Global Warming Hoax Update

From Canada Free Press:

Global warming is likely to be less extreme than claimed, researchers said yesterday. The most likely temperature rise will be 1.9C (3.4F) compared with the 3.5C predicted by the Intergovern­mental Panel on Climate Change. The Norwegian study says earlier predictions were based on rapid warming in the Nineties. But Oslo University’s department of geosciences included data since 2000 when temperature rises “levelled off nearly completely” – John Ingham, Daily Express, 26 January 2013

The Earth’s mean temperature rose sharply during the ­Nineties. This may have caused us to overestimate climate sensitivity. We are most likely witnessing natural fluctuations in the climate system – changes that can occur over several decades – and which are coming on top of a long-term warming. – Professor Terje Berntsen,University of Oslo, 24 January 2013

These results are truly sensational. If confirmed by other studies, this could have far-reaching impacts on efforts to achieve the political targets for climate. – Caroline Leck,Stockholm University, 25 January 2013

Remember the hoax wasn’t the claim that the world is warming – there is data to indicate that is true – the hoax was that human-produced CO2 was the primary culprit.  That was the hook – that was the way global socialists hoped to gain political and economic control of our lives, because they ostensibly had to control how much CO2 we emitted or the world would suffer catastrophe.  Now, after a decade of no measurable warming, a bit of actual science (not a “consensus” that the world is warming up being hitched to a claim that massive government intervention is needed to save us) is showing up in the debate…and if the world is warming, it will be far less than the alarmists expected, and may not be bad for the world.

Now, I wonder if Al Gore will give back the money he made pushing this scam?

Global Warming Hoax Update

From the Daily Mail:

The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week.

The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.

This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years…

Just to re-state my views:

1.  It is not certain that average global temperatures have been rising.  They may be, but we lack sufficient exact data over a long enough period of time to make an absolute assertion one way or the other.

2.  If average global temperatures are rising we do not have sufficient data to know if they are rising towards some historic norm or rising higher than a historic norm.

3.  If average global temperatures are rising above an historic norm then we do not have sufficient data to determine if this will be a net negative or positive for the species inhabiting the planet.

4.  If global temperatures are rising we do not have sufficient data to determine what would be the primary cause of this increase.

5.  It seems to me that the tiny fraction of a fraction of CO2 in the atmosphere which is caused by human activity is unlikely to be the culprit if, indeed, average global temperatures are rising.

6.  Given all we don’t know, any plans to deal with an alleged increase in average global temperatures are not based upon hard science but upon the merest guesswork.

7.  I refuse to massively change the way we live based upon mere guesswork.

The reason I call it a hoax is because it is always Number 7 which is the real bone of contention – with all we don’t know, the global warming alarmists yet insist upon massive tax and regulatory changes to society (all of them tending towards an increasingly undemocratic form of government).  As this works out to a massive power and wealth grab by a self-selected group of global elites, it has in my mind the mark of a hoax – a scam, if you will.  The day I see jet-setting global warming enthusiasts move in to a mud hut after leaving one last warning for me, then I’ll sit up and take notice.

 

Global Warming Catastrophe

It’s been quite a while since we’ve had a Global Warming update, and it appears that we failed to act soon enough, and now we’re all going to drown.

There are no comparisons to be made. This is not like war or plague or a stockmarket crash. We are ill-equipped, historically and psychologically, to understand it, which is one of the reasons why so many refuse to accept that it is happening.

What we are seeing, here and now, is the transformation of the atmospheric physics of this planet. Three weeks before the likely minimum, the melting of Arctic sea ice has already broken the record set in 2007. The daily rate of loss is now 50% higher than it was that year. The daily sense of loss – of the world we loved and knew – cannot be quantified so easily.

The Arctic has been warming roughly twice as quickly as the rest of the northern hemisphere. This is partly because climate breakdown there is self-perpetuating. As the ice melts, for example, exposing the darker sea beneath, heat that would previously have been reflected back into space is absorbed.

This great dissolution, of ice and certainties, is happening so much faster than most climate scientists predicted that one of them reports: “It feels as if everything I’ve learned has become obsolete.” In its last assessment, published in 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change noted that “in some projections, Arctic late-summer sea ice disappears almost entirely by the latter part of the 21st century”. These were the most extreme forecasts in the panel’s range. Some scientists now forecast that the disappearance of Arctic sea-ice in late summer could occur in this decade or the next.

As I’ve warned repeatedly, but to little effect, the IPCC’s assessments tend to be conservative. This is unsurprising when you see how many people have to approve them before they are published. There have been a few occasions – such as its estimate of the speed at which glaciers would be lost in the Himalayas – on which the panel has overstated the case. But it looks as if these will be greatly outnumbered by the occasions on which the panel has understated it.

The melting disperses another belief: that the temperate parts of the world – where most of the rich nations are located – will be hit last and least, while the poorer nations will be hit first and worst. New knowledge of the way in which the destruction of the Arctic sea ice affects northern Europe and North America suggests that this is no longer true. A paper published earlier this year in Geophysical Research Letters shows that Arctic warming is likely to be responsible for the extremes now hammering the once-temperate nations.

I’m really sorry we didn’t listen to our obviously wiser Liberals while we still had time to do something.  And even though it’s probably too late, I’d be interested in hearing from our resident Progressives, after the well-deserved I-told ya-so’s, just exactly what we should or could have done to avoid the impending climate Armageddon.  A big mea culpa is all I have to offer at this point.  I don’t even think we need to bother with the election in November.  I mean, what does it matter in the overall scheme of things?

Global Warming Update

According to a recent report:

“Rings in fossilized pine trees have proven that the world was much warmer than previously thought – and the earth has been slowly COOLING for 2,000 years.“

These findings will not set well with the ruling elite here and abroad as they are currently trying to extract money from carbon emitting countries to redistribute to other less fortunate countries. That of course is assuming  money would even make it to those less fortunate countries, considering that historically, that money only serves to line the pockets of elite UN members and Despots.

Let’s  continue down the path toward greener, more sustainable energy, but let’s also end this charade of AGW. It’s a complete racket that is only enriching a handful of people, can you say Al Gore, and doing nothing to actually help us transition to another energy platform.

More Wasted Money For The President’s “Green Energy”

A U.S. Navy oiler slipped away from a fuel depot on the Puget Sound in Washington state one recent day, headed toward the central Pacific and into the storm over the Pentagon’s controversial green fuels initiative.

In its tanks, the USNS Henry J. Kaiser carried nearly 900,000 gallons of biofuel blended with petroleum to power the cruisers, destroyers and fighter jets of what the Navy has taken to calling the “Great Green Fleet,” the first carrier strike group to be powered largely by alternative fuels.

However, the fuel’s $26-a-gallon price, compared to $3.60 for conventional fuel cannot come at a worst time when the U.S. government’s budget remains severely strained, the Pentagon is facing REAL budget cuts and energy companies are finding big quantities of oil and gas in the United States.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/02/us-usa-navy-greenfleet-idUSBRE86106X20120702

Other Green Energy initiatives in the military pushed by this administration:

The Pentagon paid Solazyme Inc $8.5 million in 2009 for 20,055 gallons of biofuel based on algae oil, or $424 a gallon.

For the Great Green Fleet demonstration, the Pentagon paid $12 million for 450,000 gallons of biofuel, nearly $27 a gallon. There were eight bidders for that contract, it said.

The technology is still not yet cost effective, but to hell with the costs (as long as you’re a Democrat).  Politics and giving in to the environmentalist lobby is more important than reliable fuel to our Navy.

 

Energy Open Thread

It seems lately that nearly every discussion inevitably leads back to a reference to energy.  Yesterday the President touted fuel efficient vehicles as one of the solutions.  GM and the American public don’t seem to have gotten the memo.

Much to the chagrin of his supporters on the extreme environmental Left, President Obama admitted that we’ll still be running transportation vehicles on gasoline in 2025:

In his weekly radio and online address Saturday, Obama said Detroit automakers are on track to build cars that average nearly 55 miles per gallon by 2025, doubling current mileage standards.

So where do we go from here?  And, for a change, lets keep ideology and insults out of the conversation and concentrate on solutions.  Contrary to what Left and Right constantly throw at each other on this blog, I still believe we all essentially want the same thing, a free, prosperous America.  If you don’t want that, either stay out of the conversation or explain why what you want is better.

 

Climate Change Update

It looks like another semi-prominent member of the Climate Alarmist community has gotten caught with his whole arm in the cookie jar.  I’ve been waiting to see how the story that has become known as FakeGate (bet you haven’t seen any mention of that in the MSM) would play out before posting a summary, but The Weekly Standard has saved me the trouble.  Wattsupwiththat has also been keeping the story at the top of its site since the first revelations about 2 weeks ago, and is up to their 58th update as of today.

The Weekly Standard article ends with some interesting comments and revelations:

More than a few observers have asked why anyone should trust Gleick’s scientific judgment if his judgment about how to deal with climate skeptics is so bad. -Gleick’s defense of his motives would be laughable if it weren’t so pathetic: “My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts—often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated—to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate, and by the lack of transparency of the organizations involved.”

Let’s take these in order. Anony-mous? True, Heartland’s board documents reveal seven-figure contributions for their climate work from one “anonymous donor,” but environmental organizations take in many multiples of Heartland’s total budget in anonymous donations washed through the left-wing Tides Foundation. The Environmental Defense Fund thanks 141 anonymous donors in one recent report. “Well-funded”? Heartland’s total budget for all its issues, which include health care, education, and technology policy, is around $4.4 million, an amount that would disappear into a single line item in the budget for the Natural Resources Defense Council ($99 million in revenues in 2010). Last year, the Wall Street Journal reports, the World Wildlife Fund spent $68.5 million just on “public education.”

The dog that didn’t bark for the climateers in this story is the great disappointment that Heartland receives only a tiny amount of funding from fossil fuel sources—and none from ExxonMobil, still the bête noire of the climateers. Meanwhile, it was revealed this week that natural gas mogul T. Boone Pickens had given $453,000 to the left-wing Center for American Progress for its “clean energy” projects, and Chesapeake Energy gave the Sierra Club over $25 million (anonymously until it leaked out) for the Club’s anti-coal ad campaign. Turns out the greens take in much more money from fossil fuel interests than the skeptics do.

Finally, “coordinated”? Few public policy efforts have ever had the massive institutional and financial coordination that the climate change cause enjoys. That tiny Heartland, with but a single annual conference and a few phone-book-sized reports summarizing the skeptical case, can derange the climate campaign so thoroughly is an indicator of the weakness and thorough politicization of climate alarmism.

The Gleick episode exposes again a movement that disdains arguing with its critics, choosing demonization over persuasion and debate. A confident movement would face and crush its critics if its case were unassailable, as it claims. The climate change fight doesn’t even rise to the level of David and Goliath. Heartland is more like a David fighting a hundred Goliaths. Yet the serial ineptitude of the climate campaign shows that a tiny David doesn’t need to throw a rock against a Goliath who swings his mighty club and only hits himself square in the forehead.

As most regular readers here know, I’ve followed this issue for a long time, although after the second release of emails known as ClimateGate 2 a  few months ago, my interest in what will eventually become known as the greatest scientific scam of all time began to wane.  FakeGate may well be the final nail in the AWG coffin.  One can only hope.

Obama’s Re-election Strategy

Is Obama trying to lose the election?  The current disconnect with reality and desire to pander to every far left cause has me wondering if Obama is trying to lose, is he just this clueless, or, as Rush noted recently, is he simply confident that he has bought enough votes to assure his re-election?

The keystone pipeline was a no brainer, and could have boosted consumer confidence to a new level resulting in higher approval numbers for Obama, not to mention bringing unemployment down, creating good paying jobs, and stimulating the local economy of many towns along the way, but Obama chooses to pander instead to environmental extremists.

The recent constitutional over reach with respect to religious liberties was another bone-headed move and not very well thought out, although it appears the move may be the first broadside in an effort to shift the political conversation away from abortion to “the GOP wants to ban contraception”.  I guess we’ll find out in a few months if that’s a viable strategy.

The fact that Obama is talking out of both sides of his mouth with respect to the individual mandate in Obamacare, on one hand calling it a tax, and on the other calling it a fine, depending on the audience, was largely overlooked by the MSM. But then his budget director got caught on camera saying this.  So either the OMB Director committed perjury before Congress or the Solicitor General will be perjuring himself before the Supreme Court.  Either way, it should be interesting.

Obama’s allegiance to AG Holder and turning a blind eye to Fast and Furious, would be a huge controversy were it not for complicity of the MSM. To date, no one has been fired, much less prosecuted.

The recent call for significant nuclear disarmament at a time when the threat level is at a post-Cold War high, and the continued indifference to the action in Egypt, Syria, etc., may pander to the far Left, but the majority of Americans have to see these actions as detrimental to America’s future.

Obama proves once again that he is not a serious president by submitting a budget with a deficit that adds another 1.3 trillion of debt, when it was just 4 years ago while campaigning he called Bush unpatriotic for much smaller deficits. When the GOP finally lands on a nominee, the conversation will be about Obama, and not only can he not defend his record, his own words will be used against him to a point that everyone will finally realize that he is not a serious president.

America is slipping into a malaise of mediocrity under his guidance and if he is reelected, we may have federal school officials checking our kids’ lunch boxes for the proper nutrition ……… Oh wait.

This president has abdicated leadership and is the most partisan president this country has ever had. The only things Obama has improved in the last three years are his bank account and golf game.

Thanks to Cluster for most of the content for this post.//RS

Save The Eagles?

Remember how it was oh so important to save eagles? It was so important that the mosquito killing chemical DDT was banned, and as a result, millions upon millions of human beings died from mosquito-borne illnesses. Nearly 30 years later, it would seem that eagles aren’t that important after all:

A controversial wind farm proposed near Red Wing plans to ask for federal permission to legally kill eagles, making it one of the first in the nation to participate in a new federal strategy aimed at managing the often-lethal conflict between birds and turbine blades.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials say they urged the developers of AWA Goodhue Wind to seek the new permit because the deaths of an unknown number of eagles and endangered golden eagles will be inevitable once the 50-turbine project is up and running.

The process for such “incidental take” permits was devised in 2009 as a compromise between the demand for clean energy from the growing number of wind farms and the rising concern over the estimated hundreds of thousands of birds and bats that they kill every year.

So, is it wrong to kill eagles? From an enviro-whacko perspective, it depends on who does the killing.

You see, it’s different when a lefty kills an eagle. Remember when DDT was banned because it was supposedly (never proven) making the egg shells of eagles too thin and brittle. As a result, literally 10s of MILLIONS of human beings died from mosquito borne illnesses– supposedly to save eagles. But it’s OK to kill a few eagles if it means that these monuments to stupidity and “green religion” are left intact.

Meanwhile, it was acceptable to kill tens of millions of human beings by banning DDT–to “save” eagles.

Ain’t it grand how liberal illogic works?

The Green Thing

This week an email forward was sent around my office. For those of you who don’t know, I am in architecture, an industry that is being gradually taken over by the green movement, so when I saw the title of the email, I was expecting something different. I think it thought provoking  regardless of what side of the aisle you are on:

The Green Thing

In the line at the store, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.

The woman apologized to her and explained, “We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.”

The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today.  Your generation did not care enough to save our environment.”

She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over.  So they really were recycled.

But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s nappies

because we didn’t have the throw-away kind.  We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry the clothes.  Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana.

In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us.

When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power.  We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she’s right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water.

We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service.

We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances.  And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smartass young person.