"In Jersey City yesterday, the talk focused mostly on the environment, with McCain vowing to make the fight against global warming a centerpiece of his presidency if elected."
Today’s global warming hysteria is just another example of public manias like Holland’s 1634-37 speculative tulip bulb frenzy
"You're looking at a lot of ice out there," says Leech Lake resort owner Roy Huddle. One day from the fishing opener, Huddle is still missing his lake.
"When you look to that island," huddle points across the lake, "that's six miles out to there, that's all ice."
An usually cold winter, followed by a late warm-up and heavy April snow have left Leech Lake fishers in a search for open water.
Half the weekend bookings at Huddle's have been rescheduled or scrubbed. Not exactly the way Roy Huddle had hoped to start his busy season. "When you're in a short season business anyway, like resorting of this type that has a big impact."
The Leech Lake ice out is two weeks past historical averages, in fact the latest in decades, but not in recorded history. In 1950, Leech Lake wasn't free of ice until a week before June. "I want you to know I was just a kid at that time," laughs Huddle, who estimates 80 percent of Leech Lake is still frozen over - 20 percent ready to fish.
Incredibly, [U.S. Senator for Minnesota Amy] Klobuchar first replied that you only have to go outside or "talk to resort owners" to see the effects of human warming in Minnesota.
They never name any of these mysterious disappearing species or how normal global temperatures are killing them, but then again, it is the UN, and it is Reuters, what do you expect?
The modellers have only now tweaked their models so that they agree with the Antarctic facts but they still have NO confidence that the tweaked models have any predictive power. Note that the prophecies of disaster all depend on getting Antarctica right. It contains 91% of the planet's glacial ice so unless that melts, sea level rise will be minor by Al Gore standards...
My personal feeling is that "consistent with" is a hedge term that has about as much meaning, and carries about as much weight, as what we here in West Tennessee call a WAG, or wild ass guess. The number of things a thing can be "consistent with" is so large as to rob the expression of meaning, or communicative value. If my veterinarian looked at one of my cows and informed me that her swollen belly was "consistent with" her being pregnant, I'm not sure I'd find that of much value, as it's also "consistent with" a number of other things, some benign, some fatal.
"Consistent with" doesn't help me make decisions on the farm. With regards to the much more vast and consequential issue of global weather predictions, "consistent with" is to me about as useful as teats on a bull.
JOBS! JOBS! JOBS! Tackling global warming will generate a jobs program of epic proportions. And it’s bigger than just solar power and wind turbines. Even more jobs will be created by producing and installing energy-saving technology — simple things like better insulation, energy-efficient light bulbs, refrigerators and air-conditioning systems. Putting smart technology into new buildings and homes will create still more good jobs. All told, going greener will create millions of new American jobs and pour billions of dollars into our struggling economy.Pardon me for asking, but haven't some European countries already been down this path? Did it work out pretty much as advertised above?
Today’s E&E Daily (subscription required) has a hilarious apologia, “Sponsors lower expectations for Lieberman-Warner bill,” offering a walk-through of the phenomenon afflicting our crusaders. Here as in pretty much every country in the world (posturing notwithstanding), global warming is such a grave threat that other people need to “do something.” Given the inescapable price tag, lawmakers looked and discovered that anything they propose would actually be doing nothing — besides harming state economies. And if forced to choose, it seems they would prefer it be other states' economies that are harmed.
A spokesperson from Bablake Weather station said: "It looks like global warming has plateaued out in our region over the past 12 months.
"Every month since May 2007 has been cooler than its counterpart 12 months previously in Coventry, and April 2008 has now continued that trend for a twelfth consecutive month."
He added: "Looking at the records, this is the longest such spell locally since our records began in 1892 - the previous record stood at eight months in both 1897 and 1934."
Northeastern Pennsylvania’s skiing, dairy, recreational fishing and tourism industries are hurting because of the effects of global warming on the region. Our quality of life has been damaged.
But after years of rising "green" taxes for roads, fuel and air travel, plus reduced garbage collection and fines for putting out too much rubbish, people have grown suspicious of government motives, even as politicians piously lecture them much more must be done.
The Government is on course for an embarrassing showdown with the European Union, business groups and environmental charities after refusing to guarantee that billions of pounds of revenue it stands to earn from carbon-permit trading will be spent on combating climate change.
So NASA relies on satellites that measure energy radiated from the ice surface and estimate a level of uncertainty in these measurements between 2-3 degree Celsius (read more here).
Given this level of uncertainty I find it extraordinary that NASA can suggest a warming trend of a fraction of a degree over the last 20 years in the following image.
I see the same mentality in the global-warming arguments. Every single incident, every single datum point, every single observation, every single measurement, is proof of the theory, and anything cited as evidence against their precious belief is treated much like many cult-like religions treat heresy and apostasy and blasphemy. (Scientology and Islam come to mind.)
"Our work force will be down at least 60 percent because we're harvesting only 40 percent of the crop," said Sarb Johl, who lost all the fruit from up to 200 of his 475 acres of peaches and prunes in Yuba County's District 10.
He predicted he would hire no more than 60 people for this summer's harvest, down from the usual 150.
"The economic loss will be huge; you displace so many people from summer jobs, and there's so many related businesses that will be damaged just as much. It's a domino effect and it goes all the way down to the grocery store," he said.
All told, the predawn frost of April 21 wiped out more than $58 million of crop value in the two counties, according to statements filed by the agriculture departments.
Where would globe-trotting pundit Thomas Friedman be without jet fuel?
Australians were among the least likely of the nations surveyed to believe global warming would worsen their own way of life (18 per cent), had low levels of guilt about their own environmental impact (nine per cent), and rated average in their belief that people need to consume a lot less to improve the environment for future generations (29 per cent).I fail to see much fear in the numbers above.
Right now everyone understands that something truly horrible is happening to the planet’s climate.
DR: McCain policy adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin said that McCain is unlikely to put in place mandatory caps on carbon in the U.S. before China and India do. Will Obama?
JG: First of all, that's a dramatic policy shift from what I understood John McCain's voice on this issue to be for the last decade, which is rather discouraging.
To be unequivocally clear, Sen. Obama believes that the United States must and will act to put a mandatory limit on our domestic greenhouse-gas emissions. That is a predicate for us leading the world to enact a truly equitable and global program in which China and India and Brazil and all the major emitting countries also put legal limits on their emissions. The story of this country has not been waiting to be led by others to address global challenges.
While carbon footprint measurements have become a popular way for governments, companies and other institutions to tout their environmental consciousness, a global warming skeptic says it will do absolutely nothing to reverse climate change.
“Like all the other concerns about CO2 it's a waste of money,” said Dr. Timothy Ball, a renowned environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. “CO2 isn't a problem,” says Ball. “It's probably the biggest misdirection in the history of science.”
Ball is among a growing number of climatologists who question the validity of manmade global warming. “You cannot find a record of any length, of any time period in the history of the earth,” Ball said, “where CO2 causes temperature to increase.”
One of the few speakers to totally support the wind turbines was Ted Gorski, a Harrow farmer and businessman.
Think it through. Taxpayers are subsidising a source of intermittent power that produces electricity at four times the usual cost, using solar panels so expensive that even with huge government rebates they will cost householders at least a decade to pay off. And this is done to make an unmeasurably tiny cut in the gases claimed to cause a global warming that might not actually be bad, but in any case stopped a decade ago.
Yes, it really is that insane.
LA JOLLA: James E. Hansen, a NASA scientist who says the Bush administration attempted to censor his warnings about the perils of global warming, will be honored tomorrow night at 7 at the Forum Theater of the La Jolla Playhouse at the University of California San Diego.A related post is about Hansen's odd fear of 400ppm of CO2 is here.
The Scripps Institution of Oceanography will give Hansen its 2008 Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest. Hansen will receive a bronze medal and a $25,000 award.
2008 Cyclone Nargis: Over 22,000 dead in Myanmar, wind speeds 190 kilometre per hour. Cyclones are known to strike the coast of Myanmar in May, hence not an unusual event.
1737: The oldest and the worst cyclone on record hit Calcutta and took a toll of 3,00,000 [or maybe "only" 350,000, according to the link below] lives in the deltaic region. It was accompanied by a 12 metre high storm surge.
1970: Bangladesh Cyclone was one of the worst in recent times, with storm surges of 4 to 5 metres height at the time of high tides, toll of about 3,00,000 people.
The frosts hit all over Northern California, including Mendocino and Lake counties in Northern California as well as the Napa Valley and Sonoma County regions. The cold also was felt in Central Coast vineyards.
Damage was spotty, a hallmark of frost, with some vineyards mangled in only in a few corners.
Sinking temperatures dragged growers out of bed as frost alarms on vineyard thermometers went off.
Although a little frost isn't unusual, the cold snap that lasted 20 or more nights in some places was a first for many vintners.
"The last one we had that was anywhere near this brutal was back in the '70s," said Napa County Agriculture Commissioner Dave Whitmer.
...
Another unknown is what the frost may have done to next year's crop — since vines are perennial, the area on the vine where buds for the 2009 harvest would form may have been damaged.
On the Naramata Bench, halfway down Lake Okanagan, Miranda Halladay says she and other apricot growers have lost about 90 per cent of the crop, and she remained unsure of her cherry yield. The co-owner of Elephant Island Orchard Wines said they will make up the shortfall by purchasing from other growers elsewhere in the region.
"We're waiting to see how things settle out with the cherries. They look to be okay, but we're just finishing up on blossom, and the fruit isn't really expressing itself at this point," she said. "The cold snap was unprecedented. The blossoms that were out when it snowed all turned brown. It was like a bad science-fiction movie."
A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing and I am reminded of Mark Twain’s famous aphorism: It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so!
I would consider this (Tom Nelson) the leading anti-global warming blog, simply because they guy posts upwards of twenty posts per day showing that global warming is a farce. Most of the time, he does his posts “Instapundit” style, linking to the relevant site with a quick sentence or two, or maybe a quick quote from the link itself.
Anyway, the place is a treasure trove of global warming information.
Here are my questions:
In 1970, when environmentalists were making predictions of man-made global cooling and the threat of an ice age and millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of government policy should we have undertaken to prevent such a calamity?
When Ehrlich predicted that England would not exist in the year 2000, what steps should the British Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent such a dire outcome?
In 1939, when the Department of the Interior warned that we only had oil supplies for another 13 years, what actions should President Roosevelt have taken?
Finally, what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that they have switched their tune to man-made global warming?
At least five demonstrators were killed Monday when Somali security forces fired at crowds protesting rising food prices in the capital Mogadishu and a fresh protest was held Tuesday.
Global warming is speeding up, [Gore] said.
Had to happen, sooner or later people were going to realize what the hysterical arm waving global warming hoax was all about -- And when they did, they would act. Last Friday in England, that event happened. That election was all about the hysterical ranting of idiots and the taxes they wanted to raise. "Red Ken" Livingston took the lead, he was at the top of the list and he lost the election. Gordon Brown the PM spectacularly lost the people's support everywhere.
The Argos buoys have disappointed global warming alarmists in that they have failed to detect any signs of imminent climate change.
The rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 has been about 1.5 parts per million (ppm) per year over the past 15 years. New Zealand produces about 0.2 per cent of the world's man-made production of CO2. Even if NZ totally eliminated CO2 emissions, the difference would be to reduce the annual rate of increase in the atmosphere by 0.2 per cent of 1.5ppm, equalling 0.003ppm which equals 3 parts per billion. This of course is a far lower amount than can even be detected.
Are we seriously going to shatter our economy, restrict ourselves to a fragile electricity system, cost every family in the land $1000 to $1500 per year in electricity expenses alone, seriously damage our agriculture industry, etc. by trying to reduce New Zealand's minuscule CO2 contribution?
The survey showed that the world's least climate-worried population lives in the country that will be the first to notice that sea level is rising - the Netherlands. Next in line were Russia, the USA, Latvia and Estonia. In Western Europe, the carefree Dutch were followed by the similarly unworried Danes, Belgians, Norwegians and Finns.Maybe they're not concerned precisely BECAUSE they have access to all that information.
Most of these people have access to all the information they could possibly want - and then some. Why the lack of concern about climate change?
Hansen presented the 66th annual Bownocker Lectures at Mendenhall Laboratory and the Fawcett Center just three days before Al Gore spoke at the Schottenstein Center...[Hansen] finally broke the conflict down into the most basic terms as he saw it - which was fossil fuel interests versus young people and nature. "It does not appear to be a very fair fight," he said. "Businesses need to realize this is serious."
Awareness is always the goal when enviro targets aren’t met. Awareness is the participation medal of goals.
If the CFO of a big corporation did this kind of stuff, he'd go to prison. But the consequences of manipulating climate change data is far more serious and leftists have seized upon global warming as their latest excuse for a power grab.
MR. RUSSERT: In terms of climate change, global warming, you've talked about wind and solar and biofuels.
SEN. OBAMA: Mm-hmm.
MR. RUSSERT: What about nuclear? All--in all realistic assessment, don't we need more nuclear power in order to wean ourselves off of those same fuels that are contaminating the world?
SEN. OBAMA: I think we do have to look at nuclear, and what we've got to figure out is can we store the material properly? Can we make sure that they're secure? Can we deal with the expense? Because the problem is, is that a lot of our nuclear industry, it reinvents the wheel. Each nuclear power plant that is proposed has a new design, has--it, it has all kinds of changes, there are all sorts of cost overruns. So it has not been an effective option. That doesn't mean that it can't be an effective option, but we're going to have to figure out storage and safety issues. And my attitude when it comes to energy is there's no silver bullet. We've got to be--we've, we've got to look at every possible option.
You know, I've said the same thing about coal. I have a aggressive goal of reducing carbon emissions, and coal is a dirty fuel right now. But if we can figure out how to sequester carbon and burn clean coal, we're the Saudi Arabia of coal, and I don't think that we can dismiss out of hand the use of coal as part of our energy mix. What we are going to have to understand, though, is, is that global warming is real, it is serious and that whatever options we come up with, if they are not addressing the fact that the planet is getting warmer, then we are failing not just this generation, but future generations.
What is credible about a prediction that sports an uncertainty 20–40 times greater than itself? After only a few years, a GCM global temperature prediction is no more reliable than a random guess.
The possibility that “global warming” itself was the natural fluctuation apparently doesn’t register.
A $2 million program funded with little debate by the Legislature last month calls for using state money to fund an "academic based" conference that highlights contrarian scientific research on global warming. Legislators hope to undermine the public perception of a widespread consensus among polar bear researchers that warming global temperatures and melting Arctic ice threaten the polar bears' survival.
When you get right down to it, the ethanol mandate is just a Soviet-style production quota system in green garb. Even the green tint is rubbing off as experts document how corn ethanol produces more greenhouse gas emissions than the gasoline it displaces, and how Europe’s biofuel directive is bankrolling rainforest destruction and species loss in Indonesia and Malaysia. Even Time magazine, a voice of global warming alarmism, now calls the U.S. and EU biofuel programs a “clean energy scam.”
If Soviet five-year plans were the height of economic folly, then what are we to make of the 2007 ethanol mandate, which established a 15-year plan, setting production quota from 2008 through 2022? Just because the mandate does not deliberately aim to starve hungry people, as Soviet policy sometimes did, does not mean conservatives should defend it or trivialize the hardship it is creating.
By co-opting the environmental movement, savvy businesses like GE can end up as huge winners while the American consumer loses with sky high energy prices.
I believe that climate change science is driven by ideology and not the study of long-term cycles.
Indeed, the theory that atmospheric CO2 produced by human activity can be a significant climate force is absolutely refuted by scientific facts that are simply not in doubt.
We are, after all, an educated society, and these issues affect every one of us. I would also ask our government do three things:
Develop a professional approach to the preparation and publication of basic observational data about weather and climate; ensure that the funding directed to climate science research be allocated in a disinterested way (that is, without any presupposition that AGW is "settled science"); and wait until there is convincing evidence and argument before it goes ahead with what seem to me to be draconian public policies.
Finally, I would ask that all our governments, as an exercise in much-needed due diligence, look at the existence of the IPCC itself, and ask whether or not it is in Australia's interest to take special notice of its output. For ourselves, if the earth is warming, then we will learn to adapt to that, as human beings have done throughout their history. But it will be important for us to do it rationally.
Here They Go Again: Senate Republicans Demand Gutting California’s Global Warming Law and Other Laws on the Books and Plan to Hold Up California Budget
...as Marxists we should be pointing out that both safeguarding the environment for the future of Humanity and coping with the impacts of inevitable ‘climate change’ can only be effectively dealt with, and planned for, by a Socialist Society, organised on a global scale, which could address those issues and effect necessary change across the earth, seas and skies.
The shock from the climate orthodoxy is palpable, as they are beginning to see their tenuous hold on the media slipping away.
Don't let anybody tell you we're going to get on rocket ships and go to a new planet.
Connolley no longer works as a climate modeller -- he now works as a software engineer for a company called Cambridge Silicon Radio.You may recall William Connolley's laughable "mission accomplished" rationale for leaving the climate field:
...in some senses, much of the main areas of climate science have now become much clearer than when I began to be interested; the obstacles to progress are now very obviously political not scientific.
Whether you believe global warming will kill us all in 2050 or not, or if you think global warming is one giant hoax, Horner's lecture will be a beneficial and educational experience. Educate yourselves on the issues at hand before you make a
Speaking to the FT, Blood insisted green investments were no longer just a "nice to have" for investors, but a "fundamental" part of the market, " because the transition from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy is a very large step that is going to happen quickly.”
Both Gore and Blood have reportedly invested personally in the fund to a "pretty sizable" extent.
"So what is the probability of this effort consistently increasing recent temperatures and decreasing older temperatures? From a statistical viewpoint, data recalculation should cause each year to have a 50/50 probability of going either up or down – thus the odds of all 70 adjusted years working in concert to increase the slope of the graph are an astronomical 2 raised to the power of 70. That is one-thousand-billion-billion to one. This isn't an exact representation of the odds because for some of the years (less than 15) the revisions went against the trend – but even a 55/15 split is about as likely as a room full of chimpanzees eventually typing Hamlet. That would be equivalent to flipping a penny 70 times and having it come up heads 55 times. It will never happen – one trillion to one odds (2 raised to the power 40).
“If you are planting long-lived plants like trees then you might want to choose a species that can cope with hotter, drier, summers and warmer, wetter, winters,” said Vicky Pope, the Met Office’s head of climate change. The decision to take the message to gardeners reflects concern among researchers that the public has still not understood the threat of climate change.
Pope said the 2003 heatwave, which was blamed for 35,000 deaths across Europe, could be regarded as cool by 2060.
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