Tag: environment

“A lot of investment in green technology has been a giant scam, if well intentioned.”

9:36 am

“A lot of investment in green technology has been a giant scam, if well intentioned.”

The quote, and entire interview, are significant for two reasons. First, the interview is seeped with many skeptical opinions about human caused global warming, is very critical of that movement’s effort to politicize science, and the person being interviewed is James Lovelock, the founder of of the concept of Gaia, a former strong advocate of global warming but now a skeptic.

Most significant however is where the interview is published. It is in Nature, one of the most important and influential science journals, which previously has been aggressively pushing global warming politics for years. That they allowed these politically incorrect opinions within their walls and then broadcast them to their readers signals a major cultural shift within the science community. It is beginning to be acceptable to be a skeptic again!

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An update on the story of the BLM’s attempt to confiscate a man’s cattle in Nevada while outlawing free speech in vast parts of the land the agency administers.

10:02 pm

An update on the story of the BLM’s attempt to confiscate a man’s cattle in Nevada while outlawing free speech in vast parts of the land the agency administers.

From the details in this story, it sounds as if the BLM might have some justification to take the man’s cattle. Voiding the Constitution while they do so, however, is unacceptable.

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The Sun continues to hiccup

11:40 am

It’s sunspot time again! On Monday NOAA posted its monthly update of the solar cycle, showing the sunspot activity for the Sun in February. I am once again posting it here, below the fold, with annotations.

Like it did in January, the Sun’s second peak of the solar maximum continued to beat its first peak, an unprecedented event. Though activity dropped slightly, it still remained above prediction and was only slightly below the first peak’s maximum. Overall, the second peak has been much stronger than the first, something that scientists have never seen before. In the past, when the Sun had a double peaked solar maximum, the second peak was always weaker. Not this time!
» Read more

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Climate scientists think the first major El Niño since 1997-1998 is beginning to brew in the Pacific.

9:55 am

Climate scientists think the first major El Niño since 1997-1998 is beginning to brew in the Pacific.

The first sign of a brewing El Niño weather pattern came in January, as trade winds that normally blow from the east reversed course near Papua New Guinea. Barrelling back across the tropical Pacific Ocean, they began to push warm water towards South America. Now climate scientists and forecasters are on high alert.

A major El Niño event — a periodic warming of waters in the eastern equatorial Pacific — could boost temperatures and scramble weather worldwide. The most recent major event, in 1997–98, was linked to thousands of deaths and tens of billions of dollars in damage from droughts, fires and floods across several continents. Yet more than 15 years later, forecasting the timing and intensity of El Niño remains tricky, with incremental improvements in climate models threatened by the partial collapse of an ocean-monitoring system that delivers the data to feed those models.

Note the date of the last event, 1997-1998. This was also the last time the world’s global temperature saw an increase. At the time global warming scientists were saying that global warming would increase the number and severity of El Niño events, which in turn would raise havoc with the climate. Instead, we have gone more than a decade and a half without any significant El Niño event, and the global temperature rise has ceased.

Note also that the article focuses on the difficulty scientists have had in predicting El Niño. These are the same global warming scientists who are also certain they can predict the exact temperature rise for the next two hundred years.

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According to a new report from the federal government, only 6 percent of the country’s electricity comes from green energy sources.

4:57 pm

According to a new report from the federal government, only 6 percent of the country’s electricity comes from green energy sources.

What strikes me about this figure is that, if I remember right, back in around 2001 or so green energy sources only contributed about 3% of our electrical needs, and Vice President Dick Cheney then made the point that even if we doubled that number it wasn’t going eliminate the need to burn fossil fuels. For that comment Cheney got pilloried by the press and by green activists for being a barbarian who was against saving the planet.

Well, here we are, about a dozen years later, and we have doubled our use of green energy, and Cheney was 100% right, we are still reliant on fossil fuels.

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Will the American Physical Society be the first major scientific institution to reject the global warming “consensus”?

10:31 am

Will the American Physical Society be the first major scientific institution to reject the global warming “consensus”?

The essentials: The APS has appointed three of the world’s most well known climate skeptics to its public affairs panel, almost guaranteeing that the organization will change its position from supporting the consensus to a more skeptical approach. Note also that this is the same organization that had one important scientist and a Nobel prize winner resign in disgust three years ago because of its insistence that the evidence of human-caused global warming was “incontrovertible.”

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“What it is observed right now is utter dishonesty by the IPCC advocates.”

9:31 am

Climategate continues: “What it is observed right now is utter dishonesty by the IPCC advocates.”

That’s the opinion of one of a number of scientists who were classified by a study to be part of the 97% consensus that supports human-caused global warming. The article asked them if the study’s classification was true, and their response was that the study was a fraud, a lie, a distortion, and simply untrue. The so-called 97% consensus was manufactured out of thin air, as many of the scientists included in it are actually global warming skeptics.

The quote that stood out most to me in the article was this one:
» Read more

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In reporting on climate change, ABC and CBS have excluded any commentary from any skeptical scientists for literally years.

4:52 pm

In reporting on climate change, ABC and CBS have excluded all commentary from any skeptical scientists for literally years.

Neither CBS nor ABC have included a skeptical scientists in their news shows within the past 1,300 days, but both networks included alarmists within the past 160 days — CBS as recently as 22 days ago. When the networks did include other viewpoints, the experts were dismissed as “out of the scientific mainstream” or backed by “oil and coal companies.”

It is almost like these news organizations are closing their eyes and sticking their fingers in their ears and chanting, “La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la…” Not the kind of behavior you’d expect from a legitimate news organization.

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The guacamole at the fast food chain of Chipotle is going to be stricken from the menu because of “global warming.”

10:17 pm

The guacamole at the fast food chain of Chipotle is going to be stricken from the menu because of “global warming.”

The Mexican fast food chain announced in recent Securities and Exchange Commission filings it could temporarily suspend sales of guacamole and some salsas due to an increase in food costs. Those increases are being caused by global warming, the Denver-based chain said. “Increasing weather volatility or other long-term changes in global weather patterns, including any changes associated with global climate change, could have a significant impact on the price or availability of some of our ingredients,” Chipotle officials said. Avocados and other items used to make Chipotle’s guacamole are the ingredients on the chopping block. [emphasis mine]

Is there nothing global warming can’t do?

Considering that there is presently zero evidence of any increase in “weather volatality”, nor is there any evidence that global warming can even cause this increased “weather volatility,” this announcement is garbage. The company wants to save money, and it is using the bugaboo of global warming to justify it.

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