CFC quack singing an old song

Below is an attempt to leverage off the prestige of an earlier Greenie hero.  Everything he says is Greenie boilerplate and mostly wrong.  But his claim to fame is his theory that CFCs caused the ozone hole in Antarctica.  But both fact and theory have since demolished that theory.  CFC reduction has not led to the hole shrinking and "Our understanding of chloride chemistry has really been blown apart" by recent findings.  So the Warmists are relying on a man who was demonstrably wrong before

Early in his career, a scientist named Mario J. Molina was pulled into seemingly obscure research about strange chemicals being spewed into the atmosphere. Within a year, he had helped discover a global environmental emergency, work that would ultimately win a Nobel Prize.

Now, at 70, Dr. Molina is trying to awaken the public to an even bigger risk. He spearheaded a committee of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society, which released a stark report Tuesday on global warming.

The report warns that the effects of human emissions of heat-trapping gases are already being felt, that the ultimate consequences could be dire, and that the window to do something about it is closing.

“The evidence is overwhelming: Levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are rising,” says the report. “Temperatures are going up. Springs are arriving earlier. Ice sheets are melting. Sea level is rising. The patterns of rainfall and drought are changing. Heat waves are getting worse, as is extreme precipitation. The oceans are acidifying.”

And the association does not plan to stop with the report. The group, with a membership of 121,200 scientists and science supporters around the world, plans a broad outreach campaign to put forward accurate information in simple language.

The scientists are essentially trying to use their powers of persuasion to cut through public confusion over this issue.

Polls show that most Americans are at least somewhat worried about global warming. But people generally do not understand that the problem is urgent — that the fate of future generations (not necessarily that far in the future) is being determined by emission levels now. Moreover, the average citizen tends to think there is more scientific debate about the basics than there really is.

The report emphasizes that the experts have come to a consensus, with only a few dissenters. “Based on well-established evidence, about 97 percent of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused climate change is happening,” it says.

That is not the same as claiming that all questions about climate change have been answered. In fact, enormous questions remain, and the science of global warming entails a robust, evolving discussion.

The new report walks through a series of potential consequences of planetary warming, without asserting that any is sure to happen. They are possibilities, not certainties, and the distinction is crucial for an intelligent public debate about what to do. The worst-case forecasts include severe food shortages as warming makes it harder to grow crops; an accelerating rise of the sea that would inundate coastlines too rapidly for humanity to adjust; extreme heat waves, droughts and floods; and a large-scale extinction of plants and animals.

“What’s extremely clear is that there’s a risk, a very significant risk,” Dr. Molina said by telephone from Mexico, where he spends part of his time. “You don’t need 100 percent certainty for society to act.”

SOURCE

NOTE: Molina is in any case far from impartial.  He is the director of the Climate Leadership Corps,  a member of WWF-México’s Senior Advisory Council and was a member of the IAC Panel, charged with assessing the IPCC. He also just happened to be a review editor for IPCC AR4 WG1 ch 7, a drafting author for AR4 WG1 Summary for Policy Makers and a Lead Author of the Technical Summary






Did the Romans produce wine in Cambridge? 2,000-year-old irrigation system for vineyards unearthed on farmland

More evidence of the Roman warm period.  Only modern viticultural techniques enable wine grapes to be grown in Britain today and even then the vines are in the South

The earliest example of Roman irrigation in Britain, dating back almost 2,000 years, has been discovered in Cambridge - and it may have been used to produce wine.

A network of ditches and ridges was found on the site of a proposed new £1 billion development on farmland at the edge of the town, near the M11.

Researchers believe the channels were used as a vineyard, or to grow asparagus, and are being hailed as evidence of 'intense agriculture' dating back to around 70AD.

Historians have long suspected the 370-acre (150 hectare) site could have been home to an ancient Roman settlement.  Archaeologists were invited to explore the site 18 months ago before work begins on the major new development of housing, shops and a new school.

Team leader Chris Evans said it was evidence of an ‘intense agricultural regime’ dating as far back as 70AD.

‘Our findings from excavating around the ridgeway have unearthed zebra-like stripes of Roman planting beds that are encircled on their higher northern side by more deep pit-wells,’ continued Evans.

‘The gully-defined planting beds were closely set and were probably grapevines or possibly asparagus.

SOURCE




The dubious apocalypse of global warming

The climate isn’t changing, but doomsday rhetoric is rising

The world isn’t warming. The Climate Depot website obtained the latest satellite measurements and found the Earth’s thermostat hasn’t budged since September 1996.

That’s 210 straight months without any trend of the planet growing hotter, or colder, by even a tenth of a degree. This ought to be good news for buyers of a Toyota Prius or carbon-dioxide offsets. They could imagine themselves as having saved the world. But they’re more depressed than ever.

Matthew Ranson, an economist, describes in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management the chaos that he thinks awaits. “Between 2010 and 2099,” he writes in the peer-reviewed journal, “climate change will cause an additional 22,000 murders, 180,000 cases of rape, 1.2 million aggravated assaults, 2.3 million simple assaults, 260,000 robberies, 1.3 million burglaries, 2.2 million cases of larceny, and 580,000 cases of vehicle theft in the United States.” No estimates of mopery or pillaging.

Mr. Ranson said he examined the effect that temperature has on crime rates, based on FBI records. The numbers recognize the obvious criminal preference to rob and pillage in balmy conditions; a blizzard is bad for everybody’s business.

He speculates that a great crime wave would follow the heat wave predicted by computer models of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The U.N. panel is raising its rhetoric, too. London’s daily Independent reports that the panel predicts crop yields will fall by 2 percent every decade, leading to malnutrition and starvation. There will be floods, fires, civil war, hay fever, heat waves, boils, various itches, pestilence and plagues on mankind.

The net cost to the world’s economy could be as much as $1.4 trillion a year, disaster on the scale of Obamacare.

If that’s not bad enough, researchers at the University of Maryland insist that global warming will destroy civilization. A forthcoming journal article asserts that expanding population and the difference in wealth between the rich (“the elites”) and the poor (“commoners”) will bring down the United States in the way the barbarians brought down the Roman Empire.

There’s a solution, of course. Higher taxes, increased regulation and more government supervision of everyone’s lives, and other liberal nostrums.

In an earlier presentation on “Population and Climate Change,” the Maryland researchers find hope. “In order to avoid collapse, government policies are needed to stabilize population and stabilize industrial production per person.”

A powerful centralized government must take over the means of production and even reproduction. “Family planning is cost-effective,” they write, “and should be a primary method to reduce [carbon-dioxide] emissions.”

Sacrificing babies to the ancient gods of Carthage didn’t save that ancient empire, and abortion won’t chill the climate today. The public is tuning out the likes of Al Gore and his prophecies because they notice that two decades of hysterical predictions haven’t come true.

In a climate of skepticism, the only way for scientists with a scam to get attention (and government grants) is to concoct ever more over-the-top claims.

If driving a Chevy Volt will reduce incidents of rape or a curlicue light bulb will rescue Western civilization, a finding that Earth’s temperature hasn’t budged in 210 months should be something to celebrate. It means the planet is doing just fine.

SOURCE





Mainstreaming fringe science with John Holdren

The White House science adviser confuses global-warming fact and fancy


Holdren

By Chip Knappenberger

In recent months, White House science adviser John Holdren has repeatedly pushed the link between extreme weather events and human-caused climate change well beyond the bounds of established science. Now, veteran climate scientists are pushing back.

Mr. Holdren’s efforts started in January, as much of the nation was shivering in the midst of an excursion of arctic air into the lower 48 states.

Anyone with a passing interest in the climate of the United States knows that is hardly an unusual occurrence (“citrus freeze” anyone?), but outfit the chill with a new, scarier-sounding moniker and a blase-sounding “cold-air outbreak” goes viral as the “polar vortex.”

Apparently, sensing the time was ripe for a bit of global-warming alarmism, the White House released a video titled “The Polar Vortex Explained in 2 Minutes,” featuring Mr. Holdren describing how “a growing body of evidence suggests that the kind of extreme cold being experienced by much of the United States as we speak is a pattern that we can expect to see with increasing frequency as global warming continues.”

Although this statement is not outright false, it is, at its very best, a half-truth — and a stretch at that. In fact, there is an ever-larger and faster-growing body of evidence that directly disputes Mr. Holdren’s contention.

This was pointed out last month in a letter to Science magazine authored by five veteran climate scientists, who are all experts in the field of atmospheric circulation patterns.

The scientists disputed Mr. Holdren’s explanation, writing that “we do not view the theoretical arguments underlying it to be compelling” and concluded that while such research “deserves a fair hearing to make it the centerpiece of the public discourse is inappropriate and a distraction.”

One of the letter’s authors, atmospheric science professor John Wallace from the University of Washington, even wrote a guest post at the popular Capital Weather Gang blog run by The Washington Post, to proclaim, “I disagree with those who argue that we need to capitalize on recent extreme weather events to raise public awareness of human-induced global warming.”

Such pushback didn’t stop Mr. Holdren, though.

A couple of weeks ago at a congressional hearing, Mr. Holdren attacked the views of University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke Jr. concerning the connection between anthropogenic global warming and the ongoing drought in the Southwest.

Mr. Pielke, an expert on the relationship between natural disasters and climate change, had previously testified to Congress that the best science regarding many types of extreme weather, including hurricanes, tornados, floods and droughts, indicated no detectable tie-in to global warming.

Mr. Holdren described Mr. Pielke’s views as being outside of “mainstream scientific opinion” and submitted a six-page explanation to the Senate subcommittee describing why he thought so, focusing on drought and specifically California drought (a copy of which was also posted at the White House website).

In response, Mr. Pielke defended himself, laying out a strong and overwhelming scientific case in a lengthy essay for The New Republic and accusing Mr. Holdren of “wielding his political position to delegitimize an academic whose views he finds inconvenient.”

Mr. Pielke was not alone in his defense. Recently, Martin Hoerling, lead scientist of the Interpreting Climate Conditions Team of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, expressed surprise at Mr. Holdren’s response to Mr. Pielke in the DotEarth blog hosted by The New York Times.

Mr. Hoerling wrote that the type of drought currently facing California “has been observed before” and that “[i]t is quite clear that the scientific evidence does not support an argument that this current California drought is appreciably, if at all, linked to human-induced climate change.”

In his State of the Union address, President Obama called for “more urgency” in combating climate change, and with his Climate Action Plan — his attempt to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions by fiat — a central theme to his legacy, we have to wonder just who is advising who?

Is the president giving orders to his science adviser to make the case that carbon-dioxide emissions are the cause of weather disasters in the United States despite the best science that argues otherwise? Or is his science adviser misinforming the president as to what the collection of science actually says, leading him to pursue carbon-dioxide regulation where it is not needed?

In either case, the situation is badly in need of repair.

SOURCE





Wind farms are 'ruining Scotland for visitors' - says new poll

They are the controversial contraptions that stand tall on the horizon – providing eco-friendly, renewable energy according to some, blotting the landscape according to others.

But a new survey has planted a foot firmly in the former camp – suggesting that wind farms are now in danger of destroying the beauty of some of the most striking portions of the Scottish countryside.

The poll, carried out by the Mountaineering Council of Scotland, has found that climbers and walkers are being deterred from visiting the country’s rural areas because of the increasing encroachment of turbines into what were once wide-open spaces.

In results that will make worrying reading for the Scottish government, the survey found that over two thirds of people – 68 per cent – say that parts of Scotland are now less appealing to visitors thanks to the proliferation of wind farms.

A similar number – 67 per cent – say that wind farms are making Scotland a less appealing place in general.

Two thirds of those surveyed say they have been put off visiting Scotland by wind farms – and will not revisit places they have already visited where turbines now exist.

Over fourth fifths of respondents are insisting that there must be protection for National Parks and National Scenic Areas. And two-thirds of those questioned want to see buffer zones around areas of specific beauty, so that wind farms cannot be placed on their edges.

‘The survey results are a stark warning to the Scottish government,’ says David Gibson of the Mountaineering Council of Scotland. ‘Badly sited wind farms are a serious threat to Scotland’s reputation as a tourism destination.’  ‘The more that are built in our mountains, the more visitors are put off.’

Scotland has taken a marked step towards the wide use of wind power in the last decade.  The Scottish government hopes to generate 100 per cent of Scotland’s energy from renewable sources by 2020 – with the majority of this power coming from wind farms.

Whitelee Wind Farm, which opened in East Renfrewshire in 2009, is the largest on-shore wind farm in the UK, with 215 turbines (and the second largest in Europe, behind only the Fântânele-Cogealac development in Romania).

Clyde Wind Farm, in South Lanarkshire, is another sizeable wind project, with 152 turbines.

The rising use of wind power is of concern to Mr Gibson. ‘Many of the wind farms planned for Scotland’s most remote and beautiful areas have yet to be built,’ he continues. ‘The evidence from this, and other, surveys, suggests that visitors dislike them more and more as they cease to be a novelty.’

The survey consulted 970 regular climbers and hikers who are members of either the Mountaineering Council of Scotland or the British Mountaineering Council.  Over three quarters of those surveyed – 77 per cent – live in Scotland.

Wind power is a consistently divisive topic.  A YouGov poll commissioned by the Sunday Times last October found a pretty even split on the question of whether the UK government is right – considering future energy needs – to invest money in the development of wind technology.

Fifty-one per cent of those questioned said that the government was right in this case.

SOURCE




Blatant Global Warming Propaganda In Kindergarten School Book…



Pretty sad when you have to start de-brainwashing your kids when they are only in kindergarten.

Via EAG News:

A West Michigan mother is questioning a book her kindergarten son brought home from his school’s library, because it portrays the global warming debate from one perspective only, and ignores other arguments.

The book – “The Magic School Bus and the Climate Challenge” – tells the story of a teacher, Ms. Frizzle, taking her students on a globetrotting trip to show them the impacts of global warming.

Published by Scholastic in 2010, it features drawings of the what the Artic used to look like – with ice as far as the eye could see – to today, with polar bears supposedly clinging to measly icebergs with desperate looks on their faces.

SOURCE

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