16 year old Kristen Byrnes got some national media exposure today on National Public Radio. You can read the article and listen to the story via MP3 here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89619306
You might also want to visit her website and offer some words of support or perhaps a little help towards college:
http://home.earthlink.net/~ponderthemaunder/index.html
Kristen has surveyed many stations in New England for www.surfacestations.org and I appreciate her (and her parents) hard work on the project.
Great to see that some in the younger generation aren’t being “gored” into believing the AGW propaganda.
Along the same lines, here is a recent story about a 13 year old that proved that NASA was wrong in another of their caluculations.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080415/sc_afp/spaceastronomygermany_080415214429
So perhaps our “scientists” at NASA aren’t the greatest at calculating Math. (Perhaps this applies to the GISS as well.)
Some good reasons to be cheerful here.
Kristen is a young person but is capable of rational, independent thought. She does not follow the herd, which I suspect is what most adults, let alone teenagers, do. Too often I hear young people simply repeating the “we’re destroying the ice caps and trashing the planet” line without bothering to find out for themselves whether this is true or not.
Also being a young person, she is more likely to be listened to by other young people.
She has plenty of other interests, apart from the climate issue. This is good: she is thus in no danger of turning into some sort of single-issue fanatic. These, in my opinion, are what the world does not need more of, whatever side they happen to be on.
Another thing I would note is that the NPR article appears to be equating building energy-efficient buildings with environmentalism. This is a mild example of something I generally find quite irritating – the automatic linking of sensible energy-saving measures with environmentalism and then through to carbon-neutrality. There are good reasons for reducing waste and saving energy (and money) that have nothing to do with melting ice-caps, drowning polar bears or cannibal holocausts. I’m having new loft insulation put in, not to reduce my carbon shoe-size but because my home will be warmer and I will save money. (N.B. if the world is actually going to get a little cooler, this sort of measure could well be sensible anyway.)
So well done, Kristen! There should be lots more like you!
This is a predicted outcome of increasing GHGs and is experimentally confirmed.
I assume you are referring to the satellite study that showed a clear increase in infrared absorption over I recall 25 years. This is touted as the smoking gun experimental proof of increased GHG warming.
Problem is it was almost all by methane. Any CO2 effect was lost in the error bars.
The experimental evidence says CO2 isn’t causing significant GH warming. Hence the widespread and disengenous references to GHG warming.
http://www.john-daly.com/smoking.htm
http://www.john-daly.com/smoking.htm
The Al Gore apologists need to stop criticizing Kristen’s parents. They are not the ones raising a repeat offender/ druggie.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19601277/
Kristen,
This attention is pretty heady stuff, so just one word of advice. Be as skeptical of your admirers and the politicians as you are of scientific hypotheses. Stick to the facts and don’t get into food fights – you won’t be the 16-year-old wunderkind forever and nasty people will be brutal when they get the chance. Otherwise, congratulations on your interview.
this liberal lukewarmer skeptic thanks you Kristin for your work. I enjoyed the interview yesterday morning.
I’ve had a quick look at the website. Inferring that all climate change, now and in the future, is natural simply because climate change in the past had natural causes (before humans started pumping CO2 and other GHGs into the atmosphere) is faulty logic: the conclusion does not follow from the premises (a non sequitur).
P, that is just a typical AGW hysterics’ deliberate misrepresentation of the skeptics argument, and thus contains its own faulty logic. Today’s climate change isn’t natural “simply because” it always was in the past. You then go on to post a bunch of typical AGW pseudoscientific drivel which has been debunked many times. As for your “quick look”, well, that may be part of your problem. Try looking more, and taking your AGW blinders off. You might actually learn something.
Texas Aggie,
I agree that would be a true night mare for Dr. H. I have heard of stranger things happening. Can you just imagine if our courts were to find against Dr. H. as the courts in England did against “Dr. Gore”
I just report what was stated on Atmoz. I very doubt that the good Dr. would sue the 16 year old. warmers hate to be proved silly.
Bill Derryberry
Keep cookin’ Kirsten
peterd:
Your comments re: 15u radiation being reduced need a citation. Water vapor absorbs at this wavelength. H20 abundance is, at minimum 100 times that of C02 and its absorptivity twice that of CO2.
All radiation in that band, emitted from the ground, is absorbed in the first few hundred meters and converted to kinetic energy.
Nothing, thereafter, requires H2O or CO2 to reemit preferentially at that wavelength and emission in the far infrared dominates.
I don’t believe your weather satellites from the 1970s could possibly be relied on for your assertion of any diminution to be at all meaningful.
Radiation balance? Where in your study of physics did you ever encounter this terminology?
My, distortion by Der Spiegel you say? What were you expecting, big boy?
I think that once this red line crosses the “0” you will see a lot of mainstream media and IPCC scientist also cross the line with it LOL
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
Jon S
Ooooooooh! That one has got to hurt.
Not to mention, are any of her statements truly libelous? If they’re true, then there’s no libel. If she’s taken something out of context, or confused an item or two, is that libel? Hansen IS one the alarmists in chief, so to sue her for saying alarming sea level rise was going to happen would be tantamount to an admission on his part that it won’t.
LOL! Sue her for libel?
Hansen ought to be sued for fraud and ineptitude!
Kirsten – don’t let anyone drag you down into the gutter of politics. Keep it about climate science.
You’re doing great!
Let’s see… if you wanted to discredit AGW skeptics who would you put on the air– a well-known credentialed climate scientist/skeptic or a cute, little 16 year old girl. Hmmm. The not so subtle message is: this is the intelligence level of your typical AGW denier. Don’t be so quick to give NPR credit on this one.
Here’s the audio link of Kirsten’s NPR interview, which I found at Lubos Motl’s website.
http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=89619306&m=89642130&live=1
@Bill in Vigo,
Those posts of mine were made last July. And I would not characterize them as anthing close to “blasting”. I’m not sure how what I wrote could be construed as anything but positive criticism.
REPLY: I think maybe he followed the “what I’m reading” link to another site.
Hey! Hey! I’m barely a year older than Kristen and I’m an eloquent AGW skeptic!? LOOK AT ME!!!
Although, admittedly, my science is a little less thorough than hers, my websites look better. Good on her, anyway…
Doesn’t seem to matter. The most credentialled CLIMATE scientists in the world have discredited it (Richard Lindzen, William Grey, Vincent Grey, Reid Bryson, Tim Ball) and it doesn’t seem to matter.
Dave
That may have been NPR’s goal, but when the 16 year old kicks the financially endowed(read their career depends on their being right) climate scientists butt, the tables turn. The effect, desired or not, on my left wing buddies at the office was to come tell me that they now realize that AGW is a complete hoax. “Where can I find out more about that?”
She hit all the high points too. Tree rings are a better indicator of water level/tree stress than temperature. The hockey stick graph was a fabrication. CO2 follows temperature.
I’ve got to go get my sweaters back out. It’s going to get cold again tonight.
Hansen sue Kris? Whatfor? The old boy has gone ’round the twist. What was he thinking?
Evan Jones (17:07:54
Evan,
Their audience is 30 million people, most of them dead tired of shoveling snow.
@PeterD.
Are you stating that a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere that is emitting IR at 0C has the ability to heat a molecule at the surface that is emitting IR at 15C.
peterd
“This is what Gore’s film says: not what WILL happen, but WHAT IF this happens. Some people should learn to be more careful about what folks like Hansen and Gore actually say.”
WHAT IF……….
If a frog had wings, it wouldn’t bump it’s ass.
Al Gore and Co. are putting wings on a frog viva playstations.
Suing Kristen Byrnes would be the dumbest thing Hansen could possibly do, and he knows it.
Though such a suit might work out to be the skeptic’s best friend–a modern day “monkey trial”?
For contributions, Kristen’s site says something about “mail.” I researched — seems to be some sort of archaic communication methodology using paper and lots of people running around in funny uniforms.
I sent Kristen’s parents an email, as I sent you (apparently ate by your anti-Paypal spam filter,) discussing Paypal for the lazier, lesser sophisticated of us.
Anyway, I’ve set up to make a small monthly contribution to “Watts Up With That?” and would do the same, if it were possible, for Kristen’s site. I really don’t understand why you won’t put the Paypal contribution button somewhere close to your “gadget” button. I’m not going to buy something I don’t need. I would just like to contribute a monthly ten or fifteen bucks, I can afford to part with, toward a work that I believe in.
REPLY: “I really don’t understand why you won’t put the Paypal contribution button somewhere close to your “gadget” button.”
I’ve just never been comfortable putting out a beggars cup on a daily basis. – Anthony