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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Tibetan shepherds welcome climate change
By Richard Spencer at the Karo-la Pass in Tibet
Last Updated: 1:52am GMT 15/02/2007
Global warming is melting the snows and glaciers — and the peasant farmers of the Tibetan plateau are delighted.
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Crossing a snowless mountain path by yak near Yamdrok-so Lake
While much of the world worries about the impact of climate change, for these hardy Himalayan shepherds, battling the elements in the world's highest mountains, a gentler climate can only be good news.
"Yes, it's definitely getting warmer," said Tsawang Dumi, 56, a Tibetan shepherd watching over a flock of 60 sheep and goats amid the winter snows of a Himalayan hillside. "Fewer animals died of the cold this winter."
Mr Tsawang lives on the side of the 23,600ft massif of Nozing Kangtsang, between the Tibetan capital Lhasa and Mount Everest to the south.
The glacier that falls from its peak has shrunk by nine per cent in recent years. "I have heard of global warming, though I don't really understand what it means," said Tashi, 30, another shepherd, watching his sheep lower down the mountainside.
"But you can see there is less snow on the mountains. In the old days, all those rocks would be covered. I don't have to take my sheep so far away from the mountain in lambing season now."
While global warming makes their tough lives a little easier, the changes unfolding around these farmers have triggered warnings from scientists, alarmed the Chinese government, and spread a panic worldwide which has affected even American politics.
Tibet's 46,000 glaciers — permanent fields of ice that feed some of Asia's biggest rivers and supply water to the biggest concentrations of humanity on the globe — are shrinking fast. "The Tibetan plateau needs our attention," said Professor Liu Shiyin, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who has monitored the glaciers' decline.
In some areas, average loss has been well in excess of 10 per cent since measurements began in the 1960s and 70s. The United Nations Development Programme has published even more dramatic figures, saying the plateau's glaciers could have almost entirely disappeared by the end of the century.
As average temperatures continue to rise, 50 square miles are lost each year.
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"As the catastrophe unfolds, China is under threat," the UNDP's human development report said at the end of last year. "The 300 million farmers in China's arid western region are likely to see a decline in the volume of water flowing from the glaciers."
The winter in Tibet has been freakishly warm, with monks this week strolling round the monasteries of Lhasa — altitude over 12,000ft — with bare arms warmed by the afternoon sun.
In Qamdo, Eastern Tibet, the mercury hit a record 71 degrees Fahrenheit on the first Friday in January.
Like the melting ice-caps of the North and South Poles, the Tibetan plateau is an indicator of the worldwide effects of climate change. Al Gore, the former American vice-president, used its fate in his campaigning documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, which is credited with changing attitudes in the US towards greater action on the issue.
But the big melt is more than just a marker of global change. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, which sustain much of China's population, rise on the plateau. So do rivers such as the Mekong, the Salween, and the Brahmaputra which flow into south and south-east Asia.
In September a joint Indian-Chinese research team will survey the remote mountains and monitor the sources of the Sutlej and Brahmaputra rivers — an indication of the international repercussions for water supplies.
"The melting of the ice sheets and the glaciers is a crisis in the Himalayas," H.P.S. Ahluwalia, who runs the Indian Mountaineering Foundation, said in announcing the project.
Present-day consequences are uncertain. In some areas, precipitation is increasing, meaning more snows in winter are swelling glaciers in some parts of the plateau. But they are in a minority. In the meantime, the melting of the plateau's permafrost is already thought to be turning its expansive grasslands into semi-desert where they meet the vast expanses of the Gobi and the Taklamaken.
But as he surveys the dazzling peaks surrounding him and counts his flock, it is hard to persuade Mr Tsawang that this is a problem. "Things are getting better and better," he said. So far this year I have only lost seven sheep."
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Debate over global warming is shifting
Some skeptics resolute, others revisiting views
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By John Donnelly, Globe Staff | February 15, 2007
WASHINGTON -- With Democrats controlling the environmental agenda in Congress, a panel of international scientists saying there's a greater-than-90 percent chance that humans contribute to global warming, and former vice president Al Gore calling climate change a moral issue, many besieged global warming skeptics are starting to tone down their rhetoric.
Some, though, are sticking to aggressive tactics, even contending they are gaining momentum. And they have influential allies: some scientists, conservative think-tank pundits, a minority of Republicans in Congress, and a sympathetic White House that has rejected attempts to force companies to curb carbon dioxide emissions -- even though the vast majority of scientists say those emissions are heating up the earth.
Still, both sides acknowledge that the global warming debate has changed significantly in recent weeks. The biggest factor is the Feb. 2 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC -- a review of scientific literature by hundreds of scientists who determined that it is more than 90 percent certain humans contribute to global warming.
That seemingly irrefutable conclusion helped shift the position of ExxonMobil, which had taken the strongest stance among oil companies against global warming policy.
Last week, Rex W. Tillerson , ExxonMobil's chief executive, acknowledged that greenhouse gases from car and industrial exhausts are factors in global warming, a stark reversal in the company's long-held position. For years, ExxonMobil has funded several Washington think tanks that have questioned the science -- and whether national policies would be effective.
Scott Barrett , a global warming believer and director of the International Policy Program at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies , said ExxonMobil's about-face is significant. "They accepted the responsibility to do something, and that could change the debate" from uncertainty about climate change to finding solutions to a fast-approaching crisis, he said.
Other oil giants, including BP and Shell, had made the shift much earlier; both are aggressively promoting fossil-fuel alternatives such as solar and wind power.
"A lot of the focus is going to shift into how much effort you should put into reducing emissions versus adapting to climate change," Barrett said. Adapting to a warmer global climate, he said, could include anything from building farther inland to guard against rises in sea level to investing in a malaria vaccine, anticipating that disease-carrying mosquitoes could spread northward from the tropics.
The debate shift has been felt elsewhere as well. The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank that had offered $10,000 last year to scientists to challenge the IPCC report, is rethinking the project, said Kenneth Green , who is overseeing the effort.
"There is a backlash growing against skeptics, a kind of climate inquisition," said Green. "What do people do if they have alternative ideas and they don't have independent institutions to back them up? They will be attacked."
Global warming skeptics say they believe the media and Congress aren't interested in hearing their side of the debate.
"The size of the megaphones for the other side is very large," said Myron Ebell , director of energy and global warming policy at Competitive Enterprise Institute, one of the leading doubters of the issue. "On our side we are using bare voices without amplification."
But those who don't believe humans contribute to global warming have some scientists, and an influential lawmaker, on their side.
Senator James M. Inhofe , the Oklahoma Republican who famously declared global warming a "hoax," said this week that the skeptics were gaining momentum. He said President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic and scientists from France and Israel, among others, are now among the doubters.
Writing in the Sunday Times of London this week, Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist magazine, suggested that the IPCC's main conclusion -- that there is more than a 90 percent certainty humans are contributing to global warming -- means there's a 10 percent chance that man is blameless, "a wide-open breach for any latter-day Galileo or Einstein to storm through with a better idea. That is how science really works."
Dr. Willie Soon , a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who believes that variations in the sun's energy might be the chief reason for a warming planet, agrees. Speaking for himself and not the center, Soon accused mainstream scientists of "attacking me. But as a scientist, you just ignore them."
Meanwhile, Christopher C. Horner , published a book this week called "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism," a primer for doubters that yesterday was ranked 33 d on Amazon.com's best-sellers' list. Horner, a fellow at Competitive Enterprise Institute, has denounced Democrats in Congress, alleging that they are delaying action on global warming to preserve it as a presidential campaign issue in 2008.
But Representative Henry A. Waxman , a California Democrat, has said he doubts any comprehensive global warming legislation will emerge until 2009 for a different reason: Though Democrats control Congress, they don't have the votes to override a likely veto by President Bush.
Bill McKibben , the author of "The End of Nature," which in 1989 warned about global warming, said skeptics "at best are taking pot shots around the edges" of the debate. Still, McKibben sees a great irony as he listens to their arguments: "There is nothing I would rather see than these guys be right."
John Donnelly can be reached at donnelly@globe.com.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Home » blogs » Noel Sheppard's blog
Christopher Horner Slams Al Gore and Global Warmingists on ‘Fox and Friends’
Posted by Noel Sheppard on February 14, 2007 - 21:45.
http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/...V46689618_.jpgFor those unfamiliar, Christopher Horner is undoubtedly a rising star on the conservative political landscape. A Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the author of the new book “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism,” he was a guest of the “Fox & Friends” crew Tuesday.
Given the subject matter, Horner had a lot of fun slamming Al Gore, Ellen Goodman, and the global warmingists (video available here). Goodman was Horner’s first target:
Well, let's say this Ellen Goodman a columnist just joined the parade of those who call people who deny climate change – – that’s what they call it -- Holocaust deniers. Okay, now think about this. You decide which is being trivialized: a few tenths of a degree increase over a hundred and something years, or 20 million people dead on the basis of their religion or sexual preferences.
Horner then made an interesting historical climate observation that has conveniently eluded all the global warming alarmists and their devotees:
Obviously, they’re the ones overreacting because it’s very simple. We admit climate change, and that’s what they deny. Climate changes – it always has, it always will. The Vikings used to farm Greenland, and if we get two degrees Celsius warmer they may again.
Next, Horner went after Al Gore:
[G]laciers are melting all over the world. Glaciers are growing all over the world. The problem is…and also glaciers are receding by growing which is in Al Gore’s movie. When they grow too far – grow is the key word -- they break off. That's not melting he shows, that's called calving. But what happens is they say melting glaciers is proof of global warming. By that logic, for lack of a better word, receding glaciers is proof of global cooling. They can't both be true and in fact neither are.
What follows is a full transcript of this segment.
Brian Kilmeade: Hey, Al Gore's “An Inconvenient Truth” which we just saw a clip of just a bunch of wasted of energy or is it a warning to the people of the world?
Steve Doocy: Our next guest Chris Horner, Christopher Horner, is the author of “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism.” He joins us live in the studio. Good morning, Chris
Christopher Horner: Good morning
Steve: So, you must be a scientist or something?
Horner: I don't rise to the level of Keanu Reeves or Alanis Morissette, who’ve done some pretty compelling work on the issue, and the (?) of ice core samples. Selma Hayak was pretty good. I think it’s not a serious objection thanks to Al Gore taking that off the table. We wouldn't be subjected to him, any politician, hundreds of celebrities can't be wrong, that argument. But the scientific literature is to be written by scientists. It’s intended to be read by interested lay people.
Steve: And, the basic overview of your book is?
Horner: The basic overview -- climate changes, weather happens, always has, always will. Societies choose how to adapt to it. Do they create wealth? Become richer more technologically adept to deal with something that’s always there unpredictable in severe weather? Or do what Europe used to do and seems to be on the cusp of doing again now which is look for witches to burn?
Brian: Okay, fine, so you think we’re overreacting to something that's out of our control, that we are not responsible, that if the earth is, in fact, heating up?
Horner: Well, let's say this Ellen Goodman a columnist just joined the parade of those who call people who deny climate change – that’s what they call it -- Holocaust deniers. Okay, now think about this. You decide which is being trivialized: a few tenths of a degree increase over a hundred and something years, or 20 million people dead on the basis of their religion or sexual preferences. Obviously, they’re the ones overreacting because it’s very simple. We admit climate change, and that’s what they deny. Climate changes – it always has, it always will. The Vikings used to farm Greenland, and if we get two degrees Celsius warmer they may again.
Steve: Alright, Chris, put on answer man hat. Here’s some questions, and you’re going to answer them. Folks at home. True or false: the climate was stable until man came along.
Horner: False. In fact, we know this is false because this claim and a chart purporting to show stable climate was called the hockey stick and then the spike upward was the smoking gun from the last U.N. report six years ago. The new one that just came out that you heard distorted about 10 days ago. It wasn’t in there anywhere. No mention of it. Air brushed out. It was dropped, because they air brushed out the little ice age which we just left and the Medieval climate optimum or warming. It's been debunked by the National Academy.
Brian: The glaciers are melting. You saw Al Gore just talk about that.
Horner: Yes, glaciers are melting all over the world. Glaciers are growing all over the world. The problem is…and also glaciers are receding by growing which is in Al Gore’s movie. When they grow too far – grow is the key word -- they break off. That's not melting he shows, that's called calving. But what happens is they say melting glaciers is proof of global warming. By that logic, for lack of a better word, receding glaciers is proof of global cooling. They can't both be true and in fact neither are.
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Climate Alarmists Abuse 'Children'
Junk Science ^ | Feb. 23rd, 2007 | Steve Milloy
“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” said famed 18th century British lexicographer Samuel Johnson. To update the quote for our current era you might substitute “children” for “patriotism” and “climate alarmist” for “scoundrel.”
Last week, outgoing United Nations World Food Program chief James Morris reminded us that 18,000 children die every day from hunger and malnutrition. Morris called the situation “a terrible indictment of the world in 2007.”
In contrast to our quixotic fixation with trying to fine-tune global climate by tweaking atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, the ongoing tragedy of starving children would seem to be a relatively easy problem to solve. After all, wealthy developed nations have plenty of surplus food and the wherewithal to deliver it to the world’s malnourished.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Global warming concerns are keeping children awake at night
GM TV (UK) ^ | February 22, 2007
Half of young children are anxious about the effects of global warming, often losing sleep because of their concern, according to a new report today.
A survey of 1,150 youngsters aged between seven and 11 found that one in four blamed politicians for the problems of climate change.
Are you doing enough?
One in seven of those questioned by supermarket giant Somerfield said their own parents were not doing enough to improve the environment.
The most feared consequences of global warming included poor health, the possible submergence of entire countries and the welfare of animals.
Most of those polled understood the benefits of recycling, although one in 10 thought the issue was linked to riding a bike.
Pete Williams, of Somerfield, said: "Concerns over our environment dominate the media at present and kids are exposed to the hard facts as much as anybody.
"While many adults may look the other way, this study should show that global warming is not only hurting the children of the future, it's affecting the welfare of kids now.
"By raising awareness amongst today's young, hopefully we are improving our chances of reaching a solution.''
The study marked Somerfield's drive to reduce the eight billion plastic bags wasted by UK households every year.
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Meteorologist Launches Website to Counter Media’s Global Warming Hysteria
NewBusters ^
Meteorologist Launches Website to Counter Media’s Global Warming Hysteria Posted by Noel Sheppard on February 24, 2007 - 16:06.
A Trenton, New Jersey, meteorologist has just launched a new website to counter the constant stream of disinformation about anthropogenic global warming coming from a hysterical media.
As reported by ClimatePolice.com (emphasis mine throughout):
Joseph Conklin, a meteorologist with expertise in the analysis of surface weather observations, has launched a website to help promote alternative scientific views on climate change. He believes these views have been overshadowed and even wrongly criticized by sensationalist news stories.
The press release continued:
"The goal of the website is to show the public that other research on climate change exists and the debate is not over. In science, alternate views should always be welcomed, not silenced," Conklin states.
Furthermore, Conklin insists on keeping information at his website non-partisan:
While research on either side of the climate change debate can be submitted to the website, only those not linked to any political group will be accepted.
"Scientific research should be apolitical. Extremist groups have promoted global warming as their primary political issue. I want this website to help correct that."
How refreshing. For those interested, here are Conklin’s credentials:
Mr. Conklin has over 14 years experience collecting and analyzing surface weather observations. He has additional experience in radar/lightning analysis, wind shear detection, and software development. Mr. Conklin holds a meteorology degree from Rutgers University and an interdisciplinary degree from Monmouth University where his master's thesis involved climate studies with lightning and severe storms. He also operates NiceWeather.com, a website specializing in monthly weather forecasts.
We certainly wish Mr. Conklin and his team great success with their new endeavor, and look forward to their contributions concerning this crucial issue.
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
A skeptic's take on man-made global warming
By Bill Steigerwald
Timothy Ball is no wishy-washy skeptic of global warming. The Canadian climatologist, who has a Ph.D. in climatology from the University of London and taught at the University of Winnipeg for 28 years, says that the widely propagated “fact” that humans are contributing to global warming is the “greatest deception in the history of science.”
Ball has made no friends among global warming alarmists by saying that global warming is caused by the sun, that global warming will be good for us and that the Kyoto Protocol “is a political solution to a nonexistent problem without scientific justification."
Needless to say, Ball strongly disagrees with the findings of the latest report from the United Nations' Intergovern-mental Panel on Climate Change, which on Feb. 2 concluded that it is “very likely” that global warming is the result of human activity.
I talked to Ball by phone on Feb. 6 from his home on Victoria Island, British Columbia, which the good-humored scientist likes to point out was connected to the mainland 8,000 years ago when the sea level was 500 feet lower.
Q: The mainstream media would have us believe that the science of global warming is now settled by the latest IPCC report. Is it true?
A: No. It's absolutely false. As soon as people start saying something's settled, it's usually that they don't want to talk about it anymore. They don't want anybody to dig any deeper. It's very, very far from settled. In fact, that's the real problem. We haven't been able to get all of the facts on the table. The IPCC is a purely political setup.
There was a large group of people, the political people, who wanted the report to be more harum-scarum than it actually is. In fact, the report is quite a considerable step down from the previous reports. For example, they have reduced the potential temperature rise and they've reduced the sea level increase and a whole bunch of other things. Part of it is because they know so many people will be watching the report this time.
Q: Why should we be leery of the IPCC's report -- or the summary of the report?
A: Well, because the report is the end product of a political agenda, and it is the political agenda of both the extreme environmentalists who of course think we are destroying the world. But it's also the political agenda of a group of people ... who believe that industrialization and development and capitalism and the Western way is a terrible system and they want to bring it down.
They couldn't do it by attacking energy because they know that would get the public's back up very quickly. ... The vehicle they chose was CO2, because that's the byproduct of industry and fossil-fuel burning, which of course drives the whole thing. They think, “If we can show that that is destroying the planet, then it allows us to control.” Unfortunately, you've got a bunch of scientists who have this political agenda as well, and they have effectively controlled the IPCC process.
Q: You always hear the argument that the IPCC has several thousand scientists -- how can you not accept what they say?
A: The answer, first of all, is that consensus is not a scientific fact. The other thing is, you look at the degree to which they have controlled the whole IPCC process. For example, who are the lead authors? Who are the scientists who sit on the summary panel with the politicians to make sure that they get their view in? � You've got this incestuous little group that is controlling the whole process both through their publications and the IPCC. I'm not a conspiracy theorist and I hate being even pushed toward that, but I think there is a consensus conspiracy that's going on.
Q: What is your strongest or best argument that GW is not “very likely” to be caused by SUVs and Al Gore's private planes?
A: I guess the best argument is that global warming has occurred, but it began in 1680, if you want to take the latest long-term warming, and the climate changes all the time. It began in 1680, in the middle of what's called “The Little Ice Age” when there was three feet of ice on the Thames River in London. And the demand for furs of course drove the fur trade. The world has warmed up until recently, and that warming trend doesn't fit with the CO2 record at all; it fits with the sun-spot data. Of course they are ignoring the sun because they want to focus on CO2.
The other thing that you are seeing going on is that they have switched from talking about global warming to talking about climate change. The reason for that is since 1998 the global temperature has gone down -- only marginally, but it has gone down. In the meantime, of course, CO2 has increased in the atmosphere and human production has increased. So you've got what Huxley called the great bane of science -- “a lovely hypothesis destroyed by an ugly fact.” So by switching to climate change, it allows them to point at any weather event -- whether it's warming, cooling, hotter, dryer, wetter, windier, whatever -- and say it is due to humans. Of course, it's absolutely rubbish.
Q: What is the most exaggerated and unnecessary worry about global warming or climate change?
A: I think the fact that it is presented as all negative. Of course, it's the one thing they focus on because the public, with the huge well of common sense that is out there, would sort of say, “Well, I don't understand the science, but, gee, I wouldn't mind a warmer world, especially if I was living in Canada or Russia.” They have to touch something in the warming that becomes a very big negative for the people, and so they focus on, “Oh, the glaciers are going to melt and the sea levels are going to rise.” In fact, there are an awful lot of positive things. For example, longer frost-free seasons across many of the northern countries, less energy used because you don't need to keep your houses warm in the winter.
Q: Is the globe warming and what is the cause?
A: Yeah, the world has been warming since 1680 and the cause is changes in the sun. But in their computer models they hardly talk about the sun at all and in the IPCC summary for policy-makers they don't talk about the sun at all. And of course, if they put the sun into their formula in their computer models, it swamps out the human portion of CO2, so they can't possibly do that.
Q: Is the rising CO2 level the cause of global warming or the result of it?
A: That's a very good question because in the theory the claim is that if CO2 goes up, temperature will go up. The ice core record of the last 420,000 years shows exactly the opposite. It shows that the temperature changes before the CO2. So the fundamental assumption of the theory is wrong. That means the theory is wrong. ... But the theory that human CO2 would lead to runaway global warming became a fact right away, and scientists like myself who dared to question it were immediately accused of being paid by the oil companies or didn't care about the children or the future or anything else.
Q: Have you ever accepted money from an oil company?
A: No. No. I wish I did get some. I wouldn't have to drive a '92 car and live in a leaky apartment bloc.
Q: Why are sea levels rising and should we worry?
A: Sea levels have been rising for the last 10,000 years. In fact, 8,000 years ago, sea level was almost 500 feet lower than it is today. It's been rising gradually over that time. It's risen very slightly in the modern record, but it has risen no more rapidly than it has in the last 8,000 years. One of the factors that people forget is that most of the ice is already in the ocean, and so if you understand Archimedes' Principle, when that ice melts it simply replaces the space that the ice occupied -- even if the ice caps melt completely. What they do is they say if we estimate the volume of water in Antarctica and Greenland, then we add that to the existing ocean level. But that's not the way it works at all. But it does work for panic and for sea-level rises of 20 feet, like Gore claims.
Q: Why are the sea levels rising, just because we are in a warming period?
A: Yes. We are in an inter-glacial. Just 22,000 years ago, which is what some people can get their minds around, Canada and parts of the northern U.S. were covered with an ice sheet larger than the current Antarctic ice sheet. That ice sheet was over a mile thick in central Canada. All of that ice melted in 5,000 years. There was another ice sheet over Europe and a couple more in Asia. As that ice has melted, it's run back into the oceans and of course that's what's filled up the oceans. But if you drilled down in Antarctica, you go down almost 8,000 feet below sea level. That ice below sea level, if it melts, is not going to raise sea level.
Q: Is there any aspect of global warming alarmism that you are worried about?
A: There are a couple of very minor things. I'm interested in and need more research done on commercial jet aircraft flying in the stratosphere. The research that's been done so far says no, it's not an issue, but I think the jury is out on that still. The other concern I have is that we're totally preparing for warming. The whole world is preparing for warming, but I mentioned that we have been cooling since 1998 and the climate scientists that I respected -- particularly the Russians and Chinese -- are predicting that we're going to be much, much cooler by 2030. So we've got completely the wrong adaptive strategy.
Q: Is it not inevitable that we will have another ice age?
A: Yes, I think there is another ice age coming, because the major causes of the ice ages are changes in the orbit of the Earth around the sun and changes in the tilt of the Earth. Those are things we've known about for 150 years.
Q: If someone asked you where he should go to get a good antidote on the mainstream media's spin on global warming, where should he go?
A: There are three Web sites I have some respect for. One is the one I helped set up by a group of very frustrated professional scientists who are retired. That's called Friendsofscience.org. It has deliberately tried to focus on the science only. The second site that I think provides the science side of it very, very well is CO2Science.org, and that's run by Sherwood Idso, who is the world expert on the relationship between plant growth and CO2. The third, which is a little more irreverent and maybe still slightly on the technical side for the general public, is JunkScience.com.
Q: If you had to calm the fears of a small grandchild or a student about the threat of global warming, what would you tell him?
A: First of all, I probably wouldn't tell him anything. As I tell audiences, the minute somebody starts saying “Oh, the children are going to die and the grandchildren are going to have no future,” they have now played the emotional and fear card. Just like in the U.S., it's almost like the race card. It's not to say that it isn't valid in some cases. But the minute you play that card, you are now taking the issues and the debates out of the rational and logical and reasonable and sensible and calm into the emotional and hysterical.
So I wouldn't raise these kinds of fear with the children. What I would do with my children and grandchildren is what I'm trying to do with the public and say, “Look, here's the other side of the story. Make sure you get all of the information before you start running off and screaming ‘wolf, wolf, wolf.'”
Bill Steigerwald is a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. E-mail Bill at bsteigerwald@tribweb.com. ©Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, All Rights Reserved.
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
http://www.tennesseepolicy.org/main/...article_id=367
For Immediate Release: February 26, 2007
February 26, 2007
For Further Information, Contact:
Nicole Williams, (615) 383-6431
editor@tennesseepolicy.org
Al Gore’s Personal Energy Use Is His Own “Inconvenient Truthâ€
Gore’s home uses more than 20 times the national average Last night, Al Gore’s global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, collected an Oscar for best documentary feature, but the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has found that Gore deserves a gold statue for hypocrisy.
Gore’s mansion, located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).
In his documentary, the former Vice President calls on Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption at home.
The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh—more than 20 times the national average.
Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359.
Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006.
Gore’s extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year.
“As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk the walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use,†said Tennessee Center for Policy Research President Drew Johnson.
In total, Gore paid nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for his Nashville estate in 2006.
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The Tennessee Center for Policy Research is an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan research organization committed to achieving a freer, more prosperous Tennessee through free market policy solutions.
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
National Geographic: Melting Mars Means Man-Made Global Warming a Myth
NewsBusters, National Geographic ^ | 3/1/2007 | Noel Sheppard
...Regardless, the earth-shattering piece began ...
Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural—and not a human-induced—cause, according to one scientist's controversial theory.
The article marvelously continued:
Earth is currently experiencing rapid warming, which the vast majority of climate scientists says is due to humans pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. (Get an overview: "Global Warming Fast Facts".)
Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures.
In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.
Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.
"The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Email I received from the "Stop Global Warming Team"
Stop Global Warming Team
Posted on 03/02/2007 5:40:03 AM MST by Shannon
After reading about Al Gore's huge electric bills I went to www.stopglobalwarming.org. I wrote to them saying I thought I'd follow Gore's wonderful example and turn on every light in my house etc. etc. Here's the email I got back:
Thank you for your email. Every family has a different carbon footprint. What Vice President Gore has asked is for families to calculate that footprint and and then take steps to reduce and offset it.
Specific steps the Gores have taken to reduce their emissions include:
Purchasing all of their power through the local Green Powerswitch program—it is 100 percent renewable power.
Renovating their home, which includes installing solar panels which will enable them to use less power.
Installing all Energy Star appliances and windows and using compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy efficiency measures, and
Living a carbon neutral life to bring their carbon footprint down to zero.
In addition, Former Vice President Gore also donated all of the the proceeds from his work on “An Inconvenient Truth” to a non-profit dedicated to educating the public about global warming and both of the companies he has co-founded are carbon neutral.
Sincerely, The Stop Global Warming Team
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
note, *I* didn't get that note someone else did.
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
It's a joke, right!
Andrew Bolt
March 02, 2007 12:00am
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sto...006029,00.html
ANY day now, global warming will change from the world's biggest scare to the world's biggest joke.
In fact, that moment could have come already. Last Monday, to be exact.
That's when we saw a beaming Al Gore waddle on stage to the roar of Hollywood's dream-makers to get his Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth.
It should have been for the former US vice president -- now the world's most famous global warming alarmist -- his finest hour.
Here he was, receiving film's highest honour for his smash documentary, in which he warns that within a century the seas will rise up to 6m while monster hurricanes tear through what's left of our cities.
Never mind that scientists reject such wild claims. Gore was getting the endorsement that counts -- an ovation from the diamond elite of showbiz and the media -- for preaching that only one thing could save us from the apocalypse he imagines.
Use. Less. Dirty. Power.
And how wildly this Use Less preacher was cheered on Monday as he stood there in his hair-shirt tuxedo. Cheered by actors who'd actually flown in by private jet. By actresses who'd driven up in stretch limos. By agents with solarium tans glowing under the brightest lights.
Ahem. Speaking of lights, Al, a small problem. But one so very typical.
At almost the very instant Gore was handed his Oscar for best documentary, The Tennessean, his home state paper, reported he'd in fact won an Oscar for hypocrisy.
Billing records of the Nashville Electric Service revealed that the local Gore mansion -- a 20-room, eight-bathroom behemoth with a well-lit heated pool -- used more electricity each month than the average American household used in an entire year.
Use Less Gore had so many lights burning, heaters running, computers humming and gadgets whirring that he burned up 221,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity last year, or more than 20 times the national household average.
Worse, he was using more electricity now than he did before he made An Inconvenient Truth to hector us into making do with less.
And this isn't even counting all the power he uses for his other two homes, and his endless flights around the world, in private jets and civil, to flog his film.
Gore's staff, sensing a PR disaster the size of the Exxon Valdez, rushed to explain away this great oil spill.
Unfair, wheedled spokesman Kalee Kreider. See, Gore and his wife tried to offset their "carbon footprint" by buying their power through the local Green Power Switch program.
"They also use compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy efficiency measures and then they purchase offsets for their carbon emissions to bring their carbon footprint down to zero.".
But time is also up for this kind of easy virtue. Let's work through those three common excuses.
So Gore has low-energy light bulbs.
And he still uses all this power? My god.
So Gore uses the local green power program.
But isn't that green power just an add-on to the Nashville Energy Service's main source of base-load power -- gassy coal-fired power plants?
And doesn't the NES's green methane-burning plant still need to burn some dirty coal to work properly? Don't its emissions still contribute to global warming?
And so we get to Gore's final excuse -- the get-out-of-jail card of so many of our warming prophets of doom, from Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery to that Jeremiah of the airport lounge, David Suzuki: Gore buys carbon offsets.
That actually means he pays other folk to use less dirty power themselves, or take out the carbon dioxide he pumps out. It's a bit like paying someone to starve so you can gorge.
But there are at least four problems with such offsets, the first of which is very particular to Gore. And that is Gore buys his offsets through Generation Investment Management, whose chairman is . . . Al Gore.
What's more, GIM's business is not to itself remove carbon from the air, but, it says, to "buy high quality companies at attractive prices that will deliver superior long-term investment returns".
Oh, and by the way, those companies have to be green. Some are even wind farms, although even they -- don't kid yourself -- produce some greenhouse gasses.
So Gore isn't so much buying offsets as investing in fashionable companies for profit. Lucky him. Rich him.
The second problem with his offsets is that if global warming really is going to fry us to Hell, shouldn't Gore cut emissions, rather just be carbon neutral?
Third problem is that even green groups now doubt many carbon offsets actually work.
For instance, the most common offset scheme -- especially here -- is to simply plant trees, often in places where people would probably plant them anyway.
But trees die and rot, and when they do they release much of the carbon they've trapped back into the air.
As Prof. Oliver Rackham, the Cambridge botanist and author, says: "Telling people to plant trees is like telling them to drink more water to keep down rising sea levels." What goes in will come out.
Besides, who checks these schemes to see they do what they claim? The band Coldplay, for instance, last year found that most of the trees of the mango plantation it planted in India to offset its world tour had actually died.
And, lastly, there's a moral problem. Offsets are really best suited for people rich enough -- like Gore -- to afford them.
They let the rich pay someone else to use less so they can use more. And so the aristocrat can party on under the chandeliers, while the power-rationed peasants sit out in his dark.
Of course, one hypocrite like Gore shouldn't discredit an entire cause. Yet it can't be an accident that global warming attracts more hypocrites than most faiths.
There's Tim Flannery, criss-crossing the world by jet to tell us to use less oil.
There's British PM Tony Blair lecturing Britons to cut their emissions, but declaring it "unreasonable" to expect him therefore to stop flying off on his overseas holidays.
And there's Prince Charles booking out all of a jet's first and second class to fly to New York to accept a green award from Gore.
Ah, Gore again. Which reminds me of Laurie David, one of the producers of Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.
David, too, demands we save the world by cutting our gasses, yet turns out to be as addicted to private jets as her friend Al.
Asked recently to explain such inconvenient hypocrisy, David spluttered: "Yes, I take a private plane on holiday a couple of times a year."
But -- and here's where she shows she's nobler than you -- "I feel horribly guilty about it."
See? The global warming faith is more about how you feel than what you actually do. Even the makers of An Inconvenient Truth demonstrate that. What a circus.
So what is the moral in this carnival of hypocrisy?
It's that global warming is an apocalyptic faith whose preachers demand sacrifices of others that they find far too painful for themselves.
It's a faith whose prophets can demand we close coal mines but who won't even turn off their own pool lights. Who demand the masses lose their cars, while they themselves keep their planes.
It's the ultimate faith of the feckless rich, where a ticket to heaven can be bought with a cheque made out to Al Gore. No further sacrifice required.
Except, of course, from the poor. While Gore's lights burn brightly, for you the darkness is coming.
Join Andrew on blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt.
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Global Warming will make you healthy and sexy
American Thinker ^ | March 2, 2007 | James Lewis
In the spirit of the world campaign to save polar bears and buy carbon indulgences to assuage our collective guilt, it is vital to point out that published scientific studies also make a case for driving more, burning more coal, and breeding more flatulent cows. The reason: Global warming will make you happier, healthier and even sexier.
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a recognized psychiatric disorder due to low levels of summer sunshine. SAD or the "winter blues" involves: depression fatigue hypersomnolence (over-sleeping) hyperphagia (overeating) carbohydrate craving weight gain and loss of libido (sexual desire) In other words, lack of sunshine can make you fat, miserable, sleepy and unsexy.
The predictable result is an increase in heart disease, suicide risk, poor sexual relationships, and general misery. Just a small rise in worldwide temperature could dramatically raise the world's level of happiness and even sexual desire. In a world of six billion people, tens of millions of sufferers might be rescued from SAD with only a small temperature rise.
Why do retirees move to Florida and Arizona? For the sunshine, of course. What will increase sunny days all over the planet? Global warming will!
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Activists: U.S. Emissions Violate Rights
ForexTv News ^ | 3/1/2007 | ForexTv
WASHINGTON (AP) - Northern Canadians told an international commission Thursday that carbon emissions from the United States have contributed so much to global warming that they should be considered a human rights violation. One activist said temperatures have climbed so much that Arctic residents need air conditioners.
The case was pressed by the Inuit community before the 34-nation Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. In a petition, the group asked the commission's assistance "in obtaining relief" from the impact of global warming, and makes specific reference to the United States as the country most responsible for the phenomenon.
The commission, however, lacks the legal authority to compel the United States to take action.
Sheila Watt-Cloutier, an Inuit activist, said the well-being of her people is under threat -- and that the need for air conditioning is just one example of the spread of global warming.
Climate change, she said is "destroying our right to life, health property and means of subsistence," she said. "States that do not recognize these impacts and take action violate our human rights."
She said ice formations are much more likely to detach from land, and take unsuspecting hunters out to sea where they face an uncertain fate.
Beyond that, she said hunters can no longer be sure of ice thickness and whether it is safe to travel.
"Many hunters have been killed or seriously injured after falling through ice that was traditionally known to be safe," she said.
The United States did not respond to the Inuit claims before the commission, an arm of the Organization of American States. The Bush administration has said it is taking steps to reduce global warming, but domestic and international critics say it is not doing enough, given that the United States is the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
Scientists generally agree the Arctic is the first place on Earth to be affected by rising global temperatures. They say that unless developed nations such as the United States -- responsible for one-fourth of world's greenhouse gases -- do not dramatically reduce their emissions within the next 15 years, the Arctic ice likely will melt by the end of the century.
The Inuit population hails from Canada, Russia and Greenland, as well as Alaska, where they are known as Eskimos. They have been trying to tell the world for more than a decade about the shifting winds and thinning ice that have damaged the hunting grounds the Northern peoples have used for thousands of years.
Watt-Cloutier was nominated with former Vice President Al Gore for a Nobel Peace Prize for their work on climate change.
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Pope is warned of a green Antichrist
Timesonline.uk.co ^ | 3/2/07 | Richard Owen
An arch-conservative cardinal chosen by the Pope to deliver this year’s Lenten meditations to the Vatican hierarchy has caused consternation by giving warning of an Antichrist who is “a pacifist, ecologist and ecumenist”.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
LOL!!! AL GORE?????????
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Cars improved the air ... that's no bull
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ^ | 02/27/07 | DWIGHT R. LEE
The motto of all environmentalists should be "Thank goodness for the internal combustion engine."
The abuse heaped on the internal combustion engine by environmentalists was never justified. But a recent story on cow flatulence in the British newspaper, The Independent, makes the environmental benefits from gasoline-powered engines even more obvious. Based on a recent study by the Food and Agricultural Organization, The Independent reports that "livestock are responsible for 18 percent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together."
Research shows that livestock outdo planes, trains and cars in producing greenhouse gases. ItÕs more proof that the internal combustion engine, which drastically cut the need for working animals, has helped the environment.
Long before global warming became an environmental concern, however, the move from the power provided by animals to that provided by gasoline had greatly improved the environment. The emissions that came out of the tailpipes of horses were much more lethal pollutants that those now coming out of the tailpipes of cars. Horse emissions did more than make our town and cities stink; they spread fly-borne diseases and polluted water supplies that killed people at a far greater rate than the pollution from cars and trucks ever have.
Photochemical smog is clearly a health risk, but not nearly the health risk of cholera, diphtheria and tetanus that have been largely eliminated with the help of gasoline powered transportation.
Before the internal combustion engine it wasn't just cows, sheep and pigs emitting pollution down on the farm. Tractors and other types of gas-powered farm machinery eliminated the horses, mules and oxen that had provided most of the power necessary to grow and harvest our food and fiber. This not only reduced the problem that still exists from animal waste that environmentalists, with justification, still complain about. The internal combustion engine also eliminated the need to produce food to fuel millions upon millions of agricultural beasts of burden. It has been estimated that in 1900 it took about 93 million acres of land to grow the food for the farm animals that were replaced by current farm machinery. Most of that land has now gone back to woodlands, greatly increasing the number of trees that are reducing the problem of global warming by absorbing carbon dioxide.
The above consideration should have been enough to warrant an environmental shrine to the internal combustion engine. And now we find that by eliminating all those farm-yard animals, the internal combustion engine also eliminated vast amounts of methane-producing flatulence, which is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than the carbon dioxide produce by burning gasoline.
Even though the internal combustion engine is less polluting than what it replaced, it is obviously not pollution-free. Efforts should, and will be made to make it even less polluting than it is, and some day internal combustion will be replaced by an even less polluting technology. But history will look kindly on the internal combustion engine as a major contributor to the steady progress toward a healthier environment that has been made over the centuries.
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
The Great Global Warming Swindle (new documentary)
http://www.channel4.com/science/micr...dle/index.html ^
The film brings together the arguments of leading scientists who disagree with the prevailing consensus that a 'greenhouse effect' of carbon dioxide released by human activity is the cause of rising global temperatures.
Instead the documentary highlights recent research that the effect of the sun's radiation on the atmosphere may be a better explanation for the regular swings of climate from ice ages to warm interglacial periods and back again.
The film argues that the earth's climate is always changing, and that rapid warmings and coolings took place long before the burning of fossil fuels. It argues that the present single-minded focus on reducing carbon emissions not only may have little impact on climate change, it may also have the unintended consequence of stifling development in the third world, prolonging endemic poverty and disease ...
In fact, the experts in the film argue that increased CO2 levels are actually a result of temperature rises, not their cause, and that this alternate view is rarely heard. 'So the fundamental assumption, the most fundamental assumption of the whole theory of climate change due to humans, is shown to be wrong.'
'I've often heard it said that there is a consensus of thousands of scientists on the global warming issue, that humans are causing a catastrophic change to the climate system,' says John Christy, Professor and Director of the Earth System Science Center, NSSTC University of Alabama. 'Well I am one scientist, and there are many, that simply think that is not true.'
(Excerpt) Read more at channel4.com ...
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
How Coldplay's green hopes died in the arid soil of India (Bad Carbon "Offsets")
The Telegraph ^ | 4/29/06 | Amrit Dhillon and Toby Harnden
When Coldplay released its second hit album, A Rush of Blood to the Head, the band said that part of the environmental damage caused by its production would be offset by the planting of 10,000 mango trees in southern India.
More than four years after the album's release, however, many of Coldplay's good intentions have withered in the arid soil of Gudibanda, Karnataka state, where the saplings it sponsored were planted.
The idea of saving the world while making music was proposed by Future Forests, a British company since renamed CarbonNeutral. It declared that the scheme would soak up carbon dioxide emissions and help to improve the livelihoods of local farmers.
"You can dedicate more saplings in Coldplay's forest, a specially-selected section in Karnataka, India," its website said. For £17.50, fans could invest in the scheme and receive a certificate packaged in a tube bearing the words "The Coldplay Forest".
Other musicians, including Dido, KT Tunstall and Feeder followed Coldplay's example. CarbonNeutral meanwhile, gave the task of planting the trees to a group called Women for Sustainable Development (WSD), as part of a £33,000 contract. WSD is headed by Anandi Sharan Mieli, 44, born in Switzerland of Indian origin and a Cambridge graduate. She now claims that the scheme was doomed from the outset.
In the impoverished villages of Varlakonda, Lakshmisagara and Muddireddihalli, among the dozen that Miss Mieli said had received mango saplings, no one had heard of Coldplay. Most of those who received saplings said they had not been given funding for labour, insecticide or spraying equipment to nurture them.
One woman, called Jayamma was the only person out of 130 families in Lakshmisagara, to receive saplings from Miss Meili, according to Ashwattamma, a farmer's wife. She said: "No one else got any trees. Some of us were offered saplings but we don't have any water."
Jayamma managed to get 50 of her 150 trees to survive because she had a well on her land. "I was promised 2,000 rupees (£26) every year to take care of the plants and a bag of fertiliser. But I got only the saplings," she said.
In nearby Varlakonda, about 10 families were given approximately 1,400 saplings. Of these, just 600 survived. Another farmer who took 100 saplings, said: "[Miss Meili] promised us that she'd arrange the water." But villagers said a tanker came only twice.
The land in Gudibanda is dry and rocky. Farmers depend on rainfall but the monsoon failed every year between 1995 and 2004, causing drought.
One of the few successes are the 300 mango trees owned by Narayanamma, 69, and her husband Venkatarayappa, 74. They were apparently the only couple to receive 4,000 rupees from Miss Meili. They also spent 30,000 rupees on tankers and labourers. "We were promised money for maintenance every year but got nothing," said Narayanamma.
Sitting in her spacious house in Bangalore, Miss Meili said that she had distributed 8,000 saplings and acknowledged that 40 per cent had died. The project had foundered, she said, because of inadequate funding. She accused Future Forests of having a "condescending" attitude. "They do it for their interests, not really for reducing emissions. They do it because it's good money," she said. CarbonNeutral said that it did not fund the whole programme and that WSD had a contractual responsibility to provide irrigation and support to farmers. Jonathan Shopley, the chief executive, conceded that while the project might still succeed, it had "struggled to reach its full potential".
Coldplay is supporting a similar project, which CarbonNeutral says is much more successful, in Chiapas, Mexico. If the Karnataka project does not offset the carbon emissions that Coldplay specified, then CarbonNeutral will make good the amount from other projects.
Richard Tipper, the director of the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management, which monitored the project for CarbonNeutral, said that the Karnataka project had "experienced major problems" because WSD had not raised the necessary money to administer the project and because of the long drought.
A monitoring visit in 2003 had found that "WSD had been unable to make the anticipated progress with the project and had not delivered carbon payments to farmers". He added that "practices for screening projects have developed considerably based on this experience".
Chris Latham, the spokesman for Coldplay in Britain, declined to comment but a source close to the band said: "Coldplay signed up to the scheme in good faith with Future Forests and it's in their hands. There are loads of bands involved in this kind of thing. For a band on the road all the time, it would be difficult to monitor a forest."
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Global-warming debate is over - or is it?
Belleville News Democrat ^ | 2/27/2007 | E. Thomas McClanahan
Too bad it's over.
While it lasted, the global-warming debate was an entertaining free-for-all. Then this month the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came out with its latest report. It was if someone had pounded a gavel. No more discussion, please. This case is closed.
Those of you still skeptical that human activity is the prime cause of global warming - well, we've put up with your annoying behavior long enough. Go to your room. Be quiet. What's the matter with you anyway?
People began comparing misguided skeptics to Holocaust deniers. Al Gore was a bit less direct. His choice of words: "global warming deniers."
A San Diego Union-Tribune media columnist, Carol Goodhue, said the controversy no longer deserved balanced coverage in the newspaper. "Sometimes the facts are so overwhelming on one side that it's unfair and inaccurate to give equal weight to both sides," she wrote last week. "This is one of those times."
Heidi Cullen of the Weather Channel said TV weathercasters who displayed disbelief in human-caused warming should have their professional certification yanked.
I'm no scientist, and I'll acknowledge human activity may have played a role in the one-degree increase in global temperatures measured over the last century. But how significant was that role? And are other factors, such as solar activity, more dominant?
I doubt that climate scientists, for all their professed certainty, know either, at least with enough certainty to justify demands that the activity causing the warming - economic growth - be squashed flat. Severe limits on greenhouse gas emissions, which many propose, would undermine the economic future for millions of people.
Nor is the global-warming consensus as rock solid as some would have us believe. Last April, 60 Canadian scientists sent a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, urging a fresh look at the science backing up the Kyoto global-warming treaty.
"Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models," the scientists wrote, "so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future. Yet this is precisely what the United Nations did in creating and promoting Kyoto and still does in the alarmist forecasts on which Canada's climate policies are based."
Even the U.N. intergovernmental panel backed away from earlier predictions that the sea level would rise by 3 feet by the end of the century. The new prediction: 17 inches.
Like manias in financial markets, there are manias in environmental fears.
In the late 1960s, the great fear was overpopulation. "The battle to feed all humanity is over," declared the ecologist Paul Ehrlich, author of "The Population Bomb." "In the 1970s the world will undergo famines - hundreds of millions of people will starve to death."
A few years later, the reigning fear was global cooling. Many became concerned about a disturbing trend in falling temperatures, beginning around 1940.
That trend reversed, obviously. But environmentalists have been predicting disasters of one sort or another - often in a bullying tone of closed-minded finality - for more than a generation. They see their attitude as "progressive" in some way, and science-based.
But the scientific mind is not incurious in the manner of, say, Heidi Cullen. The scientific impulse is to see settled beliefs as potential targets of opportunity.
For centuries, global temperature trends have ebbed and flowed in cycles some scientists now link to solar activity. From 200 B.C. to A.D. 600, temperatures trended upward. From 600 to 900, the trend was down, then up again until 1300. What became known as the Little Ice Age ran from 1300 to 1850. These shifts had little to do with greenhouse gases.
Oops, sorry. I forgot the debate's over.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
E. Thomas McClanahan is a member of the Kansas City Star editorial board. Readers may write to him at: Kansas City Star, 1729 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, Mo. 64108-1413, or by e-mail at mcclanahan@kcstar.com.
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Greenhouse effect is a myth, say scientists
Daily Mail ^ | 3/4/07 | JULIE WHELDON
Research said to prove that greenhouse gases cause climate change has been condemned as a sham by scientists.
A United Nations report earlier this year said humans are very likely to be to blame for global warming and there is "virtually no doubt" it is linked to man's use of fossil fuels.
But other climate experts say there is little scientific evidence to support the theory.
In fact global warming could be caused by increased solar activity such as a massive eruption.
Their argument will be outlined on Channel 4 this Thursday in a programme called The Great Global Warming Swindle raising major questions about some of the evidence used for global warming.
Ice core samples from Antarctica have been used as proof of how warming over the centuries has been accompanied by raised CO2 levels.
But Professor Ian Clark, an expert in palaeoclimatology from the University of Ottawa, claims that warmer periods of the Earth's history came around 800 years before rises in carbon dioxide levels.
The programme also highlights how, after the Second World War, there was a huge surge in carbon dioxide emissions, yet global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.
The UN report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was published in February. At the time it was promoted as being backed by more than 2,000 of the world's leading scientists.
But Professor Paul Reiter, of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, said it was a "sham" given that this list included the names of scientists who disagreed with its findings.
Professor Reiter, an expert in malaria, said his name was removed from an assessment only when he threatened legal action against the panel.
"That is how they make it seem that all the top scientists are agreed," he said. "It's not true."
Gary Calder, a former editor of New Scientist, claims clouds and solar activity are the real reason behind climate change.
"The government's chief scientific adviser Sir David King is supposed to be the representative of all that is good in British science, so it is disturbing he and the government are ignoring a raft of evidence against the greenhouse effect being the main driver against climate change," he said.
Philip Stott, emeritus professor of biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, said climate change is too complicated to be caused by just one factor, whether CO2 or clouds.
He said: "The system is too complex to say exactly what the effect of cutting back on CO2 production would be or indeed of continuing to produce CO2.
"It is ridiculous to see politicians arguing over whether they will allow the global temperature to rise by 2c or 3c."
The documentary is likely to spark fierce criticism from the scientific establishment.
A spokesman for the Royal Society said yesterday: "We are not saying carbon dioxide emissions are the only factor in climate change and it is very important that debate keeps going.
"But, based on the situation at the moment, we have to do something about CO2 emissions."
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
French Scientist, among First To Warn of Global Warming, Changes His Mind
Canada National Post ^ | March 5, 2007 | Lawrence Soloman
Dr. Allegre's dream is to see "ecology become the engine of economic development, and not an artificial obstacle that creates fear."
According to an article in the National Post, Dr. Claude Allegre, a well-respected and renowned French scientist, who was also among the first to sound a warning about Global Warming, has apparently changed his mind.
Fifteen years ago, geochemist Dr. Allegre, had joined with 1500 prominent scientists in signing the highly publicized World Scientists' Warning to Humanity, a letter that stressed the great potential risks of Global Warming.
However, after the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change poured billions of dollars into researching the issue, Allegre found that there was a severe lack of evidence to establish any manmade catastrophic global climate change.
In fact, after a plethora of studies and tests on global warming, the wealth of data proves just the opposite—that the majority of climate change is a natural occurrence.
Allegre shared his recant in l'Express, the French weekly, in an article he wrote entitled, The Snows of Kilimanjaro. Citing in the piece that Antarctica is actually gaining ice and that the melting of Kilimanjaro's snow caps is due to natural causes, Allegre says, "The cause of this climate change is unknown," and that others should beware of stating so emphatically that "science is settled."
Source: Canada National Post
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Quelques gens changent d'avis beaucoup, mais pour un scientifique pour faire si n'est pas la terre brise, simplement un exemple de quelle vraie science est.
(In English....Some people change their minds a lot, but for a scientist to do so is not earth shattering, merely an example of what real science is.)
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
March 06, 2007
Gore's Crusade Ends at His Front Door
By Debra Saunders
Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," was billed as "a passionate and inspirational look at one man's fervent crusade to halt global warming's deadly progress in its tracks by exposing the myths and misconceptions that surround it." But right after the movie won an Oscar for best documentary, America learned that Gore's crusade ends at his front door.
A conservative think-tank, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, released a press release that showed the Gores spent $30,000 a year on energy for their suburban Nashville home -- and burned 221,000 kilowatt-hours last year, or 20 times the national average. The reaction of Gore's spokesperson is instructive. Kalee Kreider told ABC News' Jake Tapper, "I think what you're seeing here is the last gasp of the global warming skeptics. They've completely lost the debate on the issue, so now they're just attacking their most effective opponent."
Kreider is right, in a way. Gore is the most effective global-warming advocate in America. Yet somehow Gore has little problem doing a lot of the very thing he tells the rest of the country not to do -- that is, burning more energy than is necessary.
The message comes across loud and clear: The Gores are rich, and rich people are going to burn a lot of energy. They won't let their belief in global warming crimp their lifestyle.
That's why "Inconvenient Truth" producer Laurie David can boast on the movie Website that she is "committed to stopping global warming," denounce people who drive SUVs -- and still fly in private Gulfstream jets. (Having been blasted in the press for her high-flying ways, David told ABC last year that she was cutting back on her private-plane travel. Talk about commitment.)
And let us not forget two other California pioneers on climate change -- California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, both owners of multiple SUVs and users of private planes.
Fear not, however, because Gore, like those wonderful folks who put on the Oscars, is "carbon neutral." As Kreider told ABC, the Gores "purchase offsets for their carbon emissions to bring their carbon footprint down to zero."
I used to figure that rich sinners, who bought "indulgences" from the Catholic Church before the Protestant Reformation, would be ashamed of the bargain that other churchgoers looked upon with scorn and derision.
But lo, on Academy Awards night, the stars were quite impressed with themselves for participating in a "carbon-neutral" event. Cozy up to the Natural Resources Defense Council, and all those private flights, limo rides and multiple homes disappear. Almost like special effects.
I know that the word on many readers' lips is: hypocrisy.
But the real issue is that the most effective spokesman for global warming apparently doesn't think he has to show personal leadership on his signature issue by curbing his energy consumption. The same goes for Feinstein and Schwarzenegger, who are happy to push for laws that make other people cut their emissions, but are far too affluent to cut back themselves.
"With the future so open to doubt," Gore wrote in his 1992 book "Earth in the Balance," "we routinely choose to indulge our own generation at the expense of all who will follow."
Now Gore has a spokesperson who explains his indulgence -- er, offset -- policy. And it apparently doesn't matter that Gore's behavior signals to global-warming agnostics (like me) and to global warming believers that the climate situation must not be that dire after all.
In fact, watching Gore's conspicuous consumption, you have to wonder whether he really believes in global warming at all.
dsaunders@sfchronicle.com
Copyright 2007 Creators Syndicate
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
FINALLY!!!!!!!
They are PAYING ATTENTION TO US!!!!
GLOBAL WARMING LABELED A "SCAM"
ncpa.org ^ | March 6, 2007
A new documentary, directed by filmmaker Martin Durkin, rejects the concept of man-made climate change, calling it "a lie ... the biggest scam of modern times."
The truth, says Durkin, is that global warming is a multibillion-dollar worldwide industry, created by fanatically anti-industrial environmentalists, supported by scientists peddling scare stories to chase funding, and propped up by compliant politicians and the media.
According to one of the filmmaker's experts, paleontologist professor Ian Clark of the University of Ottawa:
Global warming could be caused by increased activity on the sun, such as massive eruptions. Ice-core samples from Antarctica show that, in fact, warmer periods in Earth's history have come about 800 years before rises in carbon dioxide levels. Clark's findings appear to contradict the work of other scientists, who have used similar ice-core samples to illustrate that raised levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have accompanied the various global warming periods.
"The fact is that (carbon dioxide) has no proven link to global temperatures," says Durkin. "Solar activity is far more likely to be the culprit."
Scientists in the documentary cite what they claim is another discrepancy involving conventional research:
Most of the recent global warming occurred before 1940, after which temperatures around the world fell for four decades. They view this as a flaw because the worldwide economic boom that followed the end of World War II produced more carbon dioxide, and therefore should have meant a rise in global temperatures -- something he says did not happen. Source: Al Webb, "Global warming labeled a 'scam,' " Washington Times, March 6, 2007.
For text:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world...2226-6282r.htm
For more on Global Warming/Science:
http://eteam.ncpa.org/issues/?c=science
For more on Global Warming:
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.ph...le_Category=32
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Wow, that's a new one. Carbon Emissions as a human right. That sounds like a scene from Blazing Saddles, "Nobody moves or the %$^&$# gets it".
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Taxing Us for Breathing
realclearpolitics.com ^ | March 09, 2007 | Robert Tracinski
Last week, the New York Times published an extraordinary editorial complaining that "Right now, everyone is using the atmosphere like a municipal dump, depositing carbon dioxide free." The Times editors suggested that the government "start charging for the privilege" by imposing a "carbon tax."
We all knew it would eventually come to this: the New York Times thinks the government should tax us for breathing.
Of course, the editorial was supposed to be aimed at big corporations who build coal-fired power plants--but why should the logic stop there? Right now, eight million people are walking around on the streets of New York City heedlessly inhaling precious oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide, treating the skies over their fair city "like a municipal dump, depositing carbon dioxide free." Shouldn't they be forced to pay for the "privilege," too?
And the connection is a logical one, because the generation of power by industrial-scale power plants is as much a vital activity as breathing.
I mean this in a literal, biological sense. In biology, "respiration" doesn't just refer to the act of breathing; it refers to the chemical reactions made possible by breathing. My dictionary defines this sense of "respiration" as "the processes by which a living organism or cell takes in oxygen from the air or water, distributes and utilizes it in oxidation, and gives off the products of oxidation, especially carbon dioxide." (Wikipedia has all the biochemical details.)
Sound familiar? That's right: there is no difference in principle between your cellular mitochondria and a coal-fired power plant. Our lungs take in oxygen and emit carbon dioxide so that they can provide the energy our cells use to keep us alive and to allow us to move, to grow, to thrive. Ditto for the power plants...
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Well...
I just watched An Inconvenient Truth - it was on Showtime.
Frankly, I don't have the education or knowledge base to make an accurate decision as to whether Global Warming is fact or hoax. So I'll just have to rely on those who claim a greater understanding of the facts.
But what I will say, is that movie is one emotion tugging, wilderness landscape, shimmering brook, transcendental music, hippy-dippy, bunny loving, tree hugging movie.
And I hate that crap.
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Video: “The Great Global Warming Swindle”; Update: Scientist says he was swindled — by film’s producers
posted at 1:14 pm on March 10, 2007 by Allahpundit
Send to a Friend | printer-friendly
People have been e-mailing about this since it aired on British TV a few nights ago. Dan Riehl’s seen it and found it revelatory, particularly in whom it fingers as the culprit behind the GW craze.
I haven’t read enough on the issue to form an informed opinion, but it’s a full blown blue state/red state phenomenon now and I’m sure our readers will be interested. So here it is; 76 minutes’ worth of debunkery. Enjoy.
Update: Fallout.
Professor Wunsch said: “I am angry because they completely misrepresented me. My views were distorted by the context in which they placed them. I was misled as to what it was going to be about. I was told about six months ago that this was to be a programme about how complicated it is to understand what is going on. If they had told me even the title of the programme, I would have absolutely refused to be on it. I am the one who has been swindled.”
When told what the commission had found, he said: “That is what happened to me.” He said he believes it is “an almost inescapable conclusion” that “if man adds excess CO2 to the atmosphere, the climate will warm”.
He went on: “The movie was terrible propaganda. It is characteristic of propaganda that you take an area where there is legitimate dispute and you claim straight out that people who disagree with you are swindlers. That is what the film does in any area where some things are subject to argument.”
The producers deny he was misled.
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Scientific Smackdown: Skeptics Voted The Clear Winners Against Global Warming Believers in Heated NYC Debate
(original link)
Posted By Marc Morano – 8:45 AM ET – Marc_Morano@EPW.Senate.gov
Just days before former Vice President Al Gore’s scheduled visit to testify about global warming before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, a high profile climate debate between prominent scientists Wednesday evening ended with global warming skeptics being voted the clear winner by a tough New York City before an audience of hundreds of people.
Before the start of the nearly two hour debate the audience polled 57.3% to 29.9% in favor of believing that Global Warming was a “crisis”, but following the debate the numbers completely flipped to 46.2% to 42.2% in favor of the skeptical point of view. The audience also found humor at the expense of former Vice President Gore’s reportedly excessive home energy use.
After the stunning victory, one of the scientists on the side promoting the belief in a climate "crisis" appeared to concede defeat by noting his debate team was ‘pretty dull" and at "a sharp disadvantage" against the skeptics. ScientificAmerican.com’s blog agreed, saying the believers in a man-made climate catastrophe “seemed underarmed for the debate and, not surprising, it swung against them."
The New York City audience laughed as Gore became the butt of humor during the debate.
"What we see in this is an enormous danger for politicians in terms of their hypocrisy. I’m not going to say anything about Al Gore and his house. But it is a very serious point," quipped University of London emeritus professor Philip Stott to laughter from the audience.
The audience also applauded a call by novelist Michael Crichton to stop the hypocrisy of environmentalists and Hollywood liberals by enacting a ban on private jet travel.
"Let’s have the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), the Sierra Club and Greenpeace make it a rule that all of their members, cannot fly on private jets. They must get their houses off the [power] grid. They must live in the way that they’re telling everyone else to live. And if they won’t do that, why should we? And why should we take them seriously?" Crichton said to applause audience. (For more debate quotes see bottom of article)
The debate was sponsored by the Oxford-style debating group Intelligence Squared and featured such prominent man-made global warming skeptics as MIT scientist Richard Lindzen, the University of London emeritus professor of biogeography Philip Stott and Physician turned Novelist/filmmaker Michael Crichton on one side.
The scientists arguing for a climate ‘crisis’ were NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt, meteorologist Richard C.J. Somerville of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Brenda Ekwurzel of the Union of Concerned Scientists. The event, which was moderated by New York Public Radio’s Brian Lehrer, debated the proposition: "Global warming is not a crisis.”
Skeptics Dramatically Convinced Audience
The skeptics achieved the vote victory despite facing an audience that had voted 57% in favor of the belief that mankind has created a climate "crisis" moments before the debate began.
But by the end of the debate, the audience dramatically reversed themselves and became convinced by the arguments presented by the skeptical scientists. At the conclusion, the audience voted for the views of the skeptics by a margin of 46.2% to 42.2%. Skeptical audience members grew from a pre-debate low of 29.9% to a post debate high of 46.2% -- a jump of nearly 17 percentage points. [Link to official audience voting results]
[Link to full debate pdf transcript]
Scientist Concedes Debate To Skeptics
NASA’s Gavin Schmidt, one of the scientists debating for the notion of a man-made global warming "crisis" conceded after the debate that his side was ‘pretty dull’ and was at "a sharp disadvantage." Schmidt made the comments in a March 15 blog posting at RealCilmate.org.
"…I'm afraid the actual audience (who by temperament I'd say were split roughly half/half on the question) were apparently more convinced by the entertaining narratives from [Novelist Michael] Crichton and [UK’s Philip] Stott (not so sure about Lindzen) than they were by our drier fare.
Entertainment-wise it's hard to blame them. Crichton is extremely polished and Stott has a touch of the revivalist preacher about him. Comparatively, we were pretty dull," Schmidt wrote.
‘Advantage: Climate Contrarians’
The ScientificAmerican.com’s blog also declared the global warming skeptics the clear winner of the debate in a March 15 post titled: "Debate Skills? Advantage: Climate Contrarians."
"The proponents [of a climate crisis] seemed underarmed for the debate and, not surprisingly, it swung against them, particularly when Schmidt made the fatal debating error of dismissing the ability of the audience to judge the scientific nuances," ScientificAmerican.com’s David Biello wrote.
The advocates of climate alarmism "were faced with the folksy anecdotes of Crichton and the oratorical fire of Stott," Biello wrote at ScientificAmerican.com.
Biello concluded, "…the audience responded to Crichton's satirical call for a ban on private jets more than Ekwurzel's vague we need to throw ‘everything we can at the climate crisis.’ By the final vote, 46 percent of the audience had been convinced that global warming was indeed not a crisis, while just 42 percent persisted in their opinion that it was."
Biello also criticized climate "crisis" advocate Richard Somerville as "perplexed" and "hardly inspiring."
Skeptic’s ‘Very Popular’
Debate participant Schmidt lamented that the evening turned into one of futility for believers in a man-made global warming catastrophe.
"Crichton went with the crowd-pleasing condemnation of private jet-flying liberals - very popular, even among the private jet-flying Eastsiders present and the apparent hypocrisy of people who think that global warming is a problem using any energy at all."
Schmidt continued, "Stott is a bit of a force of nature and essentially accused anyone who thinks global warming is a problem of explicitly rooting for misery and poverty in the third world. He also brought up the whole cosmic ray issue as the next big thing in climate science."
Schmidt appeared so demoralized that he mused that debates equally split between believers of a climate ‘crisis’ and scientific skeptics are probably not “worthwhile” to ever agree to again.
Selected Quotes from the climate debate from transcript: [Link to full debate pdf transcript]
Skeptical quotes from Novelist Michael Crichton:
"I would like to suggest a few symbolic actions that right—might really mean something. One of them, which is very simple, 99% of the American population doesn’t care, is ban private jets. Nobody needs to fly in them, ban them now. And, and in addition, [APPLAUSE] "Let’s have the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), the Sierra Club and Greenpeace make it a rule that all of their members, cannot fly on private jets. They must get their houses off the [electrical] grid. They must live in the way that they’re telling everyone else to live. And if they won’t do that, why should we? And why should we take them seriously? [APPLAUSE]"
"I suddenly think about my friends, you know, getting on their private jets. And I think, well, you know, maybe they have the right idea. Maybe all that we have to do is mouth a few platitudes, show a good, expression of concern on our faces, buy a Prius, drive it around for a while and give it to the maid, attend a few fundraisers and you’re done. Because, actually, all anybody really wants to do is talk about it."
"I mean, haven’t we actually raised temperatures so much that we, as stewards of the planet, have to act? These are the questions that friends of mine ask as they are getting on board their private jets to fly to their second and third homes. [LAUGHTER]"
"Everyday 30,000 people on this planet die of the diseases of poverty. There are, a third of the planet doesn’t have electricity. We have a billion people with no clean water. We have half a billion people going to bed hungry every night. Do we care about this? It seems that we don’t. It seems that we would rather look a hundred years into the future than pay attention to what’s going on now. I think that's unacceptable. I think that’s really a disgrace."
Skeptical quotes of University of London’s emeritus professor of biogeography Philip Stott:
"What we see in this is an enormous danger for politicians in terms of their hypocrisy. I’m not going to say anything about Al Gore and his house. [LAUGHTER] But it is a very serious point."
"In the early 20th century, 95% of scientists believe in eugenics. [LAUGHTER] Science does not progress by consensus, it progresses by falsification and by what we call paradigm shifts."
"The first Earth Day in America claimed the following, that because of global cooling, the population of America would have collapsed to 22 million by the year 2000. And of the average calorie intake of the average American would be wait for this, 2,400 calories, would good it were. [LAUGHTER] It’s nonsense and very dangerous. And what we have fundamentally forgotten is simple primary school science. Climate always changes."
"Angela Merkel the German chancellor, my own good prime minister (Tony Blair) for whom I voted -- let me emphasize, arguing in public two weeks ago as to who in Annie get the gun style could produce the best temperature. ‘I could do two degrees C said Angela.’ ‘No, I could only do three said Tony.’ [LAUGHTER] Stand back a minute, those are politicians, telling you that they can control climate to a degree Celsius.”
“And can I remind everybody that IPCC that we keep talking about, very honestly admits that we know very little about 80% of the factors behind climate change. Well let’s use an engineer; I don’t think I’d want to cross Brooklyn Bridge if it were built by an engineer who only understood 80% of the forces on that bridge. [LAUGHTER]”
Skeptical quotes of MIT’s Professor of Atmospheric Science Richard Lindzen:
"Now, much of the current alarm, I would suggest, is based on ignorance of what is normal for weather and climate."
"The impact on temperature per unit carbon dioxide actually goes down, not up, with increasing CO2. The role of anthropogenic greenhouse gases is not directly related to the emissions rate or even CO2 levels, which is what the legislation is hitting on, but rather to the impact of these gases on the greenhouse effect."
"The real signature of greenhouse warming is not surface temperature but temperature in the middle of the troposphere, about five kilometers. And that is going up even slower than the temperature at the surface."
# # #
Related Links:
Global Warming on Mars & Cosmic Ray Research Are Shattering Media Driven "Consensus’
Global Warming: The Momentum has Shifted to Climate Skeptics
Prominent French Scientist Reverses Belief in Global Warming - Now a Skeptic
Weather Channel TV Host Goes 'Political'- Stars in Global Warming Film Accusing U.S. Government of ‘Criminal Neglect’
Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics
AMS Certified Weatherman Strikes Back At Weather Channel Call For Decertification
The Weather Channel Climate Expert Refuses to Retract Call for Decertification for Global Warming Skeptics
Senator Inhofe Announces Public Release Of "Skeptic’s Guide To Debunking Global Warming"
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
GORE FACES HILL GRILLING ON 'WARMING'
Drudge Report ^ | Sun Mar 18 2007
Temperatures are predicted to reach a high of only 43-degrees on Wednesday in Washington, but look for high-heat to come out of Al Gore's scheduled appearances on The Hill!
Gore is set to appear before Rep. John Dingell's [D-MI] all powerful Energy and Commerce Committee in the morning and Sen. Barbara Boxer's [D-CA] Environment and Public Works Committee in the afternoon.
Both are expected to have overflow seating, and protesters, both for and against Gore.
Gore will get a 30 minute opening and then Boxer and her republican counterpart, Sen. Inhofe, each get 15 minutes each of questioning in addition to their opening statements. Other senators will only get 5 min of Q & A.
"Democrat Dingell is a big global warming skeptic, so do not expect him to go too lightly on Gore," predicts a congressional source.
(Excerpt) Read more at drudgereport.com ...
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Scientists blame Hollywood for increased fears over global warming
Last updated at 13:33pm on 19th March 2007
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1965
Leading climate change experts have thrown their weight behind two scientists who hit out at the "Hollywoodisation" of global warming.
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/200...AP_228x143.jpgScientists are calling for caution when issuing statements on climate change, claiming the 'Hollywoodisation' of the phenomenon is not helpful
Professors Paul Hardaker and Chris Collier, both Royal Meteorological Society figures, criticised fellow scientists they accuse of "overplaying" the message.
More here...
• Blair: UK will lead the world in climate change fight
The pair spoke at a conference in Oxford today entitled Making Sense of Weather and Climate and organised by Sense about Science, a scientific trust set up to help dispel the myths surrounding polemic issues such as climate change.
They sparked controversy after saying statements made by the highly respected American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) were not justified.
The AAAS said last month: "As expected, intensification of droughts, heatwaves, floods, wildfires, and severe storms is occurring, with a mounting toll on vulnerable ecosystems and societies.
"These events are early warning signs of even more devastating damage to come, some of which will be irreversible."
Professor Collier said that while he is not sceptical that such events could happen, it is important to be "honest" about the scientific evidence behind projected future impacts.
He said that while there is "no doubt" that climate change is happening and is to an extent man-made, it is not yet proven by isolated climatic events such as the Boscastle floods.
He said: "I think the AAAS are including everything in one pot and I think there is a time to do it.
"There is always a danger of crying wolf. We have to be careful as scientists that we present the facts and don't exaggerate things because it can undermine credibility in the long term."
Professor Hardaker warned against the "Hollywoodisation" of weather and climate seen in films such as the 2004 smash hit film The Day After Tomorrow, which depicts terrifying consequences after the melting of the Arctic ice shelf.
Such films, he said, only work to create confusion in the public mind.
"I don't think the way to make people pay attention is to make them afraid about it," he said.
"We have to help them understand it and allow them to make choices - because the impact of climate change is going to mean we have got some quite difficult choices to make both in policy and as members of the public.
"Unless we can understand the science behind it, we can't be expected to get our heads around making these difficult choices."
Presenting events such as the shutting off of the Gulf Stream, creating a cooling effect, and the rise of temperatures together could be "confusing", he said, unless it is made clear that the former is far less likely than the latter.
He said the scientists should avoid being forced to make wild predictions about the future in response to climate change sceptics such as those seen in Channel 4's recent programme, Global Climate Swindle.
He said: "We must be careful not to sensationalise our side of the argument or Hollywoodise the argument otherwise you end up in an ever increasing cycle of claim and counter-claim.
"We have to be clear about what our level of understanding is and to be clear about where we are making judgements based on understanding."
Their comments were backed today by other leading figures in the debate.
Dr Peter Stott, manager of understanding and attributing climate change at the Hadley Centre for Climate Change, said he believes scientists have to make it clear there is a long way to go until we know how bad climate change will be.
He said: "There is a lot more research to do to understand about exactly what effects its going to have on you and me in the future."
He said that while he welcomed a growing public awareness about the dangers brought about by films and headlines, informed debate was vital.
"I think it is important that having said there is a problem, it would be unfortunate if people got the impression that there's nothing we can do about it because there is a lot we can do to change the future of climate change," he said.
Professor Tim Palmer, of the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts, called for better technology and computers to be developed to help climatologists to predict the future more precisely.
He said: "There are still big scientific uncertainties such as how is the weather going to change with global warming.
"My personal view is that we do need to start thinking in an international way."
Tracey Brown is the director of Sense About Science, which has also produced a booklet bringing together key scientists to help explain in layman's terms the main issues in the debate.
She said she "sympathised" with the professors' comments, saying uncertainty can often be "manipulated" to generate outlandish ideas about the issue.
"It's very important for scientists to be clear with the public - we have learned that lesson with many scientific issues," she said.
But she added that it was important not to downplay the potentially "catastrophic" results of climate change.
She said: "The kind of figures were are talking about here today show that weather is already a bigger killer than global terrorism. What seems a small change on a graphic can have catastrophic effects on people's lives.
"It's not shock tactics to talk about it as a killer."
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Carl Wunsch is a nozzle head. He said what he said. He may not like the conclusion, but who cares.
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Warming On Jupiter, Mars, Pluto, Neptune's Moon & Earth Linked to Increased Solar Activity
US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works - Newsroom ^ | March 12, 2007 | Lorne Gunter
Mars's ice caps are melting, and Jupiter is developing a second giant red spot, an enormous hurricane-like storm.
The existing Great Red Spot is 300 years old and twice the size of Earth. The new storm -- Red Spot Jr. -- is thought to be the result of a sudden warming on our solar system's largest planet. Dr. Imke de Pater of Berkeley University says some parts of Jupiter are now as much as six degrees Celsius warmer than just a few years ago.
Neptune's moon, Triton, studied in 1989 after the unmanned Voyageur probe flew past, seems to have heated up significantly since then. Parts of its frozen nitrogen surface have begun melting and turning to gas, making Triton's atmosphere denser.
Even Pluto has warmed slightly in recent years, if you can call -230C instead of -233C "warmer."
And I swear, I haven't left my SUV idling on any of those planets or moons. Honest, I haven't.
Is there something all these heavenly bodies have in common? Some one thing they all share that could be causing them to warm in unison?
Hmmm, is there some giant, self-luminous ball of burning gas with a mass more than 300,000 times that of Earth and a core temperature of more than 20-million degrees Celsius, that for the past century or more has been unusually active and powerful? Is there something like that around which they all revolve that could be causing this multi-globe warming? Naw!
They must all have congested commuter highways, coal-fired power plants and oilsands developments that are releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide into their atmospheres, too.
A decade ago, when global warming and Kyoto was just beginning to capture public attention, I published a quiz elsewhere that bears repeating in our current hyper-charged environmental debate: Quick, which is usually warmer, day or night?
And what is typically the warmest part of the day? The warmest time of year?
Finally, which are generally warmer: cloudy or cloudless days?
If you answered day, afternoon, summer and cloudless you may be well on your way to understanding what is causing global warming.
For the past century and a half, Earth has been warming. Coincidentally (or perhaps not so coincidentally), during that same period, our sun has been brightening, becoming more active, sending out more radiation.
Habibullah Abdussamatov of the Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in St. Petersburg, Sami Solanki of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon of the Solar and Stellar Physics Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and a host of the rest of the world's leading solar scientists are all convinced that the warming of recent years is not unusual and that nearly all the warming in the past 150 years can be attributed to the sun.
Solar scientists from Iowa to Siberia have overlaid the last several warm periods on our planet with known variations in our sun's activity and found, according to Mr. Solanki, "a near-perfect match."
Mr. Abdussamatov concedes manmade gasses may have made "a small contribution to the warming in recent years, but it cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance."
Mr. Soon showed as long ago as the mid-1990s that the depth of the Little Ice Age -- the coldest period in the northern hemisphere in the past 1,500 years -- corresponded perfectly with a solar event known as the Maunder Minimum. For nearly seven decades there was virtually no sunspot activity.
Our sun was particular quiet. And for those 60 to 70 years, the northern half of our globe, at least, was in a deep freeze.
Is it so hard to believe then that the sun could be causing our current warming, too?
At the very least, the fact that so many prominent scientists have legitimate, logical objections to the current global warming orthodoxy means there is no "consensus" among scientists about the cause.
Here's a prediction: The sun's current active phase is expected to wane in 20 to 40 years, at which time the planet will begin cooling. Since that is when most of the greenhouse emission reductions proposed by the UN and others are slated to come into full effect, the "greens" will see that cooling and claim, "See, we warned you and made you take action, and look, we saved the planet."
Of course, they will have had nothing to do with it.
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
The propaganda just got cranked up a few more notches..
************************************************** ****
Global Warming
Sponsor Organization: Environmental Defense
Campaign Website: www.fightglobalwarming.com
Volunteer Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, New York
Global Warming. It may seem like an impossible problem: The Arctic ice is melting, storms are becoming fiercer, the resulting climate change is upsetting invaluable ecosystems, and the pollution is damaging our health.
But there is still time. Reversing the trend of global warming trend is possible and depends not only on the efforts of environmental scientists and researchers, governments of all nations, and leaders of business and industry, but just as importantly, it depends on the daily habits of regular people.
It is these regular people that this campaign hopes to inspire. The PSAs take a powerful, emotional approach to reach Americans with the message that global warming is an urgent problem that requires their immediate action.
The PSAs drive audiences to the website www.fightglobalwarming.com. The site provides information on the the causes, science, and consequences of global warming. A large part of the site focuses on what every person can do to reduce their energy consumption and therefore do their part to help slow and reverse global warming.
The campaign launched in March 2006.
produced by: http://www.ogilvy.com/ (feel free to freep them)
************************************************** ******
: follow the money:
Domain Name: FIGHTGLOBALWARMING.COM
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com
Name Server: NS1.ENVIRONMENTALDEFENSE.ORG
Name Server: NS2.ENVIRONMENTALDEFENSE.ORG
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Updated Date: 15-oct-2006
Creation Date: 27-sep-2004
Expiration Date: 27-sep-2009
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;fightglobalwarming.com. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
fightglobalwarming.com. 3600 IN A
192.111.220.140
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
fightglobalwarming.com. 85840 IN NS ns2.environmentaldefense.org.
fightglobalwarming.com. 85840 IN NS ns1.environmentaldefense.org.
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns1.environmentaldefense.org. 69041 IN A 192.111.219.53
ns2.environmentaldefense.org. 69043 IN A 65.163.202.231
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These adds are aimed at young adults, and make a very strong, although false, point.
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
OMG!!!!!!!!!! The conspiracy theorist will be working OVER TIME now.... read this one
Ex-CIA chief says U.S. must act on climate
Mon Mar 19, 2007 9:07am EThttp://i.today.reuters.com/images/spacer.gif
By Paul Taylor
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The United States must act to cap its emissions of greenhouse gases and join the fight against climate change or risk losing global leadership, a former CIA director said in a report released on Monday.
"The United States must adopt a carbon emission control policy," John Deutch, head of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1995-96, said in a report to the Trilateral Commission, a grouping of business and opinion leaders from Europe, the United States and Asia.
"If the United States or any other OECD country that is a large producer of greenhouse gas emissions is to retain a leadership role in other areas, it cannot just opt out of the global climate change policy process," he wrote. Deutch, an energy specialist who is now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also proposed an expanded use of nuclear power, international cooperation to develop clean coal technology and a sharing of the costs of emissions control between rich countries and large emerging nations.
He advocated an additional tax of about $1 per gallon on gasoline, diesel and other petroleum products in the United States, coupled with a tightening of fuel economy standards for U.S. car manufacturers, to encourage fuel efficiency and dampen demand, while recognizing that would be politically difficult.
CAP AND TRADE
He suggested Washington use the same "cap and trade" system of limiting carbon dioxide emissions and issuing emissions permits to industry that can be traded, which the European Union currently uses.
His report to the council, created in 1973 to build a policy consensus among capitalist democracies on three continents, was the latest in a series of international studies highlighting the need for radical policy changes to combat global warming.
Deutch also listed so-called geotechnical measures under consideration to counterbalance climate change, including adding aerosols to the stratosphere, placing balloons or mirrors in the stratosphere and even "high altitude nuclear explosions to induce a nuclear 'spring'".
These ideas were so risky and hard to demonstrate technically that they highlighted the need to redouble efforts to mitigate human-induced climate change.
The report said the major industrialized countries must began a process of transition away from a petroleum-based economy to reduce their dependence on oil and gas imports for political as well as environmental reasons.
It also called for China and India to be admitted to the International Energy Agency to improve cooperation among major oil and gas importers and help avoid tensions over supplies.
While Deutch placed great expectations on carbon capture and sequestration technology to reduce emissions from coal-fired power stations, notably in China, a parallel report to the Trilateral Commission by French energy executive Anne Lauvergeon cast doubt on that solution.
Lauvergeon, chief executive of Areva, which builds nuclear power stations, said the capture and storage of carbon emitted through the burning of fossil fuels was too often presented as a miracle solution.
"This technology will ... not play a significant role in the limitation of carbon emissions for half a century," she wrote.
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Is there an average global temperature?
American Thinker ^ | March 18, 2007 | James Lewis
It is already painfully clear that models of anthropogenic global warming are ridiculously inadequate, and do not meet the basic tests of experimental science, no matter how many "scientists" yell "consensus." Now comes a serious question from a serious scientist that threatens to undermine the fundamental premise of the alarmists.
Danish physicist Bjarne Andresen has raised the interesting point that there may be no global warming, because there is no such thing as global temperature! That is because the earth atmosphere is not a homogeneous system. It's not a glass lab jar in your high school physics lab.
Says Andresen, "It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth. A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate."(Italics added.)
Andresen is a professor at The Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen. His article appeared in The Journal of Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics, with coauthors Essex and McKitrick. The journal deals with energy systems that are too complex to come to equilibrium, unlike a cup of hot tea, which behaves in a highly predictable way. A lot of important physical systems, like the climate, appear to be non-equilibrium systems. They are not well understood, which is why they are a hot frontier topic in physics.
Mathematically, there are several different "measures of central tendency," which is what an "average" really is. When we think about "average global temperature" we are usually thinking about the arithmetic mean. But there is also a geometric mean, a mode, a median, and more complicated expressions that can be used as numerical indices for the heat content of a physical system. But as Andresen points out, which of those "averages" you use depends upon your model of the atmosphere.
The current evidence cited for "global warming" could even mean a decrease in the physical heat density of the atmosphere, if a different mathematical average is used. And because the climate is driven by differences in heat between different regions --- leading to the daily weather, as well as hurricanes and snow storms --- the right predictor for global climate may not be an average heat density at all, but rather the regional differences in heat content. Weather systems flow from high to low pressure regions, which are in turn dependent upon complex heat exchange mechanisms.
All the standard arguments for global warming rely upon conventional "equilibrium" models of the atmosphere, all of which may be false.
As Andersen suggests, global warming hype may be more politics than science.
Reference.
C. Essex, R. McKitrick, B. Andresen: Does a Global Temperature Exist? Journal of Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics (2007).
Cited by http://www.eurekalert.org/, March 15, 2007
James Lewis blogs at http://www.dangeroustimes.wordpress.com/
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
NOAA SAYS U.S. WINTER TEMPERATURE NEAR AVERAGE
NOAA ^ | 3/15/07 | NOAA
The December 2006-February 2007 U.S. winter season had an overall temperature that was near average, according to scientists at the NOAA National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Precipitation was above average in much of the center of the nation, while large sections of the East, Southeast and West were drier than average.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories...ps-03-2007.jpg
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories...ip-03-2007.jpg
(Excerpt) Read more at noaanews.noaa.gov ...
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Re: The Global Warming Hoax - World's Greatest Scam
Using smoke, mirrors and faux trees to tackle global warming, geoengineers offer far-out ideas
Technology Review ^ | March 16, 2007 | By Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Crazy-sounding ideas for saving the planet are getting a serious look from top scientists, a sign of their fears about global warming and the desire for an insurance policy in case things get worse.
How crazy?
There's the man-made volcano that shoots gigatons of sulfur high into the air. The space ''sun shade'' made of trillions of little reflectors between Earth and sun, slightly lowering the planet's temperature. The forest of ugly artificial ''trees'' that suck carbon dioxide out of the air. And the ''Geritol solution'' in which iron dust is dumped into the ocean.
''Of course it's desperation,'' said Stanford University professor Stephen Schneider. ''It's planetary methadone for our planetary heroin addiction. It does come out of the pessimism of any realist that says this planet can't be trusted to do the right thing.''
NASA is putting the finishing touches on a report summing up some of these ideas and has spent $75,000 to map out rough details of the sun shade concept. One of the premier climate modeling centers in the United States, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, has spent the last six weeks running computer simulations of the man-made volcano scenario and will soon turn its attention to the space umbrella idea.
And last month, billionaire Richard Branson offered a $25 million prize to the first feasible technology to reduce carbon dioxide levels in the air.
Simon ''Pete'' Worden, who heads NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., says some of these proposals, which represent a field called geoengineering, have been characterized as anywhere from ''great'' to ''idiotic.'' As if to distance NASA from the issue a bit, Worden said the agency's report won't do much more than explain the range of possibilities.
Scientists in the recent past have been reluctant to consider such concepts. Many fear there will be unintended side effects; others worry such schemes might prevent the type of reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are the only real way to fight global warming. These approaches are not an alternative to cutting pollution, said University of Calgary professor David Keith, a top geoengineering researcher.
Last month, Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences, told the nation's largest science conference that more research must be done in this field, but no action should be taken yet.
Here is a look at some of the ideas:
The Geritol solution
A private company is already carrying out this plan. Some scientists call it promising while others worry about the ecological fallout.
Planktos Inc. of Foster City, Calif., last week launched its ship, the Weatherbird II, on a trip to the Pacific Ocean to dump 50 tons of iron dust. The iron should grow plankton, part of an algae bloom that will drink up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The idea of seeding the ocean with iron to beef up a natural plankton and algae system has been tried on a small scale several times since 1990. It has both succeeded and failed.
Planktos chief executive officer Russ George said his ship will try it on a larger scale, dumping a slurry of water and red iron dust from a hose into the sea.
''It makes a 25-foot swath of bright red for a very short period of time,'' George said.
The concept gained some credibility when it was mentioned in the 2001 report by the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which cited it as a possible way to attack carbon emissions.
Small experiments ''showed unequivocally that there was a biological response to the addition of the iron,'' the climate report said. Plankton used the iron to photosynthesize, extract greenhouse gases from the air, and grow rapidly. It forms a thick green soup of all sorts of carbon dioxide-sucking algae, which sea life feast on, and the carbon drops into the ocean.
However, the international climate report also cautioned about ''the ecological consequences of large-scale fertilization of the ocean.''
Tim Barnett, a marine physicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said large-scale ocean seeding could change the crucial temperature difference between the sea surface and deeper waters and have a dramatic effect on marine life.
Cicerone, a climate scientist who is president of the National Academy of Sciences and advocate for more geoengineering research, called the Geritol solution promising. However, he noted that such actions by a company, or country, can have worldwide effects.
George, Planktos' CEO, said his company consulted with governments around the world and is only following previous scientific research. He said his firm will be dropping the iron in open international seas so he needs no permits. Most important, he said, is that it's such a small amount of iron compared to the ocean volume that it poses no threat.
He said it's unfair to lump his plan in with geoengineering, saying his company is just trying to restore the ocean to ''a more ecologically normal and balanced state.''
''We're a green solution,'' George said.
Planktos officials say that for every ton of iron used, 100,000 tons of carbon will be pulled into the ocean. Eventually, if this first large-scale test works, George hopes to remove 3 billion tons of carbon from the Earth's atmosphere, half of what's needed. Some scientists say that's overstated.
Planktos' efforts are financed by companies and individuals who buy carbon credits to offset their use of fossil fuels.
Man-made volcano
When Mount Pinatubo erupted 16 years ago in the Philippines it cooled the Earth for about a year because the sulfate particles in the upper atmosphere reflected some sunlight.
Several leading scientists, from Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen to the late nuclear cold warrior Edward Teller, have proposed doing the same artificially to offset global warming.
Using jet engines, cannons or balloons to get sulfates in the air, humans could reduce the solar heat, and only increase current sulfur pollution by a small percentage, said Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
''It's an issue of the lesser of two evils,'' he said.
Scientists at the Center for Atmospheric Research put the idea into a computer climate model. The results aren't particularly cheap or promising, said NCAR scientist Caspar Ammann. It would take tens of thousands of tons of sulfate to be injected into the air each month, he said.
''From a practical point of view, it's completely ridiculous,'' Amman said. ''Instead of investing so much into this, it would be much easier to cut down on the initial problem.''
Both this technique and the solar umbrella while reducing heating, wouldn't reduce carbon dioxide. So they wouldn't counter a dramatic increase in the acidity of the world's oceans, which happens with global warming, scientists said. It harms sea life, especially coral reefs.
Despite that, Calgary's David Keith is working on tweaking the concept. He wants to find a more efficient chemical to inject into the atmosphere in case of emergency.
Solar umbrella
For far-out concepts, it's hard to beat Roger Angel's. Last fall, the University of Arizona astronomer proposed what he called a ''sun shade.'' It would be a cloud of small Frisbee-like spaceships that go between Earth and the sun and act as an umbrella, reducing heat from the sun.
''It really is just like turning down the knob by 2 percent of what's coming from the sun,'' he said.
The science for the ships, the rocketry to launch them, and the materials to make the shade are all doable, Angel said.
These nearly flat discs would each weigh less than an ounce and measure about a yard wide with three tab-like ''ears'' that are controllers sticking out just a few inches.
About 800,000 of these would be stacked into each rocket launch. It would take 16 trillion of them -- that's million million -- so there would be 20 million launches of rockets. All told, Angel figures 20 million tons of material to make the discs that together form the solar umbrella.
And then there's the cost: at least $4 trillion over 30 years, probably more.
''I compare it with sending men to Mars.I think they're both projects on the same scale,'' Angel said. ''Given the danger to Earth, I think this project might warrant some fraction of the consideration of sending people to Mars.''
Artificial trees
Scientifically, it's known as ''air capture.'' But the instruments being used have been dubbed ''artificial trees'' -- even though these devices are about as treelike as a radiator on a stick. They are designed to mimic the role of trees in using carbon dioxide, but early renderings show them looking more like the creation of a tinkering engineer with lots of steel.
Nearly a decade ago, Columbia University professor Klaus Lackner, hit on an idea for his then-middle school daughter's science fair project: Create air filters that grab carbon dioxide from the air using chemical absorbers and then compress the carbon dioxide into a liquid or compressed gas that can be shipped elsewhere. When his daughter was able to do it on a tiny scale, Lackner decided to look at doing it globally.
Newly inspired by the $25 million prize offered by Richard Branson, Lackner has fine-tuned the idea. He wants to develop a large filter that would absorb carbon dioxide from the air. Another chemical reaction would take the carbon from the absorbent material, and then a third process would change that greenhouse gas into a form that could be disposed of.
It would take wind and a lot of energy to power the air capture devices. They would stand tall like cell phone towers on steroids, reaching about 200 feet high with various-sized square filters at the top. Lackner envisions perhaps placing 100,000 of them near wind energy turbines.
Even if each filter was only the size of a television, it could remove about 25 tons of carbon dioxide a year, which is about how much one American produces annually, Lackner said. The captured carbon dioxide would be changed into a liquid or gas that can be piped away from the air capture devices.
Disposal might be the biggest cost, Lackner said.
Disposal of carbon dioxide, including that from fossil fuel plant emissions, is a major issue of scientific and technological research called sequestration. The idea is to bury it underground, often in old oil wells or deep below the sea floor. The Bush Administration, which doesn't like many geoengineering ideas is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on carbon sequestration, but mostly for power plant emissions.
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On the Net:
The Earth Engineering Center of Columbia University: http://www.seas.columbia.edu/earth/
The National Center for Atmospheric Research: http://www.ncar.ucar.edu/
Planktos Inc.: http://www.planktos.com/
Copyright Technology Review 2007.