Frustrating

Obligatory disclaimer...

It's articles like this one that really irritate me.

Nations scramble to agree on emissions target

By WILLIAM J. KOLE

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Five industrialized countries including Canada came under fire on Friday for blocking a draft agreement to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and counter the most catastrophic effects of global warming.

(Right from the start, it mentioned the "catastrophic" effects of global warming. First, there's the assumption that the globe is warming (which is hasn't been doing since 1998, even if a global average temperature statistic were actually meaningful). Second, there's the assumption that any warming will have catastrophic effects. Not "might," will. Truth is, any predictions of the effects of global warming are nothing more than guesses, and contradict the actual effects warming has had in the past, which have mostly been beneficial.)

But environmental groups accused the five countries of backtracking on previous pledges to take measures that would help keep Earth's temperature from rising more than two degrees Celsius - a limit scientists contend is critical to prevent catastrophic flooding and other deadly weather patterns.

(I'm going to be posting on the misconception of an "Earth" temperature later. For now, there's a few things wrong with this paragraph. First, there's the bizarre belief that we can actually control global temperatures in the first place. Second, there's the 2C number. Even that prediction is for at least a hundred years in the future. Lots can happen between now and then that have nothing to do with us humans. Third, we're talking about a global average here - how do these "scientists" agree that 2C is the dreaded tipping point? Why not 1C? Why not 3C? Again, it turns out to be pure guesswork - albeit guesswork based on mathematical equations.)

The Climate Action Network, an umbrella group, accused Switzerland of being willing to let its alpine glaciers melt away;

(except they're not actually melting - they're receding, but not melting. The local temperatures are too cold for actual melting, which is true of most of the glaciers that are receding.)

Japan of being content to allow rising ocean levels to threaten its vulnerable coastline;

(wow. Japan is "allowing" the oceans to rise. Like they've given the ocean permission. Never mind that while some areas have receding coastlines, and many others are staying the same - which tells me that ocean levels have as much, if not more, to do with what the land is doing than the ocean.)


and Russia of opening itself up to more economically devastating droughts.

(because, you know, droughts are something a country can choose to have...)

Anderson said the Vienna talks, which began Monday as a prelude to a major international climate conference set for December in Bali, Indonesia, became bogged down when some countries were pressed on what range of emissions reductions targets they would be willing to take on.

"They need to be guided by the potential calamity," she said.

(No, they need to be guided by the actual science, not the rhetoric of calamity, and the actual science cannot accurately predict what will or won't happen in the next 5 or 10 years, never mind in the next 100 or more. All they can do is make educated guesses, which our leaders can then use to *guide* their decisions, not *make* their decisions for them.)

Failing to cut emissions by at least 30 per cent of 1990 levels by 2020 "would condemn millions to disease, water shortages and misery in the developing world," he said.

(Really? Just how do they know? Guess what - they don't! More guessing games. We don't actually *know* any of this, any more than we "knew" the world would be in an ice age right now, according to the predictions of 30 years ago. Also, these predictions seem to assume that we humans will just sit there and "let" these things happen. Is that what we're doing now? No, we have aid groups around the world, battling disease, drilling wells, and generally trying to help those in need. Do these people believe that we'll just stop doing things like this? Well, I suppose that's a legitimate concern. If they get what they want, the wealthier countries that are doing all these things to try and help poor countries will probably end up just as poor themselves. Then no one will be able to afford to help anyone else.)

The EU already has pledged to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other harmful gases by 20 per cent by that year, and by another 10 per cent if other industrialized countries join in.

(Well, at least there was a token mention on "other harmful gases" ... except that CO2 is NOT a harmful gas. You'd have to be in an sealed room with nothing but CO2 for it to be harmful. It can happen, but the circumstances are very unusual, and it's the lack of oxygen, not the CO2 that'll kill you. Certainly not a concern on a worldwide basis. CO2 is a *necessary* gas, and one that has limited greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect of CO2 reduces exponentially as the amount increases. Meanwhile, what are these other "harmful" gases?)

You can read the full article here.

Anyhow, I just get frustrated when I see so many articles like this. There are so many false assumptions, misleading statements, and emotional rhetoric, it's ridiculous.


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Did they have permission?

Just an aside from my usual topic.

In the movie, AIT, Gore briefly touched on how he'd gone in a US nuclear submarine to the North Pole. He elaborated on it even more in the book. He made a big deal about how the US navy has spent years going back and forth under the Arctic ice cap, taking diligent measurements of the ice thickness so they'd know where they could safely surface. It bought up a question that has nothing to do with AGW.

While Gore was on board that US naval submarine, did they get permission from Canada (or Russia, or Denmark) to sail in their waters?

Of course, I know the answer to that one. It would be a resounding NO. The US military tends to infringe on the sovereignty of other countries on a fairly regular basis, but in respect to the Arctic, the US claims these are international waters. Well, they may say it, but the reality is that, unlike the Antarctic, the Arctic is within the international boundaries of at least three nations - this doesn't include the US, because Alaska isn't close enough to the Arctic Circle to fall within international coastal limits.

Based on the geography, it's pretty much a given that the submarine Al Gore was in was, at the very least, in Canadian waters. Probably Russian as well.

So what do you think? Do you think Al Gore insisted that the captain of the submarine he was on get permission from these countries before sailing in their waters?


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review - AIT - the movie

Obligatory disclaimer...

Well, I've finally seen the movie. Actually, I had to watch it twice because our dvd player was dying and I couldn't really see it the first time, so a proper viewing had to wait until we replaced it.

Having already read the book, which I reviewed here and here, not much has changed as far as my opinions of AIT. I'm not going to go too much into arguing the "science" behind the movie, as there is just too much, and others have done it better than I have. I recommend this site in particular, if you want to see where Gore got it right, wrong, and something in between. There are only a few points that I will discuss that have not been discussed elsewhere that I know of.

As I expected, the book was pretty much the movie in print form, though the book was able to expand on some areas while some things were completely dropped. Most of the slide show images were in the book, plus a few stills from the video clips used. In general, the two were very much alike.

First, the good. Al Gore is a fabulous orator. In between scenes of his slide show, he narrates throughout the movie. He has complete voice control. All the inflections, emotions, pauses - he gets them all perfectly. It's downright poetic. He's also a very good actor, with marvelous control of his facial expressions, down to the subtle nuances. He is clearly able to connect to an audience, both live and through film. He earned that Oscar.

He's also very passionate about his subject. Whether or not that passion is genuine, I increasingly find myself questioning, but he is passionate.

That's about it for the good, unfortunately. Like the book, this movie is more about Gore and how wonderful he is, than about global warming. This could best be described as a vanity movie. There are lots of scenes of Gore working on his laptop (you get the impression that all he ever does on that thing is move around scenes from his own slide show). There are lots of scenes of Gore looking pensively out of windows, with serious expressions on his face. You see crowds of smiling, worshipful people crowding around and taking pictures of him. You see slide show audiences hanging off his every word, clapping and cheering, or looking serious and worried, in all the right places. And, of course, laughing at all his jokes.

Actually, it was the jokes that started to get to me after a while. They are mocking jokes. They are insulting jokes. They display his contempt of the "so called skeptics," all of whom are, according to Gore, in the pockets of Exxon Mobile.

Oh, that was another good one. He actually portrays himself as some sort of eco-Dick Tracey. In an obviously staged scene, he's in his office, working on his laptop and his cell phone rings. "What did you find out?" he asks. "Working for who?" He, you are made to believe, has just 'discovered' that somebody working in the current administration (because Bush=Evil) is actually under the control of Exxon. Have you also noticed it's always Exxon? There are so many oil companies out there, but only Exxon is the company named. Go figure that one out.

But I've gone too far ahead, here. It was much earlier in the movie that I saw a clip that quite literally had me sitting with my chin down to the floor. I'd heard about an animated clip by Matt Groening. I was stunned when I actually saw it. Picture cheerful, friendly Mr. Sunbeam, sauntering over to the Earth to say hello. Then he says good by and turns to leave, only to be accosted by a gang of greenish, leather jacket and hat wearing blobs of green house gas. They proceed to beat friendly Mr. Sunbeam to death.

That's right, you have an animated murder of innocent Mr. Sunbeam by evil green house gases. Soon, a pile of Mr. Sunbeams forms with their "rotting corpses" heating up our Earth.

And this is a movie schools require our children to see, and wanted to send home with kids this past summer? (Actually, I think they did, but I can't find the article to verify that.)

This was only the first of several clips I found disgusting. Gore is quick to bring in Katrina and the destruction of New Orleans, blaming it on global warming, even though hurricane experts said otherwise. The movie goes back to Katrina later on, with plenty of emotional scenes of death, sorrow and destruction.

There are quite a few scenes used inappropriately. Among the more innocuous, but no less misleading, are the scenes of smokestacks while he talks about all the CO2 "pollution" being spewed into the air by industry. CO2 is an invisible gas. All those smokestacks? They're spewing steam, not smoke, not CO2.

Then there was a cgi clip of an anthropomorphized polar bear, swimming in the open ocean, unable to climb onto the one tiny ice floe it finds, complete with the sounds of distressed breathing, as Gore talks about how, for the first time ever, polar bears are drowning. Never mind that his claim is based on a report of 4 - that's right, four - polar bears that were found drowned after a storm. Never mind that the people who actually *live* in the north say polar bears have drowned before. Never mind that polar bears are land based animals, that happen to make use of the ice floes. Never mind that polar bears are far from endangered, but that their population has been steadily increasing. We can't let a few facts get in the way of a dramatic, emotional scene, now can we?

Speaking of facts, one of the things Gore brought up was what would happen if too much fresh water gets dumped into the ocean. This has actually happened in the past, when Lake Agassiz suddenly broke through an ice jam and emptied huge amounts of fresh water into the ocean in a very short time. I happen to be familiar with Lake Agassiz, since I grew up on what used to be the bottom of it. We had a gravel pit on our farm, and we frequently found fossils from when that area was underwater. In the movie, Gore says that the Great Lakes are the remnants of Lake Agassiz, and that when it broke through, it created the St. Lawrence Seaway. While Lake Agassiz had indeed drained in that direction occasionally, the Great Lakes are not remnants of Lake Agassiz, as you can see by the map here. Lakes Winnipeg, Manitoba, Winnipegosis, etc. are the remnants. Also, the time Lake Agassiz suddenly drained into the ocean, it was through what is now Hudson's Bay.

There were many other problems I had with the movie. For example, the absolute focus on CO2, describing it as a pollutant, and the occasional interchanging of CO2 with Carbon, as if they were the same thing. There were also a great many references to "my friend" so and so, who did this study or that study. After a while, it seemed like so much name dropping. I wonder how many of these people actually know they are his "friends?" There was also the constant references of "they, them, science," and "scientists," as if Science were one great homogeneous being. There was his insistence that this is a "moral" issue, which of course insinuates that anyone who disagrees is, therefore, immoral. This was even more interesting, when you consider his love-in with China.

I could go on, but I'm already writing for too long, so I'll jump ahead. On the dvd, there were some extras. I never did finish watching them, as it went on so long, I finally stopped watching. I never got a chance to go back before we had to return the movie. From what I'd seen, it was a lot of Al Gore talking directly to the camera, with a few clips to illustrate, including a couple of extended scenes from the slide show. He goes on about how, since the movie was made, even more science has come out to "firm up the consensus." An interesting claim, since I've noticed that more and more scientists are actually willing to risk their careers and come out in public with their disagreements. Heck, even those that agree with him have objections to some of the stuff he has in his movie.

What I found almost funny, though, was when he started talking about population. In the movie, there's a slide show clip where he talks about how high the population explosion will be in the next while. In the extras, he does acknowledge that this is no longer believed to be accurate. But does he point out that, as nations become more secure, as people, especially girls, become more educated, as sanitation improves, and wealth increases, people tend survive longer, therefore they tend to have fewer children? Nope. According to Gore, the reason population *isn't* exploding as predicted in the past is strictly thanks to "science." That the population is expected to stabilize at 9 billion is a "success" story for "science."

Wow. And here I had the audacity to think that how many children we had was a personal choice.

Oops...

Obligatory disclaimer...

The joys of unintended consequences...

Kyoto projects harm ozone layer: UN official

Mon Aug 13, 2007 9:07AM EDT

By Gerard Wynn

LONDON (Reuters) - The biggest emissions-cutting projects under the Kyoto Protocol on global warming have directly contributed to an increase in the production of gases that destroy the ozone layer, a senior U.N. official says.

In addition, evidence suggests that the same projects, in developing countries, have deliberately raised their emissions of greenhouse gases only to destroy these and therefore claim more carbon credits, said Stanford University's Michael Wara.

Kyoto is meant to curb emissions of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, but is undermining a separate pact called the Montreal Protocol, meant to phase out gases which harm the earth's ozone layer.

Continued here...

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Interesting read...

Obligatory disclaimer...

Some interesting information to be had here.


Twisted Science
Bullies of the Beltway
By Michael R. Fox Ph.D., 8/13/2007 8:25:27 AM

The complexities of global warming, (renamed as climate change) should be the domain of scientific discussions. Such discussions should be held within the constraints of science, the scientific methods, the careful collection, management, and analyses of the climate data.

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...consider the fate of Dr. William Happer who was dismissed from his position at the Department of Energy. At the time of his firing he was the Director of Energy Research at the DOE, and a past professor of physics at Princeton University with impressive scientific credentials.

As described in the June 1993 issue of Physics Today, Happer was fired for his attempt to perform some excellent physics and resolve major uncertainties in national “ozone hole scare” of those days.

At the time (and still so) major discrepancies existed between the estimated levels of UV-B radiation and actual measured levels of UV-B. He had proposed a network of UV monitors around the nation to perform the actual measurements and resolve the differences.

Such a program to minimize ozone uncertainties posed a threat to the environmentalists who had promoted ozone hole scare stories about skin cancers, cataracts in animals, and other musings.

This proved to be too great a threat to the environmental myths, and Happer was fired. The guy behind the firing was the powerful and unscientific vice-president Al Gore.

Read the whole article here.

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Global Temperature

Obligatory disclaimer...

Ah, I just knew it was just a matter of time before someone finally wrote an article like this!

Thanks, jhuck, for passing it on.

Researchers Question Validity Of A 'Global Temperature'

Science Daily — Discussions on global warming often refer to 'global temperature.' Yet the concept is thermodynamically as well as mathematically an impossibility, says Bjarne Andresen, a professor at The Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, who has analyzed this topic in collaboration with professors Christopher Essex from University of Western Ontario and Ross McKitrick from University of Guelph, Canada.

It is generally assumed that the atmosphere and the oceans have grown warmer during the recent 50 years. The reason for this point of view is an upward trend in the curve of measurements of the so-called 'global temperature'. This is the temperature obtained by collecting measurements of air temperatures at a large number of measuring stations around the Globe, weighing them according to the area they represent, and then calculating the yearly average according to the usual method of adding all values and dividing by the number of points.

Average without meaning

"It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth", Bjarne Andresen says, an an expert of thermodynamics. "A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate".

Read the rest here.

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Why just one side's links...

Obligatory disclaimer...

Those who take the time and effort to visit my blog (hi there! Thanks for stopping by. :-D) may have noticed that the links I post tend to be one sided - those that argue against AGW. There's two reasons for this.

One, there's a dirth of pro-AGW articles absolutely everywhere in the news, so I see no need to link to them. Chances are readers are already tripping over them everywhere they turn.

Two, a lot of the pro-AGW editorials are full of this sort of blather. Yes, I see this sort of thing on the anti-AGW side of things, but they are greatly in the minority, while on the pro-AGW side, it's the majority. I have no patience for that sort of thing, and this'll probably be the last time you see me link to an example of it.


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