Tag Archives: Science / Environment

Statement on Global Warming Petition Signed by 31,478 Scientists

“Before the US House of Representatives, June 4, 2009

Madam Speaker, before voting on the ‘cap-and-trade’ legislation, my colleagues should consider the views expressed in the following petition that has been signed by 31,478 American scientists:

‘We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.’

Circulated through the mail by a distinguished group of American physical scientists and supported by a definitive review of the peer-reviewed scientific literature, this may be the strongest and most widely supported statement on this subject that has been made by the scientific community. A state-by-state listing of the signers, which include 9,029 men and women with PhD degrees, a listing of their academic specialties, and a peer-reviewed summary of the science on this subject are available at www.petitionproject.org.

The peer-reviewed summary, ‘Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide’ by A. B. Robinson, N. E. Robinson, and W. Soon includes 132 references to the scientific literature and was circulated with the petition.

Signers of this petition include 3,803 with specific training in atmospheric, earth, and environmental sciences. All 31,478 of the signers have the necessary training in physics, chemistry, and mathematics to understand and evaluate the scientific data relevant to the human-caused global warming hypothesis and to the effects of human activities upon environmental quality.” (Read more from campaignforliberty.com)

‘Green’ lightbulbs poison workers

“WHEN British consumers are compelled to buy energy-efficient lightbulbs from 2012, they will save up to 5m tons of carbon dioxide a year from being pumped into the atmosphere. In China, however, a heavy environmental price is being paid for the production of “green” lightbulbs in cost-cutting factories.

Large numbers of Chinese workers have been poisoned by mercury, which forms part of the compact fluorescent lightbulbs. A surge in foreign demand, set off by a European Union directive making these bulbs compulsory within three years, has also led to the reopening of mercury mines that have ruined the environment.” (Read more from timesonline.co.uk)

A consequence of Global Warming hysteria?

What to think of Population Control

Today’s theme is population control.

Several months ago, I went to an End the Fed rally in Chicago. A fellow protester wouldn’t stop telling me about how “they” want to reduce the world’s population to a half billion, and will stop at nothing to do so. To be honest, his refusal to change the subject was annoying, though I accept the fact that the most passionate and most paranoid will always be first to protest – against the war, against the Fed, or for any other reason.

The theory about reducing the world’s population is also mentioned during the Alex Jones interview with Dr. Rebecca Carley below. I decided to look it up.

One source of the theory seems to be National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) directive itself, signed in April, 1974, by Henry Kissinger on behalf of President Nixon:

NSSM 200:
IMPLICATIONS OF WORLDWIDE POPULATION GROWTH
FOR U.S. SECURITY AND OVERSEAS INTERESTS

December 10, 1974

CLASSIFIED BY Harry C. Blaney, III
SUBJECT TO GENERAL DECLASSIFICATION SCHEDULE OF
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11652 AUTOMATICALLY DOWN-
GRADED AT TWO YEAR INTERVALS AND DECLASSIFIED
ON DECEMBER 31, 1980.

This document can only be declassified by the White House.

. . . . [I]ntense efforts are required to assure full availability by 1980 of birth control information and means to all fertile individuals, especially in rural areas. . . .

there is a major risk of severe damage to world economic, political, and ecological systems and, as these systems begin to fail, to our humanitarian values. . . .

While specific goals in this area are difficult to state, our aim should be for the world to achieve a replacement level of fertility, (a two-child family on the average), by about the year 2000. . . . Attainment of this goal will require greatly intensified population programs. . . .

The World Population Plan of Action is not self-enforcing and will require vigorous efforts by interested countries, U.N. agencies and other international bodies to make it effective. U.S. leadership is essential. . . .

We recommend increases in AID budget requests to the Congress on the order of $35-50 million annually through FY 1980 (above the $137.5 million requested for FY 1975). This funding would cover both bilateral programs and contributions to multilateral organizations. However, the level of funds needed in the future could change significantly, depending on such factors as major breakthroughs in fertility control technologies and LDC receptivities to population assistance. . . .

No country has reduced its population growth without resorting to abortion.

The idea of cutting the world’s population to 500 million probably does exist theoretically in the heads of some well-educated bureaucrats who want to save to world, but I don’t believe our government is planning a mass extermination. Nevertheless, this study which concludes that population is a security threat to the United States, and suggests government do something about it, is absolutely chilling.

I disagree with, though understand, Dr. Alim Muhammad’s reaction:

(He also mentions The Global 2000 Report, whose wikipedia description seems entirely benign.)

So, what to think about population control?

I love this presentation. From about 1:50 to 5:00 it is absolutely breathtaking:

Though other people have interpreted Hans Rolsing’s talk differently, to me it sounds like when people are in good health – something all people relentlessly strive for, population naturally levels off. So the solutions is . . . leave people alone. Give them nothing but the freedom to pursue their self-interest.

(I don’t mean stop conducting charity. Altruism is great so long as it doesn’t happen at the point of a gun, i.e. with money the government forcibly takes from us.)

1950’s Vision of Home Computer

Caption: “Scientists from the RAND Corporation have created this model to illustrate how a ‘home computer’ could look like in the year 2004. However the needed technology will not be economically feasible for the average home. Also the scientists readily admit that the computer will require not yet invented technology to actually work, but 50 years from now scientific progress is expected to solve these problems. With teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use.”

Don’t Eat Burgers, or else PLANET EARTH WILL DIE!

Occasionally, an AdSense advertisement (see sidebar) shows up which is completely contrary to this website. I’m banning them, one by one. That’s where I found letsactnow.org.

I’ll admit, they are acting rationally for people who believe the end of the world is nigh, but the shrill cries against hamburgers terrify me. Bad science always results in bad public policy, and good science usually results in bad public policy.

From their website:

Although upgrading appliances at home, installing solar panels on the roof, and switching to a hybrid car will surely reduce our contribution to global warming, not all of us are able to do that right away. So, what can we do? Wait for politicians to pass laws to save the planet? Hope that someone else will take care of the problem? Isn’t there something we can all do now to make a BIG difference?

“YES WE CAN! ACT NOW. TODAY”

Which do you think is more responsible for global warming: a gas-guzzling SUV, or a hamburger?

Surprise! It’s the burger! Hard to believe? A United Nations report demonstrated that raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars, trucks, SUVs, trains, planes and ships in the world combined. How much more? An impressive 40% more.

Hmmm. “Wait for politicians to pass laws to save the planet?” Between the appeal to government as the solver of problems, and their fear of hamburgers, I would expect complete fascism should these people ever gain power.

Pollution is best handled as a tort.

Here’s their sensationalist video:

“Your diet has a direct effect on the environment, on wildlife, on people, on water, on the weather, and on the overall health of planet Earth . . . and every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten.”

CBO: Ethanol production hiked food prices

“Increased use of ethanol was responsible for about 10 to 15 percent of the rise in food prices from 2007 to 2008, but reduced greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector by less than 1 percent, according to a Congressional Budget Office report released this week.” (Read more from thehill.com)

Made possible by global warming hysteria?

Climate Change Book Reviews

Of all the issues I cover here on LostRepublic, voicing doubts about human-induced climate change earns me by far the most consternation from friends and readers.

From the website realclimate.org:

“RealClimate is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. We aim to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary. The discussion here is restricted to scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science.”

Sorry, they do not take a stand on the issue. They only critique various news stories and individual studies.

Here is a book review of three climate change books: Winds of Change, Catastrophe, and The Weather Makers.

Rise of sea levels is ‘the greatest lie ever told’

Regarding the controversial Dr. Nils-Axel Morner.

“If one thing more than any other is used to justify proposals that the world must spend tens of trillions of dollars on combating global warming, it is the belief that we face a disastrous rise in sea levels. The Antarctic and Greenland ice caps will melt, we are told, warming oceans will expand, and the result will be catastrophe.

Although the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only predicts a sea level rise of 59cm (17 inches) by 2100, Al Gore in his Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth went much further, talking of 20 feet, and showing computer graphics of cities such as Shanghai and San Francisco half under water. We all know the graphic showing central London in similar plight. As for tiny island nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu, as Prince Charles likes to tell us and the Archbishop of Canterbury was again parroting last week, they are due to vanish.

But if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.

Despite fluctuations down as well as up, ‘the sea is not rising,’ he says. ‘It hasn’t risen in 50 years.’ If there is any rise this century it will ‘not be more than 10cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10cm’. And quite apart from examining the hard evidence, he says, the elementary laws of physics (latent heat needed to melt ice) tell us that the apocalypse conjured up by Al Gore and Co could not possibly come about.

The reason why Dr Mörner, formerly a Stockholm professor, is so certain that these claims about sea level rise are 100 per cent wrong is that they are all based on computer model predictions, whereas his findings are based on ‘going into the field to observe what is actually happening in the real world’.

When running the International Commission on Sea Level Change, he launched a special project on the Maldives, whose leaders have for 20 years been calling for vast sums of international aid to stave off disaster. Six times he and his expert team visited the islands, to confirm that the sea has not risen for half a century. Before announcing his findings, he offered to show the inhabitants a film explaining why they had nothing to worry about. The government refused to let it be shown. . . .

One of his most shocking discoveries was why the IPCC has been able to show sea levels rising by 2.3mm a year. Until 2003, even its own satellite-based evidence showed no upward trend. But suddenly the graph tilted upwards because the IPCC’s favoured experts had drawn on the finding of a single tide-gauge in Hong Kong harbour showing a 2.3mm rise. The entire global sea-level projection was then adjusted upwards by a “corrective factor” of 2.3mm, because, as the IPCC scientists admitted, they “needed to show a trend”.

When I spoke to Dr Mörner last week, he expressed his continuing dismay at how the IPCC has fed the scare on this crucial issue. When asked to act as an “expert reviewer” on the IPCC’s last two reports, he was “astonished to find that not one of their 22 contributing authors on sea levels was a sea level specialist: not one”. Yet the results of all this “deliberate ignorance” and reliance on rigged computer models have become the most powerful single driver of the entire warmist hysteria.” (Read more from telegraph.co.uk)

The Civil Heretic – Dyson Freeman, climate change skeptic

“FOR MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson has quietly resided in Princeton, N.J., on the wooded former farmland that is home to his employer, the Institute for Advanced Study, this country’s most rarefied community of scholars. Lately, however, since coming ‘out of the closet as far as global warming is concerned,’ as Dyson sometimes puts it, there has been noise all around him. . . .

IT WAS FOUR YEARS AGO that Dyson began publicly stating his doubts about climate change. Speaking at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University, Dyson announced that ‘all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated.’ . . .

A particularly distressed member of that public was Dyson’s own wife, Imme, who, after seeing [Al Gore’s] film in a local theater with Dyson when it was released in 2006, looked at her husband out on the sidewalk and, with visions of drowning polar bears still in her eyes, reproached him: ‘Everything you told me is wrong!’ she cried.

‘The polar bears will be fine,’ he assured her.” (Read more from nytimes.com)

Weather Operations by German Military

from blinkx.com

What happened to the climate consensus?

Scientists DON’T all agree the planet is warming precipitously, or that humans are responsible for that supposed warming. In fact, more and more experts in a number of fields have been speaking up to challenge the supposed scientific “consensus” on climate change.

As the headlines scream out the latest sensational warning – a NASA scientist now predicts U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has just four years to save the planet – let’s not forget that last month, more than 650 international scientists went on record as dissenting from the man-made global warming findings of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Who are these scientists? (Read more from thechronicleherald.ca)

Doubting the Green Lightbulb Fad

Author, teacher, Marilynne Robinson commented on the light bulbs in this interview about her book Mother Country:

“We know that these new lightbulbs cut down on electricity, but where do they come from? China? Hungary? They have to be dealt with as toxic waste because they have mercury in them. So who’s being exposed to these chemicals when they’re manufactured and what are the environmental consequences in China or Hungary? What is the tradeoff in terms of shipping them long distances to save a little bit of electricity?”

Obama left with little time to curb global warming

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer – Sun Dec 14, 6:49 pm ET

WASHINGTON – When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, global warming was a slow-moving environmental problem that was easy to ignore. Now it is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can’t avoid. (from news.yahoo.com)

***

“I am a skeptic. . . Global warming has become a new religion.” – Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.

Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history. . . When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” – UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.

“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds. . . I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists,” – Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.

“Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense. . . The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning.” – Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.

See this earlier post for more.

Over 650 Scientists Challenge Global Warming “Consensus” – quotes from scientists about global warming / clime changes

“Over 650 scientists have put their names to a US Senate Minority report that challenges the contention of the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change that there is a scientific “consensus” on the causes of global warming.” (Read more from infowars.net)

“I am a skeptic. . . Global warming has become a new religion.” – Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.

“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly. . . .As a scientist I remain skeptical.” – Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology and formerly of NASA who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”

Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history. . . When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” – UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.

“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds. . . I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists,” – Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.

“The models and forecasts of the UN IPCC “are incorrect because they only are based on mathematical models and presented results at scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity.” – Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico

“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” – U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.

“Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapour and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will.” ” . Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, NZ.

“After reading [UN IPCC chairman] Pachauri’s asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it’s hard to remain quiet.” – Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society’s Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review.

“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?” – Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.

“Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp. . . Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.” – Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch UN IPCC committee.

“Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined.” – Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh.

Ocean currents can power the world, say scientists

“Existing technologies which use water power, relying on the action of waves, tides or faster currents created by dams, are far more limited in where they can be used, and also cause greater obstructions when they are built in rivers or the sea. Turbines and water mills need an average current of five or six knots to operate efficiently, while most of the earth’s currents are slower than three knots.

The new device, which has been inspired by the way fish swim, consists of a system of cylinders positioned horizontal to the water flow and attached to springs.

As water flows past, the cylinder creates vortices, which push and pull the cylinder up and down. The mechanical energy in the vibrations is then converted into electricity.” (Read more from telegraph.co.uk)