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Coal Carves a Place in the Future of Global Energy
ALBANIA, COLOMBIA - Its gray and black walls stretching to infinity, Latin America's largest coal mine resembles a miniature Grand Canyon.
The big difference is that the timeless hand of nature has not carved out El Cerrejon mine. Booming global demand has.
A fleet of electric shovels runs 24 hours a day scooping up 50 tons of coal at a swipe. The rock is loaded onto 100-car trains that roll nine times a day to a private Caribbean port, where it is placed on cargo ships that deliver it to power plants in Chile, the Netherlands, Japan, the United States' Eastern Seaboard and elsewhere.
As the global price of oil and natural gas soars, some customers are taking a new look at other fuels -- including coal. And countries such as China and India, whose demand is contributing to the price of petroleum, need even more energy. Besides petroleum products, they are buying vast amounts of coal, as well.
The worldwide demand for oil has its own set of environmental consequences -- drilling in pristine areas where it previously was uneconomical and continued emission of greenhouse gases. But environmentalists warn that renewed reliance on coal takes the threat to another level.
"Growing coal use threatens nothing less than the end of civilization as we know it," said Henry Henderson, the Chicago-based Midwest director of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Low in acid-rain-causing sulfur and cheap to produce, Colombia's coal has always been coveted. These days, El Cerrejon and half a dozen other major mines in the region are booming. Energy & Mines Minister Hernan Martinez says Colombia's shipments will rise to 80 million tons this year, 10% more than last year and double the amount just five years ago.
The value of Colombia's coal exports in 2008 will surpass $5 billion, up 40% from last year and 10 times what it was six years ago, a reflection of the increased price. Coal has more than doubled in price to $100 a ton in a year.
China added more coal-burning power plants in 2007 than Britain has built in its history, said Gerard McCloskey, a coal market specialist with Cambridge Energy Research Associates in London. A few years ago, China was exporting the equivalent of Colombia's current annual exports. But by next year, the U.S. Department of Energy forecasts, it will become a net importer.
Similarly, Russia and Poland are keeping much of the coal they once exported. Prices have also been driven up by flooded mines in Australia and a hike in global shipping rates.
Still, generating energy from coal costs a third as much as from natural gas in Japan, and half to two-thirds as much in Britain, McCloskey said.
According to John Dean, coal energy consultant with Global Insight, a research firm in Frederick, Md., those favorable economics have persuaded several U.S. utilities to build new or expand coal-fired power plants.
Probably the largest project is Duke Energy's two coal-fired generation plants in Cliffside, N.C., which by 2012 will produce 1,600 megawatts of energy -- more than the output of the San Onofre nuclear power plant near San Clemente.
By 2030, about 54% of all U.S. electric power will be coal-fired, up from the current 48%, according to the National Mining Assn., a Washington-based trade group. Environmentalists and consumer advocates warn of the consequences.
Customers are beginning to see higher electric bills. Much more pain is on the way, according to U.S. Department of Energy economist Michael Mellish. "Coal prices have taken off with a vengeance and electricity prices will spike up if they stick," Mellish said.
Of longer-term concern are the effects on climate change. Coal-fired power generation and manufacturing is the leading source of carbon dioxide and methane emissions, which scientists agree are the leading contributors to the "greenhouse effect" and global warming.
Two environmental advocacy groups, Greenpeace and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), have called for a moratorium on new coal-fired plants until a feasible means of mitigating carbon dioxide emissions is in place.
One such method, called "carbon capture and sequestering," which recycles carbon dioxide from smokestacks for use or storage underground, has raised hopes. But the National Mining Assn. says its practical application is 12 to 15 years away.
"We recognize coal is a reality to which you can't simply say no," said the NRDC'S Henderson. "But you have the issue of getting coal right, or of many, many other things going wrong."
Kate Smolski, legislative coordinator with Greenpeace in Washington, said that although all fossil fuels contribute to global warming, coal is the "dirtiest, emitting double the carbon dioxide per energy unit produced, compared with natural gas."
A mid-sized coal mine that produces 500 megawatts of energy, the amount consumed by 500,000 families, will churn out as much carbon dioxide a year as half a million cars, according to the NRDC.
Located in sparsely populated northern Colombia, the El Cerrejon mine, rail line and port were built in the late 1970s by Exxon according to U.S. standards. El Cerrejon has generally been credited with being environmentally kind, as coal mines go. (ExxonMobil sold the mine in 2002 to a partnership of Australia's BHP Billiton and two London-based firms, Anglo American and Xstrata.)
The owners say they are making an effort to reclaim the areas already stripped by planting trees and pasture, predicting that they will be habitable decades from now when the coal is gone.
But other areas of Colombia, particularly the historic port city of Santa Marta and its surrounding beach areas, are suffering spills and barge sinkings, which have damaged fishing and tourism along the country's Caribbean coast. The government is requiring all mines to use direct loading systems like El Cerrejon's by 2010, but some in the industry say the goal is unrealistic.
For now, Colombia is reaping a windfall. Known for legal exports such as coffee, bananas and oil as well as illegal tonnage of cocaine, it has quietly become a world player in coal, ranking fourth among exporters, behind Indonesia, Australia and Russia.
El Cerrejon's owners are considering investing $600 million in a second docking facility at Puerto Bolivar and a major expansion of its railroad line.
The Colombian government is sharing the wealth. El Cerrejon will pay royalties totaling $380 million to the government this year.
"The industry invested billions of dollars in an area of Colombia where there was once nothing, and it's paid off," Martinez said.
Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times
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147 Comments so far
Show AllThat is exactly correct ~BBR~ and ~Amitola ~ states we human control NOTHING, things such as toenail growth, how the Earth flies through the universe, etc.
Well, actually there are many things humans most certantly can control, how much coal and oil we burn, how many trees and rain forests we destroy, how many children we have, how much plastics we produce and then contaminate our ocean's with. There are many damaging to our enviroment things we can and we must control.
Ya know, all this hype about global warming from co2 is just hype.
Anyone ever read about the Holocene Maximum? Gosh durn, there weren't a whole lot of humans back then "disturbing" the climate.
Ever looked at 40, 400, 20,000 year cycles of the past? We need to warm up quit a bit more to even come close to the Holocene Maximum.
History is a great teacher.
And how about the Eemian Interglacial Period? Do none of these nuts thinking that we are the cause of warming read at all? I am agast that people buy into this drivel without actually opening a book on geology and reading.
A a few lumps of coal will warm a man for a day.
A solar collector will warm a man for a lifetime.
Give a man a fish ...
whatfools:
Solar would be great if the sun is shining, but up here in the northern latitudes, we get rather scant sunshine in the "Winter". that is our peak energy consumption time.
The greatest thing that the Pope could do is to promote contraception in Latin America and the world.
Give a man a fish...
Dude. A fish is not going to keep anybody warm.
Hey Sigurdur11 You are the enemy. You throw jargon around like a freshman while you disagree with thousands of peer reviewed senior scientists. Get your shit together man. Sowing doubt is what created the delays that mean that the technologies that may save us are decades away instead of available already. Not that skepticism is unhealthy, but to paraphrase Robert Anton Wilson - you have to be skeptical of your skepticism as well. If twenty thousand people tell you your baby is in danger do you react? Or do you play it cool and see if they are right?
And a new ignorant denier shows up here at C/D with an intent to confuse. Slither off ~SIGUDUR11~,
Your type are why we have a controversy about the global warming issue, you are just like a damn cancer in a body.
You mentioned some past history of Earth, another age was the "Permian era", where almost all life, except some microbal and deep sea life, was eradicated on Earth within hours, due to global warming caused from excess Co2 from volcanic activity, which allowed the ocean'a methane gas to bloom out into the atmosphere.
According to the distinguished and highly regarded by his peers, vertebrate paleontologist ~Michael J. Benton~, states that same thing will re-occur within a few short years if we humans don't stop burning fossil fuels, especially coal.
I'll accept his words and if you disagree with this link, let's hear your "wisdom" on the subject.
http://www.energybulletin.net/3647.html
Sigurdur11, you don't need to read the geology if you understand the chemistry.
Hi there ~THE PROF~. Are you saying ~Doctor Benton~ is incorrect? He also understands the "chemistry".
Here's some chemistry. You have anything intelligent and productive to the issue to say about it?
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20080423_methane.html
thank you Kem, for being there to staunch the flow of neocon rhetoric.
Yeah ~Ruthie~, and also ~Maplefudge~ and a few hundred or more of us. We have to keep the "cancers" "obliterated".
Say what we may about Hillary, she got a swell word popularized. And then of course we can thank Billy for making "oral sex" household words. Of course that was an impeachable offense. Now one has to do far better to join that elite Presidential club. Opps, got off the subject, excuse meeee.
There are about three hundred million people in the United States. About half of them have their lower intestine tied in a knot over something I don't care about.
Let them eat cake!
Sigurdur11 - Solar heating works especially well in 'northern latitudes' like Minneapolis where the winter skys are usually crystal clear. And Solar power works especially well in 'southern latitudes' when air conditioners are useful.
Distributer solar power needs no expensive transmission lines like a coal fire and brimstone plant does.
You can lead a conservative to water...
...but you can't make them think.
P.S. Hi KEM, good to see your posts again.
One thing is ~GULIPER~, I don't have any knots in my guts, and another thing is, I don't care if you don't care. You can be rest assured, you are in the majority, for most don't have a clue.
Would you mind if I asked you some hypothetical questions ~Guliper~? If you would, just scroll on by.
QUESTIONS: __ Suppose you have some young children, or grand children, and someone told them that they very likely wouldn't live a full life, they maybe only had thirty years or less left to enjoy the sunsets, the stars at night, nature and the smell of the flowers.
They were also told, the adults who control their destiny, have opted for coal and oil for power sources, instead of clean re-usalbe energy sources, such as Geo-thermal, solar, wind, wave and tidal, where the fuel was free for the taking and there was little if any atmospheric or water pollution. Do you believe for a second, that they would think that was sensible, fair or just?
Do you think that might cause those young children to be concerned, to worry, or perhaps tie knots in their intestines, or perhaps give up, commmit suicide, or run away and join a street gang and do drugs till the end?
Would they wonder why we adults didn't care for their futures?
Vases have broken before, so that means it's not my fault the one I just pushed off the table broke! Gravity did it!
"TOKYO — Toyota's ecological Prius gas-electric hybrid will become even greener next year with solar-powered air conditioning on some high-end models, The Nikkei newspaper of Japan reported Monday."
When will GM come out with it's coal powered Hummer?
I think this article shows why Bush and Co. are pushing so hard for drilling off shore and in Alaska, and for the coal. He who has the gold, has the power!
The Earth started out as a molten mass very early on. It has since gone through many stages of development over the last few billion years which involved the raising and lowereing of temperature many times. Man, of course was not around. It was precisely the balanced and critical changes that brought about conditions that allowed man to live here. Perhaps if man doesn't upset the planet with his non-natural carbon emissions, the earth will continue to support man for at least a few thousand more years.
Besides, whether or not global warming is the result of man's shenannigans or nature, wouldn't we be better off by using our remaining resources for preparing for hard climatic times than squandering our limited resources to enrich even further the already filthy rich?
There are places where solar will not work. Use it everywhere else instead of coal and the world will be much better off. There are places that wind will not work. Use it everywhere else. There are places that geothermal will not work. Use it everywhere else. There is some energy we must use and can't reduce. Reduce energy use everywhere else. Conserve.
The only reason our situation is bad is because we refuse to make the positive steps we can make. The economy is riddled with bubbles because crooked bastards want them there and the people that suggest effective regulation are overwhelmed by the Gramms and their financial backers.
HOT NEWS: Port Angeles, WA-It has just been reported that Dr. Willam Dentmore, a lab instructor at Peninsula Junior College, has just made a revolutionary discovery. While instructing his freshman chemistry class,they found the fatal flaw in in the arguments of the global warming alarmists. It turns out that they got the physics all wrong about the green house gases, and that these gases are actually global cooling. The GWA failed to see their error because we are actually in a period of exceptional solar activity. It was a sophomore class in the college's newly formed astronomy dept that was able to make this latter finding.
After several hours of student calculations, they were able to determine that beginning next year there will be a decrease in the currently elevated solar activity sufficient to actually put us into a welcome period of global cooling. Computer models developed by students at the local alternative high school were able to confirm the findings of both departments.
While most of the world will welcome this news, it is certainly bad news for Wall Street. This actually means that the new inflationary bubble that everyone was counting on from all the hot new alternative energy stocks may soon be deflating.
While no one has yet proffered a prediction as to how the escaping gas from the latest bubble might impact global climate, with all of our free lance scientific expertise here in America, we can certainly count on quickly getting an answer to this next most pressing question.
www.StudentsForTheEarth.org
Kudos to you KEM PATRICK!
Glad you got there before I did.
The deniers infuriate me with their ridiculous claims. The one about solar output really astonishes me since NASA has been directly measuring solar output for many years now and has not seen an increase in solar output to coincide with the rise in the Earth's average temperature.
Another thing that angers me up is that a space probe which would measure the albedo of the Earth has been ready to launch since the end of the Clinton era (called DSCOVR). But Bush's NASA has never seen fit to launch it. Albedo is basically the measure of how much energy the Earth is absorbing vs. how much it reflects away. This satillite would monitor the Earth and Sun at once and compare how much energy is impinging on the Earth to how much is reflected away.
Why is this important? Because if it is CO2 (or pick your problem) that is causing global warming we could correlate the rise in C02, the Rise in average temperature, the Earth's albedo, and the lack of change in solar output. All of these pieces should fit together (at the moment, only three of them do because the satillite is in a warehouse). That's science and it really does work very well when it is allowed to get on with the job.
So what do the deniers have to fear from this measurement? Why do they block the launch for so many years when it's been ready to go?
http://www.bobpark.org/
And a bit about the satillite:
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN07/wn011907.html
The danger is the "distributed" power. It's really hard to charge people for energy when they produce their own. This loss of profit is why you folks are arguing. Some understand that fuel, and power lines, and gas stations, and coal deliveries all make money for a few folks.
Sunlight, however, doesn't. So, when you distribute the means to transform sunlight into energy for heat or electricity, you cut profits to that select group.
The profiteers don't want you to be aware, so they cloud the air with talk about whether coal hurts us or if global warming is really dangerous.
I can always tell the ones who are unaware of the power of distributed energy. Our U.S.A. gov is in the hands of those profiteers right now.
Just imagine what things would be like if no lobbyists stopped the manufacture of inexpensive solar cells and collectors?
It must be fossil fools day all over again. The recent cycling between ice ages and warmer periods like the Holocene maximum, in planetary engineering terms, is a good sign the Gaian system cooling capacity by keeping CO2 very low, is reaching its control limits, and will eventually fail. We are living towards the end of the earths habitable ages, as the sun has warmed up by 25 percent over that time, and we should not provoke such instability by raising greenhouse gases, which become more consequential with each age. They have already been associated with great extinction events. Climate change will be a drastic means of human population control that will also wipe out most of everything else, if we have not managed to do so so already.
It is the warmest that it has been in the last 650,000 years. Yes there were and are rises and falls in the Earth's temperature that occur normally. In other words there is no precice norm, just a normal range of variation.
Until us. That normal variation now has the additional impact of our having added 500 billion tons of extra carbon into the enviornment. THIS extra carbon is sufficient to effect the acidity of the ocean.
Sig ... all the cycles, the past patterns of long term weather, volcanic events et al... all of what has gone on before... now has us added in! There are 6.7 billion of us and what we do has it's effects.
To pretend that humanity is not having an effect on the climate... is like pretending that a massive event like enough additional and rapid heating to warm the earth sufficiently to cause the north pole to melt in such a short period of time.
So in matter of fact terms Sig... when last did the polar ice cap melt..
SO RAPIDLY?
See sig ...you can quote holocene maximums... but the reality is the compression of time needed for such changes to occur. We melt the pole in only a few years... name ONE time when such astounding rapidity occurred in the past.
The rapidity of the changes we see ...is what is scariest. One may assume with some measure of certainty that the causation of this rapidity is way in excess of what would be needed to melt the pole as in other ages.
Yeah it's melted before... but it took thousands of years. We do it in ten... half of them over alread Sig.
Explain the rapidity of the changes if man's carbon production is not a factor?
Cycle that.
~JONEDEN~ I am not sure if you are being sarcastic or not. If you are serious and what you posted about the Jr. college in Washington, and I fear you are serious, then perhaps you should write to them and inform them that they have made some fatal flaws with their science calculations and should put their profesor in a padded cell.
If by some wild miracle they have not erred, there are hundreds of world renounded scientists who have a concensus to the contrary of what they are reporting.
Let me assure you of this. The Arctic is thawing at an alarming rate, as is Antartica. There is no cooling period of planet Earth on the horizon, in fact global warming will continue for years even if we stopped burning fossil fuels world-wide at midnight tonight.
We have to attempt to stop the global warming from advancing past the turning point, and we don't have a lot of time left to attempt that. Let's see if this link is still active.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/CT/animate.arctic.0.html
To Kem Patrick: I want to thank you for your post: "I am not sure if you are being sarcastic or not. If you are serious and what you posted about the Jr. college in Washington, and I fear you are serious..."
Kem you certainly guaranteed at least one person would get a chuckle out of my piece--me.
You AGW deniers are something else. I understand that denial is a natural part of the grieving process, and no doubt the major lifestyles changes coming in our immediate future will cause great grief, but there is a point beyond which continued denial is pathological. I agree with KEM that you people are metaphorically identical to cancer in the body.
Coal is not only one of the worst greenhouse gas contributors but the pollution associated with burning and mining it is significant. And ironically, for all the activism opposing nuclear power, the fact of the matter is that burning coal releases far more radioactive material into the environment than is released in the whole nuclear process. See, for example http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html
I'm not defending nuclear because the waste disposal problem is unsolved (and maybe unsolvable), but to not even mention the uranium and thorium content of coal is clearly deceptive. The risks are not just about AGW.
Have you all no respect for your Overlords? These men and women exist, so that you may come to learn the meaning of servitude. Question not their motives, for to do so, is to question their very existance. Be thankful, smile, and sing their praise in unison, for they cannot take any kind of criticism, no matter how small it may be. They know, therefore, they exist. It's all they need, and if they tell you that Global Warming is a myth, just smile and knod.
I too liked the cancer analogy.
I also liked it because it invokes the imagry of the cigarette industry. Another example of what happens when big money encounters good science. Clearly, good science doesn't always win. Which is why I think KEM and others are right to re-iterate the facts as hard and as often as possible.
As the science continues the evidence is only getting stronger. And the evidence that human beings are the direct cause also grows stronger.
Yet, there are still people who swear that smoking doesn't cause cancer mainly because there's money to be made.
Big money forces are at work to confuse the public regarding the science behind climate change. This is well documented (though I do not have the reference on hand there was that memo from Exxon back in 1999 outlining the whole obstructionist strategy...just one of many examples).
Hi everyone. We all know global warming is a fact and most realize humanity is responible for the current situation. What most do not realize, or are unaware of is, just how 'deadly serious' the Arctic thaw is.
I will try to be as brief as possible and write the following in "layman's" terminology, as I are a layman, but what I will write here is quoted from world renounded scientists who know the score.
There is an estimated (400+ gigatons) of methane gas, which has been safely locked up in the Arctic's frozen perma-frost for several million years. Once that perma-frost thaws, and it has begun, the methane will release into the atmosphere. Sadly, methane is 25 times more potent as a Greenhouse gas than Co2 is. __ Oh-oh.
That release of the Aectic's colorless, ordorles, methane gas, will not suffocate us. It will however cause global warming to run amock and the temperature of Earth will be rapidly become high enough to allow the Ocean's methane to release into the atmosphere.
Then there will be __NO turnig back,__ NO do-overs, __ NO escape from a world-wide, mass extinction of animal life. We are animals, so are our children and theirs.
I see none of the wise deniers are taking me up on a challenge to argue the author of this link, which I will post once again. It may be the most important link of any subject or issue, which is available on the internet.
http://www.energybulletin.net/3647.html
I laughed also ~JONEDEN~ But you did have me worried. Sarcasm is always one of hte the best ways to jab a denier.
BTW, the Author of that article I posted published that paper five years ago. Even he did not foresee how soon the Arctic would begin to thaw like it currently has been doing for the past two years. We are running out of time and we have to act now, as ~Al Gore~ and the scientists (HE QUOTES) state.
Dear Sigurdur11...gosh darn, who do you suppose discovered those past climate conditions? Your local priest? Nah...scientists! Yup, they did. And you know what? Some of those scientists are stil ALIVE! And you know what else? They don't let any of us forget what they discovered.
Not to mention, if YOU are smart enough to check the past climate record, so are climate scientists.
Sweetie...isn't it wonderful to know that scientists are doing their job? Of course that means we already have factored in past climate changes, and have discovered that what is happening now is something new which is bad news buy, hey, Americans can be brave and deal with it.
But Barack Obama says that coal (as well as nuclear) can be done in a cleaner way, and he is too attractive and charismatic to be wrong about anything. Besides, once he gets elected he's going to wiggle his nose, a la Samantha in "Bewitched" and all the world's problems will instantly disappear. We just need to hold out until January.
ezeflyer says:
"The greatest thing that the Pope could do is to promote contraception in Latin America and the world."
That's it in a nutshell!
We need to control population at a level that the planet can sustain at a reasonbly good standard of living for everybody on the planet. It's as simple as that, and there is no guess work involved.
How About A Cost/Benefit Analysis Of Our Going (Vs Not Going) All Out To Reverse Global Warming
"Ok, say we go all out only to discover that the CO2 story is false?"
"The risk will be a sharp decline in the use of fossil fuels with hundreds of billions of dollars having to be spent on developing alternative sources of energy, together with our having to make certain lifestyle changes on account of said energy conversions."
"Lives lost from having unnecessarily switched from carbon-based to clean fuels?"
"None."
"And the benefit from our having switched from carbon-based to clean fuels based on what turns out to be a false premise?"
"Except for cleaner air, it's hard to say, since despite this switch, global warming presumably would continue unabated. There might be benefits from whatever lifestyle changes would be brought about by the switch from carbon-based to clean fuels."
"In other words a nice try but mission not accomplished."
"Exactly."
"And say we go all out to reverse global warming and it turns out that the CO2 story is true?"
"Hallelujeh."
"And the risks if we don't?"
"Down the road a ways could be one of our children or grandchildren who'll be anwering the call, 'Will the last one out please turn off the lights.'"
@KEM PATRICK July 20th, 2008 1:32 pm
Excellent posts. Great links. There was a magic line in your first link:-
"Instead, let's just get with the Bush administration's policy of pre-emption."
Pre-emption is exactly what is required in the issue of global warming.
@yourstruly July 20th, 2008 8:41 pm
I would like add just a few things to the cost benefit analysis:-
* You already mentioned cleaner air.
* A cleaner Ocean., One where we the fish are not poisonous to eat.
* We would preserve our oil, gas and coal reserves and the can be used later. Once we have used them, they are gone.
I knew that some rightwinger would get around to blaming Barak Obama.
Ok KEM
The carbon was released into the ocean/atmosphere system over the course of 1,000 years, at a rate that almost equals the rate at which carbon is being released into the atmosphere today through anthropogenic activity. The peak oil myth we all believe in says we shall run out of oil in 50 years.
Why am I not worried.
Some scientists believe it was due to volcanism, much of it in the oceans.
http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2005AM/finalprogram/abstract_94917.htm
This could explain the methane burp, since the warmer ocean temperatures from submarine magma could have melted the methane hydrates. The methane in the atmosphere would then break down to CO2 and H20, depleting O2, and causing a runaway warming and depleted O2 levels would harm life. Perhaps ocean life was killed off by the methane, and so oxygen generation was depleted as well.
There were by some accounts a sea level drop of 20-30 meters which could also have served to melt hydrates, perhaps in combination with some temperature rise, although a sea level drop would suggest cold temperatures and more ice or at least drought like conditions
There is no consensus on the cause of the warming 55 million years ago, let alone certainty that is was caused by methane hydrates.
continued
Now you seem very concerned about the Arctic ice disappearing in the summer.
You imply this will cause drastic ocean warming and melting of methane hydrates. The evidence suggests the changes in Arctic seas ice are decadal variations in the Arctic oscillations. Temperatures in the Arctic are not much higher than 1940, and are probably lower than in the Medieval Warming Period 800-1200 years ago, but are higher than since the Little Ice Age 400 years ago.
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=24023
Indeed, sea ice today is in the Actic summer has recovered from last year.
http://www.nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
continued
"Temperature records from Jan Mayen Island at the edge of the Arctic shows that the Arctic was warmer during the 1930s than it was during the 1990s. Unfortunately there is no comprehensive ice data from the 1930s. Instead such data begins in the late 1950s, at a time when the Arctic was entering into the grip of a known cold spell."
http://www.john-daly.com/polar/arctic.htm
Some evidence exists that the older ice melted due to soot deposited making it darker and absorbing more radiation. The new ice will have a higher albedo and reflect more light, and a cycle of recovery may be starting now.
Anyways, temperatures in 2003 were no higher than 1940 when there was much less CO2. Kind of weakens the argument of CO2 being the main driver of temperature.
http://junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/64N-90N1880-2003.gif
Solar, wind, geothermal. That's all we need.
MiMiCcs - I'm not sure where you are seeing "recovery" from the sea ice news article. Someone said yesterday you've got to learn the difference between weather and climate. The loss of Arctic and Antartic ice continues down a scale humanity has never before witnessed. Carbon dioxide, natural and man-made, certainly contributes to this phenomenon. Fossil fuel burning also contributed to the soot deposited on the ice, as you mention, melting it faster. Burning organic fuels is a dead end in so many directions.
I wonder what evolution with replace mankind with???
~MIMICCS~ indeed there is absolute proof that methane gas was the cause of the Permian mass extinction. Once again in layman's terminology, this is how it was proven by Doctor Michael J. Benton and his reports were peer reviewed.
(1) There is a layer of methane deposit found at specific levels of the Earth from the Permian era of history and it circles the globe. There was a massive and a very sudden release of methane gas and fossil remains from that time frame where animals died in mass and died suddenly.
Life to any degree did not re-appear for millions of years after that methane release. luckily enough of our ocean's phytoplankton survived, or Earth would have evolved to become another Mars, ___ a dead planet. Phytoplankton are the basis of all life on Earth.
Http://whyplankton.com
I have no argument the "excess" amount of methane in the atmosphere came from volcanic activity at that time of Earth's history. It was global warming and that was amplified by methane gas.
Doctor Benton states it will happen once again and will be caused by humanity, unless we stop burning fossil fuels. You are stating he and the hundreds of highly regarded scientists who agree with his findings are incorrect. That is your perogative, but the links you provided do not prove otherwise.
Now the Arctic thaw which is presenlty developing is as real as the sunrise every morning. There is no credible argument it is not occurring and thawing at an alarmng rate. That thaw can easily be witnesed by satellite images availabe on the internet and those are currently updated daily.
In addition, any who visit the Arctic are also witnessing methane gas BOILING the surface waters of many large lakes which are now ice free for the first time in millions of years. A month ago, several Russian scientists who were in the far northern Arctic, were quite frightened by what they were seeing.
Do you disagree with this link also?
http://www.farnorthscience.com/2007/09/26
~WCDEVINS~, he/she answers the rest of your claims with the 10:19pm post directly above this one and does so better than I could state it. Give it up ~MIMI~. I don't blaame you for not wanting to hear it, I don't want to hear it either, no one would.
When I lost the sight of one eye, I didn't want to hear the doctor's report, but want and don't want are moot. Reality sometimes hurts. We may have time to correct the Co-2 and methane issue, we may not have and your type of reasoning and arguments only tend to assist other deniers who may have the power to attempt to correct the most serious problem "mankind" has ever faced.
MiMICcs:
Your analysis is very correct.
Now to you all who think I am a neocon. I am building a wind turbine to power part of my farm. Gosh durn....isn't that just a hoot?
Let's look at the real data again. Satilite measurements indicate that we ARE at temps of 1940. Ice in Antartica is growing, not shrinking. We are nearing the end of our warm cycle. And for all you naysayers, it is a lotttttttt better being warm than it is being cold. In the past 5 years we have had a temp drop worldwide of .6C. That is a huge drop. Yet, the co2 level has continued to rise.
I am all for conservation and wise use of our resources. Being a Christian man, that is the way to treat the earth.
As far as solar in North Dakota...it just isn't feasable. Sorry, but not enough peak sunlight to generate enough power to make it through the mornings/afternoons and long nights of winter when we consume most of our power.
wcdevins:
What loss of ice are you talking about? During the Medieval Warm Period Greenland was farmed. Per data from NASA, if that can be considered reliable, overall ice load on Antartica has increased as well as Greenland.
There is a huge difference between weather and climate. Climate is 1,000's of years, weather is day to day.
I can also see that some people are so fanatical about this subject that when they look at emperical data, their eyes close. And....as far as scientists who advocate global warming, there are as many who advocate global cooling. As an old saying goes, follow the money trail people.
Greetings ~GREETNGS~. I wonder also. If the phytoplankton are eradicated, Planet Earth will die. Sadly, mankind with various pollutions such as plastics, oil spills, coal dust, DU, man made atomic waste, chemicals such as trichlorethaline, etc, are killing them off at an alarmng rate.
There is a sea of floating plastic the size of the United States and India combined, which is floating knee deep in the mid Pacific ocean. It is now an ocean "Dead Zone", one of several.
Someday mankind and the gals also, may be gone from Earth, __ wiped out. I am not concerned about what life may be here on this unique water world millions of years from now, I'm concerned about NOW and the next generations. ___ So are my grandkids. We must attempt to prevent our demise. Ya know, someday in the far distant future, something worse than man and the gals may evolve. ___ It's possible.
Kem,
There is huge doubt about Benton's analysis.