Matt Ridley on How Fossil Fuels are Greening the Planet
Matt Ridley on How Fossil Fuels are Greening the Planet
http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com/2014/11/matt-ridley-on-how-fossil-fuels-are.html
Matt Ridley, author of The Red Queen, Genome, The Rational Optimist and other books, dropped by Reason’s studio in Los Angeles last month to talk about a curious global trend that is just starting to receive attention. Over the past three decades, our planet has got greener!About 20 years ago Charles Keeling noticed that the amplitude of change of the CO2 was increasing. In other words, in the Northern Summer the Co2 level fell and in the winter it went up again and this change was growing. More Co2 was coming into the atmosphere every Winter but more was going out of it every Summer.He could understand why more was coming into the atmosphere because of industry and so on. Why was more going out of it every Summer?The answer Keeling came up with was – there was probably more green vegetation on the planet. Satellites show that for the last 30 years the planet’s vegetation has been increasing.
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Penn State researcher: ‘Land-use change often trumped impacts of a warming climate…this needs greater recognition’
Penn State researcher: “land-use change often trumped impacts of a warming climate…this needs greater recognition” http://thewestsidestory.net/2014/10/16/18935/composition-eastern-forests-affected-due-climatic-changes/
https://twitter.com/PCKnappenberger/status/523157891046703105…
BUSTED: EPA says warming changes forest tree makeup. http://goo.gl/os7qF7 NEW STUDY says BS
BUSTED: EPA says warming changes forest tree makeup. http://goo.gl/os7qF7 NEW STUDY says BS. http://goo.gl/yFjMV0 http://twitter.com/JunkScience/status/522480680132165632/photo/1
Burning wood is UK’s 2nd biggest source of ‘green energy’ – Generates more CO2 than coal
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2014/08/in-pictures-the-hidden-face-of-uk-renewable-electricity/…
Flashback: 1901 Was The Hottest July In US History – It Was Blamed On ‘The Advance Of Civilization’
…Beetles & forest fires convinced Hillary of AGW: ‘A 2005 Senate trip to Canada opened Hillary Clinton’s eyes to the dangers of climate change & inspired her to push for aggressive actions to fight it’
The autobiography, Clinton’s second, comes just days after President Barack Obama unveiled aggressive new climate-change measures aimed at U.S. coal-fired electricity.
It describes how she and the boss barged into a secret meeting at the 2009 Copenhagen climate-change conference involving emissaries from China, India, Brazil and South Africa.
After exchanging a mischievous look, the pair marched right in, past frantic Chinese officials. Obama shouted, “Mr. Premier!” to get the attention of Wen Jiabao and other stunned leaders sitting in the room.
That tense encounter helped break the old Kyoto accord divisions, where only developed economies had agreed to curb emissions, she writes.
In that same chapter, Clinton echoes an argument made this week by Prime Minister Stephen Harper: countries are generally unwilling to sacrifice prosperity to attain climate goals. She describes the process as herding cats.
But she warns against casting the environment and the economy as an either-or choice, citing the expansion of natural gas in the U.S. as one example of how greenhouse gases can shrink and the economy can grow at the same time.
“When the economy is hurting and people are looking for jobs, many other concerns fade into the background,” Clinton writes. “And the old false choice between promoting the economy and protecting the environment surfaces once again.”…
Scientist: ‘What If Our Guesses Are Wrong?’ – ‘Flawed computer models have overestimated the rate of global warming since the turn of the century’
What If Our Guesses Are Wrong?
Published in the Journal of Forestry • May 2014
By Dr. David B. South – Emeritus Professor of Forestry, Auburn University.
This old professor would like to comment on four “climate change” articles. A 1973 article entitled “Brace yourself for another ice age” (Science Digest 57:57– 61) contained the following quote: “Man is doing these things… such as industrial pollution and deforestation that have effects on the environment.” A 1975 article about “Weather and world food” (Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 56:1078–1083) indicated the return of an ice age would decrease food production. The author said “there is an urgent need for a better understanding and utilization of information on weather variability and climate change…”
Soon afterwards, Earle Layser wrote a paper about “Forests and climate” (Journal of Forestry 78:678–682). The following is an excerpt from his 1980 paper:
“One degree [F] may hardly seem significant, but this small change has reduced the growing season in middle latitudes by two weeks, created severe ice conditions in the Arctic, caused midsummer frosts to return to the upper midwestern United States, altered rainfall patterns, and in the winter of 1971–1972 suddenly increased the snow and ice cover of the northern hemisphere by about 13 percent, to levels where it has since remained” (Bryson 1974).
Spurr (1953) attributed significant changes in the forest composition in New England to mean temperature changes of as little as 2 degrees. Generally, the immediate effects of climatic change are the most striking near the edge of the Arctic (Sutcliffe 1969, p. 167) where such things as the period of time ports are ice-free are readily apparent. However, other examples cited in this article show that subtle but important effects occur over broad areas, particularly in ecotonal situations such as the northern and southern limits of the boreal forest or along the periphery of a species’ range.
Among these papers, Layser’s paper has been cited more often ( 20 times), but for some reason, it has been ignored by several authors (e.g., it has not been cited in any
Journal of Forestry papers). Perhaps it is fortunate that extension personnel did not choose to believe the guesses about a coming ice age. If they had chosen this “opportunity
for outreach,” landowners might have been advised to plant locally adapted genotypes further South (to lessen the impending threat to healthy forests). Since …
Scientist tells U.S. Senate: Global Warming Not Causing More Wildfires – ‘To attribute this human-caused increase in fire risk to carbon dioxide emissions is simply unscientific’
Government wildfire data shows that the scale of U.S. wildfires has decreased dramatically since 1930, when wildfires burned more than four times the amount of acreage burned in 2012. In 1930, wildfires consumed more than 50 million acres of land, but in 2012 wildfires only burnt up 9.2 million acres.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), carbon dioxide concentrations were much lower in the 1940s (only 310 parts per million by volume), meaning global temperatures were cooler while wildfires were much more prevalent than today.
“These data suggest that extremely large megafires were 4-times more common before 1940,” South said, adding that “we cannot reasonably say that anthropogenic global warming causes extremely large wildfires.”
“However, in today’s world of climate alarmism, where accuracy doesn’t matter, I am not at all surprised to see many journalists spreading the idea that carbon emissions cause large wildfires,” South said.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/03/report-global-warming-not-causing-more-wildfires/#ixzz33bfKoUBy…
‘Rio 2′ Is An Environmental Movie For Kids With An ‘Avatar’ Twist – ‘An animal uprising defeats the evil corporate loggers’ – ‘Indigenous creatures to fight against the evil humans, ultimately triumphing against their wanton eco-destructiveness’
‘Rio 2′ Is An Environmental Movie For Kids With An ‘Avatar’ Twist
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/29/3432170/rio-2-environmental-movie-kids-avatar/
Two turtles celebrate (slowly) after an animal uprising defeats the evil the evil corporate bloggers corporate loggers in the movie “Rio 2.”
Hollywood so rarely has an environmentally-themed blockbuster movie that each one deserves to be singled out for praise. If you don’t have children, it’s unlikely you would see Rio 2, a “3D computer-animated musical adventure-comedy film” that came out in mid-April.
And just as well — it’s not great entertainment. It’s no Wall-E — Disney’s anti-consumption eco-dystopian gem. Heck, it’s no “Lorax” — a delightful kids movie based on the Dr. Seuss job-creator-as-villain classic.
As for Rio 2, the main (?) plot of this too-busy movie is that an outsider raised in the human world tries to fit in with the (blue) indigenous inhabitants of a tropical forest paradise — even as an evil human corporation threatens to destroy their home with steam shovels and deforestation. In the end, after many awkward attempts to become one of them, the outsider is the one who leads the indigenous creatures to fight against the evil humans, ultimately triumphing against their wanton eco-destructiveness in an epic battle.
Yes, that’s also the plot of Avatar. Movies are nothing if not derivative, and if you are going to copy you might as well copy from the number one grossing movie of all time. In this case, the outsider raised in the human world is Blu, a domesticated blue Spix’s macaw (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg) that, in the original movie, two naturalists paired up with what they think is the last remaining female Spix’s macaw, Jewel (played by Anne Hathaway, of course) who wants to return to the wilderness.
In Rio 2, they do go back to the wilderness, find Jewel’s dad and a long-lost flock of macaws that the naturalists are also trying to find since proof of their existence would mean the government will prevent the rain forest from being cut down by those evil industrialists. Mayhem ensues (along with a lot of singing by the likes of Bruno Mars and Kristin Chenoweth and various Brazilian singers).
Brazilian Director Carlos Saldanha told HuffPost what he was aiming for in the movie:
Q: Apart from the happiness, the family, and the laughs that are in “Rio 2” the movie also tackles the issue of illegal logging and deforestation. Is the …
Hell Freezes Over! Germany’s Ultra-Green ‘Die Zeit’ Concedes Climate Movement Has Been Too Alarmist
Hell Freezes Over! Germany’s Ultra-Green ‘Die Zeit’ Concedes Climate Movement Has Been Too Alarmist
Germany’s eco-evangelical, leftie weekly Die Zeit has a surprisingly sober online piece that almost got by me.
It actually harshly criticizes global warming science – unusual for Die Zeit, which is an influential “intellectual” weekly that has been preaching the science is settled for years. Not long ago it one-sidedly attacked skeptics and portrayed them as gangster-types led by Godfather and mastermind Marc Morano, aided and abetted by the evil Fred Singer and German Fritz Vahrenholt.
In the latest commentary, Andreas Frey of Die Zeit writes:
We need less alarmism, more fundamental research and courage to take risks!”
Climate alarmism headed for a dead-end
Frey compares the climate change scare to another scare that swept across Germany in the 1980s: forest die-off because of acid rain. That catastrophe never materialized, of course. Frey writes that the climate change movement is caught in the very same trap and finds itself well on its way to a dead-end.
The pattern observed is similar to the issue of forest die-off. Though the catastrophe never came about, forest still isn’t doing well. But who wants to hear about it?”
Damaged science
In point number 2 of his commentary, Frey writes that many climate scientists engaged “in spreading fear, warning of dire scenarios for our future“. But that has backfired, as Frey writes:
The flood of alarm threatens the credibility of the entire field – and thus damages science. But the alarmist is proud about having made the climate issue popular; he mingles gladly with politicians (and he even fancies himself as one) and thus knows precisely what is needed to curb the collapse of the planet: eat no meat, don’t drive cars, don’t consume electricity made with coal, don’t fly. Thus he has stepped over the line between science and activism.”
Media have been too uncritical
In point no. 3, Frey surprisingly even writes that the media have been too uncritical of the science they’ve been fed by alarmist scientists…something that Die Zeit is guilty of well beyond the shadow of any doubt. In fact, skeptics get labeled as gangster-like evil climate mobsters (see above). Astonishingly, Frey describes the mindset of the media as follows:
Whatever you do, don’t say anything bad about climate scientists, don’t express any doubts about their results or forecasts – that could be fodder …