Tag: News

Dave Dahl, chief meteorologist at KSTP in the Twin Cities, told Hudson Rotarians that man is not the culprit when it comes to global warming, or climate change, issues.

Dahl spoke to the Hudson Thursday Noon Rotary Club on July 9 and said what was called “global warming” is now tabbed “climate change” because temperatures on the planet have decreased in the past couple years.

“Over 30,000 scientists are now saying that humans are not causing changes in global conditions,” Dahl said. “The climate has ‘changed’ since the planet began.”

He said that the heating of the earth — which is mostly a good thing — is caused primarily by water vapor — about 98 percent. He said carbon and other elements account for about 2 percent of the mix. Of that 2 percent, human involvement represents only about 2 percent of that (.0004 percent).

“It is my feeling, and the opinion of more and more scientists, that the sun is the driving force behind climate changes — heating and cooling,” Dahl said. “Solar activity, incl uding flares and sunspots, is usually quite active during warm stretches. The activity has been very quiet the past couple of years and the temperatures have dropped.”

He said last year’s solar activity was the quietest in 100 years. So far in 2009, the activity is even less.
“In the northern hemisphere, the 2007-08 winter was the coldest in 50 years and 2008-09 was the coldest in a century,” Dahl said.

Another flaw in the entire system is the recording of temperatures around the world, he said.

“The United States has the most reputable system, but the recording system in nearly nine out of 10 locations does not meet National Weather Service standards. Many of the sites are located on tar roofs, next to air conditioner exhaust fans, etc. The records are questionable.”

He said we should be using only satellite information, which shows that temperatures have been cooling for several years.

“Even believers of man-made ‘global warming’ have begun to realize that we do not face global warming — that’s why the terminology has been changed to ‘climate change,’” Dahl said.

Another key factor in the study of earth temperature is the sequence of events.

“People who believe in man-made global warming claim that an increase in carbon dioxide leads to global warming,” Dahl said. “Concrete scientific evidenc e shows throughout history that temperatures increase first, then carbon levels increase (carbon comes from many sources in addition to man-made pollution). That’s contrary to the claims made in the Al Gore movie (‘Inconvenient Truth’).”

Dahl claims that the Gore movie contains at least 50 factual errors — he called them absolutely false.
Dahl said that carbon spewed from one of the many volcanoes around the world adds much, much more carbon to the atmosphere than all the cars combined.

“I’m all for limiting pollution, but carbon is not necessarily a pollutant – plants would prefer more carbon,” Dahl said.

He noted that there has been much publicity about the shrinking of the polar ice cap.

“Evidence shows that the cap was much smaller in the 1930s when we went through a warm period,” Dahl said. “Siberian ice has grown 20 percent in the past two years.”

Dahl noted that throughout history there is evidence of warm and cold periods.

“It’s a recurring pattern and the sun in the key ingredient,” Dahl said. “The fact is, we could very well be headed for a cool period. Some scientists believe we are headed into a 20-30-year cooling trend based on historical patterns.”

He said it is unfortunate that the science of climate has been mixed in with political policy and political agendas.

“Many scientists are afraid to speak out because much of the funding comes from the government and they are afraid they will lose funding,” Dahl said.

“The political landscape endorses only one view — that humans are causing global warming. The policy-makers and media drive what people hear. People like to think that we can control our destiny — this is one thing we can’t control. People don’t like to hear that.”

Dahl hopes that what he considers to be the truth will become evident in the next five to 10 years.

Source

By C3 Headlines

What Does 800 ppm CO2 Look Like vs. 300 ppm?
Eco-fascists, such as Al Gore and his useful-idiots, are attempting to convince the public that if CO2 in the atmosphere grows from green-to-blue-and-then-to-white (see below chart) the following will happen:1. Greenland ice sheet will slip off Greenland and flood the world.
2. Antarctic ice sheets will melt and drown the world’s coast lines.
3. Millions of species will become extinct.
4. The ocean conveyor belt will slow down, thus freezing Europe.
5. Mass starvation will occur because crops will fail from drought.
6. Severe hurricanes and floods will wreck the planet.
7. Polar bears will lose their food source because there is no more Arctic ice.
8. Millions, possibly hundreds of millions, will perish from heat waves.
9. Tropical diseases will spread from pole to pole.
10. And, etc, ad nauseum.They say not only will this happen, but Democrat House Representatives (+8) insist the above has already started.Is it even remotely reasonable to wildly claim the world will suffer the above or become “unlivable” because of a ‘green-to-blue-to-white’ CO2 change as depicted below in the actual representation of CO2 growth? Can Al Gore and the eco-fascists produce a list of even 250 physical scientists who will actually sign a petition that states that going from ‘green-to-blue-to-white’ will actually cause the above catastrophic effects (claims)? To give Al Gore and the useful-idiots a little competitive challenge, here’s a list of 31,000 scientists (9,000+ PhD’s) who say the below (see chart) will not cause the above events to happen. (Click to enlarge)Note: If you are on speaking terms with a useful-idiot, a public school teacher, a Hollywood celebrity, a CNN reporter, or a Senator who believes Al Gore fanatical claims, share this chart with them. Explain to them, very slowly, that this is why the vast majority of climate alarmist scientists (or even a decent number of physical science scientists) will not sign a petition categorically stating they believe that small trace amounts of human CO2 will cause global catastrophes, as claimed by Al Gore and other eco-fascists. The reason they won’t is because the claims are literally non-scientific hysteria.

Source

By Eureka Alert, eScienceNews.com

No one knows exactly how much Earth’s climate will warm due to carbon emissions, but a new study this week suggests scientists’ best predictions about global warming might be incorrect. The study, which appears in Nature Geoscience, found that climate models explain only about half of the heating that occurred during a well-documented period of rapid global warming in Earth’s ancient past. The study, which was published online today, contains an analysis of published records from a period of rapid climatic warming about 55 million years ago known as the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum, or PETM. “In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in the geological record,” said oceanographer Gerald Dickens, a co-author of the study and professor of Earth science at Rice University. “There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models.” During the PETM, for reasons that are still unknown, the amount of carbon in Earth’s atmosphere rose rapidly. For this reason, the PETM, which has been identified in hundreds of sediment core samples worldwide, is probably the best ancient climate analogue for present-day Earth. In addition to rapidly rising levels of atmospheric carbon, global surface temperatures rose dramatically during the PETM. Average temperatures worldwide rose by about 7 degrees Celsius — about 13 degrees Fahrenheit — in the relatively short geological span of about 10,000 years. Many of the findings come from studies of core samples drilled from the deep seafloor over the past two decades. When oceanographers study these samples, they can see changes in the carbon cycle during the PETM. “You go along a core and everything’s the same, the same, the same, and then suddenly you pass this time line and the carbon chemistry is completely different,” Dickens said. “This has been documented time and again at sites all over the world.” Based on findings related to oceanic acidity levels during the PETM and on calculations about the cycling of carbon among the oceans, air, plants and soil, Dickens and co-authors Richard Zeebe of the University of Hawaii and James Zachos of the University of California-Santa Cruz determined that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased by about 70 percent during the PETM. That’s significant because it does not represent a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Since the start of the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide levels are believed to have risen by about one-third, largely due to the burning of fossil fuels. If present rates of fossil-fuel consumption continue, the doubling of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels will occur sometime within the next century or two. Doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide is an oft-talked-about threshold, and today’s climate models include accepted values for the climate’s sensitivity to doubling. Using these accepted values and the PETM carbon data, the researchers found that the models could only explain about half of the warming that Earth experienced 55 million years ago. The conclusion, Dickens said, is that something other than carbon dioxide caused much of the heating during the PETM. “Some feedback loop or other processes that aren’t accounted for in these models — the same ones used by the IPCC for current best estimates of 21st Century warming — caused a substantial portion of the warming that occurred during the PETM.”Source

H/T: CCF

By Ann McElhiney & Phelim McAleer
Al Gore, the former vice-president, has misrepresented the criticisms of a British High Court judge who found An Inconvenient Truth to be littered with “errors and exaggerations”.Mr Gore made the claim in Australia where he is training volunteers to campaign about climate change which he calls an imminent threat to humanity.The former vice-president shot to prominence when his documentary An Inconvenient Truth which carried the claims won an Oscar in 2006. Shortly after Mr Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. However after a lengthy hearing the British High Court found that An Inconvenient Truth was inaccurate and contained at least nine significant errors and exaggerations.However, speaking on ABC Australia Mr Gore misrepresented the judges ruling stating: “Well, the ruling was in my favour”.In reality the judge found at least nine significant errors which “were not in line with scientific consensus” or had “no evidence” to back up his alarmism.UPDATE: UK Lawyer slams Gore’s claim!Source

Letter to The Editor & To all Honourable Members of Parliament

222 words
No. 1 of a Series – IPCC’s Greenhouse theory has No Legs

In theorising global warming is caused by human production of CO2, the IPCC relies on this theory:

– sun radiates light
– that heats the Earth
– which radiates heat to space.
– CO2 traps some of this heat and radiates it back to Earth
– which heats the Earth some more, which radiates even more heat, which CO2 traps… and so on.

In this IPCC “new science”, a cooler body (atmospheric CO2) heats a warmer body (Earth). This contravenes the Laws of Nature.

The atmosphere is certainly cooler. World-wide, temperature decreases with altitude and at just 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) the temperature is already around 20 degrees C cooler than at sea level.

If the IPCC’s theoretical thermal reversal were possible, all of our energy problems would be over. Just heating another object would heat the heat source… and back and forth ad infinitum.

But no known law in the universe permits this to happen. The IPCC contradicts The Second Law of Thermodynamics and laws of physics, of science.

Indeed, geological and historical records have never tied CO2 to global temperature except as an effect of rising temperature – never as a cause.

In the IPCC’s view of global warming, though, CO2 is an all-powerful entity able to overcome Nature’s laws and perform miracles.

The evidence says it isn’t happening. Physics says it cannot happen.

Have you done your due diligence for Australia?

Malcolm Roberts BE (Hons), MBA (Chicago) Fellow AICD, MAIM, MAusIMM, MAME (USA), MIMM (UK), Fellow ASQ (USA, Aust)

—
Via email

By Ron House, PeaceLegacy.org

I’ll probably be posting quite a bit about global warming, and you might wonder why I think it’s a big issue for a site devoted to peace. Well, peace is easier if we aren’t all scrapping with each other to eke out an existence in a starving world. True peace (which includes peace with all our nonhuman friends) requires we don’t do things that will harm wildlife or damage Earth’s capacity to feed us all. True peace should make everyone happy; and if you’ve seen Gitie’s and my wild bird website (wingedhearts.org, you’ll know I don’t reserve “everyone” just for people.

It was only last August, when I was able to leave my paid job as a computer science lecturer, that I finally got around to asking myself what the truth was about global warming. True, the Kyoto protocol had come and gone (right past me); I had read lots of insults directed at our (Australia’s) ex-prime minister John Howard for saying there was no evidence of global warming, and for which he was supposedly a foolish neanderthal hopelessly out of touch with informed opinion. Well was he? I decided to spend some time finding out. I was glad I did, I nearly overlooked an issue that, handled wrongly, might result in billions of human and wildlife deaths.

It was maybe by the end of September that I was convinced John Howard was right and his critics wrong. Maybe a week later, I was convinced beyond that, that for sure there was no significant human-caused (anthropogenic) global warming (called AGW for short). That means, of course, that there would be no need for emissions trading schemes (cap and trade, ETS) to try to control carbon dioxide emissions. But when I mentioned my discoveries to some of my friends, almost all raised something called the “precautionary principle”, which goes like this: “True, maybe there is no AGW, but if that’s wrong, if the world is heating up due to human actions, a disaster will ensue; surely we should introduce ETS anyway, just to be safe; the animals will thank us.” I wondered about that.

If we want to take a precaution, it stands to reason we should first guard against the greatest danger. But what is that? If it isn’t global warming, if, on the other hand, it is global cooling that should worry us, then all the ETSes, “carbon reduction schemes”, “reducing our carbon footprint”, and so on, will actually make the problem far, far worse. When I was a child, they told me in school that ten or so thousand years ago, the world was in an “ice age”, great glaciers covering Europe, Britain, and so on, and now the ice age “is over”. One of my biggest surprises when I started researching global warming was that this is very, very wrong: dangerously so in fact.

The truth is that the planet is in an ice age, and has been for about 2.5 million years. Temperatures now are maybe eight or more degrees Celsius lower than what was normal for most of the time life has existed. Our climate today is far from normal; it is merely a short warm time in between long periods of frigid, deadly cold. The massive herbivore dinosaurs, eating over a tonne of plant matter every day, roamed a clement land surrounded by warm shallow seas. A lot more than just temperatures come into the equation, of course, but it seems clear that life can tolerate climates much warmer than they are today. On the other hand, it’s hard to make a living on a glacier! Ice ages cover huge areas of the planet in ice, and even worse, temperatures are much more variable. According to Ian Plimer in his remarkable book Heaven+Earth, temperatures one year could be up to thirty degrees colder than the year before. I look out the window now at our beautiful Australian magpies, and I don’t have to wonder how they would fare if this winter the temperatures dropped 30C: I would be looking through eyes welling with tears for their dead bodies when the ice melted.

So what should I be doing to take precautions for the safety of our delightful wildlife and our fellow humans? I looked up some temperature records and made a picture of the possibilities. I think it speaks for itself (see above)

This data comes from Antarctic ice cores. “Proxies”—measurements that reveal ancient temperatures—from ice going back 400,000 years, show us the shocking truth: the climate has been going up and down like a saw tooth. What’s more, the clement warm periods are only brief interruptions to the frigid times that ‘knock out’ much of the planet as far as supporting life is concerned. Other measures show us that this has happened ever since the current glacial era started a few million years ago.

So at last we come to the critical point: what would the climate do next if no humans were around to make changes? What do you bet? The climate scientists relied upon by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) tell us that the temperature line has been, and without human intervention would continue to be, horizontal. (Even the documented changes shown in the ice core for the past thousand years are denied.) Is that at all credible?

The global warming alarmists tell us that those who don’t agree with their scare scenarios are ‘climate change deniers’—but who are really the deniers here—the IPCC and its alarmist friends who seem to think that without humans the world would placidly continue in the horizontal direction on the diagram—or the climate realists who say the world’s climate has always changed and always will?

Let’s forget the question of whether the IPCC is right or wrong about the world heating up and about whether humans are causing it. Let’s assume they’re right 100%. (They’re not, but this is about an even bigger question.) Let’s say they’re right. Now check the diagram. The reason the ice ages come as regular as clockwork is that they are driven by the changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun, its axial inclination, and so on, things that change slowly over many thousands of years. Currently the ice ages are responding to all this on a 100,000-year cycle, and it is crystal clear that the next major movement on this cycle will be down, a sharp plunge into glacial conditions, followed by 100,000 years of a slowly deepening, ever-more deadly freeze.

So now we come to the precautionary principle. What’s the bigger danger? If the planet heats we might unfreeze some polar regions (cold regions heat more than hot regions) and make Siberia, northern Canada, and Greenland into green, verdant places where crops can grow and wild animals can prosper. Yes, we might also have to relocate some people if sea levels rise; we can’t pretend there is no downside at all from a warmer planet.

But if the planet cools, what then? Half the northern hemisphere landmass will be uninhabitable (and much of the southern hemisphere too). Climates will alternate viciously from year to year; no animal that is unable to migrate will be safe. The wealthy populations of Europe and North America, whose countries will be covered in ice, will obviously not simply sit down and die; they’ll migrate south and take the remaining warm places for themselves. Whatever the outcome, there will be wars, starvation, and unthinkable human and wildlife deaths. If we escape without half the world’s population dying, we’ll be very, very lucky indeed.

So here’s my vision of a wise precautionary principle: take advantage of any heating that human activity is making happen. If industrial activity is pumping up the planet’s temperature some degrees, excellent. The IPCC says we are making big changes, but climate realists, more credibly, say we are making only small changes. But big or small, any warming we can organise will forestall the next ice age. By lots (the alarmists) or only a little (climate realists), it all helps.

It would be bad enough if the alarmists misused the precautionary principle merely to impoverish people with mad ‘carbon reduction’ laws. But shockingly, the alarmists are not stopping at wrecking our economies with nutty schemes. Many of them want to put cold-generating sulphur pollution into the atmosphere, or seed the oceans with iron or, even worse, lime, or any number of other hare-brained schemes designed to cool the Earth. Can anything be less like a sensible precaution than that?

Sadly, we are all now in the power of people to whom rational argument means nothing, whose goals are driven by ideological zeal. It is up to us to retake our societies and our governments and start driving public policy from facts, evidence, and concern for all the lives that are threatened by human folly.