Global Warming Wrapup – Hansen A Fraud; Australia Turning Against Emission Trading System; Ethanol Boom Increasing Pesticide Use; DNC Carbon-Offset Program Producing No Electricity

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A little roundup of global warming news that should perk some interest. First there is Christopher Bookers editorial in The Telegraph about the fraud known as James Hansen:

There are four internationally recognised sources of data on world temperatures, but the one most often cited by supporters of global warming is that run by James Hansen of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).

Hansen has been for 20 years the world’s leading scientific advocate of global warming (and Al Gore’s closest ally). But in the past year a number of expert US scientists have been conducting a public investigation, through scientific blogs, which raises large question marks over the methods used to arrive at his figures.

First they noted the increasingly glaring discrepancy between the figures given by GISS, which show temperatures continuing to race upwards, and those given by the other three main data sources, which all show temperatures having fallen since 1998, dropping dramatically in the past year to levels around the average of the past 30 years.

Two sets of data, from satellites, go back to 1979: one produced by Dr Roy Spencer, formerly of Nasa, now at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, the other by Remote Sensing Systems. Their figures correspond closely with those produced by the Hadley Centre for Climate Studies of our own Met Office, based on global surface temperature readings.

Right out on their own, however, are the quite different figures produced by GISS which, strangely for a body sponsored by Nasa, rely not on satellites but also on surface readings. Hansen’s latest graph shows temperatures rising since 1880, at accelerating speed in the past 10 years.

The other three all show a flattening out after 2001 and a marked downward plunge of 0.6 degrees Celsius in 2007/8, equivalent to almost all the net warming recorded in the 20th century. (For comparisons see “Is the Earth getting warmer, or colder?” by Steven Goddard on The Register website.)

Bill Hennessey has a few points of his own on Hansen:

  • Hansen’s monthly temperature reports are wildly out of line with every other global temperature measure, and the delta increases each month
  • Three of the four global temperature measures have shown world temps flat or cooling since 2001, with Hansen the exception
  • Hansen’s NASA rejects satellite temperatures, relying instead on ground-based mercury systems, while the other three would kill for the NASA satellite data
  • Satellite data–of both temperature and ocean levels–increasingly disagree with Hansen’s reports
  • Hansen, unlike the leading scientists of the other three bodies, stands alone in calling for international dictatorship to combat global warming
  • Hansen is the most politically active of the leading scientists in the field
  • Hansen has a lifetime’s reputation to lose if he’s wrong

In Australia the debate over a proposed Emission Trading System is fast becoming one on the cost of the program, and if its worth it to do if the worlds worst polluters are not doing it also:

DESPITE breathless expectations to the contrary, Malcolm Turnbull will not turn this week’s two-day Liberal Party debate on the shape of an emissions trading system into a defacto leadership contest with Brendan Nelson.

If Turnbull loses the fight inside the shadow cabinet over Nelson’s bid to make the introduction of an Australian ETS conditional on the big emitters China, India and the US committing to a global ETS framework first, the shadow treasurer will fall into line. The word committing is important. Nelson will only be demanding timetables – not action from the global giants – as his price for introducing an Australian ETS.

~~~

Meanwhile furious work is under way behind the scenes ahead of Tuesday’s shadow cabinet meeting and then a gathering of the full party room on Wednesday to find a compromise between the position being argued by Turnbull and environment spokesman Greg Hunt on one side, and Nelson on the other.

Turnbull and Hunt want a 2012 start-up date for an ETS with no conditions, the original position recommended in the Shergold report commissioned by former prime minister John Howard.

But there is a fall-back option for the Coalition: an in-principle acceptance of Nelson’s conditionality regarding the US, China and India, but tempered by the introduction of a slow-track ETS in Australia with both low carbon pricing and implementation trajectories as the trade-off for the big emitters not making the grade post Copenhagen 2009.

Nelson is prepared to consider this option, but only as one among others. Hunt, wanting to avoid a splintering confrontation between Turnbull and Nelson, will be pushing this hard.

The search for compromise marks a dawning recognition inside the Liberal Party that Nelson may have instinctively read the politics of the issue better than Turnbull; that while his condition-based stance on an ETS may be opportunistic it may also be more in tune with community sentiment than the hairy-chested approach taken by Kevin Rudd: an ETS by 2010 and damn the torpedoes.

~~~

Former CSIRO scientist Dennis Jensen has been leading the charge against an ETS inside the Liberal Party room during the past few weeks. Jensen isn’t just opposed to an ETS. He doesn’t believe climate change necessarily exists.

“First, on the science,” Jensen told me. “The data on global temperatures, sea ice extent, tropical upper tropospheric heating and ocean temperature suggests the danger to these do not match with predictions made by the (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Having said that, even if you agreed with the IPCC position, Australia going it alone, or becoming involved in an ETS without India, China and the US is pointless.

“The danger for us becoming involved in this scheme is that we will damage our relative trading and economic position compared with those nations that continue to emit. Even if our industry does not go offshore, the economic competitiveness of our industries will be reduced due to increased costs. I am not in favour of sacrificing Australian industry, and Australian jobs and economic competitiveness, on the basis of dubious science, potential increases in the emitted carbon dioxide ‘problem’ and certainly any improvement in the overall ‘global warming’ situation, even accepting the orthodoxy.”

Then there is the news that the corn boom for ethanol has lessened interest in sustainable farming and is resulting in a increase of fertilizer and pesticide use:

MES, Iowa – Most farmers would be pleased with the yields Matt Liebman can get from his corn field – 200 bushels an acre or more.

The average yield last year in Boone County, where Liebman’s head-high corn is growing this summer, was 181 bushels per acre. The national average last year was 151 bushels.

Better yet, Liebman gets his strong yields with far less fertilizer and pesticide than conventional growers use. Applying less fertilizer saves money and reduces polluted runoff.

But Liebman, a Berkeley-trained professor of agronomy at nearby Iowa State University, knows few farmers are going to pay attention to his methods. Not when corn is selling for $6 to $7 a bushel, triple what it did just three years ago.

Farmers are planting more corn than they have in decades, raising concerns that the heavy use of chemicals needed to produce the crop will worsen pollution in rivers and streams.

Following Liebman’s sustainable farming practices would mean a farmer could only plant corn every three or four years on the same ground. Other years, they’d have to plant soybeans and crops like alfalfa and red clover to replace the nitrogen the corn has sucked out of the soil.

“I don’t tell people this is what they should do. I tell them this is something they can do,” Liebman said. “We need to be cognizant of not just production but quality of life and quality of the environment.”

This is hilarious:

The eastern Colorado wind turbine tapped for the Democratic National Convention’s carbon-offset program has one problem: It doesn’t generate any electricity. Convention organizers are now being questioned for their eagerness to market those credits to delegates.

The DNC has contracted with Vermont-based NativeEnergy to offer delegates “Green challenge” carbon offsets to soften the environmental impact of convention travel. That money is then invested in carbon-free “green” energy sources around the country, including a wind turbine installed this year by the Wray School District RD-2. But a Face The State investigation reveals the district’s turbine has never produced marketable energy due to massive equipment malfunctions.

Environmentalists preventing the US from getting at energy sources….shocker:

Amid the rolling hills and verdant pastures of south central Virginia an unlikely new front in the battle over nuclear energy is opening up. How it is decided will tell us a lot about whether this country is willing to get serious about addressing its energy needs.

In Pittsylvania County, just north of the North Carolina border, the largest undeveloped uranium deposit in the United States — and the seventh largest in the world, according to industry monitor UX Consulting — sits on land owned by neighbors Henry Bowen and Walter Coles. Large uranium deposits close to the surface are virtually unknown in the U.S. east of the Mississippi River. And that may be the problem.

Virginia is one of just four states that ban uranium mining. The ban was put in place in 1984, to calm fears that had been sparked by the partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor on Three Mile Island outside of Harrisburg, Pa. in 1979.

Messrs. Bowen and Coles, who last year formed a company called Virginia Uranium, are asking the state to determine whether mining uranium really is a hazard and, if not, to lift the ban. But they’ve run into a brick wall of environmental activists who raise the specter of nuclear contamination and who are determined to prevent scientific studies of the issue.

~~~

James Kelly, who directed the nuclear engineering program at the University of Virginia for many years, says that fears about uranium mining are wildly overblown. “It’s an aesthetic nightmare, but otherwise safe in terms of releasing any significant radioactivity or pollution,” he told me. “It would be ugly to look at, but from the perspective of any hazard I wouldn’t mind if they mined across the street from me.”

The situation is rich with irony as well as uranium. While you can’t mine yellowcake, it is perfectly legal in Virginia to process enriched uranium into usable nuclear fuel, which is somewhat dangerous to handle. A subsidiary of the French nuclear giant Areva operates a fuel fabrication facility in Lynchburg 50 miles from Chatham. It has been praised by Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, as a good corporate citizen. The state is also home to four commercial nuclear reactors, which provide Virginians with 35% of their electricity. And, of course, the U.S. Navy operates nuclear ships out of Norfolk, Va.

Across the country, there are 104 commercial nuclear reactors. They consume 67 million pounds of uranium annually, the vast majority of which is imported from Australia, Canada and former Soviet republics. The 200-acre Coles Hill deposit (Mr. Coles’s family has lived on the spot since 1785) is thought to contain nearly twice that amount. For Messrs. Bowen and Coles, with the long-term price of uranium near $80 per pound, that means they are sitting on about $10 billion worth of ore. But for the rest of us, it means they are sitting on an opportunity to make the U.S. more energy self-sufficient.

And finally this letter to the editor in The Province is an excellent smackdown of the elitism shown by the man-made global warming crowd and Max Cameron in this editorial:

The earth’s climate has been changing for 4.5 billion years, and there’s nothing he and his like-minded crowd can do to stop it.

But the earth has not warmed since 1998. We have entered a cooling phase, and all the warming of the past 100 years has been wiped out.

None of this showed up on any of the climate-change models.

For Cameron to insinuate that skeptics do not care about the environment or the future of our children shows an unbearable elitist’s arrogance.

Skeptics agree that we have to work hard to gain efficiency and become less reliant on oil, coal and gas. But they do not want to hear half-truths or pseudo-science trumpeted by eco-activists and gravy-train-riding scientists.

The single biggest enemy of the environment and planet Earth, Mr. Cameron, is poverty. Nothing else comes even close.

Just a few of the stories over the last few days that provide some fodder for discussion on the merits of AGW.

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The real data has all gone against the hoax. There is no proof, no CO2 warming signature in the atmosphere, so what did you expect. They do what leftist always do, they lie.

Like the original environmental hoax, Rachel Carson and the DDT hoax, which has killed millions of African children from malaria, it started as lies and now has been proved to be all lies. There was no science in her works, only feelings. Oddly enough her first book said global warming was natural.

PBS discussion

PAUL SOLMAN: Broecker’s colleague, Columbia physicist Klaus Lackner, is working on one of many solutions: a way to actually remove carbon dioxide from the air. It all started with his daughter, Claire’s, eighth-grade science project.

CLAIRE LACKNER, Student: We went to the pet store, and we bought a little fish pump. And then we added sodium hydroxide to the water and just ran this thing overnight with the fish pump, running through the test tube, and then looked back to see in the morning how much CO-2 we collected.

PAUL SOLMAN: They collected enough to get Claire’s dad, Klaus, thinking about a real-life application: capturing CO-2 from the air on a scale that would slow global warming.

KLAUS LACKNER: I felt this is feasible and it should technologically be possible. The other thing I realized, the amount of CO-2 in the air is so large that it actually has a chance of being economically viable.

PAUL SOLMAN: From the get-go, Lackner saw the future. Six years later, he’s got a simple working model.

KLAUS LACKNER: The most sophisticated part is this little device over here called the GasHound, which actually measures the carbon dioxide content in the air it pulls through.

PAUL SOLMAN: What is it in the outside world?

KLAUS LACKNER: So it is 380 outside. We already passed that. We are now at 520, 530. And it seems to settle around this value, which is a reflection of the fact that lots of people are in here right now.

PAUL SOLMAN: And we’re breathing in oxygen.

KLAUS LACKNER: And we’re breathing in it. And we are breathing out…

PAUL SOLMAN: We’re breathing out…

KLAUS LACKNER: … CO-2.

PAUL SOLMAN: The rest of the contraption draws air through a solution of sodium hydroxide, which removes carbon dioxide by chemically bonding with it. The little rings extend the surface area to allow maximum bonding.

KLAUS LACKNER: So the air which comes through the fan into here has given up two-thirds, three-quarters of its CO-2, as it blows out here. It’s now at 167, 166 parts per million.

PAUL SOLMAN: So it took out three-quarters of the CO-2?

KLAUS LACKNER: Right. Right. Exactly.

PAUL SOLMAN: The idea now is to scale the model up to the size of a football goalpost and suck carbon dioxide out of the air with a vengeance.

KLAUS LACKNER: Such a device could collect the CO-2 from 4,000 people or, alternatively, the CO-2 from 15,000 cars.

PAUL SOLMAN: Because greenhouse gases, once emitted, spread hither thither all over the globe, Lackner says his carbon-capture devices could be planted literally anywhere.

He claims 250,000 of these things worldwide — admittedly, a huge number — could neutralize all the carbon dioxide currently being emitted. Half a million could get carbon dioxide back down to pre-industrial levels in a matter of decades, he says. And, as the technology develops, the cost figures to go down.

KLAUS LACKNER: With off-the-shelf items we have right now, I can drive the cost of CO-2 capture from air below $100 per ton of CO-2. And I feel that, if you pursue this longer, the ultimate end game will be below $30 per ton of CO-2.

PAUL SOLMAN: That would be about 25 cents extra for a gallon of gas, says Lackner.

Her is a great link to read more about this CO2 scrubber

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/31/carbonemissions.climatechange

Now the true agenda of the environmentalist shines through. It is not about greenhouse gases, global warming or CO2 in the atmosphere. It is about control.

August 1, 2008 article

Environmental activist groups such as Greenpeace have consistently opposed similar technologies, such as carbon capture and sequestration, because they do not address what they see as the root of the problem.

On May 5, for example, the activist groups Students Promoting Environmental Action and Save Our Cumberland Mountains demonstrated in Knoxville, Tennessee against carbon sequestration. Repeatedly citing a Greenpeace position paper, they argued eliminating the use of coal, not reducing atmospheric CO2, should be society’s primary goal.

“Our position is we need to start phasing out coal as soon as possible,” said Cathie Bird of Save Our Cumberland Mountains.

“Carbon capture and storage does not make coal clean,” read a banner hoisted by protesters.

Leading energy analysts agreed with the scientists, rather than the protesters.

“If CO2 emission reduction is a goal, then investigating and investing in strategies for capitalizing on our existing infrastructure efficiently and effectively makes more sense than throwing away reasonable options simply because they don’t align with a political philosophy about our energy economy,” said Amy Kaleita, an environmental policy fellow at the Pacific Research Institute.

“This is just one more piece of evidence that environmentalists aren’t concerned about solving a problem,” said Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis. “Every problem, as they see it, is one way to restrict people’s lifestyles, and if you come up with a technological fix that can solve a problem but doesn’t require sacrifice and lets us go about our business the way we were before, they’re not happy about it, even if it solves the problem.

about the fraud known as James Hansen

What?!? Hansen a fraud? B-but…he’s 60 Minutes’ go-to guy on climate change just like Tyler Drumheller is their go-to expert on pre-war intell and Michael Scheuer the foreign policy/bin Laden/Jihad expert.

The depressing thing is that it is very difficult to get hundreds of millions or so people who have bought into the global warming hoax, and have invested their time, money, and votes supporting “green” organizations and political parties, to admit that they were wrong – especially since those organizations (plus the media) will refuse to willingly admit error and lose face.

It will take at least another 10 or more years for the evidence to become so overwhelming that a grassroots movement against the global warming scam might get enough traction to reverse some of the economic damage that has been done.

In the meantime, we can expect the OPEC countries to continue to get absurdly rich, and consumers will continue to get pummeled with high taxes, food prices, and all other energy-related costs.

The depressing thing is that it is very difficult to get hundreds of millions or so people who have bought into the global warming hoax

An easy thing to do, in the light of the shoddy education most people receive in math and science in western society.

Hansen uses temperature measurements that are highly compromised by the “urban heat island effect” and even further skewed by placing the thermometers in some of the hottest places in those islands.
http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/2007/05/how_not_to_measure_temperature.html

There is an awful lot of material on this, though only a few sources are carrying that info. Google “how not to measure temperature” (to narrow it down, you can do an advanced search on that phrase for the site “wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/” but you will still get most without that.)

SPECIFICALLY, to see the extent of the problem, go here …
http://www.m4gw.com:2005/m4gw/2008/07/makin_up_climate_data_from_jun.html#more
It shows the degree of bias and the number of temperature measuring stations that are effected. The vast majority give artificially high readings because they are located within little heat islands within a larger heat island. Hansen’s data is garbage.

That’s my point Skye. They would rather believe Al Gore or some Hollywood celebrity than a bunch of eggheads explaining the facts.

Wray School District Wind Turbine Project – Update

Sometimes ordinary people who attempt to do extraordinary things encounter unforeseen challenges. The school district in the small, rural town of Wray, CO has faced a few challenges they could not predict in developing their renewable energy project. Their wind turbine, the first large-scale wind turbine in our nation to be owned and operated commercially by a school district, was scheduled to be online by now. But a malfunctioning power converter created unavoidable delays. Replacing this component was further complicated when the U.S. distributor of the Danish-made wind turbine recently changed ownership. The malfunctioning component is now being replaced, so the turbine should be fully operational in early August. The wind turbine will generate electricity, environmental benefits, and educational opportunities, as well as reduced energy costs for the Wray School District.

NativeEnergy’s unique forward stream model brings upfront financing to help new renewable energy projects like the Wray School District wind turbine get built. Once the project achieves commercial operation we purchase the offsets on behalf of our clients. The time period over which the offsets are generated commences after commercial operation is achieved, which, in the case of the Wray School District project will be after the component is replaced on its wind turbine.

This situation clearly demonstrates why new renewable energy projects like this project need upfront capital – including the financing provided by NativeEnergy’s community – to overcome challenges on their path to operation. It also demonstrates that well-designed and financed community-based projects can be successfully developed, and importantly, that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.

For more information about our methodology, detailed answers on commonly asked questions relating to carbon offsets, e.g., “How do you estimate how much CO2 pollution is reduced?”, “Are some carbon offsets better than others?”, and “What if my project breaks down?”, please visit our web site at: http://www.nativeenergy.com/pages/faq_s/15.php. For our terms and conditions, please visit: http://www.nativeenergy.com/pages/terms_and_conditions/93.php

10/23/2007 | AWE ANNOUNCES USDA GRANTS

Americas Wind Energy Corp. (AWE), a manufacturer of medium-sized wind turbines, has announced U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grants for projects involving rural businesses in Iowa and Oregon that carried the company’s wind turbines.

Four projects will receive $500,000 each from the USDA with the goals of creating economic opportunity and reducing energy costs for farmers, ranchers and small businesses, according to the department.

One of these awards has resulted in an order for an AWE 900 kW wind turbine for installation in 2008. AWE expects additional wind turbines to be ordered in the next few weeks.

More of our tax dollars being flushed and exploited

July 26, 2008
Face The State Staff Report

WRAY – The eastern Colorado wind turbine tapped for the Democratic National Convention’s carbon-offset program has one problem: It doesn’t generate any electricity. Convention organizers are now being questioned for their eagerness to market those credits to delegates.

The DNC has contracted with Vermont-based NativeEnergy to offer delegates “Green challenge” carbon offsets to soften the environmental impact of convention travel. That money is then invested in carbon-free “green” energy sources around the country, including a wind turbine installed this year by the Wray School District RD-2. But a Face The State investigation reveals the district’s turbine has never produced marketable energy due to massive equipment malfunctions.

The school district held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the wind turbine February 15th. Officials soon discovered, however, that the turbine was incapable of producing its intended output. “We flipped it back off and on about 10 times since then,” said Superintendent Ron Howard. “It has run, it will run, but it won’t ramp itself up to full capacity.”

In the meantime, the project has been touted by Gov. Bill Ritter’s administration as an example of government innovation in clean energy, with district officials still attempting to reassure residents of the technology’s long-term potential. Area residents tell Face The State the blades do turn some days, even though the turbine is not producing electricity. The district Web site reads, “As you note the blades turning evenly in the wind…this ‘dream turned into reality’ is providing an environmentally safe source of power to our community.”

In a feature story in Saturday’s Rocky Mountain News, reporter Jerd Smith claimed that 20 percent of Wray’s power is generated by what it calls “a windmill that toils day and night producing clean electricity.” Smith’s report professed that the Wray project is “at the heart” of the DNC’s carbon-credit program.

The Rocky report also described the school wind turbine as “a project that generates thousands of dollars for the region’s cash-strapped schools,” but provided no financial data regarding any energy sales to date.

Howard says the turbine requires replacement equipment, which is scheduled to be installed this month. “It’s a new technology, so they don’t have the bugs out of it,” he said. “Since there’s so many people watching [the turbine], they might be better served to go to a more reliable model.”

State Sen. Greg Brophy, a Wray Republican, says residents feel let down by town leaders. “Most of the people out here were very excited about it,” he said. “But nobody likes to be misled. The ‘green’ DNC convention is an absolute sham.”

Despite the fact the wind turbine does not produce energy, that hasn’t stopped the district from cashing in on the project. In addition to the carbon credits sold to the DNC and others through NativeEnergy, Howard says the district receives downtime compensation from Americas Wind Energy, Inc., the firm that built the apparatus. “The money that we’re making isn’t necessarily coming from production,” he said.

When asked to quantify those payments, Howard would only describe them as “substantial.” While the details of school district contracts and finances are public information, Howard refused to disclose that information. “I’m not going to tell you how much money we are receiving from AWE while we’re waiting for this thing to run,” he said. Face The State has since requested documents from the district under the Colorado Open Records Act.

Howard is similarly tight lipped on the district’s income from carbon offsets. “I’m also not going to tell you how much we got from the sale of the green tax for green energy,” he said. “That’s all there is to it.”

Copy/Paste… the news of federal grants (read, our tax dollars…) going to Oregon is the height of idiocy. Case in point… we’re “awash” in electricity out here, according to the very progressive fish wrapper, The Oregonian.

The Northwest is awash in electric power this spring.

Rivers are swollen. Columbia River dams are running full bore. Wind farm blades are spinning.

That should be good news for the Northwest, where hydropower is cheap and wind is a leader in renewable energy. And it should be good news for California, a huge electricity consumer that often sucks up Oregon’s springtime surplus.

But a doubling of wind-power supplies and an unusually concentrated surge in water levels have challenged this season’s power operations like never before.

“You throw a spiky late runoff into the equation, and a little extra wind, and it definitely gets interesting,” said Kieran Connolly, a power manager for Bonneville Power Administration.

The result: wasted power generation, excessive spill through the dams and a sometimes frenzied juggling of dam and transmission schedules.

~~~

Oregon and Washington can’t use all the electricity that’s available. And southbound transmission lines that are at capacity can’t take the extra power California consumers otherwise would eagerly devour.

In some cases, power producers are paying customers to take electricity off their hands.

Operators of the Columbia-Snake River dams say there’s enough give-and-take in the system to handle large fluctuations in water flow and wind generation. But pressures have steadily increased, and they’ll intensify as more and more wind power comes into play.

BPA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation manage 14 major dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers. They face a slew of requirements, from meeting electricity demand to protecting fish to preventing floods.

When water levels jump as quickly as they did this season and are squeezed into a short time, the difficulties close in.

For one thing, reservoir capacity is limited, so system operators can’t store all the extra water that flows downriver. They can’t allow flooding, either, so they turn to the dams’ turbines and spillways to even things out.

Further, they can’t generate power any time they want. They must have a market for the megawatts. Because electricity demand in the region ebbs in the spring — the heat’s turned off, and so are the air conditioners — high water can quickly become a resource without an outlet via the turbines.

That leaves the spillways, which divert flows around the dams’ turbines. The corps manages spills in the spring to help juvenile salmon migrate downriver. If releases are too powerful, dissolved gas in the water can rise to dangerous levels and give fish a potentially lethal condition akin to the bends, a diver’s disease.

continue reading at link above….

Ah yes… just what Oregon needs. More wind farms….

Sorry… meant to add these pertinent paragraphs from the fish wrapper article above…

Another variable has blown in to challenge the system: the wind.

Wind-turbine capacity in the Columbia Gorge has doubled in the past year, bringing clean energy onto the grid but more stress to dam operations. The thermal winds that whip through the river corridor crank up in the spring — the very time Columbia River flows peak.

BPA is responsible for blending wind power into the grid. Each hour, wind farm operators give the agency their best forecasts of the megawatts to come. BPA uses the schedules to anticipate changes in hydro generation, then deals with last-minute variations as they occur.

Hydro is considered a good complement to wind because its generation is relatively easy to manipulate. Still, with so many demands on the system and wind’s precise velocity impossible to predict, BPA has found itself scrambling to keep the system in balance.

Several weeks ago, when an unexpected wind surge hit, Bart McManus, a BPA power manager, said he came close to telling wind developers he couldn’t take the generation that exceeded the forecast. “So far, we haven’t had to do that.”

I repeat… just what OR needs is more wind farms. And on my nicket to boot!

“Are some carbon offsets better than others?”, … — native energy

Yes, like the ones I plant in my yard. The palm tree, and the citrus, and the pomegranate I grew from seed, and the olive trees I’m sproutin – not to mention the dozens of vegetables I plant every year. And then, when the veggies are ripe, I eat them. I even make my own sauerkraut from the cabbage I grow, and then produce a little wind, myself, though not enough to power any generators (maybe I should look into that?). But then that’s the problem with a lot of wind generators, isn’t it?…. down time when the wind she no blow… (among other technical difficulties).
http://www.aweo.org/ProblemWithWind.html

I have heard they are good for culling the ever diminshing wild bird populations, as well.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5108666.stm

But seriously, I have nothing against them, as long as my tax money isn’t going to subsidize them instead of me. Nothing personal. If you can make it on your own, and make an honest profit, I’m all for it.

This quote: “environmental activists who raise the specter of nuclear contamination and who are determined to prevent scientific studies of the issue” has alot in common with Hansen’s efforts to ignore the scientific data NASA has collected using Satellites…. The very same satellites that the Globaloney crowd insisted would prove global warming is real.

The problem of earthbound temperature monitoring stations is well documented. Furthermore, none of them would detect the “hot spots” in the upper atmosphere that would exist if there was a greenhouse effect.

Hansen and company can cook the figures and get away with it simply because there is a “news” media and political constituency that willfully accepts the snake oil he is trying to sell.

Sadly, even when the massive fraud of manmande global warming is fully exposed I don’t expect that the criminals who perpetrated this fraud on the world will be punished.

<Hydro is considered a good complement to wind because,…”
……..what, it actually produces electricity?

The technology is probably decades away, and understanding the environmental impact, even longer.
http://www.physorg.com/news116611252.html

Meanwhile, they are having a little TURBINE TROUBLE (and I don’t mean the Mid Eastern kind)

That is NOT what I call “environmentally friendly”

After you suck all the CO2 out of the air…what are the plants (that give off O2) going to live on?
Increased Co2 and warmth, makes more vegetation grow. Which in turn reduces Co2 levels and gives off more O2. and reduces temps of the surface through various means.

Most excess Co2 is absorbed in the Ocean..where it is held for years before being released from the bottom like a bellows. The amount of CO2 released from the Ocean is exponential compared to everything Gore is talking about.

After you suck all the CO2 out of the air

Strawman alert!

WD-40 IS AT IT AGAIN – malfunctioning droid alert!

That’s not a “straw man,” it’s hyperbole (“A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect, as in I could sleep for a year or This book weighs a ton.”), because we could never suck all the CO2 out of the air.

But, since there is more CO2 in the air now, crops are more productive and food supplies more available for the World’s increasing population so they won’t starve (unless the climatefascists can divert food into fuel).

If the eccofreaks can claim a dependence of temps on CO2 when they don’t correlate, why don’t they see a connection between CO2 levels and increased crop yields when those DO correlate?
http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/Library/nationalassessment/LargerImages/SectorGraphics/Ag/Corn.jpg

NOTE – that graph is PER ACRE, not total, which means it’s due to improved productivity, not just the use of more land.

WD-40 IS AT IT AGAIN – malfunctioning droid alert!

That’s not a “straw man,” it’s hyperbole

Wrong again, as usual, but thanks for playing.

If Dc had not meant his argument literally, it would have been hyperbole. What we’re dealing with here, however, is a lame-ass straw man: “An argument or opponent set up so as to be easily refuted or defeated.” The way that we know that “After you suck all the CO2 out of the air” is a straw man, rather than hyperbole, is that Dc proceeds to posit an argument aimed at refuting or defeating this wholly imaginary suggestion: “…what are the plants (that give off O2) going to live on?”

Seriously: you’re getting in over your head when you try to teach me the ins and outs of figurative language.

If dc meant it incorrectly, he’s stupider than WD-40. [Sorry, dc, nothing personal. I hope it’s not too uncomfortable under that bus?**] I was just giving him the benefit of the doubt, as hyperbole is how the majority of us anti-AGW folks see that kind of representatioin.

The point is that more CO2 is good, and less is bad. Stretching the point by imagining what would happen by reducing CO2 to zero helps get the point across is not a “straw man”; it is hyperbole. And that makes WD-40 the loser.

A “straw man” is (see link to definition, above) “An argument or opponent set up so as to be easily refuted or defeated”, …like WD-40’s assertion that he knows “the ins and outs of figurative language.” (thanks for the illustration, btw)

Representing the pro-AGW side as wanting to get rid of all CO2 is such a ludicrous idea, that no respectable argument could be made that would incorporate that as a serious attack on the pro-AGW position. However, treating dc’s hyperbole as being representative of our arguments, that WD-40 can then so easily refute, is the real “straw man” here, but it’s not ours, . . . IT’S WD-40’s!

**dc-I do hope you didn’t mean it litterally. If you did, I’m sure it’s ignorance and not stupidity, but I needed a bit of hyperbole there, for effect, as I’m sure you can understand.

I was just giving him the benefit of the doubt, as hyperbole is how the majority of us anti-AGW folks see that kind of representatioin.

Ah. If four out of five wingnuts agree, then it must be true!

A “straw man” is (see link to definition, above) “An argument or opponent set up so as to be easily refuted or defeated”,…like WD-40’s assertion that he knows “the ins and outs of figurative language.”

…Thus proving once and for all that, while you can cut and paste a definition, you really have no understanding of the concept.

Yonason: this stuff you’re trying to school me on here? It’s my job. I’ve been doing it for eighteen years. Be semi-literate if you’d like–it’s a free country, and semi-literacy puts you in a lot of company, what with most of the people who post here–but don’t try to pass it off as knowledge.

Representing the pro-AGW side as wanting to get rid of all CO2 is such a ludicrous idea, that no respectable argument could be made that would incorporate that as a serious attack on the pro-AGW position. However, treating dc’s hyperbole as being representative of our arguments, that WD-40 can then so easily refute, is the real “straw man” here, but it’s not ours, . . . IT’S WD-40’s!

And here we get a glimpse of yonason’s thought process: But it’s so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of you: are you the sort of man who would put the poison into his own goblet or his enemy’s? Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.

dc-I do hope you didn’t mean it litterally. If you did, I’m sure it’s ignorance and not stupidity,

Thus invalidating your entire rant up above. It’s sweet when the Moebius strip turns in on itself so nicely.

If four out of five wingnuts agree, then it must be true!

So, we are “wingnuts” if most of us do not think it is possible to reduce CO2 to zero?
….excellent non-sequitur!

Yonason: this stuff you’re trying to school me on here? It’s my job

….not very good at it, are you!

…. more irrelavent nonsense ….

“Thus invalidating your entire rant up above.”

…in the fantasy universe you inhabit. That was “cross-talk” appologizing for any impression I might have given dc that I was calling him stupid, again giving him the benefit of the doubt, and not part of my argument.

you wiggle like a worm on a hook, but the “straw man” was still yours, not ours.

If you are a teacher, and I pray you are not, then G-d help our children!

If you are a teacher, and I pray you are not, then G-d help our children!

Heh. Prayers unanswered! Where is your God now?

I’m not trying to hurt your self-esteem or anything, but I just spent three years teaching kids who were one step up from SpEd, and they pick up on stuff faster than you do.

For those of you unfamiliar with the quote “But it’s so simple. All I have to do . . . so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.” WD-40 uses to “prove” I’m wrong, here’s the deal…

What WD-40 is doing there is quoting one of the villains from “The Princess Bride,” a pretty entertaining romantic comedy for kids. He, like WD-40, fancied himself a whiz at logic, and used it to decide which of the two goblets of wine had poison. Unbeknownst to him, the hero had put poison in both cups because he had developed an immunity to it, so that whichever cup the villain chose for himself (the other being for the hero), he, like WD-40, became the loser.

How does that apply in this case? It doesn’t. Why does he quote it? Maybe he can supply some more non sequiturs to “elucidate”?

“Where is your God now?”

All in good time, Vizzini, all in good time. In the meantime, be careful of the cup you choose.

I recognized the quote immediately because… uh ahem… it’s one of my favorite movies! LOL Children, indeed, Yon. Then again, so is Spinal Tap, Young Frankenstein, etc etc.

I guess in my ol’ broad age, I find myself increasingly gravitating to Disney/Pixar movies, dry witted comedies, adventure fantasies like Lord of the Rings, Nat’l Treasure, Harry Potters, etal… and enjoying classics like The Princess Bride (not to mention being mad for Mandy Patinkin thru his theate/celluloid career). What all these flicks have in common is an inherent charm because good and evil are so easily discerned, and what is right and moral a choice is so obvious.

Oddly enough, they are discussing the new Batman movie like that. Noting that it’s okay for Batman to illegally wire tap, use undue violence, even enjoy the low popularity numbers of Gothic City, because he’s keeping saving their asses…

Matta Harley

My son insisted I watch it with him, and I assented after he assured me I would like it. He was right.

You raise a good point about the distinction between reality and fantasy. If our neighbors acted like some of the characters we admire on the screen, how long would it be before we reported them to the authorities.

Ah, El Reg’s Mr. Goddard! Who is he, one may ask, as a “Steven Goddard” doesn’t even exist on the interweb before April 2008.

Yet the Register chose to continously enlighten us with his views on climate change without criticism, Is he perhaps having some connection to IT professional John Atkinson, who was allowed to post a similarly incoherent article on the Register? Is it just a coincidence that someone using the moniker “John A.” pops up regularly on the blog of Stephen McIntyre, who works in IT as well and is known for making powerful oil interests heard?

Thank you, “Hellbound” (I can believe that), because although your comment was pointless, at least it was short.

(As usual, the Left can’t attack the message, so it attacks the messanger – not that attacking a lying messanger is a bad thing, but FIRST one must establish that fact by showing the message to be fabricated).