economics

[Old Rocks]

What happened in Russia, Pakistan, Argentina, Uraguay, and Australia this year? How many disasters more agriculteral disasters will it take to create major starvation in the third world nations? Or do you believe that is a cost that does not count.

Whatever it was it wasn't GW, your side even said so.

Once again, you lie. What was said was that while it was impossible to blame any one event on global warming, when you have enough of them, you have a trend to increasing events, and that is exactly what was predicted, and is being caused by the warming. Probably a bit to complex for you.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Droughts are evidence of ManMade Global Warming
Flooding is evidence of ManMade Global Warming

Colder tenperatures are evidence of ManMade Global Warming
Warmer temperatures are evidence of ManMade Global Warming

More snow is evidence of ManMade Global Warming
Less snow is evidence of ManMade Global Warming

If the facts don't fit the theory, just say that all the facts fit the theory.

Global Warming Science, yes, it's that simple

 

[editec]

Droughts are evidence of ManMade Global Warming
Flooding is evidence of ManMade Global Warming

Colder tenperatures are evidence of ManMade Global Warming
Warmer temperatures are evidence of ManMade Global Warming

More snow is evidence of ManMade Global Warming
Less snow is evidence of ManMade Global Warming

If the facts don't fit the theory, just say that all the facts fit the theory.

Global Warming Science, yes, it's that simple

You cannot possibly be as stupid as you portray yourself on this board, Cru.

 

[skookerasbil]

Much has been said here about the cost of cutting emissions. What is the cost of failing to?

Yale Environment 360: Calculating the True Cost<br /> Of Global Climate Change

Calculating the True Cost
Of Global Climate Change
Researchers disagree about what the economic costs of climate change will be over the coming decades. But the answer to that question is fundamental in deciding how urgent it is to take action to reduce emissions.
by john carey

When climate legislation died last summer in Congress, one cause was the powerful drumbeat of claims that the bill would bring economic disaster. The legislation would amount to a massive tax hike, devastating an already crippled economy and throwing more people out of work, charged Senator James Inhofe (R-Ok) and Glenn Beck. It would be “the final nail in the coffin of the American middle class,” proclaimed an ad from the Conservative Society of America. Despite supporters’ protests that the price tag of greenhouse gas curbs would be modest, voters’ fear of hits to their pocketbooks forced even many Democrats to backpedal.

The heated argument about economic costs, however, barely touched one vitally important issue: the costs of NOT taking action on climate. What if last summer’s Russian heat wave and drought, which destroyed one third of the country’s wheat crop, or the catastrophic floods in Pakistan and China, or category 5 hurricanes like Katrina are just glimpses of future havoc from warming left unchecked? As Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, observes, “Certain events would have been extremely unlikely to have occurred without global warming, and that includes the Russian heat wave and wild fires, and the Pakistan, Chinese, and Indian floods.”

The economic costs of such disasters could make even inflated estimates of the legislation’s price tag look small, says University of California, Berkeley, economist Michael Hanemann. Yet Congress didn’t seem to care. “The question of damages from climate change never penetrated the debate in There’s a deeply rooted perception in the U.S. that the economy will suffer little damage from climate change.Washington,” Hanemann says.

I don't think you are qualified to discuss economics since you tell most everyone that disagrees with you they don't understand science.

The people at Yale wrote this article, and economists in Britian wrote the Stern Report.

Yale......lmao.........how about commentary from the DailyKos!!!

 

[skookerasbil]

Want to read about the "costs" to the economy................





April 27, 2009
Selling the Green Economy
By Robert Samuelson

WASHINGTON -- Few things are more appealing in politics than something for nothing. As Congress begins considering anti-global warming legislation, environmentalists hold out precisely that tantalizing prospect: We can conquer global warming at virtually no cost. Here's a typical claim from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF):

"For about a dime a day (per person), we can solve climate change, invest in a clean energy future, and save billions in imported oil."

This sounds too good to be true, because it is. About four-fifths of the world's and America's energy comes from fossil fuels -- oil, coal, natural gas -- which are also the largest source of man-made carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas. The goal is to eliminate fossil fuels or suppress their CO2. The bill now being considered in the House would mandate a 42 percent decline in greenhouse emissions by 2030 from 2005 levels and an 83 percent drop by 2050.

Re-engineering the world energy system seems an almost impossible undertaking. Just consider America's energy needs in 2030, as estimated by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Compared with 2007, the United States is projected to have almost 25 percent more people (375 million), an economy about 70 percent larger ($20 trillion) and 27 percent more light-duty vehicles (294 million). Energy demand will be strong.

But the EIA also assumes greater conservation and use of renewables. From 2007 to 2030, solar power grows 18 times, wind 6 times. New cars and light trucks get 50 percent better gas mileage. Light bulbs and washing machines become more efficient. Higher energy prices discourage use; by 2030, oil is $130 a barrel in today's dollars. For all that, U.S. CO2 emissions in 2030 are projected at 6.2 billion metric tons, 4 percent higher than in 2007. As an example, solar and wind together would still supply only about 5 percent of electricity, because they expand from a tiny base.

To comply with the House bill, CO2 emissions would have to be about 3.5 billion tons. The claims of the EDF and other environmentalists that this reduction can occur cheaply rely on economic simulations by "general equilibrium" models. An Environmental Protection Agency study put the cost as low as $98 per household a year, because high energy prices are partly offset by government rebates. With 2.5 people in the average household, that's roughly 11 cents a day per person.

The trouble is that these models embody wildly unrealistic assumptions: there are no business cycles; the economy is always at "full employment"; strong growth is assumed, based on past growth rates; the economy automatically accommodates major changes -- if fossil fuel prices rise (as they would under anti-global warming laws), consumers quickly use less and new supplies of "clean energy" magically materialize.

There's no problem and costs are low, because the models say so. But the real world, of course, is different. Half the nation's electricity comes from coal. The costs of "carbon capture and sequestration" -- storing CO2 underground -- are uncertain, and if the technology can't be commercialized, coal plants will continue to emit or might need to be replaced by nuclear plants. Will Americans support a doubling or tripling of nuclear power? Could technical and construction obstacles be overcome in a timely way? Paralysis might lead to power brownouts or blackouts, which would penalize economic growth.

Countless practical difficulties would arise in trying to wean the U.S. economy from today's fossil fuels. One estimate done by economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that meeting most transportation needs in 2050 with locally produced biofuels would require "500 million acres of U.S. land, ... more than the total of current U.S. cropland." America would have to become a net food importer.

In truth, models have a dismal record of predicting major economic upheavals or their consequences. They didn't anticipate the present economic crisis. Earlier, they didn't predict the run-up in oil prices to almost $150 a barrel last year. In the 1970s, they didn't foresee runaway inflation. "General equilibrium" models can help evaluate different policy proposals by comparing them against a common baseline. But these models can't tell us how the economy will look in 10 or 20 years, because so much is assumed or ignored -- growth rates; financial and geopolitical crises; major bottlenecks; crippling inflation or unemployment.

The selling of the green economy involves much economic make-believe. Environmentalists not only maximize the dangers of global warming -- from rising sea levels to advancing tropical diseases. They also minimize the costs of dealing with it. Actually, no one involved in this debate really knows what the consequences or costs might be. All are inferred from models of uncertain reliability. Great schemes of economic and social engineering are proposed on shaky foundations of knowledge. Candor and common sense are in scarce supply.


RealClearPolitics - Selling the Green Economy

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Droughts are evidence of ManMade Global Warming
Flooding is evidence of ManMade Global Warming

Colder tenperatures are evidence of ManMade Global Warming
Warmer temperatures are evidence of ManMade Global Warming

More snow is evidence of ManMade Global Warming
Less snow is evidence of ManMade Global Warming

If the facts don't fit the theory, just say that all the facts fit the theory.

Global Warming Science, yes, it's that simple

You cannot possibly be as stupid as you portray yourself on this board, Cru.

Do you pay attention to all the things that were caused by ManMade Global Warming?

 

[skookerasbil]

Japan seeks consumer burden to push renewable energy

Fri Jul 23, 2010 10:28am GMT

TOKYO, July 23 (Reuters) - Japanese consumers will have to pay higher electricity bills under a government plan to help triple the generating capacity of renewable energy in the next decade and cut CO2 emissions.

Utility firms will be required to buy at a fixed rate electricity generated from renewable sources of energy -- mega solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and small hydro power -- from as early as 2012, the trade ministry said on Friday.

The cost will be passed on to consumers in a scheme called a "feed-in" tariff, which is already used in countries including Germany and Spain.

A pilot scheme for retail solar power in Japan has been in place since last November, with the government providing subsidies and tax breaks to owners of houses with solar panels as well as developers of solar and other renewable power sources.

The ministry estimates the new plan could boost carbon-free electricity capacity to almost 50,000 megawatts in 10 years after the launch, triple the current levels, and aims to finalise details of the plan by the end of this year.

The latest plan could help Japan achieve its goal to cut emissions by 25 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels and is also in line with its economic growth strategy of putting clean-energy technology innovation as one of the drivers to create new demand and jobs. [ID:nTOE65D05X]

Renewable energy sources currently account for 6 percent of Japan's primary energy supply, half of it in hydro power. Tokyo aims to boost that ratio to 10 percent by 2020. ($1=87.01 Yen) (Reporting by Risa Maeda)

Japan seeks consumer burden to push renewable energy | Energy & Oil | Reuters

 

[skookerasbil]

Emulate Spain&#8217;s Green Economy? No Thanks, Mr. President
May 21, 2010 2:45 P.M. By Chris Horner
Big news [PDF] from España:

&#8220;Spain admits that the green economy sold to Obama is a ruin.&#8221;

The story goes on to note that President Obama has cited Spain as an exemplar of an ecologically sound energy economy no fewer than eight times. As I have repeatedly noted in this space &#8212; with the able assistance of Spanish economist Gabriel Calzada &#8211; for every green job created by the Iberian nation&#8217;s massive investment in renewable energy, that transfer of wealth to uneconomic activities cost the economy 2.2 jobs in opportunity cost, as well as direct job losses thanks to the increased cost of electricity (like sending steel jobs to Kentucky, as I&#8217;m told Rand Paul noted in one victory speech or another). And as I noted yesterday, even the president of Spain&#8217;s National Commission of Energy, socialist Maite Costa, calls Spain&#8217;s energy regime &#8220;insostenible.&#8220;

So can we assume President Obama will now quit tilting at windmills and leading us down this &#8220;green jobs&#8221; dead end?

No one on either side of the climate-change debate has any illusions that Kerry-Lieberman (or EPA regulation of CO2 emissions in the U.S., for that matter) will do anything to lower global temperatures. The economic case for the embrace of renewables is now shattered. So what other motive could the president have for pushing ahead with this agenda? Only one: the Power Grab.

Emulate Spain&#8217;s Green Economy? No Thanks, Mr. President - By Chris Horner - Planet Gore - National Review Online

 

[skookerasbil]

Failure of wind farms in cold weather to cost billions

Jessica Bown
Jan 10th 2011 at 10:00AM


Wind farms are failing to produce electricity when the temperatures drop, costing billions of pounds and potentially leading to blackouts, leading industrialists warned this week.

They believe that the Government will be forced to build emergency back-up power plants - paid for by companies and consumers - to compensate for the lack of energy being provided by wind farms.


The warnings came after new figures showed that during the latest cold snap wind turbines produced less than 2% of the nation's electricity.

Jeremy Nicholson, director of the Energy Intensive Users Group, which represents major companies in the steel, glass, pottery, paper and chemical industries, said the failure of wind power had profound implications.

He predicts that the Government will have to persuade power companies to build standby power stations costing billions of pounds to prevent energy shortages should extremely cold weather impede the wind turbines in the future. Nicholson also believes that the money for these new plants will be raised by hiking energy bills for both businesses and households.

Rising bills
Industry regulator Ofgem has already calculated that the cost of achieving sustainable energy targets – set in Brussels and supported by the Government – will amount to £200 billion. Annual household fuel bills are expected to double to about £2,400 on average within the next ten years. And the failure of wind farms to produce energy when winter weather bites will only add to the problem.

The latest statistics show that, while wind turbines produced 8.6% of the nation's electricity during the three months to December 23, 2010, the percentage created this way when the snow and freezing temperatures hit fell to as low as 1.8%.

Nicholson said: "What is so worrying is that these sort of figures are not a one off. It was exactly the same last January and February when high pressure brought freezing cold temperatures, snow and no wind."

The lack of energy produced by wind farms then forced the National Grid, which is responsible for balancing supply and demand of energy in the UK, to ask its biggest users – industry – to ration supplies.

It has since set up a team to look at solving the problem of erratic energy supplies.

Among the solutions being considered is the introduction of systems that would help to reduce usage at times when energy production is down. It would, for example, be possible to save massive amounts of energy by installing 'smart' meters that could stop electricity supplies to millions of fridges for an hour or so when necessary.

Failure of wind farms in cold weather to cost billions - Walletpop UK












Information on this BS is very good........except to the k00ks...........

 

[westwall]

What happened in Russia, Pakistan, Argentina, Uraguay, and Australia this year? How many disasters more agriculteral disasters will it take to create major starvation in the third world nations? Or do you believe that is a cost that does not count.

Whatever it was it wasn't GW, your side even said so.

Once again, you lie. What was said was that while it was impossible to blame any one event on global warming, when you have enough of them, you have a trend to increasing events, and that is exactly what was predicted, and is being caused by the warming. Probably a bit to complex for you.

My gosh but you sound like a 8 year old child with your "you lie" crap. Here's a refresher for you nimrod. I highlighted the relevent points for you. You'll notice that the only real correlation between GW and the Russian blocking event is a "COULD". I expect an apology.

"Despite this strong evidence for a warming planet, greenhouse gas forcing fails to explain the 2010 heat wave over western Russia. The natural process of atmospheric blocking, and the climate impacts induced by such blocking, are the principal cause for this heat wave. It is not known whether, or to what exent, greenhouse gas emissions may affect the frequency or intensity of blocking during summer. It is important to note that observations reveal no trend in a daily frequency of July blocking over the period since 1948, nor is there an appreciable trend in the absolute values of upper tropospheric summertime heights over western Russia for the period since 1900.

The indications are that the current blocking event is intrinsic to the natural variability of summer climate in this region (Figure 11), a region which has a climatological vulnerability to blocking and associated heat waves (e.g., 1960, 1972, 1988). A high index value for blocking days is not a necessary condition for high July surface temperature over western Russia&#8212;the warm summers of 1981, 1999, 2001, and 2002 did not experience an unusual number of blocking days.
A clear understanding of the causes for the 2010 Russian heat wave is important for informing decision makers and the public on whether they need to transition from a preparedness mode of precautionary responses to an adaptation mode involving investment responses and actions. Our assessment indicates that, owing to the mainly natural cause for this heat wave, it is very unlikely that a similar event will recur next summer or in the immediate future (next decade). Whereas this phenomena has been principally related to a natural extreme event, its impacts may very well forebode the impact that a projected warming of surface temperatures could have by the end of the 21st Century due to greenhouse gas increases.

The 2007 IPCC report highlights surface temperature projections for the period 2090-2099 under a business-as-ususal scenario that reveals +5ºC to +7ºC warming warming of annually average temperatures over much of Eurasia under an aggressive A2 scenario (Figure 12).







2010 Russian Heat Wave

 

[skookerasbil]

First of all, before we explore the economic dangers of this new green economy, we should make it clear that carbon dioxide simply does not cause global warming.

Dr. Tim Ball, a renowned environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg, has studied this for years and he says that it abundantly clear that carbon dioxide cannot possibly cause "global warming"....

"CO2 is about 1.5 the density of air. One of the great fallacies promoted by [the proponents of the global warming theory] is that CO2 is well and quickly mixed through the atmosphere. It isn't. They also argue that the CO2 is most effective in trapping heat from the Earth (infrared) at the top of the atmosphere. This is why the computer models predicted greatest warming at the top of the atmosphere over the tropics. The problem is the actual measurements show that is not happening."

The truth is that carbon dioxide is one of the fundamental building blocks of life. In fact, scientists tell us that there were times in the earth's past when there were much, much higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than there are now. When there is more carbon dioxide, plant life thrives and there is more food for everyone.

But the environmentalists just won't listen. It is as if nothing will shake their blind faith in global warming. But the facts are out there for anyone with an open mind. For much more on the fraud of "global warming", just check out the following article: "How To Save The Environment? Get Al Gore The Heck Away From It".

Will The New Green Economy Kill The American Dream For Millions Of People?

 

[skookerasbil]

Dr. Tim Ball, Historical Climatologist
Frontier Centre: We are all familiar with the modern theory that the world&#8217;s climate is getting warmer. Is it?

Tim Ball: Yes, it warmed from 1680 up to 1940, but since 1940 it&#8217;s been cooling down. The evidence for warming is because of distorted records. The satellite data, for example, shows cooling.
FC: Could you summarize the evidence that suggests the world is cooling slightly, not warming up?

TB: Yes, since 1940 and from 1940 until 1980, even the surface record shows cooling. The argument is that there has been warming since then but, in fact, almost all of that is due to what is called the &#8220;urban heat island&#8221; effect &#8211; that is, that the weather stations are around the edge of cities and the cities expanded out and distorted the record. When you look at rural stations &#8211; if you look at the Antarctic, for example &#8211; the South Pole shows cooling since 1957 and the satellite data which has been up since 1978 shows a slight cooling trend as well.

FC: If the world were warming up, would that be good or bad for Canada?

TB: It would be good, because even Environment Canada acknowledges that you would have better agricultural conditions, a longer frost-free season. Some people express concern about it being drier, particularly on the Prairies but the evidence says that droughts are not related to temperature. They are related to sun-spot cycles &#8211; solar cycles. So, over all it would be better for Canada and it would also reduce, by the way, the amount of fossil fuels you burn because you wouldn&#8217;t have to heat homes to the extent that we do.

FC: It has been said that a simple one degree drop in the world&#8217;s average climate would jeopardize much of Canada&#8217;s agricultural output. Is that so, and why?

TB: I am not sure that one degree is a simple drop but with a drop of one degree, which we saw in 1992 and again this last year, you could see the effects on agriculture. We are very close in many parts of the Prairies and across Canada to not getting crops. In 1992 there was the same problem and the studies show that if you drop Manitoba&#8217;s average annual temperature by half a degree you eliminate half the crops, sunflowers, and some of the other cash crops that they are now growing. So, yes, it would have a devastating effect. The main reason, of course, is that Canada is right at the northern limits of agriculture.

FC: If, as you fear, we are in a cycle of cooling, how catastrophic might the economic consequences be for us?

TB: I don&#8217;t like to look at things in terms of catastrophes, that is the thing the global warming people are playing. What we need to do is prepare for that and, unfortunately, we are preparing for warming. It becomes a problem if you haven&#8217;t prepared for it. You get sideswiped, and the fact that the federal government has forced all of the government departments into preparing for warming is foolish to me. If you are prepared for warming and it cools, you are in trouble. If you prepare for cooling and it warms, you really haven&#8217;t lost anything. Ironically, I like to tease some of the extremist environmentalists and say, well, if it cools and we haven&#8217;t prepared for it, and it is rapid, the only hope we have got is genetic modification, to create plants that are very quickly adapted to that new condition.

FC: A corollary of the popular theory of global warming is that its cause is human activity. But aren&#8217;t changes in the climate a product of cosmic forces beyond our influence, i.e., the sun?

TB: Yes, when David Anderson or the federal government says we are going to stop climate change, it is the most ludicrous statement in the history of the world. The climate changes all the time and dramatically. All you have to do is sit here in Manitoba and imagine that just 20,000 years ago, which in the Earth&#8217;s history is nothing, you would have been sitting under about 1,000 meters of ice. In fact, 20,000 years ago there was an ice sheet covering Canada that is larger than the current Antarctic ice sheet. All that ice melted in less than 5,000 years and we are not even sure where all the heat energy and the causes of that melting that occurred came from. So to suggest that the fractional amounts of CO² that humans are putting up has any influence on global climate is really quite ludicrous.

FC: How advanced is our ability to understand weather patterns at all, least of all to predict changes in them? Do we have the tools to model climates?

TB: We don&#8217;t have the tools. If you look at Environment Canada&#8217;s website right now they do 0&#8211;3 months, 3&#8211;6 months forecasts. Click up any of their own analyses of their previous forecasts using computer models for a smaller area and you will see that in 90% of the country they are less than 50% accurate. In other words, it is less than chance, yet these are the same people who quite blindly with a computer model tell you that it is going to be warmer a hundred years from now. The fact is that the computer models don&#8217;t work. The fact is that we don&#8217;t understand even a fraction of the mechanisms of climate and so for anybody to tell you that they can forecast climate is wrong. In fact, one of the hopes for the forecasters and all of these people, is that chaos theory is right and climate really isn&#8217;t predictable at all.

FC: In layman&#8217;s language, can you describe the role played by water vapour in determining atmospheric conditions?

TB: Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas. This is part of the difficulty with the public and the media in understanding that 95% of greenhouse gases are water vapour. The public understand it, in that if you get a fall evening or spring evening and the sky is clear the heat will escape and the temperature will drop and you get frost. If there is a cloud cover, the heat is trapped by water vapour as a greenhouse gas and the temperature stays quite warm. If you go to In Salah in southern Algeria, they recorded at one point a daytime or noon high of 52 degrees Celsius &#8211; by midnight that night it was -3.6 degree Celsius. That&#8217;s a 56-degree drop in temperature in about 12 hours. That was caused because there is no, or very little, water vapour in the atmosphere and it is a demonstration of water vapour as the most important greenhouse gas.

FC: What is your opinion of the scientific underpinnings of the Kyoto Accord?

TB: There are none. One of the most distressing things that is argued for Kyoto, is they are saying, &#8221;What&#8217;s going to stop pollution?&#8221; It has nothing to do with pollution and even if the full Kyoto Accord was implemented you would not be able to measure scientifically the effect that that would have. In other words, it is completely immeasurable scientifically. So, it is a policy based on ideology and economics and politics and has nothing to do with science. Proof of that, by the way, is that Russian President Putin, who agreed to sign the Kyoto Accord, said exactly that. He said, I am signing this not because the science is there but because Europe has put pressure on us to sign it.

FC: Well, you have said that Kyoto is really an extension of the ongoing trade war between Europe and the United States. Can you explain that?

TB: Farmers know, but most urban people don&#8217;t know, that there is a huge trade war going on globally between the U.S. and Europe. You see it in the farm subsidies and all of the other things. In the trade wars Europe saw an opportunity &#8211; they think that the trade imbalance is in favour of North America because it has low energy costs &#8211; so they thought if they could put a carbon tax onto North America then they could level that trade playing field with regard to production of products and also in terms of market sales. Europeans, of course, have also agreed to the Kyoto Accord but because they are very involved in nuclear and other things, it will have only a very minimal effect on their economy, whereas, for North America it would be quite devastating.

FC: What do you think of the idea of carbon taxes? Should we deliberately make energy more expensive in a cold country like Canada?

TB: Well, it just undermines our economy. McKitrick and Essex wrote their book The Gathering Storm. Here&#8217;s an economist and a climatologist getting together and analyzing the scientific detail and the impact. I think they estimate the cost at something like $3 trillion dollars over the next ten years. The difficulty with it is that I as a scientist could create all kinds of scares. There is no difficulty, you know asteroids are going to hit. The problem is, as politicians and as people, we have got to set priorities. If you are being scared to death with things that are not real because people have their own political agenda, then you are not making the right decisions and you are not going in the right direction.

FC: Your view on windmills?

TB: They are not hot air but there is certainly a lot of blowing in the wind. They only function between a certain range of wind speed. Below a certain wind speed they don&#8217;t operate; above a certain wind speed they have to shut down. They make an enormous amount of noise; in fact, there are studies in Europe now showing that some of the low harmonics actually cause problems in the body for people living near them. There is also the irony that the Greens in Germany are trying to shut the windmills down because they are killing birds by the millions. There is one windmill in California that is in a mountain pass that has killed condors and eagles and all sorts of other species that have been designated as &#8220;at risk.&#8221; The problem is, of course, that the wind mills are put where the wind blows and that&#8217;s where the birds fly particularly during migration. The other thing is that wind doesn&#8217;t blow all the time and if you have a wind generation system you have to almost 100% backup for when the wind doesn&#8217;t blow and so it simply doesn&#8217;t work.

FC: How could so many scientists be on the man-made global warming bandwagon? Are their views derived more from political science than hard science?

TB: Well, their views are from political science, their views are also a function of where you go to get the funding and who provides the funding. But also, the majority of the scientists who are on the Kyoto and global warming bandwagon know nothing about the science. David Suzuki is a perfect example. He has said publicly that he would be happy to debate genetic modification with anybody, because that is his area of expertise. Well, I could say the same thing to him, that he doesn&#8217;t know anything about global warming or climate change and so I will debate it with him and so you have this problem. The other problem is that so many of the scientists who are quoted as being on side with global warming are actually doing studies on the impact of global warming and climate changes and their studies then are listed as evidence for support of it. They are not, they are just starting with the assumption that global warming is going to occur, and what effect that would have. That is not support or proof at all.

FC: Are public funds for research that confounds the conventional wisdom impossible to obtain? Do scientists have to form their conclusions in advance to suit the zeitgeist?

TB: This is a part of the problem, You have the scientific problem about global warming and, as Richard Lindzen said, the consensus was reached before the research had even begun. But the other side of it is that if you are getting money to prove a certain point, then you are going to try desperately to prove that point. The whole point about scientific research is you have a hypothesis but you must be prepared to accept what is called the null hypothesis. That is that your hypothesis isn&#8217;t true, that something else is true. That&#8217;s true science. But what is happening now is that you set out to prove the science and there is a temptation to jiggle the data to make that happen and it is really a very unhealthy scientific environment in which to operate.

FC: Why is the famous &#8220;hockey stick&#8221; graph wrong?

TB: The &#8221;hockey stick&#8221; graph was draw by Michael Mann, Ray Bradley and Malcolm Hughes in a paper published in 1998. It is referred to as the &#8221;hockey stick&#8221; because the handle of the graph reflects temperature being essentially unchanged for a 1,000 years and the blade is a sudden up- turn in the 20th century. It is wrong because Michael Mann fixed the data. I can&#8217;t describe it any other way. Two Canadian tried to reproduce the results using the same data and the same methods but got completely different records. So that whole study, which has been the basis of the United Nations report and is the basis of the government of Canada&#8217;s argument, shows there is clear evidence of the human signal in climate change. It is based on completely wrong science.

 

[skookerasbil]

Hey West.........I think its time for a check of the USMESSAGEBOARD Environmental Forum scoreboard............especially after this thread..........

ps........5 degrees in New York tonight!!!!!!!!

 

[westwall]

Hey West.........I think its time for a check of the USMESSAGEBOARD Environmental Forum scoreboard............especially after this thread..........

ps........5 degrees in New York tonight!!!!!!!!

That's a pretty funny graphic! I love the penalty box!

 

[skookerasbil]

Hey West.........I think its time for a check of the USMESSAGEBOARD Environmental Forum scoreboard............especially after this thread..........

ps........5 degrees in New York tonight!!!!!!!!

That's a pretty funny graphic! I love the penalty box!

Dominance in here West............complete and utter dominance!!!! They keep posting up the same lame-ass crap they've been posting up for years. The k00ks think this is about winning an argument with us. I could give a crap? But think about the typical newbie coming in for a gandor and checking out the debate. Its a goof how much we pwn these assholes in a public forum!!