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GLOBAL GLACIALATING

Global warming embiggens even the smallest Himalayan ice forms, reports the BBC:

Global warming could be causing some glaciers to grow, a new study claims.

If this trend spreads, polar bears will soon have nowhere to swim. In other warmy news:

A Russian scientist predicts a period of global cooling in coming decades, followed by a warmer interval ...

“The Kyoto initiatives to save the planet from the greenhouse effect should be put off until better times,” he said. “The global temperature maximum has been reached on Earth, and Earth’s global temperature will decline to a climatic minimum even without the Kyoto protocol.”

I’m of the belief that a Pacific island sinks two centimetres every time the word consensus is used. Just part of my dissenting world view.

Posted by Tim B. on 08/26/2006 at 12:27 PM
  1. “The Kyoto initiatives to save the planet from the greenhouse effect should be put off until better times,”

    What the hell does this sentence mean?  Better times for what?  If we’re destined to have better times, then what do we need Kyoto for?  Is he saying “better times”, as in “when the marks have let their guard down and are ripe for the picking”?

    Posted by RebeccaH on 2006 08 26 at 12:40 PM • permalink

  2. So wait, what?  The Gropal Warmening causes…more ice?

    Then shouldn’t those polar bears have embiggening testicles, too?

    I need to have a lie-down and a beer.

    Posted by ushie on 2006 08 26 at 12:44 PM • permalink

  3. more ice?

    Thanks for the reminder ushie, I must turn my ice maker back on, it’s running low.

    The Sour Apple martinis taste so much better, shaken and chilled.

    Posted by El Cid on 2006 08 26 at 01:14 PM • permalink

  4. This may be a laughing matter to ya’ll, but it is playing havoc with my wardrobe planning! Should I lay in a stock of linen and tropical wool suits, or go for the heavy wool and wool/cashmere? What should be the mix of Panama hats and fur-felt fedoras? Do I spring for the full length, double-breasted, blue cashmere overcoat, or stick with a trench coat?

    Climatological uncertainty is hell.

    Posted by paco on 2006 08 26 at 01:41 PM • permalink

  5. They found warmer winters and cooler summers, combined with more snow and rainfall, could be causing some mountain glaciers to increase in size.

    So…milder winters and milder summers are symptoms of global warming?  Funny, I could’ve sworn the mantra was that global warming causes greater extremes and more variability.

    So let us review:
    If it’s hotter in summer ... global warming!
    If it’s cooler in summer ... global warming!
    If it’s warmer in winter ... global warming!
    If it’s cooler in winter ... global warming!
    If glaciers shrink ... global warming!
    If glaciers grow ... global warming!
    If polar bear nards shrink ... global warming!
      ( ... kids, fill in the next line!)

    Posted by Shaky Barnes on 2006 08 26 at 01:53 PM • permalink

  6. If this trend spreads, polar bears will soon have nowhere to swim.

    Not to mention enlarged balls.

    Posted by JAFA on 2006 08 26 at 02:21 PM • permalink

  7. RebeccaH, I was similarly puzzled and I suspect you are right.  Khabibullo Abdusamatov was probably speaking in Russian and “more gullible” was translated to “better”.

    Posted by Skeeter on 2006 08 26 at 02:57 PM • permalink

  8. paco, one word:  Ponchos.

    Posted by ushie on 2006 08 26 at 03:08 PM • permalink

  9. Paco—Start ordering the reversible stuff from the Haband catalog. You’ll roast or you’ll freeze but at least you’ll look like you’re dressed appropriately.

    Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 08 26 at 03:11 PM • permalink

  10. No, no, no! You people are not getting the picture. I can’t show up at board meetings dressed like Clint Eastwood at a gun fight, or like a duffer fresh from the links at Doral. Maybe the solution is to buy plenty of everything, but that takes money, and the bondholders of Paco convertible debentures are already getting nervous about the next scheduled interest payment. Hmmm. I suppose we could float some kind of indexed derivative instrument that tracks the credibility margin between Lowenstein and Fisk, but that’s a mighty thin spread. Still, the fees might be good for the purchase of a few retro ties . . .

    Posted by paco on 2006 08 26 at 03:41 PM • permalink

  11. Well, as you know, were it not for man’s deleterious meddling, glaciers would never retreat. So I suppose we should thank all the CO2 emitters over the past century for the fact that half of California still isn’t under ice?

    The current issue of Via (AAA magazine) features two articles: Global Warming: Vanishing Glaciers and Global Warming: Rising Tides. It also helpfully lists ways in which you can “help the planet” including how you can pay to “cancel your carbon”. Sigh.

    Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 08 26 at 04:01 PM • permalink

  12. Poor Paco!  With everything else he has to fret about, there’s this fashion thing hanging over him.  Tut.

    Climate science is certainly a strange creature among the sciences.  It seems that within its confines you are allowed to have both A and non-A at the same time and in the same manner.  Aristotle would be gobsmacked.

    Posted by saltydog on 2006 08 26 at 04:26 PM • permalink

  13. “It also helpfully lists ways in which you can “help the planet” including how you can pay to “cancel your carbon”.

    So what form does that take?  Send money to some 3rd World jerkwater and they’ll “cancel your carbon” a’la Kyoto?  Or just send a check to Algore?

    Posted by Vanguard of the Commentariat on 2006 08 26 at 05:05 PM • permalink

  14. Oh, I dunno, paco—if you show up wearing a poncho and a cowboy hat, and dusty boots, and with a tiny cigar between your tightly- clenched teeth, I’m pretty sure the others will listen to you.

    Oh, if you can get it through security, don’t forget the doubled gun belt.  That is a fashion must!

    Posted by ushie on 2006 08 26 at 05:18 PM • permalink

  15. Geez, isn’t there some sort of self-contained suit with an internal heating/cooling apparatus and chameleon-like cloaking device so that it could morph into either formal or casual wear with the flip of a switch lying around RWDB headquarters somewhere?

    Not even a prototype?

    Well, nobody better come asking for mine then.  Not unless they have a certain 62 year old stock certificate I asked them about the other day.

    Posted by 68W40 on 2006 08 26 at 05:22 PM • permalink

  16. Paco

    Still, the fees might be good for the purchase of a few retro ties

    Ummmm, maybe This?

    Hold on, maybe one of these.

    Now this, has you written all over it.

    Posted by El Cid on 2006 08 26 at 05:33 PM • permalink

  17. Ender?  Are you out there? 

    EEEEEENNNNNNNNDDDDDDDEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

    Where are you, Ender?  Something like this ought to have you popping in here, and telling us that we are “....all doomed, DOOMED, I tells ya!!!!!”

    Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 08 26 at 05:41 PM • permalink

  18. #16: Solid, Jackson!

    #15: Hey, I’ve got the stock certificate. Let’s see, it was 500 shares of the Nash Automobile Corporation, right?

    Posted by paco on 2006 08 26 at 05:50 PM • permalink

  19. Vanguard—there are a number of Web sites that will happily, happily, take your money and then plant a tree or buy a windmill…or something. “Or just send a check to Al Gore” may not be far from the mark. You don’t think he’s in this for the glory, do you?

    Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 08 26 at 06:20 PM • permalink

  20. paco

    Climatological uncertainty is hell.

    Now steady on paco.  All is not lost. It’s quite simple really. 

    The fastest way to make ice is to fill the ice cube tray with hot water then place it in the freezer.  The resultant heat transfer is faster than with cold water from the tap and so the ice forms very quickly.  Try it for yourself.

    So extrapolating to the global level, a hotter atmosphere obviously means that when someone turns on the fridge, the ice will just form quicker.  So glaziers will grow ... it’s obviously all part of global warming as is everything in reality.  And foolish me once thought that life was complicated. 

    So the answers to your questions

    “Should I lay in a stock of linen and tropical wool suits, or go for the heavy wool and wool/cashmere?”

    “What should be the mix of Panama hats and fur-felt fedoras?” and

    “Do I spring for the full length, double-breasted, blue cashmere overcoat, or stick with a trench coat?”

    are Yes, Whatever and Yes.

    Posted by Wand on 2006 08 26 at 06:44 PM • permalink

  21. Is the fear of global climate change (which seems to have been going on for aeons)linked to the leftist tendency to foster, aid, and abett regimes which maintain a morgue-like stasis in national economies - eg Cuba, Soviet Union, N. Korea, China before Deng, not to mention the Caliphates?

    Posted by blogstrop on 2006 08 26 at 06:47 PM • permalink

  22. #20
    Whoops - mea culpa - spelling should have been glaciers and not glaziers.  But, oh what the heck ... glaziers, glass, greenhouse, warming, it’s all the same in these postmodernist times of moral equivalence.  Isn’t it?  (Rhetorical question).

    Posted by Wand on 2006 08 26 at 06:54 PM • permalink

  23. Thanks, Wand, er, I think. I will try your ice-tray experiment, though.

    You’re probably right about growing glaziers, too; I saw two of those guys carrying a big plate glass window the other day, and they were much taller than the average joe.

    Posted by paco on 2006 08 26 at 07:46 PM • permalink

  24. Wand is right.  A New Scientist article just indicated that phenomenon, the warmer water in fact cools quicker and forms ice sooner.  It supposedly is to do with the salts in warmer water precipitating out and thus not inhibiting ice formation compared to cold water.  These salts one can sees plating out on pots/kettle that boil water.

    Posted by The Big Fish on 2006 08 26 at 08:09 PM • permalink

  25. So its all OK then.  The oceans are getting warmer which means they’ll get cooler quicker, and there’ll be plenty of ice to go around, and indigenous peoples can use that ice to re-enact their migrations and reverse the predations of the rapacious Europeans.  And I can stop payment on the small but well-intentioned check I wrote to Algore to cancel my carbon!

    Posted by Vanguard of the Commentariat on 2006 08 26 at 08:22 PM • permalink

  26. A Russian scientist predicts a period of global cooling in coming decades, followed by a warmer interval.

    It ought to get warmer, now that there’s one less planet to heat.

    Posted by rhhardin on 2006 08 26 at 09:11 PM • permalink

  27. It ought to get warmer, now that there’s one less planet to heat.

    rhhardin, your theory makes as much sense as anything that I’ve read!  You ought to win a Nobel prize!!  LOL!!!!!!!!!!

    Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 08 26 at 10:03 PM • permalink

  28. So let’s see:

    Retreating glaciers - bad,
    Growing glaciers - good.

    Then obviously we should do more for global warming.

    Posted by Crossie on 2006 08 26 at 10:58 PM • permalink

  29. #20 An aesthetic by-product of using boiling water to make ice is the incredible clarity of the resultant cube!

    Your friends will think you spent hours getting those pesky air bubbles out, and you’ll be the toast of the cocktail set!

    Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 08 27 at 12:04 AM • permalink

  30. Before Himalyan peaks were too cold for significant snowfall. Now things have warmed up enough for that. But, things aren’t warm enough for the new snow to melt away. Result? The snow pack builds up and eventually compacts into ice.

    Lower down the mountains it is warm enough for ice and snow to melt away, so the glaciers down there are shrinking.

    Posted by mythusmage on 2006 08 27 at 12:42 AM • permalink

  31. SBS news last night had a BBC story about some old guy in the UK who was mowing his lawn after winter a week earlier when compared with 30 years ago. They concluded that this meant spring was coming earlier and that animals and plants were going to die in large numbers within the next 20 seconds if someone didn’t “do something”.

    Meanwhile, here’s something we can all purchase to hasten spring:

    When a Hummer won’t do
    It can stop a bullet from an AK-47, shrug off a roadside bomb, and it makes a Hummer look like a chick car.

    Posted by Art Vandelay on 2006 08 27 at 06:18 AM • permalink

  32. As if Kevin Costner didn’t have enough to worry about in Waterworld. Now he’ll have to be on the lookout for icebergs.

    Posted by surly on 2006 08 27 at 07:57 AM • permalink

  33. #31 - I’ve always thought it was ridiculous that the US military doesn’t have an inexpensive armored car. We’re still set up for fighting the Soviets. The Brits have a bit of experience with occupying unfriendly climes. and they’ve been leaders in armored car design and use. How many Panhards or Humbers or other effective, low-tech AC’s could be bought for the price of the insipidly-named Stryker?

    Armored Humvees aren’t enough, and the Stryker seems like a little too much for routine work.

    Posted by Dave S. on 2006 08 27 at 09:39 AM • permalink

  34. #31 ArtVandelay:  I loved how one of the people quoted mentioned that if you were a big celebrity in Canada, the only problem you might have is signing all those autographs.

    Canadian celebrities?  Now I’ve heard everything!

    Posted by ushie on 2006 08 27 at 11:35 AM • permalink

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