Image of the day

Captured by
Douglas Rollain

M20 Trifid Nebula in LRGBHa

My Account

New to Astromart?

Register an account...

Need Help?

Posts Made By: Dave Snope

February 16, 2010 05:03 AM Forum: Global Warming - REAL or NOT

Green Olympics Failure Hurts US Competitor

Posted By Dave Snope


The electric Zambonis — part of Canada's attempt at a green Vancouver Olympics — failed multiple times this evening, causing a massive delay in in the middle of the Men's 500-meter speedskating event. Hmm, wethinks it needs more internal combustion!

The Canadian-built electric ice resurfacers used at the Richmond Olympic Oval are supposed to help the environment but it cost the second half of the 500M speedskating pairs after one ice-resurfacing machine couldn't properly clean the ice. Then a second machine failed. Then they brought in a third and it, too, screwed up the course.

With speeds of up to 40 MPH reached on the ice, the rutted and uneven surface was considered too dangerous to skate on. It was eventually fixed but American Shani Davis, prepping himself for a gold medal run in the 1,000-meter, decided to withdraw.

Maybe electric Zambonis are the future but loud, exhaust-spewing Zambonis are sexy, awesome and they work right now. How many more American skaters are we going to lose to the electric ice resurfacing machine scourge?


I wonder how the dust-to-dust environmental impact of these compares to gas powered Zamboni's. I'll bet it's much worse.

http://jalopnik.com/5472523/winter-olympics-electric-zamboni-fail

February 16, 2010 06:16 AM Forum: Global Warming - REAL or NOT

Former IPCC Chair Warns IPCC to Cut the Junk

Posted By Dave Snope

They're reduced to cannibalizing each other to claw for the last remaining shreds of credibility. Wait for the punchline at the end.

A LEADING British government scientist has warned the United Nations’ climate panel to tackle its blunders or lose all credibility.

Robert Watson, chief scientist at Defra, the environment ministry, who chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1997 to 2002, was speaking after more potential inaccuracies emerged in the IPCC’s 2007 benchmark report on global warming.

The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change. The claim has been quoted in speeches by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.

This weekend Professor Chris Field, the new lead author of the IPCC’s climate impacts team, told The Sunday Times that he could find nothing in the report to support the claim. The revelation follows the IPCC’s retraction of a claim that the Himalayan glaciers might all melt by 2035, dubbed ‘Glaciergate’ by commentators.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7017907.ece

Here's the punch line:

The report for the Algerian government, on the other hand, predicted that, on current projections, "agricultural production will more than double by 2020".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7231386/African-crops-yield-another-catastrophe-for-the-IPCC.html

Ba-da-bing!

P.S. Pachauri must be praying that his pulp novel about the erotic adventures of a traveling climate scientist starts selling fast. He lives the life of James Bond, inside his head.


February 17, 2010 02:56 PM Forum: Global Warming - REAL or NOT

The Fog of Global Warming

Posted By Dave Snope

SF Chronicle informs us last July:

The Bay Area just had its foggiest May in 50 years. And thanks to global warming, it’s about to get even foggier.

That’s the conclusion of several state researchers, whose soon-to-be-published study predicts that even with average temperatures on the rise, the mercury won’t be soaring everywhere.

The study, which will appear in the journal Climate, is the latest to argue that colder summers are indeed in store for parts of the Bay Area.

Read more: http://www.sfchroniclemarketplace.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/06/DDJT187GK9.DTL#ixzz0fo5o237m

http://www.sfchroniclemarketplace.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/06/DDJT187GK9.DTL

The Telegraph informs us:

The sight of Golden Gate Bridge towering above the fog will become increasing rare as climate change warms San Francisco bay, scientists have found.

The coastal fog along the Californian coast has declined by a third over the past 100 years – the equivalent of three hours cover a day, new research shows.

And it is not just bad for scenery, the reduction in the cooling effect of the fog could damage the health of the huge Redwood Forests nearby.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7243579/Fog-over-San-Francisco-thins-by-a-third-due-to-climate-change.html


"Well ain't this place a geographical oddity?": Everett from Oh Brother Where Art Thou.
It gets more fog AND less fog the warmer it gets.

February 26, 2010 03:09 PM Forum: Global Warming - REAL or NOT

New Paper Calls NCDC Temperature Data "Accentuated"

Posted By Dave Snope

The proof just keeps pouring in that the NCDC's adjusted temperature data used by NASA and CRU is corrupt and biased to force global warming effects. The paper uses the diplomatic word "accent (uate)(sic)" instead of "falsify", but it's the same thing.

There’s a new paper out by Dr. Edward Long that does some interesting comparisons to NCDC’s raw data (prior to adjustments) that compares rural and urban station data, both raw and adjusted in the CONUS.

The paper is titled Contiguous U.S. Temperature Trends Using NCDC Raw and Adjusted Data for One-Per-State Rural and Urban Station Sets. In it, Dr. Edward Long states:

“The problem would seem to be the methodologies engendered in treatment for a mix of urban and rural locations; that the ‘adjustment’ protocol appears to accent to a warming effect rather than eliminate it. This, if correct, leaves serious doubt for whether the rate of increase in temperature found from the adjusted data is due to natural warming trends or warming because of another reason, such as erroneous consideration of the effects of urban warming.”

Here is the comparison of raw rural and urban data:




http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/26/a-new-paper-comparing-ncdc-rural-and-urban-us-surface-temperature-data/

February 28, 2010 02:48 PM Forum: Global Warming - REAL or NOT

80% of sea-level experts disagree with the IPCC

Posted By Dave Snope

Said in an interview recorded 5 days ago with Sea Level Expert Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner. Dr. Mörner is the recently-retired head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden. He is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project. Dr. Mörner been studying the sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 38 years.

In the interview, Dr. Morner states that none of the 33 authors of the IPCC Chapter on sea levels was considered to be a sea level expert or author on the subject, that all 33 were from other disciplines and selected "due to loyalty" to the IPCC. Furthermore, Dr. Morner estimates that of the 300-400 individual scientists "in the sea-level [scientific] community", 80% of sea-level experts disagree with the IPCC conclusions regarding sea level rise.

Audio interview can be heard here:
http://itsrainmakingtime.com/2010/nilsaxelmorner/

March 1, 2010 11:48 PM Forum: Global Warming - REAL or NOT

Then and Now

Posted By Dave Snope

Way back in 1998, the NY Times reports:

U.S. Data Since 1895 Fail To Show Warming Trend
By PHILIP SHABECOFF, Special to the New York Times
Published: January 26, 1989


WASHINGTON, Jan. 25— After examining climate data extending back nearly 100 years, a team of Government scientists has concluded that there has been no significant change in average temperatures or rainfall in the United States over that entire period.

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/26/us/us-data-since-1895-fail-to-show-warming-trend.html?pagewanted=1


But...but why are they saying otherwise now? Oh, they had to "fix" the old data in the mean time.

Same temperature data, just "adjusted" to scare common people.


From HockeySchtick http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/03/back-to-future.html

March 2, 2010 07:22 AM Forum: Global Warming - REAL or NOT

Global Warming's Smallest Victim

Posted By Dave Snope

I hope for the best for the miraculous prolicide survivor. She deserves to be adopted into a family that provides love, critical thinking, and a set of values strong enough to withstand the intoxicating persuasions of false gods.

Monday, March 1st 2010, 10:03 AM

A seven-month-old girl miraculously survived alone for three days after one of her parents shot her in the chest - apparently as part of a bizarre murder-suicide pact blamed on global warming.

The baby was discovered with a bullet casing in her chest and covered with blood by police in the Argentinean city of Goya, near the bodies of her parents and 2-year-old brother, the Latin American Herald reported Saturday.

Police broke into the home after neighbors complained of a stench coming from the house. The boy was found with a gunshot wound in his back, while his parents died from gunshot wounds to the chest.

The parents, 56-year-old Francisco Lotero and 23-year-old Miriam Coletti, are believed to have been spurred by their fears about global climate change, London's Telegraph reported.

A letter was found on a table expressing the couple's anger at the government for not responding to the environmental crisis.

Doctors said the baby's condition has been improving every day, the Herald Tribune reported.




http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/03/01/2010-03-01_sevenmonthold_baby_survives_shot_to_chest_in_parents_murdersuicide_pact_blamed_o.html

March 3, 2010 08:42 PM Forum: Global Warming - REAL or NOT

Gore Called a 'Laughingstock' at Apple Shareholder

Posted By Dave Snope

I've always wondered if Gore hears anything but what his $2000/plate sycophants say to him. Does he get any criticism to his face, and how does he respond? We know that he has skillfully avoided any interviews or debates on AGW that include critical views for an entire decade. However, at the Apple Annual Shareholder's meeting, he got called a laughingstock to his face:

Yesterday, Apple shareholder Shelton Ehrlich wrote to explain what happened at this year’s Apple shareholder’s meeting.

I said this at the recent meeting of Apple shareholders:

“I stand in opposition to the re-election of Al Gore to Apple’s board. He has become a laughing stock. The Himalayan glaciers are not melting, the seas are not rising and the medieval warm period has returned. If his advice to Apple is as bad as his positions on the environment he should not be on Apple’s board.”

This is why I said it:

As a shareholder I had the right to oppose his re-election. It is my opinion that he is a laughing stock. My three categorical statements regarding the global warming science are based on what is being widely reported. The most important claim made by Mr. Gore is that the science of man-made global warming is settled. The three significant errors I cite are proof that the science is not settled.

FYI: I have spoken against his re-election at four Apple shareholder meetings. Each time I have chosen a different basis for my opposition. If I’m allowed, I will continue to oppose Mr. Gore.

As I sat down another shareholder rose to defend Mr. Gore. I would judge that more than half of the audience applauded. Later in the meeting I spoke in opposition to two proposals on sustainability and maybe fifteen people clapped. After the meeting ten found me and expressed their thanks for my remarks. They were all old, just like me.



They reelected him anyway. Just a figurehead for the BofD, and Apple wants to look like a Green company so I guess it fits.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-10459872-260.html

March 4, 2010 08:39 PM Forum: Global Warming - REAL or NOT

Katrina Victims To Sue Oil Companies

Posted By Dave Snope

I can't wait to hear the arguments for this one. AFAIK, there is no supporting data to show an increase in hurricane activity due to global warming, only statements by politicians and some unsupported, non-reviewed, broad generalizations made by the IPCC after their hurricane expert quit after refusing to lie for them, resulting in yet another IPCC-gate investigation.

So whose data will the lawyers use to prove this case?

VICTIMS of Hurricane Katrina from Mississippi are seeking to sue carbon gas-emitting multinationals for helping fuel global warming and boosting the devastating 2005 storm, legal documents showed.

The class action suit brought by residents from southern Mississippi, which was ravaged by hurricane-force winds and driving rains, was first filed just weeks after the August 2005 storm hit.

"The plaintiffs allege that defendants' operation of energy, fossil fuels, and chemical industries in the United States caused the emission of greenhouse gasses that contributed to global warming," say the documents, seen by AFP.

The increase in global surface air and water temperatures "in turn caused a rise in sea levels and added to the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina, which combined to destroy the plaintiffs' private property, as well as public property useful to them".

The suit, claiming compensation and punitive damages from multinational companies including Shell, ExxonMobile, BP and Chevron, has already passed several key legal hurdles, after initially being knocked back by the lowest court.

Three federal appeals court judges decided in October 2009 that the case could be heard. But in February the same court decided to re-examine whether it could be heard this time with nine judges.

Other companies named in the suit include Honeywell and American Electric Power, with the residents charging that "the defendants' greenhouse gas emissions caused saltwater, debris, sediment, hazardous substances, and other materials to enter, remain on, and damage plaintiffs' property".


http://www.news.com.au/business/hurricane-katrina-victims-to-sue-greenhouse-gas-emitters-afp/story-e6frfm1i-1225837005620


March 7, 2010 08:12 PM Forum: Global Warming - REAL or NOT

Arctic Sea Ice Extent Highest in Over 5 Years

Posted By Dave Snope



http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php