I've moved !
Please update your links and bookmarks...this blog will remain active as an archive, but all new posts as of October 3rd will appear at:
www.wattsupwiththat.com or wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com
My new blog location will allow me to provide better service to my readers, and richer content of postings.
Thanks !
Anthony
Here's something that took me completely by surprise. In the most recent edition of The Nation, columnist Alexander Cockburn did a left wing smack down of Gore and the entire Global Warming solutions and carbon business model.
The article, titled "Who Are the Merchants of Fear?" Lobs some heavy artillery in the direction of the Goreacle. Here's a few excerpts:
"These are multibillion-dollar computer modeling bureaucracies as intent on self-preservation and budgetary enhancement as cognate nuclear bureaucracies at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos. They are as unlikely to develop models refuting the hypothesis of human-induced global warming as is the IPCC to say the weather is getting a little bit warmer but there's no great cause for alarm. Threat inflation is their business."
And about Gore:
"The world's best-known hysteric and self-promoter on the topic of man's physical and moral responsibility for global warming is Al Gore, a shill for the nuclear and coal barons from the first day he stepped into Congress entrusted with the sacred duty to protect the budgetary and regulatory interests of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Oak Ridge National Lab. […] As a denizen of Washington since his diaper years, Gore has always understood that threat inflation is the surest tool to plump budgets and rouse voters."
And this quote:
"...Richard Kerr, Science's man on global warming, remarked, "Climate modelers have been 'cheating' for so long it's almost become respectable."
For those of you that don't know this journal, The Nation is quite to the left. For example, on their main page today, you can find a web poll on "Who most deserves to be impeached?" (Bush Cheney, or Gonzales)
When such a clearly left and prominent journal starts taking shots at Gore, the IPCC, and climate modelers like James Hansen as the article written by Cockburn does, you have to wonder if the whole house of cards isn't about to start falling down.
Wow.
The Chico News and Review has gotten quite a number of letters on their 911 Truth article which gave a platform to the people whom prefer to believe that a gigantic government conspiracy was the reason behind the 911 WTC collapse, and that the towers were brought down with explosives, rather than by fire.
I wrote a short blog essay on the subject, and a letter to the editor, pointing out that the recent collapse of the I580-880 freeway interchange had a lot of similarities, illustrating that fire can indeed take town steel and concrete structures.
Predictably, the 911Truthers lobbed a couple of ticked off letters back at me, even going so far as to say I'm "spreading distortions".
While I don't intend to argue their points, since you can't usually come out winning when you argue with people whom believe conspiracy theories, I will present another view.
For those of you that prefer rational science and engineering, I present this item, a paper published in 2003 by The Journal of The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society, presents a balanced view that shows that the collapse didn't need steel melting temperatures to occur. It was written by Thomas W. Eagar, the Thomas Lord Professor of Materials Engineering and Engineering Systems, and Christopher Musso, graduate research student, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
You can read the report in its entirety here: http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/Eagar-0112.html
Or just skip to this conclusion:
While it was impossible for the fuel-rich, diffuse-flame fire to burn at a temperature high enough to melt the steel, its quick ignition and intense heat caused the steel to lose at least half its strength and to deform, causing buckling or crippling. This weakening and deformation caused a few floors to fall, while the weight of the stories above them crushed the floors below, initiating a domino collapse.
There's a maxim called Occam's Razor; "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the right one." In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and hypothetical entities tends to be correct. Conspiracy theories require many more assumptions, some unprovable, than a fire and materials failure does.
The LA Times reports that California is seeing a big drop off in rebate applications for solar power systems. It seems that to get a rebate you have to also switch to a time of use rate with your utility.
The math of economics is not working out for many, especially for smaller systems that don't fully cover use during peak hours. The result: homeowners are reluctant to go with solar energy because its starting to become economically unfeasible.
The difference between peak and off-peak rates is particularly large in the 11 counties of Central, coastal and Southern California, where CalEdison provides electricity service to 13 million customers. CalEdison charges summer time-of-use rates that range from 29.7 to 35.9 cents per kilowatt-hour between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. on weekdays. It drops to a range of 16.3 to 18.6 cents per kilowatt-hour from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. weekdays and all weekend days and holidays, according to documents filed with the PUC.' There is likely an optimal system size for the smaller consumer of electricity that reduces consumer costs, but with so much in flux in today's solar power market its hard to pin down the numbers, as it becomes a moving target.
Another factor is the strong worldwide demand for solar panels, almost to the point of shortages. In such a market driven economy, when a product is in high demand, there is little flexibility on price and often contracts take a long time to fill to completion just waiting for panels.
It's nice to see social equality kick in from time to time. For example, not everyone can afford to buy carbon offsets like Al Gore to assuage our guilt for driving a car or flying around the country in an airplane, or having a heated pool.
But thanks to the good folks at Free Carbon Offsets, you too can join the ranks of the carbon purified.
just visit: http://www.freecarbonoffsets.com
And you can print your own Carbon Offset Certificate suitable for framing or for sale on Ebay.
I'm very distressed to read this. Newspapers are the life blood of a community. Television news has also been in decline, but television doesn't become the record for the community, as TV is more transient, and not considered a searchable news resource. People can't go to a TV station and search archives, for example. The Enterprise Record recently had to lay off staff, not so much for circulation decline, which has been flat, but for declining advertising revenue.
From the American Thinker:
Newspaper industry collapse intensifying
Thomas Lifson
The Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) has released the latest circulation numbers for big city dailies, and the news is almost uniformly bad for big newspaper publishers. The sole bright spot continues to be the New York Post, whose weekday circulation is up an impressive 7.6% to 724,748 in the six month period. The Post has a winning combination of a low cover prices and lively non-liberal writing. Oddly enough, no other papers seem to copying the successful tactics, something which ought to concern shareholders of the collapsing businesses.
Some key newspapers are in real trouble:
The Dallas Morning News hemorrhaged 14.2% of daily circ to 411,919.
The San Diego Union-Tribune slipped 6.5% to 296,331
The San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News, daily circ declined 4.9% to 230,870
The Los Angeles Times lost 4.2% of its weekday circ to 815,723
The Chicago Tribune slipped 2.1% to 566,827
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported daily circ dropped 4.8% to 345,252.
Small circulation gains were reported by the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the New York Daily News.
The New York Times, which has reported small overall circulation gains in recent years, thanks to the roll-out of new regional printing plants for its national edition, compensating for the loss of metropolitan circulation in New York, reported a loss of circulation this term, down 1.9% to 1,120,420.
In my last entry I raised three questions about Compact Flourescent Light bulbs aka CFL's
1) What about regular fluorescent tubes? They have mercury too, and sometimes in greater quantity.
2) How do you dispose of these bulbs in they have mercury in them. If you put them in regular trash are you guilty of a crime?
3) Has the hazmat materials response to mercury gotten out of hand?
An astute reader pointed out that for questions 1 and 2, there indeed is a problem. Apparently CFL's are categorized "universal waste" and shouldn't be thrown away in the
regular trash under a 2004 state law.
Here's a list of things that the state doesn't want you to throw away in your regular trash:
http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/HHW/Info/default.htm
But there is some ahem, "good" news, and that is that you can take your CFL's and flourescent tubes out to the hazwaste disposal site at the airport. Like many "household hazardous waste" materials (now including
batteries), Butte County takes bulbs at its recycling facility at the
airport, details here: http://www.recyclebutte.net/hhw.html
Given that disposing of CFL's requires special handling, I think high efficiency LED bulbs are the answer, I don't want to put my family in the position of breaking a law for accidental disposal in regular household trash
How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent lightbulb? About $4.28 for the bulb and labor — unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about $2,004.28, which doesn't include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health.
The details of this really expensive light bulb are here from Financial Post
I like CFL's, I've replaced almost every one of the conventional bulbs in my house with CFL's
This story raises three problems:
1) What about regular fluorescent tubes? They have mercury too, and sometimes in greater quantity.
2) How do you dispose of these bulbs in they have mercury in them. If you put them in regular trash are you guilty of a crime?
3) Has the hazmat materials response to mercury gotten out of hand?
I think high efficiency LED bulbs are the answer...because as much as I like CFL's, I don't want to be put in the position of dealing with the mercury (even though I don't worry about its safety, I've handled mercury before) I don't want to put my family in the position of having a hazmat response or fines for accidental disposal.
In Today's Chico News and Review, the cover story is about Internet Radio and all the trouble the Copyright Royalty Board recently caused with a draconian ruling on the cost to Internet Radio Stations. Regular over the air broadcasters don't have such limits because they are seen to "promote the music industry" Its an alliance as old as payola.
But good news comes today. A bill introduced in Congress today could nullify the new rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) which advocates say would put Internet Radio webcasters out of business, such as our own local Radio Paradise.
Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Rep. Don Manzullo (R-IL) have presented the "Internet Radio Equality Act" which aims to negate the controversial March 2nd decision which puts royalty of a .08 cent per song per listener, retroactively from 2006 to 2010 on internet radio.
Advocates of Internet Radio have dreaded the CRB ruling, which they say could raise rates between 300 to 1200 per cent for webcasters. Earlier this month, the CRB threw out an appeal by commercial webcasters, National Public Radio and others to review the new rates and postpone a May 15 deadline for the introduction of the royalty schedule.
If passed, today's proposed bill would set new rates at 7.5 per cent of the webcaster's revenue — the same rate paid by satellite radio. Alternatively, webcasters could decide to pay 33 cents per hour of sound recordings transmitted to a single user.
This bill is a critical step to preserve this new growing medium, and would present a level playing field where webcasters can compete on the same royalty terms with satellite radio. It would also reset royalty rules for non-profit radio such as NPR. Public radio would be required present a report to Congress on how it should determine rates for their internet streaming media.
I hope this passes, not so much because local radio needs more competition,
but because this insane CRB ruling makes it nearly impossible for local broadcasters to
compete on the Internet at all. This would give everybody a fair chance and at
the same time bring in millions, perhaps billions in royalties for artists.
From the "you've GOT to be freaking kidding me" department:
Dell's Virtual Plant a Tree for Me program into the computer game Second Life has many tech savvy people wondering if this represents a new low in Earth Day marketing tie-ins. It looks like in the rush to pander to green-ness, some Dell executives maybe didn't think beyond the boardroom door.
You may wonder, too, after reading Dell's invitation to its Earth Day Party at Dell Island in the Second Life game where they say proudly "get your own tree sapling to plant in Second Life!".
Yes that's' right, you can plant a virtual tree in a video game for Earth Day. And, Dell is only too happy to take a couple bucks from you in the process as well for their real tree planting program designed to assuage your guilt at using a computer that uses electricity.
You have to wonder just how hypocritically lazy some people might be to take this offer seriously, though with 5.7 million "residents" in the Second Life game, I suppose its hard to deny that this offer would have an impact.
Just how much electricity is used by PC's in pursuing this pointless exploit in "green-ness"? And with Dell soliciting and online Earth Day Party, that will tie up PC's, routers, and Servers nationwide, using even more electricity. There's no mention in Dell's press release of the expected carbon footprint on this bogus promotion. Maybe Gore will fly in on his private jet to make a "virtual appearance" to preach to the faithful.
But since some people nowadays seem incapable of disconnecting themselves from the virtual world of gaming, it stands to reason that a virtual eco-delusional activity might very well appear valid to them.
Maybe next the researchers at Berkeley can tap into the seti@home background processing idea and instead of searching for intelligent life in radio-telescope signals, we could program our wasted CPU cycles to grow virtual trees on a screen-saver. It could boast onscreen counts of virtual carbon sequestered, and virtual O2 produced. I can smell the virtual fresh air already!
We're doomed.
The The United Nations's IPCC Report comes out today so I thought I'd make a report too.
James Carville used to remind Clinton during the '92 campaign that “its the economy, stupid”.
I (and many others far smarter than I am) say that on the subject of Global Warming: “its the SUN, stupid”
Our earth is warmed by a gigantic nuclear fireball, millions of times the mass of earth and a mere 8.5 light-minutes away. One hundred and nine Earths would be required to fit across the Sun’s disk, and its interior could hold over 1.3 million Earths.
By the way, the sun has a total luminosity output of 386 YottaWatts thats 386,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts, but we only get a tiny portion of that.
You can’t just ignore that kind of power. Though it seems some prefer to, since it muddles the results they seek.
The total luminous energy output received by earth from the sun is 174 PETAWATTS (174,000,000,000,000,000) watts. Now lets just say the sun increases its output by 0.1% as its been measured to do. (And its gotten way more active this century.) That dumps an extra 174,000,000,000,000 watts into our atmosphere (174 trillion watts) 24/7.
Data source for graph: http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/climate_forcing/solar_variability/lean2000_irradiance.txt
Note: In the graph above, the low flatline from 1645-1715 is the Maunder Minimum, a period of virtually no sunspots, where the historical reports from the northern hemisphere tell a story of dramatic climate change: harsh winters, cools summers, crop failures, famine and disease.
From the abstract referenced above: "Estimated increases since 1675 are 0.7%, 0.2% and 0.07% in broad ultraviolet, visible/near infrared and infrared spectral bands, with a total irradiance increase of 0.2%. "
So its not just 0.1 %, it is 0.2% which translates to a 348 TeraWatts global irradiance increase.
Now lets put 348 trillion watts into perspective:
Hurricanes: the heat energy released by a hurricanes category 1-5 equals about 50 to 200 trillion watts or about the same amount of energy released by exploding a 10-megaton nuclear bomb every 20 minutes.
Katrina, released about 200 trillion watts over its life cycle.
Now imagine double that amount of extra energy being added to earth’s atmosphere every second by small increases in the suns output that have been documented to exist. Thats what the increase in solar irradiance is doing. Since 1675, after the depths of the Maunder Minimum, we've seen an increase in solar irradiance of about 2.5 watts per square meter.
Climate modelers say that the extra CO2 equates to a forcing of about 2 watts per square meter, which totals about 1.12 Petawatt (1,120,000,000,000,000 watts). The problem is, they can't always recreate that reliably between all of the different models out there, with the positive and negative feedback mechanisms, and other variables involved. There's disagreement on the total contribution. A lot of it. Nonetheless they seem all to agree that CO2 makes some contribution, and thats likely true. But compared to the sun, I beleive it's minimal.
Now lets look at us: 13.5 TeraWatts is the average total power consumption of the human world in 2001.
Do you think we could change the planets atmospheric energy balance with that if we squeezed all the power we made that year together and shot it into our atmosphere ?
Whats very clear though, when you look at history, and the graph above, is that our earths atmosphere and resulting climate is extremely sensitive to variations in solar output. The sweet center point seems to be about 1365 watts per square meter of irradiance...what we consider as "normal" climate. Take 1.5 watts/sq. meter away, and we get significant cooling, harsh winters, cool summers, and increases in ice and glaciers. Add 1.5 watts,/sq. meter and we get hotter summers, mild winters, and melting of ice and glaciers.
Now irradiance aside, as it's only one component, there's also the suns dynamic magnetic field and solar wind, which modulates earths magnetic field, which modulates the number of cosmic rays that enter our atmosphere, which modulates the number of clouds that form, hence changing the net surface irradiance. Plots of changes in the suns magnetic field line up very well with climate change.
There's growing sentiment that CO2 theory may very well be a red herring.
Yeah, its the sun, stupid.
Recently it was revealed that Al Gore has a large “carbon footprint” and that he setup a corporation and as CEO that allows him to assuage guilt over that large footprint by purchasing carbon credits from himself. He later invests that money in green technology companies and the profits from those stocks return to his company.
I planned to write a harsh rebuttal but as I was eating breakfast I realized something; the man is a genius. No wonder columnist Maureen Dowd calls him the “Goreacle”.
My lovely wife and I are dieting, but I realize now that we don’t need to after all. Following Gores lead, I propose a website called waste-watchers.com which will offer us the ability to purchase “dieting credits” so that we don’t actually have to change eating habits. But unlike Gore, who doesn’t allow his corporation to sell carbon credits to the public, I’ll make this website available to everyone.
Here’s a sample of “calorie credits” you can buy: Big Mac alone, 576 calories, $5. Add supersize fries and milkshake, 1720 calories, $20. Ice cream bar, 330 calories $3, Nachos with cheese, 900 calories, $9.
Simply logon the website, make your “calorie credit” purchase, and you’ll be able to eat these foods while still maintaining your calorie count guilt free.
Humorous absurdities aside, the point is that if you want to change anything, it requires real work and physical change, not accounting tricks. Honest leadership here is more incumbent on Gore than anyone, and his failure is revealing.
UPDATE: The national website www.junkscience.com has referenced this blog entry.
From the waaaayyyy over the top department:
The Weather Channel's climatologist, Dr. Heidi Cullen who hosts the program "The Climate Code", is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be denied certification (or re-certification) if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade global warming. She posted this revelation in the blog she runs on the Weather Channel website and you can read it here: http://climate.weather.com/blog/9_11396.html
She writes: "If a meteorologist has an AMS Seal of Approval, which is used to confer legitimacy to TV meteorologists, then meteorologists have a responsibility to truly educate themselves on the science of global warming." "Meteorologists are among the few people trained in the sciences who are permitted regular access to our living rooms. And in that sense, they owe it to their audience to distinguish between solid, peer-reviewed science and junk political controversy." "If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval."
Them's scientific fightin' words lady.
So, apparently any free speech, scientific debate, and public dialog that doesn't agree with the peer reviewed popular scientific opinion is grounds for denying an AMS Broadcast certification?
I have that AMS Broadcast certification, and though I was once a strong believer in the CO2-global warming theory, I'm now a skeptic that global warming is man made. I don't deny that the earth has seen increases in temperature, but I see far more supporting evidence that the sun and its various mechanisms which transport heat, light, particles, and magnetism to earth is a far bigger player than humans could ever hope to be. See my essay on the subject here: http://www.globalwarmingindex.org/gwi_essay1.htm
This reminds me of Galileo and his fight with the Roman Catholic Church in 1632. Galileo wanted to publish a book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems which totally revised the earth centric view of the universe favored by scientists, scholars, and clergy of the time and built on the work of the earlier astronomer Copernicus. Galilieo was tried and imprisoned for daring to speak out against the "consensus" of the time for what he saw as a scientific truth.
I think we would all do well to follow this maxim: "People who live in greenhouses shouldn't throw stones".
Continue reading "Weather Channel Issues Ultimate Professional Insult" »