Daily Archives: May 4, 2011

Tim Ball shines a light on… albedo

Posted on May 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

Reflected Sunlight Shines On IPCC Deceptions and Gross Inadequacies
by DR. TIM BALL on MAY 3, 2011

Moonlight is not light generated by the moon, but reflected sunlight. First astronauts on the moon were amazed by the brightness of Earth when it appeared over the lunar horizon. What they saw was Earthlight, which is also reflected sunlight. It’s sunlight that does little to heat the Earth because it goes directly back out to space. The amount reflected varies with changes to the surface and atmosphere. These changes are significant, yet poorly measured or understood and pushed aside by the fanatic focus on CO2. Global warming due to humans is based on the hypothesis that our addition of CO2 has changed the balance of energy entering and leaving the Earth’s atmosphere. There are a multitude of factors that can change this balance, many ignored or underplayed by climate science. They get away with this because the public is unaware. (Tim Ball)

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Climate change, IPCC

Luboš Motl with some basic facts about CO2 exposure

Posted on May 4, 2011 | 1 Comment

iMatter: Your house is uninhabitable for most species

iMatter March, a children’s astroturf climate activist organization that will organize a march of broken glass between 7th and 14th of this month, has released their research about the end of the world in 2050:

Scientists that dedicate their entire lives to studying this, have made it clear: to avert the worst effects of climate change, the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere need to be at 350 parts per million (ppm). Right now we are at 391ppm. If we keep burning at the rate we are now, we will be at 500ppm by 2050. This would make earth a completely different planet, uninhabitable for most species. We can’t let that happen.

Oh, really? In that case, we must be careful about our puppies, kittens, and other pets not to get into our house, to protect their life. ;-) The reality is that 500 ppm is totally harmless for all known species on the planet – and actually well below the average concentrations we experience in our everyday life. (The Reference Frame)

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Activists, Climate change, Propaganda, Rubber room

Ma Nature must really hate trees, always burning forests or flattening them with wind or ice storms or something

Posted on May 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

It’s a really good thing carbon dioxide emissions are irrelevant or Ma would’ve extinguished life on earth eons ago.

Hurricane damage to forests: Scientists study impacts on carbon cycle
May 4, 2011 by Lynn Yarris

When we think of carbon emissions that exacerbate global climate change most of us probably think of the exhaust from automobiles and other vehicles, or smoke billowing from rows of stacks at fossil fuel-burning power plants. But there is a source of large carbon emissions that is not so immediately obvious – the destruction of forest trees through hurricanes. For example, studies led by Jeffrey Chambers, who is now with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), have shown that Hurricane Katrina, the storm that flooded New Orleans and pounded the Gulf coastal areas of Mississippi and Louisiana, uprooted or severely damaged roughly 320 million trees. In terms of the carbon cycle, this devastating loss of vegetation from a single storm was equivalent to about a 10-percent increase in U.S. fossil fuel emissions for a year. (PhysOrg.com)

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Climate

If global warming is hiding behind La Niña, it is doing so very well

Posted on May 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

Thermometer note: with the restoration of electric power following the destruction wrought by a less-than-benign “Mother Nature”, the University of Alabama in Huntsville is again providing the preliminary daily satellite data used by JunkScience.com’s “Global Mean Thermometer” and updates have recommenced. Would that all lives and property could be so easily restored but that, of course, is far from the case. If you are able to assist those exposed to the indifferent brutality of the natural world we urge you to do so unstintingly.

2011: The Temperature So Far
Dr. David Whitehouse

Global averaged temperature data is now available for the first three months of 2011, 25 per cent of the year’s data. I thought it would be interesting to look at it through the eyes of the HadCrut3 and NasaGiss datasets.

Clearly the influence of the cooling La Nina is strong, but there is something else that can be tentatively deduced from the data. (GWPF)

BoM 3-month outlooks hopeless again

May 4th, 2011 by Warwick Hughes

The BoM 3 month forecast Outlooks improved for three months after Spring 2010 but have deteriorated again over the last two months.

Below I have six panels showing Outlook forecast map alongside realworld results map for rain and max & min temperatures. (Warwick Hughes)

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Climate

Questioning “climate aid”? Whatever next?

Posted on May 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

Has Mexico’s climate aid really slowed carbon emissions?
IPS: Amidst the creation of a new ‘Green Climate Fund’ for developing countries, questions are being raised on the climate finance Mexico has already received

While Mexico recently played host to a meeting for the creation of a Green Climate Fund, doubts have been raised over whether the millions of dollars in financing the country has already received in recent years have been effectively implemented to combat global warming and its consequences. (The Guardian)

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Climate change

Futures Traders, a.k.a. “speculators”, seem to be villains du jour – see why that’s a load of pork bellies

Posted on May 4, 2011 | 2 Comments

Let’s Blame Speculators
Walter E. Williams

Here’s a non-rocket science question: If you expect a reduced harvest of wheat, corn, rice or any other commodity some time in the future, what would be the wise thing to do about your consumption today? I bet that the average person would answer: Consume less now so that more will be available in the future.

Continue reading →

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Development, Energy, Propaganda

GWPF releases new report: The Shale Gas Shock

Posted on May 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

New Report: Shale Gas Shock Challenges Climate and Energy Policies
Wednesday, 04 May 2011 09:13

London, 4 May – The Global Warming Policy Foundation today publishes a detailed report about the shale gas revolution and its likely implications for UK and international climate policy.

The report The Shale Gas Shock, written by Matt Ridley and with a foreword by Professor Freeman Dyson, finds that shale gas:

  • is not only abundant but relatively cheap and therefore promises to take market share from nuclear, coal and renewable energy and to replace oil in some transport and industrial uses, over coming decades.
  • will help to keep the price of nitrogen fertiliser low and hence keep food prices down, other things being equal.
  • is unlikely to be a major source of pollution or methane emissions, but in contrast promises to reduce pollution and accelerate the decarbonisation of the world economy.

Matt Ridley, the author of the GWPF report, said:

“Abundant and relatively cheap shale gas promises to lower the cost of gas relative to oil, coal and renewables. It indefinitely postpones the exhaustion of fossil fuels and makes reducing emissions of carbon dioxide possible without raising energy prices.”

Freeman Dyson, in his foreword to the GWPF report, said:

“Shale gas is not a perfect solution to our economic and environmental problems, but it is here when it is needed, and it makes an enormous difference to the human condition.”

“Matt Ridley gives us a fair and even-handed account of the environmental costs and benefits of shale gas. The lessons to be learned are clear. The environmental costs of shale gas are much smaller than the environmental costs of coal.”

pdf The full report can be downloaded here (1.58 Mb 04/05/2011)

Hard copies of the report can be ordered for £10.00 from the Global Warming Policy Foundation, 1 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5DB, UK (GWPF Press Release)

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Energy, Fracking

Despite complete absence of supporting science European loons continue assault on useful compounds

Posted on May 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

During “discussions” I’ve actually had some anti-industry, anti-modernity fruit-loops demand all chemicals be removed from their bodies (!) so please be gentle with the uninformed / misinformed during any comment interaction.

Environmental lobby urges EU limits on chemicals

Environmental lobby ChemSec on Tuesday highlighted 22 hormone-disrupting chemicals routinely found in plastics, packaging and cosmetics that it wants regulated by the European Union.

ChemSec has accused the EU of delaying action on such “endocrine-disrupting” chemicals such as phthalates. (Reuters)

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Activists, Chemophobia, Enviros, Misanthropy, Rubber room

European bioperversity

Posted on May 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

Weird critters, these Europeans. Can’t tell the difference between computer-generated critters and real ones. For example, some actually seem to believe the misanthropic nonsense spouted by people-hating greenies about an alleged recent massive increase in extinction rates. The simple facts are that in the first half of the Second Millennium AD there was a large spike in extinctions and Europeans can be blamed for a lot of them. Of course the extinctions were mainly obscure island-bound sub species of common critters and their extinctions were the result of accidental or deliberate introduction of predators or competitors in the age of exploration (rats, mice and cats were often shipwrecked or accidentally introduced to islands during provisioning stops, goats and pigs deliberately introduced by various navies as provisioning sources for passing ships or shipwrecked souls… ). It wasn’t just Europeans either. The great Maori migrations across the Pacific Islands spread rats and the Maoris decimated New Zealand’s flightless birds and wreaked havoc on the ecosystem. The last century or two have seen very few extinctions by comparison and then even those critters that were presumed extinct have a habit of popping up again and spoiling the evil-human narrative.

Halting species loss has economic benefits, says EU

The European Union should halt the rapid extinction of plant and animal species by 2020 because it will cost less than trying to repair the damage once it is done, Europe’s environment chief said on Tuesday.

Worldwide, species extinction rates are between 100 and 1,000 times the natural rate, the European Commission said in its latest biodiversity strategy. (Reuters)

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Activists, Misanthropy, Wildlife

Walter Russell Mead on Moonbat’s admission of just what a crock “environmentalism” truly is

Posted on May 4, 2011 | 2 Comments

Top Green Admits: “We Are Lost!”

Walter Russell Mead, The American Interest

George Monbiot of the left-leaning British newspaper The Guardian has a must-read column in which he admits that because of a whole series of intellectual mistakes, the global green movement’s policy prescriptions are hopelessly flawed.

Read the whole piece for a thoughtful and brutally clear expose of the intellectual bankruptcy of the green movement from one of the smartest people in it.  This is what I’ve been getting at for more than a year here: regardless of what is happening to Planet Earth, the green movement does not have coherent and workable solutions. (GWPF)

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Enviros

Updated: High gas prices fail to spark electric vehicle sales

Posted on May 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

Update: Daily Bayonet snark added below

April Auto Sales: Gas or Electric?
By Henry Payne

As April sales figures roll in, gas prices seem to be having an effect. But they are pushing customers into gas-powered compacts, not electric ones.

Continue reading →

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Energy