Global Warming Debate

[Earniel]

The side-discussion about extinction events has been split off and moved here.

[GrayMouser]

Came across this little item- some wild-eyed socialist tree-hugger ranting on about global warming:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Alternative energy investment prospects have shriveled in the United States after the U.S. Senate was unable to break a deadlock over tackling global warming, a Deutsche Bank official said.

"You just throw your hands up and say ... we're going to take our money elsewhere," said Kevin Parker in an interview with Reuters.

Parker, who is global head of the Frankfurt-based bank's Deutsche Asset Management Division, oversees nearly $700 billion in funds that devote $6 billion to $7 billion to climate change products.

Amid so much political uncertainty in the United States, Parker said Deutsche Bank will focus its "green" investment dollars more and more on opportunities in China and Western Europe, where it sees governments providing a more positive environment.

"They're asleep at the wheel on climate change, asleep at the wheel on job growth, asleep at the wheel on this industrial revolution taking place in the energy industry," Parker said of Washington's inability to seal a climate-change program and other alternative energy incentives into place.

http://www.reuters.com/assets/print?...67A3JK20100811

[inked]

NON-biting midges and Global Warming ...

see here http://www.co2science.org/articles/V13/N38/C3.php

And for the Medieval Warm Period project see here:
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php

[The Gaffer]

Readers should be advised that Inked's links are to the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, who are funded by ExxonMobil.

[Alcuin]

....

[inked]

Alcuin, I think the attribution of funding is supposed to deny the result. I prefer peer-review of the science, myself, but -hey! any port in a storm.

[GrayMouser]

And we only know that because of outside investigation, as it's a matter of policy that they refuse to reveal their source of funding.

http://motherjones.com/environment/2...o-family%20%20

Basically an entire family who decided to cash in on the coal and oil industry astroturf funding.

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by inked

Alcuin, I think the attribution of funding is supposed to deny the result. I prefer peer-review of the science, myself, but -hey! any port in a storm.

Which is of course why you reject 99% of the peer-reviewed science in favour of obscure astroturf groups funded entirely by energy companies

[GrayMouser]

If you're actually interested in the science try this for a start:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globa.../medieval.html

But who you gonna believe, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or ExxonMobil?

[The Gaffer]

Originally Posted by GrayMouser

Which is of course why you reject 99% of the peer-reviewed science in favour of obscure astroturf groups funded entirely by energy companies

LOL

You have to hand it to the denialists. Their stuff goes round the web like a virus. You can find this rubbish posted in forums all over the place. It's as if they're controlled by some sort of dystopian UnterGeist.

[inked]

The best part, of course, is the fact that they have invented time travel to alter the midge count. Yeah, ...

[inked]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/ja...-my-long-life/

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety
Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making).

"As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now." ...

[The Gaffer]

Climate change will put at risk decades of development in poorer countries.

"For human development to become truly sustainable, the close link between economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions needs to be severed," the UN said in its annual human development report (HDR).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-dev...lopment-report.

Government remains the best instrument for action in tackling development goals:

markets were generally "very bad at ensuring the provision of public goods, such as security, stability, health and education."

[inked]

Way, way too funny ... and true!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzZ_Z...layer_embedded

BAN dihydrogen monoxide!

[inked]

New oil source and technology to harvest exceeds entire Arab conglomerate resources! Wow!

How Israel could revolutionize the global energy sector
By DORE GOLD
03/11/2011 17:04

New data suggests Israel may not only have much larger gas resources than believed, but also the 3rd largest deposit of oil shale in the world.

http://www.jpost.com/Features/FrontL...aspx?id=211676

[Earniel]

Oil shales? If those are similar to tar sands, that's one ecological disaster waiting to happen if that new technology doesn't turn out to be as miraculously good as the article describes it.

[GrayMouser]

Actually, they're worse- oil sands are gooey messes; oil shale is hard rock with a little oil mixed in.

And I wouldn't sell the ol' homestead and invest right now.

This article puts it in a little more perspective: the BLM has given him a 160 acres lease for the next ten years- they figure it'll take that long to see if it even works.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-0...ces-slump.html

I suspect that as time goes on and peak oil begins to bite, oil shales will prove a welcome but expensive minor addition to stretch out petroleum supplies.

[GrayMouser]

Meanwhile, from the world of science:

In a statement lead author Eric Rignot, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California, Irvine, noted that ice sheets have more ice than mountain glaciers, so it isn't surprising that they would contribute more to sea level rise. "What is surprising is this increased contribution by the ice sheets is already happening. If present trends continue, sea level is likely to be significantly higher than levels projected by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007," he said.

Rignot's team combined nearly two decades of monthly satellite measurements, covering the years 1992 to 2009, with regional atmospheric climate model data to examine changes in ice sheet mass and trends in acceleration of ice loss.

The study compared different measurement techniques. One was radar data from European, Canadian and Japanese satellites and radio echo soundings. That was used to measure the ice leaving the ice sheets. Climate model data was used to figure out how much ice was being added.

Another technique used eight years of data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) satellites, operated by NASA and the German Aerospace Center. They track changes in Earth's gravity field resulting from alterations in Earth's mass distribution, including ice movement.

The team found that the different ways of measuring ice loss were in agreement over the eight-year period in which the data overlaps. That told them that the data was valid and helped establish a record of ice mass changes since 1992.

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/1212...#ixzz1GxouyW2Z

[GrayMouser]

And, from the world of politics, Republicans have voted to stick their fingers in their ears, jump up and down and say " Nyaah, nyaah, I can't hear you".

http://www.salon.com/technology/how_...ans/index.html

[inked]

Covered glaciers last longer!

http://sciencenews.org/view/generic/...e_of_Himalayas


Surely we could cover the glaciers to prevent their loss? A solution to trash disposal and GW all in one fell swoop.