I surveyed 5 NOAA USHCN stations today, 2 water plants, 1 sewage treatment plant, and two private observers. Total distance traveled: 376 miles.
All stations had MMTS, and were CRN 3,4,5 rated. The sewage treatment plant was a real gem. Mold on the sensor. MMTS was mounted about 18 feet from an open sewer inlet. I have all the yucky pictures.
Total CO2 footprint contributed by travel today: I have no idea, but still less than Al Gore’s.
I still have a week to go. I need a stiff drink. Jeez bought me one.
UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Had that stiff drink, and washed the smell of today off myself. I don’t have the full survey report done, but gotta love those USHCN official climate stations at sewage plants. This one passed the smell test.
Click for larger image
Ā
Soylent Green is made from people!
Click for larger image if you dare.
Guess what, more of this tomorrow!
Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if your carbon footprint doesn’t match Al’s. He’s got really, really big feet.
I can hardly wait to see those pictures……
And we thought the vast interior might yield better quality stations. But the trends seem to have been holding pretty steady.
On the one hand, it’s a shame to see our tax dollars funding such a mess. OTOH, it indicates that your project is vindicated BIG time.
Best of luck next week!
You are a hoot and a patriot, to boot. Thanks for all the hard work. Go ahead and spew that evil gas. I’m not traveling this week. You can use my allotment.
I believe my donation was allocated for xxxx–lots of xxxx.
I am curious. Have you eaten yet at any of these:
[Preemptive edit]
I just realized my food quiz may have revealed your location/destination and I stopped myself.
[/edit]
Have a great trip. I think I’m headed to Kansas City next month. We should talk.
Well Antohny you might want to diss Al Gore, but he’s got some really good tips how to reduce your carbon footprint on your trips.
1. Reduce the use of private jet by using airlines whenever you visit Norway to receive a Nobel price.
2. Swap your limo with a hybrid limo.
3. If you need to increase the power use in your mansion. Use solar and wind power. On a really sunny, windy day, this might amount to 5 % of power usage needed for the mansion.
4. When using a helicopter to fly over glaciers, try to look worried. This will make the pilot fly more gently and more fuel economic.
5. If needed, walk up to 300 m to receive a Nobel price.
6. Change light bulbs.
7. Change laws.
8. Bye offsets from a Gore company. Best offsets there is.
9. Don’t listen to heavy metal. People who listen to heavy metal play the music really loud, which means they use more power than people that listen to normal music. Heavy metal groups are also rude to your wife.
10. Instead of using a laser pen when making presentations, use a forklift.
When CO2 is exposed to laser (a concentrated beam of light), the laser makes the manmade CO2 molecules superheat and essentially melt away large chunks of Antarctica leading to sea level rise by the meters.
Hasse:
At least here in These States I have (some) company in skepticism. You must be fairly lonely, in this regard, in Norway, however.
Consider yourself on the front lines of the fight; we realize your (social) survival is at some risk …
This adventure should be filmed. Unlike most documentaries lately, it would actually tell some truth.
Hmmmm… Maybe you could be on “Dirty Jobs”, Anthony… It’s a cable show…
Remember, Tuesday is Soylent Green day. Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day. I have never figured out what Monday is, but I am guessing it has something to do with Taco Bell.
Ah, yes, the land where the Olive Garden franchise wins the best Italian restaurant award . . .
The land where all the scenery is bucolic and all the surface station sites are urban.
Evan Jones:
Your observations are pretty much right. However, you give me too much credit by calling me the lone Norwegian sceptic š There is almost no scepticism in media in Norway, but the second largest political party have a somewhat sceptical stance. That is they want to hear bout sides of the arguments. Of course, they are being attacked ferociously on this matter and might even cost them office.
Norwegians as a whole is normally quite interested in society as a whole and the Norwegians are the nation, which reads most newspaper. Problem is, most prefer the prechewed opinions the media offer. In addition, that media consists of journalist of which 70% would vote for a far left party that normally receive 5-8% of votes in elections (I kidd you not!!). So news coverage is very much biased to the left. That means many adopt opinions of other while not truly understanding WHY they believe what they believe. Political correctness you might say š
If you ask most people WHY they believe AGW is real they would probably come up with melting ICE and the IPCC. The UN has a very very high regard in Norway. So high, that we would be willing the follow the UN blind in most cases. E.g. if UN told Norway to cut emissions by 80% by 2030. Norwegian politicians would begin debating how immediately. Where as the US would say “why are these guys bossing us around?” Therefore, for most people IPCC opinions are law, and anything contradicting is false research from the oil companies. They don’t look into the science themselves and try to educate themselves, but try to figure who is more trustworthy. I even had a discussion with a guy on a forum and showed him the graph over Antarctica sea ice extent in 2007, in reply to his claims that the poles where melting. He then asked if ICECAP was a reliable source. The problem with this guy was that he was an average well-educated man and not some leftist or environmentalist. He simply based his view what the media told him IPCC said. This guy to me was very typical for an educated, politically aware Norwegian. He did pay attention to what happens I society, but knew hardly any climate science beyond what alarmist headlines he read. If the UN is the gold standard for reliability why look into something as boring as climate science??
I suppose we should be thankful that there isn’t a methane or CO2 detector nearby as well, But, with a temp recorder near a sewer, you’d think the talkshow hosts would be having a field-day making yuck jokes. For me the sign that the msm is seeing through AGW will be when they start taking the piss; an issue like AGW could not survive satire and irreverence.
Hasse@Norway
I love #10, now that was funny!
MikeEE
re: Hasse@Norway,
” … if UN told Norway to cut emissions by 80% by 2030. Norwegian politicians would begin debating how immediately.”
From the WSJ, April 18, “… Pending legislation in the Senate from Joe Lieberman and John Warner would cut emissions even further ā by 66% by 2050. No one has a clue how to do this. …”
U.S. and Norway not all that different?
Hasse@Norway,
You come from a big oil & gaz producer country.
Why should anybody believe you ?
š
Anthony:
I really like that first picture. Is this a print, or one you painted while on your xcountry station sprint?
REPLY: It is a collage of things, an original painting by a local artist with photoshop add ins
At this very moment, Newt Gingrich is taking questions from readers regarding his Global Warming proposals. He will be doing so until about 12p ET.
I’ve submitted a couple questions, let’s see if he chooses to answer anything from one of us informed “skeptics”!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/04/17/DI2008041703486.html
Gingrich just answered my question! I think he did. I’m a bit confused.
Me: “Mr. Gingrich, do you have a suggestion as to why an absolute neophyte to the anthropogenic global warming concept should discount the recent evidence regarding the Medieval Warm Period? I am a former firm believer in AGW myself, yet I no longer support the theory, as I have not heard a single prominent environmental advocate who can discount the higher temperatures and lower carbon dioxide concentrations of that period.”
Gingrich: “You raise a good point, and as somebody that studies paleontology, I am well aware we have had much higher carbon levels (pre-historic time periods, probably caused by volcanoes) and much higher temperatures in the past. In addition, around 11,000 years ago, the Gulf Stream stopped for 600 years for reasons we don’t understand. Europe went into an ice age. Then the Gulf Stream restarted for reasons we don’t understand and the ice age disappeared.
So a great deal of the “current science” is in fact politics.
However, the word “conservative” includes “conservation” as its root. And conservatives should be cautious. Therefore, I am willing to look for methods of lowering carbon that do not destroy the economy or give the government increased power.”
I think that’s an “I don’t know”, but I’m not so sure.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/04/17/DI2008041703486.html
http://posthumousluger.com
Hasse is not totally alone, much of what he says is true. But I would tend to say the worst problem here is not people’s political inclination, but rather the fact that many believe the climate debate is first and foremost a political one. People in general have not yet understood that this is a scientific debate. Politics based on bad science will be very bad, independent of political colour. You have to get the science right first.
A lot of people here believe “the client debate is over” and that any moral person should only focus on reducing the “carbon footprint”. When you tell them there is no scientific consensus saying that man made CO2 causes (or remind them that no warming exist since 1998), they start questioning the motives for saying so. Who can blaim them when they have been told the debate is over?
I think the most important thing to do in this country is to show the reasonably well educated people that they are severely misinformed in this matter, by showing them the information that the media is not providing. Almost all of the climate related online newspaper articles have debate threads, so it is a good idea to post URLs we pick up here (I have done it already). Maybe it would be an idea to collect the best scientific articles representing the solar hypothesis, so that it is a little easier to refute the “truth”?
P.S. Thanks for this site Anthony
In addition, that media consists of journalist of which 70% would vote for a far left party that normally receive 5-8% of votes in elections (I kid you not!!).
In the US we have a situation in which journalists vote over 90% democrat (or further left) and around 7% vote republican. But what you describe is much worse, on the face of it.
Norwegians as a whole is normally quite interested in society as a whole
To the extent that socialism has had any small success whatever, it has been in Scandinavia. Perhaps the fact that those who pay into the system are themselves the primary beneficiaries (unlike a “welfare state” system) has something to do with this.
Problem is, most prefer the prechewed opinions the media offer.
Part of the problem is that the information is not being prechewd correctly. We cannot be experts in everything, and the layman, the common citizen, has to have a passing familiarity with the important issues he must vote on. The trick is to get fair, balanced, and impartial prechewing. This is a trick we have lost and must find again.
If you ask most people WHY they believe AGW is real they would probably come up with melting ICE and the IPCC.
Most skeptics agree there has been some warming since 1980, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. We differ as to cause and degree (the measurements may be unintentionally exaggerated, as this site points out).
He then asked if ICECAP was a reliable source.
The data on Icecap is reliable. It comes from official sources such as satellite photos. Those photos are not doctored. Conclusions and theories are a different issue. Anyone’s theories can be wrong. But Icecap does not measure its own data, it gets it from official sources.
Norway is small and relatively homogeneous, without much power. America is very large and very heterogeneous, with huge power. Therefore our respective attitudes towards the UN are to be expected. #B^1
But I beg you to consider when other nations have had similar power. And what they did with that power. Then look at the US with the greatest relative world power any nation has ever had (perhaps since the Mongols). And consider what the US has done with that power.
He simply based his view what the media told him IPCC said.
He needs to recheck what the IPCC has said in its supplements to AR4. They have reduced their estimates for both ice melt and sea level rise. Very often a report has several revised versions but the media looks only at the worst-looking version. It is important to get the most recent version!
Two things to keep your eye on in the near future: The Aqua Satellite and the Argo sea bouys. Aqua shows the positive feedbacks are not occurring and Argo shows that the sea is not warming.
Another local weather aside. I’ve lived in the Northwest all my life. For the 40 years or so I can remember, I don’t recall a single snow in the Northwest in late April. And yet again today, it is snowing and hailing here in the Puget Sound area. It’s really extraordinary.
I am fully aware that this is a local weather phenomenon, and that it doesn’t say much about global temperature, but it has been downright cold all winter, and last summer was pretty much a non-event with few really hot days.
Whether Algore likes it or not, this kind of empirical evidence carries a lot of weight with the average Joe, because most people live very locally. It really doesn’t matter what Algore says about future catastrophe if the average Joe is freezing in the here and now and for the next several months or years.
John Goetz,
Monday is washing day.
http://web.mac.com/sinfonia1/Global_Warming_Politics/A_Hot_Topic_Blog/Entries/2008/4/21_%E2%80%98Global_Warming%E2%80%99_Mangled.html
@Norway,
I don’t want to beat up on Norway, but it appears your country is behaving very European – like hypocrites!
Norway was (probably still is) Europe’s biggest oil and gas producer. The home of Statoil, manufacturer of the huge $5 billion Troll platform. To boot these Scandinavian countries all like to brag about their human rights, yet brutally charge $15 a beer. Talk about abuse!
Anyway. it’s great to hear you’re thinking for yourself, and that there is a party that’s open for debate. It’s indeed a sign of hope. I’m the only sceptic here in Germany (actually there are a few others). …so I know how you feel.
I look forward to reading more of your posts!
PS: A beer in a pub here goes for ā¬1.80
Norway
Thanks for the Twisted Sister link!
It rocks!
It all gets down to them telling the rest of us how to think.
Hasse; we have almost exactly the same problems here, with the exception that we don’t even have the luxury of a single political party or politically important person questioning the AGW orthodoxy. I feel the situation is pretty much the same in every Western and Northern European country. Probably it is connected to people having higher standards of living compared to rest of the world for too long time, and it makes them somehow feel guilty about it. So they must confess their hypothethical sins (which AGW theory suits perfectly) in order to be saved from their guilt. Never mind the science part.
No warming for 10 years….poor temp measurements as highlighted by this site….NASA re-instate the wrong data sheet after the Y2k scare (scam?)…oceans cooling last 5 years…and….
Aqua satellite put up in 2002 to back the “warmers” evidently supports the sceptics.
Water vapour from CO2 forms clouds at low levels and thus becomes low cloud..which means it helps to cool the planet. Right?
In other words the Hadley Cente has screwed up and no hot spots in the Troposphere (wherever that is).
I feel better now!
Wonder why all those very clever journalists are having trouble understanding all this..seems fairly straightforward to me.
Has anyone told big AL?
I am sure he would appreciate knowing the truth…inconvenient or otherwise.
James,
Hasse@Noeway
Check out National Center for Policy Analysis (non-profit, bipartisen group). This may help you fight the madness.
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st308
Off topic I know, but I was told that Mannās original hockey stick paper in Nature was not peer reviewed. Is this correct and can that be referenced?
Anthony: You needn’t post this as a comment. I just needed a way to get in touch with you!
I’m working on an article for a national publication that is targeted at law/technology. I’ve written for the pub a number of times over the last several years on technology topics, but a recent request for “green” articles caused me to fire off a anti-AGW rant to the editor, who then offered me the opp. to write a counter-AGW article. I did that, only to be shotgunned by an assoc. editor who obviously is drinking all the cool aid. I need some help on identifying some credible data sources for some of the underlying data that you’ve so nicely highlighted here.
Would you be interested in assisting me with this? I’ve also enlisted the help of Dr. Timothy Ball as another resource to review my facts. Any help you’d be willing to provide will be greatly appreciated. E-mail me at the address above.
Thanks!
-Loren
The Posthumous Luger, Newt’s decided more or less “If we can’t beat them-or make them listen to reason-we might as well join them and make sure they don’t do too much harm.” Which is not to bad in my view, if a bit defeatist and depressing. Well, it might not matter so much what you do if you do it the right way. Trouble is, if you naively believe what you are doing will make a difference when it won’t, you will do unnecessary harm no matter how careful you are. Possibly worse, though, is that if Newt doesn’t actually believe in what he is asking the people to buy into, he will have trouble making them listen-and I sense that deep down, he has doubts. But he also wants to be careful, meaning he has fallen victim to the Precautionary Principle.
Robert (18:15):
Technically, the Mann papers were peer-reviewed, but it is painfully clear that none of the reviewers ever really checked any of his sources or his analysis. To this day, Mann has not provided all of the data needed for a proper review. It literally took an act of Congress to get him to release some of his data and computer code.
Too often, peer review means somebody sitting down on the sofa on a Sunday night while the spouse is watching Desperate Housewives or Sunday Night Football, and giving the paper a quick read-through.
Has anyone told big AL?
He has a “need not to know”.
(If he did, can you imagine the legal trouble he would be in considering his business interests?)
the Troposphere (wherever that is)
That’s where we live and breathe.
we might as well join them and make sure they donāt do too much harm
Dubya, too, unfortunately. OTOH, he seems to be wisely) kicking the can down the road and making them “goals” not “mandates”–and if temps have not warmed substantially by then, those “goals” will be by the boards.
I will further observe that this-here “Precautionary Principle” is starving babies even as we sit here twiddling our keyboards. Maddens me just thinking about it.
The politics of “global warming” are all about politics, not solving global warming.
Every politician promises to “solve” the problem if you will give him/her to unconditional support (and money). But when you get into the details, step 1 always seems to be “appoint a committee to determine how to solve global warming”, which is the same thing that they have been doing over and over for the last 6 years. Why?
THERE IS NO POLITICALLY ACCEPTABLE WAY TO ‘SOLVE GLOBAL WARMING’!
The studies agree that to ‘solve global warming’ require massive reductions in CO2 emissions by >70% by 2050. No study has come up with a way to accomplish this using available technology without massive involuntary population cuts (i.e. genocide).
So it does not really matter if global warming exists, because nothing will be done to stop it.
please consider switching off the self referential ‘snap shots’ on your photos. it is distracting and a bit frustrating.
thanks.
REPLY: Actually you can do that yourself, just click on the little gear icon when the window opens
[I]I will further observe that this-here āPrecautionary Principleā is starving babies even as we sit here twiddling our keyboards. Maddens me just thinking about it.[/I]
Well, the problem is that avg. Joe has been told that making emission cuts are a good thing, because they do no harm none the less. All he has to do is to make a small sacrifice. To pollute less is a good thing. Not to do this is selfish. blah blah blah. As he is an illiterate when it comes to science, it all makes sense.
What the alarmist try to do is to claim moral superiority over realists to more easily convince the public.
Here is the news flash. A small step like bio fuel, starve the poorest people in the world. Therefore, they should ask themselves how much bio fuels cuts emissions vs. how many they help starve to death. The only demand the EU has to bio fuels is that it cuts emission by 35% compared to fossil fuels!! Increasing food prices is like pebbles to me. But, for those millions getting by on less then a dollar a year, a giant rock smacked in the face.
Maybe every sceptical site on the web should add a donate button for an organisation like “Sceptics against genocide” and kick the alarmist loons of their moral high horse. Open peoples eyes, that these decisions have real consequenses
This scam is a crime against humanity…
RE: Norway – here would be an archetypal area for well heeled Norwegian “intellectuals:”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holmenkollen
It is superficially reminiscent of Palo Alto (CA) or Lexington (MA).
Now, I would ask any denizen of this fine suburb … have you canceled your snow removal service?
As he is an illiterate when it comes to science, it all makes sense.
Well, demographics are my back. And these bozos have Pascal’s conundrum turned on its head. You are so totally dead-on about biofuels. And lord knows how many would die as a result of a bloodstained a Kyoto-equivalent.
This scam is a crime against humanity
I think they really believe those things they believe. But I heartily agree with your sentiments. It’s high time the so-called liberals of this world remembered what the word “liberal” actually means!
Skeptics against genocide. I like it.
I have some ideas.
Re Steve Sadlov
They have “very likely” canceled their snow removaL. This area can be compared to bel air and they all probably have installed electric heating in their drive ways š
Electric driveway heating? Is that in any way common? (I wonder what THAT would do to microwave reflections.)
So we update our temperature monitoring stations and note anomalies over time but our country has a rather small global footprint to compare with the rest of the worldās land masses and oceans and then does the accuracy of the anomalies we measure become authenticated by agreement with trends in satellite data? There never has been a true global temperature base line for comparison and only relative changes have been noted that appear to follow certain repeating cycles e.g., sunspots.