Tag Archives: Climate change

I Guess Man-made Global Warming May Be Possible

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Reuters posted a story yesterday with this headline, “Wind farms may have warming effect – research.” I’m sorry if you are offended that I find this hilarious, but I do.

The article reports:

Researchers at the State University of New York at Albany analysed the satellite data of areas around large wind farms in Texas, where four of the world’s largest farms are located, over the period 2003 to 2011.

The results, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, showed a warming trend of up to 0.72 degrees Celsius per decade in areas over the farms, compared with nearby regions without the farms.

“We attribute this warming primarily to wind farms,” the study said. The temperature change could be due to the effects of the energy expelled by farms and the movement and turbulence generated by turbine rotors, it said.

“These changes, if spatially large enough, may have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate,” the authors said.

First of all, I do not believe global warming (if it is occurring) is man-made–I think it reflects nature climate cycles. One of the greatest warming periods was during the Middle Ages, and there certainly was not a lot of carbon emission during that period.

The article concludes:

The authors of the study released on Sunday said: “Given the present installed (wind farm) capacity and the projected installation across the world, this study draws attention to an important issue that requires further investigation.”

“We need to better understand the system with observations and better describe and model the complex processes involved to predict how wind farms may affect future weather and climate.”

Commenting on the study, Steven Sherwood, co-director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Australia, said: “Daytime temperatures do not appear to be affected. This makes sense, since at night the ground becomes much cooler than the air just a few hundred metres above the surface. The wind farms generate gentle turbulence near the ground that causes these to mix together, thus the ground doesn’t get quite as cool.” (Edited by Pravin Char)

The bottom line here is very simple–we just don’t know as much as we think we do! I am not sure we will ever find a ‘perfect’ way to generate energy, but we need to understand that energy is needed and right now we need to embrace any form of energy that will give America energy independence.

 

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Were The Feudal Lords Driving SUV’s ?

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Yesterday the U.K. Daily Mail posted a story that will create some problems for those who believe that global warming is man-made and caused by our use of carbon fuels. Recent evidence shows that global warming occurred in the Middle Ages in many areas of the world.

The article reports:

A team of scientists led by geochemist Zunli Lu from Syracuse University in New York state, has found that contrary to the ‘consensus’, the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ approximately 500 to 1,000 years ago wasn’t just confined to Europe.

In fact, it extended all the way down to Antarctica – which means that the Earth has already experience global warming without the aid of human CO2 emissions.

Whoops.

Professor Lu based his conclusions on a rare mineral called ikaite, which forms in cold waters.

The article explains:

It turns out the water that holds the crystal structure together – called the hydration water – traps information about temperatures present when the crystals formed.

This finding by Lu’s research team establishes, for the first time, ikaite as a reliable way to study past climate conditions

The article further reports:

The scientists were particularly interested in crystals found in layers deposited during the ‘Little Ice Age,’ approximately 300 to 500 years ago, and during the Medieval Warm Period before it.

Both climate events have been documented in Northern Europe, but studies have been inconclusive as to whether the conditions in Northern Europe extended to Antarctica.

Lu’s team found that in fact, they did.

Now that we have a reliable way of studying past climate conditions, we may be able to actually understand the things that do actually impact our global temperatures.

 

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One Way To Deal With A Shakedown By Extreme Environmentalists

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Reuters is reporting today that China is banning its airlines from the European Union (EU) policy that charges a carbon fee for flights in and out of Europe. The carbon fee is essentially an additional tax and China has said that it simply will not pay the tax.

The article reports:

The EU plan is intended to curb rising greenhouse gas pollution from aviation and fight climate change. Globally, emissions from aviation comprise about two percent of mankind’s greenhouse gas pollution and this share is expected to grow.

“China hopes Europe will act in the light of the broader issues of responding to global climate change, the sustainable development of international aviation and Sino-European ties, strengthening communication and coordination to find an appropriate solution acceptable to both sides,” an unnamed official from China’s civil aviation authority said, according to the announcement.

The interesting fact in this little dust up is that China is included in the EU plan to reduce air pollution. One of the problems with the Kyoto Protocol of 2006 was that the restrictions on greenhouse gases were not extended to India and China.

The National Geographic Magazine reported in July of 2007:

Damaging air pollutants include sulfur dioxide, particulate matter—a mixture of extremely small particles and water droplets—ozone, and nitrogen dioxide. China accounts for roughly one-third of the global total for these pollutants, according to Krzyzanowski (Michal Krzyzanowski, an air quality adviser at the WHO Regional Office for Europe).

China is not willing to play the global warming game. As I have stated before, I do not support dirty air. However, I think we need to make sure that any climate change is man-caused before we cripple the major free economies of the world in the name of saving the planet. The current ‘solutions’ to global warming are nothing more than a global redistribution of wealth–the major polluters are not included in the restrictions. Evidently China does not like being included in the efforts to save the planet.

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Another Place The Federal Budget Could Be Easily Cut

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Remember the leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s (UEA) which brought into question the validity of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s work, with the reported statements “hide the decline,” and “Mike’s Nature Trick.”? Remember IPCC claims that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by the year 2035, which the IPCC, in a statement, later admitted was based on inconclusive data? According to CNS News, the questionable reports of the IPCC released in recent years have been funded more than 50 percent by the U. S. taxpayers.

According to the article:

In a Nov. 17, 2011 report, “International Climate Change Assessments: Federal Agencies Should Improve Reporting and Oversight of U.S. Funding,”the GAO found that the State Department provided $19 million for administrative and other expenses, while the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) provided $12.1 million in technical support through the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), averaging an annual $3.1 million to the IPCC over 10 years — $31.1 million so far.

The IPCC runs an annual budget of $7 million, according to the Wall Street Journal, making the United States a major benefactor for its global warming agenda.

This is one place we truly need to cut the budget.

The article further reports:

The $3.1 million annual U.S. funding goes towards the IPCC’s “core activities”: meetings of the governing bodies, co-ordination meetings, support for the developing country co-chairs, the IPCC Web site and Secretariat.  The IPCC assesses scientific information, but does not conduct any research of its own.

According to the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, the United States “has made the world’s largest scientific investment in the areas of climate change and global change research” with a total of nearly $20 billion over the past 13 years.

As a government, we are broke. We are borrowing the dollars we are spending. We also need to realize that most of the solutions proposed by the climate change proponents involve crippling the American economy while not dealing with the countries that are actually creating more pollution than the United States. It’s not about climate change–it’s about the redistribution of wealth. There is a mentality among some of those involved in climate research that the rest of the world will be made richer if America is made poorer. It never occurs to them that if they would focus on working toward building their own country’s economy rather than tearing down America’s economy, they might actually accomplish something positive. It’s time for someone in Congress to put a stop to this.

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Starting A Trade War With Carbon Credits

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An Icelandair Boeing 757-200 takes off from Lo...

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CNS News is reporting today that starting January 1, all American airlines flying into European airports will be be liable for charges for emitting greenhouse gases blamed for “global warming.”

The article reports:

Under an E.U. directive that comes into effect in just 10 days, airlines using European airports will be allocated tradable allowances covering a certain amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted each year, based on historical emissions data. CO2 emissions beyond the allowance must be paid for, and airlines can trade permits among themselves depending on how much carbon they produce.

Proponents say aviation accounts for three percent of total greenhouse gas emissions.

Please read the sentence above again.

If you are a believer in global warming, there is an aspect of this you need to keep in mind. Paying an extra $10 to $52 a ticket to fly to Europe actually has no impact on pollution–it is a way for someone to collect money from your activities. If the surtax decreases the number of people flying to Europe, it means fewer people in each plane, thus each person in the plane has a bigger carbon footprint–not a smaller one! It is the equivalent of your going up to someone and saying, “If you pay me five dollars, I won’t take a shower today and that will help the planet.” It won’t make a significant difference, and depending on what your daily activities are, it might even make your corner of the planet a little less pleasant.

Global warming, unfortunately, is about redistribution of wealth. The science is not settled and the people pushing the panic button have an agenda other than the welfare of the planet. As I have stated before, one of the best sources on the current science of climate change is wattsupwiththat. It is a very scientifically oriented site and is quite often well over my head, but there are great charts and graphs explaining what is actually going on with the earth’s climate–both now and in the past.

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The Money In Climate Science

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Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line posted a story about James Hansen, one of the leaders in the fight to convince the world that global warming is real and man-made.

The article reports:

It recently came out that James Hansen, one of the two or three most prominent global warming alarmists on whose work the IPCC reports rest, “forgot” to report $1.6 million in outside income, as required by his government contracts. Is that significant? Well, yes: A handful of scientists, including Hansen, have gotten wealthy on climate alarmism. They have an enormous financial interest in the faux science they have done so much to perpetrate.

Mr. Hinderaker points out that being a global-warming alarmist can be very profitable. The federal grants go to the people who claim that we are in serious danger, and the exotic speaking engagements go to the more radical proponents of global warming.

There is another aspect of this that I find extremely interesting. There is a website called surfacestations.org that shows some of the locations of the temperature gauges the global warming people are using to monitor temperature changes.

This is a sensor in Marysville, California.

This sensor is in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Note that it is very close to both the house and the air conditioning unit.

There are more pictures available at surfacestations.org.

I am probably one of the least scientific people on the planet, but even I have figured out that when you stand near an air conditioning unit, the air next to that unit tends to be a bit warmer than the air farther away.

We need to understand that there are climate cycles that occur naturally. We are not in control of the climate–either in a positive or negative way.

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Guess What ? Weather Changes !

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This graph is from an article by Ed Morrissey posted at Hot Air:

global warming, climate change, AGW, BEST, Al Gore

It exposes the lie in the controversial data collected by the East Anglia Project, NASA, and other organizations that have acted as advocates for action based on anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

The article points out:

But then look what happens in the past 11 years in the bottom chart.  Despite the fact that the world’s nations continue to spew CO2 with no significant decline (except perhaps in the Great Recession period of 2008-9), the temperature record is remarkably stable.  In fact, it looks similar to the period between 1945 and 1970 on the top chart.  If global temperature increases really correlated directly to CO2 emissions, we wouldn’t see this at all; we’d see ever-escalating rates of increase in global temperatures, which is exactly what the AGW climate models predicted at the turn of the century.  They were proven wrong.

Mr. Morrissey concludes:

Even perfect correlation doesn’t prove causation, and this is far from being perfect correlation.  AGW scientists have still failed to prove that CO2 is responsible for the moderate rise in temperatures, nor have they proven their hypothesis that the rise is irreversible, or even bad.  As I pointed out to my friend, Greenland hosted a farming community for over 200 years before getting swallowed in ice in a global-cooling period that helped spread disease, death, and starvation throughout Europe.  If Greenland once again becomes farmland, then we might be entering a somewhat more remarkable climate period in human history, but until then this is more properly referred to as weather.

The global warming movement is based on two things–many high-powered politicians in countries around the world (including America) are highly invested in ‘green energy’ and if they can convince the world to switch to green energy, they will make a bundle of money. Secondly, if you look at the Kyoto treaties and other global warming solutions, you will see that they are aimed at taking money away from countries with strong economies and giving it to countries with corruption, graft and weak economies. The major polluters of the world (India and China) are not bound by these treaties.

We all need to take care of our environment, but we need to balance taking care of the earth and taking care of the people on the earth.

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Crony Capitalism Underwritten By Junk Science

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In 2008, Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts signed the Global Warming Solutions Act. The stated purpose of the act was to make Massachusetts one of the first states in the nation to move forward with a comprehensive regulatory program to address Climate Change.

Meanwhile the Wall Street Journal posted an opinion piece on October 6th entitled, “Five Truths About Climate Change.”

Some basic facts pointed out in the article:

Here’s a reality check: During the same decade that Mr. Gore and the IPCC dominated the environmental debate, global carbon-dioxide emissions rose by 28.5%.

Those increases reflect soaring demand for electricity, up by 36%, which in turn fostered a 47% increase in coal consumption. (Natural-gas use increased by 29% while oil use grew by 13%.) Carbon-dioxide emissions are growing because people around the world understand the essentiality of electricity to modernity. And for many countries, the cheapest way to produce electrons is by burning coal. 

China’s emissions jumped by 123% over the past decade and now exceed those of the U.S. by more than two billion tons per year. Africa’s carbon-dioxide emissions jumped by 30%, Asia’s by 44%, and the Middle East’s by a whopping 57%. Put another way, over the past decade, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions—about 6.1 billion tons per year—could have gone to zero and yet global emissions still would have gone up.

The science is not settled, not by a long shot. Last month, scientists at CERN, the prestigious high-energy physics lab in Switzerland, reported that neutrinos might—repeat, might—travel faster than the speed of light. If serious scientists can question Einstein’s theory of relativity, then there must be room for debate about the workings and complexities of the Earth’s atmosphere. 

Please follow the link to the Wall Street Journal to read the entire article. Global warming is NOT settled science.

Meanwhile, back to Massachusetts. Many of the solar and wind energy companies have received grants from the state and from the federal stimulus program. When you look at the officers of these companies, you find that many of them went from state government to ‘green energy’ and took government money with them. There are some questionable connections here. In March of this year, the Hawaii Free Press reported:

Paul Gaynor, CEO of First Wind stood comfortably with Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie, Rep Mazie Hirono, and HECO CEO Dick Rosenblum at the grand opening of the Kahuku Wind energy project on Oahu’s North Shore Thursday.   As he should. 

First Wind–formerly known as UPC Wind–got its start in wind energy by launching Italy’s IVPC–a company now subject to a record breaking asset seizure by Italian police.  The Financial Times September 14, 2010 explains:

Please follow the links to read the entire story. Paul Gaynor was appointed by Governor Patrick to be Co-chair of “The Climate Protection Advisory Committee” under the Global Warming Solutions Act.

I think it’s time to re-evaluation the entire ‘green energy’ idea. We don’t need another place for politicians to line their pockets at the expense of taxpayers.

For more information on the ‘follow the money’ aspect of green energy, see rightwinggranny post of August 14, 2010. Also, please understand that Solyndra was counting on the passage of Cap and Trade legislation so that they could increase the price of their product and make a profit. If Cap and Trade had passed through Congress, we would probably have never heard of Solyndra. That may be one reason President Obama is attempting to virtually pass Cap and Trade by using EPA regulations to do the same thing.

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The Global Warming Hoax

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On Monday, John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article titled, “The Global Warming Hoax In Charts.” I am not scientifically inclined enough to understand exactly what the charts show, but it is obvious that climate change is not solely dependent on carbon dioxide levels.

This chart shows the relationship between ocean temperatures and the earth’s temperature:

This chart shows the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperatures:

The article concludes:

Even a casual investigation reveals that carbon dioxide levels are not the driver of global temperatures. Rather, a combination of solar activity and other earthly phenomena, most notably cycles associated with the oceans, explain the rise and fall of global temperatures that have gone on for millenia.

Even my unscientific mind tells me that the first chart shows a closer relationship than the second. My question then becomes, “Why are some scientists trying so hard to convince us that human activity is responsible for climate change?” I don’t know.

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