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Southern Ocean saturated with CO2
May 17, 2007

The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is so loaded with carbon dioxide that it can barely absorb any more, so more of the gas will stay in the atmosphere to warm up the planet, scientists reported Thursday.

Human activity is the main culprit, said researcher Corinne Le Quere, who called the finding very alarming.

The phenomenon wasn't expected to be apparent for decades, Le Quere said in a telephone interview from the University of East Anglia in Britain.

"We thought we would be able to detect these only the second half of this century, say 2050 or so," she said. But data from 1981 through 2004 show the sink is already full of carbon dioxide. "So I find this really quite alarming."

The Southern Ocean is one of the world's biggest reservoirs of carbon, known as a carbon sink. When carbon is in a sink -- whether it's an ocean or a forest, both of which can lock up carbon dioxide -- it stays out of the atmosphere and does not contribute to global warming.

The new research, published in the latest edition of the journal Science, indicates that the Southern Ocean has been saturated with carbon dioxide at least since the 1980s.

This is significant because the Southern Ocean accounts for 15 percent of the global carbon sink, Le Quere said.

Increased winds over the last half-century are to blame for the change, Le Quere said. These winds blend the carbon dioxide throughout the Southern Ocean, mixing the naturally occurring carbon that usually stays deep down with the human-caused carbon.

When natural carbon is brought up to the surface by the winds, it is harder for the Southern Ocean to accommodate more human-generated carbon, which comes from factories, coal-fired power plants and petroleum-powered motor vehicle exhaust.

The winds themselves are caused by two separate human factors.

First, the human-spawned ozone depletion in the upper atmosphere over the Southern Ocean has created large changes in temperature throughout the atmosphere, Le Quere said.

Second, the uneven nature of global warming has produced higher temperatures in the northern parts of the world than in the south, which has also made the winds accelerate in the Southern Ocean.

"Since the beginning of the industrial revolution the world's oceans have absorbed about a quarter of the 500 gigatons of carbon emitted into the atmosphere by humans," Chris Rapley of the British Antarctic Survey said in a statement.

"The possibility that in a warmer world the Southern Ocean -- the strongest ocean sink -- is weakening is a cause for concern," Rapley said.

Another sign of warming in the Antarctic was reported Tuesday by NASA, which found vast areas of snow melted on the southern continent in 2005 in a process that may accelerate invisible melting deep beneath the surface.

Southern Ocean saturated with CO2 (http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/05/17/climate.ocean.reut/index.html)

Thank goodness for the internet. Without it, we would be more prone to believe every fly-by-night theory out there. At least we are able to access differing (and more truthful) opinions.

Yes, truth like these:

GLOBAL WARMING ON MARS reported in Canadian National Post, 26 Jan 2007 and
National Geographic News, 28 Feb 2007. Data and images from the Mars Global
Surveyor and Mars Odyssey have revealed that Mars is undergoing a period of
warming and its polar ice caps are melting. The conventional theory on
variations in temperature on Mars is that they are due to aberrations in its
orbit and rotation. Mars does not have a large moon to stabilise its movements,
as the earth does. However, Russian Scientist Habibullo Abdussamatov, of Pulkovo
Astronomical Observatory, St. Petersburg, has studied variations in the sun's
heat and claims there is a pattern that can account for most of the climate
variation on both Mars and Earth. He has studied changes in the sun's irradiance
and claims that both Mars and Earth are going through a warm period due to
changes in the sun's heat. Abdussamatov commented, "Man-made greenhouse warming
has made a small contribution to the warming seen on Earth in recent years, but
it cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance". He went on to explain,
"The solar irradiance began to drop in the 1990s, and a minimum will be reached
by approximately 2040. It will cause a steep cooling of the climate on Earth in
15 to 20 years."



The unpopular punch line is that if Abdussamatov is correct, climate
change should not be blamed on human activity as fast cars and flatulent cows
can have no possible influence on Mars climate. Recent media reports have
claimed that global warming is "all our fault,"  but human activity cannot be blamed for climate change on Mars.
Abdussamatov has nailed his colors to the wall with his "steep cooling"
prediction, so it will be interesting to see if it is correct in 15 to 20 years.
In the meantime his work reminds us that there are far more powerful forces at
work in and on the world than human activity, and we would remind all to put
your trust in the One who is more powerful than all the powerful forces in the
Universe: i.e. the One who made it - the Lord Jesus Christ.

______________________

Wx Expert: People Not To Blame For Global Warming

Dr.William Gray is widely respected in the scientific community. He is a professor in the department of atmospheric science at Colorado State University and says it's much too early to blame people for global warming.

CBS-4's Shomari Stone had a chance to talk to Dr. Gray at the Governor's Hurricane Conference in Fort Lauderdale and asked him if he believes humans are the cause for global warming.

"I think this is a natural cycle," said Dr. Gray. "I'm not saying humans aren't doing a little bit, but they're certainly not the major cause of the climate change."

That's quite a different stance from what Al Gore and some environmental groups like Greenpeace allege. They say humans are responsible for global warming through carbon dioxide and other green house gas emissions over the last 30 years.

"How do they know that?" said Dr Gray. "Unless they have been working down in the trenches with weather for over 50 years like I have, most of my colleagues with similar experiences are very skeptical of the whole global warming."

The threat of global warming may be melting polar ice cap, resulting in a rise in sea levels, But Dr. Gray and a number of award winning climatologist's believe the number of hurricanes is on a natural 30 year cycle, related to the deep ocean, circulation patterns, not global warming.

"We have had this long 30-year cooling now from the middle to late 70's," said Dr. Gray. "The ocean, basic ocean current of the Atlantic Thermo Halen has changed and with a lag, I believe we are going to see some gradual global cooling as we saw from the middle 1940s to the middle 1970s."

Dr. Gray adds Al Gore, as well as some environmental groups and media outlets, are scaring people with the threats of global warming. .

"It's alarmism, but it makes good press," claims Dr. Gray. "They think maybe its happening. This is in the good that we alarm people like this so they will cut down on their fossil fuels.

At 77 years old, Dr. Gray is pleased to share his views on global warming, but he wishes the federal government would be as open minded and fair.

"They don't fund the skeptics. I have had trouble the last 15 years getting grant money because I have been well known as being a global warming skeptic, Said Dr. Gray. "They say that's not the case, but I know it is."

And this one also:


Meteorologist: 'Warming' will be joke in 5 years 
Man's part so small - 0.12% - couldn't change climate even if tried

 Climate change will be considered a joke in five years time, meteorologist Augie Auer told the annual meeting of Mid Canterbury Federated Farmers in Ashburton this week.

Man's contribution to the greenhouse gases was so small we couldn't change the climate if we tried, he maintained.

"We're all going to survive this. It's all going to be a joke in five years," he said.

A combination of misinterpreted and misguided science, media hype, and political spin had created the current hysteria and it was time to put a stop to it.

"It is time to attack the myth of global warming," he said.

Water vapour was responsible for 95 per cent of the greenhouse effect, an effect which was vital to keep the world warm, he explained.

"If we didn't have the greenhouse effect the planet would be at minus 18 deg C but because we do have the greenhouse effect it is plus 15 deg C, all the time."

The other greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen dioxide, and various others including CFCs, contributed only five per cent of the effect, carbon dioxide being by far the greatest contributor at 3.6 per cent.

However, carbon dioxide as a result of man's activities was only 3.2 per cent of that, hence only 0.12 per cent of the greenhouse gases in total. Human-related methane, nitrogen dioxide and CFCs etc made similarly minuscule contributions to the effect: 0.066, 0.047 and 0.046 per cent respectively.

"That ought to be the end of the argument, there and then," he said.

"We couldn't do it (change the climate) even if we wanted to because water vapour dominates."

Yet the Greens continued to use phrases such as "The planet is groaning under the weight of CO2" and Government policies were about to hit industries such as farming, he warned.

"The Greens are really going to go after you because you put out 49 per cent of the countries emissions. Does anybody ask 49 per cent of what? Does anybody know how small that number is?

"It's become a witch-hunt; a Salem witch-hunt," he said.

The mainstream media's level of deception and bias, is absolutely astounding.  Anyone who relies exclusively on those sources, is doing themselves a HUGE disservice.  It's sad, but it's really beginning to resemble communism.  God said that his people would be destroyed for a lack of knowledge.  I realize He was referring to His Word, but I wonder if it could also apply to world events in general?   ???

Yes. World events in general are all based on the battle between good and evil. It is not just a battle of the flesh. These things that we see in this world are happening because of that battle for peoples souls. This is what many people do not see and it is because of a lack of knowledge of God.

We see this in the increase of sinful ways when God's word was taken out of the public and sinful things moved in. I sincerely believe it started in the schools first and as those children grew up with those teachings it rapidly continued on into the media and is going still further.

I agree.  The prohibition of school prayer, and all reference to God, was the catalyst for the influx of the forces of evil.  Once God was removed, His hedge was removed as well.  School violence, mass murders, and sexual activity between teachers and students, is a direct result of the removal of God from our public schools.