Russ Steele
Stuart Leavenworth is an Editor at the Sacramento Bee and blogs on the Bee's Hot House a global warming blog. Stuart has banned any discussion of global warming on the Hot House blog that questions the belief humans are responsible for global warming. Counter arguments showing global warming has stopped while CO2 continues to increase, that arctic ice melted is a natural cycle, hurricane intensity or numbers are not increasing, and more droughts are cause by the lack of precipitation not increased temperatures which increase atmospheric moisture are not welcome. Stuart is tired of answering all the blog post that went against his religious preferences, so he banned all technical discussion of global warming from the Hot House. I guess it became to hot in the Hot House.
Today Stuart writes about climate changes in a column on where the presidential candidates stand on issues here, including climate change:
While global warming isn't the only environmental challenge that deserves attention in the 2008 primary, this issue says much about a candidate's philosophy and general approach to science and policy.
Over the past year, the scientific consensus has continued to grow: The buildup of greenhouse gases – largely from burning coal, gasoline and other fossil fuels – is warming the Earth's atmosphere. Leading scientists advocate at least an 80 percent reduction in emissions by 2050 to avoid the worst effects, including melting ice caps, rising sea levels, more intense storms, droughts and loss of biodiversity.
Since I cannot discuss any technical issues over the Hot House, here are my comments on the above.
"Consensus has continued to grow" Really, I have not seen a long list of scientist jumping on the global warming band wagon, to the contrary it seem to be going the other way, details here starting with the Senate Minority Report on 400 Scientist who do not support AGW, with more being adding to the list everyday here, here and here.
"melting ice caps" Recent studies have shown that arctic melting is the result of changing wind patterns and these changes are cyclical do to changes in Atlantic and Pacific ocean sea surface temperatures. Details here, here and here.
"rising sea levels" To date there is no sign of any acceleration in sea level rise according to the satellite record. The TOPEX record of the sea level rise can be found here. Land based sea level gage reading have been contaminated by subsiding land where the gage were placed. It is hard to tell if the sea is rising, or the land sinking.
"more intense storms" Hurricanes are rated by Accumulated Cyclone Energy or ACE. Dr Ryan Maue, and noted hurricane tracker writes: Northern Hemisphere tropical cyclone activity is at historically low levels. In fact, September 2007 suffered the lowest ACE since 1977! Even scarier, so far 2006 and 2007 have the lowest October ACE since 1976 and 1977. And, unnaturally, Sept-Oct 2007 is the lowest since 1977. While the CO2 continues to accumulate we are net seeing increasing storm intensity, though 2005 was a bit of a nasty year. But the trend is not for increasing storm intensity. More details here.
I hope you will forgive me if we cover drought and loss of biodiversity in a future post. I need to do more research and this post is already too long. As you can see why Stuart is not interested in discussing the technical facts, as they are not supporting his belief in AGW. It is hard to accept the facts when they are contrary to one's belief system. Last time I was critical of the Bee Editor I was banned from Hot House, I hope this does not happen again.
