Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
Carbon offsets are becoming Big Business these days. It does not matter how much energy you use, how much fossil fuel you burn, how much Carbon Dioxide you return to the atmosphere.
All you have to do is purchase a Carbon offset and you have compensated.
That is what Al Gore tells us so naturally it must be the truth.
Al is veritable fountain of information on the pervasiveness of the Global threat. Why he has even warned us of
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore warned hundreds of U.N. diplomats and staff on Thursday evening about the perils of climate change, claiming: Cigarette smoking is a “significant contributor to global warming!”
Wow not only a nasty habit but, a significant part of
“a full-scale climate emergency that threatens the future of civilization on earth.”
Another source of Global Warming appears to be herbivores. I know it's impolite to point this out but they pass gas, Gas which according to Al Gore threatens the future of Civilization,
So I got to thinking. Shouldn't hunters get Carbon offset credits? I mean whenever they put a bullet in Bambi they reduce the amount of methane and carbon dioxide being put into the atmosphere.,
Also the animal will no longer be eating plants which CLEANSE the atmosphere of the carbon dioxide pollutant.
We need to not only give carbon offset credits to hunters, but maybe we should even encourage their practices?
Yes how about Global Climate Control through Species Extinction?
The Weather is changing, not in living memory have we witnessed such extreme events.
Sound familiar? That is the Litany given to us by the High Priest of the Climactic Neo-Inquisition Al Gore and his adherents.
They insist that the World faces an Ecodisaster of Cosmic proportions, unless we return to the atmospheric state that existed before the Industrial Revolution of the 19th Century.
Now they seem strangely silent on the subject of what exactly Global Climate was like then.
I want you to view the following video and then ask yourself is THAT the Global Climate you wish the world to return to?
For those who for some reason were not able to view the video, let me give one of the examples it contains.
On May the 24, 1626 a Hail Storm hit central Europe it left a METER of ice on the ground. Two days later an Arctic front fell on Central Europe, rivers froze, grape vines exploded, the rye and barley crops were destroyed, tree leaves blackened and fell to the ground.
This was so unusual it HAD to be unnatural, So the Great Witch Hunt of the 17th Century ensued.
We are now witnessing the 21st Century version of those events.
Western Civilization is based on an Economic System called Capitalism.
It is my personal opinion that this system is mankind's first and best attempt to operate on some paradigm other than plunder and pillage.
The concept that a mutually agreed upon free exchange is preferable to a society based upon the acquisition of needs by force.
For the better part of the 20th Century our Way of Life was opposed by a Society that made decision based upon concerns of Ideology rather than Economics.
In fact Economic realities were ignored in the pursuit of Ideological Purity.
Anyone who has been reading here for awhile may understand my utter surprise to find that I am on the same side of a debate with the People's Republic of China.
It seems that today it is our Political Leaders who are basing decisions which affect one of the fundamental areas of our Society, our Energy Supply, upon Ideological basis rather than Economic ones.
It is the People's Republic of China which has come to certain decisions for economically sound reasons, not us this time.
Report: China to Block Ethanol Production From Corn, Other Food Crops
BEIJING (AP) -- China is putting a moratorium on projects to make ethanol from corn and other food crops, telling producers to switch to crops not widely eaten in China, such as sorghum, a state news agency reported Monday.
China is promoting ethanol in an effort to reduce reliance on imported oil but worries that demand for raw material could push up food prices and the need for scarce farmland.
"Food-based ethanol fuel will not be the direction for China," the Xinhua News Agency quoted Xu Dingming, an official of the National Energy Leading Group, as saying at a weekend energy seminar.
The government plans to ask producers to switch to crops such as cassava and sorghum, Xinhua said, citing an official of China's top planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission.
The government "has been trying to avoid occupation of arable land, consumption of large amount of grain and damages to the environment in developing the renewable energies," the agency said.
Four Chinese companies currently make corn-based ethanol, with a total annual production capacity of just over 1 million tons, according to Xinhua.
China Oil and Food Corp., owner of the one of the ethanol producers, plans to focus on sorghum, its president Yu Xubo, was quoted as saying at the seminar.
Yes it seem they are concerned about the economic effects on food supply, that ethanol costs more than alternate energy sources, and the fact that the total environmental costs of ethanol production as an energy source may be counterproductive,
Me and the Chinese Communists agree on something.
Amazing.
Oh and our leaders it seems are promoting Ethanol and Biofuels based not upon Economic concerns but in an attempt at Global Climate Ideological Purity.
We pay more for even partial ethanol fuels, we may not see this at the pumps, because it is subsidized with our Tax dollars, but we pay extra for it anyway.
As a result the price of grain climbs and effects the food supply of the poorest segments of the world's population.
This is not the way to find alternate energy supplies. This is not the philosophy that made our Nation Great.
The Deniers -- Part III Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post Published: Friday, February 02, 2007 December 8, 2006
You're a respected scientist, one of the best in your field. So respected, in fact, that when the United Nations decided to study the relationship between hurricanes and global warming for the largest scientific endeavour in its history -- its International Panel on Climate Change -- it called upon you and your expertise.
You are Christopher Landsea of the Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory. You were a contributing author for the UN's second International Panel on Climate Change in 1995, writing the sections on observed changes in tropical cyclones around the world. Then the IPCC called on you as a contributing author once more, for its "Third Assessment Report" in 2001. And you were invited to participate yet again, when the IPCC called on you to be an author in the "Fourth Assessment Report." This report would specifically focus on Atlantic hurricanes, your specialty, and be published by the IPCC in 2007
I realise that it is a given in some circles to place those who do not tow the Party Line on the Global Warning Issue in the category of Cranks, Misfits and Fringe Experimenters. I don't think that can apply here. Do you?
Then something went horribly wrong. Within days of this last invitation, in October, 2004, you discovered that the IPCC's Kevin Trenberth -- the very person who had invited you -- was participating in a press conference. The title of the press conference perplexed you: "Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity." This was some kind of mistake, you were certain. You had not done any work that substantiated this claim. Nobody had.
As perplexing, none of the participants in that press conference were known for their hurricane expertise. In fact, to your knowledge, none had performed any research at all on hurricane variability, the subject of the press conference. Neither were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability, you knew, showed no reliable upward trend in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes. Not in the Atlantic basin. Not in any other basin.
Now there are two important points in this last paragraph that bear repeating and emphasis.
none of the participants in that press conference were known for their hurricane expertise. In fact, to your knowledge, none had performed any research at all on hurricane variability,
That does not sound like it fits well with
"Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity
Or at least it does not to me. As it turns out it did not sound right to Christopher Landsea he contacted the IPCC leadership in protest.
What was the result of this action by one of the Top Hurricaine experts in the world?
Next year, the IPCC will come out with its "Fourth Assessment Report," and for the first time in a decade, you(Christopher Landsea) will not be writing its section on hurricanes. That task will be left to the successor that Dr. Trenberth chose.
I have not included the full article here. I urge the reader to go to the above link and read it's entirety.
It would appear in this case that "No Experts Need Apply" does fit the facts.
In the following days and weeks, I intend to present further examples.
The End of the Kyoto Protocol Topic: Global Warming
By Peter Zeihan and Bart Mongoven
European leaders have expressed dismay over U.S. President George W. Bush's June 1 call for the creation of a long-term dialogue among the 15 largest greenhouse gas-emitting countries. The plan, they say, is another stall tactic designed to allow the Bush administration to appear as though it is trying to work with the international community on climate issues, when in reality it is not. Such action, they say, would take time and attention away from the difficult work being done on the issue via the Kyoto Protocol process.
In reality, however, the Bush plan signals the end of Kyoto -- and the beginning of a new international consensus that relieves Kyoto's pressures on governments.
The United States, China, India, Canada and Australia produce more than half of the world's greenhouse gas emissions -- and those emissions are growing. To be effective, then, any climate regime that endeavors to make real cuts in emissions must include these countries. By bringing the Pacific Rim countries into alignment on the issue, Bush has brought the United States far more power over global greenhouse gas emissions policy than Europe ever has had. With this, Bush takes from Europe its one global foreign policy success story. The Regime
Signed in 1997 by more than 75 countries, the Kyoto Protocol is the recognized international regime on climate change. The protocol is an addendum to the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, in which parties agreed essentially to cut greenhouse gas emissions if it was convenient for them. Since cutting those emissions is highly inconvenient, very few followed through, making the protocol necessary.
Under Kyoto, each party agreed to cut its emissions by a specific amount from 1990 levels by 201. (The European Union signed up for an 8 percent cut, the United States for 7 percent and Japan for 6 percent.) But the agreement expires in 2012, at which point all participants are once again legally free from the deal. Moreover, the protocol imposed no emission restrictions on developing countries -- including China and India -- which explains why poorer countries so strongly support it.
Though from a U.S. perspective Kyoto was flawed in many ways, it was this lack of restrictions on developing countries that rendered ratification a nonstarter in the United States. Despite the tone of the current political conversation in the United States, in a 1997 vote both Republicans and Democrats unanimously vowed to reject any climate treaty that did not include commitments from developing countries. Sens. John Kerry, Paul Wellstone, Barbara Boxer and many of the climate issue's current champions were among those who essentially declared Kyoto dead on arrival. Within four months of taking office, Bush did the same, saying the United States would take no part in talks regarding a treaty it had no interest in joining.
Amazingly, the global reaction to Bush's announcement was shock. Bush became an environmental pariah at home and around the world, with Greenpeace dubbing him the "Toxic Texan" and European leaders pleading for the United States to reconsider. European Logic
From the European standpoint, simply bringing the United States into the climate change conversation is far more important than forcing it to cut its emissions by 2012. Given that the United States is the world's single-largest source of carbon emissions, any deal that does not have explicit American buy-in simply cannot achieve the ultimate end goal: reducing global emissions to the point of heading off the worst-case scenario of global warming.
To get the United States into the talks, then, G-8 leaders agreed in 2005 in Gleneagles, Scotland, to stop pressing for U.S. adherence to Kyoto if Washington agreed to take part in international discussions on the issue. European leaders hoped this would bring the United States into the fold for the more important negotiations on a broad and binding treaty that would address what happens after Kyoto expires in 2012.
U.S. activists fit their tactics into this broad European strategy. Kyoto proponents in the United States considered it a foregone conclusion that, under Bush, the United States would not pass a greenhouse gas-emissions-reducing policy on environmental grounds. The trick, then, was to get Bush to budge for other reasons. Environmental groups thought that if industry were faced with a maze of climate-related regulations at the state and local levels, then business -- normally hostile to greenhouse gas-related policies -- would appeal to the administration for harmonization. This, the environmentalists believed, would sneak in a U.S. greenhouse gas policy via the back door.
The environmentalists' key insights were simple: One of the few things businesses dislike more than patchwork regulation is uncertainty -- and having dozens of constantly changing competing regimes is about as uncertain as one can get. Therefore, the environmentalists believed industry would be more successful than they had been in lobbying the administration for a unified national policy on greenhouse gases. The strategy was a sound one, and local/state directives have proliferated, with laws in 15 states now forcing some climate change-related action or accounting on industry -- laws the Supreme Court already has ruled constitutional.
In the end, however, both U.S. environmental groups and European governments miscalculated. The former mistakenly assumed industry's desire for a single standard would lead industry to Kyoto; it only led industry to Washington. The latter assumed that dropping discussion of Kyoto I would lead Washington to participate in Kyoto II; instead, it led Washington to the Pacific. American Counterpoint
History will remember 2007 as the year the United States lost its infamous position as the world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases to China, an event that has been inevitable for years. From the U.S. point of view, therefore, any successful greenhouse gas-limiting agreement is not dependent upon Washington's participation, but on Beijing's.
As such, Bush has engaged China, India, Australia, Canada and even a discontented Japan -- birthplace of the Kyoto Protocol -- in separate negotiations outside the Kyoto system. Called the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, this strategy eschews firm caps on emissions -- which the Americans, Chinese and Indians oppose and which have thus far proved impossible to align with Australian and Canadian resource policy. It instead focuses on sharing technology that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, particularly in developing countries; it also offers companies that are developing efficiency-related technologies an expanded market for their products. Key among such technologies are clean coal, nuclear, carbon capture/sequestration and fuel cells.
The Europeans at first saw this "Pacific direction" as a stall tactic, but deemed it acceptable as long as the goal remained intact -- that the United States would eventually join Kyoto.
That too was a miscalculation.
Ultimately, U.S. industry and the Bush administration believe joining an international regime only brings more uncertainty, as both the ideological and practical design of such regulations not only originates in but also is designed explicitly for Europe. As the train of thought runs, the only way U.S. industry can rest assured that the regulatory environment is not going to change constantly -- punishing U.S. investments and rewarding European companies at their expense -- is not simply to take part in a climate regime, but to design one at home. That means abandoning Kyoto in every form imaginable, and launching a fundamentally new program.
The U.S. business community needed Bush to present a climate policy that provides clarity and certainty. A week ago, the only "certainty" was that the United States eventually would accept some new version of Kyoto, and that the climate change issue was locked into European leadership. Bush's June 1 announcement flipped that conventional wisdom on its head. Bush has killed Kyoto and assured businesses regulatory clarity by launching an international system that the United States will heavily influence, if not control outright.
For the Europeans, the key concern so far is that the expected laxness of the Pacific plan will enamor not just the Americans, but all of the major Pacific Rim economies. Compared to the strict expectations for any Kyoto successor -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel has suggested a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050 -- Chinese and Indian preference for the Pacific plan is a shoo-in. In fact, a Chinese environmental white paper released June 4 dovetails seamlessly with the Bush plan -- and almost ignores Kyoto's existence. With Australia and Canada unwilling to divorce their climate plans from that of the United States, the likely membership in any Kyoto II would be limited to Europe alone. (Europe is the only significant signatory that actually has put the current Kyoto Protocol into practice.) But this time there will be a clear alternative, which will constantly raise the question: Why doesn't Europe get with the program? Life after Kyoto
Bush's next job is simple: Wait until the Europeans declare Kyoto and Kyoto II dead (the protocol was mortally wounded at the G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland) and then present U.S. industry with a policy based on the results of negotiations with the other 14 major emitters by the end of 2008. This policy will not reflect Kyoto and will not force action by other countries.
Of course, there also is the little detail that if the Bush administration does hammer out a deal before 2009, then the next U.S. president -- regardless of party affiliation -- will take office with an internationally acceptable deal already in place. Even a Democratic president whose heart lies with Kyoto will be loathe to walk away from an agreement that puts the United States in the driver's seat and all of Asia riding shotgun. (Bush already has won support from Boxer, the Democratic senator from California, who is not exactly wed to the Bush party line.)
Ultimately, the Europeans are looking not just at a policy defeat, but also at the union's strategic failure to have any joint foreign policy. Kyoto/environmental issues have long been the only significant program in which the union has managed to make its voice heard globally. Should Europe continue to champion Kyoto now, it not only will be left out in the cold, but it also will face sharp internal debate about the reasons for deeply cutting emissions when no one else is. Several European governments already are suing the European Commission over climate-related regulations they consider too restrictive, while a newfound Polish bellicosity has led Warsaw to threaten vetoes over this and a wide raft of issues.
For those who believe that nothing but firm caps, as in the Kyoto Protocol, will forestall global warming, this is an unmitigated disaster. Those who feel that any successful global policy has to include the major non-European emitters, however, will see this is a successful first step in a way that Kyoto never was.
This report may be distributed or republished with attribution to Strategic Forecasting, Inc. at www.stratfor.com. For media requests, partnership opportunities, or commercial distribution or republication, please contact pr@stratfor.com.
interrogated before the Inquisition. For over two weeks he is imprisoned in an apartment in the Inquisition building. Galileo agrees to plead guilty to a lesser charge in exchange for a more lenient sentence. He declares that the Copernican case was made too strongly in his book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, and offers to refute it in another book.
And on June 22, 1633
sentenced to prison for an indefinite term
His Crime?
Now some may say, "Isn't it a bit late to start a Free Galileo Galilei Movement?"
For the Man, yes he died almost 400 years ago, still imprisoned by the Inquisition.
But NOT for his Principles, it is not too late for them.
It has been said those who study History are doomed to see it repeated by those who do not.
Not since the purges of Soviet Academia has the Civilized World seen the Body of Science so diminished on the grounds of doctrinal purity. The Cause of Galileo Galilei is alive in our day.
The Acid of Dogma versus Scientific Inquiry is once again on the attack lead by a Neo-Inquisition.
Those attacked, denigrated and outcast, are not cranks, not fringe experimenters, but have among their ranks some of the Best, the Brightest Minds of our Age.
So for the Intellectual Descendants of the Great Master I call out the battle cry.
Free Galileo Galilei
Do not let his Spirit be once more imprisoned, take up the gauntlet he threw down all those Centuries ago and defend it.
If You Go Outside And Spit Topic: Global Warming
You will have the same effect on the Climate as doubling carbon dioxide.
At least according to Reid A. Bryson who holds the 30th PhD in Meteorology granted in the history of American education. Emeritus Professor and founding chairman of the University of Wisconsin Department of Meteorology?now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences.
There is a very interesting article on this to be found in the May 23rd issue of the
Some people are lucky enough to enjoy their work, some are lucky enough to love it, and then there’s Reid Bryson. At age 86, he’s still hard at it every day, delving into the science some say he invented.
Reid A. Bryson holds the 30th PhD in Meteorology granted in the history of American education. Emeritus Professor and founding chairman of the University of Wisconsin Department of Meteorology—now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences—in the 1970s he became the first director of what’s now the UW’s Gaylord Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies. He’s a member of the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor—created, the U.N. says, to recognize “outstanding achievements in the protection and improvement of the environment.” He has authored five books and more than 230 other publications and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world.
Long ago in the Army Air Corps, Bryson and a colleague prepared the aviation weather forecast that predicted discovery of the jet stream by a group of B-29s flying to and from Tokyo. Their warning to expect westerly winds at 168 knots earned Bryson and his friend a chewing out from a general—and the general’s apology the next day when he learned they were right. Bryson flew into a couple of typhoons in 1944, three years before the Weather Service officially did such things, and he prepared the forecast for the homeward flight of the Enola Gay. Back in Wisconsin, he built a program at the UW that’s trained some of the nation’s leading climatologists.
How Little We Know
Bryson is a believer in climate change, in that he’s as quick as anyone to acknowledge that Earth’s climate has done nothing but change throughout the planet’s existence. In fact, he took that knowledge a big step further, earlier than probably anyone else. Almost 40 years ago, Bryson stood before the American Association for the Advancement of Science and presented a paper saying human activity could alter climate.
“I was laughed off the platform for saying that,” he told Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News.
In the 1960s, Bryson’s idea was widely considered a radical proposition. But nowadays things have turned almost in the opposite direction: Hardly a day passes without some authority figure claiming that whatever the climate happens to be doing, human activity must be part of the explanation. And once again, Bryson is challenging the conventional wisdom.
“Climate’s always been changing and it’s been changing rapidly at various times, and so something was making it change in the past,” he told us in an interview this past winter. “Before there were enough people to make any difference at all, two million years ago, nobody was changing the climate, yet the climate was changing, okay?”
“All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd,” Bryson continues. “Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air.”
Little Ice Age? That’s what chased the Vikings out of Greenland after they’d farmed there for a few hundred years during the Mediaeval Warm Period, an earlier run of a few centuries when the planet was very likely warmer than it is now, without any help from industrial activity in making it that way. What’s called “proxy evidence”—assorted clues extrapolated from marine sediment cores, pollen specimens, and tree-ring data—helps reconstruct the climate in those times before instrumental temperature records existed.
We ask about that evidence, but Bryson says it’s second-tier stuff. “Don’t talk about proxies,” he says. “We have written evidence, eyeball evidence. When Eric the Red went to Greenland, how did he get there? It’s all written down.”
Bryson describes the navigational instructions provided for Norse mariners making their way from Europe to their settlements in Greenland. The place was named for a reason: The Norse farmed there from the 10th century to the 13th, a somewhat longer period than the United States has existed. But around 1200 the mariners’ instructions changed in a big way. Ice became a major navigational reference. Today, old Viking farmsteads are covered by glaciers.
Bryson mentions the retreat of Alpine glaciers, common grist for current headlines. “What do they find when the ice sheets retreat, in the Alps?”
We recall the two-year-old report saying a mature forest and agricultural water-management structures had been discovered emerging from the ice, seeing sunlight for the first time in thousands of years. Bryson interrupts excitedly.
“A silver mine! The guys had stacked up their tools because they were going to be back the next spring to mine more silver, only the snow never went,” he says. “There used to be less ice than now. It’s just getting back to normal.”
What Leads, What Follows?
What is normal? Maybe continuous change is the only thing that qualifies. There’s been warming over the past 150 years and even though it’s less than one degree, Celsius, something had to cause it. The usual suspect is the “greenhouse effect,” various atmospheric gases trapping solar energy, preventing it being reflected back into space.
We ask Bryson what could be making the key difference:
Q: Could you rank the things that have the most significant impact and where would you put carbon dioxide on the list?
A: Well let me give you one fact first. In the first 30 feet of the atmosphere, on the average, outward radiation from the Earth, which is what CO2 is supposed to affect, how much [of the reflected energy] is absorbed by water vapor? In the first 30 feet, 80 percent, okay?
Q: Eighty percent of the heat radiated back from the surface is absorbed in the first 30 feet by water vapor…
A: And how much is absorbed by carbon dioxide? Eight hundredths of one percent. One one-thousandth as important as water vapor. You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide.
This begs questions about the widely publicized mathematical models researchers run through supercomputers to generate climate scenarios 50 or 100 years in the future. Bryson says the data fed into the computers overemphasizes carbon dioxide and accounts poorly for the effects of clouds—water vapor. Asked to evaluate the models’ long-range predictive ability, he answers with another question: “Do you believe a five-day forecast?”
Bryson says he looks in the opposite direction, at past climate conditions, for clues to future climate behavior. Trying that approach in the weeks following our interview, Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News soon found six separate papers about Antarctic ice core studies, published in peer-reviewed scientific journals between 1999 and 2006. The ice core data allowed researchers to examine multiple climate changes reaching back over the past 650,000 years. All six studies found atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations tracking closely with temperatures, but with CO2 lagging behind changes in temperature, rather than leading them. The time lag between temperatures moving up—or down—and carbon dioxide following ranged from a few hundred to a few thousand years.
Renaissance Man, Marathon Man
When others were laughing at the concept, Reid Bryson was laying the ground floor for scientific investigation of human impacts on climate. We asked UW Professor Ed Hopkins, the assistant state climatologist, about the significance of Bryson’s work in advancing the science he’s now practiced for six decades.
“His contributions are manifold,” Hopkins said. “He wrote Climates of Hunger back in the 1970s looking at how climate changes over the last several thousand years have affected human activity and human cultures.”
This, he suggests, is traceable to Bryson’s high-school interest in archaeology, followed by college degrees in geology, then meteorology, and studies in oceanography, limnology, and other disciplines. “He’s looked at the interconnections of all these things and their impact on human societies,” Hopkins says. “He’s one of those people I would say is a Renaissance person.”
The Renaissance, of course, produced its share of heretics, and 21 years after he supposedly retired, one could ponder whether Bryson’s work today is a tale of continuing heresy, or of conventional wisdom being outpaced by an octogenarian.
Without addressing—or being asked—that question, UW Green Bay Emeritus Professor Joseph Moran agrees that Bryson qualifies as “the father of the science of modern climatology.”
“In his lifetime, in his career, he has shaped the future as well as the present state of climatology,” Moran says, adding, “We’re going to see his legacy with us for many generations to come.”
Holding bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Boston College, Moran became a doctoral candidate under Bryson in the late 1960s and early ’70s. “I came to Wisconsin because he was there,” Moran told us.
With Hopkins, Moran co-authored Wisconsin’s Weather and Climate, a book aimed at teachers, students, outdoor enthusiasts, and workers with a need to understand what the weather does and why. Bryson wrote a preface for the book but Hopkins told us the editors “couldn’t fathom” certain comments, thinking he was being too flippant with the remark that “Wisconsin is not for wimps when it comes to weather.”
Clearly what those editors couldn’t fathom was that Bryson simply enjoys mulling over the reasons weather and climate behave as they do and what might make them—and consequently us—behave differently. This was immediately obvious when we asked him why, at his age, he keeps showing up for work at a job he’s no longer paid to do.
“It’s fun!” he said. Ed Hopkins and Joe Moran would undoubtedly agree.
“I think that’s one of the reasons for his longevity,” Moran says. “He’s so interested and inquisitive. I regard him as a pot-stirrer. Sometimes people don’t react well when you challenge their long-held ideas, but that’s how real science takes place.”—Dave Hoopman
Myself I have a terrible confession to make, if spitting has the same effect as doubling Carbon Dioxide then I have done far worse damage to the Climate in the past camping, with another means of emitting fluids!
I expect the arrival at any time of our present day Neo-Luddites in full hue and cry
Are you green? How many flights have you taken in the last year? Feeling guilty about all those unnecessary car journeys? Well, maybe there's no need to feel bad.
According to a group of scientists brought together by documentary-maker Martin Durkin, if the planet is heating up, it isn't your fault and there's nothing you can do about it.
We've almost begun to take it for granted that climate change is a man-made phenomenon. But just as the environmental lobby think they've got our attention, a group of naysayers have emerged to slay the whole premise of global warming.
There you will find links to: The Programme, The Arguments, Watch the Trailer, Ask Our Expert, Vote, Play the Quiz, Find Out More and the Forum.
Since I am updating this I have to decided to bump it up to the top with a couple of images to stimulate some thought.
It seems that Global Warming is no longer a theory but a dogma to many. We are not experts on climate change - and we don't pretend to be - but we do recognize that an entire school of thought has been suppressed in the German media and political culture. As Chancellor Merkel and others debate what to do about Global Warming, we think it would be appropriate to at least listen to what "the other side" has to say instead of blindly accepting what is becoming a state religion in much of Europe.
Google seems to be having problems if you cannot view the above Video there are several posters with segments on Technorati HERE
GORE: CIGARETTE SMOKING ‘SIGNIFICANT’ CONTRIBUTOR TO GLOBAL WARMING Fri Sep 29 2006 09:04:05 ET
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore warned hundreds of U.N. diplomats and staff on Thursday evening about the perils of climate change, claiming: Cigarette smoking is a “significant contributor to global warming!”
Gore, who was introduced by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said the world faces a “full-scale climate emergency that threatens the future of civilization on earth.”
Gore showed computer-generated projections of ocean water rushing in to submerge the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, parts of China, India and other nations, should ice shelves in Antarctica or Greenland melt and slip into the sea.
“The planet itself will do nicely, thank you very much what is at risk is human civilization,” Gore said. After a series of Q& A with the audience, which had little to do with global warming and more about his political future, Annan bid “adios” to Gore.
Then, Gore had his staff opened a stack of cardboard boxes to begin selling his new book, “An Inconvenient Truth, The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It,” $19.95, to the U.N. diplomats.
Developing…
I almost choked to death laughing and immediately went on line and ordered a copy of "Inconvenient Truth" from my Netflix account. I have been to serioius lately, I feel I need to kick back and watch some comedy.
Now it is true when I checked for the Gore/Smoking/Global Warming Meme on Snope's all I could find was:
No source available, because "We destroyed all copies of the speech, except for one master which cannot be released... The Gore speech was copyrighted and therefore we cannot release any copies of it."
After a Q&A with the audience, which had little to do with global warming and more about Gore's political future, Annan bid "adios" to his old comrade.
Then, Gore had his aides open a stack of cardboard boxes to begin selling his book, "An Inconvenient Truth."
So, in the end, Gore's lecture on global warming turned into no more than a lavish book party.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric had no comment on who footed the bill for the bash.
NewsMax requested from UNTV an audio copy of Gore's address.
At first, NewsMax was told a copy would be provided by the U.N. audio library.
Later, NewsMax was told that copies of the Gore speech would not be available.
Dujarric added: "The Gore speech was copyrighted and therefore we cannot release any copies of it."
The formerly "open" address, has now been reclassifed in the UN files as "a closed meeting."
Later on this claim gave me some pause.
"Regardless of what Al Gore said or did not say at the United Nations, there is evidence that tobacco and cigarette smoking contribute to global warming.
Pogue
So I decided to follow the link and look into the claim.
Here it seem is the basis for it.
The smoke from cigarettes also contains greenhouse gases. Cigarette smoke contains carbon dioxide and methane. Smoking worldwide releases about 2.6 billion kilograms of carbon dioxide in the air every year. It also releases about 5.2 billion kilograms of methane every year. Tobacco growing, curing, and smoking all add to the greenhouse effect and global warming
So along with not smoking, it seems if you are reading this and wish to save the planet from Global Warming you should, not eat beans (methane) and stop breathing.
Independent evaluations of the program are available. These evaluations provide evidence that students utilizing the Science, Tobacco & You curriculum resource demonstrate positive changes in attitudes, beliefs, and core academic knowledge. The activities in the Guidebook are being correlated to the educational standards for every state.
Our Tax dollars at work folks. And people wonder why our educational system is getting dumbed down? Well if junkscience dogma is what is being taught, why wonder? I checked some state standards and found that depending on the state this material was deemed suitable from Grades 4&5 up to Grade 8 in Washington State. I did not do a comprehensive look through, but I wonder what one would find if one graphed the Educatinal Standard Level for this materail against the States being Liberal or Conservative.
I don't know what disturbs me the most. That our children are being taught this bilge or that a man who proclaims it as truth, almost became President of the United States. Just think how different the world might be if he applied similiar reality based thinking to National Security?
What Time Of Year Is It The Warmest? Topic: Global Warming
I want you to take a GOOD look at the following graph.
Now Children that little graph is "Earth Ice over the last 750,000 years."
See where we are now? In an INTER-glacial cycle, close to the end of an average interglacial cycle to be exact.
Approximately every 100,000 years Earth's climate warms up temporarily. These warm periods, called interglacial periods, appear to last approximately 15,000 to 20,000 years before regressing back to a cold ice age climate. At year 18,000 and counting our current interglacial vacation from the Ice Age is much nearer it's end than it's beginning.
Take a GOOD look at that graph. It shows Climatic CYCLES. That is how Nature works, not Linear but in Cycles. This a phenomenon that is found time and time again in Nature, not just in Weather or Climate.
There has been much comment in the News about Global Warming. Oddly enough it is by the same groups that were commenting a generation ago about Global Cooling.
What we are witnessing is BAD Science, Political Science, Junk Science, Propaganda if you will to develop hysteria and establish political and economic control of the general population.
Science deals with DATA, not just Computer Models that can be tweaked with different assumptions to derive desired results.
It is getting Warmer? Yes and it has done so before.
Example of regional variations in surface air temperature for the last 1000 years, estimated from a variety of sources, including temperature-sensitive tree growth indices and written records of various kinds, largely from western Europe and eastern North America. Shown are changes in regional temperature in ? C, from the baseline value for 1900. Compiled by R. S. Bradley and J. A. Eddy based on J. T. Houghton et al., Climate Change: The IPCC Assessment, Cambridge UniversityPress, Cambridge, 1990 and published in EarthQuest, vol 5, no 1, 1991. Courtesy of Thomas Crowley, Remembrance of Things Past: Greenhouse Lessons from the Geologic Record
Earth's climate was in a cool period from A.D. 1400 to about A.D. 1860, dubbed the "Little Ice Age." This period was characterized by harsh winters, shorter growing seasons, and a drier climate. The decline in global temperatures was a modest 1/2? C, but the effects of this global cooling cycle were more pronounced in the higher latitudes. The Little Ice Age has been blamed for a host of human suffering including crop failures like the "Irish Potato Famine" and the demise of the medieval Viking colonies in Greenland.
Today we enjoy global temperatures which have warmed back to levels of the so called "Medieval Warm Period," which existed from approximately A.D. 1000 to A.D. 1350
So yes we HAVE seen global warming trends before and I note that the last one PREDATES the Industrial Age and the use of Fossil Fuels.
That was not the only time either. The following graph is the last 18,000 years of THIS Interglacial Cycle.
The idea that man-made pollution is responsible for global warming is not supported by historical fact. The period known as the Holocene Maximum is a good example-- so-named because it was the hottest period in human history. The interesting thing is this period occurred approximately 7500 to 4000 years B.P. (before present)-- long before human's invented industrial pollution.
CO2 in our atmosphere has been increasing steadily for the last 18,000 years-- long before humans invented smokestacks ( Figure 1). Unless you count campfires and intestinal gas, man played no role in the pre-industrial increases.
As illustrated in this chart of Ice Core data from the Soviet Station Vostok in Antarctica, CO2 concentrations in earth's atmosphere move with temperature. Both temperatures and CO2 have been steadily increasing for 18,000 years. Ignoring these 18,000 years of data "global warming activists" contend recent increases in atmospheric CO2 are unnatural and are the result of only 200 years or so of human pollution causing a runaway greenhouse effect.
Incidentally, earth's temperature and CO2 levels today have reached levels similar to a previous interglacial cycle of 120,000 - 140,000 years ago. From beginning to end this cycle lasted about 20,000 years. This is known as the Eemian Interglacial Period and the earth returned to a full-fledged ice age immediately afterward
Now maybe all this talk of Ice Volume, Interglacial Cycles is confusing. But there ARE weather cycles we are all familiar with the Seasons, Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. We have seen the Seasons come and go. We are all familiar with that Natural Cycle.
Let us do a small thought experiment.
Suppose there were a world exactly like ours, with a Race much like ours but their Life Cycles were 100,00 times more rapid, there days and night came 100,000 times more rapidly BUT their year was the same length as ours and their Seasons progressed the same.
100,000 years to 1 year, 4000 generations, each month would be about 9,000 of their years less than 400 generations. Each month would be about the same length of time as our Historical Era.
The Scientists of this Civilization have for sometime noticed an alarming trend, Their World is getting WARMER. Left unchecked Life on their planet will become extinct.
They determine the cause is the release of Carbon Dioxide into their atmosphere by the use of Fossil Fuels.
The only solution is to De-Industrialize their Civilization. That will require a reduction of their population by about 90%, because a Pre-Industrial Society can only support that number.
They will instituted Draconian Population Controls, tests will be run and only the top 10% will be allowed to reproduce, the remainder of their population will be sterilized.
The Cost will be worth it, their Race, indeed ALL of Life on their Planet will be spare the impending inevitable Doom.
Of course from our viewpoint they are WRONG. The warming trend will NOT increase Linearly, In fact in a few of their Centuries it will become COLDER.
It may become so Cold that their new Civilization will not survive, and their Society will collapse into small bands of Hunter Gatherers.
That is because they were only looking at a small part of a Natural Cycle and assumed incorrectly that trend would continue in the same direction.
Sounds preposterous? Well Big Lizards in Ya Fallow? informs us that:
Extree, extree, read all about it! Now "global warming" makes glaciers grow bigger...!
Global warming could be causing some glaciers to grow, a new study claims.
Researchers at Newcastle University looked at temperature trends in the western Himalaya over the past century.
They found warmer winters and cooler summers, combined with more snow and rainfall, could be causing some mountain glaciers to increase in size.
United Press International - NewsTrack - Russian scientist predicts global cooling:
A Russian scientist predicts a period of global cooling in coming decades, followed by a warmer interval.
Khabibullo Abdusamatov expects a repeat of the period known as the Little Ice Age. During the 16th century, the Baltic Sea froze so hard that hotels were built on the ice for people crossing the sea in coaches.
The Little Ice Age is believed to have contributed to the end of the Norse colony in Greenland, which was founded during an interval of much warmer weather
So the next time you read or hear hysterical pronunciations that Global Warming, excuse me Climate Change, is facing us with impending Doom, ask yourself, "What time of the Year is it the warmest?"
Hint it is now August and in the Northern Hemisphere this means September, October, November and December will be what?
So hot that Life as we know it will be threatened?
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