Top 10 Climate Myth-Busters for 2007

Post below lifted from Steven J. Milloy. See the original for links

"I've made up my mind. Don't confuse me with the facts." That saying most appropriately sums up the year in climate science for the fanatic global warming crowd.

Al Gore, the United Nations, grandstanding politicians and celebrities, taxpayer-dependent climate researchers, socialist-minded Greens, climate profiteers and other members of the alarmist railroad relentlessly continued their drive for greenhouse gas regulation in 2007, the year's scientific developments actually pointed in the opposite direction. Here's the round-up:

1. Cracked crystal balls. Observed temperature changes measured over the last 30 years don't match well with temperatures predicted by the mathematical climate models relied on by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), researchers reported. The models predict significantly warmer atmospheric temperatures than actually occurred, despite the availability of more and better quality data and improved modeling efforts since the late-1970s. "We suggest, therefore, that projections of future climate based on these models be viewed with much caution," the researchers concluded. Read more.

2. The big yellow ball in the sky. The Sun may have contributed 50 percent or more of the global warming thought to have occurred since 1900, according to a new historical temperature reconstruction showing more variation in pre-industrial temperatures than previously thought. The researchers found that "the climate is very sensitive to solar changes and a significant fraction of the global warming that occurred during the last century should be solar induced." Read more.

3. Pre-SUV warming. Another new temperature reconstruction for the past 2,000 years indicates that globally averaged temperature 1,000 years ago was about 0.3 degrees Celsius warmer than the current temperature. Since that climatic "heat wave" obviously wasn't caused by coal-fired power plants and SUVs, the current temperature is quite within natural variability, deflating alarmists' rash conclusions about the warming of the past 50 years. Read more.

4. A disciplined climate. Runaway global warming -- the alarmist fantasy in which a warmer global temperature causes climatic events that, in turn, cause more warming and so-on in a never-ending positive feedback loop -- was cornered by new data from researchers at the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH). The new research sheds light on the mechanism by which the atmosphere self-regulates. Read more.

5. A gnarly wipeout. Climate alarmists gleefully surfed a 2005 study that claimed greenhouse gas emissions would slow Atlantic Ocean circulation and cause a mini ice age in Europe. But an international team of researchers reported that the intensity of the Atlantic circulation may vary by as much as a factor of eight in a single year. The decrease in Atlantic circulation claimed in the 2005study falls well within this variation and so is likely part of a natural yearly trend, according to the new study. Read more.

6. A pollution solution. A new study reported that the solid particles suspended in the atmosphere (called "aerosols") that make up "brown clouds" may actually contribute to warmer temperatures -- precisely the opposite effect heretofore claimed by global warming alarmists. "These findings might seem to contradict the general notion of aerosol particles as cooling agents in the global climate system .," concluded the researchers. Read more.

7. Lazy temperature? Researchers reported that the rate of manmade carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions was three times greater during 2000 to 2004 than during the 1990s. Since increasing atmospheric C02 levels allegedly cause global warming, the new study must mean that global temperatures are soaring even faster now than they did during the 1990s, right? Wrong. According to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Climatic Data Center, ever-changing global temperatures are in no way keeping pace with ever-increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Read more.

8. Don't plant that tree! Researchers reported that while tropical forests exert a cooling influence on global climate, forests in northern regions exert a significant warming influence on climate. Based on the researchers' computer modeling, forests above 20 degrees latitude in the Northern Hemisphere -- that is, north of the line of latitude running through Southern Mexico, Saharan Africa, central India and the southernmost Chinese Island of Hainan -- will warm surface temperatures in those regions by an estimated 10 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. Read more.

9. The Tropical Arctic. Dutch researchers reported that during a period of intense global warming 55 million years ago -- when the Arctic Ocean was as warm as 73 degrees Fahrenheit -- there was a tremendous release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But which came first, the warming or the greenhouse gases? It was the warming, according to the researchers. Read more.

10. Much ado about nothing. In a report to Congress, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency revealed greenhouse gas regulation to be quite the fool's errand. In estimating the atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases 90 years from now under both a scenario where no action is taken to reduce manmade emissions and a scenario where maximum regulation is implemented, the estimated difference in average global temperature between the two scenarios is 0.17 degrees Centigrade. For reference purposes, the estimated total increase in average global temperature for the 20th century was about 0.50 degrees Celsius.

That's what researchers have reported this year. And let's not forget the spanking a British high judge gave Al Gore's movie for all its scientific inaccuracies and the thrashing non-alarmist climate scientists gave to alarmist climate scientists in a debate sponsored by the New York debating society Intelligence Squared.

Al Gore and the alarmist mob claim the debate about the science of global warming is "over." Given the developments of 2007, it's easy to see why they would want it that way.





NASA official raps coal-fired plant

NASA's chief climate scientist expanded his criticism of a proposed Marshalltown coal-fired electricity generating plant and similar facilities Wednesday, saying all gas emissions from coal plants should be captured and stored to fight global warming and to protect people's health.

James Hansen, an Iowa native and director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, held a telephone news conference to outline his objections to Alliant Energy's proposed coal-fired power plant in Marshalltown - and all similar plants.

No new coal plants should be allowed unless they capture and sequester all their carbon-dioxide emissions, a key cause of climate change, Hansen said. The plants also should be required to capture and store mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and other emissions, he added. Mercury builds up in fish tissue that people eat, while the other gases contribute to lung ailments and acid rain.

Hansen said he was speaking as a private citizen and not as a representative of NASA. When he testifies before the Iowa Utilities Board in Marshalltown next week about Alliant's proposal, he will be on vacation and traveling at his own expense, Hansen said. He isn't being paid for his testimony.

Climate studies have shown that shutting down carbon emissions from power plants would stabilize the climate, he said. "That would solve about 80 percent of the problem," he said. The next task would be to cut carbon emissions related to production of fuels for vehicles, whether that is ethanol, electricity or something else, he added. One-fifth of the carbon emissions from coal and other fossil fuels stays in the atmosphere for more than 1,000 years.

Utility officials have said they are working on technology to capture the emissions, but that could be a decade or more away. In the meantime, coal is the most reliable, and cheapest, way to provide the bulk of growing electricity demand, Alliant and other utilities have said. The 630-megawatt Marshalltown plant would be one of Iowa's most efficient and, combined with new wind power, would allow the company to cut overall carbon emissions from what they would be without it, Alliant officials have said. It would not immediately sequester carbon.

Hansen said coal plants are a bad investment because limits or an outright ban on carbon emissions are coming as soon as governments across the globe acknowledge the seriousness of global warming.

Source

An emailed comment on the above:

Just incredible.

For one thing, where does Hansen get off calling PlayStation simulations "climate studies"?

For another thing - and this demands some focus - Hansen claims that a fifth of CO2 stays in the air for a thousand years. Okay, the IPCC puts each year's natural carbon emissions in the neighborhood of 200 billion metric tons. By Hansen's metric, this means that the oceans, dissolving rocks and plants will not see 40 billion of that till a thousand years have ended. Yet the IPCC also says that more than 98% of all carbon emissions - artificial and natural combined - are re-absorbed by oceans, dissolving rocks and plants each year.

So try to reconcile both of these models. Of the yearly 207 billion that go up (fresh), 166 come down (fresh and stale), plus 38, the tail end of the atmosphere's carbon contents before the First Crusade captured Jerusalem. Does that sound plausible?

What Hansen is implicitly foistering, of course, is that nature discriminates against artificial CO2 and leaves it in the air while the rest gets recycled normally. But nature would do just the opposite. Fossil fuels are rich in the very carbon isotopes that plants prefer, since fossil fuels are the remains of plants themselves. As for rocks, they'll dissolve under rainwater no matter which carbon isotopes it contains, and the ocean will continue to follow its complex cycles of CO2 absorption and emission.

10 years, more or less. Every empirical study puts that as the average lifetime of atmospheric CO2.







British science chief criticizes Greens

The scientist credited as being the first to convince Tony Blair of the urgency of the climate crisis has accused green activists of being Luddites who risk setting back the fight against global warming. In an interview with the Guardian today Sir David King, who stepped down last month after seven years as the government's chief scientific adviser, says any approach that does not focus on technological solutions to climate change - including nuclear power - is one of "utter hopelessness".

He says: "There is a suspicion, and I have that suspicion myself, that a large number of people who label themselves 'green' are actually keen to take us back to the 18th or even the 17th century." He characterises their argument as "let's get away from all the technological gizmos and developments of the 20th century".

"People say 'well, we'll just use less energy.' Come on," he says. "And then there's the real world, where everyone is aspiring to the sort of standard of living that we have, which is based on a large energy consumption."

King calls global warming the biggest challenge our civilisation has ever faced, and famously, in a 2004 article in the journal Science, berated the US for its inaction, describing climate change as "more serious even than the threat of terrorism". But his vocal support for nuclear power and genetically modified foods has led to tensions with environmental campaigners.

In a new book, The Hot Topic, he invites further hostility, arguing that aviation has been unfairly scapegoated, and that a localist approach to grocery shopping, aimed at reducing food miles, may sometimes result in bigger carbon dioxide emissions than purchasing food transported from overseas.

Making people feel guilty about their energy use, the book argues, "makes them less likely to act, not more". "What I'm looking for are technological solutions to a technologically driven problem, so the last thing we must do is eschew technology as we move forward," says King, 68.

His book prescribes a barrage of technological measures based on nuclear energy, wind power, cutting emissions from cars and buildings, increasing the global area of solar panels by a factor of 700, and capturing and storing emissions from fossil fuel power generation. Only with a nuclear component, he argues, might Britain "just about manage" to reach its commitment to reduce CO2 emissions by 60% on 1990 levels by 2050.

He recalls how he sparked fury at a meeting of Blair's ministers when he refused to agree to stay silent in public about his pro-nuclear views, even though the cabinet had, at the time, opted not to press ahead with plans for new power stations. "Let me say that John Prescott's reaction was almost violent," he says.

John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace, said it was King, not green activists, who was living in the past. "We need science to get us out of the climate change hole we're in - that's why Greenpeace wants to see research funding piled into the cutting-edge low-carbon technologies that can deliver deep emissions cuts in a very short timeframe," he said."We're talking about technical solutions that can also be safely spread to every country in the world, no matter how unstable. Nuclear power isn't that technology, but Sir David wants to take us back to the 1950s, the last time we were told it would solve all our problems."

Source







A profitable Greenie cult

When 400 bona fide climate and atmospheric scientists, with impeccable credentials, say they don't buy into man-made catastrophic global warming, politician-for-life Al Gore, without any evidence to back up his scurrilous and defamatory accusation, suggests they are all being paid off by big business. I think I'm very safe in making this statement without any investigation whatsoever: Al Gore has been paid off more by big business in his political career than all 400 of those scientists put together. Yet, no one calls this Nobel Peace Prize winner on it. He can say anything and get away with it - even be rewarded for it. He can tell any lie - and take home awards for it. He can hurl slanderous accusations that describe no one better than himself.

Big business? Name one big business that is fighting this global warming hysteria. Everywhere I look I see big business joining the hysteria, using it as a marketing tool, claiming their products and services have small carbon footprints, whatever that means. In fact, global warming hysteria is big business. I strongly believe that's what motivates Al Gore to be the Pied Piper of this global hoax. Isn't he in the business of selling carbon credits? Hasn't anyone figured out his racket yet? Gee, let's see. A guy comes along selling the end of the world and, also, coincidentally, selling the cure. Wouldn't you get just a little suspicious?

I'm shocked that so many Americans and others around the world have fallen for this. If any of you reading this column are among this gullible group, I have some prime real estate in Manhattan I'd like to sell you called Central Park. (Inquire within.)

Not only is big business pushing the global warming hype, but so is big government. Practically everyone in the federal government is part of the scam - from George W. Bush to the Congress to the Environmental Protection Agency to the Department of Education and so on. And that's just the start of how big this conspiracy is.

It filters right down to the public school classroom in your town. Here's an example of what's happening throughout the state of Illinois. The state's EPA enlists the help of the state's education system to spread the state's propaganda: OK, let's have a poster contest on what we can do about global warming. The contest will be judged on, among other things, the accuracy of the content! But I will bet you that any kid who is skeptical about global warming will not have a chance to win.

This nonsense - this indoctrination, this spreading of lies - is going on in virtually every public school in the country. It goes on in elementary schools, and it goes on in colleges and universities. And there is no science behind it. There is no truth behind it. There is no point behind it except to enlist your little darlin' into the legion of mindless robots who care only about minimizing their parents' carbon footprints.

I'm sure I've said it before, but it needs to be said again and again: This is nothing more than child abuse. It has nothing to do with education. It is the opposite of education. It is mis-education. People who do this kind of thing to little children should be incarcerated. But they won't be, because big business and big government are behind it! And anyone who questions what is being taught in this new Stalinesque environment is labeled an enemy of the people.

It is also a blatant violation of the First Amendment, which does indeed prohibit Congress from making any law that establishes a state religion. Guess what? Global warming is indeed a state religion - and it is being spread coercively using all the power of big government and big business to do it. Just see how the "heretics" are treated - even if they do happen to be 400 of the most prominent climate scientists in the world.

Source







Global Warming and Risks of Severe Acne

This article is perfectly logical by Greenie standards but it is probably a spoof

Global warming is actually an example or an effect of climate changes. Climate change or global warming is defined as increase in average temperature of the air and ocean nearest to the earth. Climate change not only increase the temperature, but it also brings hundreds of changes such as glacier retreat, damaging of ozone layer, extreme weather etc. The article covers predictions and possibilities that how climate change and green house effect may influence on your skin and skin disorders.

Global warming may influence on human life directly or indirectly. Indirect effects may include effect of global warming on agriculture, other animals which form biological chains etc.

Human body maintains a temperature of around 98.2 degrees F, it is the ideal temperature for your body. Slight fluctuation in the scale of temperature may occur temporarily during exercise and other activities. Your body works efficiently at 98.2 degrees F. Sebaceous glands and sweat glands are heat sensitive and rapidly produce their secretions. Thus, persistent rise in temperature results in increased activity of sebaceous glands and overproduction of sebum. Overproduction of sebum mixes with dead skin cells and clogs the hair follicles and acne breakouts occurs.

Average temperature has considerably risen since 1940 affecting hundreds of biological and ecological system. The persistent rise in temperature greatly influences on your skin and its disorders.

Global warming influenced on both, animals and plants. When due to climate changes, crops had been destroyed, farmers started to use pesticides and other synthetic chemicals to increase maximum productivity level. Synthetic pesticides on crops and soil result in loss of nutritious substances. Lack of nutritious substances, vitamins and minerals is the leading cause of overactive sebaceous glands.

Ultra violet rays are divided into three categories depending upon their wavelength. Ultra violet B and C are more biologically harmful. Ultraviolet B directly affects on skin and the leading cause of sunburn. Ozone layer filters around 97.6% of harmful ultraviolet rays at distance of 35km above the earth surface. Thus, increasing climate change is greatly affecting human life and causing severe and intense skin disorders including acne, eczema and rashes.

Global warming has affected various aspects of life. All organisms depend upon the ecosystem directly or indirectly. Increased temperature, damaged ozone layer and agriculture changes are all economical factors that profoundly impacts human life. Human skin is the most sensitive and most affected organ by these factors. Various skin disorders such as acne, scars are the result of global warming and climate change.

Source

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