Sunday, April 15, 2012

Angry penguin

Pete the penguin confided to this reporter, "It has gotten so we can't eat, drop a load, or even fool around with the missus without some yahoo taking a picture of the details, and we are sick of it. Penguins have rights, too, you know. They call themselves scientists, but all they are is a bunch of peeping Toms."


here

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Why The U.S. Mental Health Care System is Not Adequately Prepared.

Global warming in the coming years will foster trauma, depression, violence, alienation, substance abuse, suicide, psychotic episodes, post traumatic stress disorder and many other mental health-related conditions.


here

Sunday, March 25, 2012

The Green crucifix


The Environmental religion also has it's own crucifix.

le Crucifie vert


Le crucifie vert

Comme toute les autre religions les Écologistes ont aussi leur Crucifie.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

The Climate war ..It’s round thirteen

This disparity in the initial reaction is easy to account for. The punishment taken by the skeptics in the early years of the climate wars, had not destroyed them but instead produced a breed of hardy veterans, who dealt in cold realities, rather than hoped for illusions. The real difference between a veteran and an inexperienced soldier, is the former are careful while the latter are fearless.








here

Sunday, March 4, 2012

America’s Energy Potential, Circa 2012 A. US Petroleum

Despite Obama’s desires to shut down America’s largest single source of electricity, coal—and watch oil prices spike to European levels, the US energy sector is rounding into splendid shape. Consider just a few of our states:

1 Texas
Consider the state of US oil supply and discoveries. Just in Texas, production is exploding, with a Feb. 26, 2012 article stating,

The Permian Basin of West Texas is experiencing an oil boom. Production will double within 5-7 years, averaging last year a million barrels per day for the first time since 2001. “Right in the basin, we could get up to 2 million barrels a day,” Jim Henry of Midland-based Henry Resources claims. “We have 30 billion barrels of new oil discoveries,” said Tim Leach, chairman and CEO of Midland-based Concho Resources.

In southern Texas, the Eagle Ford play is booming. Says another author on Feb. 27, 2012,

A similar boom is under way in the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas. “I could paint a scenario for you where we are producing 3 million more barrels per day by 2016, which would almost get us to the point where we could eliminate 60 to 70 percent of our OPEC imports,” said Texas Railroad Commissioner Barry Smitherman.

Of course, there are other Texas oil producing areas.

2. Montana & Dakotas
Bigger than Texas—Montana and the Dakotas boast a giant petroleum field called the Bakken. On expert claimed this field holds more than 500 billon barrels. Writes one author recently on the Bakken,

Oil production in North Dakota exceeded an all-time high last month, a record of 535,036 barrels a day in December. The Bakken Shale, which extends south from Canada into North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana, is the largest contiguous oil deposit in the continental U.S. (this will double the next decade).

3. California
The US government recently announced the shale of So CA could have more oil than the Bakken formation. (For all of USA, please see EIA US Review of Emerging Resources: US Shale Gas and Shale Oil Plays, July 2011 {105 pages pdf}). Writes one author,

The California Monterey/Santos oil field has estimated 4 times the technically recoverable oil as Bakken Oil Field in North Dakota, an estimated 500 billion barrels. Bakken oil field estimates range from 271 billion to 503 billion barrels. Harold Hamm (billionaire owner of Continental oil) estimates Bakken will produce six times (24 billion barrels) the oil of the EIA estimate.

4. Alaska
And don’t forget Alaska, which according to this article:

Alaska’s North Slope may hold as much as 2 billion barrels of oil, the second-largest U.S. deposit of unconventional crude, and 80 trillion cubic feet of gas, the fourth-largest gas-shale deposit, the U.S. Geological Survey said today.

With only 4 states examined, much oil rich country is ignored—like the recent 1.5 billion barrel find in Colorado. Overall, American oil reserves, which also include much undiscovered in areas which ban drilling, like most coastal regions, is absolutely massive. Says one headline: USA has 7-9 trillion barrels of oil—possibly over 1 trillion barrels recoverable.

B. Natural Gas

It would be tedious to cover all the massive new natural gas deposits discovered in the last few years in America. Suffice it to say that one author titled an article: The Dawn of the Natural Gas Era. Another claims America has 500 years of gas with present reserves. Writes petroleum expert Daniel Yergin,

The biggest energy innovation of the decade is natural gas—more specifically what is called “unconventional” natural gas. Some call it a revolution. Yet the natural gas revolution has unfolded with no great fanfare, no grand opening ceremony, no ribbon cutting. It just crept up. In 1990, unconventional gas—from shales, coal-bed methane and so-called “tight” formations—was about 10% of total U.S. production. Today it is around 40%, and growing fast, with shale gas by far the biggest part.

States another source,

America has become, in the eyes of energy professionals, the Saudia Arabia of natural gas thanks to shale gas. The DOE estimates that shale gas reserves alone are 750 trillion cubic feet. Combined with other domestic sources of natural gas, the United States has enough natural gas to last for over a century, and the numbers continue to climb.

Ellesmere Ice Shelf

Late last year and early this year, various news stories reported the demise of the Ayles Ice Shelf, Ellesmere Island. On Dec. 29, 2006, National Geographic reported Giant Ice Shelf Breaks Off in Canadian Arctic and on Jan 4, 2007, CNN reported the story. The catastrophe actually occurred in August 2005, but no one noticed reported it until 16 months later.

From the story:

The mass of ice broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 800 kilometers (497 miles) south of the North Pole, but no one was present to see it in Canada’s remote north. Scientists using satellite images later noticed that it became a newly formed ice island in just an hour and left a trail of icy boulders floating in its wake. (Watch the satellite images that clued in ice watchers) ..

The event registered as a small earthquake on instruments stationed 150 miles (250 kilometers) away, Warwick Vincent of Quebec’s Laval University told the CanWest News Service.

The Washington Post reported the story here showing the following picture from NASA. The Ayles ice shelf is visible in the center of the photograph at the lower part of the open water. They reported:

Within days of breaking free, the Ayles Ice Shelf drifted about 30 miles offshore before freezing into the sea ice.

A specialist scientist (Vincent) said that such an event was unprecedented in the tennnnnnnnnn years that he had been studying the area.

Interestingly, Hattersley-Smith 1967 (Arctic Circular 17, 13-14 noted up in Jeffries 1986) had previously observed that the Ayles Ice Shelf no longer existed. Jeffries 1986:

here

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Forget global warming

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Read more: here

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Exposure of global warming deception goes viral

take a look at the views of some of the experts, including a few candid assessments by die-hard True Believers, who reveal just how little evidence exists to keep alive the theoretical Global Warming Godzilla that lumbered onto the scene in the late 1980s.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

CLIMATEGATE II

I agree w/ Susan [Solomon] that we should try to put more in the bullet about
“Subsequent evidence” [...] Need to convince readers that there really has been
an increase in knowledge – more evidence. What is it?

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Roger Harrabin received money from EAU

The investigators said some of the breaches involved direct conflicts of interests – with the funders being the subjects of the programmes they were paying for – and that others failed to observe BBC rules on telling viewers where the programme budget had come from.

Wind farms are useless

A subsidized industry cannot make profit.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Scientific heresy

Astronomy is a science; astrology is a pseudoscience.

Evolution is science; creationism is pseudoscience.

Molecular biology is science; homeopathy is pseudoscience.

Vaccination is science; the MMR scare is pseudoscience.

Oxygen is science; phlogiston was pseudoscience.

Chemistry is science; alchemy was pseudoscience.

Are you with me so far?

Matt Ridley

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

The Delinquent Teenager

The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert
By Donna Laframboise



The book elucidates how the panel’s much-vaunted “peer review” amounts to a “circular, incestuous process. Scientists make decisions as journal editors about what qualifies as peer-reviewed literature. They then cite the same papers they themselves played midwife to while serving as IPCC authors.” IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri�s claim that all the “Climate Bible’s” science is peer reviewed is, in any case, bunk. With a body of volunteers, Ms. Laframboise went through the 2007 report and found that more than 5,000 references - over a third - were from less-than-reliable sources. The most egregious such “grey” reference led to the claim that the Himalayan glaciers were to disappear by 2035. This terrifying assertion was traced back to the top of a non-expert’s head.

more

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Solar energy fiasco.

As failed solar panel manufacturer Solyndra rides through the investigative ringer in Congress, revelations of another politically-connected company that received what appears to be a less-than-virtuous $1.2 billion loan guarantee are surfacing. The company, SunPower, received its $1.2 billion loan guarantee in September, immediately before the program’s deadline. SunPower isn’t as financially sound as the public was led to believe when it secured a loan guarantee twice the size of Solyndra’s $535 million loan. Just this week — less than a month after taxpayers landed on the hook for SunPower’s $1.2 billion loan guarantee —
read more here

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

The Green money pit

Last week, the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) released a report on the amount of money that has been spent in the fight over Transcanada Corp.’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline. The pipeline, which would run 1,700 miles from the Canadian tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico, is opposed by environmentalists.

Unfortunately, CRP’s report portrays the fight as a battle between “Big Oil” and poor little environmental activist groups. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

The report quotes Eddie Scher, the senior communications strategist for the Sierra Club. Scher complains that environmental groups can’t compete with the “literally unlimited resources” of energy companies.

“There’s no question we’re up against big numbers of campaign dollars,” he said. “We’re up against the cream of the crop when it comes to K Street lobbyists. But we believe even well-financed insanity is trumped by democracy.”

But the Sierra Club - like other major environmental groups - is by no means poor. At the end of 2009, it had more than $170 million in assets between its activist wing and its education foundation. The Nature Conservancy ended last year with $5.65 billion in assets, after taking in $210.5 million in revenue. The World Wildlife Fund had $377.5 million in assets as of June 2010, after scraping together $177.7 million for the fiscal year. And the National Audubon Society had $305.9 million stashed away at the end of last year. The Environmental Defense Fund, Earthjustice, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and almost every other national “green” group you’ve ever heard of are similarly “impoverished.”

And then there are the foundations - dozens if not hundreds of them - that finance environmental activism. Among their benefactors: the Energy Foundation ($68.6 million in assets), the Joyce Foundation ($773.6 million), the Rockefeller Brothers Fund ($729 million), the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation ($6.8 billion), the David and Lucile Packard Foundation ($5.7 billion), and Heinz Endowments ($1.2 billion).

Scher’s Sierra Club might not spend as much money on lobbying as energy companies do, but that’s by choice. The part of the Sierra Club that is organized under the 501(c)(4) section of the tax code - in other words, the part of the organization that isn’t limited by lobbying restrictions - had nearly $49 million in assets at its disposal at the end of 2009. According to its 2009 tax return, the group spent about $4.9 million on “lobbying and political expenditures.” Only $480,000 of that money was spent at the federal level. The other $4.4 million was spent lobbying at the state level or on political activities like advertisements.

But that’s because the Sierra Club has made a strategic decision to focus more on litigation than on lobbying. The group files, on average, one lawsuit per week.

Other groups with as much financial might, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council, make similar tactical decisions about litigation, lobbying, and other activities. In fact, litigation involves more bullying than lobbying does. There are few things worse in life than dealing with lawsuits.

It’s time for the people at these well-heeled environmental groups to stop whining about how they “can’t compete” with energy companies.


Monday, October 10, 2011

new Orleans levees

We keep hearing "It is Was George Bush and the republicans" who blocked the levee construction in New Orleans. Think Again.
"My feeling was that saving human lives was more important than saving a percentage of shrimp and crab in Lake Pontchartrain," Towers told the Times. "I told my staff at the time that this judge had condemned the city. Some people said I was being a little dramatic."


read more here