Saving the planet one tropical vacation at a time;
Leaders talk climate change at Hawaii conference [….] Delegates met behind closed doors for a two-day global climate change conference in Hawaii but were not expected to make major progress on setting limits for greenhouse gases.
And not a moment too soon…
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The Mauna Kea Weather Center forecast snow flurries and possibly heavy snow today and into tomorrow night on the 13,796-foot mountain. […] Haleakala National Park officials said snow reached much lower elevations than normal, down to the 7,000-foot level in the general area where the park headquarters is located. |
As global warming continues to strike around the globe…
In Tehran…
In China…
Tokyo…
Saudi Arabia…
Baghdad…
And hardest hit of all – the northern hemisphere…
When will it all end?
Addendum: Members of the Church of Kyoto are advised to read this comment before posting.
When the New York Times finally goes broke?
Good thing they changed the name to “climate change” – that way they can still wail and cry and NEVER be caught with their pants down!!
wait till some smary assed lawyer wanting to get famous & rich launches a class action lawsuit against Gore, the IPCC, Hansen, Mann et al for committing fraud.
Couple of $billion in damages ought to be enough.
The Arctic sea ice is back to normal levels!
Does this mean the Northwest Passage is blocked solid?
Does this mean Polar Bears will not drown?
Does this mean Polar Bears can survive and hunt seals despite Global Warming?
Does this mean buying carbon credits from Al Gore’s company, China, India and Russia will stop?
Does this mean Al Gore and David Suzuki are really snake oil salesmen and really don’t know their a**holes from holes in the ground?
The same for the hysterical “Man Made Global Warming” MSM journalists!
Just wondering.
I spent the weekend digging off the roof of my trailer, and I could only get 1/3 of it done, since the snow was 3 feet deep.
Global warming my foot.
ICECAP has an article about the polar bear… seems they’ve been around for over 110,000 years… which means they have survived who know how many cycles warmer than this one. This one not even being as warm as the three the globe has experienced in the last 2000 years.
It’s fascinating to watch the way people turn off their own common sense and defer to ‘experts’ like suzuki and gore, just because suzuki and gore have declared themselves to be experts. Here’s what I think is responsible for ‘global warming.’
http://ve4xm.caltech.edu/Bellan_plasma_page/skylab.gif
US election coverage at http://www.darrellepp.com
If it’s hot, we’re all dying!!! If it’s cold, we’re all dying!!! If it rains too much, …..well you get the idea.
And don’t forget – climate change even includes periods of “normal” weather!
Yes, it’s fascinating to see how the rhetoric has changed. Gone are the references to ‘global warming’ and even, fading, are any references to AGW, or man-made global warming.
Now, it’s ‘climate change’. Heck, the climate has been changing since the universe began with that BigBang.
But, more and more, the rhetoric is changing to the REAL reason for the UN’s Kyoto Agenda. The Money Scam. To get the West to pay for the industrialization of China and India.
Nothing to do with emissions. Nothing to do with pollution. Just yet another UN money scam.
If these guys are against warming so much shouldn’t they be having these conferences in cold places, not tropical? Seems pretty hypocritical. Or maybe do the next one from the arctic where all that ice used to be but is totally melted and warm now?
Made a trip up Haleakala once. It was over 80F at sea level. At the top of the mountain i was so cold I could hardly stop shivering long enough to take a picture. Great view though.
I saw on the news the other day that “climate change” was now mandated in some schools to “warn” kids about “climate change”….NO it is so they can start to brain wash them …what a waste of time and money……teach them to write instead….what a bunch of B— S—
Just to correct a misconception that seems to be kicked around a lot, the term “climate change” actually came into promince through the efforts of those who do not accept AGW – mostly from the Luntz Memo to the Republican Party.
The Luntz Memo has a section on how to talk about global warming. To quote from it:
Regards,
John
Yes, like all socialist plans the words are chosen carefully. “Climate change” is probably one of the best recent examples.
Another one that I always chuckle about is “sustainable development”.
Kate you should run a competition to come up with the full list.
*
first bali… now hawaii… funny how there’s never a “climate change”
conference in, say… beautiful trenton, new jersey.
i guess saint al wouldn’t get to work on his tan, huh?
*
Shucks I forgot to include another good one in my posting, “freedom fighter”, which has been used all the way back to Mugabe’s rise in power, and more recently has been used by the left to describe any fool that wants to blow himself up and kill people.
John Cross: that was an interesting read!
Posted by: Kate at February 4, 2008 10:44 AM
“And don’t forget – climate change even includes periods of “normal” weather!”
AH-HA! Define normal. What part of the last 10,000 years, during this present inter-glacial period, would be chosen as the the norm, to which all esle would be compared?
Conservatives answer: Hard to say; climate has always been in a state of flux.
Liberals answer: That period that best proves what I knew was the norm all along.
” … climate change even includes periods of “normal” weather!”
Or the the case of the pine beetle:
“Significant mortality occurs only with unseasonably cold weather early or late in the season.”
tinyurl.com/39d22e
the lack of abnormal also spells climate change.
Yoop I’d chose the holocene maximum as normal.
since then the sun has been giving us less heat and, well, we’re all going to die.
“….climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge…”
If only that was still true. The evidence that we are in a man-made climate crisis is waning, but paradoxically the public/political alarm is higher than ever.
I guess that’s what we call the “flywheel effect”. You remember, where the stored ocean heat keeps the air temperatures climbing, long after the forces driving upwards temperature change have attenuated.
In this case, it’s the politicians and media ringing the climate alarm bells ever louder, even
as the scientific basis weakens.
(Although I have to admit there appears to be dearth of alarmist stories over the last month or so.)
Regards, BRK
The Managing Director of the Farmer’s Almanac was on CNN a couple of weeks ago. They predict global cooling:
http://www.almanac.com/forum/read.php?9,183435,page=1
For all those unfortunates who hang on to every word of crazy Al’s I have a few simple questions:
1. If as Mr. Gore suggests in his motion picture fantasy movie and book “An Inconvenient Truth” (which really should be entitled “A Convenient Untruth”) the polar regions are getting warmer by the minute how can the world’s refrigeration system up there continue to send bone chilling cold fronts towards the Equator as they did last year?
Last October 11, I wrote ” One does not have to be a climatologist to recognize a few simple facts.
“Cold fronts begin at the poles and head for the temperate zones. If the poles are warming, the fronts will be less frigid. If your refrigerator is losing its cooling power, it will begin to lose its power to do what it is meant to do: refrigerate. And if the Arctic ice pack is melting or even thinning, as it melts or thins, the cold fronts it sends south will be less and less frigid.
“But if, instead, the ice and snow pack is thickening and becoming more frigid, the cold fronts it sends south will be increasingly colder.
“Ergo, if the polar ice caps are seeing their power to refrigerate slowly diminishing, how is it that we are witnessing more and more record breaking cold spells? Faulty refrigerators can’t fast-freeze their contents.
“As for the very real prospects of massive snowfalls and violent blizzards it is important to remember a very simple fact: the colder the air in a front, the more violent the storms created when arctic air meets warm air pushing up from the equatorial regions.
“And the warm fronts moving north are increasingly hot, but that is not the result of global warming – it’s due to the warming of the world’s oceans.
“That ocean warming is created by a huge increase in underseas tectonic activity – the kind of increased activity (See Pakistan/India/Indonesia etc) we’re witnessing on the surface – submerged volcanoes erupting, gushing red hot magma up through through the earth’s crust, or magma spilling through cracks in the sea floor and turning the ocean waters into boiling cauldrons.”
2. If, as the record shows, the earth has undergone a series of ice ages every hundred thousand years or so like clockwork with about 90 thousand years of glaciation followed by 10 or 12 thousand years of interglaciation and we are now about 12,000 years since the last ice age ended, are we not overdue for another period of glaciation? Or has a law of nature been repealed by brother Gore and his fellow Marxists?
3. If every ice age has been preceded by a rise in the level of CO2 in the atmosphere to over 300 ppm and that level is now approaching 400 ppm, should we not be concerned that Mother Nature is trying to tell us something? The CO2 is emitted by overheated oceans, by the way.
According to Bob Felix writing in iceagenow.com “Research shows that there was ‘a sudden and dramatic rise’ in carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere at the dinosaur extinction of 65 million years ago … today’s rise in CO2 levels can be attributed to our warming oceans. After all, the oceans are known as a carbon dioxide ‘sink,’ especially when the water is cold.
“But as the water warms up, it releases CO2 into the atmosphere,” he writes. “This happens in much the same way that a warm bottle of home-brewed root beer will release CO2. And if you give that CO2 no way to escape, the bottle will explode. We’ve got it backwards. We’ve got cause and effect in reverse. The CO2 is not causing global warming. Instead, our warming oceans are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. It’s not global warming, it’s ocean warming, and it’s leading us into an ice age.”
He adds that “We’ve forgotten that this isn’t the first time our seas have warmed. Sea temperatures also shot upward 10º to 18ºF just prior to the last ice age. As the oceans warmed, evaporation increased. The excess moisture then fell to the ground as giant blizzards, giant storms and floods (Noah’s Deluge type floods), and a new ice age began.”
And he warns, “The same thing is happening today. Underwater volcanic activity in the Arctic Ocean far stronger than anyone ever imagined!”
4. If evil mankind has caused the rise in CO2 by burning fossil fuels how did Mother Nature achieve it a hundred thousand years ago when there were no automobiles or backyard barbecues around?
Last October I observed that “I think it’s important to understand that I am not a scientist nor a climatologist or meteorologist or any kind of weather expert. I am an investigative reporter and it in that capacity I have spent of lot of time over the past ten years examining the state of our climate and the increasing number of odd events vis-a-vis the weather and the state of tectonic activity. I began with no preconceived notions other than the old truism that ‘Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it’
The fact that we suddenly found ourselves being preached to by a bunch of snotty know-it-alls who in their arrogance prated about an alleged global warming threat and decided to do something about it kind of stuck in my craw. When they attempted via such economy destroying absurdities as the Kyoto accord to assume authority over the entire world and impose their Marxist views on every human being on the face of the earth I made up my mind to dig into the whole subject.
My efforts resulted in an eight-part study published on Wednesday on the Web in 1997 “Global Warming or Globaloney” in which I advanced the idea that we are gradually entering a new ice age.
Careful Kate, remember that you are back in Canada where you just might be accused of being insensitive to the patriotic believers in catastrophic AGW. I smell another potential HRC investigation on the way! How dare you incite this denier rabble!
Well, if we are headed into the next ice age, then damn, that last satellite picture creeps me out all the more! Look at all that ice. Yikes!
Amazing, that so many can be led to bark up the wrong tree.
Amazing that so many can be so easily led anywhere. What does that say about *informed* North Americans?
An oxymoron?
Meanwhile Rocky Mountain Institute and Brookings Institution sit there with FREE information.= TG
Winning the Oil Endgame
By Amory B. Lovins
In mid-2005, Rocky Mountain Institute launched a three-year, $4-million effort to make this 2004 Pentagon-cosponsored RMI study’s implementation irreversible via *institutional acupuncture* —inserting needles wherever the business logic is congested and not flowing properly. The first two years’ results have exceeded expectations. We must transform six sectors, at least three of which seem to have passed the *tipping point*:
Aviation – Boeing’s fuel-frugal, half-carbonfiber 787 Dreamliner has had the fastest order take-off of any airplane in history and is sold out into 2014. This competitive leapfrog beat Airbus, moved Boeing from trouble to triumph in just two years, and is accelerating. We’re helping to speed it further.
Heavy trucks – Based on our analysis, Wal-Mart committed to double its fleet efficiency by 2015, which would save it billions of dollars.
The first step in Wal-Mart’s fleet transformation—a 25 percent fuel saving in trucks bought starting January 2007—was successfully implemented. This *demand pull* will let everyone else buy those trucks too, saving 6 percent of U.S. oil. Next we’ll help broaden the buyers’ consortium, speed suppliers’ innovations, and demonstrate tripled-efficiency designs.
Military: – The Pentagon is finally emerging as the leader within the federal government in getting our nation off oil so nobody need fight over oil.
An autumn 2007 Defense Science Board report is expected to support our case for making radical military energy efficiency a strategic goal—thus making warfighting more effective but less necessary, and triggering military R&D that would transform civilian vehicles’ efficiency just as it created the Internet, GPS, and the jet and microchip industries.
Automaking is the hardest and slowest sector to change, but after 17 years’ effort, important shifts are suddenly accelerating. The expected tsunami of *creative destruction* now washing over the industry is changing top managers or their minds, whichever comes first.
Two of the Big Three U.S. automakers’ CEOs now come from outside the industry, and one had led Boeing Commercial Airplanes’ recent efficient-airplane leapfrog (matching our suggestion that Detroit emulate Boeing’s competitive strategy). Both of our MOVE Team’s transformational car projects—one at an automaker level, another with a consortium of Tier One suppliers—turned up trumps.
More are starting, and integrative ultralight design is emerging as the industry’s new wave. A major automaker’s new emphasis on lightweighting is likely to inspire followers. Dealers and the UAW consider breakthrough innovation vital to the industry’s survival.
Reinforcing these trends, RMI’s June 2007 private Feebate Forum roused strong industry and stakeholder inter- est and an agenda of follow-on research and experimentation. And important 2007 contextual innovations range from Rim’s *smart garage* to our partner Sturman Industries’ *digital engine.*
The fuels and finance sectors are progressing, too. From cellulosic ethanol to butanol to algal oils, a portfolio of exciting new biofuel options, many still in stealth mode, is moving from lab to market.
(RMI’s work in hypothetical designs for cellulosic ethanol plants would save a typical new unit half its steam, three-fifths of its electricity, and a third of its capital cost.)
In 2006, the global financial sector invested $71 billion in new *clean energy* projects. Extensive WTOE outreach continues, including a late-2007 Chinese edition. RMI is seeking funds to continue all these implementation efforts through 30 June 2008, then will evaluate.
http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid296.php
============= Rocky Mountain Institute [free download]
Shows progress and how Military and Emergency services come first. = TG
All of this information is inconvenient truth.
Some might see it as a message from above to the Left to quit being stupid.
Man-oh-man! That climate! It’s always-a-changin’
Who’d’a thunk it?
China is going to be even more pi**ed with us for not abiding KYOTO protocol. They’re getting snow with no carbon credits to boot.
Wonder if Moe Stlong is stuck in the snow in his Eastern Paradise?
David Suzuki, on the switch from GW to CC. (He was a guest on The Weather Channel about a year ago);
Ian Sinclair: David, why the change to Climate Change ?
David Suzuki: (paraphrase)Because Global Warming may (that is ‘may’) shut down the North Atlantic Gulf Stream and Europe may (that is ‘may’) experience cooling, an ice age even. So with Global Warming, some parts of the Earth may warm and others may cool.
Does anyone believe anything DS says ?
Make that ‘The Weather Network’
its been a tough week for the MSM. a month ago it was only weather reports, now they have to be taken off the table because they are “the inconvenient truth” but not “the incovenient truth they want”
John Cross: If you found out for certain that the whole “climate change/global warming” thing was false, Would that make you happy or sad?
oh no its cold outside, that means GW isn’t happening…here all those scientists have been wasting their time and your money for all these years when all they had to do was look outside during winter to see that it’s, gasp, snowing!
Sure ignore the science and the facts and post pretty pictures to prove your ignorance on the subject!
Amory Lovins is an interesting individual. He spoke at the first Calgary Green Bldg conference a few years back.
Governments are stupid, can’t take the easy route to making change.
1. Change the building code so new homes have to have condensing furnaces and water heaters (90%+ efficiency). The hit to the price is +$2-3k max. Same with more insulation in walls, roof.
2. Get the electric car approved in urban areas where it can make a significant impact on air quality. City by-laws are so dumb. We can’t use electric bikes, skateboards, Segways coz the laws say they are motor-vehicles, yet too slow for the roads, too fast for sidewalks.
This AM on 580 CFRA Ottawa, environment canada was calling for highs of 11 degrees for Tuesday,now on the noonday news a spokesman for environment Canada says …actually the computer model got it wrong,sometimes these models don’t take in account things like amount of snow on the ground{32 cm on friday} and the high will be 4,which is normal for this time of year. The model cannot predict 24 hours forget 100 years.
Forget what they say. Watch what they do. Nobody is lobbying for the one simple measure that would increase fuel efficiency and decrease C02 in one stroke of the pen – reduce speed limits.
Why not? Because it would be overwhelmingly unpopular. You see, preventing the “end of civilization as we know it” isn’t quite as important as preventing their own political exits from the stage.
So, how do you interpret this?
They don’t even believe what they’re telling us.
on the flip side, look at all the folks in China, Saudi, Iran, Hawaii having FUN in the snow???
park the Prius, pull out the snowshoes
It is not the case that the references to phrase “global warming” are gone. The mealy-mouthed phrase “climate change” is used a lot, possibly more than “global warming”. But, many die-hards cling to “”global warming”; e.g., the Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, The Environmental Defense Fund, the Discovery Channel, Science Daily, and NASA, all continue to use “global warming”. The New York Times lists “global warming” as a science topic, it does not list “climate change”. Today, the online Globe and Mail has an article link called “The oil sands and global warming”. There is an endless number of other examples.
I think that as more people came to see that the last seven to 10 years have not been warming, but level or cooling, the phrase “climate change” will be used more. But, it will have less meaning – ten or so years with no significant change is not much change – but it may start real discussions about climate and time frames. The head of the IPCC has said he will look into this time-frame and its relatively stable temperatures. This could be a real blow to the die-hard global warning fanatics, or the mealy-mouthed “climate change” opportunists.
Governments will use any catch phrase at all to justify raising taxes; so when “climate change” has less standing, they will find another. How about “global cooling”?
Kate is right – the words they use have no meaning, look at what they do, or don’t do.
Kate got that speed limit idea bang on.
Limit semis to 105kph, so we can get around em.
Mind you Kate, that RD350 oughta ring-ding by the tractors and grain trucks around Delisle………
Sean S:
So if it is ignorance to post images showing a colder than normal January across the globe, what’s your take Sean on the latest comment by Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the UN IPCC?
You know the one, where he committed to looking into the “temperature plateau” so far this century. And the one where he mused that there may be natural factors compensating for GHG driven warming.
Regards, BRK
Reducing speed limits:
I remember driving in the USA during the Arab Oil Embargo of the early seventies.
Enforced 55 mph speed limit, even on the Interstates. I remembering many people remarking how their fuel consumption dropped dramatically.
Fuel consumption is a function of drag. At hwy speeds, most of the drag is air resistance — especially for boxy SUVs.
If I remember correctly, air resistance drag increases as the square of velocity.
Double the speed > 4 times the drag.
Triple the speed > 9 times the drag (fuel consumption)
On a recent trip to Palm Springs CA, even though we were being passed all the time, the Garmin GPS data page; Maximum Speed Attained during trip: 141 kph (88 mph)
With everbody at 55 MPH, the roads were very peaceful.
Bob: Happy of course! I am not in favour of global warming, it is just what the science supports. To quote Fermi “Whatever nature has in store for mankind, unpleasant as it may be, men must accept, for ignorance is never better than knowledge.”
Regards,
John
Why greens love “climate change” more than “global warming”
http://blogs.news.com.au/couriermail/andrewbolt/index.php/couriermail/comments/why_greens_love_climate_change_more_than_global_warming/
Sean,
Since you deal in “reality”, could you kindly provide firm scientific proof of AGW?
I’m looking for more than “the IPCC says so”
Perhaps you could also help out by summarizing how much the IPCC has had to backtrack since it’s first report? Hmmm??
Kate, not only do they not propose regulation to reduce speed limits, they do not even advocate it on a voluntary basis! Not even an explanation of the green merits of strict adherence to the speed limits. No mention of the physics, no attempt to educate. Yet it’s probably the single most effective action that anyone driving an internal combustion vehicle can undertake.
Where’s the Toronto Star on this urgent matter? It has no political skin to lose (does it?) – surely, the Toronto Star could and should be educating the drivers in the GTA on the greeniness of 100km. Or the CBC? Where is the leadership voice on this obvious, simple, effective action? Oh, and it ‘izzy’ to reduce greenhouse gases this way as well!
John cross: A lot of lefty/enviromentalists I know get off on the whole thing, I don’t know that they are that objective. It’s not like the average Joe is deaply moved by the science, they just take Suzuki or whoevers word for it.
John Cross 11:04 am: “Just to correct a misconception that seems to be kicked around a lot, the term “climate change” actually came into promince through the efforts of those who do not accept AGW – mostly from the Luntz Memo to the Republican Party.”
Funny that, I thought it came into prominence when the U.N. settled on the term “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change“… 14 years before the Luntz memo.
there is absolutely nothing i can say about something so stupid.