Saturday, April 4, 2015

Newsmax:"Global Warming Is $22 Billion Scam!"- The Idiot Parade Continues

 Newsmax is one of those "select"  sites that appears to be inbred with Fox. Its main content - most of the time- appears to appease the Reich wing nuts and Tea Party. You see it when you come across a story like the one wifey sent me yesterday morning. Full of huff and puff and reading codswallop like this:

"a top U.S. intelligence agent slams a 164-page document in the middle of the table. This document, you soon find out, contains damning evidence that a network of politicians, corporations, and scientists have conspired together to promote the fear of “global warming” . . . despite evidence clearly stating no such “global warming” exists.

The motive: $22 billion per year."

A "top U.S. intelligence agent informed them"? Yeah, right! And flying monkeys eat Repuke brains at night while clowns take over their bodies during the day. Of course, the author  - Tom Luongo-  imputes this so-called "agent" is a guy named John L. Casey (see below)- who "once did classified research". Seriously? A guy who once did "classified research" is an intelligence agent? I don't think so!   So, it's only a slightly larger step to believe this "agent"  asked Tommy boy to join him on this special "mission." What is it? To out those involved in the “$22b global warming lie" , which is "eating up precious taxpayer dollars". (We'll see how many such dollars are 'eaten' when the worst warming strikes and dykes must be built to prevent flooding in east coast cities and new power grids built to support the demand for a/c. during 4 month heat waves)

Can you say, crackpot?  What we have, in fact, is no "global warming lie"  but obdurate, ignorant dummies who believe they can bloviate on global warming though they never took a college physics course in their lives. Like one idiot on the Financial Times site ( a commenter) with whom I recently had an exchange - if you could call it that. In fact it was mostly him parroting the babble from assorted denier sites - which I recognized because I'd seen it from others. Thus, I wanted him to prove his arguments were authentically his so he was even entitled to have the debate. Thus I  presented him with one simple thermodynamics problem:

One kilogram of mercury is initially at 0 C. Find its change in entropy when heat is slowly added to raise its temperature to 100 C.

Data: Heat of fusion for Hg = 1.17 x 10 4 J/ kg, specific heat (Hg) = 138 J/ kg C; Melting temperature (Hg) = -39 C)

Specific heat (H2O) = 4,200 J/ kg C
-----------------------------

Alas, he couldn't do it though he did confess "Look, I admit I don't really know what disciplines factor into climate science". Fair  enough, but if you don't know even that, do not parrot arguments to pretend you do! Anyway, this new guy - shown below:
Tom Luongo - Newsmax hack who claims he's been recruited by an "intelligence agent' to show global warming is a $22b lie.

Claims he has "new research" showing global warming is a "lie". One must then ask what it is. Enter now this new character, the former "intelligence agent" John L. Casey:

Supposedly a former White House "insider"  who  "is one of America’s most successful climate change researchers and climate prediction experts. ... He spent 35 years conducting classified research, examining confidential documents, and directing critical scientific programs."

Luongo and Newsmax  expended at least three paragraphs on Casey's alleged creds including his former NASA ties -"investigating the Space Shuttle disaster"-  as well as climate research and earthquake predictions. But this birdbrain was busted by the Broward - Palm Beach New Times ( 'Tea Party Welcomes Global Cooling Theorist') noting:

"This week's joker is one John L. Casey, president of the Space and Science Research Corp. and CEO of the International Earthquake and Volcano Prediction Center -- both outfits conveniently located in Orlando, just down the road from Disney World.

Casey, with a CV spotty as a case of measles, describes himself as "a former White House space program adviser, consultant to NASA Headquarters, and space shuttle engineer." He claims an M.A. in management from Webster University in St. Louis and a B.A. in physics and mathematics from "JSU" -- whatever and wherever that is."

In other words, this jive turkey isn't a real climate scientist at all, just another pretender like Willie Soon. Especially as we see:

"Casey's work has never been published in a peer-reviewed academic journal, only self-published on the internet. He told New Times that's because "the importance of the findings and conclusions mandated the widest public dissemination possible, which the web supplies."

The web does supply a lot, but peer-reviewed journals and books are also critical. I have put lots of solar physics material on the web too - via this blog - but it's also  backed up by content from previously published peer -reviewed papers including in Solar Physics and the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, and Meudon (France) Solar- Terrestrial Predictions Proceedings.

Meanwhile, the climate research I regularly cite is from peer-reviewed climate papers usually appearing earlier in Eos, the journal of the American Geophysical Union. In other words, my sources show I am not a hack or a clown like Casey and his advocate Tom Luongo .  On the topic of Casey's rationale for avoiding peer-reviewed journals, University of Miami climate scientist Dr. Benjamin Kirtman pointed out:

"This is the usual nonsense associated with individuals who are afraid their work cannot withstand peer review."

Why afraid? Well, because they know ab initio their work is too full of holes to be accepted for publication. And then the likes of Luongo have the nerve to implicate climate scientists in some fraudulent, cockamamey conspiracy to "hood wink the American public"!  This is exactly the sort of crap that allows critics to disparage all conspiracy theories and to conflate real ones with bogus foolishness.

Worse, for these two clowns,  as Dr. Kirtman continues about Casey's sorry work and record:

"It looks to me that Casey is confused about global dimming, which actually seems to be in a reversal... As for the "global cooling" Casey is arguing for, all evidence is to the contrary. Indeed, ocean heat uptake has continued to steadily rise since the 1950s, and there is no plausible physical process (including changes in solar output) that would end this trend in the near-term (10-30 years). Casey's "Summary Climate Assessment" has some unsupportable statements. For example, Casey's assessment states that "Integrated Global Atmospheric Temperatures continue to show a long term COOLING trend that began in 2007. (100 year trend)." This is untrue (by far, 2001-10 is the warmest decade since the 1850s) and it is not mathematically possible detect a 100-year trend with seven years of data."

This error of trying to extrapolate a 100 year trend from seven years of data is similar to the one committed by the  nitwits who claim warming "has stopped the past 17 or 18 years".  That is, in the original  Nature paper by Keenlyside et al, they mistook data points representing five year means for indefinite  means! See e.g.


Some of Casey's claims portrayed as facts include:

1) The oceans are not getting warmer.

Clearly shot down based on the migration of some  aquatic species (e.g. sharks) to warmer waters and other species  (including sardines etc.) to cooler waters because they cannot survive the warmer ones, i.e. in the Pacific. This latter has led to the debacle of seal pups starving to death off the So. Cal. coast, because their usual food  sources are absent, Then there is the measured increase in carbonic acid H2 CO3 in the oceans, a direct result of CO2 being absorbed. 

2) We haven't seen any warming in 17 years.

This is challenged and dismantled in the link shown above, where I rip Georgie Will to shreds - based on incorrect statistical interpretations. In addition, an important paper by Sonia Seneviratne appearing in Nature Climate Change in March last year showed another, secondary source of statistical error inheres in ignoring peak high temperatures over long duration in extended land areas. Seneviratne's team reported a clear rise in the area of land experiencing more than 30 days of harsh heat per year and other regions experiencing more than 50 days of sever heat. Both of these under-reported in satellite assays and hence disclosing a lower mean temperature than should have been noted. The results, the authors state:

"Show that it would be erroneous to interpret the recent slowdown (in the late 90s and early 2000s) as a general slowdown of climate change"   Adding:

"The mean temperature or any single variable is not enough to talk about climate change"

3) The North Polar Ice cap is increasing in size.

Also dealt with before (Sept. 2012), where I noted 3 primary errors made, to wit:

i) They commit an error of omission, namely ignoring the critical land ice contribution and focusing only on sea ice. This is a common error made by those who rush into areas for which they have little or no preparation. In Antarctica, sea ice nearly entirely melts away during the S. hemisphere summer but is extensive in the winter.

ii) They fail to distinguish the two forms of ice: Antarctic land ice is actually stored ocean water that once fell as precipitation. Sea ice, meanwhile, is ice which forms in salt water (sea water) mainly during the winter months.

iii) They fail to distinguish Arctic from Antarctic ice cover and hence the relative importance of each. Arctic sea ice while its cover fluctuates, does remain all year round (so far anyway) and hence provides a reflective surface to increase albedo. (proportion of reflectance back into space). 

4) The 97% figure of climate scientists who support anthropogenic warming is completely fabricated.

Which is an out and out lie. In many of my past blog  posts I've  repeatedly cited the actual results from REAL climate scientists, as opposed to pretenders! Specifically, I've referenced the scientific consensus on global warming reported in Eos Transactions, Vol. 90, No. 3, p. 22, by P. T. Doran and M. Kendall-Zimmerman who found that (p. 24) :

the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely non-existent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.”

In their analytic survey for which 3146 climate and Earth scientists responded, a full 96.2% of specialists concurred temperatures have steadily risen and there is no evidence for cooling. Meanwhile, 97.4% concur there is a definite role of humans in global climate change.

The authors concluded (p. 24) :

The challenge appears to be how to effectively communicate this fact (non-existent debate among real climate specialists) to policy makers and a public that continues to mistakenly perceive debate exists among scientists

Indeed!
5) The Sun is the actual agent for  "natural" climate change. 

Which is total balderdash and the first sign the claimant is ignorant and has zero conception of solar physics as it relates to climate.  In his lecture at the 40th Meeting of the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society ('Solar Irradiance: Recent Results and Future Research Plans') Thomas N. Woods of the University of Colorado  noted that on average though, with such violent inputs smoothed out, the Earth's temperature changes by about 0.07 K (kelvin) over a solar cycle.

Compare this to the 0.6 K change (increase) in global temperatures over the past 100 years arising from human-caused greenhouse effect. Thus, the human component is over 8.5 times greater.

Even if the solar forcing on climate is enhanced by positive feedbacks the amplification is usually no more than a factor 2. So that 0.07 K increases become 0.14 K increases. The human component is still more important by a factor 4.2,


Which is never referenced by either Luongo or Casey, but then - given they are not real climate scientists - why expect anything different.  All we get from the likes of the delusional Luongo is the wild claim (unsubstantiated) that:

"Shortly after John exposed the truth about “global warming,” 1,000 emails and 2,000 documents from leading “global warming” scientists were found . . . revealing potential conspiracies, collusions, data manipulation, destruction of information, and even admission of flaws that were buried."


Sadly, most people lack the educational background and critical thinking skills to see through this bullshit, and would rather believe Newsmax and Luongo's hysterical ideations than the cold, hard facts of science which show unreservedly that humans are the main cause of global warming via pumping tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.

See also:

http://www.salon.com/2015/04/03/more_americans_trust_fox_news_than_the_government_to_tell_them_the_truth_about_climate_change/

Excerpt:

"When it comes to getting accurate, reliable information on global climate change, more Americans trust Fox News than the president. That’s a problem, the Huffington Post points out, while President Obama tends to contradict himself by insisting that we need to fight climate change and then signing off on fracking and offshore drilling"

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