Hurricanes and the IPCC report crank up climate catastrophe talk

The devastation resulting from this year’s hurricane season has once again spurred the climate change faction into action. Combined with a new report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), these horrible storms regenerated the predictions of doom and gloom from that group of scientists who get paid lots of money, green money, and work overtime to convince us to ignore the substantial contrary scientific data that the end is going to come, and now it is even closer than the last time they cranked up the Scare Machine.

The IPCC report suggests that a 2-degree Celsius increase in global temperatures over the next 22 years would be catastrophic. The New York Timestook this to mean that we face “a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 — a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population.”

Weighing in on this renewed crisis, political commentator Ben Shapiro addressed it in his column “No, Global Warming Isn’t The End Of The World. Here’s Why,” last week.

“The report urges a 45 percent reduction in carbon emissions from 2010 levels by 2030 in order to prevent that imminent doom,” he wrote. “The report finds that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require ‘rapid and far-reaching’ transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities.” 

Shapiro added that the consequences of this approach would be devastating. “Some of those changes could include an attempt to direct 5-10 percent of global capital revenues toward investment in public works projects, plus a $27,000 tax on each ton of carbon by 2100 – equivalent to roughly $250 per gallon tax on gasoline.”

All of which made Eric Holthaus and other confused socialists break out the champagne. Holthaus, of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, cheered the dismantling of capitalism that will follow this really foolish idea: “If you are wondering what you can do about climate change: The world's top scientists just gave rigorous backing to systematically dismantle capitalism as a key requirement to maintaining civilization and a habitable planet. I mean, if you are looking for something to do.”

Imagine that: a creature of academia that wants to do away with capitalism! 

Some interesting data addressing emissions is the “BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2018” chart showing the ten countries with the largest reductions of CO2 emissions and the ten countries with largest increases in CO2 emissions.

Leading the world in reductions in CO2 emissions in 2017 is – wait for it – the United States with more than 40 tons of reductions. The next three are the Ukraine, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. At the other end the four with as much or more in increases as the U.S. had in reductions are:
* the European Union - 40+ million tons

* Turkey – 40+ million tons

* India – 90+ million tons

* China – nearly 120 million tons

America leads the world in CO2 reductions, but four contributors each negate America’s efforts. One contributor produces twice as much as we reduced, and another produces four times what we reduced. And yet, America must do more, they say. 

The Earth has been heating and cooling for thousands, probably millions, of years; warming and cooling periods are not unusual. The terms “global warming” and “climate change” do not adequately illustrate how the Earth’s global temperature behaves. 

To provide some understanding, a chart produced by climatologist Cliff Harris and meteorologist Randy Mann covering temperatures from 2500 B.C. up to the present and looking ahead to 2038 A.D. shows the warming and cooling cycles, and should assist in understanding what is happening. 

In this 4500-year period, there have been at least 75 major temperature swings, the chart explains. The warmest temperature occurred in 1100 B.C., and the coolest temperature, by far, occurred in The Little Ice Age sometime near 1600 A.D. The warmest “recent” temperature occurred in about 1300 A.D. For most of the 4500 years, no numbers are used to indicate temperatures.

The normal temperature is 57°F. The warmest temperature using actual numbers was 58.3°F in 1998, and the coldest was estimated at 54.3°F in The Little Ice Age in 1600 A.D. The recent temperature span indicated by these two data points was approximately 4°F.

On the chart, the projected high temperature in 2038 is approximately the same as the high temperature in 1100 B.C., but is not represented by a number.

“Why shouldn’t we be quite as worried,” Shapiro asks, “as the Left would argue about global warming? Because people are good at adapting. The changes that we’re talking about don’t happen overnight – they happen over the course of decades. And that means that the impact is spread out over the course of decades, too, and against a backdrop of global growth.”

Certainly, this information must be willingly received and considered. But given the strong scientific data challenging the catastrophic predictions, the past manipulation of data and the “green money” influence enjoyed by the climate change scientific community, and America’s world-leading record of CO2 emission reductions, any sacrifice needed to combat climate change must come from other nations.

Credit where credit is due for human-caused climate change advocates

You have to admire the determination of those that persist in promoting the idea that what humans do as they live on the Earth is the proximate cause of severe damage to the environment. They believe that having evolved from living in caves to using the Earth’s riches to make electricity, fuel vehicles, and improve their lives, humans are slowly killing the planet.

It is certainly reasonable to investigate and discuss this idea, but the debate must be honest and any argument has to be supported by data, pure data, not manipulated data, and not just “friendly” data that is constructed in such a way as to support a particular point of view.

In this debate over whether human activities negatively affect the environment, talking points have replaced factual data, talking points carefully, and sometimes deceitfully constructed from the most favorable pieces that support the argument. We know this because the arguments don’t reason out, and also because some of these prominent scientists got caught with their hands in the cookie jar a few years ago.

But the manmade climate change faction is a stubborn lot and stick to the talking points no matter what other information may be circulating, and when new arguments come along, or when there is a spike in the discussion favoring the perspective contrary to theirs, they shift into high gear.

For example, talking points appeared, of all places, in the 2015 State of the Union message, when President Barack Obama presented faulty information as truth when he spoke to the nation. The President of the United States said, “2014 was the planet’s warmest year on record.”

Some data support this assertion, but even that data isn’t definitive. The supposed increase is just two-tenths of a degree Celsius, but is within NASA’s margin of error. And, the “record” at the top of which 2014 purportedly sits goes back only 135 years, a mere blink of the eye in the Earth’s long history. Essentially what this means is that at some point in that brief eye blink the temperature may have been higher than at any other time in that eye blink, or maybe not.

Playing havoc with the climate change faction is the Medieval Warm Period that ran from the 9^th century to the 14^th century. Some say it was actually warmer then than now, while others say it really was about the same as the mid 20^th century.

How did that happen? Did the Vikings burn fossil fuels in their factories, boats and land vehicles? If not, the Earth must have somehow managed to warm itself. And then it cooled itself, because after the Medieval Warm Period came the Little Ice Age when the Vikings must have abandoned the factories, gone back to sailing vessels and ox carts, and killed all the methane producing animals, causing 500 years of dramatic global cooling.

There are other warm periods further gumming up the argument: the Roman Warm Period of approximately 2,000 years ago, and the Minoan Warm Period of roughly 3,000 years ago.

An Associated Press story on Jan. 16, that might have been the impetus for the president’s dragging the subject into the State of the Union message, reported that 2014 was the hottest year on record, citing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.

The AP has since clarified the story, noting that the case is much less certain than originally stated. The NASA press release upon which the AP story relied neglected to say that NASA put only a 38 percent certainty on the assertion that 2014 was the warmest year since 1880.

The human-caused climate change idea is fraught with problems going back decades. Back in 1970 and 1971 newspapers across the country predicted a coming ice age due to atmospheric pollution, and other catastrophes. More recently, the Hockey Stick Graph made with faulty data, and the Climate Research Unit’s email revelations, cast grave doubt on the conclusions about climate change.

Considering that the Little Ice Age started in the 14^th century and lasted 500 years until the 19^th century, if the warming period that followed lasts only as long as The Little Ice Age, which is not a long period for either a warming or cooling, it will continue until roughly the 24^th century, or between 2300 and 2400 AD. Therefore, should anyone be surprised if the climate is warming in 2015? We should, in fact, be very concerned if it isn’t warming.

Natural occurrences have produced alternate periods of warming and cooling for at least thousands of years, and all scientists agree on that. Earth should be warming now, given the brief time since the last cooling trend ended. Is the warming proceeding faster than before? Probably not. But if so, why? The sun? Man’s activities? Was it something else, like what happened in the Medieval Warm Period? Probably.

We don’t need to implement expensive and harmful measures that will make negligible changes if and until the evidence – reliable evidence, not manipulated evidence – is far more compelling than it is today. Perhaps what really needs to be investigated is the role of filthy lucre in this controversy.

Well, I'll Be Darned!!!!

It appears that I've been had, and thanks to Jules for letting me know.

I usually am more suspicious of such things, particularly the political ones, but the one about Mars becoming spectacular this month got right by me.

Sorry about that, folks. I should have noticed the part where it said Mars would appear as large as the Moon. That won't happen unless we are about to crash into Mars.

I'll be more careful in the future.

Click Here to Comment

Empty Nest Syndrome

A few days ago when I looked out the patio door up at the spot where Mama Duck sat so stoically every day, I noticed that I couldn’t see her head. So, I ventured up there to take a closer look, and sure enough, she was gone. I ruffled the leaves a little, looking for eggs or broken shells, and found neither. A little later I saw that she had returned.

The last couple of days have been extremely busy, and I didn’t get many chances to check out whether she was there or not, but I did see her once or twice.

Yesterday, I noticed that Mama appeared to be gone, but it was raining most of the time I had a chance to go look. This morning, I ventured up there to find eggs that are broken open, and no sign of little ones. I guess I just missed the big events, hatching and hours later the march to the water. I hope the family is doing okay.

I’ll check out the nest more closely when I get a chance.

Fools Rush In

People are always making predictions, some of which are accurate, and some that are not. Let's review some environmentalist predictions through the years, courtesy of Walter Williams:

At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind."

C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."

In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s ... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death," Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."

In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992.

Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50 percent of the world's resources and "by 2000 they [Americans] will, if permitted, be using all of them."

In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, "The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."

Harvard University biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "... civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind."

That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look Magazine, that by 1995 "... somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct."

Williams went on to point out that these grossly inaccurate and alarmist statements starting in the 60s are actually not all that unique, citing older foolishness:

It's not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers have always been wrong.

In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In 1949, the Secretary of the Interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the American Gas Association, there's a 1,000 to 2,500 year supply.

Williams then asks some probing and important questions:

In 1970, when environmentalists were making predictions of manmade global cooling and the threat of an ice age and millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of government policy should we have undertaken to prevent such a calamity? When Ehrlich predicted that England would not exist in the year 2000, what steps should the British Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent such a dire outcome? In 1939, when the U.S. Department of the Interior warned that we only had oil supplies for another 13 years, what actions should President Roosevelt have taken? Finally, what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that they have switched their tune to manmade global warming?

And he wraps it all up with a few relevant facts:

Over 95 percent of the greenhouse effect is the result of water vapor in Earth's atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect, Earth's average temperature would be zero degrees Fahrenheit. Most climate change is a result of the orbital eccentricities of Earth and variations in the sun's output. On top of that, natural wetlands produce more greenhouse gas contributions annually than all human sources combined.

Of course, the true believers in the “man causes global warming” theory and the idea that we are facing the most serious problem since Eve bit into that apple won’t be persuaded by anything so basic as logic, but it behooves us to objectively analyze both sides of this important but unsettled issue before we follow Al Gore’s lead into one of the biggest mistakes man has yet made.

Momma Duck Update

I have been checking on Momma Duck periodically to see if we have a family in the nest yet, and as of today we do not. Momma is patiently sitting in the nest, but there is no sign of little ones as of this evening.

I have noticed pairs of Mallards in the neighborhood, and I reported a while back that there was a male and a female together in our driveway several days ago, and thought the female was Momma. More recently, there was a female on the porch steps, and I have concluded that neither of those females was Momma. Or, perhaps, it might have been Momma, and another female was sitting on the nest.

I don’t know anything about how ducks handle this situation, but Momma has to get food and water sometime, somehow.

Maybe Jules can enlighten us.

Ah, Spring

It appears that spring may finally have arrived. The weather has been warming up for the last couple of weeks, trees are greening up, tulips and flowering trees are in bloom, I’ve had to mow the lawn twice already … yep, spring is here.

That’s not to say that there is no further threat of a cold spell, though. It’s a rule of thumb around here that May 15 is the day after which it is usually, though not always, safe to put out the plants. Another such rule holds that you don’t put things out until its green all the way to the top of the mountain. That’s still a couple of weeks away, by my judgment.

It was very nice today, pretty cloudy, but about 82 degrees, and I was out trying to finish up cleaning up the property this afternoon. Still many leaves and other remnants of fall and winter to take care of, and also spraying the unwanted little green things that spring up among the gravel on the walk and such. I’d been outside for about two hours when Diane got home from a couple of errands, so I came inside for a bit.

I sat down to have some lunch and rest for a while when we heard rumbling. We were about to experience the first thunderstorm of the season. Not long thereafter, sure enough, the rains came, big drops at first, and then gradually gaining speed and frequency until it was a full-scale downpour. I look out through the patio door and noticed some white stuff bouncing off the deck: Hail. The stones were many, but fortunately not very big. And they didn’t last very long.

The first thunderstorm is a good sign that spring is finally here.

Technorati Tags: Nature, Environment

Duck Update

Today I saw Momma duck fly in right next to her nest. I don’t have a direct view of the nest, as I’m looking through the patio door, and the nest is a little above and to the right of the glass in the door, so I don’t know if anything special was going on, but it was the first time I have seen Momma not in the nest.

A little later when I was leaving for some appointments, about 9 a.m., I saw a male and female Mallard near the garage, which is about 50 f eet from the nest. When I came along, the two flew away. (The ones in the picture are not the ones I saw.)

I went up to the nest just now and Momma is there, hidden among the leaves. Corky the Beagle-mix was wondering around closer to the nest than usual. I don’t know if she doesn’t realize Momma is close by, or if she just doesn’t care.