Global Warming

Are Droughts Becoming Longer and More Intense?

“Droughts are becoming longer and more intense.”

That was Al Gore’s testimony before the United States Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee on 21 March 2007. Gore offered no proof to his claim, so some researchers conducted a study on droughts of the 20th century; the conclusions of this study suggest that Gore was lying when he made his testimony.

The folks at CO2 Science, in their analysis, concluded with the following:

death-valley.jpgWith respect to the temporal distribution of the 30 severe and persistent droughts identified by Narisma et al., seven of them occurred during the first two decades of the 20th century (1901-1920), seven occurred during the next two decades (1921-1940), eight during the middle two decades of the century (1941-1960), but only five during the next two decades (1961-1980), and a mere three during the final two decades of the century (1981-2000), which is not at all what one would have expected if the climate-alarmist thesis that is propounded by Gore and his followers was correct.

So just what is the situation here? The scientists who performed the analysis note that the 30 major droughts they identified were “mostly located in semi-arid and arid regions” that “are naturally prone [our italics] to large fluctuations.” And it’s as simple as that. The 30 major droughts of the 20th century were likely natural in all respects; and, hence, they are “indicative of what could also happen in the future,” as Narisma et al. state in their concluding paragraph. And happen they will. Consequently, the next time a serious drought takes hold of some part of the world and the likes of Al Gore blame it on the “carbon footprints” of you and your family, ask them why just the opposite of what their hypothesis suggests actually occurred over the course of the 20th century, i.e., why, when the earth warmed – and at a rate and to a degree that they claim was unprecedented over thousands of years – the rate-of-occurrence of severe regional droughts actually declined.

Apocalypse — Not!

four-horsemen-apocalypse.jpgLast week, I found a website (thanks again, Rick) where four excellent essays offer the perfect rebuttal to the nonsense that Al Gore produced in his recent crockumentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

These four essays, “The Four Horsemen of the Non-Apocalypse,” as it were, are grouped into a page entitled “Good news, Mr. Gore, the Apocalypse has been postponed.”

Four Horsemen art credit Black Horse Design

The first essay, “The Gospel According to Gore,” shares some insight into the reasons that some become alarmed, while analyzing the difference between “consensus” and actual scientific discovery.

Al Gore Goes to Hollywood (But Not To CalTech) reveals some of the junk science that Gore uses in his film, “An Inconvenient truth.” The essay shows how Gore overlooks scientific facts while mesmerizing the audience into watching the doom unfold (never mind the man behind the curtain, Dorothy).

The third topic, “Unlikely CO2, Possible Meteorites, Probable Sunshine,” is a discussion of things that are actually known to affect climate, and how anthropogenic phenomena such as urban heat islands have little effect on global climate, if any.

Finally, “Counting the Cost of the Precautionary Principle” discusses emission reduction treaties, alternative energy sources and the costs, in terms of both economics and politics, of “going green.”

The Great Global Warming Swindle

Once again, my friend and colleague, Rick pointed me to an interesting discussion about global climate on the Internet:

A DVD of the film, The Great Global Warming Swindle, will be available from mid July (despite the strenuous efforts of those who support the theory of global warming to prevent its release). The DVD is an expanded and improved version of the film broadcast in the UK on Channel Four. More interview material has been added, covering a broader range of subjects than was possible in the broadcast film.

The makers of the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle have made many science documentaries before. The thing they found most shocking when they started to make this one, was the weakness of the case for man made global warming, and the quantity and quality of the evidence which flatly contradicts it.

Martin Durkin, the director of this film, wrote an excellent editorial, “Hostages to a Hoax, which is all about the reasons for the documentary:” Continue reading…

Not So Long Ago in a Galaxy Not So Far Away

What if someone told you that planet Earth originated in another Galaxy and that the Milky Way caught us up in a gravitational sweep? What if they told you that the climate cycles on planet Earth were largely due to this galactic collision? Sound crazy? Maybe not . . .

Hat tip to my colleague, Rick, who sent this to me.

From ViewZone.com:

galaxy-collideUsing volumes of data from the Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), a major project to survey the sky in infrared light led by the University of Massachusetts, the astronomers are answering questions that have baffled scientists for decades and proving that our own Milky Way is consuming one of its neighbors in a dramatic display of ongoing galactic cannibalism. The study published in the Astrophysical Journal, is the first to map the full extent of the Sagittarius galaxy and show in visually vivid detail how its debris wraps around and passes through our Milky Way. Sagittarius is 10,000 times smaller in mass than the Milky Way, so it is getting stretched out, torn apart and gobbled up by the bigger Milky Way.

Image (David Law/University of Virginia): A new infra red digital survey of the entire sky was made in 2003. Teams from the universities of Virginia and Massachusetts used a supercomputer to sort through half a billion stars to create a — NEW STAR MAP showing our Solar System (yellow dot) to be at the exact nexus crossroads where two galaxies are actually joining.

. . .

It has been postulated that this is the real reason for both global warming since higher energy levels of the Milky Way are almost certain to cause our Sun to burn hotter and emit higher energies. Indeed, temperatures have been seen to rise on virtually all the planets in our system. This seems quite apart from any local phenomenon like greenhouse gases etc.

Watch the animation and read about other effects being observed in our solar system:

Continue reading…

Cucumbers Know More than SCOTUS

cucumber . . . about Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere, that is.

In April, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled that the Environmental Pollution Agency must consider Carbon Dioxide (CO2) as an air pollutant!

Now, as you may know, the gas CO2, is critical to the growth of vegetation on our planet; plants ‘breathe CO2 and exhale oxygen’ as it were. Animals, including us, do exactly the opposite – breathe oxygen and exhale CO2. You know what happens when animals are deprived of oxygen, so you must have a clue what might happen to CO2-deprived vegetation.

The current editorial at CO2 Science addresses that scenario – that is, an actual scientific experiment that documents what happens when cucumbers are deprived of CO2 (The following has been excerpted from “Carbon Dioxide: A Vital Atmospheric Resource Under Siege“):

Continue reading…

Devil Winds

thermometer.jpgYesterday marked the 148th anniversary of an astounding weather event.

California, like other regions, experiences occasional hot, dry winds; that is, when the air heats up due to downslope compressional heating. In Southern California these are called “Santa Ana winds,” while in Colorado, “Chinook winds” and in Bavaria, “Föhn winds.” In the deserts of North Africa, the Arabic word “Simoon” applies.

What causes these winds? Short answer: insolation, advection and the adiabatic heating process. Sorry, Al, you can’t blame this event on SUVs or carbon footprints.

June 17, 1859 – The only ‘simoon’ ever to occur in the United States
is reported by a United States Coast Survey vessel off Goleta. A
northwest wind brings scorching temperatures of 133 degrees between
1:00 and 2:00 that afternoon. Birds fall from the sky, crops shrivel
and cattle die under the shade of oak trees.

The record 133° temperature has been discredited since that time due to the thermometer having been in direct sunlight. However this vivid description from A History of the Aguajitos Ranch paints a picture that the temperature must have come very close to that:

Continue reading…

Consensus? What Consensus?

Here’s a nice article written by a journalist who sought to profile ‘deniers,’ or those ‘few’ scientists that doubt that the global warming we’re seeing is caused by man-made greenhouse gasses and pollution. The idea was to expose these ‘kooks on the margins of science’ that he thought were in the minority. After doing the research, however, The Financial Post’s Lawrence Solomon came to the conclusion that there were some serious flaws in the ‘consensus’:

Continue reading…