FYI and to share. Here are some well known, but thinly published FACTS:

Our atmosphere has weight (mass).
Half the mass is at and below 18,000ft, the rest basically fades to 0 around 70,000ft. It is, of course, densest at sea level and thins out with altitude. No surprise there…

95% of weather (wx) happens at or below 30,000ft, even huge systems like hurricanes which are hundreds of miles wide. Tornadoes and thunder storms rise as high as 50,000ft.

Still OK?
Temperature decreases at a steady rate until reaching -56F or so in the stratosphere (35,000ft+/-).

Most people have a pretty good handle on horizontal distance—a mile is 5280ft, it's about a mile to the grocery store, about 3 miles to Walmart, 100 miles to Grandma's. And so on.

Most of us have been in an airliner and seen the ground from the air. Recall now, or notice next time you're up, seeing an airport. Perhaps google/earth one. Notice the runways, they are easy to see.
The runways at IAD or LAX or MKC, etc., are just over 10,000ft long.

!!! 10,000ft. !!!

Factor that into your visual cortex…

Half of the atmosphere that protects us from cold, dead space is only TWO runway lengths above the surface.
The wx happens only THREE lengths up.
On a clear day you can see 10 miles from a hill or tall building. That's about 60,000ft.
Look straight up, chums, we're 60,000ft from space, and six runway lengths from dead cold---the temp at the south pole in winter.

Environmentalists aren't "alarmists"; call us caring earthlings with nerves of steel trying to bring an urgent situation to the attention of mankind.

Encourage people to bury that Hummer and join the fun.

Cheers,
snydly

This doesn't fit your agenda because it isn't caused by the United States but it is pretty interesting.

Underground coal fires called a 'catastrophe'

Saturday, February 15, 2003

By Michael Woods , Post-Gazette National Bureau

DENVER -- Nine men trapped in Pennsylvania's Quecreek Mine dramatized the danger of mine flooding last year, but a more common coal mine disaster is getting little attention, scientists said yesterday. It's the fire below.

Underground coal fires are relentlessly incinerating millions of tons of coal around the world.

The blazes spew out huge amounts of air pollutants, force residents to flee their homes, send toxic runoff flowing into waterways, and leave the land above as scarred as a battlefield.

"A global environmental catastrophe" is how geologist Glenn B. Stracher described the situation.

Stracher, of East Georgia College in Swainsboro, organized an international symposium on the topic at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"This symposium is dedicated to disclosing the severity of the coal fires problem," Stracher said, noting that some of the fires have been burning for centuries with few people aware of the problem.

Concern and action is needed, he said, because of the environmental impact -- especially of mega-fires burning in India, China and elsewhere in Asia. One coal fire in northern China, for instance, is burning over an area more than 3,000 miles wide and almost 450 miles long.

"The direct and indirect economic losses from coal fires are huge," said Paul M. van Dijk, a Dutch scientist who is tracking the Chinese blazes via satellite.

He estimated that the Chinese fires alone consume 120 million tons of coal annually. That's almost as much as the annual coal production in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois combined.

The Chinese fires also make a big, hidden contribution to global warming through the greenhouse effect, scientists said. Each year they release 360 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as much as all the cars and light trucks in the United States.

Soot from the fires in China, India and other Asian countries are a source of the "Asian Brown Haze." It's a 2-mile thick cloud of soot, acid droplets and other material that sometimes stretches across South Asia from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka.

The cloud causes acid rain that damages crops, cuts sunlight reaching the ground by 10 to 15 percent, and has been implicated in thousands of annual lung disease deaths.

Mine fires are frustratingly difficult and costly to extinguish, panelists said.

Weapons range from backfilling mine shafts to cutting off the oxygen supply with a new foam-like grout that's squirted into mine shafts like shaving cream and then expands to sniff out the fire.

Most are simply left alone to burn until they eventually exhaust their fuel supply.

badgersouth has hit the nail on the head! There is no Planet B for the human race. We have a choice. We can accept the word of the scientists and go all out to prevent the impending disaster which will be very expensive and will disrupt our comfortable way of life. If we're wrong and there is no global warming threat we've wasted a lot of time, money, and will be quite embarrassed. However, suppose there really is a serious threat as practically all of the scientists are saying and we do not act? Then we may reach a tipping point and enter a period where there is nothing we can do to undo the catastrophe and the human race, in the worst case, becomes extinct. Don't say it cannot happen; the scientists are saying it can. Are we willing to take that chance? I say that it's better to err on the side of being embarressed than totally dead. What say you?

Here's just but one example of how climate change could literally change the face of the Earth and human civilization. There simply is no Planet B for the human race. The time for debate is over. The time for action is now!

Global warming threatens Nile Delta
The Associated Press, August 24, 2007. "Millions of Egyptians could be forced permanently from their homes; the country's ability to feed itself devastated. That's what likely awaits this already impoverished and overpopulated nation by the end of the century, if predictions about climate change hold true. The World Bank describes Egypt as particularly vulnerable to the effects of global warming, saying it faces potentially 'catastrophic' consequences. 'The situation is serious and requires immediate attention. Any delay would mean extra losses,' said Mohamed el-Raey, an environmental scientist at Alexandria University. A big reason is the vulnerability of Egypt's breadbasket the Nile Delta, a fan-shaped area of rich, arable land where the Nile River spreads out and drains into the Mediterranean Sea. Although the Delta makes up only 2.5 per cent of Egypt's land mass, it is home to more than a third of this largely desert country's 80 million people. The Delta was already in danger, threatened by the side effects of southern Egypt's Aswan Dam. Though the dam, completed in 1970, generates much-needed electricity and controls Nile River flooding, it also keeps nutrient sediment from replenishing the eroding Delta."

zooeyhall @ 6:11 pm said:

"I think it is approaching the dimensions of an hysteria.

I think that it is a mistake to take something as changeable and unpredictable as the weather, and derive apocolyptic conclusions from it. Especially when it is being used to advocate such drastic changes in our economy, society, and life sytle expectations."

I for one do not consider you a troll, zooey, but it seems like the "hysteria" in evidence among those who assume countering global warming would involve "drastic changes in our economy, society, and life style expections."? Why assume there will be drastic, negative consequences? What's your basis for this assumption? Why don't you apply the same level of skepticism to those making these claims to those who make the global warming claims?

I recommend you read Amory Lovin's "Natural Capitalism" which argues that the measures taken to prevent global warming will result in a higher quality of life at no cost to standard of living.

The people here talking about their skepticism only talk about the weather, like zooeyhall, as though that is the measure by which scientists are making their analyses. They aren't simply looking at weather patterns; they are measuring the rising amount of warming gasses in the air like CO2, the temperature of the ocean water (and that doesn't change every season), the thickness of the ozone layer, the measurable effects of deforestation, etc., and the amount of pollutants that we are emitting into the atmosphere. It is not just some quacks looking at weather patterns. What would ever make you think that we could do all that we are doing by modern, unnatural means, and not effect the balance of an ecosystem as delicate and intricate as ours? It is so obviously happening, as logic simply dictates that it would. If this, then that. You are what you eat. You get out of it what you put in it. The planet isn't ramping up its healing capacities; it's still living life in the 12th century B.C., and no can tell the planet that it needs to work harder to sustain our changing lifestyle. Ergo, we have to change our lifestyle to fit the planet....

ray-I myself didn't finish college, and I can see the effects of global warming too. Our weather has grown more extreme and volatile. Our winters have grown more mild.

What does everyone think about the idea that cattle farming is a bigger threat than our addiction to oil? I am watching Real Time With Bill Maher right now, and he had someone on from PETA who basically says that the meat industry is harming the environment more than anything.

It's not a surprise that a lot of people will willfully ignore the evidence about global climate change and the human effect in accelerating it. Most folks are just too busy to bother or too lazy to care until it slaps them right in the face...a family member killed or maimed in the war sure will change a mind about the criminality of our so-called leaders. The water lapping on your doorstep will wake up a lot of people in about 20 years...when it's too late.
As soon as the corporations and Big oil figure out how to exploit climate change for profit, then attitudes will be manipulated to get busy being green...I know that's very cynical but it's the way I see it unrolling in Amurrika, where the sheeple roam... sadly so for our grandkids.

Considering the education barrier, the corporate opposition and the morons who get elected in this country each person should check how far your house is above sea level.

If it is less than 50 feet above sea level sell it now and move to higher ground.

There ain't no way that action will be taken in time when an unprecedented level of world wide cooperation is required.

Like most everyone, I've heard the many pro's and con's about global climate change. At this point, though, I think the vast scientific consensus backs the theory that global climate change is real and accelerating. This takes a bit more evidence than can be obtained by standing on a farm an noticing the weather.

The point (at least mine) is that we have a choice. If we make changes that are in line with conservation, we will affect the economy, but mostly in a positive way. More clean industries will be created, more jobs will be created, we will start catching up with Japan and Germany and other industrialzed nations in creating efficient technologies, and we may finally learn that we can't do what we want to and keep getting away with it.

Or, we can keep doing what we're doing, oblivious to the overwhelming scientific evidence that humans have, and continue to, affect the biosphere. We can maintain our selfish desire to have what we want, when we want it, with no regard for what may lie ahead. This is the way of the spoiled child - always wanting more and not willing to sacrifice for the future - needing to be taught a lesson the hard way.

No, we don't know for sure what will happen or how much of climate change is directly affected by human activity. What we do know is that like dirty hands and utensiles, dirty technologies can kill. That's something they didn't know in the Middle Ages and millions died as a result.

I grew up on a farm in Kansas and that qualifies me to speak on climate change, not my PHD. Logic told me as a student that we simply couldn't continue to destroy our environment and get away with it. While some still believed that because the energy from the sun is very slowly reducing - we should be headed toward another ice age, I had professors at the University of Kansas (in the early 70's) predicting what we now call global warming. Al for tobacco Gore didn't invent this.

In my lifetime I have clearly felt the effects of this climate change. As a kid, I skated on the farm pond every winter; in the last 40 years, that same pond hasn't had enough ice on it to be safe for kids to skate on.

The only scientist that I know of who deny the obvious are the one's with political and financial ties that prevent them from being honest with themselves.

Reducing our contributions to global warming means changing the way that we live, every day of our lives; and that is something most people aren't willing to do. Walk or bicycle instead of driving. It means light rail instead of driving to work, AMTRAC to the out of town business meeting instead of flying. It means the Toyota corolla is a luxury car. Eat less beef and only the fruits and vegetables that are in season. And so on.

It shouldn't surprise you that the nations aren't willing to live up to Kyoto, but it would be nice if Bush hosted a meeting next month and nobody showed up. All will join in when it is too late - when 3 billion people are flooded, when insurance in not affordable, etc. But, it will be too late for the world's poor.

If you were farming in Anacrtica you may have a diffferent opinion.

I am very skeptical--

of the entire Global Warming thing.

I think it is approaching the dimensions of an hysteria.

I think that it is a mistake to take something as changeable and unpredictable as the weather, and derive apocolyptic conclusions from it.

Especially when it is being used to advocate such drastic changes in our economy, society, and life sytle expectations.

I am have been a farmer in Nebraska for 52 years. And someone who has been deeply associated and observant of the weather. And let me tell you in all that time the one conclusion I have about the weather is that it is seldom "average". It is almost always either too hot too cold too dry too windy. I have seen hot weather in December and cold days in July.

The coldest winter ever recorded in Nebraska was followed by the hottest driest summer ever recorded---and this was back in 1936. Should we have banned Model A cars back then?

Also, there is a disturbing tendency among environmental and global warming enthusiasts to treat those who disagree almost like the heretics of the Middle ages were treated. I have had some people come close to physically threatening me, one middle-aged upper middle class housewife (from the Omaha suburbs) almost screaming at me: "how CAN you disbelieve this about Mother Earth?!?"

I'm not trying to troll the group, and I know I am going to get flamed by some for saying all this. I believe in protecting the environment and treating it properly. I practice soil conservation measures on my farm and follow all enviromental regulations.

If rich nations are staying away, guess we'll soon be joining the stiff goals.

I just finished reading the rather interesting new book A World Without Us by Alan Weisman. If the article above isn't cynical enough for you, take it to the next level with Weisman's large collection of trivia and projections.