Monckton, who was the science advisor to Britain’s Thatcher administration, says natural variability is the cause of most of the Earth’s recent warming. "In the past 70 years the Sun was more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 years ... Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and Pluto warmed at the same time as Earth."

Global Warming Conclusively Debunked As Gore Calls For CO2 Tax
The seven graphs that dispel alarmist claims about climate change

Global corporations and governments have joined forces to launch a united propaganda assault about how we must turn “green” while all the real environmental crises - deforestation, GM crops, chemtrails, genetic splicing, and cancer-causing cellphone tower radiation - are completely ignored.

Top Rocket Scientist: No Evidence CO2 Causes Global Warming

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
July 22, 2008

Read Full Article Here

Two Peer-Reviewed Scientific Papers Debunk CO2 Myth

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
July 16, 2008

The paper concludes, “CO2 enrichment will add little more than 1 °F (0.6 °C) to global mean surface temperature by 2100.”

Recent News:

Well it turns out that global warming (either natural or human induced) will not fry us. In actuality it will put us back into the ice age. Explanation: Well, you see, salt water conducts heat better than fresh water, our melting ice caps are comprised of fresh water. The diluting of the salt water will shut down the thermal convection currents in the oceans, thus stopping the transfer of heat by water from one place to another, putting us into another ice age. Don't get it? Well for you simple minded folk out there I simplified it. If you want it to cool down, give all your money to the oil companies and drive fast/aimlessly.

Written by Christopher Monckton Friday, 09 May 2008

"With climate change, politics regrettably predominates. This time, there is a dangerous complication: politicized science. The surprisingly small group of scientists who started and still stir the “global warming” scare have undesirably close financial links with politicians and corporations. Yet the notion that “global warming” is so severe a threat that it demands major increases in taxation and regulation, coupled with deep, strategic cuts in the Western economies, would only be defensible if all of the following propositions were true –

1. “The scientists, politicians, and news media behind ‘global warming’ are honest”: They are not;
2. “The debate is over and all credible climate scientists are agreed”: It is not; they are not;
3. “Temperature today has risen exceptionally fast and above natural variability”: It has not;
4. “Changes in solar activity do not significantly impact today’s global warming”: They do;
5. “Greenhouse-gas increases are the main reason why it is getting warmer”: They are not;
6. “The fingerprint of anthropogenic greenhouse warming is clearly present”: It is absent;
7. “Computer models are accurate enough to predict the climate reliably”: They cannot be;
8. “Global warming is to blame for present and future climate disasters”: It is not;
9. “Mitigating climate change will be cost-effective”: It will not;
10. “Taking precautions, just in case, would be the responsible course”: It would not be.

Each of these ten conformist propositions, every one of which must be shown true before substantial policy changes can be considered advisable, is demonstrated to be questionable at best, false at worst."

read full article here...

by Phil Brennan

Global Research, July 22, 2008
etherzone.com

Fact: All history reveals that time after time this planet of ours has experienced periods of warming and periods of cooling. A century of slight global warming, about half a degree, ended in 1998.

Fact: In this century a global cooling has set in. In 2008 most of the northern hemisphere, except for Western Europe, is coming out of what most scientists say has been the harshest winter in decades.

Malta, Israel, China and India's New Delhi have been subjected to record low temperatures. In Afghanistan, more than 900 people and 316,000 head of cattle died as a result of bitter cold weather according to Reuters.

In a letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon 13 top scientists including one Nobel Prize winner, pointed to the fact that while CO2 levels have continued to rise, global temperatures have fallen, dramatically contradicting the claim that CO2 levels cause global warming. They wrote that the UN Climate change Panel "must be called to account and cease its deceptive practices - Policies based on False science must be ended."

Meteorologist Anthony Watts says that the total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough, he says, to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years.

In a news conference held in Orlando, Florida John L. Casey, Director of the Space and Science Research Center, issued a landmark declaration on climate change.

“In an opinion echoed by many scientists around the world, the Space and Science Research Center (SSRC), today declares that the world’s climate warming of the past decades has now come to an end. A new climate era has already started that is bringing predominantly colder global temperatures for many years into the future. In some years this new climate will create dangerously cold weather with significant ill-effects world wide. Global warming is over – a new cold climate has begun.”

Fact: Lack of Sunspot activity portends the onset of global cooling. The sunspot number should stand close to 100; instead it's zero

The level of activity on the Sun will significantly diminish sometime in the next decade and remain low for about 20 - 30 years," said Ian Wilson, lead author of a study appearing in the June issue of PASA, Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia.

The result is a strong, rapid pulse of global cooling, said Wilson. "On each occasion that the Sun has done this in the past the World’s mean temperature has dropped by 1 - 2 C.”

"A 2 C drop would be twice as large as all the warming the earth has experienced since the start of the industrial era, and would be significant enough to impact global agriculture output."

Got it? Global warming, such as it was, is over. Done with. Kaput.

That however, had failed to dampen the enthusiasm of the global warming fear mongers. It has, instead, fueled a spate of often ludicrous claims of an impending planetary disaster due to alleged global warming. As meteorologist and Weather Channel founder John Coleman has said all the proponents of global warming can do is to lamely suggest that global warming has gone on vacation and is taking a ten-year hiatus on account of the absence of sun spots. “If this weren’t so serious it would be laughable” Coleman said.

“It is the greatest scam in history, he said. "I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global warming; it is a scam. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create in allusion (sic) of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environment whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the “research” to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon, they claimed to be a consensus.”

Yet the beat goes on, and gets more ludicrous with one member of Congress actually telling a bunch of kids that global warming caused Hurricane Katrina and led to the deaths of Americans in the Blackhawk Down espoused in Somalia. He forgot to mention it also causes tooth decay, body odor and underarm perspiration.

Global warming is clearly over, yet Al Gore and his acolytes keep warning us that the planet is heating up even as it continues to get colder.

One definition of insanity is the compulsion to make the same mistake over and over again all the while expecting a different and successful outcome.

If that suggests that Al Gore and his fellow global warming fantasists are nuts, well , ...

Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com. He is editor & publisher of Wednesday on the Web and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee which won statehood for Alaska. He is also a trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers. Phil Brennan is a regular columnist for Ether Zone.

I clicked on the story, mainly because I found it incredible that someone could doubt that.

What did I find?

I found that a poorly written newsreport had been very carefully cherry picked all the way from the United Kingdom. To make it seem as though it was misguided, links were placed to Audubon society and the like but of science, nary a view. Unless one counts another cherry picked chart of temperatures.

And what is the science? There are several studies that indeed confirm that penguins are at risk. However in the interest of my time and yours, I picked these 5 links for 3 different types of media:

1) An old national geographic news story here

2) A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. You can read the extract here. To read the entire study requires access to a library or subscription to the proceedings.

3) Some bloggers' take on the matter:

here -this describes the full PNA study.

here - this gives a very even handed view of gloal warming in general and on the issue of ice.                                  Recommended reading in general.

4) An editorial in the Journal Science here which puts that cherry picked temperature chart in perspective. Science is the most prestigious journal on the planet- for those who may not be aware of the prestige associated with different journals.

You know the really sad part - disinformation is always read more! More on that tomorrow.  And if you liked this post then you might want to read this one too about global warming deniers here

Apparently if the world is ever to reach the carbon-free future Mr. Gore dreams of, it will have to get there without Al's help.

"Remember, too, the Nobel prizewinning environmentalist lives in a Tennessee mansion that produces a carbon footprint 20 times that of the average American home. A sizeable chunk of his personal fortune comes from royalties on a zinc mine which had to be temporarily closed five years ago in part because the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency ruled it one of the worst-polluting mine sites in America. Illegal toxins were frequently discharged into nearby rivers."

read full article here...

CO2

Danny Huddleston
It appears that our efforts to control C02 emissions may be misguided, as the real culprit in global warming could be cows. The UK's Daily mail has the story.

Argentine scientists are taking a novel approach to studying global warming - strapping plastic tanks to the backs of cows to collect their burps and farts.

Researchers say the slow digestive system of cows makes them a producer of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that gets far less public attention than carbon dioxide in efforts to fight global warming.
[...]

Berra said the researchers 'never thought' a cow weighing 550 kg (1,210 lb) could produce 800 to 1,000 litres (28 to 35 cubic feet) of emissions each day.

At least 10 cows are being studied, Berra said, including some in a corral whose burps are collected in yellow balloons hanging from the roof.

Greenhouse gases are widely blamed for causing global warming. Methane, researchers say, is 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide in trapping heat in the atmosphere and can be found in animal waste, landfills, coal mines and leaking natural gas pipes.

Not to worry, the scientists are working on a new diet for the cows which should reduce emissions by 25%.

Be sure and check out the pictures in the article, the cows look very stylish with the big pink plastic tanks on their backs.

I would file this story the same place you filed the one where Sheryl Crow proposes that everyone use only one square of tissue in the bathroom.

Posted at 10:17 AM | Email | Permalink

Randall Hoven
Is the scientific debate over on global warming?  Not according to the American Physical Society* in this year's July's issue of Physics and Society .

"With this issue of Physics & Society, we kick off a debate concerning one of the main conclusions of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body which, together with Al Gore, recently won the Nobel Prize for its work concerning climate change research. There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO₂ emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.  Since the correctness or fallacy of that conclusion has immense implications for public policy and for the future of the biosphere, we thought it appropriate to present a debate within the pages of P&S concerning that conclusion.  This editor invited several people to contribute articles that were either pro or con.  Christopher Monckton responded ..."  [Emphasis added.]

"Some reasons why the IPCC's estimates may be excessive and unsafe are explained.  More importantly, the conclusion is that, perhaps, there is no "climate crisis", and that currently-fashionable efforts by governments to reduce anthropogenic CO₂ emissions are pointless, may be ill-conceived, and could even be harmful."

"Theoretically, empirically, and in the literature that we have extensively cited, each of the values we have chosen as our central estimate is arguably more justifiable - and is certainly no less justifiable - than the substantially higher value selected by the IPCC. Accordingly, it is very likely that in response to a doubling of pre-industrial carbon dioxide concentration T_S will rise not by the 3.26 °K suggested by the IPCC, but by <1 °K."

"If the concluding equation in this analysis is correct, the IPCC's estimates of climate sensitivity must have been very much exaggerated.  There may, therefore, be a good reason why, contrary to the projections of the models on which the IPCC relies, temperatures have not risen for a decade and have been falling since the phase-transition in global temperature trends that occurred in late 2001.  Perhaps real-world climate sensitivity is very much below the IPCC's estimates. Perhaps, therefore, there is no "climate crisis" at all. At present, then, in policy terms there is no case for doing anything. The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing."  [Emphasis added.]

Posted at 10:37 AM | Email | Permalink

...The very mild warming that the earth experienced over the last century: does that have more to do with mankind's activities or the sun?

It seems like it must be the sun. The reason we say that is because 70% of the warming we've had since 1850, when the Little Ice Age ended -- 70% of that warming came before 1940. 85% of the human emitted greenhouse gasses came after 1940. In fact, the net warming of the earth since 1940 is a miniscule 2/10 of 1 degree celsius....

Another question related to your last book: if you listen to global warming alarmists, they'll tell you that the earth is warmer than it ever has been during mankind's history. Is that true?

No. Absolutely untrue. The...warming before our last ice age was much warmer than anything we've had since. We had a warming that peaked 9000 years ago, another warming that peaked 5000 years ago. Both were warmer than today. Probably the Roman warming and the medieval warming were both warmer than today -- and we've had 8 warmings of the earth since the last Ice Age.

The whole thing is interesting - the coming outlook for global temperature?

You've recently said you believe we're about to experience mild global cooling. Can you tell us about that?

We are experiencing now, mild global cooling. We had a peak temperature in 1998, at the end of a hot El Nino and the climate model said this is just the beginning, it's going to get much hotter. But, it didn't. For 10 years, the temperature held stable.

During this time, from 2000 onward, the sunspots were predicting cooling. Let me point out to your readers that sunspots have had a strong history of predicting our temperature changes 10 years from now. A 10 year lag in predicting how solar activity will warm or cool the ocean. But, from 2000 on, they were predicting cooling.

2007, we got it. 2007 was significantly cooler and that was the first major downturn in the temperature in 30 years. That cooling has persisted -- at this point, in temperature, about back where we were in the year 1900.

And this kind of information just completely unhinges the section of the population that has decided that they have finally gotten the tool they can use to make Western Civilization destroy itself.  The flecks of spittle that I have seen sprayed around on this blog are nothing compared to the vitriol poured out by the true believers on those who actually stand athwart their ideas and stay "STOP".

But remember this too:

Another thing I have noticed is that even the global warming alarmists were right: the solutions that they're suggesting don't come close to fixing the problems. Kyoto, these cap and trade schemes, they are really expensive and actually do very little to reduce greenhouse gasses. Any thoughts on that?

They're really talking about going back to the Great Depression. Nobody has a car, nobody could afford the fuel if they had a car. They're talking about living a hundred yards from the factory, except there isn't going to be a factory because there is not going to be any coal burning to power it. No nuclear power, no drilling for oil, no hope.

I just want to remind you that there are millions of people in the Third World, women and children, heating and cooking with cow manure, firewood that they gather off the mountainside. The air pollution in some of those areas is equal to a 2 pack a day cigarette habit. ...If there's no kerosene, no propane, no nuclear electricity, are we all going to be in that situation?

On 26 June 2008 the Climate & Hurricane Forum was held in NYC, sponsored by The Energy Business Watch, with presentations by 4 prominent scientists.  The slides of the presentations are posted here (along with bios of the scientists); I found the slides useless (we need the transcripts). 

Alan "Petrodamus" Lammey has posted a summary of the Forum at his site, Texas Energy Analyst.  Read this as you would a news report, as his bio says that he has no formal training in any energy-related field (his experience in in journalism and finance).  Excerpt:

Van Loon spoke about his theories of solar storms and how, combined with, or because of these storms, the Earth has been on a relative roller coaster of climate cycles. For the past 250 years, he said, global climate highs and lows have followed the broad pattern of low and high solar activity. And shorter 11-year sunspot cycles are even more easily correlated to global temperatures.  It was cooler from 1883 to 1928 when there was low solar activity, he said, and it has been warmer since 1947 with increased solar activity. 

"We are on our way out of the latest (warming) cycle, and are headed for a new cycle of low (solar) activity," van Loon said. "There is a change coming. We may see 180-degree changes in anomalies during high and low sunspot periods. There were three global climate changes in the last century, there is a change coming now."

... Perhaps the best known speaker was Colorado State University's Gray, founder of the school's famed hurricane research team. Gray spoke about multi-decade periods of warming and cooling and how global climate flux has been the norm for as long as there have been records. Gray has taken quite a bit of political heat for insistence that global warming is not a man-made condition. Man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) is negligible, he said, compared to the amount of CO2 Mother Nature makes and disposes of each day or century.

"We've reached the top of the heat cycle," he said. "The next 10 years will be hardly any warmer than the last 10 years."

Please share your comments by posting below (brief and relevant, please), or email me at fabmaximus at hotmail dot com (note the spam-protected spelling).

For more information about global climate change

(a)  Other posts on this site

1. A look at the science and politics of global warming  (12 June 2008)
2. Global warming means more earthquakes!  (19 June 2008)
3. An article giving strong evidence of global warming  (30 June 2008)
4. Worrying about the Sun and climate change - cycle 24 is late  (10 July 2008)
5. Update: is Solar Cycle 24 late (a cooling cycle, with famines, etc)?  (15 July 2008)

(b)  Information from other sources

1. “SURFACE TEMPERATURE RECONSTRUCTIONS FOR THE LAST 2,000 YEARS“, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Division on Earth and Life Studies, NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES (2006) — aka The North Report.
2. Report of the “Ad Hoc Committee on the Hockey Stick Global Climate Reconstruction”, commissioned by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce (July 2006) — aka The Wegman Report.  Also note this excerpt from the Q&A session of the Dr. Edward J. Wegman’s testimony.
3. “The role of statisticians in public policy debates over climate change“, Richard L. Smith, American Statistical Association - Section on Statistics & the Environment Newsletter (Spring 2007) — One of the too-few reports by statisticians on the climate change literature.
4. A timeline of the science and politics of climate science.
5. A Bibliography by year of climate science research. 

Solar cycle #24 is on my list of things to watch.  The next 11-year solar cycle-- number 24 -- has not yet started.  It is a little late, and getting later.  Nothing significant yet, but it could quickly become a major geopolitical factor.  We may have a problem if it does not start by September.  A late cycle may be a "small" cycle, one with few sunspots and low levels of solar activity.  Such periods have often accompanied periods of cold weather on Earth.  Cooling means famines. 

These reports describe the latest forecasts, from the International Workshop "Solar Variability, Earth's Climate and the Space Environment", sponsored by NASA, held 1 - 6 June 2008.

1. A summary of the workshop's results.  Here are abstracts of the papers presented.
2. "Global Climate Change: Is the Sun to blame?", Sami K. Solanki, 3 June 2008
3. "What's Wrong with the Sun? (Nothing)", NASA, 11 July 2008 -- A rebuttal from staff at NASA.

Excerpts of these reports

I.  "Sun goes longer than normal without producing sunspots", Montana State University News Service, 9 June 2008 -- This story is the basis for many news reports, including ScienceDaily.  Excerpt:

The sun has been laying low for the past couple of years, producing no sunspots and giving a break to satellites.

That's good news for people who scramble when space weather interferes with their technology, but it became a point of discussion for the scientists who attended an international solar conference at Montana State University. Approximately 100 scientists from Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa and North America gathered June 1-6 to talk about "Solar Variability, Earth's Climate and the Space Environment."

The scientists said periods of inactivity are normal for the sun, but this period has gone on longer than usual.  "It continues to be dead," said Saku Tsuneta with the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, program manager for the Hinode solar mission. "That's a small concern, a very small concern."  {FM:  is this a pun on "small"?}

... Dana Longcope, a solar physicist at MSU, said the sun usually operates on an 11-year cycle with maximum activity occurring in the middle of the cycle. Minimum activity generally occurs as the cycles change. Solar activity refers to phenomena like sunspots, solar flares and solar eruptions. Together, they create the weather than can disrupt satellites in space and technology on earth.  The last cycle reached its peak in 2001 and is believed to be just ending now, Longcope said. The next cycle is just beginning and is expected to reach its peak sometime around 2012. Today's sun, however, is as inactive as it was two years ago, and scientists aren't sure why.

"It's a dead face," Tsuneta said of the sun's appearance.  Tsuneta said solar physicists aren't like weather forecasters; They can't predict the future. They do have the ability to observe, however, and they have observed a longer-than-normal period of solar inactivity. In the past, they observed that the sun once went 50 years without producing sunspots. That period coincided with a little ice age on Earth that lasted from 1650 to 1700.

II.  "Global Climate Change: Is the Sun to blame?", Sami K. Solanki, 3 June 2008 - He is Managing Director of Max Planck Institute for Solar System Researchand Contributing Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  Summary:

The Earth is heating up. For the last century it has relentlessly grown warmer, in spite of short periods of respite. This global change is leaving its mark and the predictions for the future are not very comforting. As the Earth has heated up, so has the debate on the causes of global change. Opposing camps fight over whether the drivers are man-made or natural.

The prime natural cause for explaining global warming is the Sun. It is a restless star that shows a wide variety of transient and active phenomena, such as the continuously changing hot corona, energetic flares and immense coronal mass ejections. Along with these more violent events, the Sun displays a permanent variation of its brightness, which is thought to influence the Earth's climate. Paths by which the Sun could affect climate are outlined in this talk and the question is considered to what extent is the Sun responsible for the global warming seen in the last decades.

III.  "What's Wrong with the Sun? (Nothing)", NASA, 11 July 2008 -- A rebuttal from scientists at NASA.  Excerpt:

Stop the presses! The sun is behaving normally.  So says NASA solar physicist David Hathaway. "There have been some reports lately that Solar Minimum is lasting longer than it should. That's not true. The ongoing lull in sunspot number is well within historic norms for the solar cycle." ... But first, a status report: "The sun is now near the low point of its 11-year activity cycle," says Hathaway. "We call this 'Solar Minimum.' It is the period of quiet that separates one Solar Max from another."

Although minima are a normal aspect of the solar cycle, some observers are questioning the length of the ongoing minimum, now slogging through its 3rd year.  "It does seem like it's taking a long time," allows Hathaway, "but I think we're just forgetting how long a solar minimum can last." In the early 20th century there were periods of quiet lasting almost twice as long as the current spell.

Hathaway has studied international sunspot counts stretching all the way back to 1749 and he offers these statistics: "The average period of a solar cycle is 131 months with a standard deviation of 14 months. Decaying solar cycle 23 (the one we are experiencing now) has so far lasted 142 months--well within the first standard deviation and thus not at all abnormal. The last available 13-month smoothed sunspot number was 5.70. This is bigger than 12 of the last 23 solar minimum values."

In summary, "the current minimum is not abnormally low or long."

Please share your comments by posting below (brief and relevant, please), or email me at fabmaximus at hotmail dot com (note the spam-protected spelling).

Other sources of information about the Solar Cycle

1. Daily sun watch at Spaceweather.com
2. NOAA’s  Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), including their Solar Cycle Progression page and the latest predictions.
3. NASA’s background information about Solar Cycle Predictions
4. Detailed information at SolarCycle24.com

For more information about global warming

(a)  Other posts on this site

1. A look at the science and politics of global warming  (12 June 2008)
2. Global warming means more earthquakes!  (19 June 2008)
3. An article giving strong evidence of global warming  (30 June 2008)
4. Worrying about the Sun and climate change - cycle 24 is late  (10 July 2008)
5. More forecasts of a global cooling cycle  (15 July 2008)

(b)  Information from other sources

1. “SURFACE TEMPERATURE RECONSTRUCTIONS FOR THE LAST 2,000 YEARS“, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Division on Earth and Life Studies, NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES (2006) — aka The North Report.
2. Report of the “Ad Hoc Committee on the Hockey Stick Global Climate Reconstruction”, commissioned by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce (July 2006) — aka The Wegman Report.  Also note this excerpt from the Q&A session of the Dr. Edward J. Wegman’s testimony.
3. “The role of statisticians in public policy debates over climate change“, Richard L. Smith, American Statistical Association - Section on Statistics & the Environment Newsletter (Spring 2007) — One of the too-few reports by statisticians on the climate change literature.
4. A timeline of the science and politics of climate science.
5. A Bibliography by year of climate science research. 

Latest articles on the issue I read today (I am late, I know).... "Global Warming Out Global Cooling In".

Hmm... "Snow in august" in my tropical backyard may no longer be a science fiction flick.

But the alarming thing stated in the article, is:

Four scientists, four scenarios, four more or less similar conclusions without actually saying it outright -- the global warming trend is done, and a cooling trend is about to kick in. The implication: Future energy price response is likely to be significant. [...]

oh, dear.....

Our weather is just great.  Dry air moved in on Sunday. For a time, the heat index was actually below the air temperature by a couple of degrees.  Look for cool nights and warm afternoons for Monday and Tuesday.  We move toward 90 on Wednesday as we get a little more humid and then the rest of the week through the weekend its hot and humid with lows in the 70's and highs in the low to mid 90's.  Next rain chance, and it's not a great one, is on Sunday.

On This Date in History:  The citizens of Paris stormed the Bastille!  The Estates-General was a political body made up of the nobility, the clergy and the commoners.  The commoners were the 3rd Estate.  They petitioned in June 1789 for a new constitution in France and the other estates soon joined in.  Louis XVI went and fired the Finance Minister and the people were afraid that they would be attacked by the military.  So, the stormed the Bastille, which was a fortress that also served as a prison for many political prisoners.  When they got to the gate, the guy in charge let them in, fearing a blood bath.  There were only 7 prisoners in the Bastille and there really weren't all that many armaments but the occasion has stood as a symbol of French Rebellion that eventually led to Louis and Marie Antoinette losing their heads and eventually to a French Republic..which was promptly usurped by Napoleon Bonaparte, which was good for the US since he sold us much of the United States in the Louisiana Purchase.  France really didn't finally end up as a Republic until later in the 19th Century.  Nevertheless, July 14 is sort of a French version of the Fourth of July...it also stands as a good back drop for Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.

Global Temperature Report for June:  Are we getting cooler?

June 2008 Global Temperature map.

In June, according to data from the University of Alabama at Huntsville, The June 2008 Global Temperature Report states that global temperatures were .11C below the 20 year average with the Northern Hemisphere being equal to the average while the Southern Hemisphere was .23C below the 20 year average.

This is interesting.  The general thought is that the trend for the last several months of cooler temperatures has to do with La Nina, but it does give some ammo to those who dispute the global warming argument.  Here's a breakdown for 2008:

Feb:  Global composite: +.20C deviation from the 20 year average; N. Hemisphere +.25C; S.Hemisphere-.21C

Mar: Global composite: +.09C deviation from the 20 year average; N. Hemisphere +.42C; S. Hemisphere -.25C

April: Global composite: +.02C deviation from the 20 year average; N. Hemisphere +.17C; S. Hemisphere -.14C

May: Global composite: -.18C deviation from the 20 year average; N. Hemisphere -.05C; S. Hemisphere -.31C.

June: Global Composite: -.11C deviation from the 20 year average; N. Hemisphere nil; S. Hemisphere -.23C

A couple of things you notice. First is the over all trend seems cooler.  The Northern Hemisphere has been warmer but the last few months it too is cooling somewhat. The Southern Hemisphere has been well below the 20 year average throughout. Further, the tropical zones have been consistently cooler.  March and April were .49C and .53C cooler respectively in the tropics marking the largest cooling departure since a La Nina event in 1989.  And even though La Nina is generally a tropical cooling phenomena, globally, June 2008 was the  coolest since June 1999.

Is this a trend?  Our friend Anthony Watts seems to think so as he posted in January of 2008 that this trend has been going on since January of last year.  He cites four sources in This Post. He also has weighed in on the melting polar ice cap.  Remember I chastised the reporter for highlighting the "50-50 chance" hypothesis and burying other scientists views, as well as other journalistic foibles?  Well, Watts chimes in with photos of the Arctic and claims the melting better start soon if the fears of a watery grave for Santa Claus are to come about.

For whatever reason, it seems clear that the facts show that we have gotten cooler lately and not warmer.  Now, it could be honestly said that a few months does not a trend make and I'm sure that's what the Al Gore crowd would say.  And it could be the case. But, I don't think that their computer models predicted this. And they certainly didn't publicize it if they did.  No, this is an example of how complicated the global climate really is and why a more thorough, honest, depoliticized examination needs to be done instead of people with economic interests making claims based on bad methodologies, incomplete data or with data deliberately altered or omitted.  And then we need to decide if anything can or should be done. 

Everyone likes to jump on the bandwagon, but it's possible that this bandwagon is being driven by Hector Heathcote instead of Ben Franklin.

The Texan rarely looked troubled en route to the win, eventually crossing the finish on the Champs-Elysees almost five minutes ahead of his closest rival.

BBC Sport asks key figures in the sport to rate Armstrong's achievement.

I spoke to Armstrong after one of the mountain stages and said "you're playing with them aren't you?"

And he gave me a wry grin and said he'd had to say to the cameras he was suffering before he cycled off as cool as you like.

I think that's possibly the easiest Tour he's ever ridden - he was well within himself. He was looking around a lot all the time and never really forced the pace. He got Yaroslav Popovych to increase the speed and then he went.

He'll leave a gap in the sport, although not a void. Cycling superstars do come and go. And it'll be the same post-Armstrong.

Arguably the hardest thing to achieve as a cyclist is to win the Tour de France - it's our Wimbledon or Super Bowl. And the fact that Lance did that seven times is awesome.

He's unique and everyone around the world, even from other sports, can appreciate what he's achieved.

I remember when I last rode it in 1998. I briefly took the yellow jersey before crashing out. Then, I never envisaged he would even challenge for the win the following year. But he did - I guess that was the last time he surprised me.

It simply became a case of "who's going to beat him?" rather than "will he win?".

He became cycling's first global superstar. OK, the Tour was Armstrong's springboard, but his adversity and the way he came back and what he's done off the bike, bring so much more appeal.

I suppose he's all right really - he's done a bit in his career! Seriously, though, it's pretty awesome when you watch him in action from the centre of the team.

His focus has been awesome and there was never any doubt for us in the team that he'd do it. And now he bows out at the peak of his powers

I remember riding with him in the same team at the end of my career and everyone mentions how he's a different rider altogether since his return from cancer.

But he always had the potential to be great, it's just that he far exceeded that when he came back from illness.

For me, he's the most complete rider I've ever ridden with, against or seen on the telelvision. As for comparing him to the likes of Eddy Merckx, that's hard to do. It'd be a close-run thing though.

What Lance Armstrong has achieved is a record built to last and a record that can now be set in stone.

And that is perfectly reasonable because no-one is going to break it any time soon.

He deserved his last six Tour de France wins and was an equally deserving winner this time.
]]> http://hbmt.wordpress.com/?p=74 Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:24:02 +0000 aedh http://hbmt.wordpress.com/?p=74 High grade bio fuel from grass land.

I agree completely that the most promising biofuels experiments are those using mixed native grasses. We discuss Tilman's work and its many potential benefits on page 95-96 of Earth: The Sequel. These include:

- increased storage of carbon in the soil
- improved soil structure
- water infiltration and fertility
- radically reduced need for energy inputs (tilling, seeding, fertilizing)
- avoidance of competition with food production
- reduced pollutant run-off
- enhanced biodiversity, with all its benefits

I also agree that corn ethanol is generally a bad idea, given its poor energy/carbon balance, land and water impacts, and effects on food price and availability.

For net energy analysis, I rely on the work by Alex Farrell and Daniel Sperling of the University of California. They have developed a low-carbon fuel standard by assessing the "global warming impact" (GWI) of each fuel, measured as grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule of fuel burned. The GWI for gasoline is 92, for corn ethanol 76, for Brazilian sugarcane-based ethanol 36, and for cellulosic ethanol just 4.

Amyris' fuels, because they're made from sugarcane, currently offer about the same net reductions in carbon emissions as sugarcane ethanol. However, by making pure hydrocarbons and avoiding the distilling process, their energy inputs are lower. Their long term goal is to have the sugar inputs originate in cellulosic materials, like those native prairie grasses.

Cow farts collected in plastic tank.

Eating Beef Worse Than Driving

Producing 2.2lb of beef generates as much greenhouse gas as driving a car non-stop for three hours, it was claimed yesterday.

Japanese scientists used a range of data to calculate the environmental impact of a single purchase of beef.

Taking into account all the processes involved, they said, four average sized steaks generated greenhouse gases with a warming potential equivalent to 80.25lb of carbon dioxide.

This also consumed 169 megajoules of energy.

That means that 2.2lb of beef is responsible for greenhouse gas emissions which have the same effect as the carbon dioxide released by an ordinary car travelling at 50 miles per hour for 155 miles, a journey lasting three hours. The amount of energy consumed would light a 100-watt bulb for 20 days.

Worms Cause Global Warming.

Mr Frederickson told Materials Recycling Week said: "Everybody loves worms because they think they can do no harm but they contribute to global warming.

"The amount of worm composting is very, very small and the amount of landfill is huge. But landfill sites are quite well run these days and it is possible to extract about half the gas they generate and use it for electricity generation.

"So the amount of nitrous oxide emitted by large scale worm composting is something we should be looking at before we go further down that route."

Mr Frederickson said that the research he and his colleagues had done was on very large commercial worm composting "beds" which build up large amounts of nitrogen which is then emitted by the worms as gas.

Global Warming Causes Glaciers To Grow

"It's a bit of an anomaly that they are growing, but it's not to be unexpected," said Ed Josberger, a glaciologist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Tacoma, Wash.

You can read my take on the glacier story HERE.

Clean Air Causes Global Warming, Global Warming Causes Smog.

In today's "People Can Prove Whatever They Want If They Really Try Hard Enough" moment, Swiss scientists claimed early this week that efforts to clean the air over Europe the past three decades are responsible for at least half of that continent's 1°C rise in temperatures since 1980.

In an interesting chicken and the egg conundrum, scientists in America claimed Thursday that global warming causes smog.

There are more stories out there, but that has to be it for now. Enjoy....

Local climate control: how can it be done? - the facts are these. To say that climate engineering is in a pre-early stage of development is a vast understatement. There is no such thing. Governments can no more control climate globally than they can locally. We have a long, long way to go technologically before any such thing as climate democracy can become reality. Wake up and smell the crap – it’s a scam! They want to raise taxes and increase government control over earthly endeavors and you won’t get anything for it in return.

clipped from mensnewsdaily.com I’ve never been one to disparage a glacier, but that doesn’t obscure my recognition of the manipulation in Mr. Gore’s message when he attempts to convince us that we have no choice. Balderdash! If government can control the earth’s temperature, then it can be forced in either direction. More importantly, if politicians are going to assume the authority to manipulate climate, voters should decide which way it goes. Mr. Gore lives in the southern United States where I can well understand that a few degrees of cooling seems like a good thing. Try walking around Baton Rouge, Louisiana on a hot, humid summer day. Given a democratic choice, the south will likely rise in favor of cooling. But put yourself in the middle of a snowstorm in northern Minnesota and your perspective will change dramatically. Several degrees warmer would be a relief. Make it colder and Minnesota will suffer physically and economically.