to the barricades!

There is a mechanism for reversing global warming. Not slowing--REVERSING. And you can do something about it. Read, copy and paste (with url) the following articles and commentary, which show that, amazingly, we have the capacity to create a world-wide ENGINE TO REVERSE GLOBAL WARMING simply by demanding some simple changes in air traffic patterns!
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http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/08/07/contrails.climate/

(CNN) -- The thin wisps of condensation that trail jet airliners have a significant influence on the climate, according to scientists who studied U.S. skies during a rare interruption in national air traffic after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

During the three-day commercial flight hiatus, when the artificial clouds known as contrails all but disappeared, the variations in high and low temperatures increased by 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) each day, said meteorological researchers.

While the temperature range is significant, whether the jet clouds have a net effect on global warming remains unknown.

"I think what we've shown are that contrails are capable of affecting temperatures," said lead scientist David Travis of the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater. "Which direction, in terms of net heating or cooling, is still up in the air."
Contrails Explainer:
Long white wisps of artificial clouds high in the atmosphere, contrails are the condensation trails left behind by jet airplanes.
Similar to human exhalation making a fog in chilly weather, contrails form when warm humid engine exhaust meets extremely cool air in the atmosphere.
Air temperatures where contrails form are generally lower than minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 40 degrees Celsius).
Like natural cirrus clouds, contrails insulate the planet, blocking out incoming solar energy from above and keeping in heat down below.
Scientists estimate that contrails cover some 0.1 percent of the Earth's overall surface, with regional concentrations as high as 20 percent.

In many ways, contrails behave in the same manner as cirrus clouds, thin high-altitude floaters that block out solar energy from above and trap in heat below. n many ways, contrails behave in the same manner as cirrus clouds, thin high-altitude floaters that block out solar energy from above and trap in heat below.

As a result, they help reduce the daily range in daytime highs and nighttime lows. Contrails, by providing additional insulation, further reduce the variability.

With air traffic growing and contrails becoming more prevalent, the natural variation will further decline and could disrupt regional ecosystems, some scientists speculate.

....(read more at the above url)....

Here's more on that topic:

http://www.rps.psu.edu/probing/contrails.html
Katie Green, Penn State:

[snip]....

Looking at daytime highs and nighttime lows, Carleton and Travis found the average daily temperature range across the no-fly period to be almost 2 degrees Fahrenheit larger than when jets do fly. This implies, Carleton explains, that contrails lower daytime maximum temperatures and increase nighttime low temperatures—probably in the same way that cirrus clouds do, by blocking some solar radiation from reaching earth's surface during the day, and insulating against heat loss at night.

Since finding this association, Carleton has used contrails as a sort of metric for measuring meteorological and climatic change. Because these jet signatures can only form when the upper atmosphere is humid and cold, they mostly appear over the Midwest and Northeast. Interestingly, notes Carleton, since the 1970s the frequency of contrail formation has outpaced the increase of air traffic in these areas. If this trend continues, he says, it could further decrease daily temperature ranges and even evaporation for those regions, a change that could be detrimental to certain trees, plants or insects sensitive to temperature and moisture changes.

Will such climate change prompt airlines to seek to reduce jet emissions, similar to automotive companies?

"Given the financial problems of the larger airlines in recent years, contrails are not likely to gain their attention," Carleton says. But governments in Europe and Britain "where jets also hash mark the sky" are becoming concerned, he says. Some steps that could cut down on contrails, he suggests, would be reducing the amount of sulfur in jet fuel, and re-routing flight paths either to lower altitudes, where the air is warmer, or higher altitudes, where it's often dryer.

—Katie Greene [end article]
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This data suggests obvious mechanisms for reversing global climate change. Flight patterns for jets should be altered for maximum contrail formation during the day and eliminated at night. David Travis’ studies showed that contrails very significantly reduce warming during daylight hours, and he also showed that night-radiation of heat into space is more efficient absent the contrails.

Kate Greene commented in her article that airline corporations are unlikely to be interested in making the change—and that’s where you come in. The airlines must be forced into the new schedule of global warming reversal by an unstoppable demand from the people. Forward these articles and their urls to your friends and to public officials. Get their attention with a follow-up phone call.

Call the NOAA and get them on board. Call your representatives, Senators, and any politician who doesn’t want to waste away the planet with the catastrophic events that will follow the total polar melt, which as I mentioned last week, may come any summer now and probably before 2013. The airlines must be put on notice worldwide to route their planes over high-humidity areas during the day, and to stop all flights at night through contrail-forming thermoclines, or raise their cruising levels above the contrail-forming layers.

Don’t let the planet’s ecosystem die while you stand around doing nothing. We have a means to save ourselves and repair the world for our children and future generations, and we can’t afford to let corporate rule get in the way.

By the way, this suggestion for saving the planet is UNTESTED. I do know, however, of an absolutely certain way to force global warming into the methane-clathrate-exposure stage, into the most-everyone-dies stage, and that's by doing nothing--and doing nothing includes limiting your power and car use, riding a bicycle, recycling--those are all admirable things and you should keep doing them, but they won't stop this global warming, which has already gone into a momentum that greenhouse-gas reduction can't stop in our lifetimes. This plan for contrail shielding is the only method available to us to reverse global warming. This is it. There's no time to dawdle or sneer.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
1401 Constitution Avenue, NW
Room 6217
Washington, DC 20230
Phone: (202) 482-6090
Fax: (202) 482-3154

Sen. Ron Weyden
Portland, OR
1220 SW 3rd Avenue
Suite 585
Portland, OR 97204
(503) 326-7525

Senator Gordon Smith
Portland, OR Office
One World Trade Center
121 SW Salmon Street, Suite 1250
Portland, OR 97204
Phone: 503.326.3386
Fax: 503.326.2900

Rep. Earl Blumenauer

729 N.E. Oregon Street
Suite 115
Portland, OR 97232
(503) 231-2300
Fax: (503) 230-5413
Fax for Scheduling Requests: (503) 230-5413

Of course these agencies and politicians also have web forms for contact.

And now for bad news (DID YOU CALL OR FAX YET??)

ScienceDaily (Jan. 16, 2008) — An international team of scientists, led by Dr Edward Hanna at the University of Sheffield, has demonstrated that recent warm summers have caused the most extreme Greenland ice melting in 50 years.
The new research provides further evidence of a key impact of global warming and helps scientists place recent satellite observations of Greenland´s shrinking ice mass in a longer-term climatic context.
Dr Hanna of the University´s Department of Geography, alongside some of the World´s leading Greenland glaciologists and climatologists, analysed a combination of key meteorological and glaciological records spanning a number of decades as part of the research.
The findings show how the Greenland Ice Sheet responded to more regional, rather than global, changes in climate between the 1960s and early 1990s. However the last fifteen years has seen an increase in ice melting and a striking correspondence of Greenland with global temperature variations, demonstrating Greenland´s recent response to global warming.
Summer 2003 was exceptionally warm around the margins of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which resulted in the second-highest meltwater running off from the Ice Sheet of the last 50 years. Summer 2005 experienced a record-high melt, which was very recently superseded in summer 2007 – a year almost as warm as 2003.
....(read more at:)

University of Sheffield (2008, January 16). Record Warm Summers Cause Extreme Ice Melt In Greenland. ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2008/01/080115102706.htm
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War research for today's PressWatch:

A massive naval buildup is taking place in the Persian Gulf. USS Lincoln leaving port today for ‘training,’ USS Stennis information is consistently blocked, the USS Truman is in the Persian ("Arabian") Gulf, USS Enterprise is also in the Persian Gulf, and the USS Nimitz just arrived at the Persian Gulf; all those are vast nuclear-powered aircraft carriers with their attendant warship, submarine and supply flotillas. The supercarrier USS Kitty Hawk (not nuclear) may be in Yokosuka port.

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Globalresearch.ca

Bush: Iran guilty if US ships are hit
Remarks made after US Navy withdrew allegations against Iran

Global Research, January 15, 2008
Press TV (Iran)

US President George W. Bush says the White House would hold Iran responsible if American ships were attacked in the Persian Gulf.
Bush insisted that Tehran had behaved provocatively during an incident in the Strait of Hormuz involving an identification check by Iranian boats.
The remarks came after the US Navy withdrew the allegation that Iran had harassed US warships in the Persian Gulf.
"If they hit our ships, we will hold Iran responsible," said the president. [more at globalresearch.ca]

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Here's some official bullstuff from Associated Press:

TERENCE HUNT
AP News

Jan 13, 2008 02:36 EST

A naval commander told President Bush on Sunday that he is taking the recent confrontation between Iranian and U.S. Navy forces in the Persian Gulf "deadly seriously."

White House press secretary Dana Perino said Bush did not raise the showdown in the Hormuz Strait when he spoke with U.S. Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, commander of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, which patrols the Gulf. But Perino said Cosgriff told the president that he took it very seriously when an Iranian fleet of high-speed boats on Jan. 6 charged at and threatened to blow up a three-ship U.S. Navy convoy passing near Iranian waters. The Iranian naval forces vanished as the American ship commanders were preparing to open fire....
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http://www.lulu.com/content/1011766