Tag Archives: Watts Up With That

Yipes: Fossil fuels are greening the planet

Hey, wait a minute. Aren’t fossil fuels and the Greens quite distinct? Isn’t the former the nemesis of the other? Isn’t the so-called runaway greenhouse effect and, uh, its attendant global warming, supposed to create deserts at least as far north as Minneapolis-St. Paul?

Hmm. Instead, it seems, vegetation up there (and even farther north) is growing like mad. More plants, more trees, more grass. Well, these things do take in CO2 in order to grow, and so, taking in the CO2, they are, indeed, growing. Duh.

UPDATE:  The Gorebot didn’t get the memo, or, more likely, he got it but didn’t want to read it as it conflicts with his plan to raise taxes. And, naturally, Obutthead is still leading with his behind. As what they’ve left of our economy dies, get ready for the new Ice Age.

Yesterday’s global cooling

The pols like to keep the little people agitated with one scare or another—see the Boy Emperor’s current gun control campaign which has no chance of becoming law—because it helps keep the snooze media busy while hiding the thieving they’re actually, uh, spending their time and our money on.

The Texas Legislature does it every biennium with some threat of, say, new regulations for abortion (the snooze media backs abortion, you see).

Hence global warming/climate change’s little-remembered antecedent: global cooling leading to an imminent Ice Age. Ah, but these are scientists who preach this stuff, you say? Not really, they’re politicos with science degrees who depend on federal funding to keep their university jobs. And who controls the funding? Congratulations. Now you’re catching on.

Via Powerline, which has a neat video clip showing one “activist” who lately has preached warming actually preaching cooling way back when. Gotta love the Internet.

La Nina or no?

Why does it matter? If she arrives early, say mid- to late-summer, we could have another dry scorcher. Then, as she strengthens in the fall into the winter, a warmer and drier winter. Or not.

The LCRA’s Bob Rose is on board for her early arrival, along with NOAA and Accuweather’s Joe Bastardi. But Anthony Watts at WUWT has a neat nay-saying article we might cross our fingers on. Because, among other things, La Nina would bring a stronger hurricane season. Which, this year, could mean pushing much more of that Gulf crude oil much farther ashore into Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Maybe even turn it the other way and push some of it into Texas.

AGW critic recovering

Turns out that scientist at the Copenhagen meeting who suffered a heart attack was Henrik Svensmark, author of a plausible book and much research behind it as to what (besides carbon dioxide), might be causing the global warming that may or may not actually be occurring.

Svensmark seems to be recovering from what seems to have been a malfunctioning pacemaker, according to this hard-to-read Google translation of a Danish newspaper account, posted by Anthony Watts. Svensmark believes that a lack of cosmic rays to provide the seed nuclei for the formation of clouds to keep the temperature low is behind whatever warming there is. Sol’s recent sleep apparently has upped the cosmic ray count, which Svensmark might say is bringing the recent early winters.

Sol’s new spots

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The sunspot drought hasn’t ended entirely yet, but these new Earth-size ones are the first in more than a year on the Earth-facing side of Sol. They’re a hopeful sign that we may not, afterall, be headed for more ice and cold than usual from the deepest solar minimum in almost a century.

Tilt

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The latest global warming scare? The warming oceans (that aren’t, actually, warming) could cause the Earth’s normal tilt of 23.5 degrees from the vertical to increase. Then what? They don’t say. But when it comes to Pap & Tax (otherwise known as Cap & Trade) the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is lobbying for a wait-a-minute debate on what could cause our drift into a Third World economy.

Via Watts Up With That.

UPDATE: Good analysis of the fraud by Norman Rogers, a former Zero Population Growth activist who remembers that exaggeration and scare stories produced membership in ZPG far better than facts.

MORE: Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee explain, in their 2002 book The Life and Death of Planet Earth, what an increased tilt might mean: "…if we tilted too much, or if the tilt shifted, our climate would become more extreme or be thrown into chaos. This may have happened to Mars, in fact, allowing that planet to lose its oceans."

Sunspecks

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Scientists are getting so desperate for the return of sunspots that they are now counting sunspecks. The one on the left is fading away, the one in the middle is a "dead pixel," an artifact of the SOHO spacecraft, and the two on the right are the latest candidates for sunspots. I’m wondering if the lack of activity will mean a cooler-than-usual summer. Well, I can dream, anyhow, as our daytime temps at the rancho climb steadily into the 90s.

 Via Watts Up With That.