The clear political failure of the Lieberman–Warner bill last spring shows that support for global–warming legislation wanes considerably when the extraordinary costs are compared to the almost insignificant benefits.[1] In response, those pushing restrictions on carbon dioxide (CO2) have tried to repackage global–warming legislation as jobs bills.
As appealing as the repackaging seems on the surface (lots of high–paid, high–tech workers in lab coats), the support for these claims collapses once it is examined. A little thought experiment helps give perspective.
Fuzzy Math
Suppose Jones used 1,000 kilowatt–hours (kW–h) when the price of electricity was $0.10 per kW–h. He spent $100 on electricity (1,000 kW–h x $0.10 = $100). Now suppose the price rises to $0.15 per kW–h. Responding to the higher price, Jones cuts his electricity consumption to 700 kW–h. How much better off is Jones with the higher price? Most would say, since he is now spending $105 for less electricity (700 kW–h x $0.15 = $105), he is worse off.
However, those promoting restrictions on CO2 turn economics, logic, and math upside down. In their world, the answer is: Jones consumes 300 kW–h less and, at $0.15 per kW–h, he saves $45 (300 kW–h x $0.15 = $45). Then he spends this "extra" money and creates jobs.
Everybody else correctly thinks that since Jones now spends $105 for 30 percent less electricity, he is $5 poorer and has to get by with less energy. He has less to spend, not more. Thus there will be less employment, not more. This is especially true since one of the ways Jones cuts energy consumption is to use more expensive energy–conserving products, making his loss greater than $5.
Phantom Job Creation
The topsy–turvy, we–save–with–higher–prices way of thinking undergirds a recent well–publicized University of California study that claims restricting access to energy creates more income and more employment.[2] The study notes that per capita electricity use in California is 40 percent less than the national average and attributes this reduction to efficiencies brought on by state policies.
But Californians pay 36 percent more for their electricity, have watched manufacturing's share of state output drop by 15 percent since 1980, need less electricity for heating and cooling than the rest of the nation, live in smaller houses than the national average, and pay billions of dollars to generate electricity using inefficient alternatives.[3]
The 40 percent cut in per capita energy use is not free "efficiency," but it is treated as such. And it is projected to get 1 percent more "efficient" every year without cost. The job creation in this study is as fallacious as the reasoning on which it is based. But the silliness does not end there.
Another much–publicized study, done for the Center for American Progress, makes an even more fundamental error.[4] The authors of this study fall prey to the classic "broken windows" fallacy whereby spending money creates jobs as the expenditure multiplies throughout the economy. The fallacy comes from ignoring the equally large destruction of jobs (actually larger because of something called "deadweight loss") from taxing the $100 billion, which eliminates a similar cascade of job creation elsewhere.
A third, less–well–publicized study from the University of Tennessee is also based on the broken–windows fallacy.[5] Here the authors calculate the jobs created by forcing renewable energy to 25 percent of total energy nationwide. But they neglect to account for the cost (and lost jobs) of the taxes needed so the government could subsidize all that inefficient energy.
In a recent study of the economic impacts of restricting CO2 emissions, researchers at the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation did not find an increase in employment; to the contrary, such restrictions resulted in rather significant job losses.[6] In some years, employment losses from the Lieberman–Warner restrictions would be 900,000 jobs. These job losses are net of any "green" jobs that are created.
"Green Collar" Jobs
When energy prices rise (whether due to changes in market conditions or regulation and taxes), markets will adjust in many ways. Consumers reduce consumption and buy more energy–efficient products. Producers economize on the use of energy by cutting production and purchasing more energy–efficient machinery.
Of course, some producers will see an increase in sales when energy prices rise. For example, manufacturers of heating and cooling equipment may increase sales as firms and households replace older air conditioners and furnaces with newer more efficient ones. This will increase the demand for labor, material, and capital used by the heating and cooling manufacturers. Those changes will induce yet other changes elsewhere in the economy as suppliers to the heating and cooling industry adjust their production. These sorts of responses have happened in the past and have been estimated using real data and are incorporated into the hundreds of equations built into the macroeconomic model used by the Center for Data Analysis.
Broken Ideas
Energy is a valuable input to the modern economy. Cutting CO2 makes less energy available, and when the impacts are traced through the economy, some jobs are created but more are lost. Counting only the jobs that are created distorts the analysis and invalidates the conclusions.
When all is said and done, restricting CO2 cuts energy, income, and jobs. Pretending that breaking windows creates employment may make choosing among alternatives easier, but it leads to bad policy.
By Christopher Booker Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 16/11/2008
A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record. # Read more from Christopher Booker
This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years. advertisement
So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.
The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.
A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.
If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)
Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.
Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.
Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.
Only 18 percent of survey respondents strongly believe that climate change is real, human-caused and harmful.
Yes you read that correctly, it is all in this article on the Nature Conservancy webpage. And that goes along with what was discovered in June this year by the newspapers UK Guardian and Observer, which reported that:
The majority of the British public is still not convinced that climate change is caused by humans - and many others believe scientists are exaggerating the problem…
The Nature Conservancy story citing 18 percent, is citing the American Climate Values Survey (ACVS), conducted by the consulting group EcoAmerica It also found that political party affiliation is the single largest indicator as to whether people see climate change as a threat.
It seems it is all political, as there are some other fascinating tidbits. For example:
* Convinced it’s happening: 54 percent of Republicans, 90 percent of Democrats. * Think that weather has gotten more severe: 44 percent of Republicans; 77 percent of Democrats. * Noticed the climate changing: 54 percent of Republicans; 84 percent of Democrats. * Trust Al Gore when he talks about global warming: 22 percent of Republicans; 71 percent of Democrats. * Trust environmentalists who talk about global warming: 38 percent of Republicans; 71 percent of Democrats. * Trust anyone who talks about global warming: 39 percent of Republicans; 75 percent of Democrats.
Europe’s commitment to ambitious green goals became the latest victim of the global financial crisis yesterday when a growing number of EU countries rebelled, claiming that the plans were now too expensive.
Plans for binding European legislation by December were dropped as the EU watered down the carbon dioxide blueprint that it had announced with a fanfare 18 months ago.
The revolt by eight countries, led by Italy and Poland, left the EU’s self-proclaimed mission to shape a global, postKyoto agreement on greenhouse gases in disarray.
President Sarkozy of France, which holds the rotating EU presidency, led the way in appealing to all 27 countries to stick to their targets.
But tempers flared at the quarterly European Council in Brussels, with Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, clearly furious at the pressure being applied. During a stand-up row behind the scenes, he told Mr Sarkozy that the targets would crucify Italian industry.
“Our businesses are in absolutely no position at the moment to absorb the costs of the regulations that have been proposed,” Mr Berlusconi said later.
Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister, said: “We don’t say to the French that they have to close down their nuclear power industry and build windmills, and nobody can tell us the equivalent.”
In an extraordinary break with EU protocol, both leaders said that they did not have to stick to the deal because neither had been in office when it was signed by their predecessors in March 2007.
The eight countries have the voting power to form a blocking minority, should they choose to do so.
Under the original deal, EU countries would cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020 – rising to 30 per cent if it encouraged global agreeement. Mr Sarkozy succeeded in preserving the overall goal but he faces an increasingly uphill task to hold various countries to their individual contributions.
The row erupted at the same time as Britain strengthened its policy. Giving his first speech to the Commons as Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband said that Britain would increase its target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 from 60 per cent to 80 per cent.
[This message has been edited by fierobear (edited 11-16-2008).]
Every adult should be forced to use a 'carbon ration card' when they pay for petrol, airline tickets or household energy, MPs say.
The influential Environmental Audit Committee says a personal carbon trading scheme is the best and fairest way of cutting Britain's CO2 emissions without penalising the poor.
Under the scheme, everyone would be given an annual carbon allowance to use when buying oil, gas, electricity and flights. Petrol
Filling up: Motorists would need a carbon card at the pumps
Anyone who exceeds their entitlement would have to buy top-up credits from individuals who haven't used up their allowance. The amount paid would be driven by market forces and the deal done through a specialist company.
MPs, led by Tory Tim Yeo, say the scheme could be more effective at cutting greenhouse gas emissions than green taxes.
But critics say the idea is costly, bureaucratic, intrusive and unworkable.
The Government says it supports the scheme in principle, but warns it is 'ahead of its time'.
The idea of personal carbon trading is increasingly being promoted by environmentalists. In theory it could be used to cover all purchases - from petrol to food.
For the scheme to work, the Government would need to give out 45million carbon cards - each one linked to a personal carbon account. Every year, the account would be credited with a notional amount of CO2 in kilograms.
Every time someone makes a purchase of petrol, energy or airline tickets, they would use up credits. A return flight from London to Rome would, for instance, use up 900kg of CO2 credits, while 10 litres of petrol would use up 23kg.
MP Tim Yeo MP, says the scheme could be more effective at cutting Britain's greenhouse gas emissions
Mr Yeo, chairman of the committee said personal carbon trading rewarded those with a low carbon footprint with cash.
'We found that personal carbon trading has real potential to engage the population in the fight against climate change and to achieve significant emissions reductions in a progressive way,' he said.
'The idea is a radical one. As such it inevitably faces some significant challenges in its development. It is important to meet these challenges.
'What we are asking the Government to do is to seize the reins on this, leading the debate and coordinating research.'
The Government is committed to cutting CO2 emissions to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010.
The Climate Change Bill going through Parliament aims to cut emissions by 60 per cent by 2050. The Government has said it backs the idea in principle, but it is currently too expensive and bureaucratic.
Environment Minister Hilary Benn said: 'It's got potential but, in essence, it's ahead of its time. There are a lot of practical problems to overcome.'
A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs report into the scheme found it would cost between £700million and £2billion to set up and up to another £2billion a year to run.
Tory environment spokesman Peter Ainsworth added: 'Although it does have potential we should proceed with care. We don't want to alienate people and we want everyone to be on board.'
But critics say the idea is deeply flawed. The scheme would penalise those living in the countryside who were dependent on their cars, as well as the elderly or housebound who need to heat their homes in the day.
Large families would suffer, as would those working at nights when little public transport is available.
It would need to take into account the size of families, and their ages. There is huge potential for fraud.
Matthew Elliott of the Taxpayers' Alliance said the cards would be hugely unpopular. 'The Government has shown itself incapable of managing any huge, complex IT system.' he said.
HOW THE SCHEME WOULD WORK
Every adult in the UK would be given an annual carbon dioxide allowance in kgs and a special carbon card.
The scheme would cover road fuel, flights and energy bills.
Every time someone paid for road fuel, flights or energy, their carbon account would be docked.
A litre of petrol would use up 2.3kg in carbon, while every 1.3 miles of airline flight would use another 1kg.
When paying for petrol, the card would need to swiped at the till. It would be a legal offence to buy petrol without using a card.
When paying online, or by direct debit, the carbon account would be debited directly.
Anyone who doesn't use up their credits in a year can sell them to someone who wants more credits. Trading would be done through specialist companies.
Holy crap I believe they still try to force feed this crap. On the 1/2 time show that one of those cackling crows from the View talking about melting glaciers could make the sea levels rise "at least 200 feet" and how the coral reefs are all dying because the oceans are getting so much warmer. And how the melting snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro is threatening so many people. Will these people ever sop the dishonest guilt tripping ways. Do they even think and learn for them selves or will they only rely on the spoon fed lies they regurgitate over and over again?
Do they even think and learn for them selves or will they only rely on the spoon fed lies they regurgitate over and over again?
That's how s*** like this gets promoted and popular. Many people just believe whatever the hell they are told. Some are just followers. Some like causes, and global warming is a HUGE cause to join, maybe the biggest yet. SAVE THE PLANET! SAVE HUMANITY! And they can sell any bullshit they want under the banner of global warming.
Since the publication in 2006 of the paper, "Recent cooling of the upper ocean", climate scientists have been scratching their heads, trying to figure out why the upper layer of the ocean had cooled from 2004-2006. Since the oceans absorb more than 80% of the heat from global warming, we should expect to see the oceans heating up if the globe is warming. Climate skeptics pointed to the result as evidence that the planet was not warming after all.
Holy crap I believe they still try to force feed this crap.
Do they even think and learn for them selves or will they only rely on the spoon fed lies they regurgitate over and over again?
They are TOO invested in it now. If they admit the reality now, they will be exposed for the frauds they always were. They will lose ALL credibility (and from the statistics, they don't have credibility with 82% of the population in spite of the CONSTANT bombarbing of it.), and more importantly to them, they will lose whatever power they gained from this whole charade.
Lest anyone think I am claiming brilliance in knowing this was all horrendous "science" (shouldn't have even been able to be called science), that isn't what I'm saying. It is just that I have lived through this once before. In the 1970's about every National Geographic was taking the same industrialization issues and warning about how it was going to bring on an ice age. 25 years later, THE SAME ISSUES were causing global warming.
Carbon credit card! Oh brother.
Having said that, I am NOT for trashing the planet or for wasting resources. I drive fuel efficient vehicles. I'm WAY less of an energy hog than the false prophet, Al Gore.
This kind of "information" gets front page treatment.
The retraction is on page 37 and is 3 lines.
The poor polar bear looking for SOME ice to swim on is plastered all over the media. The fact that polar ice has increased over the past 2 years is on page 37. So does the fact that the polar bear picture was taken totally out of context in the first place and misrepresented what was happening.
Oh, gawd. What a load of crap. "you can create new jobs" because of his cap-and-trade system. What about the jobs you'll LOSE when you sanction the power and manufacturing industries? Ooops, we better not talk about that.
Liberals pretend that only President Bush is preventing the U.S. from adopting some global warming "solution." But occasionally their mask slips. As Barack Obama's energy adviser has now made clear, the would-be President intends to blackmail -- or rather, greenmail -- Congress into falling in line with his climate agenda. [Review & Outlook] AP
Jason Grumet is currently executive director of an outfit called the National Commission on Energy Policy and one of Mr. Obama's key policy aides. In an interview last week with Bloomberg, Mr. Grumet said that come January the Environmental Protection Agency "would initiate those rulemakings" that classify carbon as a dangerous pollutant under current clean air laws. That move would impose new regulation and taxes across the entire economy, something that is usually the purview of Congress. Mr. Grumet warned that "in the absence of Congressional action" 18 months after Mr. Obama's inauguration, the EPA would move ahead with its own unilateral carbon crackdown anyway.
Well, well. For years, Democrats -- including Senator Obama -- have been howling about the "politicization" of the EPA, which has nominally been part of the Bush Administration. The complaint has been that the White House blocked EPA bureaucrats from making the so-called "endangerment finding" on carbon. Now it turns out that a President Obama would himself wield such a finding as a political bludgeon. He plans to issue an ultimatum to Congress: Either impose new taxes and limits on carbon that he finds amenable, or the EPA carbon police will be let loose to ravage the countryside.
The EPA hasn't made a secret of how it would like to centrally plan the U.S. economy under the 1970 Clean Air Act. In a blueprint released in July, the agency didn't exactly say it'd collectivize the farms -- but pretty close, down to the "grass clippings." The EPA would monitor and regulate the carbon emissions of "lawn and garden equipment" as well as everything with an engine, like cars, planes and boats. Eco-bureaucrats envision thousands of other emissions limits on all types of energy. Coal-fired power and other fossil fuels would be ruled out of existence, while all other prices would rise as the huge economic costs of the new regime were passed down the energy chain to consumers.
These costs would far exceed the burden of a straight carbon tax or cap-and-trade system enacted by Congress, because the Clean Air Act was never written to apply to carbon and other greenhouse gases. It's like trying to do brain surgery with a butter knife. Mr. Obama wants to move ahead anyway because he knows that the costs of any carbon program will be high. He knows, too, that Congress -- even with strongly Democratic majorities -- might still balk at supporting tax increases on their constituents, even if it is done in the name of global warming.
Climate-change politics don't break cleanly along partisan lines. The burden of a carbon clampdown will fall disproportionately on some states over others, especially the 25 interior states that get more than 50% of their electricity from coal. Rustbelt manufacturing states like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania will get hit hard too. Once President Bush leaves office, the coastal Democrats pushing hardest for a climate change program might find their colleagues splitting off, especially after they vote for a huge tax increase on incomes.
Thus Messrs. Obama and Grumet want to invoke a political deus ex machina driven by a faulty interpretation of the Clean Air Act to force Congress's hand. Mr. Obama and Democrats can then tell Americans that Congress must act to tax and regulate carbon to save the country from even worse bureaucratic consequences. It's Mr. Obama's version of Jack Benny's old "your money or your life" routine, but without the punch line.
The strategy is most notable for what it says about the climate-change lobby and its new standard bearer. Supposedly global warming is the transcendent challenge of the age, but Mr. Obama evidently doesn't believe he'll be able to convince his own party to do something about it without a bureaucratic ultimatum. Mr. Grumet justified it this way: "The U.S. has to move quickly domestically . . . We cannot have a meaningful impact in the international discussion until we develop a meaningful domestic consensus."
Normally a democracy reaches consensus through political debate and persuasion, but apparently for Mr. Obama that option is merely a nuisance. It's another example of "change" you'll be given no choice but to believe in.
A brief commentary before I continue the series debunking global warming.
Global warming is the perfect scam. It is a phenomena that would unfold over decades and centuries. It is not an immediate event, like a hurricane or flood, that one can point to as a definitive event and point in time. This makes it the perfect scam. Even if warming advocates were able to cause the immediate shutdown of all industry, powerplants and mobile sources of carbon dioxide emissions, there would be no immediate resulting feedback that one could point to and say "See! It worked!". If any difference in atmosphere and climate resulted, it would take many years or decades to see a difference. Global warming, and any successful mitigation, are unprovable in the short term. Politicians can implement cap-and-trade and various programs, but they have *no* burden of proof that their efforts are successful. They can just sit back, say "we will see the result, but it will take 20 years", which will be long after they have finished serving in office.
Some scientists can show that our sun may be heading into a period of lower energy, similar to what they believe caused the "little ice age" a few hundred years ago. This may allow the perfect "out" for warmists, because they can either claim that "the drop in the sun's energy is just masking mankind's effect on climate", or they can alternatively deny any difference in the sun's energy and claim that "our efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions are working! See! It's getting cooler already". Another quick note on the sun - the same scientists say that the sun had a period of unusually high energy during the rise in temperatures during the 20th century.
With the unprovability of global warming mitigation, and the possibility of the sun going into a lull in energy, there may be no way to prove that the warmists were wrong. And that makes global warming the perfect scam.
Does anyone know if the pollution caused by the industrial revolution had any effect on our climate and what that effect was? They didn't have any sort of emissions control or pollution controls back then. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
Does anyone know if the pollution caused by the industrial revolution had any effect on our climate and what that effect was? They didn't have any sort of emissions control or pollution controls back then. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
Note on the following graph how there is a temperature spike around 1940, a drop until the 1970s, then another rise until near present. Note also how CO2 continues to rise, but temperature is all over the place. If CO2 were the major driver of temperature, and such a risk to our climate, there should not be this disconnect between the two. They'd be more consistent, but they are not.
Do you have a chart that shows earlier measurements?
quote
The First Industrial Revolution, which began in the 18th century, merged into the Second Industrial Revolution around 1850, when technological and economic progress gained momentum with the development of steam-powered ships, railways, and later in the 19th century with the internal combustion engine and electrical power generation.
The period of time covered by the Industrial Revolution varies with different historians. Eric Hobsbawm held that it 'broke out' in the 1780s and was not fully felt until the 1830s or 1840s,[4] while T. S. Ashton held that it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830.[5] Some twentieth century historians such as John Clapham and Nicholas Crafts have argued that the process of economic and social change took place gradually and the term revolution is not a true description of what took place. This is still a subject of debate amongst historians.[6][7]
Does anyone know if the pollution caused by the industrial revolution had any effect on our climate and what that effect was? They didn't have any sort of emissions control or pollution controls back then. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
Look up 'The year without Summer'. And the whole Washington crossing the Delaware was during that time. It was cold. Damn ed cold. Stradivarius also harvested trees that were growing from that time. The sound comes from the close dense rings from cold short growth seasons for several years. I also believe that's when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein while being cooped up in the house because of the unseasonably cold period. I could be off on some of that. Its from History channel memories.
Brrrr... Antarctica Records Record High Ice Cap Growth Brrrr... South America Has Coldest Winter in a 90 Years Brrrr... Iraqis See First Snow in 100 Years As Sign of Peace Brrrr... Worst Snowstorms in a Decade in China Cause Rioting Brrrr... Jerusalem Grinds to a Halt As Rare Snowstorm Blasts City Brrrr... Worst Snowstorms in 50 Years Continue to Cripple China Brrrr... China Suffers Coldest Winter in 100 Years Brrrr... Pakistan Suffers Lowest Temps in 70 Years-- 260 Dead Brrrr... Record Cold Hits Central Asia-- 654 Dead in Afghanistan Brrrr... Severe Weather Kills Dozens in Kashmir Brrrr... Tajikistan Crisis!! Coldest Winter in 25 Years! Brrrr... Record Cold Wave Blasts Mumbai, India Brrrr... Snow and Ice in San Diego? Brrrr... Wisconsin Snowfall Record Shattered Brrrr... The Disappearing Arctic Ice Is Back And It's Thick Brrrr... Turkey's snowiest winter continues. Brrrr... Record Cold & Snow Blankets Acropolis in Greece (Video) Brrrr... Longest Ever Cold Spell Kills Cattle & Rice in Vietnam Brrrr... Most Snow Cover Over North America Since 1966 Brrrr... Australia Suffers Through Coldest Summer in 50 Years Brrrr... Record Snowfall Slams Ohio River Valley Brrrr... New Data Gives Global Warming the Cold Shoulder Brrrr... Global Cooling Causes Armed Clashes in Canada Brrrr... Snake Oil Salesman Admits to Ca$hing In on Global Warming Hysteria Brrrr... New Research Claims Earth Sliding Into an Ice Age Brrrr... Blizzard Blasts South Dakota-- 4 Feet of Snow Reported An Inconvenient Debate... Czech Pres. Challenges Gore On Warming Brrrr... Record Snow Blankets Spokane, Washington In June! Brrrr... Peru Declares Emergency-- Record Cold Kills 61 Children & 5,000 Alpacas Brrrr... Arctic Sea Ice Levels Are Up By 1,000,000 Square Kilometers Brrrr... Denver Breaks 118 Year-Old Cold Record-- Arctic Ice Refuses to Melt
I was on board the solar flux driving global warming, but after seeing that, I don't buy it anymore. A 0.08% change in solar irradiance does not have that much effect. 1 watt per square meter? and how much of that is reflected? 40%?
Second, like a really good anti-global warming nut... or a good global warming nut for that matter... you've selectively ignored the evidence that goes against your beliefs. Your solar irradiance and temperature graphs line up everywhere else, shouldn't they line up here?
Brrrr... Antarctica Records Record High Ice Cap Growth Brrrr... South America Has Coldest Winter in a 90 Years Brrrr... Iraqis See First Snow in 100 Years As Sign of Peace Brrrr... Worst Snowstorms in a Decade in China Cause Rioting Brrrr... Jerusalem Grinds to a Halt As Rare Snowstorm Blasts City Brrrr... Worst Snowstorms in 50 Years Continue to Cripple China Brrrr... China Suffers Coldest Winter in 100 Years Brrrr... Pakistan Suffers Lowest Temps in 70 Years-- 260 Dead Brrrr... Record Cold Hits Central Asia-- 654 Dead in Afghanistan Brrrr... Severe Weather Kills Dozens in Kashmir Brrrr... Tajikistan Crisis!! Coldest Winter in 25 Years! Brrrr... Record Cold Wave Blasts Mumbai, India Brrrr... Snow and Ice in San Diego? Brrrr... Wisconsin Snowfall Record Shattered Brrrr... The Disappearing Arctic Ice Is Back And It's Thick Brrrr... Turkey's snowiest winter continues. Brrrr... Record Cold & Snow Blankets Acropolis in Greece (Video) Brrrr... Longest Ever Cold Spell Kills Cattle & Rice in Vietnam Brrrr... Most Snow Cover Over North America Since 1966 Brrrr... Australia Suffers Through Coldest Summer in 50 Years Brrrr... Record Snowfall Slams Ohio River Valley Brrrr... New Data Gives Global Warming the Cold Shoulder Brrrr... Global Cooling Causes Armed Clashes in Canada Brrrr... Snake Oil Salesman Admits to Ca$hing In on Global Warming Hysteria Brrrr... New Research Claims Earth Sliding Into an Ice Age Brrrr... Blizzard Blasts South Dakota-- 4 Feet of Snow Reported An Inconvenient Debate... Czech Pres. Challenges Gore On Warming Brrrr... Record Snow Blankets Spokane, Washington In June! Brrrr... Peru Declares Emergency-- Record Cold Kills 61 Children & 5,000 Alpacas Brrrr... Arctic Sea Ice Levels Are Up By 1,000,000 Square Kilometers Brrrr... Denver Breaks 118 Year-Old Cold Record-- Arctic Ice Refuses to Melt
I was on board the solar flux driving global warming, but after seeing that, I don't buy it anymore. A 0.08% change in solar irradiance does not have that much effect. 1 watt per square meter? and how much of that is reflected? 40%?
Second, like a really good anti-global warming nut... or a good global warming nut for that matter... you've selectively ignored the evidence that goes against your beliefs. Your solar irradiance and temperature graphs line up everywhere else, shouldn't they line up here?
There are other factors. Like magnetic field strength, solar wing speed and pressure, Solar is the primary ( but not only ) driver not CO2 like the media and Gorites would fool you into believing.
I was on board the solar flux driving global warming, but after seeing that, I don't buy it anymore. A 0.08% change in solar irradiance does not have that much effect. 1 watt per square meter? and how much of that is reflected? 40%?
Here is a link to the footnote/reference to the "Northern Hemisphere Temperature" trace of which you have issue. You'd have to purchase the entire paper to read it, but here's the abstract:
The Sun is by far the most important driving force of the climate system. However, only little is known how variable this force is acting on different time scales ranging from minutes to millennia and how the climate system reacts to changes in this forcing. Changes of the global insolation can be related to the nuclear fusion in the core of the Sun, the energy transport through the radiative zone and the convection zone, the emission of radiation from the photosphere, and the distance between Sun and Earth. Satellite based measurements over two decades show a clear correlation between the solar irradiance and the 11-year sunspot cycle. The irradiance amplitude is about 0.1%. This is too small to affect significantly the climate. However, there are indications that, on longer time scales, solar variability coluld be much larger. The analysis of cosmogenic nuclides stored in natural archives provides a means to extend our knowledge of solar variability over much longer time periods.
The response of the climate system to solar forcing depends not only on the amount of radiation, but also on its spectral composition (e.g. UV contribution), seasonal distribution over the globe, and feedback mechanisms connected with clouds, water vapour, ice cover, atmospheric and oceanic transport and other terrestrial processes. It is therefore difficult to establish a quantitative relationship between observed climate changes in the past and reconstructed solar variability. However, there is growing evidence that periods of low solar activity (so called minima) coincide with advances of glaciers, changes in lake levels, and sudden changes of climatic conditions. These findings point to an active role of the Sun in past climate changes beside other geophysical factors, internal variability of the climate system, and greenhouse gases. In fact a non-linear regression model to separate natural and anthropogenic forcing since 1850 is consistent with a solar contribution of about 40% to the global warming during the last 140 years.
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That means there are other factors. However, given that CO2 could not be a significant contributor until fairly recently, then factors *other* that CO2 must be in effect.
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Second, like a really good anti-global warming nut... or a good global warming nut for that matter... you've selectively ignored the evidence that goes against your beliefs. Your solar irradiance and temperature graphs line up everywhere else, shouldn't they line up here?
Look at the *years* that you're using, approximately 1820-1880. I'd expect our temperature data got better as our technology improved, and the data to be less accurate the further back you go. It's a damn good correlation as you get closer to present.
Anyway, this is from published, scientific literature. I'm not making this stuff up. So your assertion that I'm "cherry picking" is aimed at the wrong guy. Fault the scientists' research, if you can.
Here is a link to the footnote/reference to the "Northern Hemisphere Temperature" trace of which you have issue. You'd have to purchase the entire paper to read it, but here's the abstract:
It's okay, I have a subscription.
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With an increase of the solar irradiance of 2.2 Wm during the last 140 years on the basis of our solarirra- diance reconstruction, we get a solar forcing at the top of the atmosphere of 0.55 Wm and corrected for short- wave refections 0.4 Wm . In case of an assumed sensitivity of 0.5K/(Wm ) which includes all feedbacks solar variability accounts for an increase of 0.2K for the global mean annual temperature during the last 140 yr. This is in good agreement with the results of the separ- ation of the solar forcing component based on the regression model. In contrast to the estimation of the solar forcing component by Friis-Christensen and Lassen(1991) who attributed almost all variability of the northern hemisperic temperature anomalies between 1865 to 1985 to the Sun leaving no room for the anthro- pogenic greenhouse effect and other forcings(aerosols, internal climate variability) our separation approach provides a more realistic balance between the anthropo- genic and the solar component and leaves room for other variability sources as well. According to the model at present about half of the temperature varia- bility is attributable to greenhouse gases, somewhat less to solarforcing and 10-20% to internal climate variability.
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Originally posted by fierobear: Fault the scientists' research, if you can.
I don't need to. They said the same thing I did.
[This message has been edited by ryan.hess (edited 11-22-2008).]
Originally posted by ryan.hess: According to the model at present about half of the temperature varia- bility is attributable to greenhouse gases, somewhat less to solarforcing and 10-20% to internal climate variability.
Is their conclusion based on modeling, or actual observation?
Here's some possible irony coming. Obama made a taped speech to the recent governor's conference, and he promised that the U.S. would lead in cutting CO2 emissions. You know, the "back to 1990 levels by 2020, and 80% more by 2050" crap. On this web site:
...the commentary brought up an interesting notion. Evidently, the reality of what it will *really* cost to cut carbon emissions is hitting home in Europe. They're starting to back off from these promises to cut CO2. That's after they discovered that it's actually going to cost a bunch of money, and hurt the economy and consumers. Imagine that!
So here's the irony. It's possible that Obama is going to go for the whole enchilada on cutting emissions just as the rest of the world says "whoa! wait a minute!" and backs off. Like the commentary says...
"America should be ready to a new, somewhat unprecedented global situation in which it will stand on the political left side from the rest of the world and no one will be interested in its extreme policies. In the Asia-Pacific region and Europe, the support for all kinds of climate regulation is evaporating rapidly these days.
Germany is pretty much joining Italy and the Eastern Europe in rejecting any specific post-Kyoto regulations and other regions seem to follow a similar evolution. The Czech prime minister - who will probably take over the EU since January 2009 - announced today that he will reject proposals that would increase energy prices. He also opposes a "brutal" introduction of carbon indulgence markets that would be useless because other countries will ignore it."
and
Don't expect any smooth sailing. The inclusion of Poland that critically depends on coal and that simply won't give it up is very entertaining but the other nations will oppose similar dictates, too, as soon as they realize that the projects to regulate the economies are becoming real rather than abstract nonsense used to bash America - which is what they have been so far.
Up until now, the U.S. hasn't been willing to cut emissions. Now that Obama wants to actually do it, and the U.S. no longer being the worlds whipping boy, we may find ourselves alone in the willingness (at least Obama's willingness) to cut emissions. If no one else does it, what are the chances the U.S. would follow through? The warming crap would collapse. Wouldn't that be a deliciously ironic victory over the warming hype?
Turn up the heat, somebody. The globe is freezing. Even Al Gore is looking for an extra blanket. Winter has barely come to the northern latitudes and already we've got bigger goosebumps than usual. So far the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports 63 record snowfalls in the United States, 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month. Only 44 Octobers over the past 114 years have been cooler than this last one.
The polar ice is accumulating faster than usual, and some of the experts now concede that the globe hasn't warmed since 1995. You may have noticed, in fact, that Al and his pals, having given up on the sun, no longer even warn of global warming. Now it's "climate change." The marketing men enlisted by Al and the doom criers to come up with a flexible "brand" took a cue from the country philosopher who observed, correctly, that "if you've got one foot in the fire and the other in a bucket of ice, on average you're warm." On average, "climate change" covers every possibility.
This is similar to the science practiced by Dr. James Hansen at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the source of much of the voodoo that Al Gore has been peddling since the doctor showed up at a Senate hearing in 1988 and told ghost stories that Al swallowed whole. Only last month Dr. Hansen's institute announced that October was the hottest on record, and then said "uh, never mind." The London Daily Telegraph calls this "a surreal blunder [that] raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming."
In this account, the institute had to make the humiliating climb-down after two leading skeptics of the global-warming scam, Anthony Watts, an American meteorologist, and Steve McIntyre, a Canadian computer analyst, discovered that temperature readings from September had been carried over and repeated for October.
We should sigh, shrug and give the scientists at NASA the benefit of the doubt that this was a mistake and not a deliberate howl at the moon. A spokesman for the institute explains that readings borrowed from Russia, which had been described as 10 degrees higher than normal for October, distorted the figures but, after all, the data had been obtained from others. So we should blame someone else.
This is the science we're expected to take on faith. The false figures - we must be generous and not say "faked" - were supplied by the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change. These are the most widely quoted readings, and consistently show higher temperatures than other "data sets." Would the United Nations lie? (No giggling, please.)
This sets a new standard for hubris, arrogance and haughty self-importance. Skeptics of the global-warming scam, even those with unquestioned academic and real-world credentials, are treated as ignorant pariahs by pundits, presidential candidates and other politicians who know better, or ought to.
Al Gore
This is not the first time, writes Christopher Booker in the Daily Telegraph, that Dr. Hansen's methodology has been sharply questioned. Two years ago, Messrs. Watts and McIntyre, the bloggers who caught the October fiasco, forced him to withdraw his published findings on surface temperatures in the United States, to correct his claim that the hottest decade of the 20th century was the 1990s. It was the 1930s, when the much-maligned sport utility vehicle was still a truck and Detroit made economical cars everybody wanted.
Man's notion that his science can realign the stars, adjust the orbit of planets and reorganize the universe leads him to say silly things and assert goofy claims. Saying silly things and asserting goofy claims is usually harmless as entertainment, so long as the claims are subjected to rigorous analysis and debate. But contrarian arguments about global warming, climate change and freezing heat are not tolerated by the scientists with an uneasy grip on the research money.
It's clear now that the earth has been cooling for the past decade, to the sorrow of the special pleaders and despite everything Al can do about it. The solar cycle peaked, the sun is quieter, the sunspots have faded and everybody but Al is cooling off.
Even the United Nations says so. The director of the U.N.'s panel on climate change concedes that nature has overwhelmed everything man can do and it might even be another decade before man can rally and the warming resumes. Until then, like it or not, nature rules the cosmos.
• Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.
Another interesting commentary, this on how the hype and hysteria could die after stuff like carbon credits and other anti-warming efforts would be put in place. If we did everything the enviroloonies want, what would they have to shout about?
The answer is quite simple. Since you are already paying tax for hot air, there is no more need to spend money advertizing the product. In US, the AGW hysteria and jobs will too disappear with once the Carbon Tax payments commence.
Look at the Ozone Hhole hysteria prototype of the science scam scheme. Where are the Ozone Hole scientists now? Did you hear any passionate fluorocarbon discussions lately?
