What the global warming issue is really all about

[RanchHQ]

[RanchHQ]

It is 39.2d here this morning as I have my second cup of coffee. The Horses are fed, the fence is checked and the Sac Bee brought up to La Casa.

The Lovely and Gracious Mrs. HQ pulled out about 20 minutes ago after I got her gas guzzling SUV warmed up.

Wait a minute, 39.2d? That's like a June morning in Wyoming!

FROM: American Thinker Blog: Frustrated Warmists Pull Another Cool Fast One

March 04, 2009
Frustrated Warmists Pull Another Cool Fast One
Marc Sheppard

Continued global cooling has forced clamoring climate alarmists to move the goal posts – again.

A study released yesterday confirms that global temperatures have remained flat since 2001 “despite rising greenhouse gas concentrations” and predicts they may cool for another 30 years. Needless to say, that won’t silence any of the blowhards attacking George Will’s February assertion that “there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade.”

But get this – study author and spokesman Kyle Swanson insists his findings change nothing in the AGW debate, as following this “cooling event,” which isn’t “like anything we've seen since 1950,” warming “will return and be very aggressive." Don’t be surprised by Swanson’s unmitigated gall – we heard this same brand of bet-hedging double-talk from egg-faced alarmists not once, but twice last year.

As we reported then, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed last April that an impending phase shift in a natural climate event – the Pacific Decadal Oscillation -- would likely bring colder temperatures for as many as the next 20-30 years. Aware of the IPCC blasphemy their prediction wrought, one JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, Josh Willis, was quick to explain:

“The comings and goings of El Niño, La Niña and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation are part of a longer, ongoing change in global climate. In fact, these natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.”

Uh-huh.

Just ten days later, a study by Dr. Noel Keenlyside et al, of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Germany, predicted that a pending weak cycle in the “conveyor belt” of southern warm water known as the Meridional Overturning Circulation would also decrease global surface temperatures – but over the next decade. And they too, took steps to cover their green-obliged derrières with the lead author telling Bloomberg News:

“If we don't experience warming over the next 10 years, it doesn't mean that greenhouse-gas warming is not with us. There can be natural fluctuations that may mask climate change in the short term.''

Words associate Mojib Latif, a professor at the Leibniz Institute, translated in no uncertain terms:

“Just to make things clear, we are not stating that anthropogenic climate change won't be as bad as previously thought.”

Nice try, guys.

In both yesterday’s and last year’s examples, the message from these courageous men of science is clear: Yes, of course it’s getting cooler – any fool can see that -- and it might for a generation to come. But does that mean that speculatively achievable plans to completely retool the world’s energy supply and delivery systems during a global recession -- based entirely on our speculative warnings of a manmade global warming apocalypse -- should perhaps be put on hold until we can figure this out?

Why, of course not.

[DBCooper]

Senate leader offers plan for `green' power gridMar 5 03:57 PM US/Eastern
By H. JOSEF HEBERT
Associated Press WriterComments (57) Share on Facebook



Reid Discusses Introduction of Green Transmission Bill

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate's top Democrat is proposing special power lines to carry renewable energy—like solar and wind power—from remote places.
The Federal government would be able override states and direct where the lines would go and who would pay for them. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada unveiled his proposal Thursday. It is expected to become part of a broader energy bill the Senate plans to take up in the coming weeks. The green power lines would boost development of solar, wind and geothermal energy projects otherwise cut off from the nation's electric grid. It's also a proposal that Reid acknowledged in a news release would give "an enormous boost" to his own state of Nevada where companies are eyeing large solar projects.


I wonder how people in California will feel when the Federal Government overrides them to build power lines through pristine wilderness areas?

[Smiley1]

Is it just me, or does Harry Reid really look like the Emporer from the original Star wars?

Mick

[RanchHQ]

March 13, 2009
California's Wet Dream
By Brian Sussman

I live in a state managed by a pack of damned lunatics. Not only have the spendaholics who comprise the California legislature submerged us with an unsustainable budget deficit and then swamped us with the largest combined tax increase in the Golden state's history to attempt to pay for it -- now they have spent money on gawd-awful research which proclaims the state is about to go under water -- literally.

According to yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle:

"Driven by global warming, the ocean is expected to rise nearly 5 feet along California's coastline by the end of the century, hitting San Francisco Bay the hardest of all, according to a state study released Wednesday."

The scare screed continues:

"Rising seas, storms and extreme high tides are expected to send saltwater into low-lying areas, flooding freeways, the Oakland and San Francisco airports, hospitals, power plants, schools and sewage plants. Thousands of structures at risk are the homes of low- and middle-income people, the study said."

This so-called "study" was concocted by the Pacific Institute (Pacific Institute: Research for People and the Planet), a nonprofit propaganda outfit in Oakland. The hogwash was paid for by the California Energy Commission, Caltrans and the state Ocean Protection Council. I have no idea how much money was shelled out to fund this poppycock, but I can assure you, it was a blasted waste of taxpayer dough. The Pacific Institute's mission statement says, "We envision a world where the basic needs of all people are met, where resources are managed sustainably and the natural world protected, and where conflicts over resources are resolved in a peaceful and democratic fashion."

Wonderful. My beloved Califonia is purchasing purposefully misleading goo-goo
eco-doctrine from a leftist group.

It gets even worse. On the Pacific Institute's Board of Directors is Anne Ehrlich, wife of ghoulish Malthusian, Paul Population Bomb Ehrlich. Both are esteemed members of the Stanford University faculty. The Ehrlichs have issued some wild lines over the years, including my favorite from one of their golden green oldies, Population, Resources, Environment: "A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States."

With Board members like Anne Ehrlich -- who desires to kick America back into the stone age -- anything coming out of the Pacific Institute's pipeline should be considered hazardous to the truth.

Enter Mr. Convenient Lies

All of this nonsense about rising tides has been greatly aided by the mischievous activity of one of the Ehrlich's personal friends, Al Gore. In his Oscar acclaimed work of fiction, An Inconvenient Truth, Gore includes a troubling scene which involves a graphical representation of the world's major cities drowning due to a rise in sea level from the melting of Antarctica and Greenland.

Gore focuses first on Western Antarctica. He calmly claims, "If this were to go, sea levels worldwide would go up 20 feet."

By "go" Gore is implying, melt.

He then couples that fictional cataclysm with the total melting of Greenland. Using vague, unreferenced charts supposedly illustrating the amount of melting from Greenland's glaciers and ice sheets, Gore emphatically states, "because of what is happening in Greenland right now, the map of the world will have to be redrawn." He then prophesies: "If Greenland broke up and melted, or if half of Greenland and half of West Antarctica broke up and melted, this is what would happen to the sea level..."

Playing the role of mad scientist, Gore then graphically reveals Florida flooded, San Francisco swamped, "tens of millions of people" near Beijing displaced, "40 million people" near Shanghai forced to flee, and "50 million people" becoming refugees in Calcutta and East Bangladesh.

Adding further to his fright-fest, Gore, in a troubled monotone says, "This is the World Trade Center Memorial Site. After the horrible events of 9/11 we said ‘never again'. But this is what would happen to Manhattan." Exquisite Hollywood graphics inundate Ground Zero with a tsunami of water. Gore then claims, "They can measure this precisely."
How? He never says. But clearly he seems to be likening global warming to the evils wrought by the Islamo-fascist's who drove planes into buildings on 9-11.

Gore tags the scene by asking, "Is it possible that we should prepare against other threats besides terrorists?"

Apparently, the 5 foot rise in ocean levels forecast by the new Pacific Institute diatribe assumes that Gore is correct in believing that Greenland is about to melt like the wicked Witch of the West -- something even the United Nation's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has never been willing to hang their pointy hat on.

Sea Level Rise: can you say "Teeny-weenie"?

Ever since the end of the last Ice Age, the global sea level has been gradually increasing. The melting ice and snow from that bitter cold event continually trickles into our great oceans and seas. According to the IPCC, over the past 20,000 years sea level has increased nearly 400 feet.[i] Breaking it down further, over the past century the average sea level rose 1.8 millimeters per year[ii] (try placing your thumb as close to your forefinger as possible, without the two touching -- that is the amount of sea level rise each year).

Hardly frightening.

Gore's implication that if the West Antarctica ice shelf were to melt, sea level would increase 20 feet is obviously cherry-picked from the IPCC which, as part of an obvious set of improbable, hypothetical scenarios states, "the collapse of [the West Antarctica Ice Sheet]... would trigger another five to six metres [16-19 feet] of sea level rise...that would take many hundreds of years to complete."[iii]

What Al Gore failed to mention was the IPCC section from which his West Antarctica and Greenland melting scenarios were lifted is entitled, How Likely are Major or Abrupt Climate Changes, such as Loss of Ice Sheets or Changes in Global Ocean Circulation? The section begins with this disclaimer:

Abrupt climate changes, such as the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the rapid loss of the Greenland Ice Sheet or large scale changes of ocean circulation systems, are not considered likely to occur in the 21st century...[iv]

That means that over the next 90+ years, even the usually enthusiastic global warming editors at the U.N. are not anticipating the kind of predictions that Gore, or for that matter, the Pacific Institute, lay forth.

Also, some additional snapshots from the IPCC regarding Antarctica:

"All studies for the 21st century project that antarctic [ice] changes will contribute negatively to sea level..."[v] (italics mine). That means despite the dramatic film Al Gore shows of glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula calving and crashing into the sea, there is more snow and ice accumulating on Antarctica than is breaking off and melting into the surrounding waters).

"...for the last two decades...Antarctica as a whole has not warmed."[vi]
Regarding the potential collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, "...no quantitative information is available from the current generation of ice sheet models as to the likelihood of timing of such an event."[vii]

"...accelerated sea level rise caused by rapid dynamic response of the ice sheets to climate change is very unlikely during the 21st century."[viii]

Regarding Greenland, the IPCC states:

"...the total melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which would raise global sea level by about seven metres, is a slow process that would take many hundreds of years to complete...no quantitive information is available from the current generation of ice sheet models as to the likelihood or timing of such an event"[ix]

Translation: the total melting of Greenland is a pipedream, as is the scientific sewage flowing from the Pacific Institute.

Oh, and by the way...Mr. Gore? If all of these predictions are spot on and the ocean is soon gobble up San Francisco...do the right thing. Make a statement by selling that fancy pants condo you own in the future flood zone.

And to the legislators feeding from the public trough in Sacramento: spend your precious per diem cash on these kooky studies-not our hard earned tax dollars.

Brian Sussman is a conservative talker on KSFO 560AM in San Francisco. He is also a award-winning former television meteorologist.

SOURCE: American Thinker: California's Wet Dream

[dreamliner]

Czech President Blasts Global Warming
Czech President Vaclav Klaus says many global warming advocates are more interested in money than they are in climate change.
Speaking at the opening session of the Second International Conference on Climate Change last week in New York, Klaus — who is also President pro-tem of the European Union — warned that politicians have “succeeded in creating incentives which led to the rise of a very powerful [profit]-seeking group.
“These people are interested neither in temperature, CO2, competing scientific hypotheses and their testing, nor in freedom or markets. They are interested in their businesses and their profits — made with the help of politicians.”
They will profit, he said, from trading the licenses to emit carbon dioxide, and from constructing unproductive wind, solar and similar equipment able to generate electricity only with high levels of subsidies.
They will also make money from doing research, writing and speaking about global warming.
At the New York conference, sponsored by the Heartland Institute and attended by more than 700 scientists, Klaus declared that “there is no fixed and stable relationship between measured temperature and CO2 emissions.
“The believers in this hypothesis are not able to explain why the global temperature increased from 1918 to 1940, decreased from 1940 to 1976, increased from 1976 to 1998 and decreased from 1998 to the present, irrespective of the fact that people have been adding increasing amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere.”
He said global warming alarmists “want to change us and our behavior. Their ambition is to control and manipulate us.”
The global warming debate “has not made any detectable progress and the much needed, long overdue exchange of views has not yet started. All we see and hear are uninspiring monologues.
“It reminds me of the frustration people like me felt in the Communist era. Whatever you said, any convincing and well prepared arguments you used, any relevant data you assembled — no reaction. It all fell into emptiness. Nobody listened.
“They didn't even try to argue back. They considered you a naive, uninformed and confused person, an eccentric, a complainer, someone not able to accept their only truth. It is very similar now.”
Recalling his experience at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he said he spent three hours at a closed session with about 60 people - heads of state and “experts” like Al Gore, Tony Blair and Kofi Annan.
“It was a discouraging experience. You looked around in vain to find at least one person who would share your views. There was no one.
“All the participants of the meeting took man-made global warming for granted, were convinced of its dangerous consequences, and more or less competed in one special discipline — whether to suggest a 20, 30, 50 or 80 percent CO2 emissions cut as an agreed-upon, world-wide project. It was difficult to say anything meaningful and constructive.”
Newsmax reported earlier that during the Davos conference in January, Klaus said: "I'm very sorry that some people like Al Gore are not ready to listen to the competing theories. I do listen to them.
"Environmentalism and the global warming alarmism is challenging our freedom. Al Gore is an important person in this movement."
Klaus concluded in New York: “The environmentalists speak about ‘saving the planet.’ From what? And from whom? One thing I know for sure: We have to save it - and us — from them.”
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[DBCooper]

Hybrid car sales go from 60 to 0 at breakneck speed - Los Angeles Times

Another marketing mistake.

[RanchHQ]

Obama climate plan could cost $2 trillion
Tom LoBianco (Contact)
Wednesday, March 18, 2009

(EMPHASIS MINE)

President Obama's climate plan could cost industry close to $2 trillion, nearly three times the White House's initial estimate of the so-called "cap-and-trade" legislation, according to Senate staffers who were briefed by the White House.

A top economic aide to Mr. Obama told a group of Senate staffers last month that the president's climate-change plan would surely raise more than the $646 billion over eight years the White House had estimated publicly, according to multiple a number of staffers who attended the briefing Feb. 26.

"We all looked at each other like, 'Wow, that's a big number,'" said a top Republican staffer who attended the meeting along with between 50 and 60 other Democratic and Republican congressional aides.

The plan seeks to reduce pollution by setting a limit on carbon emissions and allowing businesses and groups to buy allowances, although exact details have not been released.

At the meeting, Jason Furman, a top Obama staffer, estimated that the president's cap-and-trade program could cost up to three times as much as the administration's early estimate of $646 billion over eight years. A study of an earlier cap-and-trade bill co-sponsored by Mr. Obama when he was a senator estimated the cost could top $366 billion a year by 2015.

A White House official did not confirm the large estimate, saying only that Obama aides previously had noted that the $646 billion estimate was "conservative."

"Any revenues in excess of the estimate would be rebated to vulnerable consumers, communities and businesses," the official said.

The Obama administration has proposed using the majority of the money generated from a cap-and-trade plan to pay for its middle-class tax cuts, while using about $120 billion to invest in renewable-energy projects.

Mr. Obama and congressional Democratic leaders have made passing a climate-change bill a top priority. But Republican leaders and moderate to conservative Democrats have cautioned against levying increased fees on businesses while the economy is still faltering.

House Republican leaders blasted the costs in the new estimate.

"The last thing we need is a massive tax increase in a recession, but reportedly that's what the White House is offering: up to $1.9 trillion in tax hikes on every single American who drives a car, turns on a light switch or buys a product made in the United States," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner. "And since this energy tax won't affect manufacturers in Mexico, India and China, it will do nothing but drive American jobs overseas."

LINK: Washington Times - Obama climate plan could cost $2 trillion

[2112]

If you are interested, you might want to watch this program coming up next week from NOVA.


NOVA | Extreme Ice | PBS

You can choose to believe or not but if you ask the subsistence inhabitants of the Arctic, something unusual is going on.

[Birdieman]

Originally Posted by 2112

If you are interested, you might want to watch this program coming up next week from NOVA.


NOVA | Extreme Ice | PBS

You can choose to believe or not but if you ask the subsistence inhabitants of the Arctic, something unusual is going on.

Because PBS is hardly a liberal outlet. Good grief!