Poll, Is Global Warming real?

[audtatious]

Al Gore to Launch New Propaganda CampaignMarch 31, 2008 at 10:41 am

Be forewarned; Al Gore hasn't given up. He's going after public "consensus" on global warming before the public gets a strong enough whiff of the strengthening scientific and economic evidence against him.

It has been reported that his far-left political (and environmental business PR) organization, the "Alliance for Climate Protection", will launch an ad campaign aimed at giving the impression that there is consensus among national and world leaders on "the climate problem."

According to the New York Times, the ads are scheduled to begin Wednesday, “will team up offbeat celebrity couples who may not have much in common but share a belief that it is important to address climate change.” “The campaign is being created by the Martin Agency in Richmond, Va., part of the Interpublic Group of Companies. Martin’s work is familiar to TV viewers because the agency also produces campaigns for Geico insurance and Wal-Mart. The campaign will also include ads online and in print.”

So far, not one probable participants reportedly involved in the campaign does not have a previous history of promoting far left politics. Among the participants meant to give a false impression, Newt Gingrich - always thumping "conservative values" - who helped push through federal legislation that destroyed marriage by turning family law into a pork barrel program, and the Rev. Pat Robertson, who promoted those same reforms on his television show while supporting Gov. Tommy Thompson as a potential presidential candidate.

The slick Madison Avenue campaign is reportedly budgeted for $300 million, $100 million for each of three years and will be partially funded by profits from Al Gore's film, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

http://mensnewsdaily.com/2008/...paign/

[audtatious]

Also:

Earth Hour crashes to Earth (no significant fall in power usage): Australian Herald Sun report:

http://blogs.news.com.au/heral...earth/

[ishkabibble]

Anyone who uses the term "far left" to describe Gore is either a propagandist or has no clue what "far left" really is.

Why are the intervals on those graphs so different? one is 5 minutes, the others are 30 minutes. Also, this is just one city in OZ. Not saying you're wrong, but the methodology isn't that great.

[audtatious]

Do you really believe that charting electricity use will matter whether it is 10 minutes or 2 minutes when it is over the same span of time? I just thought it was humerous.

Gore is far-far-left on the stance of global warming. Sorry, I forgot to add a "far"

[audtatious]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20...25523

So, from the Bangkok global warming summit, they have decided to

Quote »A global decision on how much rich countries should slash their greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade should be made after the United States has a new president, the UN climate chief said Tuesday[/quote]They know that all three candidates are "pro-global warming" and figure they can make inroads with them over Bush.

also

Quote »Under President George W. Bush, who will leave office in January, the United States backed out of the Kyoto Protocol, the landmark pact on cutting emissions whose obligations expire at the end of 2012.

Bush argued that the treaty was unfair by making no demands of developing countries. But the three major candidates vying to replace him have all pledged tougher action on global warming[/quote]Uhm.....Clinton has already signed the Kyoto agreement knowing that the Senate will NOT let it pass nor even listen to it. What does Bush have to do with it at this point other than skipping the Senate for something that even Japan is now pulling out of?

Come on, Mr UN, reach further into my wallet please. I have plenty of money for something that has no impact on global warming nor has any impact on the major global polluters....

[ishkabibble]

Do you really believe that charting electricity use will matter whether it is 10 minutes or 2 minutes when it is over the same span of time?

Ummm, the interval was 5 minutes for 1 graph and 30 minutes for the other 2. 30 minutes = two samples during the hour that was being discussed. Crap methodology.

Where are your 10 and 2 minute figures coming from?

What's humorous is the blog post pretty much goes against the point it was trying to make (for anyone with half a brain, anyway).

[Repo Man]

On another note, did anyone see that fruitcup Ted Turner say that global warming was going to incite cannibalism? OMFG.

[audtatious]

Ummm, the interval was 5 minutes for 1 graph and 30 minutes for the other 2. 30 minutes = two samples during the hour that was being discussed. Crap methodology.

Where are your 10 and 2 minute figures coming from?

So, you think in the 30 minute graph people are cutting off lights and it's only sampling the high spots when they turn them on briefly? You think changing the 5 minute graph by only using a sampling of the same data every 30 minutes will change the chart as a whole?

I threw 10 and 2 out as just a couple numbers. Substitute it for 5 and 30 if you wish.

What's humorous is the blog post pretty much goes against the point it was trying to make (for anyone with half a brain, anyway).

ok

[audtatious]

On another note, did anyone see that fruitcup Ted Turner say that global warming was going to incite cannibalism? OMFG.

Sorry, my half of a brain does not understand that. I need to stop doing 3 things at a time so I can concentrate more. I'll get back with you on it.

[audtatious]

Solar activity 'not behind climate change

Changes in the sun's intensity are not behind modern climate change, new evidence suggests.

The research, carried out by physicists at Lancaster University, undermines claims by climate sceptics that cosmic rays are key drivers in cloudiness and temperature. The theory claims that variation in solar activity leads to a corresponding variance in cosmic rays.

Solar activity is not linked to Earth temperature changes, says research However, the Lancaster team, whose findings are presented in an article in the journal Environmental Research Letters, have found no significant link, the BBC reports.

The scientists used three different methods of searching for a correlation but found almost nothing.

The cosmic ray theory, put forward by Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark, has already been under scrutiny in recent years.

The latest findings are sure to add further doubt to the hypothesis, which was made famous in the controversial 2006 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle.

"We started on this game because of Svensmark's work," said Terry Sloan, part of the Lancaster team behind the research.

"If he is right, then we are going down the wrong path of taking all these expensive measures to cut carbon emissions; if he is right, we could carry on with carbon emissions as normal."

The Svensmark theory claimed that in periods of strong solar activity fewer cosmic rays made it to Earth, whereas in periods of weaker activity the reverse was true.

It then said that the rays led to cloud formation, reflecting the sun's heat back in to space. The planet therefore cools down when the sun's activity is weak, and heats up when it is strong.

However, the Lancaster team found no link between solar activity and cloud cover, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s research suggests that the contribution of man-made greenhouse gases to global warming outweighed that of the sun by a factor of thirteen to one.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Nice. That big ball of fire in the sky, which has been recently noted as slightly heating up the other planets in our solar system, has no impact to climate change.

[C-Kwik]

I was pretty skeptical about the cosmic ray thing. Though as with most of the other climate science, I'll reserve judgement until they have a more definitive answer.

But, in the meantime, I presented a copy of the Great Global Warming Swindle video to my physics prof shortly after he showed An Inconvenient Truth during class. He drives a Prius too.

To my knowledge he hasn't watched it yet as he wants to watch it along with some more collegues of his that are more qualified to comment on it since he is not a climate scientist. I'll report back when he gets back to me.

[audtatious]

Well, the opposite of what I posted above is:

The truth about global warming - it's the Sun that's to blameBy Michael Leidig and Roya Nikkhah

Global warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research.

A study by Swiss and German scientists suggests that increasing radiation from the sun is responsible for recent global climate changes.

Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: "The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures.

"The Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently - in the last 100 to 150 years."

Dr Solanki said that the brighter Sun and higher levels of "greenhouse gases", such as carbon dioxide, both contributed to the change in the Earth's temperature but it was impossible to say which had the greater impact.

Average global temperatures have increased by about 0.2 deg Celsius over the past 20 years and are widely believed to be responsible for new extremes in weather patterns. After pressure from environmentalists, politicians agreed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, promising to limit greenhouse gas emissions between 2008 and 2012. Britain ratified the protocol in 2002 and said it would cut emissions by 12.5 per cent from 1990 levels.

Globally, 1997, 1998 and 2002 were the hottest years since worldwide weather records were first collated in 1860.

Most scientists agree that greenhouse gases from fossil fuels have contributed to the warming of the planet in the past few decades but have questioned whether a brighter Sun is also responsible for rising temperatures.

To determine the Sun's role in global warming, Dr Solanki's research team measured magnetic zones on the Sun's surface known as sunspots, which are believed to intensify the Sun's energy output.

The team studied sunspot data going back several hundred years. They found that a dearth of sunspots signalled a cold period - which could last up to 50 years - but that over the past century their numbers had increased as the Earth's climate grew steadily warmer. The scientists also compared data from ice samples collected during an expedition to Greenland in 1991. The most recent samples contained the lowest recorded levels of beryllium 10 for more than 1,000 years. Beryllium 10 is a particle created by cosmic rays that decreases in the Earth's atmosphere as the magnetic energy from the Sun increases. Scientists can currently trace beryllium 10 levels back 1,150 years.

Dr Solanki does not know what is causing the Sun to burn brighter now or how long this cycle would last.

He says that the increased solar brightness over the past 20 years has not been enough to cause the observed climate changes but believes that the impact of more intense sunshine on the ozone layer and on cloud cover could be affecting the climate more than the sunlight itself.

Dr Bill Burrows, a climatologist and a member of the Royal Meteorological Society, welcomed Dr Solanki's research. "While the established view remains that the sun cannot be responsible for all the climate changes we have seen in the past 50 years or so, this study is certainly significant," he said.

"It shows that there is enough happening on the solar front to merit further research. Perhaps we are devoting too many resources to correcting human effects on the climate without being sure that we are the major contributor."

Dr David Viner, the senior research scientist at the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit, said the research showed that the sun did have an effect on global warming.

He added, however, that the study also showed that over the past 20 years the number of sunspots had remained roughly constant, while the Earth's temperature had continued to increase.

This suggested that over the past 20 years, human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation had begun to dominate "the natural factors involved in climate change", he said.

Dr Gareth Jones, a climate researcher at the Met Office, said that Dr Solanki's findings were inconclusive because the study had not incorporated other potential climate change factors.

"The Sun's radiance may well have an impact on climate change but it needs to be looked at in conjunction with other factors such as greenhouse gases, sulphate aerosols and volcano activity," he said. The research adds weight to the views of David Bellamy, the conservationist. "Global warming - at least the modern nightmare version - is a myth," he said. "I am sure of it and so are a growing number of scientists. But what is really worrying is that the world's politicians and policy-makers are not.

"Instead, they have an unshakeable faith in what has, unfortunately, become one of the central credos of the environmental movement: humans burn fossil fuels, which release increased levels of carbon dioxide - the principal so-called greenhouse gas - into the atmosphere, causing the atmosphere to heat up. They say this is global warming: I say this is poppycock."

[rn79870]

Thought you'd get a kick out of this...

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) -- Australia has begun pumping carbon dioxide underground to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, using a technology that locks dangerous gases deep in the Earth.

Geosequestration has the potential to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

Officials opened a plant in southern Victoria state on Wednesday that they said would capture and compress 110,231 tons of carbon dioxide from industry emissions and then inject it 6,500 feet underground into a depleted natural gas reservoir.

What disaster will this cause...

[audtatious]

Who knowz. Nobody is going to be happy with everything

[ishkabibble]

So, you think in the 30 minute graph people are cutting off lights and it's only sampling the high spots when they turn them on briefly? You think changing the 5 minute graph by only using a sampling of the same data every 30 minutes will change the chart as a whole?

You're right, as the first chart shows, there is absolutely no variance in a city's power consumption over the course of an hour. The lines are completely flat!

[/sarcasm]

As for the article disproving itself:

"There was a 3.5% reduction in energy use Victoria-wide, according to the National Electricity Market Management Company.

. . .

equal to taking 61,320 cars off the road for the hour."

All in all, Earth Hour is a pointless exercise (in my opinion, "Martha Stewart's polishing the brass on the Titanic"), but the article cherry picks data and compares things that are not equivalent (e.g. comparing energy consumption in one city to car sales across the entire country.) It uses the standard tactic of having a foregone conclusion and then trying to identify data that supports it.

[audtatious]

Maybe we should have them redo the chart into 3 second intervals? It does not matter at all and the 30 minute chart works just as fine as a 10 minute chart or a 5 minute chart other than there are simply more points in the lower numbers. In either case you can still draw lines regardless of whether you believe the outcome or not.

3.5% means relatively nothing one way or the other and the whole article is crap. There was definately less consumption over the period because there were some Gov't/city sites blacked out in support. What I find humerous about the whole thing is the people watching to see things go dark all over and they didn't notice a change.

[ishkabibble]

How about 1 week intervals?

[audtatious]

Then write the newspaper and tell them you want to see the charts for a month.

[confedup]

Holes can be punched into anything. Science is ever-evolving on these issues because there is no straight answer. We only fully understand a portion of our environment and what effects what. Scientists will admit that we have a long way to go in order to understand all the cause/effect of the sun, troposphere, clouds, oceans, etc. Just look at your local TV weather report and you will easily see (and they are only trying to predict up to 5 days ahead)

Of course, with manmade global warming they seem to have wrapped it up and called it "done" after the IPCC report. Fishy?

[audtatious]

Some people want it to be true and will do anything they can to make people believe it. There is a group lobbying the US to put Polar Bears on the US endangered species list regardless of the fact that the polar bear population is growing and larger than it has been in 50-100 years.

[ishkabibble]

"On January 9, 2007, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service formally proposed to list the polar bear as a threatened species."

Well, it seems the government agrees with them. From my experience, government analysts are fairly objective.

Where are your figures from?

[audtatious]

Various articles...

Seems even the fish and wildlife can't come to a concensus:

http://alaska.fws.gov/fisherie...n.htm

"World wide, polar bear populations remain relatively stable; however, climate change, contamination of the Arctic environment, potential over-harvest, and increasing human development in polar bear habitat pose conservation challenges for polar bears. " (yes, they do mention what could lessen their population....a Comet impact seems to be missing along with a nuke?)

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/...age=1Despite global warming, an ongoing study says polar bear populations are rising in the country's eastern Arctic region.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/....html""There aren't just a few more bears. There are a hell of a lot more bears," said Mitch Taylor, a polar bear biologist who has spent 20 years studying the animals. His findings back the claims of Inuit hunters who have long claimed that they were seeing more bears."

http://petesplace-peter.blogsp....html"Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada , 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present. "

There is tons of information concerning Polar Bear populations. The question is who to believe. Ever since the Polar Bear was shown in Gores movie it has taken front-row on global warming hit-lists as the icon of global warming, thus the desire to have it on the list regardless of truth or not. One of those "see what you did now?" moments

[ishkabibble]

All articles use the same source (Taylor). The CS Monitor article actually points out some of the potential flaws in Taylor's analysis.

Still don't see anything supporting your 50-100 year statement.

[audtatious]

The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 limited hunting, so with limiting hunting it's obvious that populations would have grown. Of course, that's only 36 years so let's go back further.

"In the 1950s the polar bear population up north was estimated at 5,000. Today it's 20- to 25,000, a number that has either held steady over the last 20 years or has risen slightly. In Canada, the manager of wildlife resources for the Nunavut territory of Canada has found that the population there has increased by 25 percent." - Dr. Andrew Derocher, Univ or Alberta

The above gets me in the 58 year range, which is technically 50-100 years. I can't find any data concerning populations prior, tho I'm sure it's somewhere.

Further, since you don't like Taylor:

“Polar bears, for example, survived several episodes of much warmer climate over the last 10,000 years than exists today. There is no evidence to suggest that the polar bear or its food supply is in danger of disappearing entirely with increased Arctic warming, regardless of the dire fairy-tale scenarios predicted by computer models.” - Evolutionary Biologist and Paleozoologist Dr. Susan Crockford of University of Victoria in Canada has published a number of papers in peer-reviewed academic journals

“We have this specimen that confirms the polar bear was a morphologically distinct species at least 100,000 years ago, and this basically means that the polar bear has already survived one interglacial period. This is telling us that despite the on-going warming in the Arctic today, maybe we don't have to be quite so worried about the polar bear.” - Award-winning quaternary geologist Dr. Olafur Ingolfsson, a professor from the University of Iceland, has conducted extensive expeditions and field research in both the Arctic and Antarctic

“We don’t know what the future ice conditions will be, as there is apparently considerable uncertainty in the sea ice models regarding the timing and extent of sea ice loss. Also, polar bear populations are generally healthy and have increased worldwide over the last few decades,” - Biologist Dr. Matthew Cronin, a research professor at the School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks

“I think climate change is happening, but as far as the polar bear disappearing is concerned, I have never been more convinced that this is just scaremongering. People are deliberately seeking out skinny bears and filming them to show they are dying out. That’s not right,” - Naturalist Nigel Marven is a trained zoologist, botanist, and a UK wildlife documentary maker who spent three months studying and filming polar bears in Canada's arctic in 2007.

“In warmer regions it takes far less effort to ensure survival. How did the polar bear survive the last warm period? … Look at the polar bear’s close relative, the brown bear. It is found across a broad geographic region, ranging from Europe across the Near East and North Asia, to Canada and the United States. Whether bears survive will depend on human beings, not the climate.” - Biologist Josef Reichholf, who heads the Vertebrates Department at the National Zoological Collection in Munich

“I tell you there are as many bears here now as there were when I was a kid. Churchill [in Northern Canada] is full of these scientists going on about vanishing bears and thinner bears. They come here preaching doom, but I question whether some of them really have the bears’ best interests at heart.” - Polar bear expert Dennis Compayre, formerly of the conservation group Polar Bears International, has studied the bears for almost 30 years in their natural habitat

“Why scare the families of the world with tales that polar bears are heading for extinction when there is good evidence that there are now twice as many of these iconic animals, most doing well in the Arctic than there were 20 years ago?” - Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner, former lecturer at Durham University, and host of a popular UK TV series on wildlife

I can find more if you like

[audtatious]

No comments on the above?

Anyway, seems the BBC has no spine and will change stories to make envionmentalists happy:

http://www.youtube.com/v/216v5AoQcFQ

[pinkfishtacoyum]

If I understand my brother in law (works at NOAA) correctly, the two main green house gases that environmentalist won't talk about.Water Vapor- the largest green house gas.Methane- Pretty vicious green house gas that is mainly released into the atmosphere by rice production. Of course we can ask the hungry to give up their food, so we will ask everyone else to ditch their cars, electricity and everything else the developing nations have. Makes me pine for the good old days when everyone was decrying the coming ice age.

Watervapor makes up most of the greenhouse gas emissions but carbon dioxide is the next largest.

If global warming is man caused ( which i dont think it is ) anyway of solving it would be nothing but apocalyptic on every economy across the globe. Many developing countries are left out of environmental acts that is because the countries could not survive if they had to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions. How is it that developed countries can expect to survive if we have to leave out developing countries so that they can stay alive. Every solution proposed can be compared to Kurt Vonnegut's " Harrison Bergeron " because every solution proposes bringing the top down not bringing the down up.

[240sx_Guy]

just post up your report hoe

[ishkabibble]

No comments on the above?

Sorry, was working on 3 Nissans for most of the weekend.

Much better. I'm leaning towards your side of the polar bear argument now. Still believe in global warming though.

[audtatious]

I believe in Global Warming as it is a natural cycle of the earth. I do not believe in man made global warming

[ishkabibble]

I believe in Global Warming as it is a natural cycle of the earth. I do not believe in man made global warming

I'm really gassy tonight, so I will have to disagree