An Independent Coast Observer (our local weekly newspaper, Gualala, California) reader says not believing in evolution is not believing in science, and that this should be a litmus test for voters. Interestingly, since studies show a higher percentage of Democrats than Republicans doubt evolution, I support them not voting for a candidate who believes in evolution.
Here in Northern California, not believing in science defines Democrat. Among many local unscientific belief systems are opposition to genetically modified foods and irradiation of food (and Smart meters), belief that organic foods are better, and of course, belief in catastrophic man-caused global warming.
Voluminous and rigorous scientific studies confirm that genetically modified foods (GMO) taste better, last longer, produce more using less fertilizer, pesticide, and water, and provide more healthful nutrition. A study concluded that opposing attitudes towards GMO, rather than science, were the determinant factors. Similar studies have shown that irradiated foods are better and safer, but again attitudes trump science.
Two years ago, the British Nutrition Foundation said exhaustive research by the Food Standards Agency confirms its advice that 'organic food offers no benefits over conventionally produced food in terms of nutrition'. Aside from psychic reward, the significant additional cost of organic food wastes resources. Organics also pose health threats; for example, an E. coli outbreak in Germany this year resulted in 3,900 cases including 908 instances of severe kidney failure and 52 deaths.
This week Al Gore underlined the desperation of Warmistas by presenting a 24-hour “Gore-bore-athon”. Given that global temperature have been flat for fifteen years, sea level increase became decrease, and accumulated tropical cyclone energy has fallen to its lowest level in thirty years, Al abandoned global warming and grasped “climate wierding” (all severe weather events are caused by man).
Dr. Tim Ball, Climatologist, noted: “Gore is taking normal events and claiming they are abnormal.”
And that’s unscientific.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Where Has All The Greenland Ice Gone? London Times Atlas Clueless
The London Times Atlas recently created an incredible error, one that is hard to explain by rational analysis. According to its publisher, HarperCollins, the atlas is "turning Greenland 'green' because the new edition has had to erase 15% of Greenland's once permanent ice cover". Scientists immediately jumped all over this. Were it true, sea levels would have risen a bit more than three feet in twelve years, instead of less than the half-inch observed. This Guardian article Times Atlas ice error attempts to make lemonade from this lemon, but ends leaving the sour taste of advocacy science.
This is the comment I posted to the Guardian:
As Greenland ice supposedly shrank during the past 15 years, the obvious question is where did the water go after the ice melted? To answer "the sea" may seem as obvious as the question, but wait! Slow sea level increase has recently become sea level decrease, and the missing water must be somewhere. It's not in the oceans.
Quietly, without blaring headlines, in many inconvenient areas of the Earth, ice caps and glaciers are growing. Indeed, simply Googling "Greenland ice growing" produces links to many recent studies of ice cap and glacier growth worldwide. Antarctica as a whole is gaining ice. Ditto Greenland. And glaciers in Asia and North America too.
Of course, nothing is as simple as Al Gore and the Warmistas tell us. Historically, tepid water intrusion from the Atlantic into the Arctic caused a huge reduction of sea ice. This then became the source of the water vapor which was carried over the Hudson Bay area and produced incredible snow fall, feeding the ice cap that eventually extended over Canada and the northern United States. In the process, sea levels fell over 400 feet, eventually cutting off the Atlantic flow into the Arctic (the shallowest ocean) and ending the Ice Age just 12,000 years ago. Sea levels have risen an average of over 3 feet per century since, much greater at first, slowing to about 6 inches per century the past 1,000 years.
Recent sea level rise has mostly been caused by man, but not by warming. Enormous pumping of ground water and draining of lakes for agricultural needs has resulted in "de-watering," the taking of water from the land and depositing it in the seas. At the same time, de-watering causes land subsidence, leading to the appearance of sea levels rising as lands sink.
Recent ocean cooling, giving the lie to significant warming, can also play a part since colder water is denser and has reduced volume. Oddly, a recent study attempts to explain that the lack of warming the past 15 years is a result of heat being sequestered in the depths of the oceans. Unfortunately for this hypothesis, the world wide ocean temperature monitoring system (ARGOS) has not shown this heat being sequestered.
So far observational science refutes computer climate modeling. When this happens, the models must be changed or discarded, but Al Gore and his Acolytes cry, "Throw out the observations."
This is the comment I posted to the Guardian:
As Greenland ice supposedly shrank during the past 15 years, the obvious question is where did the water go after the ice melted? To answer "the sea" may seem as obvious as the question, but wait! Slow sea level increase has recently become sea level decrease, and the missing water must be somewhere. It's not in the oceans.
Quietly, without blaring headlines, in many inconvenient areas of the Earth, ice caps and glaciers are growing. Indeed, simply Googling "Greenland ice growing" produces links to many recent studies of ice cap and glacier growth worldwide. Antarctica as a whole is gaining ice. Ditto Greenland. And glaciers in Asia and North America too.
Of course, nothing is as simple as Al Gore and the Warmistas tell us. Historically, tepid water intrusion from the Atlantic into the Arctic caused a huge reduction of sea ice. This then became the source of the water vapor which was carried over the Hudson Bay area and produced incredible snow fall, feeding the ice cap that eventually extended over Canada and the northern United States. In the process, sea levels fell over 400 feet, eventually cutting off the Atlantic flow into the Arctic (the shallowest ocean) and ending the Ice Age just 12,000 years ago. Sea levels have risen an average of over 3 feet per century since, much greater at first, slowing to about 6 inches per century the past 1,000 years.
Recent sea level rise has mostly been caused by man, but not by warming. Enormous pumping of ground water and draining of lakes for agricultural needs has resulted in "de-watering," the taking of water from the land and depositing it in the seas. At the same time, de-watering causes land subsidence, leading to the appearance of sea levels rising as lands sink.
Recent ocean cooling, giving the lie to significant warming, can also play a part since colder water is denser and has reduced volume. Oddly, a recent study attempts to explain that the lack of warming the past 15 years is a result of heat being sequestered in the depths of the oceans. Unfortunately for this hypothesis, the world wide ocean temperature monitoring system (ARGOS) has not shown this heat being sequestered.
So far observational science refutes computer climate modeling. When this happens, the models must be changed or discarded, but Al Gore and his Acolytes cry, "Throw out the observations."
Thursday, September 15, 2011
The "Tinkerbell" Effect
By noting that the Arctic ice cap has shrunk 22 percent since 1979, Mr. Jacobs exemplifies the “Tinkerbell” effect and “young earth” philosophy, since regular satellite imaging of the polar cap only began in 1979, and Arctic ice was near a maximum then (remember the “global cooling” hysteria of the 1970’s?). 1960-70’s cooling followed an earlier warming period reported in The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington, March 29, 1958:
“... (everybody knows) existing glaciers — like those in the Swiss passes and Alaska — are melting. How could new ice hulks creep in upon us while weather experts are announcing that even the North Polar ice caps are thinning? And … weather records show the weather has been growing warmer over the years - so warm in fact that certain glaciers are melting fast enough to raise the level of the world’s oceans. Can such signs really foreshadow the coming of a new Ice Age?”
Dr. Maurice Ewing, in 1958 one of America’s leading oceanographers and geophysicists, produced this study. Read the complete, fascinating report on one of my blog posts.
Very recently, scientifically speaking: “Multiple proxy records and climate models indicate that early Holocene temperatures (about 8,000 years ago) were higher than today and that the Arctic contained less ice…”
Even Warmista scientists admit that doubling atmospheric CO2 could only raise global temperature one degree Celsius, but that additional warming will come from “positive” feedbacks (which climate science proves never existed because positive feedbacks would have caused unstoppable run-away warming).
Warmistas, who think Al Gore invented climate science, are in denial about its basics: it’s always changing, change is natural, and all this was happening before 1979. Mankind contributes only 3% of CO2 emissions, and it’s foolishly ignorant and arrogant to think that minuscule changes in a trace gas drive climate change. It never has.
“... (everybody knows) existing glaciers — like those in the Swiss passes and Alaska — are melting. How could new ice hulks creep in upon us while weather experts are announcing that even the North Polar ice caps are thinning? And … weather records show the weather has been growing warmer over the years - so warm in fact that certain glaciers are melting fast enough to raise the level of the world’s oceans. Can such signs really foreshadow the coming of a new Ice Age?”
Dr. Maurice Ewing, in 1958 one of America’s leading oceanographers and geophysicists, produced this study. Read the complete, fascinating report on one of my blog posts.
Very recently, scientifically speaking: “Multiple proxy records and climate models indicate that early Holocene temperatures (about 8,000 years ago) were higher than today and that the Arctic contained less ice…”
Even Warmista scientists admit that doubling atmospheric CO2 could only raise global temperature one degree Celsius, but that additional warming will come from “positive” feedbacks (which climate science proves never existed because positive feedbacks would have caused unstoppable run-away warming).
Warmistas, who think Al Gore invented climate science, are in denial about its basics: it’s always changing, change is natural, and all this was happening before 1979. Mankind contributes only 3% of CO2 emissions, and it’s foolishly ignorant and arrogant to think that minuscule changes in a trace gas drive climate change. It never has.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
"Don't Miss" TV - Al Gore's 24 Hours of Reality
“Don’t miss” TV! Al Gore’s "24 hours of Reality" scheduled for September 14 and 15. Al says his Climate Reality Project “will connect the dots between recent extreme weather events and manmade pollution.” Alice and I just left the East Coast days before it was hit by a heat wave (relax, Al, 39 states’ heat records were set over 50 years ago) and I can see why, since the entire case of manmade global warming has collapsed around him, that he would take his movement into extreme weather because this is a much easier emotional case for him to make.
Al, everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.
They can’t - climate change is natural.
At any rate, global climate has slightly cooled for the past 15 years. A recent study says that this is because China has increased aerosols that block sunlight by burning huge quantities of coal (the very thing that increases atmospheric CO2 and supposedly global warming). However, since these aerosols were released in the Northern Hemisphere and there is little atmospheric mixing between hemispheres, it’s strange that there is slight warming in the Northern Hemisphere where the aerosols supposedly cause cooling, and cooling in the Southern Hemisphere without benefit of aerosols. Of course, other studies indicate overall aerosol levels haven’t increased for several decades, so the whole thing becomes warmist alarmists taking a fishing trip to a wading pool desperate to catch something to correlate to the lack of warming.
Still, even without warming, Al Gore and His Acolytes continue to point to every flood, drought, heat wave, snow storm, tornado, hurricane, earthquake, tsunami, &etc. as proof of the evils of warming, even as they explain why there is no warming.
Al, everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.
They can’t - climate change is natural.
At any rate, global climate has slightly cooled for the past 15 years. A recent study says that this is because China has increased aerosols that block sunlight by burning huge quantities of coal (the very thing that increases atmospheric CO2 and supposedly global warming). However, since these aerosols were released in the Northern Hemisphere and there is little atmospheric mixing between hemispheres, it’s strange that there is slight warming in the Northern Hemisphere where the aerosols supposedly cause cooling, and cooling in the Southern Hemisphere without benefit of aerosols. Of course, other studies indicate overall aerosol levels haven’t increased for several decades, so the whole thing becomes warmist alarmists taking a fishing trip to a wading pool desperate to catch something to correlate to the lack of warming.
Still, even without warming, Al Gore and His Acolytes continue to point to every flood, drought, heat wave, snow storm, tornado, hurricane, earthquake, tsunami, &etc. as proof of the evils of warming, even as they explain why there is no warming.
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Be Really Bold, Obama
President Obama challenged Republicans to extend payroll tax cuts and increase infrastructure spending. “(Republicans say they) are the party of tax cuts,” he said.... Show us what you got.”
To start, Republicans won’t cut taxes on Social Security when it is already in deficit spending, and do another stimulus plan when the last abjectly failed.
To really accomplish something, Obama should propose ending the mortgage interest deduction. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “just three (heavily Democrat) metro areas - greater New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco - receive more than 75 percent of the subsidy…The bigger the mortgage and the higher one's income, the bigger the deduction. A person in the top tax bracket of 35 percent who borrows $1 million can get a tax break of $17,500… households earning less than $75,000 get less than $200… More than three-fourths of taxpayers do not itemize, and so don't claim the deduction at all. Those who rent or have paid off their mortgages, most of them seniors, get no benefit.”
While Obama is being bold, he should also propose stopping the exclusion of employer-paid health insurance from taxes, which is the biggest federal tax subsidy.
And to be really bold, he should propose replacing the IRS with a national 15% sales tax. Much higher economic growth would result from eliminating the tax bias against work, savings, and investment. That one act would eliminate every unfair tax subsidy, be they for the wealthy or corporations, plus it would eliminate the unproductive economic drain of tax accounting and reporting.
Since I’m a CPA, real estate agent, and anti-tax hawk, my positions on these issues put the good of our country above my personal welfare. I’m one of Biden’s “barbarians”, one of the “sons of bitches” Hoffa wants taken out.
To start, Republicans won’t cut taxes on Social Security when it is already in deficit spending, and do another stimulus plan when the last abjectly failed.
To really accomplish something, Obama should propose ending the mortgage interest deduction. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “just three (heavily Democrat) metro areas - greater New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco - receive more than 75 percent of the subsidy…The bigger the mortgage and the higher one's income, the bigger the deduction. A person in the top tax bracket of 35 percent who borrows $1 million can get a tax break of $17,500… households earning less than $75,000 get less than $200… More than three-fourths of taxpayers do not itemize, and so don't claim the deduction at all. Those who rent or have paid off their mortgages, most of them seniors, get no benefit.”
While Obama is being bold, he should also propose stopping the exclusion of employer-paid health insurance from taxes, which is the biggest federal tax subsidy.
And to be really bold, he should propose replacing the IRS with a national 15% sales tax. Much higher economic growth would result from eliminating the tax bias against work, savings, and investment. That one act would eliminate every unfair tax subsidy, be they for the wealthy or corporations, plus it would eliminate the unproductive economic drain of tax accounting and reporting.
Since I’m a CPA, real estate agent, and anti-tax hawk, my positions on these issues put the good of our country above my personal welfare. I’m one of Biden’s “barbarians”, one of the “sons of bitches” Hoffa wants taken out.
Thursday, September 01, 2011
Blowin' in the Wind - Tropical Storm Irene
Hurricane Irene was not nearly as windy as the politicians and warmists proclaiming it a harbinger of our climate future. As always, such talk inspired me to seek truth in science studies and climate histories. A 2011 study of 2,200 years of North Carolina’s Barrier Island storm history (the area most affected by Irene) concluded that climatic conditions of both the Medieval Warm Period (850 to 1350AD) and Little Ice Age (1350 to 1850AD) compared to the present show "a general decrease in storminess" reflecting "more stable climate conditions (and) fewer storm impacts, and a decrease in the average wind intensity and wave energy," which suggests that the mean temperature of the past century has been neither as cold nor as warm as it was during the LIA and MWP, respectively.
In 1938 a Category 3 hurricane struck Long Island, killing between 682 and 800 people, damaging or destroying over 57,000 homes, and causing property losses estimated at $4.77 billion (2011 dollars). It’s still the most powerful, costliest, and deadliest hurricane in New England history.
Earlier, in 1815 a Category 3 hurricane hit New York City directly, causing extensive damage and creating an inlet that separated two Long Island resort towns into two separate barrier islands
In 1821 a Category 4 storm created the highest recorded storm surge in Manhattan of nearly 13 feet.
The 1869 Saxby Gale decimated the Maine coastline and the Canadian Outer Banks
In 1893 a Category 2 hurricane directly hit New York City, causing a great storm surge that pummeled the coastline, completely removing Long Island’s Hog Island resort.
Irene, a tropical storm when it reached New York which never made landfall as a hurricane, is much ado about nothing; panicked politicians and whacky warmists – excuse redundancies – foolishly hitched onto this global warming bandwagon.
In 1938 a Category 3 hurricane struck Long Island, killing between 682 and 800 people, damaging or destroying over 57,000 homes, and causing property losses estimated at $4.77 billion (2011 dollars). It’s still the most powerful, costliest, and deadliest hurricane in New England history.
Earlier, in 1815 a Category 3 hurricane hit New York City directly, causing extensive damage and creating an inlet that separated two Long Island resort towns into two separate barrier islands
In 1821 a Category 4 storm created the highest recorded storm surge in Manhattan of nearly 13 feet.
The 1869 Saxby Gale decimated the Maine coastline and the Canadian Outer Banks
In 1893 a Category 2 hurricane directly hit New York City, causing a great storm surge that pummeled the coastline, completely removing Long Island’s Hog Island resort.
Irene, a tropical storm when it reached New York which never made landfall as a hurricane, is much ado about nothing; panicked politicians and whacky warmists – excuse redundancies – foolishly hitched onto this global warming bandwagon.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)