The title of this post is stolen directly from BBC News. Honest. It's from the Science/Nature section and deals with global warming.
Then again, "tits" means something else entirely to the bird-watching population of England:
Of course, this is actually a very good lesson for the Gorebal Warming alarmists. As the natural temperature variations occur across geologic ages, different species are affected differently. What is bad for some is very good for others.
. . . in May. MAY!
Fifty degrees outside at 9 am on a Sunday morning.
Global warming my ass. Pray that the next sunspot cycle kicks into gear because if it doesn't, you'd better get ready for the next ice age.
Phil Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who became the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut. He pens a comprehensive article in today's Australian about the danger of the coming ice age:
All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.
Chapman admits that one year of cooling does not a trend make, but then he turns to sunspot activity. According to SOHO, the latest cycle of sunspots (No. 24) failed to begin on schedule (sometime shortly after March of last year).
The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.
The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.
Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.
Again, Chapman admits that there may not be a causal connection between last year's precipitous temperature drop and No. 24's late start. But given the grim consequences of another mini-ice age, he warns us to start planning now. Lack of action could prove fatal:
The interglacial we have enjoyed throughout recorded human history, called the Holocene, began 11,000 years ago, so the ice is overdue. We also know that glaciation can occur quickly: the required decline in global temperature is about 12C and it can happen in 20 years.
The next descent into an ice age is inevitable but may not happen for another 1000 years. On the other hand, it must be noted that the cooling in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions. If it continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14C cooler in 2027.
By then, most of the advanced nations would have ceased to exist, vanishing under the ice, and the rest of the world would be faced with a catastrophe beyond imagining.
Australia may escape total annihilation but would surely be overrun by millions of refugees. Once the glaciation starts, it will last 1000 centuries, an incomprehensible stretch of time.
Global warming we could deal with. In fact, it would open up more farm land and expand the habitable area on the Earth.
But an ice age is another thing altogether.
So please, for the future of humanity, everyone go out and buy a huge (non-hybrid) SUV and fire up the smudge pots. In the meantime, I think I'll invest in some acreage on the equator. Hmm, I wonder what a small plantation in the Brazilian rain forest goes for these days.
Wonko's World has a great post about global warming propagandists, with a little help from the BBC, using a 10-year old story as if it is breaking news.
So much for Gorebal Warming, as it seems the trend is quite the opposite:
A NOAA report shows that ice levels which had shrunk from 5 million square miles in January 2007 to just 1.5 million square miles in October, are almost back to their original levels.
Moreover, a Feb. 18 report in the London Daily Express showed that there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than usual, challenging the global warming crusaders and buttressing arguments of skeptics who deny that the world is undergoing global warming. . . .
Around the world, vast areas have been buried under some of the heaviest snowfalls in decades.
This has been the coldest winter I have experience for a number of years and I continue to be skeptical of global warming scaremongers based on my own observations. I am pleased to see that the coming ice age is getting a little press, although I would like to see the liberal MSM jump on board give it a little consideration.
A rare snowstorm swept the Middle East on Wednesday, blanketing parts of the Holy Land in white, shutting schools and sending excited children into the streets for snowball fights.
The weather in Jerusalem topped local newscasts, eclipsing a government report on Israel's 2006 war in Lebanon.
Men in long Arab robes pelted each other with snowballs in the Jordanian capital, Amman, and the West Bank city of Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian government, came to a standstill.
Scientists studied historical data and have concluded that warmer oceans will mean fewer hurricanes will make landfall on US soil.
But wait, everyone knows that Bush is responsible for global warming, which will mean warmer oceans. How will the liberals spin this?
Four climate scientists took 30 years of observed climate data and against which they ran 22 different computer models that have been used by organization like the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to fuel the Gorebal Warming hysteria. Problem is, as these scientists point out, the computer models used can't predict what actually happened, much less make an accurate prediction about what will be.
The report appears in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society. The abstract states:
We examine tropospheric temperature trends of 67 runs from 22
Climate of the 20th Century
model simulations and try to reconcile them with the best available updated observations (in the tropics during the satellite era). Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100 to 300% higher than observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and observed trends have opposite signs. These conclusions contrast strongly with those of recent publications based on essentially the same data.
Some choice quotes from the authors (a quote for Benjamin D. Pearson, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY is not presented):
David H. Douglass, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY:
The observed pattern of warming, comparing surface and atmospheric temperature trends, does not show the characteristic fingerprint associated with greenhouse warming. The inescapable conclusion is that the human contribution is not significant and that observed increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases make only a negligible contribution to climate warming.
John R. Christy, Department of Atmospheric Science and Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, AL:
Satellite data and independent balloon data agree that atmospheric warming trends do not exceed those of the surface. Greenhouse models, on the other hand, demand that atmospheric trend values be 2-3 times greater. We have good reason, therefore, to believe that current climate models greatly overestimate the effects of greenhouse gases. Satellite observations suggest that GH models ignore negative feedbacks, produced by clouds and by water vapor, that diminish the warming effects of carbon dioxide.
S. Fred Singer, Science and Environmental Policy Project, Arlington, VA and University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA:
The current warming trend is simply part of a natural cycle of climate warming and cooling that has been seen in ice cores, deep-sea sediments, stalagmites, etc., and published in hundreds of papers in peer-reviewed journals. The mechanism for producing such cyclical climate changes is still under discussion; but they are most likely caused by variations in the solar wind and associated magnetic fields that affect the flux of cosmic rays incident on the earth’s atmosphere. In turn, such cosmic rays are believed to influence cloudiness and thereby control the amount of sunlight reaching the earth’s surface and thus the climate.
The Chicken Littles are at it again. This time it is the UN's World Meteorological Organization who tells us that two of the three "most important" greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide [CO2] and nitrous oxide [N2O]) reached record levels in 2006.
Worse yet, a "climate specialist" at the UN agency claimed that carbon dioxide (the stuff that you exhale to feed the trees) is "gaining importance" as a greenhouse gas, becoming even more effective at warming the earth. Worse of all, the "expert" opined that it appears the upward trend of greenhouse gas concentration will continue at least for a few years.
What does it mean?
Rising levels could disrupt the comate, producing more heatwaves, floods, droughts and rising ocean levels.
Oh my!
Meanwhile, in Europe:
In Verbier, Kitzbühel and Klosters, global warming is, like, so last year. After suffering a delayed and, in some cases, virtually snowless season in 2006-07, European resorts are enjoying record November snowfalls.
Switzerland and Austria have had the best of the early snow, with even lowlying resorts that had been drawing up plans to become “winter hiking” destinations cranking up the chairlifts.
France is expecting significant snowfalls this weekend, as are parts of Germany; some Italian resorts are already open and Sweden and Norway are also hoping to join the party. Zurich has had its heaviest snowfall since 1955 and the white stuff is settling all the way down to the beaches.
From IBD, Waving The Flag Of Fear:
One day after the United Nations issued a doomsday report on global warming, it admits it has grossly exaggerated the seriousness of the AIDS problem. The cycle of fear-mongering at the U.N. continues. . . .
Remember the 1980s, when we were told that AIDS was a nondiscriminatory disease destined to wipe out large segments of the population and bring untold ruin to humanity?
When Life magazine declared on its cover in 1985 that "Now No One Is Safe From AIDS"? When the new Black Plague, worse than the first, was upon us? Who could forget Oprah Winfrey's dire warning that a fifth of heterosexuals would be dead by 1990? . . .
Global warming fear-mongering is likely to fall by the wayside in the next decade or so when it becomes obvious that the charlatans have been wrong. That won't be the end, however; global warming will be replaced by a wild exaggeration that sounds even more threatening.
Read it all, remembering ZPG from the 70's because the Earth would be overrun with people if we didn't stop having babies, the "we'll be out of oil by the year 2000" from the 60's, and every other crackpot idea you've heard from the alarmists.
Whoa, here's a poll to make you think:
Almost two-thirds of the world's people say there must be urgent action to tackle global warming, a poll for the BBC World Service showed on Tuesday.
Then again, two-thirds of the world's people are illiterate, live in huts and cook over dung fires. Listen to them on matters of global policy? I don't think so. *
*Before I get flamed, this was literary exaggeration to make a point. In actuality, a report was recently released that claimed that for the first time in history half the world population is urban. But just because they live in the "big city", it doesn't mean that they aren't ignorant savages. [Heh]
Yesterday was the coldest August 21st in the recorded history of New York City, and actually tied for the coldest day in August, previously set in 1911.
A commenter at Digg calls everyone idiots for doubting that Gorebal Warming is real, explaining that it's the warm air in the south that is pulling the freezing air from the north that is causing the record cold temperatures.
Hmm, wasn't that the same kind of logic that predicted a bad hurricane season last year? And wasn't it a year in which no major hurricanes hit land?
The latest act in the global comedy that is "global warming" is provided by Chris Goodall, a "leading environmentalist", author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life and Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford West & Abingdon.
Mr. Goodall says that growing and raising food for human consumption has become so energy-intensive that a walk to the corner shop contributes to global warming:
Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance.
Goodall is apparently comparing apples to oranges, or in this case olives to oil. While he counts up the carbons emitted to grow crops and raise cattle for people power, he only counts the carbons emitted by driving the car -- not those emitted in drilling, refining and transporting gasoline and diesel.
But the UK Times refers to Goodall as "the latest serious thinker to turn popular myths about the environment on their head." That is because Goodall is fighting what the UK Times likes to think is the good fight:
Cattle farming is notorious for its perceived damage to the environment, based on what scientists politely call “methane production” from cows. The gas, released during the digestive process, is 21 times more harmful than CO2 . Organic beef is the most damaging because organic cattle emit more methane.
Simply cutting out beef, or even meat, however, would be too modest a change. The food industry is estimated to be responsible for a sixth of an individual’s carbon emissions, and Britain may be the worst culprit. ...
The ideal diet would consist of cereals and pulses.
And so the spotlight shines on a nut from Oxford West & Abingdon. This is what happens when the crackpot falls on the side of the biased media.
Somebody needs to call Al Gore. Maybe he can explain this:
The 2007 hurricane season may be less severe than forecast due to cooler-than-expected water temperatures in the tropical Atlantic, private forecaster WSI Corp said on Tuesday.
How can this be? Isn't Bush still in charge wreaking havoc?
More and more scientists are switching sides on the issue of global warming, as can be seen in an article from the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works [hat tip to Tim Blair].
The words of these scientists resonate with me because their growing understanding of the issue parallels my own journey from strident liberal to the neo-libertarian that I have become. That is, everything sounded good -- the CO2 emissions, the ice cores, and so on -- but when they started doing the research, when they started amassing the data and looking at historical trends, when they started digging into the computer models, when they really looked at the heart of the matter and strove for understanding they discovered that the whole thing was a house of cards made of unsubstantiated claims and theories that did not mesh with reality.
For instance, Geologist Bruno Wiskel who once set about the task of honoring the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 by building a "Kyoto House":
Wiskel wanted to prove that the Kyoto Protocol’s goals were achievable by people making small changes in their lives. But after further examining the science behind Kyoto, Wiskel reversed his scientific views completely and became such a strong skeptic, that he recently wrote a book titled “The Emperor's New Climate: Debunking the Myth of Global Warming.”
Australian mathematician and engineer Dr. David Evans changed his mind after devoting six years to carbon accounting and building models of carbon emissions from land use change and forestry:
But after 2000 the evidence for carbon emissions gradually got weaker -- better temperature data for the last century, more detailed ice core data, then laboratory evidence that cosmic rays precipitate low clouds.
As Lord Keynes famously said, ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’
Canadian climate researcher Dr. Tad Murty was a believer until he started doing research for Fisheries and Oceans Canada:
If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.
Just how grossly overstated is man's impact on the environment by the environmental Chicken Littles?
According to the National Post, [Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv] believes that even a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere by 2100 "will not dramatically increase the global temperature."
“Even if we halved the CO2 output, and the CO2 increase by 2100 would be, say, a 50% increase relative to today instead of a doubled amount, the expected reduction in the rise of global temperature would be less than 0.5C. This is not significant,” Shaviv explained.
There is are many more scientists written about in the article; just think about the number that are not written about. And you won't be reading about these defections in the MSM as this continues to be an issue motivated by politics and money. As French geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre notes:
Allegre, who was one of the first scientists to sound global warming fears 20 years ago, now says the cause of climate change is "unknown" and accused the “prophets of doom of global warming” of being motivated by money, noting that "the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!"
Perhaps we should listen to past alarmist and current skeptic New Zealand climate scientist Dr. Chris de Freitas who now believes that "the billions of dollars committed to GW research and lobbying for GW and for Kyoto treaties etc could be better spent on uncontroversial and very real environmental problems (such as air pollution, poor sanitation, provision of clean water and improved health services) that we know affect tens of millions of people."
Or maybe we should just leave those dollars in the hands of the free enterprise system and out of the hands of politicians.
But that won't happen. It isn't happening now.
The article that all the quotes above (and many more -- I strongly encourage you to read it all) come from the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. The same body that has published such eye-opening articles as:
This is a Senate Committee! Yet with a stunning disregard of reality, this same body (chaired by Barbara Boxer) is pushing the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act (S. 309), aka the Sanders-Boxer Bill:
The Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act (S. 309) is the strongest global warming legislation bill introduced to date. The bill sets out a roadmap of targets, requirements and incentives to reduce U.S. emissions and help stabilize global atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, and requires that the U.S. reduce its emissions by 2050 to a level that is 80 percent below 1990 levels.
Who is backing the bill? The current list of cosponsors include only the usual suspects:
And two of those ignoramuses have publicly declared that they want to be president.
Yet another climate change study, but this one is focused on paleoceanographic data rather than tenuously-fabricated computer models.
The most popular explanation for the demise of the Neanderthals has been that the superior Homo Sapiens out-hunted the Neanderthals. But the data shows otherwise:
The conclusions point out that Neanderthal populations did suffer fluctuations related to climate changes before the first Homo Sapiens arrived in the Iberian Peninsula. Cold, arid and highly variable climate was the least favourable weather for Neanderthals and 24,000 years ago they had to face the worst weather conditions in the last 250,000 years.
Climate changes that wiped out an entire species. Kinda makes Katrina look trivial.
Hat Tip to non-blogging Advised by Wolves.
Having lived a half century on this planet, I have real doubts as to the predictions of "experts", mainly because they have such an incredibly poor track record:
In addition, a volcano can belch more greenhouse gases in a single blast than Man turns out in a decade — if you admit that CO2 is not all that important. Even living flora contributes up to 100 times more methane (which is important) than rotting vegetation, but does that mean we should cut down the rainforests to save the planet?
I'm not even convinced that the world is even getting warmer — predictions of a coming ice age are more common than the media leads you to believe. Truth is, the experts just don't know. After all:
Thus, ecosystems result from the sums of infinite individual responses of organisms to stimuli from non-living and living elements in the environment.
Exactly. It's pretty complicated, our knowledge is limited, and our computer models allow for only a small number of variables — and we are even unsure those interact with each other.
Our history of recorded temperatures is short in historical terms, never mind geological epochs. To go further than that one must rely on paleoclimatology, in which oceanic temperatures are derived from plankton fossils and summer growth is divined from evidence of pollen. Forgive me if it sounds a little too much like a CSI episode.
Heck, people are blaming global warming on everything from cosmic rays to sunspots to volcanoes to asteroids to rainforests to sheep farts to, the most popular choice among tree-huggin' hippies, Man.
But in 2003, refining the math models demonstrated that only 0.117% of the greenhouse effect is due to atmospheric CO2 from human activity — but you won't hear that from the fanatics.
Just last year, sixty "climate change experts" said Kyoto is "pointless" because the study of climate change is an "emerging science" and it is impossible to separate the noise from the science.
This year, Katmandu had snow for the first time in 60 years. Record snowfalls blanketed much of our country: 12 feet in upstate New York in ten days, 45 inches in Denver in a single storm, Georgetown had 63 inches in one day. The earliest snow in recorded history hit Argentinean ski resort — it also set a record for the heaviest single snowfall.
As the libs tried to blame record snowfalls on global warming (no, really), Toledo set a new low temperature record, breaking a record set in 1905. Good god, they are even covering their bases by saying that global warming has slowed ocean currents that warm Europe, so a mini-ice age is on the way! Sounds like a rather sophisticated and highly effective auto checks and balances system to me.
With Gore having to cancel his bellicose rantings because he was snowed out, the thing that really gets me is that the greenies will say this is the warmest January in history. But when old French people were dying in Europe because of a hotter-than-usual summer, no one noticed that we were having the mildest, kindest, gentlest summer I've ever experienced.
But even if it turns out to all be true, even if the most dire predictions miraculously pan out, what would happen?
In the great scope of things, just not very much. It would be a few degrees warmer, which means it would be more comfortable for a large portion of the winter. England would have temperate winters, just like the Middle Ages. Farming could take place in Greenland, like the Vikings did. The Sahara would bloom . . . again.
How much land mass would we lose to the oceans if the waters rose a foot? A meter? Three meters?
Go look for yourself at this interactive site. Play with the "what ifs". Heck, put in an incredible 18 meters to see the worst-case. Looking at the the big picture, a few miles of coastline would be submerged. But us in the heartland? High, dry and enjoying wine on our porch in January. Sounds nice to me.
Why are liberals so hysterical? Two reasons, I think.
First, it gives them something to blame on Bush, "Big Oil", and civilization in general. So they have something to whine about over their shade-grown Mexican decaf, imagining how wonderful it will be when mankind is eradicated from the face of the planet, not thinking about being the first to remove themselves from the ecosystem.
Second, liberals live in the coastal regions. It is their homes that will be lost to the ocean. Their cities. Their real estate investments.
If the oceans rise 3 feet, the San Francisco area will be pretty hard hit, If it rises a little more the people east of Sacramento will get beachfront property. Most of highway 101 goes underwater, but hell — we don't even lose Berkeley. Those hippies will still be high, dry, bitching and still moaning.
And that is the real bummer.
What a great start to an article:
If there is any doubt that God has a sense of humor, it has to be dispelled by a headline in Wednesday's Drudge Report: "House hearing on 'warming of the planet' canceled after ice storm."
He followed up with this: "Save it for a sunny day: Maryville Univ. in St. Louis area canceling screening of Al Gore's 'Inconvenient Truth' because of a snowstorm."
The article is based on Robert Felix's work which is presented in his book Not by Fire but by Ice. Felix claims that the whole "Global Warming" hysteria is not just junk science, but a complete lie. In reality, we are headed into an ice age — and it's coming faster than you think.
Now I realize that people put up with this kind of crap all the time, but those people are generally damn Yankees that choose to live where it is so cold that penguins scrounge for fire wood.
Me? I'm a transplanted Texan. I wear flannel shirts in August under my sports jacket. I'm just not made for cold. I don't reckon it's natural. Man is made to sweat, not shiver.
Tuesday morning I opened my eyes and thought to myself, "It's the middle of February. That cold stuff should be gone and I won't have to see it again until next year."
Then I got up, looked out the window and saw snow flurries. I swear I heard God laughing.
This morning I woke up to sixteen degrees and the lake looks like this:
Yeah, that's ice. On a lake. In Memphis. Way below the Mason-Dixon line.
This just ain't right.
Global warming my ass.
As I experience the coldest winter in recent history, I have come across the single, most reasonable and insightful commentary on global warming to date: Global Warming Is Our Friend. Amen and Hallelujah! Preach on brother!
Meanwhile, Doug Patton tries to bring some intelligence to the debate with some rather interesting numbers. Money quote:
Al Gore, Ellen Goodman and the rest of the Kool-Aid drinking GWC* are truly the new Flat Earth Society. They are so brainwashed about the "conventional wisdom" of this issue, it never occurs to them that the real reason most Americans believe global warming is less of a threat than zealots flying airplanes into buildings could just be because common sense is more highly prized on Main Street than it is inside the Beltway or in the halls of the UN.
* Global Warming Cult. Heh!
For those of you in the GWC, the "science editor" at the UK Herald attempts to discredit the skeptic who believes cosmic rays have an effect on the cloud cover, and has written a book about it and plans to test the theory later this year with a team of more than 60 scientists from around the world using the particle accelerator at Geneva. But don't worry, even if he is successful in proving a connection, the "science editor" is already pre-discrediting the discovery.
Courtesy of NASA, a historical perspective on global warming. In the following graphs, the dotted line represents the present global average temperature of about 15° C (59° F) [which is far too cold for my taste].
It looks like we are coming out of an ice age, an event that happens about once every 100,000 years.
A closer look at just the last ten thousand years or so (modern times, in geological terms) reinforces this perspective.
Note that while the birth of man predates the beginning of the Holocene epoch by more than a hundred thousand years, it is this period that saw modern man's transition from a tribal savage to the builder of civilizations. The natural warming cycle created an environment that was favorable to Homo sapiens sapiens' success.
Zooming in even closer shows that even with our huge belching factories and miles of chugging SUVs, we haven't managed to bring up the temperature to when dudes used to ride around in steel suits and heavy wool underwear:
The most recent small drop in average temperature caused the Little Ice Age of 1500-1700 AD, which history describes. Mountain glaciers advanced in Europe and rivers like the Thames in England froze solid, which doesn't happen now.
Hmmm, I wonder if the fact that the sun is warming again up has anything to do with our little temperature "problem". I heard a rumor that the sun somehow influences our weather.
Image from Global Warming Art.com, which notes:
It is widely believed that the low solar activity during the Maunder Minimum and earlier periods may be among the principle causes of the Little Ice Age. Similarly, the Modern Maximum is partly responsible for global warming, especially the temperature increases between 1900 and 1950. Residual warming due to the sustained high level of activity since 1950 is believed responsible for 16 to 36% of recent warming.
Hat Tip to Say Anything, who quips:
It’s almost like the globe has been getting warmer and colder for hundreds of thousands of years with or without humans being around to cause problems.
Weird huh?
Update: Yet another scientist questions the models used for calculating man's impact, saying that cosmic rays have a larger impact than previously believed. Hat Tip to Bill Hobbs, who links to yet another explanation.