Climate Change & Conservation – updated 12/21/16

Breaking News: A new congressional investigation has determined that the Obama administration fired a top scientist and intimidated staff at the Department of Energy in order to further its climate change agenda, according to a new report that alleges the administration ordered top officials to obstruct Congress in order to forward this agenda. 

Why is global warming now called climate change? 

Watch this BBC documentary and find out. 

Why is climategate a problem and why are skeptics in Australia gaining ground?

A fairly unique term, search engines generate 16.4M hits when searching for “climategate.”

Climategate.com seems to be leading the pack.

Tony Abbott has dubbed the ETS a giant new tax masquerading as a climate change policy, and has positioned himself as the defender of the economy as opposed to the saviour of the planet. The view appears to have gained some traction. As the film shows, Lord Christopher Monckton, the British climate change sceptic, has been drawing capacity crowds during his Australian tour. This week also a sizeable and voluble demonstration by farmers on the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra, who lambasted much of the Rudd government's green agenda. The most energy in Australian politics right now is being generated by the opponents of Mr Rudd's green agenda.

The “science” of climate change is similar to the “science” of macro-evolution. 

Whereas empirical science (scientific method) proposes an hypothesis, conducts testing, and evaluates the hypothesis based on observation and repeatability, historic science makes assumptions and interprets evidence, favoring an accepted “scientific” conclusion.  Other common uses of historic science are archaeology, forensic science, and SETI. 

Uniformitarianism is one assumption of historic science – the present is the key to the past.  Uniformitarianism proposes that what we observe today is what we would have observed at any point in history – slow, gradual change.  Therefore, if the average global temperature appears to be rising, it must be “bad.”  If the average global temperature appears to be falling, that also must be “bad.”  Activists focus on a behavior that they want to eliminate (e.g., industrialization) and tie it to something “bad,” like climate change. 

Catastrophism on the other hand, acknowledges the occurrence of global catastrophes throughout the history of world.  Evolutionists acknowledge this theory in such terms as “punctuated equilibrium” and “extinction events” (ice ages, meteors, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and floods), but still cling to the idea of gradual change over long periods of time. 

Climate models are computer-based tools used to make projections about future climate and interpret the causes of past changes.  Projections are no better than assumptions used for modeling climate change.  Weathermen have difficulty making accurate five-day weather predictions; how could climate models do a better job for projections centuries into the future? 

A chart of the earth's temperatures over the last 12,000 years, known as the Holocene Interglacial Period, shows a gradual cooling of the Earth over the last 8000 years, with a drop in temperature of roughly 1 degree Celsius.  The hottest temperatures occurred long before the Industrial Revolution and man-made emissions of C02.  http://www.environmentaldomain.com/

The rise and fall of global temperatures between interglacial periods (spanning more than 400,000 years) resembles the familiar graph of a human heart beat, and shows that between each of the "ice ages," as within the Holocene period, the earth has warmed up to levels beyond what we are experiencing today. In some cases, as much as 2 degrees Celsius.

So expand the time scale and “global warming” or “global cooling” (ice ages) are the norm for planet earth.  How we deal with these extremes is up to our priorities and resources.

What are conservation and environmental stewardship?

The Cornwall Declaration provides a balance of conservation and stewardship.  Clean water, clean air, and preservation of biological diversity are priorities for a responsible society.  The degree of “clean” and “preservation” should depend on priority of resources, not a fanatical quest to eliminate human influence on a global scale at the expense of human life. 

Get Your Priorities Right (Wall Street Journal)

“Yet the experience left Mr. Lomborg with a taste for challenging conventional wisdom. In 2004, he invited eight of the world's top economists (including four Nobel Laureates) to Copenhagen, where they were asked to evaluate the world's problems, think of the

costs and efficiencies attached to solving each, and then produce a prioritized list of those most deserving of money. The well-publicized results (and let it be said here that Mr. Lomborg is no slouch when it comes to promoting himself and his work) were stunning.  While the economists were from varying political stripes, they largely agreed. The numbers were just so compelling: $1 spent preventing HIV/AIDS would result in about $40 of social benefits, so the economists put it at the top of the list (followed by

malnutrition, free trade and malaria). In contrast, $1 spent to abate global warming would result in only about two cents to 25 cents worth of good; so that project dropped to the bottom.”

Energy dependence is a matter of resource priority and conservation.  But is conservation or concerns over climate change driving the development of costly alternative energy sources?  “Given the huge energy and material demands in the construction of, say, wind farms, the ultimate value of these is debatable.” University of Leicester

Russia oil spills wreak devastation

12/18/11 – At least 400 tons leaked from a new pipeline in two separate accidents in Russia's Far East last year, according to media reports and oil companies. Transneft's pipeline that brings Russian oil from Eastern Siberia to China was put into operation just months before the two spills happened. The oil industry in Komi has been sapping nature for decades, killing or forcing out reindeer and fish.

Where is the “science” of global climate change leading?

If climate change “science” is allowed to proceed unchecked, we may see international law prosecuting “environmental offenders.”  Progress of global government provides the means for eliminating industrialization. 

“For example, if someone drives a car, and if the emissions resulting from this act are deemed to be harmful, then they may be judged to deserve unreserved blame just because the emissions are harmful, or because they drove voluntarily, in the full knowledge of the harmfulness of the emission and without coercion. If, however, they can plead reasonable ignorance or coercion, then they may get a (limited) pardon. Finally, if the emissions in question are classified as harmless, then no one can justly be blamed.” http://www.oxfordclimatepolicy.org/publications/DifferentiatingResponsibility.pdf

Your next ticket might be for simply driving a gasoline powered automobile.  One cannot escape the stochiometry of basic chemistry: CH4 + 2O2 à CO2 + 2H2O.  If CO2 is declared internationally “harmful,” then all combustion engines will become illegal. 

The History of the Global Warming Scare – Follow the Money

So who will win in this battle to monetize the carbon? While science was killed as an innocent bystander, the UN with its desire for funding via international taxation vies with exchange corporations who want a piece of the new $300 billion market. (See also: www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/CarbonMonetization.htm)

Resources

As there are plenty of resources from proponents of global warming, climate change, and radical environmentalism, none are listed here.  Several references above reflect the inconsistencies of climate “science.”

Climate change proponents predict more rain in NM.  Bring it on!