(this page updated May 19, 2015) 
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CURRENT TRAIN PHOTOS
(this page updated May 19, 2015) | Weather
and Railroad
sites including Arkansas
Railroader and nationwide Railroad
Abandonments through 2010 plus CURRENT
TRAIN PHOTOS/TRIPS. Also
check out my Wildlife,
Nature Scenes, Flowers, Misc
|
| GLOBAL
WARMING SITES
I'll
try to put various good sites here with information about climate
change/global warming. I'm trying to get various viewpoints and
research sources for this site and if you have any sites you think
would qualify, give me that link. Just email me at the email button at
the top of this page. My opinion? The climate is changing, just like it
has for millenia. There are cold periods and warm periods and these
climate cycles would occur whether or not humans were present. However,
since the human population on Earth has grown so large, I think we're
having some influence on climate, but I'm not sure how much.
Having been a meteorologist for 32 years, I've seen and read about worse weather in the past than now (for instance, the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 was the worst hurricane to hit the US in history, NOT Katrina). And there was much less CO2 in the atmosphere back then, too, so why was it so stormy back then? Having been a weather forecaster for those 32 years, I also worked with many different computer programs trying to predict the weather and none of those programs were ever 100 percent accurate. With this in mind, I have a hard time believing the current long-range cimate computer models are any more accurate, so I have a hard time believing a computer program that says we're going to be 'x' degrees warmer in 50 years than today. I don't think we know enough about climate to even put in the right variables into a long-range climate computer program. Even the IPCC said they didn't include data on low clouds in their models, which tells me more research is definitely needed (low clouds have a cooling effect, high clouds a warming effect). Global warming is not a hoax as the planet is in a mostly-natural warming cycle (has been since the end of the Ice Age). However, there will be cooling periods, like it has been the past few years, along with warming periods. It's called 'nature' and 'weather'! I feel that we'll adjust fine as we learn more and deal with it. (Ken Z - retired meteorologist)  |
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| 48
States Temp Trend Since 1895 (NOAA/NCDC - does not
show
consistent warming in the states) |
U. S. Drought Map | Climate change chart (Last 2 billion years) | |
| ARKANSAS
CLIMATE STATS (Entire historical record with daily extremes and events for each day of the year beginning in 1879) |
Arctic Sea Ice Shrinks to record
lows -
August 2007 (National Snow and Ice Data Center) Another Article by NASA (Explains that clear skies and strong winds aided in the melting.) |
NASA
and Journal Science reported a new Ice Age possible in a 1971 article (Newsbusters.org with good sources) |
Journal
NATURE Main
Climate Site |
| Journal
NATURE Climate
Blogs (Very good discussions on climate change from a respected, peer-reviewed source) |
American Meteorological
Society
ClimatePolicy.org Blogs (Good climate change discussions from the AMS) |
RealClimate.org (Discussions on climate change, most very good. It tries to debunk any view that doesn't go along with the prevailing scientific consensus that humans are the main cause of the warming, but it at least lists other opinions) |
Climate
Ark (Stories and news on climate change with a lot of focus on deforestation) Deep Sea Warming is where much of the heat increase of the Earth is happening. Great science-based article, Feb 2015. . |
| World Climate Report (According to the site "The World's Longest Running Climate Change Blog"). It has some very good articles. |
Weather Channel Climate Blog (Interesting articles and blogs. One article talked about the over paving of America and the heat island effect, for instance (Sep 20, 2007 Purdue study). |
Foreign Policy Association
Climate Change
web log (Discusses such issues as carbon tax, political climate decisions, energy bills, etc) |
Environmental
Defense Fund- Climate 411 blogs (Good articles on climate change, leans toward the consensus of human-caused warming) |
| Cold
kills more than heat - WSJ Opinion Sep 20. 2007 (This opinion says that global warming may not be so bad - here's a partial quote: "Whereas 2,000 people died in the United Kingdom in that heat wave (Aug 2003), last year (2006) the BBC reported that deaths caused by cold weather in England and Wales were about 25,000 each winter") |
Global
Warming Primer - National Center for Policy Analysis (A 40-page PDF file that has great charts of various causes and explains global warming in great detail) |
Co2
Did NOT cause the end of last Ice Age (NASA-Sep 27, 2007) ("The climate dynamic is much more complex than simply saying that CO2 rises and the temperature warms," Stott said. The complexities "have to be understood in order to appreciate how the climate system has changed in the past and how it will change in the future.") |
(Sep
2007 - "Dr. Bromwich (head
of Polar
Meteorology Group at
Byrd
Polar Research Center) found
that the global models that the IPCC relies on are at odds with his own
findings. Antarctica's temperatures during the late 20th century did
not climb as global climate models predicted.)
Live Antarctic Webcam |
|
List
of
Advancing Glaciers
(From IceAgeNow.com - has good sources listing advancing glaciers and other non-warming articles) Growing Glaciers Article (Viewed Oct 2007) |
IPCC clarification: There are too many who think the IPCC does a lot of the scientific work on examining global warming/climate change. They do NOT (from their website): "The IPCC does not carry out research nor does it monitor climate related data or other relevant parameters. It bases its assessment mainly on peer reviewed and published scientific/technical literature.") Check out their website: |
(Excellent NOAA
article and
webcams discussion about the short Arctic summers in 2002-2003-2004.
"Despite the small number of ice thickness measurements that are
available, it seems highly likely that the summer loss of ice in 2004
was anomalously small and that the 2004 melting season was unusually
short." Low clouds were present in 2004, unlike the unusually warm
Arctic summer of 2007, when skies were abnormally clear.)
|
Global
Warming Not As Bad as Hyped - ABC News 20/20 Oct 19, 2007 (Is it a crisis? The globe is warming, but is it really all our fault? And is it true the debate is over? No. What you think you know may not be so It also says some IPCC reviewers are NOT scientists.) |
| WeatherDiscussions (A great weather site with weather forecasts worldwide, weather discussion forums) |
Maldives
Islands Sea Level Facts (From Stanford University - good PDF article showing sea levels have been much higher and lower at the Maldives than present and inhabitants survived.) |
(Great
movie interviews showing both sides of the global warming issues)
|
Antarctica
Spared Most Warming (November 2007 final IPCC report relayed by AccuWeather) Also, news article on above |
| IPCC AR4
Report (PDF) (November 2007 - good reading on regional and global warming causes and effects - not as alarmist as some would think. About 11 MB)) |
1997-2006
WORLD TEMP TREND MAP (NASA) (Shows cooling central and eastern Antarctica, warming in the west) |
Not
All Arctic Changes Due to Global Warming - (NASA -
November
13, 2007) ("A team of NASA and university scientists has detected an ongoing reversal in |
(This
petition says that "There
is
no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide,
methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the
foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's
atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is
substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon
dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and
animal environments of the Earth." Lots of good charts and it lists
names of signers and states they live in.)
|
| Current
N Hemisphere Sea Ice (University of Illinois-Urbana) - Graph showing up to date sea ice in the northern hemisphere for the past 365 days.) Cryosphere Today (Various products showing sea ice-UIUC) Total Southern Hemisphere and Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice (in case the charts on UIUC's site go down) Arctic Climate Change (Good papers, news from UIUC) |
Arctic
Temperatures 1960-2004 and 1880-2004 (This site uses some UIUC data from 1979 to present showing the low sea ice extent through summer 2007, but also shows a chart of Arctic temperatures from 1960-2004 and the same chart going back to 1880. These graphs show that Arctic temperatures were much warmer in the 1920-1940 period that today). http://www.learnstuff.com/climate-change/ This
good site has graphics and summaries of the dangers of
a
warming planet and how man-made climate change is destroying the
earth.
|
Study
showing how the media over-hypes global warming (Business and Media Institute) John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel, weather blog (He doesn't believe there is a climate crisis) Unbiased look at the GW issue (ICECAP, International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, is the portal to all things climate for elected officials and staffers, journalists, scientists, educators and the public.) |
US
Senate Report Listing 400 International Scientists who disagree with
Global Warming alarmism (While most agree the earth is warming, they disagree with the 'Science it Settled' and alarmists mentality of the IPCC summary and major media outlets. This report lists the 400 names and affiliations and their reasons for dissent. Report issued December 2007 ) |
| F5 TORNADOES SINCE 1950
(NOAA) HISTORIC TORNADOES IN THE U.S. (NOAA) DEADLIEST TORNADOES (NOAA) ARCTIC SEA ICE EXTENT (NSDC) |
(This
says human/industrial CO2 production is dwarfed by animal and other
natural CO2 production and that the only way we can reduce CO2 and not
cause a decrease in breathable oxygen is to plant billions of trees
that have been lost since 1492)
CFACT-Good articles on environmental issues that often are not seen elsehwere. It says it supports 'Sound Science' ROY SPENCER SITE A former NASA scientist with articles on global climate. LATEST GLOBAL TEMPERATURES DAILY EARTH TEMPERATURES FROM SATELLITES |
CLIMATE SCIENCE (Good site for a more balanced view on climate change, not just the headlines and alarmism, but also news behind the headlines that gets ignored in the media) REALTIME DAILY ARCTIC SEA ICE MAP (UIUC) - Shows daily sea ice extent in the Arctic back to 1979. You can compare each day's extent from one year to the next. . DISCOVERY NEWS (Science news from Discovery Channel - started November 2009) |
NASA
- JPL Global Warming Site (lots of good graphs and
information) Among some
information on the site: " Carbon
cycle. Currently,
natural processes remove about half of each year's human carbon dioxide
emissions from the atmosphere,
although this varies a bit year to year. It isn't well understood where
this carbon dioxide goes, with some evidence that the oceans are the
major repository and other evidence that land biota absorbs the
majority. There is also some evidence that the ability of the Earth
system to continue absorbing it may decline as the world warms, leading
to faster accumulation in the atmosphere. But this possibility isn't
well understood either. The upcoming Orbiting Carbon Observatory
mission will mark NASA's first attempt to answer some of these
questions via space observations."
AND "Sea level rise.
In its 2007 Fourth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change used new satellite data to conclude that shrinkage of
ice sheets may contribute more to sea level rise than it had thought as
recently as 2001. The panel concluded that it could not "provide a best
estimate or an upper bound for sea level rise" over the next century
due to their lack of knowledge about Earth's ice.2 There are 5-6 meters
worth of sea level in the Greenland ice sheet, and 6-7 meters in the
West Antarctic Ice Sheet, while
the much larger East Antarctic Ice Sheet is probably not vulnerable to
widespread melting in the next century.
Many hundreds of millions of people live within that range of sea level
increase, so our inability to predict what sea level rise is likely
over the next century has substantial human and economic ramifications."
|
