What works and doesn't in eco-living?

I ran across this interesting article in the LA Times about what works and doesn't work in practical terms when it comes to ecologically-friendly living.  This looks to be a case of the implementation details mattering as much as the big strategy.  But it's good information, if you are interested in ecological living.

Climategate is not dead

I have discussed climategate several times before.  The issue seems to have fallen out of favor with the media, and I have ignored it because I didn't have any links or new information.

Now one of the most respected physicists of the last 50 years has resigned from the prestigious American Physical Society in protest of the cover-up going on over climategate.  His accounts sure look like something other than science going on at the formerly prestigious APS.

Evolution is chaos!

New Scientist's recent cover article is a fascinating discussion of some new meta-analysis of several trains of study in evolution.  It's not too thick with technical terms.  The results are interesting and fascinating.  Scientists seem to be disproving one of Darwin's big assumptions.

The really really short version is that evidence appears to indicate that climate change (and similar external events) do not cause evolution.

Plants, animals, and insects all migrate when the climate changes.  And evolutionary changes do not correlate with those migrations.  Evolutionary changes occur completely randomly, probably driven exclusively by internal DNA defects.

This leaves a big hole in evolutionary theory.  DNA defects have shown no ability to perform the big changes, like the development of the eye or the lung.

It also makes it impossible to predict evolutionary change going forward.

It's all a matter of perspective

The Time Online UK is reporting that Russian scientists are warning about a dangerous new environmental threat.

As I've noted before, we don't understand Earth's natural temperature cycles.  This is one of those things that we don't know.  But it makes a bit of logical sense that something like this must be a big part of the puzzle.  Large amounts of something must build up and then eventually escape to cause significant change.  In this case it is methane.

But, wait a second, isn't methane also a fuel?  Yes.  Yes it is.  We normally call it natural gas.

So climate change scientists find this leaky permafrost full of methane and cry that we are all about to die.  I've got an easy solution for you, fellows.  Send in some natural gas extraction companies.  Let's bottle and burn that stuff.

Burning natural gas generates CO2, a greenhouse gas.  But, as the Times article says, methane is 25 times more damaging than CO2.  It's not a perfectly clean win, but it is a big win, nonetheless.

We might have to subsidize the extraction.  Or subsidize the insurance on the extraction.  But surely it would be worth it to save the planet from methane catastrophe.

What's next?

Yesterday I asked what's the next after environmentalism.  I think I figured it out.  Maybe.  I need a name for it.

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The planet's climate changes.  Even if all humans died today, and all traces of human life were magically erased,  the planet would still continue to get warmer.  Until its natural cycles decided it was time to cool, and then it would cool.

Even if we reached the goal of becoming carbon and warming neutral, the planet would continue to warm and cool.  We don't know how warm it will get, even if we completely stop contributing to the warming.  Becoming warming neutral is the wrong goal.  Even if we win that battle we could lose the war.

Stop naively assuming that we can survive the natural maximum and minimum temperatures on this planet!

Curb your human-centric egotism.  This planet doesn't care if we live or die.

Our war is a fight for survival on a planet that only temporarily supports our species.

This planet has maximum and minimum temperatures outside of the ranges for sustaining human life.  This planet has natural life-cycles that will kill us if we do not prepare to survive through them.

We cannot bio-engineer the planet to stop the changes.  Perhaps we can reach the level of technology to bio-engineer the top and bottom of the planet's temperature range to fit within our range, but that seems very unlikely.  Perhaps we can learn to draw down the naturally increasing salinity of the seas to stop the next massive sea-life extinction, but probably not.

We are the only thing we can change.  We need to focus on expanding our survival range.  Minimizing our negative impact might be helpful.  But that won't save us.

We have to study the planet in a much more organized fashion--mature from alchemists to chemists.  We need to understand the maximum and minimum temperatures the time-tables for when the planet will get outside of our temperature range.  We have to learn to live without sea-life.  We have to learn what else we can eat and breath.

Then we have to develop systems and processes to survive those periods.  Probably we are hundreds or thousands of years from the next extinction point, but there is hundreds or thousands of years of work that must be done before that point.

The simple fact is that we don't know how far we are from the next natural extinction point.  The only thing we know is that the light at the end of that tunnel is a train, and we will not survive if we do not focus on the right goals.

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What do I call this?

One more Global Warming post

The end is near for the warm mongers.  The Wall Street Journal has flipped and become skeptical of the science behind this movement.  Major British papers, the The Daily Mail and London Times are both now openly skeptical and ridiculing of the warm mongers.

I'm tiring of this subject.  It's today's news, and I'm much more interested in tomorrow's news.  I've spent a little time thinking through how the rest of the collapse will play out.  This is interesting, because there are opportunities that can be seized.

Advocacy Opportunities
Right now there are millions of dollars pouring in to climate change (warm monger) think tanks and consultancies.  That will dry up very soon.  All of those donors will be angry and disillusioned.  Someone could sing the right song and build out the next environmental care group and sweep up those millions.  They just have to be very careful in how they talk about man-made global warming.

I doubt that will happen.  That money will go to some cause other than environmentalism.  Certainly some money will go there, but the bulk will go elsewhere.  I wish I knew where.

The Next Environmentalism
There are many companies that are retooling and shifting their product lines to be more environmentally friendly.  Much of that is driven by public opinion on global warming.  Some of it is also based upon reduction of pollution.  Some of it is based upon energy independence.  But those two drivers were unable to get the ball really rolling until the warm mongers began their hyped-up scare tactics and well-funded media blitz.  Without the support of the global warming scare people will soon forget why we are working so hard to be environmentally friendly.

There is an opportunity for someone to remind them--similar to the above opportunity.  But what I think will happen is that the pendulum will swing away from environmentalism for a while.  So there is opportunity for an entirely new issue to capture the public's attention.  What will be the new environmentalism?

That's a great question.  Fiscal responsibility might be the new environmentalism.  Worker's rights might be it. Nationalism might be it.  Employment is the biggest issue facing the US today, so some form of employment guarantees is a good guess.  Inflation is going to be the next great challenge facing the US, so that's a good guess, too.

Product Fallout
Electric cars, wind turbines, and solar power will all have to find a new reason to exist. Without global warming scaremongering they are all dramatically less attractive products.  They are here now, with lots of people relying on those jobs.  They will be the last to admit that the global warming scare was a hoax.  But when they do they will blow out their marketing budgets trying to find a boogeyman.  My guess is that they will choose energy independence.  That's good, because energy independence is a good thing.

But I don't think that the American public will buy it.  Sarah Palin seems to do well with her crowd.  But even after the global warming hoax is put to bed the anti-Sarah crowd will never get on that bandwagon, if for no other reason than because Sarah and her crowd are there.  Can you imagine a Prius commercial fear-mongering about Arab oil power?

So I am afraid that many of these good products will ultimately lose out.  There was already a great contraction coming, as the time neared to pick a winner between the competing green energy sources.  I'm afraid that will come much faster now.  Few green power products will survive.  It's winner-take-all, and the next great innovation will be the winner.  I wish I knew who that would be: solar, wind, hydrogen fuel cell.  If I had to put money on it I would go with hydrogen fuel cells, but that's just a guess.  This little nuclear reactor looks like it has legs.

Political Fallout
I would love to say that the long-term advocates of global warming will face consequences for their misjudgment.  But that's never happened before in the political realm, so why think it will happen now.  The politicians who once advocated cap-and-trade and other global-warming prevention policies will simply stop talking about it and it will be forgotten.

I would love to say that politicians will be slower on the uptake and more cautious next time.  Again, I can't imagine that happening now when it has never happened before.  The political class will continue to be the same self aggrandizing sheep they have always been.

I do think that the fiscal problems that the capitalists have made do open the door for socialists of all stripes to gain some ground.  But that's not because of global warming, really.  But the socialists who attempt to gain ground will point to global warming scaremongering as one of the reasons why capitalists cannot be trusted--as if they needed a second reason.  But, ultimately, I think that American's are too independent a bunch to go for much official socialism.

If the libertarians could construct an attractive platform and leadership then they could make a lot of hay right now.  Again, not because of the global warming fiasco, but in part because of it.  "Don't give Washington enough power to do this again."  But that won't happen.  Attractiveness and libertarianism seem to be mutually exclusive.

Environmental Fallout
Pollution is a real problem that has never gotten the attention it deserves.  It will get even less for the next decade or so.  That's a shame.

Climate does change, it just takes a lot longer than the warm mongers have been claiming.  And human activity is not one of the principle causes.  Humanity needs to spend real scientific effort to understand climate change and figure out how to better cope with it.  That has now been set back by at least a hundred years.  That's a shame.  But that's the problem of a much later generation.

The pendulum continues to swing

The warm-mongers' strangle hold on publishing seems to have been broken.  Climate change skeptics are finding their voices again.  Suddenly we are finding out that the data we have is grossly unreliable because of the placement of weather stations near heat-generating objects like waste incinerators.  And even that data is indicating that the latest warming period ended in 1995--that's right, the planet has not been warming for the last 15 years.

I predict that the pendulum will swing even further, and that the major spokespeople of global warming will be fully discredited and shamed out of the field before cooler heads prevail and we begin actually studying the climate.  That's too bad, but the swinging pendulum of public opinion is hard to stop.

Those of us who understand that the climate is indeed changing, just not necessarily due to man-made causes, need to use this time to get ready for the next round of debates.  We need to focus on getting better weather recording stations and methods in place.  We need to focus on discussing the existing known climate change patterns, and where we are in them.  We have to use more moderate tones of alarm.  And we have to keep the information open for serious peer review.

And the plot thickens

I blogged earlier about the hackers who exposed internal emails and documents from the East Anglia Climate Research Center.  Now that some time has passed and people are starting to really sift through the data they are finding the genuine data gaps that many had predicted.

Here's the latest one.  It seems that some of the temperature readings used in their studies was from China.  That data was sent from China to someone in the US who forwarded it to East Anglia.  The raw source data was deleted, and apparently no longer exists.  And the numbers they used in their studies don't jive with any numbers that anyone can now recreate from China.  The data they used in their study is significantly warmer than any data at any existing Chinese weather station.

In a separate row, an entirely different climate change study has been entirely discredited recently.  The UN's official climate change study has been shown to have been hacked together from anecdotal data gathered in a hiking magazine.

Global warming science is acting more and more cultish every day.  They have stopped acting like real scientists.  They are hiding their data and producing garbage reports.  They attack everyone who questions them.  And they rake in big bucks from their donors.

Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away.

It's about time that someone started a thorough study of the sun.  It's only the single most powerful and important feature of our solar system.

This study should shed some light on a number of subjects.  The amount of information that we don't know about the sun boggles the mind.  For instance, the next time someone spouts off about global warming, ask him/her "What are the maximum, minimum, and average amounts of energy output by the sun in a day?"

The answer is that we have only performed a few rudimentary measurements and then extrapolated out pretty charts and graphs based upon our theoretical mathematical models.  See 'solar variation' on Wikipedia for a readable summary of the state of our lack of knowledge.

Oh, and the title of the post is a quote attributed to Elvis.  Yes, that Elvis.

Hyprocisy or cognative dissonance?

Many major climate experts are now saying that we are beginning a "mini ice-age" that may last 20-30 years, reports the Daily Mail.  They are predicting cooler than normal temperatures for both winter and summer for the next few years.

I do not understand how these same people can continue to claim that man is causing catastrophic global warming.  It boggles the mind.  The horrible man-made gases and other bad outputs have not been reduced.  How do they reconcile a mini ice-age?

Warm-mongers

And so finally we have named both sides.  The fight over global warming is between the warm-mongers and the skeptics.

Well played, Mr. Bolt.

When all else fails, lie big

As Climategate blogs along out of sight of the mainstream media, Al Gore was finally put to the question.  Unfortunately, the question was soft-balled by a journalist who apparently didn't know the facts or who didn't intend to hold Al's feet to the fire.

Little lies are hard to get away with.  Big lies polarize and can take on a life of their own.  This is not the last we will see of these particular lies--that the emails were very old and that the emails didn't contain anything damning.

The problem with Cap & Trade

I disagree with Annie Leonard about man-made global warming.  But I agree with her on the problems with the Cap & Trade solution.  Her video is definitely worth a watch.

I am against pollution, and I think that something like what Annie proposes would help with reducing pollution.  I just don't think it will affect the planet's temperature.

I am envious of her presentation medium.  I would love to be able to do these sorts of animation plus video presentations.  I wouldn't imitate her animation or presentation style, but I would love to be able to do the mixed-medium presentations.

Global warming scandal update

If you are not following this story, it's getting ugly.  The main stream media is still mostly ignoring it.  But the roar from the outsider media is getting pretty loud.  These two articles provide good coverage of the current state of affairs:

Summary of the fall-out and repercussions in the Telegraph.

A good summary of the arguments of Dr. Ian Pilmer, mentioned in the above article.

Oddly enough, Dr. Pilmer's arguments sound significantly like my own.

Global warming scandal

If the emails are not faked then this might be the end of the whole global warming industry.  Short version:

Some hackers broke in to the email servers of one of the most respected global warming research centers (University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit.)  The hackers published tons of emails between the scientists there.  The emails are still alleged, not confirmed.  It could be that the hackers wrote the emails.

The emails contain clear admissions of guilt on a number of topics:
* Being utterly unable to prove global warming.
* Fabricating and altering data to pretend to prove global warming.
* Using a number of unethical tactics to keep global warming skeptics from being published.

Wow.  Just wow.

The hackers deserve every bit of punishment that they get.  But, if true, the scientists deserve to be banished to Antarctica for the rest of their lives.

Global warming and the Bible

I've been asked about my theology of creation.  In my global warming articles I have quoted the scientific data as if it is undeniably true.  If I believe that the ice core sample data is valid, dating back hundreds of thousands of years, then that means I must be an old earth creationist.  Or maybe I'm not a creationist at all.

So let me clarify my position here:

• God created the heavens and the earth.
• I understand the young earth and old earth creationist arguments, and I think that it is a significantly less important issue than the core truth that He created it.  If you put a gun to my head and forced a decision, I would say that I think the earth is probably as old as archeologists think it is.  My God is big enough for that.
• Scientists believe in the geological data.  They do not believe in what the Bible says about the beginnings of the earth.
• If I am going to credibly discuss the problems with the theory of global warming with the scientists who believe in the theory, then I have to debate the data that they believe.
• These scientists have cherry-picked their data and performed a number of other unscientific mistakes.  They are behaving more like a cult than truly open-minded scientists.  And they are making more money off of this alarmist hype then they ever could from clear-headed fair science.
• I can see many holes in their data and logic, and if given a chance I think myself and other clear-headed folks could temper the alarms and move public opinion towards more fair policies.
• I believe that humans are causing some global warming.
• I believe that the planet has natural systems in place that both cause and counter-act both warming and cooling.
• I haven't seen anything to lead me to believe that man-made global warming will overcome and the earth's natural heating and cooling systems to cause unmitigated catastrophe.
• The ice core data does indicate that we have an 8-degree cooling event coming soon--over a period of about 3,000 years the planet will cool 8-degrees and stay near that new normal for most of the next 100,000 years.
• If you believe in a young earth you should also believe that God carefully placed the ice core data there and gave humans the reasoning facilities to read it; and so He is warning us about the natural patterns of warming and cooling that He built into this planet.
• Because of the behavior of the cult of global warming, we are actually ignoring the real threat to modern civilization--that coming 8-degree cooling.
• I could definitely be wrong about any of the above scientific opinions.  But the cult of global warming is squashing the open and honest discussions of the data, and so I can't get my skeptical questions answered.  The only choice they will give me is to turn off my brain and drink their cool-aid.  I cannot do that.
• My whole purpose in talking about this topic is to try to return the discussion to open, civil, scientific discourse.

The BBC is a little skeptical, too

The BBC is getting in a little global warming skepticism.  They make some interesting points that are different from mine.  They mention the ice core samples data, but don't give a clear interpretation.

Warmest year on record: 1989

Yes, that is twenty years of man-made global warming that has not managed to actually warm anything.

Another thought.  Temperature data is a trailing indicator.  We don't know how warm a year is until after it has happened.  There are no known leading indicators of temperature changes.  Probably there are some leading indicators, like migration pattern changes or early budding of some types of trees.  But we don't know what they are or how to read them.  We would have to keep broad and immaculate records for many decades, or maybe a full century, before we could generate enough statistically relevant data to start predicting temperatures.

In the meantime, we cannot know whether or not the planet is warming or cooling until after it has done so.  This is a classic situation where a charlatan or snake-oil salesman can say whatever they want and then deal with the actual data after the fact, and after they have gotten all of your money.

Much of the global warming fuss comes from the fact that we have had many years of general warming since reliable records started being kept in around 1880.  The planet is millions of years old, and has supported life for at least hundreds of thousands of years.  And we have instrumented temperature readings for the last 140 years.  That's a data sample set of less than two tenths of one percent (0.02%.)  This is not sufficient data to support the scale of the endeavors that are being proposed.

My contrarian opinion on global warming

Energy equals heat equals life.

Humans are heating up the planet.  We're alive and moving and generating heat.  We are also burning and heating things because movement requires energy, which is heat.  And a whole lot of our burning and heating has chemical side effects, most of which seem to cause additional heat.  So it is no stretch to say that we are heating the planet more than we need to.

So what?

Without understanding the context of our situation it is impossible to judge if this heat is a good or bad thing.  All of the global warming alarmists clearly assume that heating the planet is bad.  Maybe they know something I don't about the planet's prevailing temperature patterns, and so they can tell that this heating will somehow cross a tippping point of desctuction.  But I don't think so.  I think they are just blindly assuming that global warming is bad.  I'm not saying that because I think they are fools or evil, I just haven't been able to find them explain in context why this is such a big deal.

Global warming idea #1, blinking red lights

Here's a free one for the global warming crowd.  It's an idea that you can easily get the rest of us to support.


Convert all stoplights to blink red instead of staying solid red.  At a blinking red light you stop, look to see if anyone is coming, and if it is clear you can go on.  That would ease congestion, reduce the amount of time people sit idling, and burn less gas.  Less waiting.  Less CO2.  Less frustration.  Less foreign oil.


We would need to talk about it quite a bit and have a big change-over period, in order to maintain safety.


There would probably be some intersections where the lay of the land, presence of obstructions, and speed of the oncoming traffic would make it too dangerous to let people stop and go like this.  But that is probably a very low percentage of intersections.


Hurry up.  Go make that happen for me.  :-)