Tag Archives: Enviros & Junk Science

Glowbull Warming Notes

THere’s been more and more coming out…from the scientific world…in the nature of inconvenient truths that, contrary to AlGor et al, climate is being driven by the sun…and, global temperature seems to have peaked in 1998!

SOMEBODY…ANYBODY…

    PLEASE

HIT ALGORE WITH A CLUEBAT & SHUT HIM UP!

Firstly, from the Boston Globe (not exactly a bastion of right-wing anti-enviros):

Br-r-r! Where did global warming go?

The stark headline appeared just over a year ago. “2007 to be ‘warmest on record,’ ” BBC News reported on Jan. 4, 2007. Citing experts in the British government’s Meteorological Office, the story announced that “the world is likely to experience the warmest year on record in 2007,” surpassing the all-time high reached in 1998.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the planetary hot flash: Much of the planet grew bitterly cold.

The piece goes on to cite the actual record for ’07, both for the southern and northern hemispheres. (Guess what? It was NOT warmer!)

OPEN LETTER to UN SECRETARY-GENERAL

This came out last month, but is still well worth noting…it was signed by 100 scientists from the much ballyhooed IPCC, who take great exception to the IPCC’s conclusions, insomuch as they would affect policies. Swing that cluebat!

Re: UN climate conference taking the World in entirely the wrong direction

It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages. Geological, archaeological, oral and written histories all attest to the dramatic challenges posed to past societies from unanticipated changes in temperature, precipitation, winds and other climatic variables. We therefore need to equip nations to become resilient to the full range of these natural phenomena by promoting economic growth and wealth generation.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued increasingly alarming conclusions about the climatic influences of human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2), a non-polluting gas that is essential to plant photosynthesis. While we understand the evidence that has led them to view CO2 emissions as harmful, the IPCC’s conclusions are quite inadequate as justification for implementing policies that will markedly diminish future prosperity. In particular, it is not established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions. On top of which, because attempts to cut emissions will slow development, the current UN approach of CO2 reduction is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it.

That last sentence there puts it into proper perspective as to where the rubber actually meets the road.

Contrary to the impression left by the IPCC Summary reports:

• Recent observations of phenomena such as glacial retreats, sea-level rise and the migration of temperature-sensitive species are not evidence for abnormal climate change, for none of these changes has been shown to lie outside the bounds of known natural variability.

• The average rate of warming of 0.1 to 0. 2 degrees Celsius per decade recorded by satellites during the late 20th century falls within known natural rates of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years.

• Leading scientists, including some senior IPCC representatives, acknowledge that today’s computer models cannot predict climate. Consistent with this, and despite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th-century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling.

You get the drift…

If it isn’t CO2, then what DOES drive climate? THE SUN! (What a concept!)

Even Russia is weighing in on this. Writing for Novosti, is Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute.

A cold spell soon to replace global warming

Stock up on fur coats and felt boots! This is my paradoxical advice to the warm world.

Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells. It started in the 17th century when there was no industrial influence on the climate to speak of and no such thing as the hothouse effect. The current warming is evidently a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases.

There’s more…check it out.

Study: Global Climate Unlinked from CO2

Sun, Not Man, Main Cause of Climate Change, New Study Says

The Chief has been following the science on this for some time. In spite of the scientific mantle assumed by the IPCC, its much-ballyhooed major “scientific” paper cited ad nauseum by AlGor and others selectively ignored science that ran counter to its pre-determined and politically driven summary conclusions.

While being certainly significant and welcome, this paper is only the latest in a series of scientific studies that rather thoroughly debunk the connection between CO2 and global warming.

According to a new study on global warming, climate scientists at the University of Rochester, the University of Alabama, and the University of Virginia found that the climate change models based on human influence do not match observed warming.

That is contrary to the views held by former Vice President Al Gore, who accepted the Nobel Prize on Monday along with the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and who thinks that climate change is largely caused by human action….

The new report, which challenges the claims of Gore and the IPCC, was published in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society.

The report was written by David Douglass at the University of Rochester, John Christy at the University of Alabama, and Benjamin Pearson and S. Fred Singer at the University of Virginia.

Throw another log on the fire.

Oz P.M. Flips on Enviro Policy

Kevin Rudd recoils from climate change pledge

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last night did an about-face on deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, days after Australia’s delegation backed the plan at the climate talks in Bali.

A government representative at the talks this week said Australia backed a 25-40 per cent cut on 1990 emission levels by 2020.

But after warnings it would lead to huge rises in electricity prices, Mr Rudd said the Government would not support the target.

Dang! What’s a pol to do? Another case of mugging by that evil thuggish reality.

Weather Channel Founder: Global Warming ‘Greatest Scam in History’

Another speaker of inconvenient truth.

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 allusion 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.

No mistaking THAT message, but wait…he’s just getting warmed up!

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.

Unfortunately, evidence suggests that even this mighty blow of the cluebat will not avail against the incrediblethickheadedness of AlGor’s band of enviro moonbats and their ilk, but one can hope that it may reach those not yet intellectually brain-dead.

AlGor Award “Partner” to Nobel Committee: No thanks!

U.N. Scientist Rejects Nobel Prize Share, Denounces Climate Alarmism

This is really good.

I’ve had a lot of fun recently with my tiny (and unofficial) slice of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But, though I was one of thousands of IPCC participants, I don’t think I will add “0.0001 Nobel Laureate” to my resume.

The other half of the prize was awarded to former Vice President Al Gore, whose carbon footprint would stomp my neighborhood flat. But that’s another story.Large icebergs in the Weddell Sea, Antarctica. Winter sea ice around the continent set a record maximum last month.

Both halves of the award honor promoting the message that Earth’s temperature is rising due to human-based emissions of greenhouse gases. The Nobel committee praises Mr. Gore and the IPCC for alerting us to a potential catastrophe and for spurring us to a carbonless economy.

I’m sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never “proof”) and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time.

There are some of us who remain so humbled by the task of measuring and understanding the extraordinarily complex climate system that we are skeptical of our ability to know what it is doing and why. As we build climate data sets from scratch and look into the guts of the climate system, however, we don’t find the alarmist theory matching observations. (The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite data we analyze at the University of Alabama in Huntsville does show modest warming — around 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit per century, if current warming trends of 0.25 degrees per decade continue.)

It is my turn to cringe when I hear overstated-confidence from those who describe the projected evolution of global weather patterns over the next 100 years, especially when I consider how difficult it is to accurately predict that system’s behavior over the next five days.

Mother Nature simply operates at a level of complexity that is, at this point, beyond the mastery of mere mortals (such as scientists) and the tools available to us. As my high-school physics teacher admonished us in those we-shall-conquer-the-world-with-a-slide-rule days, “Begin all of your scientific pronouncements with ‘At our present level of ignorance, we think we know . . .'”

There’s more. Go read it.

More Gory Stuff

Gore wins; facts lose

The world has become such a difficult and dangerous place that I am deeply appreciative of recent amusing events, which seem as if they were written by the Marx Brothers or Monty Python. I have in mind, it should go without saying, Al Gore winning both an Academy Award and the Nobel Peace Prize. The very sentence sounds like a punch line. But I can’t quite figure out who is supposed to be the butt of the joke.

Couldn’t have said it better myself!

This Tony Blankley piece goes on to do the nearly impossible: he makes the so-called “carbon offset” clearly understandable as the ineffective, meaningless scam that it is.

Before reviewing Gore’s various inanities that won him the Nobel, it is worth taking a look at one of his related projects: carbon offsets. As chairman and founder of Generation Investment Management, a firm that purchases carbon dioxide offsets, Gore stands to profit further from what he sees as mankind’s misery — which is OK by me. I’m glad to see he finally has developed the capitalist instinct (like his dad did with Occidental Petroleum and Armand Hammer).

But carbon offsets are a rather strange concept. Let me use a simple metaphor to explain it: Let’s suppose that Al Gore goes to an Italian restaurant and eats a loaf of garlic bread, a plate of lasagna, a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, an extra-large pizza with seven toppings, a couple bottles of Chianti and a large assortment of pastries. As a result, he puts on 10 pounds. But he is deeply concerned that mankind is getting too fat. So he pays 10 peasants in Asia $10 each to eat nothing for a week. Although they are already thin, by starving themselves for a week, they each lose a pound. As a result, after a week, mankind is weight neutral. Al Gore weighs 10 pounds more, 10 Asians weigh 10 pounds less — and Al Gore is given another Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership in keeping mankind’s waistline in check.

Yowch!

To get down to the Nobel nitty-gritty:

But Al Gore’s carbon offset shuffle is small potatoes, as it were. His great accomplishment is to have shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the thousands of scientists of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — while contradicting their scientific findings.

There’s more relevant supporting science in the piece…check it out for yourself…

…and yet even more Gore, this time from former political apparatchik and current talking head Dick Morris:

Gore can beat Hillary

If the bumper sticker of ’92 and ’96 (Clinton-Gore) divides, and we find Gore running against Hillary Clinton, Al Gore could not only beat the former First Lady for the Democratic nomination, he could win the presidency….Al Gore — the newly minted Nobel laureate — could steal the nomination from Hillary’s well-oiled machine.

This is both good and bad. To repeat the bad:

“…he could win the presidency.”

Sheesh! That’s a chilling thought.

Leading Meteorologist: Gore Blowing Hot Air!

Gore gets a cold shoulder

More inconvenient truth for AlGor:

ONE of the world’s foremost meteorologists has called the theory that helped Al Gore share the Nobel Peace Prize “ridiculous” and the product of “people who don’t understand how the atmosphere works”.

Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth.

His comments came on the same day that the Nobel committee honoured Mr Gore for his work in support of the link between humans and global warming.

Dr. Gray went on to cite specific details to clean up the Gore from the Euro Nobel Peace committee’s attempted coronation.

But Dr Gray, whose annual forecasts of the number of tropical storms and hurricanes are widely publicised, said a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures – related to the amount of salt in ocean water – was responsible for the global warming that he acknowledges has taken place.

“We’ll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realise how foolish it was,” Dr Gray said.

During his speech to a crowd of about 300 that included meteorology students and a host of professional meteorologists, Dr Gray also said those who had linked global warming to the increased number of hurricanes in recent years were in error.

He cited statistics showing there were 101 hurricanes from 1900 to 1949, in a period of cooler global temperatures, compared to 83 from 1957 to 2006 when the earth warmed.

“The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures,” Dr Gray said.

Great application of the ol’ cluebat on AlGor, not that it will make any difference.

UK Ruling on Film Not Favoring “Greens”

Inaccuracies in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth

From the UK site of a new political party calling itself…”The New Party”. (Call it what it is, eh?)

The decision by the government to distribute Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth has been the subject of a legal action by New Party member Stewart Dimmock. Although a full ruling has yet to be given, the Court found that the film was misleading in 11 respects and that the Guidance Notes drafted by the Education Secretary’s advisors served only to exacerbate the political propaganda in the film.

In order for the film to be shown, the Government must first amend their Guidance Notes to Teachers to make clear that 1.) The Film is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument. 2.) If teachers present the Film without making this plain they may be in breach of section 406 of the Education Act 1996 and guilty of political indoctrination. 3.) Eleven inaccuracies have to be specifically drawn to the attention of school children.

The inaccuracies are:

* The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government’s expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
* The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
* The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that it was “not possible” to attribute one-off events to global warming.
* The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that this was not the case.
* The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.
* The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
* The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
* The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.
* The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.
* The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
* The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

Now THAT’s inconvenient, right Al?

Paradigm Shift on Oil in Order

The concept of “peak oil” is near and dear to the hearts of the doomsayer schools of environmentalism. Here’s another perspective on the issue that seems to be based on something more than a case of enviromentalist “vapors”.

Russia is far from oil’s peak

The good news is that panic scenarios about the world running out of oil any time soon are wrong. The bad news is that the price of oil is going to continue to rise. “Peak Oil” is not our problem. Politics is. Big Oil wants to sustain high oil prices. US Vice President Dick Cheney and friends are all too willing to assist.

What is the “peak oil” theory?

The Peak Oil school rests its theory on conventional Western geology textbooks, most by American or British geologists, which claim oil is a “fossil fuel”, a biological residue or detritus of either fossilized dinosaur remains or perhaps algae, hence a product in finite supply. Biological origin is central to Peak Oil theory, used to explain why oil is only found in certain parts of the world where it was geologically trapped millions of years ago.

That would mean that dinosaur remains became compressed and over tens of millions of years fossilized and were trapped in underground reservoirs perhaps 1,200-2,000 meters below the surface of the Earth. In rare cases, so goes the theory, huge amounts of biological matter should have been trapped in rock formations in the shallower ocean regions such as in the Gulf of Mexico or North Sea or Gulf of Guinea. Geology should be only about figuring out where these pockets in the layers of the earth, called reservoirs, lie within certain sedimentary basins.

On the other hand…

An entirely alternative theory of oil formation has existed since the early 1950s in Russia, almost unknown to the West. It claims that the conventional US biological-origins theory is an unscientific absurdity that is unprovable. They point to the fact that Western geologists have repeatedly predicted finite oil over the past century, only then to find more, lots more.

Not only has this alternative explanation of the origins of oil and gas existed in theory, the emergence of Russia as the world’s largest oil and natural-gas producer has been based on the application of the theory in practice.(Emphasis added.)

Note here: they put their money where their mouth is, and lo and behold…it worked!

This has geopolitical consequences of staggering magnitude.

THAT is a profound understatement! Read the rest of this and THEN look at the price on the corner gas station, and scratch your head along with the Chief.

How could US geology be so far behind the 8-ball on this? Hey! We’ve had long practice at trailing the rest of the world in geological theory:

Russian geophysicists used the theories of brilliant German scientist Alfred Wegener fully 30 years before Western geologists “discovered” Wegener in the 1960s. In 1915, Wegener published the seminal text The Origin of Continents and Oceans, which suggested an original unified landmass or Pangaea more than 200 million years ago that separated into present continents by what he called continental drift.

Up to the 1960s, supposed US scientists such as Dr Frank Press, the White House science adviser, referred to Wegener as “lunatic”. Geologists at the end of the 1960s were forced to eat their words as Wegener offered the only interpretation that allowed them to discover the vast oil resources of the North Sea.

Perhaps in some decades Western geologists will rethink their mythology of fossil origins and realize what the Russians have known since the 1950s. In the meantime, Moscow holds a massive energy trump card.

Human GlowBull Warming Science Refutations

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

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.

Frankly, this is not news to the Chief…although this is one of the best-protected secrets of the MSM, as is noted by the authors of this recently released survey of the current science.

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.

WELL! If it ain’t us, then what IS it that drives global climate? Hmmmmmm? SURPRISE:

Singer emphasizes “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.

THE SUN? Affecting the earth’s climate! SHOCKING!

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.

The truth IS out there…and it’s not convenient to AlGore and his ilk.

GlowBull Warming Update

Runaway Climate Captured?

Runaway global warming, the climate alarmist fantasy let loose on the public, has not yet been captured, but it certainly appears to have at least been cornered by new data from researchers at the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH).

Yet more “inconvenient facts” for AlGore.

In a study published in the American Geophysical Union’s Geophysical Research Letters on Aug. 9, the UAH researchers provide more real-world evidence of the atmosphere’s self-regulating nature. If this particular self-regulatory mechanism is confirmed by additional research, it will represent yet another deal-breaker for the scientific hypothesis that has propped up climate alarmism thus far.

Global warmers claim that increasing levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases are raising global temperatures. But even if this claim was true — and there is ample reason to be skeptical — greenhouse gases by themselves could only warm the planet by so much.

FYI, there’s quite a bit of the technical and scientific background for this in the article. IMHO, it looks pretty good, but check it for yourself…or not.

More Inconvenient Truth – for AlGore

Survey: Less Than Half of all Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory
Comprehensive survey of published climate research reveals changing viewpoints

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.

This is the stuff cited ad nauseum by AlGore and his ilk to justify their quasi-hysterical warnings of disaster.

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.

Only if you don’t keep up with the REAL (as opposed to junk) science.

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.”

No shit, Sherlock!

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.(Emphasis NOT added by Chief.)

The truth is out there!

GlowBull Warming Update

Report from the Global Warming Battlefield

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.

Check it out for some REAL inconvenient truths.

Self-Proclaimed Candidate for “Hereticide”

Junk Science: A Green Sings the Renewable Energy Blues

Another moonbat mugged by that nasty old reality!

Rockefeller University’s Jesse Ausubel introduced his new article on renewable energy by openly worrying about “hereticide” — the all-to-common historical phenomenon of putting heretics to death.

As a long-time Green, Ausubel has good reason to be concerned given his article condemns renewable energy as “wrecking” the environment. “Renewables are not green,” is how Ausubel begins the article published in the International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology. It’s a remarkable statement coming from someone who beat his fellow Greens to global warming alarmism by at least 10 years.

Note that this is NOT just some guy spouting off…it IS a peer-reviewed scientific paper.

Great debate/conversational ammo to lob at your friendly fiendly neighborhood enviros.

Carbon Offsets: Modern Indulgences

Carbon Offsets — Buyer Beware

This whole “carbon offset” thing is a scam from the get-go in the best tradition of the medieval Church, designed by the manipulative to flummox the good-intentioned into buying themselves absolution from the guilt of their own existence by making indulgence payments for having the nerve to exhale the dread pollutant CO2.

Congress began investigating the carbon offset industry this week. The inquiry could produce some “inconvenient truths” for Al Gore and the nascent offset industry.

Carbon offsets ostensibly allow buyers to expunge their consciences of the new eco-sin of using energy derived from fossil fuels. Worried about the 8 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted each year by your SUV? Similar to the indulgences offered by Pope Leo X in the 16th century, you can absolve yourself of sin by purchasing $96 worth of CO2 offsets – typically offered at $12 per ton of CO2 emitted – from offset brokers who, in turn, supposedly use your cash to pay someone else to produce electricity with low or no CO2 emissions.

Last year, offsets representing 23.7 million tons of CO2 were sold to businesses and consumers. Sounds like a lot of CO2 emissions were avoided, except when you consider that annual natural emissions of CO2 amount to hundreds of billions of tons.

The physical world aside, the CO2 offset marketplace itself is questionable – hence this week’s congressional hearing entitled, “Voluntary Carbon Offsets: Getting What You Pay For.” The hearing is particularly notable since it was called by a Democrat-run Congress, concerned that global warming alarmism is being jeopardized by dubious marketing and consumer rip-offs involving offsets.

One can only hope for some rationality on this for a change, but given that it’s involving the Congress, the Chief isn’t holding his breath in anticipation of it.

Bee Epidemic ID’d by Scientist

Asian Parasite Killing Western Bees

SOme good news for beekeepers, but correspondingly bad news for enviro moonbats who have been predicting TEOTWAKI (see this site jargonology section) due to the imminent loss of pollination from honeybees.

A parasite common in Asian bees has spread to Europe and the Americas and is behind the mass disappearance of honeybees in many countries, says a Spanish scientist who has been studying the phenomenon for years.

The culprit is a microscopic parasite called Nosema ceranae said Mariano Higes, who leads a team of researchers at a government-funded apiculture centre in Guadalajara, the province east of Madrid that is the heartland of Spain’s honey industry.

What’s the science?

He and his colleagues have analysed thousands of samples from stricken hives in many countries.

Sounds about right to the Chief.

“We started in 2000 with the hypothesis that it was pesticides, but soon ruled it out,” he told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.

Pesticide traces were present only in a tiny proportion of samples and bee colonies were also dying in areas many miles from cultivated land, he said.

Ooops! There goes one of the enviro moonbats’ favorite hypotheses!

They then ruled out the Varroa mite, which is easy to see and which was not present in most of the affected hives. For a long time Higes and his colleagues thought a parasite called Nosema apis, common in wet weather, was killing the bees. “We saw the spores, but the symptoms were very different and it was happening in dry weather too.”

So much for several possible biohazards.

Then he decided to sequence the parasite’s DNA and discovered it was an Asian variant, Nosema ceranae. Asian honeybees are less vulnerable to it, but it can kill European bees in a matter of days in laboratory conditions.

Nosema ceranae is far more dangerous and lives in heat and cold. A hive can become infected in two months and the whole colony can collapse in six to 18 months,” said Higes, whose team has published a number of papers on the subject.

Another theory points a finger at mobile phone aerials, but Higes notes bees use the angle of the sun to navigate and not electromagnetic frequencies.

Darn! Another moonbat fave bites the dust!

Other elements, such as drought or misapplied treatments, may play a part in lowering bees’ resistance, but Higes is convinced the Asian parasite is the chief assassin.

Why? DNA apprehends another perp!

“We’ve no doubt at all it’s Nosema ceranae and we think 50 percent of Spanish hives are infected,” he said.

Spain, with 2.3 million hives, is home to a quarter of the European Union’s bees.

His team have also identified this parasite in bees from Austria, Slovenia and other parts of Eastern Europe and assume it has invaded from Asia over a number of years. Now it seems to have crossed the Atlantic and is present in Canada and Argentina, he said. The Spanish researchers have not tested samples from the United States, where bees have also gone missing.

OK. If N. ceranae is the culprit, it’s hard to deal with, right? I mean TEOTWAKI must still be on schedule for the moonbats to be justified, right?

Wrong.

Treatment for Nosema ceranae is effective and cheap — 1 euro (US$1.4) a hive twice a year — but beekeepers first have to be convinced the parasite is the problem.

Science comes through!

OK. So what’s the fix?

Enviro AlGore Dines on Endangered Fish

Gore’s message loses bite

ONLY one week after Live Earth, Al Gore’s green credentials slipped while hosting his daughter’s wedding in Beverly Hills.

Gore and his guests at the weekend ceremony dined on Chilean sea bass – arguably one of the world’s most threatened fish species. Also known as Patagonian toothfish, the species is under pressure from illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing activities in the Southern Ocean, jeopardising the sustainability of remaining stocks.

How this moonbat has ANY credibility is one that exceeds the ability of the Chief to figure out.

“Live Earth” Dead on Arrival

AlGor’s concert and media extravaganza has resulted in what has to be described as a less than stellar response, both in the US and UK.

Firstly, Rasmussen polling, which has a pretty good track record, shows that the US largely ignored the hype, and the concert.

Skeptical of Performers’ Motives, Public Tunes Out Live Earth Event

The Live Earth concert promoted by former Vice President Al Gore received plenty of media coverage and hype, but most Americans tuned out. Just 22% said they followed news stories about the concert Somewhat or Very Closely. Seventy-five percent (75%) did not follow coverage of the event.

By way of comparison, eight-in-ten voters routinely said they were following news coverage of the recent Senate debate over immigration. Fifty-four percent (54%) said they followed news coverage of the President’s decision to commute Scooter Libby’s sentence.

The Chief knows that HE wasn’t on the edge of his seat about this one.

One of the best zingers that was spot on about the event came from an apparently skeptical participant: “Matt Bellamy of the band Muse. Earlier in the week, he jokingly referred to Live Earth as ‘private jets for climate change.’ ”

The whole thing was a joke, all right!

Meanwhile, over in Airstrip One, sometimes still referred to as the UK, then responses were similarly unenthusiastic and viewers strayed away in droves:

Live Earth branded a foul-mouthed flop

Live Earth has been branded a foul-mouthed flop.

Organisers of the global music concert – punctuated by swearing from presenters and performers – had predicted massive viewing figures, but BBC’s live afternoon television coverage attracted an average British audience of just 900,000. In the evening, when coverage switched from BBC2 to BBC1, the figure rose to just 2.7million.

And the peak audience, which came when Madonna sang at Wembley, was a dismal 4.5million. Three times as many viewers saw the Princess Diana tribute on the same channel six days before. Two years ago, Live 8 drew a peak television audience of 9.6million while Live Aid notched 10million in 1985.

This presumably will take some wind from the sails of the enviro moonbats hoping to use the event to catapult a “Draft Gore” movement into high gear. Too bad…that would have been just TOO easy (and fun) to take on.

Look Out for Global Cooling!

Read the sunspots

Here’s some very interesting climate science that is NOT based on somebody’s theoretical computer model of what they THINK may happen, based on what they ESTIMATE happened in the past. This one is based on specific measurement of what did happen previously, and ties it together with what’s happening now.

Article Abstract: The mud at the bottom of B.C. fjords reveals that solar output drives climate change – and that we should prepare now for dangerous global cooling

Surprise, surprise, surprise! The SUN drives climate change, not an extra tank of gas in your SUV.

Ooops! So much for Kyoto, AlGor, etc. Oscar or not, mother nature’s a bitch, isn’t she Al?

While we’re at it, here’s a whole series are some other articles on the topic of climate – all of which have the effect of pretty well demolishing the GlowBull Warming alarums: Climate change: The Deniers

The Post’s series on scientists who buck the conventional wisdom on climate science. Here is the series so far:

Statistics needed — The Deniers Part I
Warming is real — and has benefits — The Deniers Part II
The hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science — The Deniers Part III
Polar scientists on thin ice — The Deniers Part IV
The original denier: into the cold — The Deniers Part V
The sun moves climate change — The Deniers Part VI
Will the sun cool us? — The Deniers Part VII
The limits of predictability — The Deniers Part VIII
Look to Mars for the truth on global warming — The Deniers Part IX
Limited role for CO2 — the Deniers Part X
End the chill — The Deniers Part XI
Clouded research — The Deniers Part XII
Allegre’s second thoughts — The Deniers XIII
The heat’s in the sun — The Deniers XIV
Unsettled Science — The Deniers XV
Bitten by the IPCC — The Deniers XVI
Little ice age is still within us — The Deniers XVII
Fighting climate ‘fluff’ — The Deniers XVIII
Science, not politics — The Deniers XIX
Gore’s guru disagreed — The Deniers XX
The ice-core man — The Deniers XXI
Some restraint in Rome — The Deniers XXII
Discounting logic — The Deniers XXIII
Dire forecasts aren’t new — The Deniers XXIV
They call this a consensus? – Part XXV
NASA chief Michael Griffin silenced – Part XXVI
Forget warming – beware the new ice age – Part XXVII
They call this consensus? – Part XXVIII
Dire Forecasts Aren’t New – Part XXIX

So much for consensus on GlowBull Warming!

Bush Continues Leftward Skid

Bush in U-turn on global warming

George W. Bush on Thursday unveiled a striking about-face on global warming, calling on the world’s leading economies to join the US in agreeing a global target to reduce carbon dioxide emissions before the end of his term in office

The US president was speaking just ahead of a G8 summit at which climate change was expected to be high on the agenda of European governments.

So…what is left of the administration agenda that does NOT align with the international socialist orientation of the Euros any more?
(Hmmmmm. Think. THINK……….STILL thinking……..)

He explained that his apparent conversion – which follows almost seven years of having rejected precisely the road he outlined – was prompted by new scientific findings.

This is total bullsh…er…strong organic fertilizer. Recent scientific trends are that although we are probably in a warming phase of planetary climate, the impact of human activity is minimal!

But Mr Bush made no pledge on the size of emissions cuts that the US would be prepared to sign up to and gave no indication of a timeframe. The White House also ruled out carbon trading as the way to cutting emissions.

Well, IF he can be trusted on anything these days, this at least is something positive, that he hasn’t bought into the AlGor carbon trading fraud.

The Chief is getting closer and closer to agreeing with the moonbat left on one thing…that Bush is one of the worst the US has ever been saddled with in the White House.

GlowBull Warming With Sandlin-Herseth

The Chief was on a road trip when the big story of SanFran Nan and her arctic exploration expedition was getting a lot of attention.  As a result it didn’t get my full attention…although my scientific sensibility was offended by the concept that ANYONE could fly into Greenland, spend a couple days looking around, and then proclaim that they now were SURE that GlowBull Warming was occurring, since they had actually seen some ice fall into the ocean.

It COULDN’T have had anything to do with the fact that since the Greenland ice cap is accumulating MORE ice due to colder inland temperatures, that the ice along the coasts is being pushed out from the pressure of the new interior ice.  It also couldn’t have anything to do with the fact also that it is now SPRING in the northern hemisphere, and yes, some ice does melt in the spring, even in the arctic, whether or not there are SUV’s making CO2.  (What a concept!)

Of course, Greenland is still a long way from its condition when the Vikings discovered it a millenium ago, and named it GREENLAND because the coastal areas at least were ice-free and GREEN!

Finally, the Chief got caught up enough to also discover that South Dakota’s own Donk Cong Stephanie Sandlin-Herseth was part of the Pelosi GlowBull warming posse, ooking out for South Dakota.  Why if she wasn’t on the job, it might even warm up here, to where our temperature MIGHT make it into the 70’s for more than a couple days this summer.  What an environmental  catastrophe THAT would be, right Stephanie?

Your tax dollar$ at work!

Global Warming? Bring it on!

Not the End of the World as We Know It

In spite of what the MSM regularly trumpets, not even all the Euros buy into the Glowbull Warming religion, as indicated by this report from der Spiegel. Starting with a historical trace of the development of the current Glowbull Warming hysteria, the piece goes on with a rational examination of the science involved.

Largely unnoticed by the public, climate researchers are currently embroiled in their own struggle over who owns the truth. While some have always seen themselves as environmental activists aiming to shake humanity out of its complacency, others argue for a calmer and more rational approach to the unavoidable. One member of the levelheaded camp is Hans von Storch, 57, a prominent climate researcher who is director of the Institute for Coastal Research at the GKSS Research Center in Geesthacht in northern Germany. “We have to take away people’s fear of climate change,” Storch told DER SPIEGEL in a recent interview. “Unfortunately many scientists see themselves too much as priests whose job it is to preach moralistic sermons to people.”

Keeping a cool head is a good idea because, for one thing, we can no longer completely prevent climate change. No matter how much governments try to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, it will only be possible to limit the rise in global temperatures to about 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. But even this moderate warming would likely have far fewer apocalyptic consequences than many a prophet of doom would have us believe.

For one thing, the more paleontologists and geologists study the history of the earth’s climate, the more clearly do they recognize just how much temperatures have fluctuated in both directions in the past. Even major fluctuations appear to be completely natural phenomena.

In spite of AlGor’s and Rosie’s assertions that “the science is in” it is noted

A healthy dose of skepticism is a good idea, especially when scientists become all too confident and make themselves out to be oracles. But there can be a wide gap between their predictions and the end result — a fundamental weakness of all computer simulations that present only incomplete pictures of reality….Other factors that can either weaken or strengthen the greenhouse effect are still not fully understood today.

Noting some of the contradictory phenomena, the big gorilla of the situation is noted:

But the main problem lies in correctly calculating the effects of clouds. The tops of clouds act as mirrors in the sky, reflecting sunlight back into space — thus cooling the planet. But the bottom sides keep the heat radiated by the earth from escaping into the atmosphere — causing temperatures to rise. Which of the two effects predominates depends primarily on the altitude at which clouds form. Simply put, low clouds tend to promote cooling while high clouds increase warming. So far scientists agree on only one thing, namely that more clouds will form in a greenhouse climate. They just don’t know at which altitude.

Even the most powerful computer models are still too imprecise to simulate the details. However, the clouds alone will determine whether temperatures will increase by one degree more or less than the average predicted by the models. This is a significant element of uncertainty.

Confessing to being a wanna-be beach bum, the Chief says “Bring it on & warm it up!”

Environmental Crisis on Mars!

Climate change hits Mars

Mars is being hit by rapid climate change and it is happening so fast that the red planet could lose its southern ice cap, writes Jonathan Leake.

Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period.

Hmmmm….similar to Earth’s warming – hold that thought!

Since there is no known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates could be natural phenomena.

Uh…hello? “…rapid changes in planetary climates COULD be natural phenomena” ?! Could be? What else are the possibilities?

Since we haven’t been to Mars yet, it’s a bit of a reach to think that V-8 SUV’s are causing the problem, so what’s left…space aliens that beat us up there with their SUV’s? Sort of doubtful.

Hmmmm. Let’s think again…what affects both Earth and Mars? Hey! What about the SUN!  What a concept: solar activity can affect planetary climates! What’ll be next?

Glowbull Warming Alert!

Climate change could bring new U.S. Dust Bowl

Yep, it sure COULD…but then again…if pigs had wings they COULD fly!

The wisdom, or lack thereof to build huge agricultural projects and population centers in the middle of desert areas always seemed to be counter-intuitive. Just ask the Anasazi, who developed towns in the Southwest only to lose them when things dried up around the time of the medieval warming…ooops…whose SUV’s caused THAT one?

Another interesting item in this same piece is this:

Deep waters in the North Atlantic some 125,000 years ago were warmer than they are now and may have helped melt the Antarctic ice sheets, according to researchers led by Jean-Claude Duplessy of the Laboratory of Climate and the Environment of Institute Pierre Simon Laplace outside Paris.

Dang! Sort of seems like some other process than human industrialization must have been at work to melt all that ice back then. Hmmmm. Could it be just possible that the same processes are still in play? Just maybe?

Global Warming Still Not so Hot

There’s No Such Thing as a Perfect Temperature

Amazing for Newsweak Newsweek to have this…Richard Lindzen from M.I.T. ripping the Glowbull Warming claque again…based on (dare one sayit?) SCIENTIFIC REASONING! What a concept!

Looking back on the earth’s climate history, it’s apparent that there’s no such thing as an optimal temperature-a climate at which everything is just right. The current alarm rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman’s forecast for next week.

Check it out.

Minnesota Moonbats Get Mugged by Climate Reality

Frostbite ends Bancroft-Arnesen trek

A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite. The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment.

Atwood said there was some irony that a trip to call attention to global warming was scuttled in part by extreme cold temperatures. “They were experiencing temperatures that weren’t expected with global warming,” Atwood said.

Being True Believers in the Great Green Church of Glow-bull Warming, a minor consideration like a contrary evidence is a trivial matter to deal with:

“But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability.”

Let’s see…”We can’t predict the effects that SHOULD be there as a part of glow-bull warming, so that lack of evidence itself supports our case.” Ohhhh-kay. Whatever.

Environmental Inquisition Noted in UK TV Special

Scientists threatened for ‘climate denial’

Scientists who questioned mankind’s impact on climate change have received death threats and claim to have been shunned by the scientific community. They say the debate on global warming has been “hijacked” by a powerful alliance of politicians, scientists and environmentalists who have stifled all questioning about the true environmental impact of carbon dioxide emissions.

This piece goes on to note some of those scientists with first-rate credentials (M.I.T. and Oxford good enough?) who are at LEAST global warming skeptics.

Global Whatever

Global warming: the bogus religion of our age

This article is a direct response to a major paper that Blair’s Engsoc government spewed forth last fall. Dr. Lindzen (Meteorology, MIT) is NOT impressed with the efforts of Blairs well-trained lackeys who, after reaffirming The Gospel of Gore, went on to recommend (inevitably) ever increasing levels of taxation, regulations, and economic dictatorship in a report under the imprimitur of one Sir Nicholas Stern:

The world is heading for environmental catastrophe – or so we are constantly being told by the politicians and self-appointed experts. They warn us that unless we take drastic action, the earth will soon be devastated by climate change and global warming. Entire species will be lost, crops will be obliterated, floods and famine will sweep across the planet, and western economies will slide into depression.

Not only that—but the sky is falling!

‘The disaster is not set to happen in some science fiction future, but in our lifetimes,’ said Blair, who went on to claim that the ‘the world faces nothing more serious, more urgent and more demanding of its leadership than climate change.’ All this has helped put the Stern report at the very forefront of the debate. The central theme of it is that there is a near universal consensus of opinion within the scientific community about the dangers of climate change. But this is not true. There is no such unanimity among scientists.

Oooops! You mean, like, the Emperor Gore has no clothes?

The Chief particularly likes Lindzen’s wrap of all this:

Like a religion, environmentalism is suffused with hatred for the material world and again, like religion, it requires devotion rather than intellectual rigour from its adherents.

It is intolerant of dissent; those who question the message of doom are regarded as heretics, or ‘climate change deniers’, to use green parlance. And, just as in many religions, the route to personal salvation lies in the performance of superstitious rituals, such as changing a lightbulb or arranging for a tree to be planted after every plane journey.

Although no one ever expects it, can the Spanish Inquisition be far behind?

Martian Global Warming

Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says

Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet’s recent climate changes have a natural-and not a human- induced-cause, according to one scientist’s controversial theory.

This can only be controversial if your research grant “rice bowl” is being threatened by naturally induced climate change.

But wait! Couldn’t it be human caused on Mars also? What about all those Edgar Rice Burroughs’ books about John Carter of Mars? (Just wait until Algor gets reminded about that!)