<font size="6"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fantasy:</span></font><br><br><h2>HIS VIEW: The gloomy global warming gang is no fun</h2>
<p style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;">
</p>
<p style="font-size: 12px; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;">By Ed Iverson, <span style="font-style: italic;">Moscow-Pullman Daily News</span><br></p>
<p style="font-size: 10px;">Saturday, February 10, 2007 - Page Updated at 12:00:00 AM</p>
<span style="font-size: 14px;">
<p>The
cult of global warming is in panic mode. They have thrown their "Hail
Mary" pass. They have played their trump card and here it is: "climate
specialists" in Europe are now darn sure that global climate change is
"very likely" due to human causes. "Very likely" translates to a solemn
warning: there is a 90 percent certainty that man and his machines have
gummed up the atmosphere so much that there is little chance of
recovery.</p><p>Here we have the Greenhouse Gas Gang appealing to their
"priesthood," (in this case, socialist European scientists). What can
the great unwashed masses possibly do but fall back in wonder?
Unbelievers must either submit or have their papers confiscated.
Surprisingly enough, much of the populace remains stubbornly
unconvinced. There is deep-rooted suspicion back east in Hoboken. There
is persistent skepticism out west in Elko. Thinking Americans can't
shake the notion that the pronouncements of "science" are largely
influenced by loyalty to a belief system. The GGG is afraid that "we
ain't buyin' it." They are running low on ammo and they are starting to
panic. The GGG will yammer on about "science"; but you will never hear
them discuss history. Even a quick review of history destroys their
carefully crafted house of cards. When have you ever read an article
about global warming that tells the truth about the MWP or the LIA?
What? Do you mean your sixth-grader came home from government school
talking about Al Gore's movie and never said anything about the 300
years from 900 to 1200 A.D. known as the Medieval Warm Period? These
kids are told that melting polar ice masses will soon inundate coastal
cities and that polar bears are dying on drifting ice floes; but how
many of them ever learn about the Little Ice Age that began about 1400
and lasted well into the 19th century?</p><p>By 874 A.D., my Norwegian
ancestors were colonizing Iceland where glaciers were much smaller than
they are today. A century later, they were pressing on to Greenland,
the voyage made much easier than it would be today because the sea-ice
between the two islands was almost nonexistent. Tree rings dating from
1000 A.D. reveal high solar output and warmer temperatures. Radiocarbon
dating from the period confirms that there were trees that grew in
Canada far north of the modern timberline.</p><p>That is just the
beginning of the interesting history that the GGG won't ever mention.
During the MWP, Estonia experienced rapid population growth based on
successful cultivation of cereal grains. According to "The History of
Estonia" by Tannberg, an astonishing 150,000 souls lived there by 1200
A.D.</p><p>Productive farms supported 70,000 Icelanders in 1100 A.D.;
but by 1350, fishing had replaced cereal crops as the main source of
food. By 1400 A.D., the old sea routes to Greenland were frozen solid
and Greenland was totally abandoned. What had been a thriving vineyard
industry in England during the MWP was wiped out by the freezing
winters and damp, cool summers. Glaciers advanced all over the northern
hemisphere, breaking through terminal moraines, blocking the medieval
gold mines of the Hohe Tauern (high passes of the central Alps), and
causing intermittent damming and flooding of towns. The coast of
western Greenland began to submerge — not from a rising sea level; but
because a much thicker ice sheet resulted in crustal depression.</p><p>By
1600, the LIA was in full advance and would not retreat until sometime
during the 19th century. By 1850, Europe was again experiencing warm
spring and summer weather. High pressure once again prevailed and there
were early wine harvests all over the continent. At the beginning of
the 20th century, there was a marked decrease in sea ice around
Iceland. Glaciers retreated rapidly everywhere except on Antarctica.</p><p>The
globe sighed with relief. Earthlings could once again look forward to
long growing seasons, mild winters, bountiful harvests, and comfortable
weather. But hold on. What's this you say? This warming period is the
end of civilization as we know it? Well shoot. I guess there's always
something to spoil the fun.</p><p>************************************************</p></span><h2>HIS VIEW: Are we really dumber than a box of rocks?</h2>
<p style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;">
</p>
<p style="font-size: 12px; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;">By Ed Iverson</p>
<p style="font-size: 10px;">Friday, February 23, 2007 - Page Updated at 10:20:54 PM, <span style="font-style: italic;">Moscow-Pullman Daily News</span></p>
<div style="float: left; padding-right: 12px; padding-bottom: 6px;" align="center">
<img src="http://www.dnews.com/images/20070223-45dfdf0730ea1.jpg" title="View Photo" style="border: 1px solid black; width: 75px;"><br></div>
<span style="font-size: 14px;">
<p>It's
been a bad month for the cult of global warming. The nation's seats of
power and influence logged record-low temperatures and snow depths. We
were treated to an hourly report of how many people had succumbed to
freezing temperatures and swirling winds. Committee hearings that were
scheduled to explore new ways in which global warming could be
exploited to extort new taxes and extend the reach of government were
cancelled due to blizzard conditions. "Eeyore" Gore was probably even
gloomier than his usual gloomy self when he heard that several showings
of his gloomy film " 'Unsubstantiated' Truth" were cancelled due to ice
storms and impassable roadways.</p><p>I am aware those of us who read
these things and repeat them to one another with a chuckle are
considered to be dumber than a box of rocks by true believers and other
apologists for the cult of global warming. They derisively condemn we
global warming skeptics as "global warming deniers." This terminology
is designed to equate us with skinheads and neo-Nazis. It is employed
by people who pride themselves for their openness and tolerance. These
advocates of "diversity" threaten to expel any scientist from the
"fraternity" who openly challenges man-caused global warming.
Professors at small land-grant universities have no choice but to
parrot the party line required by these defenders of "academic freedom."</p><p>Satire just shouldn't be this easy.</p><p>Now
here is the truth: The GWS really do understand that unusually cold
weather this winter does nothing to disprove the claims of global
warming alarmists. However, we also understand that the best defense
against fanciful alarmism is a good laugh. It is so obvious that the
purpose of the global warming scare is to insert more government
control into our lives and justify an increasingly onerous tax burden.
If we didn't laugh we would have to cry. We cheerfully admit that
despite annual deviations, the earth experiences long periods of
warming and cooling. Indeed, the "box of rocks club" understands this
better than does the cult of global warming. Just let a few hurricanes
rip through and the climate alarmists will begin weeping and gnashing
their teeth about how this is proof positive that man has so devastated
the ionosphere that Life on Earth as we know it will soon cease to
exist. The way Gore carried on last summer one would think that
Washington, D.C., had never before experienced a heat wave. I may be
dumber than a box of rocks, but I'm not the one seriously pointing to
annual events in order to defend my position.</p><p>True believers in
global warming demand to know why we GWS refuse to bow to the
"evidence." By evidence, of course, they generally mean things like
pictures of polar bears adrift on an iceberg floating toward Iceland.
Well, to be fair, they occasionally cite a few more "proofs." For
example, Sharon Begley wrote a Wall Street Journal guest editorial,
claiming "the reality of climate change has been even worse than the
alarming forecasts." She warns that ocean levels are rising and icecaps
are shrinking faster than predicted. That is simply not true.</p><p>Begley
says oceans are rising by 3.3 millimeters per year. A little
calculation reveals that this amounts to one foot per century. As
Begley herself observes, in 1995 the IPCC projected a sea-level rise of
two feet per century. Begley warns that ice sheets in Greenland and
Antarctica are "disintegrating faster than even the 2001 IPCC report
anticipated." Again, not true. Antarctica is actually gaining
significant ice mass. The same is true for Greenland. While ice is
thinning at the edges, Greenland's interior is gaining mass.</p><p>The
real joke happens when a Gore groupie fondly compares himself to a
courageous Galileo standing for a heliocentric planetary system against
unreasoning superstition. That's getting it backward. Global warming is
the entrenched superstition of our day. It is the cult of global
warming (not the box of rocks club) who condemns all who have the
temerity to raise objections.</p></span><span style="font-size: 14px;"><p>Ed Iverson is the head librarian at
New Saint Andrews College in Moscow. He earned a master's of library
science at the University of Southern Mississippi and studied theology
at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. In 1990, he ran for
the Idaho Senate as a Republican from Mullan. He lives with his wife at
Viola.</p><p>*************************************************</p><p>*************************************************<br></p>
</span><br><br><font size="4"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><font size="6">Reality:</font><br><br><a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
IPCC: The Physical Basis of Climate Change</a><br></span></font><br clear="all">
<br>**************************************************************<br><a href="http://mail.google.com/mail/?auth=DQAAAHsAAAB7WtympXeNQClN4ctHAmRWdvvL7zmC4ETEMuoZX6-nIADyNYB-vw1Pe4Xvq7zAZv7nNxwF-HvMkPmcdJ0NKksCkXwPMDmXjTe8bnSo5HqnWNgk1t6RblSw9wgcvHzwsQEZ9oh_WnxIGiXnXYuu2Nw-ZErRJCkoQUPog0BbKzJueQ" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
Link to National Geographic Society Story</a><br><br><table bgcolor="#ffffff" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td colspan="3"><div><h1>Climate Change: Pictures of a Warming World
</h1>
</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">
<div>
<div><img src="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/photogalleries/global_warming/images/thumbnail/glaciernp-best%21TN.jpg" alt="Global Warming Pictures: Glacier National Park, Montana, and Melting Ice" border="0" height="42" width="42">
</div>
<div><a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/photogalleries/global_warming/photo2.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"><img src="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/photogalleries/global_warming/images/thumbnail/penguinsTN.jpg" alt="Global Warming Pictures: Adelie Penguins and Bird Species" border="0" height="42" width="42">
</a></div>
<div><a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/photogalleries/global_warming/photo3.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"><img src="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/photogalleries/global_warming/images/thumbnail/inuit-goodTN.jpg" alt="Global Warming Pictures: Inuits and Arctic Communities" border="0" height="42" width="42">
</a></div>
<div><a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/photogalleries/global_warming/photo4.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"><img src="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/photogalleries/global_warming/images/thumbnail/coral-diseaseTN.jpg" alt="Global Warming Pictures: Coral Reefs, Oceans, and Phytoplankton" border="0" height="42" width="42">
</a></div>
<div><a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/photogalleries/global_warming/photo5.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"><img src="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/photogalleries/global_warming/images/thumbnail/MaldivesTN.jpg" alt="Global Warming Pictures: Male, Maldives, and Rising Sea Levels" border="0" height="42" width="42">
</a></div>
<div><a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/photogalleries/global_warming/photo6.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"><img src="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/photogalleries/global_warming/images/thumbnail/barrow,-alaskaTN.jpg" alt="Global Warming Pictures: Barrow, Alaska, and Rising Polar Temperatures" border="0" height="42" width="42">
</a></div>
<div><a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/photogalleries/global_warming/photo7.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"><img src="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/photogalleries/global_warming/images/thumbnail/polar-bearTN.jpg" alt="Global Warming Pictures: Polar Bears and Species Decline" border="0" height="42" width="42">
</a></div>
<div><a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/photogalleries/global_warming/photo8.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"><img src="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/photogalleries/global_warming/images/thumbnail/hurricane-ivanTN.jpg" alt="Global Warming Pictures: Stronger and More Damaging Hurricanes and Floods" border="0" height="42" width="42">
</a></div>
<div><a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/photogalleries/global_warming/photo9.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"><img src="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/photogalleries/global_warming/images/thumbnail/glacier-melt-coolTN.jpg" alt="Global Warming Pictures: Glaciers, Melting Ice, and Rising Sea Levels" border="0" height="42" width="42">
</a></div>
<div><a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/photo_in_the_news.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">More News Photos</a></div>
</div>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="100%">
<div>
<div>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="90%">
<tbody><tr><td>
<table align="center" border="0" width="100">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" align="left" valign="top"><img src="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/photogalleries/global_warming/images/primary/glaciernp-best%21.jpg" alt="Global Warming Pictures: Glacier National Park, Montana, and Melting Ice" border="0" height="319" width="461">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left"><a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/cgi-bin/email2friend.pl" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"><img src="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/images/global2004/email.gif" align="top" border="0" height="15" width="17">
Email to a Friend </a></td>
<td><div align="right"> 1 of 9 <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/photogalleries/global_warming/photo2.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"><b>Next >>
</b></a></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</td>
<td width="1"> </td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="82%">
<tbody><tr><td>
<div>
<div>
<div>
RELATED
</div>
<ul><li><a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/01/0107_040107_extinction.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">By 2050 Warming to Doom Million Species, Study Says
</a></li><li><a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/04/0420_040420_earthday.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
Warming to Cause Catastrophic Rise in Sea Level?</a></li><li><a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/11/1109_041109_polar_ice.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">Arctic Melting Fast; May Swamp U.S. Coasts by 2099
</a></li><li>
<a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/06/0605_030605_climatechange.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">Earth Becomes Greener as Climate Changes</a></li><li><a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/07/0727_040727_globalwarming.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
High-Climbing Ice Expert Gets to Core of Climate Change</a></li><li><a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/04/0408_040408_greenlandicemelt.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
Greenland Melt May Swamp LA, Other Cities, Study Says
</a></li></ul>
</div>
<p>
Dawn strikes the mountains rising above St. Mary's Lake in Montana's
Glacier National Park. When the park was created in 1910, it had 150
glaciers. Now it has 30 glaciers, significantly reduced in size.<br><br>Many of the world's freshwater <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/02/0201_020201_wiremountain.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
glaciers</a> are shrinking, as warming temperatures melt them away. Some have disappeared all together. The glaciers on both
<a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/06/0605_020604_everestclimate.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">Mount Everest</a> and <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0923_030923_kilimanjaroglaciers.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
Mount Kilimanjaro</a> are among those glaciers noticeably decreasing as temperatures climb, causing <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/05/0501_020502_himalaya.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
lower-lying towns</a>
considerable worry.<br><br>Read <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1206_041206_global_warming.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">fast facts</a> about global warming.
<br><br>See today's top <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
news stories</a>.<br><br><i>Photo gallery by Chelsea Lane-Miller</i> </p>
<div>
<i><i>Photograph by Raymond Gehman, copyright National Geographic Society</i></i>
</div>
</div></td></tr></tbody></table></div></td></tr></tbody></table><br>*****************************************<br><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr valign="bottom"><td><a href="http://www.latimes.com/" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
<img src="http://www.latimes.com/images/standard/lat_both.gif" alt="latimes.com" border="0" height="38" vspace="3" width="205"></a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/trb.latimes/news/natworld/world;ptype=ps;slug=la-fg-warming21feb21;rg=ur;ref=latimescom;pos=printstory;sz=728x90;tile=1;ord=92465339?" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
<img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/trb.latimes/news/natworld/world;ptype=ps;slug=la-fg-warming21feb21;rg=ur;ref=latimescom;pos=printstory;dcopt=ist;sz=728x90;tile=1;ord=92465339?" alt="" border="0" height="90" width="728">
</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<hr>
<a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-warming21feb21,0,6823000.story?track=tothtml" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-warming21feb21,0,6823000.story?track=tothtml
</a><br>
<h4>COLUMN ONE</h4>
<h1>Climate change laps at Bangladesh's shores</h1>
<div>Rising oceans are already a reality there, and thousands of people could be displaced.</div>
By Henry Chu<br>
Times Staff Writer<br>
<br>
February 21, 2007<br><br>
Bhamia, Bangladesh — GLOBAL warming has a taste in this village. It is the taste of salt.<br>
<br>
Only a few years ago, water from the local pond was fresh and sweet on
Samit Biswas' tongue. It quenched his family's thirst and cleansed
their bodies.<br>
<br>
But drinking a cupful now leaves a briny flavor in his mouth. Tiny
white crystals sprout on Biswas' skin after he bathes and in his
clothes after his wife washes them.<br>
<br>
The change, international scientists say, is the result of intensified
flooding caused by shifting climate patterns. Warmer weather and rising
oceans are sending seawater surging up Bangladesh's rivers in greater
volume and frequency, experts say, overflowing and seeping into the
soil and water supply of thousands of people.<br>
<br>
Their lives are being squeezed by distant lands they have seen only on
television — America, China and Russia at the top of the list — whose
carbon emissions are pushing temperatures and sea levels upward. This
month, a long-awaited report by the United Nations said global warming
fueled by human activity could lift temperatures by 8 degrees and the
ocean's surface by 23 inches by 2100.<br>
<br>
<strong> </strong>Here in southwestern Bangladesh, the bleak future
forecast by the report is already becoming reality, bringing misery
along with it.<br>
<br> The heavier than usual floods have wiped out homes and paddy
fields. They have increased the salinity of the water, which is
contaminating wells, killing trees and slowly poisoning the mangrove
jungle that forms a barrier against the Bay of Bengal.<br>
<br>
If sea levels continue to rise at their present rate, by the time
Biswas, 35, retires from his job as a teacher, the only home he has
known will be swamped, overrun by the ocean with the force of an
unstoppable army. That, in turn, will trigger another kind of flood:
millions of displaced residents desperate for a place to live.<br>
<br>
"It will be a disaster," Biswas said.<br>
<br>
Bangladesh, a densely crowded and painfully poor nation, contributes
only a minuscule amount to the greenhouse gases slowly smothering the
planet. But a combination of geography and demography puts it among the
countries experts predict will be hit hardest as Earth heats up.<br>
<br>
Nearly 150 million people, the equivalent of about half the U.S.
population, live packed in an area the size of Iowa and about as flat.
Home to where the mighty Brahmaputra, Ganges and Meghna rivers meet,
most of Bangladesh is a vast delta of alluvial plains that are barely
above sea level, making it prone to flooding from waterways swollen by
rain, snowmelt from the Himalayas and increased infiltration of the
ocean.<br>
<br>
Global warming trends have already exacerbated that, and the situation will probably get worse, scientists say.<br>
<br>
"A little increase in temperature, a little climate change, has a
magnified impact here," said A. Atiq Rahman, director of the Bangladesh
Center for Advanced Studies — the country's leading environmental
research group — in Dhaka, the capital. "That's what makes the
population here so vulnerable."<br>
<br>
OTHER low-lying countries also are at risk, including the Netherlands
and tiny islands in the South Pacific that could eventually be
swallowed by the expanding oceans. But the population of these
countries is only a fraction of that of Bangladesh.<br>
<br>
If the sea here rises by a foot, which some researchers say could
happen by 2040, the resulting damage would set back Bangladesh's
progress by 30 years, Rahman said. As much as 12% of the population
would be made homeless.<br>
<br>
A 3-foot rise by century's end — a possible scenario if the polar ice
caps melt at a more rapid pace — would wreak havoc in Bangladesh on an
apocalyptic, Atlantis-like scale, according to scientific projections.<br>
<br>
A quarter of the country would be submerged. Dhaka, now in the center
of the nation, would sit within 60 miles of the coast, where boats
would float above the underwater remnants of countless town squares,
markets, houses and schools. As many as 30 million people would become
refugees in their own land, many of them subsistence farmers with
nothing left to subsist on.<br>
<br>
"Tomorrow's poverty will be far worse than today's," Rahman said.<br>
<br>
For years, the government either denied or downplayed the danger posed
by global warming. Bangladesh is hardly unique in that regard; many
accuse the U.S. of doing the same. Rahman recalls overhearing officials
ridicule him as a madman when he warned that Bangladesh risked being
inundated.<br>
<br>
But the weight of scientific opinion has grown, as has evidence that
climate patterns are shifting and producing harmful effects in this
region. Politicians who had previously dismissed global warming as a
far-off problem are starting to see it as a clear and present danger.<br>
<br>
"Part of it is sheer reality hitting you on the head — there's stronger
floods, more frequent floods," Rahman said. "Now the game is much
clearer. The connection … has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt."<br>
<br> Three years ago, the government set up a climate-change unit in
its Environment Ministry, but it employs only a handful of staff and
depends largely on Britain for funding.<br>
<br>
Lately officials have also begun appealing to wealthy,
fossil-fuel-consuming nations such as Japan and the countries of the
European Union to help Bangladesh prepare for a catastrophe it has few
resources to combat.<br>
<br>
"Lives in Bangladesh will be devastated through no fault of the people
concerned," Sabihuddin Ahmed, the ambassador to Britain and a former
Environment Ministry official, wrote in the Guardian newspaper in
September.<br>
<br>
For people in the West, Ahmed said, the onslaught of global warming may
seem decades away. In Bangladesh, "the future has arrived."<br>
<br> Here in the coastal southwest, in an area called Munshiganj close
to the Indian border and the famed Sundarbans mangrove forest, grizzled
farmers describe the relentless encroachment of the sea.<br>
<br>
Thirty years ago, an embankment built to hem in the tidal rivers around
them was sufficient to protect villagers from major inundations. Now
they estimate that the high-tide mark has climbed 10 feet, and breaches
such as one that happened in September, which swamped hundreds of
homes, have become depressingly common.<br>
<br> "The water came up to here," said Iman Ali Gain, sweeping his hand
up to his chest as scores of men behind him hauled baskets of gloppy
gray soil to repair the dike. "We were afraid when we saw it."<br>
<br>
LIKE many, perhaps most, Munshiganj residents, Gain, 65, does not
understand concepts such as carbon footprints, greenhouse gases, the
ozone layer or melting ice caps. The vast majority of the people in
this area are illiterate; only one in five has finished primary school.<br>
<br>
But Gain knows how his life has changed over the last several years
because of new environmental conditions. He once grew rice to support
himself and his family, but his harvests started shrinking as the
salinity of the water increased. To cope, he followed the example of
many of his neighbors and switched to shrimp farming, a way to take
advantage of the salty water washing over the fields.<br>
<br>
For the first time in Munshiganj, shrimp farming occupies more of the cultivable land than do traditional crops.<br>
<br>
Though the shift has enabled some villagers to survive, it has created
other headaches. Because it is less labor-intensive, shrimp farming has
boosted unemployment. Thousands of residents have migrated to other
parts of Bangladesh or India in search of work.<br>
<br>
Worse yet, deliberately trapping so much briny water to raise shrimp
has increased the sodium concentration in the soil, which aggravates
the salinity creeping into drinking-water supplies.<br>
<br>
"From ancient times, our people used [local] ponds for drinking water.
Now they need to go four to five kilometers to collect sweet water,"
said Mohon Kumar Mondal, a local environmental activist who is trying
to promote awareness of and adaptation to climate change.<strong><br>
<br>
</strong>The small pond here in the village of Bhamia draws women with
their jars from surrounding villages that used to have their own, or
closer, sources of drinking water. But Bhamia's pond is becoming more
saline, and the nearest abundant source of untainted fresh water is
nearly fives miles away.<br>
<br>
Residents report an increase in health problems such as diarrhea, skin
diseases and dysentery. The salty water has also killed many of the
palm and date trees that once lent a fecund beauty to the sunbaked
landscape.<br>
<br>
THOSE here who are strongly religious, a mix of Muslims and Hindus,
have tended to ascribe the changes in climate and the natural disasters
befalling them to God, Mondal said.<br>
<br>
Perhaps it is punishment for their impiety, the people murmur; perhaps,
with repentance and prayer, God will relent and spare them the heavier
floods, the stronger cyclones and the hotter summers they are
experiencing. And perhaps there will be more fresh water to slake their
thirst.<br>
<br>
A geographer with a master's degree, Mondal, 31, knows humans are
responsible for the problem that is making life more difficult here —
and threatens to make it impossible if the temperatures and the oceans
keep rising.<br>
<br>
And so it is to humans, especially those in developed societies, that he issues his plea.<br>
<br>
"I request people, please understand the situation of the Earth. Please
make your decisions according to the situation," Mondal said. "And
please think of poor people like us, who have not created greenhouse
gases. Please think of our situation."<br><br><br>********************************************************<br><br><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr valign="bottom"><td><a href="http://www.latimes.com/" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
<img src="http://www.latimes.com/images/standard/lat_both.gif" alt="latimes.com" border="0" height="38" vspace="3" width="205"></a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/trb.latimes/news/science;ptype=ps;slug=la-sci-disease25feb25;rg=ur;ref=latimescom;pos=printstory;sz=728x90;tile=1;ord=45172225?" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
<img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/trb.latimes/news/science;ptype=ps;slug=la-sci-disease25feb25;rg=ur;ref=latimescom;pos=printstory;dcopt=ist;sz=728x90;tile=1;ord=45172225?" alt="" border="0" height="90" width="728">
</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<hr>
<a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-disease25feb25,0,7795423.story?track=ntothtml" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-disease25feb25,0,7795423.story?track=ntothtml
</a><br>
<h1>Global warming: enough to make you sick</h1>
<div>Rising
temperatures are redistributing bacteria, insects and plants, exposing
people to diseases they'd never encountered before.</div>
By Jia-Rui Chong<br>
Times Staff Writer<br>
<br>
February 25, 2007<br><br>
CORDOVA, ALASKA — Oysterman Jim Aguiar had never had to deal with the bacterium <i>Vibrio parahaemolyticus</i> in his 25 years working the frigid waters of Prince William Sound.<br>
<br>
The dangerous microbe infected seafood in warmer waters, like the Gulf of Mexico. Alaska was way too cold.<br>
<br>
But the sound was gradually warming. By summer 2004, the temperature
had risen just enough to poke above the crucial 59-degree mark. Cruise
ship passengers who had eaten local oysters were soon coming down with
diarrhea, cramping and vomiting — the first cases of <i>Vibrio</i> food poisoning in Alaska that anyone could remember.<br>
<br>
"We were slapped from left field," said Aguiar, who shut down his oyster farm that year along with a few others.<br>
<br>
As scientists later determined, the culprit was not just the bacterium, but the warming that allowed it to proliferate.<br>
<br>
"This was probably the best example to date of how global climate
change is changing the importation of infectious diseases," said Dr.
Joe McLaughlin, acting chief of epidemiology at the Alaska Division of
Public Health, who published a study on the outbreak.<br>
<br>
The spread of human disease has become one of the most worrisome
subplots in the story of global warming. Incremental temperature
changes have begun to redraw the distribution of bacteria, insects and
plants, exposing new populations to diseases that they have never seen
before.<br>
<br>
A report from the World Health Organization estimated that in 2000
about 154,000 deaths around the world could be attributed to disease
outbreaks and other conditions sparked by climate change.<br>
<br> The temperature change has been small, about 1.4 degrees
Fahrenheit over the last 150 years, but it has been enough to alter
disease patterns across the globe.<br>
<br>
In Sweden, fewer winter days below 10 degrees and more summer days
above 50 degrees have encouraged the northward movement of ticks, which
has coincided with an increase in cases of tick-borne encephalitis
since the 1980s.<br>
<br>
Researchers have found that poison ivy has grown more potent and lush because of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.<br>
<br>
In Africa, mosquitoes have been slowly inching up the slopes around Mt.
Kenya, bringing malaria to high villages that had never been exposed
before.<br>
<br>
"It's going to get very warm," said Andrew Githeko, a vector biologist
who heads the Climate and Human Health Research Unit at the Kenya
Medical Research Institute in Kisumu. "That's going to mean a huge
difference to malaria."<br>
<br>
Githeko, 49, grew up in the central highlands in a tiny village near the town of Karatina, about 5,700 feet above sea level.<br>
<br>
His home was different from most of Africa. The air was damp and
chilly. On clear days, he could see the glaciers on Mt. Kenya, the
second-highest peak in Africa at 17,058 feet.<br>
<br>
When he was a child, lowland diseases like malaria were unknown in
Karatina. But perhaps 10 years ago, a smattering of cases began to
appear.<br>
<br>
He had long ago left his home to study the great plagues of Africa —
Rift Valley fever, malaria, cholera and others. The appearance of
malaria in the highlands, however, was a mystery worth returning home
for.<br>
<br>
Githeko dispatched a colleague to collect mosquito larvae in puddles
and streams around Mt. Kenya, some as high as 6,300 feet. Tests later
identified some of the mosquitoes as <i>Anopheles arabiensis</i>, one of the species that carry malaria.<br>
<br>
Githeko's findings, published in 2006, marked the highest <i>A. arabiensis</i>
breeding site ever recorded in Kenya and was the first published report
of malaria infections in the central highlands, he said.<br>
<br>
He knew by watching Mt. Kenya's gradually disappearing glaciers that
his world was warming, and that lowland diseases would eventually work
their way higher. "But we did not expect this to happen so soon," he
said.<br>
<br>
Githeko's work has been echoed in a small number of studies around the world.<br>
<br>
In 1996, health authorities reported a human case of tick-borne
encephalitis in the Czech village of Borova Lada, elevation 3,000 feet.
Until then, the <i>Ixodes rinicus </i>tick, which carries the disease, had never been seen above 2,600 feet.<br>
<br>
The case caught the attention of Milan Daniel, a parasitologist the
Institute for Postgraduate Medical Education in Prague who has been
studying the movement of ticks in the Czech Republic for half a century.<br>
<br>
He scoured the Sumava and Krkonose mountains and found that the ticks
had migrated as high as 4,100 feet largely because of milder autumns
over the last two decades, according to a series of studies published
over the last four years.<br>
<br>
>From 1961 to 2005, the mean temperature in the Krkonose Mountains had increased about 2 1/2 degrees.<br>
<br>
"This shift of the ticks," Daniel said, "is clearly connected with climate changes."<br>
<br>
According to a landmark United Nations report released this month,
global warming has reached a point where even if greenhouse gas
emissions could be held stable, the trend would continue for centuries.<br>
<br>
The report painted a grim picture of the future — rising sea levels, more intense storms, widespread drought.<br>
<br>
Predicting the future of disease, however, has proven difficult because
of myriad factors — many of which have little to do with global
warming. Diseases move with people, they follow trade routes, they
thrive in places with poor sanitation, they develop resistance to
medicines, they can blossom during war or economic breakdowns.<br>
<br>
"No one's saying global warming is the whole picture here," said Dr.
Paul R. Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the
Global Environment at Harvard University. "But it is playing a role. As
climate changes, it's projected to play an even greater role."<br>
<br>
In a Beltsville, Md., laboratory filled with bathroom-sized aluminum
chambers, U.S. Department of Agriculture weed physiologist Lewis Ziska
is peering into the future of one of the key components of global
warming — rising carbon dioxide levels.<br>
<br>
CO2 levels have been on the rise since the dawn of the Industrial
Revolution more than 200 years ago. Today, they are at their highest
point in more than 650,000 years.<br>
<br>
In the tightly sealed chambers, Ziska re-created pre-industrial
conditions by turning down the concentration of carbon dioxide to 280
parts per million. In another box, he simulated the present with 370
parts per million. In a third box, he pumped up the carbon dioxide to
600 parts per million, the estimate for 2050.<br>
<br>
Much of Ziska's work has centered on ragweed, a noxious plant that sets
off allergy sufferers, such as Ziska himself. The weeds inside the
tanks suck up carbon dioxide. "It's like feeding a hungry teenager," he
said.<br>
<br>
Collecting yellow pollen in plastic bags fitted around the plants,
Ziska found that current conditions produced 131% more pollen than
pre-industrial conditions. Future conditions produced 320% more.<br>
<br>
"For us weed biologists, this is the worst of times and the best of times," he said.<br>
<br>
The impact of global warming has not been all bad. Researchers recently
found that rising temperatures have helped reduce some diseases related
to cold weather. One British study found that the number of children
infected with a cold-like virus known as respiratory syncytial virus
has been declining with warming temperatures.<br>
<br>
Combining meteorological data and emergency room admission rates from
1981 to 2004, physiologist Gavin Donaldson at University College London
found each increase of 1.8 degrees clipped three weeks off the end the
virus' winter season.<br>
<br>
"A small amount of warming can go a long way, as far as changing
disease transmission dynamics," said Dr. Jonathan Patz, director of
Global Environmental Health at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.<br>
<br>
Given the gradual pace of warming, there are also some chances to adapt.<br>
<br>
After Prince William Sound's <i>Vibrio </i>outbreak in 2004, the
state required more oyster testing in some areas. In the last two
years, there have been only four cases of <i>Vibrio </i>food poisoning.<br>
<br>
Life in Aguiar's remote inlet has largely returned to the way it was
before. This winter has been cold. Aguiar, a bear of a man with a
riotous beard, huddled inside the houseboat for warmth recently as the
temperature outside hovered around 20 degrees. The pale Northern Lights
pulsed over the snow-laced Chugach Mountains, and skins of ice grew on
the still water.<br>
<br>
Come summer, Aguiar will start sending oyster samples to the state.
When the temperature hits about 55 degrees, he'll drop his oyster
baskets 60 or 100 feet in the water for about 10 days to clear out the
bacteria.<br>
<br>
It's a solution he can live with in a warming world.<br>
<br>
"It's not all evil," he said. "I just don't like to see rapid change."<br><br><br>****************************************************************************<br><h2>HIS VIEW: Human effects on climate change are real
</h2>
<p style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;">
</p>
<p style="font-size: 12px; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;">By Ted Moffett</p>
<p style="font-size: 10px;">Friday, February 23, 2007 - Page Updated at 01:02:45 PM <span style="font-style: italic;">Moscow-Pullman Daily News</span><br></p>
<div style="float: left; padding-right: 12px; padding-bottom: 6px;" align="center">
<img src="http://www.dnews.com/images/20070223-45df575ae3e83.jpg" title="View Photo" style="border: 1px solid black; width: 75px;"><br><b><font size="2">Moffett</font></b></div>
<span style="font-size: 14px;">
<p>In
"The gloomy global warming gang is no fun," Ed Iverson attempts to
undermine the recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate
Change, ignoring hard science regarding historical, present and
projected CO2 levels, and implying the IPCC suppressed evidence
regarding the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age, mocking
efforts to mitigate human impacts on global warming.</p><p>A Science
magazine article (Nov. 25, 2005: Vol: 310), giving results of studying
atmospheric samples trapped in Antarctic ice cores dating back 650,000
years, reveals that current CO2 levels of 380 parts per million are 27
percent higher than the high point of 300 ppm during this period,
according to Thomas Stocker of the University of Bern in Switzerland.
This 650,000-year period covers numerous ice ages and interglacials.</p><p>Consider
that pre-industrial CO2 levels were 270-280 ppm, and that the current
increase to 380 ppm is almost entirely due to human activity. If CO2
output continues to increase due to human fossil-fuel use, as it
currently is, atmospheric CO2 levels will rise to around 500 ppm by
around 2100.</p><p>According to Professor of Earth and Planetary
Sciences Daniel Schrag, director of the Harvard University Center for
the Environment, who accepts the 500 ppm figure for the projected
human-caused CO2 increase in the next century, the last time
atmospheric CO2 levels were that high was 55 million years ago during
the Eocene, when ocean levels were hundreds of feet higher due to the
absence of polar ice caps.</p><p>I recently listened on C-SPAN as IPCC
scientists addressed questions from a member of the U.S. Congress in
hearings held Feb. 8, about the Medieval Warming Period and the Little
Ice age answered frankly and expertly. Iverson's claims that the
evidence of these recent climate periods is suppressed because this
evidence contradicts human induced climate change theory are unfounded.</p><p>On
June 14, 2000, in U.S. Congressional briefings on global climate
change, under the auspices of the U.S. Global Change Research Program,
Texas A&M University's Dr. Thomas J. Crowley presented evidence
that the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age can be
explained by variations in solar output and volcanic activity, but that
these variables do not explain late-20th-century warming.</p><p>We hear
variations of Iverson's skeptical theme that natural climate change
explains the current warming trend, not human impacts. But what if
natural climate change variables should be cooling our planet? Why is
this possibility not widely considered by the skeptics of human
-induced global warming?</p><p>The climate model theory put forward by
William F. Ruddiman, Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia,
in Scientific American, March 2005, focusing on the precession of the
equinoxes and solar output influencing methane and CO2 releases,
coordinated with ice ages and interglacials over hundreds of thousands
of years offers compelling evidence. But his findings suggest we should
be entering another cooling period. Human-induced variables that warm
the climate are overcoming natural climate change. In effect, human
activity is now stopping the next ice age, as we begin to induce
temperatures on Earth far above the moderate temperatures seen during
interglacial periods for tens of thousands of years.</p><p>Unless a
mitigating variable like an asteroid impact or large-scale volcanic
activity intervenes, we have merely decades to lower CO2 output in
absolute amounts, sequester atmospheric CO2, or block solar energy by
artificial means, or radical climate change will occur if atmospheric
CO2 levels reach 500 ppm or higher. The scientific evidence is
compelling. Iverson's anti-scientific skepticism, which is hampering
efforts to stop human impacts on global warming, is likely to be viewed
by history as not very laughable.</p><p>Ted Moffett has a bachelor of science degree in philosophy from the University of Idaho and lives near Troy.</p>********************************************************<br></span>
<span style="font-style: italic;">Moscow-Pullman Daily News</span><br><span style="font-size: 14px;"><p><span style="font-size: 14px;"><p><b>God Bless Ed Iverson</b></p><p>Ed
Iverson's latest "opinion" (Feb. 10-11) is a gem that should not go
unrewarded with blessings. The Daily News should entreat God for the
first blessing, for in Iverson we find an editor's dream: someone who
writes flamboyant, unsubstantiated claims — typically with a
vituperative prose — that must, as a consequence, sell an untold number
of newspapers. And the fact that it is only "His View," the paper is
apparently not liable for his misrepresentations of facts or routine
prevarications.</p><p>The entreating of blessings also should come from
teachers that read his column, for he saves them the tremendous amount
of work it often takes to find "real life" fundamental flaws in logic
to be used as classroom examples. Iverson's columns typically contain
enough of these flaws to fill a semester's notebook.</p><p>Take his
recent "opinion" on global warming. He commits his first of several
genetic fallacies — the fallacy of attacking advocates of arguments,
not the arguments themselves — in the very first sentence where he
lumps together as a cult those who are convinced that warming is taking
place.</p><p>The illogic is repeated with more vituperative prose:
"Greenhouse Gas Gang" and their "priesthood (in this case, socialist
European scientists)." Added to the genetic fallacy of ad hominem
attack is an inability to understand data.</p><p>The Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change's recent assessment, to which Iverson obliquely
refers, is the product of 2,500 scientists working across the globe and
was signed by more than 100 countries. It would be difficult to imagine
that all these scientists and countries are, as Iverson claims,
socialist.</p><p>Iverson's reluctance to look at empirical data also
leads him to falsely conclude that "much of the populace remains
stubbornly unconvinced" when 85 percent of the public express belief in
climate warming in scientific opinion polls.</p><p>The fallacies march on. But suffice it to conclude with a final blessing for Iverson.</p><p><b>Gene Rosa,</b> Moscow</p><p>**************************************************************
</p><p> <span style="font-style: italic;">Moscow-Pullman Daily News</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 14px;"><p><b>Point of column was elusive</b></p><p>It
was harder than usual to find a point in Ed Iverson's opinion piece of
Feb. 10 & 11, in which he seemed to argue that there is no global
warming, but if there were, it wouldn't have anything to do with human
activity. Then he concludes that there is, OK, global warming, but it
is a good thing.</p><p>Never mind the witless and apparently clueless
slams at the researchers who prepared the International Panel on
Climate Change's recent report ("socialist European scientists"). Never
mind the sloppy writing.</p><p>There are just two questions I would
like Iverson to answer. First, what is the mechanism behind his
supposed "natural cycle?" The global energy balance is changing; what
is the cause for it, natural or otherwise? Will Iverson's suspicions
about science extend to asserting there are effects for which there are
no causes?</p><p>Second, there is no climatological theory in which
carbon dioxide increase does not drive temperature. How, if the current
temperature rise is wholly natural, can the absence of effect from the
increase in carbon dioxide be explained? (Especially since the
historical rises in temperature he cites were roughly 10 times slower
than the one we are currently witnessing.)</p><p>If a 35-percent
increase in the second most important greenhouse gas is not affecting
the global temperature, why isn't it, Iverson?</p><p><b>Keith Bromley,</b> Moscow</p><p>*********************************************</p><p> <span style="font-style: italic;">Moscow-Pullman Daily News</span></p></span>
<span style="font-size: 14px;">
<p><b>Sound scientific perspective</b>
</p><p>Ed Iverson raised some interesting questions on global climate
change in his weekend column (Opinion, Feb. 10 & 11). He discussed
some historical changes in climate (the "Medieval warming" of about
1,000 years ago and the "Little Ice Age" of the 15th to 19th centuries)
and wondered whether they are pertinent to the climate changes being
discussed today. He feels these two periods have been neglected in
today's discussions of global climate change. </p><p>
</p><p>Paleoclimatologists have not neglected these two periods. They
have concluded that this interesting "Medieval warming" was only a
regional, not a global, phenomenon. Further, the warming estimated for
this period was less than the warming already measured in the past few
decades. This accounts for the apparent neglect of this period in
current climate discussions.
</p><p>
</p><p>The Little Ice Age of a few hundred years ago, while truly a
cooler period, was nowhere near as great a departure from the long-term
estimated average as the changes measured now. Current warming is much
more than simply a rebound from this cooler period.
</p><p>
</p><p>No, let's not neglect history; but we should put it into a sound
scientific perspective. The changes seen in these two periods
(successes and failures of various crops, etc.) had large effects on
people in those times. However, the effects of climate change in the
near future are likely to be more severe. Already small changes in
average temperatures have had noticeable effects. For example, the
lifecycle of a widespread insect pest (conifer bark beetles) has
changed, allowing it to inflict greater damage. In another example, the
severity of fire seasons has increased. Denial that climate change has
arrived will result in a lack of mitigating responses. This will be a
pathetic legacy to leave for our children.
</p><p><b>Steve Flint,</b> Moscow <br></p>*******************************************</span></p><p> <span style="font-style: italic;">Moscow-Pullman Daily News</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 14px;"><p><b>Can't deny global warming
</b></p><p>A
big basketball weekend in Moscow/Pullman and the Daily News lets Eddie
out of the attic and he produces another of his ill-informed rants …
this time about global warming (Opinion, Feb. 10-11).</p><p>Way back in
1988 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was founded. Its
first (cautious) report was issued in 1990 after being vetted by
thousands of scientists, as well as 90-some participating governments
(including the United States). Its most recent report (issued last week
after going through the same process) put the likelihood that we humans
are the cause of global warming (which is a given from the evidence) at
about 90 percent. At this point, as Ellen Goodman has noted, global
warming deniers are on a par with Holocaust deniers.</p><p>The problem
with some of us seems to be that we refuse, individually and
collectively, to take responsibility and assume that our grandchildren
will be able to fix things (if they're lucky).</p><p>So now Eddie
complains about the "socialist European scientists" in the global
warming gang. I guess it's lucky for them that librarians from small
evangelical schools aren't in power, or all those bad scientists would
have to be burned at the stake.</p><p>The same thing cropped up when
Galileo (gosh, another one of those pesky European scientists) figured
out that the Earth revolved around the sun (it does Eddie) and was
brought up on heresy charges by the ruling ecclesiastics. He recanted
and avoided the stake but to paraphrase Galileo (who is said to have
muttered something like this as he left the court), "Yet … it is
warming up."</p><p><b>Ross Coates,</b> Moscow</p><p>**************************************************</p><p> <span style="font-style: italic;">Moscow-Pullman Daily News</span></p><p><b>A serious threat</b></p><p>Many
people in our community are asking serious questions about global
warming. As a professional scientist, I'd like to respectfully offer a
few answers.</p><p>n Who wrote the report on global warming that has
been so much in the news recently? The report was published by the U.N.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change under the auspices of the
World Meteorological Organization. It took five years of research by
600 scientists from all continents. A brief 18-page summary
(<a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf</a>) lists 303 writers and editors from 40
countries (<a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/activity/wg1authors.pdf" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">www.ipcc.ch/activity/wg1authors.pdf</a>). Most of the report's
authors are Americans (62), followed by scientists from the United
Kingdom (25). Already 113 world governments — including the United
States — signed off on the report's conclusion.</p><p>n Why can't the
scientists just tell me "yes or no" with absolute certainty, instead of
merely giving "90 percent probability" that global warming is caused by
humans? The answer is that science never deals with absolute truths.
Every scientific theory is in a way provisional, subject to future
refinement. For example, an apple falling from the tree will always
fall downward, and yet scientists still talk about Newton's "theory of
gravitation," instead of "fact of gravitation." Clearly, the word
theory has a different meaning in science, in comparison with everyday
speech.</p><p>n How can there be global warming when it is so cold this
week in upstate New York? This has to do with the difference between
weather and climate. Weather can be observed from day to day, but the
climate changes much more slowly. In fact, scientists predict that an
overall warming of the entire planet will be accompanied by extreme
weather in particular locations, including cold snaps and torrential
rains.</p><p>Global warming is a serious threat. We must learn about it as much as we can, the sooner the better.</p><p><b>Petr Kuzmic,</b> Pullman</p></span><span style="font-size: 14px;"><p>*******************************************************************************
</p><p> <span style="font-style: italic;">Moscow-Pullman Daily News</span></p></span><span style="font-size: 14px;"><p><span style="font-size: 14px;"><p><b>Getting the facts straight</b></p><p>Some
of us need to write back to Ed Iverson regarding his misleading opinion
piece about global warming (Opinion, Feb. 10 & 11). Iverson has
perpetrated falsehoods.</p><p>* There is no cabal of socialist European
scientists who preside over global warming research and its
interpretation. And there is no gang. Stop making up things.</p><p>*
According to surveys, the American people do not doubt the reality of
global warming to the extent you imply. Just political and religious
conservatives doubt it.</p><p>* The examples cited about warming and
cooling episodes in the past 1,000 years are not often discussed
because they don't mean much. On the scales required for global warming
and cooling, 300 years is a blip of nothing. Try 30,000 or 300,000 or
3,000,000 years.</p><p>* The greenhouse effect is as old as the Earth
itself. What matters are not periodic warming and cooling, but the
rates of change. The rate is higher now than it ever has been.
Adaptation and co-evolution take more time than the current rate of
change allows for many species, probably including ours. Other species
matter because we cannot live alone.</p><p>* What are conservatives
afraid of here? That accepting the reality of anthropogenic global
warming means one also has to accept the reality of evolution?
Logically, one does. And logically, it certainly means that the Earth
is more than 6,000 years old.</p><p>* We all have a right to our own
beliefs, but we do not have a right to our own science. You can take
science or leave it but, unlike a cafeteria, you cannot pick and
choose. In this case, to doubt the reality of global warming and the
human contribution to it, is to doubt the reality of carbon chemistry.
That would be a preposterous conclusion for a carbon-based life form.</p><p><b>Lee Freese,</b> Pullman</p><p>***********************************************************</p></span><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">
<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Moscow-Pullman Daily News</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: 14px;"><p><br></p><p><span style="font-size: 14px;"><p><b>Iverson's parallel universe
</b></p><p>If
only it were possible to bodily transfer Ed Iverson into a parallel
universe (Oh, happy thought) in which no actions are taken to combat
the global warming that he pooh-poohed recently (Opinion, Feb. 10 &
11). There he could bask in its effects while the rest of us mere
mortals focus our efforts on trying to save our precious world. Yes,
Ed, in recorded history there have been and will continue to be secular
changes in the Earth's climate on a scale of hundreds or thousands of
years, but the present changes within the past 50 to 100 years can be
incontrovertibly linked to human activity.</p><p>Hopefully, there is still time to do something about it - or is there?</p><p>Achim
Steiner,director of the U.N. Environmental Program, one of the sponsors
of the International Panel on Climate Change, recently declared
"February 2nd will be remembered as the date when question marks were
removed on whether climate change has anything to do with human
activity - the moment when attention will shift to what on earth are we
going to do about it." (New Scientist, Feb. 10-16,2007,p. 3).</p><p>Data
from Antarctic ice cores clearly show that atmospheric levels of CO2
and methane (CH4 ) have remained fairly constant for the past 10,000
years, but have risen sharply within the past 100 years as a result of
human activity. I am happy to put my faith in the work of our
atmospheric scientists, whom Ed labels the "greenhouse gang."</p><p>Ed is welcome in his parallel universe to continue braying and praying to his own GGG, aka greenhouse gas gods.</p><p><b>Maurice Windsor, </b>
Pullman</p></span></p></span></p><p>-- <br></p></span></p></span></p></span><br><br>Juanita Flores<br>Advocate for the Truth from Jesus