Rebels kidnap at least 75 in southern Philippines

At least 65 civilians were kidnapped Thursday from a region in southern Philippines where several rebel groups are active fighting for different causes, authorities said.

Gates arrives for Baghdad visit

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived in Iraq on Thursday after ending a two-day trip to Afghanistan.

Did Russian military spark Norway UFO frenzy?

A strange swirl of blue light seen in the morning sky above Norway on Wednesday is being linked to a failed Russian missile test.

Hurricane Expert Rips Climate Fears: ‘There has been an unrelenting quarter century of one-sided indoctrination’

The following commentary is from Atmospheric Scientist and Hurricane forecasting specialist Dr. William Gray. Gray is the renowned hurricane forecaster and Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University (CSU).

Puncturing the Climate Balloon
by Bill Gray

December 8, 2009

Had I not devoted my entire career of over half-a-century to the study and forecasting of meteorological and climate events I would have likely been concerned over the possibility of humans causing serious global climate degradation.

There has been an unrelenting quarter century of one-sided indoctrination of the western world by the media and by various scientists and governments concerning a coming carbon dioxide (CO_2 ) induced global warming disaster. These warming scenarios have been orchestrated by a combination of environmentalists, vested interest scientists wanting larger federal grants and publicity, the media which profits from doomsday scenario reporting, governmental bureaucrats who want more power over our lives, and socialists who want to level-out global living standards. These many alarmist groups appear to have little concern over whether their global warming prognostications are accurate, however. And they most certainly are not. The alarmists believe they will be able to scare enough of our citizens into believing their propaganda that the public will be willing to follow their advice on future energy usage and agree to a lowering of their standard of living in the name of climate salvation.

Rising levels of CO_2 are not near the threat these alarmists have portrayed them to be. There has yet to be a honest and broad scientific debate on the basic science of CO_2 ’s influence on global temperature. The global climate models predicting large amounts of global warming for a doubling of CO_2 are badly flawed. They should never have been used to establish government climate policy.

The last century’s global warming of about 1 degree F is not a consequence of human activities. This warming is primarily the result of a multi-century changes in the globe’s deep ocean circulation. These ocean current changes have lead to a small and gradual increase in the globe’s temperature. We are coming out of the Little Ice Age and into a generally warmer climate state. This is akin to the warmer global climate of the Medieval Period. We can do nothing but adapt to such long period natural temperature changes.

The recent ‘ClimateGate’ revelations coming out of the UK University of East Anglia are but the tip of a giant iceberg of a well organized international climate warming conspiracy that has been gathering momentum for the last 25 years. This conspiracy would become much more manifest if all the e-mails of the publically funded climate research groups of the US and of foreign governments were ever made public.

The disastrous economic consequences of restricting CO_2 emissions from the present by as much as 20 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050 (as being proposed in Copenhagen) have yet to be digested by the general public. Such CO_2 output decreases would cause very large increases in our energy costs, a lowering of our standard of living, and do nothing of significance to improve our climate.

The Cap-and-Trade bill presently before Congress, the likely climate agreements coming out of the Copenhagen Conference, and the EPA’s just announced decision to treat CO_2 as a pollutant represents a grave threat to the industrial world’s continued economic development. We should not allow these proposals to restrict our economic growth. Any United Nations climate bill our country might sign would act as an infringement on our country’s sovereignty.

Global warming is a very serious problem that still hasn’t received the necessary attention it should get. The quicker we can become proactive, the bigger difference we can make for future generations.

There has been a lot of controversy regarding the legitimacy of global warming due to the Climategate emails that have surfaced. On November 2009, the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) e-mails were hacked and made available to the public. From the 1,000 emails and 2,000 documents between 1996 and 2009 that were released, a very small amount of them had questionable material. The most controversial email was from Phil Jones, head of the CRU, which stated:

“I’ve just completed Mike’s (Michael Mann, Penn State University) Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

Mann explains the trick as simply a concise way of showing the two kinds of data together while still clearly indicating which was which and has denied that there was anything “hidden or inappropriate” about it. His method of combining proxy data had been corroborated by numerous statistical tests and matched thermometer readings taken over the past 150 years.

Regardless of the bafoonery that is Climategate, global warming still exists - it just is a question of how fast. In a TED video dubbed the Extreme Ice Survey, professional photographer and naturalist James Balog documented the glacier erosion through time-lapse images. Besides the visual evidence that exists, here are some other facts regarding global warming:

- This decade is on track to become the warmest since records began in 1850, and 2009 could rank among the top-five warmest years, the U.N. weather agency reported on the second day of a pivotal 192-nation climate conference.
- Outside of Antarctica, 95% of the glaciers in the world are retreating or shrinking.
- Nature has allowed carbon dioxide to go up to 280ppm and we are currently at 385ppm which is the highest it has been over the past 400,000 years and it is going up at a rate of 2.5ppm/year.
- Over the last 100 years, the temperature has gone up 1.3 degrees F.

Now with that said, polar bears are my favorite animal. The Polar Bear Specialist Group from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published a summary of polar bear population status per 2005. This chart shows increasing, stable, and decreasing trends in different regions. Regardless of the overall trend in polar bear population, one thing is certain - as the glaciers go away, so will the polar bears. Some contest that polar bears are strong swimmers and don’t need glaciers. This is a myth. Polar bears are dependent on sea-ice for foraging, resting, and reproduction. Polar bears have recently had to swim up to 60 miles across open sea to find food. They are being forced into the long voyages because the ice floes from which they feed are melting, becoming smaller and drifting farther apart. Although polar bears are strong swimmers, they are adapted for swimming close (15 miles) to the shore. Their sea journeys leave them them vulnerable to exhaustion, hypothermia or being swamped by waves.

There are multiple variables such as but not limited to: carbon dioxide, methane, tundra, deforestation, permafrost, and perihelion (arguable). In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need to impose things such as carbon taxes because everybody would make an effort to be more green in their everyday lives and lessen their own carbon footprint. Since we’re not living in an ideal world, I agree with the efforts to impose a carbon tax as a means of reducing global emissions of carbon.

Global warming is scientifically proven, it isn’t some made up concept like Santa Claus (sorry kids). The changes are happening and they are very visible and measurable. We need to listen to science and contribute to the solution rather than the problem.