Filed under: Global Warming, Science/Technology | Tags: Fort Collins Colorado, Minnesota, Rumford Maine
Steven Goddard posted this picture of Fort Collins, Colorado at 7 pm on the first of May. The U.S., he says, is headed for the coldest spring on record. John Hinderaker posted a similar picture a few days ago from Minnesota.
We have had here in the Seattle area two perfect sunny warm days in a row! Our winter has not been particularly cold (La Nina) but the sun has been shrouded in vast grey clouds for months on end, when it wasn’t raining. No snow at all. Even the proprietor of Sippican’s Cottage said “It was — get this — over sixty degrees. No, really, it was over sixty degrees, all at the same time, instead of broken into pieces and spread over several days. Fahrenheit!” And he’s somewhere in Northern Maine. Anecdotal to be sure, but my goodness, the sun is welcome.
I always get the giggles when I hear that old song about “The Bluest Skies You’ll Ever See Are in Seattle.” The lyricist had either never been to Seattle, or only passed through on a particularly good day. Steven Goddard has the charts to illustrate the temperature.
Filed under: Politics, Science/Technology, Domestic Policy, Environment, Global Warming, Energy | Tags: Russia's Pulkovo Observatory, Cycles of Solar Activity, Predicting the Future
Russian scientists say that a period of global cooling is ahead due to changes in the activity of the sun. Scientists at Russia’s famous Pulkovo Observatory are convinced that the world is in for a period of global cooling that could last for 200-250 years.
Solar activity is waning, so the average yearly temperature will begin to decline as well. Scientists from Britain and the US chime in to say that such forecasts for global cooling are far from groundless.
Yuri Nagovitsyn of the Pulkovo Observatory said:
“Journalists say the entire process is very simple: once solar activity declines, the temperature drops. But besides solar activity, the climate is influenced by other factors, including the lithosphere, the atmosphere, the ocean, the glaciers. The share of solar activity in climate change is only 20%. This means that sun’s activity could trigger certain changes whereas the actual climate changing process takes place on the Earth.”
Solar activity follows different cycles, including an 11-year cycle, a 90-year cycle, and a 200-year cycle. Professor Igor Davidenko comments:
“The Northern Sea Route has never opened so early or closed so late over the past 30 years. Last year saw a cargo transit record – more than five million tons. The first Chinese icebreaker sailed along the Northern Sea Route in 2012. China plans it to handle up to 15% of its exports.”
Prediction of the future is mostly little more than guesswork, but there are trends and there is a past history of cycles. Russia is upgrading its icebreaker fleet, and new generation icebreakers are set to arrive in the years to come. Russia also has great interest in energy in the Arctic. as well as the Northern Sea Route., so they are preparing for eventualities.
While other nations are considering how to prepare for a possible long period of cooling, ours is desperately trying to save the planet from global warming and free us from our addiction to foreign oil, at the same time that they restrict every possible domestic source of petroleum from drilling. Go figure.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Global Warming, Junk Science, Media Bias, Progressivism, The Constitution | Tags: Not Exactly Peace in Our Time, Republicans v. Democrats, The Real Battle
The extreme differences between the thinking of Liberals and that of Conservatives is an endlessly distasteful obsession of mine. If you read some of the early fulminations in the media upon the election of Barack Obama, it’s clear that he was widely regarded as someone who would bring the two warring camps in Washington together. Bipartisanship. Bringing people together — peace in our time.
It was only talk. Liberals want to do away with Conservatives, not get along with them. Their hatred for Conservatives is palpable — because we disagree. They don’t just want to defeat us in elections, they want us unable to compete at all. Liberals are apt to approach subjects emotionally, to turn to those who agree with them and reject those who don’t. They say silly things about the right because their understanding comes from what their friends say — they have no direct experience of conservatives. Haven’t you noticed that they all say the same thing at the same time?
For example, Liberals want to raise the minimum wage. They feel deeply for the poor, and think it is just plain mean to expect someone to support a family on the minimum wage at $7 an hour. The minimum wage is meant to be a starting point for beginners, not families. Studies show when it is raised too much, businesses are unwilling to pay people while they are trained to perform the most minimum tasks adequately. Increasing the minimum wage eliminates the first step on the ladder of lifetime employment. Liberals are not interested in studies.
What got me started on this was a video on the Boston Herald site. A female reporter was interviewing the photographer who took the iconic photographs of the immediate aftermath of the Boston marathon bombing. She showed a photo, full screen, and asked the reporter “How did you feel when you took that picture?” Stark photos of the first-responders in among the wounded and the debris. Then she’d show another and ask “How did you feel when you took this one?” Repeat, over and over. [ I have worked with lots of photographers, I can tell you that the one thing he was totally unaware of was his "feelings." He was concerned with getting a good shot, representing the horror going on, catching the rush to help, the faces, the bodies, the wounds, the lighting, the design.] I knew Liberals thought of emotion first, but really!
Here is an important example of the liberal mindset, with three articles that make the problem clear:
— From Slate:the liberal view of global warming, Fox News, and the narrow right-wing wackos for whom Fox is their only news source.
— From the Washington Times: David Deming, a geophysicist and professor at the University of Oklahoma, explains the science.
— From the Weekly Standard: Steven Hayward, indispensable intellectual, professor, explains the rise and fall of the Climate Circus, how it happened, and why it matters.
Do read all three, they’re not long and they are keepers — that explain the confusion about the whole global warming issue. Global Warming is not just an emotional issue for Liberals, it is about as close as you can get — to a true religion. The left on the one hand talks about progress and how to fix everything that is wrong with the world today. On the other hand, their solutions are the same old failed progressive ideas that have been handed down from Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson, Clinton to Obama. Their ideas have never worked, but they are sure that this time it will be different.
Liberals are perpetually discontented. They are sure that if they can just fix the things that so annoy them, change the bad things, they will arrive at some happy Utopia — or at least a better place. They admit to no underlying principles. They would like to have some, but they just can’t figure out what they are.
On the right, you find conservatives consistently talking about principles, facts, studies, freedom and free markets and how those principles apply to the problems of the day. The Constitution is revered by conservatives as the document devised by the people, who grant limited powers to the government that exists at their pleasure. It is a simple document that states general principles and doesn’t pretend to address all the problems of a country. At 226 years of age, it is the longest serving constitution in the world, and has served us well, and most Americans take pride in it.
Conservatives are more apt to recognize ordinary human nature as rather messy and not fixable. Perhaps what makes conservatives different from liberals is that they paid attention when their mothers told them that “life isn’t fair. You just have to do the best you can.” Liberals kept whining about stuff not being fair, and are convinced that if you just trust their expertise,
they will fix it.
Filed under: Art, Fun n Games, Global Warming, Middle East, News the Media Doesn't Want You to Hear, Politics, Terrorism
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have charged two men living in Canada with conspiracy to carry out a terrorist attack against a VIA Rail passenger train inside Canada. The RCMP said the two men planned to carry out an “al Qaeda-supported” terror attack to derail a train, which was also aimed at harming the economy.
The Police said, at a news conference, that the two men were receiving guidance and direction from al Qaeda related elements in Iran. The men are not Canadian citizens. There was no imminent threat to the public, but had the terror project come to fruiting, innocent people would have been killed or injured.
The Obama administration has gone out of their way to make light of the threat from terrorism, but the evidence merely points out the presidents state of denial about the rising threat. CNN’s homeland security analyst, Juliette Kayyem asserted “We have not had (even) a small-scale terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.”
We have suffered a number of major attacks, and most of them have taken place on Obama’s watch. Since 2009, terrorists have attacked our military bases, assassinated our diplomats, burned our embassies and murdered innocent spectators at a sporting event and ambushed and shot police officers.
— June 1, 2009: Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad shot and killed a military recruiter and wounded another at a Little Rock Arkansas recruiting station. A convert to Islam, Muhammad identified with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
— September 2008: Afghan native Najibullah Zazi was arrested before he could blow up the New York City Subway.
— September 2009: Police nabbed Jordanian Hosam Maher Husein Smadi before he could plant a bomb in a Dallas skyscraper.
— November 5, 2009: Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army major psychiatrist opened fire at Fort Hood Texas, shouting “Allahu Akbar!” as he killed 13 fellow soldiers and wounded 29. He was advised by al Qaeda operative Anwar Awlaki. Homeland Security has defined this as a workplace incident.
— December 2009: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was tackled by passengers before he could detonate explosives sewn into his underwear. He was trained in Yemen by al Qaeda.
— March 4, 2010: John Patrick Bedell, a Muslim convert, shot and wounded two Pentagon police officers at a checkpoint in the Pentagon station of Washington Metro in Arlington, VA.
— May 2010: A massive bomb was planted by Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan failed to explode in an SUV parked in Times Square. He was trained and funded by the Taliban.
— October 2010: Chicago synagogues discovered explosives packed inside two printer cartridges shipped by cargo planes from al Qaeda in Yemen. The attack failed.
— Sept. 11, 2012: On the anniversary of 9/11, al Qaeda operatives attacked the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. The armed assault targeted the consulate compound, and a nearby CIA annex. The U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens was killed along with three others and ten others were wounded in a 7 hour gunfight.
— April 15, 2013: Two Muslim jihadists set off bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring 183. The terrorists shot two police officers, killed one, and injured several others. One of the brothers is dead, the other in custody.
The administration continues to downplay Islamist terrorism, and proposes talks with the Taliban and with Iran.
The “Arab Spring” was mistakenly assumed to be a movement for democracy in Arab North Africa. The movement was perhaps inspired by televised shots of Iraqis, male and female, proudly voting in free elections. That was considered the equivalent of an earthquake in the Arab Middle East, where oppressive dictatorship was the norm. But Arabs had no experience of Democracy, and the Muslim Brotherhood was ready to step in.
No terrorism here, nothing to see. Just move along.
Filed under: The Constitution, Economy, Environment, Global Warming, Energy, Capitalism, National Security, Junk Science | Tags: Going Around in Circles, The Triumph of Ideology, Common Sense and an Open Mind
You may have noticed that President Obama’s speeches often come with an expiration date, which is sometimes the next day. He’s good with the teleprompter, but has trouble with facts. In the debates just before the election, he rounded on Gov. Romney for claiming that government lands were not producing oil and gas. He claimed that his administration had opened up public lands and we’re actually producing more than the previous administration, and the previous president was an oil man. “Natural gas isn’t just appearing magically,” he said.
A new Congressional Research Service report states that oil production on federal lands has fallen by 23% in the last two years, and natural gas production has dropped by 33%. The president is responsible for not one drop of increased oil and gas production. The increases are all from private lands. It’s important to understand the American people’s real energy situation. It makes a difference in the price of gas at the pump. It makes a difference in the cost of electricity, for some of our power plants are natural gas fired. It makes a difference in Obama’s efforts to force a green energy regime on the country, and it makes a difference in taxpayer money poured into useless schemes.
In the wake of Deepwater Horizon, the administration put a moratorium on drilling in the Gulf. When the moratorium was finally “lifted”after bankrupting many businesses in the Gulf region, they installed a “permitorium” slowing and making impossible efforts to drill. They removed areas that were available for oil leases, took areas off-line, and placed extensive restrictions on where it was possible to drill for oil. The entire East coast became unavailable for drilling, but quite available for offshore wind turbines.
Obama is still wedded to his primary victory rhetoric “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal.” But it turns out that the oceans are not rising but a millimeter a year, and the planet is doing nicely and does not need healing. Human produced CO2 is not the cause of global warming, and the globe is not warming, nor has it warmed for nearly 20 years……………………..(click to enlarge)
All those valiant efforts to keep us from producing any carbon dioxide — the windmills, the solar arrays, the green biodiesel that’s supposed to run the Navy, but isn’t produced in any quantity yet, the electric cars, ethanol, it was all a lie, and all the billions spent were simply a waste and a fraud. Al Gore is not now and never was a climate scientist. And the fact is that most of the subsidies for producing all these green wonders went to cronies and campaign contributors.
Obama just ordered that all federal agencies cannot approve any major projects — from pipelines to highways — until they have considered the impact on global warming. Obama plans to “expand the scope of a Nixon-era law,” the National Environmental Policy Act, “that was first intended to force agencies to asses effect of projects on air, water and soil pollution.” If Congress won’t pass the laws he wants, — in this case passing a carbon tax —then Obama will just make law on his own without all that constitutional bother.
Ross Eisberg, vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, told Bloomberg that Obama’s proposal has “got us very freaked out.”
They were always wrong about carbon dioxide. It’s what we breathe out, and it makes plants grow. It is greening the earth as Matt Ridley explained at some length in this video. There has been way more CO2 in the atmosphere in the past, we are at kind of a low point, and if it increases more, so will our forests.
That’s the trouble with ideology, you fall in love with certain ideas, and close your mind to anything that does not agree with your treasured ideas. You can’t speak about how important creating more jobs is to you, and then do everything you can to shut down the possibility of growth. At some point you have to get off the merry-go-round and walk on.
Filed under: Politics, Science/Technology, Economy, Environment, Global Warming, Energy, Junk Science | Tags: Department of Energy, Professor Ernest Moniz, Climate Change Or Not
President Obama has nominated MIT Professor Ernest Moniz to run the Department of Energy. Dr. Moniz is a nuclear physicist, with a doctorate in theoretical physics from Stanford University, and a member of the Clinton administration. He was a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology that recommended dumping $16 billion a year into renewables — three times the previous amount.
He has warned about climate change, and has been concerned that there hasn’t been enough action to combat it. The MIT Energy Initiative, which he directs, has studied natural gas and fracking, but it has led him to parrot the usual environmental lines about water contamination and methane leaks. He is described as “a politically savvy guy, and as a result of his time in Washington he understands Washington reasonably well.”
At the MIT Energy Initiative, Moniz focused on transforming the energy mix, with particular reference to renewable energy technology, which many Republicans in Congress regard with suspicion, if not contempt. But Moniz has also insisted that non-renewables must remain part of the energy portfolio for several years until they become “too carbon-intensive”. Natural gas “is part of our solution, at least for some time,” he told a meeting at the University of Texas, Austin in December.
And in testimony about a recent MIT Energy Initiative report into the controversial process of fracking, which involves pumping sand and liquid into deep shale deposits to liberate natural gas, he spoke out against banning the method, calling instead for better regulation and oversight.
In testimony before the Senate a couple of years ago, he suggested that regulation would be best if “applied uniformly to all shales” which suggest he is in favor as most greens are of the feds taking over regulation of fracking from the states. Greens are up in arms over his nomination, his cardinal sin seems to be favoring natural gas as a “bridge fuel” until such time as the green vision of an all-renewable world comes to pass. This used to be the view of nearly every environmental group not long ago. His other sin is the belief that nuclear should remain part of the energy mix, common sense for most policymakers, but another line in the sand for growing numbers of greens.
Think Progress describes Moniz as “bullish” on solar energy, and he has advised a number of solar finance and technology companies. He believes that nuclear poser can be a partial solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the long term. He sees natural gas as a true bridge to a low-carbon future, but has warned that is could slow the growth in clean energy. A 2011 MIT gas study calls for a reduction in “greenhouse pollution” greater than 50%. He has said regarding energy efficiency “The most important thing is lowering your use of energy in ways that actually save you money,” he said, “It sounds trivial, but putting out lights really does matter.”
He would, in some ways, his favor of natural gas and nuclear energy, to be an improvement on Secretary Stephen Chu, but he is more savvy in the ways of Washington politics, and thus a more formidable opponent.
The general interest in this appointment is less concerned with the beliefs of this nominee, than in his hair style, which does seem a little 18th century. I wish people were more interested in his convictions and his policies.
It is quite possible for a physicist to be unfamiliar with the science that concerns those who believe that climate is always changing, that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not the cause of warming. Some have written about the evidence that completely changed their minds. It is especially possible for a theoretical physicist to believe that breakthroughs in harnessing the power inherent in the wind and in the rays of the sun are only the right equation away.
There’s a big gap between the true watermelons — the radicals who, upon the collapse of communism, moved to environmentalism as the best venue for their grasp for power — those who assume that oil is, by its nature, bad; and those who believe that the immense panic over one degree of warming and computer program predictions of disaster in another hundred years, might be more a fault of the idea that computers can predict the future, than of Mother Nature who seems to keep on keeping on pretty well. The whole thing is a bundle of science, emotion, religion, radicalism, and junk science, slowly sorting itself out with billions and billions of taxpayer dollars.
Filed under: The Constitution, Economy, Environment, Global Warming, Energy, Capitalism, Junk Science | Tags: Environmental Protetion Agency, Nominee Gina McCarthy, The Autocrat in the White House
President Obama has given more indication about what we can expect from the EPA in his second-term global warming agenda. He has picked Gina McCarthy, one of Lisa Jackson’s top lieutenants to head the Environmental Protection Agency as its new chief. Over the past four years, McCarthy has run the EPA’s air office, as a notably willful regulator.
Her promotion gives notice that Obama has given up on getting agreement from Congress on his anticarbon agenda, particularly given the number of Senate Democrats from coal or oil states. The real climate fight is now over the shape of rules to come that could be released as early as this summer, and apparently a brutal under-the-table lobbying campaign is now underway.
The debate about global warming and the hysteria of the environmental movement, but the problems of the appointment of McCarthy and the nomination of Ernest J Moniz to take charge at the Department of Energy demonstrate that the president is planning to use these two agencies to pursue an aggressive climate change agenda in his second term.
The key issue involved in these nominations and the president’s agenda for the coming four years revolve more around legal issues than the scientific disputes. The real issue is a Constitutional one.
“The question before the nation is whether the executive branch can or should give itself the power to run roughshod over Congress and unilaterally implement new regulations that will give the force of law to the president’s climate beliefs,” as Jonathan Tobin wrote in “The Climate and the Constitution” at Commentary.
The supreme Court granted authority to the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gasses. The EPA is in the midst of writing regulations to govern such emissions from new power plants. Those rules would essentially bar construction of any new coal-fired power plants unless they include the ability to capture carbon gases — a technology that is not available on a commercial scale.
To really restrict emissions, the agency must then devise emissions limits for existing power plants, a hugely controversial project that could force the shutdown of dozens of older coal-burning plants, cause a steep drop in domestic demand for coal and trigger a sharp rise in energy prices. Coal is the cheapest and most plentiful source of fuel for power plants. Obama made it clear, when he was first nominated and subsequently, that he intends to bankrupt the coal industry.
Environmental zealots are sure that wind and solar, clean sources of energy, will allow us to shut down the fossil fuel industry. Obama expects half of our energy to come from wind and solar by 2050. Not going to happen. Wind and solar energy is limited by the intrinsic nature of the wind and the sun. Without significant government subsidy, they would shut down. They cannot run without 24-7 backup from— fossil fuel power plants. Eliminating coal-fired power plants would not only raise the cost of energy significantly, but risk blackouts and brownouts.
Congress made a mistake when it wrote the Clean Air legislation by drawing the law so broadly that way too much was left to the whim of EPA and the Department of Energy regulation. Though the Supreme Court granted powers to protect air quality to the EPA, they have gone far beyond in a real grab for power. Any such regulations are sure to bring intense opposition from the courts and from Congress. The courts have not been shy in slapping down the overreach of the EPA.
The center of the problem is that the Constitution created an organization where the three branches of government could exercise checks and balances on each other. The core of that is the notion that writing laws are the purview of Congress. When a president assumes the right to draft, pass and enforce laws— even where Congress has refused to act— it is a rejection of the constitutional process. The Constitution doesn’t go for autocrats. If we become a nation where the legal framework becomes a matter of the dictates of a president, we will all be the losers in the long run.
Lately President Obama has been going around saying that he is a President, not a “dictator” or an “emperor,” but this is a distinction without difference. On Carbon regulation, Ms. McCarthy has been integral in abusing laws that were written decades ago to achieve climate goals that Congress has rejected, with little or no political debate. Her antidemocratic politics should be the subject of thorough questioning at her confirmation hearings. We would hope that the president would restrain his hubris and insist that his agencies act within the framework of the law, but the EPA has a longtime reputation as a lawbreaker.
Filed under: Politics, Environment, Global Warming, Energy, Democrat Corruption, Junk Science | Tags: Obama Gets a Free Pass, Thirteen Words, Bush's "16 Words" Were True
At Powerline, John Hinderaker recalls George W. Bush’s “famous 16 words.” They came from Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech, where Bush said “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” That was a true statement, but the Left quickly made it a matter of immense controversy which took years to die down, and some still believe that it was false in spite of the evidence.
Ten years later, at President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union , where he said: “Heat waves, droughts, wildfires and floods — all are now more frequent and intense.” That statement was demonstrably false, as the Science and Environmental Policy Project makes clear:
The claim is so factually challenged that it is a wonder it got by the White House staff. Looking at the weather stations that have 80 years of data shows heat records were set in the 1930s, the Palmer drought index shows the 1930s and the 1950s were hotter and drier with the 1930’s dust bowl lasting a decade. … Increased floods are not supported by the data, and, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, wildfires are declining.
Obama added about Hurricane Sandy: We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy….a freak coincidence…” He was wrong about that one as well:
Sandy was neither unique nor extreme. Hurricane direct hits on NYC occurred in 1815, 1821 and 1893 in prior active periods. The damage was caused by a storm surge, not the hurricane itself.
Fred Singer, President of SEPP suggested 3 questions to ask about global warming/climate change:
1. Please explain to me why there has been no warming for more than a decade, even though atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to rise? The question is supported by graphic evidence. Phil Jones, head of HadCRU has admitted that there has been no statistically significant surface warming for at least 15 years.
2. Can you explain why the Antarctic has been getting colder and GAINING ice? (2.1 tons/yr for past 150 years)? The scientific articles were cited.
3. Could the Sun (or cosmic rays) be responsible for he major warming of the 20th century? A graph by E. Fris-Christensen and K. Lasses, published in Science, shows a strong relationship between the temperature anomaly and the sunspot cycle length while the relationship between temperature anomaly and CO2 concentration is weak. The IPCC has admitted that cosmic ray changes can affect earth’s clouds and climate.
Global warming has always been more a matter of religious belief, accepted because of the Left’s teachings that the West is deeply flawed, and can expect to fail. Deeply emotionally charged beliefs are hard to give up. Those who believe that mankind is a blight upon the earth, and we should return mother earth to the Pleistocene, aren’t open to simple scientific arguments. The problem is the people and all their works.
This video interview came from the “Forward on Climate” rally on the National Mall, Feb. 17th, to protest the Keystone XL pipeline, sponsored by 350.0rg and the Sierra Club. Now the pipeline has been approved by Governor Heineman of Nebraska, and by the State Department which must approve cross-border projects, and is back on Obama’s desk.
Filed under: Environment, Global Warming, Humor, Junk Science | Tags: Endangered Pasta?, Extinct Coffee Beans?, More Junk Science
The world as we know it will come to an end by 2080. Global warming may end the wheat crop, endangering not only pasta, but our breakfast toast, pancakes and waffles, not to mention coffee cake and croissants. Now comes word that coffee beans, that is wild Arabica beans are in danger of extinction. The invaluable Anthony Watts, proprietor of wattsupwiththat.com, responds:
The basis of the claim for “end of pasta” by Hertsgaard is this statement:
Frank Manthey, a professor at North Dakota State University who advises the North Dakota Wheat Commission. Already, a mere 1 degree Fahrenheit of global temperature rise over the past 50 years has caused a 5.5 percent decline in wheat production.
Well, I plotted the data, both for USA temperature (using the alarmist’s favorite temperature data, Jim Hansen’s GISS data) and USA wheat production from USDA, and I call bullshit on the claim:
David Middleton demolishes the silly claim about coffee beans. My coffee is of greater importance than my croissants or brioche, or even toast, so that’s a relief.
Researchers at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew and the Environment and Coffee Forest Forum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia looked at how climate change might make some land unsuitable for Arabica plants, which are highly vulnerable to temperature change and other dangers including pests and disease.
They came up with a best-case scenario that predicts a 38 per cent reduction in land capable of yielding Arabica by 2080. The worst-case scenario puts the loss at between 90 per cent and 100 per cent.
If global climate warming change disruption is likely to wipe out such a prevalent coffee bean in a few decades, the previous few hundred years of warming should have “left a mark” on global coffee production… Right?
I downloaded the latest HadCRUT4 temperature and Mauna Loa CO2 data from Wood for Trees and global coffee bean production from FAOSTAT and it appears that coffee bean trees like warmer temperatures…
They also show how the alarmists reached the nonsense they published. Is there a particular psychological type that is unhappy unless living in fear? Or they just remarkably gullible? Next to go, Bacon and eggs?
Filed under: Politics, Science/Technology, Environment, Global Warming, Energy, Junk Science | Tags: The Global Warming Folly, Environmental Claims Falling Apart, The IPCC Was Wrong
Did you ever wonder how the Global Warming Folly got started? Why did government get all excited and start supporting anything that promised to reduce the dreadful fate that science told us was about to descend on the United States and the world? Here’s how it happened back in June of 1988. James Hansen, perhaps envisioning a Nobel Prize for science, wanted to scare the Congress of the United States into supporting his vision of approaching disaster.
Watch as former Senator Timothy Wirth, (D-CO) speaking on a PBS interview about the June 1988 Senate hearing on global warming, gleefully describes his loss of integrity and respect for his office.
We didn’t know very much about climate. I’m not sure quite what the moves were, but the upshot was that climate scientists borrowed the computer programs that the financial sector had devised to predict the market, because they wanted to predict the future too. So they started with what science knew for sure, which wasn’t very much, and added educated guesses based on what they thought they knew, and finished off with uneducated guesses, because they just didn’t know. But such a warning had to be funded. Congress was scared. Grant money began to flow.
One Michael Mann’s doctoral thesis at the end of the 1990s came up with an elaborate graph that spiked up sharply in the future, further scaring the people who controlled the funding. The UN’s IPCC was happy to get in the game, and anyone who could write a good grant proposal to prove how increasing warming of the earth was going to mess up everything, got their proposals funded. There was no money for those who were skeptical. The idea was that worldwide warming was unusual, and the pre-industrial temperature history had been uneventful, and was the ideal climate condition that we should all strive to maintain.
This required pretty massive ignorance of historical climate and ordinary history and literature that described the climate. Any anomalies were just local phenomena. But the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age as local North Atlantic events? Really? A nutty idea. In the early 1990s, Japanese scientists Hiroyuki Kitagawa and Eiji Matsumoto had published clear data from the year 1995 that showed that temperatures over the previous 2000 years in South Japan fluctuated over a range of 5°C. A clear millennium cycle is depicted. Before Michael Mann.
About ten years later Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick (see the book The Hockey Stick Illusion by Andrew Montford) explained how the hockey stick graph resulted in the same conformation no matter what numbers were entered. Mann has never recanted, to his shame.
But one by one, the claims are falling apart. The polar bears are not endangered but thriving. Many of the ‘endangered’ species are not endangered. Many extinct species are not extinct. Sea level rise is not accelerating. Antarctic ice extent is still well above normal. Global Warming is not the number one threat to humanity. Corals are doing just fine in even the warmest places. New researchblows climate Science wide open. The trees may be at the heart of climate, not your SUV. And the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) got it wrong. Rajendra K. Pachauri, the head of the IPCC has been caught cashing checks from the WWF.
An increase in temperature due to a doubling of CO2 would be 1.9 degrees Celsius by 2050. We can adapt to a 1.9° increase in warmth, if it doesn’t continue cooling as it has been doing for the past 17 years.
Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve been had.
President Obama is in denial about both the climate and energy realities. The data shows that global warming isn’t happening. Electric cars aren’t happening, nobody wants them. If the president would just give up his backing for his cronies in the green energy industry who are getting wealthy on government largess with taxpayer’s money, it might do wonders for the budget.
Filed under: Environment, Global Warming, History, Junk Science, News the Media Doesn't Want You to Hear, Science/Technology | Tags: Climate Change, Kathryn Hayhoe PhD, Professor Bob Carter
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha: From the Daily Caller today —On Wednesday morning’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” the Center for American Progress’ very own Christie Heffner, former CEO of Playboy Enterprises announced that Chicago’s sky-high murder rate could be blamed — at least in part — on climate change.
Yes, last year we hit a record number of murders from guns [in Chicago], And this year we are already outpacing last year’s numbers. Now there are contributing factors that are not under anybody’s control and may seem odd, but it is factually true. One of them is actually the weather. There is a dramatic increase in gun violence when it is warmer. And we are having this climate change effect that is driving that.
The average high temperature in July, the hottest month in both Chicago and the much-safer New York City is the same for both at 84°. Scarborough thanked her on behalf of conservative bloggers across America.
Meanwhile back in the real world, there is a splendid article at WattsUpWithThat from Australian Climate Scientist Professor Robert (Bob) Carter. He is a senior research geologist who has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers on palaeo-environmental and palaeo-climatic topics, and the author of several books, the most recent Climate: The Counter Consensus, available at Amazon as well
He introduces Katharine Hayhoe, PhD, who wrote the December AITSE piece “Climate Change: Anthropogenic or Not?” is an atmospheric scientist and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. She is senior author of the book “A Climate for Change; Global Warming facts for Faith-Based Decisions.”
Quite clearly, Dr. Hayhoe and I are both credible professional scientists. Given our training and research specializations, we are therefore competent to assess the evidence regarding the dangerous global warming that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) alleges is being caused by industrial carbon dioxide emissions.
Yet at the end of her article Dr. Hayhoe recommends for further reading the websites RealClimate.org and SkepticalScience.com, whereas here at the outset of writing my own article I recommend the websites wattsupwiththat.com and www.thegwpf.org (Global Warming Policy Foundation). To knowledgeable readers, this immediately signals that Dr. Hayhoe and I have diametrically opposing views on the global warming issue.
The general public finds it very hard to understand how such strong disagreement can exist between two equally qualified persons on a scientific topic, a disagreement that is manifest also on the wider scene by the existence of equivalent groups of scientists who either support or oppose the views of the IPCC about dangerous anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming (DAGW).
Dr, Carter goes on to lay out the common ground between the two, explain how the science works, and then asks:
What evidence can we use to test the DAGW hypothesis? He presents five simple tests. I urge you to read the whole thing. It’s a very clear exposition of the current state of the argument in the climate scientist community. We’ll leave Ms. Heffner out of it, because there have always been a huge number of silly arguments from people of little understanding, but lots of faith. The list of things supposedly caused by global warming is very, very long, and remarkably senseless.
Dr. Carter here offers a really clear, non-partisan review of the argument for those who don’t know a lot about climate change, without getting into the politics at all. And there is an astounding amount of politics concerned with climate change all over the world.
