New Ice Age Prediction -- Repeat After Me, "We Really Don't Know Enough About What We Are Doing To Risk Destroying It All!"

An expert from the National Autonomous University of Mexico predicted that in about ten years the Earth will enter a "little ice age" which will last from 60 to 80 years and may be caused by the decrease in solar activity.

Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the UNAM, as argued earlier during a conference that teaches at the Center for Applied Sciences and Technological Development.
...
Velasco Herrera described as erroneous predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), pursuant to which the planet is experiencing a gradual increase in temperature, the so-called global warming.

The models and forecasts of the IPCC "is incorrect because only are based on mathematical models and presented results at scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity," said the specialist also in image processing and signs and prevention of natural disasters.

The phenomenon of climate change, he added, should include other kinds of factors, both internal, such as volcanoes and the very human activity, and external, such as solar activity.

DKK
Milenio (translation)

When Mathematicians Actually Check The Numbers The Global Warming Evidence Proves Flimsy -- Wonder Why No One Bothered To Look Before, Oh Yea, The Debate Is Over Already!

“…I was well convinced, as were most technically trained people, that the IPCC’s case for Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is very tight. However, upon taking the time to get into the details of the science, I was appalled at how flimsy the case really is.”

Watts up with that has the whole post, it's worth reading!

You can a reaction to this gentleman to be proportional to Gore's Law!
DKK
Watts Up With That -- APS Fellow supports Monckton's position

Energy Equals Prosperity -- There Is No Replacement Yet -- That's Why The Eco-waco's Want It Regulated Out Of Existance!

To judge by actions, not words, the carbon-warming view hasn't come close to persuading a political majority even in nations considered far more environmentally enlightened than China and India. Europe's coal consumption is rising, not falling, and the Continent won't come close to meeting the Kyoto targets for carbon reduction. Australia is selling coal to all comers.

On the far side of the environmental curtain China already mines and burns more coal than any other country. Together, China and India control more than one-fifth of the planet's vast coal reserves. Dar predicts--very plausibly, in my view--that the two countries may fire up a new coal plant as often as once a week for the next 25 years, adding about twice as much coal-fired generating capacity as the U.S. has today. Persian Gulf states are planning significant coal imports, because coal generates much cheaper electricity than oil or gas.

In developing countries the political survival of the people at the top depends on providing affordable fuel for kitchens, farms, fertilizer plants, steel mills, highways and power plants. Oil and coal are the only practical fuels at hand.

DKK
Instapundit

Green Doesn't Sell -- Which Should Be Good Since Greens Don't Really Care About Anything But Controling Everything

Last week, The New York Times noted that the advertising industry is pulling back from green-themed marketing, having “grasped the public’s growing skepticism over ads with environmental messages.

And advertisers’ concerns are buttressed by the recent sales figures for magazines that have published a “Green Issue” this year. Time’s Earth Day issue was the newsweekly’s third-lowest-selling issue of 2008 so far, according to ABC Rapid Report. A typical issue of Time sells 93,000 or so copies on the newsstand; the April 28 installment, which substituted green for red in the magazine’s trademarked cover design, sold only 72,000.

Elle’s May issue sold a mere 275,000 copies, versus the title’s year-to-date average of 328,500. The last issue of Elle to sell that badly was in May 2008—another green issue, probably not coincidentally.

Discover also published a green issue this year, and also took a hit for it, selling 86,000 newsstand copies, compared to an average of 117,000 in the first half of 2007. (Discover doesn’t participate in Rapid Report.)

The only magazine that didn’t take a bath on its green issue was Vanity Fair, which reported 370,000 single copy sales for May, only a little below its year-to-date average of 375,666.

Portifolio

A technological breakthrough might just allow CO2 to be "scrubbed" from the atmosphere. This from the Guardian:

It has long been the holy grail for those who believe that technology can save us from catastrophic climate change: a device that can "suck" carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air, reducing the warming effect of the billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas produced each year.

Now a group of US scientists say they have made a breakthrough towards creating such a machine. Led by Klaus Lackner, a physicist at Columbia University in New York, they plan to build and demonstrate a prototype within two years that could economically capture a tonne of CO2 a day from the air, about the same per passenger as a flight from London to New York.

The prototype so-called scrubber will be small enough to fit inside a shipping container. Lackner estimates it will initially cost around £100,000 to build, but the carbon cost of making each device would be "small potatoes" compared with the amount each would capture, he said.

You would think that this would be an environmentalists wet dream. The perfect solution to their problem! Turns out...not so much. This from the National Center for Policy Analysis:

While some see the scrubber as an efficient and economical way to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide, many environmentalists oppose the technology because it allows people to use fossil fuels and emit carbon in the first place.

Doesn't that go to the heart of the agenda of the environmentalists? They're not really interested in solutions, just control. People shouldn't be able to emit carbon whether it has an effect on the environment or not.

Conservative Punk

70% Of 20th Century Warming Caused By Ocean Southern Oscillation -- NASA Scientists

Well, well. Congress learned something shattering today, which will have the Church of Al Gore/IPCC running in fear of their lost credibility. It has been scientifically demonstrated that 70% of the Global Warming in the last century (and cooling in the last decade) is due to the Pacific Ocean Oscillations, not CO2:

...
On this issue, it can be shown with a simple climate model that small cloud fluctuations assumed to occur with two modes of natural climate variability — the El Nino/La Nina phenomenon (Southern Oscillation), and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation — can explain 70% of the warming trend since 1900, as well as the nature of that trend: warming until the 1940s, no warming until the 1970s, and resumed warming since then.

The gentlemen making this claim is the lead investigator one of NASA’s flagship Earth Observing Observatories (H/T Ice Cap). I have the honor of working on this mission on the periphery (Aqua), it is operated out of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD.

Expect the hyperventilation to begin following Gore's Law.
DKK
The Strata-Sphere -- NASA Discovers 70% Of Global Climate Due To Pacific Ocean Oscillations - Not CO2

The American Energy Act (HR 6566) -- Manzullo Co-Sponsored Bill Does What We Need -- Everything! UPDATE: Call Congress Demand A Vote!!

Congressman Don Manzullo (R-Egan) today joined 83 of his colleagues in introducing a comprehensive energy bill that takes an “all of the above” strategy to end our dependence on costly foreign oil and reduce gas prices in America. At a Capitol Hill news conference this afternoon, the Members of Congress will also demand Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi end her opposition to American-made energy and allow a vote on the bill.

The American Energy Act (HR 6566), which Manzullo co-sponsored, will increase the supply of American-made energy, improve conservation and efficiency, and promote new and expanding energy technologies to help lower the price at the pump and reduce America’s increasingly costly and dangerous dependence on foreign sources of energy. Many of the provisions of the all-encompassing bill were included in Manzullo’s 12-point plan to reduce gas prices in America, which he unveiled in May.    

This is exactly what we need, a real actual energy policy that addresses current and future issues! Manzullo and the Republicans have got to force this to the floor for a vote -- that means they have to sell it to the American people, and they have to start now! Thing is, with $4 gas prices selling it won't take much, more like just making as many people as possible aware of it!

Even T. Boone Pickens, who has been getting praise from the left for his plan, today reaffirmed that his plan is simply to get off of foreign oil using every measure available! Drill everywhere AND include renewable, kinda like plan Manzullo co-sponosred.

 

More on the plan from Manzullo!

• To increase the supply American-made energy in environmentally sound ways, the legislation will:

1.        Open our deep water ocean resources, which will provide an additional three million barrels of oil per day, as well as 76 trillion cubic feet of natural gas;

2.        Open the Arctic coastal plain, which will provide an additional one million barrels of oil per day;

3.        Allow development of our nation’s shale oil resources, which could provide an additional 2.5 million barrels of oil per day; and

4.        Increase the supply of gas at the pump by cutting bureaucratic red tape that essentially blocks construction of new refineries.

• To improve energy conservation and efficiency, the legislation will:

1.        Provide tax incentives for businesses and families that purchase more fuel efficient vehicles;

2.        Provide a monetary prize for developing the first economically feasible, super-fuel-efficient vehicle reaching 100 miles-per-gallon; and

3.        Provide tax incentives for businesses and homeowners who improve their energy efficiency.

• To promote renewable and alternative energy technologies, the legislation will:

1.        Spur the development of alternative fuels through government contracting by repealing the “Section 526” prohibition on government purchasing of alternative energy and promoting coal-to-liquids technology;

2.        Establish a renewable energy trust fund using revenues generated by exploration in the deep ocean and on the Arctic coastal plain;

3.        Permanently extend the tax credit for alternative energy production, including wind, solar and hydrogen; and

4.        Eliminate barriers to the expansion of emission-free nuclear power production.

  
DKK

See -- Representative Don Manzullo's plan here

Update:  This bill is being held up by Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in congress because it would easily pass and they couldn't have that -- an independent America would really put a crimp in their plans!   

Call Congress and demand an up or down vote on The American Energy Act today!! 

Gore's Law -- As The Facts Prove More 'Inconvenient' The Extremist Hype Will Grow

When it comes to global warming, extreme scare stories abound. Al Gore, for example, famously claimed that a whopping six meters (20 feet) of sea-level rise would flood major cities around the world.

Gore’s scientific advisor, Jim Hansen from NASA, has even topped his protégé. Hansen suggests that there will eventually be sea-level rises of 24 meters (80 feet), with a six-meter rise happening just this century. Little wonder that fellow environmentalist Bill McKibben states that “we are engaging in a reckless drive-by drowning of much of the rest of the planet and much of the rest of creation.”

Given all the warnings, here is a slightly inconvenient truth: over the past two years, the global sea level hasn’t increased. It has slightly decreased . Since 1992, satellites orbiting the planet have measured the global sea level every 10 days with an amazing degree of accuracy – 3-4 millimeters (0.2 inches). For two years, sea levels have declined. (All of the data are available at sealevel.colorado.edu.)

(...)

Increasingly, alarmists claim that we should not be allowed to hear such facts. In June, Hansen proclaimed that people who spread “disinformation” about global warming – CEOs, politicians, in fact anyone who doesn’t follow Hansen’s narrow definition of the “truth” – should literally be tried for crimes against humanity.

It is depressing to see a scientist – even a highly politicized one – calling for a latter-day Inquisition. Such a blatant attempt to curtail scientific inquiry and stifle free speech seems inexcusable. But it is perhaps also a symptom of a broader problem. It is hard to keep up the climate panic as reality diverges from the alarmist predictions more than ever before.

I call the phenomenon of growing hype in the face of 'Inconvenient' Truths Gore's Law!  (As opposed to the Gore Effect where the temperature drops in anticipation of visits by Gore and global warming protester events)
DKK
Watts Up With That -- The Green Inquisition

On the positive side --
From Scott Rasmussen: “Only 33% of American voters believe Al Gore’s proposal to switch all of the nation’s electricity production to wind, solar and other carbon-free sources in 10 years is realistic.”
DKK

What Government Has Wrought, With The Help Of The Eco-Waco's and The Courts

T Boone Pickens is absolutely right: we can't go on transferring a trillion a year to the middle east. On the other hand, we used to be the creditor nation of the world, as well as the manufacturing nation. We gave that up voluntarily for regulations and a regulatory state. Whether his conclusion, that we ought to convert to wind power, is correct is another matter. It doesn't look as useful as nuclear, but there are fewer environmental fanatics opposed to wind. I suspect that energy economics is more determined by law suits than by engineering.

DKK
JERRY POURNELLE

Why The Debate Matters -- Global Warming The Multi Trillion Dollar Religion

I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.

FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I've been following the global warming debate closely for years.

When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.

The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts.  

Here is what he means by facts:

1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.

Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.

If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. ...

2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. ...

3. The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). ...

4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect. ...

The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician's assertion. ..

What is going to happen over the next decade as global temperatures continue not to rise? The Labor Government is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions. If the reasons later turn out to be bogus, the electorate is not going to re-elect a Labor government for a long time. When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it.

 DKK
Via Ace and Powerline

Mathematical Proof There Is No Global Warming Crisis -- IPCC Assumptions, Sorta Made Up Crap

Mathematical proof that there is no “climate crisis” appears today in a major, peer-reviewed paper in Physics and Society, a learned journal of the 10,000-strong American Physical Society, SPPI reports.

Christopher Monckton, who once advised Margaret Thatcher, demonstrates via 30 equations that computer models used by the UN’s climate panel (IPCC) were pre-programmed with overstated values for the three variables whose product is “climate sensitivity” (temperature increase in response to greenhouse-gas increase), resulting in a 500-2000% overstatement of CO2’s effect on temperature in the IPCC’s latest climate assessment report, published in 2007.

Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered [http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/index.cfm] demonstrates that later this century a doubling of the concentration of CO2 compared with pre-industrial levels will increase global mean surface temperature not by the 6 °F predicted by the IPCC but, harmlessly, by little more than 1 °F. Lord Monckton concludes – (...)

• “… Perhaps real-world climate sensitivity is very much below the IPCC’s estimates. Perhaps, therefore, there is no ‘climate crisis’ at all. … The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing.”
• The IPCC’s 2007 climate summary overstated CO2’s impact on temperature by 500-2000%;
• CO2 enrichment will add little more than 1 °F (0.6 °C) to global mean surface temperature by 2100;
• Not one of the three key variables whose product is climate sensitivity can be measured directly;
• The IPCC’s values for these key variables are taken from only four published papers, not 2,500;
• The IPCC’s values for each of the three variables, and hence for climate sensitivity, are overstated;
• “Global warming” halted ten years ago, and surface temperature has been falling for seven years;
• Not one of the computer models relied upon by the IPCC predicted so long and rapid a cooling;
• The IPCC inserted a table into the scientists’ draft, overstating the effect of ice-melt by 1000%;
• It was proved 50 years ago that predicting climate more than two weeks ahead is impossible;
• Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and Pluto warmed at the same time as Earth warmed;
• In the past 70 years the Sun was more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 year

I have said it repeatedly, we really don't know what we are doing and this only shows that all of our assumptions are suspect.  The debate cannot be over when the input is not real.
DKK
Science and Public Policy Institute
Via Say Anything Blog

Are The Weather Disasters We Were Promised Missing?

Here's a quotation from Jeff Masters's blog at Weather Underground:

Tropical Storm Bertha has maintained it's strength overnight, but is having trouble with Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs) of 25°C--one degree below the threshold of 26°C considered beneficial for tropical storms.

One overstuffed European degree--almost two REAL AMERICAN degrees--below the threshold! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Weren't we supposed to have super-hot sea temperatures due to global warming? What's up with that?

What happened to the worldwide environmental catastrophe we were all expecting? Did it get lost at the UPS hub? Maybe we should have asked for a tracking number.

DKK
Hog On Ice -- When Imaginary Worlds Collide

CAFE -- It's Gonna Cost You

Earlier this year, the Bush administration surprised a lot of green activists by actually surpassing the already challenging CAFE standards for 2011-2015. While automakers like Toyota, Ford, and GM are quietly going about the business of hitting those targets, BMW is speaking up and saying that the targets are unattainable. The German automaker has asked the Bush administration for an alternative plan that helps out the hardest hit automakers, and the new rules are a punch to the gut for the Bavarian Motor crew.

While the corporate average for cars and trucks is 35.7 mpg and 28.6 mpg by 2015, BMW has to hit 37.7 mpg and 31.7 mpg, respectively. The reason for the disparity is the sliding scale the government used to account for differences in size in each automaker's lineup. Since BMW doesn't sell pickup trucks and it has plenty of small and midsize offerings, BMW has to hit higher fuel economy standards. What the CAFE numbers don't take into account is the fact that all BMWs are RWD, and there isn't a four cylinder engine to be found (in the U.S., yet). The Bush administration says its final fuel economy numbers will become public by the end of the year, and if companies like BMW don't get special dispensations, look for there to be smaller engines on the horizion, or bigger fines. 

Autoblog -- BMW calls CAFE 'not feasible'

Ten months ago, Bob Lutz said GM cars would be $5,000 more expensive if the Bush administration got its way with fuel standards by raising fuel economy 4% every year through 2017. Bush didn't get his way, but Congress did with its newly-signed-into-law energy bill that requires automakers have a fleet average of 35 MPG by 2020. According to Lutz, that's going to be even more expensive: "This is going to be a net average cost of $6,000 per vehicle, which will have to be passed onto the consumer."

Lutz said that the premium would actually range from $4,000 to $10,000, and that "it won't come all at once, because 35 mpg doesn't kick in all at once." No one said that saving the world was going to be cheap -- but $6,000 per vehicle? We look forward to figuring out which vehicles will bear the brunt of the plan. Add $10,000 to the price of a ZR-1 and no one's really going to notice. Add $6,000 to the price of a CTS and, depending on how much more expensive its competition gets, things could get interesting. Add $4,000 to the price of an Aveo and you've probably sent a fair number of buyers elsewhere.

Autoblog Green -- Lutz says new CAFE standards will increase car price by $6 grand

American Views On Energy And Environment Predictably Changing

A new poll shows high gasoline prices have dramatically changed Americans’ views on energy and the environment. More people now say expanding oil drilling and building new power plants is a bigger priority than energy conservation.
The poll by the Pew Research Center shows nearly half of those surveyed — or 47 percent — now rate energy exploration, drilling and building new power plants more important, compared with 35 percent in February.
The Pew poll of about 2,000 adults conducted in late June shows the shift toward energy development across the political spectrum including among Democrats, political independents, liberals and young people.

This was titled, "An unexpected result of high gas prices," but I'm not sure why Knoxvilletalks didn't expect it, it is an economic reality with the increase in demand and price.
DKK
Knoxville Talks

If Gore Really Meant It

Congratulations!  Since leaving the White House Al Gore has earned well over $100 million dollars as he has continued his crusade against the evils of man's impact on the world.

I am glad he is doing well and embracing capitalism, seriously!  He grabbed an idea and marketed the hell out of it and some people ate it up.  I don't even begrudge him his home energy usage, other then the hypocrisy of the Goracle being the King of Carbon, after all he buys carbon offset credits from his own company, right?

What I don't understand is why he doesn't actually do something that would not only help solve his signature green issue but would actually improve and prepare America as well? Of course helping America could impact his image and his, "citizen of the world" standing, but I think he could spin the issue to his advantage.

As Mr. Gore knows from the recent upgrades to his home, solar energy is very expensive -- to the point of still being too expensive to be practical for the average home:

FindSolar.com, operated by solar industry interests and the DOE, has a handy Solar Estimator that calculates an estimated cost for a home solar PV system and provides a list of contractors in your area. It uses some curious formulas that I don't quite understand to calculate positive ROI, but it provides some interesting insights.  (...)

Conclusion: While good for the environment (assuming "green" manufacturing practices), residential solar PV systems are still too expensive and not yet cost effective. Expect this to change, however, as R&D produces better and cheaper solar panels and manufacturing ramps up.

Middle class America simply can't afford to install these units, even after tax credits, they are just too expensive.

If Mr. Gore were serious about saving us from ourselves, his carbon offset company would stop paying to plant trees, saving the Rain Forest, or preventing third world advances by pressing green only advancements.

Rather, if Mr. Gore, as the former Vice President of The United States, wanted to do his part for every aspect of American life, from energy independence, to economic stability, and even national security he would use those carbon offsets to purchase and install solar panels here in the states.

Wouldn't the overall impact of such a program be far greater then planting a tree?  Of course it wouldn't encourage the sweeping changes the environmentalists want, but is the goal really the changes or the environment?

He could start with schools and then pledge to have a panel installed on each and every home (that wanted one, not mandated!) by a date certain.  I would sign up for that!  Imagine the impact a lower electric bill would have on the poor each and every month!

The impact would not only be felt today but would help to ensure that our nations electric production capacity were prepared for the demand of the electric vehicles of the future, something that really needs to be addressed if electric ends up being the solution.

I like the idea and would start a company myself if I had the money.  Mr. Gore has the money, how about he put it to work helping rather then just blowing hot air.
DKK

Founder Of The Weather Channel Wants To Help You -- Post By John Coleman

Global Warming and the Price of a Gallon of Gas
by John Coleman

You may want to give credit where credit is due to Al Gore and his global warming campaign the next time you fill your car with gasoline, because there is a direct connection between Global Warming and four dollar a gallon gas. It is shocking, but true, to learn that the entire Global Warming frenzy is based on the environmentalist’s attack on fossil fuels, particularly gasoline. All this big time science, international meetings, thick research papers, dire threats for the future; all of it, comes down to their claim that the carbon dioxide in the exhaust from your car and in the smoke stacks from our power plants is destroying the climate of planet Earth. What an amazing fraud; what a scam.

The future of our civilization lies in the balance.

That’s the battle cry of the High Priest of Global Warming Al Gore and his fellow, agenda driven disciples as they predict a calamitous outcome from anthropogenic global warming. According to Mr. Gore the polar ice caps will collapse and melt and sea levels will rise 20 feet inundating the coastal cities making 100 million of us refugees. Vice President Gore tells us numerous Pacific islands will be totally submerged and uninhabitable. He tells us global warming will disrupt the circulation of the ocean waters, dramatically changing climates, throwing the world food supply into chaos. He tells us global warming will turn hurricanes into super storms, produce droughts, wipe out the polar bears and result in bleaching of coral reefs. He tells us tropical diseases will spread to mid latitudes and heat waves will kill tens of thousands. He preaches to us that we must change our lives and eliminate fossil fuels or face the dire consequences. The future of our civilization is in the balance.

With a preacher’s zeal, Mr. Gore sets out to strike terror into us and our children and make us feel we are all complicit in the potential demise of the planet.

Here is my rebuttal.

There is no significant man made global warming. There has not been any in the past, there is none now and there is no reason to fear any in the future. The climate of Earth is changing. It has always changed. But mankind’s activities have not overwhelmed or significantly modified the natural forces.

Through all history, Earth has shifted between two basic climate regimes: ice ages and what paleoclimatologists call “Interglacial periods”. For the past 10 thousand years the Earth has been in an interglacial period. That might well be called nature’s global warming because what happens during an interglacial period is the Earth warms up, the glaciers melt and life flourishes. Clearly from our point of view, an interglacial period is greatly preferred to the deadly rigors of an ice age. Mr. Gore and his crowd would have us believe that the activities of man have overwhelmed nature during this interglacial period and are producing an unprecedented, out of control warming.

Well, it is simply not happening. Worldwide there was a significant natural warming trend in the 1980’s and 1990’s as a Solar cycle peaked with lots of sunspots and solar flares. That ended in 1998 and now the Sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer Sun spots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline. Earth has cooled for almost ten straight years. So, I ask Al Gore, where’s the global warming?

The cooling trend is so strong that recently the head of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had to acknowledge it. He speculated that nature has temporarily overwhelmed mankind’s warming and it may be ten years or so before the warming returns. Oh, really. We are supposed to be in a panic about man-made global warming and the whole thing takes a ten year break because of the lack of Sun spots. If this weren’t so serious, it would be laughable.

Now allow me to talk a little about the science behind the global warming frenzy. I have dug through thousands of pages of research papers, including the voluminous documents published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I have worked my way through complicated math and complex theories. Here’s the bottom line: the entire global warming scientific case is based on the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels. They don’t have any other issue. Carbon Dioxide, that’s it.

Hello Al Gore; Hello UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Your science is flawed; your hypothesis is wrong; your data is manipulated. And, may I add, your scare tactics are deplorable. The Earth does not have a fever. Carbon dioxide does not cause significant global warming.

The focus on atmospheric carbon dioxide grew out a study by Roger Revelle who was an esteemed scientist at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute. He took his research with him when he moved to Harvard and allowed his students to help him process the data for his paper. One of those students was Al Gore. That is where Gore got caught up in this global warming frenzy. Revelle’s paper linked the increases in carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere with warming. It labeled CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

Charles Keeling, another researcher at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute, set up a system to make continuous CO2 measurements. His graph of these increases has now become known as the Keeling Curve. When Charles Keeling died in 2005, his son David, also at Scripps, took over the measurements. Here is what the Keeling curve shows: an increase in CO2 from 315 parts per million in 1958 to 385 parts per million today, an increase of 70 parts per million or about 20 percent.

All the computer models, all of the other findings, all of the other angles of study, all come back to and are based on CO2 as a significant greenhouse gas. It is not.

Here is the deal about CO2, carbon dioxide. It is a natural component of our atmosphere. It has been there since time began. It is absorbed and emitted by the oceans. It is used by every living plant to trigger photosynthesis. Nothing would be green without it. And we humans; we create it. Every time we breathe out, we emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is not a pollutant. It is not smog. It is a naturally occurring invisible gas.

Let me illustrate. I estimate that this square in front of my face contains 100,000 molecules of atmosphere. Of those 100,000 only 38 are CO2; 38 out of a hundred thousand. That makes it a trace component. Let me ask a key question: how can this tiny trace upset the entire balance of the climate of Earth? It can’t. That’s all there is to it; it can’t.

The UN IPCC has attracted billions of dollars for the research to try to make the case that CO2 is the culprit of run-away, man-made global warming. The scientists have come up with very complex creative theories and done elaborate calculations and run computer models they say prove those theories. They present us with a concept they call radiative forcing. The research organizations and scientists who are making a career out of this theory, keep cranking out the research papers. Then the IPCC puts on big conferences at exotic places, such as the recent conference in Bali. The scientists endorse each other’s papers, they are summarized and voted on, and viola, we are told global warming is going to kill us all unless we stop burning fossil fuels.

May I stop here for a few historical notes? First, the internal combustion engine and gasoline were awful polluters when they were first invented. And, both gasoline and automobile engines continued to leave a layer of smog behind right up through the 1960’s. Then science and engineering came to the environmental rescue. Better exhaust and ignition systems, catalytic converters, fuel injectors, better engineering throughout the engine and reformulated gasoline have all contributed to a huge reduction in the exhaust emissions from today’s cars. Their goal then was to only exhaust carbon dioxide and water vapor, two gases widely accepted as natural and totally harmless. Anyone old enough to remember the pall of smog that used to hang over all our cities knows how much improvement there has been. So the environmentalists, in their battle against fossil fuels and automobiles had a very good point forty years ago, but now they have to focus almost entirely on the once harmless carbon dioxide. And, that is the rub. Carbon dioxide is not an environmental problem; they just want you now to think it is.

Numerous independent research projects have been done about the greenhouse impact from increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. These studies have proven to my total satisfaction that CO2 is not creating a major greenhouse effect and is not causing an increase in temperatures. By the way, before his death, Roger Revelle coauthored a paper cautioning that CO2 and its greenhouse effect did not warrant extreme countermeasures.

So now it has come down to an intense campaign, orchestrated by environmentalists claiming that the burning of fossil fuels dooms the planet to run-away global warming. Ladies and Gentlemen, that is a myth.

So how has the entire global warming frenzy with all its predictions of dire consequences, become so widely believed, accepted and regarded as a real threat to planet Earth? That is the most amazing part of the story.

To start with global warming has the backing of the United Nations, a major world force. Second, it has the backing of a former Vice President and very popular political figure. Third it has the endorsement of Hollywood, and that’s enough for millions. And, fourth, the environmentalists love global warming. It is their tool to combat fossil fuels. So with the environmentalists, the UN, Gore and Hollywood touting Global Warming and predictions of doom and gloom, the media has scrambled with excitement to climb aboard. After all the media loves a crisis. From YK2 to killer bees the media just loves to tell us our lives are threatened. And the media is biased toward liberal, so it’s pre-programmed to support Al Gore and UN. CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The LA Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press and here in San Diego The Union Tribune are all constantly promoting the global warming crisis.

So who is going to go against all of that power? Not the politicians. So now the President of the United States, just about every Governor, most Senators and most Congress people, both of the major current candidates for President, most other elected officials on all levels of government are all riding the Al Gore Global Warming express. That is one crowded bus.

I suspect you haven’t heard it because the mass media did not report it, but I am not alone on the no man-made warming side of this issue. On May 20th, a list of the names of over thirty-one thousand scientists who refute global warming was released. Thirty-one thousand of which 9,000 are Ph.ds. Think about that. Thirty-one thousand. That dwarfs the supposed 2,500 scientists on the UN panel. In the past year, five hundred of scientists have issued public statements challenging global warming. A few more join the chorus every week. There are about 100 defectors from the UN IPCC. There was an International Conference of Climate Change Skeptics in New York in March of this year. One hundred of us gave presentations. Attendance was limited to six hundred people. Every seat was taken. There are a half dozen excellent internet sites that debunk global warming. And, thank goodness for KUSI and Michael McKinnon, its owner. He allows me to post my comments on global warming on the website KUSI.com. Following the publicity of my position form Fox News, Glen Beck on CNN, Rush Limbaugh and a host of other interviews, thousands of people come to the website and read my comments. I get hundreds of supportive emails from them. No I am not alone and the debate is not over.

In my remarks in New York I speculated that perhaps we should sue Al Gore for fraud because of his carbon credits trading scheme. That remark has caused a stir in the fringe media and on the internet. The concept is that if the media won’t give us a hearing and the other side will not debate us, perhaps we could use a Court of law to present our papers and our research and if the Judge is unbiased and understands science, we win. The media couldn’t ignore that. That idea has become the basis for legal research by notable attorneys and discussion among global warming debunkers, but it’s a long way from the Court room.

I am very serious about this issue. I think stamping out the global warming scam is vital to saving our wonderful way of life.

The battle against fossil fuels has controlled policy in this country for decades. It was the environmentalist’s prime force in blocking any drilling for oil in this country and the blocking the building of any new refineries, as well. So now the shortage they created has sent gasoline prices soaring. And, it has lead to the folly of ethanol, which is also partly behind the fuel price increases; that and our restricted oil policy. The ethanol folly is also creating a food crisis throughput the world – it is behind the food price rises for all the grains, for cereals, bread, everything that relies on corn or soy or wheat, including animals that are fed corn, most processed foods that use corn oil or soybean oil or corn syrup. Food shortages or high costs have led to food riots in some third world countries and made the cost of eating out or at home budget busting for many.

So now the global warming myth actually has lead to the chaos we are now enduring with energy and food prices. We pay for it every time we fill our gas tanks. Not only is it running up gasoline prices, it has changed government policy impacting our taxes, our utility bills and the entire focus of government funding. And, now the Congress is considering a cap and trade carbon credits policy. We the citizens will pay for that, too. It all ends up in our taxes and the price of goods and services.

So the Global warming frenzy is, indeed, threatening our civilization. Not because global warming is real; it is not. But because of the all the horrible side effects of the global warming scam.

I love this civilization. I want to do my part to protect it.

If Al Gore and his global warming scare dictates the future policy of our governments, the current economic downturn could indeed become a recession, drift into a depression and our modern civilization could fall into an abyss. And it would largely be a direct result of the global warming frenzy.


My mission, in what is left of a long and exciting lifetime, is to stamp out this Global Warming silliness and let all of us get on with enjoying our lives and loving our planet, Earth.

Flying Or Prius -- Which Uses Less Fuel?

Wayne is a nuclear engineer and the kind of guy who runs the numbers. He says for longer trips -- flying on a full airliner is more efficient than driving. Matter of fact, it is not even close.

Let's run the numbers on the latest model of the Boeing 737-900. The plane burns about 2.4 gallons per nautical mile, and a trip from New York to Los Angeles, California, is about 2,100 nautical miles. So that means it would take about 5,000 gallons of Jet-A fuel to fly coast to coast.

Now let's assume it is configured to hold about 175 people -- and the plane is full -- aren't they all these days? That comes out to 28.5 gallons per passenger. Even if the passengers were all Toyota Prius owners (which get 50 mpg), 28.5 gallons would only get them 1,400 miles down the road. So if the choice is flying -- or driving solo, the airliner wins by a huge margin.

But if you fill the Prius with people (ed- yea, that'd be a tight fit on a long trip, you might pray for that coach seat!)-- it becomes competitive with flying. The driving distance between New York and Los Angeles is 2,700 statute miles. That amounts to 54 gallons of gas in the fuel-sipping hybrid. With four people in the car, the Prius wins -- with each passenger using only 13.5 gallons.

As you can plainly see, if you drive a plain old gas-engine car the airliner is more likely to be a more efficient way to travel. If your car gets, say 25 mpg, it will burn 108 gallons to get you to the "Left Coast." With four people inside, your per capita use of fuel is 27 gallons -- or virtually tied with the full 737.

So if you have to be somewhere, and you don't want to waste a lot of gas and make a big carbon footprint, the airlines are probably the way to go.

Whoa, that's now what we have been led to believe!

DKK

CNN --Behind the Scenes: 'Hypermilers' test limits of fuel conservation

How's The World Dealing With Oil Prices? How Long Till Environmentalists Get Tarred and Feathered?

British pensioners who cannot afford to heat their homes. European hauliers and fishermen whose livelihoods are under threat. Palestinians forced to fill up their cars with olive oil. Americans asked to go down to a four-day week.

All around the world, in a multitude of ways, the soaring price of oil is hurting rich and poor alike. For the lucky ones, it is simply a matter of changing their lifestyle. But those most vulnerable to the price of oil have been driven on to the streets in angry protests, which raise a fundamental question: what can we do to survive in a world where a barrel of oil costs $127 (£64).

DKK

The Independent -- Shocked! How the oil crisis has hit the world

Increased CO2 Leads To Greening Of The World

Planet Earth is on a roll! GPP is way up. NPP is way up. To the surprise of those who have been bearish on the planet, the data shows global production has been steadily climbing to record levels, ones not seen since these measurements began.

GPP is Gross Primary Production, a measure of the daily output of the global biosphere –the amount of new plant matter on land. NPP is Net Primary Production, an annual tally of the globe’s production. Biomass is booming. The planet is the greenest it’s been in decades, perhaps in centuries.

(...)
They found that over a period of almost two decades, the Earth as a whole became more bountiful by a whopping 6.2%. About 25% of the Earth’s vegetated landmass — almost 110 million square kilometres — enjoyed significant increases and only 7% showed significant declines.

(...)
Plants take the carbon from CO2 to bulk themselves up — carbon is the building block of life — and release the oxygen, which along with the plants, then sustain animal life. As summarized in a report last month, released along with a petition signed by 32,000 U. S. scientists who vouched for the benefits of CO2: “Higher CO2 enables plants to grow faster and larger and to live in drier climates. Plants provide food for animals, which are thereby also enhanced. The extent and diversity of plant and animal life have both increased substantially during the past half-century.”

From the 2004 abstract: Our results indicate that global changes in climate have eased several critical climatic constraints to plant growth, such that net primary production increased 6% (3.4 petagrams of carbon over 18 years) globally. The largest increase was in tropical ecosystems. Amazon rain forests accounted for 42% of the global increase in net primary production, owing mainly to decreased cloud cover and the resulting increase in solar radiation.

(...)
Doubling the jeopardy for Earth is man. Unlike the many scientists who welcome CO2 for its benefits, many other scientists and most governments believe carbon dioxide to be a dangerous pollutant that must be removed from the atmosphere at all costs. Governments around the world are now enacting massive programs in an effort to remove as much as 80% of the carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere.(...)
If these governments are right, they will have done us all a service. If they are wrong, the service could be all ill, with food production dropping world wide, and the countless ecological niches on which living creatures depend stressed.

Amazingly, although the risks of action are arguably at least as real as the risks of inaction, Canada and other countries are rushing into Earth-altering carbon schemes with nary a doubt. Environmentalists, who ordinarily would demand a full-fledged environmental assessment before a highway or a power plant can be built, are silent on the need to question proponents or examine alternatives.

Earth is on a roll. Governments are too. We will know soon enough if we’re rolled off a cliff.

Both Michelle Malkin Blog and Watts Up With That? linked to an article by Lawrence Solomon at the Financial Times. Watts Up included a link to a fascinating set of NASA images showing that increase in growth.

Let me reiterate what I have said before;

We really don't yet know what we are doing and we run the risk of destroying the basic structure of our civilization with many related deaths. If we can't manage to destroy a bacteria effectively how do we think we can destroy something as complex as the ecosystem.

DKK

Penn And Teller -- Call Bull Sh.. on Environmental Wacko's

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Video from Curmudgeonly & Skeptical.
DKK

Gore's Top Advisor's NASA Numbers Don't Add Up -- Are The Facts Twisted To Fit A Very Costly Theory?

Investigate Hansen and NASA: Agency Is Doctoring Temperatures In an Effort to Vindicate Global Warming Theories

Let me explain -- no, there is no time. Let me sum up: NASA's temperature records are growing farther and farther away from everyone else's as NASA routinely-- and without offering any explanations why -- "adjusts" old temperature readings downward and new temperature readings upward, all in an effort to show rising temperatures where satellite readings show none.

Actually, it's worst than that; if a few continens or large landmasses like Africa or all of Canada aren't playing nice and in fact are getting colder, NASA ignores them altogether.

Must read. Long, but convincing.

DKK

Ace of Spades HQ

Update:

Video of NASA's, "adjustments," to the US temperature readings -- Note, the flat trend (which corresponds to some other readings) becomes a warming trend: