Thursday, December 06, 2007

Did you know?

Points to ponder. The links below are legitimate. Carbon generators everywhere beware!



And my favorite, breathing causes global warming.  The Earth Blog writes:

A billion people breathing, anywhere on Earth, produces 500 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. Those billion people, breathing a total of 6.3 trillion breaths a year, all lead different lives. As we have seen, the food that is the source of that carbon dioxide determines the actual impact of those breaths that keep those billion people alive.

But in life so much more happens while those people breathe in and out.

According to the US Department of Energy:

  • A billion Indians would have produced 1.04 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2004.
  • A billion Chinese would have produced 3.62 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2004.
  • A billion Germans would have produced 10.46 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2004.
  • A billion Americans would have produced 20.18 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2004.

If a billion people stopped breathing then not only would there would be 500 million tonnes less carbon dioxide produced per year, but if those people had been relentless producers of climate changing greenhouse gases, the Earth might itself be able to breathe a sigh of relief.

But what if human beings were part of nature? What if every child not born, every laugh unheard left the world that much poorer? It's a radical thought, and not so long ago we were told that humanity was precious. How times change.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

The same idea was expressed much more dramatically in Swinburne's Hymn of Man, in tones both vaunting and tragic. Where does man's spirit go if not abroad upon the earth.

The abysses forbid it not enter: the stars make room for the soul.
Space is the soul’s to inherit; the night is hers as the day;
Lo, saith man, this is my spirit; how shall not the worlds make way?
Space is thought’s, and the wonders thereof, and the secret of space;
Is thought not more than the thunders and lightnings? shall thought give place?
Is the body not more than the vesture, the life not more than the meat?
The will than the word or the gesture, the heart than the hands or the feet?
Is the tongue not more than the speech is? the head not more than the crown?
And if higher than is heaven be the reach of the soul, shall not heaven bow down?
Time, father of life, and more great than the life it begat and began,
Earth’s keeper and heaven’s and their fate, lives, thinks, and hath substance in man.
Time’s motion that throbs in his blood is the thought that gives heart to the skies,
And the springs of the fire that is food to the sunbeams are light to his eyes.
The minutes that beat with his heart are the words to which worlds keep chime,
And the thought in his pulses is part of the blood and the spirit of time.
He saith to the ages, Give; and his soul foregoes not her share;
Who are ye that forbid him to live, and would feed him with heavenlier air?

20 Comments:

Blogger Carl said...

I live in Kenosha, WI, USA and we've just had as much snow in the last five days as we normally have in the whole month of December. I would like to know if anyone knows how I can help the global warming along, please.

12/06/2007 07:41:00 PM  
Blogger al fin said...

Candlelight protest marches cause global warming.

Islamic youths burning cars in France cause global warming.

Third worlders who deforest mountains and hillsides for firewood cause global warming.

Politicians and bureaucrats who fly to Bali for global warming conferences cause global warming.

Hybrid automobiles cause global warming.

Providing heat, power, and air conditioning to Universities and Media offices causes global warming.

Of course, global warming is far preferable to global cooling--which would kill billions of people from starvation and exposure.

12/06/2007 07:43:00 PM  
Blogger Whiskey said...

My personal favorite was Heather Mills McCartney urging the world (except for rich people like her of course) to drink rat milk instead of cow's milk.

That's what the Environmental movement has become -- a tall cold glass of rat milk.

12/06/2007 08:12:00 PM  
Blogger Sparks fly said...

I am a child of God and HE has set eternity in my heart. HE created time and sits outside it. Nothing is hidden from HIM including the malice of the people pushing this "Global Warming" scheme.

Enviromentalism is the new hat of communism. It, like communism is government funded for the most part and requires tons of cash to keep it running. Find out where its money is coming from to pay for all this media and cut it off and it will be stymied. Thousands of people are being paid big money every day to keep this criminal, demonic boondoggle going.

12/06/2007 09:19:00 PM  
Blogger Nomenklatura said...

'Global warming' is well on the way to becoming a marketing term like 'low fat', so over-extended and incontinently used that we no longer know, or really think about, exactly what it means any more.

In any case, as soon as most consumers grab a couple of slices of 'low fat' bread, the first thing they do is put something between them which adds all the fat back in. The illusion of a lifestyle change is purchased, but the underlying behavior stays the same.

A careful economic analysis will show that the global warming enthusiasm is 98% a modern pagan ritual, with very little impact on real resource allocation.

It seems likely that pre-Christian pagans derived a lot of satisfaction from their various types of tree-worship; today's modern pagans don't seem very different.

12/06/2007 10:12:00 PM  
Blogger rickl said...

Blathering on and on about global warming causes global warming.

12/06/2007 10:58:00 PM  
Blogger Bob said...

Divorce causes global warming. Separate residences. Polygamy reduces global warming. The harem reduces global warming. Dating causes global warming. Cat houses reduce global warming.

12/06/2007 11:06:00 PM  
Blogger Tarnsman said...

Newsflash---
Sunspot 978 has emerged--and it's a big one. "With the sun so quiet lately, a large spot coming around the corner is cause to drop everything and start imaging," "It's nice to see a bigger spot with some activity."

from The Independent Dec.5th

Something is happening to our Sun. It has to do with sunspots, or rather the activity cycle their coming and going signifies. After a period of exceptionally high activity in the 20th century, our Sun has suddenly gone exceptionally quiet. Months have passed with no spots visible on its disc. We are at the end of one cycle of activity and astronomers are waiting for the sunspots to return and mark the start of the next, the so-called cycle 24. They have been waiting for a while now with no sign it's on its way any time soon.

Sunspots – dark magnetic blotches on the Sun's surface – come and go in a roughly 11-year cycle of activity first noticed in 1843. It's related to the motion of super-hot, electrically charged gas inside the Sun – a kind of internal conveyor belt where vast sub-surface rivers of gas take 40 years to circulate from the equator to the poles and back. Somehow, in a way not very well understood, this circulation produces the sunspot cycle in which every 11 years there is a sunspot maximum followed by a minimum. But recently the Sun's internal circulation has been failing. In May 2006 this conveyor belt had slowed to a crawl – a record low. Nasa scientist David Hathaway said: "It's off the bottom of the charts... this has important repercussions for future solar activity." What's more, it's not the only indicator that the Sun is up to something.

Sunspots can be long or short, weak or strong and sometimes they can go away altogether. Following the discovery of the cycle, astronomers looked back through previous observations and were able to see it clearly until they reached the 17th century, when it seemed to disappear. It turned out to be a real absence, not one caused by a lack of observations. Astronomers called it the "Maunder Minimum." It was an astonishing discovery: our Sun can change. Between 1645 and 1715 sunspots were rare. About 50 were observed; there should have been 50,000.

Ever since the sunspot cycle was discovered, researchers have looked for its rhythm superimposed on the Earth's climate. In some cases it's there but usually at low levels. But there was something strange about the time when the sunspots disappeared that left scientists to ponder if the sun's unusual behaviour could have something to do with the fact that the 17th century was also a time when the Earth's northern hemisphere chilled with devastating consequences.

Scientists call that event the "Little Ice Age" and it affected Europe at just the wrong time. In response to the more benign climate of the earlier Medieval Warm Period, Europe's population may have doubled. But in the mid-17th century demographic growth stopped and in some areas fell, in part due to the reduced crop yields caused by climate change. Bread prices doubled and then quintupled and hunger weakened the population. The Italian historian Majolino Bisaccioni suggested that the wave of bad weather and revolutions might be due to the influence of the stars. But the Jesuit astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli speculated that fluctuations in the number of sunspots might be to blame, for he had noticed they were absent.

Looking back through sunspot records reveals many periods when the Sun's activity was high and low and in general they are related to warm and cool climatic periods. As well as the Little Ice Age, there was the weak Sun and the cold Iron Age, the active sun and the warm Bronze Age. Scientists cannot readily explain how the Sun's activity affects the Earth but it is an observational correlation that the Sun's moods have a climatic effect on the Earth.

Today's climate change consensus is that man-made greenhouse gases are warming the world and that we must act to curb them to reduce the projected temperature increase estimated at probably between 1.8C and 4.0C by the century's end. But throughout the 20th century, solar cycles had been increasing in strength. Almost everyone agrees that throughout most of the last century the solar influence was significant. Studies show that by the end of the 20th century the Sun's activity may have been at its highest for more than 8,000 years. Other solar parameters have been changing as well, such as the magnetic field the Sun sheds, which has almost doubled in the past century. But then things turned. In only the past decade or so the Sun has started a decline in activity, and the lateness of cycle 24 is an indicator.

Astronomers are watching the Sun, hoping to see the first stirrings of cycle 24. It should have arrived last December. The United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted it would start in March 2007. Now they estimate March 2008, but they will soon have to make that even later. The first indications that the Sun is emerging from its current sunspot minimum will be the appearance of small spots at high latitude. They usually occur some 12-20 months before the start of a new cycle. These spots haven't appeared yet so cycle 24 will probably not begin to take place until 2009 at the earliest. The longer we have to wait for cycle 24, the weaker it is likely to be. Such behaviour is usually followed by cooler temperatures on Earth.

The past decade has been warmer than previous ones. It is the result of a rapid increase in global temperature between 1978 and 1998. Since then average temperatures have held at a high, though steady, level. Many computer climate projections suggest that the global temperatures will start to rise again in a few years. But those projections do not take into account the change in the Sun's behaviour. The tardiness of cycle 24 indicates that we might be entering a period of low solar activity that may counteract man-made greenhouse temperature increases. Some members of the Russian Academy of Sciences say we may be at the start of a period like that seen between 1790 and 1820, a minor decline in solar activity called the Dalton Minimum. They estimate that the Sun's reduced activity may cause a global temperature drop of 1.5C by 2020. This is larger than most sensible predictions of man-made global warming over this period.

It's something we must take seriously because what happened in the 17th century is bound to happen again some time. Recent work studying the periods when our Sun loses its sunspots, along with data on other Sun-like stars that may be behaving in the same way, suggests that our Sun may spend between 10 and 25 per cent of the time in this state. Perhaps the lateness of cycle 24 might even be the start of another Little Ice Age. If so, then our Sun might come to our rescue over climate change, mitigating mankind's influence and allowing us more time to act. It might even be the case that the Earth's response to low solar activity will overturn many of our assumptions about man's influence on climate change. We don't know. We must keep watching the sun. -----

Al Gore and his kool-aid drinkers are going to have some serious explaning to do, real soon. Global cooling is far more of a threat than the imagined threat of global warming. Check the history books. Periods of global cooling are accompanied with famine, disease, wars and in the early days of humanity the collaspe of civilizations. We could be heading into a Maunder Minimum, not a Dalton one. Time will tell.

12/06/2007 11:13:00 PM  
Blogger Alexis said...

There isn't much violence in An Inconvenient Truth, but I've heard it has a lot of Gore.

12/06/2007 11:58:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Grynch said...

One you missed:
Global Warming causes baldness in Hedgehogs
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=432937&in_page_id=1770

This phenomenon was actually explained on Saturday Night Live by Dana Carvey in his "Church Lady" sketches. Carvey would discuss something that upset the Church Lady and then say "And what could be the cause of that? Could it be... SATAN!!!???" followed by a stern glare at the camera.

Picture Al Gore in drag and change the tagline to "Could it be... GLOBAL WARMING!!!???"

12/07/2007 03:15:00 AM  
Blogger LarryD said...

Sheryl Crow and only using one square of toilet paper per sitting

I think that (anthropogenic) global warming has jumped the shark.

I detect a wiff of desperation from the GW crowd, I think they realize their scam is beginning to unravel.

Heh, bobal, you're right, Divorce does contribute to global warming. Finally, a reason for the loony left to support marriage.

12/07/2007 06:29:00 AM  
Blogger Bob said...

Or polygamy, harems and cat houses:)

12/07/2007 06:58:00 AM  
Blogger Bob said...

Here's the complete(almost) List, folks. from John Lott's(more guns, less crime)Website.

12/07/2007 07:02:00 AM  
Blogger geoffb said...

larryd said
"I think that (anthropogenic) global warming has jumped the shark.

I detect a wiff of desperation from the GW crowd, I think they realize their scam is beginning to unravel."


This is why they are trying to change their trademark to "Climate Change" that way no matter what they can be covered.

12/07/2007 08:05:00 AM  
Blogger RWE said...

Tarnsman: I was wondering when someone else would notice this.

Several months back Space News had an item on the coming period of fewer sunspots. We have been observing the sun for centuries and been doing detailed scientific observations of the sun since around 1890.

Completely aside from the actual presence of sunspots, observations of the visible currents of the sun enable us to predict the intensity of future sunspot cycles well over ten years in advance. And the current day observations of solar currents show that they ARE AT THE LOWEST LEVEL IN RECORDED HISTORY - in other words, in over 100 years.

The prediction is that circa 2020 the sun will have fewer sunspots than ever seen before. And translates into overall lower Solar output.

When people express concern about how much the stock market has gone up so quickly I ask "If that is bad, then would it going down at the same rate be a good thing?" The same question applies to global warming. If the Earth getting hotter is a problem does this mean that it getting cooler is good? Obviously not - a huge drop in either the Dow Jones and the planet's temperature would rightly be considered as an utter catastrophe.

If I am able to resist the growing urge to take out as many environmental activists and their pet politicians as possible by means of my .303 Enfield, I fully expect to live to see the same agencies created to manage global warming swing smoothly into dealing with the coming global cooling crisis without as much as a pause.

12/07/2007 10:23:00 AM  
Blogger Yashmak said...

And then we have other reports of things like "global dimming".

It's hilarious actually, the climate folks are talking out of both sides of their mouths. Aircraft emissions are part of what is blamed for global warming, but then to say they contribute to some global dimming thing (which one would assume means more of the sun's energy is reflected back into space, thus cooling the earth or warming it more slowly). . .

It's enough to make my head spin.

12/07/2007 11:47:00 AM  
Blogger always right said...

Naahhh, man-made causes are so much easier to explain to the GW crowd. Pull out those "sunspots" explanation for a couple sentences, and you get blank stares.

12/07/2007 02:18:00 PM  
Blogger exqweezme said...

Can't beat George Will on this. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/31/AR2006033101707.html

12/13/2007 04:23:00 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

The left have global warming, the right have the war on terror. Both illusions that have nothing to do with reality. Go on living your lives in peace and efficiency and all will work out well.

12/26/2007 06:43:00 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

The left have global warming, the right have the war on terror. Both illusions that have nothing to do with reality. Go on living your lives in peace and efficiency and all will work out well.

12/26/2007 06:43:00 PM  

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