Friday, August 31, 2012

Op-ed: The longer we wait on global warming . . . - San Gabriel Valley Tribune

Atmospheric CO2 is approaching 400 parts per million for the first time in about 15 million years. That's more than a 40 percent increase since the 19th century. It's currently increasing at least 10 times faster than during the previous record high, which by strange coincidence was set right before the end-Permian extinction, 250 million years ago.

A mountain of evidence has convinced the overwhelming majority of scientists that our skyrocketing CO2 emissions have very likely caused most of the global warming since 1950. What does this mean for Southern California?

The National Academies recently projected about 1 to 5 feet of sea level rise along the Southern California coast by 2100. This will accelerate the erosion of our beaches, flood coastal properties, increase the salinity of coastal farmland and make winter storm surges punishing.

The increased chance of extreme heat waves increases drought severity and frequency, such as those in 2005 and 2010 in the Amazon, and 2011 in Texas and the Midewest. The study by Famiglietti et al. in 2011 has shown that California's Central Valley lost over four cubic miles of groundwater from 2003 to 2010 for irrigation. This dramatic withdrawal from our great underground water reservoirs points out the need for sustainable, robust water management now and into the future.

Heat waves, droughts and wildfires will be more severe in continental interiors, such as during the 2010 Russian wheat crisis. This

is disturbing because much of America's food is grown in the Midwest. Our CO2 emissions are also acidifying the oceans, which has been linked to marine extinctions even during a relatively minor CO2 excursion like the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, 55 million years ago.

Over a billion people depend on seafood. We need resilient food security to feed our recklessly growing population.

Since 2001, more than a dozen national science academies have repeatedly urged world leaders to reduce CO2 emissions, without much success. As individuals, we must prepare for and slow down climate change.

Many solutions are available to homeowners: improved insulation, more efficient appliances, white roofs, turf-removal programs, solar thermal and solar electric panels. But what about apartment residents like me, who by default use about 58 percent coal power?

My electric company, Pasadena Water and Power, has a green power program, which allows customers to specify that their power comes from renewable sources. This only adds 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is a cheap but effective way to show power companies that we care about supporting clean energy. Pasadena residents with a garage could then use 100 percent wind power to charge a Nissan Leaf or Ford Focus Electric. The technology is improving and the cost is decreasing.

My family doesn't like CFL bulbs despite their efficiency because they turn on slowly and have poor light quality. However, I recently bought several Phillips Ambient LED 12.5W bulbs. They look bizarre until they're turned on, then they quickly shine just like dimmable 60W incandescent bulbs. At $23, they're expensive, but should repay that investment through lower electricity bills during their six-year warranty period.

Individual actions aren't enough; we desperately need real leadership at the national level. At the very least, we should stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry.

We should also treat the waste from coal/gas power plants the same as waste from nuclear plants. Government regulations force nuclear plants to pay for waste disposal up front, but coal/gas plants get to treat our atmosphere as a free sewer. The Citizens Climate Lobby supports the Save Our Climate Act (SOCA) which calls for a gradually increasing fee on carbon-based fuels, with most revenue being returned to individuals and some revenue committed to reducing the federal debt.

A revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend plan like SOCA would help jumpstart a new industrial revolution by harnessing the power of the market to innovate our way out of this mess. Fiscal conservatives should note that the longer we wait, the more invasive regulations we'll need to retain some semblance of our current standard of living. Many Republicans should also note that SOCA will make nuclear power more competitive because nuclear plants only emit a few percent of the CO2 from equivalent coal plants, even considering mining and enrichment of uranium, containment dome curing and waste recycling.

In the freely-available video series "Earth: The Operators' Manual," Richard Alley explains that transitioning to clean energy will cost about as much as building our sewer system. I doubt that many people would give up indoor plumbing to save a few percent of GDP, so I'm baffled that so many people are willing to risk the water and food security of the next generations just to save a few percent of GDP. Personally, I think we should try to buy some time for the next generations to clean up our mess.

Bryan Killett is a geophysicist living in Pasadena.

Op-ed: The longer we wait on global warming . . . - Pasadena Star-News

Atmospheric CO2 is approaching 400 parts per million for the first time in about 15 million years. That's more than a 40 percent increase since the 19th century. It's currently increasing at least 10 times faster than during the previous record high, which by strange coincidence was set right before the end-Permian extinction, 250 million years ago.

A mountain of evidence has convinced the overwhelming majority of scientists that our skyrocketing CO2 emissions have very likely caused most of the global warming since 1950. What does this mean for Southern California?

The National Academies recently projected about 1 to 5 feet of sea level rise along the Southern California coast by 2100. This will accelerate the erosion of our beaches, flood coastal properties, increase the salinity of coastal farmland and make winter storm surges punishing.

The increased chance of extreme heat waves increases drought severity and frequency, such as those in 2005 and 2010 in the Amazon, and 2011 in Texas and the Midewest. The study by Famiglietti et al. in 2011 has shown that California's Central Valley lost over four cubic miles of groundwater from 2003 to 2010 for irrigation. This dramatic withdrawal from our great underground water reservoirs points out the need for sustainable, robust water management now and into the future.

Heat waves, droughts and wildfires will be more severe in continental interiors, such as during the 2010 Russian wheat crisis. This

is disturbing because much of America's food is grown in the Midwest. Our CO2 emissions are also acidifying the oceans, which has been linked to marine extinctions even during a relatively minor CO2 excursion like the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, 55 million years ago.

Over a billion people depend on seafood. We need resilient food security to feed our recklessly growing population.

Since 2001, more than a dozen national science academies have repeatedly urged world leaders to reduce CO2 emissions, without much success. As individuals, we must prepare for and slow down climate change.

Many solutions are available to homeowners: improved insulation, more efficient appliances, white roofs, turf-removal programs, solar thermal and solar electric panels. But what about apartment residents like me, who by default use about 58 percent coal power?

My electric company, Pasadena Water and Power, has a green power program, which allows customers to specify that their power comes from renewable sources. This only adds 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is a cheap but effective way to show power companies that we care about supporting clean energy. Pasadena residents with a garage could then use 100 percent wind power to charge a Nissan Leaf or Ford Focus Electric. The technology is improving and the cost is decreasing.

My family doesn't like CFL bulbs despite their efficiency because they turn on slowly and have poor light quality. However, I recently bought several Phillips Ambient LED 12.5W bulbs. They look bizarre until they're turned on, then they quickly shine just like dimmable 60W incandescent bulbs. At $23, they're expensive, but should repay that investment through lower electricity bills during their six-year warranty period.

Individual actions aren't enough; we desperately need real leadership at the national level. At the very least, we should stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry.

We should also treat the waste from coal/gas power plants the same as waste from nuclear plants. Government regulations force nuclear plants to pay for waste disposal up front, but coal/gas plants get to treat our atmosphere as a free sewer. The Citizens Climate Lobby supports the Save Our Climate Act (SOCA) which calls for a gradually increasing fee on carbon-based fuels, with most revenue being returned to individuals and some revenue committed to reducing the federal debt.

A revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend plan like SOCA would help jumpstart a new industrial revolution by harnessing the power of the market to innovate our way out of this mess. Fiscal conservatives should note that the longer we wait, the more invasive regulations we'll need to retain some semblance of our current standard of living. Many Republicans should also note that SOCA will make nuclear power more competitive because nuclear plants only emit a few percent of the CO2 from equivalent coal plants, even considering mining and enrichment of uranium, containment dome curing and waste recycling.

In the freely-available video series "Earth: The Operators' Manual," Richard Alley explains that transitioning to clean energy will cost about as much as building our sewer system. I doubt that many people would give up indoor plumbing to save a few percent of GDP, so I'm baffled that so many people are willing to risk the water and food security of the next generations just to save a few percent of GDP. Personally, I think we should try to buy some time for the next generations to clean up our mess.

Bryan Killett is a geophysicist living in Pasadena.

Mitt Romney's Energy Plan Is Marinated in Crazy Sauce - Huffington Post (blog)

Ugh. That's about the only audible response that I could muster after reading through Mitt Romney's energy plan, which he released last week after getting winks, nods of approval, and campaign donations in the millions from fossil fuel company CEOs.

I know that it's hard to believe, but Romney's positions on energy are even worse than those of George W. Bush, who was at least willing to firmly link climate change to human activity.

Romney's plan reads like a wish list for Big Oil and Coal. More drilling? You got it. A weakened EPA to push back on polluters? Word. More fracking? You don't have to ask me twice.

But most galling is Romney's refusal to mention the words "climate change" or "global warming." It's like running for president in 1936 and not mentioning that little conflict happening across the pond. Basically, Romney's plan is marinated in crazy sauce.

What's more, it's bad politics. Young people are, of course, terribly concerned about climate change, which makes sense considering that it's a broken planet that they stand to inherit. Trying to get their vote seems like a good idea.

Older folks are concerned about climate change, too. In fact, a recent Yale poll found that 55 percent of voters will consider a candidate's positions on climate change when they go into the voting booth.

Just acknowledge the obvious, please

It's hard to see why people are concerned when we continue to blast through temperature record after temperature record, and half the country is in drought. Saying something, just acknowledging the obvious, seems like a decent thing to do. So 350.orglaunched a campaign last week asking Mr. Romney two simple questions:

1. Do you disagree with the scientific consensus that humans are warming the planet?
2. If so, what do you plan to do to solve the climate crisis if you are elected president?

These questions shouldn't be too hard to answer. Every government agency -- that's the same government that Romney wants to run -- including NASA, the EPA, and NOAA all of have said that humans are warming the planet and that strong action is needed.

Please take a minute and sign . We'll deliver it for you to his campaign HQ in September and let you know what he says. Thanks.

Follow Daniel Kessler on Twitter: www.twitter.com/danieljkessler

Philip Warburg: Mitt Romney's energy myopia - The Providence Journal (blog)

By PHILIP WARBURG

NEWTON
With Hurricane Isaac flooding Louisiana and Mississippi coastal communities, the Republican National Convention was an odd time for Mitt Romney to deride President Obama's concern about rising oceans. "President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of oceans and to heal the planet," he scoffed. "My promise is to help you and your family."

As governor of Massachusetts, Romney authored an ambitious Climate Protection Plan for the state, setting clear targets for curbing greenhouse gas emissions. He acknowledged at the time that the measures outlined in his plan would "help our economy, our quality of life and the quality of our environment." Now he says we Americans shouldn't waste our time worrying about global warming.

Romney's current energy plan calls for "North American energy independence." Key features include mining more coal, fast-tracking mineral leases for oil and gas wells, quick approval of Keystone XL and other cross-border pipelines, and speeding up permits for new nuclear-power plants.

Climate change is never mentioned, and instead of honing America's competitive edge in the fast-growing global market for renewable energy, he mocks President Obama's "imaginary world where government-subsidized windmills and solar panels could power the economy."

The Republican presidential nominee takes no issue with the billions of dollars in federal revenues lost each year to tax breaks for oil and gas producers. Yet he readily dismisses the estimated 37,000 jobs that the wind industry will lose if Congress lets the federal production tax credit for new wind projects lapse at the end of this year. He claims that wind and solar should compete on their own, without government support. Why shouldn't fossil fuels do the same?

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that we could be drawing 80 percent of our total electricity needs from renewable resources by 2050. The sun and the wind alone could fuel nearly half of our total power needs by mid-century, the lab says, using equipment that is commercially available today.

Energy independence is a worthy aspiration, but we should pursue it in a manner that doesn't ride roughshod over other important values. Coherent governance of federal lands is one of those threatened values. Romney wants to back the federal government out of the mineral leasing business, boasting that states can do a much quicker job of opening up public lands to energy exploitation.

He proudly points to South Dakota, where he says permitting for new oil and natural-gas wells takes only 10 days. Do we really want hasty and haphazard environmental review to become the new national standard for mineral extraction on nearly a billion acres of land now governed by federal law?

Romney's "drill baby drill" ambitions extend beyond our nation's shores. His platform calls for "aggressively" opening up our U.S. ocean waters to oil and gas exploration, starting with federal waters off Virginia and the Carolinas.

Is this the same man who, as Massachusetts governor, opposed the Cape Wind offshore wind farm because of its visual impacts when seen from the state's shoreline, five miles from the nearest turbine? Presidential candidate Romney seems to see thousands of giant drilling platforms off our Atlantic and Pacific shores very differently, as proud emblems of American energy prowess. Given the risk of catastrophic spills, proven all too real by the BP Horizon disaster, we need to proceed with caution, not aggression, as we weigh the pros and cons of expanded offshore drilling.

The next four years present an energy opportunity that America can ill-afford to squander. We need a president who will elevate our ambitions, not bury them in policies that deepen our costly reliance on outmoded, non-renewable fuel sources.

Philip Warburg is the author of "Harvest the Wind: America's Journey to Jobs, Energy Independence, and Climate Stability''.

Arctic collapse dramatically increases global warming? - ScienceBlogs (blog)

ccgg.BRW.ch4.1.none.discrete.all Wosis then? Is it the sea ice? Ah, no. Someone else wants in on the limelight: “Parts of Arctic Siberia are releasing ten times more carbon into the atmosphere than previously thought, a University of Manchester scientist and an international team of researchers have found.”

Its the usual stuff:

much more greenhouse gas is being released into the atmosphere than previously calculated, from and ancient an large carbon pool held in a permafrost along the 7,000 km desolate coast of northernmost Siberian Arctic â€" dramatically increasing global warming. As the temperature climbs carbon, stored in vast ice walls along this Arctic coast called Yedoma, covering about one million km2 (four times the area of the UK), is pouring into the Arctic Ocean in one of the world’s most remote and desolate regions. This region is experiencing twice the global average of climate warming. While satellite images reveal thousands of kilometers of milky-cloudy waters along the Arctic coast, suggesting a massive influx of material, the Yedoma has remained understudied largely due to the region’s inaccessibility. By studying the thaw-eroding slopes of a disappearing island, the team found that the tens-of-thousands year old coastal Yedoma carbon is rapidly converted to CO2 and methane, even before being washed into the sea

and so on. It is honest enough to say quietly that the present rate of carbon release from the NE Siberian coast is not substantially affecting the CO2 levels in the global atmosphere yet â€" but then how can you possibly reconcile that with the headline? Or indeed the following text the scale of the release of both CO2 and methane into the atmosphere will have a huge effect. This will have consequences for the temperatures all over the world. There are various nutters pushing the “methane emergency” line. And although that in itself doesn’t discredit more serious people, the serious people need to talk sense and not just grab headlines, if they want to be taken seriously.

None of which says anything about the quality of the science, which sits quietly paywalled by Nurture. Its quite likely a valuable, if minor, contribution to our knowledge of carbon fluxes in the Arctic. It just doesn’t deserve the headlines it is offering.

And speaking of, errm, overenthusiasm, don’t get me started on Wadhams The entire ice cover is now on the point of collapse… It is truly the case that it will be all gone by 2015. No, it won’t be.

Controversial idea to brake global warming - Economic Times

PARIS: A controversial idea to brake global warming, first floated by the father of the hydrogen bomb, is affordable and technically feasible, but its environmental impact remains unknown, a trio of US scientists say.

Sowing the stratosphere with particles to reflect the Sun and cool the planet is possible with current technology and would cost a fraction of the bill from climate change or reducing emissions by fossil fuels, they argue.

Back in 1997, as man-made global warming became a political issue, US nuclear physicist Edward Teller and others suggested spreading sulphate particles into the upper atmosphere.

Carried around the globe on high-speed winds, the whitish particulates, known as aerosols, would reflect the Sun, reducing solar radiation by around one percent.

It would provide a cooling similar to when volcanoes spew out clouds of dust, said Teller, who argued this option was far smarter than switching out of cheap and dependable fossil fuels.

Teller, a hawk on nuclear weapons who reputedly inspired the movie character Dr Strangelove, was lashed for an idea that critics said was unworkable and laden with risk.

The new study, published in the British journal Environmental Research Letters, makes a cost analysis of so-called solar radiation management, or SRM, by aerosols.

In itself, the publication shows scientists' growing interest in examining -- if not endorsing -- once-mocked options as carbon emissions bust new records and political solutions lie beyond the horizon.

The study says the basic technology to distribute the aerosols exists and could be implemented for less than $5 billion (four billion euros) a year.

By comparison, the cost of reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to safer levels is estimated at between 0.2 and 2.5 percent of world gross domestic product (GDP) in 2030, roughly equivalent to $200 billion to $2,000 billion (160 to 1,600 billion euros), it says.

"We think this work demonstrates that it (SRM) is feasible by showing that several independent options can transport the required material at a cost that is less than one percent of climate damages or the cost of mitigation," says the paper, headed by Jay Apt, a professor at the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania.

"Removing this uncertainty is relevant whatever one's view about implementation of SRM."

The probe estimated costs of systems that would deliver one million tonnes of particles each year at a height of 18-25 kilometres (11.25-15.6 miles) in a latitude range of 30 degrees north and 30 degrees south.

The best option would be to develop specialised aircraft, as current airliners cannot fly at such attitudes. Airships would be cheaper but their bulk would make them vulnerable to jetstream winds.

Other options included guns to fire particle-stuffed shells into the atmosphere and a 20-km (12-mile) -high pipe, suspended by helium-filled floating platforms, to disgorge a particulate stream.

Compared to aircraft, though, the technology was either underpowered, too costly or too hypothetical.

The investigators stress they did not look at environmental risk or problems of governance and warn SRM can only be implemented when these and other questions are answered.

In a 2009 overview of geo-engineering, Britain's prestigious Royal Society said aerosols could be deployed quickly and could start reducing temperatures within a year.

But, it warned, they would not stop the buildup of atmospheric CO2, which is leading to dangerous acidification of the oceans. There could also be an impact on Earth's ozone layer and on regional rainfall patterns.

In July, German reseachers reported on another geo-engineering idea -- of fertilising the sea with iron particles so that the plankton sucks up CO2, eventually storing the carbon on the seabed when it dies and falls to the depths.

The scheme did work in particular conditions of a swirling Antarctica eddy, but further work is needed to see what happens in conditions with sideways currents, they said. The German experiment did not look at the environmental impact.

In Arctic, Greenpeace picks new fight with old foe - Boston.com

STOCKHOLM (AP) â€" Global warming has ignited a rush to exploit Arctic resources â€" and Greenpeace is determined to thwart that stampede.

Employing the same daredevil tactics it has used against nuclear testing or commercial whaling, the environmental group is now dead-set on preventing oil companies from profiting from global warming by drilling for oil near the Arctic’s shrinking ice cap.

The campaign took off in May 2010, when oil was still gushing from a ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico. At the time, Greenpeace was startled by reports that a small Scottish energy firm was proceeding with plans to drill for oil and gas in iceberg-laden waters off western Greenland.

‘‘It felt slightly surreal,’’ recalled Ben Ayliffe, now the head of Greenpeace’s campaign against oil drilling the Arctic. ‘‘After what happened in the Gulf of Mexico, how can anyone respond to that by going to drill in similar depths in a place called Iceberg Alley?’’

Greenpeace quickly arranged to get a ship to Greenland, where four activists attached themselves to a drilling rig for two days until a storm forced them to abandon the protest.

That stunt, a similar one in 2011 off Greenland and protests this month at an oil rig off northwest Russia are at the core of what Greenpeace calls ‘‘one of the defining environmental battles of our age.’’

‘‘Polar work feels like it’s going back to the early campaigns: simple message, people get it and the lines are very clearly drawn,’’ Ayliffe said.

From a publicity standpoint, the campaign has been successful: Greenpeace officials say since June, 1.6 million people have signed the group’s online petition urging world leaders to declare the Arctic a global sanctuary, off limits to oil exploration and industrial fishing. Dozens of celebrities, including Robert Redford, Paul McCartney and Penelope Cruz have announced their support, according to Greenpeace activist Sarah North.

‘‘I have never experienced engaging famous people at this kind of rate and with such ease in a campaign issue,’’ said North, a 15-year veteran at Greenpeace.

The impact on the oil industry, however, is unclear. The Arctic is believed to hold up to a quarter of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas reserves. Despite difficult operating conditions and high costs, the payback for Shell, Gazprom, Statoil and other companies searching for commercial quantities of hydrocarbons could be huge.

‘‘It probably sounds a bit cynical, but if they invest billions of dollars it’s not likely they will give it up just because somebody is attacking their oil rig,’’ said Mikhail Babenko, an oil and gas expert at the World Wildlife Fund’s Global Arctic Program.

Unlike Greenpeace, WWF isn’t seeking a complete ban on drilling in the Arctic but wants to make sure the most vulnerable areas are protected.

‘‘We want to be part of this discussion,’’ Babenko said. ‘‘We don’t want to stimulate oil and gas development, but if we follow (Greenpeace's) approach we will be simply out of the game.’’

Greenpeace and other environmental groups say an oil spill in the Arctic could cause irreparable damage to wildlife and marine ecosystems.

Fears that the oil industry is ill-prepared to operate in the hostile conditions of the high north were reinforced last December when a floating oil rig capsized off eastern Russia, killing more than 50 workers. While that accident happened outside the Arctic region, it underscored the challenges of drilling further north, where ice ridges are meters (yards) deep and storms are frequent.

Oil industry officials say they are taking the necessary precautions to conduct safe operations in the Arctic.

Cairn Energy, the Scottish company whose platforms off Greenland were targeted by Greenpeace protests in 2010 and 2011, isn’t drilling there this year. By all accounts, that has nothing to do with Greenpeace but to the fact that the initial drilling was unsuccessful.

Asked what, if any, impact the Greenpeace actions had on the company’s future plans for Greenland, Cairn spokeswoman Linda Bain referred to its second-quarter report, which doesn’t say anything about Greenpeace.

Shell, which has also come into Greenpeace’s cross-hairs for plans to drill off Alaska, also refused to discuss the group. Still, there’s no doubt that Shell takes Greenpeace’s Arctic campaign seriously.

In March, Shell won an injunction by a U.S. judge ordering Greenpeace to stay 1 kilometer (.6 miles) away from its drilling rigs in U.S. territorial waters.

A month earlier, New Zealand actress Lucy Lawless of the TV series ‘‘Xena: Warrior Princess’’ and six other Greenpeace activists had climbed aboard one of the drilling rigs before it left for Alaska. They later pleaded guilty to trespass charges and are awaiting sentencing.Continued...

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Global warming due to politicians' 'hot air' - Gazette.Net: Maryland Community News Online

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Romney Invokes Global Warming Against Obama - National Journal

After ignoring the issue of global warming since he began his 2012 run for the White House, Republican nominee Mitt Romney is now invoking it to illustrate a key difference issue between him and President Obama.

“President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise ... is to help you and your family,” Romney will say in his acceptance speech tonight at the Republican National Convention, according to prepared remarks released by the campaign.

Romney’s choice of words is telling. He is bringing up the politically incendiary issue of climate change in a way that seeks to avoid the thorny debate over whether or not humans’ use of fossil fuels is causing the Earth to get warmer and also simultaneously underscoring his commitment to improving the economy.

He is portraying the debate as an either-or choice: You can have either a healthy planet or a healthy, economically thriving family.

As governor of , Romney enacted policies that pledged to address climate change, but he has abandoned mentioning those policies as a presidential candidate seeking to appeal to conservative, tea party voters who question the overwhelming amount of science underpinning human-caused climate change.

One of Obama’s most ambitious promises of the 2008 campaign was to combat climate change and enact legislation controlling carbon emissions. Now, as he campaigns for reelection, he has distanced himself from those mostly unfulfilled promises.

Polling shows that global warming ranks near the bottom of voters’ concerns, far behind economic concerns. Environmentalists are already criticizing Romney on Twitter for the reference, but he had little hope of getting the support of that community anyway.

Agenda 21 and Global Warming - Canada Free Press

Club of Rome, World Wildlife Fund, Paul Ehrlich, John Holdren

Author

- Guest Column--Jim Vanne  Thursday, August 30, 2012
(0) Comments | Print friendly | Email Us

As Blaise Pascal once noted, once science is divorced from ethics, scientists will use their skills to pursue power, not truth [1].

The following is a study on this exact issue. What is behind the global warming? The same thing that was behind the global cooling scare of the 1970s: The 1974 Club of Rome report titled, Mankind at the Turning Point stated, “The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”  Their solution was simpleâ€"engineer a massive reduction in population and utterly change the socio-economic system through centralized planning via total government control. This “man is the enemy” was reiterated by the Club of Rome in 1993, as well, when they stated in their The First Global Revolution, downloadable at scribd.com that “In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill….All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”

“We came up with the idea??” In other words, scientific analysis didn’t drive this conclusion, but rather a conclusion had already been reached, and now they needed to create a “reason” to back their unsupportedâ€"and as Julian Simon provisionally demonstrated, possibly false - a priori assumptions. Do not try this technique in any school paper you may attempt, or you will be failed!

As Robert Zubrin observed, to the warmers, “... each new life is unwelcome, each unregulated thought or act is menace, every person is fundamentally the enemy of every other person, and each race or nation is the enemy of every other race or nation.” Perhaps it is put most clearly by the World Wildlife Fund Living Plant Report of 2012, which Lewis Page summarizes in the May 16, 2012 edition of the Register that “economic growth should be abandoned, (and) citizens of the world’s wealthy nations should prepare for poverty.” The rich, of course, are especially bad, as the Education for Sustainable Development Toolkit, by Rosalyn McKeown, found at esdtoolkit.org tells us: “Generally, more highly educated people who have higher incomes, consume more resources than poorly educated people, who tend to have lower incomes. In this case, more education increases the threat to sustainability.” Of course, individual rights are verboten, given the Malthusian threat to the earth. As Harvey Ruvin, Vice-chair of International Committee for Local Environment Initiatives (ICLEI), a group that wants to impose the green agenda on everyone has noted, “Individual rights must take a back seat to the collective.” Pol Pot, move over.

All this misses, of course, the simple dictum of Julian Simon: “The most important benefit of population size and growth is the increase it brings to the stock of useful knowledge. Minds matter economically as much as, or more than, hands or mouths.” This is the same Julian Simon that bet global coolers Paul Ehrlich and current-warmer-then-global cooler John Holdren that the price of chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten would go down, not up, by Sept. 29, 1990.  In fact, all five commoditiesâ€"which Ehrlich selected - went down by the targeted date. In Oct. 1990, Ehrlich mailed Julian Simon a check for $576.07 to settle the wager.  No word if current unelected Obama science czar Holdren (a former global cooling fanatic) chipped in any dough or not. Butâ€"as the last refuge of scientific (or economic) scoundrelsâ€"of course, “this time will be different.” See the Wikipedia summary of this wager.

Of course, Ehrlich has still not gone away. In April, 2012, the Royal Society published People and the Planet [2]â€"calling for the West to be de-industrialized, as well as for a drastic reduction in population based on their demonstrably preposterous “modeling” analyses. Ehrlich states: “They (population and resources) multiply together. You have to deal with them together. We have too much consumption among the rich and too little among the poor. That implies that terrible thing that we are going to have to do which is to somehow redistribute access to resources away from the rich to the poor…you might be able to support in the long term about 4 or 5 billion people. But you already have 7 billion. So we have to humanely and as rapidly as possible move to population shrinkage.”[3]

And $100 to first person who guesses who will be in charge of that redistribution process, as well as who will be exempted because they are “special” (and you can start with Nancy Pelosi and her exemption of herself, her district, and her union cronies from Obamacare, or ask Michelle Obama on her next uber-luxe vacation). Long story short, the Guardian reports that the Royal Society basically would like to sequester everyone on megacities to reduce material and energy consumption, as well as “systematically decoupling economic activity from environmental impact.” In sum, Agenda 21â€"see the Planet Under Pressure article at planetunderpressure2012 for full details. Or as the chief scientist behind Planet Under Pressure, Michail Fragkias states, ““the answer (to population growth) is denser cities.” Of course, the question presents itself as to whether these cities are meant to be Nazi-like ghettoes, to allow better control of the sheeple.

But these people are not alone. Nutrition professor Anthony Costello of the Institute of Global Health (yes, nutrition) stated in a January 25 2011 lecture titled Stabilising the global population: Where next for the Millennium Development Goals that “climate denialism” in the US is “a major problem”, both culturally and politically, “that’s got to be addressed” and the phrase “climate skeptics” needs to be removed from the vocabulary when describing those not willing to go along with the disproved and debunked “climate change” hoax. Rather, Costello argues, the phrase should be replaced by “climate denialists.” Here is Costello in his own words on YouTube. And Costello then sets the stage as skeptics being the next terrorists by stating in 2010 during a 2010 Policy Symposium on the Connection between Population Dynamics, Reproductive Health and Rights and Climate Change (page 5), that “climate skepticism kills.” I’m sure Mr. Costello “forgot” that various flavours of socialism killed perhaps up to 160 million last century, but no worries there! But as they say in the Ronco commercials, Wait! There’s More! At a UNESCO conference in September of 2009 on how to best “communicate” the IPCC conclusions, 20-year BBC veteran environment reporter Alex Kirby compared climate-skeptics to Apartheid proponents (Session 1, 01:36:35): “I’ve never thought it is part of the journalists’ job to try to inject an artificial and spurious balance into an unbalanced reality. If I have been sent to do a story on Apartheid or poverty or starvation, I hope to God I would not have tried to do a balanced story. And I think the same applies to climate change.”[4]

Of course, this comment was omitted from the official transcript. Yep. Scientists trying to apply the scientific method are “killing people” and worse than apartheid supporters. Sociologist Kari Norgaard has written that “cultural resistance” to the concept of man-made climate change to be “recognized and treated” as abnormal behavior[5] (you are correctâ€"homosexuality is good according to the APA, and using the scientific method to arrive at truth is now “abberant.” And scientists asking real questions need to be “treated.” Meanwhile, University of Amsterdam philosopher Marc Davidson who in 2007 wrote that those who are skeptic about global warming equal those who defended slavery[6] while Andrew J. Hofman of the University of Michigan, wrote in Climate change as a cultural and behavioral issue: Addressing barriers and implementing solutions that “(...) the magnitude of the cultural and moral shift around climate change is as large as that which accompanied the abolition of slavery.”

In his paper Hofman also stressed that “humankind has grown to such numbers and our technologies have grown to such a capacity that we can, and do, alter the Earth’s ecological systems on a planetary scale. It is a fundamental shift in the physical orderâ€"one never before seen, and one that alters the ethics and morals by which we judge our behavior as it relates to the environment around us and to the rest of humanity that depends on that environment.”[7]

As the Daily Sheeple concluded, “Altering our ethics, altering our morals - that’s exactly what Agenda 21 is all about- specifically and altering these ethics and morals to more “environmentally friendly” ones.” And don’t expect this to be done openly or democratically, as the need is “too urgent” - though not urgent enough for the elite to have to change their lifestyles. Just google any leftist celebrity followed by the word “mansion” to see for yourself. Perhaps try Michael Moore, James Cameron, or global warming supporter John Travolta, who has five airplanes, with a home that doubles as an airport.

It may even be as badâ€"though examining conspiracy theories are not the goal of this article - as noted in the anonymously authored document Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars that there is a conscious effort of control through knowledge suppression and selective dissemination is reiterated in the book, where it states: “”... the bookkeeper can be king if the public can be kept ignorant of the methodology of the bookkeeping. All science is merely a means to an end. The means is knowledge. The end is control.” Unfortunately, facts are a stubborn thing, and those darned deniers keep presenting facts so simple even a grade schooler can understand. Broken hockey stick, anyone? This may sound conspiracy theory oriented, but even Alduous Huxley noted that “Under a scientific dictatorship, education will really work with the result that most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution. There seems to be no good reason why a thoroughly scientific dictatorship should ever be overthrown.”

The infamous Agenda 21 also is a new card in the warmer’s deck. “Sustainable development”â€"who wouldn’t want that? But global warming, as a subset of Agenda 21, is much more pernicious than that. First get the snout of the camel under the tentâ€"and only later try to sneak in the ugly derriere as radical homosexual thinkers Madsen and Kirk advised several decades ago. As they say, “same diff” with global warming. As a matter of fact, a policy paper entitled paper The Next 40 Years: Transition Strategies to the Virtuous Green Path: North/South/East/Global (full paper at unesdoc.unesco.org ) by Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, presented at UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1991 outlined a course of action to occur over 35â€"40 years, culminating in what amounts to no more than an Orwellian socialist dictatorship (recall Nancy Pelosi stating, in answer to an environmental question, “Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory ... of how we are taking responsibility.”) The main thesis of the paper is Malthusian and redistributist, with a health slug of de-industrialization and depopulation of the West thrown in. A succinct summary of one of these seminal warmer works can be found at thedailysheeple.com

And given the history of Malthus in the whole scheme of things, who was this kindly old British reverend? As a matter of fact, he wasn’t exactly kindly, writing: “Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlement in all marshy and unwholesome situations. But above all, we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases; and those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpation of particular disorders.” (Malthus, 412) .Regarding children he stated ““We are bound in justice and honour formally to disclaim the right of the poor to support. To this end, I should propose a regulation be made declaring that no child born’ should ever be entitled to parish assistance’ The [illegitimate] infant is comparatively speaking, of little value to society, as others will immediately supply its place’ All children beyond what would be required to keep up the population to this [desired] level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the deaths of grown persons.” (Malthus, 411, 430-1)[8]

Now, it may very well be that these statements, as victorianweb.org notes, were meant to be Swiftian irony. But whether or not that is the case, those that followed him are taking the “modest proposal” literally. So, to introduce the issue of global warming, you see where the self-appointed “elite” are coming from. Think of self-appointed “elite” (no, Mr. Brzezinski is no longer an appointed official) such as Zbigniew Brzezinski,who wrote “The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.”

Some other environmental apocalyptic quotes for your consideration:

  • Best-selling economist Robert Heilbroner in 1974: “The outlook for man, I believe, is painful, difficult, perhaps desperate, and the hope that can be held out for his future prospects seem to be very slim indeed.”
  • Best-selling ecologist Paul Ehrlich in 1968: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s [“and 1980s” was added in a later edition] the world will undergo faminesâ€"hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked on now ... nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”
  • Jimmy Carter in a televised speech in 1977: “We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.”
  • Philip Cafaro at Univ. of Colorado stated “Scientists now speak of humanity’s increased demands and impacts on the globe as ushering in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. Such selfish and destructive appropriation of the resources of the Earth can only be described as interspecies genocide…Ending human population growth is almost certainly a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for preventing catastrophic global climate change. Indeed, significantly reducing current human numbers may be necessary in order to do so.”[9]
  • In 2004, emeritus professor of physics at California State University, Roger Dittmann, stated that all policies related to Agenda 21 should be pursued with the aim of worldwide population reduction and population control. “The Big Die Off,” the professor eagerly added, “has already begun.” In order to facilitate such a massive “die-off,” the professor proposes (page 18) global governance to make sure the directives will be universally applied:[10]
  • “University College’s Emeritus Professor John Guillebaud, patron of the UK-based “Population Matters”, who depicted among other things a machine-gun, a hospital bed, and a knife dripping with blood, as examples of “natural” population control as opposed to “artificial” methods such as contraception and family planning.”[11]

Wired.com notes about the acid rain emergency: “In the 1980s it was acid rain’s turn to be the source of apocalyptic forecasts. In this case it was nature in the form of forests and lakes that would bear the brunt of human pollution. The issue caught fire in Germany, where a cover story in the news magazine Der Spiegel in November 1981 screamed: “the forest dies.” Not to be outdone, Stern magazine declared that a third of Germany’s forests were already dead or dying. Bernhard Ulrich, a soil scientist at the University of Göttingen, said it was already too late for the country’s forests: “They cannot be saved.” Forest death, or waldsterben, became a huge story across Europe. “The forests and lakes are dying. Already the damage may be irreversible,” journalist Fred Pearce wrote in New Scientist in 1982. It was much the same in North America: Half of all US lakes were said to be becoming dangerously acidified, and forests from Virginia to central Canada were thought to be suffering mass die-offs of trees. Conventional wisdom has it that this fate was averted by prompt legislative action to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions from power plants. That account is largely false. There was no net loss of forest in the 1980s to reverse. In the US, a 10-year government-sponsored study involving some 700 scientists and costing about $500 million reported in 1990 that “there is no evidence of a general or unusual decline of forests in the United States and Canada due to acid rain” and “there is no case of forest decline in which acidic deposition is known to be a predominant cause.” In Germany, Heinrich Spiecker, director of the Institute for Forest Growth, was commissioned by a Finnish forestry organization to assess the health of European forests. He concluded that they were growing faster and healthier than ever and had been improving throughout the 1980s. “Since we began measuring the forest more than 100 years ago, there’s never been a higher volume of wood ... than there is now,” Spiecker said. (Ironically, one of the chief ingredients of acid rainâ€"nitrogen oxideâ€"breaks down naturally to become nitrate, a fertilizer for trees.) As for lakes, it turned out that their rising acidity was likely caused more by reforestation than by acid rain; one study suggested that the correlation between acidity in rainwater and the pH in the lakes was very low. The story of acid rain is not of catastrophe averted but of a minor environmental nuisance somewhat abated.[12]

The “ozone hole” has had a similar history to acid rain. Perhaps it was ameliorated by banning CFCsâ€"and perhaps not. We still get the ozone hole every spring in the Antarctic, about the same size. Scientists debate why, but there is no conclusion. It could be that chemicals are taking longer to disintegrate; or the issue could have been misdiagnosed in the beginning. As with global warming, by all means, examine the facts. But do not use science as a dishonest tool to achieve some social or political ends. This is what my paper is all about.

Some the environmental apocalyptic thought for the current generation can be traced to Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring. Certainly, an analysis of this book as an antecedent to the global warming planks would be well warranted; however, it is outside the scope of this paper. Suffice to say, however, thatâ€"while there are valid questions to be asked about the nature of technology in today’s worldâ€"Luddite-ism is not a viable path… unless, of course, we drastically reduce population. It is the author’s own opinion that much of what we see in environmentalism is basically a Christian heresyâ€"viz; man trying to expiate his own “environmental sins” by engaging in financial self-flagellation. Note: this does not mean mankind is not a steward of the earth. We indeed are. This also does not mean that we shouldn’t examine scientifically the impact of our actions. It does mean that the religion of environmentalism is, for all practical purposes, a cult.

Worseâ€"ignoring the example set in CS Lewis’ “That Hideous Strength”- organizers of such groups as Planet Under Pressure think we have now entered the “Anthropocene”â€"an era where man, not natural conditionsâ€"will drive our geological and meteorological processes. Martin Rees of the Royal Society stated “This century is special in the Earth’s history. It is the first when one speciesâ€"oursâ€"has the planet’s future in its hands… We’ve invented a new geological era: the Anthropocene.”[13]

Yes…. just like the dot-com wunderkinds told us before the 2000 bust, we have entered a “new era.” The reality? That mankind’s essential nature has not changed. The fact is, that we still do not know who will control the controllers. And the fact is, there is no global warming.

1 Case in point: Global Security.org reported 7/11/2011, re. the Iranian nuclear rpogramme, “unnamed diplomatic and intelligence sources, the newspaper said former Soviet nuclear expert Vyacheslav Danilenko “allegedly tutored Iranians over several years on building high-precision detonators of the kind used to trigger a nuclear chain reaction.” Science for power and money. globalsecurity.org Similarly, anticipating ClimateGate, Soren Kierkegaard noted “in the end, all corruption will come about as a consequence of the natural sciences.”
2 Online at royalsociety.org
3guardian.co.uk
4portal.unesco.org
5uonews.uoregon.edu See also prisonplanet.com
6springerlink.com
7erb.umich.edu
8 See econlib.org or american_almanac.tripod.com;
9onlinelibrary.wiley.com
10thedailysheeple.com
11thedailysheeple.com
12wired.com
13google.com


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Items of notes and interest from the web.

Is Global Warming Causing the West Nile Virus Outbreak? - Living Green Magazine

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By Lawrence Karol for TakePart.com

“The nation is heading toward the worst outbreak of West Niledisease in the 13 years that the virus has been on this continent,” The New York Times reported yesterday. “So far this year, there have been 1,118 cases and 41 deaths reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

Dr. Lyle R. Petersen, director of the agency’s division of vector-borne diseases, added “That’s the highest number of cases ever reported to the C.D.C. by the third week of August.”

Scientific American has a theory as to why this might be the case:  “The fact that the worst U.S. West Nile epidemic in history happens to be occurring during what will likely prove to be the hottest summer on record doesn’t surprise epidemiologists. They have been predicting the effects of climate change onWest Nile for over a decade. If they’re right, the U.S. is only headed for worse epidemics.”

Science writer Christie Wilcox goes on to say, “Higher temperatures bolster the chances of infection on many fronts. Temperature has a profound effect starting at the source: the mosquito . . . In the United States, epicenters of transmission have been linked closely to above-average summer temperatures. In particular, the strain of West Nile in theU.S.spreads better during heat waves, and the spread of West Nile westward was correlated with unseasonable warmth. High temperatures are also to blame for the virus jumping from one species of mosquito to a much more urban-loving one, leading to outbreaks across the U.S.”

Real Clear Science came to the same conclusions in a report on August 20. They stated, “The prime culprit in the spread of West Nile is mosquitoes, which transmit the virus to humans when they bite . . . Climate is a major accomplice, however, according to David Dausey a professor of public health at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Penn. ‘One of the things we’ve worried about for some time is that a changing climate could lead to more mosquito-borne disease,’ he said in an interview. And while you can’t attribute a single outbreak to climate change alone, he said, ‘climate theory tells us that weather extremes will become more common.’ ”

Real Clear Science added that, “Another climate factor that makes for bigger mosquito populations is the fact that spring is coming earlier and winters have been milder in recent years, both of which give insects of all kinds a running start at the breeding season.”

Read the rest of this article at http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/08/24/west-nile-virus-and-other-diseases-may-have-unexpected-accomplice-climate-change

Environmental News from Living Green Magazine â€" Where Green Is Read

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Living Green Magazine informs and educates readers with environmental news and lifestyle articles. We highlight nonprofit causes and provide sustainable solutions for individuals, families, businesses, and communities. Our readers come in all shades of green, and want to create a healthy environment for themselves and others. Living Green Magazine - Where Green Is Read

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

In Arctic, Greenpeace picks new fight with old foe - San Jose Mercury News

STOCKHOLM -- Global warming has ignited a rush to exploit Arctic resources -- and Greenpeace is determined to thwart that stampede.

Employing the same daredevil tactics it has used against nuclear testing or commercial whaling, the environmental group is now dead-set on preventing oil companies from profiting from global warming by drilling for oil near the Arctic's shrinking ice cap.

The campaign took off in May 2010, when oil was still gushing from a ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico. At the time, Greenpeace was startled by reports that a small Scottish energy firm was proceeding with plans to drill for oil and gas in iceberg-laden waters off western Greenland.

"It felt slightly surreal," recalled Ben Ayliffe, now the head of Greenpeace's campaign against oil drilling the Arctic. "After what happened in the Gulf of Mexico, how can anyone respond to that by going to drill in similar depths in a place called Iceberg Alley?"

Greenpeace quickly arranged to get a ship to Greenland, where four activists attached themselves to a drilling rig for two days until a storm forced them to abandon the protest.

That stunt, a similar one in 2011 off Greenland and protests this month at an oil rig off northwest Russia are at the core of what Greenpeace calls "one of the defining environmental battles of our age."

"Polar work feels like it's going back to the early campaigns: simple message, people get it and the lines are very clearly

drawn," Ayliffe said.

From a publicity standpoint, the campaign has been successful: Greenpeace officials say since June, 1.6 million people have signed the group's online petition urging world leaders to declare the Arctic a global sanctuary, off limits to oil exploration and industrial fishing. Dozens of celebrities, including Robert Redford, Paul McCartney and Penelope Cruz have announced their support, according to Greenpeace activist Sarah North.

"I have never experienced engaging famous people at this kind of rate and with such ease in a campaign issue," said North, a 15-year veteran at Greenpeace.

The impact on the oil industry, however, is unclear. The Arctic is believed to hold up to a quarter of the world's undiscovered oil and gas reserves. Despite difficult operating conditions and high costs, the payback for Shell, Gazprom, Statoil and other companies searching for commercial quantities of hydrocarbons could be huge.

"It probably sounds a bit cynical, but if they invest billions of dollars it's not likely they will give it up just because somebody is attacking their oil rig," said Mikhail Babenko, an oil and gas expert at the World Wildlife Fund's Global Arctic Program.

Unlike Greenpeace, WWF isn't seeking a complete ban on drilling in the Arctic but wants to make sure the most vulnerable areas are protected.

"We want to be part of this discussion," Babenko said. "We don't want to stimulate oil and gas development, but if we follow (Greenpeace's) approach we will be simply out of the game."

Greenpeace and other environmental groups say an oil spill in the Arctic could cause irreparable damage to wildlife and marine ecosystems.

Fears that the oil industry is ill-prepared to operate in the hostile conditions of the high north were reinforced last December when a floating oil rig capsized off eastern Russia, killing more than 50 workers. While that accident happened outside the Arctic region, it underscored the challenges of drilling further north, where ice ridges are meters (yards) deep and storms are frequent.

Oil industry officials say they are taking the necessary precautions to conduct safe operations in the Arctic.

Cairn Energy, the Scottish company whose platforms off Greenland were targeted by Greenpeace protests in 2010 and 2011, isn't drilling there this year. By all accounts, that has nothing to do with Greenpeace but to the fact that the initial drilling was unsuccessful.

Antarctic methane could worsen global warming: scientists - Reuters

A satellite view of Antarctica is seen in this undated NASA handout photo obtained by Reuters February 6, 2012. REUTERS/NASA/Handout

A satellite view of Antarctica is seen in this undated NASA handout photo obtained by Reuters February 6, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/NASA/Handout

LONDON | Wed Aug 29, 2012 1:09pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Large volumes of the greenhouse gas methane could have been produced under the Antarctic Ice Sheet over millions of years, which could add to global warming if released into the atmosphere by a thaw, a study said on Wednesday.

Scientists from the universities of Bristol, Utrecht, California and Alberta simulated the accumulation of methane in Antarctic sedimentary basins using models and calculations.

They found it was likely there were micro-organisms there that would have been able to convert the ice sheet's large deposits of organic carbon into the potent gas.

If present, methane would most likely be trapped under the ice.

But it could be released into the atmosphere as rising global temperatures melt the ice sheet, fuelling even more global warming, the scientists said in the paper published in the journal Nature.

"The Antarctic Ice Sheet could constitute a previously neglected component of the global methane hydrate inventory although significant uncertainty exists," the scientists said.

Methane stays in the atmosphere for up to 15 years. Levels have been on the rise over the past few years, following a period of stability since 1998.

The gas is normally trapped as "methane hydrate" in sediments under a seabed. Methane hydrate is a form of water ice containing a large amount of methane which is usually stable.

As temperatures rise, the hydrate breaks down and methane is released from the sea bed, mostly dissolving into the seawater.

But if trapped methane broke sea surfaces and escaped into the atmosphere, it would intensify global warming.

Scientists have already identified thousands of sites in the Arctic where methane is bubbling into the atmosphere but the potential for methane formation under the Antarctic Ice Sheet has been less well studied.

Conditions under the Antarctic Ice Sheet seem capable of producing methane as the water is oxygen-depleted, hosts micro-organisms and contains significant reservoirs of organic carbon, Wednesday's study said.

"We calculate that the sub-Antarctic hydrate inventory could be of the same order of magnitude as that of recent estimates made for Arctic permafrost."

In 2008, American and Russian experts estimated that 0.5 megatonnes of methane are released per year and at least 1,400 gigatonnes of carbon is trapped as methane and methane hydrates under the Arctic permafrost.

But up to 50 gigatonnes of hydrate storage could be released at any time, which would increase the methane content of the Earth's atmosphere by a factor of 12, they warned.

(Editing by Andrew Heavens)


Global warming a scientific question - Arizona Daily Sun

2012-08-29T05:00:00Z 2012-08-28T23:40:46Z Global warming a scientific question azdailysun.com

To the editor:

I had to chuckle when I read William Lowell Putnam's response to George Will's column on global warming. I don't know what Mr. Putnam expected George Will to say about it, but since he is a well-known and respected conservative, I suspect Mr. Will's stance is that climate change is either a hoax or not a real problem.

The sad fact is that a number of studies have shown that a person's opinion about global warming is best predicated by his political philosophy, liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat.

The split between the two sides is similar to the responses one would expect if you were polling about abortion, taxes or welfare, which are legitimate political topics. There will be little progress made regarding people's understanding of the probable causes and repercussions of climate change until it is recognized as a scientific question, not a political issue.

Society's responses to global warming -- adaptation and/or mitigation -- are genuine political issues. The existence or non-existence of man-caused global warming and the probable outcomes are strictly scientific questions.

JOHN SHARBER

Flagstaff

Sombre words on global warming open Pacific Islands Forum - Radio Australia

Several men hoisted Ms Gillard into the air on a ceremonial chair and carried her into the island's open auditorium.

Once inside the leaders of the 15-nation grouping were met by school children singing and a chorus of traditional songs and drumming.

Serious issues

The opening address given by Tuiloma Neroni Slade, the Forum's secretary general, was sombre in contrast.

"The demands of humanity are taking their toll putting stress in particular on the ocean," Mr Slade told delegates.

The challenges of climate change and protecting one of the world's last pristine ocean environments are expected to dominate the Forum's agenda over the coming days.

Trade, regional architecture and crime will also be discussed.

Gender equality

Ms Gillard said she also wanted to raise the issue of gender equality in the Pacific region, and will unveil an aid initiative encouraging female participation in politics.

"I will be focussing on gender equality matters not only because of the basic principle that men and women are equal," Ms Gillard said, pointing out that she is the only female leader taking part in the Forum.

"Gender equality matters because it's one of the keys to unlocking development," she said.

Clinton visit

On the sidelines of the summit, excitement is building ahead of the planned visit later this week by Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State and the highest-ranking American official to attend the Forum.

The country's Prime Minister Henry Puna said the trip had not been officially confirmed but he was confident it would go ahead.

Analysts say Mrs Clinton's presence would send a pointed message to China that the US government wants to re-engage with the South Pacific.

Global warming: New Forest Service report outlines risk to grasslands, other ... - Summit County Citizens Voice

“Research has revealed direct evidence of the effects of climate change on ecosystems and many plant and animal species”

Vegetation mosaics will shift dramatically in coming decades.

By Summit Voice

SUMMIT COUNTY â€" Some of the most widely accepted climate change models suggest that, by the end of this century, more than half of all western landscapes won’t be able to support the type of vegetation that exist there now.

Specifically, habitat for Rocky Mountain subalpine conifer forests and Great Basin alpine tundra could shrink to nearly nothing; habitat for pinyon-juniper woodlands will move northward and uphill, and semi-desert grassland areas will expand four-fold, according to a new report issued by the Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station.

In some areas, flammable invasive species like cheatgrass will expand and increase the risk of wildfires, while other uncommon species like smooth Arizona cypress and the endangered perennial MacFarlane’s four-o’clock may experience complete climate disequilibrium early in the century.

The report focuses on impacts to grasslands as ecosystems that don’t get as much attention as forests, yet are equally at risk to climate change impacts. That lack of attention has left land managers without adequate information to make informed decisions. according to the report.

“Research has revealed direct evidence of the effects of climate change on ecosystems and many plant and animal species. Birds are migrating further north, some plant and animal species are distributed further up mountains than 20-30 years ago, and rivers and marshes in the Southwest are impacted by long-term drought,” said Dr. Deborah Finch, a grasslands, shrublands and desert ecosystems researcher with the Rocky Mountain Research Station.

To fill some of the science gaps, Finch in 2010 encouraged program scientists to  evaluate existing knowledge and research needs through the framework of climate change to ignite interest, develop new studies and add a valuable dimension to existing work.

In response, 19 scientists and researchers from the Rocky Mountain Research Station collaborated across six states including New Mexico, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Nevada and Utah, and with colleagues from the University of New Mexico, University of Arizona, University of Wisconsin, and Dryland Institute, to summarize the current literature, conduct a needs assessment review, and develop decision support guidelines applicable for land management.

The report addresses animal, plant, and invasive species models and responses, vulnerabilities and genetic adaption, animal species and habitats, and decision support tools for restoration and land management.

It references other research efforts that clearly illustrate climate change impacts, including, for example, a study showing that one species of bumblebee has moved upward about 450 meters (about 1.500 feet) in elevation as temperatures increased by 1.4 degrees Celsius since the 1970s. Host plants may not be able to move upslope at the same rate, creating a disconnect between plants and their pollinators.

The report found that the mismatch between insects and their host plants is increasing for some species. From the report:

“Species most at risk are host specialists, active early in the growing season, poor dispersers, and/or have only one generation per year. Generalist species are likely to become even more widespread. There is a lack of information on interactions as a result of species shifting into new areas.”

Other findings include:

  • Transformations in native and invasive flora and faunaâ€"by the turn of the century, climate in the western U.S. may be incompatible with current vegetation types, resulting in shifting patterns of terrestrial ecosystems.
  • In arid and semi-arid shrublands and deserts, invasive grass species with higher flammability, like cheatgrass, will spread and increase both fire frequency and extent.
  • Invasive species are one of the greatest threats to the health and sustainability of ecosystems worldwideâ€"invasive species control costs the U.S. an estimated $137 billion annually.
  • Climate affects timing, migration, and reproduction cycles of plant and animal speciesâ€"increased temperatures can affect insect development time and result in significant increases in generations per year/per habitat and expose new environments to colonization.
  • Increasing water scarcity such as disruption of water flow regimes, and river and wetland drying, are likely to become overriding conservation issues.
  • Native intact cold desert shrublands can store 30 percent more carbon than the average regional flora and be restored as an alternative source of carbon sequestration.

39.586656 -106.092081

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

The Man-made CO 2 Global Warming Fraud! - RenewablesBiz

Introduction

Here is an excerpt1 from a paper written by a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) meteorologist; "Climate models used for estimating effects of increases in greenhouse gases show substantial increases in water vapor as the globe warms and this increased moisture would further increase the warming." However, this meteorologist along with the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) crowd got it backwards about water vapor and CO2 -- they cool the earth like all other gases in our atmosphere!

Although moisture in the atmosphere does increase with warming, this is because the higher temperature causes more water to evaporate. With every pound of water evaporated 1,000 Btu is absorbed and that causes cooling. Further, increased water in the atmosphere causes further cooling (not warming) by reflecting more of the radiant energy from the Sun that is hitting the water vapor molecules back to outer space.

Al Gore presented the climate change fraud as well in his "Inconvenient Truth", actually a "Convenient Lie" presentation of the Vostok Ice Core data, see below.

Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" Documentary -- Cause and Effect Reversed

In this documentary, Al Gore fudged the Vostok Ice core temperature and CO2 line graphs so it would show a CO2 spike coming first in time, but the real graph showed just the opposite. See the data in a shorter time frame (240,000 Years Before Present rather than 420,000 years as presented by Gore). This makes it easier to see which came first, Figure 1.

It is clearly seen that a global warming spike (blue line) always comes first. The spike warms the oceans, which slowly reduces the solubility of CO2 in water that results in the liberation of CO2 from the oceans around 800 years later (see Figure 2). Gore gave no explanation what would cause a CO2 spike to occur in the first place, but then again he is a politician with an agenda to make him wealthy. See the most recent time of warming between the 500 year medieval warming period and the start of an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere. One can see that CO2 started increasing during a cooling period showing it was not controlled by the warming that started some 80 years later and it is about 800 years from the end of the medieval warming period. This is historically what happens.

Man-made Emissions of Carbon Dioxide (CO2)

CO2 emissions created by man, i.e. combustion of fuels, (called anthropogenic emissions) is miniscule compared to the emissions of CO2 from nature? Table 1 was developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who promote the global warming lie. This is their data. It shows annual CO2 emissions to the atmosphere from both nature and man and how much of the CO2 emitted is re-absorbed by nature. Using the table in combination with a total concentration of 392 ppmv of CO2 seen in the atmosphere in December 2011, one sees that the increase in CO2 caused by all of man's activities amounted to only 11.5 ppmv.

The amount of CO2 from man is a mouse milk quantity compared to nature's emissions. If we eliminated worldwide, all man-made CO2 emissions, we would go back to the level we had in January 2005. It was slightly warmer (about 0.1 °C) in January 2005 than it was in January 2011.

The US EPA is regulating man-made CO2 which is orders of magnitude beyond stupid. The man-made CO2 being generated in the United States in 2010 that contributes to the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is 16.4% of the worldwide man-made total4 and that calculates to be (11.5*0.164) = 1.9 ppmv. The CO2 release from Medieval warming has caused CO2 in the atmosphere to rise some 2 ppmv per year from 1993 to 20115. So if you eliminated all man-made CO2 from the U.S. today, next year at this time it would be the same as this year before the CO2 emissions were stopped.

Nature absorbs 98.5% of the CO2 that is emitted by nature and man. As CO2 increases in the atmosphere, nature causes plant growth to increase via photosynthesis which is an endothermic (cooling) reaction. For every pound of biomass formed some 10,000 Btu are removed from the atmosphere. CO2 is absorbed, and oxygen is liberated. Further, a doubling of CO2 will increase the photosynthesis rate by 30 to 100%, depending on temperature and available moisture6.

More CO2 is absorbed by the plants due to the increased concentration of CO2 for conversion to carbohydrates. Nature therefore has in place a built-in mechanism to regulate the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere that will always completely dwarf man's feeble attempts to regulate it. Further, no regulation is necessary because CO2 is not a pollutant; it is part of the animal-plant life cycle and without it, life would not exist on earth!

A Common Sense Scientific Truth

Any mass between you and a radiant energy source will provide cooling. Stand near a fireplace that is burning and feel the warmth of the radiant energy; then have two people drape a blanket between you and the fireplace -- you will feel cooler! Another example, stand outside on a sun shiny day. When a cloud goes over and shades you from the direct rays of the sun, most people feel cooler, but perhaps not the IPCC scientists. Nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, carbon dioxide and any dust that is in the atmosphere all provide cooling as well. Why is this? If there were no atmosphere, all radiant energy from the sun would hit the earth. However, with an atmosphere, a portion of the incoming sun's rays are absorbed or reflected away from earth by striking the gaseous molecules and dust particles, so less radiant energy hits the earth and the earth is cooler because it has atmosphere, see Figure 3.

Everyone knows that cloud cover at night (more insulation) prevents the earth from cooling off as fast as it does when there are no clouds. However, on a relatively clear night if a cloud goes overhead you cannot feel any warming effect of the cloud, so this insulating effect is shown to be very minimal compared to the daytime effect. No rocket science is required here, just common sense. If common sense isn't good enough for you there is also scientific proof.

Proofs -- Water Vapor Cools the Earth

Water vapor is considered by the IPCC pseudo-scientists to have the greatest greenhouse gas effect. If this so-called greenhouse gas actually cools the earth, so must all of the others that are put in that greenhouse gas category (carbon dioxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, etc.).

1st Proof

Following the 9-11 terrorist attacks, the Federal Aviation Administration prohibited commercial aviation over the United States for three days following the attacks. This presented a unique opportunity to study the temperature of earth with and without jet airplane contrails.

Dr. David Travis, atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsin, along with two others, looked at temperatures for those three days and compared them to other days when planes were flying. They analyzed data from about 4,000 weather stations throughout the lower 48 states (U.S.) for the period 1971-2000, and compared the three-day grounding period with three days before and after the grounding period. They found that the average daily temperature range between highs and lows was 1.1°C higher during September 11-14 (see Figure 4) compared to September 8-11 and September 11-14 for other years with normal air traffic.

The data proved that contrails (water vapor) cooled the earth. You cannot just look at earth radiation like the IPCC members have done, it is miniscule compared to the radiation hitting the earth from the sun. The overall effect of our atmosphere is cooling, not warming. You have to look at energy in and out, not just energy out. Carbon dioxide and water vapor are both included in the IPCC greenhouse gas category and water vapor is said to be the strongest "greenhouse" gas. The author was the project manager for installing a fluidized bed combustor in a greenhouse to heat the greenhouse during the night and on cool days. A greenhouse is the same as a car with the windows rolled up. It does nothing more.

2nd Proof

An experiment was performed by Carl Brehmer to study the effect of rising and falling levels of humidity on soil temperature and discovered that the addition of moisture to the atmosphere exerts a significant negative feedback (cooling effect).

The experiment (Figure 5) showed the same result as the analysis of the 9-11 data; on an overall basis increased humidity reduces the temperature on earth; it doesn't warm it. The data was taken over 38 days so the first thing done was to find the 38 day mean dew point and divide the days up between those that fell above the mean -- the "humid" days -- and those that fell below the mean -- the "arid" days. Then the data was averaged as shown on the curves on the graph below. One can readily see the hotter day time temperatures for the arid days (red line).

At night a slight warming effect can be seen by the increased humidity, approximately 2°C but in the heat of the day it shows a cooling effect of some 6°C. It is well known that cloud cover doesn't allow the earth to cool off as fast at night. Higher humidity acts the same both ways. However the cooling of the earth with higher humidity is as much as three times greater in the day than the warming at night. Radiation gets reflected both ways but the radiation from the sun to the earth is greater than that of the earth to the sky. One would have thought the IPCC could do similar tests, but they only use bogus computer models based on fudged data. They are averse to using real data, because actual data refutes the computer model results. I heard a weatherman in Houston relay recently that tomorrow will be cooler because we will have higher humidity. This is well known but refuted by our charlatan government agencies, the NOAA and EPA and also the UN's IPCC.

The Climate Change Agenda is a Complete Fraud

There is a lot of supporting evidence that indicates that the Climate Change agenda is and always has been a fraud9. Why is it called a fraud? An event now referred to as "Climategate" publicly began on November 19, 2009, when a whistle-blower leaked thousands of emails and documents central to a Freedom of Information request placed with the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. This institution had played a central role in the "climate change" debate: its scientists, together with their international colleagues, quite literally put the "warming" into Global Warming: they were responsible for analyzing and collating the measurements of temperature from around the globe from the present to the distant past.

Dr. John Costello9 relays, "Climategate has shattered that myth (the myth of global warming). It gives us a peephole into the work of the scientists investigating possibly the most important issue ever to face mankind. Instead of seeing large collaborations of meticulous, careful, critical scientists, we instead see a small team of incompetent cowboys, abusing almost every aspect of the framework of science to build a fortress around their `old boys club', to prevent real scientists from seeing the shambles of their research.

Back in time, the IPCC relayed there was a greenhouse signature in the atmosphere and the temperature 8-12 km above the tropics was warmer than the ground temperature10. Actual temperature measurements refuted this. They also violated the second law of thermodynamics by saying a cooler atmosphere can warm a warmer earth. They don't have a clue, or they think people are stupid -- two bogus explanations that are easy to prove false.

Around 1990, NOAA began weeding out more than three-quarters of the climate measuring stations around the world. It can be shown that systematically and purposefully, country by country, they removed higher-latitude, higher-altitude and rural locations, all of which had a tendency to be cooler. The thermometers kept were near the tropics, the sea, and airports near bigger cities. These data were then used to determine the global average temperature and to initialize climate models. From 1960 through 1980, there were more than 6000 stations providing temperature information. The NOAA reduced these to fewer than 1500. Calculating the average temperatures this way ensured that the mean global surface temperature for each month and year would show a false-positive temperature anomaly, a bogus warming trend. Interestingly (although absent scientific credibility), the very same stations that were deleted from the world climate network were retained for computing the average-temperature base periods, further falsely increasing the bias towards earth warming.

An internal study by the U.S. EPA11 completed by Dr. Alan Carlin and John Davidson concluded the IPCC was wrong about global warming. Dr. Carlin is an Environmental Protection Agency veteran who wrote a damaging report to Lisa Jackson's EPA agenda, warning that the science behind climate change was questionable at best, and that we shouldn't pass laws that will hurt American families and hobble the nation's economy based on incomplete information.

One statement in his executive summary found that the crucial assumption in the Greenhouse Climate Models (GCM) used by the IPCC concerning a strong positive feedback from water vapor is not supported by empirical evidence and that the feedback is actually negative. This is exactly what is shown here, water vapor in the atmosphere causes a cooling effect (negative feedback), not a positive warming feedback.

EPA tried to bury Dr. Carlin's report. An email from Al McGartland, Office Director of EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE), to Dr. Alan Carlin, Senior Operations Research Analyst at NCEE, forbade him from speaking to anyone outside NCEE on endangerment issues. In a March 17 email from McGartland to Carlin, stated that he will not forward Carlin's study. "The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. The administrator (Lisa Jackson) and the administration have decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. .. I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office." A second email from McGartland stated "I don't want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change."

McGartland's emails demonstrate that he was rejecting Dr. Carlin's study because his conclusions ran counter to the EPA/IPCC position. Yet this study had its basis in three prior reports by Carlin (two in 2007 and one in 2008) that were accepted. Another government cover-up, just what the United States did not need.

Most of the U.S. House of Representatives agree with the fraud assessment. 12On February 19, 2011 they voted to eliminate U.S. funding for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. With a vote of 244-179, they said that it no longer wishes to have the IPCC prepare its comprehensive international climate science assessments. The amendment, sponsored by Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Missouri), said; "The IPCC scientists manipulated climate data, suppressed legitimate arguments in peer-reviewed journals, and researchers were asked to destroy emails, so that a small number of climate alarmists could continue to advance their environmental agenda".

The organization responsible for managing a global cap-and-trade system worth billions of dollars for carbon emissions projects around the world is trying to get sweeping legal immunities for its actions, even as it plans to expand its activities in the wake of the recent United Nations' Rio + 20 summit on sustainable development.13 Yes, global warming from CO2 is a complete fraud - that is why they are seeking shelter from prosecution.

Why Was It Done?

It was all about the money. For example, Al Gore's Generation Investment Management LLP was started in 2004 and in 2008 this announcement was made, "It will be closed to new investors, having risen close to its $5 billion target!" 14 It rose five billion dollars in 4 years! This shows that a lot of investment firms were in on the scam big time. They also hooked in nefarious pseudo-scientists who were awarded grants for their work in promoting this fraud. Sadly, much of the world runs on the tenant, "Show Me the Money!"

Conclusion

Based on real data evaluation, CO2 causing global warming is completely contrived. The lesson to the world here is, when it comes to science; never blindly accept an explanation from a politician or scientists who have turned political for their own private gain. Many scientists, including the author, see global warming from CO2 as a cruel global swindle to eliminate fossil fuels, so that a few, at the expense of the many, can reap huge profits from either carbon taxes and/or alternative non-green energy sources such as windmills, solar power, and hydroelectric power. Science is a search for truth -- nothing else; when scientific truth is trashed for personal gain, the world and its people are in very deep trouble!

References

  1. Ross, R. J., and Elliott, W.P., "Radiosonde-Based Northern Hemisphere Tropospheric Water Vapor Trends", Journal of Climate, Vol. 14, 1602-1612, July 7, 2000.
  2. Petit, J.R., et. al., "Climate and Atmospheric History of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok Ice Core, Antarctica", Nature 399: 429-436, June 3, 1999.
  3. Solomon, S., Plattner, G. K., Knutti, R. and Friedlingstein, P. 2009. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 106: 1704-1709
  4. CDIAC: Record High 2010 Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Fossil-Fuel Combustion and Cement Manufacture. http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/perlim_2009_2010_estimates.html.
  5. Ashworth, R. A., "Global Warming from CO2 - All Politics, No Science!", see Figure 3. http://principia-scientific.org/supportnews/latest-news/138-global-warming-from-CO2-all-politics-no-science
  6. Pearch, R.W. and Bjorkman, O., "Physiological effects", in Lemon, E.R. (ed.), CO 2 and Plants: The Response of Plants to Rising Levels of Atmospheric CO2, (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1983), pp 65-1055.
  7. Travis, D., A. Carleton, and R. Lauritsen, 2002: Contrails reduce daily temperature range. Nature, 418, 601.
  8. Brehmer, Carl, "The Greenhouse Effect Explored", February 21, 2012, http://principia-scientific.org/supportnews/latest-news/143-the-greenhouse-effect-explored
  9. Costella, J.P., "Climategate Analysis", http://assassinationscience.com/climategate/
  10. David Evans, "Carbon Emissions Don't Cause Global Warming", November 28, 2007, http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Evans-CO2DoesNotCauseGW.pdf.
  11. Carlin, A. and Davidson, J, "Proposed NCEE Comments on Draft technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act", March 9, 2009. http://cei.org/cei_files/fm/active/0/DOC062509-004.pdf
  12. http://www.cfact.org/a/1968/Rep-Blaine-Luetkemeyer-Defund-the-IPCC
  13. Washington Times - "Global Climate Change Group Seeks Immunity for Actions, June 12, 2012, http://times247.com/articles/global-climate-group-seeks-legal-immunity-for-actions#ixzz1ySY2gR5D
  14. New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/business/worldbusiness/11iht-gore.4.10942634.html?_r=1