Global warming?

[Pico and ME]

Ive been keeping ours at 65. There was some grumbling about it at first, but now everyone seems accustomed to it. And the boys still run around in short sleeves and shorts!?! I do push it up to 70 on occasion when I have a lot of work to do around the house...I cant function very well when I'm chilled and doing housework when I'm all layered up is difficult.

[TheMercenary]

Global warming running rampant.

http://www.accuweather.com/news-top-...h=11&year=2008

[Pico and ME]

They're forcasting a mild winter this year for my neck of the woods.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Pico and ME

They're forcasting a mild winter this year for my neck of the woods.

"The rest of the 48 contiguous states have equal chances of being warmer or cooler than normal, the forecast said."

Sounds like shifting not warming to me.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Pico and ME

Ive been keeping ours at 65. There was some grumbling about it at first, but now everyone seems accustomed to it. And the boys still run around in short sleeves and shorts!?! I do push it up to 70 on occasion when I have a lot of work to do around the house...I cant function very well when I'm chilled and doing housework when I'm all layered up is difficult.

What? You drop it to 65 when you're relaxing and up to 70 when you're working/active. Shouldn't that work the other way 'round?

[TheMercenary]

We have two thermostats, one for the up stairs, 3 large rooms and a full bath, one for the rest of the house. They are programable and we have ours go down when people are expected not to be there, i.e. kids off to school, week days, higher at waking hours of the night, down at sleeping hours. The programable things have allowed a lot of people to save a bunch of money. If you don't have one, you should.

[Pico and ME]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

What? You drop it to 65 when you're relaxing and up to 70 when you're working/active. Shouldn't that work the other way 'round?

Lol, its true though. I try to warm the house up bit before I start cleaning so that I will be comfortable enough to take off all the layers and move around.

[jinx]

We keep ours in the low 60's and have a couple little elec fire hazards going.

[henry quirk]

http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemans.../38574742.html

[richlevy]

From here

I guess we'll be finding out soon if it's all junk science. Of course, if they're wrong, and global warming is a hoax, and we attempt to stop it, we will have wasted resources. If they're right, and we don't try to do anything about it, we are seriously f****ed.

It's sort of like staying in a building when the fire alarm goes off, figuring that there's a good chance it's a false alarm.

Scientists: Pace of Climate Change Exceeds Estimates


CHICAGO, Feb. 14 -- The pace of global warming is likely to be much faster than recent predictions, because industrial greenhouse gas emissions have increased more quickly than expected and higher temperatures are triggering self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms in global ecosystems, scientists said Saturday.
"We are basically looking now at a future climate that's beyond anything we've considered seriously in climate model simulations," Christopher Field, founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

[TheMercenary]

And another person of science throws his opinion into the pool.

Former astronaut speaks out on global warming

By Associated Press | Sunday, February 15, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Around the Nation
SANTA FE, N.M. - Former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, who walked on the moon and once served New Mexico in the U.S. Senate, doesn’t believe that humans are causing global warming.

"I don’t think the human effect is significant compared to the natural effect," said Schmitt, who is among 70 skeptics scheduled to speak next month at the International Conference on Climate Change in New York.

Schmitt contends that scientists "are being intimidated" if they disagree with the idea that burning fossil fuels has increased carbon dioxide levels, temperatures and sea levels.

"They’ve seen too many of their colleagues lose grant funding when they haven’t gone along with the so-called political consensus that we’re in a human-caused global warming," Schmitt said.

Dan Williams, publisher with the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, which is hosting the climate change conference, said he invited Schmitt after reading about his resignation from The Planetary Society, a nonprofit dedicated to space exploration.

Schmitt resigned after the group blamed global warming on human activity. In his resignation letter, the 74-year-old geologist argued that the "global warming scare is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making."

Williams said Heartland is skeptical about the crisis that people are proclaiming in global warming.

"Not that the planet hasn’t warmed. We know it has or we’d all still be in the Ice Age," he said. "But it has not reached a crisis proportion and, even among us skeptics, there’s disagreement about how much man has been responsible for that warming."

Schmitt said historical documents indicate average temperatures have risen by 1 degree per century since around 1400 A.D., and the rise in carbon dioxide is because of the temperature rise.

Schmitt also said geological evidence indicates changes in sea level have been going on for thousands of years. He said smaller changes are related to changes in the elevation of land masses — for example, the Great Lakes are rising because the earth’s crust is rebounding from being depressed by glaciers.

Schmitt, who grew up in Silver City and now lives in Albuquerque, has a science degree from the California Institute of Technology. He also studied geology at the University of Oslo in Norway and took a doctorate in geology from Harvard University in 1964.

In 1972, he was one of the last men to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 17 mission.

Schmitt said he’s heartened that the upcoming conference is made up of scientists who haven’t been manipulated by politics.

Of the global warming debate, he said: "It’s one of the few times you’ve seen a sizable portion of scientists who ought to be objective take a political position and it’s coloring their objectivity."

http://news.bostonherald.com/news/na...27&format=text

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by henry quirk

http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemans.../38574742.html

The article made some interesting points, seemingly valid, but since they were not footnoted or referenced it was hard to give them to much weight.

[richlevy]

Well Merc, it does appear that the Defense Department shares your skepticism.

12-06-2008

WASHINGTON - A new US military report has come under scrutiny for asserting that the scientific data on what is causing global warming is "contradictory" - a position one leading specialist said indicates the government still hasn't fully embraced the urgency of climate change.

The report, titled Joint Operating Environment 2008, states that "the impact of global warming and its potential to cause natural disasters and other harmful phenomena such as rising sea levels has become a prominent - and controversial - national and international concern. Some argue that there will be more and greater storms and natural disasters, others that there will be fewer."
It adds: "In many respects, scientific conclusions about the causes and potential effects of global warming are contradictory."

Sharon Burke, a former Pentagon and State Department official who is now a specialist at the Center for a New American Security, said the report was factually "wrong" and "out of line," saying that there is a wide consensus that human activity, namely the production of greenhouse gases, is responsible for global warming.
Other specialists had similar reactions when they read the report.
"It's very wrong," said Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose work was cited in the military report. "The jury is not out" on what is causing global warming, he added. "I don't know where that statement came from, but it's pretty bizarre."

[henry quirk]

'The article made some interesting points, seemingly valid, but since they were not footnoted or referenced it was hard to give them to much weight.'

agreed: hence the 'make of this what you will...' caveat

[classicman]

Increased Number Think Global Warming Is “Exaggerated”

PRINCETON, NJ -- Although a majority of Americans believe the seriousness of global warming is either correctly portrayed in the news or underestimated, a record-high 41% now say it is exaggerated. This represents the highest level of public skepticism about mainstream reporting on global warming seen in more than a decade of Gallup polling on the subject.
Bottom Line

Americans generally believe global warming is real. That sets the U.S. public apart from the global-warming skeptics who assembled this week in New York City to try to debunk the science behind climate change. At the same time, with only 34% of Americans saying they worry "a great deal" about the problem, most Americans do not view the issue in the same dire terms as the many prominent leaders advancing global warming as an issue.

Got that right!

Actually the article is pretty good. Shows some long term info.