Dr David Kear
Climate Depot reports on a New Zealand geoscientist who has worked at the highest levels and has just released a detailed statement about why the threat of rising sea-levels has been blown out of all proportions, and “An ‘innocent gas, CO2, has been demonized and criminalized’”.
“The widespread obsession with Global-Warming-Climate-Change, in opposition to all factual evidence, is quite incredible.”
Kear laments the ‘Astronomical Cost of Major Measures to Combat a Non-Existent Threat’.
His scientific caliber: “Dr David Kear has a background in geology and engineering, becoming the Director General of the DSIR (Department of Scientific and Industrial Research) in 1980. He is a Fellow and Past Vice-President of the Royal Society of New Zealand, and Past President of the New Zealand Geological Society [which promises to catalogue his work here]. Dr Kear has over 100 publications on New Zealand and Pacific geology, vulcanology and mineral resources.” Apparently a foraminifera shell was named after him in 1962.
He has been in this for a very long time.
h/t to Ian for the link to Steven Goddard.
Six Grave Scientific Errors and the history of an absurd idea
Kear talks about the grave scientific errors he has witnessed, and gives a history of how an absurd idea took hold. I found it very interesting. What I find myself wondering as I read this, is whether he had made any public skeptical statements before, and if not, why not.
My interest in our changing climate and sea level
During fieldwork for a PhD thesisc I found a coastal exposure of soft sandstone at
Ohuka Creek, south of Port Waikato. There were Pliocene fossils of marine shellfish
below an extensive horizontal bedding plane. Above that plane were more fossils, but
of cool-lovinga plants. A finger could show the exact location of the abrupt change to
the cooler climate at the onset of the first of the world-wide Pleistocene glaciations
[Ice Ages]. Ice formed widely at the ultimate expense of sea water, so sea level fell.
At Ohuka, sea bed had become land. Such changes are rarely seen in a continuous
sequence, so I recorded it in a 1957 scientific paperb. That resulted in my joining an
informal world-wide Group researching changing sea levels.
Most interest then was about the rate of sea level rise as the Earth warmed following
the “Little Ice Age”. That cool period, from about 1500 to 1700 AD, halted winemaking
in England and taro cropping in New Zealand. Our Group determined the
rate of sea level rise in many different World regions, from widely-available readings
of tide gauges (less variable than those of thermometers). The average for us all was
125 mm/century (“125” here). Hence it would take 8 centuries for sea level to rise
1m – no serious threat to us.
Global Warming Dawns Subsequently, I attended many international science
conferences representing DSIR, NZ or Pacific Nations. I noted the words “Global
Warming” appearing increasingly in paper titles, and sensed a growing number of
adherents. Those latter arranged a first-ever “Conference on Global Warming” in
Vienna in 1985. Unlike most such meetings, where a communiqué summarising
achievements was released on the final day, the full results of this one were delayed
for over 2 years.
When they did appear (front page, NZ Herald, two days before Christmas 1987) a
World Declaration included “Overseas scientists have estimated that the seas around
New Zealand will rise by up to 1.4 m in the next 40 years”. That article concentrated
on the massive consequent problems, caused by our carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions,
but gave no adequate supporting science. That rate of rise was equivalent to 3,500
mm/century, 28 times faster than our 125. Hence we stupidly ignored it, thinking noone
could possibly believe it. But the World did believe, and the Global Warming
mirage was born. Had 3,500 been true, sea level should have risen by almost 1 m by
today – it hasn’t, not even closely.
This showed unambiguously that those “Overseas Scientists” were not true scientists.
They ignored a most important basic rule of true science “Thou shall not publish
Science without first checking it. A check against local tide gauges would have
shown how wrong 1.4 m in 40 yrs was; they simply hadn’t bothered to check. That
was a First Grave Error.
Australian government scientists were concerned about the effects on Pacific Island
nations by any sea level rise of around 3,500 mm/century, and launched a project to
determine the correct figure at that time. They announced the result at the 1992
meeting of SOPAC – a geoscientific organisation of South Pacific nations. Their
figure was 122 mm/century, confirming the order of magnitude of our group’s 125
average value.
Fooling the World The Global Warmers persisted with their use of pseudo-science
and made further predictions. Understandably they too all proved wrong. At
conferences I began to hear, regardless of the science involved, when a speaker
wished to “rubbish” some scientific idea or research, he/she stated that conclusion
firmly, and followed it by “Just like Global Warming”. Clearly the Global Warmers
heard that too. They didn’t change their pseudo-science, but cleverly changed the
name to ‘Climate Change”. [One can disprove warming, but the words change of
climate can’t be proved wrong].
The United Nations became interested – major sea level rise could cause havoc in
low-lying areas or island groups. They established an Intergovernmental Panel for
Climate Change (IPCC) and invited nations to send delegates. Not surprisingly those
chosen were almost entirely Global Warmers, because they clearly knew something
about it. But to do them credit the Panel members acted a little more like true
scientists than those earlier.
They accepted that “1.4 m in 40 yrs” was wrong and re-evaluated it as “0.49 m by
2100”, [roundly a century ahead]. Thus they dropped 3,500 down to 500 mm/century
– to 14% of the original. The cause remained unchanged – our CO2 emissions to the
atmosphere. In no other human activity would those involved retain a belief when the
most crucial item involved was found to be 86% wrong by themselves. That was a
Second Grave Error.
The New Errors The new value of “0.49 m by 2100” became widely accepted. In
New Zealand, District Councils were instructed by Government Departments, like
Conservation and Environment, and by Regional Councils, that they must take full
account of the risk that “0.49” implied for a sea level rise by 2100. Councils had to
consider that in the same way as earthquake and volcanic risk. Yet that “0.49” value
doesn’t stand up to the most simple scientific scrutiny.
First, the rate is four times faster than the current sea level rise, as indicated by
regional, widely-available tide gauges; second, no reason was given for quadrupling
the value, and third, good science interprets “0.49” in this sense as being deliberately
different from 0.48 and 0.50. Thus that effectively claims that those who determined
that value know, for sure, where sea level will be a century ahead to ±5 mm. That
was, and is, patently absurd.
These were the Third, Fourth & Fifth Grave Errors.
Further Damning Disclosures The United Nations appointed me personally to their
UNCSTD Committee which assists small countries with their ability regarding
Science and Technology Development. Three or so of us would go to a central city to
talk and discuss their options with delegates from regional countries. On one
occasion we met in Prague, to assist countries on both sides of the “Iron Curtain”.
While there, we were invited to visit the World’s only “Institute for Global
Warming”. It was founded and funded incredibly by the USA and Soviet Union
jointly, at the height of their “Cold War”, in an attempt to fund something “for the
good of Mankind”, rather than “for armaments”. Some of its staff could have
attended the 1985 Conference, and helped create the 1987 World Declaration.
I took the opportunity of asking to see copies of the documents that had been brought
to that 1985 Meeting in neutral Austria. Several attendees brought their estimates for
sea level rise due to Global Warming. The values, converted to mm/century, ranged
from 500 minimum to 3,500 maximum. There can be no doubt that, to ensure that
their 1987 World Declaration made the greatest impact, they published the maximum
value – contravening the most sacred rule of acceptable science Thou shall not publish
items for monetary, political, or personal gain that are not clear un-biased un-inflated
truths.
The fact that “up to” was used, might be allowed in non-scientific areas, but not in
Science. If World Media had distorted the message, the Warmers should immediately
have denied what was wrongly claimed, and ensured that the proper statement got
equal publicity. Using a maximum value for greatest effect was the Sixth (and
Worst) Grave Error.
* * *
Astronomical Cost of Major Measures to Combat a Non-Existent Threat:
Politicians and the Media have listened to the proponents of Global-Warming-
Climate-Change, but don’t seem to have made any critical assessment of it all.
Perhaps they were bemused by the Global Warmers constantly naming themselves
and associates as “Scientists”. As has been shown, those people disregarded the basic
rules of true Science. Their political and media audiences innocently believed the
statements – which contained grave errors.
Innocents in politics and the media were badly mis-led. They gladly supported
projects to combat the non-existent threat of Global-Warming-Climate-Change. The
projects were unnecessary because there was no threat; extremely costly in money
time and effort; full of praise where ridicule was deserved misleading about benefits
& options; and above all diversionary away from today’s real problems.
A huge international bureaucratic industry was born – with Cabinet Ministers,
government departments, company sections, travel, conferences, treaties, carbon
credits, and carbon trading, and very much more. The challenge was often heard that
we must curb our carbon emissions or sacrifice our grandchildren’s well-being. In
truth, those children were being saddled with a gigantic debt to pay for everything
encompassed by the Warmers’ “carbon footprints”, including the salaries and
expenses of the loudest proponents.
The widespread obsession with Global-Warming-Climate-Change, in opposition to all
factual evidence, is quite incredible. It leads to unfair treatment of some citizens, and
a massive bill for all, for nothing useful. When will citizens revolt effectively against
such callous disregard for their observations and wishes, by those who are essentially
their elected employees? When will the perpetrators examine the basis of their
ideology, and realise that it’s based on unfounded unscientific beliefs, not on
confirmed, widely-available investigations by real scientists who abide by the moral
standards of their profession?
Click here to read the rest of the 7 page PDF.
I’m interested in hearing any other skeptical statements Dr David Kear may have made, and in hearing from any NZ skeptics who may have met him, or heard him speak.
Quote Kear:
“The United Nations became interested – major sea level rise could cause havoc in low-lying areas or island groups.
They established an Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) and invited nations to send delegates.”
~ ~ ~ ~
In 2007, the CSIRO report warned, life in the city of Sydney could be completely transformed by the year 2070.
[With the ice sheets at the poles and Greenland melting] the sea levels will be 100 meters (330 feet) higher than they are today.
The ominous report issued earlier this month by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was frightening enough:
The evidence of global warning was unequivocal …”
. . .
Now, handjive aint the sharpest tool in the shed, but that should be over a meter a year?
553
It’s only 28 times the first exaggeration and clearly designed to cause panic selling of waterfront property.
Remind me…what year did Gore, Suzuki, Flannery et al. start buying water front properties?
653
Hmm….Surely not market manipulation , by those whose actions didnt concur with their words?
321
What ever it is, seeing the progression of it all laid out this way as Kear has done is a terrible indictment of those involved in promulgating and profiting from it.
70
Couldn’t agree more. I actually read the ABC article and couldnt find this anywhere
What utter stupid nonsense, you wouldnt just be making it up would you?
BTW you do realise its the American ABC network dont you?
On another note;
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/05/07/us-warns-wide-impact-climate-change
00
I hope the stonefruit are reading this thread and not the warmist propaganda.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-06/fears-climate-change-could-impact-menindee-stone-fruit/5434616
00
As Kear was famous in 1962, 52 years ago, he is retired now. Was he visible before? Good question.
Basically organizations (seeking funding or influence) are backers of man made climate change where skeptics are universally individuals. Possibly they are retired or not employed by the government or in a different field. Why? Because scientists are not well paid, jobs are scarce and they have mortgages, families or are just afraid to speak out or worse, totally disinterested or just do not care. Many scientific jobs are defence too. Why would a scientist working on munitions, for a defence department, doing classified research or at a university speak out? They know they are putting their jobs at risk and will be asked to explain and told to keep quiet, or else. Organizations do not employ or promote anyone who rocks the boat. All opinions come from the boss and the boss is always looking for funding, not notoriety.
So it is no surprise that only the Bob Carters, Ian Plimers or self employed people speak out. Universities are worse, hotbeds of righteous thinking, if you remember what happened to Prof. Geoffrey Blainey as he tried to tell the truth about Australian History in particular. Goodbye job. (I have all his books). Dr. Murry Selby ex Newcastle University is another almost tragic case, daring to tell the truth while overseas and finding he did not have a job, return air fare or credit card in a university with Tim Flannery on staff.
There is now a tsunami of popular opinion against man made Global Warming since even the IPCC and Pauchari himself says there hasn’t been any for most of 20 years. Yes, it is now becoming fashionable to be a skeptic, like so many economists became so wise after the GFC. Their ability to predict the world economy is comparable to the IPCC’s ability to predict the weather.
Watch the ABC suddenly change course now that the Greens are not running their own government and the rapid growth in funding is threatened. When the money dries up, they will all be so wise, so scientific and objective and so disparaging of alarmist nonsense. Until the next big thing with cash behind it.
Whatever else is true, there will be far less respect for peer reviewed science when the definition of a peer is now a close friend involved in the same scam.
943
One of my mates is retired geologist. He spent his whole career telling his employer that there was a global shortage of whichever mineral he wanted to prospect for. Once he retired he truthfully told all and sundry that virtually all minerals are abundant and that oversupply was a far greater problems than shortage.
352
TdeF.
I don’t know where you live, but Steve Keen, professor of Economics at the University of Western Sydney, is famous around the world for being one of only a handful of economists who correctly forecast the GFC.
They closed his faculty! Left him without a job!
Don’t leap to blame the university. They closed it because of a lack of applications to study at that university. This in turn resulted from a change in government regulations. Most of the school leavers applied for enrolment to the so called “top” universities. Few if any had heard of Steve Keen or his fame. Their schools hadn’t taught them that, or its significance. They all believed that University of Sydney on their degree would get them a higher paying job.
120
Don’t fail to note the “change in government regulation”.
91
Thanks. It is good to read that an Australian economist saw what should have been so obvious at the time in the US. After all, a few trillion dollars backed by fake mortgages to people who had no assets and could not afford the repayments should have rung alarm bells everywhere, especially at Goldman Sachs. The other implicit fraud was that Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac were setup by the government in the 1930s but were not government backed, government secured. It was a massive fraud, financial advantage by deception on an enormous scale. Everyone knew but the bankers stayed silent and the economics professors across the US said nothing. So who has gone to jail? What % of bankers or economists said anything? 1%, 0.1%, almost none? Why? The parallels with man made Global Warming are all there.
230
Boy oh boy, you are 100% flat-out wrong about who committed the fraud. It was the mortgage bankers. It’s called “control fraud,” which means fraud by those in control.
For an entertaining and highly informative 45 minutes explaining how it happened, listen to this radio interview of Dr. Bill Black. Black was the federal investigator who unraveled the S&L Crisis and sent 1000 people to jail including the Democratic Speaker of the House. You’ll find out that this statement of yours is completely wrong, and you’ll understand why: “After all, a few trillion dollars backed by fake mortgages to people who had no assets and could not afford the repayments should have rung alarm bells everywhere.” The criminality should shock you.
40
In 1933 the US govt forced/confiscated (read stole) all gold to be sold to them for exchange with paper money at about $20.67US per troy ounce,they did the same with gold held for international organisations,the price then rose to $35US per troy ounce and then the govt said the people could buy their gold back,The Yanks have been experts at conning money out of the people,look at how their Federal Reserve System works!
The US wanted their $buck to be the world’s reserve currency the only problem was that it was the Brit pound that held that job,so the US had to bankrupt the UK and the best way to do that was war,considering that the UK was still paying off WW1,so the USA financed the USSR and Nazi Germany,and then get the the kudos for being the free world’s benefactor and the poor bloody poms are up to their necks in debt for the next 4 decades.
Back both sides and you will never lose.
11
I dare say your argument is a very contentious issue.
Nevertheless, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
00
Unfortunately Steve Keen also predicted that housing would halve in value and he famously sold his own at the bottom of the much smaller trough that actually occurred. It did happen in the US. The problems he uncovered were real and perhaps he got his timing wrong but it does highlight the problem of anyone’s predictions for the future.
50
Or perhaps Steve Keen’s prediction was just a few years to early?
This from Friday:
Bloomberg reports…
‘Thirty of 31 provinces and municipalities reported missing their goals, with the biggest shortfall in northeastern Heilongjiang, where the expansion of 4.1 percent compared with an 8.5 percent target for the year.’
That’s only just HALF the national growth target.
If that shortfall continues, how will it affect Oz? Or for that matter, if a depression is the manner in which the Beijing administration will seek authorisation for war with the Chinese people, and Putin pursues similar ends in his country, and the Russians and Chinese join to form an iron fist, what affect will that have on the local real estate market? Just questions. I don’t have any answers.
40
There is stil a major unravelling to come. Just as it is obvious that massive deleveraging will hit sooner or later (read defaults, haircuts, or debt restructuring … whichever term you prefer), but it is fiendishy difficult to predict exactly when. The issues that were around at the time of the GFC are much, much worse now, courtesy of ridiculous “quantitative easing” policies of successive ineffectice central bankers. Anyone watching global economies right now cannot possibly be optimistic about the next few years. When the major crash wil come is the only question. This time Australia will feel the full brunt as well. Central bankers can only paper over (read print money – by one means of another) for so long… the cost is astronomical:
http://www.investorsinsight.com/blogs/thoughts_from_the_frontline/archive/2014/04/28/the-cost-of-code-red.aspx
40
+ 100 Bulldust
10
Very few people realise that university rankings are based almost entirely on scientific research output – particularly in medicine. A university that doesn’t have a medical school is basically doomed to be low ranked no matter how good it is in other areas.
Many high ranked universities, such as Harvard, are notorious for poor undergraduate teaching, soft marking and students selecting easy courses to boost their GPA.
The truth is that virtually all Australian universities are now poor quality at the undergraduate level due to over-enrolment and low entry scores.
If you can’t get an ATAR of >80 you don’t deserve to be at university. I studied a psychology subject in acourse where the entrance ATAR was over 90. The lecturer told the class that most of us weren’t very bright and probably had IQs of only 120.
11
Maybe a register of global warmist scientist’s/alarmist that now repent their “sins”.
Say with a cut off date the 1st of July or any other date one would suggest.
Or forever be tarred as a scientific fraudster.
This repenting after you’ve pocketed your ill gotten gains for thirty or forty years is really not good enough.
These fraudsters repent after retirement and sail off into the sunset “guilt” free and a clear conscience.
Simply oblivious to the pain their fraudulent science has and is inflicting on populations around the world.
In Australia alone thanks to the likes of flannery and co we have CO/2 tax.
Numerous desalination plants around the country at a cost of billions to people.
Their ongoing maintenance will also run into billions.
Subsidys for “clean green” electricity affects every body.
Yes these barstards should repent NOW or forever shut their collective mouths.
62
And yet it’s now firmly established in popular culture as truth. I get several solicitations a week for solar panels and they’re being sold not only as a way to reduce my electricity bill but as a way to reduce dangerous CO2 emissions.
The fraud now has a life of its own.
140
I can just hear the response from the warmists now: “He’s a geologist; not a ‘climate’ scientist”, or “Where are his peer-reviewed articles in ‘climate’ science journals?” A fanatical warmist whom I encountered at a luncheon last December denigrated and dismissed Garth Paltridge (whom he claimed to have worked under), Bill Kininmonth, Bob Carter etc. as “not being “climate” scientists. Hence their testimony was discounted completely. As for the Heartland Institute, he was hard put to it to find words denigrating and venomous enough.
I have become sick and tired of the ad hominem attacks on highly credentialed scientific minds – nauseated indeed, that I despair of true science ever recovering from this, the greatest scam in the whole history of science. But such is the pervasive influence of the Left and its “long march through the institutions”.
832
Good point.
Remember, geologists are real scientists, while those that call themselves climate scientists are all too often no more than grand manipulators of data, purveyors of unfounded scary tales of a mythical future and politically motivated green activists.
In other words, trying to find an ethical climate scientist is all too often like searching for rocking horse poo. There are obviously a few totally ethical climate scientists, but they sadly represent a small minority.
411
I can assure you few geos, who are as you say real scientists, believe in the Theory of AGW and detest the demonization of one of planet Earth’s precious compounds, CO2. The “Warmist Zeolists” day in the Sun, what a nice pun, is inexorably drawing to a close.
181
Make that zealots – I must have being thinking of that mineral Zeolite – which just for the record is a very good absorbent – there is another pun there I think – I am having one of those days.
91
I believe most geos see AGW as being real, but inconsequential and almost certainly beneficial. Government geologists are an obvious exception, as there are obvious employment consequences for not following the official party line.
Through agriculture, irrigation, city building and burning fossil fuels, man must have had some impact on climate, but there is absolutely no way we can accurately measure it. The more unscrupulous and disingenenuous alarmists claim they can measure this impact, but only a fraud or fool would claim he, or she, can measure the obviously unmeasurable.
CAGW, or Catastrophic Anthropegic Global Warming, is the grand myth of the alarmists. Nowhere in the geological record of the last few million years is there any evidence of global temperature reacting to changes in carbon dioxide levels, in fact the exact opposite is true.
In nature, carbon dioxide levels follow changes in temperature. And what changes global temperature? Answer: Variations in our Sun’s output, variations in the Earth’s orbit and tilt, and of course………………………………..
I believe most sceptics differentiate between the myth of CAGW and inconsequential, but real, AGW.
250
“inconsequential, but real, AGW.”
Maybe Anthropogenic LOCAL warming, which in turn affects the calculated global average surface temperature a little bit and the calculated average lower troposphere temperature to a somewhat lesser degree….
… but since the gravity based temperature gradient controls the Earth’s temperature, I really doubt we have had any affect on the overall global temperature at all.
71
inconsequential?………theoretical more like.
31
Peter,
Don’t take this personally but as a skeptic I don’t acknowledge any AGW at all. No one I can find has shown actual evidence that atmospheric CO2 can do what it’s being blamed for. It’s a completely unproven theory that so far hasn’t a leg to stand on. And the body of evidence against the theory has become quite large even though much of it is circumstantial. But after so much circumstantial evidence becomes known, it’s a crushing weight saying, “Not true,” to the theory.
111
Roy Hogue, so true.
$Billions, if not $Trillions, of our monies are acquired by this subterfuge based on faith in A THEORY OF CO2 EFFECTS ON CLIMATE.
It is irrational.
40
“but real AGW”. Oh, really? Prove it. Climate is the overall state and pattern of change of state of the weather in a large region. Show your work.
00
As a non “professional”, I have observed over time that professionals who feel insecure in their position protect their patch by never dipping a toe into somebody else’s patch. Just like the demarcation issues we saw with unions, where one union had the right to remove screws, and a different union the right to remove the cover the screws held on, requiring two workers to do a small job.
They get away with it citing “specialisation”. But the situation eventually arises that in this fight over turf nobody knows how the “specialities” fit together.
61
Geologists might want to explain this.
volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/climate.php
This is based on about 70 volcanoes on land erupting each year and putting out 2-3 million tons of CO2.
I suspect that the African Rift Valley volcanoes put out something quite a lot more than this estimate all by themselves, if you count what vents out when they are not erupting.
50
Vic G Gallus
Also of interest along the same lines
“…..that massive heat sources on the ocean floor have been entirely omitted from the warmists’ calculations.”
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2014/05/ocean-vents-faulty-models/
70
Nice. I was about to say that it restored my respect for geologists but the author was a physicist!
00
Forgive the long quote from the paper linked by redress but it’s necessary for context.
It’s most refreshing to see a statement like this in the last paragraph regarding the randomness of volcanic activity and its potential long term effect on climate.
Another indictment of the climate change world. Modeling can’t account for random behavior.
If I remember what I have read about ocean currents, no mention was ever made about there being any way they could change their circulation but the author presents strong arguments that they can and have done exactly that. There was heavy emphasis on the fact that they heavily influence climate on land. And this is easily borne out in recent history by the El Niño/La Niña caused differences in temperature and precipitation.
Have we at last begun to realize things are more complex than the warmists assume? I hope so.
This is one of the best papers I’ve read for ease of understanding too — straight forward and well organized with no nonsense.
50
Hi Vic. I read the link in your post and it makes it look like the anthropogenic emission of CO2 is staggeringly huge when compared with volcanoes. But the statistic is not given in any sort of context about the other (non volcanic) sources of CO2.
You don’t have to go as far as your nearest volcano to find vast amounts of natural emissions of carbon dioxide. You can start with your local forest or natural tree belt.
While many people choose to focus on the role of trees and other plants (including grasslands)giving off oxygen in the photosynthesis process, few people understand that, in the whole life cycle of a tree or plant, it gives off an equal amount of carbon dioxide as it ever ‘absorbed’ in the photosynthesis process.
When the plant is in its growth phase, it gives off lots of oxygen as it conducts photosynthesis. When the tree or plant enters its death and decomposition phase, the balance changes. As it oxidises – or is eaten by bacteria, insects, birds, animals or, indeed, aquatic life forms with regard to aquatic plants – it gives off more carbon dioxide than it does oxygen. In other words, when the plant ‘decomposes’ it draws down oxygen from the atmosphere and replaces it with carbon dioxide.
In order to give the statistics quoted in your link any context, one has to factor in the sources of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere from the plant and animal kingdom. Once this is done, it starts to put the whole scare about anthropogenic sources of carbon dioxide into some sort of context.
Once the whole system of the atmospheric carbon cycle is taken into account, the contribution of the anthropogenic sources is miniscule when compared with the whole. Whether or not the volcanoes contribute a little bit more on occasions, or a little bit less on others, is immaterial when compared with the carbon dioxide coming from living processes in forests, wilderness areas and other natural ecosystems.
61
I was pointing out that their calculations from volcanic activity is dodgy. There are a few lakes in the rift valley with a lot of CO2 dissolved in them. Lake Kivu has about 2% of the annual human production dissolved in it and ready to bubble out like a tapped beer glass. This is because the nearby volcanic activity heats up carbonate minerals in the ground.
Even Australia gets its industrial CO2 from a well and its volcanic activity has been dormant for a long time.
20
Interesting points you make, David, about the atmospheric distribution of CO2. Murry Salby made the same point in his Hamburg lecture, supported by satellite data only recently available. He stated that the highest concentrations occur, not over regions of highest human populations or industrial activity, but Equatorial Africa, the Amazon valley and South Asia.
I have not heard of any rationalisation of these new facts by our warming friends!
20
“In other words, trying to find an ethical climate scientist is all too often like searching for rocking horse poo.”
Diogenes would be proud.
10
I assume the “must be a real climate scientist” doesn’t apply to
a) anyone on the warmist side, like mammalologists, economists, psychologists or activists studying Arts degrees
b) Sarah Sea-Patrol, whose quantitative and economic training consisted of being a bank teller
c) Lindzen, who actually IS a climate scientist but has been “debunked” and the hundreds of similar scientists
Likewise, if we must listen to scientists about science, that doesn’t mean we should listen to public policy experts like Monckton about public policy responses.
20
Regarding ‘debunking’ – I spent many years in science and technology, and never saw this (deliberately provocative) term in use until I began to read about the CO2 story.
‘Debunking’ is from what I’ve seen used by doom-mongering activists only.
10
‘Debunking’ should only be used when proving a widely held belief is wrong or when the supposedly settled science is wrong. It is plain rude to use it when pointing out a fault with a postulate or hypothesis.
20
I didn’t know she had been a bank teller!!!
Up until now, I have held bank tellers in high regard.
20
She is headed, however, for a stellar career as a border protection consultant, as her Senate Committee ripostes attest!
00
It is good more scientists now have the courage to speak out against the global warming scare mongers. But as you say, why didn’t they do so before?
Is this simply more evidence which supports claims that for many scientists, speaking out against the ‘global warming orthodoxy’ was career threatening? It seems that many of the scientists who have questioned the IPCC are older scientists either secure in their positions, or at the end of their careers. This should be considered a real scandal within the scientific community. Science is all about questioning and testing hypotheses.
The fact that climate models have failed along with most of the climate predictions made in the IPCC reports, such as accelerating sea levels rises, accelerating temperature rises, accelerating sea ice melting, and on and on, has given more scientists the courage to question the establishment. But that is not the way science should work.
We have already spent decades wasting time and money on the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming theory simply because proper scientific debate was able to be shut down.
There is a whole generation of University graduates who haven’t been taught the scientific method or the right, indeed the duty of scientists to be skeptical. It is a travesty!
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A scientist is a skeptic by definition. This is always been taught. A scientist is someone who needs to be convinced by reason and evidence, needs to see that the theory fits all the data, past and then correctly predicts the future, someone who can see the logic of the model and if possible, can derive the model from simple established and proven principles. This is the legacy of Rene Descartes and the whole Rationalist movement he founded. Mathematics, logic, sound foundations and proof at every step leading to a conclusion based on established principles.
This is what has always been taught, but it can be corrupted by the need, the essential need to earn a living, to do what you are told, to conform and to survive. That is understandable. However then you get the heads of departments, the leaders, the politicians, the flexible people at the top of honored societies, the ones who will sacrifice position for bucket loads of money and fame, the ones who have abandoned their science. When this is all over, they need to be brought to account. The Royal Society, the Physics associations who ignored their members, the CSIRO, the BOM, the heads of Science who traded their beliefs for bucket loads of cash and secure important jobs. The “Climate Commissioners”. The traitors to real science who disgraced science for cash. They will retire now, hopefully. May they be remembered for the infamy of their tenure.
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“There is no harm in doubt and skepticism, for it is through these that new discoveries are made.”
Richard Feynman
20
It’s fair enough that scientists may be scared of speaking out. But something needs to be done about the ones
who continue to participate in the global warming scam. Here are a few thousand names of them. Their time will come.
http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/hall_of_shame.htm
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Nice one, with ending on a great quote:-
“So how could so many smart people have got it so wrong? A few got it wrong; the rest went along. Self interest, not science, ensured the status quo.” – C. J. Ransom.
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Blimey Jaymez. Aren’t students trouble enough to keep in line without teaching them to be sceptical ? Whose good is their state sponsored education for anyway ?
21
Maybe they’re doing it now because the fraud has finally reached critical mass?
41
“When will citizens revolt effectively against such callous disregard for their observations and wishes, by those who are essentially their elected employees? When will the perpetrators examine the basis of their ideology, and realise that it’s based on unfounded unscientific beliefs, not on confirmed, widely-available investigations by real scientists who abide by the moral standards of their profession?” Not just a moral question, but also a professional and ethical question.
Perhaps a clue lies in the principle that lazy thinking tends to beget lazy behaviour. Most people are conditioned and indoctrinated from childhood to accept what they are told. Think religion, schooling, parenting, peer pressure, cultural adherence, choice of media, etc. Compliance is usually rewarded, questioning and objection usually brings disincentive, derision and/or punishment in some form or other. Standing up to all of that takes courage mixed with a blend of (sometimes) fierce independence and a willingness to stand up for what one knows, innately or in reality, is right, or it’s a moral imperative?
Manipulation of the mind is an industry that’s all pervasive. Charlatans create new psycho “disorders” every year without any scientific rationale or substantive proof yet the local GP will have the answer; “your John or Jill has developed a shortage of medication that’s appeared on my list as treatment of the condition”. How often have you heard, “I saw it on the ABC”; I read in the Age”; the GP or psycho said so, so it must be true”? Most people are conditioned to be sheep, to follow in the dust of who is in front. And there are powerful incentives to adhere to and become a true believer in a chosen belief system when one’s salary, stipend and/or “research” grant brings favourable notoriety, not to say payment for the appropriate lifestyle.
Sceptics are, I suggest, by definition more principled in their profession, which isn’t restricted to science, and are prepared to take more calculated risks against the contemporary flow of opinion or consensus. That is often the only way science, technology and a civil society advances, against the tide of popular opinion or doctrine of the time. The breakthroughs are often as not brought to light in this manner. Persistence in the face of adversity is perhaps another characteristic.
It would be interesting to look closely at the features and characteristics of individuals who stand against the tide of popularism to bring the truth to the light for others to also see. This can entail not inconsiderable risk, personally, professionally and financially. It’s those game changers in history who deserve the accolades and support, with buckets of brickbats for the charlatans. Think of Jo, Anthony Watts, Steve McIntyre, Ian Plimer, Bob Carter, Roy Spencer, et al as a small number of examples in the climate science debate, countering the adversarial and unscientific rantings of warmists with facts, logic and civility. So a good question why Dr Kear is speaking out now. Perhaps because it wasn’t safe enough for him to do so before?
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A very small matter: Correct spelling of one of the links is “foraminifer” (plural: foraminifera).
—
Thanks! Will fix – J
30
It is unproductive to speculate why anyone did not speak up earlier.
There are many reasons, including ‘Many did’. Like Warwick Hughes.
There were some who looked at incredible claims and said ‘This is not Science. I do not wish to engage. It will go away because it carries the seeds of its own destruction.’
There are many who accepted the authority of statements by their learned Societies, especially the AAS – or earlier in time, the absence of statements from learned Societies warning of the poor standards of ‘climate science.’
This learned Society failure was one of the biggest influences. To be fair, climate science was a newish field that did not fall into a cnvenient slot of responsibility. Maybe the source of the failure was the unwillingness of well-meaning, sincere, senior scientists to emerge from ivory towers and believe the scale of deception by the United Nations, now one of the most dangerous of all global organisations w r t climate work.
Whatever the reasons, nearly all learned Societies are too timid to admit a bad mistake. Change is under way but it will not be completed by the present generation of Societies whose leaders have blood on the hands.
One has to keep looking ahead and to continue to provide solid evidence to waverers as to which ‘science’ is wrong and why. In previous debacles similar to the global warming one, the game was over once significant numbers of senior players detatched themselves from the Establishment line.
Thank you, Dr Kear, for your courage in speaking out – even if there are far more convincing arguments about sea level change than you have expressed here.
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While this may seem off topic, it is related to this topic, where Dr. Kear mentions the astronomical cost of what is being done to combat this alleged problem.
Lot of money, eh!
A new status report has been released on Renewable Power for 2012, the latest 2013 version of this yearly report.
That was what was spent across the whole World in total during 2012 on NEW Renewable Power for that year, spread across Hydro, Solar PV, CSP, Wind and BioPower (wood chips, bagasse et al)
Now, as I suspected, the only concentration is on Nameplate, and nary the slightest mention of actual power delivered for consumption.
It totalled out at 115GW of new Nameplate Power, and just the big 5, Hydro 30GW, PV 29GW, CSP 0.9GW, (oh, yeah, the coming thing they say) BioPower 10GW, and Wind 45GW.
Now, because there’s no mention of actual power generated for actual consumption, I use the current standard averages, and worked it all out.
All up, NEW power total generation comes in at 35GW so that’s a combined average CF of 30.43%. (Thank you for that Hydro)
So, now we have a total NEW power of 35GW Nameplate and it only cost $244 Billion.
Now, as to actual impact into the total electricity production, Renewable power now contributes 21%, which is huge eh! Well, thank heavens for Hydro which is 16%, and all the rest of them add up to 5%, and again, be very very careful what you read into this, because again, they only use Nameplate.
Please, never try and tell me that Renewable power is cheap and getting cheaper.
That’s the equivalent of 17 new large scale coal fired power plants, and they don’t cost $14.3 Billion each, perhaps a third of that, as shown with the new brown coal USC plant in Germany.
Tony.
SOURCE – Renewables 2013 Global Status Report. (pdf document of 178 pages) Good luck with that. I’m up to the mid 40’s so far. Remember how I’ve mentioned that the Chines lead the way now in large generators, now up to 1150MW single generators for coal fired plants and close to a 1300MW single generator. Well, the Chines last year developed a new Francis Turbine (for Hydro Power) which can drive a single 812MW generator, the largest here in Australia is 250MW.
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Here is one for you, Tony:
Was it Fraud? experts raise serious questions after low first-year energy production at Ocotillo Wind Project
The project produced only about half of the energy that Pattern claimed it would produce—far below levels deemed viable for a wind project, a second expert confirms.
“It was heartbreaking to see this project desecrate such a historically and culturally significant landscape, and it’s even worse when you find out that it was built on false claims by the developer, and with the assistance of the BLM. “– Anthony Pico, Chairman, Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians”
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The question is.. who is going to clean up the mess from the bloody awful wind turbines..
Ugly useless monstrosities. Huge lumps of concrete in the ground.
You can absolutely BET the developers have scarpered with their pockets full.. they are “greens” after all. !!
So more taxpayer burden from the so-called green agenda.
They truly are FILTH !!
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It really pi**e* me off the way they have been give carte blanch to destroy the landscape, with zero repercussion for avian slaughter or any clean up obligations.
The green agenda NEVER was anything to do with the environment.
Those who profited should be hunted down and forced to clean up .. and remove their debris….
… even (or especially) if it leaves them destitute.
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Holland used to have thousand of windmills. They were throughout the Meditteranean too and they were beautiful. There were also the watermills and canals, arguable more blots on the landscape. However both are now rare and treasured. If you go to Holland or even Paris, the Moulin Rouge (Red Windmill) on Montmatre you will get your photograph with one.
What I saw from the train in Holland, the new forests of tall, white and elegant windmills in Holland now have real beauty and elegance and are as tall as the Syndey Harbour bridge. However like the original windmills, they will decay and be removed too, a symbol of a bygone age, even a silly and very wasteful age. The only regret really is that the thousands of billions spent on sun, wind and water power generation, the Shaman religious icons, was not spent on modern technologies for permanent power safe power. That is because, with the one exception of research Chemist and Barrister Margaret Thatcher, politicians are never scientists or engineers. Even Margaret Thatcher had it wrong, but she used Global Warming and the University of East Anglia and the Green cause to fight the power of Arthur Scargill and his rampant coal miners who routinely held the country to ransom. Only at the end of her life did she regret the monster she had unleashed on the whole world.
60
Virtually all (8/9) of the most senior politicians in China are engineers or scientists.
The Prime Minister and President of Singapore are both mathematics graduates.
Boris Yeltsin was an engineer.
The President of India is a world class physicist.
US President Herbert Hoover was one of the top mining engineers in the world.
Angela Merkel has a PhD in chemistry.
Margaret Thatcher was never a research scientist. Her only scientific job was less than a year spent working as a laboratory technician in an ice cream factory.
Thatcher had almost no interest in science. She only studied chemistry because she was desperate to go to Oxford and reading chemistry was her only option. Her real interest was always politics. She retrained as a lawyer at the first opportunity after graduation.
10
Best to omit Boris from that collection. He remained an engineering student till the day he died.
10
Really, apart from China, that is a very short list. Remember also in China that a political education is an essential part of any tertiary qualification. You must be a good communist first and this permeates Chinese business. Your friends from University are your group for life.
However I cannot agree with the statements about Margaret Thatcher. From what I have read, her science degree at Oxford was 4 years, not three. In Australia we call that a BSc(Hons) with a research year. In her fourth year she specialized in X ray crystallography. Her tutor was Dorothy Hodgkin, a pioneer of X-ray crystallography who won a Nobel Prize in 1964. The information I can find is that she then worked at BX plastics as a researcher, not in ice cream. Frankly, the jobs for an industrial chemist sound very prosaic, paint, plastics, explosives, even ice cream. In fact most jobs do. Lawyers work on conveyancing, divorce, patents, contracts. In the 1950’s she trained as a lawyer, specializing in taxation, a very unusual combination. However she said she was very disappointed at being hailed only as the first woman prime minister of Britain rather than the first scientist prime minister. Unlike our Julia, she was an iron lady, tougher than the men. She would have loved blue ties.
21
Actually my wife has the same B.Sc(Hons) in Chemistry from the 1970s. It was very rare for a woman even in the 1970s and a huge challenge. Perhaps 2% of candidates and even less in Physics and engineering. Women were more numerous in the biological sciences and even medicine was rare. Then getting employment in Industrial Chemistry in the 1970’s for a woman was near impossible. Interviewers often told my wife the company simply did not have female toilets, so she requalified like Margaret Thatcher and went into science teaching. What it was like in the early 1950’s I cannot say, but it would not have been easy. Yes, Miss Margaret Roberts wanted to get into Oxford. So? In Science, who doesn’t? I can hardly accept it was a soft option. Oxford is still the premier university for science in the UK and places are very difficult to get. To turn around, get a law degree, get into politics and reach Prime Minister is an amazing career.
40
So are the renewable energy pushers and their media enablers at Fairfax, utterly offensive, all of them.
72
Did the company then try to get its property tax reduced? Duke Energy has done that at least twice in Wyoming and in a couple of other states. They say the property is not as valuable as originally calculated because the wind was not as reliable as the company believed. This has net them some reductions in taxes (which is one of the “bribes” used to get the turbines in–we’ll be so good for your schools, etc, and then back out and get the taxes reduced and services lose out).
50
Yep! Just like the lottery. Right?
20
This has all too often been the result of government subsidies or tax breaks being available. It’s easy money and those who could stop it are too often either ignorant of the true value of the project or complicit in it. Sometimes both. And the government shrugs. After all, it’s someone else’s money.
30
You’re always on topic, Tony. Always.
20
Make no mistake – Kear is 100% correct – the demonization of one of Earth’s treasures – C02 – must stop now and those still proclaiming it as the main player in causing Global Warming be ridiculed – the sooner the better – in the near future, as certain as the Sun rises in the east, so will these “Warmist Zealots” be demonized themselves as their ludicrous AGW propaganda is revealed by the MSM to be total and utter nonsense.
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‘An, ‘innocent gas, CO2, has been demonized and criminalized’, I think not!
Co2, I find you guilty as charged!
How can small amounts of co2, influence global warming?
‘Dr Karl who joins us from the ABC studios in Sydney…[yes co2 is causing the global warming thing]…Anthony from Leeds…{what percentage is global warming a natural cycle or helped by human…it’s my belief that it’s just a percentage man made and a percentage natural cycle}…[while we humans have been on this planet…the normal state of the climate is an ice age…100,000 years of ice age and then 20,000 years of none ice age…the water to make this ice come out of the oceans…this is the normal state of affairs, you can walk from the British Isles to Europe…the co2 levels are the highest in the last 650,000 years. They are rising faster than any time in the last 3 million years…but we are causing an extra…the co2 levels…we have taken the levels from 280ppm to 380ppm (not current levels) so that is a difference of 100ppm…or 1 part per 10,000, but people have said how come, can 1 in 10,000 have any effect what so ever. But if we take a moderately large male they weigh 100Kg which is 100,000 grams, so 1 part per 10,000 of that is 10grams… if you were to give that person…10 grams of morphine they would be dead…so you can see the argument that’s given, the change in co2 level is only 1 in 10,000, so minuscule is a ridiculous argument… it is very easy to…with small forces’
So listen for yourself :-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-3-Lf4-49M
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A stupid comparison B.A.
If you want to make such comparisons, you’d me more correct to show the weight of the blood as a ratio to morphine not the entire mass of the human. Further explain how CO2 works on the nervous system of the atmosphere. It is a nice scary propaganda method though isn’t it?
I am happy that they bother to mention the 20,000 year interglacial period. How many years has the present one lasted?
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‘A stupid comparison B.A.’, I think not! It just goes to explain how small virtually insignificant items can create havoc in large systems. For instance, a bag of sugar, worth next to nothing, can disable a super car worth 100,000s, if placed in the right place, namely the fuel tank! Just as co2 has an effect on the climate, because it has the correct properties to do so, regardless of its actual volume.
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You just don’t get it BA – the bag of sugar exists, it’s at the factory, but all the evidence suggests that it was never put in the fuel tank. They tested the fuel, they asked the staff, they can run the car. The data is there, anyone can see that if they open the tea-room cupboard, there’s a bag of sugar. Their models predicted the car would stop working. It didn’t.
Oh, and then there is the snopes warning that the whole sugar thing is a myth. Sugar doesn’t dissolve in gasoline. It won’t do much to your car.
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Why do the alarmist bed-wetters always use lame brain analogies to avoid tackling scientific questions head on?
I think there needs to be a new type of logical fallacy
“Obfuscation by analogy”.
40
“Why do the alarmist bed-wetters always use lame brain analogies to avoid tackling scientific questions head on?”
You answered your own question.
30
‘ always use lame brain analogies to avoid tackling scientific questions head on?’ of course you jest! It is you doubters that choose to ignore valid scientific FACTS!
03
‘ but all the evidence suggests that it was never put in the fuel tank’, oh yes it was!In WWII at Dunkirk sugar was put in all sorts of fuel tanks to disable vehicles! Proving it doesn’t take much to upset a finely balanced system, just as the climate has been up to now!
‘Their models predicted the car would stop working’, oh yes they would, after the sugar worked through the fuel system after a period of time, just like co2 working through the climate.
010
Oh really? And whose vehicles where those then?
My father was at Dunkirk; and he was a driver in the BEF*. The British troops had no food, and no water, and precious little ammunition. They certainly did not have bags of sugar lying around to put in fuel tanks. Any bags of sugar that might have been in the trucks, would have been jettisoned to get more soldiers on board, for the head-long retreat.
Also, they were trapped on an open beach, with very little cover. The last thing any sane person would be interested in, was standing by an open fuel tank, whilst being strafed and bombed.
You have read too many boys-own war comics.
*He was later a driver in the Long Range Desert Group, but that is a different story.
60
‘a driver in the BEF*’ ah yes the British Expedition Farce, as it was known!
‘They certainly did not have bags of sugar lying around to put in fuel tanks.’ may I suggest that the crew would certainly have sugar for their brew ups! Anyhow that does not stop sugar been a good effective method for knocking and engine out of action! Who would have thought it? It’s like thinking co2 would lead to climate change, Hahahahaha…………..!
02
You presented “evidence”, by way of an example, and when that was debunked by rational explanation backed by provable fact, you try to make light of it by implying that it was a joke all along.
Loser!
00
The idea of putting sugar in a gas tank may have been out there, pushed by the OSS (now the CIA), but remember, these are the same guys using remote viewing. Not sure they’re a reliable source of information. (Unless you believe in remote viewing, of course) However, Snopes, Car Talk, Mythbusters and even environmental monkeywrenching sites all say sugar does not work except to clog a fuel filter (dirty gas will do that), maybe clog injectors or maybe do nothing.
As Rereke says, sugar was rationed and food was scarce. Why would you put sugar in a gas tank when sand/dirt was free and available everywhere and is more efficient at stopping the vehicle, if only temporarily? Assuming you didn’t get shot standing by an open fuel tank.
40
‘However, Snopes, Car Talk, Mythbusters and even environmental monkeywrenching sites all say sugar does not work except to clog a fuel filter’, ha so it does the job! Well done you for proving a small insignificant item, er co2 perhaps, can disrupted a complex system!
[You are resorting to logical fallacies, and linguistic tricks, in an attempt to “prove” your point, and “win” the argument. That is way below the standard of rational debate expected from contributers at this site. If you cannot present a reasoned argument, based on evidence and logic, then it would be better for you to not comment at all. My patience is wearing very thin -Fly]
03
It says it MIGHT. Plus, you have not shown that the earth in any way resembles a CLOSED system like a fuel system in a car. In fact, virtually every example of a small amount of a substance causing damage is in a CLOSED system. So, unless there really is a glass greenhouse all around the earth and the CO2 has no way off the planet and there’s nothing coming into the system (oh, wait, dead planet–no sunlight……) then your example is completely bogus. .04% in an open system? Besides, everyone knows water vapor is a more potent greenhouse gas, so that would mean the CO2 cannot actually outperform the water vapor or CO2 would be the strongest. Yes, all those superlatives are confusing……Try to keep up.
Wait! You used an example of a physical interruption! But isn’t CO2 due to excited electrons? Not the same mechanism, open system. I think I have proved your understanding of chemistry, radiation and physical interruptions is pretty meager.
00
Linquistic tricks is generally all warmest trolls have to resort to. Guess I just figured that’s where Bat4 would go. He’s annoying, but completely predictable.
00
Sheri,
He is a prototype for the brainwashed masses that are being churned out of second rate universities throughout the Western world. Truth and rational thought are seen as being impediments to “the message”, and are therefore to be discouraged.
Education now seems to be via rote and YouTube.
I suggest you gird your loins for much more of the same.
00
Check on reality v fantasy
Now check just plain reality
If you locate ‘the problem’, let us know. Take it easy on the sugar in the meantime.
53
OMG! you really do type some baseless NONSENSE !!!!!
WTF has sugar in a petrol tank got to do with one of the PRIMARY BUILDING BLOCKS OF ALL LIFE ON EARTH.
Your analogies are pure and absolute moronic drivel !
93
You again, whackbladder? Surely by now you must realise that you’re persistent misinformed alarmist bleatings are nothing but the irritating whine of a moronic mosquito to pretty much everyone on this blog? No? Guess that illustrates perfectly your skillset. Please go away. You’re boring.
72
Not nice, Neville. While you have every right to be annoyed by someone, please raise yourself above the level where all you can do is shout abuse. Analyse, dissect and destroy his arguments without showing yourself up in your attempts to belittle him.
20
BA–still believing that sugar in the gas tank myth? In 1994 Berkely U. proved sugar does not dissolve in a gas over about a teaspoon’s worth. Then the fuel filters stop most of that. So if by “disable”, you mean the car won’t move for a bit until the filters are changed, and maybe the injectors, okay. However, since CO2 is 400 ppm in the atmosphere, you can actually only put about a molecule of sugar in the tank for an accurate comparison. To get to the bag of sugar, we’d have to have to the CO2 content somewhere near that of Venus, it would seem. Invalid comparison all the way around.
60
Nice joke BA, but as we all know –
Man-made CO2 effects on the climate is an unproven THEORY.
Or maybe YOU have proof because nobody else has!
50
Ba4th says:
How could I have said it better?
00
Not sure what you are trying to say, BA4, but I can be fairly confident that he from whom you take your name will cringe at your crassness with words; you have managed to verbally get yourself into the stickiest situation since Sticky the stick insect got stuck on a sticky bun.
As the comparison you (and so many others before you – find something original!) are trying to make is utterly invalid. The reaction of morphine (or strychnine or so many other chemicals others have suggested) is a chemical reaction, the effect of CO2 is physical; the two cannot be equated. Though, perhaps you believe that CO2 is as poisonous as CO; I mean, all that’s missing is a single oxygen atom, isn’t it?
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BA4… Your IGNORANCE knows no bounds, each post of yours is more ignorant than the previous one.
Your intelligence is going backwards. From your starting point.. how is that even possible ?!
The “normal” state of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is far higher. It just all got buried.
The 280ppm level is the absolute base level for sustained life on Earth.
At level it is dangerously low.
All life on Earth functions better when levela are much higher, because CO2 is one of the major building blocks of all life on Earth.
(morphine is not a necessity for life, just in case you didn’t know that)
Humans are restoring the Earth to a more sustainable CO2 balance..
So long as China , India, Germany etc keep using coal and thus pushing up the CO2 level, the world has a chance for progress and abundance.
Probably around 700-1000 ppm CO2 should be the final aim once the idiotic and ignorant hoax of CO2 warming is removed from non-science agenda driven farce of CAGW.
If we ever let it fall back to 280ppm or lower, life on Earth is in deep trouble.
172
I think you will find the danger point for life on land is around 150ppm CO2, during the last ice age (circa 40,000 years ago) the level briefly fell to 180ppm.
Anyhow, ask your nearest tree and see at what level it prefers its CO2: 40,000 years ago, today’s or the projections for 2100? If anyone gets an answer other than 2100, please tell me.
141
Yes 150ppm is where plants DIE,
I chose my wording carefully.. I said “sustained life”..
I did not mean living on starvation rations.
131
Say Griss, just wondering if anyone would be willing to calculate what sort of human input it would take just to double current CO2 from 400ppm to 800ppm in say about 100 years?
60
I think someone did calculate that if we kept going at the good rate we are currently going, we might reach 600+ ppm around that time.
I suspect that society and politicians will wake up to the reality that more CO2 is GOOD sometime before that and all of the stupid, ignorant restrictions on coal burning will be lifted.
Current third world countries will find they have very good natural resources in that area and will lift themselves out of the poverty a lot of their non-ruling class population now suffers.
Prosperity awaits them once the idiocy of the CAGW fraud is over.
So maybe we will reach an OPTIMUM of around 1000 ppm by around 2100.
Sure thing is.. I won’t be around to enjoy the abundance. 🙁
82
“I think someone did calculate that if we kept going at the good rate we are currently going, we might reach 600+ ppm around that time.”
From what I understand calculations have been made based on current rates of increase in atmospheric CO2. Please note that the CO2 increase is NOT all due to man-made causes but the vast majority is due to natural causes.
61
Yep, any predicted value will be on pretty tenuous ground.
Would be good for the Earth to have it up around 700+ ppm though.
41
BAD, you really must be joking.
All life on this planet is carbon based and produces carbon dioxide as a by-product of the act of living.
Regardless of whether you believe in creation or evolution common sense would indicate that CO2 is *doubleplusgood.
*Far BAD, a descriptive you may understand.
112
Maybe all those life-forms BA4 knows are morphine based (or a derivative thereof).
BA4 himself must surely be on some sort of hallucinogen to constantly come up with utterly and completely brain-dead crap that he does.
92
Your quoting Dr Karl?
You forgot to put /sarc
81
As the usual climate alarmist CO2 hating catastrophist cult follower above seems to be making his usual noisy alarmist claims which like all such cultist beliefs have no evidence for or any basis in actual facts, I have been digging around in some human health sites for the effects of reduced and low CO2 concentrations on humans.
Thjs is actually quite a hard bit of information to find as the web is absolutely flooded with a whole grossly alarmist trainload of alarmist, catastrophist inspired sites all spouting on about all the terrible things that will happen to everybody and everything due to that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere.
So to quote a section from the Medical Health Tests site and this section deals with the opposite effect on human health to the heading
Symptoms & Treatment of High Carbon Dioxide Level in Blood
[quoted ]
High Carbon Dioxide Level in Blood
All living beings need air to breath. Air is a mixture of gases like carbon dioxide (CO2), oxygen (O2), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen (N2), hydrogen (H2), and noble gases. All mammals, including human, beings need oxygen to respire and exhale a mixture of carbon dioxide and a small amount of oxygen through their lungs. The major portion of carbon dioxide is present in the body either as bicarbonates (HCO3) or carbonic acid (H2CO3). Moreover, carbon dioxide is also present in a dissolved state in body.
The exchange of gases takes place at the alveoli level, which is an integral part of lungs. It’s a passive phenomenon in which diffusion takes place. The balance between the levels of these two gases, viz. carbon dioxide and oxygen, is required for a healthy body. Any pathological condition may arise if the balance between the gases level gets disturbed inside the body.
If the carbon dioxide level arises in body, the state is known as hypercapnia. Similarly, if the level of oxygen reduces in the blood, it is known as hypoxia. All respiratory disorders include the imbalance in blood CO2 and O2 levels. A mild imbalance does not require intensive care but severe cases require medical attention on the spot.
A low level of carbon dioxide in the blood could be very harmful to the body. This condition is brought on by hyperventilation which is a situation where the individual breathes faster than he or she needs to. This may happen as a result of panic attacks or if the individual has consumed some drug that over stimulates the respiratory system.
Carbon dioxide works to increase the acidity of the blood. When there is a low level of carbon dioxide in the blood, the blood will be alkaline in nature.
This will lead to the blood vessels of the body constricting, thus reducing the flow of blood in the body. This is a situation that can be particularly dangerous as it can lead to reduced blood supply to the brain and other vital organs of the body. This problem leads to diminished consciousness, vision difficulties, muscle cramps and sudden anxiety on the part of the individual.
64
I recall reading somewhere that there ratio of CO2 to O2 needs to be within a certain range for the proper interchange.
iirc it requires something like a constant 2500 ppm or above to upset this balance in any significant way, so long as there is sufficient oxygen available (that’s the real killer)
5000 ppm is the internationally accepted “safe” level
http://www.analox.net/images-products/detail/dangers.gif
Submariners can cope with extended periods even higher than that value.
As for being too low.. fortunately our body system generates enough CO2 for it not to be an issue except in certain non-normal situations. We breathe out something like 30,000 ppm iirc.
20
I hadn’t made the connection before ROM, but now you mention it, CO2 alarmists do show signs of sudden anxiety and overwhelming panic, hyperventilation and constricted blood flow to the brain.
Do you think this could be the connection we’ve been looking for?- CO2 (or lack thereof) really is to blame. Eureka!
40
They do have a very strong tendency to hyperventilate and give the impression that their mental health is seriously at risk every time a Skeptic dares to cast doubt and quite credible aspersions upon any of their most closely held beliefs in the “science is settled”.
And of course, any doubting of that overwhelming communistic standard of statistical support, their firm belief that a “consensus of 98% of climate scientists support catastrophic global warming “, a percentage of support not dissimilar that of the North Korean voters re” Kim Jong Un” and other associated “Great Leaders” of similar global stature.
[ / sarc ]
21
All we hear from the climate catastrophist cult is how seriously bad it is all going to get for humanity and our health and the catastrophic collapse and destruction of life and the planet as we know it unless “somebody”, that “somebody” never seems to include the personal “I” as in the Black Adders of this world, does something to “save the planet” again!.
So to take my human orientated post above a bit further into this supposedly so dangerous world that humanity is in and the fate we are now supposed to experiencing and facing but which we are having a damn hard time trying to find and identify, some quotes from a small section of a very illuminating article on the progress of human health over the last couple of centuries.
And the immense strides in that human health that has arisen with the quite sudden availability of cheap, readily available energy some 250 years ago with the consequent civilisation boosting Industrial Revolution that has made such a difference to the way all of mankind now lives and the life, even of the poorest has been changed for the better.
The very basis of that immense lift in global living standards and in human health and prosperity , the cheap, always available, reliable accessible to every single citizen regardless of status or wealth in our civilisation , energy and it’s production, the single main reason for that immense progress of our civilisation in the last 250 years and the driver of civilization that the radical crazies of the so called green enviromnentalism cult are now hell bent on trying to destroy.
From ;
Enhanced or Impaired?
Human Health in a CO 2 -Enriched Warmer World
[quoted]
IV. A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMAN LONGEVITY
The last 150-200 years have seen a significant degree of global warming, as the earth has recovered from the global chill of the Little Ice Age and entered the Modern Warm Period. Simultaneously, the planet has experienced a rise in its atmospheric CO 2 concentration that has taken it to levels not experienced for eons. What effects have these “twin evils” of the climate-alarmist crowd had on human health, as represented by perhaps the best integrative measure of their myriad possible influences, i.e., human lifespan?
Obviously, no one can give a precise quantitative answer to this question. Nevertheless, there are ways to assess the relative importance of the wrongly-presumed negative health influences of global warming and atmospheric CO 2 enrichment by considering the history of human longevity.
Tuljapurkar et al. (2000), for example, examined mortality over the period 1950-1994 in the G7 countries — Canada, France, Germany (excluding the former East Germany), Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The authors found that “in every country over this period, mortality at each age has declined exponentially at a roughly constant rate.”
In discussing these findings, Horiuchi (2000) notes that the average lifespan of early humans was approximately 20 years, but that in the major industrialized countries it is now about 80 years, with the bulk of this increase having come in the past 150 years.
He then notes that “it was widely expected that as life expectancy became very high and approached the ‘biological limit of human longevity,’ the rapid ‘mortality decline’ would slow down and eventually level off,” but he states the now obvious fact that “such a deceleration has not occurred.”
&
Providing additional support for this conclusion is the study of Manton and Gu (2001). With the completion of the latest of the five National Long-Term Care Surveys of disability in U.S. citizens over 65 years of age — which began in 1982 and extended to 1999 at the time of the writing of their paper — these researchers were able to discern two most interesting trends: (1) disabilities in this age group decreased over the entire period studied, and (2) disabilities decreased at a rate that grew ever larger with the passing of time.
Specifically, over the entire 17-year period of record, there was an amazing relative decline in chronic disability of 25%, as the percentage of the over-65-years-of-age group that was disabled dropped from 26.2% in 1982 to 19.7% in 1999. What is more, the percentage disability decline rate per year for the periods 1982-1989, 1989-1994 and 1994-1999 was 0.26, 0.38 and 0.56% per year, respectively.
Commenting on the ever-accelerating nature of this disability decline, the authors say “it is surprising, given the low level of disability in 1994, that the rate of improvement accelerated” over the most recent five-year interval.
Finally, Oeppen and Vaupel (2002) report that “world life expectancy more than doubled over the past two centuries, from roughly 25 years to about 65 for men and 70 for women.”
What is more, they note that “for 160 years, best-performance life expectancy has steadily increased by a quarter of a year per year [our italics],” and they emphasize that this phenomenal trend “is so extraordinarily linear that it may be the most remarkable regularity of mass endeavor ever observed.”
They also report there are no indications of the worldwide life-extension trend leveling off anytime soon.
To summarize to this point, it appears that in countries with highly developed market economies, such as the G7 nations, where good health care is readily available, deaths of infants, children and young adults have been dramatically reduced over the last century or so, to the point where average life expectancy is now largely determined by what happens to elderly people; and it is evident that under these circumstances, the elderly are living longer and longer with the passing of time.
It is further evident that this phenomenon — which is an observed empirical reality — is likely due to ever-improving health in older mortality which in turn is likely the result of continuing improvements in their bodily systems for repairing cellular damage caused by degenerative processes associated with old age.
What is responsible for this incredible phenomenon? Nobody knows for sure. But what we do know for sure is that it has operated unimpeded with unwavering consistency ever since the inception of the Industrial Revolution, concomitant with simultaneous significant increases in both air temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Hence, we can confidently conclude that the “twin evils” of the climate-alarmist crowd have had not the slightest negative influence on this most welcome development.
In fact, their general coherence in time with the 160-year linear increase in best-performance life expectancy almost leads one to suspect that one or both of them might even be partially responsible for the lengthening lifespan of mankind.
[end]
32
ROM
Sorry but those are verifiable facts, I hope you don’t believe that that will sway our fantasist, 4Bladder, he just needs a good THEORY to BELIEVE in.
00
Dr Karl has spent vastly more time talking about science than actually doing it. AFAIK his science and medical experience is limited to his time as a student and working as a junior doctor three decades ago.
10
I knew Dr Karl personally 25years ago when we studied Medicine together at Sydney Uni. Even at that time, Karl was enthusiastic about science to almost Sheldon Cooper proportions, and was an oddity tolerated by most of his peers in spite of some bizarre behaviour, and who baldly courted fame through his 2JJJ comparing, in spite of having studied 3 full-time university degrees consecutively, all at the taxpayers expense (i.e gratis)- pre-HECS fees I might add- in what might be termed as a “professional student” capacity. Since that time he has done some noble work publicising various aspects of science, but his comment above would have to be the most spurious analogy I have ever encountered, and suggests that his grasp of evidence, empiricism and even scientific method is completely lacking in spite of a superficially impressive CV. He has serially embarrassed himself of late in the media, and relies on the stupidity of his fawning media acolytes, and unthinking drones like yourself to popularise a confected defence of the indefensible.
After so much tax-payer funded education, he owes those same taxpayers (and is, I would argue, comprehensively obliged to them) to be scrupulously honest in objectively appraising all the evidence (both in favour and contrary) and then expressing skepticism where knowledge is incomplete by actively differentiating between speculation and fact. That he has failed to do so forever marks him as a charlatan masquerading as a scientist. Please, BA4, pass on my personal regards to him. I hope they shame him, but I doubt in the entrenched narcissism of the media bubble in which he resides that that would be possible.
Email coming your way Winston. – Jo
152
I suspect he likes the press and the media, because they make him feel superior. 😉
32
I believe that the biggest problem is always when there is too little CO2 in air being breathed.
Too much is not really a worry, up to a point although being drowsy in some situations could be dangerous.
People breathing pure oxygen may have problems in that it removes CO2 from the bloodstream and given that variations in CO2 in the bloodstream acts as the “trigger” for the “next” breath, the maintenance of some CO2 in the blood is essential to life.
Strangely from a physiological point of view breathing pure O2 is very dangerous.
The routine comment that we need to be reminded of how “intrinsically important CO2 is to life” is obviously intended to be about plants but it is also vital to Humans in that the CO2 in the bloodstream is a neuro-regulator and controls our breathing impulse.
Humans can tolerate a very large range of CO2 levels in normal situations with for example up to 8,000 ppm being experienced in
submarines at times as compared to current average of about 380 ppm in the air around us.
The breathing cycle adopted during singing results in enhanced levels of CO2 in the bloodstream and a feeling of well being.
At the end of life there is a pattern of breathing known as Cheyne-Stokes breathing and it is the reverse of that used in singing.
The result is to remove CO2 from the bloodstream and when that happens there is no CO2 left to provide the NEXT breath stimulus.
It is paradoxical that many call CO2 ; “that poisonous pollutant” when it is the basic stimulant for our being.
KK
Singing: sharp intake – long slow expiration. Accumulates CO2.
Cheyne – Stokes: Long slow inhalation – short sharp exhalation: accumulates Oxygen and eliminates CO2 then life.
30
KK,
May I disagree slightly. Our astronauts started their flights in a pure O2 atmosphere or so close to that as to make no difference and they suffered no ill effects. At normal atmospheric pressure and lower there isn’t any physiological difficulty (fire was proven to be a problem though).
On the other hand, divers breathing pure O2 at higher pressure soon discovered that it was indeed a dangerous thing to do and began using helium/O2 mixtures to keep the O2 partial pressure down to roughly what it would be at one atmosphere.
Pilots of un pressurized aircraft regularly fly at altitudes requiring supplemental O2. One airplane for which I have some performance data can reach as much as 20,000 feat density altitude and cruise there very fuel efficiently. You breathe pure O2 at that very low pressure or quickly pass out then die a few minutes later. You have a little more than the time you can hold your breath to stay functional, about a minute, tops.
It’s not the fact that it’s pure O2 but the effective pressure of it (or call it density) that’s a problem.
——————————-
I had an interesting experience with O2 in the hospital. They had me on O2 and an O2 saturation sensor on my finger. Every time I started to drift off to sleep the O2 alarm went off, even with extra O2 supplied to me. As I became so relaxed my breathing slowed to the point where I didn’t maintain the 95% saturation the machine wanted to see because I wasn’t producing CO2 fast enough to stimulate the next breathing cycle often enough. After a few rude awakenings I pulled off the O2 sensor, which also set off the alarm. This time when the nurse arrived I laid down the law and said, no more, I’m not wearing the damned thing. After that I got a good night’s sleep. I just don’t need to inhale and exhale so often. My wife has even commented that I “stop breathing” at night.
10
Hi Roy
A very informative comment and it fills in a big gap in my understanding of the CO2/O2 balance outside of normal conditions with the two examples I used being at normal temperature and pressure under conditions of low activity.
The regulation of workable CO2 levels in the bloodstream at NTP is an extremely complex interaction of many processes and my examples of singing and passing away where background activity levels are low and non existent respectively, would no doubt be seen in some contexts as “simplistic”. Still I think they are relevant.
You’ve opened up a very interesting extension to my Earthbound comment with higher levels of physical exertion in the extremes of space / mountaineering, flying and diving.
That also prompts me to ask about submarines and whether they operate at higher pressures than 1 atm to counter increased hull pressure.
It is interesting that ducks and other birds put their noses under their wings when they are ready to sleep. I know that birds have different heart/lung setup to humans but it could be speculated that putting their nose under a wing is a way of breathing a CO2 rich atmosphere to make them drowsy.
As far as your slow breathing is concerned, keep it up; every breath is a gift, so go for it.
I will always be happy for my next breath , courtesy of the low CO2 level trigger.
KK
00
Good morning Keith,
I’m doubtful about this.
I’m not a submariner but it wouldn’t be feasible to counteract external pressure with increased internal pressure. Submarines basically keep an ordinary air atmosphere inside when submerged in spite of allowing CO2 levels to go way up (which I suspect they do simply for the easier job of absorbing CO2 in scrubbers if its partial pressure is higher) and we know higher levels up to at least 3% CO2 are harmless.
The pressure of seawater goes up approximately 0.5 lb/inch^2 for every foot below the surface. And even at the depths used by the WWII vintage boats which I have a little information on, that’s 150 lb/in^2 at their designed operating depth of 300 feet. With only air aboard the danger of the bends would be more than you’d want to try if you were to pressurize the boat. The situation is the same with modern submarines.
There is such a submarine, the Bowfin, on display at the submarine museum next to the battleship Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor. My wife and I went through it after taking in the Arizona. The most striking thing about its construction that you can see is the water tight bulkheads between compartments — solid steel 7 or 8 inches thick and braced to the pressure hull by ribs equally thick, strong and integral with the bulkhead. The doors were equally thick and unimaginably heavy — also not very big so to go from one compartment to the other you have to both duck and step over. I’m estimating the thickness since there was no sign to give me that information. But I can’t be very far wrong.
The pressure hull or vessel would be the same thickness. The main hull is a cylinder 16 feet in diameter with deck plates down the middle. The conning tower is a cylinder 8 feet in diameter. The boat shape you see when you look at one of these is all external structure to give the boat the shape it needs and of course, contain ballast and compressed air tanks outside the pressure hull but within the external hull to avoid the resistance to movement they would otherwise cause.
These boats were designed to operate no deeper than 300 feet, depth to keel. But there’s an entry in the Bowfin’s log saying they went to 600 feet to escape a depth charge attack. They obviously came through just fine because the boat is permanently tied up there for tourists to go through. That’s a lot of safety factor and it puts the external pressure at about 300 lb/in^2. So you can see there’s no need to counter external pressure by pressurizing the boat. But even at no more than 300 feet, if a compartment were to become flooded and the water tight door had to be closed, a little calculation makes the total force against that bulkhead 150 X pi X (8 X 12)^2, about 4,342,937 pounds, approximately 2,171 U.S. tons to be withstood by a flat bulkhead.
The modern submarine is quite different and can go much deeper but exact capabilities must be classified because I’ve never seen them in print or on the internet.
———————————
Interesting item:
One of these WWII boats was put in the way of one of the Bikini Lagoon hydrogen bomb tests with a camera inside to record the damage or as much of it as could be captured before the camera was destroyed. In that video you can see the bulkhead you’re looking at and a lot of water suddenly come at the camera so fast it’s hard to tell what’s happening, followed by loss of picture.
10
Nuts. I tried to go through the Bowfin site I just linked above and none of the links to anything except their online store will work.
Not a very good face to the world for a museum. 🙁
10
“Submarines basically keep an ordinary air atmosphere inside”
Expected this as air pressure would have trouble countering the rapid increase in hull pressure from water. looked for the sub film on youtube, no lock, but got some old footage of original tests.
The Bowfin was a massive ship at 1500 plus tons and 100 yds in length.
KK
00
And the modern nuclear powered sub would dwarf the Bowfin.
Look for a movie entitled, Run Silent, Run Deep. It’s based on a novel written by Edward Beach, a submariner who went through WWII aboard just such submarines as the Bowfin and later commanded nuclear subs before the end of his career. That phrase is or at least was the motto of the submarine service.
The exterior scenes of a sub at sea and from the bridge are on a real sub. The internal scenes were made in a simulator much like a flight simulator and while they’re accurate about the details of each part of the sub, the simulator doesn’t have the massive bulkheads and doors.
Don’t take the plot too seriously though. But it’s quite accurate about operation of the boat and life aboard while at sea. If you can find the book that’s even better but getting a book from the 1950s could be a little problematical.
10
Well Blackadder, you stirred up a hornet nest. Personally I laughed my head off but I apologise; it’s not nice to make fun of the mentally deficient.
P.S. You got the lethal dose of morphine wrong.
91
So I’m meant to believe the CAGW hypothesis because small amounts of stuff can be harmful? Gee, that’s a rigorous argument!
Here’s an argument: a standard dose of morphine could be harmful if a feedback loop caused your body to made 5x as much of it. Except that in 60 years of medical observation, not. One such instance of morphine feedback has been detected. The medical effect of morphine is exactly as predicted in scientific work dating back to 1850. But you still believe without evidence in the potential for some future feedback to emerge.
10
So I listened. What I heard was an explanation devoid of empirical evidence. And so it goes with the CO2 hating warmists. Argument from anything but real evidence is all I ever see. They start from the assumption that it’s happening without any support for that position and go on from there.
BA 4th, don’t you ever get tired of this? No one with any real understanding of what it takes to make a case for any position will fall for this kind of argument. No one.
20
BAD, sit in a warm comfortable place in the afternoon sun. Relax and breathe slowly for a few minutes. Feel the way that there is a sudden urgent and uncontrollable yawn that can’t be stopped. That will be the signal given to you to take in oxygen before you go into a state of hypoxia.
Surprisingly it doesn’t take much for this minuscule oxygen imbalance to damage you if ignored.
Fortunately you have an internal mechanism that reacts only to the Carbon Dioxide and this causes you to yawn there bye preventing hypoxia, brain damage and death.
10
2007 article:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/rotorua-daily-post/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503438&objectid=10954388
Scientist says climate change is science fiction
By Katee Shanks
1:58 PM Friday Apr 13, 2007
“Retired Ohope scientist Doctor David Kear says predictions of rising sea levels as a result of global warming aren’t science – they’re science fiction. “
170
Dwight D Eisenhower correctly identified the risk to society of government funded science. When we see scientists denouncing the current meme only after they have retired, we are looking at the consequences of what Ike predicted.
190
‘the risk to society of government funded science’, how does that work then? Because we have for at least the last decade, government scientists in America and Canada warning about co2/global warming. And basically they have been ignored. It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that America is going to exceed Saudia Arabia as a fossil fuel producer, as Canada digs for the worst type of fossil fuel (if memory serves me right), namely tar sands?
118
Basically the scientists have been ignored? Is that what you call $350 billion a year in renewables investment and $176b a year in carbon trading — both of which is almost 100% dependent on governments believing the scientists? Aren’t there 23,000 wind turbines in Europe? BA – you live in a fantasy land.
180
‘Basically the scientists have been ignored?’, yip! As a few years ago there was a broadcast of Hillary Clinton visiting the Arctic to see the results of all the melting. And what did she come out with? I paraphrase, ‘well it makes getting to all the fossil fuels easier’!
—
You are not even trying are you BA? -Jo
02
I missed the announcement that Hillary had obtained a science degree. Or is law school now science?
20
Jo,
I disagree. I find BA to be trying, in fact he is very trying indeed!
20
When did Hillary Clinton visiting the Arctic?
During the lull in ice during the late 1950 and early 1960 when nuclear powered submarines broke through the thin ice at the North pole?
Or was it the mid 1940s when Dr. Hans Ahlmann (a Swedish geographer) noted that the Arctic region, and Greenland ice-fields were melting fast and that temperatures had “increased by 10 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900. An enormous rise!”
Or maybe dear Hilary can remember back in 1923, when Popular Science reported that science is asking “Is the North Pole going to melt entirely? Are the Arctic regions warming up, with prospect of a great climate change in that part of the world?” and it goes on to say – “Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers who sail the seas around Spitzbergen and the Eastern Arctic all point to radical change in climatic conditions, with hitherto unheard-of high temperatures on that part of the earth’s surface.”
Or any other period when the polar ice was noticeably and naturally low?
You know sometimes things happen in cycles but unlike you BA4 they never repeat.
10
BA4,
Straight question. Do you think, as a general rule, that it is healthy in science to have a consensus position in any topic that cannot be challenged on its merits (i.e. in order to arrive at the truth) without an individual risking of loss of funding, tenure or employment?
140
There is an English saying: “He who pays the piper, calls the tune”.
Government funds science in three ways:
Firstly, it provides bulk funding to Universities, and other ‘Training Institutions’, to improve the overall skill set of the population in general. Government specifies the standard of education expected for various sectors of the population.
Secondly, it funds research and development that will ultimately improve the overall national gross domestic product; geological exploration for mineral deposits would fall into this category, for example. This is research that generally follows established Government policy. The Government expects to see a return for the investment.
Thirdly, it provides targeted funding into specific research and development into matters with the potential to adversly impact future policy; avoiding asteroid strikes and virus mutations, would fall into this category, as does variations in climate patterns.
The key thing to note here, is that the amount of financial investment in the first two categories is set by the budget process, so universities, and other research establishments, must operate within their individual budget allocations.
The third category though comes under the general heading on contingency, and so is more flexible. But, a case must be made to access the funding, and the more compelling the case is, the more likely the funding is to be forthcoming. This puts the universities, and other research organisations, in the position of competing with each other for a finite pool of funding, which is another reason to make the case sound as dramatic as possible.
Hence the way the Government funds climate change (and asteroid strike) research, creates an environment where the “findings” of the research will justify further funding in that area.
This is a vicious circle, that few have been prepared to break ranks on, for to do so has proven to be a career limiting move.
But now we are seeing a generation of academics starting to retire, and ceasing to be dependent on Government funding for their livelihoods. That will signal the demise of this, and some other scams, that have grown up around the flawed way in which Governments fund research.
Dr Kear may be one of the first. But by no means, will he be the last.
110
And that pretty much tells the story of global warming.
Nicely done, Rereke.
30
Although Eisenhower had an even bigger problem in mind, at least at the time he made his speech — military weapons procurement being driven by industry instead of military need.
30
And there lies the crux of AGW scaremongering and propaganda from the UN via its new revenue raising arm, the IPCC.
Revenue fell since the end of the cold war and the UN coffers became depleted – so it latches onto and promotes each earth ending scare as if there wasn’t going to be a tomorrow.
No shortage of the gullible or the mercenary to feed the frenzy.
20
Accurately stated, James. The UN needs to be abolished. Failing that, the U.S. Canada and Australia need to unilaterally leave that organization and order them out of their respective countries. Europe should follow suite but they are, as the EU, incapable of thinking about their real problem, much less taking action.
I would do that in a minute if I could.
00
BA
you say
“‘the risk to society of government funded science’, how does that work then? Because we have for at least the last decade, government scientists in America and Canada warning about co2/global warming…”
So government funding for the last decade? Prior to that, for a few hundred years, science was not the gold-mine for the talentless that it is today but the struggle to find truth. Science is the self forfilling
30
BA4
Look-up Trofim Denisovich Lysenko.
State run science at it’s best.
20
Dr. Kear’s exposé reinforces what most of us here assume has been going on, and it’s helpful to see the specific details he provides of the deliberate lies we’ve been fed. But “Innocents in politics and the media” – is he kidding? Socialist politicians and their media mouthpieces seized this issue as soon as it appeared, nurtured it with money stolen from taxpayers and used it to tighten their grip even further on their hapless subjects and steal even more money from them. Without government and media sustenance catastrophic anthropogenic global warming/climate change would long ago have gone the way of polywater and phlogisten.
121
The operative word in AGW scares is “could”!
No qualifers such as unlikely, near zero probability……..
80
May,…might….
40
Also lack of time frame.
Snow will be a thing of the past…
10
I can sympathize with David Kerr.
We have all watched the CAGW/CC/EW fable develop.
Most of us probably thought, at first, there was some substance to the claims made by state climatologists, for how many of us were informed as to the minute activities of trace gasses in our atmosphere?
The outlandish claims and idiotic projections made me laugh.
I did not get annoyed until government imposed costs upon me, in their efforts to prevent global warming caused by manmade CO2 emissions.
I assumed the watchdog agencies of our “mature” governance, would prevent implementation of mob hysterics.
That policy based upon scientific advice would document that science as a matter of course.
My bad, democracy has devolved to kleptocracy. We have career parasitism in place of public service. The public good is defined now as that which rewards the parasites.
The professional, nonpolitical civil service is long dead, but still nailed to its perch.
The only bright side is the staggering waste of public time and wealth by these fools and bandits, is so destructive to our economies that taxpayer attention is becoming focussed upon the parasites who lust for absolute power over all the rest of us.
There is no divine right to feast upon the labour of strangers.
120
This was posted recently on by my mate Spartacusisfree on Judith Curry’s site: http://judithcurry.com/2014/04/29/ipcc-tar-and-the-hockey-stick/#comments
“Houghton’s role is crucial because he has in my view reprised the role of religious zealot Joseph Priestley in our version of the Phlogiston hoax, the assumption, not accepted by any professional scientist or engineer taught standard physics, that a planetary surface emits net IR energy to its atmosphere at the same rate as it would to a body at absolute zero.
This very basic error originated with Arrhenius. Angstrom criticised it at the time and it died out. However, Sagan reintroduced it in his analysis of the Venusian atmosphere and it has since continued as a core belief of US Atmospheric Physics. Houghton copied it over to UK Atmospheric Physics.
Understanding why Sagan went wrong is important because the same mistake is made in the IPCC climate models. He failed to realise there are two optical processes acting in clouds. As well as Mie scattering which increases as optical depth increases, up to a limit of 0.5 hemispherical albedo for a non absorbing sol, a second process acts for large droplets. In our atmosphere it operates in the first few 100 m and gives the high albedo of convective clouds. The same takes place in the Venusian atmosphere.
By assuming all Solar SW entering the Venusian atmosphere went deeply into it, Sagan assumed c. 9 times as much thermalised SW as reality. In his two-stream approximation calculations, this is a negative energy flux and it offset the extra energy he wrongly assumed left the surface.
In his monograph, Houghton correctly assumed no IR energy flux from ToA to surface. However, the IPCC climate models, based on incorrectly assuming ‘back radiation’, a Thermal Radiation Field, is a real energy flux, triple the real energy entering the atmosphere from the surface. To offset this, the models apparently assume Kirchhoff’s Law of Radiation applies at ToA, giving a negative 238.5 W/m^2 from ToA to the surface. This assumption could only apply to a grey body atmosphere; in reality, it’s semi-transparent to IR so the Kirchhoff assumption is not valid.
The resultant ~40% increase over reality of energy flux from the Earth’s surface to the atmosphere plus Hansen’s mistaken view that the GHE is 33 K, it’s really ~11 K, gives the imaginary ‘positive feedback’. The 40% is offset by assuming near double low level cloud optical depth in ‘hind-casting’. The extra water evaporation is because the modellers assume the sunlit part of the ocean is hotter than reality then cheat to cover this up.
So, Houghton has presided over a massive hoax. However, it was Sagan who made the key mistakes which led to it. These have led to virtually all US Atmospheric Physicist being taught incorrect physics**. Hence many shout down professionals from other disciplines who state, correctly, that the basics of the IPCC’s Radiative and IR physics are wrong. The IPCC modelling needs to be corrected by professionals from outside Atmospheric Physics.
**Coming from Meteorology, another mistake is to assume a pyrgeometer outputs a real energy flux. Wrong: it’s a Thermal Radiation Field; only the vector sum of TRFs can do thermodynamic work. Hence the Earth’s surface emits to its atmosphere a mean 63 W/m^2, of which most goes directly to Space. There is no significant positive feedback and because Tyndall’s experiment has been misconstrued and the atmosphere self controls, CO2-AGW is near zero. There was AGW from Asian aerosols changing cloud albedo but it has saturated.”
I’ll add here that empirical data, and soon to be published theory, show that in addition to there being no ‘Extended GHE’, real CO2-AGW is near zero because of strong negative feedback
151
A link to an other “scientist” who on old days changed his view on climate change.
http://www.thegwpf.org/professor-lennart-bengtsson-joins-gwpf-academic-advisory-council/
In 2006 he wrote about irreparable damages would hit the world about 2050 due to CO2. He suggested fast breeder reactors as a solution.
http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/aw065m7h58071411/?p=e1c2d211038545f8b19c2fcb85de8ab6&pi=0
He is a meber of: http://www.kva.se/en/ (Nobel Prize in Physics and Chemestry)
http://www.kva.se/en/contact/Kontakt-sida/?personId=15
The energy committee is working hard to stop wind turbines, and is in favor of new nuclear plants in Sweden. The issue of nuclear energy is an interesting Swedish trauma.
Even Bert Bolin, IPCC, wrote 1993 about the use of nuclear as a solution to the “problem” of climate change. Bolin, as Bengtsson, a professor of Meteorology from Stockholm, Sweden.
The nuclear issue is why Sweden is so aggressive on climate change on the global arena, and professors of meteorology are active.
50
Link.
81
Good catch Scaper, I’ll pass it on.
21
“whether he had made any public skeptical statements before, and if not, why not.”
Very valid to ask this. But the answer is there. The 1.4m in 40 years, and its early dismissal as nonsense.
29 years on this is gold!
51
The CAGW scam is (and always was), as we all know, a Trojan Horse. Within its rancid belly the old and sordid bed-fellows of politics and money held court, mixed with a dose of convenient clima-fiction. Deliberately and inadvertently assisted by the overlap of latte fueled Green politics, Progressive entrenchment from the UN to the Uni, post modern Science, Big-conspiracy theorists and journalism bereft of all but the dimmest intellectual wattage, the excruciatingly unaffordable, cancerous melange has spread through the institutional edifice to become the required password at the entrance, and philosophy within.
The Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Sir Peter Gluckman was trained as a medical doctor and paediatrician. By the standard of those in climate orthodoxy, he is automatically excluded from participating in the climate debate as he is not a qualified climate priest. Nonetheless, his report “New Zealand’s changing climate and oceans: The impact of human activity and implications for the future,” leaves little doubt of his IPCC echo chamber position. Would anyone have honestly expected anything less?
Gluckman states in the forword:
Some predictions for the NZ future are summarised here
Gluckman’s report was of course trumpeted far and wide, courtesy of the NZ MSM, whose bias and political orientation are, well, beyond question. Nevertheless, an august group of scientists and engineers including Dr David Kear and ‘our own’ Dr Robert M. Carter presented a clear rebuttal.
And by starkly nauseating contrast from a Progressive leftist web side contining the usual diatribe of hand-wringing institutionalism, the anticipated parody, the acute farce that borders on satire we have all come to know and love so well, which includes frequent reference to ‘denialists’, the blog author, Gareth Renowden, self-described writer, blogger and truffle grower, and quite possibly a latte drinker, pumps this piffle from his pink pillow:
And this is really about climate? No it isn’t, it never has been, it never will be.
91
3 May: WOWK TV: Linda Harris: Morrisey urges EPA to delay carbon dioxide regulations for existing power plants
Attorney General Patrick Morrisey wants the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to delay imposing stringent carbon dioxide emission regulations on existing power plants until it “resolves substantial problems with the proposed regulations for new power plants.”
In a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, Morrisey said the regulations for existing power plants should be postponed because they are based on flawed rules targeting new power plants. The EPA’s first attempt at creating new source performance standards — or NSPS — had to be withdrawn after the comment process revealed numerous defects. The current version also suffers from multiple, well-documented problems he said, and has been heavily criticized by job-creators and bipartisan leaders across the nation…
“Driven by the ideology that ‘big government knows best,’ the EPA seems intent on pushing these job-killing regulations regardless of the real concerns voiced by our citizens, job-creators, and elected leaders from both parties.”
Morrisey urged McCarthy and other EPA officials to travel to West Virginia and hear firsthand from people who will be directly impacted by the proposed regulations.
“If permitted to become law, these regulations will have serious consequences for anyone who pays an electric bill and will have a negative impact on the economies of West Virginia and other coal-producing states,” Morrisey said..
.Morrisey also outlined concerns with the current proposed regulations for new power plants, pointing out that the proposal relies heavily on government-funded projects employing carbon capture and storage, or CCS, “even though the EPA cannot identify even one coal-burning power plant currently using CCS on a commercial scale.” The letter states that this reliance is a violation of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, a law that expressly forbids the EPA from setting performance standards based on technology that is funded by government subsidies…
http://www.wowktv.com/story/25415027/morrisey-urges-epa-to-delay-carbon-dioxide-regulations-for-existing-power-plants
20
Another great post by Steve Goddard. He has also got this one of a German Rapper who completely disses Global Warming. The subtitles seem to give out about half way through but one of the comments has a complete translation.
21
Truthseeker:
The lyrics were given below.
Full Translation:
You thinking of climate change and you’re screaming for laws
You’re thinking about CO2 and saying “let’s stop it”
Global catastrophes happening all because of man
We did too much driving, now the planet is too warm
If we don’t do something soon then the ice will melt
A flood is gonna kill us and the future’s gonna fall
No it aint…I’m telling you you’re off the wall
Man aint causing climate change, yeah you
think I’m crazy and making no sense
But just look at the climate institutes and you’ll see
what they do, they’re fudging the data making it hot
We just found out…their studies are made up
A hacker got in the computer and the database
Now read the mails from the CRU – they’ll make you laugh
They’re cooking the numbers, the temperature is up
Listen to me! It’s all a fraud and enough is enough
Refrain
Climate change was not made by man
No… It’s only to keep the world in fear
All those who are pimpin it are being called experts
And the brothers who diss it are getting labelled sick
Climate change was not caused by man
No…it’s only to keep the world in fear
But I don’t believe it, and so I’m getting labelled sick
But it’s the price you pay when you think for yourself
II
Climate change is normal, it’s always been around
We aint done a thing, history shows us so
History books show in 1100 the planet was warm
In North England people were pickin grapes and making wine
And that wasn’t because of factories run by knights and
The shield industry driving the climate up
Then in sixteen hundred the Baltic froze over and it
Wasn’t because they stopped CO2 with ‘reform’
That’s pure arrogance when man thinks he’s got the power
To control the whole climate on the entire globe
Truth is only 1 to 3 percent comes from man
Comes from processes that are natural – so they’re lying
Inside the brainless walls of these fear-mongering crackpots
They want more power, more money, more control, more global tax
And every skeptic is getting branded by them
Being defamed and compared to Holocaust deniers
Refrain
Climate change was not made by man
No… It’s only to keep the world in fear
All those who are pimpin it are being called experts
And the brothers who diss it are labelled sick
Climate change was not caused by man
No…it’s only to keep the world in fear
But I don’t believe it, and so I’m getting labelled sick
But it’s the price you pay when you think for yourself
20
Correction, the Rapper is Austrian, but the song is in German.
00
woke up to the end of ABC’s Naked Scientists prog today, which was this episode. first thing i heard was the ***carbon quote!
29 April: Naked Scientsts: Building the Future
Michael – Well, we think in the research that we’re doing at Cambridge University is, looking at how we can use this structural bamboo in large scale buildings. So, 6, 7, 8, 10-story buildings. At the moment, a building like that made of structural bamboo would be much more expensive than an equivalent in steel or concrete. But we think in the long term that it will become competitive especially if we change the way we price ***carbon.
Chris – Will this be mainly the cladding that the bamboo is used for or would you see it being used for all of the building so you could replace the steel frame or the timber frame, or whatever sort of building you’re doing with some kind of bamboo composite?
Michael – The work we’re doing at the moment is looking at ways to replace the structural frame with bamboo. There is already quite a bit of material that can be used for cladding, particularly the interior surfaces…
(scroll down) Question from listener:
Chris – Michael perhaps you could comment on bamboo. How high do you think it could build?
Michael Ramage – Well, we know we can build 10-storey buildings with wood and we’ve got proposals that are feasible for 30 stories in wood. So, with bamboo being somewhat stronger, I think 50 to 60 stories will be probably quite likely in the near term.
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/naked-scientists/show/20140429/nocache/1/?cHash=45121cca84db2038a5bc2593625e85f7&tx_nakscishow_pi1%5Btranscript%5D=1
i do love bamboo, but not sure about the feasibility 60-storey high rises with bamboo replacing steel. i could be wrong.
40
1 May: Reuters: Germany fines airlines for CO2 emissions breach
Germany has fined airlines for not paying for their carbon dioxide emissions, a government official said, becoming the first country to announce such enforcement of Europe’s Emissions Trading System (ETS)…
Earlier this month the European Parliament agreed to extend the exemption on international flights until at least 2016 following intense pressure from national governments.
However foreign airlines are still liable for their emissions made in 2012, before the exemption started…
China’s Air China and Shanghai Airlines, along with Russia’s Aeroflot and some small U.S. carriers, all of which are registered in Germany, were in breach of the regulations, according to European Commission documents published in February.
It was not clear whether those airlines were among those hit with a fine…
As the main air transport hubs for Europe, Germany and Britain are responsible for overseeing the bulk of airlines covered by the EU ETS.
A spokeswoman for Britain’s Department of Energy and Climate Change said it does not have a formal deadline for the issuing of penalties in emissions cases.
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/germany-fines-airlines-co2-emissions-134014105.html
a different view – not surprised to see speculation that American airlines are included, tho Reuters only mentioned Chinese & Russian airlines:
1 May: EuropeanVoice: Dave Keating: Germany orders airlines to pay for ETS non-compliance
Campaigners have accused Germany, France and the UK of delaying fines on airlines that did not comply with emissions trading rules in order not to anger foreign powers…
Germany levied fines against 61 airlines yesterday (30 April) for not paying for their CO2 emissions through the European Union’s emissions trading scheme (ETS) in 2012…
The airlines reportedly include Russian, Chinese and American operators. But the German government has not named them…
Environmental campaigners, who are furious that the EU backed down on its legislation in the face of foreign pressure, have accused Germany, France and the UK of trying to ‘run out the clock’ on the penalties for this period. The national governments are responsible for fining non-compliant airlines, but the time period for levying those sanctions will expire this summer. France and the UK have still not handed out fines…
Companies that fail to turn in the required amount of allowances face fines of Euros 100 per metric tonne of carbon.
http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/2014/may/germany-orders-airlines-to-pay-for-ets-non-compliance/80749.aspx
00
the way CAGW propaganda works –
u will see below how this 3 May piece by Welsh is simply a re-run of an October 2013 piece she published at Business Insider:
3 May: Business Insider Australia: Jennifer Welsh: Hiking Through Peru Showed One Journalist The True Dangers Of Climate Change
In 2013, Justin Catanoso, grantee of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, spent July 25 to Aug. 11 in Peru with Wake Forest University tropical biologist Miles Silman…
The experience of these important geographies changed his entire worldview on climate change.
“We are going to lose our coastlines. We are going to lose the ice caps,” Catanoso said. “It’s not hundreds of years off. It’s the coming generation. And the generation after that. My grandchildren are going to be living in a very different world if we don’t slow the rate of warming.”…
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/justin-catanoso-travels-to-amazon-basin-2014-5#after-flying-into-cuzco-a-city-around-10000-feet-above-sea-level-the-team-loaded-up-into-a-van-at-6-am-for-a-five-hour-3000-foot-elevation-drive-to-the-edge-of-manu-national-park-1
Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting: Peru: Race in the Rain Forest
Launched August 27, 2013
(MULTIPLE ARTICLES LISTED, MANY PUBLISHED BY NATGEO – THE FRUITS OF A GRANT)
Grantee
Justin Catanoso is a North Carolina-based journalist with 30 years of experience in covering health care, science, economic development and business. He is a Pulitzer Prize nominee and winner of the Science-in-Society Award for his coverage of the tobacco industry in the early 1990s. He has published travel stories from the U.S., Italy, Austria, Thailand and Canada. After 13 years as founding executive editor of The Business Journal in Greensboro, N.C., he is now director of journalism at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C.
???October 30, 2013/Business Insider
Hiking Through Peru Showed One Journalist the True Dangers of Climate Change
http://pulitzercenter.org/project/south-america-peru-global-warming-rainforest-cloud-forest-ecosystem-research-greenhouse-gas
the link to the October article goes to the following via a Pulitzer page…note 2013 in the URL:
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/justin-catanoso-in-the-amazon-basin-2013-10?op=1#after-flying-into-cuzco-a-city-around-10000-feet-above-sea-level-the-team-loaded-up-into-a-van-at-6-am-for-a-five-hour-3000-foot-elevation-drive-to-the-edge-of-manu-national-park-1
10
I had to go and check this: (my bolds)
This
idiotperson actually said this.Lose the Icecaps ….. plural, and in one or two generations, 50 years tops.
LOSE the Antarctic Icecap. At three degrees per Century worst case scenario.
Really!
Tony.
100
Well done Tony,
An electron-free comment … 🙂
20
not surprising!
Dec 2013: Inside Wake Forest Uni: Catanoso at the forefront of climate change reporting
Now Catanoso, a veteran journalist and director of the journalism program, is shifting his focus to raising awareness about global climate change…
He said that the experience working with Miles Silman, biology professor and director of the Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability, and many of the world’s leading tropical biologists, who like Silman are part of the Andes Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research Group, helped him recognize the monumental importance of inspiring the current generation of world leaders to act on this issue now.
“The next generation could look back and say, ‘What did you do?’” Catanoso said on WFDD. “And if you didn’t do enough, was it just because you were so focused on short-term gains and your own wealth that you didn’t see that this planet was baking and baking too fast to be healthy for us in the future?”
Catanoso’s subsequent climate change coverage, supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, has appeared in prominent news outlets like National Geographic, Business Insider, WUNC, and in a five-part series on WFDD.
http://inside.wfu.edu/2013/12/catanoso-at-the-forefront-of-climate-change-reporting/
00
originally a Mother Jones article, also published by Slate. forget that ‘years of living dangerously’ has totally bombed in the ratings, Hayhoe is on a mission. her 5 top arguments include some laughs:
3 May: BillMoyers.com: Chris Mooney: How To Convince Conservative Christians That Global Warming Is Real
This post originally appeared at Mother Jones.
Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, an evangelical Christian, has had quite the run lately. A few weeks back, she was featured in the first episode of the Showtime series The Years of Living Dangerously, meeting with actor Don Cheadle in her home state of Texas to explain to him why faith and a warming planet aren’t in conflict. (You can watch that episode for free on YouTube; Hayhoe is a science adviser for the show.) Then, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people of 2014; Cheadle wrote the entry. “There’s something fascinating about a smart person who defies stereotype,” Cheadle observed.
Why is Hayhoe in the spotlight? Simply put, millions of Americans are evangelical Christians and their belief in the science of global warming is well below the national average. And if anyone has a chance of reaching this vast and important audience, Hayhoe does. “I feel like the conservative community, the evangelical community, and many other Christian communities, I feel like we have been lied to,” explains Hayhoe on the latest episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast. “We have been given information about climate change that is not true. We have been told that it is incompatible with our values, whereas in fact it’s entirely compatible with conservative and with Christian values.”…
The fact remains, though, that most evangelical Christians in the United States do not think as Hayhoe does. Recent data from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication suggests that while 64 percent of Americans think global warming is real and caused by human beings, only 44 percent of evangelicals do. Evangelicals in general, explains Hayhoe, tend to be more politically conservative and can be quite distrusting of scientists (believing, incorrectly, that they’re all a bunch of atheists). Plus, some evangelicals really do go in for that whole “the world is ending” thing — not an outlook likely to inspire much care for the environment. So how does Hayhoe reach them?
From our interview, here are five of Hayhoe’s top arguments, for evangelical Christians, on climate change:…
http://billmoyers.com/2014/05/03/how-to-convince-conservative-christians-that-global-warming-is-real/
writer, Mooney, is, of course, another MSM & Academia darling:
Wikipedia: Chris Mooney
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Mooney_(journalist)
00
this insistence on left/right framing leaves me out in the cold…literally, in SW Qld overnite…brr:
3 May: LA Times Op-Ed: Amir Alexander: Think the climate change fight is tough? What about the 17th century fight over math?
Secretary of State John F. Kerry knows that climate change is real…
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is not convinced. “Data are not supporting what the advocates are arguing,” he told CNN recently. “In the last 15 years,” he added, “there has been no recorded warming.”
Both Kerry and Cruz spoke with authority and conviction, and it is clear that neither man has any doubts about his positions. What is less clear is why.
Kerry studied political science in college, Cruz studied public affairs, and both have law degrees. As for climate science? As far as I can determine, neither has taken as much as a single course in that field. And yet both men consider themselves fully qualified to make pronouncements on the issue of climate change.
They are, of course, far from alone in their technical ignorance. Only a few thousand specialists in the world are qualified to offer deeply informed opinions about climate change, but this has not prevented millions of us from taking a stand on both sides of the issue. I for one am as firm a believer in global warming as Kerry, knowing that a large majority of climate scientists support his view. But my grasp of the finer scientific details supporting this position is, admittedly, no firmer than his…
Broadly speaking, liberals believe the world is warming; conservatives do not…
The reason, it seems to me, is that science holds a unique position in our society as an arbiter between competing views. A Christian fundamentalist might believe that truth is on her side, but she won’t get very far trying to convert an atheist, and a pacifist has little hope of persuading a gun rights activist of the justice of his cause…
This is not the first time that a technical scientific question has become the center of a political struggle. In the 17th century, it was not climate change but mathematics that stood at the heart of that age’s culture wars…READ ON
(Amir Alexander is the author of “Infinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World.”)
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-alexander-science-mathematics-politics-20140504,0,475733.story#axzz30hmwzraG
10
Pat:
Am I confused or him?
In the lead article he says ” I for one am as firm a believer in global warming” then in the link he comes out in support of the sceptics of the day, i.e. those against mathematics by royal decree.
Unless he thinks Kerry the politician doesn’t really believe.
00
Pat,
It resolves thus:
The chattering classes are on a mission to deliver the message.
Good scientists deliver the goods.
Only the latter is important.
00
4 May: SMH: Jonathan Shapiro: Warren Buffett disappointed with offshore success
Buffett …on capital allocation
“Capitalism is about the allocation of capital and we have a system were we can allocate capital without tax consequences. We can move money as the text books say to where it can be usefully deployed, like wind farms. It makes good sense but it has to be applied with business like principles not stock promotion principles.” – Buffett…
Buffett and Munger on climate change
“I don’t think in making a decision on Berkshire and other companies that climate change should be a factor in the decision making.
“A lot of people are over-claiming that they know the impact. We are agnostic. It’s not there isn’t global warming because there is, but those that say they know its impact are talking out of their hats.”…
http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/warren-buffett-disappointed-with-offshore-success-20140504-37pqq.html
Shapiro/SMH don’t make clear who said what on climate change above; however:
WSJ Market Watch: 9 HOURs ago Live Blog 2014 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting: live
Andrew Ross Sorkin asks Buffett about climate change.
“You have investments in things like renewable energy and electric cars but BNSF carries lots of coal. What happens in the future?”
#BRK2014: Buffett: “I don’t think in making an investment decision in Berkshire – or any company – climate change should be a factor.”
Munger answers: There is plainly global warming, but people who know exactly what is going to happen are talking through their hats. Climate changes are a real issue, but no one really knows how to quantify the impact. We’re going to need a lot more electricity made from the sun. Berkshire is positioned well with investments in renewable generation and transmission lines…
http://stream.marketwatch.com/story/markets/SS-4-4/
10
so far, NYT not including the CC quotes of Buffett & Munger at the AGM:
3 May: NYT: Berkshire Hathaway’s 2014 Shareholder Meeting
By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED:
12.36 P.M. Factoring in Climate Change: Mr. Sorkin asks about climate change and whether Berkshire will meaningfully move away from fuel sources like coal, which are used in the company’s energy plants and are hauled by its railroads.
Mr. Buffett says it is a given that Berkshire will expand its use of alternative fuels, but until state power regulators require the company to stop using coal in its power plants, for example, it will use fossil fuels as well.
Mr. Munger, known for being more conservative than Mr. Buffett counterpart, is a bit more dismissive about climate change and says some people tend to overestimate the kind of effect it can have.
Still, both agree that Berkshire will eventually step further away from fossil fuel. Just not any time soon.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/05/03/live-blog-berkshire-hathaways-2014-shareholder-meeting/
00
should have mentioned Andrew Ross Sorkin is a NYT reporter who hasn’t put up a story himself, as yet.
00
The antithesis of truth is the big lie. Here’s what Hitler observed about this phenomenon:
“in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying”.
—Adolf Hitler , Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X
32
Global temperatures fluctuate over short and long term cycles. Whilst the alarmist Tipping Point of The Inconvenient Truth was an irresponsible load of non-scientific garbage.
Most Climate scientists need to more carefully revise basic physics, especially the masked accumulation of heat energy during a change of state.
WE must not be too unkind to our Climate Scientists, especially when Theoretical Physics is still in the Dark Ages, and mainstream physicists generally believe that gravitation is an illusion and gravity only results from matter being compelled to follow geodic pathways.
00
Graeme No.3 –
it does seem the writer, Alexander, is a little confused.
00
Most of AGW alarmism is being driven by a Malthusian ideology. That is, society is headed for an inevitable collapse, as populations and resource use expands beyond the carrying capacity and/or stability of the environment around them.
It took me a long time to properly figure this out. Lomborg spells it out well in his book the Skeptical Environmentalist. The idea runs very deep. It is the main reason sites like this exist. It is the prime reason alarmism in the IPCC exists.
Where alarmists consistently get the science wrong, such as sea level, and human well being, is because the idea of the inevitable Malthusian collapse trumps any observed reality. Observed reality doesn’t even need to figure in calculations, as the predicted end will come, irrespective of any present reality. The future in this view, is inevitable, it’s just a matter time. So sea levels can be distorted because it is part of an inevitable coming collapse.
It is not surprising that this sort of thing occurs, driven by human fear and ideology-we are a species predisposed to this kind of thing- what is surprising is how easily people generally and scientists are so easily fooled by it.
And here lies another driving factor, the problem of (eventually) replacing fossil fuels as a dominant source of energy. Both the Malthusian ideology and the decline in fossil fuel use, (even if we have under estimated fossil fuels and they last hundreds of years yet) drive alarmism and Malthusian ideology. These two, is what makes so many people so easily fooled by distorted science.
40
Just a note to the above, I don’t buy Malthusian inevitability, due to adaptability and innovation, amongst other things.
I also know of academics who have left fossil fuel careers and taken up environmentalism, partly through seeing the writing on the wall. Their careers paths may be reflective of the future, they themselves seem to think so anyway.
10
thingadonta @ # 34 & # 35
Re future energy supplies and I would like to think that Jo might have a look at this very interesting and comprehensive report from
ExxonMobil, The Outlook for Energy:
A View to 2040
Exxon Mobil would likely be the ones who would be getting a bit excited if the global energy supplies were approaching peak energy or even in decline.
Well it seems that from Exxon’s point of view, global energy supplies have been barely tapped compared to what is out there and can be and will be tapped with newer and advanced drilling and mining technologies in the future.
Plus their proposition of considerable reductions in energy use per capita through rapidly increasing efficiencies in power generation and energy use.
And that is using current known technologies such as the fossil sources fuel for energy production and the likely improvements to their efficiency of use.
Let alone if the likes of Lockheed Martin’s Skunkworks prove out their Fusion Reactor design by late this decade as they claim they will be able to do and get it operational by the mid 20’s which they say is their timetable for the production of their transportable fusion reactor design
There are other contenders in the corporate field who are also flat out trying to crack the fusion enigma problems, something that the few billion dollar National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore laboratories have failed to crack.
And then 20 or so billion dollar ITER Tokamak Fusion reactor is still a decade and a half away from first light’
The wannabe fusion company making the most noise at the moment is General Fusion which proposes, to quote; “Magnetized target fusion (MTF) is a hybrid between magnetic fusion and inertial confinement fusion. I
MTF, a compact toroid, or donut-shaped magnetized plasma, is compressed mechanically by an imploding conductive shell, heating the plasma to fusion conditions”.
These few are only a sample of the very significant drive by the big and some not so big corporates to crack another source of energy other than the fossil sources which our energy supplies come almost exclusively from at present .
It only needs one to crack the Fusion source of energy and humanity’s energy sources and supplies of energy will then be almost infinite in scope.
And crack it one day they will for the rewards are truly immense for the successful organisation.
Summing up, from every quarter there is information emerging that reinforces the view that global energy supplies of every type will probably not be short for at least most of or all of this century at least .
And for some energy sources they could still be well in use into the far foreseeable future some centuries ahead.
20
Also take into account the theory that “fossil” fuels are really the product of decomposing carbonate rocks deep within the earth’s crust; as opposed to dead dinosaurs.
If this theory is true, then we effectively have an infinite supply of fuel hydrocarbons.
There might also be grounds for investigating the hyothesis that atmospheric carbon dioxide can be recycled, through this process, to ultimately regenerate fuel hydrocarbons.
If this proves true, the eco fascists will have conniption fits.
20
Olaf Red @ #37
You have raised a very interesting point in your comment re abiotic oil oil that has been created not from the decomposition of biological material under very high pressure and lots of heat but oil and probably gas that has been created from the carbonate rocks under colossal pressures and heat some hundreds of kilometres down in the Earth’s mantle.
The Russians have been very strong proponents of the abiotic origins of oil for the past 30 or more years although their collossal Bazenhov shale field in western Siberia and the source rocks of the major Russian oil fields is likely to be of biological origin.
The main shale field in the USA under development at present is the Bakken field which runs through South and North Dakota and into Canada .
American shale oil reserves are estimated at 1.5 trillion barrels .
The world has used about 1.1 trillion barrels of oil since the first oil wells were drilled in Baku in what is now Azerbaijan despite the American’s claims to being the first oil producers.
The Bazenhov shale deposits in Russia are postulated as holding as much as 80 times the amount of oil that the American Bakken field is estimated to hold, so large are the Bazenhov shale fields
The historical time lines on oil production and use can be found here
In the oil drilling technology we all have heard about the fracking of the shale rocks or more accurately the layers of carbonate rocks between the impervious layers of shale.
Plus the ability to now drill a casing around a radius of about 30 feet and then drill for at least 3 kilometres all the while guiding the drill head between the changing contours of the oil bearing tight rock that is being fracked, ie; cracked open with water but now moving towards using liquid Propane and liquified CO2 as the cracking fluid under as much as 9,000 psi to allow the oil to seep out of the pores of the rock and be pumped to the surface.
Sand is pumped down with the fracking fluid so as to hold open the fractures of the fracked rock to allow the oil and gas to continue to flow out of the pores and into the oil pipe.
The latest drill technology from Shell is the expanding well casing technology now being used commercially which allows drill casing to be lowered down through previously drilled and installed casing and then when in location at the bottom of the current drilling depth, the casing sections are expanded to the same size as the casing they have been lowered down through and the drilling goes ahead until it is time to repeat the expanded casing process all over again.
In theory there is now almost no limit to the depths that an oil well can be drilled to, the only practical limits are costs and the point where the heat in the deep earth which increases at a continental land mass average with wide variations, of about 25 C per kilometre depth [ 3281 Ft / kilometre ]
The temperature limits for drill casing steels is around the 450C level after which the casing steels start to lose strength.
This puts the practical limits on drill depths using the expandable casing technology at around a maximum of 60.000 feet or about 1.5 times the deepest hole yet drilled in the Russian Arctic in 2011 of 12,345-metre-long (40,502 ft) Sakhalin-I Odoptu OP-11 Well (offshore the Russian island Sakhalin).[2]
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I was reading a very interesting article on Quadrant today about Ocean Vents and Faulty Climate Models.
A very, very interesting read…. especially as pertains to how subaqueous volcanism affects ocean currents, gas exchange and nutrient levels….not to mention the fact that climate models and Ocean models refuse to reflect the stochastic nature of the effects of subaqueous volcanism.
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J H
For some time now I have been rabbiting on about the high school level howler present in almost every paper on sea level change from heating.
You must have data about heating and cooling in all parts of the ocean before you can attribute any change in surface levels to any mechanism.
!
The deeper &50% of the world oceans are so little studied that no heating mechanism has been quantified. Therefore there is no deep ocan component to add into the whole ocean expansion/contraction equations.
Even my old Mum used to stir her soup before sipping it, in case it as too hot at the bottom.
We know that there is thermal activity on the ocean floors but we know bugger all about it.
It is simply sham science to continue making quantitative comments about sea level rise and global warming once you think about the above.
The logic is watertight – can anyone shoot it down?
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“When will citizens revolt effectively against
such callous disregard for their observations and wishes,”-
The sad truth is that the majority of the population is either incapable or unwilling to think for themselves. The perpetrators of this scam know they can control that majority through media propaganda. It is impossible for those people to believe their programmed reality could be wrong because of how pervasive the propaganda is.
Nobody likes being lied to so I would encourage readers here to speak out with simple truths to those who have been deluded. The definitive conclusions being made in the media about catastrophic changes are not supported by any underlying definitive science. CO2’s climate sensitivity is not known by anyone so conclusions about its effects are to be doubted not trusted. Most people believe the science is “settled” and aren’t aware of the massive uncertainties in climate models.
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That’s the fourth of four `extreme’ positions from NZ scientists. In the `It’s getting hotter and we’re all gonna Die!’ corner is `Lost Heat’ Trenberth, and `Drought is the new Norm’ Salinger, and in the `WTF?’ sceptical corner are Drs de Freitas and Kear. Seems pretty well balanced, now.
For a while, Chris seemed to be out there on his own.
Oops. Resupply time: more popcorn required. And beer. It’s gone down a lot lately. AR5 provided a lot of entertainment.
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And old page but a good pages , showing just how TRIVAL global warming really is..
http://knowledgedrift.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/why-the-co2-greenhouse-gas-debate-doesnt-matter/#more-999
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Griss,
I used the same page (kept permanently on my “reading list”) to make a similar comment on the most recent Bob Tisdale post over at WUWT.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/04/a-different-perspective-of-global-warming/#comment-1628314
It is an oldie but a goldie …
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2 PAGES: 3 May: LA Times: Evan Halper: Scientists race to develop farm animals to survive climate change
When a team of researchers from the University of Delaware traveled to Africa two years ago to search for exemplary chickens, they weren’t looking for plump thighs or delicious eggs.
They were seeking out birds that could survive a hotter planet…
He ( Carl Schmidt , Uni of Delaware) pulled out a map of the U.S. that climatologists at NASA recently gave him. There are yellow dots where the temperature spikes above 100 degrees more than 10 days a year. Near the Mason-Dixon line, where poultry is a big part of the economy, 100-degree days are rare. But by 2060, projections show lots of yellow dots…
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-climate-chickens-20140504,0,2628316.story#axzz30nPCYTRn
would imagine more than the $4.7m is involved:
High Plains Journal: ISU animal scientists to study heat stress in poultry
Iowa State University animal scientists are collaborating on a study of poultry genetics and management to help chickens deal with increased heat.
A $4.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative is funding the five-year project. Carl Schmidt, associate professor at the University of Delaware, leads the study with scientists from Iowa State, North Carolina State University, the University of Liverpool and Hy-Line International, the largest breeder of egg-laying chickens in the nation, based in Iowa.
http://www.hpj.com/archives/2011/jul11/jul11/0624HeatStressPoultrysr.cfm
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***”in the game” quote by an unnamed “scientist”. reminds me of Michael Molitor’s Decarbonisation lecture – he mentioned he’d been “in the game” for decades & used the term at least one other time:
4 May: SMH: Peter Hannam: Climate scientists in audit commission’s crosshairs
The nation’s climate and weather predicting capacity and the jobs of dozens of scientists are at risk if the Abbott government accepts a recommendation of the National Commission of Audit to axe a key program, researchers said.
The Australian Climate Change Science Program’s four-year funding of $31.6 million, mostly to the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, duplicates work by those and other agencies and “should be returned to the budget or allocated to priority areas”, the commission said in its report.
But scientists, including Michael Raupach, formerly of the CSIRO and now at the Australian National University, said the program supported a “great deal of critical scientific work” that helps refine climate models which are also used for weather forecasting.
“The future course of climate change matters hugely for Australia, and continued observation and modelling of climate is absolutely vital,” said Dr Raupach, whose research over more than three decades for CSIRO also included funding from the program…
One scientist said the $4 million or so provided to the CSIRO by the ACCSP per year was the reason the institution “was still in the game”***. Another said 30 to 35 climate scientists would lose their jobs directly if the program ceased and probably a similar number indirectly.
Despite the increasing heatwaves, rising sea levels and ocean acidification – which scientists link to rising greenhouse gas levels – the Abbott government has downplayed the risks from climate change, said Opposition climate change spokesman Mark Butler…
The potential for cuts to climate modelling comes as odds increase for an El Nino weather pattern in the Pacific.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/climate-scientists-in-audit-commissions-crosshairs-20140504-zr46q.html
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5 May: Guardian: Suzanne Goldenberg: Climate change is clear and present danger, says landmark US report
National Climate Assessment, to be launched at White House on Tuesday, says effects of climate change are now being felt
The National Climate Assessment, a 1,300-page report compiled by 300 leading scientists and experts, is meant to be the definitive account of the effects of climate change on the US. It will be formally released at a White House event and is expected to drive the remaining two years of Barack Obama’s environmental agenda…
The White House is believed to be organising a number of events over the coming week to give the report greater exposure…
“Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present,” a draft version of the report says. The evidence is visible everywhere from the top of the atmosphere to the bottom of the ocean, it goes on.
“Americans are noticing changes all around them. Summers are longer and hotter, and periods of extreme heat last longer than any living American has ever experienced. Winters are generally shorter and warmer. Rain comes in heavier downpours, though in many regions there are longer dry spells in between.”…
On Sunday the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, said the world needed to try harder to combat climate change. At a meeting of UN member states in Abu Dhabi before a climate change summit in New York on 23 September, Ban said: “I am asking them to announce bold commitments and actions that will catalyse the transformative change we need. If we do not take urgent action, all our plans for increased global prosperity and security will be undone.”…
“There is no question our climate is changing,” said Don Wuebbles, a climate scientist at the University of Illinois and a lead author of the assessment. “It is changing at a factor of 10 times more than naturally.”…
Under an act of Congress the reports were supposed to be produced every four years, but no report was produced during George W Bush’s presidency.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/04/climate-change-present-us-national-assessment
4 May: Gulf News: Samihah Zaman/Binsal Abdul KaderGore optimistic about limiting climate change
79 countries already generate electricity from solar photovoltaics at grid parity
Abu Dhabi: The heat energy trapped by carbon emissions and pollutants across the globe every day is equal to exploding 400,000 nuclear bombs similar to the one dropped in Hiroshima during the Second World War, Al Gore, former US vice-president and chairman of the Climate Reality Project, said at the Abu Dhabi Ascent summit on Sunday.
Speaking at the opening session of the two-day high-level meeting attended by leaders from government, business and civil society across the world, Gore said that within six years, more than 80 per cent of the world population will have access to photovoltaic electricity at rates equal to or cheaper than the grid average price…
Drawing attention to devastating weather events caused by global warming, Gore pointed out that 90 million tonnes of heat-trapping pollutants are released into the air every 24 hours. As a result, last month (April) was the 350th month in a row when temperatures were consistently higher than the 20th century average.
“Extreme weather events [such as floods, typhoons, droughts, etc] are a signal from Mother Nature that the world has a fever. So we must stop using the atmosphere as an open sewer,” he added…
Moreover developing countries without the existing structures for conventional energies “leapfrog” in disseminating new energy sources.
“A lot of developing countries don’t have very good electricity structures. So new business models and financial arrangements are emerging,” he added…
http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/environment/gore-optimistic-about-limiting-climate-change-1.1328073
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Wow!
How impressive is this? (do I really need to add /sarc)
The total power generated each year by EVERY Solar PV power plant on the whole of Planet Earth amounts to 0.26% of all power consumed, and that’s Tony being generous right there.
That’s one quarter of one percent.
That total power from EVERY Solar PV plant is the same as generated by ….. THREE large scale coal fired power plants in a year.
Total cost for all that Solar power – Upwards of a conservative $400 Billion.
Cost of 3 large scale USC coal fired power plants – $16.5 Billion. (worst case scenario)
By the way, that grid parity bit at the end of the sentence is hot steaming bovine waste.
Tony.
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I see Gore was the speaker thereof. I did not find a list of which 79 countries, however. That would have been helpful. (Did find a frightening suggestion/poll on WUWT that skeptics for a national group. That was such a bad idea for wind opponents, I hope nothing come of it.)
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4 May: Clean Technica: Zachary Shahan: Al Gore’s Tremendous Presentation At Abu Dhabi Ascent (Exclusive Videos)
Al Gore’s presentation today at the opening ceremony of Abu Dhabi Ascent* was absolutely superb. But what else do you expect from a guy who runs a nonprofit focused on presenting global warming catastrophe and key global warming solutions to the general public? What else do you expect from a guy who won a Nobel Prize for a movie?…
I could write up a summary of the presentation, but that wouldn’t do it justice at all, so I’m going to force you to watch it if you want more info. Here’s the presentation spread across three videos (since YouTube won’t let me publish a video more than 10 minutes in length)…
(VIDEOS INCL 4TH FROM Q&A)
I spoke very briefly with Gore later in the day, but he told me that he was not doing press interviews. (Standard for Gore these days.)
Despite shrugging me aside, I still think Gore is one of the best if not the best communicator on the topic of climate change. His presentation today absolutely nailed it. Be sure to share with your friends and family!
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/05/04/al-gores-tremendous-presentation-abu-dhabi-ascent-exclusive-videos/
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yea, another believer sees the light:
4 May: WSJ: Caleb S. Rossiter: Sacrificing Africa for Climate Change
Western policies seem more interested in carbon-dioxide levels than in life expectancy
Every year environmental groups celebrate a night when institutions in developed countries (including my own university) turn off their lights as a protest against fossil fuels. They say their goal is to get America and Europe to look from space like Africa: dark, because of minimal energy use.
But that is the opposite of what’s desired by Africans I know. They want Africa at night to look like the developed world, with lights in every little village and with healthy people, living longer lives, sitting by those lights. Real years added to real lives should trump the minimal impact that African carbon emissions could have on a theoretical catastrophe.
I’ve spent my life on the foreign-policy left. I opposed the Vietnam War, U.S. intervention in Central America in the 1980s and our invasion of Iraq. I have headed a group trying to block U.S. arms and training for “friendly” dictators, and I have written books about how U.S. policy in the developing world is neocolonial…
But I oppose my allies’ well-meaning campaign for “climate justice.” More than 230 organizations, including Africa Action and Oxfam, want industrialized countries to pay “reparations” to African governments for droughts, rising sea levels and other alleged results of what Ugandan strongman Yoweri Museveni calls “climate aggression.” And I oppose the campaign even more for trying to deny to Africans the reliable electricity—and thus the economic development and extended years of life—that fossil fuels can bring.
The left wants to stop industrialization—even if the hypothesis of catastrophic, man-made global warming is false. John Feffer, my colleague at the Institute for Policy Studies, wrote in the Dec. 8, 2009, Huffington Post that “even if the mercury weren’t rising” we should bring “the developing world into the postindustrial age in a sustainable manner.” He sees the “climate crisis [as] precisely the giant lever with which we can, following Archimedes, move the world in a greener, more equitable direction.”
I started to suspect that the climate-change data were dubious a decade ago while teaching statistics***…
Where is the justice for Africans when universities divest from energy companies and thus weaken their ability to explore for resources in Africa? Where is the justice when the U.S. discourages World Bank funding for electricity-generation projects in Africa that involve fossil fuels, and when the European Union places a “global warming” tax on cargo flights importing perishable African goods? Even if the wildest claims about the current impact of fossil fuels on the environment and the models predicting the future impact all prove true and accurate, Africa should be exempted from global restraints as it seeks to modernize…
(Mr. Rossiter directs the American Exceptionalism Media Project. He is an adjunct professor at American University and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.)
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303380004579521791400395288?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303380004579521791400395288.html
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blackadderthe4th,
Be a good chap would you and change your nom de blog to something less antonymous to a character that I’m sure many of us here admire for elaborating reality. What about Bazza, or Trollit or [SNIP]?
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Great, another grey haired old man with no climate science credentials gives us his opinion.
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I didn’t know grey hair correlated with global temperatures. (Only in the mind of a acolyte, right?)
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And what dilettante is it, pray tell, hands out these baseball card “credentials” of the mythical “climate science” to which you refer?
Flannery? The Goricle? George Monbiot? The Climate Council?
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Karen,
The white-haired scientist that you scorn is clearly one of great experience and understanding of the SCIENTIFIC method. Which of his analyses do you believe to be opinion rather than logical scientific analysis? Do you claim to have better scientific expertise than he?
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Karen thinks she has experience at 18 .. DOH !!!!
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Obviously Karen you have no understanding of what geology is all about. As a working geologist dealing with sedimentary rocks on a daily basis it is “climate change” and even the impact of a single weather event I see in almost every rock. So in reality geologists know more about “climate change” than your model driven so called climate scientist
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Oh forgot to add that my hair is starting to grey, actual more than starting. In many cultures it is considered you have no wisdom until your hair starts to grey.
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I consider my gray hair to be a sign of accumulated wisdom.
So that I can judge the worth — the wisdom — of what you said, how gray is your hair, Karen?
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That’s before the dye (:-0
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In that case Richard B Alley would have to be a very wise climate scientist and you should respect his opinion on global warming (that it can’t be anything other than CO2).
In your State of California, you could have completely trusted the judgement of Catholic priests Gary Holtey and Donald Kimball, two fellows who clearly had all the right qualifications.
That’s the same form of argument that says all blondes are dumb. With a bit of digging you can also find counter-examples, such as Hilary Clinton (evil perhaps, but not stupid), Jodie Foster (pretty actress with a literature degree, speaks 4 languages, and allegedly has a 142 IQ), Dolph Lundgren (blonde guy who played mostly grunt soldier roles in action movies despite having a bachelor and Masters degree in Chemical Engineering since 1976), and the unknown 19 year old blonde Marylin Mealey who was successfully taught how to program computers in a high-level language by Grace Hopper in 1957.
The grey hair stereotype is not just Argumentum ad Verecundiam, it’s a fallacy about why they should be considered wise or trustworthy in the first place. It’s like some new kind of Argumentum ad Superbiam applied to grey hair.
What fallacy is that, the Argumentum ad coloris pili?
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I see Obama is turning more gray by the day. I don’t see an associated raise in wisdom or knowledge, however.
(The reason people think all blondes are dumb is the smart ones dye their hair! 🙂 )
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His is not genes. It is gold medal.
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My hair is grey. My wife’s is not. We are the same age. Is her move “alive” or is it clairol?
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It’s not always clairol. Sometimes it’s good genes.
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I’ll go with her genes. Because she told me to. 😉
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As opposed to Flannery??? …. a balding bearded non-entity who studied kangaroo fossils. !!
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Hold on to your floaties, Dorothy, because the Wilkes ice shelf is going bye-bye, eventually…
East Antarctica more at risk than thought to long-term thaw
First sentence of the quoted study’s abstract:
Right, so the response of the basin to climate change was “unknown” AND it was “previously thought to be resilient to climate change”. The contradiction is in the ABC’s first sentence. This is the stuff of propaganda.
The lone voice of reason doesn’t show up until the 10th of 14 paragraphs:
Yes, as the study says, “East Antarctica may become a large contributor to future sea-level rise on timescales beyond a century.” Getting people to care about a ‘maybe’ that is 200 years into the future is nearly beyond their PR repertoire.
The current interglacial is overdue to end, since the last 5 interglacials were all shorter in duration and it is not known how much longer the earth will stay as warm as it is. If there could be any warming and raising of sea levels over the next 2000 years it will be in a race against time before the next glaciation.
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Global Warming is not a threat. But the acolytes are.
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