Wind Energy Push Leaves Trail of Dead Eagles



Not so green: Obama administration allows wind-energy plants to kill eagles despite federal law




Stop The Presses: Carbon dioxide is allegedly causing the geographic north pole to begin "galloping east toward Greenland"!

Polar wander linked to climate change : Nature News & Comment

Global warming is changing the location of Earth’s geographic poles, according to a new study pending in Geophysical Research Letters...

From 1982 to 2005, the pole drifted southeast toward northern Labrador, Canada, at a rate of about 2 milliarcseconds —or roughly 6 centimetres — per year. But in 2005, the pole changed course and began galloping east toward Greenland at a rate of more than 7 milliarcseconds per year.

SOURCE




Report in major German newsmagazine: “Greenland Melting More Slowly Than Expected” …Sea Level Rise Alarm Called Off!

Online Spiegel magazine (SPON) has an article today by Axel Bojanowski titled: “Sea level rise: Greenland melting more slowly than expected“.  Bojanowski writes:  "Melting in Greenland is a decisive factor on how fast the sea level rises. Now research on five glaciers on the country are showing: The northern ice cap will indeed melt more gradually than assumed.”

This dumps cold water on the global climate catastrophe scenarios that the German government-funded climate institutes, media, and politicians of every party like to trumpet.

The Spiegel article cites a new study here that finds “melting Greenland glaciers will lead to less sea level rise over the next 200 years than earlier feared” and that “the accelerated ice loss of the past decades will not continue at the same rate.”

The Spiegel story contradicts an older 2010 New York Times 2010 doom and gloom portrayal of Greenland, which cited Stefan Rahmstorf, who said:  "The past clearly shows that sea-level rise is getting faster and faster the warmer it gets. Why should that process stop? If it gets warmer, ice will melt faster.”

Of course we know that it hasn’t gotten warmer at all in 15 years, and may have even cooled slightly, and so the process naturally will not accelerate.

Rahmstorf is a leading scientist at the notoriously climate-catastrophe-obsessed Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. He once accused Spiegel of “climate scientist bashing” and “defamation”. Why? Because Spiegel dared to question his brand of bed-wetting alarmist climate science.

Bojanowski at SPON writes that the scientists reported here at Nature that a melting calculated under strongly rising temperatures for all of Greenland would lead to a sea level rise of maximum 18 cm…”well within the prognoses of the UN IPCC.”

But with global temperature data showing no warming in 15 years, oceanic cycles like the PDO and AMO turning negative, solar activity tanking, and many scientists projecting a slight to moderate cooling over the next decades, these newest prognoses may very well turn out to be exaggerated as well, especially for the next 50 years. Many parts of Greenland are indeed thickening.

In summary, it’s all very much in dispute. But we know things just don’t disintegrate like they do in Rahmstorf’s wild collapsing-world fantasies.

Bojanowski writes that glacier behavior is complex, and that predictions are fraught with uncertainty: “…the strong increase in ice loss of the past years will not continue in a linear manner, but instead will tend to moderate, the scientists suspect“. Remember – the scientists are assuming strong warming, which is not even happening.

The scientists say their predictions are “only a rough estimation that has to be fine-tuned with respect to the strong individual different dynamics“. Spiegel adds: “Calculations over ice melt in Greenland fluctuate because only very few glaciers have been systematically observed over many years.”

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Do 'environmentally friendly' LED lights cause BLINDNESS?

Eco-friendly LED lights may damage your eyes, according to new research.

A study has discovered that exposure to LED lights can cause irreparable harm to the retina of the human eye.

LED lights have been touted as a super-efficient alternative to traditional bulbs because they use up to 85 per cent less energy and each bulb can last up to 10 years.  In April, Philips, the world's biggest lighting maker, reported a 38 per cent jump in LED light sales from last year.

They are already widely used in mobile phones, televisions, computer screens and can also be fitted as a replacement for traditional lighting in the home.

LEDs are much more expensive that traditional bulbs - costing around £25 for an equivalent 100w compared to around £1 for an incandescent bulb - although manufacturers claim that consumers make their money back because the use such little energy.

The government announced it was phasing out incandescent bulbs in 2007 after an EU directive banned their use. The 100w bulb was the first to go in 2009 and lower wattage bulbs continue to be phased out gradually.

The ban caused public outrage as customers were forced to spend large sums of money on lighting that not only gave an unpleasantly 'cold' light but also caused some people to report symptoms of itchy skin and headaches.

The government's Enhanced Capital Allowance Scheme, which was brought in to help cut UK carbon emissions, is also pushing the use of LED lighting by offering businesses added tax relief if they use LED and other low-energy bulbs.

Dr. Celia Sánchez-Ramos, of Complutense University in Madrid and who led the study, explained that light from LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, comes from the short-wave, high-energy blue and violet end of the visible light spectrum.

She said that prolonged, continuous exposure to this light may be enough to damage a person's retina.  The retina is composed of light-sensitive tissue that is responsible for detecting light and in turn allowing us to see.

‘This problem is going to get worse, because humans are living longer  and children are using electronic devices from a young age, particularly for schoolwork,’ Sánchez-Ramos told

‘Eyes are not designed to look directly at light — they are designed to see with light,’ Sánchez-Ramos said.

Her comments are partly based on her 2012 study that was published in the journal Photochemistry and Photobiology.

The study found that LED radiation caused significant damage to human retinal pigment epithelial cells in vitro.

Sánchez-Ramos added that modern humans have their eyes open for roughly 6,000 hours a year, and are exposed to artificial light for the majority of that time.

Some experts have called for the LED lights to have built-in filters to cut out the blue glare.

This is not the first time energy-saving lights have come under scrutiny for safety reasons. Compact fluorescent light bulbs, or CFLs, have been criticized for the high levels of mercury they contain as well as the UV radiation they can emit.

LED lights have also been blamed for the changing hues of masterpieces in art galleries.

A study carried out by the University of Antwerp earlier this year found that LED lights were bleaching the paint on works by Van Gogh and Cézanne.

SOURCE





A survey of reasons why the current level of CO2 should not be of concern

The level of carbon dioxide, a trace essential gas in the atmosphere that humans exhale from our mouths, has come very close to reaching the “symbolic” 400 parts per million (ppm) threshold in the atmosphere. Former Vice President Al Gore declared the 400 ppm level “A sad milestone. A call to action.”  New York times reporter Justin Gillis compared trace amounts of CO2 to “a tiny bit of arsenic or cobra venom” and warned that rising CO2 means "the fate of the earth hangs in the balance."

The New Yorker Magazine declared “Everything we use that emits carbon dioxide needs to be replaced with something that doesn’t.”  And a UK Guardian editorial declared “Swift political action can avert a carbon dioxide crisis.”

But despite the man-made global warming fear movement’s clarion call of alarm, many scientists are dismissing the 400ppm level of carbon dioxide as a non-event. Scientists point out that there are literally hundreds of factors that govern Earth’s climate and temperature – not just CO2. Renowned climatologists have declared that a doubling or even tripling of CO2 would not have major impacts on the Earth’s climate or temperature.

Scientists also note that geologically speaking, the Earth is currently in a “CO2 famine” and that the geologic record reveals that ice ages have occurred when CO2 was at 2000 ppm to as high as 8000ppm. In addition, peer-reviewed studies have documented that there have been temperatures similar to the present day on Earth when carbon dioxide was up to twenty times higher than today’s levels. And, a peer-reviewed study this year found that the present day carbon dioxide level of 400 ppm was exceeded -- without any human influence -- 12,750 years ago when CO2 may have reached up to 425 ppm.

Princeton U. Physicist Dr. William Happer and NASA Moonwalker & Geologist Dr. Harrison H. Schmitt wrote on May 8, 2013 in the Wall Street Journal:  “Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant. That’s simply not the case.”

“The cessation of observed global warming for the past decade or so has shown how exaggerated NASA's and most other computer predictions of human-caused warming have been—and how little correlation warming has with concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. As many scientists have pointed out, variations in global temperature correlate much better with solar activity and with complicated cycles of the oceans and atmosphere. There isn't the slightest evidence that more carbon dioxide has caused more extreme weather,” Happer and Schmidt wrote.

Princeton’s Dr. Happer, who has authored 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers, explained in Senate testimony in 2009 that the Earth is currently in a ‘CO2 ‘famine.’ Happer explained to Congress:  ”Warming and increased CO2 will be good for mankind…'CO2 is not a pollutant and it is not a poison and we should not corrupt the English language by depriving 'pollutant' and 'poison' of their original meaning,” Happer added.

“Many people don’t realize that over geological time, we’re really in a CO2 famine now. Almost never has CO2 levels been as low as it has been in the Holocene (geologic epoch) – 280 (parts per million - ppm) – that’s unheard of. Most of the time [CO2 levels] have been at least 1000 (ppm) and it’s been quite higher than that,” Happer told the Senate Committee. “Earth was just fine in those times,” Happer added. “The oceans were fine, plants grew, animals grew fine. So it’s baffling to me that we’re so frightened of getting nowhere close to where we started,” Happer explained.

The claim by global warming activists and scientists that CO2 is the global temperature “control knob” has been challenged in the peer-reviewed literature and the Earth’s geologic history.

[See: Peer-Reviewed Study finds ‘ancient’ Earth’s climate similar to present day — despite CO2 levels 5 to over 20 times higher than today! -- Geologists reconstructed Earth's climate belts between 460 and 445 million years ago and found 'ancient climate belts were surprisingly like those of the present' -- Also included 'a brief, intense glaciation' &

Ice Age At 2000+ PPM CO2: ‘Earth experienced an ice age 450 million years ago, with CO2 somewhere between 2000 and 8000 ppm’ &

New paper (March 2013) finds CO2 spiked to levels higher than the present during termination of last ice age — Paper published in Quaternary Science Reviews -- Study 'reconstructs CO2 levels during the termination of the last ice age and finds CO2 spiked to levels near or even exceeding those of the present, obviously without any human influence. According to the authors, 'The record clearly demonstrates that [CO2 levels were] significantly higher than usually reported for the Last [Glacial] Termination,' with levels of up to ~425 ppm about 12,750 years ago, which exceeds the present CO2 concentration of 395 ppm' ]

‘You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide’

Renowned atmospheric scientist Dr. Reid Bryson, (who died in 2008), explained in 2007: “You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide.” Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, NZ, agreed with Bryson. “Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapor and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will,” Duffy wrote.

Climate change is governed by hundreds of factors, or variables, not just CO2.

UK Professor Emeritus of Biogeography Philip Stott of the University of London explains the crux of the entire global warming debate and rebuts the notion that CO2 is the main climate driver.

“As I have said, over and over again, the fundamental point has always been this: climate change is governed by hundreds of factors, or variables, and the very idea that we can manage climate change predictably by understanding and manipulating at the margins one politically-selected factor (CO2), is as misguided as it gets,” Stott wrote in 2008. It is not simply, the sun or CO2 when looking at global temperatures, it is the Sun, volcanoes, tilt of the Earth’s axis, water vapor, methane, clouds, ocean cycles, plate tectonics, albedo, atmospheric dust, Atmospheric Circulation, cosmic rays, particulates like Carbon Soot, forests and land use, etc. Climate change is governed by hundreds of factors, or variables, not just CO2.

Even the climate activists at RealClimate.org let this point slip out in a September 20, 2008 article. “The actual temperature rise is an emergent property resulting from interactions among hundreds of factors,”RealClimate.org conceded.

Former Harvard University Physicist Dr. Lubos Motl dismissed any significance to 400ppm of CO2 in an essay on May 12, 2013 titled “Why we should work hard to raise the CO2 concentration”: “CO2 is primarily plant food while its other implications for Nature are negligible in comparison. Humanitarian orgs should work hard to help mankind to increase the CO2 concentration,” Motl wrote. “'CO2 is the key compound that plants need to grow – and, indirectly, that every organism needs to get the food at the end,” he added.

Other analyses have shown CO2 loses any ‘warming’ impact as the levels increase. See: The effectiveness of CO2 as a greenhouse gas becomes ever more marginal with greater concentration – ’The effectiveness of CO2 as a greenhouse gas diminishes logarithmically with increasing concentration and from the current level of ~390 ppmv, (parts per million by volume). Accordingly only ~5% of the effectiveness of CO2 as a greenhouse gas remains beyond the current level’

In February 2013, global warming activists were stunned by the retreat of one of their former UN scientists. Top Swedish Climate Scientist Dr. Lennart Bengtsson, formerly of the UN IPCC, declared CO2”s “heating effect is logarithmic: the higher the concentration is, the smaller the effect of a further increase.”  Bengtsson noted that global warming would not even be noticeable without modern instruments. “The warming we have had last a 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all’ -- Award-Winning Dr. Lennart Bengtsson, formerly of UN IPCC: 'We Are Creating Great Anxiety Without It Being Justified...there are no indications that the warming is so severe that we need to panic...The warming we have had the last a 100 years is so small that if we didn't have had meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn't have noticed it at all.”

In addition, New Zealand Climate Scientist Chris de Freitas revealed on May 1, 2009 that “warming and CO2 are not well correlated.” de Freitas added, “the effect of CO2 on global temperature is already close to its maximum. Adding more has an ever decreasing effect.”

Australian Geologist Dr. Ian Plimer wrote on August 8, 2009: “At present, the Earth’s atmosphere is starved of CO2.” Plimer, who authored the skeptical book Heaven and Earth, added, “On all time scales, there is no correlation between temps and CO2. If there is no correlation, then there can be no causation.”

Professor Dr. Doug L. Hoffman, mathematician, computer programmer and engineer, wrote on August 24, 2009: “There have been ice ages when the levels of Co2 in Earth’s atmosphere have been many times higher than today’s.” Hoffman, who worked on environmental models and conducted research in molecular dynamics, co-authored the 2009 book, The Resilient Earth.

Other studies have shown carbon dioxide does not control the Earth’s temperature, but it is actually the reverse. See: New Paper: Danish Physicist Dr. Henrik Svensmark’s Cosmic Jackpot: ‘Svensmark stands the currently popular CO2 story on its head…Climate and life control CO2, not the other way around’ -- 'Some geoscientists want to blame the drastic alternations of hot and icy conditions during the past 500 million years on increases and decreases in carbon dioxide, which they explain in intricate ways. For Svensmark, the changes driven by the stars govern the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Climate and life control CO2, not the other way around...'The UK Royal Astronomical Society in London publishes Svensmark's latest paper'

Many skeptical scientists point out that temperature leads CO2 in the ice core data. See:  ‘The ice core data clearly reveal temperature increases generally precede increasing CO2 by several hundred to a few thousand years’

 ‘Temperature drives CO2’

Ivy League geologist Dr. Robert Giegengack, former chair of Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania,  spoke out in 2007 against fears of rising CO2 impacts promoted by Gore and others. Giegengack noted “for most of Earth’s history, the globe has been warmer than it has been for the last 200 years. It has rarely been cooler.” (LINK) “[Gore] claims that temperature increases solely because more CO2 in the atmosphere traps the sun’s heat. That’s just wrong … It’s a natural interplay. As temperature rises, CO2 rises, and vice versa,” Giegengack explained. “It’s hard for us to say that CO2 drives temperature. It’s easier to say temperature drives CO2,” he added. (LINK) "The driving mechanism is exactly the opposite of what Al Gore claims, both in his film and in that book. It's the temperature that, through those 650,000 years, controlled the CO2; not the CO2 that controlled the temperature," he added. (LINK)

Meteorologist Tom Wysmuller: ‘The Recent Temperature and CO2 Disconnect’ -- Even going back ten centuries, there have been total disconnects between temperature and the CO2 impact, or lack thereof.  From 1000AD to 1800, over a period of relatively stable CO2 values that bounced around the 280ppm level, temperatures plummeted in the Little Ice Age (LIA) and then rebounded over a century later.  CO2 values neither led nor followed the temperature declines and recoveries…CO2 seems to have had little impact in EITHER direction on the observed temperatures over that 10k year period…If CO2 is to be considered a major driver of temperatures, it is doing a counterintuitive dance around the numbers.’

More HERE  (See the original for links)






Australian conservative Senator fights the locking up of huge areas of ocean by Australia's Green/Left government

Queensland Senator Ron Boswell has called on Environment Minister Tony Burke to detail the costs of a Labor Government “propaganda film” about its looming marine parks.

“At the same time as Treasurer Wayne Swan is likely to announce a huge multi-billion-dollar deficit in the Budget, Tony Burke has launched a completely unnecessary propaganda video,” Senator Boswell said.

“It is eight minutes of pretty pictures and mostly foreign luminaries trying to justify shutting the Coral Sea and huge swathes of ocean round the rest of Australia to fishing.

“It is absolutely nothing but propaganda. It is a platform for Minister Burke to urge people to support the Government’s marine parks decision, which is opposed by millions of recreational and commercial fishers and other people in coastal communities.

“Imposition of the new marine parks by Labor will take the overall size of Commonwealth marine parks to 3.1 million sq km, by far the largest in the world, in fact a third of the total area of marine reserves across the globe. “

Senator Boswell said the video is a “shameless waste of money” produced simply as propaganda to try to generate support for the Government.

“Labor is sending the country broke and this glossy propaganda exercise is just another Government waste of money. Come on, Mr Burke, fess up and tell Australian taxpayers what this propaganda film has cost them.”

Via email from Sen. Boswell

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Preserving the graphics:  Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here and here

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