Global Warming ‘Greatest Scam in History’

[Tonington]

I'd rather go electric. No-one can say for an absolute certainty that humans have or haven't contibuted to warming the planet up, but then climatology is a young science.

No, we absolutely can say that humans have contributed to warming the planet. We can say this because we know things like the radiative properties of molecules that are opaque at various wavelengths, due to their rotation, vibration, and vibro-rotational states. We can say this also, because we know that land use changes, and our construction activities can cause more heat to be retained. The urban heat island is the earth retaining more heat.

Even if the mean temperature of the earth were falling, we could say that human activities are causing more heat to be retained. That much is certain. The only uncertainty with regards to that is really how much. The sensitivity of the climate to perturbations is not a definite quantity, and is given as a range.

 

[Avro]

Water rights over water used for various things is a touchy subject here, too. We have a power license for the creek that runs through here, but would rather use a more passive method of power and has less environmental impact.
You're welcome.
Why not LEDs?

All I want to do is run a few wheel turbines on the creek with little daming involved but a neightbor is being stubborn about it.

LEDS? Are they bright enough? Sounds interesting.....hero.

 

[L Gilbert]

No, we absolutely can say that humans have contributed to warming the planet. We can say this because we know things like the radiative properties of molecules that are opaque at various wavelengths, due to their rotation, vibration, and vibro-rotational states. We can say this also, because we know that land use changes, and our construction activities can cause more heat to be retained. The urban heat island is the earth retaining more heat.

Even if the mean temperature of the earth were falling, we could say that human activities are causing more heat to be retained. That much is certain. The only uncertainty with regards to that is really how much. The sensitivity of the climate to perturbations is not a definite quantity, and is given as a range.

Well, you are right, of course. I wasn't as attentive to what I was saying as I should have been.

I might also mention, Avro, that the casing for batteries is also recyclable.

 

[Avro]

Well, you are right, of course. I wasn't as attentive to what I was saying as I should have been.

I might also mention, Avro, that the casing for batteries is also recyclable.

I figured the casing was but my concern is the acid and other unknown by-products.

 

[L Gilbert]

I figured the casing was but my concern is the acid and other unknown by-products.

The by-products would be the salts resulting from the reaction. Those are used for many different things. Lead and other metals are recycled, too.

 

[Avro]

The by-products would be the salts resulting from the reaction. Those are used for many different things. Lead and other metals are recycled, too.

Interesting, so our hybrids won't cause a problem.....good, I was a little worried about that.

I'm sure your hybrids are the same.....hero.

 

[Stretch]

Whatever Happened To Global Warming?

'More and more people worldwide are asking, "Hey, I'm freezing my buns off and the weather is getting cooler every year. But I'm going to have to change my lifestyle and reduce my standard of living because 52 scientist-lackeys say that carbon dioxide is causing global warming? Give me a break."
The emperor has no clothes, and it's up to us to reinforce what is already known. Let us take every opportunity to ask, "Whatever Happened to Global Warming?" and at the same time point out that it's not a sin against the planet to drive an SUV or burn a peat bog. And - one last fact - in geologic time, our present level of CO2 is relatively low compared to earlier levels that were some 12 times the amount of concern to alarmists.
Plants were very happy then, and oceans didn't boil away.'
Whatever Happened to Global Warming?​

 

[Tonington]

Winter...

YouTube - Climate Denial Crock of the Week 1/21/09

 

[Stretch]

was watching "Daily Planet" yesterday and they we saying that for every ton of conrete produced, almost the same amount of CO2 is released into the atmosphere......no-one mentions that in the spiel for carbon tax, no, all they say is it's us peasants and our cars that are causing it and we must pay!

just think about how many tons of concrete are produced every day around the planet..............................................

 

[Walter]

 

[Walter]

Lawrence Solomon: The dirty truth
Posted: February 20, 2009, 7:59 PM by NP Editor Barack Obama and Stephen Harper are all for carbon capture technology. Too bad it’s not as green as it seems


By Lawrence Solomon

During President Barack Obama’s visit to Canada this week, he and Prime Minister Stephen Harper pledged to spend billions developing technologies that would capture carbon and then store it underground.
Carbon capture and storage, as these schemes are known, is misguided environmentally, economically, and in the long term, politically too. Carbon capture has only one virtue: It solves short-term political problems for both leaders.
Harper has an overarching aim in funding carbon capture — the continuing development of the Alberta tar sands. Environmentalists castigate oil from tar sands as “dirty oil” for one reason above all: Tar sands oil generates more carbon dioxide than does oil from conventional sources. With carbon capture technology promising to counter much of the greenhouse gas associated with tar sands development, Harper can neutralize the main opposition to more tar sands projects.As a bonus, he will be fulfilling a campaign promise to address global warming.
Obama has two aims in funding carbon capture. For one thing, he needs oil from Canada’s tar sands to fulfill his campaign promise of weaning the U.S. off Middle-Eastern oil; for another, as this week’s U.S.-Canada Clean Energy Dialogue makes clear, he wants to exploit America’s vast coal reserves, both for their economic benefits and to promote U.S. energy independence, another campaign promise.
Carbon capture and storage, however, is not as green as it seems — underground burial of carbon dioxide presents immense new risks to society. If the carbon dioxide is stored in deep ocean masses, as sometimes proposed, environmentalists fear that ocean acidification could devastate marine eco-systems. If the carbon dioxide is stored in geologic formations near fossil fuel plants, as is more commonly proposed, the harmful effects would directly affect human life: Research at Columbia University by one of the world’s leading geohazard scientists ranks carbon storage as one of the five top coming causes of man-induced earthquakes, a prediction all the more scary because the earthquakes would tend to occur near the fossil fuel plants, and population centres. In another potential danger, some fret about the consequences of an accidental release of carbon dioxide from underground storage facilities. In Cameroon in 1986, 1,800 people died after an unexplained release of carbon dioxide from beneath Lake Nyos, which has deep stores of carbon dioxide beneath its bottom.
Apart from these unknown future risks of stuffing carbon dioxide underground, carbon capture technologies are chock-a-block with known problems, all stemming from the fact that these technologies are, in the parlance of environmentalists, energy pigs. As one example, a typical coal plant employing carbon capture technology requires between 24% and 50% more energy for every kilowatt-hour produced.
At this level of resource gluttony, the world’s store of non-renewable fossil fuels would be consumed at a fast clip wherever carbon capture technology was applied. Worse, other pollutants that environmentalists have long fought would also increase. The “clean coal” plants that President Obama touts would produce one-third more in nitrous oxides, a major contributor to smog. Likewise, carbon capture technology applied to tar sands plants would mean that additional tar sands plants would need to be developed just to run the tar sands carbon capture facilities.
Ironically, carbon capture technology would not only worsen air quality and more rapidly scar the tar sands landscape, it may also harm the global environment if it is successful in its goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Carbon dioxide stimulates plant growth and leads to a greening of the planet. In fact, satellite measurements now show the planet to be the greenest in decades. Little wonder that, in surveys of scientists, the great majority view carbon dioxide as a beneficial gas that’s indispensable to plant growth, and insignificant to any deleterious global warming.
To add to the irony, even if carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that plays a significant role in warming the planet, there may be good reason to encourage its release into the atmosphere. A decade ago, the planet stopped warming and a year ago, global temperatures began to decline markedly. If, as many scientists now speculate, Earth could be entering a new Little Ice Age, carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases could mitigate the hardship that would come with a cooling planet.
The environmental drawbacks in carbon capture also spell economic trouble. The complexity of the technology, and its energy inefficiency, translate into high prices. Estimates from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show customers should be prepared to pay as much as 50% to 70% more for their power. With cost penalties on that scale, industries will leave carbon capture jurisdictions for less punitive climes, and captive consumers will rebel.
At heart, what politicians and the public most want is clean energy and a clean environment. Rather than sinking billions into carbon capture schemes likely to do nothing but damage the environment and the economy, Obama and Harper should target true environmental hazards such as the mercury, NOX and SOX in coal, the air and water emissions associated with tar sands. And they should come clean with the public over carbon dioxide, and admit that too little worrisome is known about its risks to start burying it, and too much worrisome is known about the risks of burying it.

 

[Walter]

Lawrence Solomon: The art of the green disinvite
Posted: February 28, 2009, 3:21 AM by NP Editor
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/White/0-solomon.jpgAn environmental veteran and global-warming skeptic finds himself frequently disinvited to debate the likes of Elizabeth May

By Lawrence Solomon

I am the most disinvited speaker in Canada.

My most recent disinvite involves a conference at Queen’s University’s Business School next week. Several months ago, I was invited to speak at its Commerce Engineering Environmental Conference. As with all my disinvites, I’m never entirely sure why I’m disinvited. But I have my hunches.

In the case of the Queen’s conference, the organizer, a student named Amy (not her real name), offered me a choice of speaking spots that I could fill. When I saw my options, I couldn’t believe my good luck — a spot in a debate on global warming was available, and the debater was ... Elizabeth May, the head of the Green Party, as knowledgeable as they come on global warming and a fabulous debater. For close to a year, I had wanted to engage in a debate on global warming with someone of the calibre of Elizabeth May, or, with just about anyone. “What luck!” I thought, as I promptly e-mailed Amy to grab the opportunity to debate Elizabeth May.Two days later, Amy broke the bad news to me: “Elizabeth May has just changed her plans. She will not be able to participate, but will be delivering an address at the dinner following the debate.”

But not all was lost. A debate was still on, only I now learned it would be a three-way debate involving me, Bruce Pardy, a law professor at Queen’s and, Amy hoped, Stephen Hazell, executive director of the Sierra Club. Still thrilled to be able to participate in a global warming debate — I know them both to be highly capable — I made my travel arrangements.

And then almost two weeks of silence, during which Amy failed to communicate. Was I being disinvited again? Finally, Amy replied: “Unfortunately we can no longer offer you a place at the debate. I realise this is extremely unprofessional, and I apologise for that. If you would like to speak on Saturday then we can offer you a spot, but Friday is no longer an option.”

My very first disinvite ever came just about a year ago. I had been invited to be the keynote speaker on day two of a two-day energy conference in April, on the subject of (yawn) electricity restructuring, the subject of an early book I wrote. Day one dealt with global warming, the subject of my new book, The Deniers, which by coincidence would be coming out the very week of the conference. “Would you like me to speak on day one instead,” I asked, explaining the timeliness of my book’s release. The organizer instantly agreed. It was in her interest as well as mine to have me speak on the strength of a book that would have just hit the stores.

Three weeks later, she called back: “What exactly is your book about?” she asked. I explained that I had profiled dozens of prominent scientists who disagreed with the view that global warming represented a harm for humanity. Long pause. “Could we go back to you talking about electricity restructuring?” she asked.

My disinvites span the spectrum — speeches, debates, media appearances — and I can’t always fault the disinviter, particularly since I’m never given a clear explanation for the disinvitation. On one occasion, a prominent organization — a household name in Canada — failed to find someone suitable who would agree to debate me. On another, a prestigious if less-well known organization was willing to fund a debate, as long as it wasn’t identified as its sponsor. On a third, a quasi-governmental European organization backed out of having me as a speaker, to the evident remorse of the organizer. In many others, I am not disinvited, because I am dropped before a formal invitation is even extended. I will be asked, “Are you available on such and such a date?” I will reply “Yes.” I will then hear back that my presence won’t be required, if I hear back at all.

I don’t take my disinvites personally. For one thing, I know that the problem isn’t with me or Energy Probe, my organization— they are the source of the invitation to start with. For another, it is hard to arrange global warming debates — in the few that I am aware of, the sceptics have won convincingly, leading most in the doomsayer camp to boycott any debates in the future .

But I do weep for Amy, the student organizing next week’s conference at Queen’s School of Business. What must she think of the integrity of the education she’s getting? Even more, I weep for the students who will be attending the conference. Amy, at least, knows that the debate over global warming that the conference is staging is a sham.

 

[Walter]

Climate change double-think

Lorne Gunter, National Post Published: Monday, March 02, 2009
The Earth has been cooling for a decade. While it may be true (or not, depending on whose figures one uses) that 1998 was the second-warmest year on record, and that seven or eight of the years since were in the top 10, no year since has been warmer than 1998 and nearly every one has been cooler than the one before it.
The trend is decidedly downward. Indeed, the drop in temperatures since late-2007 has been so precipitous --nearly a full degree Celsius-- that almost all of the global warming that has occurred since the late-1970s has disappeared.
One of the criticisms of global warming predictions is that models cannot even reproduce climate for which we already have detailed records. So last spring, when climate scientists at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Science and the Max Planck Institute of Meteorology managed -- finally -- to use their supercomputer to recreate the climate of the past half-century, there was much anticipation of what their predictions would be for the next half. What they said was that global temperatures would continue to fall for at least another decade, perhaps longer.
When I wrote last year that this 20-year intermission in upward temperature trends bruised the credibility of global warming scientists and alarmist environmentalists, several of them wrote me to say they had never predicted steadily rising temperatures. No, no, they insisted, all along they had expected periods -- even some long ones -- in which temperatures would retreat before surging ahead again. So the currently cooling fit right in with what they had been predicting all along.
This, of course, was revisionist hogwash -- if only because the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claimed there was no doubt that disastrous manmade warming was already upon us. The IPCC further predicted temperatures this decade would rise 0.3C and by similar amounts every decade through 2100.
I had been fully prepared for the alarmists to take credit for the cooling once it became undeniable. What I had not predicted was the hubris and intellectual dishonesty that permitted the warmers to insist they knew all along of facts contrary to their theories, but believed those facts reinforced, rather than undermined, the validity of their earlier claims.
Now, a similarly Orwellian doublethink is happening over Arctic sea ice. Since last fall, Arctic ice has been expanding faster than at any time since satellite records became available in 1979. The ice cap is now only a fraction smaller than in 1980 -- when it was at its largest.
Not only has this news not received much reporting, but the fact that ice sensors in the North have been malfunctioning, which has very likely led to a further underestimating of the amount of ice around the pole, has set off another we-never-claimed-it-was-an-emergency moment among greenies.
Taking exception to a column written by The Washington Post's George Will, New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin -- one of the warmers' most reliable trumpets -- wrote recently, "I've not met a single scientist focussed on sea ice who would point to a single year's changes as evidence" of global warming.
Pardon me!?
Since hurricanes stopped menacing the U. S. coastline, the supposedly rapidly melting polar ice has been the biggest alarmist story.
Consider these two examples from the scores of articles and scientists claiming the proof of dangerous warming is visible in each melting ice flow:
-Mark Serreze, one of the most prominent Arctic ice scientists in the world and a researcher at the U. S. National Snow and Ice Center, said last summer's melt proved "Arctic ice is in its death spiral," and would be completely gone each summer by 2030.
-Last fall, a group of international scientists, led by Environment Canada climatologist Nathan Gillett, insisted in the journal Nature Geoscience that, among other factors, Arctic melting was proof manmade warming was harming the planet.
Winston Smith, of course, was the character in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty- Four whose job it was to rewrite history, literally, and send the old, embarrassing versions that had been overtaken by facts down the memory hole for destruction. As the consensus on warming crumbles, expect more such Winston Smith denials from the theory's true believers.

 

[petros]

As the consensus on warming crumbles

So we aren't polluting the earth anymore? Wow!

 

[Walter]

So we aren't polluting the earth anymore? Wow!

CO2 is not a pollutant and those who say it is should stop breathing.

 

[Tonington]

CO2 is not a pollutant and those who say it is should stop breathing.

So, because it's natural means it can't be a pollutant? This is straight from the standard playbook of science deniers. It's called the Argumentum ad Naturam, or appeal to nature. It's a fallacy because it assumes that all things natural must therefore be good. It's a fallacy because it fails to recognize that natural systems have methods of coping with the problems life on this planet creates. Solutions devised by nature are sensitive, and they are discrete. If you overwhelm the coping mechanism, you have a problem.

Want a nice example. How about bull crap? It's not destructive by itself-indeed it's a nutrient just like carbon dioxide is, and nature has found ways to deal with it. But, if it's produced in sufficiently large quantities, then it becomes unmanageable. It can pollute water, and soil. Heap enough bull crap onto something, and you have a problem.

Even further, the carbon dioxide that is a problem isn't a result of respiration. It's due to combustion. Your breath is carbon neutral. The sugars and other carbon containing materials are broken down to carbon dioxide and water.

Bull crap on your assertion Walter.

That denier playbook really needs some new formations and plays to run.

:lol:

 

[Walter]

Final Score For The Met Office Winter Forecast

3 03 2009
Guest post by Steven Goddard

The UK Met Office famously forecast this past winter to be “milder than average.“​

25 September 2008
The Met Office forecast for the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average.
Seasonal forecasts from the Met Office are used by many agencies across government, private and third sectors to help their long-term planning.
​

The meteorological winter is over, and the official results are in :

The UK had its coldest winter for 13 years, bucking a recent trend of mild temperatures, the Met Office has said.
The average mean temperature across December, January and February was 3.1C - the lowest since the winter beginning in 1995, which averaged 2.5C.
​

This missed forecast falls on the heels of two consecutive incorrect summer forecasts , both of which were forecast to be warm but turned out to be complete washouts. However, the Met Office appears undaunted by their recent high profile forecasting failures, and they continue in their quest to educate the public about the imminent threat of global warming.

Peter Stott, of the Met Office, said despite this year’s chill, the trend to milder, wetter winters would continue.
He said snow and frost would become less of a feature in the future.
….
The Met Office added that global warming had prevented this winter from being even colder.
​

They have already warned that 2009 will be one of the five warmest years on record.

2009 is expected to be one of the top-five warmest years on record, despite continued cooling of huge areas of the tropical Pacific Ocean, a phenomenon known as La Niña.
​

Just as they had forecast that 2007 would be the hottest year on record, prior to temperatures plummeting by nearly a full degree.

2007 is likely to be the warmest year on record globally, beating the current record set in 1998, say climate-change experts at the Met Office.
​

Based on their past accuracy with seasonal and annual forecasting, you might want to bundle up and buy some new rain boots.

 

[Walter]

[SIZE=-1]By Bill Steigerwald
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, March 7, 2009 [/SIZE]
After George F. Will wrote a column last month questioning the faulty premises and apocalyptic predictions of global-warming alarmists, he caught holy heck from America's "eco-pessimists." He and his editors at The Washington Post were blasted with thousands of angry e-mails, most of which challenged Will's assertion that global sea ice levels have not been dramatically reduced by man-made global warming, as environmentalists claim, but are essentially the same as they were in 1979. Will, who had used data from the Arctic Climate Research Center as his source, also was accused of multiple inaccuracies by The New York Times' Andrew Revkin. Will wrote a second column defending his data and returning fire at Revkin.
All is calm now and Will is getting ready for the start of his favorite season -- baseball season. I talked to him by phone on Thursday from his office in Washington.
•Q: You have felt the righteous wrath of those who believe in man-made global warming. Are you still all there?
•A: Oh, heavens. Yeah. The odd thing about these people is, normally when I write something that people disagree with they write letters to the editor or they write a responding op-ed piece. These people simply set out to try and get my editors to not publish my columns. Now I don't blame them, because I think if my arguments were as shaky as theirs are, I wouldn't want to engage in argument either.
•Q: The big issue was about how much global sea ice there is now compared to 1979.
•A: And that of course was a tiny portion of the column. The critics completely ignored -- as again, understandably -- the evidence I gave of the global cooling hysteria of 30 years ago.
•Q: They like to pretend that there really wasn't any hysteria back then.
•A: Since I quoted the hysteria, it's a little hard for them to deny it.
•Q: What disturbs you most about this global warming consensus that seems to be pretty widespread and doesn't seem to be eroding?
•A: Well, I think it is eroding, in the sense that people sign on to be alarmed because it's socially responsible ... (and because it makes them feel good). But once they get to the price tag, once they are asked to do something about it, like pay trillions of dollars, they begin to re-think.
I've never seen anything quite like this in my now 40 years in Washington. I've never seen anything like the enlistment of the mainstream media in a political crusade -- and this is a political crusade, because it's about how we should be governed and how we should live; those are the great questions of politics. It is clearly for some people a surrogate religion. It's a spiritual quest. It offers redemption. But what it also always offers, whether it is global cooling or global warming, is a rationale for the government to radically increase its supervision of our life and our choices. Whether the globe is cooling, whether it's warming, the government's going to be the winner and the governing class will be the winner.
Now, it seems to me there is a 100 percent certainty that at any moment the planet is warming or it is cooling. That's what it does. There are cycles well-recorded through history. The climate was once warm enough for Greenland to be called "Greenland" for a reason -- the Vikings farmed there. There was a time when the planet was so cold that Eskimos landed in Scotland in their kayaks. There was "The Little Ice Age." There were warm periods -- we've been through this before. What's different now is that we have a media addicted to hysteria and we have enormous political and financial stakes in convincing people that vast shifts of power and resources should be given to the government to combat climate change. The prudent people in this refer to "climate change" so whatever happens they can say, "See, we told you."
•Q: Will you dare to do any more on global warming?
•A: Well of course! It doesn't take daring. Seriously, I don't understand what there is to worry about. In fact, the global warming "caucus," if you will, seems to me singularly toothless. They can't even get the globe to cooperate. It stubbornly refuses to warm at the moment.

 

[JLM]

I think we've had enough weather this winter for it to be counted as climate. There recently seems to be a waning of aggression in pushing this "Global Warming" theory.

 

[Tonington]

I think we've had enough weather this winter for it to be counted as climate. There recently seems to be a waning of aggression in pushing this "Global Warming" theory.

You think one season is enough to be counted as climate? Not even one whole years worth of weather, but one season? That's hilarious!

Here's some FYI on the difference: Weather and Climate Basics