What Do We Think About Climate Change

Fossil Fuel Fired Power Plants Keep Manatees Warm in Winter

GW alarmists would like to shut down all power plants, yet “An offline Florida power plant is providing a warm-water refuge for several hundred manatees who like the Sunshine State's human residents are shivering in record low cold temperatures. … The oil- and gas-fired plant was taken off line last year for modernization but [Florida Power and Light] FPL has installed a special heating system to keep waters at an attractively balmy temperature for the manatees” [http://planetark.org/enviro-news/item/56265]

The LA Times showed the following picture of manatees using the warm water output from a power plant to survive. “More than 200 manatees are wintering in a balmy canal outside a power plant, the latest exotic Florida animals seeking refuge from the state's frigid temperatures. Giant eagle rays and spinner sharks joined them in the 70-degree waters Thursday as onlookers watched them frolic near Apollo Beach. With temperatures up to 20 degrees below normal, some less resourceful animals needed help from humans to survive.” [http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unl...spa-for-chilly-manatees-sharks-and-rays.html]



A study of Florida’s manatees and power plants (“Laist and Reynolds “Florida Manatees, Warm-Water Refuges and an Uncertain Future”, 2005 [http://mmc.gov/reports/publications/pdf/floridamanatees.pdf]) states: “Most Florida manatees depend on localized warm-water refuges in the southern two-thirds of Florida to survive winter; about 60% use outfalls from 10 power plants. Future availability of these refuges is in doubt; most of these power plants may be retired within the next 20 year … plant retirements may increase cold-stress-related deaths and significantly decrease manatee abundance. … All power plant outfalls now used by manatees were built between the 1940s and early 1970s. Many of these plants have reached or are approaching the end of their planned operational lives and soon may be retired. Since they were built, regulations under the U.S. Clean Water Act have prohibited new facilities from discharging effluent substantially warmer than the receiving waterbodies. The older, pre-existing plants, however, were granted variances allowing them to continue discharging warm water. Unless the older units are “repowered,” an expensive process of updating or replacing existing generating units with more efficient units, their retirement in the next 10 to 20 years will eliminate discharges on which most Florida manatees now depend for winter survival.”

The above report states: “As most power plants now used by manatees had not yet been built at that time [1950], some assume that, if power plants were closed, manatees would simply move south to warmer areas in Florida with no effect on overall manatee abundance. Such assumptions, however, may be overly simplistic and largely incorrect. Based on site-fidelity to winter refuges and manatee responses to past outfall shut-downs, it seems questionable, if not doubtful, that all or even many manatees would move to southernmost Florida or to natural springs that lie outside of their familiar range.”


Perhaps the pro-AGW environmentalists will just claim that the manatees are an “invasive species” and should be allowed to succumb to the cold.

 

Manatee Area Sea Surface Temperatures

The following figures show the sea surface temperatures (SST) for the Florida manatee area. The graphs show the monthly SST anomalies (blue) and annual average SST anomalies (red) for 1930 through 2008 (data from the CRU HadSST2 database plotted at http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/climate.aspx). The HadSST2 database is averaged over 5x5 degree grids – the temperatures for the 4 grids encompassing the manatee area are shown.

The grid covering most of Florida’s coastline (25-30Nx80-85W) shows a slight cooling trend over the last 80 years. The other grids show a slight warming trend which does not exceed the warming of the 1930s.

The Gulf Coast Side of Florida


The Gulf Stream Side of Florida

 

Rapid Global Climate Change

I ask again: rapid compared with what? with the fast warming periods shown in these graphs, per example? some other? I'd greatly appreciate if you could post a long term graph to let us know what are you talking about, Boston.

Data from NOAA GISP2 ice core data, central Greenland:

 

no time at the moment to go over all of that G but I was reading the Ocean News before I have to go and found this which might help you understand rapid climate change a little better

 

Where is this...

If you had posted this as a teaser I would have said Crystal River Nuclear Power Plant.

 

...and I would have been wrong.

 

How do you infere from there that thinning of Arctic ice is due to increased athmospheric CO2?

NSIDC regularly puts out a news article describing the deteriorating state of the Arctic, called the Sea Ice News. In their May 5, 2008 article, they stated:
" …the Arctic Oscillation was in its positive phase through the winter season, associated with a wind pattern helping to flush thick ice out of the Arctic, leaving thinner ice. This is one of the factors helping to set the stage for pronounced ice losses this summer."

Additionally, Dr. Walt Meier from NSIDC said:

"The NAO/AO (Arctic Oscillation) is a particularly prominent one and a substantial amount of the decline in the sea ice during the late 1980s and early 1990s could be attributed to a strong positive mode during winters because the positive mode favors the loss of thicker ice (through drift) that is less likely to melt during summer."

Multiyear Artic ice has rather to do with the drift during the winter due to winds patterns there, as recognized by the own NSDIC, than with atmospheric temperature. And, of course, it has nothing to do with ACO2. This has been already asumed by most in the quickly vanishing "warmists" camp, including NSDIC. Except Al Gore, Real Climate and Boston, of course.


Once clarified this elementary thing, please fullfill my curiosity and don't hide away with ridiculous distraction maneouvres: can you please post a long term temperatures graph to let us know what are you talking about when you talk rapid climate change?

 

cause in the very next paragraph the article goes on to say what just about every scientist involved in climate research is saying

Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/techno...s researcher/2532570/story.html#ixzz0g1n3lVCa

 

I see.
“We know that we’re part of the problem,” he said. “There’s no question about that. The models are telling us that now.”

Do you realize? MODELS (why did you omit that sentence?), not facts. He is one more in the crowd of people fooled by the failed IPCC's computer models.

Read this NASA press release: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/quikscat-20071001.html

From there:

Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. "Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic," he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.

"The winds causing this trend in ice reduction were set up by an unusual pattern of atmospheric pressure that began at the beginning of this century," Nghiem said.

NASA doesn't mention AGW at all.

Watch the COMPLETE history of the NSIDC arctic sea ice in a video:



Here is another video which shows the flow of sea ice down the west coast of Greenland and the Beaufort sea. Clearly there is more at work here than simple melting, there is a whole dynamic flow going on.



(I beleive this two videos had been already posted, but anyway...)

 

Now answer my question: can you please post a long term temperatures graph to let us know what are you talking about when you talk rapid climate change (RCC)?

 

Nir Shaviv, one of the most eminent experts in this area of study, stated, oh about a decade ago, that the overall Cosmic Ray counts, as depicted in the graph's Boston presented, are meaningless as they show no correlation to cloud formation, and by extension albedo and temperature. Warmers love to throw up graphs of overall CR counts for this reason. Shaviv maintains it's the count of CR's over a certain intensity threshold (IIRC, the figure was 20 GEV), which itself has NO correlation to the overall CR count, that show a strong (undeniable, really) correlation with cloud cover, albedo, etc.

Again, old outdated information on CR's is being presented as refutation of the CR/cloud albedo connection. Again, this has all been covered.

Jimbo

 

Hi Jim! Nice to have you back. You don't lavish your presence here lately. This is less fun without you
Yes, the GWA, particularly our friend Boston just use once and again the same old outdated information, because most of the recent scientific findings discredit AGW rather than the contrary.

And their tactis are always the same: I bet Boston will not answer once again my question on the RCC (his new "warmnotologist" mantra) but will initiate a distraction maneouvre, whatever it is.

Cheers.

 

Warmnotology

Warmnotology, formerly warmnatology, is a neologism for the study of culturally-induced ignorance or doubt on climate change, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data. The term was coined by Guillermo M. Gefaell a Boatdesign.net contributor specializing in the banging on the head of some stubborn real world denialists and IPCC computer models believers. Its name derives from the Neoclassical Greek words ζεστός, warm, ἄγνωσις, agnōsis, "not knowing" (confer Attic Greek ἄγνωτος "unknown"), and -λογία, -logia. More generally, the term also highlights the increasingly common condition where less understanding on climate subjects makes one more certain than before.

A prime example of the deliberate production of climate ignorance cited by Gefaell is the GWA conspiracy to manufacture data about the climate depending on antropogenic CO2. Under the banner of science, the IPCC, a group of poor practice scientists and some enviromentalist lobbies produced biased climate research about everything except global cooling hazards, to exploit public fears about GW and thus fulfill a political and economical interests agenda. Some of the root causes for culturally-induced ignorance are media neglect, corporate or governmental secrecy and suppression, document destruction, and myriad forms of inherent or avoidable culturopolitical selectivity, inattention, and forgetfulness.

Cheers

 

Hey Jim, good to see you. Did you notice the hack post by Boston? That is so typical of him to post partial information as if the appearance of fact will make it become reality. Loser!

 

This is a good article about more of the deceptive tactics used to convince us that we are evil unless we devolve to brainless unsophisticated survivalists living in dirt hovels ............

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/NOAAroleinclimategate.pdf