Ludicrous upcoming PBS special "Heat"

See Press Release and Trailer for the October 21, 2008 2-hour PBS Frontline Special "Heat" here. Looks like it will really be laughable. Marc Morano sent the following note to one of the producers of the PBS special

Just wanted to let you my thoughts after viewing the trailer for the Frontline global warming special now posted online. What a comedy your Frontline special appears to be! Correspondent Martin Smith apparently outdoes himself with some really schlocky bad reporting. Tell him I wish him luck and am sure he will win "awards" from the usual bunch for this seemingly laughable special. Can you please forward him this email?

Your Frontline "Heat" trailer claims global warming is "most important issue of our time" and claims that global warming "is probably the most urgent problem facing the next president." See Trailer for the October 21, 2008 2-hour PBS Frontline Special "Heat.".

Smith is very comfortable in the roles as the warming fear advocate stating "But nothing matches climate change in scope and severity." Oh really Mr. Smith? You can't think of any other more "urgent" issues for a President to address? Surely you jest.

Is Mr. Smith not aware that Hurricanes are declining? That there are no long term increases in drought? See this report: Excerpt: There have been no observed changes in the occurrence of tornadoes or thunderstorms - There have been no long-term increases in strong East Coast winter storms (ECWS), called Nor'easters - There are no long-term trends in either heat waves or cold spells, though there are trends within shorter time periods in the overall record. But all of the above appear to be INCREASING in unverified climate models. See: here

Is Smith aware that sea level is failing to rise at any type of alarming rate? See this report: Scientists Counter Computer Model Sea Level Rise Fears See also: Global warming may not affect sea levels, study finds - Jan 11, 2008

It appears Frontline is completely ignorant of the latest science developments of 2007 and 2008? The latest peer-reviewed studies and prominent scientists continue to debunk man-made climate fears. See: `Consensus' On Man-Made Global Warming Collapses in 2008

I enjoyed meeting Mr. Smith on September 7, 2007 at the Senate. He appeared at the time to be interested in actually understanding the complexities of the climate issue. But it now appears that Smith may be more suited to write a newsletter for Gore than attempt to do actual objective climate reporting. Granted, I may change my mind after viewing the full program, but it looks like balance, objectivity and yes - accuracy - are not being striven for in this latest PBS Frontline silliness.





Global cooling hits Moscow

For the past two weeks, Alexandra Shuvalova has spent almost every evening sitting in a bathtub filled with piping hot water. "I even read books in the tub. Any other place in the apartment is too cold for me," said Shuvalova, a 36-year-old nanny.

Moscow is caught in the grip of an unusually early winter chill and, with most apartments hooked up to the city's centralized heating system, residents are just plain cold. Authorities have avoided turning on the heat because of a rule that requires the outside temperature to remain below 8 degrees Celsius for more than five days in a row.

But City Hall decided this week to make an exception and turn on the heat for all apartments by next Wednesday -- two weeks earlier than usual. In the meantime, residents are shivering, buying electric heaters or just slipping into the hot tub, like Shuvalova.

Shuvalova lives in a typical 12-story Soviet-era apartment building on Ulitsa Mnyovniki in northwestern Moscow. Like most apartment buildings, it gets heating, hot water and electricity through a complicated system in which extra hot water used for power generation is pumped through the main pipes to neighborhood heat-exchange points. There, through special heat-exchange equipment, household water and the heating system are warmed up -- but not mixed with -- water from the power plants. The cooled-off steam is returned to the plants and reused for electricity production.

Central heating is installed in most new housing in Russian cities, as well as many places in northern Europe, where people seldom require air conditioning in their homes because of the temperate climate. But that means, of course, entire cities stay warm when the heating is turned on and shiver when it is off and the temperature falls.

Moscow temperatures were 8 to 10 C in the second and third weeks of September, 1 to 2 degrees lower than average for this time of year, said Nikolai Volobuyev, deputy head of the federal weather bureau. "This is a considerable drop for the fall, when every degree is important," he said. The temperature on Sept. 1, the first day of school, when outdoor welcoming ceremonies are held on school grounds around Moscow, was 8 C.

When Shuvalova brought Mark Latukhin, the 9-year-old boy she cares for, to School No. 142 in central Moscow, she saw some first graders being taken inside the building before the ceremony was over. "The small kids, the girls especially, were shivering while listening to the principal's welcome speech," she said.

Schools, hospitals and kindergartens have been able to receive heating since Sept. 16 if they applied for it, according to City Hall's fuel and energy department, which oversees the heating supply. Under city rules, the heat is turned on for residential buildings after the temperature is lower than 8 C for more than five days, which is usually the case in mid-October, department spokeswoman Marina Gaze said. City Hall decided Tuesday to turn on the system earlier, even though there have not been five full days with temperatures below 8 C, she said.

About 2,000 Moscow apartments, many of them in the Tverskoi and Fili districts, started receiving heat Wednesday in a check of the general condition of the system.

Gaze said changing the system was out of the question because it would require a major infrastructure overhaul. First, giant heating plants would need to be replaced with small boilers for each apartment building or each district. This would essentially involve doubling the number of pipes currently used to provide the city's hot water -- adding or reconstructing 4,000 kilometers of pipelines and replacing all old pipes with new ones made of modern materials, such as polyethylene and steel pipes in urethane isolation, according to Moscow United Energy, which holds the city administration's energy assets.

Some residents are fed up with the system. "I would prefer to decide for myself whether it is cold or warm in my apartment to start heating it," said Yelena Rusakova, a high school teacher browsing electric heaters at the Rizhsky market on Thursday. Rusakova, who bought two heaters, added that she was also tired of the centralized hot water system, which leads to hot water being turned off for several weeks every summer.

Moscow stores, meanwhile, are seeing the sale of electric heaters soar as people try to fight off the September cold. Sales at the Tekhnosila electronics chain have jumped more than 150 percent in the first three weeks of September in comparison to the same period last year, said store spokeswoman Nadezhda Senyuk. "We are really busy day and night trying to supply our stores with these kinds of things. On weekends, everything is usually sold out," she said.

The weather forecast for the next few days does not promise any relief. Rain is predicted for Saturday, and the temperature is expected to hover around 8 to 10 degrees throughout the next week.

But there is some good news, too. The cold spell came from the north, not the Atlantic, raising the possibility of an Indian summer with temperatures of up to 20 C in October, the federal weather bureau said.

The city administration, however, will not turn off central heating. Once it is turned on, it remains on until late spring.

Source






Another Dissenter: 'Man-made global warming is 'junk' science' - declares analytical chemist?

As an analytical chemist who works in spectroscopy and atmospheric sensing, I am troubled by the lack of common sense regarding carbon dioxide emissions. Our greatest greenhouse gas is water. Atmospheric spectroscopy reveals why water has a 95 percent and CO2 a 3.6 percent contribution to the "greenhouse effect."

Carbon dioxide emissions worldwide each year total 3.2 billion tons. That equals about 0.0168 percent of the atmosphere's CO2 concentration of about 19 trillion tons. This results in a 0.00064 percent increase in the absorption of the sun's radiation. This is an insignificantly small number. The yearly increase is many orders of magnitude smaller than the standard deviation errors for CO2 concentration measurement.

"Scientific" computer simulations predict global warming based on increased greenhouse gas emissions over time. However, without water's contribution taken into account they omit the largest greenhouse gas from their equations. How can such egregious calculation errors be so blatantly ignored? This is why man-made global warming is "junk" science.

A 1998 scientific study shows that plants in North America's farmlands absorb about 2 billion tons more CO2 than the old forests they replaced. That's 0.5 billion tons more CO2 removed than the 1.5 billion tons generated in 1998 by burning fossil fuels.

Experiments show that higher atmospheric levels of CO2 result in larger and faster growing crops. This provides for more efficient food production and more CO2 removed from the atmosphere.

For a "greener" environment and balanced atmospheric CO2 concentration levels, we all should purchase both carbon credits and carbon debits.

Source






Inhofe Report Exposes Environmental Groups as `Massive Democratic Political Machines'

U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, today released an updated comprehensive investigation into the financial and political activities employed by charitable and environmental organizations claiming to be non-partisan.

"Campaigns to `save the cuddly animals' or `protect the ancient forests' are really disguised efforts to raise money for Democratic political campaigns," Senator Inhofe said during a floor speech today presenting the new report. "Environmental organizations have become experts at duplicitous activity, skirting laws up to the edge of illegality, and burying their political activities under the guise of non-profit environmental improvement.

"Take this ad for example, displayed on the League of Conservation Voters, or LCV, website. This is LCV's standard text used to raise money for the nonprofit organization. In turn, LCV takes these donations, given to `save the environment' and uses them to fund ads for Democratic Candidates such as Ben Lujan from New Mexico. LCV, similar to other groups I'll highlight later, disguises itself as an environmental group dedicated to saving the environment, yet, as shown by this political ad, it is simply an extension of the Democratic political party.

"What we find now is the fleecing of the American public's pocketbooks by the environmental movement for their political gain. We also find exhausting litigation, instigation of false claims, misleading science, and scare tactics to fool Americans into believing disastrous environmental scenarios that are untrue. Especially in this election year, the American voter should see these groups and their many affiliate organizations as they are: the newest insidious conspiracy of political action committees and perhaps the newest multi-million dollar manipulation of federal election laws.

"As an American citizen concerned about our environment and our country, I'm dismayed and saddened by this deception. If these groups actually used the hundreds of millions of dollars they raise for actual environmental improvement, just think how many whales and forests we could save. These wolves should be seen for what they really are: massive democratic political machines, disguised as environmental causes."

Much more here






Michael "Hockeystick" Mann gets desperate: Cites "disappearing" snow of Kilimanjaro as proof of warming


(January 2008 pic of Kilimanjaro above)

Michael E. Mann, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, had just spent an hour explaining why he thinks there is virtual scientific consensus that people are causing the earth to warm and sea levels to rise, when a self-described "left-leaning, pro-environment person," a meteorologist, rose to angrily dispute him. The critic said thousands of scientists disagree with Mann's contention that carbon dioxide is causing climate change. Others have discredited Mann's figures on unprecedented temperature hikes. And some wish he would leave his university, Penn State.

The critic didn't give his name. But later Herb Stevens, a North Kingstown meteorologist who makes his living as the "Skiing Weatherman" on many local television stations, confirmed he was the critic. "I'm not some crackpot," he said. "I've spent a lot of time in the last 10 years researching this matter. It is the greatest hoax perpetrated on mankind."

Mann, who has been vilified by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and a host of other climate skeptics, responded calmly before an audience of nearly 1,000 on Tuesday. Natural forces don't account for the warming that is being observed, he said. Only carbon dioxide fits. Then he added: "A fossil-fuel funded amateur has a Web site that vilifies scientists in my field," he said. Questions about his data were rejected, he said, by the National Academy of Science and by the United Nations' International Panel on Climate Change. "I don't think by any stretch of the imagination has our science been discredited, except perhaps by some far-out fringe of the blogosphere." ....

He added that the globe is not warming uniformly. Land masses are warming more than oceans. But steadily, around the world, the warming is increasing. He showed pictures of the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro disappearing. They have been there for 12,000 years, and at the current rate of decline, Mann said they will be gone in two decades.

He said his so-called "hockey stick" curve on a graph, which shows warming sloping gently upward, and then shooting straight up, has been criticized by many skeptics, but supported by 10 more studies in the last decade.

One questioner said it was well known in the scientific community that disappearing snows of Kilimanjaro have nothing to do with climate change. But Mann said the questioner was wrong. The snows are melting and evaporating, both because of climate change, he said.

More here

Sampling of Scientific Reality Checks on Mount Kilimanjaro follows:

New Study in Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research Reveals warming not cause of Kilimanjaro ice loss - September 24, 2008

Excerpt: It has become clear to all but the most blind, that rising temperatures have had little to do with Kilimanjaro's disappearing ice, as the findings of Duane et al. (2008) also suggest. [.] Stating that their work shows "the importance of moisture transport upslope to the summit of Kilimanjaro," Duane et al. thus come down on the side of the many other researchers who have concluded, in their words, that "the reasons for the rapid decline in Kilimanjaro's glaciers are not primarily due to increased air temperatures, but a lack of precipitation."

Yet another study disproves Gore's Kilimanjaro claims - July 28, 2008

Excerpt: The latest issue of Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research contains yet another article on the snows of Kilimanjaro that should further end the nonsense on this subject hyped by the global warming advocates. The work was conducted by scientists from Brunei, the United Kingdom, Massachusetts, and Arizona, and the work "is based in part on work supported by the National Science Foundation and NOAA Office of Global Programs, Climate Change Data and Detection Program." Duane et al. begin noting "The impact of any climate change on high altitude regions is of fundamental importance to the region itself, its resources, and its surrounding environments. [.] Map showing location of the 10 meteorological data logger sites on the south-western slopes of Kilimanjaro (from Duane et al., 2008). Figure 2 shows the average monthly temperatures for seven of the ten locations (as numbered in Figure 1), and what do you notice about the high elevation stations? Of course, the temperatures are consistently below freezing all year! Figure 3 shows the hourly temperatures for these stations, and again, the temperatures high on the mountain stay below freezing at all times of the day! Duane et al. conclude "It has been argued that the reasons for the rapid decline in Kilimanjaro's glaciers are not primarily due to increased air temperatures, but a lack of precipitation. Indeed our data show that temperatures remain well below freezing at site 10, with daytime maxima averaging -2.1øC. Such low air temperatures keep sensible heat supply to the glacier small and make radiative exchanges more significant. Thus, patterns of cloud cover and humidity are central to understanding glacier-climate interactions." In other words, even if Gore's claim of elevated temperatures in the region would be correct (and it isn't), the increase in temperatures thus far would have had no effect on the frozen world at the top of Kilimanjaro. [.] The mountaintop needs more water to sustain the snow, ice, and glaciers, and as many other have noted, any increase in global temperature should increase global evaporation thereby possibly saving the snows of Kilimanjaro.

Tanzania official now declares ice caps on Mt Kilimanjaro 'increasing' - May 2008

Excerpt: A Cabinet minister has allayed fears that ice caps on Mt Kilimanjaro that is a big tourist attraction in the region could disappear permanently. The minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Ms Shamsa Mwangunga, says contrary to reports that the ice caps were decreasing owing to effects of global warming, indications were that the snow cover on Africa's highest mountain were now increasing. "Among the signs of more snow is the decrease in temperatures in areas surrounding the mountain, heavy rainfall this year and increased precipitation and spring water flow on the slopes of the mountain," she pointed out.

Researchers from the U.S. and Austria say global warming isn't the cause of Kilimanjaro ice loss - June 13, 2008

Excerpt: Al Gore has made the disappearing snows of Mount Kilimanjaro a cornerstone of his crusade against global warming. In his film "An Inconvenient Truth" for example, he says: "Within the decade, there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro." But now researchers from the U.S. and Austria say global warming isn't the cause, and the fluctuations are nothing new. American Science magazine reports most of the current snow retreat occurred before 1953 - nearly two decades before any conclusive evidence of atmospheric warming was available. One of the scientists writes: "It is certainly possible that the icecap has come and gone many times over hundreds of thousands of years." The article says the disappearance of Kilimanjaro's ice is not driven by warming air temperature, but by solar radiation - and that much of the ice is not melting, but vanishing by sublimation where ice at very low temperatures converts straight to water vapor.

Another study: `Deforestation behind loss of Mt Kili snow` - Using Kilimanjaro for warming called `awfully inaccurate' - August 14, 2008

Excerpt: A scientific theory has linked the loss of snow on Mount Kilimanjaro to deforestation and dismissed suggestions that the dwindling of glaciers on Africa`s highest peak was due to global warming. The theory is highlighted in a recent study report compiled by two researchers from Britain`s Portsmouth University, Nicholas Pepin and Martin Schaefer, who surveyed the mountain`s glaciers for 11 days. The researchers, who revealed their findings at a news conference in Dar es Salaam yesterday, said the mountain`s glacier surface had shrunk from 20 km in 1880 to a mere two kilometres in 2000. They said the development was caused more by local than regional factors, with Pepin suggesting that deforestation mainly due to extensive farming as the major cause. ``Deforestation of the mountain`s foothills is the most likely culprit because without forests there is too much evaporation of humidity into outer space. The result is that moisture-laden winds blowing across those forests have become drier and drier,`` he explained. [.] Revealing the findings they first published last year in the American Scientist magazine, the experts cautioned that using Mount Kilimanjaro as a ``poster child`` for climate change was awfully inaccurate.

Snow Returns to Mount Kilimanjaro (International Herald Tribune - January 21, 2008)

Excerpt: I had wanted to climb to the roof of Africa before climate change erased its ice fields and the romance of its iconic "Snows of Kilimanjaro" image. But as we trudged across the 12,000-foot Shira plateau on Day 2 of our weeklong climb and gazed at the whiteness of the vast, humpbacked summit, I thought maybe I needn't have worried. [.] And four days later, when we reached 19,340-foot Uhuru, the highest point on Kibo, we beheld snow and ice fields so enormous as to resemble the Arctic. It looked nothing like the photographs of Kibo nearly denuded of ice and snow in the Al Gore documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." Nor did it seem to jibe with the film's narrative: "Within the decade, there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro." [.] But several weeks of heavy rain and snow preceded the arrival of our group, 10 mountaineering clients and a professional guide from International Mountain Guides, based near Seattle. That made for a freakishly well-fed snow pack and the classic snowy image portrayed on travel posters, the label of the local Kilimanjaro Premium Lager and the T-shirts hawked in Moshi's tourist bazaars. But to many climate scientists and glaciologists who have probed and measured, the disappearance of the summit's ice fields is inevitable and imminent. [.] Patchy snow covered the upper slopes above approximately 18,500 feet. At dawn, as we reached Stella Point at the lower lip of Kibo's summit crater, the fluted walls of the flat-topped Rebmann Glacier stretched out to our left. Snow blanketed the summit area, a mile and a half wide and hemmed by glaciers. Uhuru, the highest point in all Africa, was a 45-minute slog ahead.

etc, etc.

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