That Swindle again

We’ve talked about the big swindle here before, you know the one entitled “The Great Global Warming Swindle”.

Well, here’s a great dismantling of that “documentary” by George Monbiot:

Distortions, Falsehoods, Fabrications

America is doomed

The things that Bush can say and do while maintaing a straight face are just amazing. His pandering to his oil industry buddies knows no bounds.

He is perfectly OK with authorizing drilling for oil off the pristine coast of Alaska, but he has just put a freeze on solar farms in the desert because he is worried about their potential impact on the desert’s environment.

This is the same guy who said America needs to fix its addiction to oil.

The idiocy (or is it dishonesty?) is just absolutely staggering!

Scientist warns of ‘last chance’ on warming

Exactly 20 years after he first warned Congress about the dangers of Global Warming, Jim Hansen, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Sciences, told Congress on Monday that the world long ago passed the “dangerous level” for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and needs to get back to 1988 levels. He said Earth’s atmosphere can only stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises.

“We’re toast if we don’t get on a very different path,” Mr. Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute of Space Sciences who is sometimes called the godfather of global warming science, told The Associated Press. “This is the last chance.”

Read the whole story…

Report from the Subcommittee on Global Change Research

A Report by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research, a Bush appointed comittee.

http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap3-3/final-report/default.htm

NASA will need to fess-up on DSCOVR

Looks like NASA will have to come clean on their mishandling of the $100M DSCOVR satellite. This amazing satellite would enable us to precisely measure how much energy hits the planet and how much is reflected and re-emitted. This would give us the total energy budget and would give us a very clear understanding of how much extra energy is being added to the system. DSCOVR would also be able to precisely measure the global surface temperature of the Earth.

Despite the satellite having been completed at a cost of $100M, NASA mysteriously decided to mothball it, and refused any offers by other agencies and other countries to launch it and manage it. Obviously, this would be a very inconvenient scientific tool for the Bush administration and their energy industry friends.

Now looks like Congress is going to force NASAкомпютри втора употреба to provide some answers and move forward with it.

Carbon and Methane in Atmosphere Up Sharply

A new report from the NOAA shows that CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere is accelerating. More worrisome though is the fact that after a decade of steady readings, methane (CH4) is now sharply up, potentially  indicating that the dreaded positive feedback scenario where methane hydrate locked in the permafrost is being released rapidly.

Keep in mind that CH4 is several times more effective than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Also, for the conspiracy theorists out there, this is the NOAA, an American organization, so they can’t possibly be falsifying data to get more grant money given the views of the Bush administration.

The latest government data about the state of the Earth’s climate.mebeli

Political Manipulation of EPA Science

It’s no secret that the Bush Administration and the Harper government both censor scientists on a regular basis, making sure that nothing that could harm their energy industry bodies gets out. Scientists from NASA, NOAA, EPA, and Environment Canada have complained about this fact for several years. The EPA even famously cancelled a report on the environment and global warming after the White House gutted out all the hard facts on climate change.

Now a survey of EPA scientists on this very subject just came out, and it isn’t pretty!

Political Manipulation of EPA Science, by the Numbers

Here’s the whole cynical breakdown of the sad report, in the words of the Union of Concerned Scientists. (Note that not all respondents answered all questions, so response percentages are derived from different total respondents.)

  • 889 (60%) scientists said they had personally experienced at least one instance of political interference in their work over the last five years.
  • 783 (51%) said EPA policies do not let scientists speak freely to the news media about their findings. Scientists also shared anecdotes about being barred from presenting their research at conferences and their difficulties clearing research publication articles with EPA managers.
  • 492 (31%) felt they could not speak candidly within the agency about concerns about the EPA’s work without fear of retribution, and 382 (24 percent) felt they could not do so outside the agency.
  • 409 (43%) of the 969 agency veterans with more than 10 years of EPA experience, said interference has occurred more often in the past five years than in the previous five-year period. Only 43 scientists (4%) said interference occurred less often.
  • 394 (31%) scientists personally experienced frequent or occasional “statements by EPA officials that misrepresent scientists’ findings.”
  • 285 (22%) scientists said they frequently or occasionally personally experienced “selective or incomplete use of data to justify a specific regulatory outcome.”
  • 224 (17%) scientists said they had been “directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information from an EPA scientific document.”
  • Nearly 100 scientists identified the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as the primary culprit. In scientists’ responses to an essay question, “How could the integrity of scientific work produced by the EPA best be improved?,” OMB took center stage.

(Source: The Daily Green)

Harper government gets panned by prestigious Nature Magazine

Harper government gives science a raw deal, journal Nature says

Some Coral Reefs may have natural protection

Some good news for a change. A new study shows that some coral reefs appear to be protected by a natural oceanic temperature control system in their local area.

The Toronto Sun Tabloid

The Toronto Sun published a column by Lorrie Goldstein, and that column showcases the outstanding (not) quality of journalism in that tabloid. Goldstein obviously has no understanding of climate science whatsoever and so he resorts to insults and ridicule to attack a view he obviously despises.

I wrote them a comment to complain about this ridiculous article:

Lorrie Goldstein is a complete idiot and the Toronto Sun should ashamed for having published such a misguided diatribe on such an important subject. But at the same time, maybe I should thank you for proving that the climate change deniers have lost the battle, and their arguments are purely based on emotions and politics rather than facts and science.

If you are really so convinced that Global Warming is a non-issue, why don’t you present some scientific data and some rational arguments?

I suspect that is because you have no idea what you are talking about, you don’t understand the basic facts of physics behind the greenhouse effect, and you’ve never read a single piece of climate science research. What you don’t get is that it isn’t that scientists can’t tolerate disagreement with their views. In fact, science is completely built on arguments and counterarguments and having to meet strict standards of proof before a theory is accepted. What they have no tolerance for is people like you, who know absolutely nothing about science, but are motivated by politics or corporate greed and pretend to be making scientific arguments.

Absolutely shameful.