Tag: morons

Goats are SHRINKING because of climate change (or not)

Published on by sunshinehours13 Comments

“Goats are shrinking as a result of climate change, researchers have claimed.

They say Alpine goats now weigh about 25 per cent less than animals of the same age in the 1980s.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2802123/goats-shrinking-climate-change-researchers-find.html

Shocking if true!

 

However, lets get to the important line:

The team delved into long-term records of Chamois body weights provided by hunters in the Italian Alps.

Wait!

Hunters have been shooting the goats? And the “scientists” have been in fact measuring only the dead goats? Well. Not measuring. Passing on the claims of hunters.

Could it be the hunters have been shooting the bigger and slower goats?

Resulting in smaller goats being the survivors?

 

I wonder how many are being hunted?

“There are also concerns about the relative over-harvesting of older males (e.g. Zeiler et al., 1990, 1992). Although not threatened overall in Germany, the small sub-alpine populations are vulnerable to poaching and stochastic events, and possibly to inbreeding depression. Disturbance acts as a major threat to small populations and has caused declines in some. Unless steps are taken to reverse this threat, declines will continue and most small populations are on the verge of extinction. Even large populations face threats. Numbers in the Bavarian Alps are currently decreasing due to sharply increased harvest rates. Tourist development has also affected many subpopulations negatively (e.g., disturbance, habitat isolation). In Italy, competition with introduced mouflon may cause problems for Alpine chamois in some parts of its range.”

http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/39255/0

over-harvesting of older males

sharply increased harvest rates

What a shocker.

 

 

Europe To Burn Dirty Filthy Lignite Instead of Clean Fracked Natural Gas (or Nuclear)

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Green fanatics have worked really, really hard to prevent fracking in Europe. And to shut down nuclear power plants.

So what happens? A huge number of lignite power plants are being built. Lignite is filthy coal. High CO2 coal.  Lignite produces 80% more CO2 per kWh than natural gas.

Stupid Green Policies have consequences.

“Lignite – also known as brown coal – power stations currently make up more than 10% of the EU’s total CO2 emissions. Greenpeace said that if Europe is to continue to play its part in keeping the world within the internationally accepted limit of 2C of warming, 90% of the carbon contained in its lignite reserves must remain buried.

Despite this, lignite-fuelled power stations are still being built, locking in consumption of the fuel for decades. There are 19 such facilities in various stages of approval, planning or construction in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Greece, Germany, Poland, Romania and Slovenia. Greenpeace figures show these new projects alone would emit almost 120m tonnes of CO2 every year – equivalent to three-quarters of the annual carbon output of the UK’s energy sector. The average lifespan for a coal power station is about 40 years, meaning the plants could release nearly 5bn tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.”

 

http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/08/28/guardian-panic-over-new-coal-power-stations/

Solar Power Plant Needs To Burn Natural Gas 5 hours per day to Warm Up The Boilers.

Published on by sunshinehours11 Comment

This is hilarious.

“Each of the 4,000-acre facility’s three units has gas-fired boilers used to warm up the fluid in the turbines in the early morning, to keep that fluid at an optimum temperature through the night, and to boost production during the day when the sun goes behind a cloud.

The project’s managers, BrightSource Energy and NRG Energy, originally estimated that the plant’s main auxiliary boilers would need to run for an hour a day, on average, to allow the plant to capture solar energy efficiently. But after a few months of operation, they’re now saying they need to burn more gas, with the boilers running an average of five hours a day.”

 

Gas fired / solar powered bird incinerators.

 

http://www.thegwpf.org/worlds-largest-solar-power-plant-wants-to-burn-a-lot-more-natural-gas/

NRDC Recommends Gas Dryers

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The National Resources Defense Council went on a little rant about clothes dryers in the USA.

A couple of items stood out:

“natural gas dryers typically cost 50 percent to 75 percent less to operate.”

“A typical household pays over $100 in annual utility bills to operate an electric dryer and $40 for a gas dryer.“

Clearly, to me, the NRDC is telling people: Buy A Gas Dryer!

“If all of America’s electric dryers were updated to the most efficient models sold in other parts of the world, U.S. consumers would not only save $4 billion worth of energy per year”

The NRDC are certifiably insane. An “Eco-Dry” dryer costs 1,199$.  There are 89,000,000 dryers in the USA. That would cost 107 billion dollars to save 4 billion dollars. Does that make sense?

And if the USA did have a spare 108 billion dollars to send to Korea or China or Europe for new dryers:

” it would prevent roughly 16 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, equivalent to the pollution from three coal-fired power plants””

Or one natural gas power plant. Unless the 107 billion dollars was spent on gas dryers (as the NRDC recommends) in which case it would probably increase the amount of CO2. Just kidding. Gas dryers produce less CO2 than electric ones because a large portion of US electricity comes from coal.

“How a consumer uses a dryer is almost as important as which dryer is purchased. Choosing a lower operating temperature can slow the drying process a little, but it cuts energy use significantly. Stopping the dryer before all of the clothes are bone-dry saves time and energy, while reducing wrinkles and helping clothes last longer.”

Sure. Lets spend 107 billion, burn more natural gas (actually I like that recommendation) so we can have slow drying wet clothes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“We like systems that can explain everything.”

Published on by sunshinehours11 Comment

I was reading this article by Stephen L Carter and came across this paragraph.

“The literary critic George Steiner, in a wonderful little book titled “Nostalgia for the Absolute,” long ago predicted this moment. We have an attraction, he contended, to higher truths that can sweep away complexity and nuance. We like systems that can explain everything. Intellectuals in the West are nostalgic for the tight grip religion once held on the Western imagination. They are attracted to modes of thought that are as comprehensive and authoritarian as the medieval church.”

Immediately the idea of CO2/AGW as a cult religion sprang to mind.

“We have an attraction, he contended, to higher truths that can sweep away complexity and nuance.”

Yes indeed. Who cares about sunspots or the AMO or PDO or solar cycles or the LIA. There is no need in the AGW cult to really care about any or those or any of the other inputs into climate systems. Blame everything on CO2.

“We like systems that can explain everything.”

Yes. The cult of CO2 explains warming and cooling and more snow and less snow and drought and floods. There is no need for anything else.

“Intellectuals in the West are nostalgic for the tight grip religion once held on the Western imagination. They are attracted to modes of thought that are as comprehensive and authoritarian as the medieval church.”

That explains so many things including the threatened excommunication of anyone who strays from the church of CO2 and AGW.

AGW is a cult that worships CO2 and Climate Change as god. As I’ve said before.

ClimateChangeIsGod

 

 

 

 

 

“It’s not the oil that’s dirty, it’s the politics. “

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If oil is moving around North America, the best way to do it is via pipeline, not via railroads (which is happening). The latest delay in Keystone XL is disgusting.

 

“Republicans are denouncing President Obama’s latest delay on the Keystone XL pipeline, six long years after it was proposed. But for cold political fury they have nothing on Terry O’Sullivan, who runs the Laborers’ International Union that represents a half-million construction workers.

“This is once again politics at its worst,” Mr. O’Sullivan said in a public statement that deserves to be quoted at length. “In another gutless move, the Administration is delaying a finding on whether the pipeline is in the national interest based on months-old litigation in Nebraska regarding a state level challenge to a state process—and which has nothing to with the national interest. They waited until Good Friday, believing no one would be paying attention. The only surprise is they didn’t wait to do it in the dark of night.

“It’s not the oil that’s dirty, it’s the politics. Once again, the Administration is making a political calculation instead of doing what is right for the country. This certainly is no example of profiles in courage. It’s clear the Administration needs to grow a set of antlers, or perhaps take a lesson from Popeye and eat some spinach.

“This is another low blow to the working men and women of our country for whom the Keystone XL Pipeline is a lifeline to good jobs and energy security.”

The pipeline is expected to create some 2,000 new jobs from construction and thousands more related to the project. Many of those jobs would go to Mr. O’Sullivan’s union members, who do not live on San Francisco’s Pacific Heights like billionaire donor Tom Steyer who opposes Keystone.”

 

We don’t want this:

 

Climate Change Is Damaging Brains (of the Researchers Probably)

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Every once in a while I read the Daily Mail website Today I came across:

Climate change is damaging fish brains and causing them to lose their survival instinct, researchers warn

Immediately all I could think of was:

Climate change is damaging fish brains researchers brains and causing them to lose their minds

So lets get to the key point. They claim fish act bolder when exposed to water with a lower pH level:

“There’s no difference between the fish treated with CO2 in the lab in tests for chemical senses versus the fish we caught and tested from the CO2 reef”

Could it be that catching the fish and not killing them causes the fish to act differently?

 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2605560/Fish-losing-survival-instinct-climate-change-claim-researchers.html