Global Warming Enlightenment

Part Two - Quotes - Continued

³² We'll check out the reasons why many people today fear global warming. This fear of warm weather comes in dramatic contrast to our forebears - who loved warming climates and hated the mini-ice ages. After all, it was during the cooling Dark Ages that the Roman and Mayan empires collapsed, after they had thrived during a warming that was hotter than it is today. And, it was during the cold of the Little Ice Age that Europe had its worst-ever floods and famine.
(Unstoppable Global Warming, Every 1,500 Years By S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Page 7)

³³ The warming activists claim that increased meltwater due to higher temperatures could overwhelm the Great Atlantic Conveyor, the huge ocean current that distributes heat from the equator to the poles. The Gulf Stream would then shut down, and we would all be covered in ice before you can say "carbon dioxide." It happened once before - but then the world had trillions of additional tons of ice in Canadian and Siberian ice sheets for the warming to melt. The climate models - surprise! - tell us that it won't happen during the Modern Warming, because the Earth doesn't have enough ice left.
(Unstoppable Global Warming, Every 1,500 Years By S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Page 17)

³⁴ One of the Thomas team's "moderate" scenarios was an increase in Earth's temperature of 0.8 degrees Celsius in the next fifty years. The researchers said this would cause the extinction of roughly 20 percent of the world's wild species, perhaps one million of them.

Fortunately, this prediction can easily be checked. The Earth's temperature has already increased at least 0.6 degrees Celsius over the past 150 years. How many species died out because of that temperature increase?

The answer? None.

The Thomas paper tells us in its opening sentence: "Climate change over the past 30 years has produced numerous shifts in the distributions and abundances of species, and has been implicated in one species-level extinction."

That's right. The scientists who are predicting that 0.8 degrees Celsius of warming would cause hundreds of thousands of wildlife species extinctions over the next 50 years concede that roughly this level of temperature increase over the past 150 years has resulted in the extinction of one species. Reality takes away even that one extinction claim.
(Unstoppable Global Warming, Every 1,500 Years By S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Page 78)

³⁵ Who practices true environmentalism?

Al Gore:

He has a 20-room mansion and pool house in Tennessee that devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours in 2006, more than 20 times the national average of 10,656 kilowatt-hours. The power cost was around $30,000.

He has another mansion in Virginia that probably uses a similar amount but public records are not available.

He says he is going to install some solar panels in the near future but overall, he makes a large carbon footprint similar to other people of his wealth.

George W. Bush:

He has a 4,000-square-foot house in Texas that is a model of environmental rectitude.

Geothermal heat pumps located in a central closet circulate water through pipes buried 300 feet deep in the ground where the temperature is a constant 67 degrees; the water heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. Systems such as the one in this "eco-friendly" dwelling use about 25 percent of the electricity that traditional heating and cooling systems utilize.

A 25,000-gallon underground cistern collects rainwater gathered from roof runs; wastewater from sinks, toilets and showers goes into underground purifying tanks and is also funneled into the cistern. The water from the cistern is used to irrigate the landscaping surrounding the four-bedroom home. Plants and flowers native to the high prairie area blend the structure into the surrounding ecosystem.

According to Heymann, who designed the house, the four-bedroom home was planned so that "every room has a relationship with something in the landscape that's different from the room next door. Each of the rooms feels like a slightly different place." In order to help the house blend in with its surroundings, Heymann selected limestone quarried very near the location of the house. The pieces used are left-over pieces from other cuttings, making an environmental statement about conserving resources. "They cut the top and bottom of it off because nobody really wants it," Heymann says. "So we bought all this throwaway stone. It's fabulous. It's got great color and it is relatively inexpensive."

The main residence, including the kitchen, dining room, and living room/family room use a two-speed, 6-ton water-source heat pump designed to handle up to 75 guests. The president's office, master bedroom, and bathroom use a 3-ton water-source heat pump. The guest house uses a separate 2.5-ton unit. These heat pumps circulate water through pipes buried 300 feet (100 m) deep in the ground. Underground, the water remains a constant 67 degrees Fahrenheit, meaning that pure water can be used without the use of antifreeze.

The passive solar house is positioned to absorb winter sunlight, warming the interior walkways and walls of the residence. A 40,000 US gallon underground cistern collects rainwater gathered from roof urns; wastewater from sinks, toilets, and showers cascades into underground purifying tanks and is also funneled into the cistern. The water from the cistern is then used to irrigate the landscaping around the four-bedroom home.

³⁶ According to the Greenhouse Theory, more CO₂ in the Earth's atmosphere will trap more of the Earth's own radiated heat, warming the lower atmosphere and ultimately the surface of the planet - all other things being equal. But the fact that the Earth's temperature has warmed only slightly since 1940, despite the huge clouds of greenhouse gases emitted from human activities, provides evidence that the human greenhouse effect must be so small that it presents little threat to the planet or its people. This is especially true if the current CO₂ levels have already used up almost all of that trace gas's ability to heat our planet. (Each additional increment of CO₂ causes less warming.)
(Unstoppable Global Warming, Every 1,500 Years By S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Page 36)

³⁷ Higher CO₂ Levels: Another reason food production has tended to increase during the past 150 years is that CO₂ levels in the atmosphere have increased. The oceans give up CO₂ when they warm. The increased CO₂ not only fertilizes the plants, but enables them to use water more efficiently.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1997 grew wheat in a long plastic tunnel, varying the CO₂ levels for the grain plants from the Ice Age CO₂ level of about 200 parts per million (ppm) at one end of the tunnel to the late-1980s level of 350 ppm at the other?

The findings? An extra 100 ppm of CO₂ increased the wheat production by 72 percent under well-watered conditions, and by 48 percent under semi-drought conditions. That meant an average crop yield gain of 60 percent. These results are consistent with a wide variety of CO₂ enrichment studies done in more than a dozen countries on many different crops.
(Unstoppable Global Warming, Every 1,500 Years By S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Page 119)

³⁸ BRIEF ANALYSIS No. 213 For immediate release:

Friday, September 6, 1996

In 1992 at the United Nations-sponsored Earth Summit in Rio, the United States signed a treaty that established voluntary goals for returning to 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2000. Since voluntary action is not working, the Clinton administration now wants a new international treaty with enforceable goals.

At a recent U.N. conference on climate change in Geneva, Timothy Wirth, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs, said that the Clinton administration is committed to legally binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions. This is consistent with the views Wirth expressed in 1990 when he was a U.S. senator. Wirth said then that "We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing - in terms of economic policy and environmental policy."
(National Center For Policy Analysis)

³⁹ According to statistics during the Bush administration major greenhouse emissions from smokestacks were reduced 9 percent and greenhouse gasses were reduced 0.5 percent
(Knight-Ridder, Oct 13, 2004)

⁴⁰ Record cold and snowfall has been occurring the past couple months. Many parts of the country are experiencing cold 20-30 degrees below normal and record snowfalls of up to 110 inches. Gore had to cancel a global warming speech because of the extreme cold and snow.

⁴¹ Many politicians would have you believe that ocean warming is caused by humans. Don't believe it. A recent study by NOAA found that half of all ocean warming takes place at 1,000 feet to 10,000 feet down. "It is important to note," the NOAA scientists said, "that the increase in ocean heat content preceded the observed warming of sea surface temperature."
(Levitus, et al., "Warming of the World Ocean," Science, Vol. 287, 24 Mar 2000, p. 2225-29)

That's two miles down! I see no way that humans could heat the seas two miles down prior to heating the surface. No, it has to be...it must be...caused by underwater volcanism.
("Not By Fire But By Ice" By Robert Felix, Page 140)

⁴² Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling and warming scares during four separate and sometimes overlapping time periods. From 1895 until the 1930's the media peddled a coming ice age. From the late 1920's until the 1960's they warned of global warming. From the 1950's until the 1970's they warned us again of a coming ice age. This makes modern global warming the fourth estate's fourth attempt to promote opposing climate change fears during the last 100 years.
(Senate Floor Speech, Delivered by Senator James Inhofe, Monday, September 25, 2006 http://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759)

⁴³ Al Gore says in his movie that global warming produces more fierce storms and hurricanes. But on which planet are the most violent storms in our solar system? Interestingly, it is on Neptune, the outermost planet. It has storms there regularly approaching 1100 miles per hour in temperatures around 300 degrees below zero. Obviously warm weather does not create the storms on Neptune, Jupiter and other cold spots in our solar system. What does create them then? It is the difference of atmospheric temperature in different areas of the planet that cause the high winds. This differential can happen in cold or warm overall temperatures.

⁴⁴ The planets Jupiter and Saturn exert a pull on our planet which makes its orbit around the sun vary, making it increasingly ellipsoidal when both planets align to pull Earth further away from the sun, causing us to reach the furthest distance from the sun in regular 100,000 year long cycles. The regular changes are referred to as the Milankovitch cycle, after the Serbian engineer and astronomer Milutan Milankovitch, who first determined the solar influx variables as a function of Earth's position mathematically. The orbital changes, the planet's 3° change in the inclination of its rotational axis between tilt changes between about 22° and 25° in a 41,000 year cycle and the precession of the rotation, the nods and wobbles which expose one or the other of the poles to more sunlight, in a 22,000 year cycle combine to affect the absorption of solar energy slightly, but enough to cause regular, drastic medium term climate changes, i.e., changes lasting over ten to a hundred millennia.
(Global Warming In A Politically Correct Environment By M Mihkel Mathiesen, Pages 79-80)

⁴⁵ News Flash: MINNEAPOLIS - A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite. The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment.

"...losing toes and going forward at all costs was never part of the journey," said Ann Atwood, who helped organize the expedition.

⁴⁶ So too, a report last June by the National Academies seemed to contradict Mr. Gore's portrayal of recent temperatures as the highest in the past millennium. Instead, the report said, current highs appeared unrivaled since only 1600, the tail end of a temperature rise known as the medieval warm period.
(By William J. Broad; New York Times, March 13, 2007, Science Section)

⁴⁷ In October, Dr. (Don J.) Easterbrook (a geology professor) made similar points at the geological society meeting in Philadelphia. He hotly disputed Mr. Gore's claim that "our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this" threatened change. "Nonsense," Dr. Easterbrook told the crowded session. He flashed a slide that showed temperature trends for the past 15,000 years. It highlighted 10 large swings, including the medieval warm period. "These shifts," he said, "were up to 20 times greater than the warming in the past century." Getting personal, he mocked Mr. Gore's assertion that scientists agreed on global warming except those industry had corrupted. "I've never been paid a nickel by an oil company," Dr. Easterbrook told the group. "And I'm not a Republican."
(By William J. Broad; New York Times, March 13, 2007, Science Section)

⁴⁸ There is an atmospheric greenhouse effect, and carbon dioxide plays a role in it, but that's as far as it goes. There is only 0.037 percent of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by volume, and of total global emissions of carbon dioxide each year only 0.6 percent comes from cars - this is an insignificant contribution. Greens 'forget' that 96.5 percent of carbon dioxide comes from natural sources so mankind can have but little effect. Also the equilibria, or balance processes, at work in parts of the short-term carbon cycle mean that if we do succeed (we won't) in reducing carbon dioxide levels 'artificially', then nature will boost them again!
(The Association of British Drivers Global Warming - Q&A)

⁴⁹ On the Senate floor Wednesday March 21 Senator Inhofe asked Al Gore: "Are you willing to make a commitment here today by taking this pledge to consume no more energy for use in your residence than the average American household by one year from today?"

Senator Inhofe then presented Vice President Gore with the following "Personal Energy Ethics Pledge":

"As a believer,

that human-caused global warming is a moral, ethical, and spiritual issue affecting our survival;

that home energy use is a key component of overall energy use;

that reducing my fossil fuel-based home energy usage will lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions; and

that leaders on moral issues should lead by example;

I pledge to consume no more energy for use in my residence than the average American household by March 21, 2008."

Gore refused to take the pledge.
(http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.PressReleases&Content\ Record_id=7616011f-802a-23ad-435e-887baa7069ca)

Note: Senator Inhofe should have given Gore some slack and asked him to limit himself to five times the average household. I'm sure he would have still refused.

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