You seem to be getting global warming and climate change mixed up. Global warming has been around as a theory for at least 20 years, however, the ability to predict the behavior of something as complex as the climate of a whole planet is something we do not possess. We cannot currently predict what exactly will happen, but pretty much all scientists agree that something is happening to the climate.

Prior to "Global Warming" we were having "Global Cooling" back in the 60's and 70's. I remember the change over while I was still in school when one year we were taught all about Global Cooling and the next year we were told to forget everything we learned the previous year and were then taught Global Warming (by the same science teacher no less and the term Global Cooling became a no-no in class along with a loss of class participation points for the day if anyone dared question the change. BTW, I got very poor marks in class participation in the earth sciences class my second year as I questioned the change constantly and never did get a satisfactory answer).

The new up and coming questionable theory for the masses is "Global Dimming" as Global Warming has begun to be questioned by the media and general population. People are beginning to fight back against the theory as they did with the Global Cooling theories since these theories did little but cost everyone more money. It's hard to believe any of this science when the theories do a 180 degree turn every 20 to 30 years, scientists with opposing views are ridiculed and nobody can actually prove much of anything beyond a shadow of a doubt.

RDC, it ultimateley winds up with an agenda that fills these 'non profits' full of stacks of cash. Yes, at some point the scare was that we were heading toward global cooling. Now it's global warming. In 20 years it will be global cooling again...I guess...the con men won't quit

We can't go around chopping trees down, spewing mega tons of pollutants into the environment and not expect there to be some ramifications. The bottom line is something has to happen that is outside of the "normal" cycle of events if the world was left alone. We are in for some major changes to our climate. I believe we will see larger and more frequent extremes in weather conditions while the overall average temp goes up in some places, down in others but overall it is going to go up. If you live between the tropics then you're in for more and larger hurricances/cyclones. If you live in places that get tornadoes, expect more and larger ones. If live in areas that do not currently get tornadoes then expect to get some. If you live in temperate zones expect swings between drought and times of heavy rain, areas will move towards sustained drought while others will get wetter. The arctic and antarctic areas will warm up. Ice sheets will melt. Will we see the kilometre deep ice shelves reduce? Who knows? But the edges will retreat.

Over what time frame are we talking about? Have we gone past the point of no return? Who knows? Overall we are just learning how our interactions with the environment will change it. It is early days. However, we should not do nothing and sit back and see what happens. That would be very, very reprehensible.

We need to limit our inputs into the environment not just in the first world, but everywhere. I have heard the statistic that China builds the number of coal fired power stations in 10 months as Australia has ever built.

There is the Gaia theory that says the world is self balancing and that anything we do will be mopped up...but that is on a whole different time scale. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has doubled in 100yrs, Gaia sure is slow to mop it up.

Anyway I'm at work and need to stop. I might continue more later...

Live long and crunch.

---

Paul
(S@H1 8888)
And proud of it!

We can't go around chopping trees down, spewing mega tons of pollutants into the environment and not expect there to be some ramifications. The bottom line is something has to happen that is outside of the "normal" cycle of events if the world was left alone.

Unless you subscribe to the "intelligent design" theory, humans evolved naturally on this planet and therefore anything that humans do to the planet is of natural origin.

That said, humans do posess reasoning powers beyond those of other species around us. We have a greater ability to manipulate our environment and to make reasonably accurate predictions about the consequences of our actions.

We are in for some major changes to our climate. I believe we will see larger and more frequent extremes in weather conditions while the overall average temp goes up in some places, down in others but overall it is going to go up. If you live between the tropics then you're in for more and larger hurricances/cyclones. If you live in places that get tornadoes, expect more and larger ones. If live in areas that do not currently get tornadoes then expect to get some. If you live in temperate zones expect swings between drought and times of heavy rain, areas will move towards sustained drought while others will get wetter. The arctic and antarctic areas will warm up. Ice sheets will melt. Will we see the kilometre deep ice shelves reduce? Who knows? But the edges will retreat.

There are three different cycles (that have been going on for hundreds of thousands of years) that are intersecting. One is a 30-year-or-so cycle of more and less active hurricane seasons. The period from the early 1980's to the late 1990's was the inactive part of this cycle. We've been lucky that the begining of the upside of this cycle had most of the powerful storms away from land. Our luck ran out last year and some of those powerful storms hit populated areas. The difference this time around is we have much better weather prediction capabilities now than we did at previous high points in this cycle. We see it happening this time and the Global Warming Cult decided to use it as evidence for their version of the truth.

The El Niño and La Niña patterns work on a roughly 5-year cycle and affect many of rainfall patterns at the interiors of continents.

The Earth has been warming since the last Ice Age. There was a dip a couple hundred years ago (which is why Charles Dickens described a snowy Christmas in England while no contemporary author would) and we're coming out of that dip and catching up with where we'd be had the dip not happened. This is why present-day temperature gains seem so "dramatic" in a recent history context. Read Steve Milloy's numerous articles about greenhouse effects at JunkScience.com.

Over what time frame are we talking about? Have we gone past the point of no return? Who knows? Overall we are just learning how our interactions with the environment will change it. It is early days. However, we should not do nothing and sit back and see what happens. That would be very, very reprehensible.

There is an almost irresistable tendency to treat the newly discovered as if it just started happening. We've only been watching the climate with any degree of scientific methodology for a little over a century... an eye-blink in geologic time. Making wild extrapolations based on such a tiny slice of data is irresponsible, especially since the changes witnessed are within the rounding error of the earliest measurements.

We need actual research into what is happening to our climate. It is changing, and most (if not all) of that change is beyond our control. If humanity idled all of their cars and coal plants today, there would still be volcanic erruptions to spew mind-boggling amounts of pollution into the air.

We need to limit our inputs into the environment not just in the first world, but everywhere. I have heard the statistic that China builds the number of coal fired power stations in 10 months as Australia has ever built.

I don't know about the Chinese plants, but US coal-fired plants are actually among the cleanest (of course nothing can compare to a hydro-electic or wind farm). They got this way because concerned citizens made their fears known, and those fears were codified into laws and regulations that forced the coal plant operators to clean things up. Left to their own devices, most companies would love to have the public foot the bill to clean up their messes. Governments attempt to force these companies to pay to clean up their own messes.

In China, the masses do not have the ability to speak up about every single issue that concerns them... they really need to pick their battles. Freedom and the wealth to invest in costly pollution controls contribute directly to a better environment without requiring everyone to devolve to a neolithic lifestyle.

There is the Gaia theory that says the world is self balancing and that anything we do will be mopped up...but that is on a whole different time scale. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has doubled in 100yrs, Gaia sure is slow to mop it up.

The world is an incredibly complex system with amazing abilities to absorb local disturbances. You could think of it as a living organism with the ability to heal. Although I personally believe that human activity is only making a teensy-tiny nudge on top of vast forces that are already in motion, a large organism can be brought down by less than a gram of poison... we should study climate to make sure there isn't something that might send the whole system off its rails. Of course, once this is identified, al Qaeda or a similar organization will hold the world hostage.

Anyway I'm at work and need to stop. I might continue more later...

Live long and crunch.

(edit for formatting)

---

No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

No Smog for the Fear Factory?
By Joel Schwartz

Ozone smog levels have plummeted during the last three years. Between 2003 and 2005, the fraction of the nation's ozone monitors violating the federal 8-hour ozone standard plunged from 43 percent down to a record-low 18 percent.[1] The last three years were the three lowest-ozone years on record.

Environmental fear factories aren't celebrating. Shortly after the 2005 ozone season ended, the environmental group Clean Air Watch proclaimed "Smog Problems Nearly Double in 2005."[2] Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection warned "Number of Ozone Action Days Up from Last Year."[3] And EPA's New England regional office noted that "New England Experienced More Smog Days during Recent Summer."[4] Writing on 2005 ozone levels in Connecticut, a New York Times headline warned "A Hot Summer Meant More Smog.[5]

Ozone levels were indeed higher in 2005 when compared with 2004. 2005 was only the second lowest ozone year since the 1970s, while 2004 was the lowest. Ozone levels were so improbably low in 2004 that it would have been astounding if ozone wasn't higher in 2005. The real news was the unprecedented plunge in areas violating the ozone standard, and the fact that 2005 was one of the hottest years on record -- conditions that favor high ozone -- yet ozone levels remained at historic lows.[6] Both stories have gone unnoticed by the mainstream media.

Figure 1 displays the trends in days exceeding the federal 8-hour and 1-hour ozone standards during the last 30 years. 8-hour ozone exceedances declined 80 percent, while 1-hour exceedances declined more than 95 percent.

Figure 1. Trend in Average Number of Days per Year Exceeding the Federal 1-hour and 8-hour Ozone Standards


Notes: Solid lines give average for all sites in the U.S. Broken lines give average for sites continuously operated from 1985-2005. Data downloaded from EPA at http://www.epa.gov/ttn/airs/airsaqs/index.htm

Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) has also been dropping. PM2.5 declined steadily each year from 1999 to 2004, before rising a few percent in 2005. Like ozone, PM2.5 can jog up and down from year to year based on weather, so the rise in 2005 isn't cause for alarm. Emissions and ambient levels of PM2.5-forming pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and volatile organic compounds, continue to go down. Just as for ozone, the press has missed the drop in PM2.5 violations. Thirty percent of monitoring sites violated federal PM2.5 standards in 2001, but the nation cut that percentage in half by the end of 2005.[7]

The medley of environmental scares continues as the American Lung Association (ALA) releases the latest installment of its annual State of the Air report. In some ways the report is an improvement over previous editions. Where ALA used to create the false impression that air pollution was increasing and would continue to increase, State of the Air now admits that both air pollution and emissions have been declining, and that upcoming regulations will continue to clean the air.

Nevertheless, State of the Air 2006 is still mainly nonsense on stilts. ALA continues to claim that nearly half of all Americans live in areas that violate the 8-hour ozone standard. ALA used data from 2002-2004 for its estimates -- a period for which 30 percent of ozone monitors violated the 8-hour standard. But ozone was much lower 2003-2005, with a national violation rate of only 18 percent. ALA's claim of high ozone levels today is thus based on a spike in ozone that occurred four years ago, back in the summer of 2002.

Even with the older data, ALA still counts clean areas as dirty. For example, ALA counts all 3 million people in San Diego County as living in areas that violate the 8-hour ozone standard. But only Alpine, a small rural town, actually violates the standard. The other 99 percent of San Diegans breathe clean air and have for many years. Nevertheless, under ALA's grading system, if even a tiny part of a county violates a pollution standard, ALA counts all people in the county as breathing air that violates the standard. ALA counted clean areas as dirty in dozens of other populous counties around the country, including Los Angeles, Cook (Chicago), and Maricopa (Phoenix), artificially inflating its "dirty air" tally by tens of millions of people.

Even in areas that have the worst air pollution in the nation, ALA wasn't satisfied with reporting actual pollution levels and instead resorted to pollution inflation. For example, ALA claims Riverside County in California averaged 90 days per year exceeding the 8-hour ozone standard during 2002-2004. But even Banning, the worst location in the county, averaged 50 exceedance days per year, while Indio, the best location, averaged 17.

State of the Air has received less and less press coverage with each successive edition. Doom-and-gloom is mother's milk in journalism. But ALA's report looks pretty much the same each year, and is probably starting to provoke yawns in the nation's newsrooms. If we could reduce press coverage of State of the Air as quickly as we're reducing actual air pollution, we'd be in pretty good shape.

Or maybe not. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does the environmental fear industry. If recent publicity is any guide, greenhouse gases have become the new air pollution.

Joel Schwartz is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Lauren Campbell of AEI collected the 2005 ozone monitoring data used in this article from state environment agencies.

[1] Unless otherwise noted, air pollution data discussed in this essay were downloaded from EPA at http://www.epa.gov/air/data/index.html.

[2] O'Donnell, Smog Problems Nearly Double in 2005 (Washington, DC: Clean Air Watch, November 10 2005), http://cleanairwatchpressroom.blogspot.com/2005/11/smog-problems-nearly-double-in-2005.html.

[3] Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, "NUMBER OF OZONE ACTION DAYS UP FROM LAST YEAR," September 28, 2005, http://www.ahs.dep.state.pa.us/newsreleases/default.asp?ID=3643&varQueryType=Detail.

[4] EPA Region 1, New England Experienced More Smog Days During Recent Summer (Boston: September 26 2005), http://www.epa.gov/region1/pr/2005/sep/dd050917.html.

[5] J. Holtz, "A Hot Summer Meant More Smog," New York Times, October 2, 2005.

[6] U. L. McFarling and M. Bustillo, "2005 Vying with '98 as Record Hot Year," Los Angeles Times, December 16, 2005.

[7] National PM2.5 monitoring didn't begin until 1999, so 2001 is the first three-year period available for calculating national PM2.5 violation rates.

---

Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

[size=14]Environmental fear factories aren't celebrating. Shortly after the 2005 ozone season ended, the environmental group Clean Air Watch proclaimed "Smog Problems Nearly Double in 2005."[2] Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection warned "Number of Ozone Action Days Up from Last Year."[3] And EPA's New England regional office noted that "New England Experienced More Smog Days during Recent Summer."[4] Writing on 2005 ozone levels in Connecticut, a New York Times headline warned "A Hot Summer Meant More Smog.[5]

It didn't surprise me at all that Pennsylvania pulled that stunt. I live in Pennsylvania and we're the home of the drought warning by average precipitation by day and having the "incorrect type of snow" in the winter. The PaEPA is second only to the Federal EPA for having a bloated bureaucracy that has a political agenda.

We don't have drought warnings based on yearly averages, monthly averages or even weekly average, we get them by daily average when it's the only way they can get their message out (i.e. when we're well above the average precipitation levels). The news report from the PaEPA is always then followed by some environmentalist blaming global warming as to why we're down 1/16th of an inch of rain for that particular day even though we're 2 inches above average for the week/month/year.

And you gotta love the "incorrect type of snow" argument that the PaEPA pulls on the Pennsylvania residents periodically. You have 6 inches of fresh snow and the PaEPA calls a drought warning saying it's the wrong type of snow to help replenish the ground water (and followed by some environmentalist telling us how global warming is effecting snowfall).

The mainstream local media plays right along with the PaEPA by lining up the usual global warming environmentalist suspects for interviews after the drought story runs.

---

To truly explore, one must keep an open mind...

Volatile Gases
By Iain Murray: 11 May 2006

The European emissions trading scheme (ETS) was launched with great fanfare last year. The idea was to require certain energy-intensive industries to have a permit for each ton of greenhouse gases they emitted. Each industry would be allocated a certain number of permits. If they needed more, they would have to buy them; if they were able to cut emissions below their allocation, they would be able to sell them. The idea seemed wonderful in theory -- a "market-based" way to reduce emissions. In practice, the market has been a roller-coaster, reaching record highs of over €30 per ton before collapsing to just €11 last week.

What caused the precipitous collapse in price was the early reporting by France, the Czech Republic, Estonia and Holland that their emissions for 2004 were not as high as their allocations, along with the announcement by Spain that it had exceeded its allocation, but not by as much as thought. Traders reacted immediately on the assumption that other countries would make similar announcements, although this is likely to be premature, and the fear of a market glut drove prices down. To understand what happened we need to think about what the market price of an emissions permit actually represents.

A price is essentially information. At its simplest, the price paid for a permit represents merely the cost of undertaking the activity for which the permit is granted. Permits have been auctioned in the past at least partly to establish the true level of such costs. However, when permits are traded, extra information is added that changes the price from a mere reflection of the cost. Scarcity value is the most obvious example: when the market believes permits will be scarce, their value increases. If there will be enough for everyone who wants one to get one, no scarcity value will be added. Thus a rise or drop in price will reflect the market's greater emerging knowledge about the actual level of scarcity involved.

Prices can rise or drop quicker when speculation is involved and traders are essentially gambling that scarcity will be greater or less than the market as a whole believes. Wide price fluctuations, therefore, inevitably represent a lack of complete information about the nature of the market. Political uncertainty or lack of transparency related to the market merely lessens information available and therefore contributes to market uncertainty (this should be borne in mind when considering demands to keep emissions information secret).

With this in mind, we can look at the history of the European emissions market. When it was first mooted, there were fears of high prices imposing massive extra costs on industry that would be passed on to consumers. Eurocrats rushed to reassure the market this would not be so. For example, in October 2004 Spain's Cristina Narbona took to the airwaves to angrily deride a KPMG projection of prices in the €15-20 range as "false" -- if also asserting that such prices would indeed be cause for panic -- insisting instead that €5-6 was the reasonably anticipated price.

What happened next needs to be understood in the context of the national allocation plans. It is widely agreed that European member states, not wishing to see their national industries suffer, submitted overly generous allocation plans to the European Commission. The exception was the UK, which was serious about its commitment to reducing emissions. However, on seeing that its allocation plan handicapped British industry by essentially requiring them to purchase foreign credits, the UK government took the Commission to court to try to get its allocation plan replaced with a more generous one.

Meanwhile, the market price swiftly reached KPMG's estimate and then surpassed it. Traders were worried about the emissions associated with a forecast (and actual) cold winter and bid up the price. Large companies with large allocations therefore found themselves sitting on a gold mine. At the same time, the cost of the permits drove up energy prices. A study by UBS Investment Bank, for instance, found that most of the energy price increase in Europe last winter was due to the cost of emissions permits. This prompted calls from environmental groups for windfall profit taxes and other measures to remove the "unearned" value of the permits from the hated industries.

This is important. When traders do not have the information to act rationally they have a tendency to act irrationally, on hunches or gut feeling. In a politically charged market such as the carbon permit market, traders will also react to statements by major political players. Environmental groups demanding tighter allocations or auctions, for instance, will cause traders to take this political risk into account, the implied increase in scarcity almost certainly driving the price up.

The recent market dive has also been the result of incomplete information. The countries that have reported surpluses on allocation are not major emitters. The major emitters like Germany and the UK are due to report on May 15. It is possible that they will not have the same surpluses, which may cause the market to rebound slightly. On the other hand, it is also possible that they will report emissions lower than allocation, in which case the market will collapse completely.

What does all this mean? First, even at the current market price it suggests that cutting emissions is more expensive (at least twice) than the scheme designers supposed. Unsurprisingly, this has had an effect on energy prices. Proposals to tighten allocation plans would probably cause the price to rise again, reflecting a much higher economic cost of reducing emissions than envisaged. Proposals to auction rather than grant permits would presumably see a very steep rise in the market price, as industries are forced to pay for things they do for free now. Energy prices would skyrocket.

Meanwhile, it should be remembered that the ETS covers only about 40 percent of all emissions in the EU. Report after report from the European Commission confirms that overall few countries are anywhere near their reduction targets, hence the symbolic importance of the ETS. If other sectors, such as aviation, were to be brought within the ETS then the market would probably react as it did in 2005, bidding the price up in lieu of information about how easily the new sectors could reduce emissions. This would in turn have an effect on the sectors already within the scheme. The market is still feeling its way; expansion to include other sectors would increase uncertainty and result in further volatility at a crucial stage.

This all suggests that speculators who have offloaded permits at the current price are reacting to the high cost of emissions reduction. They are guessing that member states and the Commission will be unwilling to impose further restrictions that would send the price up higher.

This supposition would also be confirmed if the major emitters also report emissions below allocation next week. The price would collapse, because it would prove that member state governments were unwilling to restrict emissions by means of tighter allocations; there would be no scarcity value whatsoever to the permits.

So has anybody won from the ETS? Overall, emissions are not reducing and the high costs of the ETS suggest it will not be used to reduce emissions further unless governments are willing to slow economic growth (which is unlikely). Consumers have seen energy prices rise, then fall, for seemingly no reason. Industries, while at one point benefiting from a bull market, have seen millions wiped off their values by the recent collapse and may see yet more value disappear. Politicians and greens cannot claim vindication as the cost of emissions reduction in the event of (perceived or actual) scarcity has been revealed to be much higher than they thought, while companies are experiencing the volatility of an uncertain market and consumers have paid the price.

It should also be mentioned that volatile markets are particularly prone to manipulation by the unscrupulous. Enron recognized the potential volatility of carbon markets when it lobbied hard for their introduction in the United States. Badly structured markets where transparency is lacking are to the rogue traders like pheromones in the insect world.

One final note: the ETS is most emphatically not an example of market failure. The uncertainties are all a result of government action -- inadequate allocation plans, misunderstanding of how much it would cost to reduce emissions, political risk associated with demagoguing special interests and lack of transparency. The fatal conceit led European governments to think they could design a market to produce the outcome they want. Surprise, surprise! They were wrong.

Iain Murray is a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

---

Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

The energy cost and environmental impact of running BOINC

A computer running BOINC uses more energy than an idle computer. The amount of additional energy depends on several factors:

* How many additional hours per day you you leave your computer powered on to run BOINC.
* The energy consumption of your computer.
* Whether you use your computer's power-management features to turn off your monitor when idle.
* Your marginal electricity cost.

Using some typical values for energy usage and cost, here are estimates of the monthly costs:

Computer state: (24 hrs/day)

Off: Typical power usage, 0 watts. Energy per month: 0 kWh. Cost per month: $0
Idle: Typical power usage, 100 watts. Energy per month: 73 kWh. Cost per month: $5.84
Active: Typical power usage, 150 watts. Energy per month: 110 kWh . Cost per month: $8.80

This assumes USA average of 8 cents/kWh; the cost in Europe is about 50% higher.

Under these assumptions, running BOINC costs about $3/month relative to leaving your computer on but idle, and about $8.80/month relative to leaving it off all the time.

There may also be an environmental cost. If your electricity is produced by burning fossil fuels, the extra electricity usage produces greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. If this is the case, we recommend that you not leave your computer on just to run BOINC, or that you reduce your overall energy use to compensate.

Anyone concerned about the power usage of their computer should purchase (under $25) a power consumption meter: http://www.energydudes.com/proddetail.php?prod=0001
How reduce BOINC's energy usage and cost
Some possibilities:

* Set your general preferences to allow BOINC to compute while your computer is in use, and turn your computer off when it's not in use.
* Use your computer's power-management features to turn off your monitor when it's not in use, or to enter a low-power mode. A technical document about computer power management is available from Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories.
* If your electricity costs vary according to time of day, set your general preferences so that BOINC computes only during periods of low electricity costs.

---

Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

Don't Be Very Worried
The truth about "global warming" is much less dire than Al Gore wants you to think.

BY PETE DU PONT of OpinionJournal.com
Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Since 1970, the year of the first Earth Day, America's population has increased by 42%, the country's inflation-adjusted gross domestic product has grown 195%, the number of cars and trucks in the United States has more than doubled, and the total number of miles driven has increased by 178%.

But during these 35 years of growing population, employment, and industrial production, the Environmental Protection Agency reports, the environment has substantially improved. Emissions of the six principal air pollutants have decreased by 53%. Carbon monoxide emissions have dropped from 197 million tons per year to 89 million; nitrogen oxides from 27 million tons to 19 million, and sulfur dioxide from 31 million to 15 million. Particulates are down 80%, and lead emissions have declined by more than 98%.

When it comes to visible environmental improvements, America is also making substantial progress:

• The number of days the city of Los Angeles exceeded the one-hour ozone standard has declined from just under 200 a year in the late 1970s to 27 in 2004.
  
  
• The Pacific Research Institute's Index of Leading Environmental Indicators shows that "U.S. forests expanded by 9.5 million acres between 1990 and 2000."
  
  
• While wetlands were declining at the rate of 500,000 acres a year at midcentury, they "have shown a net gain of about 26,000 acres per year in the past five years," according to the institute.
  
  
• Also according to the institute, "bald eagles, down to fewer than 500 nesting pairs in 1965, are now estimated to number more than 7,500 nesting pairs."
  

Environmentally speaking, America has had a very good third of a century; the economy has grown and pollutants and their impacts upon society are substantially down.

But now comes the carbon dioxide alarm. CO2 is not a pollutant--indeed it is vital for plant growth--but the annual amount released into the atmosphere has increased 40% since 1970. This increase is blamed by global warming alarmists for a great many evil things. The Web site for Al Gore's new film, "An Inconvenient Truth," claims that because of CO2's impact on our atmosphere, sea levels may rise by 20 feet, the Arctic and Antarctic ice will likely melt, heat waves will be "more frequent and more intense," and "deaths from global warming will double in just 25 years--to 300,000 people a year."

If it all sounds familiar, think back to the 1970s. After the first Earth Day the New York Times predicted "intolerable deterioration and possible extinction" for the human race as the result of pollution. Harvard biologist George Wald predicted that unless we took immediate action "civilization will end within 15 to 30 years," and environmental doomsayer Paul Ehrlich predicted that four billion people--including 65 million American--would perish from famine in the 1980s.

So what is the reality about global warming and its impact on the world? A new study released this week by the National Center for Policy Analysis, Climate Science: Climate Change and Its Impacts looks at a wide variety of climate matters, from global warming and hurricanes to rain and drought, sea levels, arctic temperatures and solar radiation. It concludes that "the science does not support claims of drastic increases in global temperatures over the 21rst century, nor does it support claims of human influence on weather events and other secondary effects of climate change."

There are substantial differences in climate models--some 30 of them looked at by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--but the Climate Science study concludes that "computer models consistently project a rise in temperatures over the past century that is more than twice as high as the measured increase." The National Center for Atmospheric Research's prediction of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit warming is more accurate. In short, the world is not warming as much as environmentalists think it is.

What warming there is turns out to be caused by solar radiation rather than human pollution. The Climate Change study concluded "half the observed 20th century warming occurred before 1940 and cannot be attributed to human causes," and changes in solar radiation can "account for 71 percent of the variation in global surface air temperature from 1880 to 1993."

As for hurricanes, 2005 saw several severe ones--Katrina and Rita both had winds of 150 knots--hitting New Orleans, the Gulf Coast and Florida. But there is little evidence linking them to global warming. A team of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists concluded that the increased Atlantic hurricane activity since 1995 "is not related to greenhouse warming" but instead to natural tropical climate cycles.

Regarding Arctic temperature changes, the Study found the coastal stations in Greenland had actually experienced a cooling trend: The "average summer air temperatures at the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet, have decreased at the rate of 4 degrees F per decade since measurements began in 1987." Add in Russian and Alaskan temperature data and "Arctic air temperatures were warmest in the 1930s and near the coolest for the period of recorded observations (since at least 1920) in the late 1980s."

As for sea ice, it is not melting excessively. Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans concluded that "global warming appears to play a minor role in changes to Arctic sea ice." The U.N.'s IPCC Third Assessment Report concluded that the rate of sea level rise has not accelerated during the last century, which is supported by U.S. coastal sea level experience. In California sea levels have risen between zero and seven millimeters a year and between 2.1 and 2.8 millimeters a year in North and South Carolina.

Finally come the polar bears--a species thought by global warming proponents to be seriously at risk from the increasing temperature. According to the World Wildlife Fund, among the distinct polar bear populations, two are growing--and in areas where temperatures have risen; ten are stable; and two are decreasing. But those two are in areas such as Baffin Bay where air temperatures have actually fallen.

The Climate Science study concludes that projections of global warming over the next century "have decreased significantly since early modeling efforts," and that global air temperatures should increase by 2.5 degrees and the United States by about 1 degree Fahrenheit over the next hundred years. The environmental pessimists tell us, as in Time magazine's recent global warming issue, to "Be Worried. Be Very Worried," but the truth is that our environmental progress has been substantially improving, and we should be very pleased.

Mr. du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, is chairman of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis.

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

Don't Be Very Worried
The truth about "global warming" is much less dire than Al Gore wants you to think.

BY PETE DU PONT of OpinionJournal.com
Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Since 1970, the year of the first Earth Day, America's population has increased by 42%, the country's inflation-adjusted gross domestic product has grown 195%, the number of cars and trucks in the United States has more than doubled, and the total number of miles driven has increased by 178%.

But during these 35 years of growing population, employment, and industrial production, the Environmental Protection Agency reports, the environment has substantially improved. ...

That has just got to be some very dark satire.

Send that man to Venus and let him be pressure cooked by the superheated CO2 there!

Lobby your politicians to reduce CO2 emissions NOW.

It's all our only one planet to not destroy.

Good luck,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

You are right, ghstwolf, that both arguments were based on circumstantial evidence..."

Tom and Ghstwolf, the primary difference here is that, contrary to what you were told by the 'national media', WMD's, WMD components and prohibited WMD delivery systems were found in Iraq.

The global warming proponents cannot make strong causitive claims (though they present their position as if it is such a claim), cannot present other than a faint, stastical, claim for human caused global climate effect of any kind (though they pretend that they have proven such) and constantly make spurious claims that bear absolutely no relation to objective reality (the 'fire & brimstone sermons mentioned in an earlier post). They seem to feel that increased vitrol and volume cancel out reasoned argument contrary to their position.

I am ready to be convinced, but I will need to be convinced by data not opinion. And I want to be able to see the raw data because there is simply too much money either changing hands or with the potential to change hands for a simple 'trust me'. It is not that I question any particular person's integrity, but I do have serious doubts about some of the research and published research results I have been able to peruse.

So do the science and let the science convince me.

Mr. Bill...

Glad to read another post from that perspective. Rationality is not dead. Keep it up. Standards of evidence still matter for men of the mind.

Glad to read another post from that perspective. Rationality is not dead. Keep it up. Standards of evidence still matter for men of the mind.

Oh MAN is that insufferably arrogant. Insufferably.

Stan: OhmiGod! They killed rationality!
Kyle: You bastards!

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Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

[...]
The global warming proponents cannot make strong causitive claims (though they present their position as if it is such a claim), ...

I am ready to be convinced, ...

So do the science and let the science convince me.

Just to be clear...

Your present view is that "Global Warming" isn't happening and that Human caused Global Warming does not exist? And that a world average temperature rise of 1 deg C is of no concern?

Regards,
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

That has just got to be some very dark satire.

Send that man to Venus and let him be pressure cooked by the superheated CO2 there!

Lobby your politicians to reduce CO2 emissions NOW.

It's all our only one planet to not destroy.

Good luck,
Martin

No, it's not satire... it's a point-by-point rebuttal of common global warming myths. Would runaway CO2 make the Earth uninhabitable for humans? Yes. Is it happening? No one has demonstrated that it is. The climate models used by all sides in the debate leave much to be desired. I crunch for CPDN precisely to help out with an effort to actually test these models.

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

LOL....now that is rich...

[...]
The global warming proponents cannot make strong causitive claims (though they present their position as if it is such a claim), ...

I am ready to be convinced, ...

So do the science and let the science convince me.

Just to be clear...

Your present view is that "Global Warming" isn't happening and that Human caused Global Warming does not exist? And that a world average temperature rise of 1 deg C is of no concern?

Regards,
Martin

There is evidence that the Earth's mean temperature has raised about a degree in the past century, but the Earth's temperature is not some homeostatic value that changes only when humans meddle. We're still rising out of the last ice age. There was a dip a couple hundred years ago that is now ending, so the current trend seems particularly steep.

Many in the global warming camp seem to think that the Earth is on some linear temperature grandient that was sent out of whack by humans. The Earth was considerably warmer at the time of the dinosaurs then it is now.

The dinosaurs were not driving cars.

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

[...]
The global warming proponents cannot make strong causitive claims (though they present their position as if it is such a claim), ...

I am ready to be convinced, ...

So do the science and let the science convince me.

Just to be clear...

Your present view is that "Global Warming" isn't happening and that Human caused Global Warming does not exist? And that a world average temperature rise of 1 deg C is of no concern?

Regards,
Martin

Just to be clear:
1. Evidence that the mean temperature of the globe has risen slightly in the last several decades is clear.
2. Evidence that this change is influenced in any meaningfully way by human agency is not.
3. In what context are you placing the 'average temperature rise'?
4. What are the boundary conditions of your analysis?
5. How many sample points (surface area, atmospheric volume and data frequency) are you using?
6. Do you actually intend to analyze average temperatures? I believe that mean global temperature is actually a better measurement when you consider the surface area, atmospheric volume and time scales involved in climate analysis.
7. Are you including and relating solar energy, volcanic activity and other effects into your analysis?

I am not trying to be difficult, I simply will accept apocryphal anecdotes as evidence or analysis results.

Global Warming Myths

http://www.environmentaldefense.org/documents/382_myths.htm

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Global Warming Myths

http://www.environmentaldefense.org/documents/382_myths.htm

Myths of Global Warming
http://www.ncpa.org/ba/ba230.html

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To truly explore, one must keep an open mind...

Oh sure, so let's just continue polluting our atmosphere full steam ahead, why don't we? Let's not worry about changing the chemical balance of the planet, hell, it's an entire planet, what effect could we have?

There has to be a least-impact possible lifestyle adopted in the entire world today. Not tomorrow. Today.

Let it cost econimic growth what it will. Controls have to be established, implemented AND actually enforced for a change. You violate once, you are fined all your profits. You violate twice, you get shutdown, and the government takes over if you are a critical industry. The slash and burn of the two lungs of the world must immediately stop and be carried no further. The logging carried forth in tree-rich countries must be balanced by planting at a rate that will at the very least, balance the Carbon being removed and put into the environment (mostly the atmosphere).

But like I said. I won't weep one tear for the end of humanity.

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Never Forget a Friend. Or an Enemy.

Oh sure, so let's just continue polluting our atmosphere full steam ahead, why don't we? Let's not worry about changing the chemical balance of the planet, hell, it's an entire planet, what effect could we have?

There has to be a least-impact possible lifestyle adopted in the entire world today. Not tomorrow. Today.

Let it cost econimic growth what it will. Controls have to be established, implemented AND actually enforced for a change. You violate once, you are fined all your profits. You violate twice, you get shutdown, and the government takes over if you are a critical industry. The slash and burn of the two lungs of the world must immediately stop and be carried no further. The logging carried forth in tree-rich countries must be balanced by planting at a rate that will at the very least, balance the Carbon being removed and put into the environment (mostly the atmosphere).

But like I said. I won't weep one tear for the end of humanity.

There are two ways to decrease environmental impact. One is dial back everyone's lifestyle. The other is to invent new, cleaner ways of doing things. These form a continuum because dialing back on usage ("life style") decreases the profits that can be used to research new clean technologies.

Companies can get all of the tax write-offs in the world to research new green technologies, but they can't do the research unless they have the money in the first place. This requires as much economic activity as possible.

The government gets its money for research by skimming off of the economy. Less economic activity means less government activity. When the government has to tighten its belt, pie-in-the-sky research projects are not high on the priority list.

Should we let industry run amok until someone invents a perfect energy source? Of course not. Should we strangle industry, make everyone poorer, and eliminate any possibility of inventing a better energy source? Of course not.

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.