Do you see another canary dying, or a little boy crying wolf?

Question

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080501/full/news.2008.795.html

It's sort of like do you see the pretty young woman or ugly old woman kind of thing.

Answer 1

Pah, that article was written for scientists in a science magazine. That's totally biased. If it doesn't appear on Fox news then it is all liberal bias. It's time to take our country back from the elitists who think that going to collidge makes them smarter then me!

Answer 2

global warming is a hoax

Answer 3

I see yourself being evermore thankful that you did not take that bet.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080506/ap_o...

http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/NASA_Cl...

.

.

Answer 4

Crying wolf.

If the Earth has a fever, as former Vice President Al Gore suggests, it's not showing signs of it.

According to Climateaudit.org's Steve McIntyre, global sea ice has actually increased.

"On a global basis, world sea ice in April 2008 reached levels that were ‘unprecedented' for the month of April in over 25 years," Steve McIntyre wrote on Climateaudit.org on May 4. "Levels are the third highest (for April) since the commencement of records in 1979, exceeded only by levels in 1979 and 1982."

That data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) suggests the effects of global warming aren't as dire as some media reports would have you believe. A segment on ABC's March 28 "Good Morning America" warned melting sea ice is endangering the global warming alarmists' favorite mascot, the polar bear.

Answer 5

Considering the tidal wave of evidence accumulated over the last century, the evidence we can see every day with our own eyes;

to continue to question the science, the science that says we are in very serious trouble, in the name of political demagoguery;

is getting to be an untenable position, to the point of being morally questionable, to say the least.

edit:

E.O. Wilson said "We will look back from the end of the 21st century with a profound sense of loss and regret..."

I'm already looking back from the end of the 20th century with a profound sense of loss and regret.

The canary is dead, just nobody realizes it yet.

Answer 6

There's evidence to suggest that similar processes happened at the time of the Perrmian-Triassic Extinction:

"In the ocean, warmer temperatures reached a depth of about 4,000 meters, interfering with the normal circulation process in which colder surface water descends, taking oxygen and nutrients deep into the ocean.

As a result, ocean waters had little oxygen, proving deadly to marine life. Because marine organisms no longer removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the rate of warming accelerated."

http://usinfo.state.gov/gi/Archive/2005/...

The canaries were James Hansen's reports in the late 1980s, when few people listened.  The momentum from his warnings died before developing countries got on board, and our opportunity to respond appears to have been missed.

Canaries are now irrelevent; the mine is caving in, and there isn't a damned thing we can do about it while China isn't leading the way:

"The official treaty to curb greenhouse-gas emissions hasn't gone into effect yet and already three countries are planning to build nearly 850 new coal-fired plants, which would pump up to five times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the Kyoto Protocol aims to reduce.

China is the dominant player. The country is on track to add 562 coal-fired plants - nearly half the world total of plants expected to come online in the next eight years."

http://www.rense.com/general61/jyoto.htm

---

jim z and On Target -

Apparently global warming is a figment of Shell Oil's imagination, not Chicken Little:

http://www.nrdc.org/bushrecord/articles/...

"Pentagon officials warn that abrupt climate change over the next 20 years could throw the world into a state of anarchy -- dwarfing the current threat of terrorism.  In this doomsday scenario, large-scale droughts, famine brought on by food shortages and reduced energy supplies could cause riots around the globe that could culminate in nuclear warfare."

The report wasn't penned by members of the "Chicken Little sky-is-falling crowd" (as Republican leaders like to call global- warming activists), but by Peter Schwartz, former head of planning for Shell Oil and sometime CIA consultant, and Doug Randall of the Global Business Network, a California think tank.

http://www.grist.org/news/muck/2004/02/2...

By the way, as someone pointed out yesterday, that Pentagon report was from 2004.  It forecasted food riots as soon as 2020; they're 12 years early.  As reported yesterday:

Hundreds of shops and restaurants in southern Mogadishu closed for fear of looting. At least four other people were wounded in the violence, witnesses said.

The price of rice and other staples has risen more than 40 percent since mid-2007, leading to protests and riots in other nations, including Haiti, Egypt, Cameroon and Burkina Faso.

The Asian Development Bank said Monday that a billion poor people in Asia need food aid to help cope with the skyrocketing prices.

http://www.sunherald.com/311/story/53608...

Haiti's government falls after food riots

http://www.reuters.com/article/homepageC...

The American military won't even practice putting down American riots until this summer.

http://www.upi.com/International_Securit...

Fortunately we can now use Canadian troops to put down U.S. riots as well:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?f...

In a ceremony that received virtually no attention in the American media, the United States and Canada signed a military agreement Feb. 14 allowing the armed forces from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a domestic civil emergency

Gee... what do they see coming?

Answer 7

The CO2 growth rate over the past decade was about twice as fast as that found in the 1960s. Yet, all four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year(2007-2008), global temperatures have dropped precipitously.... an average of .70 degrees Cel.

How is is possible for the carbon dioxide rate to double over a decade and earth's temperature go down? Answer, because man made global warming is a hoax. The earth has warmed some 16 degrees F since the last ice age...before the internal combustion engine.  It was not caused by La Nina as some scientists are trying to say now...If that is the case, why was El Nino not part of the warming of the 1990's?

So what caused such GIGANTIC glaciers to melt thousands of years ago? Again, the answer is not man...it is natural temperature changes that the have ALWAYS occurred. From 1940-1974 an unprecedented amount of CO2 was released into the air(especially as plants were converted for wartime use)....yet the earth cooled for 34 years!

The earth has lost all the warming from 1974-1998 in the last ten years. I emailed a noted climatologist and asked him how this could be possible. He said ten years was not enough of a trend...What? After all the hype about the warming in the 1990's?

One thing these scientists are correct about...the debate is over. The earth has always heated and cooled several degrees. Case Closed.

Answer 8

AGW is a "cry wolf "story , the reason being that the predictions are all over the place and since you can only have one outcome , you are left with a whole lot of people who cried wolf. To "cry wolf" can be very profitable or even help you to get grant funding for research. Lets say you need funding for your Southeastern U.S. squirrel research....Well , when filling out your grant application , the two words you cant  forget to include are GLOBAL WARMING . Your chances are now pretty good that your research will be funded. While i am at it..... Once your squirrel  

study is done it gets lumped into the "consensus" on global warming , even though it was an impact study and had nothing to do with the (bad) science behind AGW theory. You dare not speak out against that though , you might see

that your next grant application gets denied.

Answer 9

Considering the importance of the ocean for life on the planet, I'd think the canary in the coal mine is the best analogy.  There are dead zones, but there is an association between run-off and pollution in some areas and low oxygen.  Global warming may be exacerbating the problem.  Is it better to be cautious in disrupting these systems, or should we just throw caution to the wind until the last "skeptic" is satisfied.  Skeptic is in quotes because many of them don't have the background or education to make rational judgments about scientific data, but ignore that fact.

Answer 10

i sometimes wish i was a bit more ignorant of how interconnected things are, of the historical precedents (eek! permian extinction!) so i could think things like this were not serious warning signs.

it took me ages to see the old lady!

Answer 11

The canary is a much more apt analogy, since this is a predicted negative result of global warming.  If it were not a predicted result and we didn't know why it was happening and people were blaming global warming, then you could argue it's more like the boy crying wolf.

The 'skeptic' argument that 'these changes are normal' is bogus because the current warming is not normal, it's anthropogenic.

Answer 12

Jim Z said it best.  I also see another chicken little screaming about the sky that is supposedly falling.  Any credibility that the scientific community had, has been destroyed by media sources and the ease with which they let politics apparently influence them.  Now when I read anything that supposedly comes from the scientific community I have to read and re read whatever is reported in an attempt at really seeing what the information is saying.  It really is sickening.

Answer 13

I see the little chickens (chicken little) crying the sky is falling and lots of people freaking out about it.  I notice the link you provided is full of anecdotal claims without any historical comparison.  For example, there is no study on the dissolved oxygen in the oceans over an extended time period to provide useful information.  An alarmist will see effects of temperature rise and freak out.  An alarmist will see effects of increased greenhouse gases and freak out.  The truth is, changes in temperature and CO2 levels are normal and those changes do have consequences.  To point out a consequence of warming and suggest that justifies their alarm-ism is nothing more than hysterics in my opinion.