**************************************************************** Additional Text on Global Warming - 4/26/08 **************************************************************** SANDBOX stuff is NOT edited. This is copy/paste only. -Maren **************************************************************** **************************************************************** 4 Bombers sent stuff on Global Warming Ray Wells ('54), Ed Wood ('62) Roy Ballard ('63), John Allen ('66) **************************************************************** **************************************************************** >>From: Ray Wells ('54) Going back to point # 10. in my previous global warming (GW) email. We need to understand the difference between polluting gases, and greenhouse gases. The source of these gases is also relevant -- some are man-made and some occur naturally in nature. Once this is understood, we need to determine what man can control and what is clearly beyond man's ability to control. The media, for the most part, has failed to make these distinctions clear, and politicians have taken advantage of the resulting confusion. I fully concur that we have dangerously polluted our water, our air, and our soil, and that this has to stop, and we need to clean up the damage we have done. I have no argument with those individuals who want to limit and possibly eliminate this pollution. However, the assumption that all this pollution is somehow causing a global warming is false; indeed the allegation that the planet has undergone a global warming is also false. I applaud the development of green technology that is less polluting than the burning of fossil fuels, but not because this technology produces less heat. It's a fact that man-made heat only contributes 2% towards heating the planet. The other 98% comes from nature -- and I'll support this fact in future emails. This is why the Kyoto Protocol is so ridiculous even if there were such a thing as global warming. The idea that greenhouse gasses are causing a global warming is false. The model for this assumption comes from what happens in a greenhouse when the gasses from the plants collect against the ceiling of the greenhouse and act as an insulator to prevent heat from escaping from the greenhouse -- this phenomenon is true enough. But the planet has no such glass ceiling to trap its greenhouse gasses and here the analogy falls apart. I assume that you are all familiar with the philosophy, "The end justifies the means." If we want to get people to stop polluting (the end result) and we scare the hell out of them by telling them that their pollution is warming up the planet, and as a result the ice caps will melt, the seas will rise, and we will suffer mass catastrophes (the means) then maybe people will stop polluting. Unfortunately, this philosophy has generated some unintended catastrophic results Here are a few: 1. A worldwide food shortage due to diverting corn to be used in the production of ethanol. 2. Refusal to grant permits to build badly needed new power plants that use new technology to cleanly burn coal (Oh my god, they will produce heat!) This is particularly painful to third world countries that need the power to improve their standard of living. 3. Rapidly rising gas prices that are collapsing our economy and lowering our standard of living. Here is my chance to explode another myth. Big Oil actually likes the idea of being able to justify limiting their production based on GW. Look at what has happened: Big Oil is reaping massive profits without having to invest in exploration, drilling, and the building of new refineries. Finally, here is a web-site by a respected, credentialed climatologist that supports some of what I have been saying: http://www.tenbillionacres.org/?gclid=CJSdvIr78pICFQdgsgodIiH_4A -Ray Wells ('54) **************************************************************** **************************************************************** >>From: Ed Wood ('62) Re: Facts and political logic Heartening indeed, to read comments from global warming skeptics like Robert Avant, Ray Wells, Frank Whiteside and others. They encourage us all to study the real facts that are available, as well as the logic that extends these known facts into projections, or, in the case of Al Gore, pure fantasy. Two references that I recommend to those with an open-minded curiosity are, Shattered Consensus by Patrick J Michaels and Unstoppable Global Warming by Fred Singer. The former is a selected set of essays by scientists who contributed to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reports that were so badly misused by politicians and the more simplistic of the environmental advocates. In it, we learn that the 2001 IPCC report was a balanced study of climate change, and since it was balanced it was clear that consensus did not exist among the contributing scientists. The summary of the report, however, was far less balanced. It contained an emphasis on the greenhouse gas model of warming that was not warranted by the preponderance of evidence in the real scientific documents in the report proper. Then there was the summary of the summary, which was written for policy makers. There was no intent for that document to be balanced. It was intended to galvanize action, and it was wildly successful in doing so. But that doesn’t make it scientifically based. It makes it manipulative. Singer’s book digs further into the deceptive practices of the editors of the IPCC 2001 study in particular. A particularly telling comparison was drawn between figures shown in the IPCC reports of 1995 and 2001. Both show the last 1,000 years of earth temperature based upon data available at the time. The differences are startling. The 2001 study, the basis of much of the current furor over global warming, shows the now famous Mann “Hockey Stick” graph with an alarming increase in global temperatures during the modern warming period. In doing so, the Mann graph denies the existence of the well documented Little Ice Age from 1500 to 1700 and the Medieval Warm Period from 1100 to 1300. The bald deception has been swallowed as “fact” by untold millions of gullible people who now clamor for us to stop or reverse CO2 production because it causes global warming. The data do indeed say that global temperatures and CO2 are related. But the cause and effect are the reverse of what most people have come to believe. CO2 has been shown to be a lagging, not a leading indicator of global warming. The supposition to explain these data is that most global warming is caused by the sun and its varying effects caused by sun spot cycles, traverses through arms of the Milky Way, etc. When the earth warms, the oceans warm as well. Vast amounts of CO2 are entrained in the oceans, and as we learned in high school science classes, when liquid warms, gases are less soluble – the CO2 is released into the atmosphere by the oceans. Study of past cycles shows that cooling begins when global CO2 levels are at their highest. So much for the idea that CO2 causes global warming. These studies, by the way are in complete agreement with what we’ve seen recently where CO2 levels continue to rise, yet the earth has undergone a generalized cooling in the last decade. Nevertheless, I am one that supports the use of alternative fuels, mass transit, and anything else we as a country can do to avoid shipping trillions of dollars to Saudi Arabia and other middle eastern countries who use this money to foment hatred, intolerance and violence that is reshaping this world. Imagine what would happen to the cause of Islamist terrorism if we were able to suddenly stop 100% of our imports from that part of the world. -Ed Wood ('62) **************************************************************** **************************************************************** >>From: Roy Ballard ('63) Maren, This is for the Cat box, I guess. I read the entry's of Ray and Frank the other day about Global Warming and I must say that the two of them cover the subject very well. Alas there is no point for me to get involved as I'm not that well informed on the subject, except to say that I believe that anyone who does not listen to the whole story that would involve GORE is well misinformed. This is a man who is for himself and no one else. But, I would say that all this political garbage is enough to make one sick, Is it or isn't it a crime to see all the money being wasted on this political mess that we now enjoy. At last count the two major dems were over 400 million and the repub was at about 90 mill. Now you put that with the GORE mess, OH what a waste of money that could be spent on better things for the people of this great nation, how about limiting the time and amount of money that can be spent for a person looking to get or is already in politics and wants to get elected..... But the bad thing is that the elected don't listen to the people of this country anymore. Nuf said and I got off the subject way too much, but one may vent on occation -Roy Ballard ('63) **************************************************************** **************************************************************** >>From: John Allen ('66) During the last week, former Vice-President AlGore and current Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, have presented further, clear and convincing evidence that the Democrat Party is the Party of one Niccolo Machiavelli who first asserted that "The end justifies the means." Last Friday (18 April), ABC's "20/20" revealed that AlGore's Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," contains the very same computer-generated footage, originally created for the 2004 fictional movie, "The Day After Tomorrow," starring Dennis Quaid. It comes from one of the most dramatic shots in the documentary where one is flown along a collapsing 700 foot high ice shelf in Antarctica, but when Hollywood filmed that scene for THEIR movie, the ice shelf was, in fact, a big piece of styrofoam. Since the ABC revelation, those few news agencies that have bothered to seek comment/clarification from Nobel- laureate Gore, have found him to be seriously incommunicado. In her Earth Day 2008 address (Tues), Speaker Pelosi offered the following quote that she described as having come from the Old Testament: "To minister to the needs of God's creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us." Now it is revealed by biblical scholars that not only does that quote NOT come from the Bible, nothing even remotely resembling it is contained in either the Old or New Testament. Ms. Pelosi simply made it up out of whole cloth, as needed for the occasion of Earth Day and the whole Liberal pipe dream of "Man-made Global Warming/Climate Change." The lesson contained herein is that Democrat leaders simply care more about the problems of the nation and the world and if, on occasion, they lie a little bit (or a lot) to further themselves and/or their agendas, it should not be held against them because after all, they mean well, and the depth of their caring is sufficient justification for their (at best) tangential relationships with the truth. -John Allen ('66) ****************************************************************