Well put, Slarti!

The same people distract themselves with images of suicide bombers taking out busloads of little children in order to ignore the level of desperation and injustice required to create suicide bombers ... they cling to images from movies like "Flight 93" of patriotic Americans taking on terrorists with their bare hands in order to avoid wondering how kerosene can melt steel skyscrapers ... they cling to images of junkies passed out in an alley with a needle sticking out of their arms in order to avoid the image of a junkie on prescription heroin looking after their families, holding down jobs and paying their taxes ... the distractions of the somnambulists are many.

Eh? come now, haven`t you read the hazards of breaking one of these compact Cfl`s??? The manufacturer gives detailed instructions for decontaminatig the area around where the bulb was broken. One is exposed to gaseous, liquid and (bonded?) merury levels that are too high for me too feel comfortable with. There are also disadvantages with CFLs surrounding output for reading. It`s an interesting thing to consider, this WMD someon calls safe.

Global Warming and the New Year: Finally, the Hope for Progress
By David Neiwert Friday Jan 02, 2009 2:00pm
Download video!

I guess they're not shutting up James Hansen anymore:

Current approaches to deal with climate change are ineffectual, one of the world's top climate scientists said today in a personal new year appeal to Barack Obama and his wife Michelle on the urgent need to tackle global warming.

With less than three weeks to go until Obama's inauguration, Prof James Hansen, head of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, asked the recently appointed White House science adviser Prof John Holdren to pass the missive directly to the president-elect.

One of the realities that Obama -- who made frequent references to that mythical beast, "clean coal," during his campaign -- will have to face is that cutting down auto emissions is only the first step he'll have to oversee. Specifically, coal use looms as a problem of great significance, particularly for electrical generation. If we go to electric cars, we won't be making any strides if we're charging them up with coal-fired electricity.

Hansen specifically addresses this, and has a plan for it:

Hansen advocates a three-pronged attack on the climate problem – all measures he has promoted before. First, he wants a moratorium and phase-out of coal-fired power stations – which he calls "factories of death" – that do not incorporate carbon capture and storage.

"Coal is responsible for as much atmospheric carbon dioxide as the other fossil fuels combined, and its reserves make coal even more important for the long run," the Hansens wrote.

Second, he proposes a "carbon tax and 100% dividend": a mechanism for putting a price on carbon without raising money for government coffers. The idea is to tax carbon at source, then redistribute the revenue equally among taxpayers, so high carbon users are penalised while low carbon users are rewarded.

Finally, Hansen wants a renewed research effort into so-called fourth generation nuclear plants, which can use nuclear waste as fuel. "In our opinion [fourth generation nuclear power] deserves your strong support, because it has the potential to help solve past problems with nuclear power: nuclear waste, the need to mine for nuclear fuel, and release of radioactive material."

Let's hope he listens better to people like Hansen than he does to his netroots base.
Tags: Global Warming, Obama Administration

http://crooksandliars.com/node/24971

Eh? Ya, I read them...I also read just how much mercury is in your average cfl and how much is volatile when broken. It's ridiculously minute...just don't put your face in it. Gimme a break...you're probably subject to worse pollution by jogging through the city. Obviously no reason to choose incadescents over cfl's. As for the reading...there have been pretty significant improvements in the light produced by cfl's. If it still bugs you, use an incadescent in a reading lamp you use to read under. Doesn't rule out the rest of the house.

"This WMD someone calls safe".....I'm not even gonna comment.

So is the parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere compared with all other gases; yet it appears anthropomorphic CO2 , les than .28% of the total amount of CO2 produced naturally by Earth`s environment through natural processes is the cause of global warming? Titty for tatty... got you acting batty

The science isn`t settled. There is not consensus. There wa media blitzkrieg trying to convince US that there is proof. The science is failing to concur with even modest statements about the projected trends in warming of the earth. Science is not consensus or democratic. Christophel Colomb and Ferdinand Magellan are just one team of dissenting fellows in a long line of others who prevailed against the political science of their time.

Computer Models Fail to Predict Climate
"Computer models that form the basis for future global warming predictions have projected significantly more warming in recent years than has actually occurred ..."


Computer models that form the basis for future global warming predictions have projected significantly more warming in recent years than has actually occurred, concludes a comprehensive new scientific study.

"A Comparison of Tropical Temperature Trends with Model Predictions," published in the December 2007 International Journal of Climatology, is the latest study to cast doubt on the efficacy of climate modeling. Climate scientists David H. Douglass, John Christy, and S. Fred Singer analyzed 22 climate models and found their predictions at odds with actual warming over the past 30 years.


No Human Fingerprint

Most of the models predicted significant middle- and upper-troposphere warming, yet actual warming was minimal.

Douglass and his colleagues write, "Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100 to 300% higher than observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and observed trends have opposite signs."

Christy, an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contributor, noted in a December 6 press statement, "Satellite data and independent balloon data agree that atmospheric warming trends do not exceed those of the surface. Greenhouse models, on the other hand, demand that atmospheric trend values be 2-3 times greater. Satellite observations suggest that greenhouse models ignore negative feedbacks, produced by clouds and by water vapor, that diminish the warming effects of carbon dioxide."


Models Don't Reflect Causes

Many top climate scientists point out climate models are incapable of handling confounding factors such as cloud cover and water vapor (the dominant greenhouse gas), thus distorting climate predictions.

Additionally, they note, the models do not reflect the actual causes of warming. Richard Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at MIT, says the models used by the IPCC and other alarmists assign too much warming resulting from increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, rendering the models' predictions inaccurate.

Singer writes, "Dire predictions of future warming are based almost entirely on computer climate models, yet these models do not accurately understand the role of water vapor. Plus, computer models cannot account for the observed cooling of much of the past century (1940-75), nor for the observed patterns of warming. For example, the Antarctic is cooling while models predict warming. And where the models call for the middle atmosphere to warm faster than the surface, the observations show the exact opposite."


Computer Programs Inadequate

Computers, no matter how big, cannot take account of all of the earth's complexities and processes, critics of the alarmist models also note. As a result, no current climate model can explain the causes of climate changes, accurately predict future climate, or form a sound basis for environmental policy.

"Mother Nature simply operates at a level of complexity that is, at this point, beyond the mastery of mere mortals (such as scientists) and the tools available to us," Christy was quoted as saying in The Wall Street Journal on November 1.

"Can the models accurately explain the climate from the recent past? It seems that the answer is no," summarized Douglass in the press statement.

"This new study adds another nail to the coffin of alarmist global warming theory," said Sterling Burnett, senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis.

"Alarmist global warming theory is totally dependent on computer models predicting accelerating warming in the future," Burnett noted, "yet the models have predicted such warming in the past, and the predicted warming has failed to materialize. This hardly seems a reliable indicator of future warming."
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results.html?artId=22604

From the effect of increased salinity of sea water under ice shelves, to the clear understanding that not enough is known about climate changes and the multiple causations thereof were all recorded in 1997.
37. H. Ye and J.R. Mather, 1997, International Journal of Climatology 17, 155-162. In the case of the Antarctic ice shelf: "For the present mode of oceanographic circulation, the implication is that warmer winters (a climate warming[)], leading to lower rates of sea-ice formation, would cause a reduction in the flux of HSSW [High Salinity Shelf Water] beneath the ice shelf. The resultant cooling in the sub-ice cavity would lead, in turn, to a reduction in the total melting at the ice shelf’s base. A moderate warming of the climate could thus lead to a basal thickening of the Fichner-Ronne Ice Shelf, perhaps increase its longevity" (K.W. Nicholls, 1997, Nature 388, 460-462).

38. In summarizing the section on projections of Changes in Extreme Events, IPCC 1995 concluded that "Current climate models lack the accuracy at smaller scales and the integration are often too short to permit analysis of local weather extremes. Except maybe for precipitation, there is little agreement between models on changes in extreme events." (p. 336) Regarding extreme wind events: "Clearly, there is little agreement between models on changes in storminess that might occur in a warmer world. Conclusions regarding extreme storm events are obviously even more uncertain." (p. 334) As for tropical cyclones: " … [I]t is not possible to say whether the frequency, area of occurrence, time of occurrence, mean intensity or maximum intensity of tropical cyclones will change." (p. 334)

39. C.J.L. Murray and D. Lopez, 1996, in The Global Burden of Disease Study, Global Burden of Injury Series (Boston: Harvard University Press), 975 pp.

40. See for example IPCC1995 Figure 6.10 on p. 307.

41. "Our ability to quantify the magnitude of [the human influence] is currently - limited by uncertainties in key factors, including the magnitude and patterns of longer-term natural variability and the time-evolving patterns of forcing by (and response to) greenhouse gases and aerosols" (IPCC 1995, p. 439).
http://www.marshall.org/article.php?id=78
http://www.marshall.org/experts.php?id=38

http://www.marshall.org/experts.php?id=44

Wait a minute. Starting an argument about global warming in 1998 is a bit unfair. After all, that’s starting off with a very hot temperature, followed by two relatively cool years.

Fine. Take those years out of the record and there’s still no statistically significant warming between 1997 and 2007. When a scientist tells you that some trend is not “significant,” he or she is saying that it cannot mathematically be distinguished from no trend whatsoever.

More importantly, there’s not going to be any significant trend for some time. Assume, magically, that temperatures begin to warm in 2009 at the rate they were warming before the mid 1990s, and that they continue to warm at that rate. The world has to warm in such a fashion through 2020 before there’s a significant trend reestablished in the data. That’s a full quarter century for any discernable trend of global warming to emerge.

That, however, is not what the U.N.’s own models show. The IPCC’s latest (2007) compendium on climate used 21 different climate models to forecast the future, and subjected each to different “storylines” (in the U.N.’s parlance) for global emissions of carbon dioxide. They are there for the world to see, on page 763 of the volume on climate science. Not one of them predicts a quarter century without warming — even under a scenario in which emissions increase more slowly than they already are.

The U.N.’s own climate models have failed barely a year after they were made public. They have demonstrated a remarkable inability to even “predict” the present. Will 10,000 people in Poznan somehow ignore this?

They shouldn’t. Instead they should be thankful. The lack of recent and future warming almost certainly means that the ultimate warming of this century is going to be quite modest. And they should keep in mind that expensive policies to fight a modest climate change will only worsen the cold snap currently affecting the global economy. http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=M2NjZjg4YzMwMDU5YWE2ODYxMGJlNjkxOGNiMjc3ZjA=

The science is not working.

U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works
Hearing Statements
Date: 12/06/2006

Statement of Dr. David Deming
University of Oklahoma
College of Earth and Energy
Climate Change and the Media

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, and distinguished guests, thank you for inviting me to testify today. I am a geologist and geophysicist. I have a bachelor's degree in geology from Indiana University, and a Ph.D in geophysics from the University of Utah. My field of specialization in geophysics is temperature and heat flow. In recent years, I have turned my studies to the history and philosophy of science. In 1995, I published a short paper in the academic journal Science. In that study, I reviewed how borehole temperature data recorded a warming of about one degree Celsius in North America over the last 100 to 150 years. The week the article appeared, I was contacted by a reporter for National Public Radio. He offered to interview me, but only if I would state that the warming was due to human activity. When I refused to do so, he hung up on me.
I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period."

The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the "Little Ice Age" took hold in the 14th century. Warmer climate brought a remarkable flowering of prosperity, knowledge, and art to Europe during the High Middle Ages.

The existence of the MWP had been recognized in the scientific literature for decades. But now it was a major embarrassment to those maintaining that the 20th century warming was truly anomalous. It had to be "gotten rid of."

In 1769, Joseph Priestley warned that scientists overly attached to a favorite hypothesis would not hesitate to "warp the whole course of nature." In 1999, Michael Mann and his colleagues published a reconstruction of past temperature in which the MWP simply vanished. This unique estimate became known as the "hockey stick," because of the shape of the temperature graph.

Normally in science, when you have a novel result that appears to overturn previous work, you have to demonstrate why the earlier work was wrong. But the work of Mann and his colleagues was initially accepted uncritically, even though it contradicted the results of more than 100 previous studies. Other researchers have since reaffirmed that the Medieval Warm Period was both warm and global in its extent.

There is an overwhelming bias today in the media regarding the issue of global warming. In the past two years, this bias has bloomed into an irrational hysteria. Every natural disaster that occurs is now linked with global warming, no matter how tenuous or impossible the connection. As a result, the public has become vastly misinformed on this and other environmental issues.

Earth's climate system is complex and poorly understood. But we do know that throughout human history, warmer temperatures have been associated with more stable climates and increased human health and prosperity. Colder temperatures have been correlated with climatic instability, famine, and increased human mortality.

The amount of climatic warming that has taken place in the past 150 years is poorly constrained, and its cause--human or natural--is unknown. There is no sound scientific basis for predicting future climate change with any degree of certainty. If the climate does warm, it is likely to be beneficial to humanity rather than harmful. In my opinion, it would be foolish to establish national energy policy on the basis of misinformation and irrational hysteria.


# # # # #
http://epw.senate.gov/hearing_statements.cfm?id=266543

AGW Al Gore`s Woodshed where dissenters are taken for rendition by the media.

al gore must have the wrong priorities...forget about global warming...you should be afraid of efficient light bulbs!

Personally I am against CFLs, not just because of the mercury. For something touted as environmentally conscious they have a circuit board, copper wound transformer, electrolytic capacitors which usually fail before other parts do(poor quality). Lots of extra components that will hit the landfill most likely. The future is LED's, they require a very simple pulser circuit(no copper wound transformer), they are not fragile(if properly made they can really take a beating) and they will produce a consistent quality of light(unlike CFLs which rely on phosphor coatings which can often be where the manufacturer cuts corners)

Where do you get that number from? Yes, anthro CO2 accounts for a small percentage of total CO2 produced, but natural sources are balance by natural sinks.



"Human activity since the industrial revolution has increased the atmospheric concentration of various greenhouse gases, leading to increased radiative forcing from CO2, methane, tropospheric ozone, CFCs and nitrous oxide. The atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and methane have increased by 36% and 148% respectively since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the mid-1700s.[22] These levels are considerably higher than at any time during the last 650,000 years, the period for which reliable data has been extracted from ice cores.[23] From less direct geological evidence it is believed that CO2 values this high were last seen approximately 20 million years ago.[24] Fossil fuel burning has produced approximately three-quarters of the increase in CO2 from human activity over the past 20 years. Most of the rest is due to land-use change, in particular deforestation.[25]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

Look at this chart and tell me you wouldn't bet on a "reaction" from this action.....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Carbon_Emission_by_Type_to_Y2004.png


You don't see the whole picture ben...the question is not what percentage of the total atmosph. constitutes CO2....most of the atmosphere is benign..it doesn't do anything. The question is how much do the greenhouse gases that we emit contribute to the greenhouse effect..and how much do our emissions contribute as a percentage of pre-industrial levels.

Hey greenenvy...Those LED's are nuts...definitely a technology worth pursuing. I recently saw them as a part of a christmas light attraction. Those little things were lighting up a forty foot tall tree...just two 1' x 2' boards covered in them.

Nonetheless, CFL's are a more sustainable choice than incandescent when used properly.