Trout Unlimited Unveils Position On Warming

[Daddy Carp]

YEP! Now your talkin Trav! This is why I wouldn't let those guys volunteer you for the trip (didn't need all that money they offered anyway). We need you here to help filter the gene-pool and coral the species............. Top O' Tha Day, Mate!.......D.C.

[Trav]

Haha,

Trip to where? Are we fishing? Is it free? Open Bar? Are we talking a psycodelic trip? I am sooo confused!!! darn brown acid!

Fill me in DC, I cant see ya! Haha

[Daddy Carp]

Well PHW, it's like we said, just a natural swing of temps that happens all the time throughout history. Someone needs to shove Al Gore's books,speaches and Hype up his......well, where the sun-don't-shine! Here is a post on the MDC online site. I copied the meat of it but others may want to read in full. This is a prime example, of many, as to how fast the "Global" is warming ..........................D.C.

2007 was a year to remember for extreme weather

Huge ice storms that struck most of Missouri early and late in the year bracketed 12 months of meteorological extremes.

JEFFERSON CITY-Weather is a perennial topic of conversation, especially among outdoors men and women. But 2007 produced meteorological extremes so remarkable that they will be talked about for decades to come. The effects of 2007’s weather will be visible to generations yet unborn.

A freak ice storm rolled across 34 counties when 2007 was barely two weeks old, extending from the state’s southwest corner to St. Louis. The results were devastating. Ice grew so thick that hundreds of power lines and countless thousands of trees collapsed under its weight. More than 320,000 customers in southwest and south-central Missouri were without electricity, some for more than a week.

Meanwhile, night-time temperatures plummeted into the teens and single digits. Roads in cities and rural areas alike were impassable mazes of downed trunks and limbs, cutting people in distress off from escape or emergency services and preventing utility workers from restoring power.

Workers with the Missouri Department of Conservation abandoned their usual duties and turned the agency’s heavy equipment, chainsaws and know-how to the life-saving work of clearing roads. The agency set up an emergency command post in Springfield to coordinate the massive effort as more than 100 Conservation Department workers labored around the clock to open hundreds of miles of rural highways. Less could be done to soften mother nature’s next blow.

In early April the mercury plunged. The arctic blast followed two weeks of temperatures from the high 60s to the low 80s. Columbia went from a high of 81.6 degrees on April 2 to a low of 18.7 degrees April 7. Similar temperature extremes occurred throughout the state.

These two events spawned a bevy of other weather-related stories that continue to unfold today. The first visible effect was the failure of what had been predicted to be an unusually early and spectacular display of dogwood blossoms.

The late freeze also killed the flowers of virtually every oak in the state, dramatically reducing the supply of acorns, a staple food for deer, turkeys, squirrels and a host of other wildlife, for at least two years.

The ice storm’s effects continued to be noticed as the year progressed and foresters got out in the woods in southwest Missouri. They discovered that downed tree limbs and trunks had multiplied the supply of fuel for wildfires by a factor of 10. That could create a second storm, this time with fire, not ice.

An even larger ice storm parked over Missouri from Dec. 7 through 11, spreading destruction over the entire state. Although the power outages were not as extensive, the year-end storm also created an enormous amount of woody debris.

In response to the increased risk of wildfires, the Conservation Department has launched a public-awareness campaign, encouraging property owners to take preventive measures before the spring fire season arrives. Information will be posted on the Conservation Department Web site, missouriconservation.org, under the keyword "Forestry."

The loss of a significant portion of Missouri’s annual turkey hatch was another weather-related story. Turkey hens had responded to two weeks of above-normal temperatures in March by starting to lay eggs, and the severe freeze destroyed many of those eggs.

The extended cold spell in early April put a halt to turkey mating behavior. Turkey hens that had been laying eggs were back to wintertime behavior patterns. Hens all over the state were seen roaming the landscape with gobblers in late April, rather than sitting on nests full of eggs. That meant that male turkeys didn’t have to gobble as much to attract hens, which made them much less likely to respond to hunters’ calls.

Partly as a result of this, the spring turkey harvest was down. More important to turkey hunters, the number of young turkeys was the second-lowest on record.

Missouri was both more and less colorful than usual on account of the April freeze. The destruction of many trees, flowers and the insects that visit them caused migrating songbirds, such as orioles and grosbeaks, to visit backyard bird feeders more than usual. However, the stress to trees from the freeze and an unusually hot, dry summer reduced the duration and vividness of Missouri’s fall foliage display.

[Al Agnew]

Well, there's so much totally unscientific and uninformed opinion in Daddy Carp's diatribes I won't even attempt to refute any of them. Poor, frail little humans...we can't fix it so therefore we didn't break it?

And while I agree with much of what you say, drew, it simply isn't true that we have enough AVAILABLE domestic oil to wean ourselves from foreign oil. I just researched this a bit for a thread on another website. Last year, we got 78% of our total oil consumption from foreign sources. Good ol' Chavez furnished us with 8% of our oil last year, as did the Saudis...those were the two biggest OPEC producers of our oil. Canada and Mexico were the two countries that furnished the most of our oil. We actually produced more domestically than the 22% we used ourselves...much of the rest of it was Alaskan oil that went to Japan and Singapore, because it's cheaper to buy oil on the open market and ship it to the U.S. than it is to ship Alaskan oil to the nearest lower 48 refineries. Latest estimates of ANWR oil says anywhere from 4 billion to 18 billion barrels could be available...we used well over 6 billion barrels last year alone. Proven U.S. reserves...what we KNOW is there and recoverable...is around 21 billion barrels. Lots more of it in oil shales, but while the technology for getting it from oil shale is gradually coming around, the technology to take care of all the waste and pollution problems associated with getting oil from oil shales is a LONG way down the road. The "simple" way of getting at the shale oil is to dig it all up and do some very complicated stuff to squeeze the oil out (actually it isn't oil until after you get it out and do a lot of stuff to it, it's an oil precurser). All that complicated stuff causes air and water pollution, and the shale left over after you do all that stuff actually expands and ends up being MORE volume of highly toxic stuff than what it was in the ground. And of course, you're also talking about strip mining a whole lot of national forest and even national parks to get at all of it.

Shell has a pilot program to get at oil shale oil a different way, by sticking big heaters down into the formation and MELTING the oil out of it. They actually think they can get three times as much energy from the oil as what they put in heating it up. But to protect the groundwater from the byproducts of this melting, they think they can FREEZE the groundwater around it. They didn't say how much energy THAT takes. And oh, by the way, it takes something like 5 barrels of water for every barrel of oil for this whole process to work...and we're talking about the oil shales being in the arid West.

I agree, however, that it looks like we're going to see this country and the world desperately seeking every last drop of oil, with all the attendant environmental damage that causes, instead of getting as serious as we need to be RIGHT NOW about energy conservation and alternative energy sources.

[Daddy Carp]

Well AA, you are as predictable as day and night! Just as do all the libs I've encountered, thus far, you spout off by name-calling and put-downs, then present a lot of facts on an intirely different subject to qualify yourselves, then expect no one to call you on it. Well Sir, I most certainly will. While I will not discredit, agree or disagree with your facts of future oil reserves and the reclamation of such, I will ascertain and state that the information you provided has very little bearing on the information I passed on from the MDC web site. Now if you have valid proof that Global warming is taking place as a result of what we are doing and that altering our proceedures will reverse or even halt it, then I shall be most attentive. But until you can provide that proof-of-fact, Please do not name call & put down myself or any other of these other fine gentlemen and ladies on this forum who each have a valid opinion of their own, which we are as entitled to as yourself Sir. God Bless & Have a Nice Day........D.C.

[zander]

I have always thought that a picture was worth a thousand words. Here is a link to a researcher in Alaska I think you'd be surprised to see. Whether or not global warming is anthropogenic or anthro-aggravated shouldn't really matter. The greenhouse effect is real and documented. What has not been established sufficiently for ALL people to accept is the responsible agent(s). Nothing we say on the forum is going to make it any more real or more fiction, but it is important to denote that global warming is just that - global. Some areas will become more arid some wetter, Some warmer, some cooler. We are not talking about local climate change after all, it is global warming, so don't read too much into the ice storms we had or the mild summers. I don't listen to Al Gore to tell me about climate change and I hope most people would not listen to Rush Limbaugh for the same reasons.

http://www.uaf.edu/water/faculty/nolan/gla...cCall/index.htm

[Chief Grey Bear]

Well AA, you are as predictable as day and night! Just as do all the libs I've encountered, thus far, you spout off by name-calling and put-downs, then present a lot of facts on an intirely different subject to qualify yourselves, then expect no one to call you on it. Well Sir, I most certainly will. While I will not discredit, agree or disagree with your facts of future oil reserves and the reclamation of such, I will ascertain and state that the information you provided has very little bearing on the information I passed on from the MDC web site. Now if you have valid proof that Global warming is taking place as a result of what we are doing and that altering our proceedures will reverse or even halt it, then I shall be most attentive. But until you can provide that proof-of-fact, Please do not name call & put down myself or any other of these other fine gentlemen and ladies on this forum who each have a valid opinion of their own, which we are as entitled to as yourself Sir. God Bless & Have a Nice Day........D.C.

Not sure where you read all this name calling, but I don't recall reading it in Al's post but, I can quote some names from others that have posted to this thread.

I can't prove that Global warming is happening, such as you cannot prove that is not happening. But as for your post from the MDC, I would think that it would be fairly elementary to understand why we are experiencing more ice storms than snow storms here in the Midwest than we ever have in the past.

One other thing. What if someday in the future we all can wake up one morning and we find that everything is a-ok. Then all those that did not believe in Global Warming can say "See, we told you so!!, But no, you wouldn't listen. Don't you fell stupid now!" I do hope and pray that will happen. But also think to yourself, what if we wake up and it is the other way around?

[drew03cmc]

Not sure where you read all this name calling, but I don't recall reading it in Al's post but, I can quote some names from others that have posted to this thread.

I can't prove that Global warming is happening, such as you cannot prove that is not happening. But as for your post from the MDC, I would think that it would be fairly elementary to understand why we are experiencing more ice storms than snow storms here in the Midwest than we ever have in the past.

One other thing. What if someday in the future we all can wake up one morning and we find that everything is a-ok. Then all those that did not believe in Global Warming can say "See, we told you so!!, But no, you wouldn't listen. Don't you fell stupid now!" I do hope and pray that will happen. But also think to yourself, what if we wake up and it is the other way around?

I think this may well just be a natural course of events, albeit a little accelerated by us and our oil grubbing selves. Whether or not it will have long-term effects on the fish and wildlife in the area is yet to be determined.

I pose the question again, how many people on this site that complain about "Global Warming" which has been partly attributed to emissions from vehicles (CO2), yet drive gas guzzlers (SUVs, sports cars, diesels) just to drive them.

That is the one thing that amazes me, any time I take a trip to a trout stream, I often have one of the few fuel efficient vehicles there and am surrounded by full size trucks and SUVs and people act like the trip killed them. I normally chuckle to myself and mutter, well, I get 30+mpg.

Again, I am off topic, but you understand. If you are not personally doing anything to change it, why bitch?

[Al Agnew]

Well, Daddy Carp...I didn't call you any names. I did say you were uninformed. Perhaps you aren't. However, you want me to respond to your assertions? Okay...

First, you cite Rush Limbaugh as saying that since we can't do anything about global warming, therefore we can't be causing it. Wow. Next time I break one of my wife's vases, I'll just tell her that since I can't fix it, I obviously didn't break it. And...who, other than Rush, says we can't do anything about it, anyway? We can't flip the giant cosmic air conditioner switch and magically cool things off, just as we didn't turn up the giant cosmic thermostat and get things heated up. But our activities are causing the heat-up, nevertheless, and our activities, if changed, can slow and stop the heating.

Then you apparently assert that the warming is being caused by our body heat, or something. That obviously makes no sense. Our numbers are not adding to the global biomass, only replacing other critters, just as our livestock is. Most certainly, we know about urban heat islands...it's warmer in big cities for a number of reasons. But that does not explain planetwide warming, and especially the fact that the areas of the planet that are warming the fastest are the Arctic and Antarctic.

Then you bring up the old global warming is natural. That does not take into account the PACE of this global warming. Sure, there are ice ages and warm periods on a particular cycle. This warming doesn't fit the cycle. It is happening too soon, too fast. I'm sure you'll say that we don't KNOW how warm it got in the past, or how quickly. But scientists with no ax to grind on global warming have already been able to come up with scientifically based estimates.

And one thing we know for sure, there is more CO2 in the atmosphere now than any of the peaks of former warm periods for several hundred thousand years. We know this from samples taken of the "fossil" air from ice cores from Antarctic glacial ice. 378 ppm right now. 250-300 ppm in every one of the warmest periods in the past. And it's up from 270 ppm at the beginning of the industrial revolution, already well within the warm periods of the past. And CO2 isn't the only greenhouse gas. Methane comes from both human and natural sources. It's a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. It's up 145% since the 1880s. The natural sources, like cow farts and termites, can't be the cause...remember that total biomass thing. Only human induced sources can explain much of the rise.

So then you talk about the ice storms, apparently using that as proof that global warming isn't occurring. But anybody who knows anything about it knows that one weather event in one spot on the globe is proof of nothing. I could just as easily bring up the warmer than normal January thru March this same year, or any other warm spell. It is the TREND that is important...not the weekly, monthly, or yearly trend, but the trend measured in decades. And over the whole globe. The earth has continued to warm, especially in the last 50 years. 2005 was the warmest year on record. The record had been broken a number of other times...seven other times since 1974. 2006 was a little cooler. All the figures aren't in for 2007. But the 5 year average has gone nothing but up for the last 50 years.

And...I wasn't responding to you when I posted about the oil figures.

Look, there are always contrarian views in science. It's a good thing. But in the case of global warming, the contrarian views are FAR outweighed by those who are certain that anthropomorphic global warming is real, significant, and something must be done about it. The media, and especially the "conservative" media, want to put the contrarians on at least an equal footing with the much greater number that make up the general scientific consensus. That shouldn't be how science works. You have to go with the consensus and not the contrarians, unless and until those contrarians can come up with convincing evidence.

I make no apologies for my views on this subject. They are based upon more than just listening to "liberals". This should not even be a liberal/conservative issue. We're all in it together. We'll all suffer the consequences if we do nothing. We'll all suffer whatever the consequences of our actions are. In fact...I have no children, and I probably won't live to see the worst consequences one way or the other. So in a very real way I may not even have a dog in this hunt. But I figure I have up to 30-40 more years on this earth, and I'd really like to leave it a little better than I found it. That's why I'm proud to call myself an environmentalist.

[Daddy Carp]

Thanks Al for the clarifications. I respect your views and stands on global warming. I agree with you on many issues as to our feeding the situation with emissions, errosion of soils and mainly the removal and distruction of rain forests and other major greeneries. These are a big factor in the increased CO2 and other impurities in the atmosphere. I also totally agree that it is not, and should not, be used for political gains, "pork barrel" projects as it is not a conserv. or lib. issue. God Bless...D.C.