The REAL motivations of Warmists on vivid display

Warmist are worried about all the CO2 in the air -- right? So any technology that removes lots of CO2 would be welcomed by them with open arms -- Right? WRONG! That would take away their best excuse for destroying modern civilization -- which is their REAL aim. They just hate modern life and seek to impose that on everybody else in any way they can. See below:

Scientists at Columbia University are developing a carbon dioxide (CO2) scrubber device that removes one ton of CO2 from the air every day. While some see the scrubber as an efficient and economical way to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide, many environmentalists are opposing the technology because it allows people to use fossil fuels and emit carbon in the first place.

Columbia University physicist Klaus Lackner, who is leading the research team, believes producing a large number of CO2 scrubbers can keep to a minimum any rise in atmospheric CO2 without the economically painful elimination of inexpensive energy sources. "I'd rather have a technology that allows us to use fossil fuels without destroying the planet, because people are going to use them anyway," Lackner told the June 1 London Telegraph.

Environmental activist groups such as Greenpeace have consistently opposed similar technologies, such as carbon capture and sequestration, because they do not address what they see as the root of the problem. On May 5, for example, the activist groups Students Promoting Environmental Action and Save Our Cumberland Mountains demonstrated in Knoxville, Tennessee against carbon sequestration. Repeatedly citing a Greenpeace position paper, they argued eliminating the use of coal, not reducing atmospheric CO2, should be society's primary goal. "Our position is we need to start phasing out coal as soon as possible," said Cathie Bird of Save Our Cumberland Mountains. "Carbon capture and storage does not make coal clean," read a banner hoisted by protesters.

Leading energy analysts agreed with the scientists, rather than the protesters. "If CO2 emission reduction is a goal, then investigating and investing in strategies for capitalizing on our existing infrastructure efficiently and effectively makes more sense than throwing away reasonable options simply because they don't align with a political philosophy about our energy economy," said Amy Kaleita, an environmental policy fellow at the Pacific Research Institute.

"This is just one more piece of evidence that environmentalists aren't concerned about solving a problem," said Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis. "Every problem, as they see it, is one way to restrict people's lifestyles, and if you come up with a technological fix that can solve a problem but doesn't require sacrifice and lets us go about our business the way we were before, they're not happy about it, even if it solves the problem.

"Now, I don't know about whether this technology will solve global warming," said Burnett, "but let's say it is cost-effective, and let's assume for the sake of argument that global warming is a real, serious problem that needs to be solved. Then I would argue that this technology may be a good thing."

"I think the question is, what is the objective?" asked Erin Baker, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, in an interview for this article. "For me, the objective is reducing the harmful effects of climate change. It is going to be extremely challenging to reduce CO2 levels to the point where we can stabilize the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at, say, 550 ppm (parts per million), and this is only a mild goal.

"Most environmentalists would like to see a much more stringent goal," Baker added. "If we want to have a reasonable chance of achieving this goal, then we need to consider a portfolio of technologies in order to achieve this. This means keeping CCS (carbon capture and storage), nuclear, and biofuels, for instance, on the table.

"If we have some kind of major breakthrough in solar technologies and electricity storage technologies, then we won't need to rely so heavily on these other technologies. But if we don't have any breakthroughs and we refuse to use our full arsenal, we will most likely fail to combat climate change and cause economic hardships, especially for the most vulnerable.

"I am not necessarily advocating a full-scale implementation of any of these technologies, but rather that we continue to [research and develop] a wide range of technologies, and not flat-out reject any possibilities," Baker said.

Source





Global cooling gains momentum among scientists

Two weeks ago, after writing about the possibility that the Earth may actually be entering a cooling phase, I braced myself for a torrent of icy missives from the global warming crowd suggesting that the heat must have fried my noggin.

By the way, it is very difficult to discuss global cooling in the midst of a summer when temperatures are hovering around 100 degrees and crops are wilting. As one friend and colleague from the sweltering Southwest noted after reading the column, "Please send some of that cooling this way."

However, one response opened my eyes to the growing community of global warming skeptics out there, most of them merited scientists. I thought it might be worth presenting their thoughts - a little equal time if you will. Marc Marono, a global warming skeptic who works for the U.S. Senate Committee on Environmental and Public Works, sent me these excerpts from a U.S. Senate report.

Russian solar physicists Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev are so convinced that global temperatures will cool within the next decade they have placed a $10,000 wager with a United Kingdom scientist to prove their certainty. The criteria for the $10,000 bet will be to compare global temperatures between 1998 and 2003 with those between 2012 and 2017. The loser will pay up in 2018, according to an April 16, 2007, article in Live Science.

Australian engineer Peter Harris says that the Earth is nearing the end of the typical interglacial cycle and is due for a sudden cooling climate change. "Based on this analysis we can say that there is a 94 percent probability of imminent global cooling and the beginning of the coming ice age. "Climate is becoming unstable," Harris went on to say. "Most of these major natural processes that we are witnessing now are interdependent and occur at the end of each interglacial period, ultimately causing sudden long-term cooling."

Oleg Sorokhtin, merited scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute, says to "stock up on fur coats and felt boots! 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. "Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change, Sorokhtin said. "Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind. Man's influence on nature is a drop in the ocean."

Canadian climatologist Timothy Ball said, "If we are facing (a crisis) at all, I think it is that we are preparing for warming when it is looking like we are cooling. We are preparing for the wrong thing."

On the impact of carbon dioxide on global temperature, United Kingdom astrophysicist Piers Corbyn said, "There is no evidence that carbon dioxide has ever driven or will ever drive world temperatures and climate change. Worrying about carbon dioxide is irrelevant."

So there you have it folks - solid evidence from the other side of the global warming fence and critical thinking I'm sure you won't hear much about outside this space. To be honest, I'm not sure which global weather consequence is more daunting - to be ice fishing in Florida or planting cotton in Maine. But politicians and the popular press should speak out for the resumption of genuine, open debate on climate change. Global warming is not necessarily a foregone conclusion.

Source





Climate Similar to the 1800s Within the Next 15 Years: First Stage of Global Cooling During 2008/09

In the peer reviewed book "Global Warming-Global Cooling, Natural Cause Found", meteorologist and climate researcher David Dilley utilizes nearly a half million years of data linking long term gravitational cycles of the moon explain the recent global warming, rises in carbon dioxide levels, and for 2200 global warming cycles during the past half million years.

The gravitational cycles are called the Primary Forcing Mechanism for Climate (PFM), and act like a magnet by pulling the atmosphere's high pressure systems northward or southward by as much as 3 or 4 degrees of latitude from their normal seasonal positions, and thus causing long-term shifts in the location of atmospheric high pressure systems.

Research by Mr. Dilley shows a near 100 percent correlation between the PFM gravitational cycles to the beginning and ending of global warming cycles. Global warming cycles began right on time with each PFM cycle during the past half million years, as did the current warming which began 100 years ago, and it will end right on time as the current gravitational cycle begins its cyclical decline.

Global temperatures have cooled during the past 12 months. During 2008 and 2009 the first stage of global cooling will cool the world's temperatures to those observed during the years from the 1940s through the 1970s. By the year 2023 global climate will become similar to the colder temperatures experienced during the 1800s.

Mr. Dilley of Global Weather Oscillations has found seven different types of recurring gravitational cycles ranging from the very warm 460,000 year cycle down to a 230year recurring global warming cycle. All of the gravitational cycles coincide nearly 100 percent with 2200 global warming events during the past half million years. This includes the earth's current warming cycle which began around the year 1900, and the first stage of global cooling that will begin during 2008 and 2009.

The release of the book "Global Warming- Global Cooling, Natural Cause Found" culminates 19 years of research clearly linking gravitational cycles as the cause for fluctuations within the earth's climate. The book is available as an electronic e-Book on this website. The author David Dilley is a meteorologist and climate researcher with Global Weather Oscillations Inc. (GWO), former meteorologist with the National Weather Service, and co-host of the radio program "the Politically Incorrect Weather Guys" airing weekly on RadioEarNetwork.com, an internet streaming radio program. Read more here. He also believes a moderate El Nino will occur this fall. See here.

Source






Russian Tanks Signal a "New Energy War"

"Russia's adventure in Georgia has been described as a `warlet,' a contained firing spree that wound up and down within a week. But to Europe's energy markets, it was the equivalent of wide-scale carpet bombing," writes Eric Reguly in Britain's Global and Mail on August 15th. "Before the Georgian crisis, Europe seemed to be doing all the right things, with little Georgia at the centre of a sensible energy diversification plan. A column of Russian tanks wrecked that strategy in an instant . . . a new energy war is about to begin."

Since the Russian tank attacks, Europe's energy position is far worse than America's. Europe's North Sea oil and gas are waning, and its marginal coal mines have long been shut down. Europe's been importing lots of gas, 40 percent of it from Russia. Georgia was threatening to allow another gas pipeline that Russia wouldn't control-so Vlad the Assailer demonstrated that he can control Caspian-region gas exports whenever he chooses to send tanks.

Europe now urgently wants a long-term partnership with the big undeveloped oil and gas deposits in Libya, Tunisia and the rest of North Africa. Alarmingly, Russia's Gazprom last month offered to buy all of Libya's gas exports.

The U.S. is now trapped, however, in the crossfire between Russian military/economic aggression, Moslem extremism and European energy starvation. We will soon be enormously grateful for our opportunity to drill off our own coasts and in our own ANWR, to import our Alaskan gas through a new pipeline, to tap Appalachia's big, tough gas deposits-and to add more of our own nuclear power. France, Finland and Eastern Europe are already building more nuclear plants, and Germany's Angela Merkel may block the German nuclear phase-out.

Solar and wind power will be built too, but so far they've been expensive, erratic and severely disappointing. Biofuels actually aggravate both global food shortages and greenhouse gas emissions.

Canada's Athabasca Tar Sands, one of the world's largest petroleum reservoirs, got a visit last week from U.S. billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. The Athabasca is also in a strategically secure location for the U.S.-400 miles north of Montana. Eco-activists have lately campaigned against the tar sands, calling it "the worst project on earth" because of the CO2 released as the heavy oil is produced. However, CO2 has had a weak correlation with earth's temperature changes-only 22 percent since 1860.

Fortunately, the earth's temperatures are now continuing to decline; more and more clearly separating CO2 emissions from climate change. The first five months of 2008 have been the coolest in at least five years, continuing the cooler trend of the past 18 months. The cooling was predicted by a 2000 downturn in the sunspot index, which has a strong, ten-year-lagged correlation with our temperature history.

The Greens have recommended non-polluting tidal power, but are opposing one of the world's outstanding tidal-power opportunities on Britain's Severn River. The Severn has a 40-foot daily tide range. A ten-mile dam across the Bristol Channel would emit no CO2 or radiation, while producing as much electricity as three nuclear power stations for the next 200 years. The eco-activists are unhappy about the loss of local mud flats which would force shore birds to relocate.

It now looks as though the West must choose between relocating some shore birds and seeing lots more Russian tanks monopolize the world's energy supplies.

Source







Bulls**t Watch - Rising Sea to Drown 600,000 Australian Homes

A real sea-level rise of a few centimetres becomes a prophesied rise of metres! Comments below from Australian rural publication "Agmates"



The Courier Mail and ABC radio continues on with its Climate Change scare mongering and hence register on our Bulls**t Watch. The headline screams “Homes at Risk from rising sea”. in todays Courier Mail. Online the headline reads: “Sea level rise from climate change ‘underestimated’.”

“THE speed at which the climate is changing has been significantly underestimated, with thousands of Australian homes potentially at risk from rising sea levels, a conference has heard.
Ports, harbours and airports situated near the ocean are also vulnerable to the immediate effects of climate change, said keynote speaker Jo Mummery. Preliminary modelling has found that if there is a rise in sea levels, 269,505 houses could be at risk in NSW and 2,875 houses in the NT.”

And again on ABC Radio: “Australian expert says sea levels to rise four metres”

“Dr Jo Mummery, from the Department of Climate Change, told the delegation that if sea levels rose just one metre - exclusive pockets of the Gold Coast would be completely washed out. She says if water enters a 200 metre buffer zone almost 559,000 residential buildings would be affected across the country.”

In both the Courier Mail Report and the ABC they quote:

“The head of the climate change unit at the Australian National University and science adviser to the federal Government, Professor Will Steffen, says he believes the scientific community is underestimating the speed at which the climate is changing. “The evidence over the past 12 to 18 months suggests that we have underestimated how fast this aspect of the earth’s system can change,” he said.”

Are you alarmed yet? Don’t be - Below is a graph showing actual sea level rises from 1991 to 2005.



And in the last 12 months sea levels have actually fallen almost 10mm.



Since global warming plateaued in 2001 sea levels have risen just 5mm or so in 7 years. Even the alarmist IPCC reports predicts sea levels will rise 50cm by 2100.
Here is a graph of sea level changes over the last 24,000 years. The graph shows that sea levels in Australia have risen 20 metres or so in the last 8,000 years.



And in the last 128 years they have risen less than 20cm.



It’s difficult to take scientists seriously who make such outlandish predictions of sea levels rising 1-4 metres in the next 90 years. Those claims immediatley register on the Agmates Bulls**t meter.

Source






Australia: Party balloons banned -- for the "environment"

The simple magic of helium balloons has been popped - councils all over Sydney are banning them. One kill-joy council ranger even attempted to stop a toddler playing with a balloon at a local festival. The bureaucrat from Canada Bay Council threatened a priest handing a helium balloon to two-year-old Lewis Sylvester at the Five Dock Ferragosto festival last week. The ranger rounded on the priest with the terse warning: "I've already told you once. You can't hand out those balloons, it's an offence."

Lewis's father Phil Sylvester, a 2GB radio producer for the Chris Smith program, couldn't believe his ears. Canada Bay is among the increasingly officious councils that have outlawed helium balloons. Marrickville and Willoughby have banned them while Manly and Waverley have gone a step further and banned both helium and regular balloons. Sutherland Council, meanwhile, provides their own biodegradable balloons at events.

Under the Protection of the Environment Operations Act it is an offence to release 20 or more "lighter than air" balloons at the same time, with a fine of $200 for an individual and $400 for a corporation.

Source

***************************************

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

*****************************************