From Yahoo News Feed
Earth Day: We are now told that obesity causes global warming. Maybe that’s why belief in human-caused climate change is at an all-time low. That and the fact that Antarctic ice is growing, not melting.
Over the past decade, as the earth cooled, the sun grew quiet and snow fell in Malibu, the disconnect between the computer models of Al Gore and the warm-mongers grew more apparent than ever. So much so that they started talking about “climate change” instead of “global warming.”
That way, everything from drought to floods was covered, even record cold winters and snowfalls.
Even that’s not working on an ever more skeptical public, according to a recent Rasmussen Reports national survey showing that just one of three voters — a new low — now believe that global warming is caused by human activity.
Nearly half (48%) believe the cause is naturally occurring planetary trends. Just a year ago, only 34% said warming was a natural phenomenon, while 47% said human activity was placing the planet at risk of disastrous climate change. That’s a huge shift.
Excerpts:
Interestingly, a growing number of Americans (58%) say we need to build more nuclear power plants, with 63% saying that finding additional sources of energy is more important than reducing the amount of energy Americans currently consume. They recognize that a growing economy requires more energy, not less, and that nukes are a pollution-free way of getting it.
…
Overweight people eat more steaks and burgers, we are told, and that means more cows and more barnyard emissions. They walk less and drive more, usually to fast-food emporiums, where every additional condiment brings us closer to planetary doom. The answer presumably would be fewer people, or at least more vegetarians.
…
Australian Antarctic Division glaciology program head Ian Allison says sea ice losses in West Antarctica over the past 30 years have been more than offset by increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of East Antarctica. “Sea ice conditions have remained stable in Antarctica generally,” Allison says.
…
So enjoy your burger and fries, and chill out. It’s the warm-mongers who are endangering us with their whoppers. And Happy Earth Day.
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All of the comments must make us realise how insignificant the human race is as far as the Earth is concerned.
We are but like a gnat on an elephants behind; just a minor irritation.
But, oh boy, aren’t we arrogant. To presume that we have such an effect on the Earth when what is happening is just natural cycles.
I have a photograph of my wife + car on route 17 in Canada when we drove from Cochrane to Nippygong. On the photo we were 58 miles from the nearest human habitation both infront and behind; the nearest tarmaced road on our left was 75 miles away and on our right was in the Soviet Union. It sure puts the human race’s place in the great scheme of things into perspective.
Since then we’ve cruised in the Artic Ocean to Spitsbergen; cruised across a part of the Indian Ocean from Madagascar to the Seychelles, jungle trekked in Borneo, been in the Galapagos and on Safari in the Masai Mara.
Point being? When you’ve been out in the wilds miles away from the vast majority of the human race you appreciate what the gnat feels like; so much space, not enough time.
Enjoy.
There is more than one flaw in their argument about overweight people but I’ll just point out that a fair number of them don’t eat more than their fair share. Instead they tend to under exercise thus not emitting as much of that toxic CO2 gas we have read about. It seems to me that thin svelt people contribute more to global warming with their increased CO2 outputs. 😉
Erich and others:
We could of course propose a feasability study for moving the ozone hole to the Artic in order to refreeze it (something with giant windmills hanging on stratospheric balloons, powered somehow by heatpumps working on the ocean’s temperature gradient).
I bet some burocrat somewhere will find money for it since it a) will save the Polar Bears, b) will return the Arctic and Antartic to their “normal” state (for the time being) and 3) will reduce the skinburn of those Aussies (No, not transfered to us Northeners, we are not all hedonists, mind you!). I’m sure we can find a source of dosh with a proposal having enough of the right words and phrazes, and what penpusher wouldn’t love the opportunity to save mankind?
Let’s try the EU or the White House. Anyone want to join me?
CodeTech (12:08:28) :
Hah – someone hit my trigger…
I AM buying a Challenger with the 5.7L Hemi… did my test drives on the weekend and monday. It’s going to be TorRed with the Classic package (fancy badges and stripes, shiny chrome wheels, and 6-speed manual transmission: 376 HP).
My favourite colour in this car and the old Magnum. And a 6 speed manual too! I have a 300C and invite you to drop in at 300cforums.com if you want to discuss LX cars. Needless to say, there is not much hand wringing about AGW in 300cforums.
When the percentage of voters doubting humnan involved climate change passes the 50% mark is when the politicians will also swing against human involved climate change.That 50% is the benchmark where the pollies start thinking about how the majority will vote!
John Wright (12:25:28) :
Yes we’ve heard about nuclear waste John. It’s just that we read other stuff than Greenpeace propaganda.
http://blog.the-thinking-man.com/nuclear-waste-does-not-exist
That should cause you a core meltdown or dispel your ignorance. Depends on you.
I have one question for those advocating we all turn vegetarian and eat fresh organically grown fruit and vegetables.
Where are you going to get the manure to grow the veges if we stop farming animals?
Tom in Texas (12:01:22) :
“So all the people on Earth could easily fit within one cubic mile.”
How much space would they take up if they were compacted? :o)
Good grief, the humans on earth wouldn’t even fill up Lake Powell! Maybe if we dumped the termites in too we could fill ‘er up once and for all:)
There is no problem with storage of nuclear waste other than the green folks will not let a reasonable storage system be set up while they look for some pie in the sky perfect solution. High level waste could be used as a source of heat and energy production to make use of its dissipated energy of decay if folks would let us, right now we burn fuel to generate energy to cool the storage pools, when Sterling cycle engines could be generating energy from the warm water pools if we would just let them.
Chernobyl is an example of what happens when you go out of your way to do everything wrong, the same sort of things happen with conventional technology — ever hear of Bhopal India, Texas City Texas, Cleveland East Ohio Gas Explosion ?
They designed a reactor with no effective containment vessel, that had an unstable design that was prone to runaway at low power levels due to a positive void coefficient and the effects of xenon posioning of the reaction compounded by the slow activation of the control rods during an emergency scram. Then in violation of good practice, they shut off safety features to run a test that never should have been run, with improper staffing and ignored warnings that they were treading on dangerous ground. Then they did not evacuate the affected region or warn neighboring areas until it was independently detected by outsiders and almost 36 hours had passed since the fatally flawed test began.
It is not an indictment of Nuclear power it is an indictment of large organizations doing things to satisfy dead lines rather than listening to the engineers who know what should be done, and disregarding standard safety measures with out regard (or understanding) of the risks involved.
Larry
“”” John Wright (12:25:28) :
Nuclear?! Has nobody ever heard of the problems of dealing with nuclear waste? Has nobody here heard of Chernobyl? Not quite the same thing as alarmism, I think. Agree that Nuclear power plants produce no CO2, but we all agree here that CO2’s no problem – or do we? “””
Chernobyl was a bad reactor design. Many more people have been killed by hydroelectric power plants, than Nuclear plants; well they drowned in the lakes of water that are damned up to feed the turbines; or got killed in a boating accident on those same lakes.
So let’s eliminate all forms of (naturally) stored energy, such as nuclear or any sort of natural hydrocarbon fuels.
So the floor is all yours John; where are you going to get the energy to supply the 6.5 billion folks we have now; let alone all those we will have by the time your plan gets implemented.
And of course in keeping with President Obama’s world good neighbor policy, we would want everybody on earth to be enjoying the same standard of living as we have; so no paying slave laboreres to watch your kids, or blow the leaves off your lawn, or flip hamburgers at below minimum wage to satisfy the teener brats.
One hint; renewable green energy arrives on earth at a density of 168 watts per square metre; according to the official NOAA earth energy budget chart.
In the USA it currently costs well over $100 per square foot to build anything on anysite. Maybe Donald Trump can observe your enterprise to see if he will give you the job.
George
“”WakeUpMaggy (14:14:40) :
Tom in Texas (12:01:22) :
“So all the people on Earth could easily fit within one cubic mile.”
How much space would they take up if they were compacted? :o)
Good grief, the humans on earth wouldn’t even fill up Lake Powell! Maybe if we dumped the termites in too we could fill ‘er up once and for all:)”
Hmmm… how much room would we take up if we were all freeze-dried THEN compacted?
Nuclear waste is mostly a problem because of our government. Other countries reuse, reprocess and recycle their nuclear waste. These methods reduce total nuclear waste about 90%, if memory serves me correctly.
We have wasted years on the Yucca Mountain project. Yucca Mountain is not a never will be a geologically suitable site for nuclear waste disposal. Yucca Mountain was a good geo-political solution, as Nevada is a sparsely populated state full of gamblers and other degenerates. (Just kidding, I used to live there. But many people do view the state that way).
When President Obama canceled the Yucca Mountain project, it was a signal that he intends to not pursue more nuclear power generation.
Mike Bryant (14:45:51) :
Hmmm… how much room would we take up if we were all freeze-dried THEN compacted?
Duh, doing the math, uh, 14% of 3cubic feet? Kind of like the SpacePack storage solution. Suck out all the hot air not much left.
After a little research and MATH I learned that Lake Powell holds 30 cubic kilometers, or 7.something cubic miles. Far too much room. Maybe we could instead put all the people of the world in something like all the stadiums of the world, filled to the brim. Our whle town would fit in our high school football stadium, for sure, sitting down.
The newly created Temperature Homogeneity Act (THA) has just passed both Houses of Congress. In the same way that timepieces all over the USA are now continually synchronized each night with the government’s atomic clock in Colorado, the new thermometers being provided by GISS through the National Weather Service Regional offices and will be continually synchronized with the computers at Goddard Institute of Space Studies. All thermometers that are sold in the United States are required to contain the hardware and software necessary to update the temperature display. For the first year, March 1, 2009 through April 30, 2010, all thermometers on public display anywhere in the United States or her Territories are required to be THA compliant. Beginning, March 1, 2010, every thermometer will comply with THA. Anyone possessing or attempting to sell any non-compliant thermometer will be subject to a $10,000 fine and not less than one year in Federal Prison. Since the NWS is now providing these compliant thermometers free of charge to the public there is no excuse for non-compliance.
(just kidding but, who knows?)
IBD article
‘So much so that they started talking about “climate change” instead of “global warming.”’
This so passé. It’s now called CARBON pollution. Get with the program.
CO2 global warming was change to global warming. Global warming was change to climate change (when the earth started to cool). How the talking points is carbon pollution.
A rose is a rose by any other name is still a rose.
Lol Mike, I would amend that slightly to be the Anomalous Temperature Homogeneity Act. Because, as we know, all temperatures are anomalies.
So all the people on Earth could easily fit within one cubic mile
That’s a good reminder of our (in)significance. A stat that made me stop and think when I first heard it is that insects* account for 80% of all animal life, measured by weight!
*more likely to be arthropods, of which insects are the major class, but I don’t recall the source, which was overheard on the radio. It sounded worryingly plausible, though.
rtw. Sorry.
The movie is in Seattle at Washington Policy Center (I didn’t look that up very well myself, here in Scandinavia.)
…and I think it’s still 2 hours before it starts at 6.30 pm.
http://www.washingtonpolicy.org/pressroom/pressreleases/EarthDayMovie09.html
WakeUpMaggy (15:03:56) :
Mike Bryant (14:45:51) :
Hmmm… how much room would we take up if we were all freeze-dried THEN compacted?
Back in 1963 I made an accidental finding about mass shrinkage. More details at:
http://www.giurfa.com/mass.html
Smokey,
I bet if we were freeze dried and compacted we would fit easily into a quarter mile cube.
Mike
HAPPY EARTH DAY!!!!!
I got the burn barrel going to commemorate the day!
Mike Bryant (16:39:37) :
Smokey,
I bet if we were freeze dried and compacted we would fit easily into a quarter mile cube.
Mike
Stop giving them ideas mate- Bereft as they are of original thought they do understand plagiarism!
James P (15:58:45) :
That’s a good reminder of our (in)significance. A stat that made me stop and think when I first heard it is that insects* account for 80% of all animal life, measured by weight!
*more likely to be arthropods, of which insects are the major class, but I don’t recall the source, which was overheard on the radio. It sounded worryingly plausible, though.
Prochlorococcus marinus, a protist, is the most abundant organism in mass. Prochlorococcus marinus lives in oceans.
Gary Pearse (08:14:21) :
On the subject of the goofy research concluding that obesity contributes to AGW, I think that as the brighter researchers in the AGW party start to have doubts, the field will more and more be left up to science clowns.
Gary – Excuse me – but hasn’t that already happened!
CodeTech (08:17:22) :
Personally, I refer to this as “hypocrite day”. I get to mock people who are completely clueless, just like “earth hour” participants.
On a tangentially related note, I STILL mock those who buy brand new vehicles and tell me my 22 year old car is harmful to the environment. Apparently these people believe cars are grown in a sustainable way in mountain meadows. Perhaps they don’t realize the massive emissions involved in actually building a vehicle, any vehicle, and certainly can’t comprehend that a 22 year old car can be properly maintained, getting excellent mileage with low emissions.
Nope, I get to watch the parade of SUVs going to the local parks to celebrate how “other people” need to clean up their impact on the planet. It’s always someone else, right?
CodeTech – And won’t these people be shocked to discover that they are precisely in the frame when Government solutions are deployed to restrict CO2 emissions.