Global Warming Hysteria (cooled)

"Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt" --Washington Post headline, November 2, 1922.

If there was any doubt that fear-mongering has long been cherished by the media, the above headline should put the question to bed. But that 80-year old news story also illustrates two of the great problems for the global warming theory -- its inability to explain sudden climate shifts in the Earth's past, and to explain why the Northern and Southern Hemispheres are so unequally affected by warming. 

A team of mathematicians have come forth with a startling new theory that solves both these problems. Led by Dr. Anastasios Tsonis, their model says the known cycles of the Earth's oceans -- the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, El Nino (Southern Oscillation) and the North Pacific Oscillation -- all tend to try to synchronize with each other. 

The theory is based on a branch of mathematics known as Sychronized Chaos.  The math predicts the degree of coupling to increase over time, causing the solution to "bifurcate," or split. Then, the synchronization vanishes.  The result is a climate shift.

Excerpt from: 'Major New Theory Proposed to Explain Global Warming' by Michael Asher in The Daily Tech. 

In High School (mid 1960's) I was taught that the Earth and its climate operate very much like a conventional heat pump system driven by the Sun's energy. In simplest form, heat energy is added at the equator and extracted at the poles, effecting, at least from our perspective, a "closed system" not unlike a typical room air conditioner. The resulting heat flow, aka The Second Law of Thermodynamics, produces the Earth's weather patterns, heating as well as cooling the planet accordingly.

The term "greenhouse effect" WAS NOT a part of that learning. The term was "invented" by the GHG wackos and has no scientific validity. Now further confirmation that the so bandied about "effect" is fiction is supported by these two German physicists:

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v2.pdf

I keep prodding and so far have gotten no response: Will someone please pick up on the truth and begin trumpeting it to both the wackos and a world apparently deluded and under the spell of said wackos??!! The greenhouse effect is fiction; therefore, human production of "greenhouse" gasses is having ZERO effect on "Global Warming" which is itself a fiction!

I am neither a scientist, nor a climatologist (also not a scientist, since climatology is not a science), but I did stay awake in Earth Science classes and have worked in the refrigeration field professionally, having weathered the previous scare of ozone depletion by common refrigerants.

Contribution from (and with thanks to): Dave Dodd, Gary, TX. USA

I really do wish that Stephen Hawking was able bodied - then at least we would all feel a whole better ridiculing the increasingly ludicrous statements he comes out with. 

In Leonardo di Caprio's new sci-fi fiction '11th Hour' (its not meant to be fiction you understand) the batty Hawking informs us the Earth could even warm to 250  degrees C! (Well look on the bright side, we could all cut down on our heating bills. Enviro-nuts never see the positives, do they?)  Anyway, here's what the article reports about Deep Throats' ramblings in the film:

The narrative of the film repeatedly emphasizes that the very fate of the human race is at stake. Change isn’t just a good thing to do for nature—change is required for our very survival. Stephen Hawking, the esteemed physicist and author, most vividly describes the direness of the situation: “We don’t know where the global warming will stop,” he explains, “but the worst-case scenario is that Earth would become like its sister planet, Venus, with a temperature of 250 [degrees] centigrade, and raining sulfuric acid. The human race could not survive in those conditions.”

The film does more than just sound the alarm and call for change; it also devotes plenty of time illustrating the most practical—and economically feasible—ways for us to change our habits. Most engaging is a discussion of biomimicry, a new science that studies nature’s best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems. This idea has inspired new types of ecologically friendly design that mimic the sustainability of nature (for instance, ecological systems in which one organism’s waste is another’s food).

It's just a politically correct thought, but...isn't it about time we blasted someone in a wheelchair into space?

Confused by the idiotic ramblings of the warming alarmists? Well here is yet more to confuse you from that bastion (I'm not sure that's quite the right word, but kids read this blog) of leftwing cant, The Guardian:

Never mind higher temperatures, climate change has a few nastier surprises in store. Bill McGuire says we can also expect more earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides and tsunamis.

The solid earth also became restless, with an increase in volcanic activity, earthquakes, giant submarine landslides and tsunamis. At the rate climate change is accelerating, there is every prospect that we will see a similar response from the planet, heralding not just a warmer future but also a fiery one.

But how can rising sea levels cause volcanoes to erupt? The answer lies in the enormous mass of the water pouring into the ocean basins from the retreating ice sheets. The addition of over a hundred metres depth of water to the continental margins and marine island chains, where over 60% of the world's active volcanoes reside, seems to be sufficient to load and bend the underlying crust. This in turn squeezes out any magma that happens to be hanging around waiting for an excuse to erupt. It may well be that a much smaller rise can trigger an eruption if a volcano is critically poised and ready to blow.

It may be no coincidence that one outcome of increased volcanic activity is likely to be a period of falling temperatures, as a veil of volcanic dust and gas reduces the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface. Maybe the Earth is trying to tell us something. It really would be worth listening before it is too late.

Taken from Mary Kapp's article Inconvenient Global Warming Myths at CampusReportOnline:

When audiences ask Christopher Horner, author of the Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming, why he hasn’t made a video of his rebuttal to former Vice President Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth,” he responds, “Well, just imagine 90 minutes of icebergs not melting…”

Horner works for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank which seeks free market solutions to environmental problems. “Climate change has never been secure,” the author of the Politically Incorrect New York Times bestseller points out. “This has nothing to do with the impact of humankind.”

“Weather has always been unpredictable and severe.”

“What about this 20 feet of sea level rise?” he asks. “It is now anywhere within a few inches.”

“Sea levels have always risen and receded.”

“The ‘90’s were the hottest decade on record except… they weren’t…,” continued Horner. “Since 1998, we should have warmed 4 or 5 degrees, but it has cooled. They have no explanation for it.” He imagines that the environmentalists object, “Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?”

Horner stated that perhaps one of the most significant ways that humans could have impacted the global temperature is one often overlooked. “Want to warm the world? Pave it. Paving makes things warmer. This is neither surprising nor unprecedented.” This is the kind of simple truth that green scientists go to great lengths to avoid and trivialize, according to Horner.

Married to a woman from Denmark, Horner laughs at the idea that “windmills” are considered new technology in the U.S. He feels that the so-called solutions to this global dilemma are more problematic than the presumed crisis itself. The environmental agenda is largely funded by taxpayers, drawing from the resources of government departments such as Education, he claims. “Environmentalists often see humans as the problem, a parasite on the earth,” says Horner.

In "The truth is, we can't ignore the sun" (Daily Telegraph, 15/7/07), David Whitehouse argues that the no sun-link article lauded by the BBC recently is deeply flawed. Here's an excerpt: 

The report argues that while the sun had a significant effect on climate during most of the 20th century, its influence is currently dwarfed by human effects. It says that all known solar influences since about 1990 are downward and because global temperature has increased since then, the sun is not responsible.

No. The research could prove the contrary. Using the global temperature data endorsed by the Inter-national Panel on Climate Change, one can reach a completely different conclusion.

Recently the United States' National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration said that 2006 was statistically indistinguishable from previous years.

Looking at annual global temperatures, it is apparent that the last decade shows no warming trend and recent successive annual global temperatures are well within each year's measurement errors. Statistically the world's temperature is flat.

The world certainly warmed between 1975 and 1998, but in the past 10 years it has not been increasing at the rate it did. No scientist could honestly look at global temperatures over the past decade and see a rising curve.

It is undisputed that the sun of the later part of the 20th century was behaving differently from that of the beginning. Its sunspot cycle is stronger and shorter and, technically speaking, its magnetic field leakage is weaker and its cosmic ray shielding effect stronger.

So we see that when the sun's activity was rising, the world warmed. When it peaked in activity in the late 1980s, within a few years global warming stalled. A coincid-ence, certainly: a connection, possibly.

My own view on the theory that greenhouse gases are driving climate change is that it is a good working hypothesis - but, because I have studied the sun, I am not completely convinced.

The sun is by far the single most powerful driving force on our climate, and the fact is we do not understand how it affects us as much as some think we do.

From Steve Milloy, Junk Science.com chipping in logic and reason to the recent study (see previous postings):

You have to admire their tenacity, if nothing else. If they want to talk about "half-baked notions" and "somehow caus[ing] an indirect forcing not included in measurements" then why go past their perennial favorite? The whole CO2-driven enhanced greenhouse hypothesis perches precariously on a yet to be observed positive feedback of massive water vapor greenhouse effect being triggered by the insignificant possible carbon dioxide greenhouse effect.

Even the most dedicated AGW promoters admit that greenhouse effect from increasing trace GHGs is logarithmic and that roughly three-fourths of the effect of doubling atmospheric CO2 has already occurred and that even if all estimated warming since the Industrial Revolution has been due to enhanced greenhouse (absurd, but never mind) then net warming is something less than three-fourths of one kelvin. This is why aerosol cooling is proposed as masking otherwise expected warming (despite no such observation being made nor experimental evidence that this is even possible in the real world).

So, the warmers' position is that unobserved water vapor greenhouse enhancement is occurring and that unobserved aerosol cooling is hiding it in the atmosphere (or alternately the oceans are storing it to spring upon us in some sudden, malevolent surprise). From this position they claim experimentally demonstrated solar/GCR/cloud enhancement mechanisms are "half-baked".

Ed. And I reiterate, what then is warming the other planets and melting the Mars ice -cap in our solar system?

An Australian academic has spoken out against the popular view that global warming is caused by greenhouse gas emissions. He believes that global warming and climate change are caused by cycles in the sun's electro-magnetic radiation. He says scientists are taking a narrow view and politicians are making policy with the wrong information.

Emeritus Professor Lance Endersbee AO is a former Dean of Engineering and Pro-Vice Chancellor of Monash University. He told Tom Harwood, ABC Western Queensland's Morning Program producer that the world has been warming naturally due to increased magnetic radiation from the sun.

"One thousand years ago the Vikings were in Greenland, and they settled there and it was a warm period, known as the medieval warm period and Europe was prosperous," he said. "And then from about 1300 on it got progressively colder and in the time of the 1600s it was terribly cold in Europe. Finland lost about one-third of their population and the Thames froze over regularly every year and people were able to travel from London up the river on sleighs - so it was a different climate," explained Professor Endersbee.

Source: Australia's ABC 

A new Mori Poll had the BBC Radio 4 Today programme in apoplexy this morning as a new poll revealed that a full 56% of the British people do not believe the climate situation is anything like as bad as alarmists are making claiming. The result of the poll clearly upset the BBC propagandist department this morning as they immediately rushed in environment correspondent Roger Harrabin to flaunt the often blatant disdain  the BBC has for the people of Britain and its real opinions (when they disagree with the leftwing opinions of the BBC, that is).

Asked "What can we do about this?" - she stopped short of including the words 'pure ignorance' (Excuse me, what can we do? Isn't the BBC supposed to be impartial?) - Harrabin went into the usual 'The UN closed the science debate down on this' drivel. Apparently, when a purely political organization settles an open science question all debate is now closed. It seems that the national and historic  British trait of retaining a healthy scepticism for 'experts' and doomsayers, the UN, EU and BBC is not quite as  dead as some of us might have believed.

Climate Terrorism & The BBC 0  the British People 1 (a Gore own goal).

THE PLANET is warming at an alarming rate--about half a degree Celsius since 1970. But, in this case, the planet under discussion is not Earth. It's Mars.

NASA scientists say the Red Planet is being hit by such rapid climate change that it could lose its southern ice cap. Could this mean that global warming is not entirely a manmade phenomenon? Certainly, it would be hard to blame Mars' warming on gas-guzzling SUVs and other fossil-fuel pollution, or methane released by cows that have proliferated to gratify meat-eaters.

Scientists theorize that Earth and Mars may be warming at roughly the same rate for radically different reasons. Researcher Lori Fenton, heading a team that compared maps of the Martian surface from the Viking mission of the 1970s with those made by the Mars Global Survey two decades later, speculates that temperature differences between light and dark portions of the planet may be stirring strong winds that are leading to further warming.

But others wonder whether solar activity may be driving much of the warming on both Earth and Mars.

Wll argued editorial:  The Free-Lance Star

Scientist who warned of coming ice age in the 1970’s is still standing behind global cooling prediction:

‘Thanks to new evidence that Dr. Kukla only recently published, he now knows that global warming always precedes an ice age. That makes the current period of global warming a mere blip that constitutes additional indication of the ice age to come.’

Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology, considers global warming a bunch of hooey.

The UW-Madison professor emeritus, who stands against the scientific consensus on this issue, is referred to as a global warming skeptic. But he is not skeptical that global warming exists, he is just doubtful that humans are the cause of it.

There is no question the earth has been warming. It is coming out of the "Little Ice Age," he said in an interview this week. "However, there is no credible evidence that it is due to mankind and carbon dioxide. We've been coming out of a Little Ice Age for 300 years. We have not been making very much carbon dioxide for 300 years. It's been warming up for a long time," Bryson said.

The Little Ice Age was driven by volcanic activity. That settled down so it is getting warmer, he said.  Humans are polluting the air and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, but the effect is tiny, Bryson said.

Source & full story: The Capital Times  (with thanks for the tip to Mitch Persaud, Canada)

The issue of global warming is more about social than natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature.

As a witness to today’s worldwide debate on climate change, I suggest the following:
■Small climate changes do not demand far-reaching restrictive measures
■Any suppression of freedom and democracy should be avoided
■Instead of organising people from above, let us allow everyone to live as he wants
■Let us resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term “scientific consensus”, which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority
■Instead of speaking about “the environment”,  let us be attentive to it in our personal behaviour
■Let us be humble but confident in the spontaneous evolution of human society. Let us trust its rationality and not try to slow it down or divert it in any direction
■Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives.

Source: Financial Times 

And here's a shock! The leftwing news website Daily Kos supports the Czech president's assertions!  

Carl Wunsch, professor of physical oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the debate about global warming can point out risks, but assertions of impending catastrophe can’t be proven with mathematical certainty.

“Carbon dioxide is part of a very complicated feedback system,” Wunsch said Monday. “Assertions that you can show that carbon dioxide change led, or lagged, temperature change proves that there is, or is not, a human component is absolute nonsense. It’s much more complicated than that.”

Source:  CNBC

The UK government’s policy of promoting biofuels for transport will come under harsh attack this week from one of its senior science advisers.

Roland Clift will tell a seminar of the Royal Academy of Engineering that the plan to promote bioethanol and biodiesel produced from plants is a “scam”.  Clift, professor of environmental technology at Surrey University, sits on the scientific advisory council of Defra, David Miliband’s environment department. He will tell the seminar that promoting the use of biofuels is likely to increase greenhouse gas emissions.

Clift’s comments will amount to a direct challenge to Miliband, who has published a strategy promoting biofuels. It coincides with a surge of anger among environmentalists over the weak pledges on climate change that emerged from last week’s G8 summit. The audience on Thursday will also include Howard Dalton, Miliband’s chief scientist at Defra, who is expected to speak in defence of biofuels.

Clift said: “Biodiesel is a complete scam because in the tropics the growing demand is causing forests to be burnt to make way for palm oil and similar crops.  “We calculate that the land will need to grow biodiesel crops for 70-300 years to compensate for the CO2 emitted in forest destruction.”

Source: The Sunday Times, June 10 

Leading Australian academic, author and commentator Professor Ian Plimer considers the groundswell of concern about climate change is nothing more than political hot air and that a major earthquake or volcanic eruption are the real threats to the world atmosphere.

Prof Plimer told Mineweb that the current push on climate change was the new version of the Y2K farce where billions of dollars were spent on compliance and regulatory issues in case computer and digital equipment shut down at the turn of the new millennium, only to be proven a pointless exercise.

"Global warming is not a word of science, it's a word of politics," he said.

Source: Mineweb  

We should never be more vigilant than at the moment a new dogma is being installed. The claque endorsing what is now dignified as "the mainstream theory" of global warming stretches all the way from radical greens through Al Gore to George W. Bush, who signed on at the end of May. The left has been swept along, entranced by the allure of weather as revolutionary agent, naïvely conceiving of global warming as a crisis that will force radical social changes on capitalism by the weight of the global emergency. Amid the collapse of genuinely radical politics, they have seen it as the alarm clock prompting a new Great New Spiritual Awakening.

Alas for their illusions. Capitalism is ingesting global warming as happily as a python swallowing a piglet. The press, which thrives on fearmongering, promotes the nonexistent threat as vigorously as it did the imminence of Soviet attack during the cold war, in concert with the arms industry. There's money to be made, and so, as Talleyrand said, "Enrich yourselves!" I just bought two roundtrip British Airways ticket to Spain from Seattle and a BA online passenger advisory promptly instructed me that the CO2 "offset" cost would be $7.90 on each ticket, which I might care to contribute to Climate Care. It won't be long before utility bills will carry similar, albeit mandatory and much larger charges.

Source: Alexander Cockburn, Counterpunch 

Take out the "suddenly" for this first paragraph (where has the writer been?) and you have a fine take on global warming alarmism with some important insights from an Asian perspective in this fine article 'Too much Hot Air' from the India Times. Well worth reading.

Global warming is agitating our minds, particularly after the report of the Inter- governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Four issues are under debate. Is the earth warming in an unprecedented manner, hitherto never seen in history? Are industrialisation and higher lifestyles responsible for this warming? Which countries and regions are the highest emitters of global greenhouse gases? And, can massive technological breakthroughs curtail future emissions to acceptable levels?

Instead of having a dispassionate debate, global warming has suddenly taken on an alarmist hue. Dissenting views are looked upon with suspicion or disdain. Doomsday ayatollahs are nothing new to human history.

British singer Neil Tennant said he is uncomfortable about concerts such as Live Earth, with singers "lecturing" others about social issues.

"I've always been against the idea of rock stars lecturing people as if they know something the rest of us don't -- it looks arrogant," the Pet Shop Boys singer said. "It's not as if they have a private source of information. To state the obvious as if you are the only person that knows it is intellectually weak."

Tennant also expressed reservations about U2 singer Bono and his politically active life, NME.com said.

"Bono uses his celebrity but in doing so he increases his celebrity," Tennant said. "I've never been totally convinced that the rest of U2 feel comfortable with that."

Live Earth is a worldwide concert from seven venues, including London, taking place July 7 to raise awareness of global warming.

Source: The Money Times

Ed. Shouldn't Tennant be a Pet Shop Man by now...? 

Gravity: it’s the law. Having built a house or two and having been around many who did, I have heard many times how important it is to construct a really good, strong foundation. It’s absolutely crucial. I am sure many of you have heard the same. If you don’t, the house won’t stay standing for long. Gravity will see to that.

 But I never heard anyone mentioning to me that there was a scientific ‘consensus’ among experts for the existence of gravity, as though that is why I should pay attention. The existence of gravity wasn’t just an opinion; it was a scientific fact. Gravity is the law. People are entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts.

Struck by today’s media and the Oscar blitz of just how dangerous climate warming is, I became fascinated by the fervor with which the media and senior officials clung to the statement that ‘global warming’ obviously was the truth because there was a ‘consensus’ among scientists. However, science does not arrive at conclusions based on ‘consensus’ but rather derives its outcomes based on a proven methodology of the study of facts. ‘Consensus’ is simply a political and a sociological tool, not a scientific one.

Source: David Morgan, The Ashville Tribune, for the full article (well worth reading!) go here.