More rain is falling in autumn in the Southeast than a century ago. Droughts have increased in spring and summer, and the temperature has made a slight move upward, particularly since 1970.
It's projected to continue to rise, according to the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Increasingly extreme weather is likely, such as heavier downpours and more intense droughts in some areas.
Yet change in Tennessee could be difficult to tabulate, according to Joanne Logan, an associate professor of biosystems engineering and soil engineering at the University of Tennessee.
"In Tennessee, everything is pretty subtle," she said, adding that research has not been plentiful when it comes to agriculture and climate change here.
If small changes are occurring under the radar, a trigger point could be reached suddenly where ecosystems as a whole could fail, unable to make changes quickly enough to keep up, she said.
On the other hand, it's entirely possible that the ecosystem will continue to function pretty much like normal. So, you know...
These maniacs seemingly are trying to outdo the Islamists. So far we've seen them blowing children up, and now these global warming maniacs are depicting children being hanged? How sick is this?
Ironically enough it's from a leftist group called ACT Responsible. Sure. If they acted responsibly they'd get off their high horse, get real jobs and become useful members of society. Instead they get off on blowing up kids on film and putting nooses around their necks.
Just imagine if a leftist politician were portrayed the same way. There'd be worldwide condemnation and hand-wringing over civility. There would be calls for hate crimes prosecutions. Instead most media just ignore craziness like this and then tell us we don't get the "humor" of it all. Seriously, how can anyone look at this image and not be outraged?
"I'm going to sit by my friend Lula," he said, moving toward Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
A) Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez B) American President Barack Obama C) Libyan dictator Moammar Gahdaffi D) Iranian thug Ahmadinejaid
Well, I would hope that years of taking multiple choice tests would help. The old rule is when in doubt choose B. And you would be right.
It seems that Barry O's trip to Copenhagen was just one misstep after another by his team and himself. These guys are like the gang that can't shoot straight. Obama is blinded by his narcissistic attitude that the world revolves around him, and as far as other world leaders are considered, he needs to be seated at the kiddy table and leave the grown-ups alone, and he is becoming quite an irritant to them.
What follows is just some of events that our community organizer-in-chief engaged in that reads like a rough draft of Three Stooges episode.
The president of the United States walked into a meeting of fellow world leaders and there wasn't a chair for him, a sure sign he was not expected, maybe not even wanted.
Ouch!
Instead of attending a planned meeting with Denmark's prime minister, he plunged into an emergency session of about 20 nations, big and small, wealthy and poor. Right away there was a troubling sign.
China was the only nation to send a second-tier official: vice foreign minister He Yafei instead of Premier Wen, who was in the building. The snub baffled and annoyed delegates.
No matter how hard China tried to tell Barry they weren't interested, he just kept stumbling along, secure in his knowledge that he was the most important man in the room. Uhmmm, no Barry. You have denigrated the office of President of the United States to such a low point that whoever we elect next is going to have one heckuva time restoring us back to the top. One thing I am pretty sure of is it ain't going to be you.
A short time later, however, the U.S. team was more baffled and irked than before. At a follow-up session of the morning's big meeting, the Chinese sent an even lower-ranking envoy in Wen's place.
This says Obama was unaware, which in Robert Gibbs speak, his Press Secretary, will say was unprecedented. This administration seems to be caught unaware a lot, whether by jobless numbers, the failure of their giveaways or simply the reaction to their latest grab of taxpayer money.
Obama was unaware, however, thinking he was going to meet alone with Wen. After some confusion about who had access to the room, White House aides told the president that Wen was inside with the leaders of the three other countries, apparently working on strategy.
"Good," Obama said as he walked through the door. "Mr. Premier, are you ready to see me?" he called out. "Are you ready?"
Inside he found startled leaders and no chair to sit in.
Does anybody get the image of other world leaders huddling together after Obama leaves the room and having a good laugh. I half expect Barack to walk out of a meeting sometime with a "Kick Me" sign neatly taped to the back of his jacket.
Yup, I feel so much better knowing these guys are in charge. The sad part is that out of the triumvirate--Nancy, Harry, and Barry--Barry might be the most competent.
Not even Andrea Mitchell of NBC News or Rachel Maddow of MSNBC can find a good spin to put on it, although they try. Even Andrea admits that for the most part the meeting in Copenhagen was a failure.
World leaders flying into Copenhagen today to discuss a solution to global warming will first face freezing weather as a blizzard dumped 10 centimeters (4 inches) of snow on the Danish capital overnight.
“Temperatures will stay low at least the next three days,” Henning Gisseloe, an official at Denmark’s Meteorological Institute, said today by telephone, forecasting more snow in coming days. “There’s a good chance of a white Christmas.”
Delegates from 193 countries have been in Copenhagen since Dec. 7 to discuss how to fund global greenhouse gas emission cuts. U.S. President Barack Obama will arrive before the summit is scheduled to end tomorrow.
Denmark has a maritime climate and milder winters than its Scandinavian neighbors. It hasn’t had a white Christmas for 14 years, under the DMI’s definition, and only had seven last century. Temperatures today fell as low as minus 4 Celsius (25 Fahrenheit).
Not quite sure how they can claim four inches is a blizzard, but hey, we'll play along.
Frankly, I amazed this Australian scientist was allowed an audience at the Circle of Commitment confab in Copenhagen. Here I figured dissent would not be tolerated as the poobahs of propaganda schemed for new ways to empty our pockets.
AN Australian scientist has told a Copenhagen audience that humans are not damaging the climate - and the weather seemed hotter to him as a child.
Well-known geologist and author Ian Plimer travelled to the scene of the UN climate conference to question whether the world was warming.
"It's been freezing in Perth and bucketing down," Professor Plimer said after his lecture.
The UN's weather body, the World Meteorological Organisation, yesterday announced the last decade was likely to be the hottest on record.
Australia has had three heatwaves this year and is on track to record its third-hottest year ever.
But Prof Plimer, author of the recent best-selling book, Heaven and Earth, which questioned human-induced climate change, said: "One swallow doesn't make a summer."
The University of Adelaide professor did not make it inside the official climate conference venue, instead giving his speech to a rival conference organised by a US lobby group in central Copenhagen.
"Heretics are not allowed," he said of the UN conference.
He told the rival conference he remembered summers when he was a child being much warmer and said at the moment it was freezing in Perth and bucketing down.
Prof Plimer said he was in Copenhagen to try to stop the world engaging in the "global collective madness" of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by clamping down on economic development.
He said the climate had always changed and it was erroneous to blame emissions from people.
Of course it's erroneous, but our moral superiors tell us the science is settled, so that's that.
We imagine they figure with the continued network blackout they can just run out the clock on the the great ClimateGate hoax. When you have such friendly media coverage spewing the usual climate babble, that air of smug superiority is easy to come by.
A group of the nation's top scientists defended research on global climate change Friday against what they called a politically motivated smear campaign designed to foster public doubt about irrefutable scientific facts.
Irrefutable? Oh, you mean the science is settled? Is this a news story? Why, yes it is. But the reporter knows it's irrefutable.
The allegations came after skeptics seized upon a series of hacked e-mails at England's University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit as evidence of a climate change hoax.
The scientists from two major research centers, a national think tank and NASA, claimed during a telephone news conference that the e-mail exchanges were taken out of context in an attempt to influence pending greenhouse gas emissions policies.
It is, they said, a cynical, blatantly dishonest effort to cloud the fact that the world is now confronting a huge, potentially disastrous climactic shift.
Blatantly dishonest? Like, say, dumping the data so nobody can check it? Like "hiding the decline" and pulling "tricks," that kind of blatantly dishonest behavior?
"There is so much information that tells us the planet has been warming," said Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeler at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "No independent study is going to come up with anything other than what we've already concluded."
In that case, Mr. Schmidt, you should welcome the independent studies since if the science is settle it would only reinforce your position, right?
If I had a theory and claimed it was so solid, I'd be more than eager to have others confirm it. But they do not want any independent review of their work because they know they'll be exposed as frauds.
The world's foremost scientists, some 2,500 in all, agree that an increase in global temperatures since 1900 is responsible for the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet, acidification of the ocean, sea level rise and habitat destruction.
Despite this, the drumbeat of skepticism about global warming has never been louder. The Internet and conservative news programs have been flooded over the past week with breathless accounts of alleged scientific fraud.
Again, this is not an opinion piece; rather it's an actual news story. Not that you could tell the difference. Nowhere in this "news" story can a critic of this scam be found. Instead we get duplicitous propaganda like this:
Joseph Romm, a physicist and senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress, said the evidence of warming is getting clearer while opponents are "redoubling their disinformation campaign."
"The last ten years are the warmest ten year period in the modern record," said Romm, who served in the U.S. Department of Energy in the 1990s. "These observations are unequivocal. The question is what will happen in our future, and that is still in our hands."
Of course that is an outright lie, but hey, why deal with facts when you have an agenda? And they accuse others of a disinformation" campaign?
The folks are University of East Anglia are finally feeling enough heat (pun intended) over the exposure of the junk science at their "prestigious" Climatic Research Unit that today they announced they would investigate whether their esteemed scientists have been churning out bogus data. Still, you'll notice the shift toward blaming skeptics of being politically motivated as the Hopenchangen in Copenhagen event approaches.
A British university said Thursday it would investigate whether scientists at its prestigious Climatic Research Unit fudged data on global warming.
Thousands of pieces of correspondence between some of the world's leading climate scientists were stolen from the unit at the University of East Anglia and leaked to the Internet late last month. Skeptics of man-made global warming say the e-mails are proof that scientists have been conspiring to hide evidence showing that global warming was not as strong as generally believed.
Phil Jones, the director of the unit, stepped down Tuesday pending the result of the investigation.
The university had promised a probe when Jones stepped down, but didn't specify what the investigation would encompass. Thursday's announcement was the first acknowledgment that the research itself would be under scrutiny.
East Anglia said its review will examine the e-mails and other information "to determine whether there is any evidence of the manipulation or suppression of data which is at odds with acceptable scientific practice."
The theft of the e-mails and their publication online — only weeks before the U.N. summit on global warming — has been politically explosive, even if researchers say their content has no bearing on the principles of climate change itself.
There was further criticism following the revelation that the university had thrown out much of the raw temperature data on which its global warming research was based. The university said in a statement last week that the data, stored on paper and magnetic tape, was dumped in the 1980s to save space when the unit moved to a new location.
The release of the data has prompted some lawmakers in Britain to warn that critics of climate change want to wreck any global agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions that could be achieved at the Dec. 7-18 U.N. climate change summit in Copenhagen.
Ed Miliband, Britain's climate change secretary, on Thursday called those challenging the mainstream scientific view on climate change irresponsible and dangerous.
"We have to beware of the climate saboteurs, the people who want to say this is somehow in doubt, and want to cast aspersions on the whole process," Miliband told reporters.
Heh. Climate saboteurs. Oooh, how nefarious!
The University of East Anglia's investigation comes in addition to a probe by Penn State University, which is also examining e-mails by its own researcher, Michael Mann.
East Anglia said former civil servant Muir Russell would lead the inquiry. Russell said he "has no links to either the university or the climate science community."
The university has asked that the review be completed by spring 2010.
I wonder whether when this "independent" study is released whether they'll allow it to be peer-reviewed?
Noted climatologist Al Gore was unavailable for comment.
While this is huge news int he UK, the American media still remains largely silent, lamely claiming so new-found ethical excuse because these e-mails were leaked. They didn't seem to mind running with Sarah Palin's hacked emails last year, nor did they care back in the mid-90s when Newt Gingrich's conversations were illegally taped by Democrat operatives.
Let's suppose there was an email chain suggesting Bush officials deliberately lied about WMD in Iraq. Would the media ignore them and would Democrats accuse a leaker of being a saboteur? Or would the leaker be hailed as a courageous national hero and feted far and wide?
Seemingly every day all across the country there are tea parties with huge numbers of people attending but they're largely ignored by the Obama-approved media. On Saturday a sparse gathering turned up in Times Square to blither on about non-existent climate change or global warming ... or whatever the heck they're calling it now, but it still gets plenty of attention.
About 150 people have gathered for a rally in Times Square as part of a series of demonstrations around the world calling for action on global warming.
The focus of Saturday's rallies was the number 350.
Heh. The focus was 350 and they couldn't even get half that number to attend.
Just pathetic.
Some scientists say that's the level to which atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions, measured in parts per million, should be lowered to prevent dangerous climate change.
Some are concerned they're not being take seriously. You think?
Organizers said their goal, in the prelude to global climate talks in Copenhagen in December, was to illustrate the urgent need to cut emissions by pointing out that the world passed the 350 mark two decades ago. Yet while agreeing that unabated emissions pose serious risks, some prominent scientists and economists focusing on climate policy said the 350 target was so unrealistic that the campaign risked not being taken seriously — or could convey the wrong message.
Meanwhile, one lefty wondered aloud whether this meagere gathering would draw teabagger-style coverage.
Keeping it classy.
Will these protests get teabagger-style coverage? Probably not. A good fight over crowd estimates always helps and so does having a television network devoted to revving up your cause.
Here's another esteemed pundit with the tea parties on the brain.
I've always thought those who worshiped at the altar of global warming were suffering from a psychosis and now it's been confirmed.
PSYCHIATRISTS have detected the first case of "climate change delusion" - and they haven't even yet got to Kevin Rudd and his global warming guru. Writing in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Joshua Wolf and Robert Salo of our Royal Children's Hospital say this delusion was a "previously unreported phenomenon".
"A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne with an eight-month history of depressed mood . . . He also . . . had visions of apocalyptic events." (So have Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery, Profit of Doom Al Gore and Sir Richard Brazen, but I digress.)
"The patient had also developed the belief that, due to climate change, his own water consumption could lead within days to the deaths of millions of people through exhaustion of water supplies."
But never mind the poor boy, who became too terrified even to drink. What's scarier is that people in charge of our Government seem to suffer from this "climate change delusion", too.
Here is Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday, with his own apocalyptic vision: "If we do not begin reducing the nation's levels of carbon pollution, Australia's economy will face more frequent and severe droughts, less water, reduced food production and devastation of areas such as the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu wetlands."
And here is a senior Sydney Morning Herald journalist aghast at the horrors described in the report on global warming released on Friday by Rudd's guru, Professor Ross Garnaut: "Australians must pay more for petrol, food and energy or ultimately face a rising death toll . . ."
These shameless propagandists who lie through their teeth are doing incalculable harm to the mental health of children. A generation of kids now believe these apocalyptic scenarios that they're indoctrinated with.
This does far more harm than anyone's carbon footprint or some such nonsense.
