Month: December 2011

What level of humiliation will Christopher Monckton subject himself to in order to preserve his self delusion?

Monckton’s name came up a few times at this week’s AGU gathering –  in conversation with the indefatigable John Abraham – who totally destroyed his supreme Lordship’s cred with all but the wackest of denialist wack jobs.  Monckton of course threatened to sue, (still waiting) – huffed and puffed – called Abraham an “overcooked prawn”, and withdrew to invent a cure for AIDS.

As far as the “prawn” accusation. See  Abraham, Prawn, and Monckton below. You decide.

Part 2 below.

Continue reading “The Weekend Wonk: Monckton Humiliated by Potholer (again)”

I would never subject my gentle readers to more than a small snippet of Senator James “there have never been any gay people in my family” Inhofe’s  vomitous bloviations on any topic, much less climate.

The senator released a gloating video the other day about the “end of the global warming” movement, demonstrating once again the complete separation between the Tea Party wing of the GOP and the universe the rest of us live in.  Amy Goodman mercifully excerpts only a small part of it here.

In regard to the “global warming movement”, — I guess that is synonymous with the “reality based community” of which the modern GOP is still so scornful. I can attest that among the 20,000 leading earth scientists here at the annual American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, the science and reality of global warming has never been clearer or more urgent.

Whether or not Durban comes up with some kind of agreement, the stars are aligning to make global climate an issue in the upcoming presidential election, and an opportunity for President Obama to draw a clear distinction between himself and the opposition, whoever it is.  I’d like to see him get on the bully pulpit and get started.

 One of the great things about being here at the American Geophysical Union conference is the opportunity to meet in the flesh with people who have up till now only been disembodied heads on a screen at best.

John Cook, founder of the Mother of All Climate Sites – Skepticalscience.com – is someone I’ve had the privilege to meet and interact with here, when I can fight my way thru the crowds that have turned out for his sessions here.

He’s got a new feature at SkSci highlighting the bonehead mispronouncements of Australia’s most odious disinformer, Ian Plimer.

On 30 October, Ian Plimer wrote to The Weekend Australian, lamenting that noone had explained to him how anyone could be concerned about carbon dioxide given that most of its sources were supposedly natural. However, a thorough explanation of how we know humans are causing the increase in CO2 levels can be found on pages 414 and 415 of a 2009 book on climate change. The book is called Heaven and Earth. The author, Ian Plimer.

Plimer contradicting Plimer is not an isolated incident. One of his pet arguments is that carbon dioxide has been much higher in the past, without the Earth going into meltdown. He concludes that carbon dioxide can’t have much of a warming effect. There’s a major flaw in this line of thinking. The further back in time you go, the cooler the sun gets. If it wasn’t for the warming effect of carbon dioxide, the Earth would’ve been a frozen iceball throughout much of its history.

The question that has long burned in my mind was how could Plimer, a geologist, not know that the sun has been steadily warming throughout Earth’s history. A proper understanding of greenhouse warming over geological timeframes requires considering both CO2 levels and solar activity. You would expect this kind of over-simplified misinformation from a blogger sourcing their information from other blogs but from a professional geologist? Well, at this point, the mystery deepens.

It turns out Plimer is aware that the sun has been steadily warming over the Earth’s history. In his 2001 book A Short History of Planet Earth, Plimer explains how the warming effect from CO2 kept our planet from freezing into an ice age when the sun was cooler (emphasis mine):

The early Sun had a luminosity of some 30 per cent less than now and, over time, luminosity has increased in a steady state. The low luminosity of the early Sun was such that the Earth’s average surface temperature would have been below 0°C from 4500 to 2000 million years ago. But, there is evidence of running water and oceans as far back as 3800 million years ago. This paradox is solved if the Earth had an enhanced greenhouse with an atmosphere of a lot of carbon dioxide and methane.

If you’re confused at this point, you’re not alone! Which Plimer are we to believe? The Plimer who considers the full body of evidence and comes to conclusions consistent with the scientific consensus that increased greenhouse gases causes warming? Or the Plimer who cherry picks the data, withholds vital pieces of evidence and misleads the public. I know which I prefer.

 You can’t stop an idea whose time has come – much to the chagrin of the renewable-hating tea party congress.

AP: 

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A $1 billion solar energy project that would nearly double the number of panels on residential rooftops in the U.S. is back on track less than two months after losing a federal loan guarantee in the wake of the Solyndra bankruptcy and myriad related investigations.

San Mateo, Calif.-based SolarCity said Wednesday that it had reached a deal with Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch unit for financing the five-year project called SolarStrong. The venture would put shimmering solar panels on 120,000 military houses in dozens of states.

SolarCity said the solar installations will provide power to military families at a lower cost than utility power.

In late September, SolarCity said the military project’s loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy was scuttled due to new, more rigid requirements spurred by the collapse of Fremont, Calif.-based Solyndra Inc., which filed for bankruptcy despite a $528 million DOE loan.

Just weeks before, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu had hailed SolarStrong as the “largest domestic residential rooftop solar project in history” while announcing DOE’s intent to provide a partial guarantee for the company’s $344 million loan.

But SolarCity was unable to finalize the loan by the DOE’s Sept. 30 deadline, blaming the increased red tape caused by Solyndra’s collapse.

Yet, SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive said the loan guarantee process is a chief reason why the new funding happened at all. He said the careful vetting required by the DOE’s loan program helped give the bank confidence in the project.

“BofA Merrill never wavered when the loan guarantee wasn’t finalized and worked with us to create a financing structure that works without it,” Rive said in a statement. “The fact that SolarStrong can move forward without a federal loan guarantee is a clear indication that long-term incentives such as the investment tax credit are working.”

In generations past, the US Military took the lead in racially integrating its fighting units, over the objections of so-called “conservatives”.  Now, it is pushing the envelope in the technologies of the 21st century.

Here in the US, and overseas, the US Military is decades ahead of the Tea Party, recognizing the national security importance of renewable energy, and the savings in money and precious blood of our service people.

Climate deniers will hate this. It’s about sustainability, peace, building prosperity, and self reliance.

These people have the timerity to produce energy and food – without BP, without a grid, without giant power plants, without giant corporations,  without coal, without oil. And they didn’t have to kill anyone.  That would never win you the Iowa GOP primary.

One of the most thoughtful responses to my videos recently.

(trolls, take notes )

 

I think this means I get a decoder ring soon.

—

THANK YOU FOR YOUR OFFER OWE MY ILLUMINATI AGENT GREENMAN, YOU HAD FOOL MORE OF THOSE HUMAN SHEEPLE SCUM INTO BELEIVING THE FALSE THEORY OF GOLBLE WARMING. FOR THAT I WILL AWAORE YOU

This short film by San Francisco filmmaker Stephen Thomson,  a  year in the making,  pays tribute to a critical scientific and academic figure in postmodern history: the late Climatologist and Stanford Professor Stephen Schneider (1945-2010)

This video was screened before a live audience by Climate One of the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on Dec 6, 2011 as the introduction to an event honoring Stephen Schneider and presenting an award in his name to Richard Alley, Professor of Geosciences and Associate of the EMS Environment Institute.

This video will be presented again thursday, December 8, at the AGU (American Geophysicists Union) Conference currently being held in San Francisco.

Thomson, an emerging multi-media master,  has also been a contributor of musical score material to the Climate Crock series, and is responsible for the gripping adaptation of Bill Mckibben’s now famous essay about extreme weather and climate change, that has now gone viral – see below….

Continue reading “Stephen Schneider (1945 – 2010) – Consummate Science Communicator”

 ChinaHush:

October 14, 2009, the 30^th annual awards ceremony of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund took place at the Asia Society in New York City. Lu Guang (卢广) from People’s Republic of China won the $30,000 W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his documentary project “Pollution in China.”

Go to the link, but not unless you have a strong stomach.

This, ironically, is the world the Tea Party has in mind for us.

Predictably, the comments are being swarmed with brain dead, spittle flecked anti-science outrage.

I saw Mike speak on tuesday at AGU to a full house. He was calm, witty, with a slight (ok, not so slight) edge of sarcasm toward the unbelievable tide of nonsense that’s come his way over the last several years.

It’s such a glaring contrast to be among 20,000 of the world’s best and most committed scientists – for whom the facts of global climate are simply not an issue for discussion, and then compare to the sea of drivel that passes for thought in the anti-science set.

(also great to meet so many scientists who are big fans of the Climate Crock series, but I digress…..)

Can’t wait for Mann’s book to come out. That ought to get some spittle flowing.