Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2006 4:28 pm
One of the universities that tried to recruit H after hearing her play in honor jazz band is there. She decided she didn't want to go to college though.
Uh oh...By John Heilprin, Associated Press
WASHINGTON ? Cool your home, warm the planet.
When more than two dozen countries undertook in 1989 to fix the ozone hole over Antarctica, they began replacing chloroflourocarbons in refrigerators, air conditioners and hair spray.
But they had little idea that using other gases that contain chlorine or fluorine instead also would contribute greatly to global warming.
Wait...CFCs destroy ozone, the atmospheric layer that helps protect against the sun's most harmful rays, and trap the earth's heat, contributing to a rise in average surface temperatures.
D'oh?In theory, the ban should have helped both problems. But the countries that first signed the Montreal Protocol 17 years ago failed to recognize that CFC users would seek out the cheapest available alternative.
The chemicals that replaced CFCs are better for the ozone layer, but do little to help global warming. These chemicals, too, act as a reflective layer in the atmosphere that traps heat like a greenhouse.
So... the first environmentalist wacko treaty made things 2 to 3 times worse than the second environmentalist wacko treaty even tries to fix?That effect is at odds with the intent of a second treaty, drawn up in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 by the same countries behind the Montreal pact. In fact, the volume of greenhouse gases created as a result of the Montreal agreement's phaseout of CFCs is two times to three times the amount of global-warming carbon dioxide the Kyoto agreement is supposed to eliminate.
Bwahahahahaaaa! Yeah, they're in a pickle, aren't they?This unintended consequence now haunts the nations that signed both U.N. treaties.
Well, Blaise, that's because environmentalist wacko scientists are NEVER EVER wrong!Switzerland first tried in 1990 to sound an alarm that the solution for plugging the ozone hole might contribute to another environmental problem. The reaction?
"Nothing, or almost," said Blaise Horisberger, the Swiss representative to U.N.-backed Montreal treaty. "We have been permanently raising this issue. It has been really difficult."
Secret talks. Yeah, we gotta keep a lid on this!Horisberger, a biologist with the Swiss Agency for the Environment, Forests and Landscape, kept trying. Finally, the first formal, secret talks on the subject were held in Montreal last month.
Oh yeah, it turned out great, didn't it?"Saving the ozone layer by reducing CFCs and at the same time promoting alternatives was an urgent crisis in the early years of the Montreal Protocol," said Marco Gonzalez, the treaty's executive secretary, in Nairobi, Kenya. "Now there is always a need to find new substances which are safe, energy-efficient and also have minimal impact across a range of environmental issues."
The Montreal Protocol, which now has 189 member nations, is considered one of the most effective environmental treaties.
That's a lot of dough to spend on making things worse...Almost $2.1 billion has been spent through an affiliated fund to prod countries to stop making and using CFCs and other ozone-damaging chemicals in refrigerators, air conditioners, foams and other products.
The Montreal treaty got us using chemicals that are 10,000 times worse?!Scientists blame CFCs for poking a huge, seasonal hole in the stratospheric ozone layer about 7 miles to 14 miles over Antarctica. Last year, the ozone hole peaked at about 10 million square miles, or the size of North America. That was below the 2003 record size of about 11 million square miles. Scientists expect the hole will not heal until 2065.
CFCs also are thinning the ozone layer over the Arctic and, to a lesser extent, globally. As the protective layer thins, more ultraviolet radiation gets through, increasing people's risk of skin cancer and cataracts and threatening more plants and animals with extinction.
Some of the replacement chemicals whose use has grown because of the Montreal treaty ? hydrochloroflourocarbons, or HCFCs, and their byproducts, hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs ? decompose faster than CFCs because they contain hydrogen.
But, like CFCs, they are considered potent greenhouse gases that harm the climate ? up to 10,000 times worse than carbon dioxide emissions.
This is one of the funniest things I've ever read!!!The Kyoto treaty's goal is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, motor vehicles and other sources that burn fossil fuels by about 1 billion tons by 2012.
Use of HCFCs and HFCs is projected to add the equivalent of 2 billion to 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere by 2015, U.N. climate experts said in a recent report. The CFCs they replace also would have added that much.
"But now the question is, who's going to ensure that the replacements are not going to cause global warming?" said Alexander von Bismarck, campaigns director for the Environmental Investigation Agency, a non-profit watchdog group in London and Washington. "It's shocking that so far nobody's taking responsibility."
It goes on and on, but enough of that for now. You get the general idea. Let's move on to another related article...
We now go to the Russian News and Information Agency
I can hear Algore now... "Guys? Can you just shut up about this until after the 2008 elections please? Please? Guys?"ST. PETERSBURG, August 25 (RIA Novosti)- Global cooling could develop on Earth in 50 years and have serious consequences before it is replaced by a period of warming in the early 22nd century, a Russian scientist said Friday.
Environmentalists and scientists today focus on the dangers of global warming provoked by man's detrimental effect on the planet's climate, but global cooling - though never widely supported - is a theory postulating an overwhelming cooling of the Earth which could involve glaciation.
"On the basis of our [solar emission] research, we developed a scenario of a global cooling of the Earth's climate by the middle of this century and the beginning of a regular 200-year-long cycle of the climate's global warming at the start of the 22nd century," said the head of the space research sector of the Russian Academy of Sciences' astronomical observatory.
No! You mean we have to go through the 17th century global cooling crisis all over again?! Nooooooooooo!!! Say it ain't so!Khabibullo Abdusamatov said he and his colleagues had concluded that a period of global cooling similar to one seen in the late 17th century - when canals froze in the Netherlands and people had to leave their dwellings in Greenland - could start in 2012-2015 and reach its peak in 2055-2060.
Okay, class... so what have we learned in today's lesson?He said he believed the future climate change would have very serious consequences and that authorities should start preparing for them today because "climate cooling is connected with changing temperatures, especially for northern countries."
"The Kyoto initiatives to save the planet from the greenhouse effect should be put off until better times," he said, referring to an international treaty on climate change targeting greenhouse gas emissions.
"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," Abdusamatov said.