Global Warming Is Not A Crisis – According to the New York Times

I keep wanting to make the point that medicine is one of our biggest energy wasters but the world keeps yanking my chain like this:

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/on-the-energy-gap-and-climate-crisis/

The one I’d choose is much like the one stated by  Richard Somerville of the University of California, San Diego, during a climate debate several years ago over the proposition that “ Global Warming is Not a Crisis.”

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But then little things like this pop up the same day:

http://www.ecanadanow.com/science/2010/04/08/global-warming-is-still-an-issue-two-glaciers-disappear/

Global Warming is Still an Issue, Two Glaciers Disappear

Posted by Staff on Apr 8th, 2010 /

Two more glaciers have disappeared from Glacier National Park. There are 25 glaciers left and scientists believe they will be gone by the end of the decade. This brings the problem of Global Warming back into the news after the recent email scandals, that implied that many in the Global Warming movement were manipulating statistics.

The loss of the glaciers in the northwestern Montana park is attributed to warmer temperatures. These 2 glaciers fell below the measure used by scientists to determine if they can be called glaciers. This number is 25 acres. When the glacier falls below this number, it is no longer considered a glacier. The largest glacier in the park, called the “Harrison Glacier” covers 465 acres.

The decrease of glaciers means there is less water in the rivers of the area. Less water also contributes to an increase in fires and a decrease in fish. It is not certain what is causing the rise in temperatures causing the shrinking of the glaciers. 90% of glaciers worldwide are now said to be shrinking. Alaska, the Alps and the Andes are leading the world in the loss of glaciers. Scientist have toyed with the idea of covering glaciers in plastic sheeting to keep them cooler.

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Isn’t life pathetic sometimes…

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Rep. Joe Barton – You can’t regulate God

But you CAN regulate the airlines, the world’s Air Forces, the Coal companies, and the water born freight business. You can regulate the Navy and you can regulate the 500 largest point of source polluters. But trying to regulate Al Gore proved difficult:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqUHM2gf5g4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Barton

Barton was born in Waco, Texas to Bess Wynell Buice and Larry Linus Barton.[1] He graduated from Waco High School. He attended Texas A&M University in College Station on a Gifford-Hill Opportunity Award scholarship[2] and received a B.S. in industrial engineering in 1972. An M.Sc. in industrial administration from Purdue University followed in 1973. Following college Barton entered private industry until 1981 when he became a White House Fellow and served under Secretary of Energy James B. Edwards. Later, he began consulting for Atlantic Richfield Oil and Gas Co. before being elected to Congress in 1984.[3]

Barton was elected to represent Texas’s 6th congressional district in his first attempt, defeating Democratic opponent Dan Kubiak with 56% of the vote in a contest to succeed Phil Gramm, who left his seat to run for the United States Senate that year. He was one of six freshmen Republican congressmen elected from Texas in 1984 known as the Texas Six Pack. He received 88% of the vote in 2000, 71% of the vote in 2002 against Democratic challenger Felix Alvarado, and 66% of the vote in 2004 against Democratic challenger Morris Meyer.[citation needed]

In 1993, Barton ran in the special election for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the resignation of Lloyd Bentsen, who became Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration. Barton finished third in the contest and missed a runoff slot.[citation needed]

Congressman Barton is the Ranking Minority Member on the Energy & Commerce Committee.[

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Rep. Barton has been regarded as a climate change denier[5] and his opposition to addressing global warming has been consistent and long-term. As a chairman with primary responsibility over the energy sector, Barton has consistently acted over the years to prevent congressional action on global warming.[11] In 2001, Barton declared, “as long as I am chairman, [regulating global warming pollution] is off the table indefinitely. I don’t want there to be any uncertainty about that.”[12] Barton led opposition to amendments that would have recognized global warming during consideration of the Energy Advancement and Conservation Act in 2001, opposing an amendment to require the President to develop and implement a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels as called for by the non-binding United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which the U.S. is a party to.[13] In 2003, Barton again opposed amendments that would have recognized global warming during consideration of the National Energy Policy Act of 2003, opposing a nonbinding amendment that would have put Congress on record as saying that the U.S. should “demonstrate international leadership and responsibility in reducing the health, environmental, and economic risks posed by climate change.”[14] In July 2003, Barton offered an amendment to the Foreign Relations Authorization Act to remove language that both recognized global warming and called on President Bush to reengage with the international community to find solutions.[15] In addition, Barton has consistently opposed proposals to reduce the nation’s dependence on oil.[16][17][18]

In 2005, prompted by a February 2005 Wall Street Journal article,[19] Rep. Barton has launched an investigation into two climate change studies from 1998 and 1999.[5] In his letters to the authors of the studies, he requested not just details on the studies themselves but significant information about their entire lives and previous studies. This has been widely regarded as an attempted attack on the scientists rather than a serious attempt to understand the science,[20] although some view it as a normal exercise of the committee’s responsibility and an effort to make possible scientific debate on a subject within its jurisdiction.[21][22] The Washington Post condemned Barton’s investigation as a “witch-hunt“.[23] Environmental Science & Technology, an obscure policy journal often cited by politicians, including Barton, reported what it said was scientific proof that global warming science is wrong.[24] See also Barton’s own response to this controversy in The Dallas Morning News.[25] The dispute expanded with Sherwood Boehlert‘s House Science Committee taking a strong interest.[26]

In 2006, Barton earned two “environmental harm demerits” from the conservative watchdog group Republicans for Environmental Protection, the first “for derailing floor passage of a sense of the House resolution … acknowledging climate change and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”; the second, “for holding hearings, in his role as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, designed to intimidate climate scientists and raise doubt about the impacts and causes of climate change.”[27] The hearings were held by Barton’s committee on July 19, 2006, chaired by Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY), Chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations; there, several skeptics testified regarding the hockey stick graph.

During Former Vice President Al Gore‘s testimony to the Energy and Commerce Committee in March, 2007, Barton asserted to Gore that “You’re not just off a little, you’re totally wrong,”[28] thus reinforcing his denial that carbon dioxide emissions contribute to global climate change.

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http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633524/the_climate_killers/15

The Inquisitor
Rep. Joe Barton
Republican, Texas

As ranking Republican on the House energy committee, Barton is a mini version of Sen. James Inhofe. In his view, the climate is changing for “natural variation reasons,” and humans should just “get shade” and learn to adapt. “For us to try to step in and say we have got to do all these global things to prevent the Earth from getting any warmer is absolute nonsense,” he insists. “You can’t regulate God.”

During the Bush era, Barton bottled up all climate legislation and pushed to open up public lands for drilling by private interests. He also targeted leading climate scientists, demanding that they provide Congress with detailed documentation of their financial interests. (Barton himself has received $1.4 million from oil and gas donors, plus $1.3 million from electric utilities.) The inquisition drew sharp rebukes, even from Barton’s fellow Republicans. Your “purpose seems to be to intimidate scientists rather than to learn from them,” then-Rep. Sherwood Boehlert told Barton. The effort “to have Congress put its thumbs on the scales of a scientific debate” is “truly chilling.”

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With liars like this can the republic survive?

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Fred Singer – He has been making up science since he said cigarettes wouldn’t kill you

Of course he has been in favor of bad air for 50 years…so at least he is badly consistent….

Oh it’s Jam Band Friday and I am going to do something a little different….today i bring you the Grammy Picks by State Journal Register writers Rhys Saunders, Brian Mackey and Brian Murphy. Caution – most of these songs I have never heard – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAwjZLztd28&feature=related

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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7JthgTMHDU )

He lies about the atmosphere, he also lies about his credentials

http://www.desmogblog.com/people/fred-singer

18 November 09

Fred Singer, lacking nobility, still claims the Prize

Climate skeptics are, not surprisingly, hitting the European speaking circuit in the weeks leading up to the U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen. But what is surprising is that notorious global warming denier S. Fred Singer was described at a skeptic conference today as a Nobel prize winner, a flat out lie.

According to a Belgian journalist who alerted DeSmog to Singer’s appearance today at a skeptic conference in the European Parliament building, Singer was described in event materials as:

“a reviewer of IPCC reports, he shares the 2007 Nobel peace prize with Al Gore and 2000 others.”

The idea that Fred Singer shares any part in the IPCC/Gore Nobel prize is laughable, of course.  Other than Mr. Gore, the Nobel committee recognized only the IPCC authors, and they all received framed Nobel certificates.  If Singer can produce a framed Nobel, I’ll produce my Olympic gold medal (Singer must eat cereal too, I sure enjoy the prizes inside, although I’ve never seen a Nobel peace prize before).

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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXG0YMv5Fvk )

Last week at the Copenhagen climate summit, we saw Christopher Monckton, the head of the delegation for the oil industry-friendly Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), accuse young climate change activists of being “Nazis” and the “Hitler youth.”

Another member of Monckton’s Copendenier delegation is a gentleman by the name of S. Fred Singer, who is well known to our team at the DeSmogBlog.

Readers might say why are you picking on this guy? You did not post much extra stuff about a lot of the earlier people?  The answer is that he is that he is the only one purporting to be a scientist…and he is from that bastion of lying and cheat…George Mason University. God typing that made me feel unclean.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-grandia/copendenier-fred-singer-o_b_390152.html

In fact, we once received a letter from Singer’s lawyer threatening to sue us after we reported that Singer once did work for the cigarette lobby. We never heard back from Singer after we sent along all the research behind our claim.

Like Monkcton, Singer has an “expert” opinion on many subjects. Not coincidentally, many of these expert opinions greatly assist the work of various industries looking to avoid being saddled with expensive health and environmental regulations.

Our research team recently came across a 1996 Washington Times article by Singer, titled Anthology of 1995’s Environmental Myths [pdf]. In the article, Singer outlines “five topics that demonstrate distortion or misuse of science in shaping policies.”

The five are: global warming, the hole in the ozone, second-hand tobacco smoke, the “Radon scare” and toxic substances in our food.

Take a read of Singer’s article and ask yourself this: what would our planet and people be like today if we had listened to Singer’s advice 13 years ago? Then ask yourself: why would anyone in their right mind trust his supposedly “expert” opinion – or the opinions of those in his delegation – here at the Copenhagen climate talks.

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1Xr-JFLxik )

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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m1EFMoRFvY )

But the real deal is this:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633524/the_climate_killers/13

The Hack Scientist
Fred Singer
Retired physicist, University of Virginia

A former mouthpiece for the tobacco industry, the 85-year-old Singer is the granddaddy of fake “science” designed to debunk global warming. The retired physicist — who also tried to downplay the danger of the hole in the ozone layer — is still wheeled out as an authority by big polluters determined to kill climate legislation. For years, Singer steadfastly denied that the world is heating up: Citing satellite data that has since been discredited, he even made the unhinged claim that “the climate has been cooling just slightly.” Last year, Singer served as a lead author of “Climate Change Reconsidered” — an 880-page report by the right-wing Heartland Institute that was laughably presented as a counterweight to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s scientific authority on global warming. Singer concludes that the unchecked growth of climate-cooking pollution is “unequivocally good news.” Why? Because “rising CO2 levels increase plant growth and make plants more resistant to drought and pests.” Small wonder that Heartland’s climate work has long been funded by the likes of Exxon and reactionary energy barons like Charles Koch and Richard Mellon Scaife.

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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYaiGB7eYU8 )

Don’t worry Radon Gas won’t hurt you. What a scientist hahaha

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSD4vsh1zDA )

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Don Blankenship – He blows the tops off mountains and pushes the rubble into the valleys

These are the guys I think should lead the list but he is number 12 here. Don’t just take it from me or Tim Dickinson

http://www.grist.org/article/don-blankenship-seventh-scariest-person-in-america/

Don Blankenship: Seventh scariest person in America

Massey Energy CEO is a really bad dude

24 Oct 2006 5:40 PM
by David Roberts

The venerable print magazine Old Trout was recently relaunched with a splashy issue on “The Thirteen Scariest Americans.” I was asked to write up the scariest American from an environmental point of view.

The choice was not difficult. The scariest polluter in the U.S. is Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy. The guy is evil, and I don’t use that word lightly.

The issue is out now. (Look for it on a newsstand near you!) The folks at Old Trout have given me permission to publish an expanded version of the piece after a suitable period of exclusivity. So watch for that at the beginning of December.

In the meantime, check out three things.

First, there’s this longish New York Times piece on Blankenship from Sunday. In the usual style of mainstream reportage, it is studiously neutral in tone, woefully downplaying the environmental destruction Massey does and the thuggish tactics Blankenship has imposed. But you can get a pretty accurate general picture of the guy.

Second, watch this short clip from Bill Moyers‘ PBS special Is God Green? At the end there’s an archival clip of Blankenship from 1984. To me it’s absolutely mesmerizing. I’ve probably watched it 50 times. The sunken, lifeless eyes, the flat affect, the utter lack of empathy … like I said, it bespeaks psychopathy. I’ve shown it to a bunch of other people and they don’t find it quite as chilling as I do, so your mileage may vary:

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http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633524/the_climate_killers/12

The Climate Killers

Meet the 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming

TIM DICKINSON

The Coal Baron
Don Blankenship
CEO, Massey Energy

In an age when most CEOs are canny enough to at least pay lip service to the realities of climate change, Blankenship stands apart as corporate America’s most unabashed denier. Global warming, he insists, is nothing but “a hoax and a Ponzi scheme.” His fortune depends on such lies: Massey Energy, the nation’s fourth-largest coal-mining operation, unearths more than 40 million tons of the fossil fuel each year — often by blowing the tops off of Appalachian mountains.

The country’s highest-paid coal executive, Blankenship is a villain ripped straight from the comic books: a jowly, mustache-sporting, union-busting coal baron who uses his fortune to bend politics to his will. He recently financed a $3.5 million campaign to oust a state Supreme Court justice who frequently ruled against his company, and he hung out on the French Riviera with another judge who was weighing an appeal by Massey. “Don Blankenship would actually be less powerful if he were in elected office,” Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia once observed. “He would be twice as accountable and half as feared.”

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Trust me, if he could sell you coal and make you eat it he would.

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Tom Donohue – He even lies about his member’s positions

Shouldn’t they fire this useless puke.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633524/the_climate_killers/11

The Know Nothing
Tom Donohue
President, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

As the de facto chief of American business and industry, Donohue has turned the biggest lobbying presence on Capitol Hill into the biggest friend of climate polluters. In the first nine months of last year, the Chamber spent $65 million — three times more than ExxonMobil — mounting a campaign to block Congress from placing limits on carbon pollution. “Not only has the Chamber spent decades denying the existence of the climate crisis,” Al Gore observed, “now it is dedicating a significant quantity of resources and money attempting to prevent Congress from taking action.”

The extreme anti-climate position staked out by Donohue runs counter to the position of his own members. Of the 23 companies on the Chamber’s board that made their position on climate legislation public, only four are against it — and three of those are coal companies. Yet the Chamber claims, in scaremongering language, that climate legislation threatens to “completely shut the country down” and “virtually destroy the United States.” For his part, Donohue is proudly ignorant of the risks that a changing climate poses to the business community: “Is the science right? Is science not right? I don’t know.”

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Like I have been saying all these last 2 weeks everyone should read Burn and Climate Killers in the Rolling Stone.

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James Inhofe – Why does this man even deserve to be heard on Global Warming

The quick answer is that he doesn’t deserve to be listen to. He has no background for it. But often that is the case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Inhofe

James MountainJimInhofe (born November 17, 1934) is an American politician from Oklahoma. He is a member of the Republican Party and currently serves as the senior Senator from Oklahoma. A former the State Representative and Senator, Inhofe served eight years in the United States Congress before election to the Senate in 1994.

Inhofe is among the most vocal global warming skeptics in the US Congress and is also known for his general opposition to LGBT rights, his support for the state of Israel, and his legislative efforts to make English the national language of the United States.

Inhofe was born in Des Moines, Iowa and moved with his family to Tulsa, Oklahoma, when he was a child. He was a member of the Class of 1953 at Tulsa Central High School,[1] and served in the United States Army from 1957 to 1958.[2][3]

In 1959, Inhofe married Kay Kirkpatrick, with whom he has four children. Inhofe received a B.A. degree from the University of Tulsa in 1973, at the age of 38.In his business career, Inhofe was a real estate developer and became president of the Quaker Life Insurance Company; during this time, the company went into receivership. It was liquidated in 1986.[4]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633524/the_climate_killers/7

God’s Denier
Sen. James Inhofe
Republican, Oklahoma

As the former chairman and ranking Republican of the Senate environment committee, Inhofe is one of the GOP’s loudest and most influential voices on climate change. The senator from Oklahoma calls global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” insists that carbon dioxide is not “a real pollutant,” and doesn’t worry about rising sea levels, because, if all else fails, “God’s still up there.”

Far from being marginalized, Inhofe continues to hold remarkable sway: In November, he organized fellow GOP members to boycott the environment committee’s debate on climate legislation. He also marshaled the ranking GOP members of all six committees with jurisdiction over climate change to write Sen. Barbara Boxer, warning her that proceeding without Republicans would “severely damage” prospects for the bill’s passage. The move helped cloud the bill’s future, diminishing America’s bargaining position at the Copenhagen climate negotiations. “We won, you lost,” Inhofe gloated to Boxer during a committee hearing. “Get a life.”

In December, the senator also vowed that a resurgent GOP would block the EPA from curbing carbon pollution: “After the 2010 election,” he said, “I guarantee we’ll have the votes to do it.”

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Good God and we still have 10 more to go. I do not know how much longer I can keep this up.

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Marc Morano – There is a name that few people will recognize

I have been posting for the last 8 or 9 days about the article below and the related book Climate Killers. Please read them so you will know who the enemy is and what to do about it.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633532/as_the_world_burns/

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He is the master of the bad word. He sits around and thinks up phrases like Nature Nazis, Envirowussies, and the “fear promoting business”. He hides behind the skirts of his right wing masters. You never see him in public and if only he had a last name like Drudge….but he doesn’t…he sounds like a quarterback and looks like a pug.

Meet the 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming in Tim Dickinson’s “The Climate Killers.”

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633524/the_climate_killers/6 

The Drudge of Denial
Marc Morano
Founder, Climate Depot

Morano, who worked for Sen. James “Global Warming is a Hoax” Inhofe, left Congress last year to set up shop as the Matt Drudge of climate denial. Today he runs Climate Depot, a website whose sponsor is funded by oil heir Richard Mellon Scaife. A private version of a congressional blog that Morano ran for Inhofe, the site serves as a clearinghouse for climate kooks. “He’s a central cell of the climate-denial machine,” says Kert Davies, research director for Greenpeace. “He’s been very effective in delaying action on this crisis.”

Morano says climate scientists are in the “fear-promoting business” and accuses them of waging a “war on modern civilization.” But it’s Morano who trafficks in wild claims, routinely distorting the work of climate scholars and charging that “proponents of man-made global warming have been funded to the tune of $50 billion.” A former producer for Rush Limbaugh, Morano gained fame as one of the first to trumpet Swift-boat lies about John Kerry’s military record. Andrew Watson, a British climate professor who recently debated Morano on the BBC, said it best in a whispered aside at the end of the show: “What an asshole.”

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Should be Dan Morono, don’t you think? 

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Mary Landrieu – Finally a woman polluter wow that IS equallity

My computer was attacked by a Trojan Horse dialer on Friday and life has sucked ever since. I am posting from the Riverton Library as we speak. This meant that I did not get to give my tribute to Martin Luther King as the founder of the environemental justice movement. So here are some sites to see:

http://taintedgreen.com/general/what-would-martin-luther-king-jr-say-to-us-about-the-environment/000509

or

http://ams.confex.com/ams/87ANNUAL/techprogram/paper_122177.htm 

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But we shall move on. We are going over the 17 greatest climate killers in the US as an example of whose behavior we have to change. This post is from 2 very important articles in of all places the Rolling Stone Magazine:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633532/as_the_world_burns/ 

Meet the 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming in Tim Dickinson’s “The Climate Killers.”

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It is sad but true…I worked in Mary’s first campaign for the Senate. The sole reason I did was to make her the first woman elected to the Senate from Louisiana. This is how I am repaid. Just think her Brother Mitch Landrieu is probably the next Mayor of New Orleans. Wonder what they can do together?

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633524/the_climate_killers/5

The Dirty Democrat
Sen. Mary Landrieu
Democrat, Louisiana

Landrieu — who boasts of being “the most fervent pro-drilling Democrat in the Senate” — has assured oil interests that she’ll be “putting the brakes” on current efforts to cap carbon pollution. Even though her home state will be savaged by climate change, Katrina-style, Landrieu routinely sides with her energy funders. In 2008, after providing the pivotal vote to preserve $12 billion in tax breaks for Big Oil, she received $272,000 from oil and gas interests — third among Democrats. Joined by other Democrats from key energy states — including Jim Webb of Virginia, Max Baucus of Montana, Evan Bayh of Indiana and Robert Byrd of West Virginia — Landrieu tried to kill climate legislation in the Senate by requiring that it be passed by a 60-vote supermajority. “Landrieu acts more to protect Big Oil than the future for the people of Louisiana,” says Tony Massaro of the League of Conservation Voters, which added Landrieu to its “Dirty Dozen” roster of pro-pollution politicians.

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Hope somebody drills her someday. 

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Cap And Trade – An industry insider opposes it when industry proposes it

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Community Energy Systems is a nonprofit 501c3 organization chartered in Illinois in Sangamon County. As such we are dependent on public donations for our continued existence. We also use Adsense as a fundraiser. Please click on the ads that you see on this page, on our main page and on our Bulletin Board (Refrigerator Magnets) and you will be raising money for CES. We say a heartfelt THANK YOU to all who do.

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This is an example of what we have to put up with in this community. Springfield has been raped by corporate media purchases. First a right wing conglomerate, the Sinclair Broadcast Group, bought channel 20 and gave us an ex-CIA agent as a far right social commenter. Then Gatehouse buys our local paper, the State Journal Register, and in one week they give us an editorial in which Union Pacific says that they can ram as many freight trains down our throats as they want and the opinion below that Cap and Trade will kill the USA’s economy. This by the guy who lead the deregulation train before it derailed our economy. Thanks a lot man.

http://www.sj-r.com/opinions/x801093616/Dan-Miller-CO2-curbs-would-be-devastating

In My View: CO2 curbs would be devastating

THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER

Posted Nov 07, 2009 @ 12:03 AM

 Regulations and mandates that force nationwide cuts in carbon dioxide emissions offer only speculative environmental benefits, if any, as a switch to wind and solar power will certainly cause more harm than good to the environment.

But command-and-control forces in Congress are headed in that direction, with the House narrowly passing a bill to cap CO2 emissions, and the Senate taking up a companion bill this month.
Engineers calculate that a stunning 600 square miles of wind turbines would be needed to produce the same 1,000 megawatts of electricity as a single medium-to-large coal power plant. That’s enough to provide electricity to about 10,000 homes.

Even in favorable locations, wind turbines can supply electrical power only about 20 percent of the time, meaning utilities still must have an alternative baseload source to compensate for wind fluctuations, and those alternatives are three: coal, natural gas or nuclear power plants. But by taking coal and natural gas out of production due to carbon dioxide restrictions, a massive and enormously expensive program will be needed to build more nuclear power plants to supply this baseload.

Further, wind turbine developments despoil nature’s beauty, and indiscriminately kill birds and bats, including many endangered species.

Writing last summer in the Boston Globe, Eleanor Tillinghast, director of the environmental advocacy group Green Berkshires, warned, “Cutting wide swaths of unspoiled forest for access roads, clear-cutting miles of ridgelines, erecting industrial structures with spinning blades that threaten migrating birds and the last remaining bats — these are irreversible actions with permanent consequences.”

Solar power likewise requires substantially more environmental destruction than coal. The Nevada Solar One array, the most efficient in the nation, requires 350 acres of land to produce less than 1/10th the power of a conventional coal-fueled power plant, and that’s at peak efficiency at noon on a cloudless day.

Both wind and solar power projects inevitably would require the construction of new transmission lines, often across otherwise-pristine lands, to reach energy-hungry consumers. The nation’s key wind corridor, from the Texas panhandle to the Dakotas, contains no major population center.

Further, wind and solar generators consume much more water than coal power plants, a serious problem in desert areas with the most sunlight.

All of that explains why so many environmentalists oppose further development of wind and solar power. By forcing construction of more of these projects, carbon dioxide restrictions will have a devastating impact on many of America’s most valuable natural treasures.

Dan Miller is publisher at The Heartland Institute and former chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission, the public utility regulatory body in Illinois. He can be reached at
dmiller@heartland.org.

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More on this guy Miller later.

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This Planet Is About Shot – They argue over climate change cause they do not want you to see the big picture

What the Industrialists of the world and their Bankers do not want you to see is  that the oceans are depleted, the atmosphere is seriously screwed up (not just with green house gases), and the land has effectively been stripped. Humanity has literally sucked the resources out of this planet, goaded on by religious and political leaders.

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20090824001733data_trunc_sys.shtml

24 September 2009
New doomsday map shows planet’s dire state
by Kate Melville

Human activities have already pushed the Earth beyond three of the planet’s biophysical thresholds, with consequences that are detrimental or even catastrophic for large parts of the world, conclude 29 European, Australian and U.S. scientists in an article in Nature. This force has given rise to a new era – Anthropocene – in which human actions have become the main driver of global environmental change.

“On a finite planet, at some point, we will tip the vital resources we rely upon into irreversible decline if our consumption is not balanced with regenerative and sustainable activity,” says report co-author Sander van der Leeuw, of Arizona State University. The report started with a fairly simple question: How much pressure can the Earth system take before it begins to crash? “Until now, the scientific community has not attempted to determine the limits of the Earth system’s stability in so many dimensions and make a proposal such as this. We are sending these ideas out to be vetted by the scientific community at large,” explains van der Leeuw. Nine boundaries were identified in the report, including climate change, stratospheric ozone, land use change, freshwater use, biological diversity, ocean acidification, nitrogen and phosphorus inputs to the biosphere and oceans, aerosol loading and chemical pollution. The study suggests that three of these boundaries -climate change, biological diversity and nitrogen input to the biosphere – may already have been transgressed.

Using an interdisciplinary approach, the researchers looked at the data for each of the nine vital processes in the Earth system and identified a critical control variable. Biodiversity loss, for example, is based on species extinction rate, which is expressed in extinctions per million species per year. They then explored how the boundaries interact. Here, loss of biodiversity impacts carbon storage (climate change), freshwater, nitrogen and phosphorous cycles, and land systems.

The researchers stress that their approach does not offer a complete roadmap for sustainable development, but does provide an important element by identifying critical planetary boundaries. They also propose a bold move: a limit for each boundary that would maintain the conditions for a livable world. For biodiversity, that would be less than 10 extinctions per million species per year. The current status is greater than 100 species per million lost per year, whereas the pre-industrial value was 0.1-1.

“Three of the boundaries we identify – 350 parts per million of atmospheric carbon dioxide, biodiversity extinction rates more than 10 times the background rate, and no more than 35 million tons of nitrogen pollution per year – have already been exceeded with fossil fuel use, land use change, and agricultural pollution, driving us to unsustainable levels that are producing real risks to our survival,” notes report co-author Diana Liverman, of the University of Arizona.

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We are in the midst of a very large extinction event that we are essentially causing…

Mass extinctions require 2 events. In other words the Dinosaurs didn’t evolve into birds because of a single event…the comet strike. What happened was they filled every niche, ate themselves out of house and home. Probably started eating themselves, thus the gigantisism movement AND then the comet struck. Humans are heading for the same fate.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/02/17/mass-extinction-theory.html

Mass Extinctions May Follow One-Two Punch

Michael Reilly, Discovery News

Illustration of Volcanic Eruption

The “Press” | Discovery News Video

 

Feb. 17, 2009 — As agents of extinction, comet and asteroid impacts may be losing their punch.

According to a new theory about how mass dyings work, cosmic collisions generally aren’t enough to cause a major extinction event. To be truly devastating, they must be accompanied by another event that inflicts long-term suffering, like runaway climate change due to massive volcanic eruptions.

In other words, a comet couldn’t have killed the dinosaurs by itself — unless they were already endangered species.

This kind of one-two punch could explain more than the extinction of dinosaurs, Nan Arens of Hobart and William Smith Colleges said. In a recent paper in the journal Paleobiology, she and colleague Ian West argue that there are two types of events that can cause extinctions — “pulses” (quick, deadly shocks, like comets) and “presses” (drawn-out stresses that push ecosystems to the brink but may not kill outright, like million-year-long volcanic eruptions).

The chances of mass dyings go way up when both happen together, argues Arens.

 

eruption

WATCH VIDEO: What constitutes a mass extinction?

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But are all mass extinctions created equal? Can researchers come up with a “Grand Unified Theory” of ancient apocalypse?West and Arens think so. They combed the last 300 million years of geologic record, noting impact craters, massive eruptions, periods of ancient climate change, and then comparing them to extinctions. The rate at which species die off spiked dramatically, they found, when a “pulse”-type event occurred within a million years or so of a “press.”The theory fits well for the dinosaurs. Around the time of their demise 65 million years ago, a comet slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula and a huge volcano, the Deccan Traps, was erupting in what is today India.

But other extinctions are problematic. The greatest dying in geologic history, the Permian-Triassic extinction, killed 90 percent of all life on Earth, but there is no record of an impact. Instead, all signs point to a 200,000-year-long volcanic eruption in Siberia as the murder weapon.

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