Thursday, March 25, 2010
Worrying about our democracy and our literacy
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Todays column was prompted by my need to escape the current despair over politics. Our hero for all seasons, President Obama, who has to fix the world economics, the Mideast problems, create a Palestinian accord, suppress Taliban, still the nuclear threats, and above all get the employment back on track, has been caught in the healthcare trap. Now the first phase of healthcare has been resolved, but the ugliness continues. The seniors have been frightened, and the young resort to cynicism. This democracy is seriously threatened.
Meanwhile, another competition, the e-book phenomenon, is causing turmoil in the world of hardcover books. As is, the newsprint world is tumbling, and even the august NY Times, the source of much of the story below, is selling its Boston Globe franchise, and has acquired a Mexican billionaire partner.
Now, the e-books. Adventurous Amazon, with its Kindle, generated a viable handheld reading machine, and is selling its copied books at $10 and returning the publisher and author 70%. Now Apples e-book, iPad tablet, will provide e-books at $12.99 to 414.99, with the same percentage return. There are three more reader and e-book competitors in the marketplace with each others product being variously readable or non-readable on the varieties of machines. Meanwhile Google has copied certain university library holdings, available on internet, apparently also out of copyright and free for access. The confusion in the marketplace is immense, and the rules vary, as to use, retention, loaning, and particularly, in their application in the free municipal library functions.
All this is brought into a sharper focus as we read that Barnes and Noble , our neighborhood stalwart , with headquarters and several giant stores right here in T&V country, is having management restructuring, apparently to facilitate changes into this new world. It brings up memories.
I have a particular affection for B&N, the creator of literate and cultural oases, where books can be browsed at leisure and purchased at discounts, providing a civilized counterbalance to the prevailing world of crude TV and media escapes.
Way back in the 1970s, when there was an Antiquarian Book Row between 4th Avenue and Broadway, in the then cheap rent district below 14th Street, a new competitor with a different style opened on SW corner of Fifth Avenue and 17th Street. It was owned by Barnes & Noble, named for a long nearly defunct old-time book dealership, and featured almost-new current books for 49 cents, stamped as sold by USPS, apparently acquired in an auction of book shipments destroyed by the new package handling equipment then installed by the Post Office. We the aficionados of Fourth Ave flocked there, picking up boxes and boxes of excellent items. I caught books by Henry Miller and Grove Press, poets, the Beats, and even a thick 2nd volume of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (with a magnifying glass) for $5, which accounts for my half-baked erudition of Shakespeares lingo.
The store manager was Steve Riggio, a young fellow who knew cash register and would get fusty when I left books on wait for longer than a day but accepted my lame excuses. His brother Len, the owner, would come by occasionally to inspect the days take and help lock up.These were the young guys who built the B&N empire of 723 retail stores and 639 college outlets, with a huge real estate component, a legend in those days, before Microsoft, Oracle, and internet book retailer Amazon startups. That was in the years when Fred Bass was expanding Strand Bookstore, Biblo & Tannen and Paragon found new directions in reprinting classics and copyright-free books, and the traditional antiquarian dealers were closing or moving to the country, under the pressure of rising rents.
I met Leonard Riggio in conjunction with 14th Street Union Square LDC-BID function, introduced by Rob Walsh, now Commissioner of NYC Small Business Development, but learned about him from another local hero, the controversial publisher, talk show regular and baccarat expert Lyle Stuart, who got his own start in 1953 by suing Walter Winchell and collecting $40,000. The arrogant Daily Mirror columnist got Lyle irritated enough to write a Secret History of Walter Winchell and have it published by the notorious book pirate Samuel Roth. Winchell allegedly sent three thugs after Lyle (good jacket copy) and ranted excessively, hence the fine. Ah the old days! But I digress.
Leonard Riggio, son of a cabdriver, got his part-time book dealing start while studying at NYU. In 1965 he opened The Student Book Service to compete with the college store, and in 1971 had enough stature to buy the ailing old-timer Barnes and Noble. He rejuvenated the business, buying up stores and real estate nationally. B&N went public in 1992 and currently has 723 retail bookstores and 639 college outlets, and has a publishing subsidiary. Brother Stephen Riggio became the CEO in 2002, and now is ceding the position to an internet-bred executive William Lynch, to handle the new era. Lynch has brought in Fictionwide, an e-book retailer, and introduced Nook, B&Ns version of e-reader. Store sales have fallen 5.2%, while internet income rose 32%. Apparently there is investor pressure, and supermarket billionaire Ronald P Burkle wants to increase his 20% share to 37%. All these threats to the world of hardcover books and free libraries bid bad weather to our highly literate and book-conscious T&V country.
Locally, Riggio has been a sharer of wealth all along, with the family foundation benefing schools, literacy, arts, childrens defense and, recently, Katrina survivors in New Orleans, by building some 20 new residences.
Wally Dobelis thanks NY Times and internet sources.
Todays column was prompted by my need to escape the current despair over politics. Our hero for all seasons, President Obama, who has to fix the world economics, the Mideast problems, create a Palestinian accord, suppress Taliban, still the nuclear threats, and above all get the employment back on track, has been caught in the healthcare trap. Now the first phase of healthcare has been resolved, but the ugliness continues. The seniors have been frightened, and the young resort to cynicism. This democracy is seriously threatened.
Meanwhile, another competition, the e-book phenomenon, is causing turmoil in the world of hardcover books. As is, the newsprint world is tumbling, and even the august NY Times, the source of much of the story below, is selling its Boston Globe franchise, and has acquired a Mexican billionaire partner.
Now, the e-books. Adventurous Amazon, with its Kindle, generated a viable handheld reading machine, and is selling its copied books at $10 and returning the publisher and author 70%. Now Apples e-book, iPad tablet, will provide e-books at $12.99 to 414.99, with the same percentage return. There are three more reader and e-book competitors in the marketplace with each others product being variously readable or non-readable on the varieties of machines. Meanwhile Google has copied certain university library holdings, available on internet, apparently also out of copyright and free for access. The confusion in the marketplace is immense, and the rules vary, as to use, retention, loaning, and particularly, in their application in the free municipal library functions.
All this is brought into a sharper focus as we read that Barnes and Noble , our neighborhood stalwart , with headquarters and several giant stores right here in T&V country, is having management restructuring, apparently to facilitate changes into this new world. It brings up memories.
I have a particular affection for B&N, the creator of literate and cultural oases, where books can be browsed at leisure and purchased at discounts, providing a civilized counterbalance to the prevailing world of crude TV and media escapes.
Way back in the 1970s, when there was an Antiquarian Book Row between 4th Avenue and Broadway, in the then cheap rent district below 14th Street, a new competitor with a different style opened on SW corner of Fifth Avenue and 17th Street. It was owned by Barnes & Noble, named for a long nearly defunct old-time book dealership, and featured almost-new current books for 49 cents, stamped as sold by USPS, apparently acquired in an auction of book shipments destroyed by the new package handling equipment then installed by the Post Office. We the aficionados of Fourth Ave flocked there, picking up boxes and boxes of excellent items. I caught books by Henry Miller and Grove Press, poets, the Beats, and even a thick 2nd volume of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (with a magnifying glass) for $5, which accounts for my half-baked erudition of Shakespeares lingo.
The store manager was Steve Riggio, a young fellow who knew cash register and would get fusty when I left books on wait for longer than a day but accepted my lame excuses. His brother Len, the owner, would come by occasionally to inspect the days take and help lock up.These were the young guys who built the B&N empire of 723 retail stores and 639 college outlets, with a huge real estate component, a legend in those days, before Microsoft, Oracle, and internet book retailer Amazon startups. That was in the years when Fred Bass was expanding Strand Bookstore, Biblo & Tannen and Paragon found new directions in reprinting classics and copyright-free books, and the traditional antiquarian dealers were closing or moving to the country, under the pressure of rising rents.
I met Leonard Riggio in conjunction with 14th Street Union Square LDC-BID function, introduced by Rob Walsh, now Commissioner of NYC Small Business Development, but learned about him from another local hero, the controversial publisher, talk show regular and baccarat expert Lyle Stuart, who got his own start in 1953 by suing Walter Winchell and collecting $40,000. The arrogant Daily Mirror columnist got Lyle irritated enough to write a Secret History of Walter Winchell and have it published by the notorious book pirate Samuel Roth. Winchell allegedly sent three thugs after Lyle (good jacket copy) and ranted excessively, hence the fine. Ah the old days! But I digress.
Leonard Riggio, son of a cabdriver, got his part-time book dealing start while studying at NYU. In 1965 he opened The Student Book Service to compete with the college store, and in 1971 had enough stature to buy the ailing old-timer Barnes and Noble. He rejuvenated the business, buying up stores and real estate nationally. B&N went public in 1992 and currently has 723 retail bookstores and 639 college outlets, and has a publishing subsidiary. Brother Stephen Riggio became the CEO in 2002, and now is ceding the position to an internet-bred executive William Lynch, to handle the new era. Lynch has brought in Fictionwide, an e-book retailer, and introduced Nook, B&Ns version of e-reader. Store sales have fallen 5.2%, while internet income rose 32%. Apparently there is investor pressure, and supermarket billionaire Ronald P Burkle wants to increase his 20% share to 37%. All these threats to the world of hardcover books and free libraries bid bad weather to our highly literate and book-conscious T&V country.
Locally, Riggio has been a sharer of wealth all along, with the family foundation benefing schools, literacy, arts, childrens defense and, recently, Katrina survivors in New Orleans, by building some 20 new residences.
Wally Dobelis thanks NY Times and internet sources.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Climate change the story and the controversy
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Record cold spells and snowfalls, and global warming? Hmm
Global warming is a strange term to describe the causes of this exceptionally cold and snowy winter. Even sophisticated New Yorkers may have a hard time with this apparent contradiction. Certain recent events heavily touted by global warming deniers have cast doubts about the rapid deterioration of the atmosphere. These include the disputes about the failed Copenhagen conference and the news of stolen messages from the East Anglia University Climatic Research Unit showing that some reputable scientists have suppressed the publication of adverse findings that question the manmade deterioration of the atmosphere. Climate change is a less incongruous term to discuss the huge amounts snow, rain storms and weather in these 2009/10 winter months.
Yet global warming may in fact be the cause of this record bad weather. Few scientists will challenge the one degree Fahrenheit upward change in the Earths temperature in the 20th Century, a third of a degree higher if you include years to 2005. Researchers point to the large number of independent observations, e.g. monks keeping books on recording arrival of cherry blossom and other agricultural hallmark events arrival over many decades, variations of rings on ancient trees at Mammoth Park in California, and hundreds of core borings of centuries-old ice. The latter contain bubbles of air, and their carbon dioxide content has increased over the years.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) has the potential to cause such a rise in heat, and observations in Mauna Loa research station since 1957 showed a 12% increase in 40 years, a figure that started the current concerns. CO2 in the atmosphere, along with water vapors, ozone and methane, helps form the natural barrier that protects our Earth from the hot rays of the Sun, permitting only a beneficial amount to pass through. No CO2 makes Mars a cold planet; too much of it inhibits life on Venus; while we have a balanced amount. CO2 is also what plants absorb in the spring to grow, and what we breathe out with every breath.
This perfection of Earths atmosphere has been marred by the greenhouse effect, brought on by the Industrial Revolution, starting in 1750. Industrial production, marked by deforestation and fossil fuel burning, has increased radically, skyrocketing in the last 20 years (deniers dispute the steep curve), causing a near 75% increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, which impacts the radiation balance, trapping heat in the atmosphere. The ozone layer of our atmosphere, which blocks incoming radiation, has been depleted by chlorofluorocarbons (used as refrigerants, also known as CFCs), permitting increased irradiation of Earth by the suns ultraviolet rays. CO2 emissions in the air have grown with the increased energy consumption through vehicular (cars and trucks, ships and boats, and airplanes), industrial and household energy use. The recent industrialization and economic development in Asia, increasing its per capita energy use, has further boosted the pollution of the atmosphere,
As the earth warms, more evaporation of water ensues, glaciers begin to melt, snowy surfaces turn dark, thus absorbing more heat, and, in a vicious circle, global warming further increases. Water evaporation increases rain and snowfall, when the normal winter cold winds meet the charged atmosphere. In the winter of 2010, by rare coincidence, the dominant sea-level air and temperature pressure variations (the Arctic Oscillation and the North Atlantic oscillation in Atlantic, The Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the El Nino-Pacific Oscillation which recurs every three to seven years, and the Indian Ocean Dipole) all collaborated in bringing extreme winter weather to North America, and across the ocean to Europe and the East, as far as China and Korea. Thus global warming could in fact explain our unusually cold winter, including prolific snowfalls, the worst in decades, breaking record levels in normally low precipitation areas, and the even more unusual penetration of the cold as far south as Florida. Low temperatures in the South affect us up north and around the country, as in some places 80% of tomato and other fruit and vegetable crops have been destroyed and orange blossoms were frozen, with an impact in grocery stores throughout the nation.
So, this cold winter adds very little substance to the claims of global warming deniers, though it provides some appealing rhetoric. The better evidence for the deniers has been the mistakes and questionable practices of the climate research establishment. Conservatives have been right to criticize professors who suppressed credible global warming denier material for publication, and to denounce the 2007 report of the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body that coordinates international climate research, supported by the national academies and scientific organizations of over 40 industrial countries) which reported speculation by an Indian scientist about an impending Himalayan glacial meltdown as scientific fact.
Thus, even before climate change denier Sen. Jim Inhofe (R, OK) built a protest snowman on his Washington lawn, the deniers had their more legitimate material. More questionable have been their attacks on reports of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Climate Data Control (NCDC). Furthermore, Senator Inhofe has misreported NOAA balloon findings in claiming that there has been no increase in global temperature in the last 100 years, and has tried to rally the base by comparing emission control by the U.S. EPA to actions of the Gestapo. That isnt helpful. Mainstream science currently supports the global warming hypothesis. Global warming skeptics are right to scrutinize the methodology of scientists and keep them honest. But misrepresenting the facts and polarizing the politics in this area of serious global concern is counterproductive.
The author thanks Arthur Dobelis Esq for his research
Record cold spells and snowfalls, and global warming? Hmm
Global warming is a strange term to describe the causes of this exceptionally cold and snowy winter. Even sophisticated New Yorkers may have a hard time with this apparent contradiction. Certain recent events heavily touted by global warming deniers have cast doubts about the rapid deterioration of the atmosphere. These include the disputes about the failed Copenhagen conference and the news of stolen messages from the East Anglia University Climatic Research Unit showing that some reputable scientists have suppressed the publication of adverse findings that question the manmade deterioration of the atmosphere. Climate change is a less incongruous term to discuss the huge amounts snow, rain storms and weather in these 2009/10 winter months.
Yet global warming may in fact be the cause of this record bad weather. Few scientists will challenge the one degree Fahrenheit upward change in the Earths temperature in the 20th Century, a third of a degree higher if you include years to 2005. Researchers point to the large number of independent observations, e.g. monks keeping books on recording arrival of cherry blossom and other agricultural hallmark events arrival over many decades, variations of rings on ancient trees at Mammoth Park in California, and hundreds of core borings of centuries-old ice. The latter contain bubbles of air, and their carbon dioxide content has increased over the years.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) has the potential to cause such a rise in heat, and observations in Mauna Loa research station since 1957 showed a 12% increase in 40 years, a figure that started the current concerns. CO2 in the atmosphere, along with water vapors, ozone and methane, helps form the natural barrier that protects our Earth from the hot rays of the Sun, permitting only a beneficial amount to pass through. No CO2 makes Mars a cold planet; too much of it inhibits life on Venus; while we have a balanced amount. CO2 is also what plants absorb in the spring to grow, and what we breathe out with every breath.
This perfection of Earths atmosphere has been marred by the greenhouse effect, brought on by the Industrial Revolution, starting in 1750. Industrial production, marked by deforestation and fossil fuel burning, has increased radically, skyrocketing in the last 20 years (deniers dispute the steep curve), causing a near 75% increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, which impacts the radiation balance, trapping heat in the atmosphere. The ozone layer of our atmosphere, which blocks incoming radiation, has been depleted by chlorofluorocarbons (used as refrigerants, also known as CFCs), permitting increased irradiation of Earth by the suns ultraviolet rays. CO2 emissions in the air have grown with the increased energy consumption through vehicular (cars and trucks, ships and boats, and airplanes), industrial and household energy use. The recent industrialization and economic development in Asia, increasing its per capita energy use, has further boosted the pollution of the atmosphere,
As the earth warms, more evaporation of water ensues, glaciers begin to melt, snowy surfaces turn dark, thus absorbing more heat, and, in a vicious circle, global warming further increases. Water evaporation increases rain and snowfall, when the normal winter cold winds meet the charged atmosphere. In the winter of 2010, by rare coincidence, the dominant sea-level air and temperature pressure variations (the Arctic Oscillation and the North Atlantic oscillation in Atlantic, The Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the El Nino-Pacific Oscillation which recurs every three to seven years, and the Indian Ocean Dipole) all collaborated in bringing extreme winter weather to North America, and across the ocean to Europe and the East, as far as China and Korea. Thus global warming could in fact explain our unusually cold winter, including prolific snowfalls, the worst in decades, breaking record levels in normally low precipitation areas, and the even more unusual penetration of the cold as far south as Florida. Low temperatures in the South affect us up north and around the country, as in some places 80% of tomato and other fruit and vegetable crops have been destroyed and orange blossoms were frozen, with an impact in grocery stores throughout the nation.
So, this cold winter adds very little substance to the claims of global warming deniers, though it provides some appealing rhetoric. The better evidence for the deniers has been the mistakes and questionable practices of the climate research establishment. Conservatives have been right to criticize professors who suppressed credible global warming denier material for publication, and to denounce the 2007 report of the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body that coordinates international climate research, supported by the national academies and scientific organizations of over 40 industrial countries) which reported speculation by an Indian scientist about an impending Himalayan glacial meltdown as scientific fact.
Thus, even before climate change denier Sen. Jim Inhofe (R, OK) built a protest snowman on his Washington lawn, the deniers had their more legitimate material. More questionable have been their attacks on reports of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Climate Data Control (NCDC). Furthermore, Senator Inhofe has misreported NOAA balloon findings in claiming that there has been no increase in global temperature in the last 100 years, and has tried to rally the base by comparing emission control by the U.S. EPA to actions of the Gestapo. That isnt helpful. Mainstream science currently supports the global warming hypothesis. Global warming skeptics are right to scrutinize the methodology of scientists and keep them honest. But misrepresenting the facts and polarizing the politics in this area of serious global concern is counterproductive.
The author thanks Arthur Dobelis Esq for his research
Labels: Arthur Dobelis
Thursday, March 11, 2010
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Record cold spells and snowfalls, and global warming? Hmm…
“Global warming” is a strange term to describe the causes of this exceptionally cold and snowy winter. Even sophisticated New Yorkers may have a hard time with this apparent contradiction. Certain recent events heavily touted by global warming deniers have cast doubts about the rapid deterioration of the atmosphere. These include the disputes about the failed Copenhagen conference and the news of stolen messages from the East Anglia University Climatic Research Unit showing that some reputable scientists have suppressed the publication of adverse findings that question the manmade deterioration of the atmosphere. “Climate change” is a less incongruous term to discuss the huge amounts snow, rain storms and weather in these 2009/10 winter months.
Yet global warming may in fact be the cause of this record bad weather. Few scientists will challenge the one degree Fahrenheit upward change in the Earth’s temperature in the 20th Century, a third of a degree higher if you include years to 2005. Researchers point to the large number of independent observations, e.g. monks keeping books on recording arrival of cherry blossom and other agricultural hallmark events arrival over many decades, variations of rings on ancient trees at Mammoth Park in California, and hundreds of core borings of centuries-old ice. The latter contain bubbles of air, and their carbon dioxide content has increased over the years.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) has the potential to cause such a rise in heat, and observations in Mauna Loa research station since 1957 showed a 12% increase in 40 years, a figure that started the current concerns. CO2 in the atmosphere, along with water vapors, ozone and methane, helps form the natural barrier that protects our Earth from the hot rays of the Sun, permitting only a beneficial amount to pass through. No CO2 makes Mars a cold planet; too much of it inhibits life on Venus; while we have a balanced amount. CO2 is also what plants absorb in the spring to grow, and what we breathe out with every breath.
This perfection of Earth’s atmosphere has been marred by the greenhouse effect, brought on by the Industrial Revolution, starting in 1750. Industrial production, marked by deforestation and fossil fuel burning, has increased radically, skyrocketing in the last 20 years (deniers dispute the steep curve), causing a near 75% increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, which impacts the radiation balance, trapping heat in the atmosphere. The ozone layer of our atmosphere, which blocks incoming radiation, has been depleted by chlorofluorocarbons (used as refrigerants, also known as CFCs), permitting increased irradiation of Earth by the sun’s ultraviolet rays. CO2 emissions in the air have grown with the increased energy consumption through vehicular (cars and trucks, ships and boats, and airplanes), industrial and household energy use. The recent industrialization and economic development in Asia, increasing its per capita energy use, has further boosted the pollution of the atmosphere,
As the earth warms, more evaporation of water ensues, glaciers begin to melt, snowy surfaces turn dark, thus absorbing more heat, and, in a vicious circle, global warming further increases. Water evaporation increases rain and snowfall, when the normal winter cold winds meet the charged atmosphere. In the winter of 2010, by rare coincidence, the dominant sea-level air and temperature pressure variations (the Arctic Oscillation and the North Atlantic oscillation in Atlantic, The Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the El Nino-Pacific Oscillation which recurs every three to seven years, and the Indian Ocean Dipole) all collaborated in bringing extreme winter weather to North America, and across the ocean to Europe and the East, as far as China and Korea. Thus global warming could in fact explain our unusually cold winter, including prolific snowfalls, the worst in decades, breaking record levels in normally low precipitation areas, and the even more unusual penetration of the cold as far south as Florida. Low temperatures in the South affect us up north and around the country, as in some places 80% of tomato and other fruit and vegetable crops have been destroyed and orange blossoms were frozen, with an impact in grocery stores throughout the nation.
So, this cold winter adds very little substance to the claims of global warming deniers, though it provides some appealing rhetoric. The better evidence for the deniers has been the mistakes and questionable practices of the climate research establishment. Conservatives have been right to criticize professors who suppressed credible global warming denier material for publication, and to denounce the 2007 report of the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body that coordinates international climate research, supported by the national academies and scientific organizations of over 40 industrial countries) which reported speculation by an Indian scientist about an impending Himalayan glacial meltdown as scientific fact.
Thus, even before climate change denier Sen. Jim Inhofe (R, OK) built a protest snowman on his Washington lawn, the deniers had their more legitimate material. More questionable have been their attacks on reports of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Climate Data Control (NCDC). Furthermore, Senator Inhofe has misreported NOAA balloon findings in claiming that there has been no increase in global temperature in the last 100 years, and has tried to rally the base by comparing emission control by the U.S. EPA to actions of the Gestapo. That isn’t helpful. Mainstream science currently supports the global warming hypothesis. Global warming skeptics are right to scrutinize the methodology of scientists and keep them honest. But misrepresenting the facts and polarizing the politics in this area of serious global concern is counterproductive.
The author thanks Arthur Dobelis, Esq, for research
Record cold spells and snowfalls, and global warming? Hmm…
“Global warming” is a strange term to describe the causes of this exceptionally cold and snowy winter. Even sophisticated New Yorkers may have a hard time with this apparent contradiction. Certain recent events heavily touted by global warming deniers have cast doubts about the rapid deterioration of the atmosphere. These include the disputes about the failed Copenhagen conference and the news of stolen messages from the East Anglia University Climatic Research Unit showing that some reputable scientists have suppressed the publication of adverse findings that question the manmade deterioration of the atmosphere. “Climate change” is a less incongruous term to discuss the huge amounts snow, rain storms and weather in these 2009/10 winter months.
Yet global warming may in fact be the cause of this record bad weather. Few scientists will challenge the one degree Fahrenheit upward change in the Earth’s temperature in the 20th Century, a third of a degree higher if you include years to 2005. Researchers point to the large number of independent observations, e.g. monks keeping books on recording arrival of cherry blossom and other agricultural hallmark events arrival over many decades, variations of rings on ancient trees at Mammoth Park in California, and hundreds of core borings of centuries-old ice. The latter contain bubbles of air, and their carbon dioxide content has increased over the years.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) has the potential to cause such a rise in heat, and observations in Mauna Loa research station since 1957 showed a 12% increase in 40 years, a figure that started the current concerns. CO2 in the atmosphere, along with water vapors, ozone and methane, helps form the natural barrier that protects our Earth from the hot rays of the Sun, permitting only a beneficial amount to pass through. No CO2 makes Mars a cold planet; too much of it inhibits life on Venus; while we have a balanced amount. CO2 is also what plants absorb in the spring to grow, and what we breathe out with every breath.
This perfection of Earth’s atmosphere has been marred by the greenhouse effect, brought on by the Industrial Revolution, starting in 1750. Industrial production, marked by deforestation and fossil fuel burning, has increased radically, skyrocketing in the last 20 years (deniers dispute the steep curve), causing a near 75% increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, which impacts the radiation balance, trapping heat in the atmosphere. The ozone layer of our atmosphere, which blocks incoming radiation, has been depleted by chlorofluorocarbons (used as refrigerants, also known as CFCs), permitting increased irradiation of Earth by the sun’s ultraviolet rays. CO2 emissions in the air have grown with the increased energy consumption through vehicular (cars and trucks, ships and boats, and airplanes), industrial and household energy use. The recent industrialization and economic development in Asia, increasing its per capita energy use, has further boosted the pollution of the atmosphere,
As the earth warms, more evaporation of water ensues, glaciers begin to melt, snowy surfaces turn dark, thus absorbing more heat, and, in a vicious circle, global warming further increases. Water evaporation increases rain and snowfall, when the normal winter cold winds meet the charged atmosphere. In the winter of 2010, by rare coincidence, the dominant sea-level air and temperature pressure variations (the Arctic Oscillation and the North Atlantic oscillation in Atlantic, The Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the El Nino-Pacific Oscillation which recurs every three to seven years, and the Indian Ocean Dipole) all collaborated in bringing extreme winter weather to North America, and across the ocean to Europe and the East, as far as China and Korea. Thus global warming could in fact explain our unusually cold winter, including prolific snowfalls, the worst in decades, breaking record levels in normally low precipitation areas, and the even more unusual penetration of the cold as far south as Florida. Low temperatures in the South affect us up north and around the country, as in some places 80% of tomato and other fruit and vegetable crops have been destroyed and orange blossoms were frozen, with an impact in grocery stores throughout the nation.
So, this cold winter adds very little substance to the claims of global warming deniers, though it provides some appealing rhetoric. The better evidence for the deniers has been the mistakes and questionable practices of the climate research establishment. Conservatives have been right to criticize professors who suppressed credible global warming denier material for publication, and to denounce the 2007 report of the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body that coordinates international climate research, supported by the national academies and scientific organizations of over 40 industrial countries) which reported speculation by an Indian scientist about an impending Himalayan glacial meltdown as scientific fact.
Thus, even before climate change denier Sen. Jim Inhofe (R, OK) built a protest snowman on his Washington lawn, the deniers had their more legitimate material. More questionable have been their attacks on reports of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Climate Data Control (NCDC). Furthermore, Senator Inhofe has misreported NOAA balloon findings in claiming that there has been no increase in global temperature in the last 100 years, and has tried to rally the base by comparing emission control by the U.S. EPA to actions of the Gestapo. That isn’t helpful. Mainstream science currently supports the global warming hypothesis. Global warming skeptics are right to scrutinize the methodology of scientists and keep them honest. But misrepresenting the facts and polarizing the politics in this area of serious global concern is counterproductive.
The author thanks Arthur Dobelis, Esq, for research
Labels: Arthur Dobelis
