Seattle: A Warmist scientist who mentions no science -- funnily enough

All he can manage is personal abuse below: No attempt at a rational argument. Just like the comments that we conservative bloggers get from the Green/Left in the comments on our blogs.

Such a low intellectual standard tells its own story, I think: If even the top rung of Warmists have nothing but rage to offer, it shows how little there is behind their theories.

The author below complains of scientific illiteracy but himself encourages it. He seems to think that appeals to authority are science

OK. We're agreed that the majority of the US population is Scientifically Illiterate in the last postings to this column. So too, is the Federal House, Senate and the Supreme Court. Obama seems to have had some science and speaks literately, but his predecessor was even anti-science in general. I've suggested that our inability to generate a very long term society that is sustainable is a consequence of this illiteracy.

I see that two of these leading proponents of illiteracy, Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), the champion climate denier in Congress, are circulating a draft of their "Climate Science Denial" bill that would gut the Clean Air Act to exclude climate emissions and repeal the EPA scientific finding that climate emissions pose a threat to human health.

I have mentioned that a cautious scientist, a foremost expert on the properties of radiation, NASA's Jim Hansen, is quite courageous sticking his neck out by warning the law-makers that serious effects of Global Warming would likely ensue if we ignore the observational warnings and continue to pollute the atmosphere.

In the case of Upton and Inhofe, I am cynically amazed by their willingness to put their heads on the chopping block --- as a cautious but literate scientist I suspect that they have a good chance of going into the history books as the most short-sighted and thoughtless legislators in our history as the data comes in in the next FIVE to twenty years. They do have the courage of their convictions. These convictions apparently come from thin air. And probably polluted air. Or likely from their fossil fuel burning donors.

If you're still on the fence, read Hansen's "Storms of my Grandchildren" for a cautious prediction.

SOURCE




Halfway to doomsday!

Below-freezing temperatures, icy streets, and blinding blizzards have plagued the country for two weeks now. Buried in all that snow is the five year anniversary of the Sundance premiere of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.”

It was at Sundance in 2006 that we first heard Gore’s most profitable hypothesis: The world had ten years or less to avert imminent destruction. That same year, Rush Limbaugh began his “Algore (sic) Doomsday Countdown.”

“Now, the last time I heard some liberal talk about ‘ten years’ it was 1988, Ted Danson,” said Limbaugh. “We had ten years to save the oceans; we were all going to pay the consequences, which would result in our death. Now Al Gore says we’ve got ten years. Ten years left to save the planet from a scorching. Okay, we’re going to start counting. This is January 27th, 2006. We will begin the count, ladies and gentlemen.”

To be fair, Gore did say that that the world would not be over in ten years, just that a line will have been crossed, making salvation impossible. “The world won’t ‘end’ overnight in 10 years,” said Gore. “But a point will have been passed, and there will be an irreversible slide into destruction.”

Nevertheless, according to the clock, we are now half way to the point of no return. Limbaugh acknowledged the five year anniversary on his program Wednesday.

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Do carbon emissions pose a health risk?

A new ploy from the Warmists. But since cold weather is much more likely to kill you than warm (NOBODY was killed by Australia's recent great midsummer cyclone) the argument is an absurdity. Cold is life-threatening. Warmth is simply uncomfortable.

It is true that there is a lot of disease in the tropics but I come one of the few areas of white settlement in the tropics and we have long had appropriate public health measures in place -- so mortality from tropical diseases is rare, unlike mortality from winter ailments and accidents in colder climes

When Republican lawmakers introduced legislation this week to block efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate carbon, environmental groups pushed back hard. And this time, the groups stepped up their efforts by attempting to shift the argument from being about climate change science and green jobs to public health safety.

In a press release sent out Thursday, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) attacked the proposal as a “serious health setback.”

“This is unprecedented political interference with sound science and enforcement of clean air safeguards, which have improved our water and air for the past four decades,” said NRDC climate and air legislative director Franz Matzner.

“Politicians should not block EPA scientists from continuing to reduce carbon dioxide, mercury and other life-threatening pollution. Big polluters cannot be allowed to continue spewing unlimited amounts of carbon pollution into our air.”

When contacted by The Daily Caller, an NRDC spokesperson referred to a 2008 NRDC fact sheet that lists health risks from carbon dioxide that include a more intense “allergenic pollen season” and an increase in droughts and floods.

Even Democrats on the Hill have taken up the argument shift to public health. “These attacks on the Clean Air Act will only take us backwards to a time when big polluters dirtied our air with impunity and hurt the health of our children,” said Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland Thursday. “If Republicans want to tear down the progress we have made to make air cleaner in America, they’re going to get a fight from those of us who are committed to the public health of our communities.”

A spokesperson for the American Public Health Administration (APHA) also told TheDC that the organization supported “reducing carbon emissions to protect public health. In a response to the proposed legislation, the APHA called on Congress to defend the Clean Air Act and the EPA’s attempts to regulate carbon as a matter of public health.

But for some, the threat of carbon dioxide on public health is exaggerated. One scientist even described CO2 to TheDC as a “beneficial gas.” In an interview with TheDC, Joe D’Aleo, a meteorologist and executive director of the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project (ICECAP), called the public health argument “nonsense” and “absolutely ludicrous... Since we emit 2.7 pounds of CO2 per person per day from respiration, it is clearly not harmful,” said D’Aleo.

He also pointed out that in classrooms, auditoriums, and especially submarines, carbon dioxide levels are always higher than they are in the open air. “And they don’t die in submarines from carbon dioxide,” said D’Aleo.

“The EPA has admitted that its cap-and-trade agenda won’t have any meaningful impact on climate,” said Matt Dempsey, spokesperson for Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, one of the co-sponsors of the legislation. “One wonders, then: how could stopping something with no impact have any impact on public health?”

More HERE




Magnetic Polar Shifts may be behind Massive Global Superstorms

But I am sure Al Gore will tell us that global warming affects the earth's magnetic field too. You can invent theories to explain anything. Being wise after the event is easy. It's inventing theories that have predictive power that is hard -- a challenge Warmists routinely fail.

The article below contains a considerable element of speculation but does pinpoint a neglected "forcing" on climate

NASA has been warning about it…scientific papers have been written about it…geologists have seen its traces in rock strata and ice core samples… Now "it" is here: an unstoppable magnetic pole shift that has sped up and is causing life-threatening havoc with the world's weather.

Forget about global warming—man-made or natural—what drives planetary weather patterns is the climate and what drives the climate is the sun's magnetosphere and its electromagnetic interaction with a planet's own magnetic field.

When the field shifts, when it fluctuates, when it goes into flux and begins to become unstable anything can happen. And what normally happens is that all hell breaks loose.

Magnetic polar shifts have occurred many times in Earth's history. It's happening again now to every planet in the solar system including Earth.

The magnetic field drives weather to a significant degree and when that field starts migrating superstorms start erupting.

The superstorms have arrived

The first evidence we have that the dangerous superstorm cycle has started is the devastating series of storms that pounded the UK during late 2010.

On the heels of the lashing the British Isles sustained, monster storms began to lash North America. The latest superstorm—as of this writing—is a monster over the U.S. that stretched across 2,000 miles affecting more than 150 million people.

Yet even as that storm wreaked havoc across the Western, Southern, Midwestern and Northeastern states, another superstorm broke out in the Pacific and closed in on Australia.

The southern continent had already dealt with the disaster of historic superstorm flooding from rains that dropped as much as several feet in a matter of hours. Tens of thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed. After the deluge tiger sharks were spotted swimming between houses in what was once a quiet suburban neighborhood.

Shocked authorities now numbly concede that much of the water may never dissipate and have wearily resigned themselves to the possibility that region will now contain a new inland sea.

But then only a handful of weeks later another superstorm—the megamonster cyclone Yasi—struck northeastern Australia. The damage it left in its wake is being called by rescue workers a war zone.

The incredible superstorm packed winds near 190mph. Although labeled as a category-5 cyclone, it was theoretically a category-6. The reason for that is storms with winds of 155mph are considered category-5, yet Yasi was almost 22 percent stronger than that.

A cat's cradle

Yet Yasi may only be a foretaste of future superstorms. Some climate researchers, monitoring the rapidly shifting magnetic field, are predicting superstorms in the future with winds as high as 300 to 400mph.

Such storms would totally destroy anything they came into contact with on land.

The possibility more storms like Yasi or worse will wreak havoc on our civilization and resources is found in the complicated electromagnetic relationship between the sun and Earth. The synergistic tug-of-war has been compared by some to an intricately constructed cat's cradle. And it's in a constant state of flux.

The sun's dynamic, ever-changing electric magnetosphere interfaces with the Earth's own magnetic field affecting, to a degree, the Earth's rotation, precessional wobble, dynamics of the planet's core, its ocean currents and—above all else—the weather.

Cracks in Earth's Magnetic Shield

The Earth's northern magnetic pole was moving towards Russia at a rate of about five miles annually. That progression to the East had been happening for decades.

Suddenly, in the past decade the rate sped up. Now the magnetic pole is shifting East at a rate of 40 miles annually, an increase of 800 percent. And it continues to accelerate.

Recently, as the magnetic field fluctuates, NASA has discovered "cracks" in it. This is worrisome as it significantly affects the ionosphere, troposphere wind patterns, and atmospheric moisture. All three things have an effect on the weather.

Worse, what shields the planet from cancer-causing radiation is the magnetic field. It acts as a shield deflecting harmful ultra-violet, X-rays and other life-threatening radiation from bathing the surface of the Earth. With the field weakening and cracks emerging, the death rate from cancer could skyrocket and mutations of DNA can become rampant.

Another federal agency, NOAA, issued a report caused a flurry of panic when they predicted that mammoth superstorms in the future could wipe out most of California. The NOAA scientists said it's a plausible scenario and would be driven by an "atmospheric river" moving water at the same rate as 50 Mississippi rivers flowing into the Gulf of Mexico.

Magnetic field may dip, flip and disappear

The Economist wrote a detailed article about the magnetic field and what's happening to it. In the article they noted:

"There is, however, a growing body of evidence that the Earth's magnetic field is about to disappear, at least for a while. The geological record shows that it flips from time to time, with the south pole becoming the north, and vice versa. On average, such reversals take place every 500,000 years, but there is no discernible pattern. Flips have happened as close together as 50,000 years, though the last one was 780,000 years ago. But, as discussed at the Greenland Space Science Symposium, held in Kangerlussuaq this week, the signs are that another flip is coming soon."

Discussing the magnetic polar shift and the impact on weather, the scholarly paper "Weather and the Earth's magnetic field" was published in the journal Nature. Scientists too are very concerned about the increasing danger of superstorms and the impact on humanity.

Superstorms will not only damage agriculture across the planet leading to famines and mass starvation, they will also change coastlines, destroy cities and create tens of millions of homeless.

Superstorms can also cause certain societies, cultures or whole countries to collapse. Others may go to war with each other.

A Danish study published in the scientific journal Geology, found strong correlation between climate change, weather patterns and the magnetic field.

"The earth's climate has been significantly affected by the planet's magnetic field, according to a Danish study published Monday that could challenge the notion that human emissions are responsible for global warming.

"'Our results show a strong correlation between the strength of the earth's magnetic field and the amount of precipitation in the tropics,' one of the two Danish geophysicists behind the study, Mads Faurschou Knudsen of the geology department at Aarhus University in western Denmark, told the Videnskab journal.

"He and his colleague Peter Riisager, of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), compared a reconstruction of the prehistoric magnetic field 5,000 years ago based on data drawn from stalagmites and stalactites found in China and Oman."

In the scientific paper "Midday magnetopause shifts earthward of geosynchronous orbit during geomagnetic superstorms with Dst = -300 nT" the magnetic intensity of solar storms impacting Earth can intensify the effects of the polar shift and also speed up the frequency of the emerging superstorms.

Pole reversal may also be initiating new Ice Age

According to some geologists and scientists, we have left the last interglacial period behind us. Those periods are lengths of time—about 11,500 years—between major Ice Ages.

One of the most stunning signs of the approaching Ice Age is what's happened to the world's precessional wobble.

The Earth's wobble has stopped

As explained in the geology and space science website earthchangesmedia.com, "The Chandler wobble was first discovered back in 1891 by Seth Carlo Chandler an American astronomer.

The effect causes the Earth's poles to move in an irregular circle of 3 to 15 meters in diameter in an oscillation. The Earth's Wobble has a 7-year cycle which produces two extremes, a small spiraling wobble circle and a large spiraling wobble circle, about 3.5 years apart.

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Even the Northern sea ice will not disappear

The sea ice in the North will not melt down. Several factors will make it come back, latest modelling shows. Rough translation from Norwegian below

Is the melting of sea ice in the Arctic unstoppable? Will the ice disappear? "Our research suggests that the ice will not melt for good. Amount of ice in the summer season looks instead to be relatively stable", said Dirk Notz, Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg.

During the great northern Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromsø this week, he showed a clear pattern of ice melt: "We see that a year with a lot of melting ice is always followed by a year of less melting. Our climate models show that the ice will come back to the same level within one to three years, which surprised us", he said. He points to several explanations for this development:

* The usual scenario is the Arctic ice reflects sunlight. With less ice or no ice the ocean gets warmer, as the ice melts. But while losing sea ice without any more heat than the ocean that is covered by ice. Such a "feedback" keeps the water temperature low, so that the ice comes back, says Notz.

* The thickness of the ice is also a factor: A thin layer of ice is sea ice. Thin ice grows back faster than thick ice.

* Another factor is that sea ice grows without falling snow, which lowers the temperature. From this it means that we can manage to keep the sea ice in the Arctic, but it requires that we reduce emissions of CO2, says Notz.

Support: Lars Henrik Smedsrud, a researcher at the Bjerknes Centre at the University of Bergen, supports the findings.

* "I have done similar things with a slightly different climate model and get very consistent results to Notz. The fact that two different models agree provides tremendous similar results, strengthens the credibility of results", the researcher says.

He said the results demonstrate a positive factor:

* If we reduce emissions of greenhouse gases significantly, the ice will respond and will grow back relatively quickly, "he said.

The main theme of the conference Arctic Frontiers, was the term "tipping point", which describes a significant change that is not reversible - that is a kind of "point of no return" where it is not possible to return to its previous normal state.

* This shows that there is no "tipping point" for sea ice. To say that that is what is crazy, "says Smedsrud.

SOURCE






Australia: Greenie ideology hurts kids

Air conditioning causes global warming so must be stopped, you see

PARENTS from hundreds of schools have resorted to paying for basic resources such as airconditioning, even while the federal government's Building the Education Revolution has spent millions on new "green" classrooms with only natural ventilation.

As temperatures reached 42.2 degrees in Sydney yesterday – and after a record run of extremely hot days – the NSW Parents and Citizens' Associations said families were commonly being asked to fund cooling that should be publicly funded.

"It is a serious health and safety issue," said NSW Primary Principals Association president Jim Cooper. He said more buses and trains had airconditioning than classrooms, but children and teachers had to endure six hours in the heat, not half an hour. "The bottom line is it's very difficult to concentrate and focus when you're in a room with a temperature of 35 degrees-plus."

But parents were asked not only to buy the airconditioners but to fund their maintenance and contribute to the power bills, said Sharryn Brownlee of the Central Coast P&C.

Only 30 per cent of public schools have air-conditioning provided by the Department of Education. Just 20 per cent of new classrooms built under the BER have air-conditioning systems. The Department of Education only provides airconditioning in heat zones with a mean January average temperature of above 30 degrees.

But the NSW Teachers Federation president, Bob Lipscombe, said airconditioners should be installed in all classrooms. "It’s extraordinary in this day and age, when just about every public building and every private building requires airconditioning, that classrooms do not get it as a matter of course," Mr Lipscombe said. "The Department is being unreasonable to expect teachers to work in temperatures in the high 30s."

The NSW P&C president Helen Walton said: "It’s not just heaters and airconditioners. We are talking about raising money for everything from providing boxes of tissues in classrooms to paying for extra staff. That’s completely unacceptable." Her association estimates several hundred schools have self-funded airconditioning over the past few years across NSW.

Mr Cooper, from the Principals Association, said funds raised by parents contributed to the purchase of six new airconditioners at his school in Albion Park, near Wollongong. "It was a lot of money for us but it was regarded as a high priority for the children," he said.

Berowra Public School, in Sydney’s north, and Havenlee Public School, near Nowra, have both raised thousands of dollars to put towards airconditioning. A survey by the Australian Education Union found 92 per cent of NSW schools had engaged in fundraising in the past year. "The [schools] which are most affected are the ones which sit just outside the designated heat areas and aren’t eligible for air conditioning despite having very high temperatures throughout summer," Mr Cooper said.

Mosquitoes in the state’s north meant "teachers can’t leave the doors and windows open for ventilation so conditions just become stifling".

Classrooms designed under the BER use passive temperature control techniques such as insulation and natural ventilation.

SOURCE

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