Energy Crisis? :: Man-Made Global Warming?

“We have made a mistake.”
Gerd Leipold, Executive Director of Greenpeace 2009, forced to admit that his organization put out false and misleading information about the effects of climate change.

“We have just four months. Four months to secure the future of our planet.”
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon 2009

President Obama  “has four years to save the world.”
Dr. James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies 2009

More …

“Two thousand scientists, in a hundred countries, engaged in the most elaborate, well organized scientific collaboration in the history of humankind, have produced long-since a consensus that we will face a string of terrible catastrophes unless we act to prepare ourselves and deal with the underlying causes of global warming.”
Al Gore 2005

oops, sorry Al, but  in 2009, there was that little email scandal about those “two thousand scientists and their well organized collaboration” …

“you can’t be value free when it comes to marriage”
Al Gore (sorry ,could not resist putting this one in)

oh, but YOU sure can!

Item: I wonder if this major story on recent fossil fuel extraction technology breakthroughs that literally turns our current fuel crisis on its head will make the popular print and electronic media headlines.

Item: There have also been an increasing number of scientific news reports that there are virtually no sunspots on the sun at this time. Sunspots=earth heating up. No sunspots=earth cooling down. So, contrary to the the global warming alarmists’ theory that the earth is heating up, scientific evidence is pointing to a mini ice age within the couple of decades.

“There is an 11-year cycle (about) in sunspots. When spots are plentiful, the sun’s energy is stronger, and there is a tendency for Earth’s temperatures to increase. During the low point there are few sunspots, and temperatures are more likely to drop. We have been in a solar minimum for more than a year. NASA and other agencies predicted that sunspot numbers would be increasing by now, but they are not. According to NASA, we are seeing:

• The lowest sustained solar radio flux since the F10.7 proxy was created in 1947;

• Solar wind is the lowest observed since the beginning of the space age;

• The solar wind magnetic field 36 percent weaker than during the minimum of Solar Cycle 23;

• Effectively no sunspots;

• Cosmic rays at near record-high levels.

Item: Then there is the classic on-air debate between global warming alarmist scientist Bill Nye and the global warming skeptic, meteorologist Joe Bastardi:

BILL O’REILLY, HOST: Factor follow-up segment tonight, another global warming study debunked in the journal Nature Geoscience. The study was printed that showed the ocean is rising because of global warming. Well, now the magazine says sorry, the study was flawed. Just another in a long line of global warming problems including the resignation last week of the U.N. global warming guy. Joining us from Los Angeles Bill Nye the science guy who believes in manmade global warming. And from State College, Pennsylvania, Accuweather meteorologist Joe Bastardi who is skeptical. So Joe, give me your best shot. Why are you dubious about this global warming business?

JOE BASTARDI: Well first of all, let’s take a look at what happened this winter because there are a lot of people trying to now say that all the cold and snow that we had was because of global warming. This was our forecast issued in July and then I reissued it again in October. Notice the cold and snow in the mid-Atlantic states, snow down here in Texas, warm and dry up here. Wet in California. Now, how did I come up with that? Was it global warming? No. We have an El Nino and a state of the ocean in the Pacific similar to the 60s and 70s when Bill O’Reilly was growing up and there was all that snow. The solar cycles are doing something that is reminiscent to colder times. And amazingly, amazingly, the very thing that John Holdren opined on last year, blasting soot into the high altitudes over top of the Artic actually happened naturally with volcanic activity last year led to a lot of blocking over the polls [sic] this year.

O’REILLY: So, once again, you have a meteorological explanation for what happened.

BASTARDI: Oh yes.

O’REILLY: Bill, why do you believe, and Joe doesn’t believe in manmade global warming. Why do you believe in it?

BILL NYE: Well, the evidence is overwhelming. Do you agree, Joe, that in 1750 the world’s carbon dioxide was about 280 parts per million? Do you agree with that?

BASTARDI: Bill, you don’t want to go here, do you know why? Because I’m going to show the CO2 correlation.

NYE: Do you agree?

BASTARDI: Yes. I also agree.

O’REILLY: Wait, Joe. Wait. Let him make his point and you can reply. Go ahead, Bill.

NYE: Do you agree that the planet Venus is warm because it has a lot of carbon dioxide in its atmosphere? When I say warm, enough to melt lead on its surface? Do you agree with that?

BASTARDI: I don’t believe we have the proper measurements of Venus from over 10 billion years ago. So I can’t tell the relationship with the Earth.

O’REILLY: Go ahead, Bill.

NYE: I think you are throwing a red herring in there.

BASTARDI: Oh I am? I wasn’t around the time of Creation.

NYE: This is the carbon dioxide in 1750 in parts per million as represented by fountain pen ink. This is it today. Even though it’s a very, very small fraction, four hundreds of a percent, it’s still quite noticeable and it affects the world’s climate. About your explanation with volcanoes, you know, this is a study done by the IPCC, and this is a timeline and it depicts volcanic activity. And one of the greatest revelations behind casting where they showed that there was a correlation between volcanic eruptions and the Earth’s cooling because particulate matter gets high in the atmosphere. Well, it’s only true of volcanoes near the equator. Mt. St. Helens had hardly any effect at all. And you can see when you extract the data from this trend, you extract trend from this data, the world is getting warmer. It’s continually getting warmer. And these data are so compelling that they overwhelm any effect that has, that might have come from this winter.

O’Reilly: Alright, Joe. You reply.

NYE: Sort of nothing to do with it.

BASTARDI: That’s simply not true, Bill. When you blast SO2 into the atmosphere over top of the Arctic, what happens is it absorbs sunlight warms the stratosphere which depresses the troposphere underneath and cools the troposphere. That can be documented from what happened back in 1912 if you went back and looked at the following winters. But look at this.

O’REILLY: Wait, wait, wait, Bill. Let Joe go.

BASTARDI: You want to bring up the CO2 argument. Why don’t we just look at the sun spots back here, back in 1750 and notice that they have been coming up and along with it the temperatures. Basically it comes down to this. If you you look at the strength of correlation to warming, and this is courtesy of meteorologist Joe D’Aleo. CO2 since 1895, you can see the .43, the sun .57, the oceans .85. But since 1998, CO2 is going next to nothing because the Earth’s temperature is flat lining and CO2 is coming up. So what you have to believe, folks, is this that the sun, plus the oceans, plus the volcanic activity plus natural reversal has less effect than the yearly human contribution equal to the width of a hair on a one kilometer bridge of a trace gas needed for life. So, if you want to believe that you can go ahead and believe that. Seems kind of hard to.

O’REILLY: All right, Bill.

NYE: Actually Joe, Mr. Bastardi, the last 10 years are the warmest decade on record.

BASTARDI: Sure, measuring with satellites.

NYE: 1998 was an especially warm year. 1998 was an especially warm year as was 2006. Now, what’s happened is you showed back in September on this program this graph. And it starts around here 2001 and the idea is that it shows the world cooling off. Well, actually, it’s weighted because of the especially warm 1998. When you extract the data as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…

BASTARDI: Exactly right.

NYE: …has, you see it go up and down but the trend is up. Now, what, here is the question for you, Mr. O’Reilly for Mr. Bastardi: in whose best interest is this? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change does these studies, they argue about it, that’s what ClimateGate was about. The one guy called the other guy an idiot. One guy calls his method no good. The other guy says his method is really good. But the world is getting warmer. Carbon dioxide is a very strong greenhouse gas. It has a very long residence time in the atmosphere. It is making the world warmer. Along with methane and other human activities. In whose best interest is it to deny this stuff?

O’REILLY: Let me give Joe the last word.

BASTARDI: Alright, Bill. How are you measuring, when measuring temperatures since the satellite era began in the late 70s at the end of the last what we call the cold PDO. And what I want to show you here real quick, folks.

NYE: Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

O’REILLY: Let him finish.

BASTARDI: The Pacific Decadal Oscillation. If we take a look at this right back here, we see that during the 70s here, and you can see the Time magazine from late 70s we were in a cold PDO. We have been warming it up. We are now turning colder. And the fact of the matter is that if I am right, and this is the greatest debate ever, Bill Nye, the greatest lab experiment ever. If I’m right, the reversals will lead to a degree to a degree and a half cooling. If you are right, they are not. But what are we worried about right now? What we have to look at is the next 20 or 30 years.

Read more / Watch Video

Joe Bastardi Explains Further

Item: Here is an excerpt from an open letter that Joe Bastardi wrote on AccuWeather.com that provides additional factual information about how sun activity and El Nino relate to global temperature.

To be sure, the cooling now is happening faster than it should because it got so warm in the first place via the super nino of 97-98. The last warm cycle reached its peak in the late 50s when we actually surfaced submarines at the north pole in 1959… IN MARCH! I often wonder what global temps would have been measured at then if we had the ways of measuring we do now. The fact that there was so much “shock” at some of the revelations that showed up on the O’Reilly Factor is because people are refusing to understand that so far, this has been a case of been there, done that.

One can pull out as many cases of bad weather in the 30s, 40s and 50s as they can now. I still believe the 3 greatest examples of how bad a hurricane can get in relation to latitude are the 1938 hurricane with 186 mph wind gusts at Blue Hill Mass, the 1944 hurricane that destroyed the Atlantic City boardwalk, and Hurricane Donna which gave hurricane force winds to every state from Florida to Maine. The 1944 hurricane had winds 600 miles in diameter and stripped 50% of the screws from a recon plane into it.

Unlike many people, I am well acquainted and respect the co2 warming idea, but in its pure form, which actually allows for the cooling coming now! There in lies the problem. We can’t know till after the period that is coming up through 2030 whether co2 is really a player or not. The threat of not only oceanic cycles cooling the earth, but the suns lack of intensity and increased volcanic and seismic activity could mean that as some papers in the early 90s (and dismissed by many) opined we would be as cold as back in the early 1800s. What you see now may just be the beginning. One thing we do know, that we should be skeptical of any future event, no matter what we believe.

Read entire letter…

Naturally occurring Mini Ice Age … a more likely future

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Delta Smelta

As an amateur conservationist, naturalist and environmentalist I live my life in relative simplicity, and consciously keep my consumption of products and goods at a low level. I enjoy the natural world on many levels, from hiking to gardening; I promote kindness to animals; I’ve gone vegan – this, and more,  places me on those lists without being labeled a tree-hugging wacko. Since I strive to live by the credo ‘everything good within reason’, this especially holds true in the area of environmentalism. For me, to be an environmentalist does not mean that I need to believe in every cause that every environmentalist puts forth. Like all of life’s big challenges, I want to be able to choose which mountain to die on.

Saving the delta smelt is not one of those mountains. During California’s recent three year drought in the Sacramento San Joaquin Delta, instead of the state looking for ways to help suffering farmers who were losing farms and facing upwards of 40% unemployment, the Endangered Species Committee, also known as the “God Squad,” was allowed to impose ‘water curbs”, thereby reducing flow from pumping stations to parched agricultural areas. These measures were implemented to save the delta smelt, a small fish who they believed was endangered from being caught and killed in the irrigation pumping stations.

Since then, The Pacific Legal Foundation has petitioned the governator to remove the water curbs. However, like most issues, it’s complicated, with some wondering whether the smelt is the real culprit leading to the loss of water in the area; that perhaps the present problems would be the same from just the three-year drought alone; or, that farmers should simply learn to adapt to changes in their environment. In any case, for California, a state whose financial crisis is reaching the breaking point, the delta smelt issue is just one more example of how over regulation can have disastrous outcomes for all.

So, do we save a little fish or save the livelihood and homes of thousands of farmers? Though a complicated issue, the decision is clear. Common sense and reason must prevail. For some of you, please do not tell me you care about these fish as you – yes, you meat-eating hypocrites – bite down on your flesh sandwich in one hand and hold up your Save the Planet placard with the other. Don’t screech about the loss of these fish while millions of factory farmed chickens, pigs, sheep and cows are treated cruelly and butchered in appalling manners each minute of every day. And isn’t it ironic that the waste from these same factory farmed animals is the leading contributor to ground water pollution in the world? Perhaps this is the mountain you should make your stand on.

“other nations”

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves.

And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”

Henry Beston American writer and naturalist

“Other Nations”

“Earthlings”