Cool It – Great Documentary on the Global Warming “Alarm”

Watching a documentary on Epix called “Cool It” by Bjorn Lomberg of the Copenhagen Consensus Center.

Apart from the usual debunking of Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”, the movie goes at a bunch of other aspects of the global warming issue and pragmatically looks at fiction and FASHION of it vs. the reality. A lot of scientists from MIT, NOA, NASA, U of C Berkeley, London School of Economics, and other places chime in on the issue exposing how many good ideas get shuttered and how data gets manipulated for commercial and political reasons.

The main push of the movie is that we should look less at the politics and fashion of climate change (“feeling good”) towards new technology that reduce our carbon emissions (“doing good”). Example: let’s focus our energy on solar and wind power storage.

Artificial Photosynthesis – VERY COOL! Uses light to split hydrogen and oxygen to provide amazing amounts of energy. Plus, it doesn’t have to be clean water.

Algae Fuel – VERY COOL! Need an area 128m x 128m to meet the demands of the airline industry, scientists say.

Waves – very big energy sources. Apparently waves can meet 50% of America’s energy needs and we have devices which can capture 90% of their energy.

Cool It – The Movie

If anyone else has seen it, feel welcome to comment on it. If not, I highly recommend taking a look.

The people who produced the movie:
The Copenhagen Consensus Center.

The Ridiculous Side of Environmentalism – NJ’s Solar Panels

Was reading Dan Andros’ article on “The Blaze” about NJ’s new solar panels attached to their streetlights, and to the ones already attached to homes. Like he says, here’s something environmentalists hope you never do: the math.

From the post:

$515 million dollars was spent to eventually power 3250 homes. That means approx $158,000 was spent per home. The average electric bill in the United States is approx $105 a month, or $1260 a year. See where this is going? It’s going to take a long, long time – 125 years to be exact – to break even on this wonderful green project. And the panels only have a lifespan of about 25-30 years so they will need to be replaced long before the money is recouped.

I’m curious if there’s a dollars-to-dollars dispute to his numbers (doubt it), but I’m also curious as to where in fact these solar panels were manufactured. I hope in America!

Either way, yet another example of how “green” can be planet-friendly, but galactically stupid.

What I Really Think About Anyone Who FANATICALLY Promotes “Earth Hour”

I posted this in response to a snide remark someone made to a friend who said they didn’t want to participate in Earth Hour. The snide remark was basically that my friend “obviously didn’t care about the planet” which is completely untrue, but what it does show is the false moral highground that so many on the left try and take on the issue when it’s completely hypocritical to who they are.

My response to the comment is below. If you disagree, knock yourself out because I’m happy to change my opinion, but I have yet to be shown here where I’m wrong.

…Everyone’s welcome to draw their own meaning from “Earth Hour”, and if it’s a positive and constructive one, then great, but for me this Hour campaign is nothing but a big brainwash and yet another outlet for the whacky left to appease their guilt over their addiction to consumption that they’re incredibly hypocritical for. They’re supposedly so hardcore about saving the planet, yet I’m betting that the only time they ever turn everything off is for that one hour, which is 0.00011416 of the total hours out of the year.

It’s hypocritical, and it’s also ridiculous both in concept and how far the leftie loons take it. Imagine an alcoholic throwing one shot away or a smoker throwing one cigarette away out of 8,760 – which is the amount of hours in a year – then patting themselves on the back and praising themselves for the rest of the year having done the “right thing” only 0.011416% of the time.

That would be ridiculous in itself, but more ridiculous is if after taking that one shot or one cigarette break, they continue on with the other 8,759 yet now go out and judge/lecture/preach to every other drinker and smoker on the planet who smokes/drinks the full 8,760 just because they now think that they’re somehow “better” than them. And what’s their reason for criticizing, judging, or preaching? It’s “Well, they obviously don’t care enough about their health”, or “I’m just trying to raise awareness”. Both are from a b.s. moral highround that I have yet to find anyone who truly deserves.

I paid for all my electronics, and I also pay my utility bills in full and on time. My $hit is on and will stay on until I decide to turn it off. Raising awareness about a problem is one thing. Sitting there telling another person that they’re planet-killers, baby-killers, warmongers, Marxists, slave-labor supporters, un-American, or whatever just because they don’t happen to buy into one’s own personal bullshit is another. If we’re going to get anywhere on the issues we need to knock it off.

Separating the Global Warming Issue into its 3 Proper Categories

Reading the Politico Arena blog today, and the question that was raised was whether or not Al Gore is right about “Snowpocalypse” being attributed to Global Warming.

Jeremy Mayer, Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, had this to say, which I think nails it:

Why are you asking a bunch of pundits what they think of a scientific question? If we all agree with Gore, what would that prove?

The debate about global warming can be divided into three sections. Is the Earth getting warmer? Is it anthropogenic? And what can/should we do about it? I think the scientific consensus on the first question is immense. On the second question, there is less certainty, but it seems to be growing that it is man-made. And on the third, there is no scientific consensus.

Keeping this issue separated into these three categories or questions allows science to stay in its realm and politicians and pundits to do the same.

Why I Love The State of Texas

From the Washington Times, August 25, 2010:

“Federalist principles have allowed Texas to become the strongest state in the union. The Lone Star State leads the nation in job creation, is the top state for business relocation and has more Fortune 500 companies than any other state and is the top state for wind generation. President Obama said he wants to double U.S. exports in five years; he could look to Texas, as we are the top exporting state in the country. The Obama administration could learn a lot from Texas.”

Linking The Gulf Spill to Cap & Trade Is a Cheap Ploy For Useless Legislation

I’ve been reading some of the discussion over in Politico on Obama’s Oval Office speech, and I think I have to agree the most with Stuart Gottlieb’s post:

“President Obama channeling his ‘inner Winston Churchill’? Quite to the contrary, Obama’s Oval Office address was filled with empty campaign-style rhetoric and strained efforts to salvage a perception of presidential leadership and control.”

So there weren’t many strong words, I get that, but I read elsewhere that many people were looking for strong words on cap and trade, and I don’t get that. I simply don’t get the logic: IF oil in water, THEN control emissions in air? I think Andrew Malcolm of the LA Times said it best: “There’s a pipe spewing a gazillion gobs of oil into the Gulf, so let’s build more windmills.”

The Gulf spill had nothing to do with carbon emissions into the atmosphere, and anyone trying to link the two under the whole umbrella of the environment is just being idiotic and hypocritical. The Gulf spill had to do with a continuous lack of accountability regarding the quality of the companies and the equipment that operate in our oceans.

Mistakes and oversights were made at the government levels (largely with the Bush Administration), and Obama’s leadership needs to show that those mistakes and oversights are to be no longer. But Obama also needs to show leadership in not allowing environmentalists to use this as an excuse to push their ideological, people-hating agenda at the same time.

This is NOT the time to discuss Cap & Trade or the Kerry-Lieberman bill, or to use cheap political ploys to try and shove them down our throats (example here). This is the time to a) plug the hole in the ocean, b) clean up the damage, and c) fix the economy. It is not the time to worry about scientifically meaningless reductions with something we still don’t understand.

Other sources here and here.

A quote that I think about re: the Man-Made Global Warming Debate

“Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.”
– Michael Crichton

In the Heat of the Climategate Scandal, Let’s Not Forget “Real” Pollution

I was very concerned with man-made global warming after watching Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” – that is, until about 5 seconds later when I started looking at scientific contradictions that argued against it. In the meantime, I grew concerned with how so-called “environmentalists” on the left were so quick to skewer anyone who even brought up the possibility that the human influence on climate change might be overblown.

I’m glad to see the climate scandal exposed for what it is, and I hope the mainstream media will pursue it further, but now I have a concern of a different kind. Will the environmentalists be completely silenced?

They took a big gamble to push their socialist (and arguably draconian) agenda. They hoped that Hollywood and our guilt would blind us to science and reality, and they failed, but that doesn’t mean they can’t pick up the cause against real pollution once again and gain some of that credibility back.

I hope they do. As far left as their views might be, we need their voice to be included so as to come to a rational, and realistic, decision on how best to preserve our planet and society.

What Word Best Describes The Decade So Far?

Over in the Politico Arena and reading their survey asking the above: What word best describes the decade so far?

I think it’s a great question, and there’s been some great words (I think) to describe the past decade. Some of my favorites so far:
1) Hubris (describing Gore, Bush, and Obama)
2) Alarm clock (9/11, subprime crisis, etc.)
3) Unsettling
4) Polarization
5) Hyper-Polarizing

My word? In a word, I would have to say, “Arrogance”.

Overall, I’m all for American Pride, but I think the last decade has been an example of American Arrogance in how we both thought and acted like we were “too big to fail”, whether it was economically, militarily, or socially, and we saw examples of this almost everywhere we looked.

We had political arrogance on behalf of Bush re: Iraq. We had political and scientific arrogance re: Gore, ClimateGate, and man-made global warming.

We have had corporate arrogance as well. First with Enron (2001), later, with the subprime players. After that would come the banking industry (bailouts and bonuses), and perhaps the worst, Bernie Madoff. If he’s not an icon of arrogance I don’t know what is.

We have seen arrogance on behalf of sports figures and politicians in their “right” to cheat, and with cable pundits in their “right” to define fellow Americans in derogatory terms. We have seen arrogance on behalf of the newspapers and their right to exist, and we have seen arrogance on behalf of common, everyday citizens and their apparent “right” to live far beyond their true financial means.

We got a “reality check” on 9/11, but economically it took us another 9 years to start to really “wake up” in this country as far as our place in the world is concerned.

ClimateGate: Let’s Be Sure Not To Ignore The Real Pollution

Now that fingers are starting to point back to the sky rather than to each other regarding climate change, I’m hoping that ultimately it won’t take the focus off the REAL environmental threat: pollution. Air quality, soil quality, and water quality remain highly important as the rest of the world seeks to become more industrialized.

(Image by Chang'r, CC)