Lizard Extinctions Blamed on Global Warming‏

Warmists were equally certain that the big frog die-off of a few years ago was due to global warming. They now admit that it was a fungus that caused the problem. Who knows what the real explanation will be this time? We old guys do have pesky memories, don't we? -- JR

When it comes to the hazards of global warming, it may turn out that lizards in burrows are the canaries in the coal mine.

In a study to be published Friday in the journal Science, an international team of biologists reports that in more than one-tenth of the places in Mexico where lizards flourished in 1975, the reptiles now cannot be found. The researchers predict that by 2080, about 40 percent of local lizard populations worldwide will have died off and 20 percent of lizard species will be extinct.

The reason for the huge die-off appears to be rising temperatures. But it isn't heat that is killing the lizards directly.

Instead, global warming appears to be lengthening the period of the day when lizards must seek shelter or risk fatal overheating. In the breeding season, that sheltering period is now so long that females of many species are unable to eat enough food to produce eggs and offspring.

Springs that start earlier and are warmer than they once were have been noted in many regions of the world in the past three decades. The new study suggests that the phenomenon may be far more important for the survival of some animals than peak summer temperatures, said Barry Sinervo, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz who headed the 26-person research team.

"It is as if something has really happened in world climate and the lizards are telling us that," he said.

The lizard findings also suggest that early stages of global warming may be more than a warning: They may have permanent consequences.

"Many of us have been worried about extinctions in the future," said Raymond B. Huey, a lizard physiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, who wrote a commentary accompanying the study. "This paper shows that extinctions are already here. I think that will really be surprising to most biologists."

Lizards are cold-blooded. They depend on the environment for the heat necessary to run their bodies -- functions from muscle contraction to digestion and hearing. Some get heat by basking in the sun ("heliotherms"), others by waiting for the air to warm them up ("thermoconformers"). Different species have different optimal temperatures as well as different maximal temperatures they can tolerate.
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Several years ago, the research team visited 200 places in Mexico where in 1975 biologists had recorded the presence of basking lizards of the Sceloporus genus, 48 species in all. At 12 percent of the sites, the researchers found no lizards.

The places with none tended to be at southern latitudes and low elevations and in regions where four decades of weather data showed a marked increase in springtime temperatures. Species with lower optimal temperatures -- 90 to 95 degrees, on average -- were also more likely to have gone "locally extinct" than more heat-tolerant ones.

Sinervo hypothesized that springtimes were getting too hot for lizards. He fashioned artificial reptiles out of painted PVC pipe and electronic temperature gauges and put them out in the sun at two places in the Yucatan where the species Sceloporus serrifer survived and two places where it was extinct.

Where the lizards had died out, the average April day had 9.25 hours with temperatures so high that lizards of that species would have had to seek refuge in a cool spot to survive. Where they survived, there were far fewer "hours of restriction."

An analysis of more sites led the scientists to conclude that when Mexican Sceloporus lizards spent more than four daylight hours in burrows out of the sun, extinction was very likely. Females simply wouldn't have enough time to eat.

"The summer maximum [temperature] doesn't matter to them," Sinervo said. "Lizards are fully capable of crawling under a rock and not doing anything for a couple of months. The problem arises for females in the spring who are maximally cranking away for reproduction."

The researchers created a mathematical model linking a lizard's optimal temperature, the maximum outdoor temperature and the hours of restriction to a species' risk of extinction. It correctly "predicted" recent extinctions in South America, Europe, Australia and Africa.

Predictions for 2050 -- local extinction of 16 percent of the world's lizard populations and global extinction of 6 percent of lizard species -- appear unavoidable, the researchers wrote. The more dramatic 2080 die-offs might be avoided if global warming is slowed.

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Talking Climate in the Windy City

Roger L. Simon

There must be some irony in holding a climate conference in Chicago, but I’m not sure what it is. Nevertheless, something close to eight hundred people have assembled at the Marriott on the Magnificent Mile to hear more than 70 scientists, economists and other experts opine on whether our globe is heating up. Naturally, since this is a skeptics’ event, most of them think not very much, as do the American people at this point.

Not surprisingly, however, the whole affair has been branded as corrupt by our colleagues at the Huffington Post who claimed the conference was bought and paid for by those nefarious fellows in the energy industry. (Wasn’t BP now supporting AGW? Oh, never mind.) The Heartland Institute, the conference organizers, emphatically deny this support. I leave it to you, dear reader, to decide the truth.

Unlike the HuffPo, I’m more interested in the science (not their long suit). And I have been getting an earful, spending most of my time in a conference room oddly name the “O’Hare” (it in no way resembles an airport), interviewing one scientist and expert after another for PJTV.

On the first day, two, especially, were notable — Lord Christopher Monckton and Richard Lindzen of MIT. I interviewed these gentlemen extensively practically back-to-back. Fortunately, neither of them knew my calculus grade in high school and I was able to slyly avoid being revealed as the scientific nincompoop that I am by sagely nodding my head at the appropriate moments. This was a good strategy because, I must say, I learned a lot.

I spoke first with Monckton who, I’m sure many readers know, has essentially become the verbal spokesman for the climate skeptic movement. Only allowed one witness to the Democrats’ four, ranking Republican Cong. Sensenbrenner chose Monckton, a British politician, not a scientist, to testify on the skeptics’ behalf before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

I asked Monckton why he thought he was chosen and he said it was because he was a politician and could withstand the hectoring from the majority members of the committee. Indeed I think he relished it. Outnumbered as he was, the Viscount evidently gave the Democrats a piece of his mind. I wish I had been there, because there is no question this man has an extraordinary command of the English language. For rhetoric alone, the Democrats should have been taking notes.

But that’s part of the point. This is no longer about science, if it ever was. Listening to Richard Lindzen lay out the whole history of “climate science” for me was fascinating, as he plotted the various motivations for the transition from the global cooling fears of the seventies (remember the Newsweek cover?) to the beginnings of the warming movement in the eighties.

During his interview, Monckton said that Lindzen’s latest research puts the final cap (not a felicitous word choice perhaps) on the global warming movement. Lindzen has studied the actual satellite temperature measurements, which reveal the heat escaping into the void, rather than being trapped in the “greenhouse” that “warmists” so assiduously insist is there.

Lindzen discusses these pesky results in his PJTV interview and I imagine will further reflect on them in his keynote speech, which PJTV will stream. Monckton has the final keynote, which he told me will center on the role the AGW movement played — or was intended to play — in the development of a global government through the UN.

What a relief it is the public is finally turning against this. And we have men like Monckton and Lindzen to thank for it, as well as many others at the conference. Steve McIntyre, whom I will be interviewing Monday, comes quickly to mind.

With any luck, in the near future, a few of our politicians may even wake up to this. But that may be pushing it. I have a suspicion most of them did even more poorly in calculus than I did.

SOURCE






The Heartland Climate Conference Smear Campaign Begins

As ever, the Warmists have only "ad hominem" arguments to bless themselves with

For the fourth time in the past three years scientists, economists and policymakers are gathering to explore both the causes and consequences of “climate change,” and the cost and effectiveness of currently proposed “remedies.” Also for the fourth time in the past three years, the Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change, which commences this Sunday, has been all but ignored by the mainstream media. And as reliable as the MSM have become in evading the event’s purpose, so have the alarmist media become in distorting it.

This year’s early entry appeared on Thursday, when former RFK Jr. Research Associate and onetime EPA “environmental justice advocate” Brendan DeMelle let the green games begin with this hysterically deluded posting at HuffPo.

According to DeMelle, the MSM’s “lack of interest” in what he brands a “non-event” stems not from liberal media bias, but rather “from the fact that this denial-a-palooza fest is dripping with oil money and represents a blatant industry effort to greenwash oil and coal while simultaneously attacking the credibility of climate scientists.”

How strikingly original – even the excruciatingly unclever “denial-a-palooza” was boosted from Greenpeace Research Director Kert Davies, who spread the term around like so much environment-friendly fertilizer during ICCC’s maiden voyage to NY City in 2008. And exactly which “climate scientists’” credibility is DeMelle so deeply concerned about? If perchance those paid to toe the green line for NASA, NOAA, CRU or the IPCC, then, as we’ve reported here, here, here, and here, respectively, there’s not much left of it standing on which to bear down upon. Needless to say, DeMelle’s lame attempt to defend the honor of those discredited entities by referencing last month’s laughable Lord Oxburgh Climategate whitewash falls dreadfully short of the mark.

If, on the other hand, he refers to those true experts who’ll be attending and presenting at next week’s ICCC IV, then I suspect he’d do well to join us in Chicago and learn firsthand that such intellectual ten-rounders are exactly what science is built upon, not blind adherence to single-minded “mainstream” opinion.

But DeMelle’s sparse scientific quiver quickly depleted, compelling him to continue his original thinking theme by reaching for an old familiar green arrow, tipped with the words: “For insight into the underlying aim of the Chicago denier conference, let us take a look at the funding sources for the sponsoring organizations.”

What followed was a lengthy litany of alleged contributions to various ICCC cosponsors from various organizations he coincidentally quotes the slogan-hijacked Kert Davies condemning as “hell-bent on keeping us addicted to dirty oil and coal.” The list was dominated by capitalist villains ExxonMobil, the Koch Foundations and the Scaife Foundations, and I have neither the time nor inclination to verify DeMelle’s figures for one simple reason: They’re irrelevant. Even if accurate to the penny – so what?

For starters, contrary to DeMelle’s implications, ICCC cosponsors don’t contribute dime one to the event. As Heartland Executive Vice President and Publisher Dan Miller explained to me earlier today, theirs is more an honorary title (much like that of freshly ordained Doctor of ecology and evolutionary biology Albert Gore) bestowed in recognition of their promotion of the conference to their members. Accordingly -- whosoever does or does not contribute money to these fabulous organizations that in fact do not in turn contribute money to the ICCC can’t possibly have any bearing on the conference’s objectivity and is therefore a nonissue.

As to ICCC’s sole financial sponsor, Heartland Institute itself, the total amount of funding it receives from all energy companies combined is no more than 5% of its budget, and, according to Dan, “probably much less.” Responding to DeMelle’s bogus insinuations to the contrary, Dan asserts: "Exxon last donated in 2006, and the amount was pocket change. I think the company bought a table for a dinner. The Heartland Institute hasn't received funding from Koch or Scaife for more than a decade."

So Brendan, show me the dripping oil money that’s keeping the oh-so-conscientious MSM at bay. And while you’re at it, perhaps you might explain why it is that the research funding sources of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) contrarians influence MSM newsworthiness decision-making while those of AGW alarmists apparently aren’t worth an editor’s second thought. When was the last time the NY Times, MSNBC or ABC News took a pass on an “unprecedented manmade global warming” story simply because its underlying research came from Britain’s Climate Research Unit (CRU), as is so often the case?

The same CRU whose director, Phil Jones, was discovered through Climategate-related documents (read my report here) to have received 55 endowments since 1990 from agencies ranging from the U.S. Department of Energy to NATO, worth a total of £13,718,547, or approximately $22.6 million. The same CRU whose list of potential funding sources in those same documents included four renewable energy agencies. Three -- the Carbon Trust, the Northern Energy Initiative, and the Energy Saving Trust -- are U.K.-based consultancy and funding specialists promoting "new energy" technologies with the goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The fourth -- Renewables North West -- is an American company promoting the expansion of solar, wind, and geothermal energy in the Pacific Northwest.

So while Heartland is as oil-free as acne wash, the CRU is dripping in green-fantasy-power-ooze money, which gives them an undeniably intrinsic financial interest in the promotion of AGW. And yet, MSM articles and reports (not to mention those of the hallowed IPCC) are awash with the manipulated data, charts, and projections generated by this blatantly biased organization. Is anyone really buying our HuffPo hero’s assertion that the “lack of press interest” in the Heartland conference is based primarily on the MSM’s scruples regarding funding conflicts?

Of course, contrary to alarmist-controlled media ranting, funding sources are hardly the measure of scientific theory eminence. Upon completing this entry, I pack for my fourth voyage to the land of climate sanity, from which I will again be reporting to you that which the MSM most certainly will not – climate considered as rational science rather than political instrumentation.

No doubt a few MSM types will ultimately acknowledge the goings on at the Chicago Marriott Magnificent Mile Hotel, if only to poke sophomoric fun at what they’ll ignorantly term the “denier’s conference.”

And while the effectively brainwashed “Carbon causes warming -- period” crowd chuckles in self-satisfied accord, AT readers will share in the brilliant yet refreshingly disparate opinions of these amazing luminaries to ponder and discuss. And learn.

Stay tuned.

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The Venusian climate is enigmatic

Warmists always tell us that the high temperatures on Venus are the result of a strong Greenhouse effect but that is just speculation. The truth is that no-one so far understands the Venusian climate. Its reality defies all existing theories. The paper after the one below suggests that adiabatic effects may be a large part of the explanation for the high temperatures observed

A new Japanese space probe is poised to launch toward Venus today to help solve the enduring mysteries of the hellish, cloud-covered world, which has been often described as Earth's twin.

The Venus Climate Orbiter Akatsuki, which means "Dawn" in Japanese, is set to launch from Tanegashima Space Center in Japan today on a 2-year mission to study the weather and surface of Venus in unprecedented detail. Liftoff is set for 5:44 p.m. EDT today, though it will be early Tuesday morning local time at the launch site.

"Once we can explain the structure of Venus, we will be able to better understand Earth," said Akatsuki project scientist Takeshi Imamura in a statement released by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). "For example, we may discover the reasons that only Earth has been able to sustain oceans, and why only Earth is abundant in life."

Imamura has called Akatsuki "the world's first interplanetary probe that deserves to be called a meteorological satellite."

The probe carries five different cameras to study Venus' clouds as well as map the planet's weather and peer through its thick atmosphere to view the surface. It will join Europe's Venus Express already in orbit around the planet, and has scientists on that mission eager as well.

"Venus somehow transformed from a more Earth-like place to the alien place it is today, and what's fascinating about the world is figuring out how it diverges from the Earth and the history behind why that happened," said David Grinspoon, curator of astrobiology at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and an interdisciplinary scientist on the Venus Express mission. "It could help us understand how things here might change."

Akatsuki will launch atop a Japanese H-2A rocket and won't be alone during blastoff. JAXA is launching several smaller satellite experiments with the mission, including an ambitious solar sail designed to tag along on the trip to Venus. [More on Japan's solar sail mission.]

Secret of Venus' super-rotation

One of Akatsuki's main goals is to understand what may be the biggest mystery of Venus — the "super-rotation" of its atmosphere, where violent winds drive storms and clouds around that planet at speeds of more than 220 mph (360 kph), some 60 times faster than the planet itself rotates.

"There's no consistent model of Venus's climate that can reproduce this super-rotation," Grinspoon explained. "We've been taking general circulation models from Earth and tweaking them for Venus, and they don't work. By understanding better how climate works on Venus, it will make us better understand how climate change on Earth works."

Akatsuki will monitor Venus in the infrared to learn more about the atmosphere and surface under the murky clouds, hopefully revealing what mechanism is driving this super-rotation.

But Imamura has said his team is fully prepared to be surprised by unexpected findings which may uncover more questions than answers.

"We may be pleasantly surprised by the emergence of a greater mystery than super-rotation," he said.

Impossible lightning

The Venus Express spacecraft the European Space Agency launched in 2005 intriguingly found evidence of lightning on the planet, even though none should exist.

"What creates lightning on Earth is water droplets and ice crystals in clouds, which leads to the separation of electric charges that lightning needs, and you don't have that kind of weather on Venus," Grinspoon said.

But Venus is covered with thick clouds of sulfuric acid.

"Maybe there's a kind of weather we haven't seen yet on Venus that causes this lightning, or maybe how we're wrong about the kinds of conditions needed to make lightning," he added.

Akatsuki should help capture vital clues about this lightning with a camera dedicated to photographing it.

Weird stripes on Venus

There are unusual stripes in the upper clouds of Venus dubbed "blue absorbers" because they strongly absorb light in the blue and ultraviolet wavelengths. These are soaking up a huge amount of energy — nearly half of the total solar energy the planet absorbs. As such, they seem to play a major role in keeping Venus as hellish as it is, with surface temperatures of more than 860 degrees F (460 degrees C).

"We don't know what they are," Grinspoon said. "They're probably some kind of sulfur compound, but we haven't been able to nail it down yet."

Akatsuki's ultraviolet imager will focus on inspecting these enigmas.

A bright mystery, and volcanoes?

In 2007, two-thirds of the Venus's southern hemisphere was suddenly covered in a bright haze that disappeared a few days later. It remains uncertain what started this amazing transformation.

"We think it's some kind of dynamic overturning of the atmosphere that injected sulfur dioxide above the clouds briefly, but we're not sure," Grinspoon said.

The clouds may be fueled from sulfur spewed up by volcanoes on Venus, as Grinspoon and his colleagues ran calculations that suggest the sulfur seen in the atmosphere should dissipate after 10 to 30 million years if not otherwise refueled. However, Venus's clouds are so thick that no one has actually seen any volcanoes yet.

"Venus guards her secrets rather tightly, and under forbidding conditions," he said. The scientists behind Akatsuki hope its cameras might be able to spot active volcanoes under her veil.

Double-teaming Venus

When Akatsuki reaches Venus in December, it will find Venus Express there as a partner in orbit, complementing it in a number of ways.

For instance, they will take different orbits over the planet — while Venus Express has an orbit that takes it over both poles, enabling it to see virtually the entire world, Akatsuki will fly an elliptical orbit around the equator, allowing it to concentrate on parts of the atmosphere for hours at a time. The orbit will bring Akatsuki as close as 186 miles (300 km) to Venus and as far away as 49,709 miles (80,000 km).

"Venus Express and Akatsuki are like sister satellites, and a very good cooperative relationship has been built as we have progressed in our missions," Imamura said.

Imamura said that while Venus Express primarily studies the chemical composition of Venus' atmosphere, Akatsuki will focus on the fluid motion of the planet's weather. Together, the two spacecraft should reveal a comprehensive picture of how the planet works.

"If there's one thing we've been learning about Venus, it's that it's a really dynamic planet that's very changeable, so we need as much long-term data as we can to build up an understanding of how things change over time," Grinspoon said. "Having Akatsuki there should help capture more vital clues to understanding Venus's mysteries."

SOURCE






Adiabatic Theory predicts slight cooling from Doubled CO2

IPCC models leave out most of the processes affecting climate. Adiabatic theory looks at the effect of pressure on temperature

Adding to the list (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23...and others) of scientists and mathematicians who have disproven conventional greenhouse gas theory, Russian physicists OG Sorokhtin, GV Chilingar, and LF Khilyuk noted in their book Global warming and global cooling. Evolution of climate on earth. Developments in Earth & Environmental Sciences (Elsevier 2007) that conventional greenhouse theory is not based on sound physical derivation, with most calculations and predictions based on intuitive models using numerous poorly defined parameters and unproven positive feedback forcing from CO2.

Most conventional interpretations and models, such as those of the IPCC, consider only one component of heat transfer- radiation- to create a flat earth radiation budget of the atmosphere, ocean, and land masses, and do not adequately address the impact of e.g. convection and circulation on a rotating sphere. In contrast, the Sorokhtin et al adiabatic theory considers earth as an open, dissipative system that can be described by non-linear equations of mathematical physics, taking into account the formation of stable thermodynamic structures in each compartment, between compartments, and ruled by strong negative feedbacks (e.g. convection, water cycles, clouds).

They devised a model based on well-established relationships among physical fields describing the mass and heat transfer in the atmosphere and subsequently published the paper Cooling of Atmosphere Due to CO2 in Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and Environmental Effects (2008), excerpted below.

This paper and all of the other derivations of atmospheric physics noted in the list above come to essentially the same conclusion: Doubling of CO2 levels will cause insignificant changes in global temperature (<1°C). This prediction is in much better agreement with the five peer-reviewed empirical satellite studies than any of the IPCC models or predictions from conventional greenhouse gas theory.

Basic formulas describe among others, the heat transfer in the atmosphere by radiation, the atmospheric pressure and air density change with elevation, the effect of the angle of the Earth's precession and the adiabatic process. For the adiabatic process the formula considers the partial pressures and specific heats of the gases forming the atmosphere, an adiabatic constant and corrective coefficients for the heating caused by water condensation in the wet atmosphere and for the absorption of infrared radiation by the atmosphere. The adiabatic constant and the heat coefficients are estimated using actual experimental data.

This adiabatic model was verified, with a precision of 0.1%, by comparing the results obtained for the temperature distribution in the troposphere of the Earth with the standard model used worldwide for the calibration of the aircraft gauges and which is based on experimental data. The model was additionally verified with a precision of 0.5%–1.0% for elevations up to 40 km, by comparing the results with the measured temperature distribution in the dense troposphere of Venus consisting mainly of CO2.

Introduction

Traditional anthropogenic theory of currently observed global warming states that release of carbon dioxide into atmosphere (partially as a result of utilization of fossil fuels) leads to an increase in atmospheric temperature because the molecules of CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) absorb the infrared radiation from the Earth’s surface. This statement is based on the Arrhenius hypothesis, which was never verified (Arrhenius, 1896).

The proponents of this theory take into consideration only one component of heat transfer in atmosphere, i.e., radiation. Yet, in the dense Earth’s troposphere with the pressure p > 0:2 atm, the heat from the Earth's surface is mostly transferred by convection (Sorokhtin, 2001a). According to our estimates, convection accounts for 67%, water vapor condensation in troposphere accounts for 25%, and radiation accounts for about 8% of the total heat transfer from the Earth’s surface to troposphere. [IPCC models rely almost entirely upon the radiation budget, which according to the authors accounts for only 8% of atmospheric heat transfer-maybe that's why Trenberth et al can't find the "missing" heat- added comments]

Conclusion

Thus, convection is the dominant process of heat transfer in troposphere, and all the theories of Earth’s atmospheric heating (or cooling) first of all must consider this process of heat (energy) mass redistribution in atmosphere (Sorokhtin, 2001a, 2001b; Khilyuk and Chilingar, 2003, 2004).

Accumulation of large amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to the cooling, and not to warming of climate, as the proponents of traditional anthropogenic global warming theory believe (Aeschbach-Hertig, 2006). This conclusion has a simple physical explanation: when the infrared radiation is absorbed by the molecules of greenhouse gases, its energy is transformed into thermal expansion of air, which causes convective fluxes of air masses restoring the adiabatic distribution of temperature in the troposphere. Our estimates show that release of small amounts of carbon dioxide (several hundreds ppm), which are typical for the scope of anthropogenic emission, does not influence the global temperature of Earth’s atmosphere.

The Sorokhtin et al model was based on the observation that in the troposphere (the lower and denser layer of the atmosphere, with pressures greater than 0.2 atm) the heat transfer is mostly by convection and the temperature distribution is close to adiabatic. The reasoning for this is that the air masses expand and cool while rising and compress and heat while descending.

The main conclusions of this work are:

1. Convection accounts for approximately 67% of the total amount of heat transfer from the Earth's surface to the troposphere, the condensation of water vapour for 25% and radiation accounts for only 8%. As the heat transfer in the troposphere occurs mostly by convection, accumulation of CO2 in the troposphere intensifies the convective process of heat and mass transfer, because of the intense absorption of infrared radiation, and leads to subsequent cooling and not warming as commonly believed.

2. The analysis indicates that the average surface temperature of the earth is determined by the solar constant, the precession angle of the planet, the mass (pressure) of the atmosphere, and the specific heat of the atmospheric mixture of gases.

3. If the nitrogen–oxygen atmosphere of the earth would be replaced by a CO2 atmosphere with the same pressure of 1 atm, then the average near-surface temperature would decrease by approximately 2.5 °C and not increase as commonly assumed.

4. The opposite will happen by analogy if the CO2 atmosphere of Venus would be replaced by a nitrogen–oxygen atmosphere at a pressure of 90.9 atm. The average near-surface temperature would increase from 462 °C to 657 °C. This is explained easily by observing how the results of the derived formulas are affected, considering that the molecular weight of CO2 is about 1.5 times greater and its specific heat 1.2 times smaller than those of the earth's air.

5. If the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere increases from 0.035% to its double value of 0.070%, the atmospheric pressure will increase slightly (by 0.00015 atm). Consequently the temperature at sea level will increase by about 0.01°C and the increase in temperature at an altitude of 10 km will be less than 0.03°C. These amounts are negligible compared to the natural temporal fluctuations of the global temperature.

6. In evaluating the above consequences of the doubling of the CO2, one has to consider the dissolution of CO2 in oceanic water and also that, together with carbon, a part of atmospheric oxygen is also transferred into carbonates. Therefore instead of a slight increase in the atmospheric pressure one should expect a slight decrease with a corresponding insignificant climate cooling.

SOURCE (See the original for links)





The Knowledge Problem

by economist Don Boudreaux

Sen. Bill Nelson claims that “The ultimate answer to America’s energy needs lies not in oil, but in the rapid development of alternative fuels” (“Halt offshore exploration,” May 13).

How in the world does Mr. Nelson divine this alleged fact? Does he have expert insight into the full costs and benefits of developing and producing non-fossil fuels? Has he displayed a unique talent at predicting changes in the technologies that are used to extract petroleum? Hardly.

After a short stint in the Army, Mr. Nelson spent all of one year (1970) in the private sector (where he practiced law). From 1971 until today he has worked exclusively in politics. He has neither experience in the energy industry nor any record of entrepreneurship. For nearly 40 years – well over half of his life – he’s devoted his career to spending other people’s money. In short, he has no basis for making this claim.

Mr. Nelson’s “answer to America’s energy needs” deserves no more attention than does any such prophecy issued by a Ouija board or by a witch doctor reading the entrails of a rooster.

SOURCE

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