I hate it when other world leaders condemn the U.S. Thanks Al for reinforcing the idea of the ugly American.
THE United States' leading hurricane forecaster says global ocean currents, not human-produced carbon dioxide, are responsible for global warming.
William Gray, a Colorado State University researcher, also said the Earth may begin to cool on its own in five to 10 years.
Speaking to a group of Republican MPs, Dr Gray had harsh words for researchers and politicians who said man-made greenhouse gases were responsible for global warming.
"They are blaming it all on humans, which is crazy," he said.
"We're not the cause of it."
Dr Gray said in the past 40 years the number of serious hurricanes making landfall on the US Atlantic coast had declined even though carbon dioxide levels had risen.
He said increasing levels of carbon dioxide would not produce more, or stronger, hurricanes.
Dr Gray, 77, has long criticised the theory that heat-trapping gases generated by human activity are causing the world to warm.
Earlier this month, he dubbed former US vice-president and 2000 Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore "a gross alarmist" for making the Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, which helped focus media attention on global warming.
Yesterday, Dr Gray said that politics and research into global warming had created "almost an industry" that had frightened the public and overwhelmed dissenting voices.
He said research arguing that humans were causing global warming was "mush" based on unreliable computer models that could not possibly take into account the hundreds of factors that influenced the weather.
He said little-understood ocean currents were behind a decades-long warming cycle, and disputed assertions that greenhouse gases could raise global temperatures as much as some scientists predicted.
"There's no way that doubling CO2 is going to cause that amount of warming," he said.
Dr Gray also said warming and cooling trends could not go on indefinitely and believed temperatures were beginning to level out after a very warm year in 1998.
This is from the gristmill blog, they are a bunch of believers in global warming, but they seem to be having a understandable discussion of carbon offsets. Check it out and see how the true believers view carbon offsets.
"Also, a largely unregulated carbon-cutting business has sprung up. In this market, consultants or companies estimate a person’s or company’s output of greenhouse gases. Then, these businesses sell “offsets,” which pay for projects elsewhere that void or sop up an equal amount of emissions — say, by planting trees or, as one new company proposes, fertilizing the ocean so algae can pull the gas out of the air. Recent counts by Business Week magazine and several environmental watchdog groups tally the trade in offsets at more than $100 million a year and growing blazingly fast.
But is the carbon-neutral movement just a gimmick?
On this, environmentalists aren’t neutral, and they don’t agree. Some believe it helps build support, but others argue that these purchases don’t accomplish anything meaningful — other than giving someone a slightly better feeling (or greener reputation) after buying a 6,000-square-foot house or passing the million-mile mark in a frequent-flier program. In fact, to many environmentalists, the carbon-neutral campaign is a sign of the times — easy on the sacrifice and big on the consumerism."
A sign of potential fraud in the carbon offset market, British airline EasyJet has delayed the lunch of it carbon offsetting scheme. The reasoning for this delay is they have found that the carbon offset market is riddled with “snake oil salesmen”.
“Toby Nicol, EasyJet's communications director, said the company had been shocked by how much money carbon offsetting firms wanted for their service.”We have been quite surprised at the percentage that the offsetting companies would like to take out of the scheme for administration costs. Between 25% and 30% of every pound put in by consumers would go into administrating the company and that was simply too expensive," he said.
There are a lot of people who have dived into the market who are desperate to make a margin from it. There are too many snake oil salesmen in the business.”
Has EasyJet given up on the carbon offsetting market? No, EasyJet is going to buy UN-backed carbon credits on the open market at about 7.50 British pounds per ton, with a launch date sometime this summer. Lets be honest here, the UN's past is a bit checkered, with the Iraq oil for food program as its chief example of out of control fraud. Can EasyJet trust that the UN backed offsets will be any more effective?
Credit Card Environmentalism
There is a hint in this article at an other problem with carbon offsets, that this is just credit card environmentalism. Carbon offsets allow the rich to buy off there indulgences, rather then change they behavior.
“Low-budget airlines in particular have been targeted by environmentalists because they have driven a boom in air travel. The environment minister Ian Pearson labeled Ryanair the "irresponsible face of capitalism" this year after the airline criticized the European emissions trading scheme.”
Targeting the low cost airlines shows that the cost of saving the planet will be born by those on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.
“But is the carbon-neutral movement just a gimmick?
On this, environmentalists aren't neutral, and they don't agree. Some believe it helps build support, but others argue that these purchases don't accomplish anything meaningful — other than giving someone a slightly better feeling (or greener reputation) after buying a 6,000-square-foot house or passing the million-mile mark in a frequent-flier program. In fact, to many environmentalists, the carbon-neutral campaign is a sign of the times — easy on the sacrifice and big on the consumerism.”
A summary of the article is this is an unregulated industry and it is unlikely that every carbon offset purchased is removing the CO2 that it claims.
NASA says that the Mars has warmed about 0.5C since 1970. That is about the amount of what the earth has risen over the same time frame. I guess the CO2 from my neighbors SUV has finely made to the planet Mars. Now his CO2 is causing a massive climate change on the red planet.
Have to point out that one researcher thinks that this is due to strong winds.
Business Week uses TeraPass Inc., (the supplier of carbon offsets to the Academy Awards) project in
It looks like the EU is look at the affects of cow farts on Global Warming. This is from the belief that live stock is a greater threat to the planet then transportation emissions.
Is methane produced by livestock (cows and hogs) a problem? Studies have shown that methane is 21 times greater impact as a greenhouse gas then CO2. In
Looking for ways to reduce methane emissions from livestock Canadian authors Karin Wittinberg and Dinah Boadi conducted a study on this subject found 20 different way to reduce methane and nitrous oxide emissions. Some ideas are:
The authors showed that there ideas can have a measurable impact on reducing green house gases for little increase in cost to the consumer. This would be preferable the draconian changes proposed by global warming supporters.
An other example of do as I say not as I do. Last night Democrat debate all participating candidates arrived by private jet. This is not how you reduce CO2 to save the planet, this flight was roughly 1,700 miles and the CO2 Emissions for each candidate was 794lbs or a total of 6,352lbs. This was determined by using TerraPass flight calculator.
I have no doubt that all the republicans candidates will also fly by private jet and some of them have bent over to kiss the global warming extremists buts, should know that continued use of private jet make them look just as hypocritical as last night Democrats candidates did.
The scale of this problem for the EU is enormous:
“In the next eight years alone, the Chinese would install, as new, as much energy generating plant as currently exists today in all of the 25 countries of the expanded European Union- a total of 800 giga watts.
Ninety per cent of this would be coal-fired, that is, producing the most C02, and most of this, he said, would last for 50 to 60 years - "you can't shut down a power station after five or 10 years as that would be economic suicide". He said: If we can't influence
