Gulf Of Thailand Won't Rise With Global Warming, Expert Claims

[TonySoprano]

BB's comments in orange.......

The greenhouse and hydroponic gardeners will save some money if the CO2 levels go up. They have been releasing compressed CO2 in the enclosed greenhouses and their plants do much better. Perhaps this will mean the end of world hunger. Temperature going up means a longer growing season in northern climates.

average temperatures going up may benefit some pockets of land area, but I venture that in the big picture, it will bring bigger deserts, and generally screw with patterns that flora and fauna are used to (and therefore with peoples' well-being). droughts will be more severe and cover wider areas. Floods will increase in severity. Hurricanes will increase in size, as warmer sea water directly affects that.

You may say, 'hey, how can you have more severe droughts and more severe floods in the same areas? That's contradictory.'

I respond: not really. Look at just Thailand. Every year there are floods and there are droughts - often in the same places, though six months apart. It could be argued that the patterns are getting more severe each passing year. If global warming really kicks in, more severe weather swings will certainly take place, not just in Thailand, but in most parts of the world.

Sea levels going up? I don't believe that either. Evaporation increases in hotter weather and ice bergs are already mostly underwater. The two poles are VERY small as compared to the surface of the seas.

There may be increased evaporation, but clouds can only carry a tiny fraction of the water that oceans can carry, so the affect of evaporation will be negligible at most - except for lakes. If half the ice at the poles and Greenland melted, the effects would raise seas worldwide (including Thailand's) several meters.

I have to admit that I am biased because I absolutely don't believe anything Al Gore says.

Do you not believe what Gore says because you don't like the guy, or because his science is faulty? ....or for some other reasons?

I'm saying that I DON'T like the gloom and doom Chicken Little types. I hear all these bullshit predictions that are based on nothing except a good imagination.

I also believe that Al Gore couldn't tie his own shoes without help. The bottom line is that the earth goes through cycles and this is part of a cycle. No one has ever explained to me what caused the last ice age that carved out the Great Lakes in the US.

Sounds like you know way more about this than Al Gore. Too bad you are off in the middle of nowhere in Thailand doing god knows what all day and not in charge of a government agency.

[ballpoint]

This is obviously a touchy subject for many people, which is surprising since I suspect few are experts, and have simply formed an opinion based on the popular press. While by no means an expert myself, I did study glaciology as part of a geology degree, this was in the days before global warming was the "in" theory, back when the hole in the ozone layer was the current bogeyman. I'm not going to press one way or the other, but I will give some facts that have been missing from this thread. What I haven't seen mentioned here, is that, technically, we are currently in an "ice age" or glaciation. This is because the Antarctic ice sheet has been a permanent fixture for the last 2.5 million years. The warmer period we now experience being termed an interglacial, which has lasted since the beiginning of the Holocene epoch, 10,000 years ago. Since the start of this Quaternary glaciation, there have been a number of cycles of warming to interglacials and "refreezing" to glacial periods. As I said, the glaciation is marked by the continuous presence of the Antarctic ice sheet. There is no proof that the Greenland one has been as continuous though, and may have disappeared during other interglacials. What is likely, is that this Holocene interglaciation will last longer than the others, probably another 50,000 years, due to the Earth's projected orbit. Prior to this glaciation, the Earth's surface was completely free of any significant ice. For reference, do a search of "Quaternary glaciation". What this shows is, since the beginning of the Pleistocene, the earth has cyclically cooled and warmed, with corresponding falls and rise in sea level. There are also corresponding falls and rises in CO2 levels in ice cores, however there is evidence to show that these trail the temperature changes, and are an effect of them, not a cause. The warmer the climate, the more CO2 the atmosphere can absorb. In the present day, concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are higher than those calculated for other Pleistocene interglacials, but again, studies have shown the CO2 concentration started increasing after temperatures in Antarctica started rising (http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~joos/OUTGOING...cope_proofs.pdf). This paper also notes that the high levels of greenhouse gases (GHG's) in the atmosphere, if sustained, could delay the onset of the next glacial period. It is important to remember, that CO2 is not the only GHG; water vapour, methane, and Nitrogen - Oxygen compounds being others. Of these, water vapour contributes up to 85% to the greenhouse effect when clouds are included. Human activity does not directly affect water vapour concentrations, except very locally, such as near irrigated fields. Therefore, while human made CO2 emissions have contributed to the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, they form a relatively small part of overall GHG's. Are they significant? That hasn't been satisfactorily answered by anybody.

Now, my opinion: The Earth's temperature has dramatically risen and fallen over the eons, and will continue to do so. Whether we are directly affecting it I don't know. But, for the good of our health, we definitely should be actively cutting pollutants such as sooty and other particulate emissions, along with those of poisonous gases. What I don't like though, is being told a theory is a hard fast fact, being told that I must do this and that because of this theory, and not being allowed to question it without being called a crank. By all means, make the industries clean up their act, it's about time they did, but come up with some hard truth before taking my car away from me.

[brahmburgers]

......By all means, make the industries clean up their act, it's about time they did, but come up with some hard truth before taking my car away from me.

I'm not advocating taking away your car, yet I might suggest you try keeping it as clean-running as reasonably possible. And with your knowledge, you could influence others toward lessening their polluting ways. Indeed, influential Thais could do so much more to steer their countrymen toward cleaner lifestyles.

The number one most important thing to impress upon people, whether global warming is a dire threat or not, - is the need for energy conservation and maintaining a cleaner environment. Ok, that's two things, but perhaps a good catch-all word is 'husbandry.' In boy scouts, there was a merit badge for 'animal husbandry'. Well, there could not be a multitude of awards/citations given out everywhere - to all sorts of people - for 'Earth Husbandry.'

Seriously though, thanks ballpoint for shedding light on the debate (pun intended) and adding a wealth of info about glaciation and such.

[JetsetBkk]

...I'm told there are European countries currently trying to pass legislation to tax cattle farmers for bovine flatulation ...

Oh dear. I just bought a couple of kilos of Brussels Sprouts.

[yumidesign]

The greenhouse and hydroponic gardeners will save some money if the CO2 levels go up. They have been releasing compressed CO2 in the enclosed greenhouses and their plants do much better. Perhaps this will mean the end of world hunger. Temperature going up means a longer growing season in northern climates.

Sea levels going up? I don't believe that either. Evaporation increases in hotter weather and ice bergs are already mostly underwater. The two poles are VERY small as compared to the surface of the seas.

I have to admit that I am biased because I absolutely don't believe anything Al Gore says.

Al Gore is a politician.......

ABC Insiders (Aus) TV yesterday...... mean temperatures around the world have not increased over the last decade!!!!!!

All the so called futurists better get a crystal ball.... and then they can tell us what the weather is going to be like tomorrow

[Gary A]

What killed the dinosaurs? I subscribe to the theory that the earth's crust rotated. The poles became too heavy with ice and the earth had to re balance itself. That seems logical to me because the crust floats on a molten core. I think it is a proved fact that huge glaciers gouged out the Great Lakes. Where did those glaciers come from if not from one of the poles?

[PhilHarries]

It's all horsesh1t anyway according to some.

Rise of sea levels is 'the greatest lie ever told'

The uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story, writes Christopher Booker.

Christopher Booker

Last Updated: 6:31PM GMT 28 Mar 2009

If one thing more than any other is used to justify proposals that the world must spend tens of trillions of dollars on combating global warming, it is the belief that we face a disastrous rise in sea levels. The Antarctic and Greenland ice caps will melt, we are told, warming oceans will expand, and the result will be catastrophe.

Although the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only predicts a sea level rise of 59cm (17 inches) by 2100, Al Gore in his Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth went much further, talking of 20 feet, and showing computer graphics of cities such as Shanghai and San Francisco half under water. We all know the graphic showing central London in similar plight. As for tiny island nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu, as Prince Charles likes to tell us and the Archbishop of Canterbury was again parroting last week, they are due to vanish.

But if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.

Despite fluctuations down as well as up, "the sea is not rising," he says. "It hasn't risen in 50 years." If there is any rise this century it will "not be more than 10cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10cm". And quite apart from examining the hard evidence, he says, the elementary laws of physics (latent heat needed to melt ice) tell us that the apocalypse conjured up by Al Gore and Co could not possibly come about.

The reason why Dr Mörner, formerly a Stockholm professor, is so certain that these claims about sea level rise are 100 per cent wrong is that they are all based on computer model predictions, whereas his findings are based on "going into the field to observe what is actually happening in the real world".

When running the International Commission on Sea Level Change, he launched a special project on the Maldives, whose leaders have for 20 years been calling for vast sums of international aid to stave off disaster. Six times he and his expert team visited the islands, to confirm that the sea has not risen for half a century. Before announcing his findings, he offered to show the inhabitants a film explaining why they had nothing to worry about. The government refused to let it be shown.

Similarly in Tuvalu, where local leaders have been calling for the inhabitants to be evacuated for 20 years, the sea has if anything dropped in recent decades. The only evidence the scaremongers can cite is based on the fact that extracting groundwater for pineapple growing has allowed seawater to seep in to replace it. Meanwhile, Venice has been sinking rather than the Adriatic rising, says Dr Mörner.

One of his most shocking discoveries was why the IPCC has been able to show sea levels rising by 2.3mm a year. Until 2003, even its own satellite-based evidence showed no upward trend. But suddenly the graph tilted upwards because the IPCC's favoured experts had drawn on the finding of a single tide-gauge in Hong Kong harbour showing a 2.3mm rise. The entire global sea-level projection was then adjusted upwards by a "corrective factor" of 2.3mm, because, as the IPCC scientists admitted, they "needed to show a trend".

When I spoke to Dr Mörner last week, he expressed his continuing dismay at how the IPCC has fed the scare on this crucial issue. When asked to act as an "expert reviewer" on the IPCC's last two reports, he was "astonished to find that not one of their 22 contributing authors on sea levels was a sea level specialist: not one". Yet the results of all this "deliberate ignorance" and reliance on rigged computer models have become the most powerful single driver of the entire warmist hysteria.

That little piece was in the UK Telegraph. Unfortunately the screams of the scare mongers all but drown out sensible, balanced debate. So we are doomed to throwing trillions at a problem that doesn't exist.

Anyway Gary, we shouldn't be concerned about what killed the dinosaurs but rather who killed them? CIA agents are currently top of the conspiracy theorists' list.

[teatree]

One thing that is indisputable is that there is NO consensus among scientists.

Now over 700 international scientists dissent over man-made global warming claims - U.S. Senate Minority Report

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?Fus...0b-bd9faf4dcdb7

I particularly like the following quotes from the report:

“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” - Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.

“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical...The main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”

Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.

“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds… I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists.” - Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.

“So far, real measurements give no ground for concern about a catastrophic future warming.” - Scientist Dr. Jarl R. Ahlbeck, a chemical engineer at Abo Akademi University in Finland, author of 200 scientific publications and former Greenpeace member.

“Anyone who claims that the debate is over and the conclusions are firm has a fundamentally unscientific approach to one of the most momentous issues of our time.” - Solar physicist Dr. Pal Brekke, senior advisor to the Norwegian Space Centre in Oslo. Brekke has published more than 40 peer-reviewed scientific articles on the sun and solar interaction with the Earth.

“The models and forecasts of the UN IPCC "are incorrect because they only are based on mathematical models and presented results at scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity.” - Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico

“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.

“Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapour and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will.” – . Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, NZ.

“After reading [uN IPCC chairman] Pachauri's asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it's hard to remain quiet.” - Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society's Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review.

“The Kyoto theorists have put the cart before the horse. It is global warming that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way round…A large number of critical documents submitted at the 1995 U.N. conference in Madrid vanished without a trace. As a result, the discussion was one-sided and heavily biased, and the U.N. declared global warming to be a scientific fact,” Andrei Kapitsa, a Russian geographer and Antarctic ice core researcher.

“I am convinced that the current alarm over carbon dioxide is mistaken...Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good science.” - Award Winning Physicist Dr. Will Happer, Professor at the Department of Physics at Princeton University and Former Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy, who has published over 200 scientific papers, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences.

“Nature's regulatory instrument is water vapor: more carbon dioxide leads to less moisture in the air, keeping the overall GHG content in accord with the necessary balance conditions.” – Prominent Hungarian Physicist and environmental researcher Dr. Miklós Zágoni reversed his view of man-made warming and is now a skeptic. Zágoni was once Hungary’s most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol.

“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?" - Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.

“Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp…Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.” - Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch UN IPCC committee.

“The quantity of CO2 we produce is insignificant in terms of the natural circulation between air, water and soil... I am doing a detailed assessment of the UN IPCC reports and the Summaries for Policy Makers, identifying the way in which the Summaries have distorted the science.” - South Afican Nuclear Physicist and Chemical Engineer Dr. Philip Lloyd, a UN IPCC co-coordinating lead author who has authored over 150 refereed publications.

“Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined.” - Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh.

“All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead.” - Geophysicist Dr. Phil Chapman, an astronautical engineer and former NASA astronaut, served as staff physicist at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

“Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense…The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning.” - Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.

“CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another….Every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so…Global warming, as a political vehicle, keeps Europeans in the driver’s seat and developing nations walking barefoot.” - Dr. Takeda Kunihiko, vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University in Japan.

“The [global warming] scaremongering has its justification in the fact that it is something that generates funds.” - Award-winning Paleontologist Dr. Eduardo Tonni, of the Committee for Scientific Research in Buenos Aires and head of the Paleontology Department at the University of La Plata.

“Whatever the weather, it's not being caused by global warming. If anything, the climate may be starting into a cooling period.” Atmospheric scientist Dr. Art V. Douglas, former Chair of the Atmospheric Sciences Department at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, and is the author of numerous papers for peer-reviewed publications.

“But there is no falsifiable scientific basis whatever to assert this warming is caused by human-produced greenhouse gasses because current physical theory is too grossly inadequate to establish any cause at all.” - Chemist Dr. Patrick Frank, who has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed articles.

“The ‘global warming scare’ is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making. It has no place in the Society's activities.” - Award-Winning NASA Astronaut/Geologist and Moonwalker Jack Schmitt who flew on the Apollo 17 mission and formerly of the Norwegian Geological Survey and for the U.S. Geological Survey.

“Earth has cooled since 1998 in defiance of the predictions by the UN-IPCC….The global temperature for 2007 was the coldest in a decade and the coldest of the millennium…which is why ‘global warming’ is now called ‘climate change.’” - Climatologist Dr. Richard Keen of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado.

“I have yet to see credible proof of carbon dioxide driving climate change, yet alone man-made CO2 driving it. The atmospheric hot-spot is missing and the ice core data refute this. When will we collectively awake from this deceptive delusion?” - Dr. G LeBlanc Smith, a retired Principal Research Scientist with Australia’s CSIRO.

[ExoticMatter]

Words fail me also, I.. I.. I....-

I'm spraying water from eyes I'm laughing so hard!!!

:jerk:

It must be that gravity doesn't apply to Thailand as it does to Europe! ROFLMAO

I wonder if the journalist got it?

TiT

Actually gravity is less because we're near the equator.

At 0.6% pole to equator I reckon its roughly 1 beer per body mass equivalence

[teatree]

I suggest you go to Switzerland, N.Pole, Antarctica, anywhere that's had historic ice cover, glaciers, etc, and see for yourself and/or ask the locals - especially scientific-minded people on hand. You'll find, without exception, that traditional ice cover has reduced dramatically in recent years.

Yes, summer brings natural cylces of melting, but recent years have had profound melting - with ice not being replaced. Greenland, Arctic, Antarctica are losing roughly 50 cubic miles of ice each (ice not being replaced in winter) and scientific projections say that sobering trend will be exacerbated in coming decades.

Why were we given warning of an 'ice free' Arctic this year, when the ice only decreased by around 10%.

the warnings were for ice-free arctic in 10 to 25 years, not 'this year'

I guess you must have missed these little nuggets of fear mongering and propaganda. All from last year and all staggeringly incorrect:

North Pole could be ice-free this summer, scientists say

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/weather/...ting/index.html

North Pole Could Be Ice Free in 2008

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id=4728737&page=1

North Pole May Be Ice-Free for First Time This Summer

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...north-pole.html

North Pole Could Be Ice Free in 2008

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1377...line-news_rss20

North Pole May Be Ice-Free This Year

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/north-pole-ma...627072309990001

[plachon]

I suggest you go to Switzerland, N.Pole, Antarctica, anywhere that's had historic ice cover, glaciers, etc, and see for yourself and/or ask the locals - especially scientific-minded people on hand. You'll find, without exception, that traditional ice cover has reduced dramatically in recent years.

Yes, summer brings natural cylces of melting, but recent years have had profound melting - with ice not being replaced. Greenland, Arctic, Antarctica are losing roughly 50 cubic miles of ice each (ice not being replaced in winter) and scientific projections say that sobering trend will be exacerbated in coming decades.

Why were we given warning of an 'ice free' Arctic this year, when the ice only decreased by around 10%.

the warnings were for ice-free arctic in 10 to 25 years, not 'this year'

I guess you must have missed these little nuggets of fear mongering and propaganda. All from last year and all staggeringly incorrect:

North Pole could be ice-free this summer, scientists say

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/weather/...ting/index.html

North Pole Could Be Ice Free in 2008

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id=4728737&page=1

North Pole May Be Ice-Free for First Time This Summer

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...north-pole.html

North Pole Could Be Ice Free in 2008

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1377...line-news_rss20

North Pole May Be Ice-Free This Year

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/north-pole-ma...627072309990001

Oh dear, here we go again............in case you missed this little nugget from a few days ago. It must be getting more and more difficult to be a climate change denier, when almost every news article you see you have to deny, squeezing yourself ever further into a minority position where you look ever more ridiculous and ostrich-like.

http://www.enn.com/climate/article/39586

However much you want to deny what is happening to the planet, I'm afraid this kind of news is not going to go away just because you fail to understand the concept of scientific consensus.

[canuckamuck]

This is obviously a touchy subject for many people, which is surprising since I suspect few are experts, and have simply formed an opinion based on the popular press. While by no means an expert myself, I did study glaciology as part of a geology degree, this was in the days before global warming was the "in" theory, back when the hole in the ozone layer was the current bogeyman. I'm not going to press one way or the other, but I will give some facts that have been missing from this thread. What I haven't seen mentioned here, is that, technically, we are currently in an "ice age" or glaciation. This is because the Antarctic ice sheet has been a permanent fixture for the last 2.5 million years. The warmer period we now experience being termed an interglacial, which has lasted since the beiginning of the Holocene epoch, 10,000 years ago. Since the start of this Quaternary glaciation, there have been a number of cycles of warming to interglacials and "refreezing" to glacial periods. As I said, the glaciation is marked by the continuous presence of the Antarctic ice sheet. There is no proof that the Greenland one has been as continuous though, and may have disappeared during other interglacials. What is likely, is that this Holocene interglaciation will last longer than the others, probably another 50,000 years, due to the Earth's projected orbit. Prior to this glaciation, the Earth's surface was completely free of any significant ice. For reference, do a search of "Quaternary glaciation". What this shows is, since the beginning of the Pleistocene, the earth has cyclically cooled and warmed, with corresponding falls and rise in sea level. There are also corresponding falls and rises in CO2 levels in ice cores, however there is evidence to show that these trail the temperature changes, and are an effect of them, not a cause. The warmer the climate, the more CO2 the atmosphere can absorb. In the present day, concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are higher than those calculated for other Pleistocene interglacials, but again, studies have shown the CO2 concentration started increasing after temperatures in Antarctica started rising (http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~joos/OUTGOING...cope_proofs.pdf). This paper also notes that the high levels of greenhouse gases (GHG's) in the atmosphere, if sustained, could delay the onset of the next glacial period. It is important to remember, that CO2 is not the only GHG; water vapour, methane, and Nitrogen - Oxygen compounds being others. Of these, water vapour contributes up to 85% to the greenhouse effect when clouds are included. Human activity does not directly affect water vapour concentrations, except very locally, such as near irrigated fields. Therefore, while human made CO2 emissions have contributed to the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, they form a relatively small part of overall GHG's. Are they significant? That hasn't been satisfactorily answered by anybody.

Now, my opinion: The Earth's temperature has dramatically risen and fallen over the eons, and will continue to do so. Whether we are directly affecting it I don't know. But, for the good of our health, we definitely should be actively cutting pollutants such as sooty and other particulate emissions, along with those of poisonous gases. What I don't like though, is being told a theory is a hard fast fact, being told that I must do this and that because of this theory, and not being allowed to question it without being called a crank. By all means, make the industries clean up their act, it's about time they did, but come up with some hard truth before taking my car away from me.

This is fascinating stuff, also the article Phil posted was typical of the level of professional, qualified dissent that is simply ignored by the pilgrims of doom.

One thing I want to know, and I think Kuhn Jeane touched on it way back, is the amounts of CO2 we are talking about.

I feel we are being led to believe that CO2 is this major climate changer when in reality it is a small component of the GHG mix. and on top of that, the human contribution to the natural occurring amount of CO2 is also likely a tiny fraction. What I am saying is if (I am just guessing at figures for now) human contribution to CO2 in the world is say 0.5% and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is 0.04%, we are talking about .0002% of the

Total makeup of atmospheric gases (almost all of which are listed as greenhouse gases). So if humans were to vanish entirely, the overall reduction to Greenhouse gases would be insignificant and entirely wiped out by a simple volcano, or perhaps the rotting corpses of the former humans.

What I am saying is, when it comes to altering the amount of greenhouse gases in the sky, it simply can't be done by us. It would be like trying to lower the oceans.

[Duangta]

What is the biggest fossil fuel reserve on the planet? Yes, right: Methane.

What is the biggest climate changing greenhouse gas? Yes right: Methane

Research yourself on the internet for "methane permafrost climate change" And you will find tons of stuff, most research is still underway, but there are some findings already.

Some links:

http://www.twilightearth.com/2009/03/permafrost-methane-and-climate-change-vid/

(this is a good one)

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/c...omb-938932.html

The amount of methane on earth is 6 times the amount of ALL other fossil fuels together. And it is being released into the air in huge amounts, right now. Forget about CO2, methane is the killer and will have the biggest impact on our climate.

Brace yourself

[Duangta]

Just wanted to add two more numbers:

Methane has a 23 times stronger effect on global warming than CO2. The global methane deposits are ENORMOUS.

The melting Permafrost is not the only source of fresh methane releases, bigger deposits are in the ocean, with warming ocean temperatures this methane deposits (frozen, pressurized methane) will be released as well. If this stuff is released, the temp will rise to the highest point since life exists on earth. Much higher than the temp climax 55 - 60 Million years ago....

[teatree]

I suggest you go to Switzerland, N.Pole, Antarctica, anywhere that's had historic ice cover, glaciers, etc, and see for yourself and/or ask the locals - especially scientific-minded people on hand. You'll find, without exception, that traditional ice cover has reduced dramatically in recent years.

Yes, summer brings natural cylces of melting, but recent years have had profound melting - with ice not being replaced. Greenland, Arctic, Antarctica are losing roughly 50 cubic miles of ice each (ice not being replaced in winter) and scientific projections say that sobering trend will be exacerbated in coming decades.

Why were we given warning of an 'ice free' Arctic this year, when the ice only decreased by around 10%.

the warnings were for ice-free arctic in 10 to 25 years, not 'this year'

I guess you must have missed these little nuggets of fear mongering and propaganda. All from last year and all staggeringly incorrect:

North Pole could be ice-free this summer, scientists say

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/weather/...ting/index.html

North Pole Could Be Ice Free in 2008

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id=4728737&page=1

North Pole May Be Ice-Free for First Time This Summer

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...north-pole.html

North Pole Could Be Ice Free in 2008

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1377...line-news_rss20

North Pole May Be Ice-Free This Year

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/north-pole-ma...627072309990001

Oh dear, here we go again............in case you missed this little nugget from a few days ago. It must be getting more and more difficult to be a climate change denier, when almost every news article you see you have to deny, squeezing yourself ever further into a minority position where you look ever more ridiculous and ostrich-like.

http://www.enn.com/climate/article/39586

However much you want to deny what is happening to the planet, I'm afraid this kind of news is not going to go away just because you fail to understand the concept of scientific consensus.

There is no consensus! Come on, if there is one thing that can be very easily proved it is that MANY scientists disagree:

More than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition denying that man is responsible for global warming:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/...al-warming.html

Now More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims:

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?Fus...F0-274616DB87E6

The fact that the mainstream media almost entirely fails to report the lack of consensus should really make you doubt anything they say. You cannot rely on CNN to make your mind up for you, THEY ARE LYING TO YOU.

Here is a recent example of their tricks.

A few days ago its was reported all over the media that a huge ice bridge had collapsed in the Antarctic and was a sure sing that GW is getting worse.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7984054.stm

What they fail to say is that there is actually 40% more ice in the Antarctic than in 1980, as can be seen from satellite images from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado.

http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/comment.p...omment.news.109

You can post a new scare story about global warmi.....sorry, I mean climate change (its actually getting colder now so they have to call it that) everyday, but that doesn't mean its true.

And the greatest greenhouse gas is not methane, it is water vapor and by a large margin.

[plachon]

Oh dear, here we go again............in case you missed this little nugget from a few days ago. It must be getting more and more difficult to be a climate change denier, when almost every news article you see you have to deny, squeezing yourself ever further into a minority position where you look ever more ridiculous and ostrich-like.

http://www.enn.com/climate/article/39586

However much you want to deny what is happening to the planet, I'm afraid this kind of news is not going to go away just because you fail to understand the concept of scientific consensus.

There is no consensus! Come on, if there is one thing that can be very easily proved it is that MANY scientists disagree:

More than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition denying that man is responsible for global warming:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/...al-warming.html

Now More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims:

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?Fus...F0-274616DB87E6

The fact that the mainstream media almost entirely fails to report the lack of consensus should really make you doubt anything they say. You cannot rely on CNN to make your mind up for you, THEY ARE LYING TO YOU.

Here is a recent example of their tricks.

A few days ago its was reported all over the media that a huge ice bridge had collapsed in the Antarctic and was a sure sing that GW is getting worse.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7984054.stm

What they fail to say is that there is actually 40% more ice in the Antarctic than in 1980, as can be seen from satellite images from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado.

http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/comment.p...omment.news.109

You can post a new scare story about global warmi.....sorry, I mean climate change (its actually getting colder now so they have to call it that) everyday, but that doesn't mean its true.

And the greatest greenhouse gas is not methane, it is water vapor and by a large margin.

I was actually referring to the process of debate and consensus building that was followed before it got to the momentous point where the majority of climate scientists (NB, not scientists in other disciplines who signed the petition mentioned) from across the world agreed that human activity was a major cause of observed climate change. That cannot be a coincidence or result of some worldwide "con", as you would like to believe.

A couple of paras from the end of the Torygraph article you linked to is telling:

A spokesman for the Royal Society, Britain’s national academy of science, said: “The world’s leading climate experts at the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change believe that it is greater than 90 per cent likely that human activity is responsible for most of the observed warming in recent decades. That is a pretty strong consensus.

“The science has come a long way since 1998 and it continues to point in one direction - the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avert dangerous climate change.”

The 31,000 doubting scientists are likely a motley collection of old thinking neo-cons, who hate to think that the bedrock of their beliefs that natural resources are inexhaustible and fossil fuel-powered economies can run forever. They should go and read some Thomas Kuhn about paradigm shifts, as to why they might be mired in obsolete belief systems and theories.

[teatree]

The 31,000 doubting scientists are likely a motley collection of old thinking neo-cons, who hate to think that the bedrock of their beliefs that natural resources are inexhaustible and fossil fuel-powered economies can run forever. They should go and read some Thomas Kuhn about paradigm shifts, as to why they might be mired in obsolete belief systems and theories.

What about the 700 scientists included in the US senate minority report denying AGW? The figure of 700 is growing and includes many former IPCC scientists. Are these former IPCC scientists to be scoffed at now that they have become heretics?

I'm all for getting rid of fossil fuels and using clean energy, but global carbon tax, cap/trade systems and micro-managing our lives is not the way to do it.

Carbon Dioxide, along with Sunlight, Oxygen and Water is one of the fundamentals needed for life on this planet. IT IS NOT TOXIC WASTE! The general public's belief that it is a pollutant is just mind boggling.

P.S The world has just had one of the coldest winters on record, Arctic ice is at a five year high and the Antarctic is at an all time high. Could you point me to the IPCC climate models that predicted this cooling?

[JetsetBkk]

...P.S The world has just had one of the coldest winters on record, Arctic ice is at a five year high and the Antarctic is at an all time high. Could you point me to the IPCC climate models that predicted this cooling?

The data at the National Snow and Ice Data Center's website is very interesting.

So there's been an increase of 1,500,000 sq. km. in the sea ice extent at the Antarctic and a decrease of 900,000 sq. km. in the Arctic.

Overall, a gain of 600,000 sq. km.

But lets not talk about that. The collapse of a little ice bridge in the Arctic is much more important. And there are some really scary pictures of it too.

Must give these scientist guys some more money to go and take some more pretty scary pictures and find out exactly what is happening there.

[brahmburgers]

I'll go with the guy who puts on his boots and jacket - and trudges out to the northernmost stretches of the Arctic to do scientific measurements. Sorry I don't have his name on hand, but he's one of the rare few who are actually on site. His core drillings are finding consistently thinner ice each year - dramatic decreases in overall ice cover, on average, from year to year. He estimates Arctic ice cover is 7/10ths of what it was when he started measuring - several years ago.

As for whether it's caused by misdeeds of man or not, that's secondary. The prime concern is dramatic non-renewable ice-melting is happening at both poles, Greenland and glaciers.

And yes, there are vast amounts of methane that could be vented in to the atmosphere. It lies trapped at the bottom of oceans, but could be released due to warming and/or major disturbance of ocean waters.

[plachon]

...P.S The world has just had one of the coldest winters on record, Arctic ice is at a five year high and the Antarctic is at an all time high. Could you point me to the IPCC climate models that predicted this cooling?

The data at the National Snow and Ice Data Center's website is very interesting.

So there's been an increase of 1,500,000 sq. km. in the sea ice extent at the Antarctic and a decrease of 900,000 sq. km. in the Arctic.

Overall, a gain of 600,000 sq. km.

But lets not talk about that. The collapse of a little ice bridge in the Arctic is much more important. And there are some really scary pictures of it too.

Must give these scientist guys some more money to go and take some more pretty scary pictures and find out exactly what is happening there.

The overall picture worldwide is of rising temperatures and melting ice sheets and glaciers. Not sure what your point is about scientists using money to do research - what do you expect them to use - bananas? Research funders are at liberty to decide what they want to fund. That some fund climate change denial science and some fund science that has found clear and incontrovertible evidence of AGW is also normal. Seems like the govts, mainstream media and increasingly business leaders are persuaded by the latter (despite vigorous efforts by the former fossil fuel company-sponsored research to deny the evidence) and are now slowly, very slowly, starting to do something about the multiple threats to the human race that climate change poses.

Even the NSIDC you provide a link to, seems to agree with the likely causes when they flagged the break up of the Antarctic Wilkins ice shelf last year:

http://nsidc.org/news/press/20080325_Wilkins.html

[teatree]

The world has been warming and the Arctic has been shrinking, I don't think anyone is disputing that. The point is that it is well within natural variations. The Arctic ice extent has only been measured for 30 years, so all these scare stories of record low ice levels are meaningless - all they really mean is the lowest level for 30 years.

Right now the world is going through a cooling phase. Temperatures are falling and the Arctic is expanding (no matter how they try to spin things you can't cover up the raw facts) and the Antarctic IS AT IT'S HIGHEST EVER LEVELS. In the future the world is sure to go through a warming phase. That is the natural cycle.

I for one am hoping that the current cooling doesn't last too long as lower temperatures would have a far more severe effect on humanity than higher temperatures.

[JetsetBkk]

I'll go with the guy who puts on his boots and jacket - and trudges out to the northernmost stretches of the Arctic to do scientific measurements...

Has he been to the Antarctic yet?

[teatree]

I'll go with the guy who puts on his boots and jacket - and trudges out to the northernmost stretches of the Arctic to do scientific measurements...

Has he been to the Antarctic yet?

Shhhh....you are not allowed to talk about the Antarctic. We don't want to draw attention to the fact that it is at record levels and has actually grown by more than the Arctic has shrunk since records began.

[Longduckdong]

Gulf of Thailand won't rise with global warming, expert claims

Apr 23, 2007, 3:03 GMT

Bangkok - Global warming is not likely to cause the sea level in the Gulf of Thailand to rise because the body of water is too far from melting glaciers, a leading Thai hydrologist claimed on Monday.

Recent forecasts by the United Nations' Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which predict a 40 centimetre rise in sea levels by the end of the century will cause flooding for up to 94 million Asians living in coastal areas, may not apply to the Gulf of Thailand, according to Suphat Vongvisessomjai, a former professor in water resources engineering at Bangkok's Asia Institute of Technology.

'The climate change panel's projection was wrongly accepted to apply to the Gulf of Thailand,' Suphat told The Nation newspaper. 'We are too far from melting glaciers or ice sheets.'

Suphat added that, in fact, recent research shows that the average sea levels along some coastal provinces on the gulf have declined 0.3 to 0.6 centrimetres over the past eight years.

The hydrologist, now an employee of Team Consulting Engineering, called on the public not to panic over the IPCC findings.

'The climate change panel did not deceive us or exaggerate. Its scientific findings are just based on the environment of their scientists, most of whom live in Europe,' he told the English-language daily.

Asia-Pacific news

LaoPo

Leading Thai hydrologist. Smart man this one. What's he going to come up with next? You can't drown in the Chao Phraya river because it is full of silt?

[teatree]

The Sun is the driver of climate. Or is it just a coincidence that when that huge ball of nuclear fusion in the sky heats up, earth heats up, and when is cools Earth cools too?

'Quiet Sun' baffling astronomers

By Pallab Ghosh

Science correspondent, BBC News

The Sun is the dimmest it has been for nearly a century.

There are no sunspots, very few solar flares - and our nearest star is the quietest it has been for a very long time.

The observations are baffling astronomers, who are due to study new pictures of the Sun, taken from space, at the UK National Astronomy Meeting.

The Sun normally undergoes an 11-year cycle of activity. At its peak, it has a tumultuous boiling atmosphere that spits out flares and planet-sized chunks of super-hot gas. This is followed by a calmer period.

Last year, it was expected that it would have been hotting up after a quiet spell. But instead it hit a 50-year year low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity.

According to Prof Louise Hara of University College London, it is unclear why this is happening or when the Sun is likely to become more active again.

"There's no sign of us coming out of it yet," she told BBC News.

"At the moment, there are scientific papers coming out suggesting that we'll be going into a normal period of activity soon.

"Others are suggesting we'll be going into another minimum period - this is a big scientific debate at the moment."

In the mid-17th Century, a quiet spell - known as the Maunder Minimum - lasted 70 years, and led to a "mini ice-age".

This has resulted in some people suggesting that a similar cooling might offset the impact of climate change.

According to Prof Mike Lockwood of Southampton University, this view is too simplistic.

"I wish the Sun was coming to our aid but, unfortunately, the data shows that is not the case," he said.

Prof Lockwood was one of the first researchers to show that the Sun's activity has been gradually decreasing since 1985, yet overall global temperatures have continued to rise.

"If you look carefully at the observations, it's pretty clear that the underlying level of the Sun peaked at about 1985 and what we are seeing is a continuation of a downward trend (in solar activity) that's been going on for a couple of decades.

"If the Sun's dimming were to have a cooling effect, we'd have seen it by now."

'Middle ground'

Evidence from tree trunks and ice cores suggest that the Sun is calming down after an unusually high point in its activity.

Professor Lockwood believes that as well as the Sun's 11-year cycle, there is an underlying solar oscillation lasting hundreds of years.

He suggests that 1985 marked the "grand maximum" in this long-term cycle and the Maunder Minimum marked its low point.

"We are re-entering the middle ground after a period which has seen the Sun in its top 10% of activity," said Professor Lockwood.

"We would expect it to be more than a hundred years before we get down to the levels of the Maunder Minimum."

He added that the current slight dimming of the Sun is not going to reverse the rise in global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

"What we are seeing is consistent with a global temperature rise, not that the Sun is coming to our aid."

Data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows global average temperatures have risen by about 0.7C since the beginning of the 20th Century.

And the IPCC projects that the world will continue to warm, with temperatures expected to rise between 1.8C and 4C by the end of the century.

No-one knows how the centuries-long waxing and waning of the Sun works. However, astronomers now have space telescopes studying the Sun in detail.

According to Prof Richard Harrison of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire, this current quiet period gives astronomers a unique opportunity.

"This is very exciting because as astronomers we've never seen anything like this before in our lifetimes," he said.

"We have spacecraft up there to study the Sun in phenomenal detail. With these telescopes we can study this minimum of activity in a way that we could not have done so in the past."

[LawnGnome]

Anyone who thinks that global warming is a myth, is gonna get their ass kicked in heaven by me, when its proven correct but its too late to do anything about it are well and truly f*cked. Choose your poison - Jackie Chan style or Steven Seagal knife fighting - either way you are gonna pay!

[plachon]

The Sun is the driver of climate. Or is it just a coincidence that when that huge ball of nuclear fusion in the sky heats up, earth heats up, and when is cools Earth cools too?

'Quiet Sun' baffling astronomers

By Pallab Ghosh

Science correspondent, BBC News

The Sun is the dimmest it has been for nearly a century.

There are no sunspots, very few solar flares - and our nearest star is the quietest it has been for a very long time.

The observations are baffling astronomers, who are due to study new pictures of the Sun, taken from space, at the UK National Astronomy Meeting.

The Sun normally undergoes an 11-year cycle of activity. At its peak, it has a tumultuous boiling atmosphere that spits out flares and planet-sized chunks of super-hot gas. This is followed by a calmer period.

Last year, it was expected that it would have been hotting up after a quiet spell. But instead it hit a 50-year year low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity.

According to Prof Louise Hara of University College London, it is unclear why this is happening or when the Sun is likely to become more active again.

"There's no sign of us coming out of it yet," she told BBC News.

"At the moment, there are scientific papers coming out suggesting that we'll be going into a normal period of activity soon.

"Others are suggesting we'll be going into another minimum period - this is a big scientific debate at the moment."

In the mid-17th Century, a quiet spell - known as the Maunder Minimum - lasted 70 years, and led to a "mini ice-age".

This has resulted in some people suggesting that a similar cooling might offset the impact of climate change.

According to Prof Mike Lockwood of Southampton University, this view is too simplistic.

"I wish the Sun was coming to our aid but, unfortunately, the data shows that is not the case," he said.

Prof Lockwood was one of the first researchers to show that the Sun's activity has been gradually decreasing since 1985, yet overall global temperatures have continued to rise.

"If you look carefully at the observations, it's pretty clear that the underlying level of the Sun peaked at about 1985 and what we are seeing is a continuation of a downward trend (in solar activity) that's been going on for a couple of decades.

"If the Sun's dimming were to have a cooling effect, we'd have seen it by now."

'Middle ground'

Evidence from tree trunks and ice cores suggest that the Sun is calming down after an unusually high point in its activity.

Professor Lockwood believes that as well as the Sun's 11-year cycle, there is an underlying solar oscillation lasting hundreds of years.

He suggests that 1985 marked the "grand maximum" in this long-term cycle and the Maunder Minimum marked its low point.

"We are re-entering the middle ground after a period which has seen the Sun in its top 10% of activity," said Professor Lockwood.

"We would expect it to be more than a hundred years before we get down to the levels of the Maunder Minimum."

He added that the current slight dimming of the Sun is not going to reverse the rise in global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

"What we are seeing is consistent with a global temperature rise, not that the Sun is coming to our aid."

Data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows global average temperatures have risen by about 0.7C since the beginning of the 20th Century.

And the IPCC projects that the world will continue to warm, with temperatures expected to rise between 1.8C and 4C by the end of the century.

No-one knows how the centuries-long waxing and waning of the Sun works. However, astronomers now have space telescopes studying the Sun in detail.

According to Prof Richard Harrison of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire, this current quiet period gives astronomers a unique opportunity.

"This is very exciting because as astronomers we've never seen anything like this before in our lifetimes," he said.

"We have spacecraft up there to study the Sun in phenomenal detail. With these telescopes we can study this minimum of activity in a way that we could not have done so in the past."

One of the marvelous things about you climate change sceptics, is that invariably you post a fair number of articles or links that dispel and sometimes disprove your own unscientific positions and expose yourselves to ridicule. This is one such instance and if you care to go back through this long thread, there are several other similar instances of you guys arguing against your own position earlier held. In this case, I suspect poor old Teatree didn't fully understand the article he was posting, so keen was he to feed his own prejudice (I am assuming at this point that you are a "he", but forgive me if you are female).

In case you are having trouble Teatree understanding this article, I'll simplify it for you. It's basically saying that while the sun appears to be going through a dimming or cooling phase, the earth's climate is continuing to get warmer, confounding expectations (and your earlier assertions).

NB from the article: He added that the current slight dimming of the Sun is not going to reverse the rise in global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

"What we are seeing is consistent with a global temperature rise, not that the Sun is coming to our aid."

In other words, man's polluting activity with fossil fuel emissions is even more significant than the effect of slight changes in sun spot activity observed by this group of scientists. C'mon, you're going to have to do a whole lot better than this if you want to convince anyone of your case.

Thanks for the laugh and great article.

[canuckamuck]

Actually Plachon here is a classic example of a scientist refusing to let the truth get in the way of the ACC mantra. When you read this segment:

He added that the current slight dimming of the Sun is not going to reverse the rise in global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

"What we are seeing is consistent with a global temperature rise, not that the Sun is coming to our aid."

Data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows global average temperatures have risen by about 0.7C since the beginning of the 20th Century.

And the IPCC projects that the world will continue to warm, with temperatures expected to rise between 1.8C and 4C by the end of the century.

You can clearly see the smoke and mirrors effect. Up until this point he has been using facts from his own studies, but then, when it is time to push the ACC spin. He uses 1900 as his watermark, even though the cooling should have began some time in the 1990's after the the high activity of the 1980's. And then he refers back to theoretical (much disputed) models of the IPCC to confirm his illogical conclusion. Think about it! A 0.7 degree increase during a century where the sun had been increasing in activity for 80% of the time confirms the role of the sun in heating, not the other way around.

If he was being scientific he would have given us the global temperature difference of the last 20 years which would be more in line with the observed decline in solar activity. But if he had done that, his evidence would have either proved nothing, or gone against ACC, and that is career suicide in today's science community. Without the ACC distraction these findings actually confirm what many are saying: That we have begun the slide towards a protracted cooling period, and probably this will continue for the next 200 years.

Edited April 22, 2009 by canuckamuck

[ding]

Maybe the expert is right. I'm going to go pee in my toilet on one side only and see if it piles up on that side...

Happy climate change everyone!

[Tigs]

Anyone who thinks that global warming is a myth, is gonna get their ass kicked in heaven by me, when its proven correct but its too late to do anything about it are well and truly f*cked. Choose your poison - Jackie Chan style or Steven Seagal knife fighting - either way you are gonna pay!

Well done. You join the 'possibly the most pathetic post on Thai Visa' club. (By the way, they don't let people like you in Heaven..sorry)

Back to the sane and non-psychopathic members of the forum.

Does this professor chap then think that when you sit in the bath the water is deeper at the tap end?