The Truth, Still Inconvenient

[PhilsFan]

Originally Posted by kramwest1

Was it Gasland: A film by Josh Fox ?

Just watched it last night. I take back everything I have said about Natural Gas being our transition/back-up fuel for solar and wind.

Solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and wave generation now! We are SO fucking ourselves.

Indeed it was. I live in the Delaware River watershed.

[kramwest1]

Originally Posted by PhilsFan

Indeed it was. I live in the Delaware River watershed.

Man, that was depressing. Great docu though.

[yolland]

^ Speaking of Pennsylvania's natural gas industry,

New York Times, April 7

Pennsylvania environmental regulators said Wednesday that they were calling for waste treatment plants and drinking water facilities to increase testing for radioactive pollutants and other contaminants, to see whether they are ending up in rivers because of the growth of natural gas drilling in the state. The move follows a March 7 letter that the federal Environmental Protection Agency sent to the state, instructing it to perform testing for radioactivity within 30 days and to review the permits of state treatment plants handling the wastewater.

...The letters from federal and state regulators follow reports in The New York Times about gas industry wastewater with high levels of radioactivity being discharged into rivers and streams by sewage treatment plants that were not designed to remove radioactive materials. The state’s letter also comes almost a month after a lengthy conference call among EPA officials and state regulators, during which they discussed how to improve regulation of natural gas industry wastewater in Pennsylvania. During the call, federal regulators raised concerns about sludge, often called biosolids, from waste treatment plants receiving drilling wastewater. When wastewater is sent through these plants, some of the heavier contaminants settle out during the treatment process. Radioactive elements like radium may also settle and concentrate in the sludge, which is sometimes sold by treatment plants for use as fertilizer.

...During the conference call, EPA officials pushed state regulators to consider re-evaluating all of the permits at wastewater treatment plants that are accepting drilling waste and adding stricter standards for testing of radionuclides and other contaminants. “It’s basically out of the question,” [PA Dept. of Env. Protection official Ron] Furlan said, rejecting the idea and explaining that “it’s too resource intensive” and that industry would push back too strongly.

[PhilsFan]

They're not taxed and they don't have to abide by regulations thanks to the undoing Dick Cheney led when he was VP. So, not only are they poisoning us, but they're poisoning us for free. As a sidenote, the PA Department of Environmental Protection has suffered huge budget cuts in recent years. Now, all PA education is facing the same kinds of cuts (it was recently revealed that the main reason Penn State is getting steep cuts is because Graham Spanier doesn't kiss enough ass - seriously, they said he wasn't "humble" enough).

Anything to get Terry Pegula some more money to donate to the GOP.

[the iron horse]

Originally Posted by BVS

You always talk about how God gave us free will, but then you always spit out this contradictory line of logic when it comes to the planet.

So which one is it?

What contradiction?

I just recycled all my trash about an hour ago.

Took it all to my local recycling site

[anitram]

Originally Posted by the iron horse

Don't worry. Live your life.

[PhilsFan]

Originally Posted by the iron horse

What contradiction?

I just recycled all my trash about an hour ago.

Took it all to my local recycling site

Do you think it is a good idea to cut education funding in order to balance your budget in a way that keeps environmentally damaging natural gas drilling untaxed?

[the iron horse]

Originally Posted by PhilsFan

Do you think it is a good idea to cut education funding in order to balance your budget in a way that keeps environmentally damaging natural gas drilling untaxed?

I think it's a good idea to cut taxes anywhere we can.

What has "education funding" done for the United States the past forty years.

Nothing

[PhilsFan]

... What?

[A_Wanderer]

Originally Posted by the iron horse

I think it's a good idea to cut taxes anywhere we can.

What has "education funding" done for the United States the past forty years.

Nothing

Larry Page could be an example.

[BVS]

Originally Posted by the iron horse

What contradiction?

I just recycled all my trash about an hour ago.

Took it all to my local recycling site

Do you ever plan on answering a question?

If not, what are you doing here?

[the iron horse]

AccuWeather.com - Climate Change | Coolest March since 1994

[Canadiens1131]

Originally Posted by the iron horse

AccuWeather.com - Climate Change | Coolest March since 1994

Do you comprendes
basic statistics or
gradual change over time?

[purpleoscar]

Originally Posted by Canadiens1131

gradual change over time?

Climate models go cold | FP Comment | Financial Post

Carbon warming too minor to be worth worrying about

By David Evans :joking:

The debate about global warming has reached ridiculous proportions and is full of micro-thin half-truths and misunderstandings. I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence, was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic. Watching this issue unfold has been amusing but, lately, worrying. This issue is tearing society apart, making fools out of our politicians.

Let’s set a few things straight.

The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s. But the gravy train was too big, with too many jobs, industries, trading profits, political careers, and the possibility of world government and total control riding on the outcome. So rather than admit they were wrong, the governments, and their tame climate scientists, now outrageously maintain the fiction that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant.

Let’s be perfectly clear. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and other things being equal, the more carbon dioxide in the air, the warmer the planet. Every bit of carbon dioxide that we emit warms the planet. But the issue is not whether carbon dioxide warms the planet, but how much.

Most scientists, on both sides, also agree on how much a given increase in the level of carbon dioxide raises the planet’s temperature, if just the extra carbon dioxide is considered. These calculations come from laboratory experiments; the basic physics have been well known for a century.

The disagreement comes about what happens next.

The planet reacts to that extra carbon dioxide, which changes everything. Most critically, the extra warmth causes more water to evaporate from the oceans. But does the water hang around and increase the height of moist air in the atmosphere, or does it simply create more clouds and rain? Back in 1980, when the carbon dioxide theory started, no one knew. The alarmists guessed that it would increase the height of moist air around the planet, which would warm the planet even further, because the moist air is also a greenhouse gas.

This is the core idea of every official climate model: For each bit of warming due to carbon dioxide, they claim it ends up causing three bits of warming due to the extra moist air. The climate models amplify the carbon dioxide warming by a factor of three — so two-thirds of their projected warming is due to extra moist air (and other factors); only one-third is due to extra carbon dioxide.

That’s the core of the issue. All the disagreements and misunderstandings spring from this. The alarmist case is based on this guess about moisture in the atmosphere, and there is simply no evidence for the amplification that is at the core of their alarmism.

Weather balloons had been measuring the atmosphere since the 1960s, many thousands of them every year. The climate models all predict that as the planet warms, a hot spot of moist air will develop over the tropics about 10 kilometres up, as the layer of moist air expands upwards into the cool dry air above. During the warming of the late 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, the weather balloons found no hot spot. None at all. Not even a small one. This evidence proves that the climate models are fundamentally flawed, that they greatly overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide.

This evidence first became clear around the mid-1990s.

At this point, official “climate science” stopped being a science. In science, empirical evidence always trumps theory, no matter how much you are in love with the theory. If theory and evidence disagree, real scientists scrap the theory. But official climate science ignored the crucial weather balloon evidence, and other subsequent evidence that backs it up, and instead clung to their carbon dioxide theory — that just happens to keep them in well-paying jobs with lavish research grants, and gives great political power to their government masters.

There are now several independent pieces of evidence showing that the earth responds to the warming due to extra carbon dioxide by dampening the warming. Every long-lived natural system behaves this way, counteracting any disturbance. Otherwise the system would be unstable. The climate system is no exception, and now we can prove it.

But the alarmists say the exact opposite, that the climate system amplifies any warming due to extra carbon dioxide, and is potentially unstable. It is no surprise that their predictions of planetary temperature made in 1988 to the U.S. Congress, and again in 1990, 1995, and 2001, have all proved much higher than reality.

They keep lowering the temperature increases they expect, from 0.30C per decade in 1990, to 0.20C per decade in 2001, and now 0.15C per decade — yet they have the gall to tell us “it’s worse than expected.” These people are not scientists. They overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide, selectively deny evidence, and now they conceal the truth.

One way they conceal is in the way they measure temperature.

The official thermometers are often located in the warm exhaust of air conditioning outlets, over hot tarmac at airports where they get blasts of hot air from jet engines, at waste-water plants where they get warmth from decomposing sewage, or in hot cities choked with cars and buildings. Global warming is measured in 10ths of a degree, so any extra heating nudge is important. In the United States, nearly 90% of official thermometers surveyed by volunteers violate official siting requirements that they not be too close to an artificial heating source.

Global temperature is also measured by satellites, which measure nearly the whole planet 24/7 without bias. The satellites say the hottest recent year was 1998, and that since 2001 the global temperature has levelled off. Why does official science track only the surface thermometer results and not mention the satellite results?

The Earth has been in a warming trend since the depth of the Little Ice Age around 1680. Human emissions of carbon dioxide were negligible before 1850 and have nearly all come after the Second World War, so human carbon dioxide cannot possibly have caused the trend. Within the trend, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation causes alternating global warming and cooling for 25 to 30 years at a go in each direction. We have just finished a warming phase, so expect mild global cooling for the next two decades.

We are now at an extraordinary juncture. Official climate science, which is funded and directed entirely by government, promotes a theory that is based on a guess about moist air that is now a known falsehood. Governments gleefully accept their advice, because the only ways to curb emissions are to impose taxes and extend government control over all energy use. And to curb emissions on a world scale might even lead to world government — how exciting for the political class!

Even if we stopped emitting all carbon dioxide tomorrow, completely shut up shop and went back to the Stone Age, according to the official government climate models it would be cooler in 2050 by about 0.015 degrees. But their models exaggerate 10-fold — in fact our sacrifices would make the planet in 2050 a mere 0.0015 degrees cooler!

Finally, to those who still believe the planet is in danger from our carbon dioxide emissions: Sorry, but you’ve been had. Yes, carbon dioxide is a cause of global warming, but it’s so minor it’s not worth doing much about.

David Evans consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, and part-time 2008 to 2010, modelling Australia’s carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and forestry and agricultural products. He is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees, including a PhD from Stanford University in electrical engineering. The comments above were made to the Anti-Carbon-Tax Rally in Perth, Australia, on March 23..

Probably too gradual and small to panic about, but panic generates more funding.

[A_Wanderer]

This title grabbed our attention: Top Rocket Scientist: No evidence C02 causes global warming. And it should. It is a pretty bold statement and the implications would be pretty big news.

So we decided to compile a backgrounder on 'The Top Rocket Scientist."

Here's the research database entry on David Evans:
No peer-reviewed articles on climate change

According to his own resume, Evans has not published a single peer-reviewed research paper on the subject of climate change. Evans published only a single paper in 1987 in his career and it is unrelated to climate change.

Evans has published an article for the Alabama-based Ludwig von Mises Instutute, a right-wing free-market think tank.

Evans also published a "background briefing" (pdf) document for the Australian chapter of the Lavoisier Group, a global warming "skeptic" organization with close ties to the mining industry.

"I am not a climate modeler"

From 1999 to 2006 Evans worked for the Australian Greenhouse Office designing a carbon accounting system that is used by the Australian Government to calculate its land-use carbon accounts for the Kyoto Protocol. While Evans says (pdf) that "[he] know[s] a heck of a lot about modeling and computers," he states clearly that he is "not a climate modeler."

Background

David Evans lives in Australia and gained media attention after an article he wrote titled, No Smoking Hot Spot was published in The Australian in June, 2008.The article claims that climate change is not caused by C02 emissions because there is no evidence of "a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics." Evan's claim has been thoroughly debunked by Tim Lambert, a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.

According to his bio, Evans claims to be a 'Rocket Scientist' and one article claims that he is a 'Top Rocket Scientist.' While Evans background does show that he has a PhD in electrical engineering, there is no evidence that he was ever employed as a rocket scientist.

Evans answered our inquiry about his claim to being a rocket scientist with the following explanation:In US academic and industry parlance, "rocket scientist" means anyone who has completed a PhD in one of the hard sciences at one of the top US institutions. The term arose for people who *could* do rocket science, not those who literally build rockets.Thus the term "rocket scientist" means someone with a PhD in physics, electrical engineering, or mathematics (or perhaps a couple of other closely related disciplines), from MIT, Stanford, Caltech, and maybe a few other institutions.

I did a PhD in electrical engineering at Stanford in the 1980s. Electrical engineering is your basic high tech degree, because most high technology spawned from electrical information technology. I specialized in signal processing, maths, and statistics.

The definition provided by Evans would appear to be at odds with the conventional use of the term 'rocket scientist' which according to various sources is "One specializing in the science or study of rockets and their design." For example, here's an entry on Answers.com about Hermann Oberth a famous Rocket Scientist who published a book about rocket travel into outer space in 1932 and is considered one of 3 founding fathers of modern rocketry and astronautics.

Evans also claims to be "building a word processor for Windows." DeSmogBlog contacted Microsoft Corp. and they have confirmed that he does not work for Microsoft Corporation.

Kevin Grandia | Who is 'Rocket Scientist' David Evans?

I think that your want for climate change to be make believe clouds your judgements PurpleOscar.

[BVS]

Junk science, simpleton science or just a flat out dismissal of science...

Is this all we have when it comes to an opposition?

[purpleoscar]

But if we meet the Cancun temperatures without eliminating fossil fuels what does that say?

[BVS]

What do YOU think it says?

[purpleoscar]

We are in a La Nina right now and that's nothing compared to an ice age so when natural cool periods happen they are hardly going to be wiped out by doubling CO2.

I just don't believe in 6 degree temperature increases from a doubling of CO2 or even constant higher El Nino's indefinitely. Much more CO2 couldn't stop ice ages and at some point the interglacial period will end. Since the 3rd world needs developing and China is going to continue to do so I don't feel panic scenarios are warranted and are not even ethical. Only people who feel they will gain good jobs from this scenario and be shielded from higher energy costs will play the "precaution" game. Most people will want more evidence before they fork over their hard earned money.

[BVS]

But you think ignoring, embracing junk science only because you don't want it to be true, or paying scientist to dissent is ethical?