Climate Change News (Updated)
[Guest post by DRJ]
The newest global threat? Global cooling:
“Noted scientists at a Chicago climate conference declare that global warming is not only dead, but that the planet faces a big chill for decades to come. What about those frozen wind turbines?
It’s not exactly Copenhagen or Kyoto, but the 700 scientists attending the fourth International Conference on Climate Change, sponsored by the Heartland Institute, had some chilling news of their own in the most liberal sense.
“Global warming is over — at least for a few decades,” Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told the gathering. “However, the bad news is that global cooling is even more harmful to humans than global warming, and a cause for greater concern.”
Here’s one small but expensive concern:
“We see a bit of irony in an early February report that 11, 115-foot-tall wind turbines installed to provide power to 11 Minnesota towns were not functioning because they couldn’t handle the record cold temperatures of a harsh winter.”
As a candidate, President Obama wanted to harness clean, renewable energy like those Minnesota wind turbines to reduce demand for foreign energy, protect the environment, and fight global warming.
I think they call that an EPIC FAIL.
— DRJ
UPDATE: Mike K posts a photo of snow today in Lake Arrowhead, California, with a forecast for more next week — the weekend before Memorial Day.
Greetings:
The chills I’m getting aren’t from climate cooling or frozen wind turbines, they’re from the idea of God’s green earth being covered with those monstrosities, destroying the natural landscapes of our country with what look like out-takes from “The War of the Worlds”. The idea of their proliferation makes me long for the days of wall-to-wall highway billboards.
11B40 (c08b96) — 5/23/2010 @ 10:23 amTake a look at my blog for a photo of Lake Arrowhead this morning. I may have to give some more thought to moving up there. Snow, the weekend before Memorial Day in southern California. The forecast says possible snow flurries next Friday. Fortunately, I will be in Spain.
Mike K (82f374) — 5/23/2010 @ 10:27 amThe Team R Doctrine?
Someone needs to bitch-slap this loser in as forceful yet genteel a manner as possible I think. The federal government quite obviously can’t find its ass with both hands because it’s staffed by SEIU homos what are disdainful of grubby oil drillings specifically and capitalisms generally. Please to be keeping the inept and dysfunctional gay gay gay U.S. government away from the ecological disaster Michael.
happyfeet (c8caab) — 5/23/2010 @ 10:39 amGreat photo, Mike K. I updated the post to add a link to your post and comment.
DRJ (d43dcd) — 5/23/2010 @ 10:51 amThe simple solution is to install all the wind turbines in Washington, D.C. The continual expulsion of hot air coming from Congress would then satisfy all our energy needs for eternity.
navyvet (206534) — 5/23/2010 @ 10:52 amHeh. Wouldn’t that be great?
DRJ (d43dcd) — 5/23/2010 @ 10:56 amI predict we will see colder temperatures. And warmer temps. And droughts. And floods. And hurricanes. And tornadoes.
In other words we will see weather that, when we have a global population that can fit inside the borders of Texas, man will have a minute, if any effect on.
That we are throwing so much money at this non-problem is a testament to modern day Harold Hills like Al Gore and politicians are the residents of River City.
MU789 (aad8cf) — 5/23/2010 @ 11:05 amAny contemplation of “Global Cooling” will be ignored by the usual suspects until one day they wake-up to find that Rodeo Drive is an outdoor ice-skating rink, sans mechanical refrigeration.
AD - RtR/OS! (bb1c62) — 5/23/2010 @ 11:07 amI know, for
L.A.Beverly Hills to get that cold is improbable, but we’re working in metaphors here.wind turbines installed to provide power to 11 Minnesota towns were not functioning because they couldn’t handle the record cold temperatures of a harsh winter
Just goes to show the Minnesotans-4-Global Warming were more than pop stars and pretty faces after all.
I couldn’t get the link to work. Was this a group of scientists who had been for Global Warming until new data? I would have thought they would have stepped back and realized how ridiculous it looks to change your prediction for the next 100 years every ten.
Analogy time. This is like a doctor recording the interval between heartbeats to the hundredth of a second, and when the interval goes down or up two beats in a row, they panic because the person is about to die, or about to go into a rapid tachycardia and then die.
Maybe you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, but these folks are trying to set a Guiness record for highest percentage fooled perpetually.
MD in Philly (cb8efe) — 5/23/2010 @ 11:42 amI can’t get the link to work either, MD. Maybe Investors.com is doing maintenance. The person interviewed in the article at the link was Don Easterbrook, and he’s been counseling against global warming hysteria for some time.
DRJ (d43dcd) — 5/23/2010 @ 11:46 amThanks, DRJ. He seems to be someone who actually looks at evidence and uses reason, imagine that. Sunspots and solar output having an effect on the earth’s temperature, that’s a novel idea. 😉
MD in Philly (cb8efe) — 5/23/2010 @ 11:55 amBjorn Lomborg, “the Skeptical Environmentalist,” addresses the distinction between global warming and cooling in his book from a few years back Cool It. Despite all the caterwauling about increased deaths from heat stroke during the summer in locations where the temperature has been rising, Lomborg points out, the number of deaths is more than offset by the decrease in deaths from freezing during the winter months. He posits that humans are able to handle the extreme heat far better than the extreme cold, which makes sense when we compare the number of people living at the Equator relative to the number living in the arctic. It stands to reason, therefore, that global cooling (if it really is happening) will be far more problematic to us than global warming. Look for the scaremongering green community to start in with the frozen granny routine any day now.
JVW (36eb17) — 5/23/2010 @ 11:59 amI have seen a guy freeze to death in front of a motel air conditioner. He was drug overdose and lay there for about 12 hours with it on high. He made to us with an 86 degree body temp but died shortly after of a cardiac arrhythmia.
I am a bit concerned that we are in the next ice age. The Medieval Warm Period ended quite rapidly and other ice ages have begun in as little as a decade. Today is not reassuring as it is cool and windy here and snowing at 4500 feet. All the passes to go north from southern California are higher than that.
Mike K (82f374) — 5/23/2010 @ 12:32 pmIf global cooling does happen, wouldn’t it be the bitterest of ironies to liberals if Arizona became the most desirable place to live?
JVW (36eb17) — 5/23/2010 @ 12:38 pmA lot of people don’t know this, but Al Gore’s ‘Generation Investment Management’ is now assembling a hedge fund to mitigate risk in the carbon offset credit market; the new fund is based on carbon onset debits.
/sarc off
TimesDisliker (dcc9d5) — 5/23/2010 @ 12:49 pmMike K…
AD - RtR/OS! (bb1c62) — 5/23/2010 @ 4:05 pmForwarded your Arrowhead post to Clayton Cramer who was posting on snow in Horseshoe Bend ID this weekend, and he’s put up your post too on his blog.
In my short span of life on this planet I have seen one “new ice age” scare come and go, followed by a global warming scare come and hopefully now go, I will not look to buy goose down futures tomorrow.
But you know, in spite of himself, Gore had the right idea- plant trees. They take in CO2, give off O2, and make wood. If it stays warm, they give shade and keep the local environ cooler, if it gets cold, hello firewood.
OT- I just had the most interesting thing happen. All of a sudden my screen went into something about getting feeds to a rapidly changing web site. Looked interesting, but my knowledge of technology is like, so 2005ish.
MD in Philly (cb8efe) — 5/23/2010 @ 7:46 pmI don’t know if it’s accurate but this is a fun map comparing forests then and now.
DRJ (d43dcd) — 5/23/2010 @ 8:32 pmComment by DRJ — 5/23/2010 @ 8:32 pm
An early Rush controversy was his claim (back in the late 80’s-early 90’s) that America has more forest cover today than at the time of Independance. I think this was something he picked up from an ex-Gov of WA, Dixy Lee Ray (of whom he was a great fan) – but I could be mistaken. Nevertheless, others have looked into this and have confirmed it. What a lot of people overlook is that New England and the Middle Atlantic states had a lot of cleared land in the 1770’s set aside for agriculture, that has gone back to woods, or has grown housing along with the concomitant trees in the yard. Because of the establishment of towns, there are probably many more trees on the Great Plains than what the Pioneers found as they trekked West.
AD - RtR/OS! (bb1c62) — 5/23/2010 @ 10:10 pmAnyway, just a thought on trees.
The answer to combat global cooling? Get rid of capitalism, stop using carbon based fuels, adapt organic farming, get back to nature.
You mean that’s the same plan to deal with global warming?? Hmm, did not see that coming at all!
Have Blue (854a6e) — 5/23/2010 @ 11:19 pm#17 MD in Philly:
Or not.
We have roughly twice as many trees in North America as there were when European colonists started arriving. Some of it is natural forestation occurring as part of the maturation of forests as alluvial plains fill in and grow forests, but most of it is interference for one reason or another by people meaning well. Much from “protecting” forests from logging by less than reasonable people, and much more from controlling forest fires.
EW1(SG) (edc268) — 5/24/2010 @ 4:30 amI had missed DRJ and AD’s comments by not refreshing before posting in response to MD in Philly, but GMTA.
Anyway, number one cause of increased forest cover in North America has been management of forest fires, which were frequent and impressive. Secondly has been the change from sustainable management of timber as a crop to treating forests as untouchable…even those in private ownership.
EW1(SG) (edc268) — 5/24/2010 @ 4:38 amDRJ, AD – RtR/OS!, EW1(SG)-
Thank you for the contributions. My comment was made with tongue firmly planted in cheek (but I did not indicate such).
I thought that in general, no one would be against trees per se (which I know ya’ll are not), and giving Al Gore credit for planting trees was one thing he could legitimately take credit for.
I agree with the comments about forrestation now compared to the past. For example, I know there is only one very small area in Pennsylvania where the trees have never been cut down, and as I drive throughout the midwest it is clear that almost all of the forrest stands I see could have grown up in the last 75 years or so.
MD in Philly (cb8efe) — 5/24/2010 @ 5:47 amBTW, Currently the web site seems to be functioning very well, as suitable for our worthy host and his band of merry contributors.
Thanks to whoever is working behind the scenes, [sarc alert](but don’t mess up again, if you know what’s good for you…)
MD in Philly (cb8efe) — 5/24/2010 @ 5:59 am