I just can’t take anyone seriously who believes in man made global warming.
Of course climate change is real.
This morning it was 42 degrees and right now its 78 degrees and I expect tomorrow it to be about 68 degrees.
You aren't going to hear anything from McCain, or the other two for that matter, that isn't straight out of Soros' agenda to bring this country to it's knees.
Pandering whores.
John, it's called "weather." Look into it.
The Sun Contributes to Climate Change!
Video @ 10:00
I think that climate change is real too. When has it ever NOT changed? Where I live we sometimes get 40 degree swings in temperature over the course of a single day. We even experience (gasp!) significant changes in average temperature that last for months - these are called “seasons”.
The question is not that the climate changes it is whether or not the change is for the worse and whether or not we can do anything about it. The other day there was a segment on a newscast about greenhouse gases and the climate change loons admitted that even if every vehicle in the US was banned tomorrow the resulting change in temperature would be less than 1 degree over a period of years.
The only thing I am sure of is that if we give complete control of energy production and usage to politicians we will have surrendered virtually all freedom for virtually nothing.
ping
They forgot a candidate:
Hot debate: Global warming
Alan Keyes
September 23, 2000
This week, I am going to consider some of the economic and related human costs of a serious attempt to restrict carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. These are costs that the Kyoto protocol would impose whether or not the warnings about global warming — and its catastrophic effects — are reality or fantasy, a topic I will explore next week.
The material basis for human flourishing is crudely measured by our statistics of wealth and income. It is no doubt true that many in the developed world cast their money after baubles of mere momentary interest, distractions rather than helps on the road to happiness. But this does not significantly alter the large picture, which is that economic flourishing makes possible — indeed, largely consists in — an increasingly effective human providence over the daunting and dangerous circumstances of our material existence. Nourishing and plentiful food, protection from the elements and disease, opportunity for leisure and rest in circumstances that rejuvenate tired soul and body — all these things are possessed by the people of the world, by and large, in proportion to their annual income.
Perhaps even more important, these blessings are not best understood as war prizes won by autonomous individuals in the combat of economic life. Human beings work, save and spend, for the most part, so that they can care for the people in their lives, children and spouses above all. Whatever theories may be in the heads of leftist intellectuals, the fact of real human life is that our economic striving is ordered to the fulfillment of our moral duties and hopes. This is the moral meaning of property rights, and of economic liberty, and it is the real reason that grandiose governmental schemes to redistribute wealth or accomplish other noble sounding goals are so dangerous — governmental intervention in the fabric of wealth creation is almost by definition a tyrannical disruption of our efforts to care for ourselves and each other.
The poor of the world are particularly vulnerable to such disruption for two reasons. First, wealth is the resource base for freedom and a wealthy people tends to be more able to establish and preserve its liberty against government ambition than a people entirely distracted by the daily effort to keep body and soul together. Second, government interference in economic activity is most damaging to people who are still striving for material essentials and for whom economic disruption means the delay or indefinite loss of those essentials. Recession in America means fewer SUVs — in Bangladesh it means famine and death.
These facts may seem obvious to many but it is important to remember that it is only in the past several decades that the intellectual battle over their truth was won — and that the political victory is still in doubt. The proposition that economic liberty and growth were the most important paths to the material well-being of the world’s people was ferociously disputed for most of the 20th century by socialists. It is a mistake to believe that today’s liberals have abandoned that dispute.
Today, the Clintons and Gores of the world seem content to crow about the abundance that economic liberty has produced and to make use of it to advance their own political power. But the crucial fact to remember is that, while they may be willing to milk this cow, they don’t love it, don’t know what keeps it alive, and may very well kill it without a second thought if their calculus of political advantage and ideology shifts and the path of political power diverges from the path of economic liberty. At that point, those who are building a global economy of solutions to the perennial material needs and pains of human existence will find that their political leaders have derailed a prosperity that, at the beginning of the 21st century, was on track to bring incalculable benefit to billions of people around the world.
The statistical correlation between economic prosperity and the use of energy — and of electricity in particular — is nearly perfect. Countries that are wealthy use lots of energy, countries that are poor use very little. Countries that are on the move out of poverty, and toward prosperity, experience dramatic increases in their use of energy.
And this is not surprising. Energy, as the late Julian Simon pointed out, is the “master” resource — the resource that enables mankind to transform raw materials into useful commodities. America is often criticized by environmentalists for using so much energy but this is absurd. We use so much energy because we feed the world, just to name one of the many good works of the American economy. Criticizing the use of energy in economic activity is no different, in principle, from a parent criticizing a child who spends much energy in helping around the house. Free economies use energy in ways that human ingenuity and experience judge to be the most efficient deployments in particular times and places to solve the problems and seize the opportunities of human life. Living things use energy to accomplish their good and important goals — and so do free economies.
This is the plainest common sense and we are far-gone down the road of ideology, indeed, when we have become propagandized into thinking that the very use of energy is suspect. Such suspicion is, along with abortion, perhaps the clearest manifestation of the socialist death wish. The left seems often to think that the perfect state of human existence would be to successfully prevent the introduction of new life and any sign of metabolism in those who have the questionable good fortune to exist.
For the most part, and increasingly, the energy used by the world economy takes the form of electricity. The obvious and true conclusion to be drawn is that the provision of increasing quantities of energy in the form of cheap electricity is a fundamentally important task if we are to remain on the course of economic prosperity. And, as Dr. Mark Mills points out, “the cheapest source of both existing and new kilowatt-hours is fossil fuel — coal in particular. Two-thirds of global power is fossil-fueled; that figure will rise to 70 percent by 2015 since fossil fuels account for nearly 80 percent of all planned and projected growth in world electric supply.” The production of cheap electricity from fossil-fuels produces carbon dioxide.
Which brings us to Kyoto. The core proposal of the Kyoto movement is that the governments of the world should agree to enforce a dramatic reduction in the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But it is overwhelmingly true now, and for the foreseeable future, that the increases in energy use which will be required for continued material improvement of the human condition will come in the form of fossil-fuel based electricity. Therefore, over the relevant historical period we can consider, it will remain true that the imposition of a reduction in the rate of growth of our use of fossil fuels will reduce economic prosperity by a corresponding amount.
The electricity produced from renewable sources will be both more expensive and dramatically insufficient in quantity. Despite billions of dollars in taxpayer and ratepayer subsidies over two decades, wind farms and solar panels (the renewable energies most favored by the Kyoto partisans) supply less than two percent of America’s electricity needs. Other than in niche-market applications, they are simply not competitive with other fuel sources. Were we to attempt seriously to substitute renewable sources for fossil fuels in the production of electricity, these limitations would translate directly into fundamental economic costs of the kind that wealthy westerners can hardly imagine.
The cuts in global usage of electricity that are the goal of Kyoto would prevent the spread of electrification in the developing world, denying the people in those countries the basic benefits of such devices as air-conditioners, refrigeration, and the whole range of labor-saving devices that we take for granted in the West. Denied also would be the cheap power that has been the foundation for economic growth in every country in the world throughout the industrial age. Denied as well would be the benefits of the age of intelligent devices, exploding communications capacity and barely contemplated other new uses of the electrons that lie at the heart of the new economy.
For while it is true that the communications and computer revolutions make the use of energy greatly more efficient, and that efficiency in the use of electricity has and will continue to grow rapidly even in its older applications, still the growth of population, the spread of electricity to new areas, and the development of new kinds of applications of electricity vastly outpace the increases in efficiency. Despite its more efficient use, absolute use of electricity will grow dramatically in the service of human economic activity in the years ahead and there is no source of that electricity capable of meeting the demand but fossil fuels.
The Kyoto reductions of carbon dioxide emissions would require the fundamental disruption of the global project of improving the material conditions of human existence. The cost of the Kyoto experiment will be abandoning the growth path of an economy that has the capacity to end famine and other basic deprivations, extend access to learning, and lift the whole globe to levels of material prosperity that were, until recently, the prized accomplishment of the few developed nations of the world. Why would any sane person consider paying this cost in the absence of absolutely compelling evidence that the alternative is global calamity on a huge scale?
One reason is suggested by the fact, previously mentioned, that we have a class of politicians who have for a long time been evidently motivated by something other than the ambition to leave the world’s people in freedom to accomplish their own material and moral success. An article in The Electricity Journal by David Wojick suggests another reason. Dr. Wojick points out that the requirements of compliance with the Kyoto goals do not fall evenly on all developed nations. While the United States would have to decapitate the growth curve of its own use of electricity in order to meet its target under Kyoto, Britain and Germany would have to do very little. The reason is that the American economy is growing and its use of electricity, and the associated consumption of fossil fuels, is growing correspondingly. The tired nations of Europe, on the other hand, are not growing and seem content to remain economically stagnant even as they cease to replenish their human populations. Is it not possible that the leaders of these stagnant countries see in the Kyoto agenda an opportunity to prevent the boisterous life of the developing world, including the still young and vigorous American economy, from disrupting a Europe that seems content to grow old rocking on its porch?
The use of energy is a sign of youth, of hope and of life. These things are hated by the old, the despairing and the dead of soul. The siren of Kyoto is an invitation to join these latter forces in the abortion of the global effort to make life better for ourselves and our brothers and sisters. Rejecting it will be an important part of the duty of the West to choose life.
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/keyes/000923
Yes, climate change is real....happens here in December, March, June, September.....
One day Chicken Little was walking in the woods when -- KERPLUNK -- an Enviro-Nut fell on her head
"Oh my goodness!" said Chicken Little. "The sky is falling! I must go and tell President Bush."
On her way to the White House, Chicken Little met Nervous Nelly.
Nervous Nelly said that she was going into the woods to hunt for worms.
"Oh no, don't go!" said Chicken Little. "I was there and the sky fell on my head! Come with me to tell President Bush."
So Nervous Nelly joined Chicken Little and they went along and went along as fast as they could.
Soon they met Crotchety Bobby, who said, "I'm going to the woods to hunt for seeds."
"Oh no, don't go!" said Nervous Nelly. "The sky is falling there! Come with us to tell President Bush."
So Crotchety Bobby joined Nervous Nelly and Chicken Little, and they went along and went along as fast as they could.
Soon they met Lucy Goosey, who was planning to go to the woods to look for berries.
"Oh no, don't go!" said Crotchety Bobby. "The sky is falling there! Come with us to tell President Bush." So Lucy Goosey joined Crotchety Bobby, Nervous Nelly and Chicken Little, and they went along as fast as they could.
Then who should appear on the path but sly old Owl Gore
"Where are you going, my fine feathered friends?" asked Owl Gore. He spoke in a polite manner, so as not to frighten them.
"The sky is falling!" cried Chicken Little. "We must tell President Bush."
"I know a shortcut to the White House," said Owl Gore sweetly. "Come and follow me."
But wicked Owl Gore did not lead the others to the Oval Office. He led them right up to the entrance of his Carbon Trading Pit. Once they were inside, Owl Gore was planning to turn them into Liquid CO2!
Just as Chicken Little and the others were about to go into the Owl's pit, they heard a strange sound and stopped.
It was President Bush's Special Hunting Dogs, growling and howling.
How Owl Gore hustled his fat butt, across the meadows and through the forests, with the hounds close behind.
He ran until he was far, far away and never dared to come back again.
After that day, Chicken Little always carried an umbrella with her when she walked in the woods.
The umbrella was a present from President Bush to protect Chicken Little From any Enviro-Nuts falling from Green-Trees.
A nd if -- KERPLUNK -- an Enviro-Nut fell, Chicken Little didn't mind a bit. In fact, she didn't notice it at all.
The End
As usual, Dr. Keyes proves to be far ahead of his time.
This is the following week’s column he mentioned in the previous post:
Debunking the gashouse gang
Alan Keyes
September 30, 2000
Just how likely is it that increasing levels of carbon dioxide resulting from human use of fossil fuels will cause a significant increase in global temperature — and that such an increase will be seriously harmful to human society? You may have the impression from the media and Al Gore that this awful scenario is a scientific certitude unless we “take action” to prevent it.
A survey of what reputable scientists are actually saying on the question, however, suggests that it is quite likely that no one on earth knows just “how likely” these bad results are. In fact, I think it is quite unreasonable for anyone to be confident that we face a human-induced global warming that will, on balance, be harmful rather than beneficial for humanity or the environment, much less that such a warming would be catastrophic.
First, what is the basis for the scientific claim that global warming is underway as the result of the real increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide that have been measured over the past century and more? As Dr. S. Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics points out, most such predictions are based on computer simulations of the climate.
Have you ever stopped to think how difficult it would be to develop a set of rules that would describe the behavior of the global climate over a century or more? Would this task be more or less difficult than developing rules that would accurately predict the weather in your hometown a week from now? Here are just some of the difficulties that the computer models face.
It is always difficult to describe the real world in terms of a set of rigid rules, but this is particularly true when attempting to describe a situation with many causes that act and react upon each other. The global climate is, to put it mildly, one of the more complicated systems that scientists attempt to model. Very roughly speaking, for each causal factor in the real world, a quantitative rule of behavior is added to the model which describes its effect on each of the other factors involved. The possible combinations of such causes and effects multiply dizzyingly. Dr. Baliunas and her colleagues have noted that a sophisticated computer model of such climate parameters and their interactions would have to track millions of distinct cause-and-effect relationships. Computers do not even exist today that are powerful enough to handle the calculations that would be required. In addition, very slight differences in the original situation or the rules governing the model can lead to widely differing model results. The longer into the future the model is run, the more widely its results can vary from those of another model which expressed its rules slightly differently.
Imagine trying to calculate the path of a ball rolling down a rocky hill. Now imagine trying to calculate global weather patterns a century in advance!
It is important to note that the difficulty of modeling the global climate system does not result merely from the enormous complexity of the system, but also from the fact that the physical processes themselves are incompletely understood. For example, depending on their height, clouds can exert a warming or cooling influence on the atmosphere. Yet, the formation and behavior of clouds remains somewhat mysterious.
The “greenhouse” effect of carbon dioxide in isolation from all other factors is fairly simple to calculate, while the actual result of increased carbon dioxide in dynamic interaction with all the other factors in the earth’s climate is dauntingly complex. Is it any wonder that models constructed by advocates of the global warming theory would have tended to overemphasize the warming effect of carbon dioxide? Or that the warming predicted by their models for the period of the most rapid increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide has continually exceeded the actual recorded warming by significant amounts? In models, it is sometimes easy for a scientist to find what he is looking for — after all, he is in some respects the creator of the world he is studying.
Connected with the difficulty in understanding the effect of carbon dioxide in climate change is the fact that other factors are known to affect global climate — above all, the sun. In the rush to a spurious scientific consensus that human production of carbon dioxide threatened the earth, the possibility that the principal cause of global temperature change is the sun’s varying output of energy was dismissed as “junk science.” Now it begins to look as if the sun is an important cause of the modest warming that has in fact occurred over the past 150 years. The Sunday Times of London reported over the weekend that new research, based on data provided by the European Space Agency, is to be released this week at one of the first conferences bringing solar researchers together with scientists investigating global temperature. The Times reports that the new research shows that “earlier computer models severely underestimated the sun’s impact” on global temperature — and that global warming “is caused mainly by the sun.”
Whether or not the study is as reported, the scientific community is beginning to take seriously the possibility that the sun plays a major role in climate change. And what happens if scientists find that the sun is responsible for much or even most of the modest warming the world seems to have experienced during the past century? Partisans of coercive energy conservation schemes like the Kyoto protocol might find this very inconvenient. For how in the world would we legislate reductions on solar emission?
Perhaps more important than assigning responsibility for global temperature change in the years ahead is the question of whether such change will help or hinder human life. Is a slightly warmer atmosphere — whether caused by man or by the sun — such a bad thing? There is good reason to conclude that we have little to fear, and perhaps much to gain, whether we or the sun is the cause of warming. In Senate testimony last month Robert Mendelsohn, Yale Professor of Forest Policy, reported that his ongoing research indicates that currently predicted levels of warming by 2100 are likely, on balance, to provide economic benefits in the Unites States of between 14 and 23 billion dollars per year. He noted that the critical factor in these predictions, which represent a modification of earlier predictions of significant cost from warming, is that “adaptation matters.” That is, “Empirical research indicates that households and firms will respond to climate change and reduce damages and enhance benefits.”
Perhaps the most important potential effect of the undeniable increase in carbon dioxide will be its dramatic enhancement of the productivity of farming. Carbon dioxide is the most important plant food and a significant increase in the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide is very likely to be an important enabler of a second Green Revolution, as Drs. Keith and Craig Idso of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change have argued. Elevation of carbon dioxide may be, in effect, a global, equitable and un-bureaucratic nutritional program for the world, with proportionally greater effect in precisely those areas that now suffer most from low agricultural productivity.
Breathless predictions of melting icecaps, rising oceans, inundated coastlines and super-storms around the world, meanwhile, look increasingly unfounded. If the models were correct, we should already be well along toward such dangers and they are simply not occurring. This might be partly explained by the failure of the earth to warm as rapidly as the models have predicted, but then this means that the models may well continue to overstate the warming we face. Even predictions of the increased spread of malaria and other infectious diseases turn out to be based on simplistic assumptions that temperature is the dominant factor in their spread. But this is simply false; as Dr. Paul Reiter of the Centers for Disease Control points out, the United States is largely free of such diseases because of its systems of hygiene and health, not its temperature, and the coldest centuries of the past millennium were some of the most afflicted with these same diseases.
The scientific debate surrounding global temperature change and human generation of carbon dioxide is vast. The citizen’s duty is not mastery of a difficult and complicated scientific literature, but a general supervision of the use society makes of the claims of science, including the insistence that political agendas posing as science be filtered out. In the case of global warming, it is clear enough that much of the supposed science of the past decade has actually been political activism by other means. Perhaps the tide is turning now, but it is still important that — in the face of ongoing alarmism and fear mongering — we spread the word that the issue of global warming is much more complicated, and much less alarming, than the gashouse gang has let on.
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/keyes/000930
380 out of 1,000,000 molecules in the air are CO2. Round it to the nearest 1/10 and you ZERO!
Well, all three Democrats agree.
“cap and trade” this!!!
That's true in many respects but he won the republican party nomination and the alternatives are worse. At least he supports the troops and would be tough on terror.
Maybe if he didn't live in a desert, he'd know these things.