A Warmist who doesn't even listen to himself

And he doesn't know the difference between "effect" and "affect" either.  Below are two of his paragraphs. In the first he properly notes many of  the doubts about global warming theory and in the second he assumes all that away and talks as if GW were a certainty.  The article is from a Maine outfit called "Unity College" which describes itself as:  "We Train Environmental Professionals in Sustainability Science".  So they would cut their own throats if they really looked at "the science".  What if everything we do is already "sustainable"?  I can think of no exceptions

In any discussion of the current and future impacts of climate change we must look at the science for what it actually says and avoid jumping to any conclusions about the outcome.  The most important thing to understand is that climate change scenarios are projections, they are not predictions.  A projection is a conditional prediction, and thus, it does not imply certainty.  For example, the current projections for end-of-century global average temperature rise range from 4˚ to 6˚C, but these are dependent on maintaining our current rate of increasing emissions, especially that of carbon dioxide.  There are many reasons why the rate of emissions might change, resulting in more or less warming as we move forward in time.   For example, changes in economic activity strongly affect the rate of carbon dioxide emissions. The recent recession resulted in a decrease in the growth rate of emissions from about 3.1% per year to -1.3% for 2009.  Thereafter, the world’s economic engine cranked up considerably, increasing the growth rate of emissions to 5.9% per year in 2011.  To be sure, such small changes in the growth rate of emissions have little potential to slow the rate of warming.   Another factor that is outside the conditional prediction of this scenario is the rate of positive feedback from natural sources of greenhouse gas such as the thawing permafrost, or the well documented process of worldwide forest decline.  These factors could considerably accelerate the rate of warming and take us well beyond 6˚C.  In all candor I must say that there are very few factors that will significantly slow the rate of human-caused emissions, short of concerted and intensive efforts at mitigation.  Wildcards that could change the future include unpredictable events like an asteroid strike or volcanism sufficient to put aerosols into the stratosphere and thus cool the planet.  Just how lucky do you feel?

The current generation of young adults in college will experience an increasingly dangerously disrupted climate during their lives.  We have only limited ability to affect this outcome because there is a 30-40 year time lag in the equilibration of ocean heat loading with the atmosphere.  About 93% of energy imbalance caused by the greenhouse gases goes into the oceans, and it takes time for this energy to be expressed in the climate system.  Evidence of massive ongoing change in the oceans is seen in the slowing of the Gulf Stream and widespread changes in salinity and surface temperatures.  The hydrologic cycle has sped up about 40% since the mid 20th century, and the rate of acidification of the oceans is faster now than at any time during the previous 300 million years.  Accordingly, this generation of students must prepare to adapt as the impacts of these changes ramify across the planet.  Even casual inspection of higher education shows that institutions are generally failing to prepare students to face these challenges.  As educators we have an ethical obligation to do so.

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Global warming to blame for crumbling stone walls of 13th century fortifications

They admit that “There is evidence of repair over the centuries right from the thirteenth century right through" but this lot of crumbling is different, apparently.  That there has been NO global warming in recent years they do not address.  Myths are apparently enough to cause ancient stone walls to crumble

For centuries they stood firm against marauding Welsh invaders but now the historic walls of Ludlow are said to be under threat from a new enemy – climate change.

Residents living near one section of the medieval structure were this weekend advised to leave their homes temporarily after engineers found that it was unsafe.

Three other sections of the wall in the picturesque Shropshire town have collapsed in the past fortnight.

Parts of the structure date back to 1233, when Ludlow, now better known for its listed buildings and Michelin-starred restaurants, was a fortified border town.

Colin Richards, head of conservation and archaeology for Shropshire, said: “It’s amazing that they have stood for 800 years and the climate change that has affected them over the last couple of years has wreaked so much damage.”

Mr Richards told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “There is evidence of repair over the centuries right from the thirteenth century right through, but last year was the second wettest year on record.

“It’s this alternation between very wet periods and then very dry periods.

“Recently we’ve had a saturation of the material behind the wall and then the frosts which come and expand the moisture and it just gives it sufficient pressure to cause it to move out beyond its plane of stability and collapse.”

In places, water had leeched through the bedrock of the ground, turning to frost.

“The frost has eroded the stone and so we’ve got areas of wall which are just hanging there at the moment.”

The local authority took action at the weekend after an inspection of the wall backing onto the gardens of 14 properties in the town.

An engineer found that its condition had “seriously deteriorated over the past year, and is now considered to be unsafe”.

Shropshire Council said the safety concerns were confined to part of the walls in The Linney, which back on to the gardens of a small number of residential properties.

The local authority was already liaising with English Heritage after a 30ft section of the walls, which date back to the 13th century, collapsed last month, damaging a parked car.

Council leader Keith Barrow said: "We are talking to the Diocese of Hereford and advising them to urgently review the safety of this particular section of the wall.

"Our number one concern is the safety of residents and we are advising the people who live in these particular properties to temporarily leave their homes to be absolutely sure that they are safe."

Rosanna Taylor-Smith, county councillor for Ludlow North, added: "We would like to reassure people that we are doing everything possible to manage the situation."

However, it was believed that only one homeowner has decided to leave so far though engineers were continuing to monitor the wall section in case it deteriorates further requiring an evacuation.

Residents have been offered temporary accommodation by the council.

The walls, which are owned by the Diocese of Hereford, are one of the most complete ancient perimeter defences of any historic town in England.

Officials at the Ludlow Town Walls Trust are reportedly preparing to submit a bid for a £1.2 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to help preserve the structure.

More than £1 million is thought to have been spent shoring up sections of it over the last four years while the council is facing a bill for £250,000 for recent collapses.

SOURCE




Solar vs. Anthropogenic - Obtaining a Better Understanding of Global Warming

On March 21, Dr. Nir Shaviv will discuss solar influences on the Earth's climate at a forum hosted by the George C. Marshall Institute.

Dr. Shaviv, a professor of physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, will discuss the evidence demonstrating that the sun has a large effect on climate and the physical mechanism for this link.

He will show that by considering the solar forcing, a much more consistent picture emerges for the observed 20th century climate change, with part of it being solar and part being anthropogenic.

In this picture, however, Earth's climate sensitivity is modest and therefore the 21st century global warming is expected to be modest as well (about 1°C).

A recent talk by Dr. Shaviv can be found below:



Prof. Dr. Shaviv is a fast-talking Israeli who gave his talk to a German audience in slightly accented English so even I found him a bit hard to follow.  So it's no wonder the Germans offered a quick summary in German:  "Der Einfluss kosmischer Strahlung auf das Klima! Die Untersuchung der Wolkenbildung durch kosmische Strahlung im Magnetfeld der Sonne ist seit mehreren Jahren ein wichtiges Feld, Klimaänderungen besser zu verstehen" (The influence of cosmic rays on climate.  Research on cloud formation by cosmic rays in the magnetic field of the sun has now for several years been an important field for a better understanding of climate change) -- JR

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OBAMA'S GREEN MONEY SCHEME EXPOSED

By Sharon Sebastian

Few realize that the "green movement" is about building large personal fortunes for an elite few. As with all robber barons, it is about the money. It is why President Barack Obama laid out his threat to again bypass Congress and ignore the American people during his 2013 State of the Union address. Mr. Obama will attempt to force his ill-conceived green energy plans into existence with the stroke of his pen via Executive Orders:

"I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy." - President Barack Obama, February 12, 2013

Obama is determined to resurrect his green energy schemes by drying up America's access to oil and gas no matter the pain inflicted on American families and businesses. Having put the coal industry on life-supports, his next target -- restricting power plants that generate electricity to homes and businesses.

What the President hides behind the curtain and does not reveal is his alliance with international green elites, White House and Wall Street cronies and energy regulatory czars who have orchestrated a CO2 carbon-taxing scheme that puts billions of dollars into their own hands. It's a money scheme. Three years ago, the global-warming money transfer scam surfaced and named not only this president, but a former Democrat president and vice-president as participants planning to accumulate vast personal wealth as a result. One need only ask, why did Al Gore so confidently tout that he was destined to become the "first global-warming billionaire?"

Long in the designing, the elements were close to being in full play. The plans were drawn, the carbon-credit trading exchange registered as the Chicago Climate Exchange was formulated (New York Times - Click here // Trading symbol CCX - Click here.), set to both transfer and stash cash, the green barons' privately-owned Chicago bank was on the ready and the right president was in office to perpetrate the scam on the American people. That is, until the great global-warming-climate-change fraud stopped the United Nations-supported, elite cadre of well-connected political, banking and Wall Street associates in their tracks. British Freedom quotes The Times of India:

"Billionaire globalists like George Soros fund green groups and seek to promote the globalist 'climate change' scam as a way to enrich themselves and infiltrate developing nations in order to financially exploit them and their natural resources for profit."

The June 2009 Bloomberg article, Sandor Got Obama's Nod for Chicago-Style Climate Law by Jim Efstathiou Jr., reported that a carbon-capping bill set to be imposed on American businesses was the cornerstone of Obama's environmental agenda. Bloomberg quotes CCX founder Richard Sandor as saying that the bill ".began "way, way to the left with provisions to push U.S. utilities into bankruptcy." The article further reads: "Sandor launched the Chicago Climate Exchange, or CCX, in 2003 after getting two research grants from the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation. Obama was on the foundation that gave us the grant, Sandor said. We know him well." CCX reportedly now operates under the auspices of Environmental Financial Products.

When "global-warming-climate-change" was exposed as a blatant fraud, the American people and a Republican House refused to play ball. By doing so, they stymied the global clique of politicians and socialist ideologues who remain ready to bring America to its economic knees for their own financial and ideological gains. Even so, Mr. Obama is making another high-stakes play to push through his green agenda to fully activate the global CCX exchange despite the high cost to even the poorest of Americans.

While Obama is gearing up to invest billions of America's tax dollars into the green abyss, other countries are backing away. Never mind that China and India refuse to put a dime into the scam. European nations have already experienced a severe hit to their economies and negative blow-back from their citizens. In the face of worldwide data to the contrary, Obama claimed during his State of the Union address that: ".the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15." How an American President can make such an erroneous claim to the American people in the face of existing facts reveals him as sorely misstating or misinformed.

A February 27, 2013 news release by the Global Warming Policy Foundation states that it has highlighted the global warming standstill for many years against fervent denial by climate activists. Its Chairman, Nigel Lawson, states: ".there has been no further recorded global warming at all for at least the past 15 years." Backing-up Lawson's findings are reported reversals by such global-warming heavy-weights as the United Nation's Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and NASA's James Hansen who both reportedly now recognize that global temperatures have not risen for more than a decade.

Europe is facing a green backlash.

"The BBC has backed down over Sir David Attenborough's widely contested claim that parts of the world have warmed by 3.5C over the last two decades. ...The comment was removed from Sunday night's repeat of the show." -- Harley Dixon, The Daily Telegraph, 11 Feb. 2013

"...long-term consequences of the Energy Bill will be horrible. It's a recipe for deindustrialization." -- Professor Gordon Hughes, Mail on Sunday, 24 February, 2013

"Today energy policy is framed with only one factor in mind: satisfying the green lobby. It is, to be blunt, mad." -- Stephen Pollard, Daily Express, 20 February 2013

"Carbon emissions are no longer the driving factor setting UK energy policy. The new and dominant issue is cost." -- Nick Butler, Financial Times, 21 February, 2013

Scientific facts that Mr. Obama and his cronies prefer you not know come from Edmund Contoski, an environmental consultant for more than 40 countries. In Liberty Unbound, Contoski writes: "The overwhelming majority (97%) of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere comes from nature, not from man." Based on scientific data, "Not only are worms contributing to the CO2 in the atmosphere," Contoski further notes that, "volcanoes, swamps, rice paddies, fallen leaves, and even insects and bacteria alone emit ten times more carbon dioxide than all the factories and automobiles in the world. Even natural wetlands emit more greenhouse gases than all human activities combined." Nature itself foils the environmentalists as The U.S. Department of Energy admits that once emitted that 98% of all the carbon dioxide emissions are again absorbed by nature. Contosky then queries, "Termites emit ten time more CO2 than humans, should we cap-and-tax them?"

The media neglect the real reason Barack Obama wants your dollars to flow into his green machine that will swallow them up and then divvy them up among an elite group that will reap financial gain as America loses. The scheme is hidden in plain sight. Perhaps a great investigative journalist like Bob Woodward will peel back the layers of this political fraud. After all, he's already endured one tongue-lashing threat from the White House.

Via email





What fun!  New York Times Kills Green Blog

By Alan Caruba

Fewer and fewer people care about the apocalyptic claims and outright lies of the environmental movement these days. The end of the world is nowhere in sight unless a stray asteroid is headed our way and, after some seventeen years of a natural cooling cycle, it’s hard to convince people that global warming is a problem.

In January The New York Times that has printed every global warming lie it could since the late 1980s shut down its “environmental desk” and reassigned its editors and reporters to other tasks. On March 1 it announced it was discontinuing the “Green Blog”, leaving only Andrew C. Revkin to rave on at “Dot Earth.”

Tim Graham, the Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center, noted that Revkin’s paycheck is being underwritten by financing from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and, if that dries up, Revkin will have to take his fear-mongering somewhere else. Graham opined that “The reality must be that people don’t read it (Green Blog) and people simply don’t find global warming a scintillating subject. So much for the notion it’s the ‘story of the century.’”

The Times promised “we will forge ahead with our aggressive reporting on environmental and energy topics, including climate change, land use, threatened ecosystems, government policy, the fossil fuel industries, the growing renewable sector and consumer choices.” Readers have already made their choice; they are no longer interested in the torrent of lies that pours forth from the pages of the Times on the topics they will continue to report about. They have figured out that it is a steaming pile of horse manure.

It won’t be long before other print news media conclude that writing about “climate change”, aka global warming, no longer gets their reader’s hearts pumping faster.

A case in point from the alternative world of Internet blogs is the fact that 13 of the 17 blogs nominated for Best Science & Technology Weblog Awards were those of climate and environmental skeptics!

At The Guardian, a British daily that, like the Times, never failed to report that the Earth is warming, Leo Hickman who writes an environmental blog for it was fuming. He accused the climate skeptics of “gaming” the awards competition because they have succeeded in generating so much enthusiasm.

P. Gosselin, the writer of the No Tricks Zone blog admitted that “It was tough not to gloat” after reading Hickman’s screed. “It’s indeed a good look at a sour grapes display by the increasingly defeated looking alarmist side, now that they see they have got no chance of winning. Of the five finalists, four are skeptic blogs. The sole remaining alarmist blog, Skeptical Science, has dropped out.”

“The problem for them”, the alarmist blogs, “is that nobody is listening to their message any more. And, except for themselves, nobody else even has an inkling of enthusiasm left o nominate them, let alone vote. They’re rapidly sinking into irrelevance.”

It took time, but a consensus has been growing about the alarmists, whether it’s their absurd claims or the media that has been reporting them. It will take more time—and Mother Nature—before more people conclude that they have been victimized by the Greens who have foisted “renewable energy” (solar and wind) that not only provides less electricity than traditional sources, but drives up their bills in the process.

Environmentalism has never really been about science or even the Earth. Judi Bari of Earth First made that clear when she said, “If we don’t overthrow capitalism, we don’t have a chance of saving the world ecologically” or Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund who said, “”The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization we have in the U.S. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.”

Writing recently in Investors Daily Business, Dennis Prager, a syndicated columnist, noted that the Philippines recently decided after twelve years to permit the planting of genetically modified (GM) rice. The reason for the reversal was that 4.4 million Filipino children suffer from vitamin A deficiency, causing 250,000 to 500,000 children to go blind; half die within a year.” GM rice provides that vital vitamin. The Greens where and everywhere fight against the use of GM crops.

“So who would oppose something that could save millions of children’s lives and millions of other children from blindness?” asked Prager. “The answer is people who are move devoted to nature than to human life. They are called environmentalists. These are the same people who coerced nations worldwide into banning DDT.”

Who is really saving the world and our fellow humans? The skeptics. The scientists and others who have debunked the lies and exposed the agenda of the environmentalists. The Green Blog is dead. It is a victory for all of us.

SOURCE





Australia: Greenies attacking Coca Cola

Their sort probably don't drink Coke anyway.  It has after all got both caffeine and sugar in the standard product.  Horrors!  And the low calorie version has ASPARTAME in it.  Could anything be worse (aside from global warming, that is)?  It's probably even got that nasty hydrogen hydroxide in it

ANGRY consumers are flooding social media with threats to boycott Coca Cola after the company's court win yesterday to dismantle a Northern Territory recycling scheme.

The Federal Court yesterday ruled in favour of the beverage company who argued the state government's 10 cent deposit recycling scheme, introduced in January 2012, was costly and ineffective.

Coke had argued the extra 10 cents added to its products was unfair to consumers, despite the fee being refundable.

The soft drink company yesterday had to call police to break up a protest at its Sydney headquarters led by Clean Up Australia chairman Ian Kiernan and Greenpeace CEO David Ritter, but it's having a harder time dealing with the angry mob online.

Hundreds of people have flooded the company's Facebook page with furious messages and complaints, with many users pledging to never buy Coke products again.

One user posted a picture of a dead bird with a cut open stomach full of plastic waste, along with the message "Brought to you by Coca Cola".
Tweet1

"Disgusted with your resistance to the NT recycling scheme. Have you never heard of corporate responsibility?" the user wrote.

"Bad move. Bad corporate citizenship. You've lost me as a customer for ALL your products," wrote another, while one user commented: "My family believe in recycling so no more Coke products for us EVER AGAIN."

The protest has also spilled over to Twitter, where users have been tweeting angry messages under the hashtag #CokeFail.

"Help stop @CocaCola trashing Australia #cokefail," tweeted @RiaLettner.

"Don't buy Coke. Shame. #cokefail" tweeted @Visivoz.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL  and EYE ON BRITAIN.   My Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

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