Don't Interupt Us With Reality

Bjorn Lomborg, the Skeptical Environmentalist, fact-checks Obama's address on climate change.

But huge props to Obama, who is already delivering on one widely-derided promise, namely, that his election would mark "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow": this is from Dr. Lomborg:

Sea levels are rising, but they have been rising at least since the early 1800s. In the era of satellite measurements, the rise has not accelerated (actually we've seen a sea-level fall during the past two years).

The turning of the tide!  And people doubted The One...

Comments

[Barney's Evil Twin]

Reality was Obama's presser this afternoon when he introduced his energy/enviromental team. I think he mentioned that the rest of the country needs to become more like California.

Thank goodness the markets were closed when he rolled out his dream team.

[matt]

the waters subside when The One walks on them...all hail The One!

[G R]

There is already a climate carbon global tax. It's 2% on green investments in developing countries. Obama wants to have another go at his global GDP/GNP tax that Blair the socialist invented. NGOs are suing countries on the collection of the taxes and want to do the collecting.

http://www.actionaid.org/pages.aspx?PageID=34&ItemID=430

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/3543150/Oxfam-calls-for-34-billion-per-annum-to-help-poor-cope-with-climate-change.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081212/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_poland_climate_talks

[kim]

The sea level bit is controversial. The Jason satellite's data was not presented for a few months, and it is possible that the latest data again shows a rise. Argos oceanic buoys, which drift at 6,000 feet then surface periodically to transmit data showing temperature from 0 to 6,000 feet deep, also show slight cooling of the oceans for the last four years. Personally, I believe the sea level is steady or dropping reflecting thermal contraction. More importantly, the climate is the continuation of the oceans by other means. The heat content of the oceans is hundreds of times what the heat content of the atmosphere is.

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation has now flipped to its 30 year cooling phase. While it was in its warming phase, for the last quarter of the last century, the warming it gave was confused by the alarmists with the effect of CO2. Also, though no one is sure just how, or whether, the sun directs climate, it is acting somewhat peculiarly with its sunspots in hiding. One solar researcher, Bill Livingston, is expecting spots to disappear completely by 2015. What that means, no one is for sure.

We are cooling, folks, for how long, even kim doesn't know, but kim thinks it will be for 20-100 years. Plenty of time to figure out the precise effect of CO2 on climate, which is probably quite small.

It is amazing to watch the politicians of the world haggle over Carbon restrictions, when evident cooling is soon going to expose the fantasy. The root problem of the climate models is that they exaggerate the forcing effect of CO2 by ascribing an incorrectly high positive value to the feedback effect of water vapor. No one knows what that is, and my personal theory is that it is variable.
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[kim]

Chu, Obama's Energy pick, is a bright guy, but he is committed to the CO2=AGW paradigm. Only Palin and Thompson among our national politicians know the real story. Marc Morano, Inhofe's publicist, has recently released a list of 650 skeptical scientists whose devastating quotes may be found at Watts Up and other places. Richard Lindzen has written a revelatory critique of what went wrong in climate science. Vinod K. Dar, in June, in Right Side News, has a marvelous essay predicting the future with a thorough understanding of the economic and political geography of the world's energy.

It is little known that the bulk of the IPCC's statement about climate was written by as few as 50 scientists, and the Summary for Policymakers by under ten. This is a scam and a hoax of epic dimensions, illustrating the madness of crowds.
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[Disillusionist]

kim -

Read "The Chilling Stars", by the Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark (he's at the Danish Space Research Institute). His very convincing thesis is that the sun's magnetic field, as manifested in the "solar wind", greatly affects the number of cosmic rays reaching the Earth. The weakening magnetic field (few or no sunspots) results in higher concentrations of cosmic ray's reaching Earth's atmosphere, where their effect is to enhance cloud formation. In terms of greenhouse gases, water vapor beats CO2 a thousand to one. And of course, it's not even modeled by the IPCC (because it's so insanely complicated - see this week's weather forecast). Expect about 30 years of cooling, minimum.

[kim]

Yes, Svensmark's thesis is high on the list for how the sun effects the climate, and it is being tested as we speak, with results expected in three or four years. His thesis might explain how Lindzen's 'iris effect' works, and could explain how small changes in the output of the sun wreak changes of greater magnitude in climate. Note that this is effected through clouds, another thing that is poorly parameterized by the climate models. The action of clouds is quite variable. You, yourself, have noticed that daytime clouds cool the surface, and nightime clouds warm it.

I think I've never heard so loud
The quiet message in a cloud.
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[Rick Ballard]

China is now doing their part on CO2. They cut power consumption by 9.6% in November. Now there's a dedicated conservation effort. All the brainiac economists insist that China's economy is still growing, yet they've managed to cut consumption by that much. They sure must be efficient.

[bad]

China's not the US so they must be incredible.

[PeterUK]

I will believe the sea levels are rising when beach front property values come down.

This is all very similar to the economic bubble,based on figures and statistics.The actual data gathering is decidedly unimpressive.

[kim]

Yeah, the Gorebellied Fool bought an expensive San Francisco condo near the waterfront. If he's not a fool, he's an evil, greedy, bastard.
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[sbwaters]

[OT] To NPR Ombudsman

Instead of anecdotal anti-Bush comments do you suppose you could have reported what would have happened to the shoe-thrower under Saddam Hussein? There would have been nothing left but the shoe, if that.

You report about popularity, not what is important to society.

Someone needs to look at what is news from outside your box. Every day you miss the point.

[/OT]

[Pofarmer]

when he introduced his energy/enviromental team

names?

[Pofarmer]

The heat content of the oceans is hundreds of times what the heat content of the atmosphere is.

Exactly, and yet people will argue that the atmoshphere warms the oceans.

[Pofarmer]

Excellent sbw.

[PeterUK]

Climatology is a recent voodoo discipline akin to sociology,all measurements and hypothesis and very little else.Where is the Isaac Newton of climatology? All I see is shamans and hucksters.

[clarice]

"Shamans", "hucksters"--this discipline has our names all over it, PUK.
Or, should I call you Professor PUK?

[clarice]

OT--From Steyn Online:
"Brian Kennedy of the Claremont Institute had a grim piece in The Wall Street Journal the other day positing an Iranian-directed freighter somewhere off America’s shores capable of firing a nuclear-armed Shahab-3 missile that explodes in space over Chicago:

Gamma rays from the explosion, through the Compton Effect, generate three classes of disruptive electromagnetic pulses, which permanently destroy consumer electronics, the electronics in some automobiles and, most importantly, the hundreds of large transformers that distribute power throughout the U.S. All of our lights, refrigerators, water-pumping stations, TVs and radios stop running. We have no communication and no ability to provide food and water to 300 million Americans.

This is what is referred to as an EMP attack, and such an attack would effectively throw America back technologically into the early 19th century.

If Brian Kennedy were to switch it from an Iranian freighter to an Iranian freighter secretly controlled by a Halliburton subsidiary, he might have a scenario he could pitch to Paramount. But he’s got a tougher job pitching it to America. This is the Katrina nation: Our inclination is to ignore the warnings, wait for it to happen, and then blame the government for not doing more. That last part will prove a little more difficult after an EMP attack. I doubt there’ll be a blue-ribbon EMP Commission for Lee Hamilton to serve on, or much of a mass media for him to be interviewed by Larry King and Diane Sawyer on. “An EMP attack is not one from which America could recover as we did after Pearl Harbor,” writes Mr Kennedy. “Such an attack might mean the end of the United States and most likely the Free World.”

Are there really people out there who want to do that? End the entire Free World? The very term sounds faintly cobwebbed. When nukes were confined to five reasonably sane great powers, the left couldn’t get enough of Armageddon: There were movies, novels, plays, even children’s books about the day after, and the long nuclear winter. When it was crazies like Reagan and Thatcher with their fingers on the buttons, the liberal imagination feasted on imminent nuclear immolation. Now it’s Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-Il and who knows who else with their fingers on the buttons, and nobody cares: What’s the big deal? "

http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/1561/26

[PeterUK]

Clarice,
EMP,SCAM has a valve/tube manufacturing facility in China.Some of us are only going back to the early 20th century.

[clarice]

Heh--I esp love this bit:
"When it was crazies like Reagan and Thatcher with their fingers on the buttons, the liberal imagination feasted on imminent nuclear immolation. Now it’s Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-Il and who knows who else with their fingers on the buttons, and nobody cares: What’s the big deal? "

[Danube of Thought]

I remember my father telling me about EMP, and what it could do, in 1970 when he was head of the Defense Nuclear Agency (it was known as the Defense Atomic Support Agency at the time). No one has taken it very seriously in the intervening years, as far as I know. I'm not sure what to make of it.

[Rick Ballard]

"All I see is shamans and hucksters."

Lehman is dead so one of them is a ghost. Goldman-Sachs is heading for Citigroup zombie status (who the hell would be stupid enough to leave money with GS - even with FDIC insurance behind it)?. The Soros and Rogers "great commodity play" (based in large part on the AGW/Peaker scam) is unwinding faster than the chimerical Chinese economy and although they both continue to lie through their teeth about their "performance" (like Madoff) there is no reason to suppose that commodities will quickly "come back" to the idiotic levels which would be necessary for them to stay afloat.

Chu is going to find himself in the "Who ya gonna believe, me or your lyin' eyes." position before he's even sworn in if the Farmers' Almanac is correct. He goes in the "shaman" category, as Luboš Motl notes.

I'm still waiting for a sane economist to note that it hard to find a tax more regressive than an Air Tax. Or one with the brains to note that an economic slowdown has the same effect on CO2 reduction as any of the schemes proposed to date. I remain unsurprised by the lack of comment - after all, they can't quite bring themselves to acknowledge what a 9.6% reduction in energy usage means in terms of the "robust" Chinese economy.

[Pofarmer]

after all, they can't quite bring themselves to acknowledge what a 9.6% reduction in energy usage means in terms of the "robust" Chinese economy.

Maybe they just started airing up their tires?

[matt]

The EMP threat has always been there. Not sure if it takes a special device, but it was always @ 100 miles up that it took effect. It would fry most electronic components, which would take out most anything built after the early 70's. A good reason to invest in a pre-1970's car.

Most military electronics and some mission as well as some special application medical stuff is EMP protected, but the effect on the industrial base would be considerable. Better keep those blueprints and all that paper around for a while.

All written up in reports back in the late 60's and 1970's. Maybe we need to bring back the neutron bomb now. After all, it is a "green" device.

[kim]

dailytech.com has an up-to-date article on sea level.
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[Rick Ballard]

"Maybe they just started airing up their tires?"

Could be. Could be one billion Chinese fists squeezing the yuan in the hand rather than spending it too. I'm still looking for the "brilliant" western economist who has had the wit to describe the fact that Asian pension programs consist of children. When that "one child per family" slave gets dumped by the factory down on the littoral two parents begin starving in the interior. I'm sure that there is a seasonal drop in power consumption when the last of the Christmas shipments are made in October. I'm also sure that it is no where near 10%.

It's rather amusing to watch the ho hum attitude of the oil market to OPECs "big" news that they are going to cut production by 2 mbd. Where would they store it if they didn't cut? The total "surplus" production will be over 6 mbd when the 2 mbd worth of new production scheduled to come on line in '09 becomes available. The news on China isn't lost on the oil market traders.

[PeterUK]

Mr Ballard,

"I'm sure that there is a seasonal drop in power consumption when the last of the Christmas shipments are made in October. I'm also sure that it is no where near 10%."

I have it from a large scale importer that he has canceled some large orders from China.No customers mean no economic boom.

[larry]

EMP, and what it could do Posted by: Danube of Thought | December 16, 2008 at 09:52 AM Only guessing, mind you, but I bet it's in the air order of battle. Closer on the spectrum to flak suppression than world bomb.

[sophy]

Please do not hesitate to have Metin2 gold . It is funny.