Global Warming ‘Greatest Scam in History’
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You hippy-crites! When it comes to saving the planet do celebrities practise what they preach?
By TOM SYKES - More by this author » Last updated at 18:28pm on 6th May 2008
Is the hot air emitted by celebrities when they spout ecological platitudes a greenhouse gas?
If so, then the melting of the polar ice caps just moved a step closer, following calls by Trudie Styler, a leading celebrity ecological hypocrite - call them hippy-crites for short - for the general public to eat more locally grown vegetables.
Campaigning against food miles might seem an unlikely cause for Styler, given that a tribunal last year heard how she ordered her personal chef to travel over 100 miles to make a bowl of pasta for her youngest child and has sold olive oil and honey from her Tuscan estate, Il Palagio, 1,000 or so miles away, in Harrods in London.
So it was hardly surprising that an alert journalist present at the lecture, which was being staged as part of the Earls Court Real Food Festival, had the wit to question the environmental record of Styler and her husband Sting.
The couple's carbon footprint, the impertinent ink-stained wretch pointed out, has been estimated at 30 times greater than the average Briton's. How did Styler and Sting - who have seven homes - square that with their environmental crusading?
Styler conceded that as Sting "has a 750-person crew to bring around the world, it is a difficult challenge".
Her rare moment of ecological candour was shortly replaced by the more familiar self-congratulation and justification, however.
"I would like to think that we both work pretty hard for the rights of indigenous people and for the rights of conservation of the Amazon rainforest, but we do need to get around," she said.
Of course, Sting and Trudie's "do as I say not as I do" approach to the dilemma of environmental pollution is by no means unusual among the carbon-guzzling lifestyle of the celebrity elite.
Here's a roll call of some other startlingly hippy-critical celebrities:
Scroll down for more...
By TOM SYKES - More by this author » Last updated at 18:28pm on 6th May 2008
Is the hot air emitted by celebrities when they spout ecological platitudes a greenhouse gas?
If so, then the melting of the polar ice caps just moved a step closer, following calls by Trudie Styler, a leading celebrity ecological hypocrite - call them hippy-crites for short - for the general public to eat more locally grown vegetables.
Campaigning against food miles might seem an unlikely cause for Styler, given that a tribunal last year heard how she ordered her personal chef to travel over 100 miles to make a bowl of pasta for her youngest child and has sold olive oil and honey from her Tuscan estate, Il Palagio, 1,000 or so miles away, in Harrods in London.
So it was hardly surprising that an alert journalist present at the lecture, which was being staged as part of the Earls Court Real Food Festival, had the wit to question the environmental record of Styler and her husband Sting.
The couple's carbon footprint, the impertinent ink-stained wretch pointed out, has been estimated at 30 times greater than the average Briton's. How did Styler and Sting - who have seven homes - square that with their environmental crusading?
Styler conceded that as Sting "has a 750-person crew to bring around the world, it is a difficult challenge".
Her rare moment of ecological candour was shortly replaced by the more familiar self-congratulation and justification, however.
"I would like to think that we both work pretty hard for the rights of indigenous people and for the rights of conservation of the Amazon rainforest, but we do need to get around," she said.
Of course, Sting and Trudie's "do as I say not as I do" approach to the dilemma of environmental pollution is by no means unusual among the carbon-guzzling lifestyle of the celebrity elite.
Here's a roll call of some other startlingly hippy-critical celebrities:
Scroll down for more...
Environmentalists Still Can't Get It Right
By WALTER E. WILLIAMS | Posted Tuesday, May 06, 2008 4:30 PM PT
Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some environmentalist predictions they would prefer we forget.
At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind."
C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."
In 1968, professor Paul Ehrlich, former Vice President Al Gore's hero and mentor, predicted that there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s . . . hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death."
Ehrlich forecast that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and that by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million.
Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."
In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning that the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992.
Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50% of the world's resources and "by 2000 they (Americans) will, if permitted, be using all of them."
In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, "The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."
Harvard biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look magazine, that by 1995 "somewhere between 75% and 85% of all the species of living animals will be extinct."
It's not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers have always been wrong.
In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas.
In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In 1949, the secretary of the interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the American Gas Association: There's a 1,000- to 2,500- year supply.
Here are my questions:
In 1970, when environmentalists were making predictions of man-made global cooling and the threat of an ice age and millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of government policy should we have undertaken to prevent such a calamity?
When Ehrlich predicted that England would not exist in the year 2000, what steps should the British Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent such a dire outcome?
In 1939, when the Department of the Interior warned that we only had oil supplies for another 13 years, what actions should President Roosevelt have taken?
Finally, what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that they have switched their tune to man-made global warming?
Here are a few facts:
More than 95% of the greenhouse effect is the result of water vapor in Earth's atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect, Earth's average temperature would be zero degrees Fahrenheit.
Most climate change is a result of the orbital eccentricities of Earth and variations in the sun's output. On top of that, natural wetlands produce more greenhouse-gas contributions annually than all human sources combined.
By WALTER E. WILLIAMS | Posted Tuesday, May 06, 2008 4:30 PM PT
Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some environmentalist predictions they would prefer we forget.
At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind."
C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."
In 1968, professor Paul Ehrlich, former Vice President Al Gore's hero and mentor, predicted that there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s . . . hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death."
Ehrlich forecast that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and that by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million.
Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."
In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning that the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992.
Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50% of the world's resources and "by 2000 they (Americans) will, if permitted, be using all of them."
In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, "The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."
Harvard biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look magazine, that by 1995 "somewhere between 75% and 85% of all the species of living animals will be extinct."
It's not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers have always been wrong.
In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas.
In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In 1949, the secretary of the interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the American Gas Association: There's a 1,000- to 2,500- year supply.
Here are my questions:
In 1970, when environmentalists were making predictions of man-made global cooling and the threat of an ice age and millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of government policy should we have undertaken to prevent such a calamity?
When Ehrlich predicted that England would not exist in the year 2000, what steps should the British Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent such a dire outcome?
In 1939, when the Department of the Interior warned that we only had oil supplies for another 13 years, what actions should President Roosevelt have taken?
Finally, what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that they have switched their tune to man-made global warming?
Here are a few facts:
More than 95% of the greenhouse effect is the result of water vapor in Earth's atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect, Earth's average temperature would be zero degrees Fahrenheit.
Most climate change is a result of the orbital eccentricities of Earth and variations in the sun's output. On top of that, natural wetlands produce more greenhouse-gas contributions annually than all human sources combined.
You hippy-crites! When it comes to saving the planet do celebrities practise what they preach?
By TOM SYKES - More by this author » Last updated at 18:28pm on 6th May 2008
Is the hot air emitted by celebrities when they spout ecological platitudes a greenhouse gas?
If so, then the melting of the polar ice caps just moved a step closer, following calls by Trudie Styler, a leading celebrity ecological hypocrite - call them hippy-crites for short - for the general public to eat more locally grown vegetables.
Campaigning against food miles might seem an unlikely cause for Styler, given that a tribunal last year heard how she ordered her personal chef to travel over 100 miles to make a bowl of pasta for her youngest child and has sold olive oil and honey from her Tuscan estate, Il Palagio, 1,000 or so miles away, in Harrods in London.
So it was hardly surprising that an alert journalist present at the lecture, which was being staged as part of the Earls Court Real Food Festival, had the wit to question the environmental record of Styler and her husband Sting.
The couple's carbon footprint, the impertinent ink-stained wretch pointed out, has been estimated at 30 times greater than the average Briton's. How did Styler and Sting - who have seven homes - square that with their environmental crusading?
Styler conceded that as Sting "has a 750-person crew to bring around the world, it is a difficult challenge".
Her rare moment of ecological candour was shortly replaced by the more familiar self-congratulation and justification, however.
"I would like to think that we both work pretty hard for the rights of indigenous people and for the rights of conservation of the Amazon rainforest, but we do need to get around," she said.
Of course, Sting and Trudie's "do as I say not as I do" approach to the dilemma of environmental pollution is by no means unusual among the carbon-guzzling lifestyle of the celebrity elite.
Here's a roll call of some other startlingly hippy-critical celebrities:
Scroll down for more...
Just goes to show how many celebrities love to jump on a bandwagon without actually thinking about what that cause truly means compared to their own actions.
All for the sake of winning over a few teeny-boppers who don't look into those things either.... *shrugs*
Added:
One thing I'd like to add is that most of these celebs are in the game, playing by the same rules as all the other celebs who all do the same things as they do..... the fact that they do a little bit to help out and reduce what pollution they create themselves is something I suppose.... but it does show the futility of this whole global warming scare tactic, especially when the people you have trying to promote your cause are some of the biggest contributors to the problem.
Al Gore And Climate Ka-Ching
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, May 08, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Al Gore blames the Burma tragedy on global warming despite growing evidence to the contrary. Could the hype be related to his financial interests?
Gore's reaction to the death and destruction caused by a cyclone ravaging Burma was to utter an emphatic "I told you so" Tuesday on National Public Radio. In an interview on NPR's "Fresh Air" broadcast, the jolly green giant made the charge while talking about the paperback release of his ironically named book, "The Assault on Reason."
Ignoring the fact that the rising death toll is due in part to an incompetent, isolationist and authoritarian government that allows most of its people to live in shanty towns of tin and bamboo, Gore claimed that "we're seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming."
In other words, people die in Rangoon because of an SUV in Richmond, Va.
There's a "trend toward more Category 5 storms," Gore claimed, and this trend "appears to be linked to global warming and specifically to the impact of global warming on higher ocean temperatures in the top couple of hundred feet in the ocean, which drives convection energy and moisture into these storms and makes them more powerful."
Except, as we recently noted, the trend in the world's oceans — as shown by measurements taken by a fleet of 3,000 high-tech ocean buoys first deployed in 2003 — is toward cooling. As Dr. Josh Willis, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, noted in a separate interview with National Public Radio, "there has been a very slight cooling" over the buoys' five years of observation.
As Joseph D'Aleo, the Weather Channel's first director of meteorology, told National Review Online's Deroy Murdock that the slight warming trend "peaked in 1998, and the temperature trend the last decade has been flat, even as CO2 has increased 5.5%. Cooling began in 2002." He added: "Ocean buoys have echoed that slight cooling since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration deployed them in 2003."
In fact, Ryan Maue of Florida State University's Center for Ocean-Atmosphere Prediction Studies says 2007 "will rank as a historically inactive tropical cyclone year for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole."
In the past 30 years, Maue adds, only 1977 had less hurricane activity from January through October. Last September had the lowest activity since 1977 while the Octobers of 2006 and 2007 had the lowest activity since 1976 and 1977, respectively.
So why the hype? Well, global warming is a growth industry designed to keep Earth and some bank accounts green.
Gore himself joined the venture capital group, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers just last September. On May 1, the firm announced a $500 million investment in maturing green technology firms called the Green Growth Fund.
The group announced another $700 million to be invested over the next three years in green-tech startup firms. But if the green technology business, uh, cools down, there will be no return on that investment. There would be no need for such investments if global warming wasn't a threat. So Gore just launched, among other things, a $300 million on an ad campaign to convince us it is so.
Speaking at a conference in Monterey, Calif., on March 1, the former vice president admitted to having "a stake" in a number of green investments into which he recommended attendees put money rather than "subprime carbon assets" such as tar sands and shale oil. He also is co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management, which sells carbon offsets that allow rich polluters to continue polluting with a clear conscience.
We have a prediction all our own — that disastrous global warming will not occur. Then the greenies will take credit for preventing it and ask us if we're glad we spent trillions in fighting it. Al Gore will be laughing all the way to the bank.
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, May 08, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Al Gore blames the Burma tragedy on global warming despite growing evidence to the contrary. Could the hype be related to his financial interests?
Gore's reaction to the death and destruction caused by a cyclone ravaging Burma was to utter an emphatic "I told you so" Tuesday on National Public Radio. In an interview on NPR's "Fresh Air" broadcast, the jolly green giant made the charge while talking about the paperback release of his ironically named book, "The Assault on Reason."
Ignoring the fact that the rising death toll is due in part to an incompetent, isolationist and authoritarian government that allows most of its people to live in shanty towns of tin and bamboo, Gore claimed that "we're seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming."
In other words, people die in Rangoon because of an SUV in Richmond, Va.
There's a "trend toward more Category 5 storms," Gore claimed, and this trend "appears to be linked to global warming and specifically to the impact of global warming on higher ocean temperatures in the top couple of hundred feet in the ocean, which drives convection energy and moisture into these storms and makes them more powerful."
Except, as we recently noted, the trend in the world's oceans — as shown by measurements taken by a fleet of 3,000 high-tech ocean buoys first deployed in 2003 — is toward cooling. As Dr. Josh Willis, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, noted in a separate interview with National Public Radio, "there has been a very slight cooling" over the buoys' five years of observation.
As Joseph D'Aleo, the Weather Channel's first director of meteorology, told National Review Online's Deroy Murdock that the slight warming trend "peaked in 1998, and the temperature trend the last decade has been flat, even as CO2 has increased 5.5%. Cooling began in 2002." He added: "Ocean buoys have echoed that slight cooling since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration deployed them in 2003."
In fact, Ryan Maue of Florida State University's Center for Ocean-Atmosphere Prediction Studies says 2007 "will rank as a historically inactive tropical cyclone year for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole."
In the past 30 years, Maue adds, only 1977 had less hurricane activity from January through October. Last September had the lowest activity since 1977 while the Octobers of 2006 and 2007 had the lowest activity since 1976 and 1977, respectively.
So why the hype? Well, global warming is a growth industry designed to keep Earth and some bank accounts green.
Gore himself joined the venture capital group, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers just last September. On May 1, the firm announced a $500 million investment in maturing green technology firms called the Green Growth Fund.
The group announced another $700 million to be invested over the next three years in green-tech startup firms. But if the green technology business, uh, cools down, there will be no return on that investment. There would be no need for such investments if global warming wasn't a threat. So Gore just launched, among other things, a $300 million on an ad campaign to convince us it is so.
Speaking at a conference in Monterey, Calif., on March 1, the former vice president admitted to having "a stake" in a number of green investments into which he recommended attendees put money rather than "subprime carbon assets" such as tar sands and shale oil. He also is co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management, which sells carbon offsets that allow rich polluters to continue polluting with a clear conscience.
We have a prediction all our own — that disastrous global warming will not occur. Then the greenies will take credit for preventing it and ask us if we're glad we spent trillions in fighting it. Al Gore will be laughing all the way to the bank.
Wile E. Coyote can't fix climate
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
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Whenever Canadian politicians talk about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, I'm reminded of the classic Looney Tunes cartoon character, Wile E. Coyote, in his mad and perpetually unsuccessful pursuit of the Road Runner.
In his forever doomed efforts to capture the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote orders every conceivable device from the Acme Corporation, only to have them all malfunction on him in some spectacular way and blow up in his face.
Inevitably, the hapless Wile E. Coyote is left in an impossible predicament, such as running madly off a cliff into thin air, while frantically pumping his arms and legs in crazed pursuit of the Road Runner . . . until he looks down.
At that moment, a stricken look on his face, Wile E. Coyote plummets hundreds of feet to the canyon floor below, his impact eventually marked by a small puff of smoke.
But then, Wile E. Coyote, being a cartoon character and thus impervious to death, is back up on his feet in time for the next cartoon, whereupon he repeats the entire process, with the same result.
Forever unsuccessful in capturing the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote is proof of the wise old saying that a good definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.
That's why, these days, I can't help but think of Wile E. Coyote whenever I hear Liberal Leader Stephane Dion touting a carbon tax, now that, as even the Globe and Mail finally reported yesterday on its front page, citizens in huge swatches of Europe and the United Kingdom are in open revolt against them, condemning them as nothing more than tax grabs by politicians.
It's why the same image came to mind when I heard NDP Leader Jack Layton yesterday praising a "cap and trade'' system for pricing carbon, even though Europe's three-year-old cap and trade system, known as the Emissions Trading Scheme, has become a playground for market speculators and hedge funds, while leading to skyrocketing electricity prices and doing next to nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
I think of Wile E. Coyote, when I see Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty madly racing over a cliff using another defective "Acme" product, ostensibly meant to fight global warming -- government subsidies for ethanol production -- now widely condemned as a contributing factor to global food shortages and skyrocketing food prices.
In many ways, the Kyoto Accord has become to the world's politicians what the Acme Corporation was to Wile E. Coyote, a supplier of perpetually flawed products that not only don't get the job done, but lead to unintended disasters.
Take Kyoto's so-called Clean Development Mechanism, by which developed countries can purchase the right to emit more greenhouse gases by investing in emission-reduction projects in developing nations, now facing widespread allegations of profiteering and corruption.
No doubt our Canadian politicians will argue their carbon tax, and their cap and trade system and their ethanol subsidies will be different, that they will not make the same mistakes other politicians around the world have made.
And it is, of course, in that painfully naive and foolish belief, that this time, they will finally get it right and avoid disaster, that they resemble Wile E. Coyote the most of all.
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
Whenever Canadian politicians talk about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, I'm reminded of the classic Looney Tunes cartoon character, Wile E. Coyote, in his mad and perpetually unsuccessful pursuit of the Road Runner.
In his forever doomed efforts to capture the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote orders every conceivable device from the Acme Corporation, only to have them all malfunction on him in some spectacular way and blow up in his face.
Inevitably, the hapless Wile E. Coyote is left in an impossible predicament, such as running madly off a cliff into thin air, while frantically pumping his arms and legs in crazed pursuit of the Road Runner . . . until he looks down.
At that moment, a stricken look on his face, Wile E. Coyote plummets hundreds of feet to the canyon floor below, his impact eventually marked by a small puff of smoke.
But then, Wile E. Coyote, being a cartoon character and thus impervious to death, is back up on his feet in time for the next cartoon, whereupon he repeats the entire process, with the same result.
Forever unsuccessful in capturing the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote is proof of the wise old saying that a good definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.
That's why, these days, I can't help but think of Wile E. Coyote whenever I hear Liberal Leader Stephane Dion touting a carbon tax, now that, as even the Globe and Mail finally reported yesterday on its front page, citizens in huge swatches of Europe and the United Kingdom are in open revolt against them, condemning them as nothing more than tax grabs by politicians.
It's why the same image came to mind when I heard NDP Leader Jack Layton yesterday praising a "cap and trade'' system for pricing carbon, even though Europe's three-year-old cap and trade system, known as the Emissions Trading Scheme, has become a playground for market speculators and hedge funds, while leading to skyrocketing electricity prices and doing next to nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
I think of Wile E. Coyote, when I see Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty madly racing over a cliff using another defective "Acme" product, ostensibly meant to fight global warming -- government subsidies for ethanol production -- now widely condemned as a contributing factor to global food shortages and skyrocketing food prices.
In many ways, the Kyoto Accord has become to the world's politicians what the Acme Corporation was to Wile E. Coyote, a supplier of perpetually flawed products that not only don't get the job done, but lead to unintended disasters.
Take Kyoto's so-called Clean Development Mechanism, by which developed countries can purchase the right to emit more greenhouse gases by investing in emission-reduction projects in developing nations, now facing widespread allegations of profiteering and corruption.
No doubt our Canadian politicians will argue their carbon tax, and their cap and trade system and their ethanol subsidies will be different, that they will not make the same mistakes other politicians around the world have made.
And it is, of course, in that painfully naive and foolish belief, that this time, they will finally get it right and avoid disaster, that they resemble Wile E. Coyote the most of all.
Found an interesting comment in a blog:
It's really hard to imagine how this little ball of fire (the Sun) could have any impact on our climate at all. The little hottie only represent's 98% of the mass of our solar system, and is has atmospheric pressure silghtly higher than earth's: 1.3 million times more to be exact.
27,000,000 degrees Farenheight is not much more than lukewarm, so the only reasonable explaination for globall warming clearly is our conversion of .0000000000000001 percent of Earth's mass into fuel! The only solution, of course, is more taxes.
It's really hard to imagine how this little ball of fire (the Sun) could have any impact on our climate at all. The little hottie only represent's 98% of the mass of our solar system, and is has atmospheric pressure silghtly higher than earth's: 1.3 million times more to be exact.
27,000,000 degrees Farenheight is not much more than lukewarm, so the only reasonable explaination for globall warming clearly is our conversion of .0000000000000001 percent of Earth's mass into fuel! The only solution, of course, is more taxes.
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Some nice little stats missing the point, but it's not the conversion of fuels into heat here on Earth that is the problem, it's the trapping of heat from that little ball of fire that is the problem. By the time the hot gases reach the photosphere, the energy has been reabsorbed and re-emitted at lower and lower temperatures, so that what's left is visible light, and the temperature at the photosphere is 5800°K.
Carbon Chastity
The First Commandment of the Church of the Environment
[SIZE=-1]By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, May 30, 2008; A13
[/SIZE]
I'm not a global warming believer. I'm not a global warming denier. I'm a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can't be very good to pump lots of CO2into the atmosphere but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats.
Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems -- from ocean currents to cloud formation -- that no one fully understands. Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing. The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative.
Yet on the basis of this speculation, environmental activists, attended by compliant scientists and opportunistic politicians, are advocating radical economic and social regulation. "The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity," warns Czech President Vaclav Klaus, "is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism."
If you doubt the arrogance, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming -- infinitely more untested, complex and speculative -- is a closed issue.
But declaring it closed has its rewards. It not only dismisses skeptics as the running dogs of reaction, i.e., of Exxon, Cheney and now Klaus. By fiat, it also hugely re-empowers the intellectual left.
For a century, an ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous knowledge class -- social planners, scientists, intellectuals, experts and their left-wing political allies -- arrogated to themselves the right to rule either in the name of the oppressed working class (communism) or, in its more benign form, by virtue of their superior expertise in achieving the highest social progress by means of state planning (socialism).
Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's China, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty more rapidly than ever in human history.
Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but -- even better -- in the name of Earth itself.
Environmentalists are Gaia's priests, instructing us in her proper service and casting out those who refuse to genuflect. (See Newsweek above.) And having proclaimed the ultimate commandment -- carbon chastity -- they are preparing the supporting canonical legislation that will tell you how much you can travel, what kind of light you will read by, and at what temperature you may set your bedroom thermostat.
Only Monday, a British parliamentary committee proposed that every citizen be required to carry a carbon card that must be presented, under penalty of law, when buying gasoline, taking an airplane or using electricity. The card contains your yearly carbon ration to be drawn down with every purchase, every trip, every swipe.
There's no greater social power than the power to ration. And, other than rationing food, there is no greater instrument of social control than rationing energy, the currency of just about everything one does and uses in an advanced society.
So what does the global warming agnostic propose as an alternative? First, more research -- untainted and reliable -- to determine (a) whether the carbon footprint of man is or is not lost among the massive natural forces (from sunspot activity to ocean currents) that affect climate, and (b) if the human effect is indeed significant, whether the planetary climate system has the homeostatic mechanisms (like the feedback loops in the human body, for example) with which to compensate.
Second, reduce our carbon footprint in the interim by doing the doable, rather than the economically ruinous and socially destructive. The most obvious step is a major move to nuclear power, which to the atmosphere is the cleanest of the clean.
But your would-be masters have foreseen this contingency. The Church of the Environment promulgates secondary dogmas as well. One of these is a strict nuclear taboo.
Rather convenient, is it not? Take this major coal-substituting fix off the table, and we will be rationing all the more. Guess who does the rationing.
The First Commandment of the Church of the Environment
[SIZE=-1]By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, May 30, 2008; A13
[/SIZE]
I'm not a global warming believer. I'm not a global warming denier. I'm a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can't be very good to pump lots of CO2into the atmosphere but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats.
Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems -- from ocean currents to cloud formation -- that no one fully understands. Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing. The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative.
Yet on the basis of this speculation, environmental activists, attended by compliant scientists and opportunistic politicians, are advocating radical economic and social regulation. "The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity," warns Czech President Vaclav Klaus, "is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism."
If you doubt the arrogance, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming -- infinitely more untested, complex and speculative -- is a closed issue.
But declaring it closed has its rewards. It not only dismisses skeptics as the running dogs of reaction, i.e., of Exxon, Cheney and now Klaus. By fiat, it also hugely re-empowers the intellectual left.
For a century, an ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous knowledge class -- social planners, scientists, intellectuals, experts and their left-wing political allies -- arrogated to themselves the right to rule either in the name of the oppressed working class (communism) or, in its more benign form, by virtue of their superior expertise in achieving the highest social progress by means of state planning (socialism).
Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's China, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty more rapidly than ever in human history.
Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but -- even better -- in the name of Earth itself.
Environmentalists are Gaia's priests, instructing us in her proper service and casting out those who refuse to genuflect. (See Newsweek above.) And having proclaimed the ultimate commandment -- carbon chastity -- they are preparing the supporting canonical legislation that will tell you how much you can travel, what kind of light you will read by, and at what temperature you may set your bedroom thermostat.
Only Monday, a British parliamentary committee proposed that every citizen be required to carry a carbon card that must be presented, under penalty of law, when buying gasoline, taking an airplane or using electricity. The card contains your yearly carbon ration to be drawn down with every purchase, every trip, every swipe.
There's no greater social power than the power to ration. And, other than rationing food, there is no greater instrument of social control than rationing energy, the currency of just about everything one does and uses in an advanced society.
So what does the global warming agnostic propose as an alternative? First, more research -- untainted and reliable -- to determine (a) whether the carbon footprint of man is or is not lost among the massive natural forces (from sunspot activity to ocean currents) that affect climate, and (b) if the human effect is indeed significant, whether the planetary climate system has the homeostatic mechanisms (like the feedback loops in the human body, for example) with which to compensate.
Second, reduce our carbon footprint in the interim by doing the doable, rather than the economically ruinous and socially destructive. The most obvious step is a major move to nuclear power, which to the atmosphere is the cleanest of the clean.
But your would-be masters have foreseen this contingency. The Church of the Environment promulgates secondary dogmas as well. One of these is a strict nuclear taboo.
Rather convenient, is it not? Take this major coal-substituting fix off the table, and we will be rationing all the more. Guess who does the rationing.
In praise of CO2
With less heat and less carbon dioxide, the planet could become less hospitable and less green
Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post Published: Saturday, June 07, 2008
According to a growing number of scientists, the period of global warming that we have experienced over the past few centuries as Earth climbed out of the Little Ice Age is about to end.
Planet Earth is on a roll! GPP is way up. NPP is way up. To the surprise of those who have been bearish on the planet, the data shows global production has been steadily climbing to record levels, ones not seen since these measurements began.
GPP is Gross Primary Production, a measure of the daily output of the global biosphere -- the amount of new plant matter on land. NPP is Net Primary Production, an annual tally of the globe's production. Biomass is booming. The planet is the greenest it's been in decades, perhaps in centuries.
Until the 1980s, ecologists had no way to systematically track growth in plant matter in every corner of the Earth -- the best they could do was analyze small plots of one-tenth of a hectare or less. The notion of continuously tracking global production to discover the true state of the globe's biota was not even considered.
Then, in the 1980s, ecologists realized that satellites could track production, and enlisted NASA to collect the data. For the first time, ecologists did not need to rely on rough estimates or anecdotal evidence of the health of the ecology: They could objectively measure the land's output and soon did -- on a daily basis and down to the last kilometre.
More from FP Oil Watch
The results surprised Steven Running of the University of Montana and Ramakrishna Nemani of NASA, scientists involved in analyzing the NASA data. They found that over a period of almost two decades, the Earth as a whole became more bountiful by a whopping 6.2%. About 25% of the Earth's vegetated landmass -- almost 110 million square kilometres -- enjoyed significant increases and only 7% showed significant declines. When the satellite data zooms in, it finds that each square metre of land, on average, now produces almost 500 grams of greenery per year.
Why the increase? Their 2004 study, and other more recent ones, point to the warming of the planet and the presence of CO2, a gas indispensable to plant life. CO2 is nature's fertilizer, bathing the biota with its life-giving nutrients. Plants take the carbon from CO2 to bulk themselves up -- carbon is the building block of life -- and release the oxygen, which along with the plants, then sustain animal life. As summarized in a report last month, released along with a petition signed by 32,000 U. S. scientists who vouched for the benefits of CO2: "Higher CO2 enables plants to grow faster and larger and to live in drier climates. Plants provide food for animals, which are thereby also enhanced. The extent and diversity of plant and animal life have both increased substantially during the past half-century."
Lush as the planet may now be, it is as nothing compared to earlier times, when levels of CO2 and Earth temperatures were far higher. In the age of the dinosaur, for example, CO2 levels may have been five to 10 times higher than today, spurring a luxuriantly fertile planet whose plant life sated the immense animals of that era. Planet Earth is also much cooler today than during the hothouse era of the dinosaur, and cooler than it was 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warming Period, when the Vikings colonized a verdant Greenland. Greenland lost its colonies and its farmland during the Little Ice Age that followed, and only recently started to become green again.
This blossoming Earth could now be in jeopardy, for reasons both natural and man-made. According to a growing number of scientists, the period of global warming that we have experienced over the past few centuries as Earth climbed out of the Little Ice Age is about to end. The oceans, which have been releasing their vast store of carbon dioxide as the planet has warmed -- CO2 is released from oceans as they warm and dissolves in them when they cool -- will start to take the carbon dioxide back. With less heat and less carbon dioxide, the planet could become less hospitable and less green, especially in areas such as Canada's Boreal forests, which have been major beneficiaries of the increase in GPP and NPP.
Doubling the jeopardy for Earth is man. Unlike the many scientists who welcome CO2 for its benefits, many other scientists and most governments believe carbon dioxide to be a dangerous pollutant that must be removed from the atmosphere at all costs. Governments around the world are now enacting massive programs in an effort to remove as much as 80% of the carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere.
If these governments are right, they will have done us all a service. If they are wrong, the service could be all ill, with food production dropping world wide, and the countless ecological niches on which living creatures depend stressed. The second order effects could be dire, too. To bolster food production, humans will likely turn to energy intensive manufactured fertilizers, depleting our store of non-renewable resources. Techniques to remove carbon from the atmosphere also sound alarms. Carbon sequestration, a darling of many who would mitigate climate change, could become a top inducer of earthquakes, according to Christian Klose, a geohazards researcher at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Because the carbon sequestration schemes tend to be located near cities, he notes, carbon-sequestration-caused earthquakes could exact an unusually high toll.
Amazingly, although the risks of action are arguably at least as real as the risks of inaction, Canada and other countries are rushing into Earth-altering carbon schemes with nary a doubt. Environmentalists, who ordinarily would demand a full-fledged environmental assessment before a highway or a power plant can be built, are silent on the need to question proponents or examine alternatives.
Earth is on a roll. Governments are too. We will know soon enough if we're rolled off a cliff.
With less heat and less carbon dioxide, the planet could become less hospitable and less green
Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post Published: Saturday, June 07, 2008
According to a growing number of scientists, the period of global warming that we have experienced over the past few centuries as Earth climbed out of the Little Ice Age is about to end.
Planet Earth is on a roll! GPP is way up. NPP is way up. To the surprise of those who have been bearish on the planet, the data shows global production has been steadily climbing to record levels, ones not seen since these measurements began.
GPP is Gross Primary Production, a measure of the daily output of the global biosphere -- the amount of new plant matter on land. NPP is Net Primary Production, an annual tally of the globe's production. Biomass is booming. The planet is the greenest it's been in decades, perhaps in centuries.
Until the 1980s, ecologists had no way to systematically track growth in plant matter in every corner of the Earth -- the best they could do was analyze small plots of one-tenth of a hectare or less. The notion of continuously tracking global production to discover the true state of the globe's biota was not even considered.
Then, in the 1980s, ecologists realized that satellites could track production, and enlisted NASA to collect the data. For the first time, ecologists did not need to rely on rough estimates or anecdotal evidence of the health of the ecology: They could objectively measure the land's output and soon did -- on a daily basis and down to the last kilometre.
More from FP Oil Watch
The results surprised Steven Running of the University of Montana and Ramakrishna Nemani of NASA, scientists involved in analyzing the NASA data. They found that over a period of almost two decades, the Earth as a whole became more bountiful by a whopping 6.2%. About 25% of the Earth's vegetated landmass -- almost 110 million square kilometres -- enjoyed significant increases and only 7% showed significant declines. When the satellite data zooms in, it finds that each square metre of land, on average, now produces almost 500 grams of greenery per year.
Why the increase? Their 2004 study, and other more recent ones, point to the warming of the planet and the presence of CO2, a gas indispensable to plant life. CO2 is nature's fertilizer, bathing the biota with its life-giving nutrients. Plants take the carbon from CO2 to bulk themselves up -- carbon is the building block of life -- and release the oxygen, which along with the plants, then sustain animal life. As summarized in a report last month, released along with a petition signed by 32,000 U. S. scientists who vouched for the benefits of CO2: "Higher CO2 enables plants to grow faster and larger and to live in drier climates. Plants provide food for animals, which are thereby also enhanced. The extent and diversity of plant and animal life have both increased substantially during the past half-century."
Lush as the planet may now be, it is as nothing compared to earlier times, when levels of CO2 and Earth temperatures were far higher. In the age of the dinosaur, for example, CO2 levels may have been five to 10 times higher than today, spurring a luxuriantly fertile planet whose plant life sated the immense animals of that era. Planet Earth is also much cooler today than during the hothouse era of the dinosaur, and cooler than it was 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warming Period, when the Vikings colonized a verdant Greenland. Greenland lost its colonies and its farmland during the Little Ice Age that followed, and only recently started to become green again.
This blossoming Earth could now be in jeopardy, for reasons both natural and man-made. According to a growing number of scientists, the period of global warming that we have experienced over the past few centuries as Earth climbed out of the Little Ice Age is about to end. The oceans, which have been releasing their vast store of carbon dioxide as the planet has warmed -- CO2 is released from oceans as they warm and dissolves in them when they cool -- will start to take the carbon dioxide back. With less heat and less carbon dioxide, the planet could become less hospitable and less green, especially in areas such as Canada's Boreal forests, which have been major beneficiaries of the increase in GPP and NPP.
Doubling the jeopardy for Earth is man. Unlike the many scientists who welcome CO2 for its benefits, many other scientists and most governments believe carbon dioxide to be a dangerous pollutant that must be removed from the atmosphere at all costs. Governments around the world are now enacting massive programs in an effort to remove as much as 80% of the carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere.
If these governments are right, they will have done us all a service. If they are wrong, the service could be all ill, with food production dropping world wide, and the countless ecological niches on which living creatures depend stressed. The second order effects could be dire, too. To bolster food production, humans will likely turn to energy intensive manufactured fertilizers, depleting our store of non-renewable resources. Techniques to remove carbon from the atmosphere also sound alarms. Carbon sequestration, a darling of many who would mitigate climate change, could become a top inducer of earthquakes, according to Christian Klose, a geohazards researcher at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Because the carbon sequestration schemes tend to be located near cities, he notes, carbon-sequestration-caused earthquakes could exact an unusually high toll.
Amazingly, although the risks of action are arguably at least as real as the risks of inaction, Canada and other countries are rushing into Earth-altering carbon schemes with nary a doubt. Environmentalists, who ordinarily would demand a full-fledged environmental assessment before a highway or a power plant can be built, are silent on the need to question proponents or examine alternatives.
Earth is on a roll. Governments are too. We will know soon enough if we're rolled off a cliff.
June 09, 2008, 8:30 a.m.
Bad Science
A grand tradition.
By Roy Spencer
With the failure of the Lieberman-Warner global-warming bill in the Senate last Friday, I am reminded of the long and grand tradition the scientific community has had in promoting “bad science.” (It is mere coincidence that the acronym for this term is “BS.”)While the failure of the carbon cap-and-trade legislation was largely a result of economic concerns over what it would cost the country, its proponents will no doubt return next year with claims that no price is too great to save us from planetary destruction. But I believe that the huge cost of “doing something” substantial about global warming will inevitably cause us to reexamine the science. Just how certain are we that recent warming really has been caused by SUVs spewing carbon dioxide and cows belching methane? After all, the greater the cost of the advertised fixes, the more certain we must be that the scientific consensus really is more than just a political statement.And why should the science of global warming be so uncertain? Mostly because it is a whole lot easier to make scientific measurements than it is to figure out what those measurements are telling us about how the natural world works. The famous humorist and writer Mark Twain once said, “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.”I consider the theory that global warming is caused by mankind to be just one more example of the continuing tradition scientists have of extrapolating well beyond what they think they know. In his 1883 book Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain also expressed perfectly the proclivity of scientists for turning observations of the natural world into long range predictions which were clearly outlandish.
Twain humorously extrapolated an observed change in the length of the Mississippi River forward and back in time by millions of years to demonstrate the absurdity of the conclusions one can reach when one assumes something currently observed will continue to happen at the same rate, indefinitely.
Twain famously concluded, “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture from such a trifling investment of fact.” Possibly the most prolific purveyor of failed environmental predictions is the MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” recipient, Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich. Beginning in the 1960s, Dr. Ehrlich embarked on a series of premonitions that included dead oceans by 1979, hundreds of thousands of smog deaths in cities, pesticide-related cancers reducing average life expectancy to 42 years by 1980, and such an abuse of pesticides that would cause other countries to launch a nuclear attack on the U.S. out of fear of global poisoning.For some strange reason, the more dire the prediction, the better chance of receiving a prestigious award for scaring the rest of humanity with it — Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize comes to mind.Now, I am assuming that your local newspaper has already kept you sufficiently warned concerning the many different ways that you will suffer a premature death, most of which are now ultimately the result of manmade global warming. But one you might not have heard about is the recent decline in Great Lakes water levels which is (of course) also due to global warming. For instance, Lake Superior water levels in 2007 reached near-record lows. I say “near-record” because a similar decline was observed in the early 1920s which culminated in the record low lake level of 1926. From reading media reports of the 1926 event, one can see the continuing tradition of experts to predict events that non-experts (the public) recognize to be foolish. A Duluth Herald editorial at the time gave the common sense explanation for low lake levels:
But the “experts” had a very different take on the issue, as reported in the May 27, 1926 issue of Daily Mining Journal:
The silliness of such statements isn’t a failure of the scientific method, but a reflection of the fact that scientists are — believe it or not — human. I have personally heard scientists in leadership positions express the opinion that we need to stop producing carbon dioxide, no matter what the science says. These are the anointed ones who keep us informed on the “scientific consensus” on global warming, and who proclaim that “the debate is over.”
While the global-warming debate will probably slow down for some number of months, it will likely return with a vengeance sometime after the fall elections. This is, of course, unless our eight-year stretch of no warming continues. Since January of 2006 when Al Gore announced we have only ten years left to save ourselves, the globally averaged satellite measured temperature of the lower atmosphere has fallen by one degree Farenheit. Last month was the fifth-coolest month in the 30-year satellite record.
If global warming doesn’t get its act together pretty soon, there will be a lot of scientists (and more than a few politicians) who will look pretty foolish — but only to those who remember the foolish predictions. Since we still remember a few scientists in the 1970s who were announcing the arrival of a new ice age, I am hopeful that we will also be reminded of the catastrophic warming forecasts when they also fail.
But by then we will have moved on to new kinds of environmental catastrophes to predict and wring our hands over. After all, we scientists are human, too, and we must preserve our traditions.
Bad Science
A grand tradition.
By Roy Spencer
With the failure of the Lieberman-Warner global-warming bill in the Senate last Friday, I am reminded of the long and grand tradition the scientific community has had in promoting “bad science.” (It is mere coincidence that the acronym for this term is “BS.”)While the failure of the carbon cap-and-trade legislation was largely a result of economic concerns over what it would cost the country, its proponents will no doubt return next year with claims that no price is too great to save us from planetary destruction. But I believe that the huge cost of “doing something” substantial about global warming will inevitably cause us to reexamine the science. Just how certain are we that recent warming really has been caused by SUVs spewing carbon dioxide and cows belching methane? After all, the greater the cost of the advertised fixes, the more certain we must be that the scientific consensus really is more than just a political statement.And why should the science of global warming be so uncertain? Mostly because it is a whole lot easier to make scientific measurements than it is to figure out what those measurements are telling us about how the natural world works. The famous humorist and writer Mark Twain once said, “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.”I consider the theory that global warming is caused by mankind to be just one more example of the continuing tradition scientists have of extrapolating well beyond what they think they know. In his 1883 book Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain also expressed perfectly the proclivity of scientists for turning observations of the natural world into long range predictions which were clearly outlandish.
Twain humorously extrapolated an observed change in the length of the Mississippi River forward and back in time by millions of years to demonstrate the absurdity of the conclusions one can reach when one assumes something currently observed will continue to happen at the same rate, indefinitely.
Twain famously concluded, “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture from such a trifling investment of fact.” Possibly the most prolific purveyor of failed environmental predictions is the MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” recipient, Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich. Beginning in the 1960s, Dr. Ehrlich embarked on a series of premonitions that included dead oceans by 1979, hundreds of thousands of smog deaths in cities, pesticide-related cancers reducing average life expectancy to 42 years by 1980, and such an abuse of pesticides that would cause other countries to launch a nuclear attack on the U.S. out of fear of global poisoning.For some strange reason, the more dire the prediction, the better chance of receiving a prestigious award for scaring the rest of humanity with it — Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize comes to mind.Now, I am assuming that your local newspaper has already kept you sufficiently warned concerning the many different ways that you will suffer a premature death, most of which are now ultimately the result of manmade global warming. But one you might not have heard about is the recent decline in Great Lakes water levels which is (of course) also due to global warming. For instance, Lake Superior water levels in 2007 reached near-record lows. I say “near-record” because a similar decline was observed in the early 1920s which culminated in the record low lake level of 1926. From reading media reports of the 1926 event, one can see the continuing tradition of experts to predict events that non-experts (the public) recognize to be foolish. A Duluth Herald editorial at the time gave the common sense explanation for low lake levels:
The weather bureau has issued a report on low lake levels…the Great Lakes watershed is in a cycle of light precipitation…levels will come back when…the dry cycle is succeeded by a wet one. There have been dry cycles before….and for every dry cycle there has been a wet one to follow…
But the “experts” had a very different take on the issue, as reported in the May 27, 1926 issue of Daily Mining Journal:
Ultimate extinction of the American side of the falls at Niagara is mathematically certain unless water levels in the Great Lakes are raised.
I have a difficult time reading that statement without laughing. But I suspect it wasn’t meant to be a joke.
The silliness of such statements isn’t a failure of the scientific method, but a reflection of the fact that scientists are — believe it or not — human. I have personally heard scientists in leadership positions express the opinion that we need to stop producing carbon dioxide, no matter what the science says. These are the anointed ones who keep us informed on the “scientific consensus” on global warming, and who proclaim that “the debate is over.”
While the global-warming debate will probably slow down for some number of months, it will likely return with a vengeance sometime after the fall elections. This is, of course, unless our eight-year stretch of no warming continues. Since January of 2006 when Al Gore announced we have only ten years left to save ourselves, the globally averaged satellite measured temperature of the lower atmosphere has fallen by one degree Farenheit. Last month was the fifth-coolest month in the 30-year satellite record.
If global warming doesn’t get its act together pretty soon, there will be a lot of scientists (and more than a few politicians) who will look pretty foolish — but only to those who remember the foolish predictions. Since we still remember a few scientists in the 1970s who were announcing the arrival of a new ice age, I am hopeful that we will also be reminded of the catastrophic warming forecasts when they also fail.
But by then we will have moved on to new kinds of environmental catastrophes to predict and wring our hands over. After all, we scientists are human, too, and we must preserve our traditions.
Why Did 32,000 Scientists Sign a Petition Dissenting From Global-Warming Consensus?
Why Did 32,000 Scientists Sign a Petition Dissenting From Global-Warming Consensus?...
Posted Jun 10, 2008 01:54 PM PST
Category: SCIENCE/HEALTH
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/a...-from-global-warming-consensus.aspx?source=nl
Why Did 32,000 Scientists Sign a Petition Dissenting From Global-Warming Consensus?...
Posted Jun 10, 2008 01:54 PM PST
Category: SCIENCE/HEALTH
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/a...-from-global-warming-consensus.aspx?source=nl
Heres a good financial right wing incentive against allowing carbon pollution.
You are disposing of your waste into the air and expecting me to pay for the consequences of your actions.
Carbon, regardless of heating effects, does damage other peoples private property. Perhaps not alot, but why should they pay for your careless efforts.
Others do not exists to support you in a welfare state and pay the true cost of your lifestyle choices.
You are disposing of your waste into the air and expecting me to pay for the consequences of your actions.
Carbon, regardless of heating effects, does damage other peoples private property. Perhaps not alot, but why should they pay for your careless efforts.
Others do not exists to support you in a welfare state and pay the true cost of your lifestyle choices.
Temperature Stock Report
12 06 2008
Interesting quote of the week:
I never thought of it that way. Sell!
12 06 2008
Interesting quote of the week:
If Global Warming were a stock, and you bought it in 1979 at zero (par) and decided to sell it this month to buy a house, 29 years later you aren’t very happy with your investment. At it’s peak in 1998, the temperature only went to a 0.8 increase, and in April it dipped to very nearly unchanged. (From Charles Noland, Blue Skies)
I never thought of it that way. Sell!
GLOBAL WARMING
Here is a very basic set of overview information related to global warming. This page has been compiled by Texas A&M University's Laboratory for Applied Biotelemetry & Biotechnology. This data is compiled from a variety of online sources. For a detailed introduction to this issue, check out Common Questions about Climate Change (United Nations Environment Programme & World Meteorological Organization).
See also: Statement on the Status of Global Climate in 2000 (1.3 Mb pdf) by the World Meteorological Organization (U.N.)
| Is Global Warming happening? | Are there observable warming effects? | What emissions effect global temperatures? | Have CO2 emissions increased? | How about CO2 prior to industrial revolution? | Who are the biggest contributors to global CO2 emissions? | Is CO2 production directly related to life style and affluence? | What can you do? |
Is Global Warming happening?
Yes:
The above graph shows the departure from the long-term average, of average global temperatures, in degrees Farenheit, since 1880. (Source: EPA)
The figure below shows average global temperatures from 1860 onwards, in degrees Celsius and Farenheit. (Source: United Nations Environment Programme World Meteorological Organization)
Are there observable effects that may be tied to Global Warming?
Yes:
To give one example, the graph above shows the percentage of US area (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) with an unusually large amount of the total annual precipitation originating from extreme precipitation events. (Source: United Nations Environment Programme World Meteorological Organization).
In another example, the figure below shows anomalies in Arctic sea ice extent since 1970. (Source: Statement on the Status of Global Climate in 2000 (1.3 Mb pdf) by the World Meteorological Organization, U.N.)
What emissions have an effect on global temperatures?
Many different emissions have an effect on global temperatures:
The figure above shows the relative importance to global warming and cooling of various gases and particulate matter in the atmosphere. (Source: United Nations Environment Programme World Meteorological Organization)
Have CO2 emissions increased?
Yes, since the industrial revolution:
The figure above shows total fossil CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) emissions for three regions, from 1860 through present. Since 1860, global CO2 emissions have increased by more than 1000%. (Source: United Nations Environment Programme World Meteorological Organization)
How about CO2 emissions prior to the industrial revolution?
The graph above shows CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) concentrations as measured in the atmoshpere and in ice cores. (Source: United Nations Environment Programme World Meteorological Organization)
Who are the biggest contributors to global CO2 emissions?
The single biggest contributor are the United States of America:
How might this be related to population size and affluence?
Generally speaking, richer countries and more affluent life styles contribute more to CO2 production, but there are notable exceptions that proove that affluent living does not automatically result in high CO2 production:
The figure below shows the per capita production of carbon dioxide (in metric tons of carbon per inhabitant emitted per year) in 1997, for all the 31 countries that contributed more than 0.5% to the total global production of fossil CO2. North American countries (U.S. and Canada) average about 5 tons of CO2 carbon per person, most countries in the European Union average less than half that (around 2.2 tons per person), and some of the most highly populated countries (and thus big CO2 producers) including the Peoples Republic of China, India, and Brazil are all below the global average of 1.13 metric tons of CO2 carbon per person.
Two notable countries not listed in the figure below are:
The U.S. Virgin Islands as the country with the highest rate of any on the planet (33.22 metric tons of CO2 carbon per inhabitant, corresponding to 0.05% of global fossil CO2 production in 1997).
Switzerland as the most affluent nation on the planet (based on per capita median income and GDP values for 1997). Switzerland in 1997 produced 1.52 metric tons of CO2 carbon per inhabitant (corresponding to 0.18% of total global production). The example of Switzerland shows that it is possible to maintain an affluent community at per capita CO2 production rates near the global average, or about 28% of the U.S per capita CO2 production rate.
What can you do?
That's actually very simple: reduce the amount of fossil fuels you use:
- Drive less and/or use more efficient cars. These days, it is absolutely not a problem to use cars that obtain at the very least 40 miles-per-gallon efficiency in city driving, and 50 mpg on the highway. Cars with at least that much mileage are made by Toyota, Honda, and Volkswagen, amongst others. The world record for a production car is currently held by the VW Lupo 3L TDI, the first production 3-litre car (a car that uses less than 3 litres of fuel per 100 km, or about 75 mpg, on average). Volkswagen recently accomplished the first "Around the world in 80 days on 1000 litres" trip at an average consumption of only 2.38 l/100 km with a production Lupo (that is 94 mpg, at an average speed of 50 mph).
- Use energy efficient lighting, including fluorescent and compact fluorescent light bulbs.
- Lower your thermostats in winter time, raise them in summer time to reduce heating and air conditioning usage.
Per Capita is a ridiculous way to measure emissions.
The earth doesn't react to "per capita" emmissions.
Its Emissions versus the amout of the earths surface it represents.
High population density nations do not magically get to pollute more because they can't make the most important ecological friendly decision to have fewer kids.
The earth doesn't react to "per capita" emmissions.
Its Emissions versus the amout of the earths surface it represents.
High population density nations do not magically get to pollute more because they can't make the most important ecological friendly decision to have fewer kids.
No Zzarchov, it is not ridiculous. It is just a measurement. Useful to some. Not to others.
High population density nations pollute more than low population density nations of the same size.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Hansen’s Anniversary Testimony
By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, AMS Fellow
On June 23, 1988 James Hansen, Astronomer by degree but climatologist by self appointment testified in front of congress. It was an orchestrated testimony coordinated by Senator Al Gore and a Senator from Colorado, Tim Wirth (now running Ted Turner’s UN Foundation) who admitted they picked the day after calling the National Weather Service to ensure it was a hot day. He admitted proudly later they opened all the windows the night before, making air conditioning ineffective and making sure all involved including Hansen would be seen mopping their brow for maximum effect. Hansen testified “Number one, the earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements. Number two, the global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe, with a high degree of confidence, a cause-and-effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.”
See in the story below how hard Hansen has worked to try and make his prognostication verify by manipulating data. By his own comments to the UK Guardian “When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that’s a crime.” Well the disinformation that comprises the GISS data then by his own words is a crime, and in his own words he “should be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature”.
Here is the plot of actual NASA global satellite monthly temperatures since June 1988. Note the anomaly in May 2008 was lower than in June 1988 by nearly 0.3C. Of course, we don’t have June 2008 numbers yet. Please note I am not saying that cooling began in 1988. Satellites show clearly that since 1979 there was a moderate warming which peaked in 1998. A cooling has taken place the last 6 to 7 years. Global station and ocean data with all its warts shows the warming from the early 1900s to the 1930s, cooling from the 1940s to the 1970s then warming again peaking in 1998. I am just making an observation that it is ironic that 20 years after his first testimony about global warming, it is half a degree F oooler globally, not supporting the drastic measure he advocates. Also we can explain not only the trends but each spike or dip with some natural phenomena as we have shown in recent posts.
See larger image here
His testimony will no doubt include reference to upcoming or ongoing dangerous rises in sea level and ignore the data. His radio interview today on the Diane Rehm show this AM on WAMU in Washington DC, (audio links here) provides a preview of what he will tell congress.
See larger image here
He will also no doubt repeat his claim he is being muzzled. He confuses a muzzle with a megaphone as shown by this table of actual Hansen media references by year (thanks to Roger Pielke Jr. on Prometheus).
See larger image here.
Today unlike in June 1988, temperatures will be near normal in DC with temperatures in the 70s and 80s with thunderstorms. The last two weeks have averaged 2 degrees below normal.
Hansen’s Anniversary Testimony
By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, AMS Fellow
On June 23, 1988 James Hansen, Astronomer by degree but climatologist by self appointment testified in front of congress. It was an orchestrated testimony coordinated by Senator Al Gore and a Senator from Colorado, Tim Wirth (now running Ted Turner’s UN Foundation) who admitted they picked the day after calling the National Weather Service to ensure it was a hot day. He admitted proudly later they opened all the windows the night before, making air conditioning ineffective and making sure all involved including Hansen would be seen mopping their brow for maximum effect. Hansen testified “Number one, the earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements. Number two, the global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe, with a high degree of confidence, a cause-and-effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.”
See in the story below how hard Hansen has worked to try and make his prognostication verify by manipulating data. By his own comments to the UK Guardian “When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that’s a crime.” Well the disinformation that comprises the GISS data then by his own words is a crime, and in his own words he “should be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature”.
Here is the plot of actual NASA global satellite monthly temperatures since June 1988. Note the anomaly in May 2008 was lower than in June 1988 by nearly 0.3C. Of course, we don’t have June 2008 numbers yet. Please note I am not saying that cooling began in 1988. Satellites show clearly that since 1979 there was a moderate warming which peaked in 1998. A cooling has taken place the last 6 to 7 years. Global station and ocean data with all its warts shows the warming from the early 1900s to the 1930s, cooling from the 1940s to the 1970s then warming again peaking in 1998. I am just making an observation that it is ironic that 20 years after his first testimony about global warming, it is half a degree F oooler globally, not supporting the drastic measure he advocates. Also we can explain not only the trends but each spike or dip with some natural phenomena as we have shown in recent posts.
See larger image here
His testimony will no doubt include reference to upcoming or ongoing dangerous rises in sea level and ignore the data. His radio interview today on the Diane Rehm show this AM on WAMU in Washington DC, (audio links here) provides a preview of what he will tell congress.
See larger image here
He will also no doubt repeat his claim he is being muzzled. He confuses a muzzle with a megaphone as shown by this table of actual Hansen media references by year (thanks to Roger Pielke Jr. on Prometheus).
See larger image here.
Today unlike in June 1988, temperatures will be near normal in DC with temperatures in the 70s and 80s with thunderstorms. The last two weeks have averaged 2 degrees below normal.
- Status