Thomas Edison day

How I celebrated Thomas Edison day.

I kept my lights on and also turned on my Christmas lights.

Environmental whackos were urging everyone to turn off their lights
for one hour in celebration of “Earth Hour”
If you’re unfamiliar, “Earth Hour” is a feel good hour where
socialists and tree-hugging hippies unite to dismiss electricity,
fossil fuels and the modern conveniences that allow for historically
unrivaled prosperity, longevity, health and quality of life throughout
the world.
While the knuckleheads leader Al Gore were the dozen or so
floodlights grandly highlighting several trees and illuminating the
driveway entrance of Gore’s mansion.
We… had to witness the unpleasant TV broadcasting of a bunch of out of
touch with reality Ecochondriacs crying to save the planet while
burning candles made out of oil and releasing that much hated “carbon”
into the atmosphere.
I also wonder how many people fell in the dark or house fires were started ?
Thankfully, most of the Kool-Aid drinking human haters that
participated in “Earth Hour” undoubtedly spent the hour on their couch
or on their porch reflecting how solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, short
and generally life would be without electricity.
The total impact on public policy and probably on people's
"consciousness" was about as effective as watching paint dry.
Believing that it makes one iota of difference to anyone, anywhere,anytime that turning off your lights
for an hour does anything except make the participant feel a false
sense of moral superiority in a Guilt free hour.
Maybe the one positive thing that did happen during that hour of Darkness is the
turning off of them new green "Trojan horse" mercury releasing fumes
from CFL lamps.
Personally April Fools day would be a better suited date.

Letter To the British Columbia School Boards

I admit that I am not a climatologist on the issue of global warming. However; I support the principle that young people should be educated, not propagandized -- and I know something about what that means.

One of the most important differences between education and propaganda is how they deal with great controversies.

In education, students are taught about the controversies. In propaganda, they are shielded from them.

In education, students are taught both sides of the important debates. In propaganda, they are taught only one.

In education, students are taught both the strengths and the weaknesses of the officially favored theory. In propaganda, they are taught only its strengths.

In short, education is the training of minds, while propaganda is the training of prejudices. In a democracy, the public schools should not propagandize, but educate.

As we find in the science section of these guidelines, students must learn to "analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information.

The issue is that although students should be taught about both sides of a scientific theoretical controversy, your assignment, based on the description in your permission request, appears to only present one side and are shielded from the weaknesses. contained in. BC Science 10.

How can a student write a critique about assertions made on global warming without having anything to compare and contrast the assertions to? Your permission/assignment sheet gave no indication as to how, if any, the views to counter Anthropogenic Global Warming would be taught.

In addition, it is not clear what alternate assignment is available to the student/teachers should they choose to Learn from a climatologist instead from a television show hosted by a journalist with no science degrees.

If the "theory" of global warming is to be taught in your classroom, I urge that the topic should be taught like the other sciences and like other controversial theories -- with honesty about both . When classroom activities and/or textbooks are biased, you(the school board)) are the check and balance.

Statements are made in Science 10 that are assertions that mix cause and effect: "climate change is affecting our planet right now. Ice is disappearing earlier in the spring, trees are budding earlier, and extreme weather events are causing more outbreaks of disease than 20 years ago." They are not only inaccurate but also dishonest.

I urge The school board to require that the scientific data to both sides of this controversy be taught and that not one side be suppressed.

To do so would be not only be good training in science, but good education in citizenship.

W Robichaud

Williams lake BC

http://www.bcscience.com/bc10/pgs/links_u1.html

Green energy is not such a breeze

One by one, the energy giants that hoisted green flags and trumpeted their conversion to renewables are ducking and diving and hiding behind the curtains.
Iberdrola, a big investor in wind farms in Spain and the owner of ScottishPower, is slashing its spending on renewables by 40 per cent. Shell said recently it would no longer invest in wind turbines, preferring to focus its efforts on new biofuel technology, while BP has opted out of the UK renewables market, deeming it to be a poor bet.
It is tempting to see the great push for renewable energy in Europe as a fair-weather phenomenon. The performance of Britain's turbines is a case in point - for much of January they were operating at about 10 per cent of capacity.


Sailors use to wait for a breeze to come by and take them home..wind Power was not that efficient.

Lack of logic in those who claim to be logical

Global Warming: What is the motive and how has such a situation developed?

Once people realize that humans are not causing global warming and the IPCC claims are scientifically unjustified, despite strong support by environmentalists, two questions logically follow. What is the motive and how has such a situation developed? I examined the political motive in a series of articles starting here;

More...

Despite popular opinion and calls to action, the Maldives are not being overrun by sea level rise

The photographs he attached are interesting to say the least, click for larger images:

And soon others were jumping in. Tom Harris quoted a study from Nils-Axel Mörner and provided a plot from Nils-Axel Mörner’s study of sea level using C14 isotope dating.

Harris wrote:

While Andrew does not personally say that sea level rise will swamp the Maldives soon, he implies he agrees with the scenario by including nothing at all to counter the validity of the Maldivian announcement. I suggest Andrew read about Morner’s work and get an expansion of the below misleading piece published right away. You can download (for the next 7 days) one of Dr. Morner’s most recent papers on the topic at http://tinyurl.com/dhz6gk . Note the below graph from that report, especially.

The Clear and Cohesive Message of the International Conference on Climate Change

By Marc Sheppard

“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.” -- from the Oregon Petition, signed by over 31,000 scientists

Statistics in modern society

Most people know about Disraeli’s comment, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics”, but few understand how the application of statistics has affected our lives or how it developed and evolved. We sense it when everything sort of fits everyone, but doesn’t precisely fit anyone.

Many years ago, I monitored development of a housing estate for low-income residents. Planners knew who qualified as residents beforehand because of the criteria so they did a survey to determine the desires and expectations for all residents. After people had lived there for a while a second survey sought their judgment. The response was “It’s alright, but…” It was a predicable outcome because the planners designed for the average. Chances of any individual requests being included were very small. In any population there is a wide range of individuals, but modern society only accommodates the majority near the middle, that is within one standard deviation of the average.

Application of statistics to all elements of our lives is an outgrowth of what is generally called logical positivism. Wikipedia defines it as, “a school of philosophy that combines ”empiricism, the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge of the world, with a version of rationalism incorporating mathematical and logico-linguistic constructs and deductions in epistemology.” In simple terms this means that if you can’t quantify something it doesn’t exist. It makes mathematics and its practical application, statistics, paramount. Ludwig Wittgenstein conceived the idea at the turn of the 20th century. Wikipedia notes, “Wittgenstein’s influence has been felt in nearly every field of the humanities and social sciences, yet there are widely diverging interpretations of his thought.” Interpretations may diverge but the influence dominates our world and is at the center of why we have lost our way. The dominance is in the pure logical analysis of life and society.

International Conference on Climate Change

We Know! We all Know " They are all being paid by Exxon". Whatever that it is suppose to mean.

Arctic summer ice could vanish by 2013

Vincent`s scientific team has spent the last 10 summers on Ward Hunt Island, a remote spot some 2,500 miles northwest of Ottawa.The Arctic is warming up so quickly that the region's sea ice cover in summer could vanish as early as 2013, decades earlier than some had predicted, a leading polar expert said on Thursday.

Warwick Vincent, director of the Centre for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec, said recent data on the ice cover "appear to be tracking the most pessimistic of the models", which call for an ice free summer in 2013.

The year "2013 is starting to look as though it is a lot more reasonable as a prediction. But each year we've been wrong -- each year we're finding that it's a little bit faster than expected," he told Reuters.

The Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world and the sea ice cover shrank to a record low in 2007 before growing slightly in 2008.

In 2004 a major international panel forecast the cover could vanish by 2100. Last December, some experts said the summer ice could go in the next 10 or 20 years.

If the ice cover disappears, it could have major consequences. Shipping companies are already musing about short cuts through the Arctic, which also contains enormous reserves of oil and natural gas.

Vincent's scientific team has spent the last 10 summers on Ward Hunt Island, a remote spot some 2,500 miles (4,000 km) northwest of Ottawa.

"I was astounded as to how fast the changes are taking place. The extent of open water is something that we haven't experienced in the 10 years that I've been working up there," he said after making a presentation in the Canadian Parliament.

"We're losing, irreversibly, major features of the Canadian ice scape and that suggests that these more pessimistic models are really much closer to reality."

In 2008 the maximum summer temperature on Ward Hunt hit 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to the usual 5 degrees. Last summer alone the five ice shelves along Ellesmere Island in Canada's Far North, which are more than 4,000 years old, shrunk by 23 percent.

Vincent told Reuters last September that it was clear some of the damage would be permanent and that the warming in the Arctic was a sign of what the rest of the world could expect. He struck a similarly gloomy note in his presentation.

"Some of this is unstoppable. We're in a train of events at the moment where there are changes taking place that we are unable to reverse, the loss of these ice shelves, for example," he said.

"But what we can do is slow down this process and we have to slow down this process because we need to buy more time. We simply don't have the technologies as a civilization to deal with this level of instability that is ahead of us."

Did Someone forgot why it is called " SUMMER sea ice?

"In 2008 the maximum summer temperature on Ward Hunt hit 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to the usual 5 degrees. Last summer alone the five ice shelves along Ellesmere Island in Canada's Far North, which are more than 4,000 years old, shrunk by 23 percent."

Shrunk by 23 percent ? we were told it had collapsed in 2004.

http://www.nunatsiaqnews.com/archives/40730/news/features/40730_01.html

And then we have a study in 1986 showing the Ice Shelves off Ellesmere had Collapsed in 1983

http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic39-1-15.pdf

How can they be more then 4000 years old if they were not there some 40 years ago?
..
"I was astounded as to how fast the changes are taking place. The extent of open water is something that we haven't experienced in the 10 years that I've been working up there," he said after making a presentation in the Canadian Parliament."

Sound more like a Panic Attack after noticing the possibility of a Tax payer Funded trips coming to an End.

Cap and Trade and Alternative energy: The real danger in Obama’s policies.

The stimulus package is a classic example of dishonesty staring down honesty.

It ignores and exacerbates the underlying financial problems as the stock market reaction indicates. It will create few private sector jobs, but government departments will grow greatly in numbers and power and that will require more and continuing funding. If you want to see how much government grows under such liberal policies look at the growth in United Kingdom bureaucracies under Gordon Brown when he was in charge of treasury and then as Prime Minister.

Perhaps the largest growth with Obama’s stimulus package will be in implementing and controlling the energy plans within the package. This will also be the most lasting and damaging legacy. It will increase the total cost of living and of doing business while making US businesses less competitive in world trade. It will set back the growth of new sources of energy by many years . Look at those who have tried the ‘green’ approach. The UK energy needs are in serious problems and closer to home California is suffering from green energy plans and involvements with Enron and alternative energies. The Canadian Province of Ontario energy needs were mismanaged by Maurice Strong and badly influenced by environmentalist David Suzuki.

Dishonesty is also evident because they have moved the goalposts again. First it was carbon credits, then it was carbon tax and now it is cap and trade. They are all the same idea falsely presented as methods of reducing CO2. In fact, they don’t reduce it at all but they do give government control and put more money in government hands. They are an environmental form of sin tax like those on tobacco and alcohol. The new name eliminates reference to CO2 (carbon) and taxes. A Cap, determined by the government, will limit the amount of CO2 you can produce. Details were expanded in Obama’s first budget proposal. He estimates a return of $625 billion from the cap and trade. It allows him to punish certain industries, as Obama indicated he would with the coal industry. The word Trade incorrectly implies some sort of business like approach. It is really an unnecessary transfer of wealth, just as carbon credits were in the Kyoto Protocol. As House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican said. “We’ve got real concerns about his plan on cap and trade,” “Let’s just be honest and call it a carbon tax that will increase taxes on all Americans who drive a car, who have a job, who turn on a light switch, pure and simple.”

James Hansen’s Former NASA Supervisor Declares Himself a Skeptic Says Hansen ‘Embarrassed NASA’ & ‘Was Never Muzzled

Subject: Climate models are useless

Marc, First, I sent several e-mails to you with an error in the address and they have been returned to me. So I'm resending them in one combined e-mail.

Yes, one could say that I was, in effect, Hansen’s supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his resources, and evaluate his results. I did not have the authority to give him his annual performance evaluation. He was never muzzled even though he violated NASA’s official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind's effect on it). He thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress.

My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit. Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy.

With best wishes, John