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To the 34% of American Adults Who Are "Worried a Great Deal" about "Global Warming"
Preface: A recent Gallup poll showed that 34% of American adults worried “a great deal” about “global warming”. This essay is written for that 34%.
Many well-intentioned people are desperately trying to stop climate change …
And yet they are proposing things that will put more C02 and methane into the air and otherwise do more harm than good.
Frack That
Many propose nuclear and fracking as a way to reduce carbon emissions.
In reality, scientists say that fracking pumps out a lot of methane … into both our drinking water and the environment.
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas: 72 times more potent as a warming source than CO2.
As such, fracking actually increases – rather than decreases – global warming.
Are Nukes the Answer?
It turns out that nuclear is not a low-carbon source of energy … and funding nuclear crowds out the development of better sources of alternative energy.
Mark Jacobson – the head of Stanford University’s Atmosphere and Energy Program, who has written numerous books and hundreds of scientific papers on climate and energy, and testified before Congress numerous times on those issues – notes that nuclear puts out much more pollution (including much more CO2) than windpower, and 1.5% of all the nuclear plants built have melted down. More information here, here and here.
Jacobson also points out that it takes at least 11 years to permit and build a nuclear plant, whereas it takes less than half that time to fire up a wind or solar farm. Between the application for a nuclear plant and flipping the switch, power is provided by conventional energy sources … currently 55-65% coal.
Scam and Trade
One of the main solutions to climate change which has long been pushed by the powers that be – cap and trade – is a scam. Specifically:
- The economists who invented cap-and-trade say that it won’t work for global warming
- Many environmentalists say that carbon trading won’t effectively reduce carbon emissions
- Our bailout buddies over at Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and the other Wall Street behemoths are buying heavily into carbon trading (see this, this, this, this, this and this).
As University of Maryland professor economics professor and former Chief Economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission Peter Morici writes:
Obama must ensure that the banks use the trillions of dollars in federal bailout assistance to renegotiate mortgages and make new loans to worthy homebuyers and businesses. Obama must make certain that banks do not continue to squander federal largess by padding executive bonuses, acquiring other banks and pursuing new high-return, high-risk lines of businesses in merger activity, carbon trading and complex derivatives. Industry leaders like Citigroup have announced plans to move in those directions. Many of these bankers enjoyed influence in and contributed generously to the Obama campaign. Now it remains to be seen if a President Obama can stand up to these same bankers and persuade or compel them to act responsibly.
In other words, the same companies that made billions off of derivatives and other scams and are now getting bailed out on your dime are going to make billions from carbon trading.
War: The Number One Source of Carbon
The U.S. military is the biggest producer of carbon on the planet.
Harvey Wasserman notes that fighting wars more than wipes out any reduction in carbon from the government’s proposed climate measures.
Writing in 2009 about the then-proposed escalation in the Afghanistan war, Wasserman said:
The war would also come with a carbon burst. How will the massive emissions created by 100,000-plus soldiers in wartime be counted in the 17% reduction rubric? Will the HumVees be converted to hybrids? What is the carbon impact of Predator bombs that destroy Afghan families and villages?
The continuance of fighting all over the Middle East and North Africa completely and thoroughly undermines the government’s claims that there is a global warming emergency and that reducing carbon output through cap and trade is needed to save the planet.
I can’t take anything the government says about carbon footprints seriously until the government ends the unnecessary wars … all over the globe.
So whatever you think of climate change, all people can agree that ending the wars is important. (War also destroys the economy.)
Anyone who supports “humanitarian war” by the U.S. is supporting throwing a lot of carbon into the air.
Dumb as a Mongoose In Hawaii
Many scientists suggest “geoengineering” the Earth’s climate. But that could actually worsen climate change. It could also increase the risk of drought.
Moreover, geoengineering would increase ocean acidification and decrease available sunlight for solar power.
And once we started, we could never stop.
Some of the geoengineering proposals are downright nuts. For example, “government scientists are studying the feasibility of sending nearly microscopic particles of specially made glass into the Earth’s upper atmosphere to try to dampen the effects of ‘global warming.’ ” Others are currently suggesting cutting down trees and burying them. Other ways to geoengineer the planet are being studied and tested (and see this and this), involving such things as dumping barium, aluminum and other toxic metals into the atmosphere.
Remember, the mongoose was introduced to Hawaii in order to control the rats (which were eating the sugar cane used to make rum). It didn’t work out very well … mongeese are daylight-loving creatures while rats are nocturnal. So the mongeese trashed the native species in Hawaii, and never took care of the rats.
Similarly, the harm caused by many of these methods have not been thought through … and they could cause serious damage to our health and our ecosystems.
So – whatever you think about climate – you can obviously agree that we should approach climate change from the age-old axiom of “first, do no harm”, making sure that our “solutions” do not cause more damage than the problems.
So What’s the Answer?
If nuclear, fracking, cap and trade and geoengineering aren’t the answer, what is?
There are 3 main strategies which both climate activists and climate skeptics can agree on, because they have big upsides whether or not the Earth is warming:
(1) Reducing soot will quickly reduce melting of ice and snow. Reducing soot will be cheaper than the “decarbonation” which many policy-makers have proposed. And it would increase the health of millions of people worldwide
(2) Use specific smart combinations of solar, wind and geothermal energy
(3) Decentralize power generation and storage. That would empower people and communities, produce less carbon, prevent nuclear disasters like Fukushima, reduce the dangers of peak oil (and thus prevent future oil spills like we had in the Gulf), and have many other positive effects
We don’t need fascism to make this happen … We just need a sound plan.
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The IPCC's WG3 report, out today, recommends more nuclear and fracking:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/14/ipcc-wgiii-throwing-the-greens-un...
Obviously both have great potential to make our environment less livable.
GW is more likely to blow a unicorn than he is to see any current climate model proved accurate in the next 20 years.
big emphasis on if 'he is to see'
Looking down through the comments I see George really rallied the troops on this one. Just a few notes:
1) If you look at who established and funds the Climate Research Unit and many other Climate NGO's you will be very surprised to find that the main sponsors are Shell, Exxon, BP, and others. So all you numbskulls who keep blaming skeptical science on big oil best do research on your own first.
a) Begs the question why would big oil fund climate NGOs when these NGOs are fighting fossil fuels. Well, The Joker is here to tell you, what is primary competition to fossil fuel for car power? Electricity. Electricity that is created from burning coal. This is why the big oil companies are also supporting the EPA's current agenda to regulate CO2 emmissions from the coal industry. If they shut down coal, they shut down the competition. It's just that simple people.
b) These NGOs are not going after big oil. they can't bite the hand that feeds them, they are going after coal. That is why they promote fracking, because it is Shell, Exxon, etc that own most of the natural gas out there too.
c) In other words, big oil and climate "units" are working together, so EAT IT all you stupid people who keep spitting out the tired line that big oil funds climate skeptics.
2) CO2 is not pollution and there are thousands of peer-reviewed articles that speak of the benefits of elevated CO2 on ecosystems, plants, animals, and aquatic life. It is essential for life and we are at the bare minimum of historical concentrations.
3) the mild warming that occured in the 90's is not outside the variance of historical temperatures and the incline is not nearly as steep as the warming that occured in the early 20th century. It was much warmer during the mideval warm period, Roman warm period, etc than it is now.
4) It's an interglacial period, thank your lucky stars that it is. It is supposed to be warm and people and species do much better during warm periods than cold. History proves it.
5) The temperatures of the land masses follow exactly the patterns of the ocean cycles, PDO, AMO, NAO, etc, as do the acceleration and declination of glaciers.
6) Why doesn't anybody blame the end of the last ice age on anthropogenic global warming. I mean, jesus, glaciers retreating from the U.S. all the way to the arctic but it is never mentioned in the debate? Because it can't be blamed on people that's why.
7) I've been trying for 10 years to plant zone 7 and 8 plants in my zone 6 yard. All have failed. Someone call me when I can and I'll take global warming seriously.
It's a mad mad mad mad mad mad mad mad mad mad mad world.
and yet precisely zero organizations saying global warming is a hoax have funding from anywhere but big oil and I mean zero.
Links?
links?
How many thousand links do you want? I've already put in 5 hours off work to reply to zerohedge comments tonight. I think that's plenty. I have no doubt I could find 1000 links for you. Perhaps on Sunday I'll have some time to follow up.
6) Why doesn't anybody blame the end of the last ice age on anthropogenic global warming. I mean, jesus, mohammed, glaciers retreating from the U.S. all the way to the arctic but it is never mentioned in the debate? Because it can't be blamed on people that's why.
Jesus didn't have anything to do with it. Now a murdering, thieving, raping pedophile of a "prophet" might be a different story.
Joker good on ya...let's worry about AGW, while our society is coming apart due to the strangle hold of international corps - corrupt pols - corrupt media- and our education by propaganda in public schools and university..brave new world, the masses are mind fucked..don't forget to pay your fare share.
global warming is the strangle-hold of the biggest corps. You didn't know that? Follow the money.
"you will be very surprised to find that the main sponsors are Shell,
Exxon, BP, and others."
Grateful for links...
and who is sponsoring the 'science' claiming there is no global warming?
How is it the entire planet minus a small number of Americans addicted to burning oil & gasoline seem able to measure global warming?
Is there something wrong with every thermometer on the planet so only those in America work, and further, can get 'correct' measurements outside America where warming is detected? Got extra weather stations there that only Americans can use?
http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2013/general-information/thank-you-to-our-spo...
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/about-cru/history
Joker,
Thanks for all of your hard work!
I will dig in...
Yeah, the BEST study funded in part by the Kochs was supposed to disprove Global Warming according to all the denialti sites at the time...
All it did was make Richard Muller the spokesperson turn from a being a skeptic into a convert...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-ch...
Ooooppss....
No problem. Hopefully you can dig enough dirt to tell us a story and spread the word.
Here, I'll start it for you,
Once upon a time in a far-away land to the East that was called Anglia, there was an Ivory Tower. Inside this Ivory Tower, way up at the top, lived an oily whore..........
HA HA HA HA
I'm currently on the lochsa, away from and my links on my home computer. You are really going to make me work here....but because I like and respect you....
WAIT A MINUTE! Don't you owe me a picture of an airplane crash with no evidence of a plane?
"airplane crash with no evidence of a plane?"
Which one are you referring to?
Any will do, as long as it didn't happen on 9/11.
It also seems to be a self regulating mad mad mad mad mad mad mad mad mad mad mad world...
Buy 10,000 white marbles. Corral them all on your living room rug. Paint 4 black. These represent CO2. The other 9996 marbles are 99% oxygen and nitrogen and the other 1% including the CO2 are trace gases. The whole mess on your rug represents our atmosphere. Clearly CO2 is an infinitesimal trace gas. 4 in 10,000 is infinitesimal, i.e. vanishingly small. How small? If you remove two black marbles and replace them with two white marbles then you shut down photosynthesis world wide. The CO2 concentration is now 200 PPM (parts per million). That's right, plants died before you get to zero parts per million. Now add just one marble and you take us back to the mid 1800's when the CO2 concentration was 300 PPM. Those in charge of the worldwide AGW psy-op say this is just right. It's like Goldielock's favorite porridge. Throw in just one more marble in 10,000 to bring us to present 400 PPM and we're out of control. B***S***! Photosynthesis is optimized at 1200 PPM. That's 12 marbles in 10,000. Highly productive greenhouse operations pay lots of money to get their facilities up to 12 marbles. Another way to say this is CO2 represents 4 one hundredths of one percent (.04 %). Get real now. Do you really think CO2 controls anything other than photosynthesis and our ability to survive on this planet?
we can measure the control. Add even 1 marble that's cyanide and you'll be very ill. Add a few more and you're very dead.
Add more CO2 instead and the Earth gets so hot that plant life dies and that means crops. It's already happening right now, several years in a row burying burned, dehydrated, brown corn. No harvest from there.
You didn't know?
I call bullshit on your PPM explanations and the implied trivialization of impacts of trace gases.....
By way of example.......
Lets take CO... Carbon Monoxide.... exposures of 100 PPM or greater.... yes that is 100 PARTS PER MILLION "vanishingly small" is extremely harmful to human life... aka CARBON MONOXIDE Poisoning....
By the way.... Annual CO2 emissions are 14,920 pounds per household... source US EPA...
World wide average is about 40 pounds of CO2 per person per day on the globe......... times 7.156 billion people is a SHIT LOAD of CO2......
+10,000
Good illustration.
From what I can tell, the best environment for a combination of plant and animal life on earth is one a bit richer in CO2 than now, but also significantly richer in O2.
So, don't worry about CO2, but definitely stop clear-cutting jungles. But since (from what I can find out) the oceans are even more important in the CO2 to O2 production cycle, stop destroying the ocean with events like those in the gulf and Fukushima in the past few years, plus whatever other chemical runoffs or dumps may be happening on a regular and irregular basis.
Keep it clean. Keep it growing. Then don't worry, be happy.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2010-warmest-year.html
2010 and 2005 tied for warmest years EVER on record
"the next warmest years are 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007 and 2009, which are statistically tied for third warmest year. The GISS records begin in 1880."
Any more CO2 and we'll see all our crops die off and it's the end for us.
Dishonest-ann, you never give up.
Forget CO2.
Stop pollution (and global slavery).
The predators-that-be always provide a few bogus, selected, erroneous, disingenuous references for morons to refer-to. Those same lying sacks of crap said the north polar ice cap would be GONE FOREVER starting in 2013. Well, it is now 2014 and the north polar ice cap is growing again.
Sorry, but cycles are normal.
Furthermore, the temperature now is much cooler than the MWP. Oh, and guess what? The CO2 was higher too, and more crops were grown then than ever before in human history. Oh, and not only that, when old time sailing ships wandered through the polar regions during the MWP, the water levels were the same as they are today.
The whole AGW fraud is so utterly full of lies, that advocates have to purchase special devices to prevent their heads from spinning at hyper-sonic speeds.
I guarantee AGW is bogus and nothing bad will happen in that regard. However, if all the morons who used to care about keeping the environment unpolluted continue to spend all their time and efforts trying to enrich the carbon-tax billionaires like they do now, predators-DBA-corporations ARE likely to poison the planet.
All the huge polluters are laughing their asses off as the hordes of people who used to complain about their egregious pollution are too busy making fools of themselves over a completely bogus issue! FOOLS!
Forget CO2... clean up the environment!
No one claimed that ice would be gone forever in 2013...
Stop making shit up...
I didn't make that claim up, alarmist AGW advocates did. And you know it.
Furthermore, and most importantly, anyone who has paid any attention at all has repeatedly seen evidence temperatures, weather, CO2, O2, ice-coverage and many other aspects of the earth environment have been going through cycles for as long as we have ways to measure changes. And the earth environment has gone through times that were warmer, with less ice at the poles, with higher CO2 and so forth long before humans generated CO2.
Now the truth is, mankind is doing a HORRIBLE job at keeping the environment clean, and many activities of large corporations that are ALLOWED by governments cause serious damage to the environment. But the current generation of humans who would care about that have been hijacked to support the fraud that is AGW and CO2 scare tactics. And so, the huge corporations dominate government, pollute and abuse the crap out of earth and human beings, and pretty much get a pass from those folks who used to complain (or the new generation who should replace those who used to complain).
If you want lower CO2, go plant more plants, stop corporations from trashing the oceans (since it seem the oceans may be responsible for more CO2 to O2 than plants on the land). If you want less CO2, become pro O2. I support that. Go green, go pro plants, go anti-pollution.
And STOP supporting the globalist authoritarians who promote the AGW fraud in order to receive endless huge piles of money from carbon-taxes and government favors, and misdirect whole generations of potentially concerned humans away from their egregious pollution and enslavement endeavors.
Don't waste your time, Ann.
Flak is the liar who knows he's lying, but but he's getting something from it.
MDBogus is a true believer of the caliber of the Spanish Inquisition. Hee, too, is willing to kill people for his beliefs. Which kinda makes me feel sorry for him. Because he's been taken for ride by same people who secretly despise him and want to enslave him. Useful idiot is, I believe, the applicable term.
Given that she can't back her assertion, we all know who is speaking the truth...
There was one USN study that suggested the Arctic could be ice free only in late summer in 2016+/-3 years. To then claim from that study that there would no ice forevever by 2013 is being ignorant at best....
BTW, the people that have funded climate denial will soon have more blood on their hands than anyone in history...
honestann,
"Well, it is now 2014 and the north polar ice cap is growing again."
I'm sure you weren't trying to suggest that the arctic ice is growing in April 2014, as it's obviously the beginning of the melt season, but I can't see that your were suggesting that the 35 year trend is suddenly reversing either. Please elaborate.
Hopefully you weren't motivated to say this by the London Daily Mail / Mail Online. (+60% blahblah story last year was them no?)
Arctic sea ice volume trend
No. But it doesn't even matter! Slightly higher CO2 is not a threat. Before humans started spewing as much CO2, sailing ships passed through the north polar regions (during the MWP, and possibly during other times in human history). We know this because written records from those times still exist.
Overall, a slightly warmer world is beneficial. And no, there will not be any "runaway" effects. Those bogus predictions have already been observed long enough to know they are NOT HAPPENING. Those theories were frauds. Even if you don't believe those claims were intentional fraud, they are now disproven.
Many of the same scumbags who now push enslavement of mankind over global warming were pushing for enslavement of mankind over the coming ice age 40 years ago (including the current president's supposed "science advisor").
Wake up! It doesn't matter very much whether the weather gets a little warmer or cooler. This has been happening for millions of years, if not billions.
tsk tsk, Major faux pas using the hillary clinton defense around here. Try again?
?5,000 for the extended prognosis.
I think this is the part which people are not really latching on to. Not seeing the wood for the proverbial trees as it were.
I live in the second biggest city, in one of the five biggest nations on Earth, and it's also one of the most polluted, from coal and the surrounding deserts. The remaining vegetation here is no longer green. All locally sourced edible vegetation and plant life is tasteless. On top of that, we all go to work iand school in our pm2.5 masks. Yay! : )
I'm sure we could lower the Co2 parts by a factor of 2 or more, if we pave over another 30% of the world, but clearly the people heavy part of the equation is not going to go on forever.
Horticulture and love is what we need.
Buy 10,000 white marbles. Corral them all on your living room rug. Paint 4 black. These represent CO2. The other 9996 marbles are 99% oxygen and nitrogen and the other 1% including the CO2 are trace gases. The whole mess on your rug represents our atmosphere. Clearly CO2 is an infinitesimal trace gas. 4 in 10,000 is infinitesimal, i.e. vanishingly small. How small? If you remove two black marbles and replace them with two white marbles then you shut down photosynthesis world wide. The CO2 concentration is now 200 PPM (parts per million). That's right, plants died before you get to zero parts per million. Now add just one marble and you take us back to the mid 1800's when the CO2 concentration was 300 PPM. Those in charge of the worldwide AGW psy-op say this is just right. It's like Goldielock's favorite porridge. Throw in just one more marble in 10,000 to bring us to present 400 PPM and we're out of control. B***S***! Photosynthesis is optimized at 1200 PPM. That's 12 marbles in 10,000. Highly productive greenhouse operations pay lots of money to get their facilities up to 12 marbles. Another way to say this is CO2 represents 4 one hundredths of one percent (.04 %). Get real now. Do you really think CO2 controls anything other than photosynthesis and our ability to survive on this planet?
damn straight, a friend of mine grew some plants some years ago and used a tank of CO2, and goddammit if those plants didnt jump like MFers with a very high CO2 concentration in the greenhouse.
so in this completely controlled environment there is zero comparison to the real world because temperature was never permitted to rise as it does in the real world. In the real world drought and heat wave would kill the plants. In the controlled greenhouse there's ability to vent heat, vent CO2 and to pipe in water from sprinklers and I'm betting your friend did all of those things.
the only climate change that matters is the heat in the ukraine, syria, irn, south china sea, senkaku islands, africa and all the other places the west has decided to go into the death throes of empire. this could render all other concerns moot in just a coupla days.
Projects like the Communist Red Chinese solar production facilities and farm(s) we see American Oligarch Harry Reid and son have planned for Bunkerville, Clark County, Nevada, are fully supported by the information operation (pys-op) we know after all these years as Anthropogenic Global Warming. Nevada is their oyster. What do think would threaten the EPA's endangered desert tortoise more a few hundred wandering ruminants or thousands of solar panels and miles of roads and production facilities required to establish and maintain such a massive infrastructure? As usual the political and bureaucratic hypocrasy and conflict-of-interest is simply off the charts and they fully expect the sheeple to buy the propaganda hook, line and sinker. There are many, many more of these oligarch investment projects, mostly on public lands. Can you find them?
Actually there's equal plans to do fracking there, not just a solar farm.
-1 me if you want, like a retard, but Adam Kokesh & Alex Jones both busted that wide open, fracking and solar farm, papers refering to Gold Butte and to Cliven Bundy specifically to get him out and get both in.
Nonsense, there's no pollution in China.
http://www.crystalkiss.com/pollution-china/
I think they've got a handle on it now.
A little corexit 9500 an we'll clean that up in a jiffy.
"Any environmentalist who complains about pollution in the US needs to visit China. China has all our manufacturing and way fewer environmental controls. Go protest in China and learn about free speech."
Yup. People are nutz. Not to change the subject here but I gotta laugh at BLM protecting the desert tortoise. FEDGOV blows something north of 140+ nukes off in Nevada since 1945 and can't kill the turtles, but 600 head of cattle are gonna do 'em in.
My government is stuck on full fukkin retard. LOL.
Pretty amusing time to be alive on this dying blue ball, eh?
Everything imported to America but made now in China (but once was not) is still American pollution. That pollution ends when the importing ends.
Any environmentalist who complains about pollution in the US needs to visit China. China has all our manufacturing and way fewer environmental controls. Go protest in China and learn about free speech.
"Then complete removal of all humans on Earth. Forever."
See? the bugs always win. Worms too. So why stress out?
Live each day as if it's your last.
200. I'll be dead.
So will everyone else. Everyone.
Most people would actually care if their grandchildren & further descendants have a world to live in.
I suppose that care isn't obligatory. It would just be more respectful if the decision wasn't made for everyone all at once by big oil corporations and by retards in Nascar, Formula 1, flying private jets and driving everywhere all day when a bus could do the same job.
I understand if there's particular-sized objects and/or children where a bus just won't do it but that isn't the case for everyone.
9 hour traffic jams? Daily, half in the morning, half at 5pm? Really? Can't take a subway?
Seems 2 people -1'd me and would gladly spend 9 hours in a car for nothing, sitting nearl still, burning fuel the entire time. The reason your brain works so poorly is because you're breathing in all that exhaust. It's toxic.