Man Made Global Warming, Cap and Trade. Things that make you go Hmm...

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220

To understand the misconceptions perpetuated about climate science and the climate of intimidation, one needs to grasp some of the complex underlying scientific issues. First, let's start where there is agreement. The public, press and policy makers have been repeatedly told that three claims have widespread scientific support: Global temperature has risen about a degree since the late 19th century; levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have increased by about 30% over the same period; and CO2 should contribute to future warming. These claims are true. However, what the public fails to grasp is that the claims neither constitute support for alarm nor establish man's responsibility for the small amount of warming that has occurred. In fact, those who make the most outlandish claims of alarm are actually demonstrating skepticism of the very science they say supports them. It isn't just that the alarmists are trumpeting model results that we know must be wrong. It is that they are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn't happen even if the models were right as justifying costly policies to try to prevent global warming.

This is one of the points that I made a few years ago. Many people don't know about the Time Magazine article from the 70's dealing with "Global Cooling," asking the question, "Is there another ice age coming?"

It is interesting because the data that the scientists were using in the 1970s is the same data that is being used now. In order to find a pattern the scientists must look at past data. These data have already been collected, and CAN NOT CHANGE. This means that we have a completely different group of scientists (using the same data) coming up with a completely different theory. The difference; this time there is a political agenda behind the theory.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html

TIME Magazine

Another Ice Age?

Monday, Jun. 24, 1974

In Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims. During 1972 record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in centuries. In Canada's wheat belt, a particularly chilly and rainy spring has delayed planting and may well bring a disappointingly small harvest. Rainy Britain, on the other hand, has suffered from uncharacteristic dry spells the past few springs. A series of unusually cold winters has gripped the American Far West, while New England and northern Europe have recently experienced the mildest winters within anyone's recollection.

As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.

Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest. Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.

Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds —the so-called circumpolar vortex—that sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world. Indeed it is the widening of this cap of cold air that is the immediate cause of Africa's drought. By blocking moisture-bearing equatorial winds and preventing them from bringing rainfall to the parched sub-Sahara region, as well as other drought-ridden areas stretching all the way from Central America to the Middle East and India, the polar winds have in effect caused the Sahara and other deserts to reach farther to the south. Paradoxically, the same vortex has created quite different weather quirks in the U.S. and other temperate zones. As the winds swirl around the globe, their southerly portions undulate like the bottom of a skirt. Cold air is pulled down across the Western U.S. and warm air is swept up to the Northeast. The collision of air masses of widely differing temperatures and humidity can create violent storms—the Midwest's recent rash of disastrous tornadoes, for example.

Sunspot Cycle. The changing weather is apparently connected with differences in the amount of energy that the earth's surface receives from the sun. Changes in the earth's tilt and distance from the sun could, for instance, significantly increase or decrease the amount of solar radiation falling on either hemisphere—thereby altering the earth's climate. Some observers have tried to connect the eleven-year sunspot cycle with climate patterns, but have so far been unable to provide a satisfactory explanation of how the cycle might be involved.

Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin's Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.

Climatic Balance. Some scientists like Donald Oilman, chief of the National Weather Service's long-range-prediction group, think that the cooling trend may be only temporary. But all agree that vastly more information is needed about the major influences on the earth's climate. Indeed, it is to gain such knowledge that 38 ships and 13 aircraft, carrying scientists from almost 70 nations, are now assembling in the Atlantic and elsewhere for a massive 100-day study of the effects of the tropical seas and atmosphere on worldwide weather. The study itself is only part of an international scientific effort known acronymically as GARP (for Global Atmospheric Research Program).

Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.

The earth's current climate is something of an anomaly; in the past 700,000 years, there have been at least seven major episodes of glaciers spreading over much of the planet. Temperatures have been as high as they are now only about 5% of the time. But there is a peril more immediate than the prospect of another ice age. Even if temperature and rainfall patterns change only slightly in the near future in one or more of the three major grain-exporting countries—the U.S., Canada and Australia —global food stores would be sharply reduced. University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: "I don't believe that the world's present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row."

The question you have to ask yourself is "How is it that scientists take the same data, and come up with two completely different theories?" In the TIME article they mention that man might be responsible to some degree by "dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth." Now it is said that the exact opposite is happening; somehow even with an increased amount of particulate matter in the atmosphere, we are keeping heat in?

Notice towards the end of the article they predict dire consequences.

The only difference is that there is no call for humans to reverse the effect. How arrogant are those who suggest that we can actually change the climate?

We don't even know where hurricanes are going after they form, we just watch them. Now we have these clowns telling us that we are all going to die, if we don't do something about our emission of carbon dioxide, just like they predicted dire consequences in the 70s. Consequences that never came to be.

I thought that carbon monoxide was the real culprit anyway. Remember the thinning of the Ozone Layer? What ever happened to that? Most people are unaware of this fact, but if you do a little reading on automobiles you will find that their catalytic converters convert carbon monoxide to water, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide. If carbon dioxide is so dangerous, why use automobile catalytic converters if they release, as a byproduct, carbon dioxide?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalytic_converter

Although catalytic converters are effective at removing hydrocarbons and other harmful emissions, most of exhaust gas leaving the engine through a catalytic converter is carbon dioxide (CO2),[11] one of the greenhouse gases indicated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to be a "most likely" cause of global warming.[12] Additionally, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has stated catalytic converters are a significant and growing cause of global warming, due to their release of nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas over 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide.[13]

Foiled again! What are we going to do? So, we trade carbon monoxide for two harmful chemicals? Carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide (which is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide). I thought that the catalytic converters were going to clean the air? That's what we were told!

Now we are told that we have to reduce our emission of carbon dioxide. Why not nitrous oxide? The EPA says it's more dangerous. Oh, that's right, not everything releases nitrous oxide. Cars wouldn't produce nitrous oxide without their catalytic converter. Shh don't tell anyone...

So, what is the proposed solution to the supposed carbon dioxide problem? Taxes. There are no real measures to curb the production of carbon emissions. The majority of energy produced in the U.S. results in CO2 being released as a byproduct. Economies grow, as a result their energy usage also grows. How then are you going to reduce the amount of energy used, while still growing the economy?

There is no viable alternative to fossil fuels yet, at least not any that those who wish to tax energy will allow us to use (nuclear). So, what is the plan? The plan is: Tax people, and hope that someone comes up with an alternative, other than the one we have now (nuclear). Doesn't this sound like an effective strategy?!

The government sometimes uses taxes to punish particular groups of people, or their preferred activity. They call these "morality taxes." Take smokers for example; there is an ever increasing tax on cigarettes. Politicians claim that these taxes are going to be allocated to help people quit smoking. This might work to curb the number of smokers to some extent. So, for the sake of argument, lets say that someone produces an alternative to cigarettes. Is the cigarette alternative going to be taxed? After all, the tax was for cigarettes right? To punish those who smoke, because it's morally wrong. If there is an alternative to cigarettes, is that not just another form of smoking? In fact the alternative to cigarettes could lead to one smoking traditional cigarettes, let's tax it!

The idea that there is an energy tax to decrease energy use, while at the same time, drive innovation for alternative sources of energy is a JOKE. The "Cap and Trade" initiative is a TAX --that's all it is. It is not a tax that will go away, it will follow whatever alternatives are found in the future. That is the plan. Once you set precedent to tax energy it will be taxed in all forms. Don't fall victim to the hype and the "save the planet" "reduce emissions" garbage that you hear.

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