For nine years Alice and I lived on a small ranch east of Livermore, California. Two of my closest neighbors were the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and the Altamont Pass wind farm. I could only see a hint of the sprawling Livermore Lab campus, but from my backyard I could watch many of the wind turbines at Altamont not doing much.
On two occasions recently I drove through the Altamont Pass on Highway 580 and both times did not see even one wind turbine turning. The first time was understandable; it was just after noon on a desultory summer day. The second time, however, was during a driving rain storm.
Aside from their demonic ability to kill Eagles and raptors during their rare periods of operation, Altamont Pass should be viewed as a living laboratory of the futility of wind power. (For a very clear exposition of this point, click on this link to an excellent Master Resource blog post)
Its near neighbor, the Livermore Lab, is another matter. A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle reported: "Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory reported Thursday they have taken a major step toward harnessing the forces that power the sun in an effort to create unlimited energy on Earth."
There it is in a nutshell. On the one hand, the supposed scientifically enlightened pursue a very limited, costly, and as common sense demonstrates, futile method of meeting burgeoning energy needs. On the other hand, science is just taking baby steps to develop nuclear power production, which assuredly will one day become the means of satisfying mankind's ever increasing energy needs. One direction leads nowhere while fueling the cry that what must be done is for mankind to stop economic progress. The other direction unleashes the potential for mankind to achieve economic security for all, thereby reducing the need for politicians and their acolytes to preside over the division of shrinking resources.
We know which road politicians will choose, so common sense (and science) will lead us to choose the other.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Global Warming – Last Place and Falling Fast
The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press published its annual assessment of the public’s – our – priorities for 2010. Unlike the Obama Administration, we the people seem to have arranged our priorities by common sense rather than liberal ideology. The economy, jobs, terrorism – makes sense to me.
Last and falling steadily, global warming.
Interestingly, this steady decline in our concern about global warming preceded the disclosures of the chicanery and incompetence practiced by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC). After recent disclosures (slowly gaining traction in the news against the main stream media’s attempts to ignore them) concerning misrepresenting and suppressing skeptical studies of global warming, making unsupported alarmist claims of Himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2035 and of ocean acidification in a decade, and using articles from advocacy organizations like the World Wildlife Fund as if they were peer-reviewed science studies, the next Pew review shouldn’t even include global warming on its list of public priorities.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Wikipedia - The Heavy Hand of William M. Connolley Distorts Global Warming
Every article concerning climate change in Wikipedia seems to have been edited by William M. Connolley to the detriment of neutrality and balance. Mr. Connolley has edited 5,428 Wikipedia articles, and controlled the editing process of many of them (his editing privileges may have been rescinded. Now how will the damage he's done be undone?). Until recently (circa 2007) He was a member of RealClimate and contributed to their unabashed promotion of anthropogenic global warming.
For instance, Wikipedia has a page: Description of the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in IPCC reports .
The opening paragraphs of this page are below:
For instance, Wikipedia has a page: Description of the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in IPCC reports .
The opening paragraphs of this page are below:
The description of the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in IPCC reports has changed since the first report in 1990 as scientific understanding of the temperature record of the past 1000 years has improved. The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA) are the best-known temperature fluctuations in the last millennium.
Critics of the "hockey stick graph" of later reports have claimed that the record of the MWP and LIA were suppressed in the IPCC Third Assessment Report, although every report has discussed the phenomena.
When the various links above are followed, what is found are one-sided expositions of the Mann et all “hockey stick” temperature reconstruction of the past 1,000 years – which wrote off the Medieval Warm Period – and dismissal of the criticism by Steve McIntyre and the total ignoring of Soon et al finding that the Medieval Warm Period was a global phenomenon and was warmer than the present period. It also has no mention that the tree-ring proxy reconstructions of temperatures do not show warming after 1960, casting doubt on their ability to show prior warming (i.e., Medieval Warm Period warming).
The assertion that the "scientific understanding of the temperature record of the past 1,000 years has improved" is unsupported by any by any reference to what caused the improvement, and in what way it was improved.
The statement concerning suppression of the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age, that "every report has addressed the phenomena" can only be considered accurate to the extent that some contained a brief mention without discussion, and others contained brief, broad dismissals of them.
From the first progress report of the IPCC from 1990 on page 202, the above is graphics 7c [12], in which the Medieval Warm Period was portrayed as clearly warmer than the present.Any claim by Wikipedia of fairness and neutrality in their pages concerning climate change are therefore subverted by the heavy-handed editing of William M. Connolley, who selectively includes or omits information and sources on the basis of whether they are in accord with anthropogenic global warming.
Apparently Mr. Connolley thinks he can simulate fairness by adhering to the strict title of this Wikipedia page, that it is about the description of the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in IPCC reports without going into the criticisms of the IPCC description.
I could do the same by making a post describing how God created the Earth 6,000 years ago, and only allowing items in the post concerning God’s creative accomplishments. I could dismiss criticisms by noting that many theologians are on board with my post, and have been for thousands of years.
I don’t understand why Wikipedia allows the pursuit of knowledge to be hijacked by an advocate of a point of view. Then again, the Church did the same with Galileo, lost credibility, and opened the way for the Reformation.
Wikipedia, reform thyself!
“Robust” is the Global Warmists Favorite Word
What is it with the Warmists and “robust”?
Dr. Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), admitted that they had wrongly asserted that glaciers in the Himalayas would melt by 2035, but then defended the IPCC, saying it was wrong to generalize based on a single mistake. ‘Our procedure is robust,’ he added.
“Was ist das “robust”? I sputter in German (confronted with such arrogance, my English failed me.)
What is robust about a review methodology that (1) includes a 1999 news report on Himalayan glaciers that was never reviewed by glacier science experts? (2) that then was lifted from and cited as a source a 2005 World Wildlife Fund report that contained a basic arithmetic error (the rate of average annual glacier retreat for 121 years was determined by dividing the total distance by 21 instead of 121)? and (2) ignored critical comments generated in the course of the IPCC “robust” review process?
Professor Graham Cogley, a glacier expert at Trent University in Canada, said the claim multiplies the rate at which glaciers have been seen to melt by a factor of about 25.
An authoritative report published last November by the Indian government said: “Himalayan glaciers have not in any way exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat.”
Raj Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, denounced the Indian government report as “voodoo science”.
However, it is apparently robust voodoo science.
Next we consider Michael Mann of “hockey stick” fame, immortalized by Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” Inconveniently for both Gore and Mann, the hockey stick has been totally broken and discarded by serious climatologists, thanks primarily to the outstanding work and persistence of Stephen McIntyre. Suffice it to say, “trees don’t make good thermometers,” since they grow well with more rain, more CO2, logging which removes their neighbors, farming that does the same and adds fertilizers, and sometimes grow poorly when it gets really hot. Mann et al compounded their tree-ring proxy scam by using small, carefully selected samples, and by using algorithms that produced hockey sticks even when fed random, spurious data.
But with all these problems, a global warming enthusiast pronounced historical temperature determination through Mann’s tree-ring proxies to be robust. I think what “robust” means in this context is that a lot of global warming alarmists – Mann, Briffa, Jones – are complicit in the fraud.
Dr. Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), admitted that they had wrongly asserted that glaciers in the Himalayas would melt by 2035, but then defended the IPCC, saying it was wrong to generalize based on a single mistake. ‘Our procedure is robust,’ he added.
“Was ist das “robust”? I sputter in German (confronted with such arrogance, my English failed me.)
What is robust about a review methodology that (1) includes a 1999 news report on Himalayan glaciers that was never reviewed by glacier science experts? (2) that then was lifted from and cited as a source a 2005 World Wildlife Fund report that contained a basic arithmetic error (the rate of average annual glacier retreat for 121 years was determined by dividing the total distance by 21 instead of 121)? and (2) ignored critical comments generated in the course of the IPCC “robust” review process?
Professor Graham Cogley, a glacier expert at Trent University in Canada, said the claim multiplies the rate at which glaciers have been seen to melt by a factor of about 25.
An authoritative report published last November by the Indian government said: “Himalayan glaciers have not in any way exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat.”
Raj Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, denounced the Indian government report as “voodoo science”.
However, it is apparently robust voodoo science.
Next we consider Michael Mann of “hockey stick” fame, immortalized by Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” Inconveniently for both Gore and Mann, the hockey stick has been totally broken and discarded by serious climatologists, thanks primarily to the outstanding work and persistence of Stephen McIntyre. Suffice it to say, “trees don’t make good thermometers,” since they grow well with more rain, more CO2, logging which removes their neighbors, farming that does the same and adds fertilizers, and sometimes grow poorly when it gets really hot. Mann et al compounded their tree-ring proxy scam by using small, carefully selected samples, and by using algorithms that produced hockey sticks even when fed random, spurious data.
But with all these problems, a global warming enthusiast pronounced historical temperature determination through Mann’s tree-ring proxies to be robust. I think what “robust” means in this context is that a lot of global warming alarmists – Mann, Briffa, Jones – are complicit in the fraud.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Two Interesting Points Debunking Global Warming
It seems we notice what interests us. I’m very interested in seat belt goodies - and debunking the Warmists.
Some recent writers to our weekly newspaper, the Independent Coast Observer, called me a global warming denier and claimed that science by consensus supports their view of anthropogenic global warming. However, we have to thank Al Gore for inadvertently teaching us that 600,000 years of Vostok (Antarctica) ice core samples show CO² lags rather than precedes warming. If further studies are needed to prove that CO² is not the primary driver of global warming, we only have to look at the past seventy years to see that in over half of those years we had cooling as CO² rose.
In fact, the claim that recent warming is unprecedented was disproven by the observed warming of 1860 to 1880, 1910 to 1940, the Medieval Warm Period (800 to 1300 AD), and other periods of the past 10,000 years such as the Roman and the Holocene Climate Optimum.
Adding to the chaos of Climategate –leaked emails revealed how UN IPCC scientists tried to withhold data from public scrutiny – other recent disclosures shed light on the dubious science of anthropogenic warming. The first concerns melting Himalayan glaciers.
During our vacation in India, Alice and I read an article by an Indian scientist that contradicted claims by the UN IPCC that Indian glaciers were melting rapidly. Then we learned that the Indian skeptic was right. The UN claim in 2007 that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 was based on a news story generated by a brief telephone interview with a little-known Indian scientist in 1999. The scientist’s research was never peer-reviewed and does not support what he purportedly said – and he now denies what was reported in his name - in the interview. A UN official now says he will recommend that the glacier assertions be eliminated from the IPCC assessment.
The fallacious Indian glacier melting ties in with apocalyptic predictions by Al Gore and the IPCC of sea level increases of six feet or more by 2100.
Jason Lowe, a leading climate researcher: "(W)e think such a big rise by 2100 is actually incredibly unlikely. The mathematical approach used to calculate the rise is simplistic and unsatisfactory."
The consensus may be frozen, but its science is melting away.
Some recent writers to our weekly newspaper, the Independent Coast Observer, called me a global warming denier and claimed that science by consensus supports their view of anthropogenic global warming. However, we have to thank Al Gore for inadvertently teaching us that 600,000 years of Vostok (Antarctica) ice core samples show CO² lags rather than precedes warming. If further studies are needed to prove that CO² is not the primary driver of global warming, we only have to look at the past seventy years to see that in over half of those years we had cooling as CO² rose.
In fact, the claim that recent warming is unprecedented was disproven by the observed warming of 1860 to 1880, 1910 to 1940, the Medieval Warm Period (800 to 1300 AD), and other periods of the past 10,000 years such as the Roman and the Holocene Climate Optimum.
Adding to the chaos of Climategate –leaked emails revealed how UN IPCC scientists tried to withhold data from public scrutiny – other recent disclosures shed light on the dubious science of anthropogenic warming. The first concerns melting Himalayan glaciers.
During our vacation in India, Alice and I read an article by an Indian scientist that contradicted claims by the UN IPCC that Indian glaciers were melting rapidly. Then we learned that the Indian skeptic was right. The UN claim in 2007 that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 was based on a news story generated by a brief telephone interview with a little-known Indian scientist in 1999. The scientist’s research was never peer-reviewed and does not support what he purportedly said – and he now denies what was reported in his name - in the interview. A UN official now says he will recommend that the glacier assertions be eliminated from the IPCC assessment.
The fallacious Indian glacier melting ties in with apocalyptic predictions by Al Gore and the IPCC of sea level increases of six feet or more by 2100.
Jason Lowe, a leading climate researcher: "(W)e think such a big rise by 2100 is actually incredibly unlikely. The mathematical approach used to calculate the rise is simplistic and unsatisfactory."
The consensus may be frozen, but its science is melting away.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Really Dumb Football - San Diego Chargers, Dallas Cowboys
A friend watched the NFL playoff between the Dallas Cowboys and Minnesota Vikings with a Cowboys fan and his pet monkey. The Cowboys started off strongly, and as they gained one first down after another, with each first down the monkey went giddy with excitement, leaping, screeching, and jumping excitedly from chair to chair, from wall to wall. Each celebration was wilder than the preceding. My friend had never seen anything like it.
“That’s incredible!” my friend exclaimed. “What does your monkey do when the Cowboys do something really special?”
“I don’t know,” the Cowboy supporter replied, “I’ve only had him for ten years.”
If Wade Phillips continues as the Dallas coach, the monkey probably won’t live long enough to give us the answer.
Wade Phillips was a strong contender, but Norv Turner can’t be beat for NFL playoff stupidity. In the first instance, his players didn’t show poise or composure. It’s one thing to miss a tackle, or drop some passes – the players are human, and their opponents are trying to make them miss, or make mistakes. However, losing 15 yards for taunting after doing a great job of covering a kickoff, or kicking the challenge flag when instant replay was going to confirm that the player made a good sideline catch are the sort of undisciplined acts that a coach should have indoctrinated his players against.
But what can you expect from a coach like Norv Turner who can’t even discipline himself against making stupid decisions? Turner’s decision to on-side kick was criticized by announcer Phil Simms in detail before the kick was made, and Simms gave all the logical reasons why an on-side kick was a bad idea with over two minutes to play and a timeout and two-minute warning to stop the clock. First, on-side kicks usually don’t work, especially if one is expected. Second, with a normal kick-off, the Jets would probably start deep in their own territory, particularly since they were prepared to defend against the on-side kick and had their “hands” team in with only one kick returner and no blockers deep to receive a normal kickoff. Third, if the Jets started on or about their own 20-yard line, they would probably only call conservative running plays, and if faced with a fourth down and a yard to go, would punt instead of going for it on fourth down.
Not so strangely, after many years of watching NFL football (and playing high school eight-man football half-a-century ago), I had already arrived at the same position concerning an on-side kick as Phil Simms. It’s too bad for the Chargers that Norv Turner didn’t tap his football knowledge to arrive at the same conclusion.
Having the Jets think you were going to on-side kick was a good idea. Actually doing it wasn’t.
“That’s incredible!” my friend exclaimed. “What does your monkey do when the Cowboys do something really special?”
“I don’t know,” the Cowboy supporter replied, “I’ve only had him for ten years.”
If Wade Phillips continues as the Dallas coach, the monkey probably won’t live long enough to give us the answer.
Wade Phillips was a strong contender, but Norv Turner can’t be beat for NFL playoff stupidity. In the first instance, his players didn’t show poise or composure. It’s one thing to miss a tackle, or drop some passes – the players are human, and their opponents are trying to make them miss, or make mistakes. However, losing 15 yards for taunting after doing a great job of covering a kickoff, or kicking the challenge flag when instant replay was going to confirm that the player made a good sideline catch are the sort of undisciplined acts that a coach should have indoctrinated his players against.
But what can you expect from a coach like Norv Turner who can’t even discipline himself against making stupid decisions? Turner’s decision to on-side kick was criticized by announcer Phil Simms in detail before the kick was made, and Simms gave all the logical reasons why an on-side kick was a bad idea with over two minutes to play and a timeout and two-minute warning to stop the clock. First, on-side kicks usually don’t work, especially if one is expected. Second, with a normal kick-off, the Jets would probably start deep in their own territory, particularly since they were prepared to defend against the on-side kick and had their “hands” team in with only one kick returner and no blockers deep to receive a normal kickoff. Third, if the Jets started on or about their own 20-yard line, they would probably only call conservative running plays, and if faced with a fourth down and a yard to go, would punt instead of going for it on fourth down.
Not so strangely, after many years of watching NFL football (and playing high school eight-man football half-a-century ago), I had already arrived at the same position concerning an on-side kick as Phil Simms. It’s too bad for the Chargers that Norv Turner didn’t tap his football knowledge to arrive at the same conclusion.
Having the Jets think you were going to on-side kick was a good idea. Actually doing it wasn’t.
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Global Cooling - Al Gore Shows the Way
I declare that this recent prolonged cold period is the beginning of global cooling - and of course is also the end of global warming.
"Wait," I hear the cry of Al Gore and His Acolytes. "How can you declare global cooling after just a month of some of the worst cold weather in the past 100 years?"
That's the easy part. Al Gore and The Warming Gurus declared a piddling Category 3 hurricane, Katrina, proof of global warming just because it got a lot of headlines for its unlucky strike ("lucky" for the Warmists) on New Orleans. So after 15 years of no appreciable warming, and almost ten years of modest cooling, I feel it's time to declare the coming of Global Cooling.
It's not like it's unprecedented. For over a million years we have had long glacial periods broken by shorter interglacial periods. The last Ice Age ended just over 10,000 years ago, and since then we have had warmer periods than today interspersed with cooler periods. In fact, during the past 11,400 years about 7,500 of those years were warmer than the present. However, the warming has been diminishing and the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850 AD) was colder than recent preceding cold periods.
It looks like we're on the verge of another cold period, probably one similar to the Ice Age. Unlike Al Gore and His Panic Mongers, I don't think it will happen fast. The mile-thick ice sheets over Chicago won't be there for another 20,000 years. By then the sea levels will be over 400 feet lower than today.
You wouldn't need a Channel Tunnel to go from Europe to the United Kingdom, just a snowmobile or skis.
More on this
"Wait," I hear the cry of Al Gore and His Acolytes. "How can you declare global cooling after just a month of some of the worst cold weather in the past 100 years?"
That's the easy part. Al Gore and The Warming Gurus declared a piddling Category 3 hurricane, Katrina, proof of global warming just because it got a lot of headlines for its unlucky strike ("lucky" for the Warmists) on New Orleans. So after 15 years of no appreciable warming, and almost ten years of modest cooling, I feel it's time to declare the coming of Global Cooling.
It's not like it's unprecedented. For over a million years we have had long glacial periods broken by shorter interglacial periods. The last Ice Age ended just over 10,000 years ago, and since then we have had warmer periods than today interspersed with cooler periods. In fact, during the past 11,400 years about 7,500 of those years were warmer than the present. However, the warming has been diminishing and the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850 AD) was colder than recent preceding cold periods.
It looks like we're on the verge of another cold period, probably one similar to the Ice Age. Unlike Al Gore and His Panic Mongers, I don't think it will happen fast. The mile-thick ice sheets over Chicago won't be there for another 20,000 years. By then the sea levels will be over 400 feet lower than today.
You wouldn't need a Channel Tunnel to go from Europe to the United Kingdom, just a snowmobile or skis.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Senator Baucus not Drunk?
If Democrat Senator Max Baucus was not drunk while giving this speech, he's in really bad shape.
If he is this rambling and incoherent when sober, maybe he should drink more so he could have an excuse for sounding like a drunken idiot for over five minutes on the Senate floor.
If he is this rambling and incoherent when sober, maybe he should drink more so he could have an excuse for sounding like a drunken idiot for over five minutes on the Senate floor.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Send Democrats to Greenland
It seems just yesterday that Al Gore directed our attention to Greenland, for which we should all be grateful. Greenland artifacts of Viking habitation demonstrate that the Medieval Warm Period was, indeed, warmer than the present.
However, Al Gore and his Acolytes are nothing if not history challenged. To them "unprecedented" warming means the end of the inconvenient cooling in 1975. For awhile they tried to say that present warming was the most in the past 1,000 years, but then Mann's "hockey stick" was shattered and they had to concede the Medieval Warm Period (800 to 1350 AD, well within the past 1,000 years).
Then it was unprecented warming for the past 400 years, which conveniently begins during the Little Ice Age. There sure wasn't much warming then.
Unfortunately for Al, science marches on and recent climate records for Greenland show that it was warmer, and got warmer faster, in the 1930's than our current period. (Click here for the report)
This chart of Greenland climate change for the past 170 years show that the 1930's warming was greater and faster than now.
What's a warming alarmist to do?
Friday, December 18, 2009
Wind Power is Stupid
There is a book out that for me is a must read: "The Wind Farm Scam" by John Etherington.
The following is my comment on wind farms:
Wind power is such a stupid idea it is no wonder it is so popular with the left. It is expensive, unreliable, requires 100% conventional generation backup, kills endangered species birds, visually pollutes scenic vistas, and must be located far away from population centers.
To “solve” this last objection, the most ludicrous plan I’ve seen for wind power was first for New York city, and recently for San Francisco, to install urban wind turbines – with no apparent appreciation to their noise and vibration characteristics, loss of generating capacity because of wind drag from buildings and the necessity to use relatively small wind turbines, and the unsafe conditions caused by mechanical stresses on the buildings upon which they are erected.
In farcical attempts to design ways to overcome the intermittent power generation factor – it is an exceptional wind farm that produces at 25% of rated capacity – there are proposals to use excess energy generated during the night to compress air (or to store energy in some other mechanical way) to generate power when the wind doesn’t. Of course these alternative power schemes will be very expensive and, as yet, have not been created to operate in the real world.
I lived nine years within sight (but thankfully not sound) of the wind farm at the Altamont Pass, California, and observed that most of the time none of the turbines were turning, and when some were, a lot were not because they were down for maintenance. About the only thing they did well was kill eagles and hawks – thousands each year. I would hazard a guess that more energy went into creating the Altamont Pass wind farm than was generated by it, and that its operation never made, and never will, make economic sense.
The following is my comment on wind farms:
Wind power is such a stupid idea it is no wonder it is so popular with the left. It is expensive, unreliable, requires 100% conventional generation backup, kills endangered species birds, visually pollutes scenic vistas, and must be located far away from population centers.
To “solve” this last objection, the most ludicrous plan I’ve seen for wind power was first for New York city, and recently for San Francisco, to install urban wind turbines – with no apparent appreciation to their noise and vibration characteristics, loss of generating capacity because of wind drag from buildings and the necessity to use relatively small wind turbines, and the unsafe conditions caused by mechanical stresses on the buildings upon which they are erected.
In farcical attempts to design ways to overcome the intermittent power generation factor – it is an exceptional wind farm that produces at 25% of rated capacity – there are proposals to use excess energy generated during the night to compress air (or to store energy in some other mechanical way) to generate power when the wind doesn’t. Of course these alternative power schemes will be very expensive and, as yet, have not been created to operate in the real world.
I lived nine years within sight (but thankfully not sound) of the wind farm at the Altamont Pass, California, and observed that most of the time none of the turbines were turning, and when some were, a lot were not because they were down for maintenance. About the only thing they did well was kill eagles and hawks – thousands each year. I would hazard a guess that more energy went into creating the Altamont Pass wind farm than was generated by it, and that its operation never made, and never will, make economic sense.
Nail in Man-Caused Global Warming Coffin
I have often mentioned that previous periods were warmer than the present.
Further, that these warmer periods did not cause runaway warming, although from all that the current alarmists say, they should have. If man-caused warming triggers positive feedbacks - increased water vapor traps more heat, more heat increases water vapor and generates more release of CO2 from oceans and methane from thawing permafrost - then previous warming should have done the same.
It didn't.
More proof of that, or the lack of runaway warming, is clearly shown in a recent video.
The video is great, but for quiet contemplation of the graphs showing previous periods of greater natural warming compared to the present, go to "Hockey stick observed in NOAA ice core data."
Further, that these warmer periods did not cause runaway warming, although from all that the current alarmists say, they should have. If man-caused warming triggers positive feedbacks - increased water vapor traps more heat, more heat increases water vapor and generates more release of CO2 from oceans and methane from thawing permafrost - then previous warming should have done the same.
It didn't.
More proof of that, or the lack of runaway warming, is clearly shown in a recent video.
The video is great, but for quiet contemplation of the graphs showing previous periods of greater natural warming compared to the present, go to "Hockey stick observed in NOAA ice core data."
Click on this graph showing periods of climate change during the past 10,000 years. Of interest are the two periods of greater warming during the past 2,000 years - the Medieval Warm Period of about 1,000 years ago, and the even warmer Roman Period at year "0". So much for Al Gore's claim that the current warming is "unprecedented."
Obviously Al learned from Bill Clinton how to parse the truth. What Al meant to say is the current warming is unprecedented if you only look at the last 1,000 years, and then only if you use the discredited "hockey stick" prepared by Michael Mann of "Climategate" fame that eliminated both the Medieval Warm Period (850 to 1350AD) and the Little Ice Age (1350 to 1850AD).
In other words the current warming is unprecedented if you only go back to the Little Ice Age, or if you hide or overlook all the previous warming periods. For example, the graph shows at least a dozen in the past 10,000 years warmer than the present.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Climategate - FactCheck.Org is Clueless
I have previously doubted the neutrality of FactCheck.Org, and their "fact checking" of Climategate added to my doubts. Rather than demonstrating a "nose" for facts, they mischaracterized the position of man-caused global warming skeptics, and then proceeded to knock their strawman down.
They said: "Climate skeptics are claiming that they show scientific misconduct that amounts to the complete fabrication of man-made global warming."
That's not what the skeptics say. We say that the scientific misconduct raises doubts about the science of man-made global warming. It's unprofessional of FactCheck.Org to charge skeptics with thinking that information about a segment of the science is proof of its complete fabrication. Just as we skeptics believe that the rise in CO2 since 1950, and the fluctuations in cooling and warming in that period, invalidate alarmists claims that CO2 drives global temperatures.
The following is my reply to FactCheck.Org: (with some minor alterations for grammar and to add a dig about Al Gore lying about the emails)
As you possibly don’t know, or are taking pains to not know, the point is that the science underlying the validity of reconstructing global temperatures by means of tree-ring and other proxies has been placed in doubt by the actions of Drs. Jones, Mann, Briffa et al. The tree-rings post 1960 show cooling or no warming when compared to instrumental records. This divergence led Mann, Briffa, and others to drop the tree-ring temperatures and replace them with instrument readings without disclosing their divergence. The point in challenging this is quite simple: if current tree-ring temperatures don’t agree with current instrument temperatures, why is there any confidence that tree rings were good proxies for temperature in the preceding 1000 or 2000 years?
This question has far-reaching implications. Mann et al say that current warming is unprecedented. Al Gore showed Mann’s hockey stick in “An Inconvenient Truth” to make this very point. The hockey stick obliterated the warming of the Medieval Warm Period, and the cooling of the Little Ice Age, just as tree rings now don’t show recent warming.
If the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the present, as evidence of vineyards in England and pastures and farming in Viking Greenland show – and a Harvard/Smithsonian study by Soon et al of 240 climate studies worldwide show it was warmer then than now – then the positive feedback from increased water vapor trapping heat in the troposphere, thereby causing runaway warming, should have happened 1,000 years ago, and the runaway warming forecasted for this century should be part of our historical record.
Of course if its effects were as dangerous as forecasted, we wouldn’t be here to read the record.
Catastrophic warming didn’t happen then, and it didn’t in the very warm Roman Warm Period or in the earlier, even warmer Holocene Climate Optimum. What did happen naturally was that the Ice Age ended, sea levels rose over 400 feet in the past 10,000 years – an average of over four feet a century compared to the eight inches sea levels rose in the past century – and that humankind progressed and prospered during the warm periods and suffered famine, violent storms, and pestilence during the intervening cold periods.
All of these dramatic climate changes happened naturally. In the past two centuries 30-year periods of warming have alternated with 30-year periods of cooling, possibly caused by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. NASA records show that the United States had warming from 1915 to 1945 equal to or greater than the recent warming, and that the cooling 1945 to 1975 spurred predictions of catastrophic global cooling even as atmospheric carbon dioxide increased steadily and rapidly.
Glaciers were in retreat during the 1800’s, long before the rapid industrialization beginning around 1950 started the rapid rise of CO2. Mount Kilimanjaro, contrary to Al Gore’s posturing, lost most of its ice cap prior to 1953 from sublimation - which turns ice directly into water vapor at below-freezing temperatures - not warming, since at the elevation of Kilimanjaro’s ice cap the temperature hardly ever of never rises above freezing.
One climate alarmist is on record in the Climategate emails stating that it is a “travesty” that the lack of warming during the past decade can’t be explained. Al Gore denigrates the emails, saying that they are all over ten years old, even though many are recent.
It’s a travesty that your fact checking missed the critical points the exposed emails uncovered. I would have expected better from an unbiased pursuit of the truth.
They said: "Climate skeptics are claiming that they show scientific misconduct that amounts to the complete fabrication of man-made global warming."
That's not what the skeptics say. We say that the scientific misconduct raises doubts about the science of man-made global warming. It's unprofessional of FactCheck.Org to charge skeptics with thinking that information about a segment of the science is proof of its complete fabrication. Just as we skeptics believe that the rise in CO2 since 1950, and the fluctuations in cooling and warming in that period, invalidate alarmists claims that CO2 drives global temperatures.
The following is my reply to FactCheck.Org: (with some minor alterations for grammar and to add a dig about Al Gore lying about the emails)
As you possibly don’t know, or are taking pains to not know, the point is that the science underlying the validity of reconstructing global temperatures by means of tree-ring and other proxies has been placed in doubt by the actions of Drs. Jones, Mann, Briffa et al. The tree-rings post 1960 show cooling or no warming when compared to instrumental records. This divergence led Mann, Briffa, and others to drop the tree-ring temperatures and replace them with instrument readings without disclosing their divergence. The point in challenging this is quite simple: if current tree-ring temperatures don’t agree with current instrument temperatures, why is there any confidence that tree rings were good proxies for temperature in the preceding 1000 or 2000 years?
This question has far-reaching implications. Mann et al say that current warming is unprecedented. Al Gore showed Mann’s hockey stick in “An Inconvenient Truth” to make this very point. The hockey stick obliterated the warming of the Medieval Warm Period, and the cooling of the Little Ice Age, just as tree rings now don’t show recent warming.
If the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the present, as evidence of vineyards in England and pastures and farming in Viking Greenland show – and a Harvard/Smithsonian study by Soon et al of 240 climate studies worldwide show it was warmer then than now – then the positive feedback from increased water vapor trapping heat in the troposphere, thereby causing runaway warming, should have happened 1,000 years ago, and the runaway warming forecasted for this century should be part of our historical record.
Of course if its effects were as dangerous as forecasted, we wouldn’t be here to read the record.
Catastrophic warming didn’t happen then, and it didn’t in the very warm Roman Warm Period or in the earlier, even warmer Holocene Climate Optimum. What did happen naturally was that the Ice Age ended, sea levels rose over 400 feet in the past 10,000 years – an average of over four feet a century compared to the eight inches sea levels rose in the past century – and that humankind progressed and prospered during the warm periods and suffered famine, violent storms, and pestilence during the intervening cold periods.
All of these dramatic climate changes happened naturally. In the past two centuries 30-year periods of warming have alternated with 30-year periods of cooling, possibly caused by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. NASA records show that the United States had warming from 1915 to 1945 equal to or greater than the recent warming, and that the cooling 1945 to 1975 spurred predictions of catastrophic global cooling even as atmospheric carbon dioxide increased steadily and rapidly.
Glaciers were in retreat during the 1800’s, long before the rapid industrialization beginning around 1950 started the rapid rise of CO2. Mount Kilimanjaro, contrary to Al Gore’s posturing, lost most of its ice cap prior to 1953 from sublimation - which turns ice directly into water vapor at below-freezing temperatures - not warming, since at the elevation of Kilimanjaro’s ice cap the temperature hardly ever of never rises above freezing.
One climate alarmist is on record in the Climategate emails stating that it is a “travesty” that the lack of warming during the past decade can’t be explained. Al Gore denigrates the emails, saying that they are all over ten years old, even though many are recent.
It’s a travesty that your fact checking missed the critical points the exposed emails uncovered. I would have expected better from an unbiased pursuit of the truth.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Tiger's Eleven
I had to claim the prize for being the last blogger to post about Tiger Woods.
The latest "news" article says his mistress total is now eleven.
For awhile I thought Tiger was a Democrat plant to take attention away from "Climategate," but now I realize that the main stream media needs no distraction to ignore Climategate. They only cover the news that suits their agenda.
Tiger's next will be number twelve.
I wonder if he will find they are "Cheaper by the Dozen?"
The latest "news" article says his mistress total is now eleven.
For awhile I thought Tiger was a Democrat plant to take attention away from "Climategate," but now I realize that the main stream media needs no distraction to ignore Climategate. They only cover the news that suits their agenda.
Tiger's next will be number twelve.
I wonder if he will find they are "Cheaper by the Dozen?"
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Climategate - Cherry Picking
A Salon article on Bjørn Lomborg's "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming," criticizes Mr. Lomborg for "cherry picking" support for his position that resources spent combating global warming could be spent better elsewhere. Eban Goodstein, the Salon reviewer, discredits Mr. Lomborg's benefit-cost analysis for using the most likely outcome, rather than the most dire. Without saying "precautionary principle," that is what Mr. Goodstein is advocating.
To fight fire with fire, the use of the precautionary principle leads to cherry picking the worst-case scenario from the spectrum of possible outcomes. Again and again in his criticism, Mr. Goodstein finds one, maybe two, examples of a prediction that is far beyond the realm of even the IPCC's expectations. Not surprisingly, Dr. James Hansen is the author of most of them, and Al Gore concurs.
However, the central fact is that Hansen/Gore et al construct their apocalyptic prognostications on an element of climate change that has not been demonstrated in any recent periods of even higher temperatures. Apparently they believe - they can't know - the concept that the very limited ability of atmospheric carbon dioxide to increase global temperatures will trigger "positive forcings" - the release of vast quantities of methane from frozen tundra deposits - and those temperatures will then increase far beyond expectations.
Other equally eminent scientists have theorized, on the basis of past warming periods, that negative forcings will dampen, not accentuate, the warming trend. Considering that there is evidence for expecting negative forcing, and none for positive forcing, Mr. Lomborg's position is far more likely.
Recent headlines also add weight to this. The bright light shining on the Climate Research Unit e-mails and records liberated in the UK this week has disclosed that the top "hockey stick" scientists, Drs. Michael Mann, Keith Briffa, and others, cherry picked (there's those words again) climate proxies to exaggerate current warming and to understate historical warming. In particular, proxies were used and abused to suppress or eliminate the inconvenient Medieval Warm Period of roughly 800-1300 AD.
The Medieval Warm Period cannot be allowed to stand if the current warming alarmists are to prevail, because the positive forcings their predictions require did not appear when natural climate change gave them the opportunity. In fact, one of the Warmists unknowingly confided to a warming skeptic that "we have to eliminate the Medieval Warming Period."
Unfortunately for the Warmists, the evidences of the Medieval Warming Period, and the even warmer Holocene Climate Optimum which preceded it by 4,000 years, are abundant and irrefutable.
What really must be eliminated is the cherry picking the Warmists use to accuse skeptical scientists of cherry picking, and then their corruption of peer reviews to hide their ethical lapses.
Just the tip of their unethical activities was exposed this week, and much more is coming out as investigators pore over the e-mails.
"Tighten your seat belts."
To fight fire with fire, the use of the precautionary principle leads to cherry picking the worst-case scenario from the spectrum of possible outcomes. Again and again in his criticism, Mr. Goodstein finds one, maybe two, examples of a prediction that is far beyond the realm of even the IPCC's expectations. Not surprisingly, Dr. James Hansen is the author of most of them, and Al Gore concurs.
However, the central fact is that Hansen/Gore et al construct their apocalyptic prognostications on an element of climate change that has not been demonstrated in any recent periods of even higher temperatures. Apparently they believe - they can't know - the concept that the very limited ability of atmospheric carbon dioxide to increase global temperatures will trigger "positive forcings" - the release of vast quantities of methane from frozen tundra deposits - and those temperatures will then increase far beyond expectations.
Other equally eminent scientists have theorized, on the basis of past warming periods, that negative forcings will dampen, not accentuate, the warming trend. Considering that there is evidence for expecting negative forcing, and none for positive forcing, Mr. Lomborg's position is far more likely.
Recent headlines also add weight to this. The bright light shining on the Climate Research Unit e-mails and records liberated in the UK this week has disclosed that the top "hockey stick" scientists, Drs. Michael Mann, Keith Briffa, and others, cherry picked (there's those words again) climate proxies to exaggerate current warming and to understate historical warming. In particular, proxies were used and abused to suppress or eliminate the inconvenient Medieval Warm Period of roughly 800-1300 AD.
The Medieval Warm Period cannot be allowed to stand if the current warming alarmists are to prevail, because the positive forcings their predictions require did not appear when natural climate change gave them the opportunity. In fact, one of the Warmists unknowingly confided to a warming skeptic that "we have to eliminate the Medieval Warming Period."
Unfortunately for the Warmists, the evidences of the Medieval Warming Period, and the even warmer Holocene Climate Optimum which preceded it by 4,000 years, are abundant and irrefutable.
What really must be eliminated is the cherry picking the Warmists use to accuse skeptical scientists of cherry picking, and then their corruption of peer reviews to hide their ethical lapses.
Just the tip of their unethical activities was exposed this week, and much more is coming out as investigators pore over the e-mails.
"Tighten your seat belts."
Climategate - Man-Caused Global Warming is Dead!
I've had so much fun reading the hundreds of e-mails that were hacked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, UK, that I forgot that one of my duties as a global-warming skeptic is to help publicize evidence that the alarmists are lying, distorting, or fudging climate science.
A very good spot to get a lot of information directly from the e-mails is the Bishop Hill Blog. Forinstance, Michael Mann, the creator of the discredited "hockey stick" that was/is the core of Al Gore's presentations, discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(1047388489)
So far all the main stream media reports have only reported the records being hacked, and their only analyses have been that the consensus for man-caused global warming will stand. How this can be concluded without looking at the e-mails involved is beyond me, except it again illustrates how the media wants to advocate rather than report.
Bloggers will have to stay on this and keep pushing the disclosures, or the main stream media will do as usual - ignore it and hope it all goes away.
How reporters can walk - run - away from such a juicy opportunity to engage in momentous investigative reporting boggles my mind. Their editors have to really want them to carry the water for Al Gore to let that happen.
A very good spot to get a lot of information directly from the e-mails is the Bishop Hill Blog. Forinstance, Michael Mann, the creator of the discredited "hockey stick" that was/is the core of Al Gore's presentations, discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(1047388489)
So far all the main stream media reports have only reported the records being hacked, and their only analyses have been that the consensus for man-caused global warming will stand. How this can be concluded without looking at the e-mails involved is beyond me, except it again illustrates how the media wants to advocate rather than report.
Bloggers will have to stay on this and keep pushing the disclosures, or the main stream media will do as usual - ignore it and hope it all goes away.
How reporters can walk - run - away from such a juicy opportunity to engage in momentous investigative reporting boggles my mind. Their editors have to really want them to carry the water for Al Gore to let that happen.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Why Do Muslims Hate Us?
According to Liberals, Muslims don't hate us, we just don't understand them. What we have is a failure to communicate, and if we would just listen to Muslims everything would be wonderful.
I admit I don't understand Muslims. Their religion has never seemed peaceful and tolerant to me, and those seem like worthy expectations of religion.
Thinking about the prescription for peaceful relations with Muslims - improved communications - leads me to consider Muslim violence against other Muslims. Don't Sunnis and Shiites understand each other, live together, worship the same God, yet kill each other viciously and indiscriminately given the opportunity?
When Muslims kill Muslims - Saddam Hussein killed more Muslims than all the Crusaders combined - what chance do we hated infidels have? Suppose you are a gay, or a feminist; will your views be tolerated in Saudi Arabia? Iran? Pakistan? Afghanistan? How about if you're a Christian or Jew? Or a Muslim who wants to be an atheist or convert?
The political correct say we are the problem, not the Islamists.
Such are the fruits of colossal ignorance and stupidity.
I admit I don't understand Muslims. Their religion has never seemed peaceful and tolerant to me, and those seem like worthy expectations of religion.
Thinking about the prescription for peaceful relations with Muslims - improved communications - leads me to consider Muslim violence against other Muslims. Don't Sunnis and Shiites understand each other, live together, worship the same God, yet kill each other viciously and indiscriminately given the opportunity?
When Muslims kill Muslims - Saddam Hussein killed more Muslims than all the Crusaders combined - what chance do we hated infidels have? Suppose you are a gay, or a feminist; will your views be tolerated in Saudi Arabia? Iran? Pakistan? Afghanistan? How about if you're a Christian or Jew? Or a Muslim who wants to be an atheist or convert?
The political correct say we are the problem, not the Islamists.
Such are the fruits of colossal ignorance and stupidity.
Obama Gets Something Right
Obama finally gets something right. He has dithered on many things, the latest Afghanistan, and things have gotten worse.
But his dithering on climate change is the best thing he has done. A Spiegel Online article takes Obama to task for causing the failure of Copenhagen before it fails - Obama Has Failed the World on Climate Change - and for that the world should be truly grateful.
Obama has saved the world from misguided leaders that who would fruitlessly destroy economic progress in the developing nations that will enable their people to adapt to natural climate change.
It's too bad that Obama is clueless about the good he is doing.
But his dithering on climate change is the best thing he has done. A Spiegel Online article takes Obama to task for causing the failure of Copenhagen before it fails - Obama Has Failed the World on Climate Change - and for that the world should be truly grateful.
Obama has saved the world from misguided leaders that who would fruitlessly destroy economic progress in the developing nations that will enable their people to adapt to natural climate change.
It's too bad that Obama is clueless about the good he is doing.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Thomas Friedman Bombs Out on Global Warming
According to: Our Three Bombs, By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, Published: October 6, 2009, The New York Times:
The misuse of “unprecedented” by anthropogenic global warming enthusiasts, such as the literate Thomas L. Friedman, the polemicist Al Gore, and many other college educated liberals is unprecedented. So much so that I consulted a dictionary to ascertain whether its meaning had changed, or whether there was a nuance that allowed its seeming perversion. There wasn’t. “Unprecedented” still means what I thought: without previous instance; never before known or experienced; unexampled or unparalleled.
For the current level of carbon in the atmosphere to be unprecedented, it simply means that the current level was never before achieved – or surpassed. Five hundred million years ago atmospheric carbon dioxide was twenty times today’s level. Does that qualify as a previous instance? About 150 million years ago, during the Jurassic Period, it was four to five times as high. Does that qualify as something known before or experienced?
Apparently what should alarm us is not the build up of carbon in the atmosphere, which is obviously not unprecedented, but that it will “tip over some ecosystem and trigger a nonlinear climate event.” Perhaps as happened 10.000 years ago during the Holocene Climate Optimum, when average global temperatures were about 4ºC higher than today? Except nothing was tipped to melt the Siberian tundra and release all its methane, the Amazon didn’t dry up, and although all the sea ice at the North Pole melted in the summer, nothing catastrophic ensued.
All that happened is that human civilization prospered and thrived in the warmer, wetter environment. The same thing happened during subsequent warm periods following cold periods in cycles of hundreds of years up to the present. The Roman Warming was good for humanity; the following Dark Age wasn’t. Then about 1200 years ago the Medieval Warm Period began, and mankind again prospered for five hundred years until the Little Ice Age began about 1300 AD. Crops failed, famine stalked the land, glaciers advanced over farms and villages, mighty storms spread devastation, droughts (which are more frequent and last longer during cold periods) added to the misery, and disease and pestilence cut weakened populaces in half.
Happily, the Little Ice Ages ended and our Modern Warming began naturally, just as would be expected, given that similar cycles are not unprecedented.
As we continue to build up carbon in the atmosphere to unprecedented levels, we never know when the next emitted carbon molecule will tip over some ecosystem and trigger a nonlinear climate event — like melting the Siberian tundra and releasing all of its methane, or drying up the Amazon or melting all the sea ice in the North Pole in summer. And when one ecosystem collapses, it can trigger npredictable changes in others that could alter our whole world.
The misuse of “unprecedented” by anthropogenic global warming enthusiasts, such as the literate Thomas L. Friedman, the polemicist Al Gore, and many other college educated liberals is unprecedented. So much so that I consulted a dictionary to ascertain whether its meaning had changed, or whether there was a nuance that allowed its seeming perversion. There wasn’t. “Unprecedented” still means what I thought: without previous instance; never before known or experienced; unexampled or unparalleled.
For the current level of carbon in the atmosphere to be unprecedented, it simply means that the current level was never before achieved – or surpassed. Five hundred million years ago atmospheric carbon dioxide was twenty times today’s level. Does that qualify as a previous instance? About 150 million years ago, during the Jurassic Period, it was four to five times as high. Does that qualify as something known before or experienced?
Apparently what should alarm us is not the build up of carbon in the atmosphere, which is obviously not unprecedented, but that it will “tip over some ecosystem and trigger a nonlinear climate event.” Perhaps as happened 10.000 years ago during the Holocene Climate Optimum, when average global temperatures were about 4ºC higher than today? Except nothing was tipped to melt the Siberian tundra and release all its methane, the Amazon didn’t dry up, and although all the sea ice at the North Pole melted in the summer, nothing catastrophic ensued.
All that happened is that human civilization prospered and thrived in the warmer, wetter environment. The same thing happened during subsequent warm periods following cold periods in cycles of hundreds of years up to the present. The Roman Warming was good for humanity; the following Dark Age wasn’t. Then about 1200 years ago the Medieval Warm Period began, and mankind again prospered for five hundred years until the Little Ice Age began about 1300 AD. Crops failed, famine stalked the land, glaciers advanced over farms and villages, mighty storms spread devastation, droughts (which are more frequent and last longer during cold periods) added to the misery, and disease and pestilence cut weakened populaces in half.
Happily, the Little Ice Ages ended and our Modern Warming began naturally, just as would be expected, given that similar cycles are not unprecedented.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
San Francisco Tilts Towards Mass Hysteria
San Francisco may think it is on the cutting edge concerning urban wind farms (San Francisco tilts towards wind power, September 29, 2009), but the idea has long been tried and found wanting in Great Britain. The following critiques of urban wind power were all gleaned from the writings of wind power enthusiasts.
The first problem with urban wind turbines is the urban environment; buildings and other structures cause turbulence which reduces wind speed and causes it to swirl. The only rooftop wind turbines suited to a swirling wind are vertical axis (“eggbeater”) turbines, which are severely limited in size and are subject to frequent – and very expensive – gearbox failure.
Roof mounted wind turbines also are very noisy and produce heavy – and very annoying – vibrations. In an urban setting they may pay off on their investment in twenty years if they’re maintenance free, and none are. In urban settings small windmills usually don’t even pay back their carbon investment and are more likely to be net consumers of electricity than producers, since the inverter uses electricity when the turbine is not generating.
To operate efficiently, the larger the wind turbine the better, necessitating tall towers and long blades which are not appropriate in an urban setting. Manufacturers recommend that even small wind turbines be mounted on 80- to 120-foot towers to clear turbulence since nothing is generated until wind speed exceeds the cut-in rate of 7 to 10 mph. Such towers are unsuitable for installation on most rooftops.
San Francisco’s 44-member urban wind power task force producing a report recommending urban wind power is an illustration of how anthropogenic global warming inspires mass hysteria.
The first problem with urban wind turbines is the urban environment; buildings and other structures cause turbulence which reduces wind speed and causes it to swirl. The only rooftop wind turbines suited to a swirling wind are vertical axis (“eggbeater”) turbines, which are severely limited in size and are subject to frequent – and very expensive – gearbox failure.
Roof mounted wind turbines also are very noisy and produce heavy – and very annoying – vibrations. In an urban setting they may pay off on their investment in twenty years if they’re maintenance free, and none are. In urban settings small windmills usually don’t even pay back their carbon investment and are more likely to be net consumers of electricity than producers, since the inverter uses electricity when the turbine is not generating.
To operate efficiently, the larger the wind turbine the better, necessitating tall towers and long blades which are not appropriate in an urban setting. Manufacturers recommend that even small wind turbines be mounted on 80- to 120-foot towers to clear turbulence since nothing is generated until wind speed exceeds the cut-in rate of 7 to 10 mph. Such towers are unsuitable for installation on most rooftops.
San Francisco’s 44-member urban wind power task force producing a report recommending urban wind power is an illustration of how anthropogenic global warming inspires mass hysteria.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
I Hate White Guys' Health Care Plans
I must confess that I oppose all the health care reform plans that white guys have come up with for over forty years. It all started with LBJ, who gave us a plan which is not only already bankrupt, but which will bankrupt generations not yet born until it is mercifully euthanized. Then Jimmy Carter proposed a health care reform, but he had things so screwed up that America pulled the plug on him and turned the mess over to Ronald Reagan to clean up.
I have to thank Bill and Hillary Clinton for their attempt at health care reform. It was so awful than it brought us the Republican takeover in 1994, which lasted until the Republicans forgot why the American people voted for them to replace the feckless Democrats.
Al Gore had a plan, and John Kerry too, which the voters spared us from suffering.
Now another white guy has a plan, and I now know, thanks to the media, what motivates me to oppose it: racism.
That's right.
All along I thought I didn't like dumb Democrat health care plans, but thanks to the media I see the light.
It was racism all along.
LBJ, Jimmy, Bill and Hillary, Gore, Kerry, Obama - what's the common link?
That's right, they're white!
And I don't like their health care plans because I'm racist.
Of course!
I have to thank Bill and Hillary Clinton for their attempt at health care reform. It was so awful than it brought us the Republican takeover in 1994, which lasted until the Republicans forgot why the American people voted for them to replace the feckless Democrats.
Al Gore had a plan, and John Kerry too, which the voters spared us from suffering.
Now another white guy has a plan, and I now know, thanks to the media, what motivates me to oppose it: racism.
That's right.
All along I thought I didn't like dumb Democrat health care plans, but thanks to the media I see the light.
It was racism all along.
LBJ, Jimmy, Bill and Hillary, Gore, Kerry, Obama - what's the common link?
That's right, they're white!
And I don't like their health care plans because I'm racist.
Of course!
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