Category: Mockery
10 Feet Thick Ice Stops Icebreaker in Antarctic
The Russian ship MV Akademik Shokalskiy has been stuck in the Antarctic Ice since Monday. The Chinese Ice Breaker Xue Long, or Snow Dragon got within six miles and it too was stopped by thick ice.
“It got stuck in the ice on Monday night — 15 days after setting out on the second leg of its research trip.
According to Turney, the ship was surrounded by ice up to nearly 10 feet (3 meters) thick. It was about 100 nautical miles east of the French base Dumont D’Urville, about 1,500 nautical miles south of Hobart, Tasmania.
The Russian expedition ship is carrying scientists and passengers led by an Australian climate change professor.”
I find it ironic the “climate change professor” led the ship and passengers into 10 foot thick ice. He’s kind of thick. But maybe 10 feet thick ice in the summer is unusual?
Solar Panels Frying Migrating Birds
“Some animal rights activists are wondering just how many birds green energy may unintentionally kill as more and more birds turn up dead at solar energy facilities throughout California.
A recent article by Vice author Lex Berko notes that dead birds are being found with “singed wings” around several California solar energy facilities.
It happens that many of California’s solar plants are, the article claims, in the path of “the four major north-to-south trajectories for migratory birds” called “the Pacific Flyway.”
Birds are dying in one of two ways. In some cases, they imagine the shining solar panels to be bodies of water and dive straight into them. There they die when they smash into the panels from the sky.
Others “feel the wrath of the harnessed sunlight.” The ultra polished solar mirrors bounce sunrays strong enough to burn the feathers off birds that quickly crash to the ground, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Many of the fowl dying as a result of their unfortunate flight paths over solar facilities are birds protected by the federal government under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.”
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/11/12/Oops-Solar-Energy-Plants-are-Killing-Rare-birds
Canada Congratulates Australia – And Gives Finger to British Columbia
Canada congratulated Australia.
"Ottawa, November 12 2013 — Today, Paul Calandra, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister,
issued the following statement on behalf of the Government of Canada on Australian Prime Minister
Tony Abbott’s introduction of legislation to repeal the carbon tax:
“Canada applauds the decision by Prime Minister Abbott to introduce legislation to repeal Australia’s
carbon tax. The Australian Prime Minister’s decision will be noticed around the world and sends an
important message.
“Our government knows that carbon taxes raise the price of everything, including gas, groceries,
and electricity. Prime Minister Abbott has said that, in Australia, the repeal of the carbon tax
will reduce the average household’s cost of living by (in Australian dollars) $550 a year,
take $200 off household power bills and $70 off gas bills.
“Our government has reduced greenhouse gas emissions while protecting and creating Canadians
jobs – greenhouse gas emissions are down since 2006, and we’ve created 1 million net new jobs
since the recession – and we have done this without penalising Canadian families with a carbon tax.”"
Maybe the Prime Minister should get the f*** out of Ottawa every once in a while.
British Columbia has a carbon tax, and last time I checked, British Columbians were Canadians.
The Montreal Protocol Excuse
I hear there is a new explanation for The Pause in global warming. The new excuse is that a drop in CFC’s (which are a type of GHG) has saved us!
“Our statistical analysis suggests that the reduction in the emissions of ozone-depleting substances under the Montreal Protocol, as well as a reduction in methane emissions, contributed to the lower rate of warming since the 1990s.”
The World Meteorlogical Organization puts out a Greenhouse Gas Bulletin. Lets take a quick look at a couple of the claims.
1. “reduction in methane emissions”
Not really. One or two are down. Some have paused. Others are up.
As the WMO says “Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is a potent LLGHG. It is produced by the chemical industry, mainly as an electrical insulator in power distribution equipment. Its current mole fraction is about twice the level observed in the mid-1990s (Figure 6). The stratospheric ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), together with minor halogenated gases, contribute ~12%[4] to radiative forcing by LLGHGs. While CFCs and most halons are decreasing, hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which are also potent greenhouse gases, are increasing at relatively rapid rates, although they are still low in abundance”
2. “reduction in the emissions of ozone-depleting substances”
Not really! There was a CH4 pause but it resumed rising in 2006.
3. What about N2O which contributes 6% of the radiative forcing? Nope.
Lets take a look at the over all table. I see no reduction. (I also don’t see H2O, but the AGW Cult always ignores water vapor).
Quick Robin … To The Bat Chopper
It’s not really funny is it …
“BOULDER, Colo., Nov. 8 (UPI) — Wind turbines killed at least 600,000 — and possibly as many as 900,000 — bats in the United States in 2012, researchers say.
Writing in the journal BioScience, the researchers said they used sophisticated statistical techniques to infer the probable number of bat deaths at wind energy facilities from the number of dead bats found at 21 locations.”
The problem with the above article is that it probably grossly underestimates bat deaths considering the deaths of bird and bats found in Spain.
“The Spanish Ornithological Society in Madrid estimates that Spain’s 18,000 wind turbines may be killing 6 million to 18 million birds and bats annually. “A blade will cut a griffon vulture in half,” says Bechard. “I’ve seen them just decapitated.”
http://www.nature.com/news/the-trouble-with-turbines-an-ill-wind-1.10849
Hometown Max Temperature – Days Over 25C / 30C / 35C
A couple of days ago I did a post about the days over 30C in the HADCET maximum daily temperature dataset.
Warmists have claimed we are all going to die in heatwaves. The HADCET doesn’t show that.
So I thought I would look at the same data for my hometown on the west coast. The data only starts in the late 1940s.
Here are three histograms of the daily maximum temperature over 35C , 30C and 25C. Nothing to worry about. Unless you plan to time travel to the 1960s or 1970s..
Click for larger.
So then I thought … what about early warm days and late warm days. By that I meant before June and after September.
There were no days over 35C that occurred early/late. And the years that stood out were the 1950s.
Biofuels Kill
“Based on current technologies, higher biofuel production
necessarily means greater diversion of crops and/or cropland to
the production of fuel rather than food. The iron law of supply
and demand dictates that this would almost unavoidably
increase global food prices over what they would otherwise be.”
“Results derived from World Bank and World Health Organization (WHO)
studies suggest that for every million people living in absolute
poverty in developing countries, there are annually at least 5,270
deaths and 183,000 Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) lost to
disease. Combining these estimates with estimates of the
increase in poverty owing to growth in biofuels production over
2004 levels leads to the conclusion that additional biofuel
production may have resulted in at least 192,000 excess deaths
and 6.7 million additional lost DALYs in 2010. These exceed
WHO’s estimated annual toll of 141,000 deaths and 5.4 million
lost DALYs attributable to global warming.
Thus, policies intended to mitigate global warming may actually have increased death and disease in developing countries.”
Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Volume 16 Number 1 Spring 2011
( Hat tip to commenter David L Hagen from here. )
HADCET Maximum Temperature – Days over 30C
HADCET Daily Maximum data is available from 1878 on. There were 45 days over 30C since 1878.
I think we can agree that the AGW Cult insists we are all going to die because of massive heat waves.
Of the 45 days 30C and over, 5 occurred from 2003 to 2006, none after 2006.
6 occurred in the 1940s.
14 occurred in the 1970s – 9 of which occurred in 1976 alone.
Is death by heatwave imminent in the area covered by HADCET? I think not. And then there is the matter of UHI …
| Year | Month | Day | MAX TEMP |
| 1878 | 6 | 26 | 30 |
| 1906 | 8 | 31 | 30.4 |
| 1906 | 9 | 1 | 31 |
| 1906 | 9 | 2 | 31.3 |
| 1911 | 8 | 9 | 31.5 |
| 1911 | 8 | 13 | 30.1 |
| 1921 | 7 | 10 | 30.1 |
| 1923 | 7 | 12 | 31.1 |
| 1923 | 7 | 13 | 30.6 |
| 1930 | 8 | 27 | 30.2 |
| 1932 | 8 | 19 | 30.3 |
| 1943 | 7 | 31 | 30.9 |
| 1947 | 6 | 2 | 30 |
| 1948 | 7 | 28 | 30.8 |
| 1948 | 7 | 29 | 31.6 |
| 1948 | 7 | 30 | 30.5 |
| 1949 | 7 | 12 | 30.2 |
| 1970 | 7 | 7 | 30.1 |
| 1975 | 8 | 3 | 30.3 |
| 1975 | 8 | 4 | 31.9 |
| 1975 | 8 | 7 | 31 |
| 1975 | 8 | 8 | 31.1 |
| 1976 | 6 | 28 | 30.3 |
| 1976 | 6 | 29 | 30.1 |
| 1976 | 7 | 1 | 30.6 |
| 1976 | 7 | 2 | 31.8 |
| 1976 | 7 | 3 | 33.2 |
| 1976 | 7 | 4 | 31.4 |
| 1976 | 7 | 5 | 31.4 |
| 1976 | 7 | 6 | 31.6 |
| 1976 | 7 | 7 | 30.4 |
| 1984 | 7 | 8 | 30 |
| 1990 | 8 | 2 | 32.8 |
| 1990 | 8 | 3 | 33.2 |
| 1995 | 7 | 31 | 30.2 |
| 1995 | 8 | 1 | 31.9 |
| 1995 | 8 | 2 | 31.4 |
| 1995 | 8 | 3 | 30.3 |
| 1995 | 8 | 11 | 30.3 |
| 1997 | 8 | 10 | 30.3 |
| 2003 | 7 | 15 | 31.1 |
| 2003 | 8 | 9 | 32.8 |
| 2006 | 7 | 18 | 30.9 |
| 2006 | 7 | 19 | 32.9 |
| 2006 | 7 | 25 | 30.2 |
Environmentalists Win Battle Over Keystone XL – Environment Loses War
Environmentalists have kept the Keystone XL pipeline from being finished. Pipelines are the safest way to move oil to oil terminals on various costs of the USA and Canada. They are not perfect. There is some risk. But there is risk in every project.
Now oil companies are bypassing the Keystone. They are going to move the oil (in fact they are already moving the oil) via rail. Moving oil by rail is not as safe. But it is easier to add rail cars and more rail terminals than it is to get a pipeline approved.
Way to go environmental morons. (Warning. Link is to NY Times)
“Since July, plans have been announced for three large loading terminals in western Canada with the combined capacity of 350,000 barrels a day — equivalent to roughly 40 percent of the capacity of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that is designed to bring oil from western Alberta to refineries along the Gulf Coast. Over all, Canada is poised to quadruple its rail-loading capacity over the next few years to as much as 900,000 barrels a day, up from 180,000 today.”
“The Canadians remain a few years behind producers in North Dakota, where the paucity of pipelines encouraged early oil explorers like EOG Resources to form a partnership with Burlington Northern Santa Fe to build terminals for the shipment of oil by rail to refineries across the country. Today more than three-quarters of North Dakota’s production, which also was to move on the Keystone XL pipeline, is transported by rail. The Canadian oil producers took notice.”
sunshine hours 