Looking back







CO2 data shows nobody's dead from a little carbon dioxide

A lady with a CO2 meter has some interesting information

What I’m about to say isn’t a spoof. It’s the result of research and discussions with scientists working in the field. For all of you who need the data, I’ll give them in summary, but you go look up the mountain of references, do some research for yourself, even get a meter if you like. You’ll believe the numbers below better if you discover them on your own. And you won’t need to believe me when I say “I told you so.”

The following summarizes levels of CO2 under various conditions:

40,000 ppm: The exhaled breath of normal, healthy people.

8,000 ppm: CO2 standard for submarines

2,500 ppm: CO2 level in a small hot crowded bar in the city

2,000 ppm: The point at which my CO2 meter squawks by playing Fur Elise

1,000 to 2,000 ppm: Historical norms for the earth’s atmosphere over the past 550 million years

1,000 to 2,000 ppm: The level of CO2 at which plant growers like to keep their greenhouses

1,000 ppm: Average level in a lecture hall filled with students

600 ppm: CO2 level in my office with me and my husband in it

490 ppm: CO2 level in my office working alone

390 ppm: Current average outdoor level of CO2 in the air

280 ppm: Pre-industrial levels in the air, on the edge of "CO2 famine" for plants

150 ppm: The point below which most plants die of CO2 starvation

(all of these data vary a little with size of the space, ventilation, wind, and the like)

What does it mean?

There’s a lot more data out there, but this simple list says it all. Carbon dioxide is present in our outside air at about 390 ppm.

A little less than that and our plants start to suffer.

A little more and there’s little effect on people while plants proliferate.

 A lot more and there’s still not much effect on people.

Nowhere in the list of numbers do people get dead. Well, except for those submarines that never surface. You get the point.

Above average is a good thing

Above ambient levels of 390 ppm is where plants start to thrive. Remember your science: it says plants take in CO2 and output O2; people take in O2 and output CO2. We’ve got a good thing going with the plants, not to mention that they grow into what we eat. Having more to eat is a good thing in my book…and in the book of the world where so many people still don’t have enough food.

What happens with less?

But the powers that be—namely Gov. Schwarzenegger and the AB32 crew—want to lower the levels of CO2 in the air. If those regulations succeed, we will have targeted the plants for destruction. Then what will we eat? Each other?

Leave nature alone

Left on its own, nature has seen much higher levels of CO2 in times when human beings weren’t exhaling in numbers or driving cars. How about we leave well enough alone and let nature and people do their own thing. If that means a little more CO2, we can take it and take it well.

SOURCE




Glacier scientist: Global warming is good, not bad

For Terry Hughes of Fort Pierre, now a professor emeritus of earth sciences and climate change at the University of Maine, the way to answer the question of whether human activity is driving climate change isn’t with a “yes” or “no.”  He prefers to answer: “It doesn’t matter.”

It doesn’t matter, Hughes said, because global warming is good – far preferable than global cooling.

As a glaciologist, or one who studies glaciers, Hughes didn’t need to be convinced that climate change is real. “I never doubted it for an instant. The Earth has not always been like this,” Hughes said.

Hughes even agrees that human activity probably have something to do with it. “It may have given it a nudge,” Hughes said. “But there are so many natural events that swamp that out, for example, the eruption of Vesuvius, or Krakatoa. The industrial revolution was more gradual, over decades.”

As recently as the 1970s, Hughes recalls, his colleagues feared for another ice age.

Hughes says a number of his colleagues at places such as NASA and the University of Maine “have urged me to march in lockstep with Albert Gore, the drum major in the parade denouncing global warming as an unmitigated disaster.”

But Hughes – who returned a few years ago to live in Fort Pierre now that he has retired – has demurred.  “It’s human nature for them to pound the panic drum,” said Hughes, but added he isn’t convinced global warming won’t be as bad as feared. “In fact, it’s going to be a big plus, in the balance.”

Eight reasons why. Here’s why Hughes thinks that way.

* Assuming that global warming is caused by CO2 – which has greatly increased in the past 18 years with no corresponding global warming, Hughes contends – more atmospheric CO2 would greatly increase agricultural production.

* Global warming would thaw permafrost, opening lands in the arctic and subarctic to a boom in economic development in Alaska, Canada and Russia. For example, Hughes said, 18 to 24 hours of summer sunshine would deliver two agricultural harvests per year.

* Thawing permafrost would increase by one-seventh Earth’s landmass open to extensive human habitation. That would be a new frontier in the same way the New World was, and on a similar scale. At the same time, the portion of Earth open to two annual harvests would increase by two-sevenths, Hughes calculates.

* Melting sea ice would open the Northwest Passage and the Northeast Passage to year-round shipping. The cost and time to travel between the West and the Orient would be cut in half. New cities and seaports would spring up to service the sea traffic.

* Melting sea ice and the rising sea level, if the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melt, would open new fishing grounds that could join in the boom in ag production to feed the planet.

* If the sea level did rise, there would be a global economic boom. Jobs would be needed worldwide to relocate coastal cities and re-design port facilities. Examples might be floating port facilities like those along the Amazon.

* Science, technology and engineering would undergo a massive revolution as humans worked to meet the new challenges.

* Changes in climate and sea level would encourage more cooperation between countries to handle the redistribution of population, manufacturing and commerce.

Hughes, in an as-yet-unpublished academic paper, argues that the other frightening alternative to global warming is global cooling.
“We know that endgame: A sheet of ice thousands of feet thick from south of the Great Lakes across the North Pole almost to the Mediterranean Sea, the situation only 18,000 years ago,” Hughes wrote. “Why is that scenario never stated? Would reductions in atmospheric carbon dioxide trigger that calamity?”

SOURCE





Pope Francis Foolish to Link Church To Green Movement

Pope Francis' recent leftist statements should trouble Catholics and non-Catholics alike, but even more disturbing are the pope's latest declarations on the dramatic action needed to fight climate change.

The Vatican apparently now has been infiltrated by followers of a radical green movement that is, at its core, anti-Christian, anti-people, anti-poor and anti-development. The basic tenets of Catholicism — the sanctity of human life and the value of all souls — are detested by the modern pagan environmentalists who worship the created, but not the creator.

At its core, Big Green believes that too many human beings are the basic global problem. People, according to this view, are resource destroyers. Climate change, they say, is due to the overpopulation of Mother Earth.

The head of the Catholic Church should denounce — not praise — such anti-human thinking. It violates Pope John Paul II's famous letter reminding us that creative human beings are a resource, not a curse.

Instead, the pope unwittingly has linked arms with the people who have provided finance, intellectual credibility and applause for radical and immoral population-control policies including eugenics, millions of forced abortions and sterilizations, and one-child policies, all in the name of "saving the planet."

Francis is reportedly preparing a lengthy encyclical message for early 2015 to the world's 1.2 billion Catholics on the need for decisive action on climate change. He may even be preparing a U.N. speech on the topic.

Earlier this year, he said: "The monopolizing of lands, deforestation, the appropriation of water, inadequate agro-toxics are some of the evils that tear man from the land of his birth. Climate change, the loss of biodiversity and deforestation are already showing their devastating effects in the great cataclysms we witness."

The science behind this is bunk. As we've documented repeatedly, there is no scientific basis for the claims that the planet has been hit with more severe weather events over the last decade or that we are witnessing "great cataclysms" above the historical norm.

The number of hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, typhoons, monsoons, earthquakes, floods, freezes and so on is not on the rise, according to the best scientific evidence available. Not only are natural disasters no more prevalent today than 100 years ago, but deaths and damage to communities from catastrophic weather events have dropped greatly as wealth and incomes have risen.

The church has missed the vital connection between increased economic development — thanks to human ingenuity and free-market capitalism — and humanity's ability to overcome the sometimes random and ravaging effects of nature.

Death rates, especially for children in the poorest areas of Africa, South America and Asia, fall because people can leave "the land of (their) birth," thanks to higher incomes and transportation.

What climate-change action will the Vatican endorse? Almost all the leading anti-climate-change initiatives endorsed by the Green Movement — cap and trade, carbon taxes, regulations against using abundant fossil fuels — are merely regressive taxes that hurt the poor the most.

What is the ethical and moral basis for going to poor villages and telling those living at subsistence levels that they have an obligation to save the planet by staying poor and using less energy? Cheap and affordable electric power is the best antidote for extreme poverty, disease, malnutrition and human deprivation. It should be celebrated.

Ironically, the pope in separate declarations has spoken out about the immorality of "income and wealth inequality" and "trickle-down economics." The radical climate change agenda he has made peace with would make the poor poorer and income inequality worse.

We'd like to hear the pope say this: The science on global cooling, global warming, climate change — or whatever the left calls it these days — is unsettled at best.

But if climate change is a threat, the best response is not to empower heavy-handed and incompetent command-and-control governments to fight it, but let free people use their wealth, technology, ingenuity and creativity to solve it. If the corrupt U.N. or Greenpeace is our salvation, we're all doomed.

Francis recently declared we should be wary of putting a "crude and naïve trust in those wielding economic power," a clear slap at capitalism. But surely it's more true of those "wielding economic power" in government.

We would remind Francis that the greatest acts of barbarism and the most villainous violations of basic human rights in history — slavery, the Holocaust, China's one-child policy, Stalinism, Pol Pot's killing fields, Mao's starvation of millions, and on and on —have been perpetrated by the statists.

Most of these acts of death and destruction were defended in the name of some greater and grandiose planetary cause — Marxism.

The Church's mission is to save souls. Free people and free enterprise should be left to fix what ails the planet.

SOURCE





No evidence California homes use less electricity today than homes built before building energy codes

The National Bureau of Economic Research has some bad news for CA Greenies.  See summary below.

How Much Energy Do Building Energy Codes Really Save? Evidence from California

Arik Levinson

Construction codes that regulate the energy efficiency of new buildings have been a centerpiece of US environmental policy for 40 years. California enacted the nation’s first energy building codes in 1978, and they were projected to reduce residential energy use—and associated pollution—by 80 percent. How effective have the building codes been? I take three approaches to answering that question. First, I compare current electricity use by California homes of different vintages constructed under different standards, controlling for home size, local weather, and tenant characteristics. Second, I examine how electricity in California homes varies with outdoor temperatures for buildings of different vintages. And third, I compare electricity use for buildings of different vintages in California, which has stringent building energy codes, to electricity use for buildings of different vintages in other states. All three approaches yield the same answer: there is no evidence that homes constructed since California instituted its building energy codes use less electricity today than homes built before the codes came into effect.

SOURCE






If You Lose Weight, You’re Destroying the Planet

In 2011, a study claimed that losing weight could help save the planet from the Flying Global Warming Monster.

"Being overweight is bad for the environment as well as your health, according to a study released today.

Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that overweight people were likely to be more responsible for carbon emissions than slim people because they consume more food and fuel.

We estimated that a 10 kg weight loss of all obese and overweight people would result in a decrease of 49.560 Mt of CO(2) per year, which would equal to 0.2% of the CO(2) emitted globally in 2007. This reduction could help meet the CO(2) emission reduction targets and unquestionably would be of a great benefit to the global health."

Science spoke. And only a bunch of ignorant mouth-breathing troglodytes who don’t follow Neil deGrasse Tyson on Twitter would dare to disagree.

But no wait. Apparently losing weight DOES cause Global Warming.

"Despite a worldwide obsession with diets and fitness regimes, many health professionals cannot correctly answer the question of where body fat goes when people lose weight, a new study shows. The most common misconception among doctors, dieticians and personal trainers is that the missing mass has been converted into energy or heat. The correct answer is that most of the mass is breathed out as carbon dioxide and goes into thin air."

But wait. Obesity also causes Global Warming.

"Expanding waistlines are not just tipping scales but may also push the mercury higher around the world, according to a new study.

As humanity becomes more rotund, more resources are needed to cool, nourish and transport the extra weight, a trend that can contribute to climate change by requiring the consumption of more fossil fuels and resulting in more greenhouse gas emissions."

Whether or not you lose weight, you’re destroying the planet… because you’ve alive. But let’s hear from other leading experts, like Hillary Clinton.

Speaking to State Department staff on Earth Day, Mrs Clinton said more must be done to reduce the department’s environmental footprint and conceded this was a big challenge, much like one of her personal battles.

“Often times when you face such an overwhelming challenge as global climate change, it can be somewhat daunting – it’s kind of like trying to lose weight, which I know something about,” she said to laughter.

But wait, Latino Fox News says Italian mountain goat-antelopes are losing weight because of Global Warming. So it’s all right then.

SOURCE




Obama’s green economic policies hit blacks hardest

Following the lead of the Rev. Al Sharpton, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets to protest grand jury decisions regarding the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and physical restraint death of Eric Garner in New York, by white police officers.

With chants of “Black lives matter” and “No justice, no peace,” demonstrators are expressing their frustration with what they regard as a system gamed against black Americans. Underlying the social unrest is a weak economic recovery that has left blacks behind. Blacks have the highest unemployment rate, the lowest average income and the lowest rate of homeownership.

Objective analysis would conclude that President Obama’s progressive policies have failed blacks, leaving them frustrated and vulnerable to the social agitation by Mr. Sharpton.

The sad truth is Mr. Obama’s agenda includes policies that preferentially harm blacks. In particular, Mr. Obama’s climate change policy, in effect, serves as a 21st-century version of Jim Crow laws owing to its economic impact on black households. A study from the Pacific Research Institute on the impact of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed regulations on existing power plants demonstrates the harm Mr. Obama’s climate change regulations could cause black families in Ohio.

The EPA’s Clean Power Plan establishes state-specific targets for carbon dioxide emissions from power plants to be 30 percent lower than 2005 levels by 2030. Because Ohio uses coal to generate the vast majority of its electricity, the state will experience a significant rise in power costs from the EPA’s proposed rule that targets coal-fired power plants that emit carbon dioxide.

The impact of rising electricity costs are not divided equally among Ohio households. As the study shows, wealthy households would be minimally affected, but low-income households would pay a significantly higher proportion for electricity.

The lower the income, the greater the economic burden.

Under the EPA’s proposed regulations, the average yearly cost for electricity would rise from 2.9 percent to 3.8 percent of the average Ohio household’s income. For the average black household, however, the yearly spending on electricity would rise from 4.5 percent to 5.8 percent.

For lower-income blacks, the yearly cost for electricity would be as much as 26 percent of household income, or possibly higher.

Conversely, high-income households are minimally affected. Some Clermont County households would spend only 1.1 percent of their income on electricity under the EPA’s rule, from today’s baseline of 0.8 percent.

The social impact of Mr. Obama’s climate change plan is devastating to the black community, the group that suffers the most because of lower average incomes.

These households will have less money to spend on food, housing, health care and other basic needs.

Higher energy costs will drive more black families to government dependency, including assistance to help pay for soaring utility bills.

Mr. Obama is fully aware of the electricity price increases resulting from his climate change agenda.

During a 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, before he was president, Mr. Obama discussed the consequences of his plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Candidate Obama acknowledged that “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” and compliance costs would be passed “on to consumers.”

SOURCE

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