Calling Al Gore: Where are you?

George_1950 · Jan 13, 2009, 10:00 AM

"BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) - Residents of the upper Midwest bundled up or just stayed inside Tuesday as a wave of bitterly cold air barreled south out of the Arctic, following on the heels of a fast-moving blizzard.
Some schools closed because of the cold and temperatures hit the single digits as far south as Kansas and Missouri.

The coldest air spilled across the Canadian prairie into the Dakotas and Minnesota. Grand Forks, N.D., dropped to a record low of 37 degrees below zero Tuesday morning, lopping six degrees off the old record set in 1979, the National Weather Service said.

In northern Minnesota, it was 35 below zero in Roseau and 36 below in Hallock, with wind chills down to 45 below in Hibbing. Just to the north, Winnipeg, Saskatchewan, also hit minus 36, according to Environment Canada.

In North Dakota, the Minot area got 6 inches of snow, on top of about a foot that fell late last week, and Bismarck collected 4. Bismarck, Fargo and Grand Forks all broke snow records for December, each with more than 30 inches."
Sharp cold wave shocks upper Midwest, temps to -36

speechlesstx · Mar 26, 2009, 07:34 AM

And Obama's EPA sent issued a report to the White House claiming CO2 is a pollutant that endangers public health under the Clean Air Act. That's absurd and dishonest.

Speaking of the EPA, Obama's pick for no. 2 there stepped aside the day before his Senate hearing, over "scrutiny of his former affiliation with a now-defunct nonprofit that in 2007 was found by the EPA inspector general's office to have mismanaged more than $25 million in grants from the agency. "

speechlesstx · Mar 26, 2009, 01:35 PM

Vote Earth! This Saturday you can join people all over the world in saving the planet by turning off your lights for an hour at 8:30 PM wherever you are...

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2,848 cities, towns and municipalities in 84 countries have already committed to VOTE EARTH for Earth Hour 2009, as part of the worlds first global election between Earth and global warming.

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On March 28 you can VOTE EARTH by switching off your lights for one hour.
Or you can vote global warming by leaving your lights on.

The results of the election are being presented at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009. We want one billion votes for Earth, to tell world leaders that we have to take action against global warming.

I vote for all the greens that “vote earth” to go live in a hut in Bangladesh…or maybe near Obama’s brother. That should leave plenty of light for the rest of us.

speechlesstx · Mar 26, 2009, 01:50 PM

Disclaimer: This is not proof that global warming is a hoax...I'm just saying:

The Texas Panhandle is expecting a low of 24 tonight and 6-17 inches of snow between now and Saturday. Guess I'll have to crank the heat back up for Earth Hour (and while Obama will still let me).

galveston · Mar 26, 2009, 02:13 PM

Yeah, just when the "greens" think they have all the answers, nature moons them!

PS: I'm gonna pass on that thing about turning my lights off at 8:30. They go off enough for me already. Night before last they were off from about 9:30 to about 1:00 AM.

If government doesn't get out of the way and allow more generating plants to be built, rolling black outs will get those lights off and help save the planet.

speechlesstx · Mar 27, 2009, 11:26 AM

The Civil Heretic

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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. Chat rooms, Web threads, editors’ letter boxes and Dyson’s own e-mail queue resonate with a thermal current of invective in which Dyson has discovered himself variously described as “a pompous twit,” “a blowhard,” “a cesspool of misinformation,” “an old coot riding into the sunset” and, perhaps inevitably, “a mad scientist.” Dyson had proposed that whatever inflammations the climate was experiencing might be a good thing because carbon dioxide helps plants of all kinds grow. Then he added the caveat that if CO2 levels soared too high, they could be soothed by the mass cultivation of specially bred “carbon-eating trees,” whereupon the University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner looked through the thick grove of honorary degrees Dyson has been awarded — there are 21 from universities like Georgetown, Princeton and Oxford — and suggested that “perhaps trees can also be designed so that they can give directions to lost hikers.” Dyson’s son, George, a technology historian, says his father’s views have cooled friendships, while many others have concluded that time has cost Dyson something else. There is the suspicion that, at age 85, a great scientist of the 20th century is no longer just far out, he is far gone — out of his beautiful mind.

But in the considered opinion of the neurologist Oliver Sacks, Dyson’s friend and fellow English expatriate, this is far from the case. “His mind is still so open and flexible,” Sacks says. Which makes Dyson something far more formidable than just the latest peevish right-wing climate-change denier. Dyson is a scientist whose intelligence is revered by other scientists — William Press, former deputy director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and now a professor of computer science at the University of Texas, calls him “infinitely smart.” Dyson — a mathematics prodigy who came to this country at 23 and right away contributed seminal work to physics by unifying quantum and electrodynamic theory — not only did path-breaking science of his own; he also witnessed the development of modern physics, thinking alongside most of the luminous figures of the age, including Einstein, Richard Feynman, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Witten, the “high priest of string theory” whose office at the institute is just across the hall from Dyson’s. Yet instead of hewing to that fundamental field, Dyson chose to pursue broader and more unusual pursuits than most physicists — and has lived a more original life.

Among Dyson’s gifts is interpretive clarity, a penetrating ability to grasp the method and significance of what many kinds of scientists do. His thoughts about how science works appear in a series of lucid, elegant books for nonspecialists that have made him a trusted arbiter of ideas ranging far beyond physics. Dyson has written more than a dozen books, including “Origins of Life” (1999), which synthesizes recent discoveries by biologists and geologists into an evaluation of the double-origin hypothesis, the possibility that life began twice; “Disturbing the Universe” (1979) tries among other things to reconcile science and humanity. “Weapons and Hope” (1984) is his meditation on the meaning and danger of nuclear weapons that won a National Book Critics Circle Award. Dyson’s books display such masterly control of complex matters that smart young people read him and want to be scientists; older citizens finish his books and feel smart.

Except the dedicated global warming consensus, they can't even take the ideas of such a reputable scholar seriously - they'll attack anyone that doesn't walk in lockstep. But in this case, they can't ignore this guy either.

speechlesstx · Apr 11, 2009, 05:50 AM

More evidence that global warming is "human-caused."

NASA: Clean-air regs, not CO2, are melting the ice cap

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New research from NASA suggests that the Arctic warming trend seen in recent decades has indeed resulted from human activities: but not, as is widely assumed at present, those leading to carbon dioxide emissions. Rather, Arctic warming has been caused in large part by laws introduced to improve air quality and fight acid rain.

Dr Drew Shindell of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies has led a new study which indicates that much of the general upward trend in temperatures since the 1970s - particularly in the Arctic - may have resulted from changes in levels of solid "aerosol" particles in the atmosphere, rather than elevated CO2. Arctic temperatures are of particular concern to those worried about the effects of global warming, as a melting of the ice cap could lead to disastrous rises in sea level - of a sort which might burst the Thames Barrier and flood London, for instance.

Shindell's research indicates that, ironically, much of the rise in polar temperature seen over the last few decades may have resulted from US and European restrictions on sulphur emissions. According to NASA:

Sulfates, which come primarily from the burning of coal and oil, scatter incoming solar radiation and have a net cooling effect on climate. Over the past three decades, the United States and European countries have passed a series of laws that have reduced sulfate emissions by 50 percent. While improving air quality and aiding public health, the result has been less atmospheric cooling from sulfates.

Meanwhile, levels of black-carbon aerosols (soot, in other words) have been rising, largely driven by greater industrialisation in Asia. Soot, rather than reflecting heat as sulphates do, traps solar energy in the atmosphere and warms things up.

The Arctic is especially subject to aerosol effects, says Shindell, because the planet's main industrialised areas are all in the northern hemisphere and because there's not much precipitation to wash the air clean.

"Right now, in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere and in the Arctic, the impact of aerosols is just as strong as that of the greenhouse gases," says Shindell.

Or did it? They can't seem to make up their minds.

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Other scientists have recently suggested that it's not just the Arctic which is subject to aerosol effects. Boffins from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have said that aerosol levels from dust storms and volcanoes alone would account for as much as 70 per cent of the temperature rise seen in the Atlantic ocean during the past 26 years, leaving carbon simply nowhere...

There might not even be any need for action on the part of the West, with China building sulphur-belching coal power stations and diesel vehicles at a furious rate in recent times. Dr Shindell doesn't say so, but it's at least possible that this has something to do with the fact that global temperatures have actually dipped slightly over the last couple of years.

This is all too confusing, we caused global warming by driving our SUV's, belching out CO2 that trees and plants thrive on and by cleaning the air. Or was it dust and such from dust storms and volcanoes? And the temperature is dropping?

Neverthless, "shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays" is a possible solution to it all says Obama's new science adviser.

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"It's got to be looked at," he said. "We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the table."

What could possibly go wrong there?

excon · Apr 11, 2009, 06:11 AM

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Originally Posted by speechlesstx

What could possibly go wrong there?

Hello again, Steve:

You're right. Those Obama scientists don't know squat... So, until they get their act together, we can keep throwing our trash into the air. That can't hurt anything, right????

excon

tomder55 · Apr 11, 2009, 07:26 AM

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we can keep throwing our trash into the air

sounds like Obama's solution is that very thing .

BTW ;that is a false choice because it is unrelated . You can take steps to reduce harmful emissions without the chicken-little lies about the effects of human produced carbon dioxide.

speechlesstx · Apr 11, 2009, 08:17 AM

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Originally Posted by tomder55

sounds like Obama's solution is that very thing .

Right, "shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere."

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BTW ;that is a false choice because it is unrelated . You can take steps to reduce harmful emissions without the chicken-little lies about the effects of human produced carbon dioxide.

Right again.

tomder55 · Apr 11, 2009, 08:35 AM

wonder what the carbon foot print is for the President to fly a pizza chef 850 miles to serve deep dish pizza to 140 guests at the White House yesterday?

Wonder how much that cost the US taxpayers ?

The Associated Press: Obama orders pizza from St. Louis, Chicago miffed

What does Obama have in common with Kim Jong mentally Il ?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009...th-korea-pizza



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