Henry Payne for May 29, 2014

We have a policy?

Ask the Defense Department – they are projecting regional wars over fresh water supplies. Many areas in Asia in the volatile area where China and India meet are dependent on glacial melt for their water supply. With the climate warming, these glaciers are on their way out. The water supply to these areas is already decreasing and it will only get worse.

Any day now, Republicans in the House are going to pass legislation to create Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, which is, after all, their primary (laser-like) focus.

news flash to braindead08 195 job bills passed by the house are sitting in the senate but reid knows a person with a job is less likely to vote demo so he stops them

I admit I am not well-versed in the technical mechanics of global warming. And, as you point out, carbon dioxide does enter the atmosphere from other sources. But, as I posted before, we are adding to that significantly. Man does not cause climate change, but can interfere with, and hasten changes with the Earth’s natural cycles. I recall that during the 1970’s, there was a serious push to mandate that industries which do emit carbon dioxide, and other potentially harmful gasses, to install filtration systems. It was expensive, but may have become less costly as time passed, but Industry did not want to invest that much money, as it would hurt the bottom line. I think this was a major factor for many corporations and industries to move operations out of the U.S.

Actually, I guess we DO have a POLICY, but it can, and does change with each administration.

Are you the one who thought that hydrocarbons and carbohydrates are the same?

“thanks entirely to Obama’s and Kerry’s job-killing policies, West Virginia has only employed a few thousand people in the coal industry, and this has been true since the ’80s.”#toosubtleforgocomics

Eso puede pasar because most Americans are miners. Its true! Just ask the people in Florida.

I am not qualified to analyze those photos. I suspect that they show temporary sea ice, not what most people consider an “ice sheet.” Seasonal sea ice varies, but has been melting more rapidly, as trends from the last few decades show. .Read information from the following sites, that explain some of my points about glaciers in the Himalayas. .http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/sea_ice.php

http://dels.nas.edu/Report/Himalayan-Glaciers-Climate-Change-Water-Resources/13449?bname=basc

http://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/2932

Ice is complicated; there are a lot of factors involved. A good source of information is the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Here are a few passages from their current news:

“Since reaching its annual maximum extent on March 21, Arctic sea ice extent has declined somewhat unevenly, but has consistently been well below its average 1981 to 2010 extent. While the rate of Arctic-wide retreat was rapid through the first half of April, it has subsequently slowed down. However, ice breakup was quite early in the Bering Sea, presenting difficulties for gold dredging operations and seal hunters in the region. In the Antarctic, sea ice continued to reach record high extents.”

“Average ice extent for April 2014 was the fifth lowest for the month in the satellite record. Through 2014, the linear rate of decline for April ice extent is -2.4% per decade relative to the 1981 to 2010 average.”

“The anomalously low sea ice conditions in the Bering Sea are partially a result of low winter ice cover (see our March 3, 2014 post) and an unusually early breakup of sea ice. The Fairbanks Daily News Miner reported that the unusually early breakup of ice in the Bering Sea forced several gold dredging operations to act quickly to get their equipment off the coastal sea ice, which is used as a platform to work shallow seabed gold deposits. Seal hunters were also impacted by the early breakup, in some cases abandoning their snowmobiles on the ice as it became unstable or impassable. The snowmobiles were later recovered by boat.”

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/