The Death of the Global Warming Myth

[American Patriot]

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.)

[American Patriot]

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

[American Patriot]

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

[Malsua]

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".

[American Patriot]

Lol

[American Patriot]

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 ...

[Backstop]

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.

[American Patriot]

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.

[American Patriot]

And here is the film

Thank you, no applause, just throw money.

[American Patriot]

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"

[American Patriot]

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 ...

[American Patriot]

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.


Scientists 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."

[Malsua]

Carl Wunsch is a nozzle head. He said what he said. He may not like the conclusion, but who cares.

[American Patriot]

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.

[American Patriot]

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
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These adds are aimed at young adults, and make a very strong, although false, point.

[American Patriot]

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 ET


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.

[American Patriot]

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/

[American Patriot]

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.







(Excerpt) Read more at noaanews.noaa.gov ...

[American Patriot]

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.

------

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.

[American Patriot]

Al Gore Challenged to International TV Debate on Global Warming

PERTH, Scotland, March 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In a formal invitation sent to former Vice-President Al Gore's Tennessee address and released to the public, Lord Monckton has thrown down the gauntlet to challenge Gore to what he terms "the Second Great Debate," an internationally televised, head-to-head, nation-unto-nation confrontation on the question, "That our effect on climate is not dangerous." (http://ff.org/centers/csspp/docs/20070316_monckton.html) Monckton, a former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher during her years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, said, "A careful study of the substantial corpus of peer-reviewed science reveals that Mr. Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, is a foofaraw of pseudo-science, exaggerations, and errors, now being peddled to innocent schoolchildren worldwide." Monckton and Gore have once before clashed head to head on the science, politics, and religion of global warming in the usually-decorous pages of the London Sunday Telegraph last November. Monckton calls on the former Vice President to "step up to the plate and defend his advocacy of policies that could do grave harm to the welfare of the world's poor. If Mr. Gore really believes global warming is the defining issue of our time, the greatest threat human civilization has ever faced, then he should welcome the opportunity to raise the profile of the issue before a worldwide audience of billions by defining and defending his claims against a serious, science-based challenge." The arena of the glittering "Second Great Debate" will be the elegant, Victorian-Gothic Library of the Oxford Museum of Natural History, which was the setting for the "Great Debate" between the natural scientist T. H. Huxley and Bishop "Soapy Sam" Wilberforce on the theory of evolution, following the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. Lord Monckton says he chose this historic venue "not only because the magnificent, Gothic architecture will be a visually-stunning setting for the debate but also because I hope that in this lofty atmosphere the caution and scepticism of true science will once again prevail, this time over the shibboleths and nostrums of the false, new religion of climate alarmism." Lord Monckton's resounding challenge to Al Gore reads as follows --

"The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley presents his compliments to Vice- President Albert Gore and by these presents challenges the said former Vice-President to a head-to-head, internationally-televised debate upon the question, 'That our effect on climate is not dangerous,' to be held in the Library of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History at a date of the Vice-President's choosing.

"Forasmuch as it is His Lordship who now flings down the gauntlet to the Vice-President, it shall be the Vice-President's prerogative and right to choose his weapons by specifying the form of the Great Debate. May the Truth win! Magna est veritas, et praevalet. God Bless America! God Save the Queen!"

SOURCE Center for Science and Public Policy