Fun with Global Warming - Part Drei!

A continuation of Fun with Gov't Meddling, and Fun with Global Warming - Part Deux!

Post as you see fit.
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elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

To get things going:

Ouch...

A Report from the Global Warming Battlefield
By Roy Spencer : 15 Aug 2007

In case you hadn't noticed, the global warming debate has now escalated from a minor skirmish to an all-out war. Although we who are skeptical of the claim that global warming is mostly manmade have become accustomed to being the ones that take on casualties, last week was particularly brutal for those who say we have only 8 years and 5 months left to turn things around, greenhouse gas emissions-wise.

I'm talking about the other side - the global warming alarmists.

First, NASA's James Hansen and his group had to fix a Y2K bug that a Canadian statistician found in their processing of the thermometer data. As a result, 1998 is no longer the warmest year on record in the United States - 1934 is. The temperature adjustment is admittedly small, yet there seemed to be no rush to retract the oft-repeated alarmist statements that have seared "1998!" into our brains as the rallying cry for the fight against global warming.

Then, the issue of spurious heat influences on the thermometers that NOAA uses to monitor global temperatures has reared its ugly head. Personally, I've been waiting for this one for a long time. Ordinary citizens are now traveling throughout their home states, taking pictures of the local conditions around these thermometer sites.

To everyone's astonishment, all kinds of spurious heat sources have cropped up over the years next to the thermometers. Air conditioning exhaust fans, burn barrels, asphalt parking lots, roofs, jet exhaust. Who could have known? Shocking.

Next, my own unit and I published satellite measurements that clearly show a natural cooling mechanism in the tropics which all of the leading computerized climate models have been insisting is a warming mechanism (Spencer et al., August 9, 2007 Geophysical Research Letters).

We found that when the tropical atmosphere heats up from extra rain system activity, the amount of infrared heat-trapping cirrus clouds those rain systems produce actually goes down. This unexpected result supports the "Infrared Iris" theory of climate stabilization that MIT's Richard Lindzen advanced some years ago.

No one in the alarmist camp can figure out how we succeeded with this sneak attack. After all, there isn't supposed to be any peer-reviewed, published research that denies a global warming Armageddon, right?

But these volleys have not gone unanswered. From the other side of the battlefield, Al Gore and Newsweek coordinated an assault on a few skeptics with all kinds of guilt-by-association accusations. They allege that a few scientists were offered $10,000 (!) by Big Oil to research and publish evidence against the theory of manmade global warming.

Of course, the vast majority of mainstream climate researchers receive between $100,000 to $200,000 from the federal government to do the same, but in support of manmade global warming. Apparently, that's okay since we all know that the federal government is unbiased and there to help, whereas petroleum companies only exist to force us to burn fuels that do nothing more than ruin the environment.

Little damage was done by the Gore-Newsweek assault, though, since the attack amounted to little more than a verbal "Well, your mama wears Army boots!" It didn't help matters that the magazine's own columnist, Robert Samuelson, published a follow-up article saying the allegation of bribes offered to scientists "was long ago discredited" and that "the story was a wonderful read, marred only by its being fundamentally misleading."

Next, I'm happy to report that we skeptics have been getting a steady stream of new recruits. In the last year or so, more and more scientists have been coming out of the closet and admitting they've had some doubts about this whole global warming thing.

In fact, chances are that your favorite TV weather person is a closet skeptic (unless it's Heidi Cullen). But please observe the "don't ask - don't tell" rule. Most broadcast meteorologists are not ready for the public embarrassment that would accompany their outing.

And lastly, I have been heartened by new scientific intelligence that we skeptics have been gathering. I can predict there are more surprises to come, with some pretty powerful tactical weapons yet to be deployed. Climate scientists are beginning to question long held assumptions - which is almost always the first step toward a major scientific discovery. So stay tuned.

Oh, and by the way, in the interests of a fair fight, the next time someone sees Al Gore, could you ask him to stop calling us "global warming deniers"? I don't know of anyone who denies that the Earth has warmed. I'm sure this has just been an honest misunderstanding on Mr. Gore's part, and he'll be more than happy to stop doing it.
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Remove the obvious...

Double Ouch...

Red faces at NASA over climate-change blunder

The Toronto Star: TheStar.com

Agency roasted after Toronto blogger spots `hot years' data fumble
August 14, 2007
DANIEL DALE
STAFF REPORTER

In the United States, the calendar year 1998 ranked as the hottest of them all – until someone checked the math.

After a Toronto skeptic tipped NASA this month to one flaw in its climate calculations, the U.S. agency ordered a full data review.

Days later, it put out a revised list of all-time hottest years. The Dust Bowl year of 1934 now ranks as hottest ever in the U.S. – not 1998.

More significantly, the agency reduced the mean U.S. "temperature anomalies" for the years 2000 to 2006 by 0.15 degrees Celsius.

NASA officials have dismissed the changes as trivial. Even the Canadian who spotted the original flaw says the revisions are "not necessarily material to climate policy."

But the revisions have been seized on by conservative Americans, including firebrand radio host Rush Limbaugh, as evidence that climate change science is unsound.

Said Limbaugh last Thursday: "What do we have here? We have proof of man-made global warming. The man-made global warming is inside NASA ... is in the scientific community with false data."

However Stephen McIntyre, who set off the uproar, described his finding as a "a micro-change. But it was kind of fun."

A former mining executive who runs the blog ClimateAudit.org, McIntyre, 59, earned attention in 2003 when he put out data challenging the so-called "hockey stick" graph depicting a spike in global temperatures.

This time, he sifted NASA's use of temperature anomalies, which measure how much warmer or colder a place is at a given time compared with its 30-year average.

Puzzled by a bizarre "jump" in the U.S. anomalies from 1999 to 2000, McIntyre discovered the data after 1999 wasn't being fractionally adjusted to allow for the times of day that readings were taken or the locations of the monitoring stations.

McIntyre emailed his finding to NASA's Goddard Institute, triggering the data review.

"They moved pretty fast on this," McIntyre said. "There must have been some long faces."
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Remove the obvious...

Receding Arctic ice reveals unknown islands

REUTERS

August 21, 2007

NY ALESUND, Norway – Previously unknown islands are appearing as Arctic summer sea ice shrinks to record lows, raising questions about whether global warming is outpacing U.N. projections, experts said.

Polar bears and seals have also suffered this year on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard because the sea ice they rely on for hunts melted far earlier than normal.

“Reductions of snow and ice are happening at an alarming rate,” Norwegian Environment Minister Helen Bjoernoy told a seminar of 40 scientists and politicians in Ny Alesund, 750 miles from the North Pole.

“This acceleration may be faster than predicted” by the U.N. climate panel this year, she said. The U.N. panel of 2,500 scientists said in February that warming in the past 50 years was “very likely” the result of greenhouse gases caused by fossil fuel use.

“There may well be an ice-free Arctic by the middle of the century,” said Christopher Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey.

The thaw around Svalbard has revealed several islands not on any maps. “Islands are appearing just over the fjord here” as glaciers recede, said Kim Holmen, research Director at the Norwegian Polar Institute. “We're already seeing adverse effects on polar bears and other species.”
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Surprise, surprise...

UK 'may fail 2020 target for CO2'
By Roger Harrabin
BBC environment analyst

A think tank with a track record in forecasting government failure on greenhouse gas targets is warning that further energy promises by the government look likely to be broken.

Cambridge Econometrics were one of the first to forecast that the government would miss its CO2 target for 2010 - a prediction that ministers rejected for several years before finally conceding.

Their latest report on Thursday looks at the long-standing government target of cutting CO2 by 20% before 2010.

The report says at the current rate of progress this target will not even be reached by 2020.

By then, the government is theoretically striving to cut CO2 by a minimum of 26%.

The report says achieving this will need much stricter policies - particularly to tackle emissions from homes and from transport.

There is a gloomy forecast too on renewable energy - that the government will fail to meet its targets in both 2010 and 2015.

But the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said the UK had a "good record" on tackling climate change and was on target to "meet and exceed" greenhouse gas reduction targets under the Kyoto protocol.

The government's Energy White Paper and other measures meant the country was on track to meet the 2020 goal relative to 1990 levels, it said, even though the UK economy will have doubled in size in the same period.

A spokesman added: "This report does not take account of a number of these measures, such as the carbon reduction commitment and the zero carbon homes initiative, which will help us meet this target.

"We intend to put the 2020 target into legislation through the Climate Change Bill, and the Energy White Paper provides a strong foundation for a range of policies and programmes that will help us reach it."

Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/6959589.stm

Published: 2007/08/22 23:45:48 GMT
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elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

Study links climate to cooperative behavior

NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

August 23, 2007

In uncertain times, it's nice to think that people band together to help one another.

While the verdict may be out on the human race in this regard, African starlings are a different matter. Some starling species exhibit remarkable cooperative behavior, and a new study shows one factor that has influenced its evolution: climate uncertainty.

The behavior is cooperative breeding, in which some individuals delay their own breeding to help raise the offspring of others, who may or may not be relatives. Among the 45 African starling species, some breed cooperatively and some do not.

Dustin R. Rubenstein, now at UC Berkeley, and Irby J. Lovette of Cornell's Laboratory of Ornithology undertook a genetic analysis of all 45 species and used it to build a family tree showing evolutionary patterns. Then they used rainfall data, in some cases going back more than 140 years, from across Africa to determine how predictable the weather is in various starling habitats.

Their findings, published in Current Biology, show that cooperative-breeding species largely inhabit semi-arid savannas, where rainfall is highly unpredictable from year to year. In forests, where rainfall was more consistent, noncooperative breeders were more prevalent.

In studying the family trees, the researchers found much evidence that cooperative breeding evolved at various times as starling species moved to savanna habitats. Cooperation would be expected to confer an evolutionary advantage, because in very dry years, when food and other resources are scarce, it helps ensure that more offspring survive.
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Climate change in our labor force

By Lawrence Fitch

August 29, 2007

Global warming is on the world's policy radar. This was not always so. In the face of scientific warnings decades ago, world leaders either didn't believe the evidence or believed that the evidence overstated the problem. Yet, as the polar ice caps begin to melt, as stronger storms brew over the Gulf of Mexico, as England floods, as fisheries decline or disappear, an international consensus has begun to form.

Similar warnings about our labor force have been made for many years by writers such as Peter Drucker, publications like The Harvard Business Review, and by groups such as the National Association of Manufacturers, the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable and the World Health Organization. Today, that labor crisis is real in California as a whole, and in San Diego in particular. This latest form of “climate change” is hurting our economy, our competitiveness and our quality of life.

Like global warming, it is not going away and must be faced squarely to avert pending disaster. On multiple fronts, and in multiple economic clusters, we see evidence of this crisis. Here are just a few:

Education. Business leaders, educators and policy-makers have recognized that the levels of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, taught in the education system of the United States is significantly lower than that in other nations. Worse, U.S. students are not acquiring high enough STEM skills, and not enough U.S. students are pursuing education in these critical areas. The result? A shortage of STEM-skilled people and the outsourcing of high-wage, high-skilled jobs overseas, or the need to import skilled professionals from other countries into our nation's research programs and high-technology companies.

According to a recent report by the Public Policy Institute of California (Can California Import Enough College Graduates to Meet Workforce Needs?), even though California is 12th in the nation in the percentage of adults who are college graduates (30 percent), we still can't meet the needs of our state's businesses and industries, because, as the report predicts, 41 percent of our state's jobs will require college degrees by 2025. How will we increase our number of college graduates to meet this growing need? We cannot even meet this skill need by continuing to import college graduates at current rates.

Cost of living. The good news is that we have low unemployment in San Diego, thanks to continued growth in our services, life sciences, high tech and tourism clusters. Contributing to the work-force climate change is that few workers in San Diego can afford housing, even though the housing bubble appears to have burst nationally. Adding to that, few workers can afford the ever-increasing costs of gasoline, energy and food. Higher wage jobs are available in the region, but without better educational results, San Diego residents won't be qualified to fill them.

Health care. Leaving aside the challenges faced by businesses trying to keep up with the increasing costs of health insurance, our region, as well as the nation as a whole, is confronting a health care labor shortage of mammoth proportions. This shortage is fueled by two conditions: (1) few young people are aware of the number and variety of occupations in the industry, as well as the career paths and opportunities that are present. And, (2) even if more of our youth decided to pursue health care careers, our community colleges, four-year universities and private schools are already operating beyond capacity and are without the resources to prepare more individuals for these important jobs.

Immigration. Two labor climate-change issues face us in the immigration arena, one at the bottom of the wage scale and the other near the top. Easily the most divisive political issue today is what to do about the millions of undocumented workers performing many of our most low-wage and low-skilled jobs. San Diego is at the front lines of this dilemma by virtue of its location on the border with Mexico. While Congress has chosen to put this issue off to the future, it will remain a hot topic until some resolution is reached.

Perhaps more pressing from a work-force standpoint is the import of high-wage, high-skilled workers, mostly into our high technology and life sciences industries. These workers come to the United States on special, time-limited visas granted to a specified number of foreign workers with particular skills. And ever since their inception, these visa programs have been mired in controversy.

Business leaders chafe at the limited number of visas granted, stating that they are unable to find enough skilled workers to fill their open positions and keep their companies operating. Labor leaders and employee associations contend there are enough skilled workers, and that employers are using the visas to import workers at lower wage levels.

When Congress established the visas, the time limits were designed to help companies meet an immediate need, while U.S. residents acquired the skills necessary to fill the positions. Now, it appears, that industry leaders themselves are arguing over whether the visa period should be used as a time to help those with very specialized skills gain a permanent right to work in the United States, or as a revolving door to use and release workers as needed.

Aging work force. Finally, as baby boomers age, and as labor shortages loom, workers will be working well past “retirement age,” either by choice or by necessity. There are many issues around workplace safety, managers who are younger than their staff, increased benefit costs, and accommodation of schedules that employers face with a mature work force. When mature workers do retire, many experts worry that there will not be a skilled young work force to replace them.

However, as with global warming, no single organization or single approach can solve the problem. It will take industry, educational institutions, community-based organizations, foundations and government agencies – and the media – to take on these issues and develop collaborative solutions. The climate change that is the work-force crisis will take new policy approaches, new funding and a commitment by stakeholders recognizing that this is not a “social problem,” but an economic problem, to grow our region's well-paying jobs and prepare our residents to fill them.

The first step, as with global warming, is recognizing the crisis and not being afraid to face the changes in behavior and attitudes demanded by the times.

Fitch is president and chief executive officer of the San Diego Workforce Partnership.
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When climate patterns line up and 'beat' in sync, it can change everything
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SURVEY: LESS THAN HALF OF ALL PUBLISHED SCIENTISTS ENDORSE GLOBAL WARMING THEORY; COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY OF PUBLISHED CLIMATE RESEARCH REVEALS CHANGING VIEWPOINTS

Michael Asher
August 29, 2007 11:07 AM
In 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of research papers on climate change. Examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003, she found a majority supported the "consensus view," defined as humans were having at least some effect on global climate change. Oreskes' work has been repeatedly cited, but as some of its data is now nearly 15 years old, its conclusions are becoming somewhat dated.

Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte recently updated this research. Using the same database and search terms as Oreskes, he examined all papers published from 2004 to February 2007. The results have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, of which DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy. The figures are surprising.

Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."

The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the "primary" cause of warming, but it doesn't require any belief or support for "catastrophic" global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.

These changing viewpoints represent the advances in climate science over the past decade. While today we are even more certain the earth is warming, we are less certain about the root causes. More importantly, research has shown us that -- whatever the cause may be -- the amount of warming is unlikely to cause any great calamity for mankind or the planet itself.

Schulte's survey contradicts the United Nation IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (2007), which gave a figure of "90% likely" man was having an impact on world temperatures. But does the IPCC represent a consensus view of world scientists? Despite media claims of "thousands of scientists" involved in the report, the actual text is written by a much smaller number of "lead authors." The introductory "Summary for Policymakers" -- the only portion usually quoted in the media -- is written not by scientists at all, but by politicians, and approved, word-by-word, by political representatives from member nations. By IPCC policy, the individual report chapters -- the only text actually written by scientists -- are edited to "ensure compliance" with the summary, which is typically published months before the actual report itself.

By contrast, the ISI Web of Science database covers 8,700 journals and publications, including every leading scientific journal in the world.

###

Brits 'addicted' to cheap flights

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

Britons are "addicted" to cheap flights and confused about the climate impact of flying, according to research.

In a government-funded study, even people living generally "green" lives said they were reluctant to fly less.

The Exeter University team that carried out the research says cheap flights have become a lifestyle choice.

Aviation accounts for about 7% of the UK's emissions, and research suggests Britain will not meet its climate targets without curbing the industry.

The government raised air passenger duty in February, and the European Union is set to include aviation in its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which could increase costs further.

But the Exeter research suggests price hikes would have a minimal impact.

"Until you have politicians giving us some clear messages, people will be confused." --Brenda Boardman

"We found that flying is quite embedded in peoples' lifestyle choices," said Stewart Barr from the university's Department of Geography.

"And it's not people on lower incomes taking these flights, it's middle class people taking more flights to go on city breaks, and they can afford to pay higher prices."

Fixed habits

The findings come from a series of focus groups run in Devon in 2005, and from a prior questionnaire.

Researchers found that as many as one-fifth of the population regarded themselves as committed environmentalists, who would routinely take measures such as composting, recycling, and curbing water and electricity consumption.

"This group is the most receptive to arguments about reducing flights and most knowlegable about the issue, but even they don't feel they can reduce flying because it's part of their lifestyle," observed Dr Barr.

"All groups said the state of knowledge about flying compared to other forms of transport is very confusing; you might have in a tabloid newspaper, for example, an article saying flying is bad next to a massive advert for Ryanair saying (Gordon) Browns's duty increase is wrong."

In July the Advertising Standards Authority ordered Ryanair not to repeat advertisements claiming that aviation accounted for just 2% of carbon emissions, because the company did not explain the figure was based on global rather than UK statistics.

Runway growth

The government maintains people are keen to reduce their carbon footprints.

"We know that more and more people are already taking steps to reduce their impact on the planet and there are a wide range of ways they can do this," said a spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which commissioned the Exeter research.

"Our role is to give them the information to make greener choices that are right for their circumstances."

But some observers believe there is an inherent contradiction within a government that wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while expanding airport capacity.

Expansion plans are lodged for many airports including Heathrow, Stansted, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Liverpool and East Midlands.

"I certainly wouldn't advise expanding them," said Brenda Boardman from Oxford University, "because the more you build them, the more people will use them.

"I'm not at all surprised that people are confused, because you have Tony Blair saying it's unreasonable to ask people to stop flying; until you have politicians giving us some clear messages, people will be confused."

Dr Boardman's Environmental Change Institute (ECI) published research last year showing the government could not achieve its long-term goal of a 60% cut in national greenhouse gas emissions without curbing the aviation sector.

She also believes the increase in flying may be hurting the national economy, with Britons choosing to spend money holidaying overseas rather than in the UK.

Away from Britain, aviation is growing at spectacular rates, with India recently seeing a 45% increase in passenger numbers within a single year. It is the fastest-rising source of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Exeter research was unveiled at the Royal Geographical Society's (RGS) annual meeting in London.
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Remove the obvious...

An inconvenient fact
Patrick Moore, Special to The Vancouver Sun
Published: Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Despite the anti-forestry scare tactics of celebrity movies, trees are the most powerful concentrators of carbon on Earth according to Dr. Patrick Moore as a co-founder of Greenpeace and chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. in Vancouver.

It seems like there's a new doomsday documentary every month. But seldom does one receive the coverage that Hollywood activist Leonardo DiCaprio's latest climate-change rant, The 11th Hour, is getting.

When we're bombarded anew with theatrical images of our earth's ecosystems when the film opens across B.C. this Friday, I'm concerned that we're losing sight of some indisputable facts.

Here's a key piece of information DiCaprio, collaborator and long-time activist Tzeporah Berman and the leadership of my old organization Greenpeace are ignoring when it comes to forests and carbon: For British Columbians, living among the largest area of temperate rainforest in the world, managing our forests will be a key to reducing greenhouse gases.

As a lifelong environmentalist, I say trees can solve many of the world's sustainability challenges. Forestry is the most sustainable of all the primary industries that provide us with energy and materials. Rather than cutting fewer trees and using less wood, DiCaprio and Berman ought to promote the growth of more trees and the use of more wood.

Trees are the most powerful concentrators of carbon on Earth. Through photosynthesis, they absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in their wood, which is nearly 50 per cent carbon by weight. Trees contain about 250 kilograms of carbon per cubic metre.

North Americans are the world's largest per-capita wood consumers and yet our forests cover approximately the same area of land as they did 100 years ago. According to the United Nations, our forests have expanded nearly 100 million acres over the past decade.

The relationship between trees and greenhouse gases is simple enough on the surface. Trees grow by taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and, through photosynthesis, converting it into sugars. The sugars are then used as energy and materials to build cellulose and lignin, the main constituents of wood.

There is a misconception that cutting down an old tree will result in a net release of carbon. Yet wooden furniture made in the Elizabethan era still holds the carbon that was fixed hundreds of years ago.

Berman, a veteran of the forestry protest movement, should by now have learned that young forests outperform old growth in carbon sequestration.

Although old trees contain huge amounts of carbon, their rate of sequestration has slowed to a near halt. A young tree, although it contains little fixed carbon, pulls CO2 from the atmosphere at a much faster rate.

When a tree rots or burns, the carbon contained in the wood is released back to the atmosphere. Since combustion releases carbon, active forest management -- such as removing dead trees and clearing debris from the forest floor -- will be imperative in reducing the number and intensity of fires.

The role of forests in the global carbon cycle can be boiled down to these key points:

Deforestation, primarily in tropical forests, is responsible for about 20 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions. This is occurring where forests are permanently cleared and converted to agriculture and urban settlement.

In many countries with temperate forests, there has been an increase in carbon stored in trees in recent years. This includes the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Sweden.

The most important factors influencing the carbon cycle are deforestation on the negative side, and the use of wood, from sustainably managed forests, as a substitute for non-renewable materials and fuels, on the positive side.

To address climate change, we must use more wood, not less. Using wood sends a signal to the marketplace to grow more trees and to produce more wood. That means we can then use less concrete, steel and plastic -- heavy carbon emitters through their production. Trees are the only abundant, biodegradable and renewable global resource.

DiCaprio's movie, The 11th Hour, is another example of anti-forestry scare tactics, this time said to be "brilliant and terrifying" by James Christopher of the London Times.

Maybe so, but instead of surrendering to the terror, keep in mind that there are solutions to the challenges of climate, and our forests are among them.

This film should be a good, clear reminder for us to put the science before the Hollywood hype.

Dr. Patrick Moore is a co-founder of Greenpeace and chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. in Vancouver.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

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Study predicts warming will increase strength of storms

ASSOCIATED PRESS

August 31, 2007

WASHINGTON – As the world warms, the United States will face more severe thunderstorms with deadly lightning, damaging hail and the potential for tornadoes, a trailblazing study by NASA scientists suggests.

While other research has warned of broad weather changes on a large scale, such as more extreme hurricanes and droughts, the new study predicts that smaller events such as thunderstorms will be more dangerous because of global warming.

The basic ingredients for whopper U.S. inland storms are likely to be more plentiful in a warmer, moister world, said lead author Tony Del Genio, a NASA research scientist.

And when that happens, watch out.

“The strongest thunderstorms, the strongest severe storms and tornadoes are likely to happen more often and be stronger,” Del Genio said in an interview yesterday from his office at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. The paper he co-authored was published online this month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Some scientists caution that this area of climate research is too difficult and new for this study to be definitive. But some upcoming studies also point in the same direction.

With a computer model, Del Genio explores an area that most climate scientists have avoided. Simple thunderstorms are too small for their massive models of the world's climate. So Del Genio looked at the forces that combine to make thunderstorms.

A unique combination of geography and weather patterns already makes the United States the world's hottest spot for tornadoes and severe storms in spring and summer. The large land mass that warms on hot days, the contours of the atmosphere's jet stream, the wind coming off the Rocky Mountains and warm moist air coming up from the Gulf of Mexico all combine.

Del Genio's computer model shows global warming will mean more strong updrafts, when the wind moves up and down instead of sideways.

“The consequences of stronger updrafts are more lightning and bigger hail,” he said.

The Southeast and Midwest lie in the path of most of the most dangerous of these storms.

However, the new study also forecasts danger for the Western United States. It predicts lightning will increase about 6 percent.

Previous studies have shown that the West will get drier, making it a tinderbox for more wildfires. This study shows that there will be more matches in the form of lightning strikes to start those fires, Del Genio said.
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'GREEN' GORE GOES GULFSTREAM
VIDEO CATCHES ECO-WARRIOR ON LUXURY PRIVATE JET
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From the NYT:

September 11, 2007

‘Feel Good’ vs. ‘Do Good’ on Climate

By JOHN TIERNEY

After looking at one too many projections of global-warming disasters — computer graphics of coasts swamped by rising seas, mounting death tolls from heat waves — I was ready for a reality check. Instead of imagining a warmer planet, I traveled to a place that has already felt the heat, accompanied by Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish political scientist and scourge of environmentalist orthodoxy.

It was not an arduous expedition. We went to an old wooden building near the Brooklyn Bridge that is home to the Bridge Cafe, which bills itself as “New York’s Oldest Drinking Establishment.” There’s been drinking in the building since the late 18th century, when it was erected on Water Street along the shore of Lower Manhattan.

Since record-keeping began in the 19th century, the sea level in New York has been rising about a foot per century, which happens to be about the same increase estimated to occur over the next century by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The temperature has also risen as New York has been covered with asphalt and concrete, creating an “urban heat island” that’s estimated to have raised nighttime temperatures by 7 degrees Fahrenheit. The warming that has already occurred locally is on the same scale as what’s expected globally in the next century.

The impact of these changes on Lower Manhattan isn’t quite as striking as the computer graphics. We couldn’t see any evidence of the higher sea level near the Bridge Cafe, mainly because Water Street isn’t next to the water anymore. Dr. Lomborg and I had to walk over two-and-a-half blocks of landfill to reach the current shoreline.

The effect of the rising temperatures is more complicated to gauge. Hotter summer weather can indeed be fatal, as Al Gore likes us to remind audiences by citing the 35,000 deaths attributed to the 2003 heat wave in Europe. But there are a couple of confounding factors explained in Dr. Lomborg’s new book, “Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming.”

The first is that winter can be deadlier than summer. About seven times more deaths in Europe are attributed annually to cold weather (which aggravates circulatory and respiratory illness) than to hot weather, Dr. Lomborg notes, pointing to studies showing that a warmer planet would mean fewer temperature-related deaths in Europe and worldwide.

The second factor is that the weather matters a lot less than how people respond to it. Just because there are hotter summers in New York doesn’t mean that more people die — in fact, just the reverse has occurred. Researchers led by Robert Davis, a climatologist at the University of Virginia, concluded that the number of heat-related deaths in New York in the 1990s was only a third as high as in the 1960s. The main reason is simple, and evident as you as walk into the Bridge Cafe on a warm afternoon: air-conditioning.

The lesson from our expedition is not that global warming is a trivial problem. Although Dr. Lomborg believes its dangers have been hyped, he agrees that global warming is real and will do more harm than good. He advocates a carbon tax and a treaty forcing nations to budget hefty increases for research into low-carbon energy technologies.

But the best strategy, he says, is to make the rest of the world as rich as New York, so that people elsewhere can afford to do things like shore up their coastlines and buy air conditioners. He calls Kyoto-style treaties to cut greenhouse-gas emissions a mistake because they cost too much and do too little too late. Even if the United States were to join in the Kyoto treaty, he notes, the cuts in emissions would merely postpone the projected rise in sea level by four years: from 2100 to 2104.

“We could spend all that money to cut emissions and end up with more land flooded next century because people would be poorer,” Dr. Lomborg said as we surveyed Manhattan’s expanded shoreline. “Wealth is a more important factor than sea-level rise in protecting you from the sea. You can draw maps showing 100 million people flooded out of their homes from global warming, but look at what’s happened here in New York. It’s the same story in Denmark and Holland — we’ve been gaining land as the sea rises.”

Dr. Lomborg, who’s best known (and most reviled in some circles) for an earlier book, “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” runs the Copenhagen Consensus Center, which gathers economists to set priorities in tackling global problems. In his new book, he dismisses the Kyoto emissions cuts as a “feel-good” strategy because it sounds virtuous and lets politicians make promises they don’t have to keep. He outlines an alternative “do-good” strategy that would cost less but accomplish more in dealing with climate change as well as more pressing threats like malaria, AIDS, polluted drinking water and malnutrition.

If you’re worried about stronger hurricanes flooding coasts, he says, concentrate on limiting coastal development and expanding wetlands right now rather than trying to slightly delay warming decades from now. To give urbanites a break from hotter summers, concentrate on reducing the urban-heat-island effect. If cities planted more greenery and painted roofs and streets white, he says, they could more than offset the impact of global warming.

The biggest limitation to his cost-benefit analyses is that no one knows exactly what global warming will produce. It may not be worth taking expensive steps to forestall a one-foot rise in the sea level, but what if the seas rise much higher? Dr. Lomborg’s critics argue that we owe it to future generations to prepare for the worst-case projections.

But preparing for the worst in future climate is expensive, which means less money for the most serious threats today — and later this century. You can imagine plenty of worst-case projections that have nothing to do with climate change, as Dr. Lomborg reminded me at the end of our expedition.

“No historian would look back at the last two centuries and rank the rising sea level here as one of the city’s major problems,” he said, sitting safely dry and cool inside the Bridge Cafe. “I don’t think our descendants will thank us for leaving them poorer and less healthy just so we could do a little bit to slow global warming. I’d rather we were remembered for solving the other problems first.”
____________
Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

Challenge to Scientific Consensus on Global Warming: Analysis Finds Hundreds of Scientists Have Published Evidence Countering Man-Made Global Warming Fears

WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new analysis of peer-reviewed literature reveals that more than 500 scientists have published evidence refuting at least one element of current man-made global warming scares. More than 300 of the scientists found evidence that 1) a natural moderate 1,500-year climate cycle has produced more than a dozen global warmings similar to ours since the last Ice Age and/or that 2) our Modern Warming is linked strongly to variations in the sun's irradiance. "This data and the list of scientists make a mockery of recent claims that a scientific consensus blames humans as the primary cause of global temperature increases since 1850," said Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Dennis Avery.

Other researchers found evidence that 3) sea levels are failing to rise importantly; 4) that our storms and droughts are becoming fewer and milder with this warming as they did during previous global warmings; 5) that human deaths will be reduced with warming because cold kills twice as many people as heat; and 6) that corals, trees, birds, mammals, and butterflies are adapting well to the routine reality of changing climate.

Despite being published in such journals such as Science, Nature and Geophysical Review Letters, these scientists have gotten little media attention. "Not all of these researchers would describe themselves as global warming skeptics," said Avery, "but the evidence in their studies is there for all to see."

The names were compiled by Avery and climate physicist S. Fred Singer, the co-authors of the new book Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, mainly from the peer-reviewed studies cited in their book. The researchers' specialties include tree rings, sea levels, stalagmites, lichens, pollen, plankton, insects, public health, Chinese history and astrophysics.

"We have had a Greenhouse Theory with no evidence to support it-except a moderate warming turned into a scare by computer models whose results have never been verified with real-world events," said co-author Singer. "On the other hand, we have compelling evidence of a real-world climate cycle averaging 1470 years (plus or minus 500) running through the last million years of history. The climate cycle has above all been moderate, and the trees, bears, birds, and humans have quietly adapted."

"Two thousand years of published human histories say that the warm periods were good for people," says Avery. "It was the harsh, unstable Dark Ages and Little Ice Age that brought bigger storms, untimely frost, widespread famine and plagues of disease." "There may have been a consensus of guesses among climate model-builders," says Singer. "However, the models only reflect the warming, not its cause." He noted that about 70 percent of the earth's post-1850 warming came before 1940, and thus was probably not caused by human-emitted greenhouse gases. The net post-1940 warming totals only a tiny 0.2 degrees C.

The historic evidence of the natural cycle includes the 5000-year record of Nile floods, 1st-century Roman wine production in Britain, and thousands of museum paintings that portrayed sunnier skies during the Medieval Warming and more cloudiness during the Little Ice Age. The physical evidence comes from oxygen isotopes, beryllium ions, tiny sea and pollen fossils, and ancient tree rings. The evidence recovered from ice cores, sea and lake sediments, cave stalagmites and glaciers has been analyzed by electron microscopes, satellites, and computers. Temperatures during the Medieval Warming Period on California's Whitewing Mountain must have been 3.2 degrees warmer than today, says Constance Millar of the U.S. Forest Service, based on her study of seven species of relict trees that grew above today's tree line.

Singer emphasized, "Humans have known since the invention of the telescope that the earth's climate variations were linked to the sunspot cycle, but we had not understood how. Recent experiments have demonstrated that more or fewer cosmic rays hitting the earth create more or fewer of the low, cooling clouds that deflect solar heat back into space-amplifying small variations in the intensity of the sun.

Avery and Singer noted that there are hundreds of additional peer-reviewed studies that have found cycle evidence, and that they will publish additional researchers' names and studies. They also noted that their book was funded by Wallace O. Sellers, a Hudson board member, without any corporate contributions.

Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years is available from Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Unstoppable-Global-Warming-Every-Years/dp/0742551172 /ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-6773465-0779318?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1189603742&sr=1-1

For more information, please contact Dennis Avery, Hudson Institute Senior Fellow and co-author of Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years, at 540-337-6354: Email: cgfi@hughes.net

Hudson Institute

Vanishing ice worries West
Accelerating Arctic melting could change weather patterns in region, bring less rain.
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misfit@boincsynergy.com

Gore Dodges Repeated Calls to Debate Global Warming
By Bonner R. Cohen Ph.D. : 28 Sep 2007

As over 150 heads of state and government gather at UN headquarters in New York to discuss climate change, former Vice President Al Gore, the most prominent proponent of the theory of the human-induced, catastrophic global warming, continues to refuse repeated challenges to debate the issue.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who addressed the General Assembly on climate change September 24, is but the latest global warming skeptic to receive the cold shoulder from Gore. In ads appearing in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Times, Klaus has called on Gore to face him in a one-on-one debate on the proposition: "Global Warming Is Not a Crisis." Earlier in the year, similar challenges to Gore were issued by Dennis Avery, director of the Center for Global Food Issues and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, and Lord Monckton of Brenchley, a former adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. All calls on the former vice president to face his critics have fallen on deaf ears.

The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based free-market think tank, launched the debate campaign in April, using ads, press releases, and other tactics to prod Gore into confronting those who reject his alarmist views on global warming.

For his part, President Klaus has not minced words on what he sees as the real agenda of those promoting climate hysteria. In an op-ed in the Financial Times (June 13, pointedly titled "Freedom, Not Climate, is at Risk," Klaus said: "Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives." Arguing that the issue of global warming "is more about social than about natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature," Klaus rejected the notion of a "scientific consensus" on climate change as an effort by a "loud minority" to impose its will on a "silent majority."

However, Klaus reserved his unkindest cut of all for the movement that has joined forces with Gore is spreading fear about global warming:

"As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning."

Gore's refusal to take on the likes of Klaus, Avery and Lord Monckton is no isolated incident of the former vice president's lacking the courage of his convictions. In June, Professor Scott Armstrong of the University of Pennsylvania urged Gore to put his global warming money where his mouth is. Armstrong, one of the world's leading experts on forecasting, has studied the forecasts made by Gore and such organizations as the UN's Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) and found their methodology wanting.

Convinced that Gore and the IPCC are overstating how much temperatures will rise in the years to come, Armstrong has challenged Gore to the following wager: Each man bets $10,000 on how much temperatures will go up in the next ten years. The money will stay in escrow until 2017. The one whose forecast come closer to the actual change in temperature will be declared the winner and be allowed to donate the $20,000 plus accumulated interest to the charity of his choice. But despite being flush with cash from his movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," and from lucrative speaking engagements around the world, Gore has not taken Armstrong up on the bet.

Gore's reluctance to go toe-to-toe with global warming skeptics may have something to do with the - from the standpoint of climate change alarmists - unfortunate outcome of a global warming debate in New York last March. In the debate, a team of global warming skeptics composed of MIT scientist Richard Lindzen, University of London emeritus professor of biogeology Philip Stott, and physician-turned novelist/filmmaker Michael Crichton handily defeated a team of climate alarmists headed by NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt. Before the start of the nearly two-hour debate, the audience of several thousand polled 57.3 percent to 29.9 percent in favor of the proposition that global warming is a "crisis." At the end of the debate, the numbers had changed dramatically, with 46.2 percent favoring the skeptical point of view and 42.2 percent siding with the alarmists.

Bonner R. Cohen is a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C. and author of "The Green Wave: Environmentalism and its Consequences, published by the Capital Research Center.
____________
Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

From this site:

Source: European Space Agency
Date: September 16, 2007

Northwest Passage Opens: Arctic Sea Ice Reaches New Low


The area covered by sea ice in the Arctic has now (September 14, 2007) shrunk to its lowest level since satellite measurements began nearly 30 years ago, opening up the Northwest Passage – a long-sought short cut between Europe and Asia that has been historically impassable.

Envisat ASAR image of the McClure Strait in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, acquired on 31 August 2007. The McClure Strait is the most direct route of the Northwest Passage and has been fully open since early August 2007. The dark gray colour represents the ice-free areas while green represents areas with sea ice. (Credit: ESA)


Envisat ASAR image of the McClure Strait in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, acquired on 31 August 2007. The McClure Strait is the most direct route of the Northwest Passage and has been fully open since early August 2007. The dark gray colour represents the ice-free areas while green represents areas with sea ice. (Credit: ESA)

Leif Toudal Pedersen from the Danish National Space Centre said: "We have seen the ice-covered area drop to just around 3 million sq km which is about 1 million sq km less than the previous minima of 2005 and 2006. There has been a reduction of the ice cover over the last 10 years of about 100 000 sq km per year on average, so a drop of 1 million sq km in just one year is extreme.

"The strong reduction in just one year certainly raises flags that the ice (in summer) may disappear much sooner than expected and that we urgently need to understand better the processes involved."

Arctic sea ice naturally extends its surface coverage each northern winter and recedes each northern summer, but the rate of overall loss since 1978 when satellite records began has accelerated.

The most direct route of the Northwest Passage across northern Canada is now fully navigable, while the Northeast Passage along the Siberian coast remains only partially blocked. To date, the Northwest Passage has been predicted to remain closed even during reduced ice cover by multi-year ice pack – sea ice that survives one or more summers. However, according to Pedersen, this year’s extreme event has shown the passage may well open sooner than expected.

The previous record low was in 2005 when the Arctic area covered by sea ice was just 4 million sq km. Even then, the most direct Northwest Passage did not fully open.

The Polar Regions are very sensitive indicators of climate change. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change showed these regions are highly vulnerable to rising temperatures and predicted the Arctic would be virtually ice free by the summer of 2070. Still other scientists predict it could become ice free as early as 2040 due to rising temperatures and sea ice decline.

Because sea ice has a bright surface, the majority of solar energy that hits it is reflected back into space. When sea ice melts, the dark-coloured ocean surface is exposed. Solar energy is then absorbed rather than reflected, so the oceans get warmer and temperatures rise, making it difficult for new ice to form.

The Arctic is one of Earth’s most inaccessible areas, so obtaining measurements of sea ice was difficult before the advent of satellites. For more than 20 years, ESA has been providing satellite data to the cryosphere communities. Currently, ESA is contributing to the International Polar Year (IPY) – a large worldwide science programme focused on the Arctic and Antarctic.

Since 2006, ESA has supported Polar View, a satellite remote-sensing programme funded through the Earthwatch GMES Service Element (GSE) that focuses on the Arctic and the Antarctic.

In 2009, ESA will make another significant contribution to cryosphere research with the launch of CryoSat-2. The observations made over the three-year lifetime of the mission will provide conclusive evidence on the rates at which ice cover is diminishing.

Note: This story has been adapted from material provided by European Space Agency.


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High price for load of hot air - climate change hysteria is costing us billions

by Professor Bob Carter James Cook University

Courier Mail Monday 18/6/2007

With understandable reluctance, Prime Minister John Howard recently donned the political hair-shirt of a carbon trading system.

On the same day, NASA chief Michael Griffin commented in a US radio interview that "I am not sure that it is fair to say that (global warming) is a problem that we must wrestle with".

NASA is an agency that knows a thing or two about climate change. As Griffin added: "We study global climate change, that is in our authorisation, we think we do it rather well.

"I'm proud of that, but NASA is not an agency chartered to, quote, battle climate change."

Such a clear statement that science accomplishment should carry primacy over policy advice is both welcome and overdue.

Nonetheless, there is something worrying about one of Griffin's other statements, which said that "I have no doubt . . . that a trend of global warming exists".

Griffin seems to be referring to human-caused global warming, but irrespective of that his opinion is unsupported by the evidence.

The salient facts are these. First, the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998. Oddly, this eight-year-long temperature stasis has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2.

Second, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements, if corrected for non- greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, show little if any global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increase by 55 ppm (17 per cent).

Third, there are strong indications from solar studies that Earth's current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades.

How then is it possible for Griffin to assert so boldly that human-caused global warming is happening?

Well, he is in good company for similar statements have been made recently by several Western heads of state at the G8 summit meeting. For instance, German Chancellor Angela Merkel asserts climate change (i.e. global warming) "is also essentially caused by humankind".

In fact, there is every doubt whether any global warming at all is occurring at the moment, let alone human-caused warming.

For leading politicians to be asserting to the contrary indicates something is very wrong with their chain of scientific advice, for they are clearly being deceived. That this should be the case is an international political scandal of high order which, in turn, raises the question of where their advice is coming from.

In Australia, the advice trail leads from government agencies such as the CSIRO and the Australian Greenhouse Office through to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations.

As leading economist David Henderson has pointed out, it is extremely dangerous for an unelected and unaccountable body like the IPCC to have a monopoly on climate policy advice to governments. And even more so because, at heart, the IPCC is a political and not a scientific agency.

Australia does not ask the World Bank to set its annual budget and neither should it allow the notoriously alarmist IPCC to set its climate policy.

It is past time for those who have deceived governments and misled the public regarding dangerous human-caused global warming to be called to account. Aided by hysterical posturing by green NGOs, their actions have led to the cornering of government on the issue and the likely implementation of futile emission policies that will impose direct extra costs on every household and enterprise in Australia to no identifiable benefit.

Not only do humans not dominate Earth's current temperature trend but the likelihood is that further large sums of public money are shortly going to be committed to, theoretically, combat warming when cooling is the more likely short-term climatic eventuality.

In one of the more expensive ironies of history, the expenditure of more than SUS50 billion (S60 billion) on research into global warming since 1990 has failed to demonstrate any human-caused climate trend, let alone a dangerous one.

Yet that expenditure will pale into insignificance compared with the squandering of money that is going to accompany the introduction of a carbon trading or taxation system.The costs of thus expiating comfortable middle class angst are, of course, going to be imposed preferentially upon the poor and underprivileged.

[Professor Bob Carter is an AEF member.]

Published in Courier Mail June 18 2007
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CNN Meteorologist: ‘Definitely Some Inaccuracies’ in Gore Film

By Paul Detrick | October 4, 2007 - 11:35 ET

CNN Meteorologist Rob Marciano clapped his hands and exclaimed, "Finally," in response to a report that a British judge might ban the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" from UK schools because, according to "American Morning," "it is politically biased and contains scientific inaccuracies."

"There are definitely some inaccuracies," Marciano added. "The biggest thing I have a problem with is this implication that Katrina was caused by global warming."

Marciano went on to explain that, "global warming does not conclusively cause stronger hurricanes like we've seen," pointing out that "by the end of this century we might get about a 5 percent increase."

The case stems from a father's claims that the film is brainwashing propaganda, who told The Telegraph, "I am determined to prevent my children from being subjected to political spin in the classroom."

The Business and Media Institute has extensively critiqued the media's coverage of global warming in Fire & Ice, which covers a hundred years of coverage of global warming. While journalists have warned of climate change for more than 100 years, the warnings switched from global cooling to warming to cooling and warming again.

UPDATE: Marciano also sarcastically said, "the Oscars, they give out awards for fictional films as well."

—Paul Detrick is a Researcher at the Business and Media Institute.

And more school censorship...
I thought with the right arguments can be shown quite everything? How shall the students learn to think by themselves when critical films (even though being inaccurate) are censored and banned?
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Account frozen...

And more school censorship...
I thought with the right arguments can be shown quite everything? How shall the students learn to think by themselves when critical films (even though being inaccurate) are censored and banned?

And more school censorship...
I thought with the right arguments can be shown quite everything? How shall the students learn to think by themselves when critical films (even though being inaccurate) are censored and banned?

How can students learn critical thinking skills when exposed to deliberately inaccurate information presented as truth?

With the right preparation a good teacher could come up even with "Atlas Shrugged" without making his or her students to disciples of Ayn Rand, or with something by LaVey without making them to satanists.

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Account frozen...

Proliferation of Climate Scepticism in Europe
By Hans H.J. Labohm : 05 Nov 2007

Climate scepticism has now gained a firm foothold in various European countries.

In Denmark Bjørn Lomborg stands out as the single most important sceptical environmental­ist, defying the political correctness which is such a characteristic feature of his home country, as well as other Nordic countries. But wait! Bjørn Lomborg is not a genuine climate sceptic. Real climate sceptics admire his courage, his scientific rigour and debating skills, but beg to disagree with him on the fundamentals of climate science. Lomborg acknowledges that there is such a thing as man-made global warming, which is quite in line with the mantra of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). He 'only' challenges the cost benefit relationships of the policy meas­ures, which have been proposed to do something about it. Massive expenditures (often euphemistically called 'investments') in exchange for undetectable returns. Real climate sceptics do not accept the man-made global warming hypothesis. They are of the opinion that the human contribution to global warming over the last century or so is at most insignificant. But, of course, they are happy with the arguments advanced by Bjørn Lomborg to bolster their case against climate hysteria.

In Germany EIKE (Europäisches Institut für Klima und Energie, Jena: http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/) has been established - still in its infancy, but nevertheless. Moreover, a group of German climate sceptics has written something which could be called a consensus among many climate sceptics: Climate Manifest of Heiligenroth (See: http://www.klimamanifest-von-heiligenroth.de/klimaman-e.html). Furthermore there are many climate sceptical websites in Germany. For those who like visual thrills and possess a basic command of the German language, Konrad Fischer's website might be fun: 'Videos and films concerning the greenhouse swindle and climate terror' (http://www.konrad-fischer-info.de/7video.htm)

But the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) belief is still overwhelming in Germany. In newspapers and on TV, Stefan Rahmstorf, the German climate Torquemada, -- comparable to Al Gore in the US, George Monbiot in the UK and David Suzuki in Canada -- are constantly attacking critics of the AGW hypothesis. Contrary to good scientific practice, he lavishly lards his interventions with ad hominem attacks and insinuations that his opponents lack qualifications and/or are being paid by industry. Although decades of pro AGW indoctrination has left its mark on the German psyche, even true believers are becoming fed up with him.

In Sweden, despite its high standards of political correctness, there is a very vocal group of climate sceptics, which regularly publish in 'Elbranchen'. In September 2006 they organised a seminar: 'Global Warming - Scientific Controversies in Climate Variability'. This meeting was hosted by the Royal Technical High School in Stockholm and chaired by its rector, Peter Stilbs (See: http://gamma.physchem.kth.se/~climate/). Even Swedish TV has aired a debate on the issue. For those who have some command of the Scandinavian languages, see: http://webbtv.axess.se/index.aspx?id=229: Veckans Debatt: Global uppvärming: Vad säger vetenskapen?

In Italy the Bruno Leoni Institute has espoused climate scepticism (http://www.brunoleoni.it/). In Spain, the foundation Rafael del Pino has paid attention to climate scepticism in the past, but because of social and political pressure it has felt forced to keep a low profile on this issue over the last few years. (http://www.libertaddigital.com/index.php?action=desaopi&cpn=25151) In the French-speaking part of Europe, individual scientists such as as Marcel Leroux could be mentioned. Moreover, the Molinari Institute has joined the cause of climate scepticism (http://www.institutmolinari.org/index.htm). In the Czech Republic, President Vaclav Havel is single-handedly attempting to instil some common sense into public opinion. In Austria the Hayek Institute carries the torch (http://www.hayek-institut.at/english/1183/termine/article/hayek/2035/), while Estonia is represented by Olavi Kärner (http://www.aai.ee/~olavi/).

In my own country, the Netherlands, the situation has markedly improved. In line with the tradition of consensus-seeking, it has been possible to establish something close to a real dialogue between AGW adherents and the climate sceptics. Personally, I have even been invited by the Nether­lands Royal Meteorological Institute (KNMI) to become expert reviewer of the IPCC. As such, I have submitted many fundamental criticisms on the draft texts of the Fourth Assessment Re­port of the Panel (AR4). What happened to my comments? To be honest, I have not the faintest idea. Most probably, nothing at all.

Nevertheless, in my capacity as expert reviewer of the IPCC, I have also received (a tiny) part of the Nobel price, which has been awarded to Al Gore and the IPCC (yes, thanks for your congratulations). Should I be grateful? I don't think so. Both 'An Inconvenient Truth' and the latest IPCC report labour under cherry-picking, spindoctoring and scare-mongering (Al Gore's movie more than the IPCC reports). Awarding the Nobel price for such flawed science is a disgrace. But it should be recalled that the Nobel Prize for Peace is being awarded by a group of (five) Norwegian politicians and not by the Swedish Academy of Science, which is always scrupulously investigating the merits of the candidates. The Norwegians are piggybacking on the reputation of the Nobel prizes for science and literature. The method of electing the winner of the Peace prize ensures a political outcome reflecting the current strength of Norwegian political parties. Four out of five members of the parliamentary committee that selected Gore are former cabinet members. The fifth, Mjoes, was president of the University of Tromso. So the Democrat Gore owes his prize to a constellation of Progressives, Social and Christian Democrats and Green socialists. Little wonder Francis Sejersted, past chairman of the committee, admits: 'Awarding a peace prize is, to put it bluntly, a political act.'

Russian scientists are criticising very openly the AGW hypothesis. They do it with a frankness which - in this particular field - is still rare in the 'free world'. Usually scientists shroud their statements in clouds of caveats. Even the IPCC follows this tradition to a certain extent. But Russian climatologists do not. They simply state that a new little ice age is imminent. Not so long ago it was astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov of the Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in St. Petersburg, who declared that the Earth will experience a 'mini Ice Age' in the middle of this century, caused by low solar activity. Now it is the climatologist Olech Sorochtin, member of the Russian Academy of Physical Science, who joins him. His message was prominently disseminated by the Russian press agency Novosti, which in the period of the Cold War was generally considered to be a mouthpiece of the Kremlin. (http://de.rian.ru/analysis/20071009/83073114.html). Therefore, it is perhaps not too far-fetched to speculate that this might be a warning signal that the Russians will drop out of Kyoto when its first phase expires in 2012.

But Britannia rules the waves. Stewart Dimmock, a Kent lorry driver and school governor, took the government to court for sending copies of Gore's film to schools. He was backed by a group of campaigners, including Viscount Monckton, a former adviser to Mrs Thatcher. They won a legal victory against 'An Inconvenient Truth'. Mr Justice Burton ruled that the movie contained at least nine scientific errors and said ministers must send new guidance to teachers before it was screened. 'That ruling was a fantastic victory,' said Monckton. 'What we want to do now is send schools material reflecting an alternative point of view so that pupils can make their own minds up.' Monckton has also won support from the maker of 'The Great Global Warming Swindle'. Martin Durkin, managing director of WAG TV, which produced the documentary, said he would be delighted for his film to go to schools. I have become a proselytiser against the so-called consensus on climate change ... people can decide for themselves,' he said.

And what about our kids? Well, they have survived the story of Santa Claus without any visible scars. Wouldn't they survive the nonsense of man-made global warming as well?

Hans Labohm is an independent economist. Together with Dick Thoenes and Simon Rozendaal, he is co-author of 'Man-Made Global Warming: Unravelling a Dogma'.

____________
Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

I still think this link, this link and this link say all there is needed regarding this subject.

Live long and BOINC!

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

I still think this link, this link, and this link say all there is needed regarding this subject.

By John Coleman ( Founder of The Weather Channel )

It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create an illusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the “research” to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.

Environmental extremists, notable politicians among them, then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild “scientific” scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda. Now their ridiculous manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmentally conscientious citizens. Only one reporter at ABC has been allowed to counter the Global Warming frenzy with one 15 minute documentary segment.

I do not oppose environmentalism. I do not oppose the political positions of either party. However, Global Warming, i.e. Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you “believe in.” It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming is a non-event, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won’t believe a me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it.

I have read dozens of scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct. There is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. I am incensed by the incredible media glamour, the politically correct silliness and rude dismissal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming.

In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious. As the temperature rises, polar ice cap melting, coastal flooding and super storm pattern all fail to occur as predicted everyone will come to realize we have been duped. The sky is not falling. And, natural cycles and drifts in climate are as much if not more responsible for any climate changes underway. I strongly believe that the next twenty years are equally as likely to see a cooling trend as they are to see a warming trend

____________
Air Cold, the blade stops;
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Calm Chaos Forums : Everyone Welcome

So...because Mr. Coleman doesn't agree about GW.....it's inaccurate??

My source was the news release that was available in several places on the net...
____________
Air Cold, the blade stops;
from silent stone,
Death is preordained

Calm Chaos Forums : Everyone Welcome

IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) launched today.

Webcast of the press conference 17 November 11 AM

The IPCC has launched the first three volumes of its assessment report "Climate Change 2007" and is currently finalizing its Synthesis report.

The Synthesis Report will be launched in Valencia, Spain, tomorrow, 17 November 2007 during a press conference.

At 11:00, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, will make a short statement in plenary to the 450 delegates that have been working the whole week on the adoption of the Synthesis Report during the 27th Session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Valencia. His speech will be delivered in the "Plenary Room".

At 11:20, the Secretary General of the United Nations together with Mr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC, will join Mr. Michel Jarraud, Secretary General of World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and Mr. Achim Steiner, Executive Director of United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) at the "Auditorio" for the press conference.

Please find below the latest technical update to cover the press conference on the presentation of the IPCC Synthesis Report in Valencia. IMPORTANT: PLEASE NOTE THAT SATELLITE SIGNAL TIMES HAVE CHANGED.

The press conference on 17 November 11 AM will also be webcasted on this website.
____________
Account frozen...

It's official, we're all going to die.

And not a word about China, India, Russia, and Mexico. Now is the time to panic, people. Do you hear me? PANIC!!!

From the Washington Post:

Emissions Growth Must End in 7 Years, U.N. Warns
Report Lays Out Stark Choices to Avoid the Deaths of Species

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 18, 2007

The world will have to end its growth of carbon emissions within seven years and become mostly free of carbon-emitting technologies in about four decades to avoid killing as many as a quarter of the planet's species from global warming, according to top United Nations' scientists.

The stark choices laid out yesterday by the agency's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) describe the daunting task if the world is to avoid the consequences of a planet heated up by more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) since 2000.

The panel, which distilled research from about 2,500 scientists, avoided conclusions about how much global warming is too much.

"The scientists now have done their work. I call on political leaders to do theirs," U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said upon formally receiving the report yesterday in Valencia, Spain.

But the tables laid out in the report describe mounting grim consequences for each degree of atmospheric heating of the planet and the difficult steps that must be taken to avoid even the worst of those consequences.

To avoid heating the globe by the minimum possible, an average of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the world's spiraling growth in greenhouse gas emissions must end no later than 2015, the report said, and must start to drop quickly after that peak. By 2050, carbon dioxide and other atmospheric polluting gases must be reduced by 50 to 85 percent, according to the estimates.

That would require a drastic reworking of industrial processes, transportation, agricultural practices and even the buildings people live in, according to the report's calculations.

"We may have already overshot that target," said David Karoly, one member of the core team that wrote the report. Current emissions already are nearing the limit required in 2015 to limit the warming to 2 degrees Celsius, he said in an interview from Valencia.

Even at that threshold, the seas will continue to swell for centuries from thermal expansion and meltwater from ice caps and glaciers; the oceans will turn more acidic; most coral reefs will become lifeless expanses; floods and storms will increase; and millions of people will be short of the water they need, the report said.

"These are extremely serious findings," said IPCC Chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri.

But if the world misses that target and does not stabilize carbon dioxide emissions until 2030, for example, the planet's temperature will increase by as much as 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit above 2000 temperatures, the report said. That level of warming would result in widespread extinctions of species, a slowing of the global currents, decreased food production, loss of 30 percent of global wetlands, flooding for millions of people and higher deaths from heat waves.

Policymakers in Europe and other governments have generally regarded the 2-degree Celsius rise as the maximum the world should tolerate. The Bush administration has resisted making such a judgment, and John H. Marburger III, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, has said that goal "is not actually linked to regional events that affect people's lives."

The scientists who wrote the report officially declined to recommend such a threshold because it "involves value judgments."

"Unfortunately, that is a question people are ducking for too long," said Pachauri in an interview from Valencia after the end of the week-long deliberations by delegates of 130 countries. But, he acknowledged, global warming of 3 or 4 degrees Celsius would be "an insufferable burden that human society and other species would have to carry."

"We need to define thresholds beyond which we won't go. It really is a matter of life or death for some communities on Earth," Pachauri said in the interview. "The choice for us is to see where it is we want to draw the line."

In a final speech to the delegates, Ban described how impressed he was on recent trips to the Amazon jungle and Antarctica, both of which would be severely threatened if mankind does not curb global warming, he said.

"If the panel's most severe projection comes through, much of the Amazon rain forest will transform into savannah," he said. "These things are as frightening as science-fiction movies. But they are even more terrifying, because they are real."
____________
Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

It's official, we're all going to die.

And not a word about China, India, Russia, and Mexico. Now is the time to panic, people. Do you hear me? PANIC!!!

It's official, we're all going to die.

And not a word about China, India, Russia, and Mexico. Now is the time to panic, people. Do you hear me? PANIC!!!

...

It's official, we're all going to die.

And not a word about China, India, Russia, and Mexico. Now is the time to panic, people. Do you hear me? PANIC!!!

...

OMG! Is that true? We are all gonna die? But.. but.. but... , I thought I was immortal.

It's official, we're all going to die.

And not a word about China, India, Russia, and Mexico. Now is the time to panic, people. Do you hear me? PANIC!!!

...

OMG! Is that true? We are all gonna die? But.. but.. but... , I thought I was immortal.

Oh well, it's about time - the Reaper has refused to put me back on his list for the last 2000 years or so ... ;)

It's official, we're all going to die.

And not a word about China, India, Russia, and Mexico. Now is the time to panic, people. Do you hear me? PANIC!!!

...

OMG! Is that true? We are all gonna die? But.. but.. but... , I thought I was immortal.

Oh well, it's about time - the Reaper has refused to put me back on his list for the last 2000 years or so ... ;)

I TOLD you that you are ON The List....yer just a ways down there right now....lol

It's official, we're all going to die.

And not a word about China, India, Russia, and Mexico. Now is the time to panic, people. Do you hear me? PANIC!!!

Don't worry Rush..it's those people from 3rd world countries that you keep forgetting about when you mention how much better everyone is under capitalism that will be worst affected.

So it's not really a big deal is it, because you and your cronies have been happily screwing them for 100s years now. It's just more of the same.

I TOLD you that you are ON The List....yer just a ways down there right now....

Am I on the list yet? And if so, can I get bumped to the top? I've seen quite enough... ;)

You are destined to stick around for a while though, Jeff.

Please stop, you're frightening me... ;)

You are destined to stick around for a while though, Jeff.

Please stop, you're frightening me... ;)

Death is supposed to be frightening to some.

And even more frightening to you would be the fact that I don't do requests....lol

That's not what I've heard.... :-P

You are destined to stick around for a while though, Jeff.

Please stop, you're frightening me... ;)

Death is supposed to be frightening to some.

And even more frightening to you would be the fact that I don't do requests....lol

That's not what I've heard.... :-P

Well...you are still here....that should pretty well prove it, eh?? ;-)

Are you backing out on our deal???
Gimme back my firstborn son right now!

You are destined to stick around for a while though, Jeff.

Please stop, you're frightening me... ;)

Death is supposed to be frightening to some.

And even more frightening to you would be the fact that I don't do requests....lol

That's not what I've heard.... :-P

Well...you are still here....that should pretty well prove it, eh?? ;-)

Are you backing out on our deal???
Gimme back my firstborn son right now!

I am not the deal maker. I am only the collector.

You would have to speak with my superiors about any deal you had with them.

* edit * To avoid any further confusion...I must point out that I do the collections for both sides. * edit *

I am sick and tired of you trying to collect my soul. You pick and pick.... but I won't tolerate you anymore. lol. I want a proper instrument of death brought down here. No more of your funny friendly thanatos crap. :-P

I'll be outside toasting marshmallows.
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I'll be outside toasting marshmallows.

Just heard on the Boortz radio program that Australia has a proposal for a $5,000 baby tax to be paid in order to offset each child's 'carbon footprint'. An additional $800 per year tax will be paid as well. Poor people are exempted of course. LOL

Let's all just go back to the mud and live in caves and worship rocks.

Just heard on the Boortz radio program that Australia has a proposal for a $5,000 baby tax to be paid in order to offset each child's 'carbon footprint'. An additional $800 per year tax will be paid as well. Poor people are exempted of course. LOL

Let's all just go back to the mud and live in caves and worship rocks.

The worlds gone mad (or maybe just us Australians), Down here we have the Baby Bonus (from 1 July 2008 the Baby Bonus will be increased to $5000. per baby)
So the Government will give with one hand and take away with the other. LOL

The baby bonus has been nicknamed the "plasma tv bonus" because thats what the money is being spent on.

I suppose the title of the thread says it all.

Make fun of that which you don't understand.

Anyone who has run even one WU of ClimatePrediction.net would at least have some
appreciation of the delicate balance with nature we rely on for survival. Instead
of squandering untold billions on wars, ensuring a steady diet of fossil fuels,
might this capital not be better used in an all out effort to harness
fusion power, developing infrastructure for decarbonizing fossil fuels, and
distributing Hydrogen as a fuel. I'm sure that once the need becomes obvious,
the markets will respond, but hindsight is 20-20, we really could use some
foresight on the part of governments, but don't hold your breath.

:#]

It's time to forget about ever increasing levels of energy consumption, and past time to seek real solutions.
Who says we have to keep increasing our use of energy every year?

What would happen if Canadians and Americans were to have our energy consumption cut in half?
Do you really believe that we'd be dying in the dark under that circumstance?

I suppose the title of the thread says it all.

Make fun of that which you don't understand.

Anyone who has run even one WU of ClimatePrediction.net would at least have some
appreciation of the delicate balance with nature we rely on for survival. Instead
of squandering untold billions on wars, ensuring a steady diet of fossil fuels,
might this capital not be better used in an all out effort to harness
fusion power, developing infrastructure for decarbonizing fossil fuels, and
distributing Hydrogen as a fuel. I'm sure that once the need becomes obvious,
the markets will respond, but hindsight is 20-20, we really could use some
foresight on the part of governments, but don't hold your breath.

:#]

It appears to me that it is just like Y2k, the folks that i will have to buy guns to fight off will be fleeing from

It's time to forget about ever increasing levels of energy consumption, and past time to seek real solutions.
Who says we have to keep increasing our use of energy every year?

What would happen if Canadians and Americans were to have our energy consumption cut in half?
Do you really believe that we'd be dying in the dark under that circumstance?

Probably not. But there sure would be a whole lot of people just wandering around.

omg, knightmate. You're killing me! Killing me!!!! lol. The whole staggering around thing....jeebus....haha

Penguins in peril

Shrinking sea ice takes deadly toll on Pacific walrus

100th POST!
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Putting the focus on global warming
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Facing the climate change challenge
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Climate alters the water equation

WEATHER WATCH
ROBERT KRIER

February 7, 2008

Mankind has messed with the climate of the West, and as a consequence, long-established rules about managing water supplies have become obsolete.

Those are the primary conclusions of two reports published last week.

The first study, released in the journal Sciencexpress, was conducted by a team of scientists led by Tim Barnett, a climate researcher at UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Barnett and his colleagues analyzed precipitation and river-flow data from the last half of the 20th century in nine mountain ranges in the West, including the Sierra Nevada.

The 1950-99 period saw gradual decreases in the percentage of precipitation falling as snow, earlier snow melts, increased temperatures and progressively earlier dates when rivers reached their mid-flow points for the season.

Using computer models to help account for natural variability, the researchers determined that most of the changes in hydrology were caused by human-induced warming.

“The climate has been changing in the West, but nobody ever answered the question: Why?” Barnett said. “The answer is, it's us.”

Water shortages and a lack of storage capacity to meet changing river flows will become increasingly likely, the study found. Forecast models point to even greater changes and challenges in the future.

“It's a major problem,” said Barnett, who worked on the study with fellow Scripps researchers, plus scientists from Washington state, Japan and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Nor California.

Barnett, who played a lead role in the first three reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the current wet winter and heavy snowpack should not fool people into thinking that Western climate isn't changing.

“There will be fluctuations in temperature and precipitation in the future, too,” he said. Overall, he said, precipitation will be less reliable, and managing water resources will be more difficult.

The Sierra Nevada, a sort of natural reservoir that holds much of California's water in the form of snow, should become increasingly ineffective at storing that supply, Barnett said.

“Building more dams would be useful in California,” he said. “That's a pretty obvious solution. This might be a time when the environmentalists need to step aside.”

State water management officials already see shifts in snowpacks and melt times, said Jeanine Jones, California's interstate resources manager. Some recent years have brought extremely early snow melts, she said.

With peak runoffs coming earlier in the spring, flood-control managers must recalculate optimum storage levels for various points of the year, Jones said.

Climate change is making past precipitation patterns increasingly irrelevant for water managers, according to Christopher Milly, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. Milly is the lead author of a study published last week in the journal Science.

Under a warming climate, there is cause for concern in regions downstream from places like the Sierra Nevada, where the rain-snow division is quite sensitive to temperature, Milly said. In such regions, warming also presents a challenge for water supply, because winter runoff is not well aligned in time with summer water demand, he said.

“The human effect on climate is expected to grow over time in the coming decades, so we will get further from the familiar past climate, so it will be harder to say what is 'normal' precipitation,” Milly said.

“On the other hand, we will likely become increasingly skillful over time at predicting future climate, and that will make the climate forecasting problem easier. I cannot guess which of these two effects will dominate.”
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Carbon Dioxide becomes Gasoline?
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Calm Chaos Forums : Everyone Welcome

Computer climate models are increasingly reliable
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The Energy Future: Scenarios
By Arnold Kling : 06 Mar 2008

"[Electricity from solar power] is doubling now every two years. Doubling every two years means multiplying by 1,000 in 20 years. At that rate we'll meet 100 percent of our energy needs in 20 years." --Ray Kurzweil, quoted in Live Science

That is one scenario for energy. This essay will look at that possibility, along with other scenarios for energy. Keep in mind that I am not a scientist or an energy policy expert. These are just my amateur observations.
Solar Singularity

Suppose that solar power achieves and then surpasses "grid parity," meaning that it produces electrictity less expensively than conventional power sources. Once that happens, solar power would inevitably become the dominant energy source. Call it the Solar Singularity.

When, if ever, will the Solar Singularity take place? Kurzweil evidently sees it happening in less than twenty years. That extrapolation, however, is not intrinsically persuasive. As Andrew Leonard pointed out, citing Jeremy Ball, the demand for solar power has been driven in recent years by government subsidies. Extrapolating the last decade of subsidy-driven growth for the next twenty years is a rather dubious exercise. Only when solar power has been weaned off government support will we get a true measure of the speed at which we are approaching the Solar Singularity.

The U.S. Department of Energy's future solar timeline predicts that grid parity will be achieved within ten years, for both concentrating solar power and photovoltaics. However, a glance at the Department's 2007-2011 Plan suggests that there is a wide range of uncertainty concerning the cost of photovoltaics. Concentrating solar power appears to be much closer to economic viability at present.

For photovoltaics, where are the cost reductions going to come from? A recent report from Silicon Valley offered an optimistic scenario.

A link between Moore's Law and solar technology reflects the engineering reality that computer chips and solar cells have a lot in common.

"A solar cell is just a big specialized chip, so everything we've learned about making chips applies," said Paul Saffo, an associate engineering professor at Stanford University and a longtime observer of Silicon Valley."

A computer chip gets more computationally efficient as engineeers figure out ways to cram more components into the same space. The analogy with a solar chip would be for it to become more efficient at converting sunlight to electricity as its components get closer together. It is not clear to me that this is a valid analogy.

For solar power, I would rather see prizes and subsidies given to research than to deployment. If solar power systems are uneconomical to manufacture now, then it seems to me that we should not be manufacturing them. Until better technologies are developed, deployment is counterproductive. On the other hand, if research does lead to cost-effective technologies, then the Solar Singularity will take care of itself.
Carbon Competition

Oil and coal are the two least expensive sources of energy. That is why we use them so much. If we were just to rely on markets, then my guess is that oil and coal would be selected as the dominant fuels for at least the next two decades.

Nansen G. Saleri recently wrote that technologies have been developed for extracting more oil from existing deposits. The problem is political. He notes that 90 percent of oil reserves are controlled by national companies.

Oil is the economic lifeline for dictators and autocrats. A true private-sector oil industry seems to be unattainable. The temptation for government to control oil production is simply too great. The Oilocrats do not care about investing in technology for more effective extraction. As a result, oil production is lower than it should be.

Dictatorship of another sort impedes coal as well as oil. This is the dictatorship of the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change, which has forged a political consensus that we must fear man-made global warming. I actually think that there is more science to be found among the "dissenting voices" of the climate debate. But the Carbon Competition scenario will encounter a great deal of friction from those who believe in the Global Warming story.

Overall, the prospects for the Carbon Competition scenario seem poor. The Oilocrats and the climate dictators are likely to hold sway.
Conservation

For the next five years, stretching our existing energy resources by using conservation seems to hold more promise than new energy production. As reported on The Energy Blog, the McKinsey Global Institute sees a high return on investment from energy conservation measures. I assume that if MGI recalculated based on an oil price of $100 a barrel, the returns would be even higher.

An important potential source of conservation is modernization of the electric power grid. Lynne Kiesling has been a steady advocate of peak-load pricing and other improvements that could be made in the process of electricity delivery.
Nu-Cu-Lar

Nuclear power is a proven technology. My presumption would be that nuclear power ought to be somewhat cheaper today than it used to be, because the computers and sensors needed to operate a nuclear power plant ought to cost much less than they did thirty years ago.

The need for nuclear power could increase over the next decade if battery technology continues to improve. Engineers appear to be getting closer to solving the problem of developing a car battery that can be re-charged regularly overnight. Once such batteries can be manufactured at a reasonable cost, it would become economical to shift from gasoline. However, if we are going to put more demand on the electricity grid, then that seems to raise the priority of modernizing that grid and adding more nuclear power plants.

The question for nuclear power is whether the return on investment is sufficient. Much of this reflects an assessment of the likelihood of a serious accident or problem with nucear waste. If those probabilities are sufficiently high, then nuclear plant construction will never be economical.
Franken-fuels Future

Just as with solar power, subsidies are leading to the deployment of biofuels before they are truly economical. Biofuels will only provide a net energy gain if dramatic innovations take place.

Vinod Khosla wrote recently that

The world of fuel chemistry production is undergoing exciting change...We will be able to remove a hydroxyl group here, add a hydrogen there, and create a longer or shorter carbon chain to optimize fuels.

A number of entrepreneurs are trying to develop or modify organisms that can help with the conversion of biomass into fuel. This depends on the new field of genetic engineering. Drew Endy argued recently that bio-engineering is at a take-off point. If he is correct, then "wet" nanotechnology (using genetic engineering) is poised to overtake conventional materials science as a source of innovation.

I call this the Franken-fuels Future. My relatively uninformed guess would be that over the next ten to fifteen years we are more likely to approach the Franken-fuels Future than to achieve the Solar Singularity. Indeed, one possible path to efficient solar power is the development of organisms that convert the sun's energy to electricity that we can use.
Summary

Below is a table that summarizes these scenarios.
Scenario**************Most Economical Timeframe*****Remarks
Carbon Competition****2008-2020****************Cheapest energy sources, except for political barriers
Conservation**********2008-2015***************Smarter electric grid, better car batteries
Nu-cu-lar*************2013-2030****************It works, but at what risk?
Franken-fuels*********2020 and beyond***********The most likely revolution
Solar Singularity*****2025 and beyond*************Hope it happens

Note that hydrogen does not appear anywhere in this table. I have a very hard time believing that it will be economical to deliver hydrogen to filling stations the way that gasoline is delivered today. If hydrogen enters the picture, it will be as part of a solution for re-chargeable car batteries. Even there, I have my doubts.

Conventional biofuels, including corn-based ethanol, also do not appear in this table. The political-agribusiness-lobbying complex can keep the conventional biofuel industry alive. However, until we get to the Franken-fuels scenario, biofuels are wasteful.

Finally, let me repeat that these are merely my impressions. Precise calculations are beyond my capabilities. Moreover, calculations depend on the outcomes of numerous research ventures that are impossible to predict.
____________
Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

A list ( probably incomplete ) of all the things that have been blamed on Global Warming...

Acne, agricultural land increase, Afghan poppies destroyed, Africa devastated, African aid threatened, Africa in conflict, aggressive weeds, air pressure changes, Alaska reshaped, allergies increase, Alps melting, Amazon a desert, American dream end, amphibians breeding earlier (or not), anaphylactic reactions to bee stings, ancient forests dramatically changed, animals head for the hills, Antarctic grass flourishes, Antarctic ice grows, Antarctic ice shrinks, Antarctic sea life at risk, anxiety treatment, algal blooms, archaeological sites threatened, Arctic bogs melt, Arctic in bloom, Arctic ice free, Arctic lakes disappear, Arctic tundra to burn, Atlantic less salty, Atlantic more salty, atmospheric circulation modified, attack of the killer jellyfish, avalanches reduced, avalanches increased, Baghdad snow, Bahrain under water, bananas grow, beer shortage, beetle infestation, bet for $10,000, better beer, big melt faster, billion dollar research projects, billions face risk, billions of deaths, bird distributions change, bird visitors drop, birds confused, birds return early, birds driven north, bittern boom ends, blackbirds stop singing, blizzards, blue mussels return, bluetongue, brains shrink, bridge collapse (Minneapolis), Britain Siberian, British gardens change, brothels struggle, brown Ireland, bubonic plague, budget increases, Buddhist temple threatened, building collapse, building season extension, bushfires, business opportunities, business risks, butterflies move north, camel deaths, cancer deaths in England, cannibalism, cataracts, caterpillar biomass shift, cave paintings threatened, childhood insomnia, Cholera, circumcision in decline, cirrus disappearance, civil unrest, cloud increase, cloud stripping, cockroach migration, coffee threatened, cold climate creatures survive, cold spells (Australia), cold wave (India), computer models, conferences, conflict, conflict with Russia, consumers foot the bill, coral bleaching, coral reefs dying, coral reefs grow, coral reefs shrink , cost of trillions, cougar attacks, cradle of civilisation threatened, crime increase, crocodile sex, crops devastated, crumbling roads, buildings and sewage systems, curriculum change, cyclones (Australia), danger to kid's health, Darfur, Dartford Warbler plague, death rate increase (US), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, depression, desert advance, desert retreat, destruction of the environment, disappearance of coastal cities, diseases move north, Dolomites collapse, drought, ducks and geese decline, dust bowl in the corn belt, early marriages, early spring, earlier pollen season, Earth biodiversity crisis, Earth dying, Earth even hotter, Earth light dimming, Earth lopsided, Earth melting, Earth morbid fever, Earth on fast track, Earth past point of no return, Earth slowing down, Earth spins faster, Earth to explode, earth upside down, Earth wobbling, earthquakes, El Niño intensification, end of the world as we know it, erosion, emerging infections, encephalitis, English villages lost, equality threatened, Europe simultaneously baking and freezing, eutrophication, evolution accelerating, expansion of university climate groups, Extinctions (human, civilisation, logic, Inuit, smallest butterfly, cod, ladybirds, pikas, polar bears, gorillas, walrus, whales, frogs, toads, plants, salmon, trout, wild flowers, woodlice, penguins, a million species, half of all animal and plant species, mountain species, not polar bears, barrier reef, leaches), experts muzzled, extreme changes to California, fading fall foliage, fainting, famine, farmers go under, fashion disaster, fever,figurehead sacked, fir cone bonanza, fish catches drop, fish downsize, fish catches rise, fish deaf, fish get lost, fish stocks at risk, fish stocks decline, five million illnesses, flesh eating disease, flood patterns change, floods, floods of beaches and cities, flood of migrants, flood preparation for crisis, Florida economic decline, flowers in peril, food poisoning, food prices rise, food prices soar, food security threat (SA), footpath erosion, forest decline, forest expansion, frog with extra heads, frostbite, frost damage increased, frosts, fungi fruitful, fungi invasion, games change, Garden of Eden wilts, genetic diversity decline, gene pools slashed, giant oysters invade, giant pythons invade, giant squid migrate, gingerbread houses collapse, glacial earthquakes, glacial retreat, glacial growth, glacier wrapped, global cooling, global dimming, glowing clouds, god melts, golf Masters wrecked, Gore omnipresence, grandstanding, grasslands wetter, Great Barrier Reef 95% dead, Great Lakes drop, greening of the North, Grey whales lose weight, Gulf Stream failure, habitat loss, Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, harmful algae, harvest increase, harvest shrinkage, hay fever epidemic, health affected, health of children harmed, heart disease, heart attacks and strokes (Australia), heat waves, hibernation affected, hibernation ends too soon, hibernation ends too late, homeless 50 million, hornets, high court debates, human development faces unprecedented reversal, human fertility reduced, human health improvement, human health risk, human race oblivion, hurricanes, hurricane reduction, hydropower problems, hyperthermia deaths, ice sheet growth, ice sheet shrinkage, ice shelf collapse, illness and death, inclement weather, India drowning, infrastructure failure (Canada), industry threatened, infectious diseases, inflation in China, insect explosion, insurance premium rises, Inuit displacement, Inuit poisoned, Inuit suing, invasion of cats, invasion of herons, invasion of jellyfish, invasion of midges, island disappears, islands sinking, itchier poison ivy, jellyfish explosion, jets fall from sky, Kew Gardens taxed, killing us, kitten boom, krill decline, lake and stream productivity decline, lake empties, lake shrinking and growing, landslides, landslides of ice at 140 mph, lawsuits increase, lawsuit successful, lawyers' income increased (surprise surprise!), lives saved, Loch Ness monster dead, lush growth in rain forests, Malaria, mammoth dung melt, Maple production advanced, Maple syrup shortage, marine diseases, marine food chain decimated, Meaching (end of the world), Mediterranean rises, megacryometeors, Melanoma, methane emissions from plants, methane burps, methane runaway, melting permafrost, Middle Kingdom convulses, migration, migration difficult (birds), migratory birds huge losses, microbes to decompose soil carbon more rapidly, minorities hit, monkeys on the move, Mont Blanc grows, monuments imperiled, moose dying, more bad air days, more research needed, mortality increased, mountain (Everest) shrinking, mountains break up, mountains melting, mountains taller, mortality lower, National security implications, natural disasters quadruple, new islands, next ice age, NFL threatened, Nile delta damaged, noctilucent clouds, no effect in India, Northwest Passage opened, nuclear plants bloom, oaks dying, oaks move north, ocean acidification, ocean deserts expand, ocean waves speed up, opera house to be destroyed, outdoor hockey threatened, ozone repair slowed, ozone rise, Pacific dead zone, personal carbon rationing, pest outbreaks, pests increase, phenology shifts, plankton blooms, plankton destabilised, plankton loss, plant viruses, plants march north, polar bears aggressive, polar bears cannibalistic, polar bears drowning, polar bears starve, polar tours scrapped, popcorn rise, porpoise astray, profits collapse, psychiatric illness, puffin decline, railroad tracks deformed, rainfall increase, rape wave, refugees, release of ancient frozen viruses, resorts disappear, rice threatened, rice yields crash, rift on Capitol Hill, rioting and nuclear war, river flow impacted, rivers raised, roads wear out, robins rampant, rocky peaks crack apart, roof of the world a desert, rooftop bars, Ross river disease, ruins ruined, salinity reduction, salinity increase, Salmonella, satellites accelerate, school closures, sea level rise, sea level rise faster, seals mating more, sewer bills rise, severe thunderstorms, sex change, sharks booming, sharks moving north, sheep shrink, shop closures, short-nosed dogs endangered, shrinking ponds, shrinking shrine, ski resorts threatened, skin cancer, slow death, smaller brains, smog, snowfall increase, snowfall heavy, snowfall reduction, soaring food prices, societal collapse, songbirds change eating habits, sour grapes, space problem, spectacular orchids, spiders invade Scotland, squid population explosion, squirrels reproduce earlier, storms wetter, stormwater drains stressed, street crime to increase, subsidence, suicide, swordfish in the Baltic, Tabasco tragedy, taxes, tectonic plate movement, teenage drinking, terrorism, threat to peace, ticks move northward (Sweden), tides rise, tornado outbreak, tourism increase, trade barriers, trade winds weakened, transportation threatened, tree foliage increase (UK), tree growth slowed,, trees could return to Antarctic, trees in trouble, trees less colourful, trees more colourful, trees lush, tropics expansion, tropopause raised, truffle shortage, turtles crash, turtles lay earlier, UK coastal impact, UK Katrina, Vampire moths, Venice flooded, volcanic eruptions, walrus pups orphaned, war, wars over water, wars sparked, wars threaten billions, water bills double, water supply unreliability, water scarcity (20% of increase), water stress, weather out of its mind, weather patterns awry, weeds, Western aid cancelled out, West Nile fever, whales move north, wheat yields crushed in Australia, wildfires, wind shift, wind reduced, wine - harm to Australian industry, wine industry damage (California), wine industry disaster (US), wine - more English, wine -German boon, wine - no more French , wine passé (Napa), winters in Britain colder, winter in Britain dead, witchcraft executions, wolves eat more moose, wolves eat less, workers laid off, World at war, World bankruptcy, World in crisis, World in flames, Yellow fever.

and all on 0.006 deg C per year!

The list provided has links to all the " news " articles " that mentioned the items on the list. If it seems necessary, I will go back through the list and click on the individual links and provide them here. It'll take me a while though.
____________
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Death is preordained

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Highlighting clean energy in San Diego
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Tassie's key role in clean revolution
Article from: The Mercury

ANNE MATHER

May 03, 2008 12:00am

TASMANIA is at the forefront of world-leading technology which has the potential to clean up the coal industry.

Australian company Exergen has been testing new technology at Beaconsfield in northern Tasmania which reduces the greenhouse gas emissions of brown coal.

The technology involves reducing the moisture and contaminants in brown coal, which significantly reduces its carbon emissions when burnt.

The revolutionary procedure was being kept tightly under wraps, but was brought into the spotlight yesterday with the announcement of a multi-million dollar investment in the trials.

Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson announced yesterday three of the world's largest mining entities had committed to the clean-coal technology, known as Continuous Hydrothermal Dewatering (CHTD).

Mr Ferguson said Indian company Tata Power and leading engineering services company Sedgman had joined founding shareholder Thiess as cornerstone investors in both Exergen Pty Ltd and its technology.

Mr Ferguson said the technology could revolutionise the coal industry.

Teamed with modern power generation plants, Exergen promises emission reductions of approximately 40 per cent.

Exergen general manager Greg Kukla said the technology could remove up to 80 per cent of the moisture from brown coal, while also removing other contaminants.

The technology involves placing coal in a reactor which expels water as a liquid and, in the process, reduces soluble ash content; improving energy efficiency and significantly reducing greenhouse gas.
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Acne, agricultural land increase, Afghan poppies destroyed, Africa devastated, African aid threatened, Africa in conflict, aggressive weeds, air pressure changes, Alaska reshaped, allergies increase, Alps melting, Amazon a desert, American dream end, amphibians breeding earlier (or not), anaphylactic reactions to bee stings, ancient forests dramatically changed, animals head for the hills, Antarctic grass flourishes, Antarctic ice grows, Antarctic ice shrinks, Antarctic sea life at risk, anxiety treatment, algal blooms, archaeological sites threatened, Arctic bogs melt, Arctic in bloom, Arctic ice free, Arctic lakes disappear, Arctic tundra to burn, Atlantic less salty, Atlantic more salty, atmospheric circulation modified, attack of the killer jellyfish, avalanches reduced, avalanches increased, Baghdad snow, Bahrain under water, bananas grow, beer shortage, beetle infestation, bet for $10,000, better beer, big melt faster, billion dollar research projects, billions face risk, billions of deaths, bird distributions change, bird visitors drop, birds confused, birds return early, birds driven north, bittern boom ends, blackbirds stop singing, blizzards, blue mussels return, bluetongue, brains shrink, bridge collapse (Minneapolis), Britain Siberian, British gardens change, brothels struggle, brown Ireland, bubonic plague, budget increases, Buddhist temple threatened, building collapse, building season extension, bushfires, business opportunities, business risks, butterflies move north, camel deaths, cancer deaths in England, cannibalism, cataracts, caterpillar biomass shift, cave paintings threatened, childhood insomnia, Cholera, circumcision in decline, cirrus disappearance, civil unrest, cloud increase, cloud stripping, cockroach migration, coffee threatened, cold climate creatures survive, cold spells (Australia), cold wave (India), computer models, conferences, conflict, conflict with Russia, consumers foot the bill, coral bleaching, coral reefs dying, coral reefs grow, coral reefs shrink , cost of trillions, cougar attacks, cradle of civilisation threatened, crime increase, crocodile sex, crops devastated, crumbling roads, buildings and sewage systems, curriculum change, cyclones (Australia), danger to kid's health, Darfur, Dartford Warbler plague, death rate increase (US), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, depression, desert advance, desert retreat, destruction of the environment, disappearance of coastal cities, diseases move north, Dolomites collapse, drought, ducks and geese decline, dust bowl in the corn belt, early marriages, early spring, earlier pollen season, Earth biodiversity crisis, Earth dying, Earth even hotter, Earth light dimming, Earth lopsided, Earth melting, Earth morbid fever, Earth on fast track, Earth past point of no return, Earth slowing down, Earth spins faster, Earth to explode, earth upside down, Earth wobbling, earthquakes, El Niño intensification, end of the world as we know it, erosion, emerging infections, encephalitis, English villages lost, equality threatened, Europe simultaneously baking and freezing, eutrophication, evolution accelerating, expansion of university climate groups, Extinctions (human, civilisation, logic, Inuit, smallest butterfly, cod, ladybirds, pikas, polar bears, gorillas, walrus, whales, frogs, toads, plants, salmon, trout, wild flowers, woodlice, penguins, a million species, half of all animal and plant species, mountain species, not polar bears, barrier reef, leaches), experts muzzled, extreme changes to California, fading fall foliage, fainting, famine, farmers go under, fashion disaster, fever,figurehead sacked, fir cone bonanza, fish catches drop, fish downsize, fish catches rise, fish deaf, fish get lost, fish stocks at risk, fish stocks decline, five million illnesses, flesh eating disease, flood patterns change, floods, floods of beaches and cities, flood of migrants, flood preparation for crisis, Florida economic decline, flowers in peril, food poisoning, food prices rise, food prices soar, food security threat (SA), footpath erosion, forest decline, forest expansion, frog with extra heads, frostbite, frost damage increased, frosts, fungi fruitful, fungi invasion, games change, Garden of Eden wilts, genetic diversity decline, gene pools slashed, giant oysters invade, giant pythons invade, giant squid migrate, gingerbread houses collapse, glacial earthquakes, glacial retreat, glacial growth, glacier wrapped, global cooling, global dimming, glowing clouds, god melts, golf Masters wrecked, Gore omnipresence, grandstanding, grasslands wetter, Great Barrier Reef 95% dead, Great Lakes drop, greening of the North, Grey whales lose weight, Gulf Stream failure, habitat loss, Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, harmful algae, harvest increase, harvest shrinkage, hay fever epidemic, health affected, health of children harmed, heart disease, heart attacks and strokes (Australia), heat waves, hibernation affected, hibernation ends too soon, hibernation ends too late, homeless 50 million, hornets, high court debates, human development faces unprecedented reversal, human fertility reduced, human health improvement, human health risk, human race oblivion, hurricanes, hurricane reduction, hydropower problems, hyperthermia deaths, ice sheet growth, ice sheet shrinkage, ice shelf collapse, illness and death, inclement weather, India drowning, infrastructure failure (Canada), industry threatened, infectious diseases, inflation in China, insect explosion, insurance premium rises, Inuit displacement, Inuit poisoned, Inuit suing, invasion of cats, invasion of herons, invasion of jellyfish, invasion of midges, island disappears, islands sinking, itchier poison ivy, jellyfish explosion, jets fall from sky, Kew Gardens taxed, killing us, kitten boom, krill decline, lake and stream productivity decline, lake empties, lake shrinking and growing, landslides, landslides of ice at 140 mph, lawsuits increase, lawsuit successful, lawyers' income increased (surprise surprise!), lives saved, Loch Ness monster dead, lush growth in rain forests, Malaria, mammoth dung melt, Maple production advanced, Maple syrup shortage, marine diseases, marine food chain decimated, Meaching (end of the world), Mediterranean rises, megacryometeors, Melanoma, methane emissions from plants, methane burps, methane runaway, melting permafrost, Middle Kingdom convulses, migration, migration difficult (birds), migratory birds huge losses, microbes to decompose soil carbon more rapidly, minorities hit, monkeys on the move, Mont Blanc grows, monuments imperiled, moose dying, more bad air days, more research needed, mortality increased, mountain (Everest) shrinking, mountains break up, mountains melting, mountains taller, mortality lower, National security implications, natural disasters quadruple, new islands, next ice age, NFL threatened, Nile delta damaged, noctilucent clouds, no effect in India, Northwest Passage opened, nuclear plants bloom, oaks dying, oaks move north, ocean acidification, ocean deserts expand, ocean waves speed up, opera house to be destroyed, outdoor hockey threatened, ozone repair slowed, ozone rise, Pacific dead zone, personal carbon rationing, pest outbreaks, pests increase, phenology shifts, plankton blooms, plankton destabilised, plankton loss, plant viruses, plants march north, polar bears aggressive, polar bears cannibalistic, polar bears drowning, polar bears starve, polar tours scrapped, popcorn rise, porpoise astray, profits collapse, psychiatric illness, puffin decline, railroad tracks deformed, rainfall increase, rape wave, refugees, release of ancient frozen viruses, resorts disappear, rice threatened, rice yields crash, rift on Capitol Hill, rioting and nuclear war, river flow impacted, rivers raised, roads wear out, robins rampant, rocky peaks crack apart, roof of the world a desert, rooftop bars, Ross river disease, ruins ruined, salinity reduction, salinity increase, Salmonella, satellites accelerate, school closures, sea level rise, sea level rise faster, seals mating more, sewer bills rise, severe thunderstorms, sex change, sharks booming, sharks moving north, sheep shrink, shop closures, short-nosed dogs endangered, shrinking ponds, shrinking shrine, ski resorts threatened, skin cancer, slow death, smaller brains, smog, snowfall increase, snowfall heavy, snowfall reduction, soaring food prices, societal collapse, songbirds change eating habits, sour grapes, space problem, spectacular orchids, spiders invade Scotland, squid population explosion, squirrels reproduce earlier, storms wetter, stormwater drains stressed, street crime to increase, subsidence, suicide, swordfish in the Baltic, Tabasco tragedy, taxes, tectonic plate movement, teenage drinking, terrorism, threat to peace, ticks move northward (Sweden), tides rise, tornado outbreak, tourism increase, trade barriers, trade winds weakened, transportation threatened, tree foliage increase (UK), tree growth slowed,, trees could return to Antarctic, trees in trouble, trees less colourful, trees more colourful, trees lush, tropics expansion, tropopause raised, truffle shortage, turtles crash, turtles lay earlier, UK coastal impact, UK Katrina, Vampire moths, Venice flooded, volcanic eruptions, walrus pups orphaned, war, wars over water, wars sparked, wars threaten billions, water bills double, water supply unreliability, water scarcity (20% of increase), water stress, weather out of its mind, weather patterns awry, weeds, Western aid cancelled out, West Nile fever, whales move north, wheat yields crushed in Australia, wildfires, wind shift, wind reduced, wine - harm to Australian industry, wine industry damage (California), wine industry disaster (US), wine - more English, wine -German boon, wine - no more French , wine passé (Napa), winters in Britain colder, winter in Britain dead, witchcraft executions, wolves eat more moose, wolves eat less, workers laid off, World at war, World bankruptcy, World in crisis, World in flames, Yellow fever.

[OMG! snip]

If it seems necessary, I will go back through the list and click on the individual links and provide them here. It'll take me a while though.

I wanna see some links... LOL... ;)

I wanna see some links... LOL... ;)

I hate you....LMAO

I wanna see some links... LOL... ;)

I hate you....LMAO

Only if they are interesting.

I wanna see some links... LOL... ;)

I hate you....LMAO

Only if they are interesting.

That's too subjective: What is uninteresting for you might be interesting for others, and vice versa

OK....since I am WAY too lazy to post all the links to the things that have been blamed on Global Warming....I will simply supply the link TO the links.

Warm List

* edit * Some of the links may not work. The majority of them do, though. * edit *
____________
Air Cold, the blade stops;
from silent stone,
Death is preordained

Calm Chaos Forums : Everyone Welcome

I will simply supply the link TO the links.

Slacker... ;)

An open letter to environmentalists

Thank you for your dedication to protecting our environment. Clean air and clean water are essential to preserving life on planet Earth. Protecting all species and natural lands and forests are admirable priorities. Recycling and a green lifestyle are wonderful. Making the environment the most important thing in your life is a good thing, not a problem. I support you.

But we do have a problem. You have vigorously embraced the Global Warming predictions of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and are using the warning of uncontrollable warming and a resulting environmental calamity to campaign for elimination of fossil fuels. Your environmentally conscious friends in politics and in the media have united with you to create a barrage of news reports, documentaries, TV feature reports, movies, books, concerts and protest events to build support for your goals. The war against fossil fuels has become a massive scare campaign that is giving children nightmares.

Here’s what’s wrong with that: the science is not valid. There is no Global Warming underway and the science on which the computer projections of weather chaos are based is wrong. Dead wrong.

I know many scientists are part of your movement and they have tried hard to give your uncontrollable climate change panic a scientific basis. The UN Climate Change Panel has a large staff, a big budget, a headquarters in Geneva and a strong champion in Al Gore to lead the charge. And thousands of well-intentioned politicians and the media of the world have supported your movement. It must seem to you that there can be no doubt: fossil fuels are destroying the environment and will lead to uncontrollable global warming unless we act now. With all that powerful support for your anti-fossil fuel movement, and with the worthy goal of saving the planet from the disastrous consequences of runaway Global Warming, how can you fail?

Here’s how: The science behind your global warming scare is bad and no anthropogenic global warming is happening. Dissenting scientists have now produced convincing evidence that the cornerstone of your scientific argument, increased atmospheric carbon dioxide forcing a rapid, irreversible rise in temperature, is invalid. All of the various “signs of global warming” you have so widely publicized have been proven wrong. They are normal variations in climate that result mostly from the cycles of the Sun. As the Sun cycle has changed in the last three or four years, they have reversed themselves. Arctic ice melting and polar bears dying, shrinkage of glaciers and the rise of ocean levels, increased intensity and number of hurricanes and intensified droughts have all been touted as signs of global warming. They are not. They are part of this natural variation in climate. The intensified hurricane claim never happened. Katrina was an isolated, random event. The droughts are part of the natural cycle and are reversing at this time. Glaciers are stabilizing. The Arctic ice cap is already back to normal.

Here is what I am suggesting you do. Campaign for your environmental goals on the basis of their own merit. Let go of the global warming frenzy before it leaves you discredited and embarrassed. Stop screaming, “The sky is falling.” It is not.

Do your good work. Devote your lives to our environment. In many ways you will succeed. We are all grateful for your love of the planet. But, don’t use scare tactics.

Most of all I urge you not to become extremists. And, may I encourage you to live your lives in a loving way, love your fellow human beings and our wonderful advanced standard of living and way of life as much as you love the Earth.

My very best regards,

John Coleman

P.s. - If you will read my briefs on the science that debunks the global warming frenzy and follow the links there, you will begin to realize the folly of Global Warming.

Go to ICECAP.us for a starter.JC

------------------------------------------

John Coleman is the founder of The Weather Channel.
____________
Air Cold, the blade stops;
from silent stone,
Death is preordained

Calm Chaos Forums : Everyone Welcome

John Coleman is the founder of The Weather Channel.

Polar bears placed on threatened list as sea ice recedes
But ruling won't affect warming policy

By Juliet Eilperin
THE WASHINGTON POST

May 15, 2008

WASHINGTON – Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne listed polar bears as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act yesterday, saying the loss of Arctic sea ice in a warming climate could drive them to the brink of extinction in less than four decades.

Although the Bush administration handed environmentalists a victory they had sought for more than three years, Kempthorne said he would ensure that his decision did not “open the door” for activists to force the adoption of limits on greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming.

The act “is not the right tool to set U.S. climate change policy,” he said in a news conference. “This has been a difficult decision. But in light of the scientific record and the restraints of the inflexible law that guides me, I believe it was the only decision I could make.”

The decision to list polar bears, which have become the iconic symbol of global warming's impact, highlights how an administration opposed to mandatory cuts in emissions has begun to acknowledge the growing evidence of their effects. Kempthorne pointed to satellite images of shrinking Arctic sea ice that has outpaced scientists' most dire projections. Polar bears use sea ice as a platform to hunt prey.

“The fact is that sea ice is receding in the Arctic,” he said. “As you can see, when we have looked at what is actually happening in the Arctic, we have found considerably less sea ice than the models are projecting. Because polar bears are vulnerable to this loss of habitat, they are, in my judgment, likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future – in this case, 45 years.”

Under the law, the federal government is now required to draft a recovery plan for the species, which entails assessing the population and its habitat. The ruling also compels federal agencies to consult with the Interior Department when considering decisions that could further imperil the polar bears.

Administration officials, however, sought to minimize the policy consequences of the decision – the first time the Endangered Species Act has been invoked to protect an animal principally threatened by global warming. Kempthorne made clear that the decision would not justify regulating emissions from power plants, vehicles or other human activities.

Kempthorne said that there is no scientific way to connect specific greenhouse gas emissions from specific smokestacks to the harm of a species or its habitat.

Kempthorne had the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issue a memo yesterday that said the existing science doesn't make such a connection. As a result, when new power plants and other emitters of greenhouse gases seek permission to operate, the Fish and Wildlife Service can't use the polar bear listing as a reason to deny a permit.

But environmentalists, who by and large praised the decision, said the administration would have no choice but to curb greenhouse gases.

“The law says what it says, not what the administration wishes it says,” said Kassie Siegel, climate program director at the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity. “This is great news for polar bears. ... It's also a watershed moment, the strongest statement we've had to date from this administration about global warming.”

Conservative and business groups, however, hailed Kempthorne's intention to limit the regulatory fallout.

“We must safeguard our environment while also protecting our economy,” said William Kovacs of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
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Control through global warming

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
THE WASHINGTON POST

May 30, 2008

I'm not a global warming believer. I'm not a global warming denier. I'm a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can't be very good to pump lots of CO2 into the atmosphere, but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats.

Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems – from ocean currents to cloud formation – that no one fully understands. Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing. The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative.

Yet on the basis of this speculation, environmental activists, attended by compliant scientists and opportunistic politicians, are advocating radical economic and social regulation. “The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity,” warns Czech President Vaclav Klaus, “is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism.”

If you doubt the arrogance, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming – infinitely more untested, complex and speculative – is a closed issue.

But declaring it closed has its rewards. It not only dismisses skeptics as the running dogs of reaction, i.e., of Exxon, Cheney and now Klaus. By fiat, it also hugely re-empowers the intellectual left.

For a century, an ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous knowledge class – social planners, scientists, intellectuals, experts and their left-wing political allies – arrogated to themselves the right to rule either in the name of the oppressed working class (communism) or, in its more benign form, by virtue of their superior expertise in achieving the highest social progress by means of state planning (socialism).

Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's China, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty more rapidly than ever in human history.

Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but – even better – in the name of Earth itself.

Environmentalists are Gaia's priests, instructing us in her proper service and casting out those who refuse to genuflect. (See Newsweek above.) And having proclaimed the ultimate commandment – carbon chastity – they are preparing the supporting canonical legislation that will tell you how much you can travel, what kind of light you will read by, and at what temperature you may set your bedroom thermostat.

Just Monday, a British parliamentary committee proposed that every citizen be required to carry a carbon card that must be presented, under penalty of law, when buying gasoline, taking an airplane or using electricity. The card contains your yearly carbon ration to be drawn down with every purchase, every trip, every swipe.

There's no greater social power than the power to ration. And, other than rationing food, there is no greater instrument of social control than rationing energy, the currency of just about everything one does and uses in an advanced society.

So what does the global warming agnostic propose as an alternative? First, more research - untainted and reliable - to determine (a) whether the carbon footprint of man is or is not lost among the massive natural forces (from sunspot activity to ocean currents) that affect climate, and (b) if the human effect is indeed significant, whether the planetary climate system has the homeostatic mechanisms (like the feedback loops in the human body, for example) with which to compensate.

Second, reduce our carbon footprint in the interim by doing the doable, rather than the economically ruinous and socially destructive. The most obvious step is a major move to nuclear power, which to the atmosphere is the cleanest of the clean.

But your would-be masters have foreseen this contingency. The Church of the Environment promulgates secondary dogmas as well. One of these is a strict nuclear taboo.

Rather convenient, is it not? Take this major coal-substituting fix off the table, and we will be rationing all the more. Guess who does the rationing?
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