Posts filed under 'Global Warming'
When an email from GetUp about climate change was forwarded to me earlier this year by a friend, all that I could do was laugh…I couldn’t even muster up a full rant due to my amusement.
It wasn’t the fact that it was an email pushing the “humans are destroying the planet” line, asking for people to sign an online petition that caused me to be amused, it was the fact that this friend, who I consider to be quite intelligent, had fallen for GetUp’s version of the story which, as usual for this mob, was quite a twisting of the truth.
Perhaps this press release which has crossed my desk late yesterday from The Australian Environment Foundation will adequately explain what I couldn’t find the words to explain after receiving that email and falling in to a fit of laughter a few months ago:
Australian Environment Foundation
Media Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday, 29 December 2008
Getaway GetUp on the ETS
GetUp’s global warming television ads (to air today) are dishonest and inaccurate, according to Dr Jennifer Marohasy, Chair of the Australian Environment Foundation.
“For all sorts of reasons a number of groups, of which Internet campaigners GetUp.org.au are one, are pretending that the Rudd Government’s proposed Emissions Trading Scheme is a minor 5 to15 percent adjustment to our way of life”.
“In fact, the government’s ETS will reduce the amount of energy available to every man; woman and child currently living in the country by an extraordinary 35 percent, absent the discovery and implementation of an unknown source of carbon free energy in the next ten years”.
Dr Marohasy said that this would be the equivalent of closing down all of Australia’s manufacturing and half its rural industries.
“Or thought of another way, it is the equivalent of closing 72% of our current power generation capacity (stationary power)”.
Dr Marohasy said that population growth masked the severity of the scheme.
“Our natural birth-rate plus immigration intake adds around 360,000 to the population every year, roughly the equivalent of another Brisbane every 5 years - 20 percent growth in 11 years - making 35% look like 15%”.
Dr Marohasy said that it was understandable that groups like GetUp that stand for nothing and are opposed to everything would want to downplay the severity of the government’s proposals.
“If GetUp has nothing to complain about they are out of business, so of course they want to portray the government’s decision in the ‘worst’ light”.
She said that the government also has a vested interest in downplaying the severity of their scheme.
“Kevin Rudd wants to convince Australians that it won’t hurt one little bit, so he’s happy for groups like GetUp to criticize him for being John Howard lite.
In fact, the proposed ETS will make Australians poorer; while it is richer, not poorer nations that are better able to protect their natural environment”.
Sources:
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/inventory/enduse/pubs/vol1-summary.pdf
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3101.0/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brisbane
- ENDS -
I just love the “groups like GetUp that stand for nothing and are opposed to everything” quote, and I hope this story gets a good run in the media today.
Samuel
December 30th, 2008 at 04:43am
How much do you know about Global Warming/Climate Change?
To find out, and brush up on what you don’t know, take The Global Warming Test.
Update: Link corrected, sorry about that. End Update
For the record, I correctly answered nine out of ten.
(Thanks to Jim Ball for the link).
Samuel
August 13th, 2008 at 08:51pm
For one reason or another, I can’t remember why now, I was looking at data about Canberra’s hottest days a few days ago, and I found something rather interesting…none of the hottest days are in recent years:
Canberra’s Hottest Days
January: 1968 (31st)
February: 1968 (1st)
March: 1965 (3rd)
April: 1968 (12th)
May: 1967 (10th)
June: 1957 (3rd)
July: 1975 (19th)
August: 1977 (30th)
September: 1965 (26th)
October: 1967 (28th)
November: 1959 (23rd)
December: 1957 (25th)
All of these exceptionally hot days occurred in the years 1957-1977, with the years 1965, 1967 and 1968 taking seven of the twelve places. Surely if the planet is warming we would see some, probably the majority, of years coming from the 1990s and 2000s…perhaps Canberra is just unusual, how does Melbourne stack up?
Melbourne’s Hottest Days
January: 1939 (13th)
February: 1983 (8th)
March: 1940 (11th)
April: 1938 (5th)
May: 1905 (7th)
June: 1957 (2nd)
July: 1975 (30th)
August: 1982 (29th)
September: 1928 (28th)
October: 1914 (24th)
November: 1894 (27th)
December: 1876 (15th)
Well that’s interesting, nothing after 1983, with two thirds of the hottest days occurring before 1950.
So, what does this prove? It proves that even if the planet is warming (which it isn’t), it’s been hotter and we all survived, even prospered. Makes you wonder what all the hype is about doesn’t it?
Samuel
June 24th, 2008 at 01:47pm
Seeing as it’s Friday, I think you deserve two side-effects of global warming today:
1. Longer days:
Belgian scientists have identified a hitherto unsuspected benefit of global warming - more time for all of us.
They say increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere will slow the Earth’s rotation.
This will make every day a little longer than it is already.
[..]
They found that each day would lengthen because of angular momentum changes, including variations in surface pressure over land masses, average surface pressure over the ocean, and zonal winds and currents.
[..]
the effect would be measurable, with a probable increase of 11 microseconds per decade during this century.
The Belgian’s have also expanded on ACTION mathematics to the point where zero is replaced with a random positive number:
“It means 24 hours won’t be 24 hours any more. It will be something a little bit more.”
2. Days will be shorter:
Of all the possible ways in which climate change could affect our planet, this is the most bizarre: as the oceans warm up, Earth will start rotating a wee bit faster, reducing the length of a day.
The time it takes for Earth to complete one rotation is affected by anything that changes the distribution of the planet’s mass relative to its axis of rotation.
“Think of an ice skater who is spinning,” says Felix Landerer of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany. “When you stretch your arms out you slow down, and when you bring your arms closer to your body you spin faster.” Earth, it seems, will hug itself a little bit tighter because of global warming.
Perhaps, if the Earth hugs itself and becomes more windy, the days won’t change at all.
Samuel
May 23rd, 2008 at 03:25am
On the bright side, once the planet explodes, it will stop warming.
Can Earth explode as a result of Global Warming?
Dr Tom J. Chalko 1 , MSc, PhD
Submitted on 8 April 2001, revised 30 October 2004.
[..]
Abstract: The heat generated inside our planet is predominantly of radionic (nuclear) origin. Hence, Earth in its entirety can be considered a slow nuclear reactor with its solid ”inner core” providing a major contribution to the total energy output. Since radionic heat is generated in the entire volume and cooling can only occur at the surface, the highest temperature inside Earth occurs at the center of the inner core. Overheating the center of the inner core reactor due to the so-called greenhouse effect on the surface of Earth may cause a meltdown condition, an enrichment of nuclear fuel and a gigantic atomic explosion.
There are seven pages filled with the gory details of the demise of our fair planet, but the basic summary is that if the melting of the polar caps doesn’t provide enough of a “heatsink” for the planet, there will be an increase in volcanic activity, followed by a nice large planet-destroying nuclear explosion. Of course, the doctor takes so much longer to say that. It makes for some fun reading if you’ve got some spare time.
Samuel
May 22nd, 2008 at 03:14am
Yes that’s right, apparently global warming is responsible for acne.
Human body maintains a temperature of around 98.2 degrees F, it is the ideal temperature for your body. Slight fluctuation in the scale of temperature may occur temporarily during exercise and other activities. Your body works efficiently at 98.2 degrees F. Sebaceous glands and sweat glands are heat sensitive and rapidly produce their secretions. Thus, persistent rise in temperature results in increased activity of sebaceous glands and overproduction of sebum. Overproduction of sebum mixes with dead skin cells and clogs the hair follicles and acne breakouts occurs.
Average temperature has considerably risen since 1940 affecting hundreds of biological and ecological system. The persistent rise in temperature greatly influences on your skin and its disorders.
[..]
Various skin disorders such as acne, scars are the result of global warming and climate change.
It’s so laughable that it’s hard to tell whether or not the author is making it up.
Samuel
May 21st, 2008 at 03:35am
Professor Tim Flannery has some bright ideas to prevent global warming:
SCIENTIST Tim Flannery has proposed a radical solution to climate change which may change the colour of the sky.
[..]
Professor Flannery says climate change is happening so quickly that mankind may need to pump sulphur into the atmosphere to survive.
[..]
The gas sulphur could be inserted into the earth’s stratosphere to keep out the sun’s rays and slow global warming, a process called global dimming.
Well that’s all well and good except that, firstly, sulphur is generally not a gas, and secondly, when it is, it works wonders if you want acid rain. In a gaseous form you can have either sulphur dioxide or sulphur trioxide; the former is a primary cause of acid rain as sulphuric acid, the latter is mixed with water to produce sulphuric acid.
Unfortunately News Limited omitted the line of the AAP story explaining why Professor Flannery wants sulphur in the atmosphere, but The Age were kind enough to include it:
The gas sulphur could be inserted into the earth’s stratosphere to keep out the sun’s rays and slow global warming, a process called global dimming.
That’s odd, I thought it was only the “greenhouse gases are not the cause of global warming, it’s all the sun’s fault” crowd that wanted to blame the sun’s rays for changes in Earth’s climate. Thankfully the professor proves that he is not in my camp on that one:
Regardless of what happened to emissions in the future, there was already far too much greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, he said.
Cutting emissions was not enough. Mankind now had to take greenhouse gases out of the air.
OK, but how? I suppose more trees could help (unless you’re the confused scientist who kept telling 2CC’s Mike Jeffreys about the merits of de-forestation this morning…he didn’t realise he had the wrong term at any stage during the conversation) but if we need to actively remove it from the atmosphere, doesn’t that mean burning an awful lot of fuel to get extraction devices up there?
Personally, I’d much rather watch the temperature fall all by itself.
At the very least, kudos to the nutty professor for trying, and for giving me some extra entertainment.
Samuel
May 20th, 2008 at 08:35pm
I must say, I quite liked having the lights on between 8pm and 9pm. It was a good way to spend Earth Hour. The full set of photos can be seen on the photo gallery at http://photos.samuelgordonstewart.com/EarthHour08.
Earth Hour coincided with half an hour of The Bill, so I recorded The Bill and watched it on a half hour delay.
A few choice photos:
The lounge room to the dining room, kitchen and laundry
Looking the other way
Power Dog models a rather busy power board. I deliberately waited to charge my mobile phone until Earth Hour, and likewise with the laptop which was also plugged in.
The outside lights were on.
As was the light in the oven, which was cooking dinner at the time.
Power dog enjoys three light sources.
The main light, a lamp and a torch.
Whilst it wasn’t open for the whole hour, the glow of the fridge is still appealing.
Quite frankly, I think I prefer having all the lights on, the whole house looks quite nice when it’s bright.
I hope you enjoyed Earth Hour as much as I did.
Samuel
March 29th, 2008 at 11:52pm
Resounding success! A lovely bright house during Earth Hour. Photos coming later tonight.
Samuel
March 29th, 2008 at 09:09pm
Plenty of people think I’ve gone near-enough to completely mad with my post about turning on all of my lights during Earth Hour…somehow I don’t think the organisers would mind as it just proves that even people such as me who see almost no sense in the theory of anthropogenic global warming are thinking about Earth Hour and giving it more publicity.
Anyway, the reason for this post isn’t to try and convince people that I am sane, rather it is to show the perspective of Michael Carden, somebody who has spent an awful lot of time fixing broken electronic devices.
Most modern pieces of electronics make use of a switchmode power supply. Everything from TVs and DVD players, to computers and kitchen appliances are likely to have one, and in general they are a wonderful thing. Small, light, cheap and able to run from the mains power in most parts of the world without caring whether they’re plugged into 110, 115, 150, 230 or 240 volts. They (mostly) just work.
[..]
If you have this device plugged into power all the time, a small part of its switchmode power supply - the part responsible for kickstarting it from completely off - never gets used. And this part almost always contains a handful of tiny electrolytic capacitors that play no part in the running of the device until it’s disconnected from the power outlet, and then connected again. Then it’s their job to get the power supply started. These little beasties don’t like heat very much, but they usually live in a hot place (the switchmode power supply) and so as the months and years go by, the heat slowly kills them. They can die completely and you’ll never know. Unless you unplug the device or switch off the power outlet.
So I’m wondering what will happen if thousands or millions of people switch off everything at the power outlet all at once. I think that there’s an excellent chance that quite a lot of stuff won’t come back to life when the power goes back on.
Michael goes on to point out that the percentage will be quite low, but if you’ve never turned off the microwave, the DVD player or the cordless phone at the wall, so you really want to risk it?
My other thought on the subject is this. The electricity suppliers have their systems set up to expect a certain minimum load that never goes away. While I’m sure that their systems are designed to cope safely with the sudden loss of load when everyone switches off, I can’t help but wonder just when they tested this.
Hmmm, it’s one thing to be voluntarily without power for an hour, with a switch to turn it back on at any time a couple metres away, but if enough people take part in Earth Hour and something does go “bang” in the power grid, how many people are actually going to enjoy Earth Week?
Samuel
March 29th, 2008 at 02:29pm
I’ve been debating whether or not to post this. On the one hand I don’t want to give Earth Hour any more publicity than it already has, however on the other hand I would like to publicise my plan for that hour of climate-change-alarmism induced insanity, and then there’s the fact that I haven’t written much this week and need to write something.
Anybody who has been reading this blog for a while would know of my stance on climate change…basically I think it is almost entirely natural, and I see Earth Hour as a rather strange stunt. For those of you who don’t know, Earth Hour is an event where people are invited to turn off all of their lights for an hour in a bid to save energy (and theoretically cut down on the amount of greenhouse gases produced) and raise awareness of energy use and the theory of man-made global warming.
My plan for that hour (8pm to 9pm tomorrow) is to turn on all of my lights in an effort to offset the people who are turning off their lights. I may also decide to use other appliances such as the kettle or the washing machine during this hour…anything I wouldn’t normally use during that hour. I would like to invite you to join me, either turn on all of your lights or perhaps go for an unnecessary drive (with the price of petrol at the moment, that one could be a bit too expensive), or just use electricity that you wouldn’t normally use during that hour.
Update: Knowing that I wouldn’t be the only person with this idea, I did a Google search for “against earth hour” and found the blog of Samantha Burns who has this rather useful list of appliances that you could turn on during Earth Hour if you want to help offset the madness:
-all household lights
-air conditioner
-heater
-automobiles (your ride)
-automobile headlights
-washer
-dryer
-dishwasher
-stove/oven
-put on oven’s self-cleaning cycle
-microwave
-any/all kitchen appliances
-television
-dvd player
-game system
-stereo
-and any other electrical equipment you can think of
I’m struggling to think of more appliances…anybody have any suggestions?
End Update
The really good thing is that because most people (anecdotally at least) don’t have any more than a quarter of their household lights on at any given time, one household turning on their lights can offset at least four households turning off their lights.
I’m looking forward to turning on all of my lights, who wants to join me?
Samuel
March 28th, 2008 at 07:45pm
If there is one thing I like more than people saying amusingly peculiar things, it’s people saying amusingly peculiar things in support of things I disagree with.
Take Wilfried Haeberli from the World Glacier Monitoring Service at the University of Zurich in Switzerland for example. Whilst talking about various glaciers “disappearing” due to global warming, he said “There are many canaries emerging in the climate change coal mine. The glaciers are perhaps among those making the most noise”.
As 2CC’s Mike Jeffreys pointed out this morning, Mr. Haeberli seems to be getting his metaphors mixed up. Canaries which emerge from a coal mine are a good thing, and melting ice doesn’t usually make much noise.
What I find particularly odd about the article is “The estimates, based on measuring the thickness of glacier ice, indicated an average loss of about 1.5 metres in 2006″, but it’s now March 2008, why don’t we have measurements from last year…does it really take fifteen months to calculate the average of the measurements taken during 2006, or are they just saving on carbon emissions by making their PR person swim across the oceans to each media outlet?
The other sentence of note in the article just makes the point that I’ve been trying to make for ages. “The thaw could disrupt everything from farming - millions of people in Asia depend on seasonal melt water from the Himalayas”. It’s quite simple…adapt. The world changes, we as the human race, just like every other animal and plant on this planet, have to adapt if we plan to continue to exist.
Moving on, and Jim Ball was talking about a book which sounds very interesting this morning. “Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years” by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery is described by Jim as a book which “totally and forensically demolishes the entire global warming fraud and of course the fraudsters”.
It has recently been re-released as a paperback and I intend on buying a copy as it sounds like a good read. Jim links to a review by Jay Lehr, Ph.D. which I’ll quote in part. As much as I would like to quote it in full, there just isn’t enough room here for that.
With their new book, Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years, S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery skewer all the misinformation that has been used for so long in an attempt to convince society that mankind is the root cause of all global climate change.
The book is truly amazing! It meticulously supports, with hundreds of detailed, published references, the clear facts and conclusions that the Earth’s climate has been traveling a well-defined rollercoaster path of temperature change for at least 900,000 years.
[..]
In almost a point-by-point refutation of Al Gore’s unsupportable rant that “the debate is over; man is warming the Earth,” Singer and Avery explain technically but lucidly why nearly every cherry-picked fact in Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” is contradicted by science, which weighs heavily in favor of a very different truth: Man is in fact all but irrelevant to global climate, as the sun and its accompanying solar system rule.
Anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming has been the scare du jour of the collectivist environmental movement, socialist countries, and academic money launderers for nearly a decade now. Unlike the past Y2K scare, ozone elimination, and avian flu, efforts to combat global warming will have long-term, serious, negative impacts on the citizens of the world, whose quality of life, especially in the poorest nations, will be disastrously worsened.
It will not be possible to read Unstoppable Global Warming without being convinced a sham is being perpetrated on society. Even a 30-minute perusal of the text will impress the average unbrainwashed person that despite Gore’s beautiful pictures of heaving ice flows in both his movie and book, man is not the culprit behind climate change. Singer and Avery’s well-chosen book title alone should give the thinking person pause.
In the opening chapter, “Is Humanity Losing the Global Warming Debate?” Singer and Avery explain how the ratio of two isotopes of oxygen allows us to date the age in which air bubbles were trapped in ice, and that with almost a million years of ice cores we can readily tell that periodic warming of the Earth has occurred persistently almost every 1,500 years.
That obviously does not square with efforts to get us to reduce our use of cars, air conditioners, and fertilizer in order to reduce carbon in our atmosphere. Technological advances have increased our life expectancy by 30 years during the past century, but now we are being asked to give much of it up and return to organic farming, which was able to support only 1.5 billion people 100 years ago.
If we gave up high-yield farming, as many global warming alarmists desire, we would need to clear all the world’s forests to sustain our current food demands, and thus eliminate about half of the world’s wildlife.
[..]
Singer and Avery document the exhaustive data search they performed to confirm conclusively the existence of a 1,500-year warming cycle. They grappled with the 100,000-year elliptical cycle of the Earth’s orbit, the 41,000-year axial tilt cycle of the Earth, and the 23,000-year precessing or wobble cycle.
In addition to those cycles, they thoroughly document the most influential cycle of all: the 1,500-year solar cycle that drives most of the Earth’s climate cycle.
The authors shatter the greenhouse gas theory, making it clear humanity’s modest addition to the atmosphere’s small amount of carbon dioxide does not add up to a significant alteration in temperature.
In obliterating the Kyoto Protocol as a construct to change anything, the authors uncover a suppressed report from the federal government of Canada, which concluded that country’s expenditure of $500 million to reduce greenhouse gases was “largely wasted, producing neither a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions nor the development of new, cleaner technologies.”
The review goes on, but I think that’s enough for now.
Incidentally, there is a particular blog which links here, authored by a person who appears to be a believer in the theory of anthropogenic global warming (I assume that’s what they mean when they refer to global warming as a debacle). I haven’t named them or linked to them today, because I want to see if this post enough to prompt them to remove their link to me in a burst of frustration, or preferably register here and refute me.
Samuel
March 17th, 2008 at 11:17am
Good evening Clinton and Rachel,
A carbon tax of $500 per child per year for the third and subsequent child? Plus the removal of the baby bonus? I suppose the academic who came up with that one doesn't have children…
With the planet already showing signs of cooling, I can't wait until another few years have passed and all of these global warming alarmists have egg on their faces.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
Update: I got the figures wrong…in reality they are much worse. $5000 per child at birth plus up to $800 per child per year thereafter. Professor Barry Walters appears to be proof that just because you’re a professor, you’re not necessarily sane. He might not be insane either, but he doesn’t seem to have thought this one through. Professor Walters, amongst the many other flaws in your proposal, you are forgetting the random nature of some births…why should parents be punished for having triplets? They didn’t plan on having triplets…I would have thought that of all people, you, Professor, as an obstetrician would understand that.End Update
December 11th, 2007 at 08:30pm
Either that or the door to the lunatic asylum have been left open and unguarded.
An academic says nations need to cut greenhouse pollution by 50 per cent by 2025 and 100 per cent by 2050 .. to avoid climatic disaster.
Climate change researcher IAN MCGREGOR says the kind of emissions cuts being discussed at the UN conference in Bali would not avert catastrophic climate change.
Mr MCGREGOR .. from Sydney’s University of Technology .. says the recent dramatic melting of ice in the Arctic shows the world’s in greater trouble than originally thought.
Somebody’s been paying a bit too much attention to Lachlan Connor’s policies.
First it’s the Melbourne taxi drivers wanting to be immune from demerit points, then New South Wales transport minister John Watkins informs everyone of his delusion that Morris Iemma can’t be run over by a bus because of the marvellous job he is doing as transport minister, then Western Australia’ Corrective Services Minister launchers her own branch of mathematics, and now this. Did somebody fly me to a different planet while I was sleeping?
Honestly, some days on this planet should just be skipped.
Samuel
December 7th, 2007 at 02:44pm
I have been thinking about our changing climate a bit this morning and a thought occurred to me. This is purely hypothetical, but just suppose that we, as a human race, were to stop producing “greenhouse gases” completely, and after we did so, they planet kept warming indefinitely. How many years would it take for the scientists who have been blaming human activity for climate change, to accept that humans were not responsible?
I would be willing to say that it wouldn’t happen in my lifetime.
I think the next thirty to fifty years would be spent blaming “all those years of human activity” for the continuing increase in temperatures. The following fifty years or so would probably be spent trying to find something else which was “continuing” the increase, although scientists would start to realise the situation wasn’t caused by human towards the end of this period.
I think it would take a bit over 100 years for the majority of the “humans are responsible” brigade to change their tune, but even then there would be those who would insist that humans caused an “irreversible change”.
As I said, this is entirely hypothetical, but it is worth thinking about. What do you think would happen amongst the scientific community in this hypothetical scenario?
Samuel
December 7th, 2007 at 08:25am
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