Global Warming and Other Fortune Telling

Our government forecasters can't forecast weather a year ahead to spot hurricanes.

"Cap and Trade" was rammed barely through the U. S. House of Representatives: Last week, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (the 'Cap and Trade Energy Bill'), or H.R. 2454, was 946 pages long. Over the weekend, it ballooned to 1,201 pages with no explanation for how or why. Then on the day of the vote, Pelosi's House added another 255 pages to the bill at 3:00 AM (EST) and limited debate to three hours before passing this massive "national energy tax". Did each Member of the House read and carefully analyze the bill? Not a chance. Even so, myraid Democrats chose not to go along and only 8 Republicans boarded the Democratic ship of fools. Be clear: this has nothing to do with "global warming" and all about power...raw power of Democrats over others: us.

A recent (May 2009) Associated Press article stated that because of unusual circumstances, the government projections of when minorities will become the majority were wrong. By as much as a decade to more than three decades from now, so says David Waddington, the Census Bureau chief of projections. Whatever figures it projected are now subject to revision. So much for fortune telling. Global warming projections are just that. Projections by computers from keyboard inputs fingered in by humans. And I'd guess mostly humans who could be registered Democrats! And out a century. Get real, global warming is a method by which liberals gain and retain power over others. To many it has become an ineluctable belief in the end of civilization. Thomas Malthus thought the same thing. He was dead wrong! So are they. But who'll know, it's out a century and power is now! And see my post about a world policeman or lack thereof, which says that since there's no world policeman to keep nuclear weaponry and delivery systems under control a nuc dropped on, say, Israel would hasten global warming rapidly. Why has America neutered itself?


Well, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is now fiction. Or at least only on-line. I thought the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wasn't supposed to print fiction. The article "Less water, more heat forecast for state" is nothing but fiction. I mean, do you really think anyone can forecast 90 years ahead about anything? Anything? The national weather forecast can't even forecast hurricanes a year ahead. Give me a break, the only way you'd print this piece of garbage is to influence the spending of our tax dollars (my money) on programs to counteract these computer programs developed by liberals with agendas. Ladies and gentlemen, we are in the worst economic times in twenty years and we should be looking ways to save money not throw it away on hallucinations.

Superamerican

The article about which I write (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Wednesday, February 11, 2009, Front Page):


Less water, more heat forecast for state

Report details climate change in Washington
By ROBERT McCLUREP-I REPORTER
Fewer cherries and apples -- but possibly more wheat.
More summer days when streams grow dangerously warm for salmon -- and worse winter floods flushing away or burying their eggs.
More people dying in King County from heat stress. Less drinking water in the summer. A quadrupling of the acreage burned statewide in summer wildfires.
But more electricity to heat our homes in the winter.
Those are a few of the effects projected for Washington by the first comprehensive look at how climate change is likely to affect the state by the end of the century.
Released early Wednesday, the study was ordered by the Legislature and carried out by 64 scientists, many affiliated with the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington.
"This is the most detailed description of the effects of future climate change that we've ever had for any of the Northwest states," said Philip Mote, a report author and the outgoing Washington state climatologist.
On Thursday, the scientists plan to huddle with state officials to brief them on actions that can be taken to prepare for climate change and -- they hope -- blunt its worst effects. Many of the impacts outlined in the new report assume continued use of fuels whose emissions trap heat in the atmosphere. Those effects could at least theoretically be lessened through technological innovations or reduced fuel use.
The new study delves into some areas not researched thoroughly for Washington in the past: How a changing climate will affect agriculture, human health and the systems that carry away rainwater to prevent flooding.
"There's more work to do, but this is a first step," said Jeremy Littell, a forest ecologist who helped organize the report.
The picture is not uniformly grim. For instance, because winter storms are likely to bring more rain and less snow, we should see higher stream flows in the winter. That means we can make more hydropower -- a plus, since winter heating sometimes requires importing electricity.
But the flip side of that coin is that there will be less snow left around in the summer -- when we count on it to melt slowly, recharging reservoirs and dropping stream temperatures enough to keep salmon healthy. Plus, more people will be cranking up the air conditioning in the summer -- the very time Northwesterners now profit by selling the juice to sweltering Californians.
That kind of if-then-but scenario is played out in a number of sections of the report. For example, increased carbon dioxide, or CO2, and the increased productivity that comes with warmth should help forests grow more vigorously. On the other hand, the drier, hotter climate is likely to mean more fires -- not to mention increasing the range of the forest-shredding mountain pine beetle.
And it looks like overall, forests will grow better in the early decades of the century, as CO2 increases, but then show worse growth as the climate dries and warms, particularly in Eastern Washington. There are likely to be wide variations among sections of the state, though.
"It's one of those issues that, it very much depends on where you look," Littell said. "When you take it statewide, that's what we're looking at."
The report, titled "The Washington Climate Change Impacts Assessment," pulls back from previous projections on whether we're likely to see more of the intense winter storms that caused flooding the past three years.
That's because when scientists examined whether intense downpours had increased over the last few decades, they saw little difference. However, the analysis did not include the storms that sparked state-of-emergency declarations the last three years. Also, two computer-based projections showed increases in intense storms are likely -- but disagreed on how much, and where, they are likely to occur.
So while on balance scientists still expect more of these cats-and-dogs downpours, they're not nearly as confident about that as, say, their projection that wildfires will increase from burning an average of 425,000 acres annually to 800,000 in the 2020s and 2 million in the 2080s.
Or look at agriculture. Dryland wheat farming is likely to benefit, because a major climate-warming gas is carbon dioxide, which helps plants grow more vigorously. That same CO2 benefit holds true for cherries and apples, but because the warming stands to exacerbate water shortages in the Yakima Valley, where many are grown, overall the state is likely to see lower yields.
For salmon, the picture is bleak -- but it depends on the species and its location.
"The stream conditions in the summertime are just looking to be deteriorating," said Nathan Mantua, a fish researcher who helped produce the report. "It's hard to see it any other way."
For sockeye and chinook that return to spawn in the summer, that could mean big trouble. Currently they seek deep water or other spots that stay cold longest. But some of those are likely to disappear as temperatures increase. And even fish that make it to cold water refuges may not be able to leave in time to swim to their spawning grounds before exhausting themselves and dying, Mantua said.
We already saw an example of the kind of thing that's likely in the extremely hot summer of 2004, Mantua said. Workers counted some 300,000 sockeye salmon swimming past the Ballard Locks on their way to Lake Washington. Biologists estimated only 100,000 made it to the spawning grounds. Maybe 20,000 or so got caught by anglers, Mantua said. The remainder presumably died, probably because of extremely warm temperatures in the Lake Washington Ship Canal.
Coho and steelhead are also likely to be affected, but at the other end of their lives, when they spend summers in fresh water before heading to sea.
On the other hand, pink salmon, chum salmon and fall-returning chinook aren't likely to be affected very much, because they're out at sea in the summer.
Human health is also likely to be affected. And while the picture in Washington may not be as dire as some other regions, "Climate change in Washington state will likely lead to larger numbers of heat-related deaths," the report says. "The greater Seattle area in particular can expect substantial mortality during future heat events due to the combination of hotter summer and population growth."
At the meeting Thursday to discuss courses of action, officials hope to begin sketching out steps to prevent as much damage as possible.
"Adapting to climate change must be seen as a continuous series of decisions and activities undertaken by individuals, groups, and governments rather than a one-time activity," the report says.
P-I reporter Robert McClure can be reached at 206-448-8092 or robertmcclure@seattlepi.com. Read his blog on the environment at datelineearth.com.