On occasion I have the painful opportunity to talk to individuals about “Global Warming”. Those that are zealous believers, in my experience, tend to be young and liberal. The reason age is important is that I remember my teachers telling me as a child that we were destroying the planet because of pollution. Problem is that back in the 70’s we were being told that it was a coming Ice Age that would overtake the planet.
The problem is everyone is caughtup in this vanishing polar bear syndrome, the momentum is becoming unstoppable, logic is losing ground to a steady barrage of questionable information from every venue. I just don’t see it. What I do see is healthy polar bears going about the business of being bears and dealing with the variances of mother nature while all around them the learned ones lament their demise. Its like the fable ” The Emperor’s New Clothes” no one dares go against the hype in fear of being castigated. Twenty years ago if a researcher came across a polar bear eating another polar bear it would have been duly noted as the nature of the beast and no one would raise an alarm, today it’s a sure sign of global warming… the bears are starving and are turning on one another.
2007 seemed to be the year that climate change shook the thermometers...Again, if you actually look at the global RSS temperature data, 2007 absolutely did NOT "shake the thermometers":
The Northwest Passage was the most navigable it had been in modern times.On December 12, his claim was:
Another first: the Northwest Passage was open to navigation.
Australia’s environment minister [former Midnight Oil lead singer Peter Garrett] may be the only politician on earth charged with such responsibility who is banned (by his own party!) from talking about climate change...
The mayor uses first names when he speaks to former Vice President, and Nobel Laureat Al Gore. During his term in office, Keene has become the first New Hampshire city to join an international climate pact. And as Keene’s Mayor, Blastos has made more than one trip to Sundance, Utah for climate change talks.Note that Keene has a population of about 23,000 people.
There, he exchanged ideas with the likes of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and actor and environmental activist Robert Redford.
Finance, Organization and Personnel Committee report read recommending that the Keene City Council authorize a contribution of $1,000 to the Sundance Preserve to put toward the cost of producing the film, Fighting Goliath: Texas Coal Wars, with funding coming from the Mayor’s Official Business Expense account and the Planning Department’s Technical Service account. On motion by Councilor Georgina, voted unanimously to carry out the intent of the report.. The Mayor commented that he feels very passionately about this film and expressed how important it is to be distributed around the country.A related Boston Globe story is here.
Officials in Keene, NH are finding it more difficult than expected to get people to change their behavior to help the environment. Despite a local "no-idling" ordinance, many of the cars lined up outside Keene High School on a recent school day were running despite several signs asking them to turn off their cars while waiting.
If the trend continues, Fraser predicts that Adélie penguins will be locally extinct within five to ten years.If you read the entire article, it looks like Adelie penguins are just moving around in response to fluctuations in ocean currents. The article carefully avoids any mention of total Adelie population numbers. Why is that?
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Since Fraser began to study Antarctic penguins in 1974, he has seen the Adélie population in the western Antarctic Peninsula shrink by 80 percent.
Today there are 8,000 birds left from an original colony size of 40,000.
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"They are the classic canaries in the coal mine, in that they are responding to changes that are occurring on an enormous scale," Fraser said.
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As the Antarctic Peninsula heats up, southern parts of Antarctica have become more hospitable homes for the species.
Adélie populations in the far southern peninsula have tripled in previous decades, Fraser said.
A total of 2.5 millions pairs of Adélie penguins currently breed on the Antarctic continent and the small islands around it...Studies conducted in several locations have revealed that populations of Adélie penguins are either stable or increasing, but since population trends are highly dependent on the sea-ice distribution, there is a fear that global warming may ultimately affect Adélie penguin populations. Adélie penguins colonize the ice-free zone of the Antarctic continent for the short summer breeding season, and their at-sea activities (90% of their life) depend on the structure and annual fluctuations of the sea ice to a point that they are sometimes referred to as the creatures of the pack ice (sensu Ainley). This intricate relationship is illustrated by the birds’ foraging ranges, which are defined by the maximum extent of the sea ice.Note that Antarctic sea ice extent recently hit a "record high" for the period since 1979.
The worst thing you can do is mix kids and politics. But the teach-in is definitely do-able in a K-12 setting, and the science is clear that global warming is real and human-caused this time around.
The majority of the government’s schemes to reduce carbon emissions are set to be scaled down or dropped. Many have seen this as a major U-turn, especially after the Treasury listed climate change as its top priority.
It got me thinking: I'm an environmental scientist, but I've never had time to review the "evidence" for the anthropic causes of global warming. I operate on the principle that global warming is a reality and that it is human-made, because a lot of reliable sources told me that, and because I read it in learned journals. When I said, in my opening speech for the launch of UNEP's Global Environment Outlook-4 in Beirut: "There is now irrevocable evidence that climate change is taking place..." I was reading from a statement prepared by UNEP. Faith-based science it may be, but who has time to review all the evidence? I'll continue to act on the basis of anthropic climate change, but I really need to put some more time into this.
The giant, tusked mammals typically clamber onto the sea ice to rest, or haul themselves onto land for just a few weeks at a time.Ok, so it's not unusual for them to haul up on land. Google shows a lot of pictures of them on land.
As a result, walruses came ashore earlier and stayed longer, congregating in extremely high numbers, with herds as big as 40,000 at Point Shmidt, a spot that had not been used by walruses as a "haulout" for a century, scientists said.Are you saying that that spot *was* used as a haulout in earlier years?
Walruses are vulnerable to stampedes when they gather in such large numbers. The appearance of a polar bear, a hunter or a low-flying airplane can send them rushing to the water.Are stampedes ever caused by the appearance of researchers or low-flying research planes?
Sure enough, scientists received reports of hundreds and hundreds of walruses dead of internal injuries suffered in stampedes. Many of the youngest and weakest animals, mostly calves born in the spring, were crushed.Were anecdotal reports of "hundreds and hundreds" used to come up with the estimate of 3,000 to 4,000? How much actual counting was done? What's the baseline number of annual stampede deaths? Is anyone checking that any animals found dead were killed in stampedes, rather than dying from some other cause?
Biologist Anatoly Kochnev of Russia's Pacific Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography estimated 3,000 to 4,000 walruses out of population of perhaps 200,000 died, or two or three times the usual number on shoreline haulouts.
No large-scale walrus die-offs were seen in Alaska during the same period, apparently because the animals congregated in smaller groups on the American side of the Bering Strait, with the biggest known herd at about 2,500.So when a walrus herd of 2,500 is panicked, stampede deaths are not a big deal, but when the herd reaches tens of thousands, we can expect lots of stampede deaths?
As the Pacific walrus population grew, annual subsistence catches by indigenous Arctic peoples ranged from about 3,000 to 16,000 walruses per year until about 1990, and then decreased to an average of 5,789 animals per year from 1996 to 2000.A related paragraph is here:
Pacific walrus meat has been used for the past 40 years to feed foxes which are kept on government - subsidised fur farms in Chukotka. One estimate made by natives was of an annual kill of 10,000 - 12,000 walruses per year, but this may have been overstated. Recent investigations have found that much of the meat is left to waste and that there are no markets for the resultant fox furs. Fox farming operations in Chukotka are currently in decline due to economic recession. Local unemployment caused by the general economic situation and the closure of the farms has however led to a recent increase in illegal head-hunting.Some more background information is in this 2007 WWF post:
Last fall some 20,000-30,000 animals were piled up there. No one has actually counted them all, but the Vankarem residents are certain the number is growing.My comments: Eighty-100 dead walruses out of 20,000-30,000 hauled out on land seems quite low, if Kochnev's estimate of 3,000-4,000 total stampede deaths is correct (remember, his estimate is based on a population of maybe 200,000, many of which are not hauled out in huge herds).
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In early winter, when the ice is re-forming and walruses leave the beach, up to 100 carcasses remain behind. These blubbery animals offer a perfect meal for wandering and hungry polar bears.
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As soon as the walruses departed, the polar bear patrol spent several days working to collect the remains of walruses killed in the stampedes. Using a tractor, they carted the carcasses six miles west of the village, anticipating that the bears would come from the west in the fall. In the end, they scattered some 80 walruses around selected sites -- and then they waited.
In mid-November, a truck driver alerted the patrol to bear tracks on the beach. The wave had begun. For the next three weeks, bears making their way along the coast stopped to graze on the carcasses at this so-called "feeding point" instead of proceeding to the village. At one time alone, Sergey and his team counted 96 bears feeding on the walrus. In total they estimated that 185 bears had been circulating with a six mile radius around the village.
...researchers have encountered herds as large as 100,000 in recent years...When I read this in the "walrus" Wikipedia entry, I'm also not convinced that lack of summer ice is necessarily a big deal:
In the non-reproductive season (late summer and fall) walruses tend to migrate away from the ice and form massive aggregations of tens of thousands of individuals on rocky beaches or outcrops.In the same entry, when I read this, I'm not convinced that polar bears really need year-round sea ice in order to feed successfully:
Polar bears hunt walruses by rushing at beached aggregations and consuming those individuals that are crushed or wounded in the sudden mass exodus, typically younger or infirm animals.Some video of polar bears successfully hunting walruses is here and here. I don't see any ice in that first hunting scene.
The course of apocalyptic movements is generally similar. In order to keep the enthusiasm of its followers at a fever pitch and to attract new followers, it is necessary to keep stoking the fires with more and more outlandish claims. The hysteria peaks as doomsday is moved closer and closer to the present, and then — poof — it collapses. It appears to me that the global warming bubble has gone about as far as it can go before it descends into ranting and writhing on the ground or random outbreaks of mob violence.
"I differ from Lomborg," says Professor Ian Plimer of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Adelaide. "I don't accept that there is sufficiently validated evidence to show that there is human-induced global warming." Australia's other most prominent sceptic, Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, agrees. "Cool It is classic Lomborg," he says. "Well-written, beautifully crafted and tightly argued - and infuriatingly wrong on anthropogenic global warming."
In the IPCC case, there was an active truncation of “inconvenient” data which had the effect of concealing a mismatch from the reader. Worse, the matter was clearly and explicitly brought to IPCC’s attention and they refused to address the concealing.
In Pierrehumbert’s words, there was no “legitimate reason” for what IPCC did, but a “very good illegitimate reason”. It’s gratifying that Pierrehumbert and realclimate are lending their authority to the condemnation of such practices.
Had Thomas Edison employed the same business strategy as his 21st-Century heirs at General Electric, he would have lobbied Congress to outlaw the candle in 1879 when he perfected and patented the light bulb.
He surely could have masked his self-interested lobbying in some public interest claim, such as fire prevention or the need for wax conservation. Today, the mask is environmentalism.
Earlier this month, Thomas Edison’s GE, together with Sylvania and Philips won a legislative victory when Congress passed an energy bill that would outlaw sale of the standard light bulb by 2012.
Sylvania is the leading light bulb maker worldwide, and GE is tops in America. These two companies, together with Dutch-based Royal Phillips Electronics, concede they basically wrote the new light bulb law. It goes without saying that they stand to profit from it — at consumer expense.
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On Dec. 18, the day the bill cleared its biggest hurdle and passed the Senate, GE’s stock jumped 8.8 percent, and Philips jumped 2.1 percent.
Since proving the validity of long-term forecasts is difficult and the ultimate tests would take years, and since many scientists are alarmed at the dire scenarios, my colleagues are beginning to talk about whether it is O.K. to exaggerate and push forecasts that are not currently provable if the only way to get societies to act is to frighten people. I think it is not O.K. It is a short-term view, and even if it works, it will inevitably debase science and scientists.
...So now the IPCC temperature scares have been corrected at both ends. First, warming periods of the distant past were wrongly eliminated or diminished. And now the warming periods of the present have been exaggerated. What's left as proof that unprecedented anthropomorphic climate change is taking place as predicted?Hat tip: Greenie Watch
So-called Global Warming has the potential to destroy 300 years worth of scientific progress and our advanced western civilization along with it. From an economist’s position, it is pure folly. And our worst enemies’ dream come true.
Supporters of so-called global warming tend to fall into one (or more) of three categories: politicians who want to use this latest scare tactic as another means to take more control and power over our lives, corrupt businessmen who want to profit by selling snake oil solutions to a gullible public, or ignorant but well-intentioned people who have bought into another fantasy fable.
Al Gore probably personifies all 3.
The most conspicuous doubter in France is Claude Allegre, a former education minister and a physicist by profession. His new book, ``Ma Verite Sur la Planete'' (``My Truth About the Planet''), doesn't mince words.
He calls Gore a ``crook'' presiding over an eco-business that pumps out cash. As for Gore's French followers, the author likens them to religious zealots who, far from saving humanity, are endangering it. Driven by a Judeo-Christian guilt complex, he says, French greens paint worst-case scenarios and attribute little-understood cycles to human misbehavior.
The daily mantra proclaims: There is consensus on climate change. Global warming is real. It will be a disaster. Humans are to blame. We have to do something — immediately.
However, as Albert Einstein observed, the consensus of 100 scientists is undone by one fact. The United Nations and its Climate Cataclysm army of 15,000 in exotic Bali clearly understood that.
They were not about to let even one fact prevent them from promoting climate scares and a successor to Kyoto. Gloom-and-doom scientists and bureaucrats owned Bali's podiums. Radical environmentalists fumed and staged stunts. Al Gore repeated myths that enthralled the Academy and Nobel committees, and demanded sacrifices — by others.
Meanwhile, respected climate scientists were barred from panel discussions, censored, silenced and threatened with physical removal by police if they tried to present peer-reviewed evidence that questioned disaster claims...
In any event the statement of Patrick Michaels “Weather equipment is very high-maintenance. The standard temperature shelter is painted white. If the paint wears or discolors, the shelter absorbs more of the sun’s heat and the thermometer inside will read artificially high.” seems like a realistic statement in light of the photos above. The magnitude of the effect in the surface temperature record has yet to be determined, but it seems clear that shelter maintenance, or lack thereof, is a significant micro-site bias factor that has not been adequately investigated nor accounted for in the historical temperature record.
There are several reasons why the press provides so little coverage to science indicating that global warming isn’t the end of the world. One has to do with bias in the scientific literature itself. Theoretically, assuming unbiased climate research, every new finding should have an equal probability of indicating that things are going to be more or less warm, or worse-than-we-thought vs. not-so-bad.
But, when someone finds that there’s only half as much warming as we thought, and the story is completely ignored, what does this say about the nature of the coverage itself? Somehow, you’d think that would have been newsworthy.
With election year pending, they are enough to remind us of H.L. Mencken's warnings to fellow Americans: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and hence clamorous to be led to safety by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it."
December's record snowfall amounts continue to climb. The holiday storm added 31 inches to both Snowmass and Silverton Mountain and 23 inches to Aspen Mountain's seven feet already accumulated this month. Wolf Creek received 21 inches of new snow adding to their season total of more than 16 feet.Note that just last month, the World Wildlife Fund was painting a gloomy picture of "bare" ski slopes in the near future, caused (of course) by "carbon emissions".
California and some Northeastern states have decided to force their residents to buy cars that average 43 miles-per-gallon within the next decade. Even if you applied this law to the entire world, the net effect would reduce projected warming by about 0.05 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, an amount so minuscule as to be undetectable. Global temperatures vary more than that from day to day.
There are other complications that might give environmentalists pause, if they were the kind of people who paused. When a CFL bulb finally dies--after years and years and years!--it cannot be dropped in the trash like an incandescent; it must be recycled by specially equipped recycling facilities. CFLs contain mercury. If one breaks in your home, Kazman says, EPA guidelines suggest you open windows and leave the room for at least a quarter of an hour before trying to clean up the mess. And for God's sakes don't use a vacuum, which could disperse the poison into the air. Even when they're intact, U.S. News happily tells us, "the bulbs must be handled with caution. Using a drop cloth might be a good new routine to develop when screwing in a light bulb."
When in the course of human history has mankind been so healthy, secure and prosperous that national political leaders, scientists and the media elite worldwide could be preoccupied with a theoretical crisis predicted to occur 50 years hence?
You don't have to be religious to qualify as a fundamentalist. You can be Al Gore, the messiah figure for the global warming cult, whose followers truly believe their gospel of imminent extermination in a Noah-like flood, if we don't immediately change our carbon-polluting ways.
One of the traits of a cult is its refusal to consider any evidence that might disprove the faith...
In spite of all we have learned about our climate and our planet's natural systems over the past two decades, relatively big holes exist in our capacity to monitor where exactly global greenhouse gases are coming from and where they are going.
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...critical questions remain. Half of the carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere gets soaked up again. Where it goes is the subject of much debate. Some say the oceans; others say soils or plants. The reality is, we don't know for sure.
For more than 50 years, the planes of the Lost Squadron rested at the site of the crash, unseen, but not forgotten. Then in 1992 an entrepreneur, Roy Shoffner led a successful expedition (the 10th such expedition, dating back to 1977) to rescue one of the planes of that ill fated mission from its icy grave. The 1992 expedition found that the planes were resting under some 268' of solid ice (equivalent to the height of a 23 story building), built up since 1942 (How does that fit in with our reports of global warming?)
What do we see? The linear trend is going down with a rate of 0.05°C per decade. What's more, the last 8 months are situated below the trendline, so the negative trend is likely not going away in the next couple of months. The RSS data is based on satellite measurements and are fairly accurate.
Those who are talking about a 'climate catastrophe' and call for 'imminent action' should have a careful look at this graph.
"Global warming is a wonderful environmental disease," he said sarcastically. "It has a thousand symptoms and a thousand cures and it has tens of thousands of practitioners with job security for decades to come unless the press and public opinion get tired of it."
As I said above, I don’t know anything about the science of global warming, and I express no opinion on scientific matters. But even taking the direst of scientific forecasts about global warming as correct, many of the policies advocated by global warming alarmists are clearly irrational from an economic point of view–so irrational, in fact, that they call into question everything such alarmists might say about global warming. Whenever I read about Al Gore in the newspaper, I find this a comforting and beautiful thought.
Various theories have been put forward to explain the numerous deaths. For several years, the Sahel and the Horn of Africa have also seen similar numbers of deaths. In 1995-1996, CIRAD worked on a fatal epizootic disease affecting dromedaries in Ethiopia.2. From the San Francisco Sentinel on Dec. 24, 2007, we get a post entitled "SCIENTISTS FEAR GLOBAL WARMING responsible for unprecedented camel deaths in North Africa".
Initial reports blamed infectious disease, but after Saudi vets sent blood samples to international laboratories it was announced that the animals had been killed by contaminants in their fodder. Two particular contaminants were pinpointed: the antibiotic salinomycin, a supplement used in chicken feed that is toxic to camels, and a fungal species with mycotoxins that can cause nerve damage. However, the Saudi government has shared little information about its investigation and evidence pinpointing fodder contaminants is disputed by experts.3. On December 25, 2007, on the "How to Offset Carbon" blog, we then get a post that flatly states "Global warming responsible for camel deaths in North Africa".
“Neither mycotoxins nor any known disease could have killed 5,000 camels in that short span of time,” said Ulrich Wernery, scientific director of Dubai’s Central Veterinary Research Laboratory.
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Other scientists argue that climate change may be increasing numbers of disease-bearing insects, while others argue that changes in the use of camels, which are exploited less for transport and more for milk and meat today, may be making them more susceptible to disease.
Mankind has flourished in warm periods and suffered catastrophic famines and epidemics in cold phases.
The cold wave sweeping through 16 northern districts has crippled normal life for the last few days.
Over 1,000 people mostly children and elderly persons have fallen victim to cold related diseases in the last three days in the region, reports our Sirajganj correspondent.
Bogra Met Office sources said the cold wave might intensify in mid-January.
CO2 Science has been doing a weekly plot of these climate stations showing the cyclical nature of the changes and the lack of warming in most stations. This month the station is Binghamton, NY, which actually has shown a cooling of 2.67F over the period...By the way, surfacestation.org siting for Binghamton has shown the siting there was very good.
...But he then discovered that the Prius-green movement of his rivals wasn't all it seemed to be.
"They would have a few Prius models on display at their stands at conventions'' of livery service providers, Mackasek said of his competitors. "But it was mostly for show ... sort of like what happens in Hollywood when celebrities are going to an event.''
The stars "are chauffeured in their limousines, or they drive their luxury cars and Hummers to a certain drop-off point. Then they get out of those vehicles and into Prius cars" and arrive at the red carpet looking green, Mackasek said.
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Valera is then required to pay for CCX-approved programs, such as reforestation and the development of wind and solar energy projects, designed to offset the carbon emissions Valera described in its annual report.
It's complicated. And there are many critics who say the carbon offset program is as much of an environmental ruse as putting little gas-electric hybrid cars in the service of a luxury limousine company. But Mackasek said the program has definite value for his firm and its clients.
"It means we spend hundreds of dollars annually instead of thousands to make a green statement,'' he said. "It's a way for us to show our concern'' for global warming and related environmental problems "and to educate our clients without inconveniencing them,'' Mackasek said.
Contrary to the focus of much of the media on Canada and the U.S. “backing down” at the Bali conference on climate change, the real story may be quite the opposite. Opposition halted only after the conference agreed not to state specific emission reductions as targets for the year 2020. This was the big sticking point.
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At Bali you had the hypocritical sight of 190 countries meeting to decide on targets that only 38 of those countries committed themselves to meet. Oddly enough, those 38 represented most of the liberal west. So in that Pacific paradise you had the egregious site of some 150 polluting states dictating new terms of submission to the few who had agreed to do anything about it. Could anyone blame Canada and the U.S. for wanting to get a level playing field and have every country sign on without the excuse that India and China use that it would interfere with their economic growth?
Is man-made CO2 melting the Greenland Ice?
Since the IPCC temperature data indicates that
Greenland’s Temperature is within its normal
70 year range, what could be melting the ice?
Could it be that natural forces like magma is
melting it from the bottom?
...the lack of warming in recent years by several measures (upper ocean heat content, lower tropospheric temperatures), and the at best muted positive feedback from the water vapor feedback, indicates that we know quite a bit less on global warming than you indicate.
I agree the warming could resume (due to the diversity of positive climate forcings of which CO2 is up to 30% in a global average) but the lack of recent agreement between the models and the observations raises questions on whether negative feedbacks and negative climate forcings could actually result in cooling, at least for a period of time. After all the IPCC SPM admits that they left off climate forcings with a low level of scientific understanding.
...the law requires auto fuel efficiency standards to increase by 40 percent by 2020. Unfortunately, this goal is presently only achievable by reducing vehicle weight — but lighter cars are deadlier cars. So what’s the purported benefit of mandating 4,000 or more deaths per year?
The law’s supporters claim that it may reduce national oil consumption by about 5 percent (400 million barrels of oil per year). Doing the math, your life is now worth about 100,000 barrels of oil.
According to one study, commissioned by the EU, making the necessary changes to bring CO2 emissions down, would add about £2,000 to the average price of a car.
They would include introducing engines, which would turn off when the car is stopped at traffic lights, for example.
“So,” said Al Gore at the recent Bali, Indonesia, conference on global warming, “I am going to speak an inconvenient truth. My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali. We all know that.”
Well, no, Al, what we all know is that a sufficient degree of disloyalty, pomposity, vengefulness and incompetence can lead people to dismiss truths that don’t lend them credence.
And we know that one such truth in your case is that America is controlling its increases in greenhouse-gas emissions better than a long list of European and other Kyoto-signing poseurs...
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