NOW GLOBAL WARMING IS RACIST!

Some comments by Rush Limbaugh

A new study from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation says that white people are more to blame for global warming. "A new study released by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation suggests that rising temperatures will kill more black citizens than white citizens in the US while claiming African-Americans are less responsible than others for causing so-called global warming." So now even global warming is a racist.... Headline used to be "Women and Minorities Hardest Hit." Now it's just blacks: "Blacks, Period, Hardest Hit."

"The research, conducted by the Oakland, California-based group Redefining Progress, is being billed as the first-ever comprehensive examination of the health and economic impact of climate change on the black population." William Jefferson, Democrat, Louisiana, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation -- this is not the Congressional Black Caucus. They have a foundation. It is the same guys, but they've got a foundation, and William Jefferson said, "We are long past the point where global warming is considered a myth." [sic]

Now, the new report for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation has three main findings. "One: America's black population will be disproportionately burdened by the health effects of global warming. Two: Blacks are less responsible for contributing to global warming than other Americans. Three: Policies designed to mitigate global warming can generate large health and economic benefits for blacks, depending on their implementation."

Well, now, given that this is the Congressional Black Caucus, and given that we know what their politics are, if they think policies designed to end or mitigate global warming will "generate large health and economic benefits for them," what is it they suggest be done? To them, "benefits" all come from the government. Benefits all come from taking from one group of citizens and giving to another.

So they assume that whatever plan we put into effect to fix global warming will include government getting bigger and redistributing benefits. Has this not always been what I said was the point of the environmentalist wackos in the first place, was to grow government? And so now you've got the Congressional Black Caucus getting in on it. Eddie Bernice Johnson, whose last foray into the public was to call for the UN to monitor U.S. elections in November, said, "Time and again, the world's leading atmospheric scientists have warned us about the devastating impact of climate change. We now have irrefutable proof [sic] on its impact on our economy, our way of life, our health, and our children."

"The report claims that more than 160,000 deaths annually can already be attributed to climate change across the world. That figure is likely to increase unless action is taken. More than 70% of blacks live in urban areas which are in violation of federal air pollution standards. Thus more blacks than whites would likely be affected by higher concentrations of toxins in the air."...

one more quote here from the study: "The most direct health effect of climate change will be intensifying heat waves that selectively..." So the heat waves know where they're going! Hang on a minute. "The heat waves that selectively impact poor and urban populations according to the study..." You see, I'm sitting here laughing about it, but this is the kind of stuff, this is no different than the (conspiracy theory) CIA invented AIDS to wipe out the black population. This is no different than some of these cockamamie hare-brain conspiracy theories. So now we're going to have probably P. Diddy and Whoopi Goldberg and whoever else starting national tours saying heat waves target blacks.


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HISTORY SHOWS CLIMATE TO BE VERY VARIABLE

"Blair reiterated in an interview with the BBC that "we do want agreement that this is a serious issue and that we need to make progress on it. And so my ambition for the G-8 next year is that we get into a proper dialogue. . In other words, to get a basic agreement of what the science tells us, and secondly then to start a process which will allow us to identify the means of combating it."

Agreement of the sort Blair has in mind might be difficult to come by. Just last month, for example, the underpinnings for Blair's claim that the temperature rise in the northern hemisphere in the last century was the most rapid in the last thousand years have been pretty much undermined -- in a study by a believer in anthropogenic warming.

As Andrew Revkin reported in The New York Times Oct. 5: "A new analysis has challenged the accuracy of a climate timeline showing that recent global warming is unmatched for a thousand years. That timeline, generated by stitching together hints of past temperatures embedded in tree rings, corals, ice layers and other sources, is one strut supporting the widely accepted view that the current warm spell is being caused mainly by accumulating heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe emissions."

The study by Hans von Storch demonstrated that the famous "hockey stick study" showing stable average global temperatures over the last millennia until a steep rise in the last century was flawed, and that the climate varied a lot more than the hockey stick allowed.

This comports with actual history, and with some common sense.

Consider what the climate was likely like in the fabled time of King Arthur and the Round Table. The myth is believed to have its origins in the lives of a King Arthur in the 5th and 6th Centuries A.D. This Arthur lived in a time when there were vineyards in Britain. Indeed, one reason that Caesar went to Britain in the 1st Century B.C. was to take advantage of its far more equable climate compared with Gaul.

But then things turned bad. It wasn't just the death of the good king in the battle of Camlann (crooked river) around 537 A.D. that caused Britain to enter a dark age. It was, quite literally, that things went dark for a couple years after the massive eruption of Krakatau around 535 A.D. It led to catastrophic global cooling, with two years of unceasing winter that in turn led to starvation and pestilence, and possibly the war in which the real Arthur was killed and out of which the mythological one was born. At any rate, that's something to ponder.

A few hundred years later, though, around 800 A.D., the climate warmed appreciably in what became known as the Medieval Warm Period (PDF). It was during this time that the Vikings raided Britain and set up colonies in Greenland and, possibly, as far west as Nova Scotia or Virginia, if you believe stories of lost tribes.

But climate just never stays the same. And beginning in the 13th Century, a Little Ice Age (PDF) led to the Vikings' withdrawal from their far-flung settlements. The cold period featured terrible flooding from snow melts. It lasted until about the time Prince Albert first took Queen Victoria to Balmoral in 1852. With such a cold beginning, perhaps that's why Queen Elizabeth thinks things have gotten too hot for her estates".


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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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Suit to de-list endangered species

Bob Briggs' wife's family has owned about 1,000 acres of redwood forest off Waddell Creek since 1913. He doesn't clearcut, and logs about once a decade. He pays the property taxes on the Rancho del Oso land with money from the wood and an organic farm. "If I couldn't farm my property here, if I couldn't harvest my timber from time to time, I would not be in an economic position to keep this land," Briggs said. But coho salmon and steelhead spawn in the creek, so Briggs, 80, said he faces a growing number of restrictions on what he can do with his property, located about seven miles north of Davenport. For example, he said, it took two years and a consultant for him to get a permit to clear a log jam that diverted water over his fields.

Many in the Central Coast Forest Association - a group of about 200 people who own small woodland swaths of Santa Cruz and Monterey counties - share his frustrations, Briggs said. So they have teamed up with a Sacramento law firm and others to challenge the Endangered Species Act listings of salmon and steelhead in California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho. "All of these regulations and restrictions are not about fish, they're about the government controlling land use," said Briggs, spokesman for the Central Coast group.

The Pacific Legal Foundation recently filed an intent to sue the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries, a federal agency responsible for protecting and preserving marine resources. The letter asserts coho salmon and steelhead bred in the wild are genetically identical to those raised in hatcheries, said Russ Brooks, managing attorney for the foundation. Because there is no difference, the filing contends, counters should include both in their tallies and remove the fish from the threatened and endangered species lists. Coho salmon and steelhead spawn in streams and rivers and both are listed as threatened in Santa Cruz County. They also are threatened or endangered around the Pacific Northwest.

In a related development, the Bush administration on Tuesday proposed cutting the federally designated habitat critical to the recovery of threatened and endangered salmon by more than 80 percent in the Northwest and 50 percent in California, focusing protection on rivers where the fish now thrive. Briggs said he looks forward to the relaxed land restrictions his group's lawsuit could provide.

Scientists argue hatchery fish aren't as strong as wild fish. They compete with them for food and threaten the gene pool. Fishermen say the difference between catching a wild and hatchery fish is like that between a wild turkey and a Butterball. But Brooks said the listings are not about fish. Instead, they are a tool to block logging and development.

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MORE DISHONESTY ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING

A Science Magazine essay claiming there is a "scientific consensus" about human-caused "global warming" was ridiculed Monday by a British scientist, who compared such a "consensus" to the near-unanimous elections that existed in the old Soviet Union. On Monday, Benny Peiser, a United Kingdom social anthropologist, called the Dec. 3 essay, "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change," a "disturbing" study. "A one-hundred-percent record of 'scientific consensus' on anthropogenic climate change would be a sensational finding indeed. In fact, such a total result would be even more remarkable than any 'consensus' ever achieved in Soviet-style elections," Peiser noted sarcastically.

The Science Magazine essay analyzed 928 abstracts containing the keyword "climate change," all published in peer-reviewed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003. The essay found that not a single one of the studies showed climate change to be naturally occurring. The essay was written by University of California professor Naomi Oreskes, a member of the University's Department of History and Science Studies Program. According to Oreskes, "None of these (928) papers argued that [current climate change is natural]. This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with [United Nations] IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies," Oreskes wrote. "Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect," she added. "The question of what to do about climate change is also still open. But there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic (human caused) climate change. Climate scientists have repeatedly tried to make this clear. It is time for the rest of us to listen," concluded Oreskes.

But Peiser, a senior lecturer in Social Anthropology & Sport Sociology at Liverpool John Moores University and the editor of of CCNet (Cambridge Conference Network) webzine, labeled Oreskes' essay a "disturbing article. Whatever happened to the countless research papers published in the last ten years in peer-reviewed journals that show that temperatures were generally higher during the Medieval Warm Period than today, that solar variability is most likely to be the key driver of any significant climate change and that the methods used in climate modeling are highly questionable?" Peiser asked. "Given the countless papers published in the peer-reviewed literature over the last ten years that implicitly or explicitly disagree with the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming, one can only conclude that all of these were simply excluded from the [Science Magazine] review. That's how it arrived at a 100 percent consensus!" he added.

According to Peiser, Oreskes' assertion that there is a 100 percent consensus about the issue is not backed by science. "Even [former Soviet dictator Joseph] Stalin himself did not take consensus politics to such extremes," Peiser explained. "In the Soviet Union the official 'participation rate' was never higher than 98-99 percent. So how did the results published in Science achieve a 100 percent level of conformity? Regrettably, the article does not include any reference to the [unpublished?] study itself, let alone the methodology on which the research was based. This makes it difficult to check how Oreskes arrived at the truly miraculous results," he added.

Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the free market environmental group Competitive Enterprise Institute, also criticized the idea that there is a "scientific consensus" on "global warming." "Publishing such an easily debunked falsehood in an erstwhile reputable, peer-review publication (Science Magazine) demonstrates either a new low in desperation or a new generation believing there are no checks and therefore no limits," Horner told CNSNews.com. After all, past nonsense brought increasing taxpayer funding for decades. What would make them think they can't just make things up?" Horner added.

Iain Murray, a senior fellow in International Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, wrote a letter to the editor of Science Magazine questioning why the study was even published. "I was surprised to see Science publish an article crowing over the existence of a scientific consensus on global warming and then advancing the non-sequitur that political action is therefore needed. Neither is a point worthy of consideration in an objective, scientific journal," Murray wrote in his letter to the editor, dated Dec. 6. "...the message of the article -- that politicians must act on the basis of the science -- is clearly a political point rather than a scientific one," Murray continued. "...the argument advanced by the author that 'our grandchildren will surely blame us if they find that we understood the reality of anthropogenic climate change and failed to do anything about it' is barely economically literate and has no place in a scientific journal," he added.

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The above story reminds me of this piece of "research" reported in an eminent psychology journal. Although the authors of that study express some pride that they "cast a wide net" in looking for articles to include in their summary, they in fact leave out practically everything that does not suit them. They look only at articles that they like. It is NOT in any way a comprehensive, objective survey of the literature on the subject. For instance, how many of my 200+ published academic journal articles on the subject did they cite? Just two. So just in ignoring the great bulk of my articles on the subject they ignored half the relevant literature. But Leftists always have been good at ignoring evidence. So they concluded that their Leftist approach to the study of politics "has withstood the relentless tests of time and empirical scrutiny" and go on to cite 13 articles that support their approach as evidence for that assertion. If they had been fair and objective, they could also have quoted 100 articles of mine that upset that assertion. But in good Leftist fashion it is only people who support their views that they cite. Any science with Leftist involvement swiftly degenerates into bunk. More on that here

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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Push towards renewable energy runs out of puff

There is SOME limit to the amount of Greenie nonsense people will put up with

Australia is falling behind other countries in its pursuit of clean energy. Forecasts suggest the proportion of renewable energy - mainly wind and hydro schemes in Australia, but also solar - is declining as the ever-growing demand for electricity is increasingly met by coal-fired power stations. The chief executive of the Australian Wind Energy Association, Libby Anthony, said: "Australia's current energy policy will actually see the market share of renewable energy decline in real terms over the next 10 years." The proportion of energy generated from renewable energy has slipped over the past 20 years, from 20 per cent, primarily from Snowy Hydro, to below 10 per cent. "Countries around the world have embraced clean renewable energies as a significant part of their strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and Australia, the highest per capita greenhouse-gas polluter in the world, has an obligation to do the same," Ms Anthony said. Wind will provide a third of new generating capacity in the European Union this decade, she said. And China has committed to source 17 per cent of its energy from renewables by 2020.

In contrast, Australia's mandatory renewable energy target requires only a 2 per cent increase by 2010, which was based on outdated 1997 projections of Australia's energy needs by that time, Ms Anthony said. The installed capacity of wind turbines was now 379 megawatts, she said. It is expected to grow by 20 per cent a year, with another 324 megawatts under construction, and 415 megawatts approved and at tender stage. Ms Anthony said increasing the mandatory target to 10 per cent by 2010 "would have minimal effect on the economy and would deliver desperately needed jobs and investment to rural and regional Australia".

The target determines how many "renewable certificates" will be issued. Wind farmers can sell the certificates to large energy users, which must meet green targets either by installing green measures or buying certificates. Ms Anthony said her association knew of 4200 megawatts of wind turbine capacity at the feasibility stage that were unlikely to proceed because there were too few certificates.

Others are sceptical about wind and other forms of renewable energy. The outgoing managing director of Energy Australia, Paul Broad, dismisses the contribution wind farms can make. "It's nickel and dime stuff," he said.

But Denmark showed it could be done, Ms Anthony said. It has 5000 wind turbines in giant wind farms. By harnessing North Sea winds it generates electricity for more than 1 million homes, the highest per capita wind energy provision of any country, Greenpeace says. The Danish Government plans to triple wind energy production by 2040 by developing five offshore wind-turbine parks.

There is increasing concern internationally over the noise and visual impact of wind turbines. And in NSW a National Party MP, Duncan Gay, has taken up the cause of the Dooley family, near Crookwell, east of Young. They are fighting plans for another large wind farm, which would leave the family farm surrounded on four sides by wind farms. "Col Dooley compares the sound of the existing eight wind turbines on a windy day to "a stock crate on a gravel road, with its decks down", Mr Gay said.

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The green beast is out of control

In campaigning for animal rights, some activists have lost respect for humanity

A sensitive child will always refrain from stepping on ants. Some will burst into tears at the thought of killing one of God's smallest creatures. Kindness to ants is to be encouraged. But not to a ridiculous extent. Sooner or later the child will come to realise one of life's many sad lessons: that if you want to walk around, it is impossible to avoid killing the odd ant. Not so for the increasingly pushy ranks of animal liberationists who seem locked in a childish Eden, in which all animals are sweet and "only man is vile".

The most visible of the animal rights organisations, the US-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), has recently turned its sights on Australia. Last month it damaged our $880 million-a-year merino wool export industry by forcing a large US clothing chain to boycott our wool. A vegan organisation which began with campaigns against fur, PETA has been targeting "cruel" Australian rodeos, and last week raised the prospect of running its anti-fishing and anti-fish-eating campaign here on the basis that fish are intelligent and have feelings.

It might seem like a joke but PETA is an ideological organisation committed to winning each of its campaigns and with a pretty good track record so far, exploiting the natural aversion most city dwellers have to thinking too deeply about the origins of that neat piece of steak or plastic-wrapped chicken tenderloin. People in touch with their humanity are, of course, opposed to cruelty to animals.

We are genetically programmed to eat meat, but we cringe at the sight of half-dead lobsters in the fish tanks at the front of seafood restaurants. We seek free-range eggs rather than those laid by battery hens which, by all accounts, lead a bleak existence. We expect humane farming and have been content to fund the RSPCA and animal welfare groups to that end.

But now animal liberation zealots are going too far, and risk losing the goodwill of the public and damaging the animals they profess to protect. The RSPCA, with a proud record of protecting animal welfare in Australia, has become their enemy.

Recently, a university student member of Animal Liberation threw red paint over the RSPCA national president, Hugh Wirth, at a black-tie dinner, in a protest about Pace Farms's eggs. Guests reportedly feared Wirth had been shot or stabbed. One of Wirth's crimes is to state the truth that Animal Liberation's agenda is to force everyone to become vegetarians. In the US, where protests have morphed into terrorism, activists vandalised the house and car of a San Francisco chef who served foie gras, firebombed an apartment complex in San Diego, causing $50 million damage, and regularly smash up McDonald's restaurants, spraying "McKiller" and "meat is murder" on walls. It's an old ploy to make the public arms of the movement, such as PETA, look reasonable, even when they're trying to stop us eating fish.

In its most successful attack in Australia so far, PETA bullied the US clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch into boycotting our wool with a bogus campaign against the age-old farming practice of "mulesing" sheep. While no one would argue the process, which involves cutting off folds of skin around the sheep's anus, is pleasant, it's a lot less painful than what happens to an un-mulesed sheep when attacked by blowflies. But PETA doesn't like mulesing so it targeted more than 20 US clothing retailers, including A&F, showing executives a potential ad campaign featuring the logo "A&F" splattered with blood. Another reads: "Abercrombie or Abercruelty?" The company caved into the blackmail and the Australian wool industry promised to phase out mulesing by 2010, which still didn't satisfy the activists. There is no logic to the boycott against Australian wool but it illustrates the power of eco-warriors and the great cowardice of corporations and their senior managers who have been caving in to all sorts of greenmail lately in order to appease the green beast, funding employees to work as eco-volunteers in the Amazon, for instance.

The effrontery of activists is limitless. One example is that last year a whistleblower sent me a copy of a 16-page letter sent from the offices of Maurice Blackburn Cashman lawyers on behalf of the Climate Action Network. The letter came with a list of 145 Australian and Australian-based companies "given notice by Maurice Blackburn Cashman". From Qantas to Wesfarmers, Foster's and Westfield, the letter warns the company is creating greenhouse emissions and the directors are therefore legally liable. "It would be prudent for your board to assess and, if necessary, address climate risk. A failure to take these steps may raise questions about the fulfilment of the directors' duties under the Corporations Act 2001 and general law." The letter concludes with the insolent request for the company's "plans for assessing and addressing climate risk in the 03-04 financial year and beyond".

The modus operandi for animal liberationists is much the same, seemingly with some success. But in a world in which "meat is murder" the newfound obsession with animal rights is not a sign of a more compassionate society but of one which has lost respect for humanity. It has lost its belief in the soul and free will, which used to distinguish people from animals and gave existence meaning.

The guiding philosophy of animal rightists is that humans are the moral equivalent of animals, no better or worse. Australian philosopher Peter Singer, now a feted professor at Princeton University who advocates infanticide, first mapped out this equivalence in his influential 1975 book Animal Liberation.

Last night the ABC aired a British documentary, starring famed chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall, who expresses a similar view. In the promos, she says: "If you look into the eyes of a chimpanzee you know you're looking into the eyes of a thinking, feeling being. We must redefine man, redefine tool, or accept chimpanzees as humans." The documentary emphasises the fact that we share "98 per cent of our DNA" with chimps. It doesn't point out we share half our DNA with bananas. Where is the Banana Liberation Front?

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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A FALLACY IN MEASURING GLOBAL TEMPERATURE

Louis Hissink comments:

Finally a short note about Temperature - that property of physical matter that seems to get so much attention these days. Roy Spencer, above, noted that the climate models might be in error. Well there is a fairly obvious error made in estimating the global surface temperature.

It comes about when intensive variables are used as the basis of quantitative analysis and explained in intensive and extensive variables.

Examples of extensive variables are mass, length, area and doing basic arithmetic on them, like addition, is possible. So adding 5 grams of water to 10 grams of water gets you 15 grams of water. No argument about this I suspect.

Examples of intensive variables are ore-grades in grams per tonne, specific gravity or density and temperature. So if I have 5 grams of water at 20 degrees Celsius and 10 grams of water at 30 degrees Celsius does not mean I have 15 grams of water at 50 degrees Celsius. The problem here is that intensive variables are not quantities - you can't go to your local supermarket and buy 20 degrees Celsius of frozen prawns, for example.

And herein lies the fundamental problem of computing the earth's "global temperature" - you cannot simply add up all the mean temperatures, then divide by the total number of measurements to get the overall mean temperature - because intensive variables are not additive. And weighting those temperatures by "urban" effects does not improve the computation.

However the physical quantity which is additive is the amount of thermal energy for a body of atmosphere which is computed as the mass of atmosphere multiplied by its temperature and its specific heat based on the relative humidity of the air when the temperature was recorded. It is a simple concept and usually described in Physics 101 texts as the method of mixtures.

A more accurate estimate is made when the weather stations are assigned to the type of land they are on - and one would need to draw boundaries along urban areas and so forth. These concepts are thoroughly described in any good geotatistical text and not detailed here. Thus each temperature station is assigned an area of influence based on the type of physical environment it is linked to. It is then a simple matter to assign the third dimension to give us volume of atmosphere for that specific area, for which we can measure its density, humidity and temperature. This then allows us to compute the quantity of thermal energy associated with that part of the atmosphere that is linked to a particular weather station. This is repeated for all the rest of the weather stations, divided by the total mass times specific heats to obtain the final global temperature.

This is how the mean global temperature should be estimated. Oh and there is no such thing as an average global temperature either, since one object cannot have an average anything.

Of course simply adding up the temperatures and dividing by the total number of measurements does have a valid physical meaning - it is simply the average temperature of the physical thermometers themselves, assuming physically identical thermometers. The problem is that when a temperature is recorded, it is the thermal state of the thermometer and the mass of substance it is in thermal equilibrium with. The temperature is associated with two physical objects, and estimating the average temperature of the thermometers is one calculation while the temperature of the atmosphere another.

And of course we must not forget the mass of the earth at its temperature, because it too is part of the thermal system that the atmosphere is part of, and so must be factored into the estimate of the global mean surface temperature.

Therefore it is quite possible that the discrepancy between the global surface temperatures and the MSU temperatures of the lower troposphere is the result of faulty computation of the surface temperatures rather than anything else.






AND THE NONSENSE GOES ON

The claims get wilder as the contrary evidence piles up

Reuters recently reported that "A study of a 2003 heatwave in Europe may give Pacific islanders and environmentalists new ammunition for legal cases blaming the United States for global warming, advocates said on Thursday."

"Legal cases"! What fun. Just mentioning legal cases is supposed to create the impression of firm evidence, of course. The Article in Nature (PDF) is entitled "Human contribution to the European heatwave of 2003" by Peter A. Stott, D.A. Stone and M.R. Allen. The introduction reads:

The summer of 2003 was probably the hottest in Europe since at latest AD 1500, and unusually large numbers of heat-related deaths were reported in France, Germany and Italy. It is an illposed question whether the 2003 heatwave was caused, in a simple deterministic sense, by a modification of the external influences on climate- for example, increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere- because almost any such weather event might have occurred by chance in an unmodified climate.However, it is possible to estimate by how much human activities may have increased the risk of the occurrence of such a heatwave. Here we use this conceptual framework to estimate the contribution of human-induced increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and other pollutants to the risk of the occurrence of unusually high mean summer temperatures throughout a large region of continental Europe. Using a threshold for mean summer temperature that was exceeded in 2003, but in no other year since the start of the instrumental record in 1851, we estimate it is very likely (confidence level >90%)9 that human influence has at least doubled the risk of a heatwave exceeding this threshold magnitude.

So what does this new evidence amount to? It is no new evidence at all, in fact, It is just a "conceptual framework"! And it is in any case ludicrous to say that they can establish 90% confidence that human influence has anything to do with this. In the Reuters article they quote various environmentalists calling this "evidence" and an "important step". It is in fact just an exercise in number manipulation.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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THE MAIN EFFECT OF THE KYOTO TREATY: MONEY FOR RUSSIA

No wonder they signed up

But first a couple of preliminary remarks about the immediate effects of the European mini-Kyoto. Will it reduce emissions? Contrary to what many believe, it will not. On the basis of the allowances allocated to existing facilities covered by the EU emission trading scheme, Fred Singer, the dean of the climate sceptics, forecasts that European industry will be allowed to increase annual CO2 emissions by 5% during the first phase of the scheme (2005 to 2007) relative to their emissions in 2000. Additional allowances will also be available through reserves set aside for the construction of new plants. If all these reserve allowances are issued, then emissions would be permitted to increase by an additional 6%. In total, the first phase of the scheme could therefore allow emissions to increase by up to 11% relative to 2000 levels. And Singer comments: 'These increases are in stark contrast to the commitments of European Member States under the Kyoto Protocol which require a collective reduction in emissions across all EU 15 countries of 8% by 2010 from 1990 levels.'

Moreover, there is this little snag of 'paper compliance'. As David Victor of the Council on Foreign Relations argues, Russia (and Ukraine) agreed in Kyoto to freeze emissions at 1990 levels, but the collapse of the post-Soviet economy in the early 1990s means that their emissions are already far below that target and unlikely to recover fully by 2008. Selling the windfall to nations in emissions deficit could earn Russia (and Ukraine) a considerable sum of money. Since the windfall is free -- completely an artifact of the luck and skill of the diplomats in Kyoto rather than the result of any effort to control emissions -- these extra credits would squeeze out bona fide efforts to control emissions. That buys 'paper compliance' but no reduction in emissions.

So formally the system will run smoothly, but there will be no reductions of emissions. On the contrary, they will still rise. In the mean time there will be a net flow of resources to Russia (and other countries) in order to pay for the emission allowances which Russia does not need for itself. That is a boon for Russia and -- if we take official statements at their face value -- a source of deep satisfaction of European policymakers because it helps Kyoto to enter into force. Whether the average citizen/taxpayer is equally satisfied remains to be seen. Of course, it is true that all European parliaments have approved Kyoto. But did they know the shortcomings of the underlying science? Have they been fully informed by their governments about the costs and benefits of Kyoto? Did they know that Kyoto will result in a net cooling which is so small that even in 2050 it will not be possible to detect it, even with the most sophisticated thermometers? And did they realise that Kyoto is like the proverbial camel's nose: nothing to get excited about in the beginning, but devastating in the end?

It is often argued that CO2 emission trading is in conformity with market principles. However, if we take a closer look, it is not. It requires a prior act of creating and distributing (property) rights (to emit), where no rights existed before. Only governments can do so.

In Europe, national emission ceilings are the outcome of negotiations between the EU member countries and other countries which will join the scheme. Subsequently, individual countries are free to distribute the emission rights nationally according to schemes to their liking......

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THAT AWKWARD SATELLITE DATA

The results of two research studies announced this week address the infamous discrepancy between satellite and surface thermometer trends over the last 25 years. The original satellite dataset produced by the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) now has a warming trend of 0.08 deg. C/decade since 1979, while the surface thermometer trend is two to three times this value. Climate models, in contrast, claim that any surface warming as a result of global warming should be amplified with height, not reduced. This has led to varying levels of concern in the climate community that the theory contained in the climate models might be in error.

As background, a study published earlier this year by Fu et al. (1) attempted to estimate the amount of tropospheric warming by a simple linear combination of the stratospheric and tropospheric channels of the Microwave Sounding Units (MSUs) flying on NOAA polar-orbiting weather satellites. (The troposphere exists from the surface up to a height of around 8-12 miles, the stratosphere overlays it.) Since the tropospheric channel has about 15% influence from the stratosphere -- which has cooled strongly since 1979 -- the tropospheric temperature can only be estimated through removal of the stratospheric component. Fu et al. used radiosonde (weather balloon) data to arrive at an optimum combination of the two channels that, when applied to the satellite observed temperature trends, resulted in a tropospheric warming trend that was larger than that estimated by UAH with a different technique.

In the first article announced this week, Fu & Johansen (2) estimate the stratospheric contribution to the satellite instrument's tropospheric channel through a slightly different method than in their original article. They used previously published radiosonde estimates of temperature trends through the lower and middle stratosphere to estimate the error in their method, as well as the amount of stratospheric cooling contained in the tropospheric channel. While we would prefer to leave detailed comments for a journal article, a couple of general points can be made. For the period they examined (1979-2001), our (UAH) lower tropospheric temperature trend is +0.06 deg. C/decade, while their estimate of the (whole) tropospheric trend is +0.09 deg C/decade. You might notice that the difference between these two trends is small, considering the probable error bounds on these estimates and the fact that the two techniques measure somewhat different layers. Also, their method depends on belief in the radiosonde-measured trends in the lower stratosphere, even though we know there are larger errors at those altitudes than in the troposphere -- and most published radiosonde trends for the troposphere show little or no global warming (!) As is often the case, the press release that described the new study made claims that were, in my view, exaggerated. Nevertheless, given the importance of the global warming issue, this line of research is probably worthwhile as it provides an alternative way of interpreting the satellite data.

The other study (3), published by Simon Tett and Peter Thorne at the UK's Hadley Centre, takes issue with the original Fu et al. method. Tett and Thorne claim that when the technique is applied to variety of radiosonde, reanalysis, and global model simulation datasets in the tropics, it leads to results which are more variable than the UAH technique produces. It also mentions the dependence of the method on the characteristics of the radiosonde data that are assumed.

Source

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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What's a lefty eco-activist to do?

America's left wing, anti-corporate, socialist, eco-activists have a terrible dilemma today. Castro-wannabe Hugo Chavez has nationalized Venezuela's oil industry, and his American PR representativces spin fuzzy warm tales of the formerly oppressed masses now enjoying socialist nirvana. One of the messages they tell American lefties is to support Citgo, the American refining company controlled by the Venezuelan state oil company.

The only problem is that the state oil company doesn't bother with state-of-the-art tankers when shipping oil to the Citgo refinery on the Delaware River. An up to date tanker would not have had the ugly oil spill, killing birds and Other Living Things which just took place.

So, for the trendy-lefties the question is: does socialism win (buy Citgo products) or does ecology win (boycott Citgo)?

Source






DANISH CLIMATE REALISM

A team of scientists has condemned claims of climate catastrophe as "fatally flawed" in a report released today. The study appears on the same day that 300 climate scientists warn that winter temperatures in Alaska, western Canada and eastern Russia have risen by up to 4 C in the past 50 years - and could warm by up to 7 C. Martin Agerup, president of the Danish Academy for Future Studies and colleagues from Stockholm, Canada, Iceland and Britain say in their report that predictions of "extreme impacts" based on greenhouse emissions employed "faulty science, faulty logic and faulty economics".

Predictions of changes in sea level of a metre in the next century were overestimates: sea-level rises were likely to be only 10cm to 20cm in the next 100 years. Claims that climate change would lead to a rise in malaria were not warranted. Extreme weather was not on the increase but more likely to be part of a natural cycle, not yet understood by climate scientists. The report says a warmer world would benefit fish stocks in the north Atlantic and reduce the incidence of temperature-related deaths in vulnerable humans.

Source






THE ORIGINAL MOONBAT GETS SOME THINGS RIGHT

A very effective rubbishing by George Monbiot of the latest Greenie fad for biofuels based on edible oils. Crop oils are no substitute for petroleum. Alcohol from tropical sugarcane planations is, however. Sugarcane grows extremely well in tropical and subtropical climates and Australia alone could double its production almost overnight without any adverse effects. And it would give poor countries in Africa a cash crop that would be their salvation

The world is finite. This means that when one group of people pursues its own interests, it damages the interests of others. It is hard to think of a better example than the current enthusiasm for biofuels. These are made from plant oils or crop wastes or wood, and can be used to run cars and buses and lorries. Burning them simply returns to the atmosphere the carbon that the plants extracted while they were growing. So switching from fossil fuels to biodiesel and bioalcohol is now being promoted as the solution to climate change.

Next month, the British government will have to set a target for the amount of transport fuel that will come from crops. The European Union wants 2% of the oil we use to be biodiesel by the end of next year, rising to 6% by 2010 and 20% by 2020. To try to meet these targets, the government has reduced the tax on biofuels by 20p a litre, while the EU is paying farmers an extra 45 euros a hectare to grow them. Everyone seems happy about this. The farmers and the chemicals industry can develop new markets, the government can meet its commitments to cut carbon emissions, and environmentalists can celebrate the fact that plant fuels reduce local pollution as well as global warming. Unlike hydrogen fuel cells, biofuels can be deployed straightaway. This, in fact, was how Rudolf Diesel expected his invention to be used. When he demonstrated his engine at the World Exhibition in 1900, he ran it on peanut oil. "The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today," he predicted. "But such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum." Some enthusiasts are predicting that if fossil fuel prices continue to rise, he will soon be proved right.

I hope not. Those who have been promoting these fuels are well-intentioned, but wrong. They are wrong because the world is finite. If biofuels take off, they will cause a global humanitarian disaster. Used as they are today, on a very small scale, they do no harm. A few thousand greens in the United Kingdom are running their cars on used chip fat. But recycled cooking oils could supply only 100,000 tonnes of diesel a year in this country, equivalent to one 380th of our road transport fuel. It might also be possible to turn crop wastes such as wheat stubble into alcohol for use in cars - the Observer ran an article about this on Sunday. I'd like to see the figures, but I find it hard to believe that we will be able to extract more energy than we use in transporting and processing straw. But the EU's plans, like those of all the enthusiasts for biolocomotion, depend on growing crops specifically for fuel. As soon as you examine the implications, you discover that the cure is as bad as the disease.

Road transport in the UK consumes 37.6m tonnes of petroleum products a year. The most productive oil crop that can be grown in this country is rape. The average yield is 3-3.5 tonnes per hectare. One tonne of rapeseed produces 415kg of biodiesel. So every hectare of arable land could provide 1.45 tonnes of transport fuel. To run our cars and buses and lorries on biodiesel, in other words, would require 25.9m hectares. There are 5.7m in the UK. Even the EU's more modest target of 20% by 2020 would consume almost all our cropland. If the same thing is to happen all over Europe, the impact on global food supply will be catastrophic: big enough to tip the global balance from net surplus to net deficit. If, as some environmentalists demand, it is to happen worldwide, then most of the arable surface of the planet will be deployed to produce food for cars, not people.

This prospect sounds, at first, ridiculous. Surely if there were unmet demand for food, the market would ensure that crops were used to feed people rather than vehicles? There is no basis for this assumption. The market responds to money, not need. People who own cars have more money than people at risk of starvation. In a contest between their demand for fuel and poor people's demand for food, the car-owners win every time. Something very much like this is happening already. Though 800 million people are permanently malnourished, the global increase in crop production is being used to feed animals: the number of livestock on earth has quintupled since 1950. The reason is that those who buy meat and dairy products have more purchasing power than those who buy only subsistence crops.

Green fuel is not just a humanitarian disaster; it is also an environmental disaster. Those who worry about the scale and intensity of today's agriculture should consider what farming will look like when it is run by the oil industry. Moreover, if we try to develop a market for rapeseed biodiesel in Europe, it will immediately develop into a market for palm oil and soya oil. Oilpalm can produce four times as much biodiesel per hectare as rape, and it is grown in places where labour is cheap. Planting it is already one of the world's major causes of tropical forest destruction. Soya has a lower oil yield than rape, but the oil is a by-product of the manufacture of animal feed. A new market for it will stimulate an industry that has already destroyed most of Brazil's cerrado (one of the world's most biodiverse environments) and much of its rainforest.

It is shocking to see how narrow the focus of some environmentalists can be. At a meeting in Paris last month, a group of scientists and greens studying abrupt climate change decided that Tony Blair's two big ideas - tackling global warming and helping Africa - could both be met by turning Africa into a biofuel production zone. This strategy, according to its convenor, "provides a sustainable development path for the many African countries that can produce biofuels cheaply". I know the definition of sustainable development has been changing, but I wasn't aware that it now encompasses mass starvation and the eradication of tropical forests. Last year, the British parliamentary committee on environment, food and rural affairs, which is supposed to specialise in joined-up thinking, examined every possible consequence of biofuel production - from rural incomes to skylark numbers - except the impact on food supply.

We need a solution to the global warming caused by cars, but this isn't it. If the production of biofuels is big enough to affect climate change, it will be big enough to cause global starvation.

Source.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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GREENIES USING THE COURTS TO TIE UP THE WEST

Cheat Seeker has the goods. One excerpt:

"The more significant of the two stories is the LA Times piece, which focuses on a Bush administration proposal to cut critical habitat for two endangered fish species by as much as 80 percent. Bear with me; this really is interesting. Critical habitat is the front in the battle between the grab-everything/sue-everyone faction of the environmental movement and anyone-who-wants-to-build-anything-anywhere. It is a skirmish that shows just how intense and intelligent the radical greens are in their effort to de-populate the West."




Meteorologist Likens Fear of Global Warming to 'Religious Belief'

An MIT meteorologist Wednesday dismissed alarmist fears about human induced global warming as nothing more than 'religious beliefs.' "Do you believe in global warming? That is a religious question. So is the second part: Are you a skeptic or a believer?" said Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard Lindzen, in a speech to about 100 people at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. "Essentially if whatever you are told is alleged to be supported by 'all scientists,' you don't have to understand [the issue] anymore. You simply go back to treating it as a matter of religious belief," Lindzen said. His speech was titled, "Climate Alarmism: The Misuse of 'Science'" and was sponsored by the free market George C. Marshall Institute. Lindzen is a professor at MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.

Once a person becomes a believer of global warming, "you never have to defend this belief except to claim that you are supported by all scientists -- except for a handful of corrupted heretics," Lindzen added. According to Lindzen, climate "alarmists" have been trying to push the idea that there is scientific consensus on dire climate change. "With respect to science, the assumption behind the [alarmist] consensus is science is the source of authority and that authority increases with the number of scientists [who agree.] But science is not primarily a source of authority. It is a particularly effective approach of inquiry and analysis. Skepticism is essential to science -- consensus is foreign," Lindzen said.

Alarmist predictions of more hurricanes, the catastrophic rise in sea levels, the melting of the global poles and even the plunge into another ice age are not scientifically supported, Lindzen said. "It leads to a situation where advocates want us to be afraid, when there is no basis for alarm. In response to the fear, they want us to do what they want," Lindzen said.

Recent reports of a melting polar ice cap were dismissed by Lindzen as an example of the media taking advantage of the public's "scientific illiteracy." "The thing you have to remember about the Arctic is that it is an extremely variable part of the world," Lindzen said. "Although there is melting going [on] now, there has been a lot of melting that went on in the [19]30s and then there was freezing. So by isolating a section ... they are essentially taking people's ignorance of the past," he added.

'Repetition makes people believe'

The climate change debate has become corrupted by politics, the media and money, according to Lindzen. "It's a sad story, where you have scientists making meaningless or ambiguous statements [about climate change]. They are then taken by advocates to the media who translate the statements into alarmist declarations. You then have politicians who respond to all of this by giving scientists more money," Lindzen said. "Agreement on anything is taken to infer agreement on everything. So if you make a statement that you agree that CO2 (carbon dioxide) is a greenhouse gas, you agree that the world is coming to an end," he added.

"There can be little doubt that the language used to convey alarm has been sloppy at best," Lindzen said, citing Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbles and his famous observation that even a lie will be believed if enough people repeat it. "There is little question that repetition makes people believe things [for] which there may be no basis," Lindzen said. He believes the key to improving the science of climate change lies in altering the way scientists are funded.

'Alarm is the aim'

"The research and support for research depends on the alarm," Lindzen told CNSNews.com following his speech. "The research itself often is very good, but by the time it gets through the filter of environmental advocates and the press innocent things begin to sound just as though they are the end of the world. "The argument is no longer what models are correct -- they are not -- but rather whether their results are at all possible. One can rarely prove something to be impossible," he explained.

Lindzen said scientists must be allowed to conclude that 'we don't have a problem." And if the answer turns out to be 'we don't have a problem,' we have to figure out a better reward than cutting off people's funding. It's as simple as that," he said. The only consensus that Lindzen said exists on the issue of climate change is the impact of the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty to limit greenhouse gases, which the U.S. does not support. Kyoto itself will have no discernible effect on global warming regardless of what one believes about climate change," Lindzen said. "Claims to the contrary generally assume Kyoto is only the beginning of an ever more restrictive regime. However this is hardly ever mentioned," he added.

The Kyoto Protocol, which Russia recently ratified, aims to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2010. But Lindzen claims global warming proponents ultimately want to see a 60 to 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gasses from the 1990 levels. Such reductions would be economically disastrous, he said. "If you are hearing Kyoto will cost billions and trillions," then a further reduction will ultimately result in "a shutdown" of the economy, Lindzen said.

Source




There Is NO Man-Made Global Warming

By Tom DeWeese

There is no scientific evidence to back claims of man-made global warming. Period. Anyone who tells you that scientific research shows warming trends -- be they teachers, newscasters, congressmen, senators, vice presidents or presidents -- is wrong. In fact, scientific research through U.S. government satellite and balloon measurements shows that the temperature is actually cooling -- very slightly -- 0.037 degrees Celsius. A little research into modern-day temperature trends bears this out. For example, in 1936, the Midwest of the United States experienced 49 consecutive days of temperatures over 90 degrees. There were another 49 consecutive days in 1955. But in 1992, there was only one day over 90 degrees and, in 1997, only five days. Because of modern science and improved equipment, this "cooling" trend has been most accurately documented over the past 18 years. Ironically, that's the same period of time the hysteria has grown over dire warnings of "warming."

Changes in global temperatures are natural. In fact, much of the recent severe weather has been directly attributed to a natural phenomenon that occurs every so often called El Nino. It causes ocean temperatures to rise as tropical trade winds actually reverse for a time. The resulting temperature changes cause severe storms, flooding and even drought on every continent on earth. It's completely natural. El Nino has been wreaking its havoc across the globe since long before man appeared.

How about the reports that the polar ice cap is melting? On Election Day, the Financial Times of London carried the hysterical headline: "Arctic Ice Cap Set to Disappear by the Year 2070." The article stated that the Arctic ice cap is melting at an unprecedented rate. The article is based on a report titled "Impacts of a Warming Arctic," submitted by a group of researchers called the Arctic Climate Impact Assessement (ACIA).

It must be understood just who makes up this so-called group of researchers. The report is not unbiased scientific data. Rather, it is propaganda from political groups that have an agenda. The report was commissioned by the Arctic Council, which is comprised of a consortium of radical envionmentalists from Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States. All are nations that possess land within the Arctic Circle. Many of these countries, through the Kyoto Protocol, have a financial stake in pushing the global warming agenda. One of the groups providing "scientists" to the ACIA "researchers" is the World Wildlife Fund, one of the leading chicken-little scaremongers that create junk science at the drop of a news release to terrify us all into proper environmental conduct.

The report is now being used at the global warming meeting currently underway in Buenos Aires to rally the troops and bully the United States into accepting the discredited Kyoto Protocol. We are being warned of killer heat waves, vast flooding and the spread of tropical diseases. Ocean levels are rising, and America's coastlines are doomed, they tell us. Hurricanes and tornadoes have already become more violent, we're warned. Floods and droughts have begun to ravage the nation, they cry. Any change in temperatures, an excessive storm or extended flooding is looked upon as a sure sign that environmental armageddon is upon us. Diabolical environmentalists are using the natural El Nino phenomenon to whip people into a global warming hysteria.

Two kinds of scientists

We are assured by such groups that scientists everywhere are sounding these warnings and that we may only have one chance to stop it. Well, as the debate rages, we find that there are really two kinds of scientists. There are those who look at facts and make their judgments based on what they see and know. Their findings can be matched by any other scientist, using the same data and set of circumstances to reach the same conclusions. It's a age-old practice called "peer review." It's the only true science.

And then, there are those who yearn for a certain outcome and set about creating the needed data to make it so. Usually, you will find this group of scientists greatly dependent on grants supplied by those with a specific political agenda who demand desired outcomes for their money. Let's just take NASA, for example -- the most trusted name in American science. A lot of NASA scientists have fallen into the money trap. Environmental science has become the life-blood of the space program as the nation has lost interest in space travel. To keep the bucks coming, NASA has justified launches through the excuse of earth-directed environmental research. And the budgets keep coming. At the same time, many of NASA's scientists have a political agenda in great harmony with those who advocate global warming. And they're not above using their position to aid that agenda whenever the chance is available.

This was never more clearly demonstrated than in 1992, when a team of three NASA scientists was monitoring conditions over North America to determine if the ozone layer was in danger. Inconclusive data indicated that conditions might be right for ozone damage over North America -- if certain things happened. True scientists are a careful lot. They study, they wait, and many times, they test again before drawing conclusions. Not so the green zealot. Of this three-member NASA team, two could not be sure of what they had found and wanted to do more research. But one took the data and rushed to the microphones with all of the drama of a Hollywood movie and announced in hushed tones that NASA had discovered an ozone hole over North America.

Then Sen. Al Gore rushed to the floor of the Senate with the news and drove a stampede to immediately ban freon -- five years before Congress had intended -- and without a suitable substitute. He then bullied President George H.W. Bush to sign the legislation by saying the ozone hole was over Kennebunkport, Maine, Bush's favorite vacation spot. Two months later, NASA announced -- on the back pages of the newspapers -- that further research had shown there was no such damage. But it was too late. The valuable comodity known as freon was gone forever.

Flawed computer models

Then there are those computer models. Night after night, Americans watch the local news as the weatherman predicts what kind of a day tomorrow will be. These meteorologists, using the most up-to-date equipment available, boldly give you the five-day forecast. But it's well known that even with all of their research and expensive equipment, it really is just a "best guess." There are just too many variables. If the wind picks up here, it could blow in a storm. If the temperature drops there, it could start to snow. The earth is a vast and wondrous place. Weather does what it wants. Yet those who are promoting the global warming theory have the audacity to tell you they can forecast changes in the global climate decades into the future.

The truth is that computer models are able to include only two out of 14 components that make up the climate system. To include the third component would take a computer a thousand times faster than what we have now. To go beyond the third component requires an increase in computer power that is so large, only mathematicians can comprehend the numbers. Moreover, even if the computer power existed, scientists do not understand all the factors and the relationships between them that determine the global climate.

So it's an outrage for the World Wildlife Fund or the Sierra Club to tell you that man-made global warming is a fact and that we Americans must now suffer dire changes in our lifestyle to stop it.

Scientists are not on the global warming bandwagon

And so, too, is it an outrage for the news media to tell you that most true scientists now agree that man-made global warming is a fact. What it doesn't tell you is that roughly 500 scientists from around the world signed the Heidleburg Appeal in 1992, just prior to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, expressing their doubts and begging the delegates not to bind the world to any dire treaties based on global warming. Today, that figure has grown to more than 4,000 scientists. Americans aren't being told that a 1997 Gallup Poll of prominent North American climatologists showed that 83 percent of them disagreed with the man-made global warming theory.

And the deceit knows no bounds. The United Nations released a report at the end of 1996 saying global warming was a fact, yet before releasing the report, two key paragraphs were deleted from the final draft. Those two paragraphs, written by the scientists who did the actual scientific analysis, said:

1. "[N]one of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases."

2. "[N]o study to date has positively attributed all or part of the climate change to ... man-made causes."

Obviously, those two paragraphs aren't consistent with the political agenda the U.N. is pushing. So, science be damned. Global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the people of the world -- bar none...........

Global raid on American wealth

But perhaps you still are not convinced. Maybe you still cling to the idea that such drastic action is necessary -- that those pushing the global warming agenda are truly in a panic over global warming and are just trying to find a solution. If you are one of these people, ask yourself: Why does the Kyoto Protocol only bind developed nations to draconian emission levels? Undeveloped Third World nations would be free to produce whatever they want. These would include China, India, Brazil and Mexico. Yet 82 percent of the projected emissions growth in future years would come from these countries.

Now ask yourself: If the Kyoto Climate Change Protocol is all about protecting the environment, then how come it doesn't cover everybody? The truth, of course, is that the treaty is really about redistribution of the wealth. The wealth of the United States is, and has always been, the target. The new scheme to grab the loot is through environmental scare tactics. And international corporations that owe allegiance to no nation would bolt America and move their factories lock, stock and computer chip to those Third World countries, where they would be free to carry on production.

But that means the same emissions would be coming out of the jungles of South America instead of Chicago. So where is the protection of the environment? You see, it's not about that, is it?........

More here

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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HOUSING: REGULATIONS TO DEFEAT REGULATIONS

Local know-alls restrict the building of new houses so that drives up the price. So new regulations are introduced in an attempt to reverse some of the same price-rise. It will lead to corruption, of course, as people use any non-monetary way they can to get into the artificially low priced homes

Hoping to get a leg up on rising home prices, Davis is climbing the economic ladder to reach the next rung of families who need help finding affordable housing: those earning nearly $100,000. The City Council has approved a plan requiring builders to make 25 percent of homes in new developments affordable for middle-income buyers, defined as families of four who earn $72,240 to $96,320 annually. The rule is on top of an existing 25 percent requirement for low-and moderate-income buyers, who earn $30,100 to $72,240 for a four-member household.

In addition, officials want folks who work in Davis to get first dibs on the affordable homes. Some who don't work, however - including retirees and those with disabilities - also would get preferences. Meanwhile, the city is studying a cap that would limit residential growth to 250 units annually.

While other California cities and counties have similar "inclusionary housing" ordinances targeting families with very low to moderate incomes, Davis is believed to be the only one in the state to extend help to core middle-class households. "Middle income" is defined as 80 percent to 120 percent of the annual Yolo County median income of $60,200 for a family of four. (The median is the point at which half the households earn more, half less.) "We're very excited about it," Mayor Ruth Asmundson said. "This council has been saying we want the people who work in Davis to be able to live in Davis to maintain the quality of life we have. They have to have a vested interest in the community."

After two years of study and public discussion, the City Council approved the new affordable housing rules in concept last month. Staff members are working out key details - including how to give preferences for affordable units - for formal ordinances to be heard early next year, Community Development Director Bill Emlen said.

Basic economic principles of supply and demand are squeezing solid middle-class home buyers in Davis. Relatively low crime and top schools draw many newcomers to the city of about 62,000. Meanwhile, a strong community desire for slow growth has resulted in steep housing prices for even well-educated professionals. "We're talking about folks like nurses, police officers, firefighters, teachers and administrative personnel at UC Davis," Emlen said. "Some professors even fall into that category, depending on where they're at in their tenure." A consultant hired by the city to study the needs of middle-income families found a growing gap between earnings and housing costs. The study said median income in Yolo County since 1995 increased 37 percent, from $44,000 to $60,200. Meanwhile, the average home price in Davis increased 140 percent, from $191,600 to $461,163. The consultant also found that middle-income families in Davis could afford homes costing $282,000 to $387,000. However, in March, the median sales price for all homes in the city was $425,000.

The result is that many who work in Davis - and earn too much to qualify for low-or moderate-income housing - commute from homes in Dixon, Sacramento and Woodland, Asmundson said. To increase housing opportunities in Davis, the council agreed that 25 percent was a reasonable target for middle-income buyers, she said. "Since this hasn't been done before, we need to be cautious ... but my hope is that the percentage can keep going up," Asmundson said. "We want to keep looking for ways so people who work here can live here."

Meanwhile, city officials see the proposed annual limit of 250 new units - which is slightly lower than the current rate - as both a target and a cap for residential growth. Emlen said the goal is to "set a parameter for metered growth" that will help the city avoid boom-and-bust development cycles.

More here





THE GEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON GLOBAL WARMING

Compared to the massive heat pouring from earth's core, any effect of carbon dioxide is the merest fleabite. Article reproduced from here. See the original for links

As far as the earth is concerned, and from a geological perspective, 99% of the earth's mass is hotter than 1000 degrees Celsius, and 1% of the earth's mass cooler than 100 degrees celsius - statistics here.

The temperature of space is about 2.7 degrees Kelvin, or expressed in the Celsius scale, approximately -269 degrees Celsius. Therefore the net heat loss from the earth to space is enormous, from which space could be thought as an almost infinite heat sink. And fluctuations of this heat source will overwhelm anything that humanity thinks it could contribute.

And why are we not being cooked to a frazzle on the earth's surface by this enormous mass of matter at a temperature greater than 1000 Degrees Celsius underneath us? Since the temperature gradient between the earth and space is somewhat steep, one wonders about the scientific basis of climate science and the hypothetical construct of anthropogenic CO2 induced global warming, given the overwhelming contribution that the earth's interior makes to the surface temperature of the earth and to space's ability to absorb all this thermal energy.

Given the mass of the solid earth is somewhat greater than that of the atmosphere, of which 0.033 percent is CO2, a simple physics 101 calculation of the heat balance might suggest that the contribution by CO2 to the earth's surface temperature is, for practical purposes, irrelevant. Are these scientific facts incorporated into the climate models? No, for which self respecting climatologist would study geology - the necessary background for miners of coal, oil, metals and industrial minerals.

C02 contributes nothing to the "Greenhouse effect" in practical terms, see here . Climate scientists and the Greens are not repositioning the deck chairs on the Titanic, they are actually screaming about the position of specks of dust on the armrests of those deck chairs.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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WOW! THIS SHOULD PREVENT A LOT OF GREENIE NONSENSE

Making other people pay for Greenie preferences seems like it is coming to an end

Over the past three decades, Oregon has earned a reputation for having the most restrictive land-use rules in the nation. Housing was grouped in and near the cities, while vast parcels of farmland and forests were untouched by so much as a suburban cul-de-sac. Environmentalists and advocates for "smart growth" cheered the ever-growing list of rules as visionary, while some landowners, timber companies and political allies cried foul.

But in a matter of days, the landowners will get a chance to turn the tables. Under a ballot measure approved on Nov. 2, property owners who can prove that environmental or zoning rules have hurt their investments can force the government to compensate them for the losses - or get an exemption from the rules. Supporters of the measure, which passed 60 percent to 40 percent, call it a landmark in a 30-year battle over property rights. "I've been getting calls from California, Idaho, Washington, Alaska and Wisconsin," said Ross Day, a Portland lawyer for the conservative group Oregonians in Action who co-wrote the law, Ballot Measure 37. "They all want to find out what our secret recipe was to get it passed."

Whatever the benefits of Oregon's land-use rules, Mr. Day added, "the people paying the cost are property owners.... If Enron does something like this, people call it theft," he said. "If Oregon does it, they call it land-use planning."...

Conservatives across the country have championed the idea of compensation for aggrieved landowners since at least the mid-1990's and the 1994 Republican "Contract With America." Four states have laws dating from that period that provide some compensation for affected property owners. "In Oregon, they're serious," said Michael M. Berger, a partner in the Los Angeles law firm of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. "It helps make people sit up and take notice that this is something they have to deal with. This is a big shock to the body politic - it's a very red-state thing to do, and Oregon is very blue, so this shows it cut across everyone."

Both sides expect the measure to survive judicial scrutiny, and the state and local governments are to start fielding claims on Dec. 2. If claims are found to be valid and the government will not or cannot pay, it must instead waive any restrictions that went into force after the owners - or their parents or grandparents - acquired the land.

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THE FACTS ABOUT GENETICALLY MODIFIED CROPS

GM crops are no more harmful to the environment than conventional plant varieties, a major UK study has found. The Bright project looked at varieties of sugar beet and winter oil-seed rape which had been engineered to make them tolerant of specific herbicides. The novel crops were compared with non-GM cereals grown in rotation. The project concluded that the GM varieties, used in this way, did not deplete the soil of weed seeds needed by many birds and other wildlife.

The findings of the Botanical and Rotational Implications of Genetically Modified Herbicide Tolerance (Bright) Link project were released on Monday. Bright was designed to mimic normal agricultural practice, and measure how these GM crops would perform when used in a typical crop rotation pattern over four years. Not only did the project find no evidence of seed depletion, it also pointed to potential benefits for farmers of growing the GM crops. "What we have shown is that in the case of these two crops, there are ways of managing them which are quite practical, and farmers can deal with them quite readily," the study's scientific co-ordinator Dr Jeremy Sweet told BBC News. "There appear to be some management advantages in the flexibility of the herbicide usage; there could well be cost-benefit advantages, depending on the price of the herbicides and seeds when the crops are commercialised. So there do appear to be a number of reasons why farmers might be quite interested in growing these crops."

However, there is little prospect of GM crops being introduced into the UK in the short-term. Earlier this year another major trial, the Farm-Scale Evaluations or FSEs, found that two GM varieties, a sugar beet and a spring rape, were more damaging to biodiversity than conventional crops. There were fewer insect groups, such as bees and butterflies, recorded among the novel plants. A GM maize, on the other hand, appeared to do better than its conventional cousin. Following the FSE results, Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett announced that companies wishing to bring GM crops into the UK would have to go through a long approval process. Subsequently, Bayer CropScience, the only company with outstanding applications for government permission, withdrew those applications.

Nevertheless, Bright will help biotech companies and proponents of GM agriculture argue that the crops should not be banned on environmental grounds. The European Union has indicated that member countries will in the future have to base decisions on whether or not to permit GM agriculture on science rather than public opinion.....

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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GREENIES KEEPING THE "OZONE HOLE" SCARE ALIVE

Because it is really just another natural weather system, the ozone hole continues to fluctuate as wildly as it ever did, despite all the bans on refrigerants and other chemicals. Its maximum size from year to year has not diminished at all. As is reported here, the hole was at its biggest in 2000 -- well after CFCs had been banned. Even more interesting, however was that in 2002 the hole shrank so much that it disappeared -- being replaced by two much smaller holes. Then in 2003 it was back at its second largest size ever. Extreme changes like that clearly indicate random natural fluctuation rather than systematic influence from ozone or anything else man-made. But Greenies are still on the attack anyway:

"The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) launched a campaign Tuesday to convince supermarkets in the United States to stop selling food, such as tomatoes, strawberries and nuts, grown or treated with the chemical methyl bromide. Used as a pesticide and soil fumigant, methyl bromide is considered the most potent chemical still in widespread use that depletes the Earth's protective ozone layer.

The international non-profit organization said it plans to investigate the supply chains for major supermarkets and campaign to have products produced with methyl bromide removed from shelves across the nation. "There are viable alternatives to the use of methyl bromide," said EIA President Allan Thornton. "Supermarket chains such as Safeway, Whole Foods, Albertsons, Kroger and Wal-Mart need to ensure that their shelves are free of produce grown or treated with this deadly chemical. We will be writing to major supermarkets to ask them to stop supporting the continued use of methyl bromide."

The depleted ozone layer allows more cancer causing ultra-violet solar radiation to strike the Earth, increasing the incidence of skin cancer. And methyl bromide also should be shelved for its other harmful effects on public health, the EIA said. Direct exposure can result in headaches, nausea, chest and abdominal pain, respiratory failure, and even death. Many strawberry and tomato fields treated with methyl bromide are located so near as to endanger homes, schools, and churches. The chemical has been identified as a source of occupational illness for farm workers who are exposed to it. The EIA's action is timed to coincide with a meeting this week in Prague of Parties to the Montreal Protocol, the international accord that aims to phase out use of ozone depleting chemicals, including methyl bromide.

Methyl bromide production has already been cut by some 30 percent of peak 1991 levels under the Montreal treaty, which the United States ratified in 1988 during the administration of President Ronald Reagan. The remaining 30 percent is to be phased out by January 1, 2005, except for uses that the treaty parties agree are "critical." The Bush administration has drawn criticism from environmentalists for negotiating a change in the treaty that has slowed the pace of the U.S. methyl bromide phase out. The phase out covers such uses as fumigation of soils and pest control on farms. But other pest-control purposes, involving exports of commodity crops, animal fodder, cut flowers, hides and consignments in wooden pallets, are exempted from the international phase out. Some experts estimate that close to a fifth of methyl bromide use worldwide could be excluded from control measures under these quarantine and pre-shipment exemptions, and they warn that the amounts used are even growing in some regions...... "

(Source)




And it's no wonder the Greenies want to ban the stuff: A total ban would be very disruptive

There is no known single alternative fumigant, chemical, or other technology that can readily substitute for methyl bromide in efficacy, low cost, ease of use, wide availability, worker safety, and environmental safety below the ozone layer. Research by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) indicates that multiple alternative control measures will be required to replace the many essential uses of methyl bromide. For preplant uses, such measures include combinations of fungicides, herbicides, and insecticides; other fumigants; and nonchemical alternatives, including cultural changes in cropping systems, resistant crops, and biological control. For some quarantine and export applications, effective replacements include irradiation, heat, cold, and controlled atmosphere treatments.
The effective application of a single alternative control measure or combination will generally be limited to a specific crop or use because specific crops have widely varying requirements and because of variations in target pests, soil types, climates, and state and local regulations.

(Source)




Even if the Greenies got their way it would have minimal effect

Note: "Only about a fifth of the methyl bromide that enters the atmosphere comes from human activity" and "Methyl bromide persists for less than a year in the atmosphere, so measures taken now can have an immediate effect." (Source)




The economics of the ban

Production of the gas - scheduled to be banned in the United States as of January 1, 2001 - has already been frozen at 1991 levels. A global phaseout is to be completed ten years later, with exemptions for its use in developing countries. What that means, say farmers, is that America will be at a distinct disadvantage in the global marketplace unless the ban is lifted or an alternative to methyl bromide is found. (Source)




Banning it solves a nonexistent problem

"The main pretext for the ban on this essential compound is the assertion by ``300 scientists'' that it is ``50 times more effective at destroying ozone than the chlorine from CFCs.'' The EPA claims that up to 90% of the methyl bromide used for agricultural purposes finds its way into the atmosphere.

The Methyl Bromide Working Group (http://www.sparber.com/ozone/htm) notes that up to 80% of the methyl bromide in the atmosphere comes from natural sources (oceans and biomass burning). Moreover, methyl bromide is destroyed by soil bacteria and chemical processes in the atmosphere (mean residence time about a year) and absorbed by the ocean.

This argument is completely irrelevant because there is no evidence of a net sustained downward trend in stratospheric ozone or upward trend in ultraviolet radiation at earth's surface. But again the hypothetical threat to the Planet trumps the clear and present danger from microbes, pests, and starvation".

(Source)




Ozone levels have always fluctuated

"Other scientific papers have confirmed that the ozone depletion theory is wrong. The Norwegian science magazine From the World of Physics, for example, published a thorough review of ozone science by Thormod Henriksen from the Institute of Physics at the University of Oslo, which presents evidence that the ozone layer was thinner in the 1940s than today!

Norway has several of the ozone measuring stations that have been operating continuously for the longest periods of time, and these are managed by some of the most qualified scientists in the field. Thus, Norway has some of the best, consistent data for a historical analysis of ozone trends. Henriksen describes the history of ozone research in Norway, and analyzes the ozone data starting in the 1940s. Figure 1 compares measurements done at the Dombaas research center in two periods: 1940-1946 and 1978-1994. As can be seen, the ozone layer went through a thinning process in the 1940s similar to that occurring now, with the exception, as noted by Henriksen, that "the ozone layer over southern Norway was thinner in the period between 1940 to 1946 than it is today." Henriksen also points out that the level of ultraviolet (UV) radiation have hardly changed"

(Source)

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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