Thursday, May 11, 2006

The Global Cooling News Blackout

By Donald Laigle

I remember seeing on the Travel Channel a program featuring a British commentator-traveler who was on a ship somewhere in a Canadian waterway. One of the locals he interviewed mentioned that there were usually a lot of icebergs in the water at this time of the year, but as the TV cameras panned out onto the water, the viewer could plainly see there were none this year. The Brit looked into the camera and said "Am I the only one that's noticing this global warming thing?"

I have been seething to respond ever since, and here at last is my response: Yes. You are the only one. The only one, that is, who believes that global warming keeps icebergs from appearing. Because if you had paid attention that day in science class you would have learned that icebergs start out as glaciers that break off-why? Are you listening now?-because of warm weather that causes the ice to melt and break off from the rest of the ice mass. It's called "iceberg calving" and it requires warmer weather and melting.

Yes, I realize that European classrooms are heavy on environmental dogma and light on hard science, but you know, this is the kind of thing even ordinary people can deduce for themselves if they choose to use their brains for that purpose instead of mouthing "liberal" platitudes.

In other words, the fact that warming didn't happen is responsible for this phenomenon of no icebergs, which you nonetheless spin to make your side look good. Because you are part of the liberal media and it is your duty to teach your environmentalist religion to the world.

Without environmentalism, you would lose your raison d'ˆtre, your reason for getting out of bed in the morning. Without it, your existence on this planet would be useless. But Evolution, in all her glory, has chosen you to sit at the pinnacle of her...well, let's not say creation here...her chain of accidents to which you owe your existence, ever since Darwin showed the world that God is nothing but a fiction. And from your pinnacle you have a solemn duty to her to alert the rest of benighted humanity to the grave danger that has arisen due to our ignorance, namely, our mindless beliefs in traditional things like God and country and male-female marriage, all of which serve no purpose but to cause wars and hate and mistrust of the media.

I know how they think. I was a liberal. And today I discovered that the meteorologists, or at least the people who write about weather in the local paper, have joined forces with these enlightened ones. I noticed it last week already: on April 27, for the first time in my 60+ years, I saw frost on the ground as far as the eye could see. I recalled that when I was a child,my father had told me that generally, farmers in our region considered all danger of frost to be past on April 1. So I was so impressed by this ultralate frost that I got my camera, went outside, wrote the date in the frost on my car windshield and took some pics. And it happened again on April 29th. I did recall a few frosts the first week of April, but only isolated cases. Never were there several days of frost in April, to say nothing of the extreme lateness!

Meanwhile I checked the local papers for reports on this unusual phenomenon. The reporters seemed to have overlooked it. Today, May 2, it frosted again, more lightly, but you could clearly see a large blotch of frost on the neighbor's house. I snapped more pics. I spoke with a few old timers, and none of them could recall frost in May either.

Then I called the local papers, first in a neighboring county where I grew up. They had taken no notice of odd weather. I figured maybe that could be explained by the 15 mile distance from here. So I called the local paper and the editor said she didn't think it was unusual. I told them I had never seen frost in May. She said they only covered weather stories when there was a human interest side, and she asked if I had a garden. I said I didn't but I had snapshots of frost taken the 27th, the 29th and today, May 2nd. She said "I don't think we'd be interested in those."

I checked with the state climatologist and discovered they don't keep records back more than 5 years! I also called the local library, and was told they would check. Suddenly it dawned on me: where would scientists gather enough data to determine whether there really is global warming if no one, not the state climatologist, not the local news editors, no one in the appropriate positions where they might be expected to have this information, had a clue as to temperature stats of previous years?

Finally, the librarian called me back. He had found an obscure web site that actually had records dating back a half-century. Here is what he found: Record lows for this area: April 29: 28 degrees in 1949, April 30: 34 degrees once (date not given), May 1: 29 degrees in 1978, and May 2: 34 degrees in 1979. Thus, with all these lows scattered over different years, there was never a year in which it frosted on three different days at the end of April and never had there been frost reported on May 2. Never! But that wasn't news. Because truth is only whatever fits into the shoeboxes of liberalism. And this truth doesn't fit.

Source




GLOBAL WARMING ON JUPITER AND OTHER SOLAR SYSTEM BODIES

Jupiter

A new storm and a new red spot on Jupiter hints at climate change, USA TODAY and dozens of other sources explained yesterday. The temperatures are expected to change by as much as 10 Fahrenheit degrees at different places of the globe. At least close to the new spot and to the equator, nothing less than global warming is expected.

Triton

Triton is Neptune's largest Moon. Some people believe that it used to be an asteroid. Global warming was detected on Triton. Between 1989 and 1998, the temperature jumped by 5 percent on the absolute (Kelvin) scale. The same relative increase would raise the Earth's temperature by 22 degrees Fahrenheit in 9 years. See thousands of other pages about the global warming on Triton.

Enceladus

Another moon of Saturn's, Enceladus, would be also expected to be frozen and cold. Suddenly, Cassini has informed us that Enceladus generates its own heat. Its high temperatures seem to be incompatible with calculations based on solar energy itself, according to existing models.

Saturn

Saturn itself has a rather warm southern pole, and the temperatures in that region suddenly jumped by 3-5 Kelvin degrees. Well, it's warm because it's been exposed to sunshine for quite some time but the magnitude of the temperature jumps is not trivial to calculate.

Pluto

What's going on with Pluto? Well, yes, your guess is right. There is global warming on Pluto. Pluto's atmospheric pressure has tripled in 14 years, and the associated increase of temperature is estimated to be around 3.5 Fahrenheit degrees, despite the motion of Pluto away from the Sun.

Mars

Of course, the global warming on Mars is a well-known story. The warming has been used by this blog to discover the Martians. More seriously, we have explained that the dramatic and speedy melting of the Martian icecaps is caused by the greenhouse effect. 95% of "their" atmosphere is made of carbon dioxide; that's slightly more than 0.038% of our atmosphere. The warming trend on Mars is undeniable. Some people have tried to blame the global warming on NASA's rovers. Such accusations are pretty serious because NASA is already preparing plans to occupy Mars using the greenhouse effect, as ordered by George Bush. ;-)

Venus

Venus, our planet's evil sister, has already been identified as unusable for life because of ... yes, because of the greenhouse effect that occured in the past. Last month, the Venus express gave us some new hints why Venus has such a thick atmosphere that generated global warming.

Earth

The Earth is currently experiencing warming, too, although a less dramatic one than the previous examples. However, there is apparently a huge difference. The warming on the previous planets and moons was natural. On the other hand, the warming on Earth couldn't evolve naturally: it is caused by the humankind, evil corporations, and their intelligent design, most left-wing scientists believe. The warming trends can't have anything to do with the Sun whose activity is now highest in the last 1000 years: it is unethical to propose that the Sun plays any role, consensus scientists argue.

A comparison

You may ask the consensus scientists: why is there such a difference between the explanations for the warming of the Earth and the other planets and their moons? It's because the Earth is the center of the Universe, they would answer. You could also ask: why do all these planets and moons indicate warming? Shut up, the consensus scientists would answer.

Some of them would tell you that your paradox is resolved by the anthropic principle: the people on Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto, Mars, Triton, and other celestial bodies cannot complain about the anthropogenic global warming because... because these people don't exist! :-)

The debate is over, Al Gore, our prophet, has announced. Terrestrial global warming, caused by the human sins, is no longer a political issue: it is now a spiritual issue. Now it's time to punish the heretics who deny that the Earth as the center of the Universe is special because of the humans who were created to the image of God - and because of their sins and SUVs.

This looks like a story about some silly priests from the 16th century Catholic Church - a story about the Dark Ages that most of us heard in the basic school. But unfortunately, what we are describing here are influential people in the 21st century ....

People who believe, much like the Church in the 15th century, that the divine truth is determined by consensus. People who believe that we should prefer awkward hypotheses if they support our spiritual values. People who believe that questions and independent thinking should be silenced.

The Reference Frame, 7 May 2006






RED SPOT JUNIOR

An email from Graham Compton (graham.compton@ntu.ac.uk), School of Biomedical and Natural Sciences Nottingham Trent University

I see that the position of the new red spot on Jupiter, rather nearer the pole than the old, is being interpreted as evidence for an increase in Jupiter's temperature (See here). In the (presumed) absence of combusting fossil fuels on Jupiter, an increase in solar input might be guessed as a possible cause, but anyway it has certainly demonstrated a dramatic increase in storm activity at high latitudes and all this with no anthropogenic input. Funny stuff, weather.






Cement firm uses waste in image clean-up

Sounds expensive

Thousands of tonnes of hazardous waste is being harnessed to manufacture Australian cement in an initiative to clean up the image of one of the world's biggest polluting industries. Flammable industrial waste, including oils, pesticides and chemical by-products, are replacing fossil fuels in powering high-intensity kilns at one of the nation's biggest cement manufacturers. The process reduces greenhouse gas emissions by reclaiming waste that would otherwise go to landfill. It is one of dozens of green initiatives up for discussion at the three-day Enviro 06 Conference and Exhibition, which started in Melbourne on Tuesday.

Geocycle, a subsidiary of Cement Australia, reclaims about 12,000 tonnes of industrial waste each year and is the only Australian company to reuse hazardous materials. The waste is transported to a processing plant in Dandenong, in Melbourne's south-east, where it is analysed and blended to produce an optimum burn potential. The waste is then loaded into 20,000 litre tanks and transported to Cement Australia's manufacturing kilns in Gladstone, Queensland, where it is burned at 1,200 degrees.

Geocycle operations manager John Hewitson said substituting waste for fossil fuels did not reduce greenhouse gases generated in the kiln but resulted in an overall reduction in emissions from landfill. "There are quite drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions overall and it's certainly, from an Australian point of view, one of the ways that Australia can remain competitive in the manufacturing of cement," Mr Hewitson said. "The cement industry is the largest generator of CO2 (carbon dioxide) of all the industries in the world. "Four or five per cent of total greenhouse gases generated is from the cement industry. "Any reduction in that is a very significant environmental improvement."

Currently six per cent of fuels burned at Cement Australia is reclaimed waste - the rest comprises fossil fuels, including coal - but the company aims to increase that to 20 per cent within 10 years. In the Netherlands the substitution rate is 83 per cent. When operating at its full potential, the process can provide a free form of energy - a scenario overseas cement manufacturers are striving to achieve, Mr Hewitson said. In Australia, greater government subsidies for purchasing reclaimed oil - used to blend waste - would boost turnover, he said. Educating industry to separate their waste was also important for improving the quality and quantity of the yield. Geocycle charges up to $600 a tonne for disposing of industrial waste. With the cost of landfill for hazardous waste set to increase to up to $1,000 a tonne in future, Mr Hewitson said there was a financial incentive for industry to find greener alternatives.

Source

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists


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