The stupid, it burns. OTOH, he’s with Gore and Hansen and there’s press with him, so maybe he’s just being sociable . Get a load of this from Richard Branson’s blog, CO2 can apparently contradict solar forcing due to the Earth’s precession wobble and orbit:
Here’s the money quote:
The good news is we now know how to heat up the world. We just release an excess of carbon into it. So any time we’re heading to an ice age again that is what we can do to stop it.
Yeah, sure, that’ll go over well with the people that think Branson, Gore, and Hansen are heroes. And walking from Scotland to North Africa? Really?
But I agree with Sir Richard on one point; warmth is far preferable to an ice sheet. You can’t dodge ice sheets but you can take steps to stay cool.
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They did not need to travel to Antarctica for this, they knew what they were going to report before they left. I would not be surprised if they actually did not go at all, perhaps they traveled to Bransons Caribean retreat, had a few martinis, stood in front of a green-screen and acted like they were surounded by penguins.
Remind me not to buy any of Bransons Virgin products.
Branson and Gore, the Brothers Grimm.
Great bearded loon and a complete p*i*k known in the UK as a plonker.
I thought this was a science website, not more publicity for an odious, grinning, bearded see you next….
saltspringson says (February 1, 2012 at 10:08 am)
Branson’s 2nd posting included this:
The quickest way of solving the problem is to tax all fossil fuels and distribute the taxes back to every man and woman in the country.
—————
So we should increase the tax on Virgin Airlines jet fuel by 10,000% Mr. Branson? I await my share of the proceeds with eager anticipation.
And, of course, the predictable ice-free SUMMER pictures of poor helpless penguins wallowing in guano. What a crock.
Like Warren Buffet, Branson’s wealth is secure, so maybe it’s natural for him to want to keep others out of his exclusive domain in the stratosphere.
Raising carbon and other taxes (on others) will help keep all those rising young entrepeneurs off his turf.
“If you look at the history of the world we are normally in an ice age.”
If the “we” is modern humans, that is a reasonable statement. If “we” refers to life on earth, the statement is utterly wrong. The history of the world includes much more elapsed time when it was suitable to grow avocadoes here in Washington State where I live (we have the fossils to prove it!). The bit about ice between N. Africa and Scotland, that is just plain wrong any way you look at it. The relationship between glacial epochs, interglacials, ice ages, and CAGW has long been my primary interest in climate issues. For years, no one was bold/crazy enough to claim that we could stop the next ice age. Now you commonly hear it. If there was ever an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof, that would be it!
saltspringson says:
February 1, 2012 at 10:08 am
“Branson’s 2nd posting included this:
http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/blog/antarctica-log-2–no-lie-can-live-forever
“As Jim Hansen the scientist said on this ship: ‘We cannot continue to burn all the coal, oil from the tar sands without pushing the planet out of control. It’s time to stop subsidising fossil fuels. The quickest way of solving the problem is to tax all fossil fuels and distribute the taxes back to every man and woman in the country. “”
One of the countries that subsidizes gasoline for their people down to 10 cents or so is… Iran. Good luck convincing them, Richard. You’ll need it.
David Larsen says:
February 1, 2012 at 9:32 am
Maybe Virgin Air should stop leaving all that co2 in the atmosphere. He should ground all of his jets if he believes that crap.
I have said the same many times in the past. If you truly believe that CO2 is a threat then stop doing anything that adds to the threat. Ford should stop making cars, Branson stop flying planes, Gore should move into a cave, etc. But true believers only want me to stop not them.
Doggerland: Brian Fagan, Professor of Archaeology at the University of California [says]: “Ten thousand years ago the southern North Sea was a marshy plain where elk and deer wandered… England was part of the continent until as recently as 6000 BC when rising sea levels caused by post ice age warming filled the North sea.” In:
http://judithcurry.com/2011/07/12/historic-variations-in-sea-levels-part-1-from-the-holocene-to-romans/
Interesting.
There are even Presidents and Ministers out there with him and Gore, in Antarctica.
I have compiled a list of the known green religious out there:
http://ecotretas.blogspot.com/2012/01/gore-na-antarctida.html
Still far from the 116, but everyone can help finding more of them…
Ecotretas
Oh my. Anyone with an ego less colossal than Branson’s would cringe at such a public and easily avoided error (the man has minions galore who could have vetted his statement for accuracy, eg by consulting even Wikipedia for about 30 seconds on the ice thing).
But it’s all water of a duck’s back for him – entrepreneurial businessmen are not noted for their capacity for shame or commitment to accuracy.
That’s why there is almost no overlap between the 2 subsets of humanity known as scientists and entrepreneurial businessmen.
Hansen: “The quickest way of solving the problem is to tax all fossil fuels and distribute the taxes back to every man and woman in the country.”
So, first you tax us for our fossil fuel use. Then you give us the money back. Then we can use it to buy petrol for our cars. Is this some kind of co2-cycle?
Who has a bigger carbon footprint than Branson, Gore?
Street trader propaganda par excellence. Resiiist! Resiiist!
Branson is repeating a widespread claim (which, I must confess, I believed until today) that la Gomera in the Canaries is the sole surviving subtropical forest from the Tertiary Period; that all vegetation north of la Gomera was wiped out and has subsequently regrown.
Is there a blogger out there who can pin down the truth of the matter and the source of the Gomera myth if that’s what it is?
ddpalmer:
The Mediterranean Sea *was* once dry, but it refilled itself 5.3 million years ago. You may be confounding this with the Isthmus of Dover (featuring an ice bridge from Kent to Artois) , which was breached by the English Channel Flood about 400,000 years ago – still long before humans arrived.
Branson tweeted the title of him 2nd blog – “no lie can last forever”
My reply? “Like Jim Hansens”
Branson’s Formula One team finished dead last two years running, beaten even by a Spanish squad with barely any funds. Branson’s team soley used computer simulations to design the car and measure its performance. The team recently announced they are buying a windtunnel because the computer simulations are just not working out.
“So any time we’re heading to an ice age again that is what we can do to stop it.”
Whoa! So Branson is a man after my own heart! I, too, believe we should liberate more of our imprisoned CO2 into the atmosphere!
“And walking from Scotland to North Africa? Really?”
Well, you can’t do it on ice, but in principle that can be done today: Scotland to England to France (via Channel Tunnel) across Europe to Turkey and across the Bosphorus Bridge (I had to Google that one) south to the Sinai and across the Suez Canal Bridge (had to Google that one, too) to Africa. Easy peasy.
Branson is a famous dyslexic. Bet he has trouble with fellow travelers Tokyo Sexwale, Yao Tandong and Rosina Bierbaum come blog time.
Quaternary glaciation in the Atlas Mountains of North Africa
http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/geography/staff/documents/Morocco_Glaciation_Hughes_et_al_2004.pdf
To a still lesser extent glaciers existed in Africa, for example in the High Atlas, the mountains of Morocco, the Mount Atakor massif in southern Algeria, and several mountains in Ethiopia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_glacial_period
So there must have been glaciers in the north of Africa. Did they close the Straits of Gibraltar , I don’t know but I don’t think so .
The Straits of Gibraltar is now 700m deep so a sea level drop of 120m would not be enough to create dry land.
Russ in Houston says:
February 1, 2012 at 9:43 am
I cannot find anything showing that the ice sheets extended to North Africa. How does someone that inept become so wealthy?
He is clearly very successful at one thing – amassing money. Just like Al Gore and Bono, adept at parting people from their money whilst making sure that said people feel good about it, so that he can return later to further rummage around in their trouser pockets for any loose change he may have missed the first time. It’s marketing, and I agree with the late, great Bill Hicks on the subject of marketing.
Uh oh…whenever they make a bold pronouncement like this, usually the EXACT OPPOSITE is what occurs. I guess we’re headed for another Ice Age 🙁
It’s summer down there. I wonder if Hansen and Branson (nice rhyme) are running around in their Speedos roasting to death. I hope they remembered to take the Coppertone suntan oil.