Yesterday I had the honor of co-presenting a seminar with Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama, Huntsville, when he visited Chico State University. He had relatives to visit in town but had asked to be able to make a rebuttal presentation is response to Dr. Ben Santer’s presentation a couple of weeks ago which I had attended and written about here.
Dr. James Pushnik, moderator for the Santer event at CSUC, graciously allowed Dr. Christy and myself to make a rebuttal presentation yesterday and I thank him sincerely for the opportunity. Dr. Christy ended his essay with the title of this post saying “Don’t demonize energy, because without energy, life is brutal and short”. Dr. Christy writes this from his firsthand experiences in Africa, where he watched the native people just trying to survive and where wood carried for miles was the energy source for their society. I thought those were good words to consider, especially since we have activist maniacs like weepy Bill McKibben out to demonize energy on a daily basis. McKibben and his followers, not possessing the intelligence to fully understand what they are doing, think “they won“.
Bottom line: that tar sands oil is going to be burned somewhere, in other countries willing to buy it. Stopping a pipeline has no effect on Canada’s export of the oil, only on American jobs, but McKibben and his 350.org is cluelessly ecstatic over this. I like how he’s brainwashed these poor souls into thinking they have to cut back.
Along the same lines and coincidentally about the same time as all this was happening, I was asked by WUWT reader Paul Homewood if I’d be interested in carrying this essay from his blog “Not a lot of people know that” about how difficult life was during the time of the little ice age.
Today, I’m thankful for two things: 1) Our freedom, secured by veterans we honor today and 2) Our wonderful energy infrastructure, without which, I couldn’t bring you this essay and Bill McKibben would be chopping wood in Vermont just to keep warm.
Here’s Paul’s essay on life in the Little Ice Age in England:
In Part I we started to review the book “The Little Ice Age” by Brian Fagan, a Professor of Archaeology. If you have missed it, you can catch up with Part I here.
Everything that follows is based on the book.
==============================================================
Storms and Floods
Drawing by Hans Moser in 1570 of Scheldt flood
It was not only the cold that was a problem during the Little Ice Age.Throughout Europe, the years 1560-1600 were cooler and stormier, with late wine harvests and considerably stronger winds than those of the 20th Century. Storm activity increased by 85% in the second half of the 16th Century and the incidence of severe storms rose by 400%.
Perhaps the most infamous of these storms was the All Saints Flood in November 1570, which worked its way northeast up the North Sea.The storm brought enormous sea surges ashore in the Low Countries, flooding most of Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Dordrecht and other cities and drowning at least 100,000 people. In the River Ems further north in Germany, sea levels rose an incredible four and a half meters above normal.
In 1607 another storm caused even greater floods in the Bristol Channel with flood waters rising 8 meters above sea level miles inland.
Later in the 17th Century, great storms blew millions of tonnes of formerly stable dunes across the Brecklands of Norfolk and Suffolk, burying valuable farm land under meters of sand. This area has never recovered and is heathland. A similar event occurred in Scotland in 1694. The 1400 hectare Culbin Estate had been a prosperous farm complex next to the Moray Firth until it was hit by another huge storm which blew so much sand over it that the farm buildings themselves disappeared. A rich estate had become a desert overnight and the owner, the local Laird, died pauper three years later.
The Great Storm of 1703 is recognized as the most powerful storm ever recorded in England and caused immense damage there as well as across the North Sea in Holland and Denmark.
Cold, Snow and Ice
Between 1680 and 1730, the coldest cycle of the Little Ice Age, temperatures plummeted and the growing season in England was about five weeks shorter than now. The winter of 1683/4 was so cold that the ground froze to a depth of more than a meter in parts of south west England and belts of ice appeared off the Channel coast of England and northern France. The ice lay up to 30 miles offshore along the Dutch coast and many harbours were so choked with ice that shipping halted throughout the North Sea.
Another exceptional winter was that of 1708/9. Deep snow fell in England and lasted for weeks while further East people walked from Denmark to Sweden on the ice as shipping was again halted in the North Sea. Hard frosts killed thousands of trees in France, where Provence lost most of its orange trees and vineyards were abandoned in northern France, not to be recultivated until the 20th Century. In 1716 the Thames froze so deep that a spring tide raised the ice fair on the river by 4 meters! The summer of 1725 in London was the coldest in the known temperature record and described as “more like winter than summer”.
After a warm interlude after 1730, when eight winters were as mild as the 20th Century, the cold returned. The temperature of the early 1740’s was the lowest in the Central England Temperature record for the entire period from 1659. Even in France thousands died of the cold and when the thaw came “great floods did prodigious mischief”.
Although temperatures started to gradually increase in the mid 19th Century, another cold snap in 1879 brought weather that rivalled the 1690’s. After a below freezing winter, England experienced a cold spring and one of the wettest and coldest summers on record. In some parts of East Anglia, the harvest was still being brought in after Christmas. The late 1870’s were equally cold in China and India , where up to 18 million died from famines caused by cold, drought and monsoon failure.
The cold snap persisted into the 1880’s and 1890’s when large ice floes formed on the Thames.
Fishing and Sea Conditions
During the 17th Century conditions around Iceland became exceptionally severe. Sea ice often blocked the Denmark Strait throughout the summer. In 1695, ice surrounded the entire coast of Iceland for much of the year, halting all ship traffic. The inshore cod fishery failed completely, partly because the fish may have moved offshore into slightly warmer water. On several occasions between 1695 and 1728, inhabitants of the Orkney Islands were startled to see an Inuit in his kayak paddling off their coasts. These solitary hunters must have spent weeks marooned on large ice floes. As late as 1756, sea ice surrounded much of Iceland for as many as thirty weeks a year.
The cod fishery off the Faeroe Islands failed completely as the sea surface temperature became 5C cooler than today, while enormous herring shoals deserted Norwegian waters for warmer seas further south.
Famine
As climatic conditions deteriorated, a lethal mix of misfortunes descended on a growing European population. Crops failed and cattle perished by diseases caused by abnormal weather. Famine followed famine bringing epidemics in their train, bread riots and general disorder. Witchcraft accusations soared, as people accused their neighbours of fabricating bad weather.
Farming was just as difficult in the fledgling European colonies of North America where there were several severe drought cycles between 1560 and 1612 along the Carolina and Virginia coasts.
From 1687 to 1692, cold winters and cool summers led to a series of bad harvests. Alpine villagers lived on bread made from ground nutshells, whilst in France, wine harvests were delayed till as late as November. Widespread blight damaged many crops, bringing one of the worst famines in Europe since 1315. Finland lost perhaps as much as a third of its population to famine and disease in 1696-7.
Things did not improve. 1739 brought more problems, ruining grain and wine harvests over much of western Europe, while winter grain yields were well down because the ground was too hard to plough for weeks.
By 1815, Europe was struggling with yet another cold spell, when the Tambora eruption made matters a whole lot worse. The following year was described as “ The year without a summer”. In France the grain harvest was half its normal level and southern Germany suffered a complete harvest failure. In Switzerland grain and potato prices tripled, and 30000 were breadless, without work and resorted to eating “sorrel,moss and cats”.
Inevitably such suffering brought with it social unrest, pillaging, rioting and criminal violence. The famine encouraged many to emigrate to America, although in Saint John’s, Newfoundland, 900 were sent back to Europe because there was so little food in town.
The crisis of 1816/7 was the last truly extensive food dearth in the Western world and its effects ranged from the Ottoman Empire, to parts of North Africa, large areas of Switzerland and Italy, western Europe and even New England and Canada. Other parts of the world were also badly affected such as China. Death tolls are hard to calculate but 65000 may have perished in Ireland, while in Switzerland the death rate could have doubled. The death toll would have been much worse in England and France but for the availability of and ability to efficiently distribute reserve stocks of food.
For anyone who wishes to explore this period further, Brian Fagan’s book is available here.
R. Gates says: November 12, 2011 at 1:30 pm
ForcingsFactorscausinglikely to cause cooling over the next few years:1) Quiet sun, linked to 2) Extended Periods of La Nina and other cool phases of various ocean cycles.
ForcingsFactorscausing warminglikely to bias the thermometer records over the next few years:3) Continuing growth of UHI-linked effects
4) Factors introducing direct bias in thermometer records
Factors likely to have minimal effect:
5) Highest level of greenhouse gases
in at least 800,000 yearsaccording to questionable ice-core proxy data record spliced onto current direct record.There, corrected.
Key information re the Ice Hockey Stick “record” of past CO2 levels: Slide 38 of my presentation shows how the rising levels of CO2, methane and N2O in the ice core records indicate their relative SOLUBILITIES, not their actual past levels. The apparent increase in recent levels can thus be clearly seen here NOT to correspond to any Industrial Revolution “increases” of these gases.
Jesse Fell says: November 13, 2011 at 1:37 am
…anything like what happened on Venus…
Jesse, there’s no proof I’ve found convincing that anything ever DID happen on Venus. There is evidence that Venus’ high temperature is simply a product of its far denser, deeper atmosphere (Harry Dale Hoffman’s figures); that Venus herself is emitting internal heat; that the science around Venus has had its books cooked in a way awfully parallel to what we’ve seen in Climate Science; and finally, that Hansen himself moved from astrophysics to climate just after Venus had been declared guilty of runaway global warming, using corrupted science.
Let’s make life healthy and happy, rather than nasty, brutish and short: click
Lucy Skywalker says:
November 13, 2011 at 4:32 am
Key information re the Ice Hockey Stick “record” of past CO2 levels: Slide 38 of my presentation shows how the rising levels of CO2, methane and N2O in the ice core records indicate their relative SOLUBILITIES, not their actual past levels. The apparent increase in recent levels can thus be clearly seen here NOT to correspond to any Industrial Revolution “increases” of these gases.
_____
Seriously? Wow. If you’re right, it would mean a Nobel prize. Why didn’t CO2 levels increase so much during the previously warm Holocene Optimum, or even during the Roman warm period or MWP, when temperatures hit similar (or greater) levels?
Sadly for your Nobel prize bid, you are completely mistaken. The spike in CO2 levels that began at the start of the industrial revolution, and then rapidly accelerated in the past century are most certainly do to the human burning of fossil fuels. And furthermore, the spike from roughly 280 ppm to the nearly 400 ppm is extraordinary in the climate record over the past 800,000 years, and is absolutely due to human activities.
The core of the debate among the reasonably educated warmists and skeptics is about the sensitivity of the climate to this spike, which of course, continues to spike upward, and the heart of the sensitivity question is about the role of feedbacks, both positive and negative, as the basic physics of CO2’s “greenhouse” behavior by itself and is well understood and has been for at least a century. By itself, without considering feedbacks of any type, from the logarithmic nature of the response, we’d expect roughly 1C of warming for a doubling of CO2 from 280 to 560. However, we know there are feedbacks, both positive and negative, and so the real debate is about these feedbacks.
Based on past climate data from the mid-Pliocene (the last time CO2 was at the levels we’re now approaching), around 3C of warming is a good approximate estimate of what we can expect from a doubling of CO2 to 560 ppm, once all fast and slow feedbacks have been considered.
Ian W says:
November 12, 2011 at 10:33 am
Michael Palmer says:
(M.P.) If the US government were half as well-run as these countries, Katrina would have caused a lot less damage.
(I.W.) Perhaps you should learn a little about the US Constitution. The defense of the Louisiana coastline and the levees around New Orleans (and for that matter all the evacuation plans) were the responsibility of the State of Louisiana and not of the Federal Government.
Reply: Nice nitpick. Let’s say then if the U.S., as a country, were half as well-run then. Happy?
(I.W.) Another few points about Katrina – the storm front caused floods up to 30 miles inland along a line from New Orleans to the Florida Panhandle. … You are displaying your ignorance if you think that a flood caused by a southbound polar low in the North Sea at a high tide bears any resemblance to a hurricane like Katrina.
Reply: Hamburg is about the same distance in-land. In 1962, some 350 people drowned there due to some teeny, weeny North Sea storm surge. My father was then a student there and helped collect the bodies. And this was not because there were no coastal defenses at the time – to the contrary, the construction and maintenance of dykes has always been taken very seriously along the North Sea coast, to the point that in centuries past land owners who neglected it along their stretch were expropriated, and their land handed over to anyone who would assume the dyke maintenance duties. However, only with the construction technology of the 20th century and with the muscle of the central governments was the problem really solved.
I grew up in Northern Germany – between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea – and now live in Canada, but I also lived in Texas for a year and visited Louisiana; that was before Katrina. I was truly surprised to see how in many places how little there was in the way of coastal defences. I noticed the same along the Atlantic coast in Canada.
Gates says:
“The spike in CO2 levels that began at the start of the industrial revolution, and then rapidly accelerated in the past century are most certainly do [sic] to the human burning of fossil fuels.”
Gates, you constantly avoid responding to my challenge to falsify this testable hypothesis:
At current and projected levels, CO2 is harmless and beneficial.
Give it your best shot, using the scientific method. Provide testable evidence specifically showing that human-emitted CO2 has caused verifiable global harm directly attributable to anthropogenic CO2 emissions. If you can provide any such evidence, you will be the very first to be able to do so, and you will be on track for a [now worthless] Nobel Prize.
Put up or shut up.
R. Gates;
Based on past climate data from the mid-Pliocene (the last time CO2 was at the levels we’re now approaching), around 3C of warming is a good approximate estimate of what we can expect from a doubling of CO2 to 560 ppm, once all fast and slow feedbacks have been considered.>>>
During that time period the Isthmus of Panama was open reuslting in higher temperatures globally due to the amount of warm water that could flow through that channel. As the Isthmus gradually closed, arctic currents became more dominant and a cooling cycle set in that evolved into another ice age. You shoot your mouth off about factors that mask warming, and then claim as evidence of what the CO2 sensitivity should be from a time period with huge factors at play that were the dominant forces behind higher temperatures, you just forgot to mention them.
The fact is that you’ve been unable to make your case without resorting to misleading and misrepresentative data. Are you a fool who repeats the claims of others without bothering to check them yourself? Or do you take the rest of us for fools who will blindly accept your drivel without checking the facts for ourselves?
BTW – you have yet to back up your claim that the models always predicted periods of warming by telling us exactly which of the 23 models cited by the IPCC shows this. You’ve also been asked to produce a quote of a single sentence from IPCC AR4 that said this was so. You have also failed to admit that Al Gore’s experiment as illustrated could not produce the results as illustrated, despite your willingness to put a wager on the matter prior to Anthony demonstrating quite conclusively that you were hopelessly wrong. Nor have you responded to my point to you that your suggestion to remove the globes from the experiment would have made the demonstration of the greenhouse effect physically impossible, demonstrating your lack of understanding of the science involved rather nicely.
There’s no Nobel Prize for fiction R. Gates, nor one for hucksterism, so stop trying to win one.
Jesse Fell says: November 13, 2011 at 1:55 am
[…] The loss of arctic ice — which is happening before our eyes — will greatly reduce the Earth’s total albedo, which will in turn enhance the warming effect of the greenhouse gases.
Not relevant, angle of incidence is too low for solar heating of Arctic waters. The Arctic is a heat dump, transferred from the tropics, heat goes to the Arctic, then to outer space, cooling earth. Open water equals excessive heat loss. Kind of like a thermostat, or better, a disconnecting clutch on any “runaway” warming.
Jesse Fell says:
November 13, 2011 at 1:55 am
Myrrh,
Yes, “The Warming Papers” includes the 1906 paper by Arrhenius.
I don’t see it.
So, not actually included as distinct entity in its own right, but somewhere discussed? What does it say about it?
There was a lot of work done between Arrhenius’ 1906 paper which corrected his earlier and now defunct 1896 paper on the subject and 1956 when the “paper trail” resumes, wasn’t there?
Ah, here: http://greenhouse.geologist-1011.net/ , it says Arrhenius was refuted in 1909 by Woods, don’t see that in the list of contents either.
And, Arrhenius misunderstood Fourier:
And that is still the base on which we get AGWScience claiming what it does. So, is this covered in The Warming Papers? That the “greenhouse” of Arrhenius and AGW comes from taking what Fourier said the atmosphere wasn’t?
As analysed further on the link I’ve given above: The Shattered Greenhouse: How Simple Physics Demolishes the “Greenhouse Effect”. Timothy Casey B.Sc. (Hons.) Consulting Geologist:
Well, you can read the rest of the page yourself, but what this shows is that Arrhenius didn’t know what he was talking about, and that those subsequently following his concept of the greenhouse atmosphere because he failed to understand Fourier, have built their work on a fictional atmosphere, one which Fourier said didn’t of course exist.
Appears to me then, this “paper trail” of The Warming Papers is not covering the actual science history of the subject.
However, this page has contributed to the paper trail of I’ve been collecting of the history about these ideas. I’ve already concluded from arguments about ‘the AGW greenhouse’, that the world AGW science describes doesn’t actually exist, but is a science fiction world, molecules without volume and weight in an atmosphere of empty space, etc., so now I know why there’s no convection in the AGWScience Fiction world, it goes right back to the beginning with Arrhenius getting Fourier wrong.
So, “The Warming Papers is a compendium of the classic scientific papers that constitute the foundation of the global warming forecast.”,
which is all based on the fictional science foundation from Arrhenius, about an imaginary atmosphere with its own version of physical properties and processes and not on our real world with its consolidated body of knowledge as understood in tried and tested traditional physics.
No wonder you can’t understand our engineers and other applied scientists.
CO2 is not climate – no more than the crow that just flew by my window is climate. If CO2 were climate, the planet would have cooked a long time ago, repeatably. Unless you can show how CO2 has been the climate driver in the past, it is time to search for some other element that does dominate and correlate with climate change. Or does such inquiry severely encroach on your ideological beliefs to the point of collapse. GK
davidmhoffer,
Your simplification of the global effects of the closure of the Isthmus of Panama is revealing for it’s cherry-picking. It hardly was “the cause” of an ice age. There is no doubt that the closure of the Isthmus of Panama altered ocean circulation patterns, but it was far from the only geological change going on around the planet, both above and below sea level. You also fail to mention Milankovitch cycles, which of course, set the true pulse for periods of glaciation and ice ages. Of course no two periods of Earth’s history will ever be exactly alike (Earth 2011 does not equal Earth 1650 or Earth 3.3 MYA), but the mid-Pliocene warm period remains as the most likely closest analogue of the the Earth at 400 ppm of CO2 and greater.
But of course, this was not the focus of my response to Lucy, as she was stating that the current spike in CO2 levels was not due to human industrial activity (mainly the burning of fossil fuels), which is nonsense.
For those who want a pretty good summation of some of the current thinking about the complicated and interrelated effects of the closure of the Isthmus of Panama, I would suggest:
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=12321&tid=282&cid=2508
For those who want a good look at the latest research into the mid-Pliocene period and its potential relationship to a higher CO2 climate in Earth’s near future, I would suggest:
http://geology.er.usgs.gov/eespteam/prism/
R. Gates;
but it was far from the only geological change going on around the planet, both above and below sea level. You also fail to mention Milankovitch cycles, which of course, set the true pulse for periods of glaciation and ice ages. Of course no two periods of Earth’s history will ever be exactly alike >>>
And hence, by the evidence you yourself proclaim, estimating the sensitivity to CO2 by comparing that period to this period is impossible, and your claim to the contrary debunked by none other than yourself.
R. Gates;
But of course, this was not the focus of my response to Lucy, as she was stating that the current spike in CO2 levels was not due to human industrial activity >>>
Perhaps you need to be reminded of what it is you said. Since you can neither, evidently, recall what you said, or be bothered to review your own discourse, I will quote directy from your previous comment in which you said:
“Based on past climate data from the mid-Pliocene (the last time CO2 was at the levels we’re now approaching), around 3C of warming is a good approximate estimate of what we can expect from a doubling of CO2 to 560 ppm, once all fast and slow feedbacks have been considered.”
So, just to review, you boldly stated what the sensitivity to CO2 doubling was based on the mid-Pliocene, then showed how the mid-Pliocene and current climate could not possibly be directly compared, and then tried to claim that your comments weren’t meant to address sensitivity in the first place.
Don’t forget the rest of my questions in my previous comment. Until you either admit your folly, or provide a credible answer, I’m just going to keep repeating them. I’ll be adding this little gem to the list of course since I doubt you have what it takes to refute the fact that you refuted yourself and then tried to claim you didn’t say what you said.
Dave Springer? May I have permission to shamelessly steal your supplication to Algore:The Goreacle? I will most certainly give all credit to you, and I will get it into as many minds as possible. I most humbly beseech you to grant me this boon, Oh Great One!!!
Steve Keohane says:
November 13, 2011 at 7:32 am
Jesse Fell says: November 13, 2011 at 1:55 am
[…] The loss of arctic ice — which is happening before our eyes — will greatly reduce the Earth’s total albedo, which will in turn enhance the warming effect of the greenhouse gases.
Not relevant, angle of incidence is too low for solar heating of Arctic waters. The Arctic is a heat dump, transferred from the tropics, heat goes to the Arctic, then to outer space, cooling earth. Open water equals excessive heat loss. Kind of like a thermostat, or better, a disconnecting clutch on any “runaway” warming.
_____
While I agree there will likely not be a “runaway” warming from current and projected CO2 levels and related feedbacks, I would strongly disagree that the angle of incidence is “too low” for a direct heating of Arctic waters, and this is one of the polar amplification effects as higher levels of CO2, and one reason that the north pole in particular is shown to warm faster than the rest of the planet as a whole as CO2 levels rise. Of course, I would assume you’d be talking about during the summer months when lower sea ice levels certainly allow more direct heating of the Arctic waters during these months, and we find a direct correlation between lower sea ice levels and anomalously warm waters in those same areas, caused by the direct heating of those same waters by the sun.
davidmhoffer said:
“I’ll be adding this little gem to the list of course since I doubt you have what it takes to refute the fact that you refuted yourself and then tried to claim you didn’t say what you said.”
___
I’m sure in your little world of fantasy your lists actually mean something. It is not my responsibility to continually explain the nuances of difference to you, but in davidmhofferland, there is apparently no such shades of grey, but all is black and white. A pity…
R. Gates;
I’m sure in your little world of fantasy your lists actually mean something. It is not my responsibility to continually explain the nuances of difference to you, but in davidmhofferland, there is apparently no such shades of grey, but all is black and white. A pity…>>>
Yes, it is a pity that you do not take responsibility for, or even admit to, the claims you make. You just keep spouting off like you actually know something when everything you post just makes you look silly. If I am the one in fantasy land, why do you not diorectly answer the questions put to you about your claims?
1. You agreed to a bet with me that if Al Gore’s on air “experiment” were repeated as illustrated, it would not show the results as illustrated. True or False?
2. You suggested that the experiment be carried out but with the globes removed from the jars as they were superflous. I pointed out to you that with nothing in the jars to absorb SW and re-radiate it as LW, demonstration of the “greenhouse effect” that the experiment was supposed to demonstrate was impossible and showed that you didn’t understand the science inviolved in the first place. True of False?
3. You claimed that the “models” have always told us to expect extended periods with no warming. I asked you to specify which of the 23 models cites in IPCC AR4 showed this. I asked you to produce a single sentence from IPCC AR4 that suggested this. I asked you to produce a single quote by a mjor warmist researcher that was made prior to the current warming hiatus which has been in place for close to 15 years. To date, you have not been able to back your claim up with any such evidence. True or False?
4. You claimed that by comparing the mid-Pliocene with current conditions we could calculate a sensitivity to CO2 doubling of 3 degrees C. Then you said the two periods were not comparable. Then you said that wasn’t what you were claiming. True or False?
Really R. Gates, you represent the very essence of the problem with the climate debate. You feel free to make up your own facts, your own history, change what you said, claim you said something else, and when confronted with the facts, you change the subject or give excuses to avoid answering. Ther is something pitifull about it all right R. Gates. It is a pity that sycophants like you get away with spouting grabage to justify actions by government that tax honest hard working people for no reason, raise living costs putting the poor at risk, keeping developing nations from developing, and the “researchers” that you support rolling in dough to study something that isn’t a problem, never was, and never will be. That you have to resort to the tactics that you do to support their position tells us how weak that position is, and that your purported knowledge is nothing but the product of fantasyland. But not my fantasyland sir, yours, and one that I suspect you know very well is one of your own making.
Jay Davis says:
November 11, 2011 at 6:40 pm
Defenders of McKibben and other anti-fossil fuel fanatics. To date, no one has come up with viable economic alternatives to coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear energy. Wind and solar are so woefully inadequate they are not worth spending money on. Therefore, any competent, reasoning individual would conclude McKibben, and people like him, who fight against developing new sources of fossil fuels and pipelines to transport them, are maniacs too stupid to realize how much harm they are doing. And I am giving them the benefit of the doubt. Because I don’t think they practice what they preach.
_____________________________________
I would love to send them for a year or two into the hinterlands of Maine or even West Virgina where people still use outhouses, wood burning stoves and plow with mules because a tractor would roll over and kill you.
And yes I have been in that back country. Had three friends disappear never to be seen again too.
G. Karst says:
November 11, 2011 at 8:56 pm
If you think the LIA was bad, try running the same model – this time with a population of 7 billion!
UNSPEAKABLE! – GK
___________________________________
Why the heck do you think the Wealthy are snapping up farmland all over the world while governments are passing regulations to wipe out independent farmers???
Of interest is the fact that a year and a half ago “Global Cooling” was on the agenda at the June 2010 Bilderberg Conference. Now the Land Grabs in Africa, South American and even in the USA are making news. Do they know something we don’t????
From our buddy James Delingpole: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100055500/global-cooling-and-the-new-world-order/
Land Grab References:
http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1097:open-letter-to-ifc-pending-approval-of-the-project-calyxagro-proj-ref-29137
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-10/being-like-soros-in-buying-farm-land-lets-investors-reap-16-annual-gains.html
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/african-land-grab-acres-bottle-scotch
Dave Springer said:
November 11, 2011 at 9:05 pm
Let me get this straight. Canada would sell resources critical to the defense of the North American continent to Red China…
————————————————————-
Mark and two Cats says:
November 11, 2011 at 11:28 pm
The US should invade Canada, eh.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I have a better idea guys. Lets pack up all out lefty Politicians and University Profs and ship them one way to China. That is what you guys did with Maurice Strong after all.
We can toss in those from Australia too. I am sure China has a forced labor camp where they could be useful….
I have a great idea. ALL those in favor of no oil pipeline, no coal etc. must surrender their drivers license and may not apply for another for the rest of their lives. Foot or public GROUND transportation only.
This includes the likes of Al Gore and Waxman and Pelosi and Reid….
R. Gates says: November 13, 2011 at 5:22 am
Lucy Skywalker says: November 13, 2011 at 4:32 am
_____
Seriously? Wow. If you’re right, it would mean a Nobel prize. Why didn’t CO2 levels increase so much during the previously warm Holocene Optimum, or even during the Roman warm period or MWP, when temperatures hit similar (or greater) levels?
R. Gates says: November 13, 2011 at 10:10 am
…this was not the focus of my response to Lucy, as she was stating that the current spike in CO2 levels was not due to human industrial activity (mainly the burning of fossil fuels), which is nonsense.
You have misquoted me and missed my point. I was not referring to MLO and today’s situation, which is another issue. I was referring to the infamous splicing of ice core records with MLO, and what the ice core record is actually saying. As you might have deduced from my page, which it looks like you did not visit.
My delight in the comparison of the curves for CO2, CH4 and N2O arises from the fact that this material originated in a warmists’ paper but they had not observed their own data closely enough to see the true implication of their graphs.
Yes I think this matter does deserve a Nobel prize but that should go to Jaworowski and Segalstad. Fine chance though, in the present corrupt circs.
Ralph says:
November 11, 2011 at 11:12 pm
The reality, is that one barrel of oil is 100,000 man hours of work. Delete the oil, and none of that work gets done.
Your only other option, to ensure the work is done and civilisation continues (people are fed and housed), is to reinstate slavery. In the absence of oil and oil powered machines, that is how the Roman’s powered their great civilisation.
Is that what the Greens want?
________________________________________________
That is what the United Nations wants.
Do not forget that Saudi Arabia outlawed slavery in 1962 along with other third world countries. Just because it has been made illegal does not mean Slavery is still alive and well. It is estimated there are between 12 and 27 million slaves today, more than at any other time in history.
Slavery alive and well in the US: http://www.usatoday.com/money/books/2007-09-16-nobodies_N.htm
United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat I), held May 31 – June 11, 1976. Agenda Item 10 Preamble
Dave S. This is the basis for that blasted Supreme Court ruling that industry can use Eminent Domain ” if land is used in the interests of society as a whole” The UN policy recommendations following this Preamble were endorsed by the participating nations, including the United States. The EPA is based on that endorsement as are the “World Heritage Sites” and now the “Food Safety Modernization Act.” That Act SPECIFICALLY turns control of our farmland and farmers over to the World Trade Organization and the United Nations, who have been working together to come up with “Good Farming Practices” and “Good Agricultural Practices” over the last decade.
You do not have to be called a slave to BE a slave.
“2009 the Year of the Slave” http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/yearoftheslave.html
As I’ve often said, warmer doesn’t bother me, colder scares the “heck” out of me.
New York City dealing with an ocean a few inches higher is nothing compared to dealing with an ice sheet a mile thick.
It would also simultaneously solve the intractable, growing traffic problem. Everybody is happy. GK