G8 Ball.
Spoke Sunday 12 with the always energetic Marc Marano, Climate Depot, re the G8 inability to deliver on the utopian ambitions of the climate control NGOs to mandate industrial down-sizing. It comes to this fact. At the present growth curve, the G8 rich states, plus the G20 rich states, plus the G39 rich states (subsets repeated) will fail to meet all known targets for carbon emissions over the next forty and ninety years. POTUS arrived in Italy with the Cap and Trade 219 vote win in the House, credit Mrs. Pelosi, and he was the natural leader for the other (mostly Euro) climate cultists. Didn't work. China and India balked, and that gave air cover to all the other doubters. Fiona Harvey, Financial Times, told me Sunday 12 that unless the industrial states moderate and make the carbon emissions peak in the next ten years, they cannot meet their goal of limiting to 2 degree rise worldwide by 2050. Further, that unless the US delivers Cap and Trade, the Copenhagen session of the climate cult, chaired by the UN's Ban Ki Moon, is a non-starter. The House bill itself is now troubled (see above, the polite version) after the vote. Many folk jumping overboard after the G8 flop. Why? Perhaps there is no downside to quitting an Eight Ball. Note the mention of Eliot Engel, 19th NY (D), an agreeable, savvy, liberal vote: EE would not be toying with voting no unless there was agreement among the progressive cultists that the Cap and Trade bill is an antique novelty.
Sea Ice.
Meanwhile I read on ClimateDepot that there is a surprising detail this Summer 2009 about sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere. This is not a positive for the "we are melting" chant. Al Gore, call your science officer: "June 2009 monthly sea ice data is now out for NH and SH. The global sea ice anomaly in June 2009 remained positive. Over the 1979-2009 period, there is zero trend in global sea ice anomaly, with a SH increasing trend offsetting a NH decreasing trend. June 2009 NH anomaly was not remarkable." What I understand from the 82 comments is that the NASA projections for the retreat of the Northern Ice Pack do not take into account this "anomaly." Also that the worldwide warming trend may be limited to the North Hemisphere. This seems irregular. The cult gotta lotta "splainin' to do. "Looks like cryosphere is ignoring the Southern Hemisphere. Guess they aren't really talking about 'worldwide' climate, just the Northern Hemisphere...."
*What’s the mean temperature in the Caucasus? It seems it keeps getting hotter...*
Gleaned from news wires: State Dept says stunts like these don't promote stability in the region. Uhhhh, ya think?--->
Not so subtly, Medvedev visits South Ossetia Monday on tour of a Russian army base near Tskhinvali.
"The base is a signal for those who may have idiotic plans in their heads," he said.
He also acknowledged that a test of a missile had been launched from a Nukler sub. It was not the new class inter-continental Bulava that has failed 5 times in 5 tests, but, was a reliable ballistic Sineva.
On Tuesday, the guided missile destroyer USS Stout arrives for joint maneuvers with Georgian naval vessels and anchors at Batumi while Russian jets take target practice on mock targets nearby.
Shortly thereafter, Medvedev watches through binoculars as Russian fighters perform ground strikes against practice targets near Novorrossiisk on the Black Sea.
*Things are going just magnificently as we "reset" our relationships and build trust, don't you think?*
Oh yeah, Biden returns to Georgia in about a week, too. This time as VPotUS. He'll also visit the Ukraine on this trip.
If temps have been rising on Venus and Mars, don't s'pose the sun, and not humans, is the cause of the temp increases on earth, could it?
If we commit economic suicide for the sake of the delusional climate hysterics, there will be no going back to right the situation easily because no government program ever ends. Like campaign finance reform, the pols will keep dicking around with it to prove they were right all along, or rather to keep from having to admit they were wrong. I don't mind if we are the leaders in lip-service to an insane idea. As long a the environmentalists are as influential in western politics, from European coalition governments to the wholesale capture of a major US party, our prosperity is threatened.
Ancient Climate-Change Event Puzzles Scientists
By Phil Berardelli
ScienceNOW Daily News
14 July 2009
Carbon dioxide (CO2) gets a bad rep for contributing to global warming, and deservedly so. But scientists say they can't entirely blame the greenhouse gas for a curious spike in Earth's temperature 55 million years ago. New research reveals that something else also seems to have warmed the planet during that time, though no one's quite sure what it was.
Over the past couple of decades, researchers have been gathering data about a mysterious event known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). The data, derived from drill cores brought up from the deep seabed in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, show that the surface temperature of the planet rose by as much as 9°C within 10,000 years during the PETM, which itself started out warmer than our current world. Temperatures stayed at this elevated level for nearly 100,000 years.
On the surface, the culprit appeared to be CO2. For reasons unknown, atmospheric concentrations of the gas rose by about 700 parts per million, from 1000 ppm to 1700 ppm--more than four times higher than today's level of 385 ppm--during the PETM. That much of an infusion of the well-established greenhouse gas should have been plenty to spike temperatures.
But a new analysis doesn't fully support this scenario. Oceanographer Richard Zeebe of the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and colleagues ran carbon-cycle simulations of the oceans and atmosphere based on the data yielded by the sediment cores. They even simulated what would happen to global temperatures when they increased the atmosphere's sensitivity to doubling CO2 levels--to 2000 ppm--during the PETM. The most they could achieve was a warming of 3.5°C, they report online this week in Nature Geoscience. That means some other phenomenon must have pushed up temperatures by as much as 5.5°C, the team says. So at present, the unexplained warming represents a gap in understanding about what causes significant and rapid climate change.
"It's possible that other greenhouse gases such as methane could have contributed to the [PETM] warming," Zeebe says. It's also possible that the models are underestimating the climate response to CO2 increases. If that's the case, it "would mean our understanding of the climate system is incomplete," he says.
Zeebe's team is now looking at smaller warming events that occurred within several million years after the PETM. "We're currently trying to find out whether or not [they] were caused by the same mechanism," he says. The idea is to determine whether the PETM warming was unique "or a universal feature."
Geochemist Gabriel Bowen of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, applauds the work. "We've long had a hunch that something was fishy about the climate response during the PETM," he says. "This study puts the nails in the coffin of the idea that climate during the PETM responded to CO2 alone." Says Bowen, "The urgent challenge now facing us is to find out what was amplifying [temperatures] during this event and understand what it means for Earth's future
Almost as fast as the U.S. is slipping into ever steeper decline, the veneer is peeling off the global warming hoax as well. It certainly did manage to suck in a lot of well-meaning people. But most of them are now beginning to realize that it's nothing more than a ruse. More importantly, increasing numbers are beginning to recognize the political forces driving it.
This is why Obama and the Democrats in Congress are so hell-bent on passing 'cap and trade’ RIGHT NOW, before the entire rationale behind it blows up in their faces. The truth is, they need the money to further the farce of being able to afford universal health care - at least, that's the narrative most Dems are centered on (and refuse to think beyond). So even if they know the climate change issue to be a joke, they believe they can still support it if it means being able to lure their constituents in with promises of immortality.
What is becoming increasingly clear is that universal health care is no panacea. Besides being impossible to achieve as the remedy is currently structured, any attempt alone in that direction will result in worse health care than currently exists, and would bankrupt the country to boot.
And that is the ultimate goal of this administration, isn’t it? On analysis, every policy put forward by this administration thus far, damages America’s economy further. The looming immigration debate no doubt will introduce yet another corrosive element into the mix. Even in our foreign policy, despite public pronouncements to the contrary, the ultimate destruction of Israel remains implicit.
As Americans, who have been largely comatose during the Bush years, begin to realize where we are heading, they are increasingly asking, “What can we do to save ourselves?”
“Not much,” even the most right-wing ideologues tell us. “Wait for the next election.”
I’ve been accused of being excessively pessimistic. On the other hand, I’ve also been told that I speak for a lot of people. And I actually do remain confident that Americans will at some point rise up and speak clearly in opposition of where this administration is taking us. Only, I do believe that if we wait until the next election (still a year and a half away), it’ll be too late. The cancerous growth of our government must be stopped NOW!
Here in India, a commonly used form of protest used by political activists is to declare a ‘Bandh’. The word in Hindi literally means ‘closed’. During a Bandh, a major political party or a large chunk of a community declares a general strike, usually lasting one day. Bandhs are a powerful means of civil disobedience. Because of the economic pain that a Bandh exacts on local communities, it is much feared as a tool of protest.
It’s difficult to say at what point precisely Obama and the Dems will have over-reached. Will it be when they drag Bush/Cheney in front of an international tribunal? Will it be when they decide to quash talk-radio? Any number of other scenarios remains equally intriguing. Suffice it to say, the day will come when the majority of Americans will say, “Enough is enough!” The message will be unmistakable and infinitely more potent than genteel tea parties with accompanying finger sandwiches.
Declaring a Bandh would certainly seem to fit the bill. It would demonstrate that those participating had ‘skin in the game’ and were profoundly committed. The only reasons not to do it would be (1) if nobody cared; (2) if you happen to agree that Obama’s vision is right for America; or (3) if you were afraid to find out that there aren’t enough people out there to make it happen.
I’m not saying that the people’s protest will necessarily take on the form of an Asian Bandh. America's response will be uniquely American. It will not be violent; Americans are not a violent people. What I am saying is that some kind of protest will congeal around righteous grievance and that it will happen before the next election cycle begins.
and do they consider the possibility that the CO2 is the effect and not the cause of the warming?
What "Twilight Zone" show from the sterling Serling series era was about the Earth ellipse disintegrating and chronicles the drama while a few city dwellers in high rises collapse in all the ways humans can do?
What a class act. He gave all of those up and comers a forum to showcase their skills. So many of these people owe their careers and prosperity to the visionary Rod Serling and his production company.
Wouldn't it be nice in today's time to be so thoughtfully provoked!!
Hey! Wait a minute! That's what hooked me on the John Batchelor Show originally and now in this forum with all you good people!!
COULD IT BE THAT WE ACTUALLY NEED MORE CO2 PRODUCTION TO OFFSET THE DECREASING NUMBER OF SUNSPOTS?
Like the SH increasing sea ice and the NH decreasing sea ice balancing each other out, maybe the lower number of sunspots (causing cooling temperatures on earth) is balanced out by rising CO2.
We are right now at the tail end of an interglacial. The earth is most likely heading into a 100,000 or so year ice age that we couldn't induce enough global warming to hold off with an effort.