Global Warming an 'Offense against God'?
Cap-and-trade: 'Immoral non-solution to a non-problem'
Cooling Consistent With Warming? - More Scientists Dissent
Sampling of articles in past few days - May 13, 2008 - Round Up
Evangelical Leader: 'Global warming is an offense against God' (Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals)
Excerpt: Global warming is an offense against God, and God is going to hold us accountable if we don't do something. He is going to judge us. Look, creation care is a pro-life issue. One out of six children being born with birth defects linked to pollution is a pro-life issue.
http://www.covchurch.org/cov/news/item6279
Counter: Quotes from the book "Orthodoxy" by G. K. Chesterton (written in the early 20th)
Excerpt: "The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a stepmother. The main point of Christianity was this: That Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate.
http://www.christianforums.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=31891&start=15
1) Cardinal George Pell in The Australian 10 May 2006: 'Pagan emptiness and fears about nature have led to hysteric and extreme claims about global warming. In the past, pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.'
2) Cardinal Pell Ridicules 'Semi-Religious' Belief in Global Warming- Compares Fears to 'Superstition' Sunday Telegraph (Australia) February 18, 2007
Excerpts of Pell: "Christians don't go against reason, although we sometimes go beyond it in faith to embrace the probabilities.
What we were seeing from the doomsayers was an induced dose of mild hysteria -- semi-religious if you like, but dangerously close to superstition.
I'm deeply skeptical about man-made catastrophic global warming, but still open to further evidence.
The science is certainly more complicated than the propaganda.
We know that enormous climate changes have occurred in world history -- for example, the ice ages and Noah's flood, when human causation could only have been negligible."
New Report: The Cost and Futility of Trading Hot Air - Why carbon 'cap-and-trade' is an immoral non-solution to a non-problem
(By Lord Christopher Monckton, the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, a climate researcher and former advisor to UK Prime Minister Thatcher)
Excerpt: Carbon trading is not merely futile - it is immoral, for it cannot but do harm to the poorest people in our community: the very people who are most deserving of our protection. [.] If carbon trading works, it will not be cheap. If it is cheap, it will not work. Either way, it is unnecessary, both because "global warming" will not prove catastrophic and because the prices of carbon-based fuels are already rising on their own without State interference. It would accordingly be false to suggest that the cost of cap-and-trade to the economy - whether financially or in terms of jobs, household consumption, and growth - will be "minimal". Most proponents of cap-and-trade have a vested and often financial direct interest in taking advantage of their privileged positions to create and then to exploit a rigged market, where the State will ration the volume of emissions that may be traded and will, therefore, largely dictate the price, whether directly (as in the dirigiste EU), or indirectly. It is at best disingenuous to pretend that the cost to the victims of this or any rigged market will be negligible. Likewise, the artful notion that some of the additional revenues contributed to governmental coffers by the victims of carbon trading can be redeployed to alleviate the worst of its ill effects on the poorest households is, in economic terms, absurd.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/cost_and_futility_of_trading_hot_air.html
Professor Roger Pielke Jr. Smacks down activists at RealClimate.org Again! Cooling consistent with warming?
Excerpt: The folks at Real Climate have produced a very interesting analysis that provides some useful information for the task of framing a falsification exercise on IPCC predictions of global surface temperature changes. The exercise also provides some insight into how this branch of the climate science community defines the concept of consistency between models and observations, and why it is that every observation seems to be, in their eyes, "consistent with" model predictions. This post explains why Real Climate is wrong in their conclusions on falsification and the why it is that two decades of cooling can be defined as "consistent with" predictions of warming.
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/001425how_to_make_two_deca.html
Scientist details the soaring costs of 'Suicidal global warming policies' (By UK Professor Emeritus of Biogeography Philip Stott of the University of London)
Excerpt: The costs of suicidal 'global warming' policies are soaring like our newly-returned swallows. On Sunday, The Daily Express highlighted the cost for UK families of the government's ill-judged policies, based on a newly-released report carried out by respected energy consultants for the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform [what a 1984 invention. These costs are no longer a joke. Here we have a Labour government heaping burden after burden on the poorer members of society, at a time when people's finances are under greater stress than usual from rising food and fuel bills, from the increasing unavailability of mortgages, and from a series of ill-thought out tax and pension decisions. No wonder Labour received a drubbing last week in the local and London elections. It is just asking to be voted out of office.
New analysis: The Economic Costs of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Change Legislation (Heritage Foundation - May 12, 2008)
Excerpt: Members of Congress are considering several bills designed to combat climate change. Chief among them is Senate bill 2191--America's Climate Security Act of 2007--spearheaded by Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA). This bill would set a limit on the emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide from the combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas. Since energy is the lifeblood of the American economy, 85 percent of which comes from these fossil fuels, S. 2191 represents an extraordinary level of economic interference by the federal government. [.] Our analysis makes clear that S. 2191 promises extraordinary perils for the American economy. Arbitrary restrictions predicated on multiple, untested, and undeveloped technologies will lead to severe restrictions on energy use and large increases in energy costs. In addition to the direct impact on consumers' budgets, these higher energy costs will spread through the economy and inject unnecessary inefficiencies at virtually every stage of production and consumption--all of which will add yet more financial burdens that must be borne by American taxpayers. S. 2191 extracts trillions of dollars from the millions of American energy consumers and delivers this wealth to permanently identified classes of recipients, such as tribal groups and preferred technology sectors, while largely circumventing the normal congressional appropriations process. Unbound by the periodic review of the normal budgetary process, this de facto tax-and-spend program threatens to become permanent--independent of the goals of the legislation.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/cda08-02.cfm
Fox 25 TV in Massachusetts segment: Overreacting to Global Warming?
The segment featured:
1) Meteorologist Art Horn, currently operating The 'Art' Of the Weather business. See also: Weatherman with a Contrary ViewHorn: 'Global Warming? What Global Warming?'- Excerpt: "The real inconvenient truth," he said, disputing the current weather prognosticators, was that "hurricanes are not increasing in numbers or frequency." The devastation in New Orleans was not caused by Katrina, he said, but by the fact the city's levees had not held. "Had the levees held, there would not have been anything (damage) of any consequence. It wasn't from the wind." Targeting Al Gore, Horn said that the frequency and strength of such hurricanes as Katrina were not increasing due to global warming effects. Since cameras were put into space in the 1960s, Horn said, "there has been no increase in the number of Atlantic hurricanes in the U.S.," nor has there been since 1900. http://www.greenwichcitizen.com/localnews/ci_9203908
2) Physicist Dr. Laurence I. Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and former Chair of the New England Section of the American Physical Society, has authored peer-reviewed research articles and given numerous talks nationally and internationally.
3) Renowned hurricane forecaster Dr. William Gray, Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University (CSU), and head of the schools Tropical Meteorology Project.
Direct link to video: http://www.myfoxboston.com/myfox/MyFox/pages/sidebar_video.jsp?contentId=6508711&version=1&locale=EN-US
Link to text report: http://community.myfoxboston.com/blogs/Kevin_Lemanowicz/2008/05/08/Global_Cooling
Plus, Fox 25's Meteorologist Kevin_Lemanowicz who hosted the climate segment on the growing scientific dissent, declared himself a skeptic in 2008.
Chief Meteorologist Kevin_Lemanowicz of Fox 25 TV in Massachusetts dissented from man-made climate fears in 2008. "I continue to say that we have obviously warmed, but we should not be setting policy based on an uncertain climate future," Lemanowicz wrote on April 14, 2008. "I am not convinced we have been the dominant force in our global warming, and I certainly don't trust climate models that are integrating thousands of variables thousands of time-steps into the future. There is chaos inherent in these models," Lemanowicz explained. "One of the cornerstones of the movie An Inconvenient Truth was the belief that global warming will cause more frequent and more ferocious hurricanes. This belief was shared by esteemed MIT scientist Dr. Kerry Emmanuel. Well, just like that, the tide has turned," Lemanowicz wrote, noting that Emmanuel was reconsidering his views on the global warming-hurricane link. In a May 1, 2008, report, Lemanowicz noted that "carbon dioxide is a good thing." He wrote: "Did you know that if the greenhouse effect didn't exist, life on this planet would be frozen? Further, I'm sure you remember from grade-school science that carbon dioxide is vital for life. Plants need it, and, in turn, give us oxygen. No CO2 means no plants, which means little oxygen for us. Certainly not enough to live on. Why, then, is CO2 called "pollution"? Is it really bad for us?" (LINK & (LINK) & (LINK)
Another Dissenter: Chemist Dr. Joel M. Kauffman, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia
Climate Change Re-examined
Excerpt: Claimed human-caused warming of the Earth to dangerous and unprecedented levels by human-related emissions of carbon dioxide is contradicted mainly by a non-correlation of carbon dioxide levels with warming. Details are given of misleading proxy temperature reconstructions, as well as of misleading proxy atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Evidence is presented to show that trepidation about runaway land surface temperatures should apply only to giant urban heat islands, not to rural areas or oceans. Evidence is presented for causes in addition to human emissions for changes in the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, namely its emission from warming oceans. Plausible alternative causes of surface temperature change are given as well, including variations in solar output and cosmic ray intensity.
http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/ccr.pdf
Another Dissenter! Chief Meteorologist Craig James, of a Michigan NBC TV affiliate
That Darned Water Vapor
Excerpt: If you've read many of my past posts, you may remember that the main reason I (and many other meteorologists) disagree with the computer model forecasts of how much warming will occur due to an increase in CO2 is because of how those models handle water vapor. in this post written over a year ago. [.] How many models have forecast there would be no warming from 1998-2008? There is also a Science Daily article published on April 6, 2008 stating that the accuracy of global climate models has been quite good, but the authors do admit "Although model-based projections of future climate are now more credible than ever before, the authors note they have no way to say exactly how reliable those projections are." Shouldn't that be the headline of the article? There was another article about the accuracy of the models published in Science Daily on Dec 12, 2007 reporting that ""The usual discussion is whether the climate model forecasts of Earth's climate 100 years or so into the future are realistic," said the lead author, Dr. David H. Douglass from the University of Rochester. "Here we have something more fundamental: Can the models accurately explain the climate from the recent past? "It seems that the answer is no." I'll bet it is all because of how they handle that darned water vapor.
http://blogs.woodtv.com/?p=3614
'Killer cornflakes' - Global warming may cause increase in food toxins (this is not a joke)
Excerpt: Climate change could lead to "killer cornflakes" with the cereal carrying the most potent liver toxin ever recorded, an environmental health conference has been told. The effects of the toxins, known as mycotoxins, have been known since the Middle Ages, when rye bread contaminated with ergot fungus was a staple part of the European diet, environmental health researcher Lisa Bricknell from Central Queensland University (CQU) said. "People started suffering mass hallucinations, manic depression, gangrene, abortions, reduced fertility and painful, convulsive death," Ms Bricknell told the 10th World Congress on Environmental Health in Brisbane on Tuesday. "The rye bread, which was known as the staff of life, quickly became known as the sceptre of death. "The damage was done not from a single exposure but from many small doses of the toxins over a long period of time. Mycotoxins can appear in the food chain as a result of the fungal infection of crops in the field or in storage, either by being eaten directly by humans, or by being used as livestock feed. [.] Grain-growing areas of Australia, such as Queensland's Burnett region, could become unviable, and Australia may have to import more maize and maize-based food products to meet demand. "In a situation of climate change, if we are importing more products and imported products are not regulated ... we can also expect that other countries may be experiencing similar problems with increased contamination. "While killer cornflakes may not precisely be around the corner, we do have potential for increasing aflatoxin exposure. "We need to investigate risk management for maize production and we need to undertake careful monitoring of food products coming into our country.
http://news.smh.com.au/climate-change--killer-cornflakes/20080513-2dm3.html
Paul McCartney 'horrified' as his eco car is flown 7,000 miles from Japan
Excerpt: The Lexus LS600H, which costs £84,000, was a gift from Lexus to the 65-year-old former Beatle, who helped promote the hybrid vehicle. But instead of arriving by boat as expected, the car was flown to Britain on a Korean Air flight, creating a carbon footprint almost 100 times bigger than if it had come by sea. Sir Paul is a vocal advocate of vegetarianism and has long been a poster child for environmental activism. His 6-year marriage to Heather Mills, with whom he campaigned against seal culling, came to an end yesterday after their divorce was finalised in the High Court. A source is reported to have said: "Paul was offered a Lexus as a gift and ordered the hybrid limo because it helps to reduce emissions. "He'll be horrified after learning it was delivered by plane. Paul has always campaigned for green issues and he can't understand why anyone would send an enormous car from Japan to Britain on a plane." [.] Co2balance.com Director Mike Rigby said: "That is the equivalent of driving the car around the world six times."
Climatologist Dr. Tim Ball: The Hockey Stick scam that heightened global warming hysteria
Excerpt: Serious concerns were raised about the objectivity of an IPCC Report and Summary with major input from scientists citing their own research. Unfortunately, this is typical of the incestuous, political, nature of the entire IPCC process. In his report Professor Wegman's first recommendation says, Especially when massive amounts of public monies and human lives are at stake, academic work should have a more intense level of scrutiny and review. It is especially the case that authors of policy-related documents like the IPCC report, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, should not be the same people as those that constructed the academic papers. Most people, especially the media, missed the equally startling and disturbing conclusion by Wegman. In our further exploration of the social network of authorships in temperature reconstruction, we found that at least 43 authors have direct ties to Dr. Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him. Our findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus 'independent studies' may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface. The incestuous potential of such a small close-knit group is disturbing beyond co-authorship. Proponents of the anthropogenic global warming theory have made much of the fact that critics have few or no 'peer reviewed' papers. Why? It appears members of the group of 43 were also peer reviewing each other's papers. It is one possible explanation why Mann's paper sailed through peer review. Journal editors are not required to disclose the names of reviewers, so we can't know. It probably also explains why so much is made of peer review by members and defenders of the IPCC. When you have a small group in a specialized research area it is too easy to control what gets published. What I call peer review censorship.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/3021
Global warming hysteria reaching new heights
Excerpt: What is truly evil is that Al Gore and his scientific prostitutes take advantage of people's ignorance. [.] New Scientist, which revealed last year that obesity causes global warming, now tells us that global warming will make days longer, which has been confirmed by NASA. So not only is at least one global warming hysteric worried that efforts to stop global warming may slow the rotation of the earth, but the hysterical New Scientist reports that global warming itself slows it: Global warming will make days longer as well as hotter, say Belgian scientists. A team led by Olivier de Viron of the Royal Observatory of Belgium has calculated the impact of global warming from the build-up of greenhouse gases in the air on the angular momentum of the planet. So we might at well get used to longer and longer days. Who needs Daylight Savings Time anymore? Oops, days already are getting longer, and have been for billions of years before Bill Clinton ate his first Big Mac or scientists had too much time on their hands and too much tax money to spend. The Left is beyond parody. NASA's next manned mission to the moon is further away than the first mission was when President Kennedy announced the goal of getting there and back within the decade. [.] No, what is truly evil is that Al Gore and his scientific prostitutes take advantage of people's ignorance. Al Gore must have said a thousand times that we must "stop climate change" on a planet that has had billions of years of climate change. We must preserve the composition of an atmosphere that has never had a stable composition. [.] The rotation of the earth is slowing, the distance of the moon is increasing, the atmosphere of the earth and the radiation of the sun keep changing, continents drift together and break apart, volcanoes erupt unpredictably, asteroids crash intermittently, and Al Gore, the Nobel committee, three presidential candidates, and the United Nations tell us that we have to sacrifice one tenth of our economy to keep it from all happening.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/05/global_warming_hysteria_reachi.html
How to Be a Climate Hero - (Note: Sadly, not a satire, she may actually believe this stuff)
Excerpt: A few years ago, when my first child was born, I became paralyzed with fear about climate disruption. It was so clear that our children would be punished for what we adults were doing to the world. I got depressed. I got anxious. Then, from sheer desperation, I started writing letters to editors. [...] Right now everyone understands that something truly horrible is happening to the planet's climate. The heat waves and forest fires, the floods and droughts. But there are 6 billion of us now-quite the Bystander Effect. So we stay in our seats filling out forms, trying to ignore the smoke swirling thicker around us. We bustle about our normal lives, assuming it can't be as bad as it seems because surely, then, everyone would be marching in the street about it.
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/2957/
Climate activists concede skeptics are better informed: Why are green advocates failing in climate debate?
Excerpt: When I launched the TalkClimateChange forums last year, I was initially worried as to where I would find people who didn't believe in global warming. I had planned to create a furious debate, but in my experience global warming was such a universally accepted issue that I expected to have to dredge the slums of the internet in order to find a couple of deniers who could keep the argument thriving. The first few days were slow going, but following a brief write-up of my site by Junk Science I was swamped by climate skeptics who did a good job of frightening off the few brave Greens who slogged out the debate with. Whilst there was a lot of rubbish written, the truth was that they didn't so much frighten the Greens away - they comprehensively demolished them with a more in depth understanding of the science, cleverly thought out arguments, and some very smart answers. If you want to learn about the physics of convection currents, gas chromatography, or any number of climate science topics then read some of the early debates on TalkClimateChange. I didn't believe a word of it, but I had to admit that these guys were good.
In the following months the situation hardly changed. As the forum continued to grow, as the blog began to catch traffic, and as I continued to try and recruit green members I continued to be disappointed with the debate. In short, and I am sorry to say it, anti-greens (Reds, as we call them) appear to be more willing to comment, more structured, more able to quote peer reviewed research, more apparently rational and apparently wider read and better informed.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/05/why-are-green-advocates-failing-in.html
Group pushes to improve Earth's ecosystem by ensuring human species does not survive
Excerpt: The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, or VHEMT, consists of volunteers who have made active life decisions to remain childless for the benefit of the Earth, thereby preventing the extinction of millions of species of plants and animals. While no one person takes credit for being the founder, Les U. Knight created its name and is the spokesperson for the movement. "We've already exceeded Earth's carrying capacity for humans by quite a bit," Knight told WND. "We are using up our resources. The best way to stop it is by not breeding. It's really the best way because the people we don't create don't exist, and so there's no impact on them." VHEMT activists believe a smaller population will benefit the Earth by reducing human and environmental catastrophe. "There is no problem on the planet that would be more easily solved by adding more people," Knight said. "Everything that we like, including clean air and clean water and wilderness to go and visit, all of those will increase as there become fewer of us."
Knight said the greenest habit humans can have is to prevent creation of another member of the species, reducing humanity's ecological footprint on the Earth.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=63755
Global Warming Doomsayer Sees End of Civilization
Excerpt: If there were a Society of Global Warming Alarmists, Bill McKibben might get kicked out for being too much of a worry wart . . . You've probably seen those phone-message forms with check boxes in ascending order of urgency from "FYI-no need to return call" all the way up to "the future of civilization hangs in the balance." We might see that last category as light-hearted exaggeration, but it's no laughing matter to McKibben. In his jeremiad in today's LA Times literally entitled "Civilization's last chance," McKibben solemnly declares that "the world looks a little terminal right now" and "it isn't morning in America, it's dusk on planet Earth." OK. Just so long as it's nothing serious. McKibben's lament is based in important part on a paper that James Hansen and several co-authors have submitted to Science magazine which concludes that "if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm."
Report: Polar Bears Threatening to Deliver Us $200 Oil
Excerpt: Protecting the environment is a noble cause, although the consequences can be costly. Back in August 1973, a biologist found a humble fish called the snail darter in the Little Tennessee River. At the time, it was believed that this species would be pushed to extinction if the Tennessee Valley Authority finished its Tellico Dam. The snail darter became a celebrity, as environmentalists used the Endangered Species Act to halt the project. It took six years and an act of Congress to complete the dam. [.] The first is the possible wide geographic reach of the global warming argument. The snail darter almost killed a single dam. The polar bear could, in theory at least, stop everything. Suppose someone wants to build a coal-burning power plant in Florida. Environmentalists might challenge the construction on the grounds that the plant will emit greenhouse gases leading to global warming and an increased threat to polar bears. It is hard to say how such challenges would play out. My guess is that it would heighten the pressure on the U.S. to adopt a cap-and-trade emissions program or a carbon tax. The second impact of this ruling is that it will likely end all Arctic exploration for oil and gas, at least in the U.S. Given surging world demand for oil, increased supply is the only thing standing between us and $200-a-barrel oil.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20670001&refer=columnist_hassett&sid=aIF14Y3PWiTE
Prominent scientists say polar bears' extinction theories found fatally flawed
Excerpt: A new study has claimed that the research done by the US Department of the Interior to determine if global warming threatens the polar bear population is so flawed that it cannot be used to justify listing the polar bear as an endangered species. The research came about when on April 30, US District Judge Claudia Wilken ordered the Interior Department to decide by May 15 whether polar bears should be listed under the provisions of the Endangered Species Act. But, after professor J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School and colleagues undertook an audit at the request of the state of Alaska, they found the Interior Department report to be flawed. As part of the subsequent study, the authors examined nine US Geological Survey Administrative Reports. Professor Armstrong and his colleagues concluded that the most relevant study, properly applied only 15% of relevant forecasting principles and that the second study only 10%, while 46% were clearly contravened and 23% were apparently contravened. Further, according to them, the Geologic Survey reports do not adequately substantiate the authors' assumptions about changes to sea ice and polar bears' ability to adapt that are key to the recommendations. Therefore, the authors write, a key feature of the US Geological Survey reports is not scientifically supported. The consequence, they maintain, is significant: The Interior Department cannot use the series of reports as a sound scientific basis for a decision about listing the polar bear as an endangered species.
Eco-moms unite: Weigh trash, bike to grocery store and measure showerhead water flow with buckets!
Excerpt: They've weighed their trash and begun biking to the grocery store. They've timed their kids' showers and held buckets under the showerheads to measure the flow. Sure enough, in the seven months that five Swarthmore mothers have been greening their lives, their bills - logged on spreadsheets - have told the tale of their success: Electric use down 15 percent, and water down 27.5 percent. So far the kids have balked at only one thing: soy in the sloppy joes. These days, motherhood is tinged with green. Eco moms are on a mission. And, networkers that women are, they are doing it in groups. "Our grandmothers had quilting bees. My mother had bridge. I've been in book groups," said Beth Murray, who initiated the Swarthmore group. "It may be that this is the next thing women get together to do." [.]While all their spreadsheets show progress, the women nevertheless worry that their efforts are picayune, given the giant shifts in technology and society that experts say are needed to combat global warming. But then it comes back to the power of moms. As their kids begin to understand why their mother isn't, say, buying plastic bags for their sandwiches anymore, "it is bringing an awareness to the new generation," Volz said. "I think they'll then really lead the way."
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/home_top_stories/20080512_Women_unite_to_mother_the_earth.html
Why we should be concerned about cooling: Cold temps delay planting and slow crop grow in Idaho
(Clink on link to see chilling photo of crops encased in ice!)
Excerpt: Cold temperatures have delayed planting and slowed crop growth across much of Idaho this spring. Temperatures in Boise during April averaged 4 degrees below normal, according to the National Weather Service.This month has gotten off to a cold start too, with low temperatures on May 1 dipping to 27 degrees in the Jerome area, covering sprinkler irrigation lines in ice.
http://www.capitalpress.com/main.asp?SectionID=67&SubSectionID=792&ArticleID=41533
Canada's extremely long, frigid and snowy winter ends with 25 shattered records
Excerpt: Environment Canada's April snowfall data, including 29.9-centimeters of snow, with no more than a trace amount over the final 18 days, brings Sault Ste. Marie's winter accumulation,to 471 cm. That's the second-heaviest on record, 40 cm short of the monster 511-cm accumulation of 13 winters ago. Warning signs of above-average snowfall descended upon the Sault early and often. November, the second month of the seven-month city winter watch, was the snowiest in 13 years, January the third-snowiest in 26 years, and February the fourth-snowiest in 47 years, as far back as such data is readily available. Total winter snowfall, 168 cm above the 30-year norm of 303 cm, included 16 heavy 24-hour accumulations in excess of 10 cm, nearly triple the norm. There were seven exceeding 15 cm and eight that broke 60-year records for particular dates. It marked the seventh time in 47 years that snowfall at the weather agency's Sault Airport station exceeded 400 cm, including the third winter in the past seven.
http://www.saultstar.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1022795
Winter in May? Fishing season delayed by ice on Minnesota lakes
Excerpt; 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.
http://www.kare11.com/sports/sports_article.aspx?storyid=510299
WSJ: taxpayer subsidies per unit of energy: Wind ($23.37) v. Gas (25 Cents)
Excerpt: An even better way to tell the story is by how much taxpayer money is dispensed per unit of energy, so the costs are standardized. For electricity generation, the EIA concludes that solar energy is subsidized to the tune of $24.34 per megawatt hour, wind $23.37 and "clean coal" $29.81. By contrast, normal coal receives 44 cents, natural gas a mere quarter, hydroelectric about 67 cents and nuclear power $1.59. The wind and solar lobbies are currently moaning that they don't get their fair share of the subsidy pie. They also argue that subsidies per unit of energy are always higher at an early stage of development, before innovation makes large-scale production possible. But wind and solar have been on the subsidy take for years, and they still account for less than 1% of total net electricity generation. Would it make any difference if the federal subsidy for wind were $50 per megawatt hour, or even $100? Almost certainly not without a technological breakthrough.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121055427930584069.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks
Environmentalists' Wild Predictions - By Walter E. Williams
Excerpt: Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some environmentalist predictions that they would prefer we forget.
At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind." C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed." In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich, Vice President Gore's hero and mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s ... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." [.] Harvard University biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "... civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look Magazine, that by 1995 "... somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct." It's not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers have always been wrong. In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In 1949, the Secretary of the Interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the American Gas Association, there's a 1,000 to 2,500 year supply. [.] Finally, what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that they have switched their tune to manmade global warming?
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2008/05/07/environmentalists_wild_predictions
Al Gore Feeds on Myanmar's Tragedy
Excerpt: Mr. Gore's book, meanwhile, lurches between paranoia and megalomanic fantasies of a world that falls in step behind his vague "Marshall Plan" to save it from a climate catastrophe whose most turbulent storms lie inside Mr. Gore's head. The book's title is appropriate, since it is filled with fallacies and illogicalities. Its central conceit is that the "climate crisis" will somehow make grand central U.N.-style plans - which have always and everywhere failed in the past - suddenly viable. "In rising to meet this challenge," writes Mr. Gore, "we too will find self-renewal and transcendence and a new capacity for vision to see other crises in our time that cry out for solutions: 20 million HIV/AIDS orphans in Africa alone, civil wars fought by children, genocides and famines, the rape and pillage of our oceans and forests, an extinction crisis that threatens the web of life, and tens of millions of our fellow humans dying every year from easily preventable diseases." The pretension is stunning. But apparently the only thing preventing the White House from leading such an ambitious programme is that George Bush is in thrall to Exxon Mobil. In Mr. Gore's proto-Orwellian world, to oppose him amounts to "censorship." His attempt to use the tragedy of Myanmar to promote his woolly/scary political agenda is disgraceful.
Warmer Earth May Shut Down Plate Tectonics and Prevent Earthquakes?
Excerpt: A new study of possible links between climate and geophysics on Earth and similar planets finds that prolonged heating of the atmosphere can shut down plate tectonics and cause a planet's crust to become locked in place. "The heat required goes far beyond anything we expect from human-induced climate change, but things like volcanic activity and changes in the sun's luminosity could lead to this level of heating," said lead author Adrian Lenardic, associate professor of Earth science at Rice University. "Our goal was to establish an upper limit of naturally generated climate variation beyond which the entire solid planet would respond."
http://www.physorg.com/printnews.php?newsid=129822894
Global Warming Worries Wealthy, Polluting Nations Least
Excerpt: The wealthier a country is and the more greenhouse gases it spews into the atmosphere, the less worried its citizens are about the effects of global warming. Residents of the low-lying Netherlands, ironically, are the least worried of all. (Andrea Thompson, Senior Writer, LiveScience)
JunkScience.com Responds: 'Senior writer' having senior moment: Carbon dioxide isn't 'pollution', wealthier nations have much less to fear from the environment and 'global warming' has always been a non-issue. Moreover, the wealthier a country is the less it pollutes since it can afford the niceties of non-productive control of emissions and effluent of many types -- even those of purely aesthetic influence.
EU official says car pollution targets unworkable: report
Excerpt: A senior EU official said Sunday that a European Union deadline to cut carbon dioxide emissions from new cars by 2012 was unrealistic, according to an interview with a German newspaper. Industry Commissioner Guenther Verheugen said that the proposals -- under which carmakers will be fined for failing to meet emission limits by the deadline -- were already likely to be delayed by the European Parliament. (AFP)
Sendler dies. Nobel should cry - By Andrew Bolt
Excerpt: Irena Sendler has died. She was last year beaten for the Nobel Peace Prize by Al Gore in a decision which shames the Nobel committee. Judge who best upheld the values of peace that this prize was meant to enshrine. Was it a mendacious fear monger who has made many millions by wildly exaggerating a global warming that stopped a decade ago? Or was it this woman: A Polish woman who helped save 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis has died aged 98. Irene Sendler, known to many as the "female Schindler", rescued children and babies imprisoned in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, smuggling them out in bags, or through the sewers, and hiding them with friendly families around Warsaw. Donning a Star of David armband used by the Nazis to mark out Jews, she passed incognito in the ghetto to organise the escape plans. She was eventually arrested by the Gestapo, tortured and condemned to death.
Will Life Be Worth Living in 2000 A.D.? (Written in 1961!)
Excerpt: July 22, 1961, Weekend Magazine - What sort of life will you be living 39 years from now? Scientists have looked into the future and they can tell you. It looks as if everything will be so easy that people will probably die from sheer boredom. You will be whisked around in monorail vehicles at 200 miles an hour and you will think nothing of taking a fortnight's holiday in outer space. Your house will probably have air walls, and a floating roof, adjustable to the angle of the sun. [.] You'll have wall-to-wall global TV, an indoor swimming pool, TV-telephones and room-to-room TV. Press a button and you can change the décor of a room. The status symbol of the year 2000 will be the home computer help, which will help mother tend the children, cook the meals and issue reminders of appointments. Cooking will be in solar ovens with microwave controls. Garbage will be refrigerated, and pressed into fertiliser pellets.
Climate Reality: Belief In Global Warming Slips
Excerpt: The proportion of Americans who say that the earth is getting warmer has decreased since January 2007, mostly because of a decline among Republicans, according to the latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Overall, 71 percent of Americans say there is solid evidence of higher global temperatures, compared with 77 percent at the beginning of last year. Republicans in particular are increasingly skeptical - just 49 percent of Republicans say there is evidence that the earth's average temperature has been rising, down 13 points since January 2007. Roughly half of Americans (47%) say the earth is warming because of human activity. Groups are working hard to raise awareness about global warming. The Alliance for Climate Protection will spend $300 million over the next three years on a global warming marketing campaign.
http://www.environmentalleader.com/2008/05/12/belief-in-global-warming-slips
Impact of global warming will rival great depression, Australian Professor Garnaut claims (Sadly, he may be right! So called "solutions" to global warming may bring on economic calamity!)
Excerpt: Professor Ross Garnaut, author of the Australian government's climate change review, has warned that the world will face severe consequences, if policy makers ignore the economic impact of global warming. In an article published in the Australian National University's biannual, Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, Professor Ross Garnaut likened the shocking economic impacts of unexpected climate change events could rival the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Climate change will boost farm output
Excerpt: AUSTRALIAN agricultural output will double over the next 40 years, with climate change predicted to increase, rather than hinder, the level of production. A recent spate of reports forecasting the decline of Australian agriculture because of climate change have greatly exaggerated, and even completely misreported the threat of global warming, according to senior rural industry figures. In a report published by the Australian Farm Institute, executive director Mick Keogh says agricultural output is projected to improve strongly through to 2050, with a growing global population and increased economic wealth boosting demand for Australian produce. If the sector adapts even modestly, production would increase rather than decrease as a result of climate change, the report says. Predictions of a 20 per cent drop in farm production by mid-century were cited by Kevin Rudd and Agriculture Minister Tony Burke as justification for Australia's signing of the Kyoto Protocol. In fact, Mr Keogh says, if global warming does occur, some areas such as southeast Queensland will receive more rain, and as a result will greatly benefit. Recent research has shown increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere lifts plant production by up to 30 per cent in a phenomenon known as carbon fertilisation.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23681267-11949,00.html
'Abnormally cold conditions' may have caused Heathrow crash landing
Excerpt: Heathrow crash landing 'caused by fuel freeze' - The crash landing of a British Airways Boeing 777 at Heathrow may have been caused by abnormally cold conditions over Russia, air investigators have said. Experts have homed in on fuel flow as the key issue which led to the crash landing of the Boeing 777 Flight BA38 was forced to make an emergency landing at Heathrow when it lost thrust in both engines at 600ft coming in to land on January 17. [.] On Monday, in an interim report, the Air Accident Investigations Branch (AAIB) said the drop in temperatures to -105F (-76C) may have caused the fuel in the aircraft to thicken during the flight which meant it was unable to get the additional thrust needed to land. Further tests will be carried out to establish precisely what happened.
Ready the chainsaws: White paper seeks more forest thinning operations to cut CO2 emissions
Excerpt: A white paper on Japan's forestry industry released Tuesday recommended the government accelerate forest thinning operations to help the country achieve a greenhouse gas reduction goal under the Kyoto Protocol. The fiscal 2007 white paper said thinning operations would promote forest growth, enhancing their capability to absorb carbon dioxide. The Kyoto pact requires Japan to cut emissions by an average 6 percent from 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. The white paper said 3.3 million hectares of forest needs to be thinned if the 3.8 percent portion of the targeted 6 percent emission reduction is to be achieved through trees absorbing CO2. Thinning operations and lumber processing can be integrated through consignments to forestry industry associations and lumber companies and so can be made more efficient, the white paper said. At present, much forest land belongs to small-scale owners, making forestry business costly and less efficient. The government is ready to provide subsidies to foster human resources to engage in thinning operations, said the paper, which the Cabinet has endorsed.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D90KE1NG0&show_article=1
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