posted May 15, 2010 07:16 PM            

quote:

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Even if there were sufficient areas available, the sun doesn't shine at night and the wind doesn't blow reliably...SO there would still need to be carbon based energy used to power electricity producing power plants.

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posted May 15, 2010 08:57 PM            

nuclear energy has not been produced in anything like a "clean" way and no one has figured out how to do it yet.

posted May 15, 2010 10:37 PM            

Further, the available land mass in the US doesn't exist for installations of solar collectors and wind farms of the size necessary to even make a dent in US energy needs.

We've thrown hundreds of billions of tax payer money at solar panels and wind turbine technology with little to show for the money....all the way back to Jimmy Carter years.

Understand, I don't give a flip where the power comes from to heat/cool my home, cook my food or light my home. Solar and wind turbines are fine with me....but the technology doesn't exist to make these energy sources viable...or anywhere near cost effective when compared to coal, oil or natural gas fired electric power plants. In my opinion this is a dead end option and it's more a product of politics than science.

These are some facts everyone should know about alternate power sources and what we're really talking about in the real world.

Have a look at the numbers and ask yourself is this even possible. I must conclude that it isn't even possible...let alone desirable.

From a post on December 2, 2009

November 25, 2009
Climate Fraud and the Environmental Agenda
By J.R. Dunn

The debate on environmentalism specifically as regards the environmental movement itself -- has been marked by confusion since the beginning. Criticism of environmentalist thinking tends to confuse means with goals. Environmentalist reforms, however they are presented and whatever they may involve, are simply means of pushing forward the Green agenda. As for the goals inherent in that agenda...they are something else entirely.

We see this misapprehension at work today in the debate concerning renewable power sources. Critics continually object that renewables such as wind, solar, and hydroelectric power simply can't provide enough energy to run a modern industrial society. While figures differ, all forms of renewable energy put together don't break into the double digits of what is required to support an advanced economy like that of the U.S. The general consensus lies at around 3% to 5%. It currently stands at roughly two-thirds of 1% -- yes, you read that right. Much time is spent pointing this out, as if the Greens don't realize it. But of course they do -- in fact, that's the entire point.

Not that they'll ever admit it. The Green argument concerning renewable energy is that it can easily provide adequate power with the added benefit of creating a "sustainable" economy. The most recent example appeared in the October edition of Scientific American in a piece by Mark Z. Jacobsen and Mark A. Delucchi titled "A Plan for a Sustainable Future: How to get all energy from wind, water and solar power by 2030." (A PDF version is available here.) The authors make the claim that America's energy needs can be provided for by:

490,000 I megawatt tidal turbines
5,350 100 megawatt geothermal plants
900 1300 megawatt hydroelectric dams
3,800,000 5 megawatt windmills
720,000 .75 megawatt wave converters
1,700,000,000 rooftop solar voltaic systems, 0.003 MW
49,000 300 megawatt solar thermal plants
40,000 300 megawatt photovoltaic power plants

This makes for an impressive picture. Unfortunately, it's almost completely empty. Writing in The American Spectator, William Tucker completely demolishes the argument in his customary thoroughgoing fashion. (Anyone dealing with detailed tech policy questions would do well to study how Tucker handles them.) Tucker points at that the amount of space required for the solar plants alone would be in excess of 450,000 square miles, "the size of Texas and California combined." As for rooftop systems, there very likely aren't 1.7 billion roofs on earth to set them up on...at least, not enough rooftops sturdy enough, large enough, and oriented to the south enough. Similarly, "We would live in a forest of 80-story windmills interrupted by rolling prairies of solar collectors. Every inch of coastline would be girdled with tidal generators while every square mile of ocean was dotted with wind and wave collectors. There would be no place on the planet not dedicated to gathering energy."

Clearly, "A Plan for a Sustainable Future" is by no means a serious proposal, but instead a PR effort intended to sell the Green agenda. And what is that agenda?

The goal of environmentalism is not to provide power or maintain the current level of industrial activity. If anything, it's the exact opposite. Since conservation was twisted into an ideology in the late 1960s, it has pursued the explicit goal of remaking society on the basis of a fantasy notion of natural living, in which human beings are little more that another unit of the ecology, no more important and requiring only slightly more in the way of resources than a snail darter or a spotted owl. While not trumpeting this aim, Greens make no secret of it.

Environmentalism is a revolutionary ideology, deriving much of its thinking, rhetoric, and practice from the left. Like other left-wing cults, it is explicitly anti-capitalist. But environmentalism goes one step further -- while the left wishes to remake industrial society according to the Marxist model, the Greens wish to simply abolish it and return to a mythical "natural" state. What easier way to accomplish that then to cut the West's energy lifeline?

Nuclear power has already been made anathema. Coal and oil, as CO2 releasers, are next on the agenda. In the end, this leaves only renewables. What this means is more than conservation, more than recycling, more than the Green gestures to which many Americans have become reconciled. It means a complete collapse of industrial society. Not mere cuts, but effective eradication of home heating, electricity, and transportation. It means shutting down virtually all heavy industry. The limited industry that will remain - electronics, computers, some forms of biotechnology -- will be light enough to leave a small ecological "footprint." It will also be controlled by government, or rather the Green bureaucracy.

Of course, such a system cannot conceivably support 300 million Americans or 6 billion people worldwide. But as they say, that's not a flaw, but a feature.

Mass murder has always been inherent to socialism. The first recorded mention of genocide occurred in a February 1848 edition of the socialist paper Neue Rheinische Zeitung, edited by none other than Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Twenty years later, the Nihilists amused themselves by trying to calculate how many people would have to be killed once they took over. The generally accepted figure was 10%. As many will recall, William Ayers easily doubled this figure in similar discussions with his Weather Underground comrades.

Nor was this limited to cocky pseudo-revos. Whenever the left has achieved power, mass murder -- democide, in the term coined by Dr. R.J. Rummel -- has been the result. Stalin accounted for his 40 million. Mao may have exceeded this. As far as percentages of population go, the Khmer Rouge are the undisputed champs, having slaughtered at least a third of their Cambodian countrymen.

The Greens like to reverse the formula, speaking instead of what the optimal human population of earth might be. The numbers vary -- a billion, half a billion, a hundred million, or a little over 1% of the current world population. There's even a Voluntary Human Extinction movement, which holds that the human race is an evolutionary failure that would be better off extinct.

But the impulse is the same. The question remains on how to reach the goal. In the past, Greens have spoken of outside forces doing the job for them, of population crashes caused by overpopulation, pollution, resource depletion, or lately, by global warming. But there has always been a more typical leftist undercurrent as well, common among Earth First! and eco-fascist groups, that if nature fails, the Greens should step in. Such concepts as tailored viruses designed to cut the population through sterilization or more final effects have been discussed in Green circles with considerable seriousness.

The revelations of fraud concerning the East Anglia Climate Research Unit e-mails will go a long way toward transforming the debate on environmentalist policy. But such a transformation should not be limited to the topic of global warming. The public image of environmentalism as a warm, sentimental, animal- and tree-loving movement is no more than a mask. In truth, it is steel-hard and anti-human, yet another example of the sickness within the soul of modernism. The center-right must discover a method of getting this truth across. But first, this truth must be adequately understood. http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/climate_fraud_and_the_environm.html

posted May 16, 2010 12:45 AM            

iraq alone has reached the million mark(that's iraqi casualties). vietnam? how many million? how about hiroshima? dresden? wounded knee?

it seems human sacrifice in one form or another has always been and is STILL with us...

but you keep saying europe is completely socialist, and there have been no mass murders there lately. BOTH sides killed millions in WWII.

i'm not preaching for population reduction, though i have to admit the world does seem crowded these days. bucky fuller pointed out that if DESIGN were used intelligently every one of us could live like billionaires. of course there would have to be some consensus amongst EVERYONE and we know that will never happen - but design could drastically alter the way we operate..the way a building is designed changes its power requirements.

but if we insist on keeping the same old same old, power grid, building shapes, modes of transport, etc, it will never happen.

It means a complete collapse of industrial society. Not mere cuts, but effective eradication of home heating, electricity, and transportation. It means shutting down virtually all heavy industry. The limited industry that will remain - electronics, computers, some forms of biotechnology -- will be light enough to leave a small ecological "footprint." It will also be controlled by government, or rather the Green bureaucracy. -

this is the conservative's paranoid nightmare. there was a huge fuss when the automobile came in and threatened the existing structure of society. there was fury over building railroads all over the place. in fact the industrial revolution was once seen as the end of the world by many.

and it is unfounded. change does NOT equal death. from time to time watersheds are reached and a LOT of things change quickly. this scares a lot of people but it happens anyway. and not to make genocide convenient!

it is time to clean up our mess, for sure. that doesn't mean we have to kill off half the population. but if we don't find a way to create without making so much poison in the process, we will not resemble ourselves if we survive at all...mutate or die!?

posted May 16, 2010 11:59 AM            

quote:

---

It is a scientific fact the man made contribution to greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere is 0.12% of the total....that's 12/100ths of 1 (one) percent.

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Is it? Do you want to start citing scientific references as I keep asking you to do?

quote:

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Katatonic, you keep floating these pie in the sky ideas but where is the substaniation for any of them?

---

Ironic.

quote:

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So, technology is not capable of moving America and the world forward with any other fuel source than carbon based fuels.

---

Sure it is.

quote:

---

The two clean energy sources which are available are also fought by the global warming nuts and crackpots; hydroelectric and nuclear power plants.

---

I believe climate scientists DO, in fact, endorse nuclear power.

quote:

---

Even if there were sufficient areas available, the sun doesn't shine at night and the wind doesn't blow reliably...SO there would still need to be carbon based energy used to power electricity producing power plants.

---

The oceans are constantly moving with great reliability.

quote:

---

The crackpots have been exposed as frauds and hoaxers and their issue of man made global warming is exposed as a crock of crap.

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posted May 17, 2010 01:39 PM            

Perhaps Virginia's Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli reads what I say on this forum.

May 17, 2010
Climategate Taxpayer Fraud Investigation Draws Ideological Heat
By Mark J. Fitzgibbons

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has used the power of government to seek documents from the University of Virginia regarding its former professor and Climategate figure of "hockey stick" fame, Michael Mann. Mr. Cuccinelli is investigating whether Professor Mann engaged in fraud to obtain taxpayer money to fund his research.

The civil investigation is making some people sweat, and raised howls of protest from sources ranging from the liberal Washington Post to the libertarian Reason. Academicians are protesting it as a threat to academic liberty. Daniel Lashof, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's Climate Center, penned a letter calling Cuccinelli's actions "political harassment of climate scientist Michael Mann."

Virginia Congressman Jim Moran, chairman of the Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, which should be investigating Climategate but isn't, chimed in: "One can only conclude that [Cuccinelli's] investigation is motivated by the desire to silence those with whom [he] disagree[s]."

Mr. Moran, not known as a defender of the First Amendment, may want to be more circumspect lest he arouse suspicions that he doth protest too much. As Jason Zweig reports at The Wall Street Journal, congressional committee chairs such as Mr. Moran may use "insider information" garnered through their committee positions to direct their personal investments. That would be unlawful for you or me. The issue of global warming has already affected financial markets, making certain members of the political class very wealthy.

As someone who has fought unlawful and abusive government investigations, including ones by state attorneys general, I am more than just a little aware of how government abuses its investigative powers. They are abused for political reasons, and out of sheer incompetence.

I agree, however, with Moe Lane's abbreviated assessment that "the Commonwealth of Virginia can investigate this because Mann took state money to do his research." The issue, however, is more complex and goes deeper than just taking government money. After all, when government is everywhere, who these days doesn't have some link to government money?

Grant recipients solicit grants by making certain representations. Professor Mann's research was funded through a grant of taxpayer money. An intentional misrepresentation of a material fact to induce the grant would constitute fraud at common law.

Mr. Cuccinelli bases his investigation in statutory authority given him under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, which provides considerable detail about what the attorney general must do to bring such an investigation. The statute also allows Virginia to intervene on behalf of actions filed by private individuals under what are called qui tam lawsuits. Private citizens in Virginia, therefore, could bring actions under the fraud statute that presumably would allow access to the University of Virginia's records at issue, provided the litigants complied with the criteria in the qui tam statute.

If Mr. Cuccinelli's investigation does not meet the statutory thresholds, then a court could limit his investigation. I doubt that Mr. Cuccinelli, a litigator with an engineering degree, failed to nail it down. Also, academic freedom is not a recognized legal privilege that could be raised to block an investigation into alleged fraud to obtain taxpayer money.

Many state officials with whom I'm familiar often make investigative demands or threats in other contexts without complying with stringent procedures comparable to those found in the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act. They issue demands against private entities that do not receive taxpayer funds. Often, those state officials, including attorney general offices, refuse to even state their grounds or cite to statutory authority when they make their demands or threats.

Besides the statutory authority under which Mr. Cuccinelli is proceeding, another aspect of his investigation involves the doctrine of "visitation" described in the 1819 landmark decision, Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward. Visitation involves the authority to control and investigate. The government has far greater visitation power over public entities than over private ones.

Michael Mann was employed by the University of Virginia, which is not a private institution, but a state school. If the University of Virginia were a private school, it would have a stronger argument to oppose a government investigation. However, being a state entity, the University of Virginia has little room to argue that the government may not control and investigate it.

The public-private distinctions under the doctrine of visitation are lost on liberal statists, who often ignore reasonable cause or even lawful authority to investigate private entities and matters, but are guardians at the gate blocking investigations of public institutions and taxpayer-funded leftwing projects.

Professor Mann's work would not only serve as a basis for society-changing legislation such as cap-and-trade, but would influence the direction of many hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money and the financial markets. Fortunes and fame are often incentive for fraud.

Contrast, if you will, how The Washington Post took sides against Attorney General Cuccinelli with its much more favorable coverage of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's subpoena of eight banks "focusing on the relationships between the banks and the agencies that rated certain mortgage-related securities packaged by the banks and sold to clients."

We do not, of course, hear outrage from Congressman Moran and others when Democrats engage in show hearings and other investigations of the private sector, even when the private entities were acting or speaking as required by law. The contradictions on the left are startling.

The case for looking into Professor Mann's records for potential fraud to procure taxpayer money looks strong compared to the specious investigations -- unrelated to abuses of taxpayer money -- in which Democrats engage on a regular basis.

posted May 17, 2010 11:23 PM            

"Daniel Lashof, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's Climate Center, penned a letter calling Cuccinelli's actions "political harassment of climate scientist Michael Mann."

"Virginia Congressman Jim Moran, chairman of the Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, which should be investigating Climategate but isn't, chimed in: "One can only conclude that [Cuccinelli's] investigation is motivated by the desire to silence those with whom [he] disagree[s]."

Hahaha

Well acoustic, this news seems to have made it all the way to crackpot science central...AND the House of Representatives of the United States of America.

posted May 18, 2010 10:22 AM            

"Like I said, jwhop, let us know when it becomes actual news"...acoustic

State attorney general demands ex-professor's files from University of Virginia

By Rosalind S. Helderman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 4, 2010

posted May 18, 2010 02:19 PM            

Do you know what gross stupidity is acoustic?

144 leftists fits the bill perfectly.

The Attorney General of Virginia is demanding documents from a global warming crackpot to see if he made false representations on his applications for research grants.

It's off the blogs acoustic.

It's into the US House of Representatives acoustic.

It's into fraud central of the global warming crackpots acoustic.

It's in the Washington Post acoustic.

End of the story acoustic. You lose again.

posted May 18, 2010 10:54 PM            

It should end in a prosecution, trial, conviction and inprisonment for defrauding the federal government.

Your nonsense was that it's a blog, not news...as least as leftists understand news.

posted May 18, 2010 10:55 PM            

That's a separate offense which should be investigated and prosecuted.

posted May 19, 2010 01:53 AM            

By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent
Thu May 6, 4:37 pm ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – More than 250 U.S. scientists on Thursday defended climate change research against "political assaults" and warned that any delay in tackling global warming heightens the risk of a planet-wide catastrophe.

The scientists, all members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, targeted critics who have urged postponing any action against climate change because of alleged problems with research shown in a series of hacked e-mails that are collectively known as "climate-gate."

"When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take action," the 255 scientists wrote in an open letter in the journal Science.

"For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet," they wrote. They said they were deeply disturbed by "recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular."

Scientists sounded a similar note on Thursday before the U.S. House of Representatives panel on energy independence and climate change.

"The reality of anthropogenic climate change can no longer be debated on scientific grounds," James Hurrell of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research told the committee. "The imperative is to act aggressively to reduce carbon emissions and dependency on fossil fuels."

U.S. legislation aimed at cutting climate-warming pollution could be unveiled in the Senate next week.

FALLOUT FROM "CLIMATE-GATE"

Thousands of hacked e-mails sent between climate scientists were published just before a U.N. meeting on climate change last December in Copenhagen.

Those who doubt the existence of human-generated climate change argued that these messages showed that the climate research unit at East Anglia University in Britain had conspired to distort or exaggerate the science.

An inquiry last month cleared the British researchers of wrongdoing in the "climate-gate" case.

Even though individual scientists have been cleared, climate science is being tested, Sheila Jasanoff, of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, wrote in Science.

"It is no longer enough to establish what counts as good science; it is equally important to address what science is good for and whom it benefits," Jasanoff wrote.

She said in an interview that the article was prompted by the fallout from "climate-gate."

A U.S. climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University whose e-mails were released in the "climate-gate" case was targeted last month by the state of Virginia.

Michael Mann -- whose research includes the so-called "hockey stick" graph that documents recent climate warming -- was found not guilty by Penn State of suppressing or falsifying data or misusing information.

However, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is investigating whether Mann misused state funds when he got grants for his climate change research while at the University of Virginia.

(Editing by Xavier Briand) http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100506/sc_nm/us_climate_science/print

What I can't find is whether there was motive to falsify data. I can't imagine that his funding was contingent upon finding global warming to be true. As such, it would be difficult to make the case of fraud.

posted May 19, 2010 10:34 AM            

Yes, the Attorney General of Virginia has a state case, Mann having taken state money to fund his hoax, fraud and scam of man made global warming nonsense.

But, most money funding these clowns comes from federal research grants. Therefore acoustic, the Attorney General of the United States should be actively investigating Mann and the other crackpots...like Hansen with the aim of criminal prosectutions for defrauding the federal government.

posted May 19, 2010 10:53 AM            

I don't suppose I need to remind you that eight years of this research was done during a Republican administration.

posted May 19, 2010 11:10 AM            

Even Phil Jones, the so called scientist at the center of the fraud at East Anglia University in Britain ADMITTED...

"there has been no significant warming since 1995".

I make that to be 10 years...and no significant warming of the earth acoustic.

How is that possible acoustic?

Using the model of the crackpot science set...rising CO2 levels CAUSE rising temperatures.

CO2 levels keep rising but temperatures are not rising...they're declining since 1998.

posted May 19, 2010 11:36 AM            

quote:

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How does it feel to have the most basic theory of your man made global warming religion totally destroyed acoustic?

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If you think you destroyed my argument with that, then you're really not up on your climate science. 1998 was a particularly hot year. The cooling that has taken place since is simply a returning to a more median temperature. Go fish.

posted May 19, 2010 11:49 PM            

Those papers establish the facts that rising levels of CO2 lag temperature rises by as much as 3,000 years...and therefore CO2 is not the cause of any warming over the last hundred years.

That alone is enough to kill the junk science spewed out by the nuts pushing man made global warming as it relates to CO2.

That's the end of the story acoustic and we don't even have to get into tree ring growth; we don't have to get into the direct correlation between sun spot activity and temperatures; we don't have to get into the insignificance of the 0.12% of greenhouse gas contribution by human activity; we don't have to get into the fraudulant manipulation of temperature reporting stations; we don't have to get into the fraudulant manipulation of computer models by the nuts; we don't have to get into the fraudulant "hockey stick" graph submitted by the nut Mann...or a range of other factual proofs.

posted May 19, 2010 11:51 PM            

No one will ever view these crackpots as members of the scientific community again.

posted May 20, 2010 01:27 AM            

quote:

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acoustic, you don't understand a word of those peer reviewed papers submitted, accepted and authoritative on the fraud being committed by man made global warming crackpots.

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What "peer-reviewed" papers that are accepted and authoritatively assert that global warming is a fraudulent idea? All the people I've turned to during this debate are STILL considered experts in their field, so OBVIOUSLY there's no peer-reviewing that proves any such thing.

quote:

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Those papers establish the facts that rising levels of CO2 lag temperature rises by as much as 3,000 years...and therefore CO2 is not the cause of any warming over the last hundred years.

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We've already been over this. It's true that a lag occurs, but that lag doesn't prevent CO2 from contributing to global warming. You and no one you've cited has proved anything to the contrary.

quote:

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That's the end of the story acoustic and we don't even have to get into tree ring growth; we don't have to get into the direct correlation between sun spot activity and temperatures; we don't have to get into the insignificance of the 0.12% of greenhouse gas contribution by human activity; we don't have to get into the fraudulant manipulation of temperature reporting stations; we don't have to get into the fraudulant manipulation of computer models by the nuts; we don't have to get into the fraudulant "hockey stick" graph submitted by the nut Mann...or a range of other factual proofs.

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You would lose on most if not all of these grounds. You're pulling your typical authority act. We've seen it all before. It's false. You don't have a clue what you're talking about, so you're throwing out key words as if you have a case when you don't. If you had a case you'd have made it successfully. That hasn't happened. You've been thwarted by science the whole way.

quote:

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No one will ever view these crackpots as members of the scientific community again.

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posted May 20, 2010 08:13 AM            

You're a legend in your own mind.

But acoustic, lots of members have stopped by this forum to express the opinion that man made global warming is a crock.