About Me

Name: BLOGASSAULT
Biography
Loading...

Create Your Own Blog Find Other Townhall Blogs

Comments

Archives

Redoing The Data

Britain’s Met Office proposed that climate scientists around the world undertake the “grand challenge’’ of measuring land surface temperatures as often as several times a day, and allow independent scrutiny of the data - a move that would go some way toward answering demands by skeptics for access to the raw figures used to predict climate change.

“This effort will ensure that the datasets are completely robust and that all methods are transparent,’’ the Met Office said. The agency added that “any such analysis does not undermine the existing independent datasets that all reflect a warming trend.’’
 
   I would like to see some so called skeptics involved in the data gathering, you know, just to be sure.
   
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

HuffPo Talks With Senator Inhofe

   There is no bigger climate "denier" than senator Inhofe, and the HuffPo wanted to ask him about his climate hoax theory. The funny thing is, they label the story with the word "theory", yet they never use that word when it comes to climate change itself.

Q. You reasserted in today’s hearing your belief that global warming is a hoax. Can you clarify specifically who is perpetrating the hoax? Who are the dupers and who are the victims of the climate hoax?

A. Who are the victims? It would be the United States. It would be the economy, what would happen to this country according to MIT* and others who have made analyses as to the economic destruction that would come with something like cap-and-trade or [regulating greenhouse-gas emissions] through the Clean Air Act.

Q. Who are the perpetrators of the hoax?

A. That’s the United Nations and the IPCC, clearly.
 
   Inhofe doesn't take any crap from the interviewer, and makes a good case against the status quo. Read the whole thing.
 
 
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Driving Leading Cause Of Climate Change Or Not?

   The first thing I come across this morning is two articles, one telling me it is the leading cause of climate change, and the next telling me it isn't.
 
   The first study was done by Nadine Unger of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). She has come up with a new way to correlate the economy with the impacts of climate change.

In a paper published online on Feb. 3 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Unger and colleagues described how they used a climate model to estimate the impact of 13 sectors of the economy from 2000 to 2100. They based their calculations on real-world inventories of emissions collected by scientists around the world, and they assumed that those emissions would stay relatively constant in the future.

In their analysis, motor vehicles emerged as the greatest contributor to atmospheric warming now and in the near term. Cars, buses, and trucks release pollutants and greenhouse gases that promote warming, while emitting few aerosols that counteract it.
 
   But then we have this article on the Thin Green Line that tells us, well, something different.

As the single-largest contribution an individual makes to climate change, driving is a green bugaboo.

But some calculations made by Christopher Mims this morning on Change.org challenge that dogma.

Here's a simplified version: It takes roughly 126 calories, or 531,000 joules, of energy, to walk a mile. If you drive a fuel-efficient Honda Civic the same mile, you'll expend roughly 4,332,750 joules, or 1036 calories, of energy.

So far so good, right? Well, now remember an influential 2004 article in Harper's that made the case that, in our industrial agricultural system, it can take as many as 10 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce a single calorie of food.

That means those 126 calories you burn have a hidden back end of 1260 calories — more than the Honda Civic.
   
   I haven't a clue what kind of strange math that is, but in the green world, including the IPCC, fuzzy science is not all that uncommon.
 
   The point here is, being green can take on all kinds of forms, and it does not matter what side you want to play. It is much like global warming, whether it is snowing outside or it's the hottest summer in recent memory, it is all because of climate change. Environmentalism has been twisted in so many directions that it has become its own living, breathing, beast. It can now be contorted to fit any scenerio that best fits their immediate need; even if it doesn't always make any sense.



 
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

U.N. To Investigate IPCC

   They are appointing a independant panel to investigate the matter...or something.
 
The UN is to commission an independent group of top scientists to review its climate change panel, which has been under fire since it admitted a mistake over melting Himalayan glaciers.
The experts will look at the way the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) operates and will recommend where they think changes are needed. The panel will be part of a broader review of the IPCC, full details of which will be announced by the UN next week.
 
   Top scientists that, I am sure, have no opinion about climate change one way or the other and are not already bought and sold by the U.N. and the IPCC. How about I just give you the answer we will get form them at some point two years from now:

The IPCC mistakenly posted material that was not properly peer-reviewed. This, of couse, does not change the fact the climate change is real and that the IPCC has spent much valuable time and money doing the necessary work to help bring more awarness and global solutions to the climate change situation. Therefore, we find that a better peer-review process is needed, but climate change is still a very real threat, and the IPCC is an important part of the front line in battling the serious threat that faces our planet.  Therefore, we suggest that the IPCC do a better job of peer-review. Oh, and climate change is real.
 
   You may think I am kidding, but just mark my words.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Another New Problem Adds To Global Warming

   So many things can be part of the reason why global warming is such a problem today, and now we can add another to the list.
Whaling. Yes, whaling is now a cause of global warming, according to a new study.

A century of commercial whaling has released around 100 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- that's equivalent to burning more than 50,000 square miles of temperate forest or 128,000 large sport-utility vehicles driving for 100 years.

Those are the findings of a study by U.S. scientists from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute unveiled by Andrew Pershing from the University of Maine at the Ocean Sciences meeting this week in Portland, Ore.

"Whales, like any animal or plant on the planet, are made out of a lot of carbon," Pershing was quoted as saying at the conference by BBC News. "And when you kill and remove a whale from the ocean, that's removing carbon from this storage system and possibly sending it into the atmosphere."

   If my tax dollars paid for this study, I want to move to another planet.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Will Green Jobs May Kill Jobs?

   Interesting article from the Washington Post Opinion column today. Sunil Sharan gives some examples of how the green jobs push by Obama is in doubt because of how some of the stimulus monies are being spent.
 
Let's consider just one clean-energy sector, the smart grid, for its job-creation potential. The Obama administration allocated a little more than $4 billion in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to the smart grid, an unprecedented amount for a hitherto-neglected but critical piece of our national infrastructure. Much of this is to be spent installing close to 20 million "smart meters" over the next five years. Smart meters are digital versions of the spinning electric meters that are omnipresent nationwide. Whereas spinning meters have changed little in more than a century and must be read by workers, smart meters automatically transmit electricity consumption data to a utility.
 
   Well, that is certainly not jobs "saved or created". That is more like jobs "lost or eliminated".
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Recycled Critics Of Big Tobacco And Acid Rain?

   I like when some writer at some big newspaper makes big accusations against someone while providing no evidence of it. For instance, this article from the Gaurdian.
 
   Today's campaigners against action on climate change are in many cases backed by the same lobbies, individuals, and organisations that sided with the tobacco industry to discredit the science linking smoking and lung cancer. Later, they fought the scientific evidence that sulphur oxides from coal-fired power plants were causing "acid rain." Then, when it was discovered that certain chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were causing the depletion of ozone in the atmosphere, the same groups launched a nasty campaign to discredit that science, too.
 
   The link he has listed there makes no reference to these lobbies, rather it is just another article from the Gaurdian about the same thing.
Just another enviro-nutter who is desperatly trying to save the planet with an unproven theory. What these writers are really doing are trying to stay relevant so they can keep their jobs.
 
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

New Gun Law Not Welcome

   In this LA times article, I had to laugh at the stupid opening paragraph:
 
Guns are now permitted -- but not necessarily welcomed -- in national parks
 
As the controversial law takes effect Monday, critics argue it could increase wildlife poaching, violence between visitors and against rangers, and destruction of historic and cultural monuments.
 
   Increased violence against visitors and rangers? You know, someone would have to be a mental midget to believe that having a gun in a national park would somehow promote violence. Outside the bounderies of most national parks are regular forest lands (at least in Colorado) that people carry guns into all the time, yet there are no random shootings or violence there.How is it that a national park would be different?
 
   Maybe somewhere there is some otherwise law abiding, gun owning citizen who has something against park rangers that will now decide to take his revenge being he can lawfully carry a weapon into the park.
 
Silly.
 
 
 
 
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Captain Planet

 
captain_planet
 
   Do you think it's the carbon pollution that is the cause of his, well, appearance?
 
   For more fun. here is a Robot Chicken segment were Ted Turner is Captain Planet...
 
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Vertical Downtown Gardens?

   I have seen some goofy green stuff, but this one is near the top.
 
vertical
 
Architects and federal officials are planning a series of 250-foot-tall trellises designed to shade the west side of the remodeled Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building. The added greenery is just part of a $135 million project that will also feature elevators that generate electricity on the way down, solar arrays on the roof, smart lighting systems that adjust to the daylight available, among other advances.
 
   My question is, how do you mow it? With a solar powered mower that also defies gravity? My other question would be what to do if the stuff were to die and start raining down on the sidewalk patrons? It all seems a little strange to me.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Weird? No...

   This is from Climate Skeptic Blog...
 
What an odd world we live in when environmental activists feel the need to write about how horrible grass and open parks can be for the environment.
 
   It is not odd, it is revealing.
 
   As with most enviro-nutters (especially those in California) they live to criticize anything that does not fit into their idea of how green things should be. It is easy to pick on parks in California because these nutters have a good chance of effecting change on them. Politicians and government officials are so scared of the enviromental movement in their state that they will make the necessary changes rather than make them angry. Besides, these officials certainly don't want to look like they don't care about the environment.
 
   But as we have found recently, even the green way is not always the right way. I am talking about the fight in California over the Solar farms they want to build in the Mojave Desert, but the other side of the environmental coin, the animal rights organizations have put up a fight against them.

Near Hollister CA the world's largest solar project is in a classic struggle between NIMBYs and green energy advocates.

A Silicon Valley company is proposing to build here what would be the world's largest solar farm — 1.2 million solar panels spread across an area roughly the size of 3,500 football fields.

But, in recent weeks, the Santa Clara Valley, Monterey Peninsula and Fresno chapters of the Audubon Society have opposed the project.

Birds, foxes, lizards and kangaroo rats live there. Somehow I don't believe that these concerns will kill this one, since major transmission lines run right through the area, and other conducive factors are present. And the clock is ticking:

Demand for solar is hot. Schwarzenegger this year signed an executive order requiring 33 percent of California's electricity to come from renewable sources such as solar and wind. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama's stimulus plan contains billions in grants and tax credits for green power. It would pay for 30 percent of Solargen's project in the Panoche Valley, for example, if ground can be broken by Dec. 1, 2010.

In the Mojave solar fight, it's about Federal power and conservation on a grand scale.
 
   Is California goes, so goes...
 
   
 
   
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Saving The World With A Carbon Tax

   Here is a funny headline for you:

A Simple Carbon Tax Would Cost Only $2.50 A Gallon And Could Save The World

Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

EPA Still Handing Out Study Money

   The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is still handing out cash to universities for research into effects of global war..I mean climate change.
 
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is awarding nearly $17 million in Science to Achieve Results (STAR) grants to universities across the country to study the consequences of climate change on the air we breathe and the water we drink.

“EPA is engaging the academic research community, through these grants, to enable solutions that will both adapt to and mitigate the impact of climate change,” said Dr. Paul T. Anastas, assistant administrator for the Office of Research and Development.

   Must be part of the American Recovery Reinvestment Act.
 
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Where Is The Climate Scandal Coverage?

   Here is a good story from Charlie Martin at Pajamas Media. In it, he discusses the relative quiet in the American media's coverage of the climate scandal.

It’s been called the “biggest scientific scandal in history.” It has everything to earn Pulitzer consideration: lies and misconduct in high places, political implications, even massive financial transactions that may or may not be legitimate or even legal. It’s big news … as long as you read the Telegraph, the Guardian, the London Times, or even major Indian papers.

It’s no news at all if you read the U.S. mainstream media.
 
   And he is correct. Type in any search engine the climate email scandal or the IPCC's admittance to several climate errors over the past few weeks, and the majority of the links you will get are from bloggers and European news agancies. N.Y Times, Washington Post, San Franscisco Chronicle; all silent.
 
   Nothing to be surprised about, I guess. But this is part of the explanation behind the rapid fall of the main stream newspaper business. People have so many options for news now with the internet, including blog sites and international news, that when they see the big papers not reporting the news, it makes them look biased. And surprise...they are!
 
   Of course, you already knew that...
 
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

When Losing - Move The Goal Post

   After all that has been revealed, and still being revealed, you would think they would take a step back and reassess the science regarding global climate change. With the whole thing in question now and most countries not wanting to participate in a agreement that is laden with errors in data and unproven and un-peer reviewed science, it is no wonder some are trying to save their beloved movement.
 
   This piece comes from the Washington Post opinion section in todays online edition:

First, climate science is complex, and there is much that we still do not understand. Politicians, advocates and scientists who have claimed a level of certainty unsupported by evidence -- about exactly how climate change will unfold or is unfolding -- have not helped the cause. Second, as in any research effort being conducted by thousands of scientists across many years and many countries, mistakes will be made in the research or in its collection and reporting. The mistakes that have been revealed recently -- about, most prominently, the likely melting rate of Himalayan glaciers -- need correcting. But in the overall picture, they are trivial.

Politicians nonetheless have seized on both the trivial mistakes and the complexity of the science to cast doubt on the underlying and unrefuted truth of human-caused greenhouse gas accumulation. In many cases, it is hard to know whether they are being obtuse or dishonest, and hard to know which would be worse.
 
   The funny thing is, the first statement the writer makes is the one thing that we kept trying to tell those that said the debate was over. Over and over the "skeptics" kept telling them that there was no accounting for the sun in there studies, and no accounting for the mideviel warming period, and no understanding of the ice ages. What has sceince made so clear that the small amount of warming we are having is do to us? Then, in 1998, a cooling trend started and they don't know why. But now they use the same arguement to explain their error away. 
 
   As for the second point, were does one begin? The mistakes are starting to look like the number of shoes once in Imelda Marco's closet, and they are still coming.
 
   Listed below are just a few of the stories in recent weeks highlighting errors in the IPCC's fourth assessement alone:
 
1. Amazon Rainforest data found to be unsubstantiated.
 
2. Himalayan glacier melt data not peer-reviewed.
 
3. Sea level rise data retracted after faults found in data.
 
 
5. African Agriculture scare stories.
 
 
Then you get to other areas like Chris Horner's two year fight to get data released thru the Freeedom of Information Act regarding temperature anaylsis from NASA and the GISS. Once he got it, it clearly shows the corruption that is on scale with those from the CRU.
 
   I do agree with those on the enviro-side that none of this conclusivly proves that global warming is not real. But it does conclusivly prove that some people within the IPCC and other organizations that are involved with making policy are corrupt. But it doesn't end there. It has has also revieled the ways in which data is gathered. Using studys from green organizations, and information from those that have no scientific background show the inconsistancy and the total break-down of the peer review process within the community itself.
 
   As I have said in the past, if it involves the U.N., it is probably suspect. This scandal proves it once again.
 
    
 
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive
« Previous123Next »