Katy Grimes: Is man-made global warming just a lot of hot air?

Speaking of hot air, somebody should tell Al Gore that the Antarctic sea ice has set another record… because it is growing.

That’s great news for that large, ferocious, furry white bear that global warming alarmists, and teachers, keep lying to children about. (snort)

According to Steven Goddard, “Day 256 Antarctic ice is the highest ever for the date, and the eighth highest daily reading ever recorded. All seven higher readings occurred during the third week of September, 2007 – the week of the previous Arctic record minimum.”

Goddard has a blog called “Real Science,” in which he has been following and disputing the global warming data tampering, hype, and government lies, and he does this with real data.

Goddard also has been following the Antarctic sea ice growth, and the lack of reporting on this phenomenon. “Not only is Antarctic sea ice area at a record high, and more than seventeen thousand Manhattans larger than the highest Arctic ice area ever recorded – but it is has been above normal every day during 2012,” Goddard wrote today.

However, the National Snow and Ice Data Center is rather quiet about this good news.

“NSIDC does not mention the record Antarctic cold or ice on their web site, choosing inside to feature an article about global warming threatening penguins,” Goddard wrote.

Forbes online just published a story about this as well, and noted that a recent NPR story about the arctic failed to mention that Antarctic sea ice has been growing steadily for more than 30 years.

“National Public Radio published an article on its website last month claiming, ‘Ten years ago, a piece of ice the size of Rhode Island disintegrated and melted in the waters off Antarctica. Two other massive ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula had suffered similar fates a few years before. The events became poster children for the effects of global warming. … There’s no question that unusually warm air triggered the final demise of these huge chunks of ice,’” Forbes reported.

I Googled “Antarctic sea ice growing,” and found only three subtle references to this. Most of the other featured stories led to doom and gloom reports about the diminished arctic because of man-made global warming.

For real news on climate change and global warming, I follow Anthony Watts, a Meteorologist who publishes a great website called “Watts Up With That.” Watts regularly dispels global warming hysteria while providing accurate climate data and information. And he’s a real conservationist, not just a elitist enviro-greenie.

Watts recently reported that the latest ICEsat measurements for Antarctica “melted, now that a continent wide tally has been made,” because totals show significant ice gains. Watts found that the “ice-free Arctic by the end of summer 2012″ prediction has now gone up in flames (s0 to speak), once the total arctic ice measurements showed substantial increases.

Good news for the polar bears and penguines–bad news for global warming hysterics, and anyone trying to make a buck off of Al Gore’s doom and gloom circus act.

California hysterics

Maybe the California Air Resources Board will stop with the world-class AB 32 implementation scam, and allow employers to get back to work doing business cleanly and smartly, as most already do.

Pfffft. I can’t believe I said that.

With the recent news that California’s air is significantly and measurably cleaner already, is there really a need to continue pursing such drastic policies for carbon emission reductions, to 1990 levels, as required by the business-and-job-killing landmark legislation, AB 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act?

The  purpose  of  AB 32, and cap‐and‐trade, was to  reduce  greenhouse  gas emissions,  not raise billions of dollars in new tax revenue for the state’s big-spenders.

But don’t bother mentioning that to the state’s bureaucrats who have figured out how to impose even more hefty taxes on private sector businesses — just as Al Gore did when he discovered global warming.

(Note: The author knows that polar bears don’t actually live in Antarctica…tongue in cheek)

By Wayne Lusvardi

Science is on nobody’s side in the contentious debate about “global warming.” That is because you can find data on either side of the argument to prove or disprove whatever you want, just as the Bible is often used in the same way. Science is agnostic, not a “believer” or a “denier.”

Unfortunately, California Gov. Jerry Brown’s Office of Planning and Research launched a website last week to deny the “global warming deniers.”  No sooner than the website was launched than global warming skeptic Anthony Watts found a chart on the governor’s website that contained a “glaring error.”  The Office of Planning and Research had to remove the chart.

Here’s a copy of the spiked chart, which also is on Anthony Watts’ website “Watts Up With That?”

In other words, the governor’s Office of Planning and Research put up a chart with temperature data over a 117-year period that only reported the temperature for four months of each year from January to April.  Temperatures were reported for only one-third of every year.

Ken Alex of the Office of Planning and Research sent Anthony Watts the following email acknowledging the error and stating that the chart was removed. 

“From: Ken Alex

“Date: Monday, August 20, 2012 3:19 PM

“To: ‘Anthony Watts — TV Weather’

“Subject: RE: Your page on climate has a glaring error

“Dear Mr. Watts

“Thanks again for reviewing our ‘Climate Change: Just the Facts’ website.  We followed up on the issue that you raised and discovered that, as you pointed out, one of the charts on our website shows only one scenario, while the tool we link to can provide a range of scenarios for data from 1885-2012.  Rather than show one data set, we have instead decided to remove this chart and link directly to the resource.  We hope people viewing our website will explore this resource to see wealth of climatic data that has been collected.

“Thanks,

“Ken”

This is not what should be called “science.”  It is an example of cherry picking data to suit your purposes.

Correlation is Not Causation

And as it is often said in statistics, “correlation is not causation.”  You can find a linear relationship between, say, the number of gang-related homicides and hot summer nights.  But hot summer nights do not “cause” homicides any more than global warming causes gang murders or living next to a freeway with high levels of carbon dioxide causes heart attacks.  That is a statistical correlation that confirms your prior belief system that Big Corporations cause deaths.  But if freeways caused heart attacks, then why is there a greater incidence of heart attacks in cold weather and in cold climates?

Climate is a more complex natural phenomenon than can be explained by linear charts on either side of the debate. But the governor’s Office of Planning and Research “denier” website is chock full of such charts. As the above email from the Office of Planning and Research states:

“We hope people viewing our website will explore this resource to see wealth of climatic data that has been collected.” 

The problem is that there is a mass of equally convincing contrary data that has been collected on global warming “denier” websites.

Science Not On Side of Brown’s Cap & Trade Taxing Machine

Politicians for hundreds of years have been saying, “Science is on my side” of some political debate.  Global warming is not only an annual multi-billion-dollar governmental research industry, it has now morphed into the justification for Brown’s huge Cap and Trade taxation machine.  Brown wants $1 billion in Cap and Trade pollution taxes to go toward funding his bullet-train project. So he has to assure that science is on his side in the global warming debate.

Medieval kings used the ancient “science” of alchemy to deter invasion by enemy armies. Medieval princes would claim that they had an alchemist who could turn lead into gold that could then be used to buy a mercenary army to fight on their side in a war.

As the governor’s “denier” website states:

“Many (deniers) receive funding for their efforts from industries with a financial interest in ignoring climate change. Oil companies, coal-burning electric utilities, and other companies that make their profits from burning fossil fuels have funded denier organizations and scientists, just as tobacco companies funded people who claimed that second-hand smoke was safe.”

The same statement could be made about global warming scientists working for the government.

But why are so many distinguished global warming scientists retired who have no financial gain from government research grants or employment by petroleum industries? Global warming is not science or anti-science.  It is a sociological and political phenomenon that depends on one’s social location and financial gain.

I guess the above case of the erroneous global warming chart could humorously be called a case of “denying the global warming anti-deniers.”  But who can understand what a sentence with so many double negatives means?  Global warming must have made me do it. Or maybe it was global anti-warming?

By Wayne Lusvardi

Gov. Jerry Brown once dabbled in the concept of “Tao” in Zen Buddhist religion. William Voegeii says that what explains Jerry Brown’s “Tao” is his rejection of his father’s values.  But it isn’t Brown’s, Tao but his embrace of “Tahoe-ist” environmentalism that explains why jobs are being killed in California.

On Monday, Brown issued a statement at the Lake Tahoe Summit that scientific fact is not on the side of global warming “deniers.”  Concurrently, the California Air Resources Board considered installing a kill switch on 90 percent of its Cap and Trade pollution credit-trading program due to the weak economic recovery in California.  Somebody please tell Brown that CARB has found a way to turn off global warming!

Brown’s statement issued near warming ‘hot spot’

Also on Monday, Brown launched a website to rebut global warming skeptics.  It devotes two pages to “denialists” and rebutting “common denialist arguments.”  Brown launched his website and issued his statement in Stateline, Nevada, at the annual environmental Tahoe Summit.

Brown’s website stated:

 “Global warming’s impact on Lake Tahoe is well documented. It is just one example of how, after decades of pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere humanity is getting dangerously close to the point of no return.  Those who deny global warming’s existence should wake up and honestly face the facts.” 

As global warming skeptic Anthony Watts points out on his website “Watts Up With That?”, Brown issued his statement near the official National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration  weather station in Lake Tahoe.  As the photo above clearly shows, the temperature reading station at Lake Tahoe is within 5 feet of a barrel used to burn trash and near the hot reflective surface of a nearby tennis court. Global warming “denialists” may (or may not) be denying the facts.  But unscientific data collection from temperature-measuring stations and politicized disinformation may be corrupting those facts.

CARB Asked to Issue Free Pollution Permits

The Sacramento Bee reports that the California Air Resources Board is studying whether it will give industries free permits to emit 90 percent of their greenhouse gases in January under its Cap and Trade program.

Cap and Trade is a program that caps the amount of air pollution an industry can emit.  The only way to emit more than the cap is to buy pollution credits from either the state or from other companies that already emit less than their “cap” and have credits to “trade.”  Cap and Trade was developed by CARB in respnose to the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.

CARB’s concession to study giving out free pollution credits is in response to pressure from the California Chamber of Commerce.  The Chamber is concerned that many industries and businesses will leave California.  Out-of-state industries do not have to buy pollution credits to reduce air emissions.

Johns Manville, a Berkshire Hathaway Company, is a manufacturer of energy-efficient building insulation, roofing materials and other materials.  The prolonged downturn in the real estate economy in California has weakened the financial situation of the Manville plant in Willows, Calif., which presently employs 200 people.  The Willows Plant is threatened with shutdown if it has to buy pollution credits.

The Willows Plant is located in Republican Glenn County in Northern California. Glenn County has a population of about 28,000 and an unemployment rate of about 18 percent as of 2010.

The city of Willows’ population is about 6,000.  A loss of 200 employees would reflect about 7 percent of its workforce.

According to the Sacramento Bee, other corporations with facilities struggling to stay in California include Campbell’s Soup and Del Monte Foods.

“Tahoe-ist” Environmentalism Threatens Local Economies

So-called environmentalists in the Tahoe area who hate tourists hold the annual Tahoe Summit.

They have put forth trumped-up “scientific” facts that pollution from tourist auto traffic (or local warming) has directly affected the clearness of the blue-green lake by causing algae blooms. Over the years blocks and blocks of cheap motels have been bulldozed and replaced with open space and “wetlands” to reduce the tourist population and enhance the value of the vacation homes of those San Francisco elites who live there.  Stickers that say “Keep Tahoe Blue” ironically grace the bumpers of every third appropriately-named Chevy Tahoe SUV.

Brown apparently knows how to ingratiate himself with Lake Tahoe’s elite pretend-environmentalists, who know well how to cover up their self-serving NIMBY (“Not-In-My-Back-Yard”) economic interests.  But it is the tourist economy in Lake Tahoe and the major building material and food processing industries in California that are threatened with extinction by Tahoe-ist environmentalism, not the other way around.

Unfortunately, Brown’s and CARB’s environmental policies have been to demonize, criminalize and tax those very industries that are threatened by out-of-control environmentalism.  It is easy for Jerry Brown to deny the global warming “deniers” in front of a crowd of pretend environmentalists in Lake Tahoe.  But it is getting harder and harder to deny the causes of much of California’s economic decline is related to Brown’s and CARB’s “Tahoe-ist” environmental policies.