Let’s start with a few statements:
(1) man is not causing global warming if we indeed are warming which I doubt.
(2) there is a conspiracy afoot to send billions of US taxpayer dollars around the world to fight a non-existent danger
(3) a fool and his money are soon parted and finally
(4) the world in 2003-8 has actually turned cooler leading some scientists to speculate on whether there might not be a very real threat of global cooling.
Back in 1975, a consensus of the world’s leading scientists after studying the climatic records for the past 250 years concluded in bold headlines that they world was headed for a worldwide disaster – global cooling.
For those of you that find this hard to believe, check the April edition of TIME MAGAZINE. You can’t miss it, it’s the cover story. Doom for the human race because of a century of impending global cooling.
Thirty three years, later these same scientists looking at this same data came to a remarkably different conclusion. The world is still doomed, they announced with straight faces, but not because of global cooling as formerly thought but because of global warming. (And they didn’t even blink when they said it.)
Now, I am not going to get into another long discussion trying to figure what happened to our climate in those thirty-three years that would convert this august body from fear of cooling to fear of warming – personally I think it is more about political ambition, coercion, and the promulgation of dis-information for financial gain than it is about climate - but I will say the chances of them being right this time is no better than the chances of them being right last time and that would be next-to-none and none.
We may be faced with a serious problem but it's not of man’s doing. That’s because climate is controlled by nature and is the product of solar activity, interstellar particle bombardment of Earth, cloud cover and to a lesser degree, our oceans. But man himself has little affect on global climate.
As to what can be done about climate, the answer is not much. All we can do is prepare keeping in mind that Nature is capricious and whenever we try to outguess her, we are usually wrong.
Today is January 14,2009. We are beset with record cold temperatures around the world. Northern Europe, Southern Italy – even Minneapolis has a record temperature today of 40- degrees below zero. Cold this year is worse than last and last was worse than the year before. Here is something so serious and so important that I am amazed it hasn’t gotten more coverage but maybe that’s because no one knows what we can do about it if it’s true. And I am afraid that it is true. First an excerpt from PRAVDA RUSSIA. As you read, keep in mind that the Russian Academy of Sciences is among the best in the world. Also keep in mind that in the partheon of weather, cooling can be more destructive than warming. Global cooling, depending on its severity and duration could actually destroy life on this planet. That’s something to think about when these jackasses go on about warming and going ‘green’. That includes those well-known jackasses, leaders of the hapless Democratic party - Strange Harry Reid, Silly Nancy Pelosi, and Goofy Al Gore. They are the last persons to trust about anything. This is the excerpt from an article in "PRAVDA RUSSIA".
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JANUARY 12, 2009: PRAVDA:
"The earth is now on the brink of entering another Ice Age, according to a large and compelling body of evidence from within the field of climate science. Many sources of data which provide our knowledge base of long-term climate change indicate that the warm, twelve thousand year-long Holocene period will rather soon be coming to an end, and then the earth will return to Ice Age conditions for the next 100,000 years."
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You should know that 12,000 years ago this planet was covered by an ice sheet five miles thick. We couldn’t live with that again but with technology maybe we can find a way to live. It wouldn’t be much of a life though. Perpetual bitter cold? Do you think maybe our attention should now shift from this warming nonsense (which wouldn’t kill us anyway) to cooling (which could)?
I certainly do.
As to all the current political hysteria about C02, I have said it before and I will say it again, C02 is not our enemy. C02 is an absolutely necessary ingredient in our lives. Without it, plants couldn’t go green and couldn’t produce oxygen and we wouldn’t be able to breathe. The recycling system is called photosynthesis. C02 is a friend of man’s, Those politicians in and out of the so-called "scientific community" running around the country complaining about C02 have their heads on wrong. C02 is not harmful and it represents just .04% of our atmosphere. The other 99.6% is something else. Anyway only 10% of that C02 comes from man.
During the past 140 years, ever since the Industrial Age began, we have been pouring copious amounts of C02 into our atmosphere yet our life expectancy has doubled and our atmosphere is still clear and sunny. Take a ride into the countryside almost any summer afternoon and you will find two things: (1) tons of other cars and trucks and busses on the highway with you all spewing forth C02 and (2) the sun shining brightly on a perfectly wonderful, cloudless day. How come?
Certainly we have problems with the air were breathe. But that’s more about chemicals and other particles making their way into our blood stream than anything else. And that comes from our lifestyle not global anything. In truth, man invents many things, some of which seem harmless for twenty years or so and then later are found to be highly toxic, even destructive. Like lead paint or asbestos or coal dust or metal filings in metal shops. They truly are spreading havoc among us.
Could carbon particles be a part of this problem? Maybe but that is not what we are discussing here today: today’s discussion is addressing global climate change, its causes and effects. The super-expensive, super-hyped, super-sales job being fomented around the globe by certain financial interests aiming at getting a big slice of taxpayer revenues at our expense.
I refer to these people as “The Greenies”.
I want to talk about them for a moment.
“ALTERNATIVE FUEL”
The Buzz Word For 2008
Did you know that in 2008, America used 33% of its corn crop for the production of corn ethanol, an alternative fuel that consumed 1/3 of all the food corn we raised while contributing just 4% of the automotive fuel we needed. Check out those numbers and you will see lobbyists stealing money from you. Corn Ethanol is all about money and politics and very bad politics at that.
Corn is a foodstuff. When you divert it to fuel, you remove it from the food chain. As it turns out, producing corn ethanol was far more expensive in many ways, than anyone ever anticipated so any benefits that were gleaned were miniscule. In the process, many people got rich from the program but as often happens, many got hurt. In the end, corn ethanol turned out to be far less beneficial than promised.
Corn is NOT a fuel. What corn is, is a foodstuff. Something to be eaten by humans and animals. Take corn out of the food chain and you are removing a vital part of the chain causing disruptions up and down the ladder. And even if it did reduce the fuel problem somewhat (assuming we really have one), it only reduced it from 100% down to 96%, so was it worth the problems it caused? No it was it. It was all about money. Talk about a scam.
Look folks, maybe ethanol does have a future but it will be ethanol from something other than corn, take my word for it. You can make it out of a lot of things i.e. sawgrass, sugar beets, even corn stalks etc. Personally, I think the beets are the best way to go but unfortunately they are all in central America not in the United States. So there's the rub. So let’s agree to forget ethanol for the time being, it’s just a minor player in the fuel business.
Solar Power: Very nice. Clean and neat and a renewable resource. Actually someone is working on a glass (for windows) that will store energy from the sun during the day and release it into your home during the night. That’s sounds pretty cool. Someday, solar might be a player in the production of electrical energy but not now. Not this decade and maybe not next either. Sure you are going to hear about solar because the solar people want tax money as subsidies. But for now, it remains a non-player in the energy field.
Wind Power: Nice touch here too. Being somewhat familiar with wind farms I can tell you my impression - despite all the hype on TV by Boone Pickens et al – is that wind is never going to be a big player in energy. Yes it might get up to 12% over the next twenty years. Maybe 15% but wind has decided drawbacks not the least is that wind doesn’t always blow nor does it blow a lot where a lot of homes are located. So it’s always going to be costly. And folks watch Nancy Pelosi. She is the biggest single investor in the Boone Pickens wind farm (that he, like the Kennedy’s, wouldn’t allow on his land because it is so ugly). Don’t be sucked in. Give WIND 15% and call it a day.
We still get most of our electricity from burning coal and with anything that increases electrical consumption – like electric cars – you are going to need more energy and that means burning more coal which is fine with me.
Nuclear Energy: Clean and renewable but very, very dangerous no matter what they tell us. A nuclear meltdown would be like have a nuclear bomb dropped where the plant is. That will affect everyone within 75 miles of the plant and in America, like in France, that’s putting a whole lot of people in jeopardy. We will build nuclear plants but they have the problem of being inherently dangerous and the second problem of spent fuel rods. Nothing is ever without its drawbacks in the energy field.
Note: I have been following the introduction of these small nuclear generators expected to hit the market in four years. Each one produces enough electricity to power 4,000 homes and they are cheap and clean. They say they are also safe and I will take them at their word for now but I can’t help wonder what happens if one of them is located in an area that has a small earthquake or some sort of explosion. Will they split apart and if so what will be the effect on those 4,000 homeowners. Since the first reactors are not scheduled for delivery until around 2012, we won’t know much about them until about three years after installation. So we are looking at about a decade before we know much more about their safety and their productivity and their impact on our energy needs. If they turn out to meet the standards at that time, they will go into mass production and that will take more time followed by delivery time. We are looking at two decades before they will make any real impact if they ever do.
Keep in mind we have no immediate problem anyway. There is nothing wrong with burning coal or oil. They are not dangerous to us or to our environment (except maybe for miners). The problem is FOREIGN oil. So if the silly Democratic no- nothings will get out of the way and let us drill for the oil we have in country, we will not need any alternatives for a few decades or maybe ever a whole lot of decades. The so-called environmentalists are in the way. The have riots and they run the streets loudly proclaiming THEY are protecting OUR earth. No, they are just nuts and they don’t have the slightest idea what they are talking about. I can do without them.
As I mentioned in my other article on this site – “A Tutorial On Global Warming” – the real danger to the environment comes from converting woodlands and pristine wildernesses to building lots for rich folks who want to get away from the congested city. That’s where the land is most abused. But then, we do have to live somewhere don’t we? And no matter where we build, chances are that place was once a “pristine wilderness”. Hell, all America was a “pristine wilderness” before we got here and all the world was a ‘pristine wilderness” before man got here. It is just too silly for words.
Electric cars: These cars have two big problems: (1) they cost a lot ($35-42,000.00) and (2) the battery has to be replaced way too often (4-5 years) at a very big cost ($10,000.00). Those two problems are going to generate a lot of sales resistance. What this car needs is a new kind of battery, one that is cheap, lasts a very long time, and stores much more energy than current batteries thereby extending both the life of the battery and the driving range of the car between recharges. Until that day, the EV has a limited future. Sure they may sell 750,000 of them over the next five years and the manufacturers may be delighted but 750,000/250,000,000 is just .03% of the market (that’s 3/10ths of 1.0%). Not enough to make much of a difference.
Hybrids: Now this car has the most upside. The reason is simple: it combines an electric motor with a combustion engine. Depending on how long you drive and how fast you go, you are either using electricity or gasoline to get there. What this combination does is increase your MPG and that’s helps a lot. Still you have to be realistic about these cars. I would guess everybody is going to be making plug-in Hybrids in a year or two. Right now there are probably less than 1,000,000 of these cars worldwide. Maybe 200,000 in America but assuming the consumer still wants them in the future, they should be able to multiply that number ten fold in the next five years selling 2,000,000 of them here in America. Another ten years and there may be 20,000,000 of them on our roads.
And that will be fine. But – and it’s a big but – the population will also have grown as will the number of vehicles on the road so those 20,000,000 plug-in Hybrids may be offset to some degree but a number of new combustion engines on the road to accommodate our new citizens. Most immigrants are at the bottom of the economic ladder when they get here so they will be looking to buy and operate not the brand new, very expensive Hybrids, but the older, cheaper combustion engine cars and trucks.
Change comes slowly folks and usually at a far greater cost that anticipated.
Prediction: Today we have 250 million combustion engine cars, trucks, buses etc. on our roadways. I do see some of the municipal buses converting but not to electric so much as to natural gas. Natural gas is the poor relation in this picture. Where I see it as the best alternative fuel (if we need an alternative fuel and I am not sure we do), but for some reason, it is basically ignored. Maybe it is too dangerous to operate, I don’t know. But for now, it is a non-player on the big scene.
So that’s the roundup. And here’s one more point. These plug-in Hybrids which are going to be the most successful of all the alternative cars, had to be plugged in after work. For most people that’s going to be around the same time every night. And you have to leave it on all night long. I am not sure how much this is going to cost (electricity is not cheap and has to be more expensive in the future) and if we did have those 20-25 million Hybrids (10% of the market) being recharged at about the same time, we would need to build about 100 new power plants (burning coal) to produce the electricity needed to recharge them. And don’t forget the effect on the environment of both building those batteries and eventually disposing of them. Both are environmentally hazardous problems. As I said, ignore the hype. Nothing is free and nothing of any importance is easy. Almost everything has an upside and a downside.
As you can see from all this, everyone is lining up for a share of the market. And what is driving them? That’s easy - money.
But what should be driving it? The need to get off, not oil but foreign oil. It is not oil that is the problem it is the fact that oil is essential to our lives and letting it remain in the control of people that do not like us very much, or who are envious or jealous of us – is killing us. If it were absolutely necessary, that would be one thing, but it isn’t. We have more than enough of our owl oil (including shale) to take care of ourselves and our economy with no problem – if we could just get those damn environmentalist nuts and their political allies – out of the way.
Now let me recap. I love that picture of the polar bear wandering around aimlessly because we are drilling for oil at ANWR on 2,500 acres of his pristine wilderness.
First, not to worry Mr. Bear. You still have about 28,000 square miles of pristine wilderness at ANWR to wander around. You won’t even miss that postage-sized piece of ground they are using. Anyway, I don’t hear anyone mourning the loss of the Buffalo whose natural habitat is now converted to cities and towns all over the west and mis-west.
How come?
And what about the state of California that has stolen a land area that must be over 150,000 square miles from the animals that lived there? Does House Speaker Pelosi live in California? Is she rampaging against new million dollar homes in the hills transplanting millions of animals that used to call that acreage home? In fact, the whole damn state was a violation of the rights of the animals who used to live there and were driven out by cruel human beings who took over the landscape and carved a state out of it. We would all be so much better off had we stayed out of there and let the animals live in peace.
Silly? Of course it’s silly. Once upon a time there were as few as 100,000 people living on this planet. They probably occupied much less than 1% of the land area of the Earth. Since then, humans have multiplied over and over again until there are now six BILLION of us. And as you might expect, much of the formerly pristine land area of this Earth has been taken over by these human beings.
You see that’s the natural way. We are all of us, animals. Some run around on four legs and some on two but we are all fighting for survival. Just as one four legged animal destroys the habitat of another because he needs more room to expand, so do humans destroy the habitats of others because of need. What each group needs to survive and to grow, they take if they can. We can so we do. We have since we showed up on the surface of this planet.
To say we shouldn’t drill for oil because it ‘harms’ the environment is as dumb and as shortsighted as anything anyone could ever say. If we follow that line of reasoning, we should all go jump off a bridge somewhere and return this earth to the animals that were here first – well their ancestors were anyway. Then we can watch from above as they rip each other and fight each other and even eat each other to survive.
Because that’s the name of the game – survival. They do what they have to in order to survive and we do the same.
There is no economic problem that can’t be helped, if not cured, by drilling for oil and gas wherever we can find it. And doing so right now.
And if we do, the environment will survive just as it always has and so will mankind just as it always has.
“Green” has become a political soundbite used to manipulate the uninformed for someone else’s financial and political gain.
Don’t be a sucker.
Remember that picture they used to circulate of the Alaskan polar bear on the ice flow standing there with water all around him. The caption said the photo was taken in December and the dwindling number of Alaskan polar bear’s were losing their natural habitat because of global warming caused my mankind’s burning of fossil fuels.
Every bit of that statement was false and the environmentalists knew it., to wit:
1. The population of the Alaskan bear in 2006 was over 29,000, an all time high.
2. The photo was taken in July, not December.
3. Some ice is melting (natural warming) but some is reforming (natural cooling).
4. Mankind does not cause global weather changes, nature does.
5. Burning fossil fuels does not harm the environment. That’s a myth.
6. Drilling for oil or gas or digging for coal or gold or silver or any other precious metal or resource has been going on for millennia and has caused no permanent
damage to the Earth. When the operations close down, in time, nature reclaims that which belongs to it. Including California.
Joey
By the way the weather data collected around the world from land based weather "stations" is ridiculously inaccurate for lots of reasons, to wit:
November 29, 2009
Climate change data dumped
Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor
SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based. It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.
The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building. (hahaha)
Related Links
The great climate change science scandal
EU figurehead says climate change a myth
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The admission that the original data has been discarded follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.
In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenized) data.” (That means his interpretation of what the ground stations recorded.)
The CRU is the world’s leading Centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible
(This would be really funny if it weren't so serious.)
Here's some information they aren't telling us:
PS The raw data they are talking about came from ground collection devices placed around the world. The problem was they had specific rules for upkeep and maintenance of the stations (small boxes) to preserve the quality of their readings. These mandatory maintenance regulations were totally ignored in 3/4 of the world's countries for years. Any data they collected had to be all but WORTHLESS.
Here are just a few examples:
(1) the stations had louvers on two sides that had to be cleaned of debris every week. That was mandatory. Unfortunately that was not done. In fact, some were uncleaned for months and even years particularly in 3rd world countries and parts of the world where political unrest was present or where people had all the could do just to stay alive. .
(2) it was mandatory that the small ground station devices been repainted WHITE every few months so they would not absorb heat and skew the results. That wasn't done at all. In some cases, it was never done.
(3) There were stringent rules about where the weather collection stations could be placed. They units couldn't be under trees, near buildings, near parking garages or automobile parking lots or anywhere except in clean, open, unshaded areas away from any contaminating influences i.e. buildings, cars, shade trees, air conditioning units, lights etc.
Turns out they were placed around the world in places that compromised their readings to such a degree that the readings were actually worthless. (They used them anyway because they liked what they showed - warming. Sure they were warm but the reasons were mechanical not natural.)
Interestingly, they did have weather balloon readings but since they contradicted the global warming results from the contaminated ground stations, they weren't used. They knew the results they wanted.
This is a deliberate scam and those who perpetrated it belong in jail starting with Al Gore. They have cost the world billions if not trillions of dollars. This European meeting on climate change should be canceled today but it won't be because it's really about billions of dollars of American money!!!
There's a sucker born every minute.
They even violated rules of where these device could be installed so their readings were contaminated from the beginning. That's the data upon which all these predictions are based and that data is scientifically flawed to the point where it is useless. The best data on temperature comes from weather balloons which they have refused to incorporate for one very good reason: those readings disprove the readings from the ground stations which are the basis for the global warming wealth redistribution plan.
Nobody is honest anymore. Look at the Nobel Committee. They are the biggest bunch of Marxist phonies in the world and they use many of their awards to promulgate their politics.
Joey
