during the hiatus and compared them with historical records. Their findings seem to bolster the theory of contrails as climate changers. Temperature swings in North America were about two degrees Fahrenheit wider than normal during those days. The anomalies were especially pronounced at locations under busy jet routes."
When I pointed this article out to my conservie acquaintances back in August, it was pooh-poohed as not scientific enough to be worthy of a read. When confronted with the NASA link that Diving Bird sent out yesterday, one of my conservies, a recently divorced computer nerd out in Southern California, wrote:
Dear Anna Bloviations,
I hope you now realize that applying some sort of factual basis to your arguments might make people take what you say seriously. You can thank Diving Bird for tirelessly scouring the net to back up your opinion from ten months ago.
As far as the contrail argument goes, one scientist's opinion doesn't make it so. If you want to have a debate on whether or nor ORION nailed it when they hinted that contrails cause global warming, then you have to establish the fact that there is actual "global warming." It's tough to prove that one thing can cause another when the latter is far from being proven.
Most scientists agree that global warming is a political hot button, not an actual, factual, provable occurrence. We all know Al Gore is on the bleeding edge of earth science and blames anyone who is a registered Republican for global warming. If global warming actually exists and is proven to be caused by humans (Republican humans), I wonder if Al Gore would probe into whether or not cigarette smoke has anything to do with it. I doubt that any of the millions of pounds of tobacco produced at Al Gore's plantations could cause global warming. Nor would his tobacco ever cause cancer.
Does anyone remember the ice age? Know why it happened? Did Republicans cause that? Does anyone here think that the earth is on its own course and we're just along for the ride?
Dear Conservie:
I beg to differ but there WAS factual basis to my argument i.e. Matt Rasmussen wrote it nine months ago. Diving Bird's findings in this instance are merely the cherry on top of the cake. Had you bothered to venture out of your four-by-four, this-is-how-I-want-to-see-life box, you might have discovered this yourself. Here is the abridged version of the article: Notes on the Subject of CONTRAILS: The day the sky stood still. Subscribe to ORION's glossy, gorgeous, germane magazine and you can have the whole article in its entirety. But just think Mr. Conservie. Had you listened to me back then, you could have been using some great pick-up lines on the Southern California babes out in your parts: "See that contrail up there...?" Because contrails make for great lines.
As to whether there exists or doesn't exist global warming due to man's abysmal track record in taking care of its environment, what if you're right? What if we are just along for the ride and nothing we are doing has any affect whatsoever on the world's inevitable climate changes? If this is your thinking then we have indeed arrived at a very interesting philosophical point in our discussions . Do we take an Oh-what-the-hell, Hummer-driving, chemical-spilling, McMansion-building attitude and live it up to the hilt because we're going down anyway? Or, even if we are aware that cosmically speaking we are mere peanuts in the grand scheme of things, we nonetheless make choices that we know will direct us to a more sustainable, enlightened, and environmentally-friendly way of living based on the scientific knowledge we have ascertained with certainty thus far. Which party, Democrats or Republicans (and unfortunately we only have two parties), has the better record?
Having just recently sent a concession email to Mr. XXX that Democrats are by no means exempt from environmental wrong-doing (Kerry's seven SUV's), I think it moot that you would further think it newsworthy that Mr. Gore is no saint either. Are we to just finger-point until we are all hanging-on-for-dear-life to the old Boston Custom House Tower whilst SUV's drift pass us upon the flooded shores of Massachusetts?
Diving Bird says I am in a 'funk' when I pronounce cockroaches and ants more deserved of the world than we humans. But really I can think of very few creatures, if any, that are so adept at destroying the earth that would sustain them as we humans are.
Too bad common sense isn't recognized as a science. It sure would spare us a lot of grief and destruction...
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