Image Credit: grapetonix
You might picture the Arctic as endlessly white. But Skip Walker, a geobotanist at the University of Alaska, told us that satellite data shows the Arctic is ‘greening.’
Skip Walker: There’s a lot of things that happen with greening. You can increase the length of the growing season, starting earlier in the spring, ending later in the fall – such things as more shrub cover, greater density of vegetation, less space between plants on the ground.
Walker said that greening is happening because both Arctic air and land have been warming. The warming of Arctic seas means less cold air over the Arctic.
Skip Walker: You can think of the cold air mass that lies over the Arctic ocean as a big pool of cold air that spills onto the land, and the ice content of the ocean affects the size and the strength of the cold air effect.
Walker’s team has been studying some of the most remote areas of the Arctic – including islands near Greenland, Russia and Canada – places he said, that few people will ever see.
Skip Walker: A lot of areas that are the most remote and that people know the least about are probably the most susceptible. We can easily detect changes in biodiversity because there’s very few species there, at present.
Our thanks to:
Skip Walker
University of Alaska
Fairbanks, Alaska
Are these the same satellite sensors that “missed” 193,000 square miles of ice? We are being fed information with a decidedly political taste to it. Since the folks that send out the info have a vested interest in the conclusions drawn, why should we believe any of it?
The world (earth) has been warmer than it is now and colder than it is now. that within recorded history. Recorded history is but a fleeting moment in geologic time. I think we know little to nothing about climactic trends. We should hope for a warming trend so that agriculture can migrate north and continue to provide cheap, nutritious food for the earth’s population of humans. If it cools, we are in a bad way.
There are a lot of people who are constantly push push pushing the globle warming and we are all going to die diatribe and I was wondering what motovates you to do this. Any one who has the ability to stand back and analyze the information and , at least just study the concept of the term of weather , will see that the weather is allways been in a state of flux. All ways has and all ways will. Back ,during and after I was in high school in the seventys ,there was a group of “scientist” who were proclaiming that by two thousand and one the United Kingdom was to be under five hundred meters of ice and snow. Now as far as I can determine this hasent happen , yet. So if this hasent happened , then when will it happen? How can this consensis of the past of ice and cold and we are all going to die, come to such a failure?And if the consensis of the past be such a dismal failure , then how can I determine that this consensis of co2 is different? As now the sunspot theory has more of long term , past tense , consistancy then the carbon dioxide story of today. The middle-ages warm period was benificial to mankind. But the little iceage and the year with no summer was not. Now I dont think that the middle-ages warm period was caused by co2 bellching suv’s and farting cows and pigs. But I dont hear or see in the media and even here in your web site , any notation of this inconsistency. What caused the warm period? What caused the little iceage? What are the criteria of weather change? There has been a small voice in the wilderness crying out that the science of meteorology is so large and prevasive that no one is even knowledgeable as to what should be included in to the field. Some are even including geology in to the field as to how chemistry affects freshly broken rock surfaces in the rising mountain ranges, and effecting the weather patterns. Some are claiming that water vapor is hugely much more of a warming gas then co2. And there is a very large argument of to how much water vapor is in the atmosphere at anytime , anyplace and how to measure it. What is the preciptation rate of the world and the evaperation rate? The massive amounts of water vapor in the air is unknowen as to what it can cause , but the co2 today is still the bad boy. Is this because of the politics of pollution? The politics of just make noise and muddy the water and exert control over the people? Keep the situation confused and in termoil to make money on the carbon trading? Gore is making out like a banker on this one! Is this the heart of the matter? There is more and more of the opposite view that the co2 is the wrong pick of the warming bad boy. Are you going to express this view also? Can you explain the difference of the two views? Can you explore the pollitical correctness and its manipulation of all of the current weather views motives and controling measures? Are the ones making the most money , making the most noise? Just constantly saying that the warming is because of the co2 and ignoring the diologe is not helpful. What are you going to say if the UK is covered with ice and snow?
Dear Dan and Benjamin:
It is hard to digest the barrage of scientific information that we receive daily regarding climate change issues. The concerns that you express reflect a widespread and legitimate concern by the public regarding whether or not the warming trends reported are real, how much of the trends may be due to human influences, and whether or not the consequences pose a real threat to humanity. My main response is that we all have to continue to read as much possible about these topics. As we gain more information, it should become clearer what our options are. Each of us has to judge which of the sources of information are credible and which are not.
Admittedly, our records are still short in terms of geologic time spans. Scientists have to examine the data that are available and report what we see. I too am somewhat of a sceptic. I think most scientists are by nature sceptics. We always have to be wary of jumping on band wagons of funding, but we also have a responsibility to report what we see. The public and policy makers can then decide how this information is used.
To give you a bit more information on the greening trends reported in the short Earth and Sky segment, the following information was reported at the last meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco (Dec 15-19 2008). The research is being conducted as part of the International Polar Year. Papers are being submitted now that will present these results in more detail. Hopefully, I have kept the scientific jargon to a minimum here. Some of the numbers reported here will need refinement based on newly analyzed satellite data.
Models have predicted that the retreating sea ice should affect the temperature and ecosystems of adjacent lands (e.g., Lawrence et al. 2008). Our study shows that the there is a link between the coastal sea-ice concentrations, temperatures on land, and the greenness or productivity of Arctic tundra vegetation. Our study examines the observed patterns of sea-ice, land temperatures, and an index of greening during the period 1982-2007, within a 50-km band along the coastlines of 14 Arctic seas. The trends in greening come from the full length of the records from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) sensors aboard the NOAA satellites. Greenness was determined using the maximum annual Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (MaxNDVI) an index of the summer peak in greenness of the vegetation that is derived from earth’s reflectance in the visible (VIS) and near infrared (NIR) portions of the spectrum (NDVI = (NIR – VIS)/(NIR + VIS)). The NDVI index has been shown to be a good indicator of vegetative activity in tundra regions.
Coastal sea ice declined along all Arctic coasts (average of 27% for the northern hemisphere as a whole during the period of record (Bhatt et al. 2008). The largest declines were along the coastlines east and west of Bering Straight including the W. Chukchi, E. Chukchi, and E. Siberia seas (-48%, -47%, and -49% respectively). This portion of the Arctic saw large areas of ice retreat in 2005 and 2007. The smallest decline was in the Greenland Sea (-4%) where the seas along the eastern coast of Greenland receive ice from the Greenland Ice sheet and ice that is flushed out of the Arctic basin by the Trans-Polar drift.
Land temperatures as measured by the summer warmth index (SWI) increased 13% for the northern hemisphere as a whole. The SWI is sum of the monthly mean temperatures that are above freezing. However, the coastal areas of the North America Arctic have experienced 19% increase in land temperatures while Eurasia experienced only a 4% increase. The largest increases occurred in the region north of Bering Straight (E. Siberia Sea +35%, W. Chukchi Sea +68%, W. Bering Sea +39%, and E. Chukchi Sea +39%) and in the Greenland, and Baffin Island regions (Greenland Sea +74%, Baffin Bay +64%, and Davis Straight 60%). The smallest increases were seen along the northern coast of Russia (Laptev Sea +2%, E. Kara Sea, +3%, and W. Kara Sea +4%).
MaxNDVI increased 4% for the coastal Arctic as a whole. The largest increases were in Alaska and Canada (Beaufort Sea +24%, Baffin Bay 16%, Davis Strait 16%, E. Chukchi Sea 11%), and declines occurred mainly in northern Russia (Laptev Sea -12%, E. Kara Sea -7%, E. Siberian Sea -2%, W. Chukchi -1%) and along the Greenland Sea (-4%). Temporal analyses of these trends generally show that within each region, periods of lower sea-ice concentration are correlated with warmer land-surface temperatures and higher NDVI values. Variations in this pattern do occur though and may be due to different wind regimes, for example on-shore vs. off shore wind regimes or other unique conditions that are not explained by our data.
If the Arctic continues to warm over the next few decades as predicted by most models, changes in vegetation biomass are expected and will have important consequences to many components of the Arctic system including the status of the permafrost, depth of the thaw layer, snow patterns, the distribution of patterned ground, hydrological cycles, wildlife, and human use of arctic landscapes. There will also be important feedbacks to climate through changes in albedo and carbon fluxes. It is almost certain though that changes to the ecosystems will occur. As you both point out, such changes have occurred before and will continue to occur. Some of these changes could be beneficial as far as human occupation and exploration for natural resources are concerned.
The NDVI changes noted here are in general agreement with ground observations. For example increased shrub cover has been observed in northern Alaska and elsewhere (Tape et al. 2006), and biomass clearly increases on zonal sites along north-south bioclimate transects in North America and Russia (Walker et al. 2008a, Raynolds et al. 2008b, Epstein et al. 2008). The Arctic represents a potential carbon sink if the greening observed from space is resulting in added biomass, This could decrease the global amount of carbon in the atmosphere which could reduce the greenhouse effect of adding more carbon to the atmosphere. However, the net sink effect may be small because of the relatively small amount of total aboveground biomass in the Arctic. Estimated annual increases in biomass based on the 4% northern hemisphere increase in NDVI during the last 27 years reported here and a regression of NDVI vs. biomass indicate that the annual addition of biomass to the tundra represents approximately 0.07% of the annual global carbon emissions.
At present, it is uncertain what the remarkable increases of NDVI in Alaska and the declines in Russia mean with respect to changes in plant biomass. We need quantitative observation of temporal changes in tundra biomass from numerous sites in the Arctic as well as a clearer understanding of other variables affecting tundra NDVI at circumpolar scales to corroborate the observations from space.
One of my concerns is that the unique ecosystems that occur in the extreme northern, coldest bioclimate subzone of the Arctic (Subzone A of the Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map (Walker et al. 2005)). This bioclimate subzone is currently surrounded by perennial summer sea ice. This subzone is most sensitive to increases in temperature, and could change radically if the perennial sea-ice does melt. This may not be of much concern to most people because the region only occupies about 2% of the Arctic, and is currently rarely visited. But the region does offer extremely beautiful landscapes and the opportunity to study life at the extremes along the global bioclimate gradient. It is worthy of our attention.
References:
Bhatt, U. S., D. A. Walker, M. K. Raynolds, J. Comiso, and H. E. Epstein. 2008a in prep. Panarctic trends and variability in the land-ocean margins of sea-ice concentrations, land-surface temperatures, and tundra vegetation greenness. Earth Interactions.
Bhatt, U., D. A. Walker, M. Raynolds, and J. Comiso. 2008b. Circumpolar and regional analysis of the relationship between sea-ice variability, summer land-surface temperatures, Arctic tundra greenness and large-scale climate drivers. Abstract 363. in NASA Carbon Cycle and Ecosystems Joint Science Workshop, 28 April – 2 May 2008, University of Maryland, Adelphi, MD, http://cce.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/meeting_2008/mtg2008_ab_search.pl.
Comiso, J. C. and F. Nishio, 2008: Trends in the sea ice cover using enhanced and compatible AMSR-E, SSM/I, and SMMR data, J. Geophys. Res. 113, doi:1029/2007JC004257.
Comiso, J. 2003: Warming trends in the Arctic from clear-sky satellite observations, J. Climate, 16:3498-3510.
Epstein, H. E., D. A. Walker, M. K. Raynolds, G. J. Jia, and A. M. Kelley. 2008. Phytomass patterns across a temperature gradient of the North American arctic tundra. Journal of Geophysical Research – Biogeosciences 113:G03S02 (p01-p11).
Epstein, H. E., Q. Yu, J. O. Kaplan, and H. Lischke. 2007. Simulating future changes in arctic and subarctic vegetation. Computing in Science and Engineering Jul/Aug:12-23.
Jia, G. J. 2008 submitted. Vegetation greening in the Canadian Arctic related to warming and sea ice decline. Journal of Geophysical Research – Biogeosciences.
Lawrence, D. M., A. G. Slater, R. A. Tomas, M. M. Holland, and C. Deser. 2008. Accelerated Arctic land warming and permafrost degradion during rapid sea ice loss. Geophysical Research Letters 35:L11506, doi:11510.11029/12008GL033985.
Raynolds, M. K., J. C. Comiso, D. A. Walker, and D. Verbyla. 2008a. Relationship between satellite-derived land surface temperatures, arctic vegetation types, and NDVI. Remote Sensing of Environment 112:1884-1894.
Raynolds, M. K., D. A. Walker, and H. A. Maier. 2006. NDVI patterns and phytomass distribution in the circumpolar Arctic. Remote Sensing of Environment 102:271-281.
Raynolds, M. K., D. A. Walker, C. A. Munger, C. M. Vonlanthen, and A. N. Kade. 2008b. A map analysis of patterned-ground along a North American Arctic Transect. Journal of Geophysical Research – Biogeosciences 113:G03S03 (p01-18).
Tape, K., M. Sturm, and C. Racine. 2006. The evidence for shrub expansion in Northern Alaska and the Pan-Arctic. Global Change Biology 12:686-702.
Tucker, C. J., D. Slayback, J. Pinzon, S. O. Los, R. B. Myneni and M. G. Taylor (2001). Higher northern latitude Normalized Difference Vegetation Index and growing season trends from 1982-1999. International Journal of Biometeorology 45(4): 1984-1190.
Walker, D. A., H. E. Epstein, J. G. Jia, A. Balser, C. Copass, E. J. Edwards, W. A. Gould, J. Hollingsworth, J. Knudson, H. A. Maier, A. Moody, and M. K. Raynolds. 2003. Phytomass, LAI, and NDVI in northern Alaska: relationships to summer warmth, soil pH, plant functional types, and extrapolation to the circumpolar Arctic. Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres 108:8169.
Walker, D. A., H. E. Epstein, V. E. Romanovsky, C. L. Ping, G. J. Michaelson, R. P. Daanen, Y. Shur, R. A. Peterson, W. B. Krantz, M. K. Raynolds, W. A. Gould, G. Gonzalez, D. J. Nicolsky, C. M. Vonlanthen, A. N. Kade, P. Kuss, A. M. Kelley, C. A. Munger, C. T. Tarnocai, N. V. Matveyeva, and F. J. A. Daniëls. 2008. Arctic patterned-ground ecosystems: A synthesis of field studies and models along a North American Arctic Transect. Journal of Geophysical Research – Biogeosciences 113:G03S01.
Walker, D. A., B. C. Forbes, M. O. Leibman, H. E. Epstein, U. S. Bhatt, J. C. Comiso, D. S. Drozdov, A. A. Gubarkov, G. J. Jia, E. Karlejaärvi, J. O. Kaplan, V. Khumutov, G. P. Kofinas, T. Kumpula, P. Kuss, N. G. Moskalenko, M. K. Raynolds, V. E. Romanovsky, F. Stammler, and Q. Yu. 2008 submitted. Cumulative effects of rapid land-cover and land-use changes on the Yamal Peninsula, Russia in G. Gutman, P. Groismann, and Reissel, editors.
Walker, D. A., M. K. Raynolds, F. J. A. Daniëls, E. Einarsson, A. Elvebakk, W. A. Gould, A. E. Katenin, S. S. Kholod, C. J. Markon, E. S. Melnikov, N.G. Moskalenko, S. S. Talbot, B. A. Yurtsev, and CAVM Team. 2005. The Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map. Journal of Vegetation Science 16:267-282.
AGU Fall Meeting Talks:
1. U23F-05 (invited), Tue 1340, MC 3016, Walker, D.A., Bhatt, U.S., Epstein, H.E. The Greening of the Arctic IPY Project.
2. C21C-0559 (poster), Tue 0800 MC Hall D, Jia, G.J., Epstein, H.E., Walker, D.A., Wang, H. Decadal changes of phenological patterns over Arctic tundra biome.
3. GC52A-07, Fri 1020 am, MC2007, Walker, D.A. Leibman, M.O., Forbes, B.C., Epstein, H.E. Cumulative effects of rapid climate and land-use changes on the Yamal Peninsula, Russia.
Hi there! I’m thrilled this piece generated your interest, even if you’re not on board with the idea behind it.
Here’s a response from Dr. Skip Walker. I’m posting it in two bits — I think our site may have rejected it because of it’s length.
___________
Dear Dan and Benjamin:
It is hard to digest the barrage of scientific information that we receive daily regarding climate change issues. The concerns that you express reflect a widespread and legitimate concern by the public regarding whether or not the warming trends reported are real, how much of the trends may be due to human influences, and whether or not the consequences pose a real threat to humanity. My main response is that we all have to continue to read as much possible about these topics. As we gain more information, it should become clearer what our options are. Each of us has to judge which of the sources of information are credible and which are not.
Admittedly, our records are still short in terms of geologic time spans. Scientists have to examine the data that are available and report what we see. I too am somewhat of a sceptic. I think most scientists are by nature sceptics. We always have to be wary of jumping on band wagons of funding, but we also have a responsibility to report what we see. The public and policy makers can then decide how this information is used.
To give you a bit more information on the greening trends reported in the short Earth and Sky segment, the following information was reported at the last meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco (Dec 15-19 2008). The research is being conducted as part of the International Polar Year. Papers are being submitted now that will present these results in more detail. Hopefully, I have kept the scientific jargon to a minimum here. Some of the numbers reported here will need refinement based on newly analyzed satellite data.
Models have predicted that the retreating sea ice should affect the temperature and ecosystems of adjacent lands (e.g., Lawrence et al. 2008). Our study shows that the there is a link between the coastal sea-ice concentrations, temperatures on land, and the greenness or productivity of Arctic tundra vegetation. Our study examines the observed patterns of sea-ice, land temperatures, and an index of greening during the period 1982-2007, within a 50-km band along the coastlines of 14 Arctic seas. The trends in greening come from the full length of the records from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) sensors aboard the NOAA satellites. Greenness was determined using the maximum annual Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (MaxNDVI) an index of the summer peak in greenness of the vegetation that is derived from earth’s reflectance in the visible (VIS) and near infrared (NIR) portions of the spectrum (NDVI = (NIR – VIS)/(NIR + VIS)). The NDVI index has been shown to be a good indicator of vegetative activity in tundra regions.
Coastal sea ice declined along all Arctic coasts (average of 27% for the northern hemisphere as a whole during the period of record (Bhatt et al. 2008). The largest declines were along the coastlines east and west of Bering Straight including the W. Chukchi, E. Chukchi, and E. Siberia seas (-48%, -47%, and -49% respectively). This portion of the Arctic saw large areas of ice retreat in 2005 and 2007. The smallest decline was in the Greenland Sea (-4%) where the seas along the eastern coast of Greenland receive ice from the Greenland Ice sheet and ice that is flushed out of the Arctic basin by the Trans-Polar drift.
Melting ice, pictures of polar bears and falling ice do not CAUSE climate change. This is insanity. History is already laughing.
Follow the link to:
Fire James Hansen – NASA Climate Chief in Facebook groups.
We need responsible environMENTALism, not to mention science.
many poeple believening that the creation of man come from the climent,while some scientise testify weather and climent,both were in man creatiom.
The author refuses to believe that the satellite that measures sea ice in the Artic suffered a sensor GLITCH and missed over 190,000 sq. miles of sea ice or maybe this glitch wasn’t supposed to be made public by the Melting ice activist.
Dr. Walker,
Thank you for your excellent follow-up discussion on the data and methodologies behind your research. The short podcasts deliver the headline but often leave us science minded individuals wanting to know more details. I think it is really cool that you took the time to give such a well articulated and detailed reply to Dan and Ben. I look forward to hearing more about your ongoing work (I bookmarked your web page to keep up on your SASS program).
I wanted to point out to other commenters that you are using the AVHRR based sensors on the NOAA-11 and 12 satellites rather than the failing SSM/I sensors on board DMSP-F13 and F15 which caused the recent data problems with NSIDC real-time products. As such, the NSIDC data errors would not impact your findings.
I understand that the NDVI is calculated to approximately a month’s resolution (to normalize for cloud cover, storms, low SNR events, etc…). Thus, the MaxNDVI would be the month range of highest photosynthesis productivity for the year (as opposed to a fixed sample month each year) if I understand your comments.
Is the scope of your research focused mainly on the correlation specifically between greenness and observed coastal land temperatures or are you collaborating with other research groups to correlate to oceanic, atmospheric, solar, and geologic processes which drive the region’s climate variability so that those drivers can be used as longer range predictors?
Notice the people who are for it are using rhetoric to make it seam more convincing and smarter but I do not see a connection between some bodies of water warming and some colling and some getting greener. Also I notice only negaTIVES OF GLOBAL WARMING MAKING IT SO BAD… who knows maybe if you look at all the details a warmer Earth is better. And dont tell me the polar bears will die because if they do then they were weak and could not adapt. bah i could go on rambling all the possible theories just like the global warming dudes. I trust in God not some humans who try to predict weather in 50 years but cant even do 3 days.
How large an Electro Magnet would be required anyway to force the Magnetic NORTH POLE back to the NORTH POLE?
(Faith Based Science)
The End Is Near
We have seasons, and weather in a climate that varies unpredictably and is little understood. Even the “scientists” say that it is very challenging research with so much more to learn about climate.
With that in mind, if we don’t understand natural climate, how are we going to be to be able to tell the difference form it and so-called human induced weather? What gives us the rite to say that any climate including for that matter is anything BUT natural? Climate is not like the inside of a nice indoor shopping mall and this sense of urgency over a nothing crisis is something I hope we as a society grow out of. The dirty thirties put things in perspective and people of that time would never have even given this 23 year old theory a second glance in the first place. Now we have medicare, day care, health care, job fares……… . We have had things so good for so long that we don’t know what bad is. That’s why the global warming craze has been so enduring and successful at tapping our collective guilt.
So life goes on, no crisis, it melts, it freezes, we have record hurricanes one year and none at all the next, North America has been cooling for a decade.
I say we all be thankful that CO2 is not a pollutant after all and therefore we should all tackle real pollution, keeping in mind that environmentalism’s accomplishments have been many and our world has improved from that success over the last 40 years. Have a parade. Let’s all be happy with clear perspective without the politics.
Dear Skip Walker and research team members,
Thanks for the work you are doing. In the long run scientists prevail and ideologues fail.
Despite all the complexities of modern life, it seems to me that unvarnished and unreflective support of three primary behaviors are governing the “way of life” of most people in our culture. These widely shared and consensually validiated behaviors literally drive unbridled growth of production capabilities, unrestrained per human consumption of resources, and unbounded hubris. The leviathan scale and anticipated rise of these objective and subjective all-too-human tendencies could become patently unsustainable soon; whereas, setting limits on the increasing growth of uneconomic production, unhealthy overconsumption, unrestricted population numbers and unconscionable, objectively unjustifiable arrogance could lead the human community toward sustainable ways of living in the world.
Perhaps necessary change is in the offing.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php
Years ago it became quite clear that malignant forms of power and greed had invasively overtaken those with great wealth as well as their bought-and-paid-for politicians in my not-so-great generation of leading elders. They perversely chose to mortgage the very future of our children. If that had been the end of their shameless behavior, things would have been bad enough. But no, it now appears these leaders, for whom honesty, transparency and accountability are everywhere eshewed, have gone a step beyond merely mortgaging the children’s future. They are surely thieves of the highest order because they are threatening to steal the children’s future by effectively extirpating “life as we know it†and destroying the Creation for which all of us — rich and poor, arrogant and meek, powerful and powerless — bear responsibility.
Medicare, daycare, welfare, jobfare.….
Greenzi sustainability is POVERTY.
Global Warming, the new WMD scam of fear and lies.
At first they just came for the light bulbs and I did not speak out.
Because these days, I like to hide out in the darkness of my nice warm basement.
Then they came for the plastic bags and I did not speak out.
Because I was already using the replacement bag they had issued to me as per the minimum consumption laws made of 100% Polyester (imitation weave no less).
Then they came with this giant, tandem diesel powered monster of a truck to pickup and compost my “bagged†leaves and I did not speak out because I didn’t have any bags.
So they issued me their new paper bags with 100% of the 30% portion being recycled paper, or a 70% loss in real trees.
Then they came for my oil and I did not speak out.
Because they had already confiscated my Smartcar and recycled it into a wheelbarrow that they forced me to use every Earth Day to help them discover new sites to plant more and more and more trees.
Then they came for the BBQ and I did not speak out.
Because it doesn’t matter what the F*&% you do to a vegetarian hotdog, it still tastes like $hit.
Then they came for the air conditioner and I did not speak out.
Because by this time, the inevitable cool climate trend had cycled in once again as it has for billions of eons all by it’s poor little self, for reasons we do not and may not ever understand.
Then they came to register me to vote, and I did not speak out.
So they impaled my poor little weed infested, pesticide free front lawn with one of their plastic Green Party reelection signs.
Finally they came for me and I COULD not speak out.
Because there was nothing left to give, or take.
Our children will not be suffering a hell on earth on a toxic melting planet after all because the theory of humans destroying planets with C02 (one of the building blocks of life) has been proven false since it is 25 years old now.
“Sustained, unprecedented and escalating warming†-IPCC
Be happy and learn to respect nature, not fear for it.
STOP THE PANIC:
1-There IS debate.
2-The theory is 25 years old.
3-La Nina is stronger than global warming the theory now admits.
So preserve our environment, not rescue it with fear from a non-existent crisis.
Contribute to the advancement of our civilization to use nuclear power to fuel electric cars instead of going back in time to live with less.
We are living longer than at any time in human history and there is no reason for this not to continue if we just learned to embrace the future with optimism, not terror.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html
2006 – 2008 Trend = -44.25 degF / Decade COOLING
2005 – 2008 Trend = -16.35 degF / Decade COOLING
2004 – 2008 Trend = -1.50 degF / Decade COOLING
2003 – 2008 Trend = -0.69 degF / Decade COOLING
2002 – 2008 Trend = -2.47 degF / Decade COOLING
2001 – 2008 Trend = -0.17 degF / Decade COOLING
2000 – 2008 Trend = -0.74 degF / Decade COOLING
1999 – 2008 Trend = -1.08 degF / Decade COOLING
1998 – 2008 Trend = -1.77 degF / Decade COOLING
1997 – 2008 Trend = -0.15 degF / Decade COOLING
1996 – 2008 Trend = 0.92 degF / Decade WARMING
Preserve our world, not SAVE it with needless fear from a myth.