It wasnt that long ago the same idiots were predicting global cooling.
They can't even accurately predict if it will rain tomorrow and we're supposed to change our entire way of life because of their computer models?
I don't think so.
Posted by
montville star
on
March 12, 2007 7:06 PM
Those tolerant liberals aren't so tolerant after all:
Scientists threatened for 'climate denial'. Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada, has received five deaths threats by email since raising concerns about the degree to which man was affecting climate change. One of the emails warned that, if he continued to speak out, he would not live to see further global warming.
"Western governments have pumped billions of dollars into careers and institutes and they feel threatened," said the professor.
"I can tolerate being called a sceptic because all scientists should be sceptics, but then they started calling us deniers, with all the connotations of the Holocaust. That is an obscenity. It has got really nasty and personal."
There are always nut cases that threaten people with alternate points of view and what ever flat earth view of the world and mans damage the fact remains that we would be better off with cleaner air and water and that is undenieable. Controls over toxic emmissions have worked to a degree and if the science and the 140-150 countries who believe in global warming are wrong to a degree but we burn cleaner fuels and create less polution than that is a good thing not a bad thing. This is only a conservative issue because the right has made it so and we have seen how wrong they have been about everything about the war and the global ecconomy over the past six years. This is just another of a long line of issues the live for today conservatives want to pass on to their children and their childrens children. NO shame , no regrets it is just their selfish policy.
Posted by
Dan Grant
on
March 13, 2007 8:28 AM
Dan, if you really were concerned about clean air or greenhouse gases you'd be demanding that the US embark on an emergency program of constructing modern nuclear plants.
Over 70% of the US energy is produced by the burning of the fossil fuels (mostly coal) that we know generate particulates and greenhouse gases.
Nukes produce almost none.
If you won't demand that we use (France gets more than half of their power from nukes) a proven technology, then you have no credibility to demand that we follow the advice of the same junk science that said Saddam's torching of the Kuwaiti oil fields would lead to worldwide environmental calamity and famine.
One effort doesn't negate the other. You can pursue a safe nuclear development and still work on renewable and cleaner energy, bTW the one who predicted the disaster from Saddam burning the oil fields was Carl Sagen who A. isn't around to defend himself and B. was an astronomer as far as I know.
Posted by
Dan grant
on
March 13, 2007 2:56 PM
Some stories just write themselves:A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite. Generally, stories that begin this entertainingly tend to quickly diminish in subsequent paragraphs. Here, however, the fun – unlike certain frozen explorers – never quits: The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment … Then there was the cold - quite a bit colder, [organiser Ann] Atwood said, than Bancroft and Arnesen had expected.
They went to the North Pole … and they were surprised by the cold. Well, who can blame them, what with all this warming talk? Maybe they’ll sue Al Gore. "My first reaction when they called to say there were calling it off was that they just sounded really, really cold,” Atwood said. They. Were. In. The. Arctic.
Atwood said there was some irony that a trip to call attention to global warming was scuttled in part by extreme cold temperatures.
You don’t say. And now, a punchline of such sublime delusion it’s impossible to imagine it being said with a straight face: "They were experiencing temperatures that weren’t expected with global warming,” Atwood said. “But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability."
(Via many readers and commenters, all of whom would have enough sense to predict coldness upon visiting Arctic areas). via timblair.net
Of course "You can pursue a safe nuclear development and still work on renewable and cleaner energy".
There are good reasons to do so, like creating a cleaner environment, saving money, and reducing the transfer of wealth to those who would like to kill us all.
Not because of wildly hysterical, unsupported predictions of calamity.
Danny Boy....I use the term affectionately given the time of year and my well known respect for your postion on some LOCAL issues. I'm sorry but I do see the postion of Mr. Gore to be a vailed attempt to regain some self percieved moral higher ground. The man was an expert at nothing while his party's leader was defending his right to lie to the American People. Seriously when did he become an expert on global warming....last I checked his wife was trying to clean up the Recording industry while Mr. Clinton's wife was trying to rework 12% of the American Economy...namely the health care Industry.
In conclusion, Dan your a great guy ...Al Gore is no scientist. Ray Mulligan
Posted by
Anonymous
on
March 13, 2007 8:49 PM
Al Gore, a professional politician, was too stupid to campaign with Bill Clinton, who was the most popular Democrat of our time, and lost the 2000 election as a result.
Why would we want to listen to him about climate change?
Posted by
Anonymous
on
March 15, 2007 10:29 PM
I would point out to you that as far as the majority of voters are concerned (not that they counted) Gore had more support and votes than Bush had. I agree he ran away from Clinton and that was a mistake but to denegrate his efforts on the environment is just plain silly.
Posted by
Dan Grant
on
March 16, 2007 9:14 AM
C'mon Dan stay focused...The presidential election is not some municipal question like courtesy busing which can be overturned because the people in charge don't like the outcome. The question was..and still is..'when did Mr. Gore become a scientist'?Ray Mulligan
Posted by
Anonymous
on
March 16, 2007 11:34 AM
"Al Gore, a professional politician, was too stupid to campaign with Bill Clinton, who was the most popular Democrat of our time, and lost the 2000 election as a result."
Ray I am focused this was the last comment I was responding to. You have to be fast on your feet on the blog my friend.
BTW Howard Cosell wasn't a boxer but he knew one when he saw one. Gore doesn't need to be a scientist to know we are in trouble. I am driving a Hyundai Stick now in keeping with a greener world.
I am chilling my beer out on my deck in the snow. This reduces the energy required to run the fridge. We all have to do our part. Happy St. Patty's Day to all, no matter what you drive!
Posted by
Anonymous
on
March 16, 2007 1:56 PM
Sorry Mr. Soussa you are not going to bait me. I will comment on issues but it isn't personal.
Posted by
Dan Grant
on
March 17, 2007 9:58 AM
No "bait" Dan.
There is absolutely no scientific consensus that man's activity is the cause of global warming, so I'll take the opinion real scientists over yours.
No offense.
Posted by
ron soussa
on
March 17, 2007 1:13 PM
When Margaret Thatcher became UK Prime Minister in 1979, her mandate was to reduce Britain's economic decline. Thatcher wanted to make the UK energy-independent through nuclear power – she didn't like her country's reliance on coal, which politically empowered the coal miner unions, or oil, which empowered Middle Eastern states.
So Thatcher latched onto Bolin's notion that man-made emissions of carbon dioxide warmed the planet in a harmful way, thereby providing the perfect political cover for advancing her nuclear power agenda without having to fight the miners or Arab oil states.
She empowered the U.K. Meteorological Office to begin global climate change research, a move that eventually led to the 1988 creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations' group that has come to be the "official" international agency for global warming alarmism.
At about the same time, as Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore explains on-camera, environmentalism became more extreme. By the mid-1980s, environmental goals – e.g., clean air and clean water – had become so mainstream that activists had to adopt more extreme positions to remain anti-establishment.
Then when the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War ended, many "peace-niks" and political activists moved over to environmental activism, bringing their "neo-Marxist" political philosophy with them. As Moore puts it, environmentalism became the "new guise for anti-capitalism."
Global warming alarmism was thus borne from this combination of official British policy, environmentalism' s rejection of its own success and political opportunism by "unemployed" left-wing political activists.
With such an inglorious heritage, it's no wonder the scientists in "The Great Global Warming Swindle" have little trouble dismantling climate myths.
Perhaps the most important bit of scientific knowledge presented is the actual relationship between temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide.
In "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore disingenuously describes the relationship as "complex" while implying that higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels cause higher global temperatures.
But according to the geological record and data from ice cores, higher temperatures actually precede higher carbon dioxide levels by about 800 years.
Twentieth century data support this idea in at least two ways. First, most of the 20th century's warming occurred before 1940, while most of the century's greenhouse gas emissions occurred after 1940.
Next, when manmade greenhouse gas emissions soared in the post World War II industrial boom, global temperatures declined until the mid-1970s, leading to the aforementioned global cooling concerns.
The Channel 4 program notes that ongoing temperature measurements contradict global warming theory. According to the theory, lower atmosphere temperatures should be warming at a much faster rate than those at the Earth's surface. In reality, however, just the opposite is occurring.
Then there's the sun – the gigantic yellow ball in the sky that climate alarmists want all of us to ignore in favor of minute emissions of an invisible gas that makes up less than one-half of one percent of the Earth's atmosphere.
As it turns out, solar activity – unlike atmospheric carbon dioxide levels – correlates quite well with historic temperature changes, including through its effects on cosmic rays and clouds, as the film demonstrates quite effectively.
So why does the world seem to be caught up in the vise-like grip of a controversy that is contradicted by available scientific data and its own dubious heritage?
According to the scientists in the movie, there is an intolerance of dissent on global warming. Official government sanction of global warming opened the floodgates of funding to climate researchers, who previously worked in obscurity.
NASA scientist Roy Spencer says in the program that climate scientists need for there to be problems to get more funding.
IPCC contributor John Christy says of climate scientists, "We have a vested interest in creating panic because money with then flow to climate scientists."
University of London biogeographer Philip Stott says that "If the global warming virago collapses, there will be an awful lot of people out of jobs."
The film also debunks the IPCC claim that the 2,500 scientists contributing to its reports also support its alarmist conclusions. One key IPCC contributor for example, the Pasteur Institute's Paul Reiter, threatened to sue the IPCC if the group didn't remove his name from a chapter with which he disagreed.
When I met Al Gore in January 2006 after a presentation of his climate slideshow, I asked him if he'd be interested in setting up a public debate between climate scientists. He declined – twice.
At this point, I'd settle for a movie face-off – "An Inconvenient Truth" vs. "The Great Global Warming Swindle." Let the public see both sides of the story and then we'll see who's believable and who's not.
Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience. com and CSRWatch.com. He is a junk science expert, and advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Posted by
Anonymous
on
March 19, 2007 12:16 PM
Anonymous March 19, 2007 11:16 AM
Thanks, that was great.
I also really liked the part in the film where the GreenPeace co-founder admits how the environmental movement's original goals of clean air and water (which are now mainstream beliefs) have been replaced by the need to be anti-establishment.
Several readers had interesting comments about Al Gore's comment: "The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say, 'well, I read a science fiction novel that tells me it's not a problem.' " Reader Martin Shimp notes:
Clearly Gore never cared for his children while they had a fever. Fevers can be a symptom of either a bacterial or viral issue. A doctor can attempt a solution to a bacterial issue, but not a viral one. A virus has to run its course while the body fights it--and a fever is a sign of the struggle to eliminate the virus. Let's see a scientific consensus that the Earth's fever is bacteria-related.
Reader Scott Jacobson questions Gore's premise:
Some great news for Daddy Gore: Little baby Earth does not have a fever. It's been awhile since Daddy Gore had a little bundle at home so maybe he has just forgotten that an infant is not considered to have a fever until her body temperature is at or above 100.4 degrees, or 1.8 degrees above normal. In the last century, little baby Earth's temperature has only gone up "almost one degree."
Overreacting is common among parents. I remember one morning when my first child was still an infant. Imagine my horror when I discovered that her temperature had risen to 99.5 degrees, almost a whole degree in just under 12 hours. Naturally, I immediately sat down and built a computer model, which clearly projected that by age 30, her temperature was going to be a staggering 19,710 degrees!
Thankfully, with the help of a patient wife and an impatient pediatrician, I came to realize that these fluctuations were normal, and that my baby daughter would not be going supernova by the time she reached her golden years.
And Kelly Murphy puts things in perspective nicely:
So let me see if I have this right. According to Al Gore, I would have to be an idiot to decide, after reading "a science-fiction novel" (he must be referring to "State of Fear") that it's OK to go about living my life in a normal fashion. Instead, I should see one science-fiction movie (his) and run screaming out of the theater prepared to change every aspect of my life to avoid certain destruction.
Posted by
Anonymous
on
March 22, 2007 6:01 PM
You'll love this one too;
Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever. Now scientists are telling us that Mars is experiencing its own planetary warming: Martian warming.
It seems scientists have noticed recently that quite a few planets in our solar system seem to be heating up a bit, including Pluto.
NASA says the Martian South Pole’s “ice cap” has been shrinking for three summers in a row. Maybe Mars got its fever from earth. If so, I guess Jupiter’s caught the same cold, because it’s warming up too, like Pluto.
This has led some people, not necessarily scientists, to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, non signatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their air-conditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle.
Silly, I know, but I wonder what all those planets, dwarf planets and moons in our SOLAR system have in common. Hmmmm. SOLAR system. Hmmmm. Solar? I wonder. Nah, I guess we shouldn’t even be talking about this. The science is absolutely decided. There’s a consensus.
Ask Galileo.
Posted by
Anonymous
on
March 22, 2007 10:48 PM
Yes, those are very funny.
I saw the first one in the Wall Street Journal site. Where did the second one come from?
LOOK OVER THE DESCRIPTIONS OF THE FOLLOWING TWO HOUSES AND SEE IF YOU CAN TELL WHICH BELONGS TO AN ENVIRONMENTALIST.
HOUSE # 1:
A 20-room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house all heated by gas. In ONE MONTH ALONE this mansion consumes more energy than the average American household in an ENTIRE YEAR. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2,400.00 per month. In natural gas alone (which last time we checked was a fossil fuel), this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not in a northern or Midwestern "snow belt," either. It's in the South.
HOUSE # 2:
Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university, this house incorporates every "green" feature current home construction can provide. The house contains only 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is nestled on arid high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in winter and cools it in summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas, and it consumes 25% of the electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house.
Flowers and shrubs native to the area blend the property into the surrounding rural landscape.
HOUSE # 1 (20 room energy guzzling mansion) is outside of Nashville, Tennessee. It is the abode of that renowned environmentalist (and filmmaker) Al Gore.
HOUSE # 2 (model eco-friendly house) is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas. Also known as "the Texas White House," it is the private residence of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.
So whose house is gentler on the environment? Yet another story you WON'T hear on CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC or read about in the New York Times or the Washington Post.
Indeed, for Mr. Gore, it's truly "an inconvenient truth."
"Why So Gloomy?" asks the headline over Richard Lindzen's guest commentary about global warming in the April 16 issue of Newsweek. The cover of the magazine features a dire warning -- "Save the Planet -- Or Else" -- but Lindzen, a world-class climate scientist who holds an endowed chair in meteoroly at MIT, doesn't buy it.
Yes, he writes, the planet has warmed a bit, and human-generated greenhouse gases may be partly responsible, but that is hardly cause for panic. Alarmism over global warming may be in vogue, but climate change is normal -- "the earth is always warming or cooling by as much as a few tenths of a degree a year." The current fearmongering, says Lindzen, "rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman's forecast for next week."
Environmental Movements: We think we know why Karl Rove doesn't want songstress turned global-warmist Sheryl Crow to touch him. Over the weekend the Washington Post published excerpts from a "blog"--that is a sort of online personal journal--on which Crow offered some rather unhygienic advice:
"I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. Now, I don't want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required."
You have to wonder, though, if Crow is conspiring with Karl Rove to make global-warmists look ridiculous. We thought there were at least a few serious scientists among their number.
Dan Grant is absolutely correct, there is no reason this country can't embark on an energy self-sufficiency program, that reduces our dependence on the Bush family chums in Riyadh, while also cutting emissions. Nuclear is probably not the answer either, until the long-standing problem of what to do with spent fuel rods is addressed once and for all. Bush is right to say "America is addicted to oil", but being in the pocket of big oil, this administration will never do anything meaningful about it.
You can continue burying your head in the sand and deny the existence of global warming, or you can listen to the overwhelming consensus of hundreds of climate experts and be part of the solution. Gore goes into solutions in some detail in the film. Starting with increasing fuel economy standards - its a joke how our vehicles have such lousy fuel economy compared to the rest of the industrialized economies.
Defending Karl Rove? Please...at least wait with the right wing talking points until he's sentenced to prison, where he and most of the Bush Misadministration belongs.
Posted by
Anonymous
on
April 27, 2007 9:14 AM
I actually agree with most of what you wrote, including that this administration, like all the ones before it, has failed woefully to do anything but talk about our "energy addiction".
However I completely disagree that there is anything remotely approaching a "consensus" that man's activity produces global warming. The earth's temperature was higher long before the industrial revolution and the large scale consumption of fossil fuels.
I'm out of the country and have limited internet access now, but will be happy to respond in greater detail next week. In the meantime I am very interested in why you choose to be anonymous instead of using your real name.
I am totally disgusted with the people who insist on making the issue of global warming a political one. Have any of these people even SEEN or read "an Inconvenient Truth"? --- and to classify anyone who dares to believe that air and water pollution, aerosol sprays, diesel fuel emissions, etc. have contributed to the greenhouse effect and have caused a hole in the ozone layer as a Liberal" -whatever that is supposed to mean --- is just reprehensible. These are the same people who honestly believe the line that global warming has been going on "since the days of Noah" --however, no one can tell me exactly when that was, or even IF that was. ( yes, i know some historians put it at 1150 BC.) Has anyone ever read a sixth grade science book?????? Mr. Sousa, I am not a Liberal, nor am i an idiot; I do believe that man in the last century has contributed to this process. I also have documented proof that the pollution caused by mercury, coal and diesel emissions and water and air pollution are primary causes of developmental disabilities in children, notably : ADD, Autism, PDD, Apraxia, due to the effect of said pollution on the pre-natal fetus. Just idling school buses in front of schools not only cause allergies and asthma in children, but have an effect on the placenta of young women before they even know they are pregnant. I would be happy to supply these data by mail to anyone who asks, and has the guts to put his/her name and address.
Thank you. Theresa C. Cavanaugh President, Learning Disabilities Assn. of NJ PO Box 492, Towaco, NJ 07082
Posted by
Anonymous
on
April 27, 2007 4:39 PM
Taking global warming (or cooling) out of the equation for the moment, there are still plenty of other good reasons to adopt carbon neutral thinking - not the least of which is that it makes better economic sense - why pay foreign terrorists for something (oil) when you can get it for free (photovoltaically)?
Send fewer bucks to the camel jockeys. Keep more money in the domestic economy. Develop new technologies we can sell around the world. And so on.
If this unexpectedly results in the glaciers rebounding and Ohio being saved from the ravages of beachfront casino development, all the better.
Posted by
Anonymous
on
June 19, 2007 2:14 PM
This information is from Climatologists, not flunkouts of divinity school (Al Gore). It debunks the global warming "theory"
You people love to wallow in your ignorance. why? because it might affect your pocketbooks? Because it gives you a chance to further your political agendas? It seems every issue of global importance is reduced , in this town, to attacks on Dan Grant and/or Al Gore. Can someone please tell me why NASA's top climate expert, James Hansen, siad that the Bush Administration had forbidden him to speak publicly about global warming and the need to reduce greenhouse gases. Some of you solons should check out NPR "Weekend Edition" , February 26,2006. Union of Concerned Scientists "Restoring Scientific Integrity i Policy Making." (Feb. 18,2004.
Please don't make such an important issue, important to the health of our children and to the economy of our nation, into a political football. Terry Cavanaugh
Posted by
Anonymous
on
July 11, 2007 5:58 PM
Terry,
Why don't you take the Global Warming Test (in the post above yours)?
Real scientists disagree with Gore and it has nothing to do with politics.
Please. Let's deal w/ the facts about weather forecasting. We cannot even accurately predict the coming Hurricane season.
With all of the computer simulations, extrapolations, etc.......try the following exercise: Write down the weather forecast on the 5th day of the 5-day forecast...and then compare w/ the actual weather that day. And Al Gore is predicting what will happen in 20-50-100 yrs using some of the same tools?!? Forgive me for being leery of any new liberal agenda. Great for fund raising, selling books/movies and for even creating entirely new industries, which coincidentally, hire the same professors, scientists, etc who make the predictions.
How much has employment increased at universities by adding global warming staffs/ depts. Follow the money. You can do the same for the diversity issue, welfare, poverty, racial, women studies, etc., ad nauseum.
By the way what were the goals of increasing diversity in the schools/businesses? Is there proof that these goals are being attained? Results??? (that's a dirty little word among liberals...only feel good programs) When will Global Cooling return?!?
Posted by
zelig
on
February 13, 2008 11:52 AM
The ugliest part of the global warming debate is the name-calling by the pro-global warming side. It's possible that their propensity to call those who disagree with them "Nazis" and "Holocaust deniers" will do more harm to the global warmularian's cause than all their exaggerations and fake data put together. If anyone mentions a contradiction, a flat-out lie, or exaggeration put out by the global warming activists, he or she is immediately attacked as a "global warming denier" or worse. Those courageous individuals who've spent their lives keeping alive the memory of the real Holocaust are rightfully indignant about this trivialization of the word "holocaust". But it's only another example of the philosophy that anything is justified, from exaggeration to outright fear-mongering, if it supports their cause. For those who smell power almost coming within their grasp, the temptation to do whatever it takes to get over that last hump of resistance must be overwhelming.
The fact that name-calling and personal attack is such a dominant paradigm among the global warmularians suggests that their beliefs are based more on emotion and herd mentality than on evidence.
If the global warming activists were really concerned about global warming, they would be clamoring for more research into alternative energy sources, more nuclear power, and so forth. But that's not happening. In fact, even windmills far offshore, where there are no birds to get sliced, diced, and (that's not all) meringued, have now become passé. Apparently, it messes up the view of those rich liberals who live on Martha's Vineyard. Global warming may be an incipient catastrophe, but let's not get carried away.
Yes, nuclear waste is a potential problem. But all we have to do is bury the nuclear waste in Arizona. In 25 years, if our politicians get their way, Arizona will be part of Mexico, and it will be someone else's problem.
Posted by
zelig
on
February 27, 2008 5:38 PM
Just when you thought cooler heads had prevailed, and all this global warming stuff had been finally dismissed as politically-motivated hysteria, someone releases another report to the media with even more fantastic predictions about how we're all going to die because of too much carbon dioxide.
Only now, it's official. The IPCC has finally admitted that their earlier dire warnings about global warming were nothing more than a bunch of hand-waving. "For the first time, we are not just arm-waving with models," says Martin Parry, co-chair of the IPCC's Working Group II on Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. But now it's different. Now they're sure the oceans are going to rise by several feet, millions of people will die from lack of water, and billions of polar bears and baby seals will drown from too much water. And it's not from models. Apparently those boffins have found some new miraculous way of directly measuring what's going to happen in the future. They can now directly measure, for example, that bigger hurricanes will strike and that between 75 and 250 million people will go thirsty. And what's more, they can measure that it's All America's Fault™.
The IPCC is an organization whose job is to "provide an assessment of the state of knowledge on climate change" at the behest of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Every few years, the IPCC releases a report detailing the "consensus" of the 2000 or so scientists who have been selected to provide their consensus. The latest IPCC report that discloses these miraculous technologies for measuring temperatures in the future is not out yet. It remains to be seen whether the dire warnings that we keep hearing about in the press really are predicted by the IPCC, and exactly how the IPCC is able to measure things that haven't happened yet, and in fact may never happen. Talk about useful technology. I can't wait to read it!
It's just a coincidence, of course, that the United Nations is the institution in which activist groups like Greenpeace have all their hopes pinned on someday becoming a "world government." Luckily for the world, they're not one yet. In order to govern, an organization needs power, which means the right to tell other people what to do with their resources. And, most likely, taxing those resources. Since the UN has lost much of its credibility after that inconvenient series of genocides that it failed to stop, and that unfortunate truth about obscene profiteering in the scandal (which was largely ignored by the press) over the oil for food program, it's fighting an uphill battle.
The other thing a government needs is legitimacy. Legitimacy comes from representing the people--i.e., democracy. Contrary to what you may have heard, putting 200 dictators in a room and letting them vote on the best way to bash Israel doesn't make you a democracy.
The UN's new agenda, as Greenpeace and other non-governmental organizations see it, is to redistribute wealth from rich nations (i.e. the United States) to poor nations (i.e., almost everyone else). Amazingly enough, the poor nations are all in favor of this, while the rich nation is mostly opposed (although the Democrats, who want everyone to be poor, love it, because it's a chance to create a "global warming tax". Nothing warms the Democrats' hearts more than an opportunity to create a new tax). And no one is quite sure what the Bush Administration's policy is (perhaps not even President Bush himself).
It would be necessary to cripple industrial society to reduce CO2 emissions enough to make a dent in global warming. This uncomfortable fact is hardly ever mentioned by the warmularians.
Posted by
zelig
on
February 27, 2008 5:41 PM
This documentary has been discredited. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle
Read particularly the section entitled "Reaction from Scientists". It would be nice to find that it's all wrong, but, unfortunately, the facts show that human behavior is in fact contributing to global warming. On issues of science, it seems wise to believe scientists, rather than TV producers (particularly those who tamper with data). Read the full article and see if you're still convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt. Try not to let hubris get in the way of comprehension.
Posted by
Dennis
on
March 3, 2008 6:11 PM
Ah, Wikipedia..now THERE'S an irrefutable resource! So much so that Wiki's "experts" say it's an open question whether the US Government caused 9/11.
If you choose to take their word as gospel then it's not much of a stretch to accept Al Gore as a real expert on the science of climate change.
But if you're interested in facts, one truly irrefutable fact is that there is no scientific consensus that man's activity causes GloWar in any more meaningful way than the natural phenomenon of gasses emitted by the eruption of Mt. St. Helens or the flatulence of bovines.
You may switch to the Toyota Pious but if you're not advocating a change to more nuclear energy (France gets half of its electricity that way) then you're just being symbolic.
By the way, did you ever look at the track record of weather forecasters over just, say, 30 days?
"Can someone please tell me why NASA's top climate expert, James Hansen, siad that the Bush Administration had forbidden him to speak publicly about global warming and the need to reduce greenhouse gases"
Just wondering if you know the answer to this question?
Posted by
Anonymous
on
March 4, 2008 9:57 PM
Ron, perhaps you will believe the Bush administration's web site (http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/stateofknowledge.html) which states:
What's Known
Scientists know with virtual certainty that:
* Human activities are changing the composition of Earth's atmosphere. Increasing levels of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times are well-documented and understood. * The atmospheric buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is largely the result of human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels. * An “unequivocal” warming trend of about 1.0 to 1.7°F occurred from 1906-2005. Warming occurred in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and over the oceans (IPCC, 2007). * The major greenhouse gases emitted by human activities remain in the atmosphere for periods ranging from decades to centuries. It is therefore virtually certain that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will continue to rise over the next few decades. * Increasing greenhouse gas concentrations tend to warm the planet.
Are they wrong, too, Ron? How tight are those blinders you're wearing? Are they cutting off the blood supply to your head?
Posted by
Dennis
on
March 14, 2008 5:43 PM
Dennis, You seem to be a knowledgable fellow. I have 2 questions. Can you tell me what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? and, If this happened today, in your opinion, would mankind be blamed?
Posted by
Anonymous
on
March 14, 2008 6:59 PM
Anonymous, those are interesting questions that might be relevant in some other discussion. Perhaps you can seek out a paleontologist or a therapist who can provide answers.
Posted by
Dennis
on
March 16, 2008 9:54 PM
Dennis, You are obviously drinking the global warming Koolaid. Over 19,000 American scientists have signed a petition expressing their view that man's contribution to greenhouse gas emitions has no significant effect on global warming. You must be smarter than all of them. Congratulations, keep drinking!
Posted by
Anonymous
on
March 22, 2008 9:02 PM
Dennis, you prove yet again that common sense is uncommon. And interesting that you now choose to believe the EPA. Did you believe them when they said that the air around Ground Zero was safe?
How is it that you choose to believe the exponential interpolations about climate change, years into the future, from the same scientists who can't accurately predict if it will rain tomorrow?
These same people said we would have global famine when Saddam torched the Kuwaiti oil fields in 1991 because the smoke was going to blot out the sun and crops wouldn't grow.
Anonymous, according to the National Science Foundation there were 2,157,300 scientists working in the USA in 2001. The 19,000 "scientists" who signed the petition that you are probably referring to (http://www.oism.org) make up 8/10 of 1% of scientists in the USA. Not quite a majority. Furthermore, the 19k who signed include individuals with BA and MA degrees, as well as PhDs.
Ron, apparently you will disqualify any information that disagrees with your views. If you want to encourage a free and open debate on this blog, you might avoid bullying those with a dissenting opinion. This is my last post on this subject, as I've said my piece.
Posted by
Dennis
on
March 27, 2008 11:15 AM
Come on Denny. I've been bullying you for over 35 years. I thought you were used to it by now.
And if you had wanted to have an honest discussion you would have included "Much of the continent is not warming and some parts are even cooling" while mentioning the Antarctic ice chunk that fell off.
So I'll ask you again: How is it that you choose to believe the exponential interpolations about climate change, years into the future, from the same scientists who can't accurately predict if it will rain tomorrow?
More Global Warming Nonsense By PAUL REITER and ROGER BATE April 10, 2008; Page A14
Today, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will hold a hearing on the implications of climate change for human health. Malaria will top the menu, but so will ignorance and disinformation.
The lead witness will be Dr. Jonathan Patz of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has suggested that U.S. energy policy may be "indirectly exporting diseases to other parts of the world." Dr. Patz, the World Health Organization (WHO) and others claim that global warming is now spreading disease and may be the cause of some 160,000 deaths a year.
In 2007, for example, WHO pointed to rising temperatures in an outbreak of a mosquito-borne virus, Chikungunya, in Italy. Yet WHO misdiagnosed the problem. Modern transportation, not climate change, caused the outbreak.
In that case, the transmitter of the disease, or vector, was the Asian Tiger mosquito. It is native to Asia, but exported world-wide in shipments of used tires. It is now abundant in parts of U.S. and in 12 countries in Europe. In cities, it breeds in man-made containers of water, such as saucers under flower-pots, water barrels, blocked gutters and so on. The virus was carried to Italy by an infected Indian who flew from Delhi, where an epidemic of the disease was then raging.
So the real technological villain in that case was the jet airplane. It was irresponsible, then, for WHO to state "although it is not possible to say whether the outbreak was caused by climate change . . . conditions in Italy are now suitable for the Tiger mosquito." And it was absurd for environmental alarmists to chime in with apocalyptic pronouncements.
The globalization of vectors and pathogens is a serious problem. But it is not new. The Yellow Fever mosquito and virus were imported into North America from Africa during the slave trade. The dengue virus is distributed throughout the tropics and regularly jumps continents inside air passengers. West Nile virus likely arrived in the U.S. in shipments of wild birds. These diseases are spread by mosquitoes and therefore difficult to quarantine.
It may come as a surprise that malaria was once common in most of Europe and North America. In parts of England, mortality from "the ague" was comparable to that in sub-Saharan Africa today. William Shakespeare was born at the start of the especially cold period that climatologists call the "Little Ice Age," yet he was aware enough of the ravages of the disease to mention it in eight of his plays.
Malaria disappeared from much of Western Europe during the second half of the 19th century. Changes in agriculture, living conditions and a drop in the price of quinine, a cure still used today, all helped eradicate it. However, in some regions it persisted until the insecticide DDT wiped it out. Temperate Holland was not certified malaria-free by the WHO until 1970.
The concept of malaria as a "tropical" infection is nonsense. It is a disease of the poor. Alarmists in the richest countries peddle the notion that the increase in malaria in poor countries is due to global warming and that this will eventually cause malaria to spread to areas that were "previously malaria free." That's a misrepresentation of the facts and disingenuous when packaged with opposition to the cheapest and best insecticide to combat malaria DDT.
It is true that malaria has been increasing at an alarming rate in parts of Africa and elsewhere in the world. Scientists ascribe this increase to many factors, including population growth, deforestation, rice cultivation in previously uncultivated upland marshes, clustering of populations around these marshes, and large numbers of people who have fled their homes because of civil strife. The evolution of drug-resistant parasites and insecticide-resistant mosquitoes, and the cessation of mosquito-control operations are also factors.
Of course, temperature is a factor in the transmission of mosquito-borne diseases, and future incidence may be affected if the world's climate continues to warm. But throughout history the most critical factors in the spread or eradication of disease has been human behavior (shifting population centers, changing farming methods and the like) and living standards. Poverty has been and remains the world's greatest killer.
Serious scientists rarely engage in public quarrels. Alarmists are therefore often unopposed in offering simplicity in place of complexity, ideology in place of scientific dialogue, and emotion in place of dry perspective. The alarmists will likely steal the show on Capitol Hill today. But anyone truly worried about malaria in impoverished countries would do well to focus on improving human living conditions, not the weather.
Mr. Reiter is director of the Insects and Infectious Diseases Unit of the Institut Pasteur, Paris. Mr. Bate is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Posted by
Anonymous
on
April 14, 2008 10:34 PM
Doesn't anybody have a concern that this whole UN effort is a way to usurp control of the US Economy from a sovereign govt. to a supra-national, NON-ELECTED, undemocratic bureaucracy?
Since Europe has been unable to match the productivity gains of the US economy, don't you think that they, along w/ other forces (like China trying to demonstrate that they are a super power on the world stage) would like to see the US Economic engine bound and controlled by other countries?
Remember what an effective job these Bozos (the UN) did w/ the Oil-for-Food scandal... BILLIONS made in illegal deals w/ Saddam... But ONLY the US and Great Britain are actually PROSECUTING their citizens who perpetrated the fraud... NO OTHER COUNTRY is.... Just turn a blind eye.....
Is this the cast of questionable characters you want to turn control of the US economy over to?
Posted by
Anonymous
on
April 15, 2008 7:33 AM
I saw a study recently that said as the climate warms there should be less Hurricanes due to the wind shearing the tops of formations that cause Hurricanes.
Details get in the way of a good alarmist story...
See article below;
Hurricane Expert Reconsiders Global Warming Link
Prominent MIT hurricane scientist Kerry Emanuel has publicly reversed his view regarding global warming's alleged impact on hurricanes.
“The [computer] models are telling us something quite different from what nature seems to be telling us," said Emanuel, whose views on hurricanes and global warming have been prominently cited by Al Gore and other promoters of climate change fear.
He told the New York Times. "There are various interpretations possible: The big increase in hurricane power over the past 30 years or so may not have much to do with global warming, or the models are simply not faithfully reproducing what nature is doing. Hard to know which to believe yet.”
In 2005, a few weeks before Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Emmanuel asserted in a paper that he had found statistical evidence linking rising hurricane energy and global warming.
His conversion is a very important new development in the climate debate, said Marc Morano, a top aide to climate change skeptic Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla.
"First, 2007 turned out to be the ‘tipping point’ for global warming fears, and 2008 appears to be the year of vindication for skeptics as many prominent scientists reverse their climate views, more and more skeptical scientists speak out, and new data debunks man-made climate fears.
“Now another major scientist reconsiders his views on a significant aspect of man-made climate fears.”
Posted by
Anonymous
on
April 20, 2008 8:10 PM
The latest climate data from NOAA is linked below. Keep in mind that we know very little about what technological and sociopolitical changes over the next 50 years will influence our possibly negligible impact on the constantly changing climate.
Will a socialist agenda driving a flurry of taxes on our "footprint" for water-vapor, carbon, or methane (that was the dog, not me) push us in the right direction, or could messing with global economics push us into more tumultuous times?
Instead of carbon taxation, why not continue the focus on renewable energy while exploiting the energy reserves we have? As a gallon of gas becomes more expensive due to market conditions (even without arbitrary taxes), the pace of research and investment in renewable technologies will increase, and existing technologies like nuclear, solar, wind, and ocean power become more palatable.
Maybe some 10-year old kid today will come up with fusion in a box by 2050. Hopefully that idea won't be squashed like the electric car:)
Click on "State of the Climate" at www.ncdc.noaa.gov /oa/climate/research/monitoring.html
2007 Global Temps vs 20th Century Avg: Combined land & ocean surface temp 5th warmest on record.
January 2008 Global Temps vs. 20th Century Avg: Combined land & ocean surface temp 31st warmest on record, +0.18°C above the 20th century mean. Land surface average was below the 20th century mean, -0.01°C, for the first time since 1982.
February 2008: La Niña contributed to February temperature that were the coolest since the La Niña episode of 2000-2001. Global combined land & ocean surface temp +0.38°C above the 20th century mean.
March 2008: Global combined land & ocean avg surface temp 2nd warmest on record, 0.71°C above mean.
April 2008: Global combined land & ocean avg surface temp 13th warmest, +0.41°C above mean.
- montvillian
Posted by
Anonymous
on
June 4, 2008 12:26 AM
New Site from NASA http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/ Click on uncertainties - in regards to factors that trigger abrupt climate change: "scientists don't have much confidence that they know what those triggers are"
Update from NOAA May 2008: The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for May 2008 was +0.45°C above 20th century mean, ranking 8th warmest.
