Keith Olbermann: Current TV Co-Founder And Former VP Al Gore Was a ‘Clod’ – TVNewser
“When you’re working for somebody whom you admired politically, who turns out to be a clod,” says Olbermann, referring to Gore, “the scales fall from your eyes. Sorry. Al underdelivered. I mean that’s just simply the case. I don’t want to dwell on it, but it’s true.”
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Speaking of clods, Ahnold channels my own local California haranguer Sherri Quammen
Schwarzenegger got off some good gibes to win the crowd over.
Speaking of greenhouse gas deniers: “Strap some conservative-thinking people to a tailpipe for an hour and then they will agree it’s a pollutant!”
And naturally, there was this quip: “Use your Hummer, but have an electric engine.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-bradley/national-clean-energy-sum_b_3757805.html
Luboš Motl says it’s a gas chamber analogy: http://motls.blogspot.com/2013/08/arnold-schwarzenegger-orders-gas.html
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More heat than light? Climate catastrophe and the Hiroshima bomb
There has been some discussion on Twitter today (14 August) about the wisdom or otherwise of measuring the heat being retained by the Earth in terms of Hiroshima bombs. The analogy is presented by John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli on their Skeptical Science blog, drawing on an academic paper by Church et al to describe the heat retained as equivalent to four Hiroshima bombs per second.
I have no reason to doubt this. However, choosing the most effective metaphor involves more than simply finding an analogy that accurately conveys a specific energy equivalence. The very purpose of a metaphor is to help make the incomprehensible familiar in order to make a point. Asking whether it is accurate or not is not enough.
More heat than light? Climate catastrophe and the Hiroshima bomb
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Another Paper Supports Svensmark’s Cosmic Ray Theory
Another Paper Supports Svensmark’s Cosmic Ray Theory
In recent weeks there has been even further developments in support of Svensmark’s Cosmic Ray Theory of cosmoclimatology. Via The Hockey Schtick is this article: …
http://climateobserver.blogspot.com/2013/04/another-paper-supports-svensmarks.html
h/t to Mark Bofill
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Mumble McGuirk says:
Well the American Meteorological Society has posted the slate of candidates for next President and Councilors:
http://www.ametsoc.org/elections/2013candidates.pdf
It may be a Hobson’s Choice, but I urge any AMS members to vote for .NOT. Heidi Cullen.
I don’t disagree. Cullen is not only an activist, but as we saw in her recent congressional testimony, not particularly cognizant. I’d vote for the Air Force guy. – Anthony
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Climate change may be speeding coast redwood, giant sequoia growth.
By Bettina Boxall
Per the article: Finally, some good news about the effects of climate change. It may have triggered a growth spurt in two of California’s iconic tree species: coast redwoods and giant sequoias.
Since the 1970s, some coast redwoods have grown at the fastest rate ever, according to scientists who studied corings from trees more than 1,000 years old.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-redwoods-climate-20130814,0,3829911.story
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Paging Brad Johnson of ‘Forecast the Facts’. New peer-reviewed paper: “Our findings contradict the view that a warming world will automatically be one of more overall climatic variation.”
Evidence from Greenland ice cores shows that year-to-year temperature variability was probably higher in some past cold periods…Many climate models predict that total variability will ultimately decrease under high greenhouse gas concentrations, possibly associated with reductions in sea-ice cover. Our findings contradict the view that a warming world will automatically be one of more overall climatic variation.
h/t to Tom Nelson
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Die Klimazwiebel: Science for a good cause?
Imagine the following scenario. An atmospheric scientist makes a discovery that seems to challenge a particular model of sea level increase due to global warming. She expects her discovery will be refined through further research, and that, in the end, it will not refute the mainstream view. In the meantime, she wants to avoid giving ammunition to climate skeptics, so she postpones publication. But an ambitious postdoc surreptitiously informs the media about the discovery. The media accuse the scientist of a cover-up and report that key evidence for anthropogenic climate change has been refuted.
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The Editor, Richmond Times-Dispatch, August 15, 2013.
Sir,
Charles Battig did a great service to your readers by spreading truth about the now-collapsed climate scare. Michael Mann’s criticisms of him (August 5) were ill-founded. Attorney General Cuccinelli investigated Mr Mann under the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act 2000 because of what I shall delicately call the statistical peculiarities evident in Mr Mann’s “hockey stick” graph that had purported to abolish the medieval warm period and to show – falsely – that today’s quite normal global temperatures were unprecedented in 1300 years.
Mr Mann’s graph relied heavily upon the widths of tree-rings from bristlecone pines as a basis for estimating temperatures before we had thermometers, although these pines are unreliable proxies because the tree-rings widen not only when the weather is warmer but also when it is wetter and when there is more CO2 in the air. That kinda musses things up.
According to real scientists, the graph also gave extreme weighting to datasets that showed unusual 20th-century warming at the expense of those that did not. And the program that Mr Mann created to draw the graph would have shown the 20th century as unusually warm even if random red noise rather than real-world data were fed in. There were numerous other statistical curiosities. Mr Mann’s graph is perhaps the most laughable and widely-discredited object in the history of bad science supporting worse politics.
Most learned papers based on real-world data show that the medieval warm period was real, global, and warmer than the present. A spate of papers by computer modelers apparently confirming Mr Mann’s contrarian conclusion appeared with interesting suddenness after his paper was scientifically discredited. Many of the authors, according to an independent statistical report for the House Energy & Commerce Committee in 2006, were linked to Mr Mann by previous co-authorship. Hmmm.
Mr Battig did not criticize Mr Mann for his bad personality, though Mr Mann’s characteristically malevolent description of his opponents as “deniers” and “denialists” several times in his letter of reply would be illegal in Europe as being anti-Jewish, racialist hate-speech disrespectful of Holocaust victims. Certainly no real scientist would use such language. Mr Battig criticized Mr Mann for his flagrantly bad science, not his flagrantly bad manners. Science is not about personalities. It is about seeking truth. Mr Mann’s graph was not true. It was not science. It deserved criticism. It got it.
Besides, according to the satellites, notwithstanding record increases in CO2 concentration there has been no global warming at all for 16 years 8 months – and counting. That is 200 months without so much as a flicker of global warming. The game is up and the scare is over.
Yours faithfully,
Monckton of Brenchley
http://sppiblog.org/news/monckton-to-mann-forget-personalities-science-is-about-truth
re: Another Paper Supports Svensmark’s Cosmic Ray Theory: I don’t think it does, other than by finding evidence of an 11-year cycle. When it says the cycles “ suggest a global mechanism probably related to a solar magnetic shielding effect acting on galactic cosmic rays as an explanation for the relationship of thunderstorm and solar activity” it has entered the realm of pure conjecture because AFAICS from the abstract the study itself did not investigate in any way the solar parameters or GCRs. To my mind, it is roughly equivalent to saying that the findings are “consistent with” GCR theory – and we all know how valuable (or not) such arguments can be.
You only have watch An Inconvenient Truth to see Gore is a complete moron. Unfortunately, with the ever declining education standards, the moron to moron market is large and growing.
Die Klimazwiebel: Science for a good cause?
Very important blog post, this one. If physical evidence is suppressed because it doesn’t support the dominant theory then science cannot progress and it just becomes dogma.
Sadly, the one commenter there doesn’t realise that the scenario is based on real events (Hide the Decline as revealed by Climategate) and thinks that sceptics are making it all up.
Or, at least, he talks as though he doesn’t realise that the scenario is based on real events.
On Hiroshima bombs….
It is instructive to measure things like the UKs daily consumption of electricity in Hiroshima Bombs.
It is broadly, on average ,about 30GW x 24h = 720GWh
That comes out for crude purposes to 600 Kilotons of atomic bang. Hiroshima is reckoned to have been at most 20 kilotons TNT equivalent.
So Britain consumes the equivalent of 30 Hiroshima bangs of energy every day. JUST as electricity.
Now think about enough electrical energy storage to take Britain through a cold 6 weeks of no wind and no winter sun..and how MUCH energy that would be locked up somewhere…and what would happen if it all let go at once.
And remind the renewable fraternity of those figures.
Heeheehee – Lord Christopher Monckton sure shines. I love reading his words. And he’s right! 🙂
Speaking of greenhouse gas deniers: “Strap some conservative-thinking people to a tailpipe for an hour and then they will agree it’s a pollutant!”
Carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and easy mixup for an Austrian immigrant body builder. Luboš Motl has the right take on the subject. Fits right in with the ‘denier’ label.
Someone once said he admired the Austrians, for they had convinced the world that Beethoven was Austrian and that Hitler was German.
I recall the chillingly quiet Kenneth Branagh film “Conspiracy,” which was about a meeting of the NSDAP where they were deciding details of the final solution. A report was given at the meeting that said carbon monoxide was effective, but unfortunately it left everyone colored pink.
Al’s old buddy:
14 Aug: NYT: NICHOLAS CONFESSORE/AMY CHOZICK: Unease at Clinton Foundation Over Finances and Ambitions
On one occasion, Mr. Magaziner dispatched a team of employees to fly around the world for months gathering ideas for a climate change proposal that never got off the ground. Another time, he ignored a report — which was commissioned at significant expense from the consulting firm McKinsey & Company — on how the foundation could get involved in forestry initiatives…
In March 2012, David Crane, the chief executive of NRG, an energy company, led a widely publicized trip with Mr. Clinton to Haiti, where they toured green energy and solar power projects that NRG finances through a $1 million commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative…
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/14/us/politics/unease-at-clinton-foundation-over-finances-and-ambitions.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0
14 Aug: UK Telegraph: Tim Stanley: The New York Times takes down the Clinton Foundation. This could be devastating for Bill and Hillary
It’s nothing new to report that there’s an unhealthy relationship in America between money and politics, but it’s there all the same. While the little people are getting hit with Obamacare, high taxes and joblessness, a class of businessmen enjoys ready access to politicians of both Left and Right that poses troubling questions for how the republic can continue to call itself a democracy so long as it functions as an aristocracy of the monied…
The reality is that this is a man who – in May 1993 – prevented other planes from landing at LAX for 90 minues while he got a haircut from a Beverley Hills hairdresser aboard Air Force One. The Clintons are populists in the same way that Barack Obama is a Nobel prize winner. Oh, wait…
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100231113/the-new-york-times-takes-down-the-clinton-foundation-this-could-be-devastating-for-bill-and-hillary/
Or put Arnold in a nuclear sub for three months, harmlessly breathing CO2 levels three times higher than 350. (That’s the relevant analogy, because car exhaust contains toxins in addition to CO2, and a toxic level of CO2 as well.)
I have never worked in Hiroshima bombs, but somewhere I have got the notion that there is a rough energy equivalence between 1 kWh, one standard scuba cylinder and one pound of Semtex. It maybe completely wrong but I find it strangely useful when arranging things in my head.
Robin Hewitt says: August 15, 2013 at 3:42 am “… I have got the notion that there is a rough energy equivalence between 1 kWh, one standard scuba cylinder and one pound of Semtex.”
Semtex’s energetic component PETN’s Explosion energy: 5810 kJ/kg (1390 kcal/kg), so 1 kg of PETN has the energy of 1.24 kg TNT
1 kWh = 3.6 x 10^6 J by definition
Scuba tank, 12 Liters at 230 Bar is 1242 KJoules ~300 Grams TNT
re: Al Gore is a Clod
And how much money has the flim flam made pushing this global warming schtick? The clod has been darned successful. Professor Guy Owens must have had big Al in mind when he wrote the Ballad of the Flim Flam Man.
Monckton delivers.
“Our findings contradict the view that a warming world will automatically be one of more overall climatic variation.”
Now, after WUWT and other skeptics have been presenting the issue of reduced tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, fires for years….. some guys jump up with their E=mc^2 moment. Ya know in the coming months and years, they’ll be wowing the world with “new” findings that things are not worse than we thought and the grants will just keep coming in. “Hey, CO2 has benefits is what we found in our models” and “You don’t have to wear a snorkel to live in Vanuatu or Mauritius”, or “things might get cooler before they get warmer and our models say warmer has been kinder to humans and animals than colder” . I think it’s time that e-articles and blogs were broadly cited. Why must the words have to have come out of the blacksmith Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg’s old technology? Even when they come around they will still be worse frauds than we thought.
Doug Huffman says: Scuba tank, 12 Liters at 230 Bar is 1242 KJoules
Did you get that off my brother’s scuba site? I only ask because it would amuse him.
The diversion into energy equivalents illustrates the tautology of a true statement, and how little information is conveyed by a tautology and its verification. Its hypothetical falsification is a swan of a different color.
I feel honored that Lord Monckton would grace my own local paper with his wisdom. But fear he is titling at windmills since it is a renowned rag that is not even worthy of the bottom of a bird cage.
Never the less, thank you Lord Monckton for putting the series of letters to the editor in proper perspective, and bringing truth to my small corner of the globe.
Robin Hewitt says: August 15, 2013 at 4:39 am “Did you get that off my brother’s scuba site? I only ask because it would amuse him.”
I verified my faint recollection at http://biobug.org/scuba/scubatank/
In my career I yield tested large air bottles on submarines by pressurizing them to rated pressure with calibrated water volume and ensuring a linear stress/strain = change in pressure/change in volume. As I recall, the stresses were on the order of 10K psi.
In one instance the ship was at environmental temperature – full of holes with a freezing wind blowing through it. I refused to test without assurance that the bottles were above Reference Transition Temperature from elastic to brittle fracture. I delayed until I was ordered to test.
I was upset that An Inconvenient Truth was pushed on elementary school kids when it came out. But if it had not been so, and the film were allowed to pass quietly, they would have missed what my liberal friends call “a teachable moment”. I hate that turn of phrase, but it perfectly captures what becomes more obvious daily. Don’t pin your credibility to a bad guess with long odds.
rogerknights says:
August 15, 2013 at 1:13 am
…..Or put Arnold in a nuclear sub for three months, harmlessly breathing CO2 levels three times higher than 350. (That’s the relevant analogy, because car exhaust contains toxins in addition to CO2, and a toxic level of CO2 as well.)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually it is the Carbon MONOXIDE that is the killer in car exhaust. The Author of the Huff n Puff article is trying to say it was a joke.
Anthony,
You can keep your ahnold. A few years ago I saw some boring 1970s documentary on body builders that featured a very young ahnold, a struggling body builder immigrant who shared his life long dreams of his future. These included moving to America, becoming famous and wealthy along with marrying a kennedy and becoming president. Check, check, check, check, ??? (to be determined). he is obviously goal oriented and very ambitious but the plan part about marrying into a particular political klan is more than a little bit over the top.
I just LOVE IT when people who allegedly “know the science” don’t know the difference between cabon DIoxide and carbon MONoxide. Makes me giggle uncontrollably.
Arnold who? And for the verbal knives getting turned on Gore by his own- never get in the way of one’s opponents attacking each other.
Doug Huffman says: I verified my faint recollection at http://biobug.org/scuba/scubatank/
Yes, that’s him, you’ll find his name at the end of the calculation. I didn’t think that anyone else on the planet actually cared what energy was stored in a scuba tank. I found it strangely useful for robotics because you can save a lot of energy with very little weight, but I don’t explain things very well, I have a mild autism, gets me in to trouble.
Monckton makes a mockery of Mann’s hot hockey stick.
Mann it burns. One can just feel the heat.
MattN says:
August 15, 2013 at 5:51 am
I just LOVE IT when people who allegedly “know the science” don’t know the difference between carbon DIoxide and carbon MONoxide. Makes me giggle uncontrollably.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
YUP,
(Crystalline) CARBON is a girl’s best friend and carbon DIOXIDE is a tree’s best friend.
The ‘Contains no Chemicals’ Label on items also has me run screaming.