June 14, 2006
My Globaloney Has a First Name, It's H-a-r-r-y
This morning, I heard a sound bite of Sen. Harry Reid (D-Caesar's Palace) on the radio claiming that Hurricane Alberto is more "proof" of global warming. (Actually, it sounded like he said Alfredo, rather than Alberto; maybe he was calling in from a swank pasta joint in D.C., after having just watched An Inconvenient Truth.)
I suppose Reid means that, since there were never any hurricanes before America's industrial revolution, every time one spawns in the Atlantic, it's undeniable evidence of Bush's perfidy in withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol, that treaty that even the Clinton Administration never formally submitted to the Senate for rejection.
Unfortunately for this theory, "Hurricane" Alberto is now downgraded to a tropical storm; even Sen. Reid should be willing to concede that there were occasional tropical storms even before "those dark, Satanic mills" started releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. For people still fretting about global warming, AP has some good news:
Instead of a disaster, Alberto's rainfall may turn out to be a blessing for Florida's efforts to battle wildfires and for farmers in Georgia who were worried about drought.
"It's definitely a million-dollar rain," said Joe McManus, a marketing specialist with the Georgia Farm Bureau in Macon. "It could save some cotton and peanut fields...."
Officials said the storm also gave them real-world practice on the lessons learned from the slow response to some of last year's storms. Hurricane specialists said they ran into a few computer glitches but nothing that couldn't be fixed before the next storm.
"It was a nice tune-up, a nice warm-up," said hurricane specialist Richard Pasch. Florida's Emergency Management spokesman Mike Stone put it another way: "You can train all you want, but nothing beats the real deal."
Thank George for global waming!
Sadly, it may turn out that global warming is yet another broken political promise. The critics of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose summit in Rio de Janeiro eventually led to Kyoto, have finally begun to speak out in force, having been stifled for some time now by threats and bullying behavior by academic and professional institutions passionately committed to academic freedom -- when the subject is Ward Churchill or Juan Cole.
Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a surprising assessment: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention...."
Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Patterson asked the committee, "On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"
Patterson concluded his testimony by explaining what his research and "hundreds of other studies" reveal: on all time scales, there is very good correlation between Earth's temperature and natural celestial phenomena such changes in the brightness of the Sun.
Canada Free Press also quotes Dr. Boris Winterhalter, former marine researcher at the Geological Survey of Finland and professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki; Dr. Wibjörn Karlén, emeritus professor, Dept. of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden; and Dr. Dick Morgan, former advisor to the World Meteorological Organization and climatology researcher at University of Exeter, U.K. on the continuing robust presence of ice at the poles... a truth quite inconvenient to one Albert J. Gore.
(Here is an interesting website we've just found; we haven't had time to go through it yet, but it looks promising: EnviroTruth.org. It could be a worthwhile clearinghouse of dissent against the globaloney slicing machine.)
But globaloney rolls on, impervious to such dissent. After all, this is such an important political issue that we cannot allow a few malcontents to muddy up the rising waters.
Besides, Harry Reid needs a bigger office and is already measuring the curtains in Majority Leader Bill Frist's joint.
Hatched by Sachi on this day, June 14, 2006, at the time of 5:22 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this hissing: http://biglizards.net/mt3.36/earendiltrack.cgi/847
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference My Globaloney Has a First Name, It's H-a-r-r-y:
» The Questions Never Asked from Big Lizards
According to the New York Times, global warming -- excuse me, global climate change; I keep forgetting -- has raised world temperatures to the warmest it's been in at least 1,000 years, maybe more. But this immediately raises a number... [Read More]
Tracked on June 24, 2006 12:07 AM
Comments
The following hissed in response by: dasbow
Not to pick too many nits, but our pal Alfredo was never classified as a hurricane. Sadly for Harry, Algoro only made tropical storm status, and is now a tropical depression rapidly becoming an extratropical low pressure.
The above hissed in response by: dasbow ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://biglizards.net/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
at June 14, 2006 6:34 PM
The following hissed in response by: Bill Faith
Linked from Dafydd and Sachi are on a down-right roll
The above hissed in response by: Bill Faith at June 14, 2006 7:39 PM
The following hissed in response by: RBMN
Re: monkyboy at June 14, 2006 09:46 PM
It's the Al Gore "experts" that are only experts on effect--not cause. The polar bears are having trouble hunting seals because there's less ice. So why is there less ice? A polar bear expert sure as hell can't tell you why there’s less ice. You have to ask climate-model experts why. And a lot of those top experts on CAUSE of warming, people who design computer climate models based on real data, for a living, say it's mostly the cause of normal cyclical changes in solar activity--activity that affects the whole solar system. THAT, or, they're just not prepared to say why, because they don’t have enough data. CO2 will hardly be the main factor, according to a lot of climate experts. CO2 was higher during one of the Earth's previous ice ages. The “Greenhouse Effect” is not just a hobby-horse theory anymore. It's now become some kind of sacred religion for some unbalanced goofballs, like Al Gore.
The above hissed in response by: RBMN at June 14, 2006 11:03 PM
The following hissed in response by: cdquarles
monkyboy, pathetic banned troll from CQ:
Here are a couple of facts for you. 1. Dihydrogen monoxide is the primary "greenhouse" gas in Earth's atmosphere. 2. The primary climate driver here on Earth is a yellow-white variable G2 dwarf star called Sol.
The above hissed in response by: cdquarles at June 15, 2006 12:51 AM
The following hissed in response by: BigLeeH
All I can say is thank God for Al Gore. He has declared himself to be carbon-neutral, stating that he buys carbon reduction to offset any emissions from his businesses and personal activities. With his jet-setting to promote his policies (and his movie), and with his vast verbal flatus, that must come to thousands of tons of carbon a month.
If it weren't for this reduction in atmospheric carbon, the global warming caused by Bush and Halliburton would have caused Alberto to grow to unprecidented intnesity -- leveling the entire southeastern US and tearing a big hole in the Saffir-Simpson Scale by becoming the first Category 8 Hurricane. Instead, thanks to Gore and his Captain Planet superpowers the peanut crop in Georgia was saved. Hoorah!
The above hissed in response by: BigLeeH at June 15, 2006 7:34 AM
The following hissed in response by: Big D
Monkeyboy, it has been suggested many times before that you might want to take a science class or two before commenting here. Consider that reiterated.
"Without all the CO2 in its atmosphere, it (Venus)would be almost earth-like....quite pleasant, really."
So, without all that darn carbon dioxide, Venus would be quite pleasant? Really? It would have rotates slower than Earth so would have a 5,392.8 hour day, and since it is half the distance from the sun as Earth, the sun would be twice as bright in the sky.
Bring your sun tan lotion.
The above hissed in response by: Big D at June 15, 2006 9:55 AM
The following hissed in response by: Lib-O-Suxion
Big D,
Thanks for the wonderfully terse, yet tasty response to Monkeyboy. It appears that he's gonna have to start with high school science, though.
The above hissed in response by: Lib-O-Suxion at June 15, 2006 1:24 PM
The following hissed in response by: Master Shake
All we need are a whole lot more cows to create methane, and we'll cool off. I mean, Uranus and Neptune are really cold, and they have more methane in their atmospheres than we have carbon dioxide in ours. We just need to adjust the balance!
What do you mean they're a lot farther away from the sun? What does that big, hot ball of gas have to do with planetary temperatures? Why, Venus would be a paradise if evil humans hadn't crushed all of the Venusian rain forests under the wheels of their SUVs!
The above hissed in response by: Master Shake at June 15, 2006 1:32 PM
The following hissed in response by: Robert Schwartz
I am passing the hat to buy Monkeyboy a ticket to Venus.
The above hissed in response by: Robert Schwartz at June 15, 2006 4:11 PM
The following hissed in response by: Big D
Monkeyboy
Er..."swiftboating a planet is not considered science"? By that do you mean citing actual, easily verifiable, facts is "swiftboating"? Hmmm. Come to think of it, you may actually have stumbled into something.
"Trade away our children's future for a few trinkets of god and guns" Err. I assume you mean Republicans won't readily trade economic catastrophe for potentially meaningless reductions in global warming?
"An imaginary victory in the phony libruls vs. real Americans battle?" I can't even guess what you mean here. Your mental download from DailyKos must be fading. Time to fill 'er back up champ!
Seriously, it must suck to be you. Quivering in fear and ignorance every day. Filled with rage and terror over issues that you know next to nothing about. I don't know how you do it.
The above hissed in response by: Big D at June 15, 2006 5:07 PM
The following hissed in response by: Dick E
Monkyboy-
Let’s see -- the carbon dioxide level on Venus is lots higher than Earth’s; it’s really hot on Venus; ergo, if we increase carbon dioxide levels here, we’ll have GLOBAL WARMING!!!
Wow! Who can argue with such finely tuned, razor sharp, Aristotelian logic.
Monkyboy, please keep up the good work. We need superior intellects like yours to show us the way.
But … wait a minute! Monkyboy, are you a plant (not the potted kind -- or maybe -- oh, never mind) by the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy sent here to lull us into complacency? Did they assign you to post on right-leaning blogs so that we may be led to think that all lefties are as brilliant as you? Is it all just a put-up job, and you really DO know how to spell monkey?
The above hissed in response by: Dick E at June 15, 2006 7:03 PM
The following hissed in response by: Robert Schwartz
The above hissed in response by: Robert Schwartz at June 15, 2006 8:34 PM
The following hissed in response by: cdquarles
monkyboy, pathetic banned troll from CQ:
I see you couldn't handle fact #1, so you tried to twist fact #2. Oh so predictable and pathetic you are.
The above hissed in response by: cdquarles at June 16, 2006 11:54 PM
Post a comment
Thanks for hissing in, . Now you can slither in with a comment, o wise. (sign out)
(If you haven't hissed a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Hang loose; don't shed your skin!)© 2005-2009 by Dafydd ab Hugh - All Rights Reserved
)
