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Climategate update

November 22, 2009

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Click on any of the images to go to the associated webpage.

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While I have spent a bit of time reading some of the emails that were leaked earlier the week, I simply do not have the time – or desire – to delve deeply into the files.  There are many others around the world digging into this.

I think that there have been serious consequences that have resulted from the actions of some of the scientists whose correspondence has been leaked.  In their zeal to “prove” — at all costs — CO2 as the cause of anthropogenic global warming, other potential causes have been marginalized.  Evidence is mounting that changes in land use may have a significantly greater impact on climate change than rising CO2.  If true, mitigation and adaptation to successfully address human impacts on climate could be done at a fraction of the cost of  the drastic actions and expenses that are being called for today.  It may be that efforts could have been started a decade ago, but for an obsession on CO2 as the global warming culprit.

On Examiner.com, Thomas Fuller is writing a series of articles regarding the actions and communications of a group of climate scientists and paleoclimatologists known as The Team. Click here to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 , Part 6, and Part 7.

My first post on this was Climategate.

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Climategate

November 21, 2009

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While I haven’t blogged about it for a while, I read material related to global warming climate change every day, so it was with great interest yesterday morning that I read of the release of allegedly stolen anthropogenic global warming climate change correspondence.

I had woken early for some reason and was unable to get back to sleep.  By 4:30, I was up and checking email, blogs and the news-feeds that I subscribe to.

A little over an hour later, I was downloading the files.

It’s going to be interesting to see where this is going to end up.  Articles are already appearing in the mainstream media.

See new article: Climategate update.

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I’m tired of it!

July 1, 2009

We don’t watch much TV and we’ve already seen way too much of the current Michael Jackson media circus and the morbid fascination of the public and  some of the Michael Jackson fans.

Most people realized that Jackson had problems, but there seems to be some sort of sick fascination of the man and those problems. The media seems to think that the public wants or needs every detail of his life and the aftermath.

While I like much of his music, he was just another wealthy celebrity with problems that were exacerbated and enabled by his wealth and influence as far as I’m concerned.

I don’t need or want excruciating details about his funeral, his will, his mom, his dad, his kids, his ex-wife, etc., etc.

Just report whatever is actually newsworthy in this story and move on, please.  If there’s anything new, update us tomorrow.

I just find it annoying when there are so many more important things going on in the world that are being under reported because of this sensationalism.

Comments?

day 27

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Cap and what?*^%#!!!

June 29, 2009

A musical take on cap and tax… er, trade.

day 25

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I discovered just a little while ago that access to individual posts on this blog was unavailable and commenting was not available. This was because of something I did with some files on the server earlier today — not a web host issue. I knew that I should have checked after I was done, but didn’t.

It’s all back to normal now. It was only a 30 second fix, because it’s something that happened before and I knew where to look.

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A couple of days ago, a park visitor from Spain was injured by a Yellowstone National Park bison (aka American buffalo).

“At approximately 11:25 a.m., the woman and her husband were using a pay phone in the Canyon lodging area with their backs to the road. According to witnesses, two bull bison walked down the road, passing within 20 feet of the couple. One of the bison left the road, walked up behind the woman and butted her into the air. The couple, who were facing away from the road, did not see the bison.”

The woman was taken to the Lake Clinic where she was treated for minor injuries and released.

This quite an unusual event. Bison are not usually aggressive unless someone has encroached upon their space. We have seen numerous instances where people have gotten way too close to these critters and nothing happened. Park regulations require that a minimum distance of 25 yard must be maintained from bison.

Bison are very, very common in the Canyon area.

We still hope to make it to Yellowstone this year. However, we may not have as much time available as we had originally thought.

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Climate change legislation — The Waxman/Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act pass by a very slim margin today in the US House of Representatives. I actually watched some of the debate on CSPAN. I’ve got just a few comments.

  • They didn’t even have a properly collated official copy of the bill in the room during the debate. Three hundred pages were revised overnight and one of the House staff was in the process of inserting pages into the correct place in the “official copy” during the closing minutes of the floor debate.
  • The debate on the floor was limited to 3 hours for a bill that may be one of the largest tax bills in the history of the country.
  • While virtually every American would end up with higher energy costs as a result of the bill, as I understand it, it’s requirements would have negligible impact on global warming, if anthropogenic (human caused) global warming (AGW) were a proven fact rather than an unproven hypothesis.
  • The premise of the bill is predicated on the assumption that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a proven scientific fact. The earth has been warming up until the last ten years. Global carbon dioxide levels have been rising, at least in part due to human activities, even during the last ten years as global temperature anomalies have been stable or dropping. While it would seem obvious to blame rising temperatures on carbon dioxide produced by man, there is no proof that continued rising CO2 will result in a continued rise in global temperatures. The predictions of rising temperatures are the product of computer climate models that assume that anthropogenic global warming is a proven scientific fact rather than an unproven hypothesis.
  • Our Representative, voted against it. I think I voted against him in 2008. He’s got my vote in 2010.

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Climate change — I read material on climate change almost every day.

I am absolutely appalled at the gloom and doom, the-sky-is-falling alarmism that is in the media on a daily basis.

I’m not sure at what point I stopped simply accepting anthropogenic (human caused) global warming. I can say that for well over a year I’ve been reading a lot of climate change related material and have a much better understanding of the topic than I once had. My first blog post on climate was It’s not a hypothesis… It’s not a theory… it’s a CONSENSUS! last year.

Below is some of what I’ve come to believe and understand related to the Earth’s climate.

  • Anthropogenic global warming is an unproven hypothesis.
  • Even though anthropogenic global warming is an unproven hypothesis, it is likely that some warming has resulted from carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere by humans.
  • There is no proof that continued rise in CO2 will result in continued rise in global temperatures.
  • Carbon Dioxide Absorption Peaks

    Carbon Dioxide Absorption Peaks

  • Carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas by absorbing infrared radiation in three narrow bands of frequencies, (2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µM)), meaning that most of the heat producing infrared radiation frequencies escapes absorption by CO2.  The main peak, 15 µM, is absorbed completely within about 10 meters of the ground meaning that there is no more to absorb.  Doubling the human contribution of CO2 would reduce this distance. Reducing the distance for absorption would not result in an increase in temperature.
  • The science of climate change is not settled.  Science is never settled. There is always more to learn, more to add.
  • Consensus on climate change is not science.  It’s politics.  Science isn’t done by consensus, as I understand it.
  • For a scientist to be a skeptic on climate change is not a bad thing.  Scepticism and questioning are important aspects of science.
  • The Earth appears to have been cooling overall for most of this young century — 2000 to 2009.
  • The reports of the danger to polar bears are premature.  They are also recycled over and over again.
  • The prediction of an Arctic free of  ice is  premature.  AMSRE-A Sea Ice Extent has 6 1/2 years of history. The sea arctic sea ice extent currently is higher than any of the other years at this point in the annual cycle. AMSRE-A (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer – Earth Observing System).
  • Antarctic sea ice extent is getting larger.
  • A recent survey found Arctic ice to be thicker than expected.  (radiobremen)
  • The heat content of the world’s ocean is dropping – Q = mc∆T. (The Global Warming Hypothesis and Ocean Heat)
day 22

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THAT isn’t news!

June 1, 2009


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originally posted on flickr
by Stitch


While we were traveling, though unintended, I only watched television a few hours.

If I subtract the time that the TV was on a food channel at my sister-in-law’s and watching Mama Mia at my brother-in-law’s, it’s down to less than an hour of TV for 27 days away from home — and that was primarily checking for weather forecasts.

It was a good break from television and some of the things that bug me about it.

Today, watching the evening news, it struck me just how much of what is presented as news really isn’t news, at least as far as I’m concerned.

I was watching a story about the shooting of two young soldiers  — one killed — in Little Rock at a joint Army – Navy recruiting office. The story is still new so there are a lot of unanswered questions and it’s understandable that the story is still rough and not fully fleshed out.

However, a couple of things about the story struck me the wrong way.

The alleged shooter was apprehended 30 minutes later and the story had to mention that their station was the only one that had a camera at the police station when the suspect was brought in.  That’s not news.  It’s gratuitous self-promotion.

As is fairly common, I guess, they found it necessary to get some local reaction from people at the scene.  They interviewed one young fellow who had driven down to shopping center that the recruiting office was in because his girlfriend works there, she gets upset easily and, besides checking on her,  he wanted to find out  what was going on.  I’m sorry, but local reaction is generally not news.

While the specifics may vary, local reaction to a shooting is going to be predictable, but it’s not news unless the reaction is something unexpected.

For instance, if the local reaction had been for citizens to have apprehended the suspect instead of the police, that would have been news.

Comments, anyone?

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