Sunday, February 28, 2010

Nike Creates World Cup Jerseys From Landfill Plastic : TreeHugger

Nike Creates World Cup Jerseys From Landfill Plastic : TreeHugger

Please support "The Coalition of Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages" in NYC

There has been a lot of controversy on whether tourist horse carriages should be banned in NYC. I am pro-ban as most of you know. I trully believe there is no place for horses in the street filled with cars, noise, and exhaust. But besides not being good for the animal, it is also dangerous for people as it is very umpredictable when one horse will snap and possibly hurt someone, and there is always the probability there will be a crash between a car/taxi and the horse carriages also causing damage and injury. There are also other alternatives that are just as good and fun as horse carriages; pedicabs. They are environmentally friendly and more safe.

Please sign the petition, donate if you can or subscribe for news and progress. You will supporting a great cause that makes sense.

http://www.banhdc.org/index.shtml

Home | State of the Planet 2010

Home State of the Planet 2010

Monday, February 22, 2010

Criticism Towards Andrew Revkin

I have posted the previous entry in one of the conferences at school and to my surprice a few students where less than pleased by the article. Apparently-and this was unknown to me-Andrew have made a name  for himself in both sides of the argument. Some believe in the research he does for his journalism but some claim he also contributed towards the fabrication and exageration of the climate climate issue. Since some of you may not be familiar with the recent "climate gate" in which there was few e-mails leaked containing information of scientists going back and foward in which they state  that some of the data regarding climate change is not reliable. This article courtecy of a fellow student.

The Amazing Revkin

Written By: Paul Chesser

Published In: American Spectator blog

Publication date: 03/13/2009

Publisher: American Spectator



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It’s a rare occasion when you find a global warming alarmist willing to debate a skeptic in public, as happened last month in North Carolina when atmospheric scientist John Christy went up against William Schlesinger, president of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. It’s probably because alarmists don’t like when their clocks get cleaned.

So what do the skeptics do when their cowardly opponents run away? They throw a party for themselves!

That’s what happened this week in New York, when The Heartland Institute hosted its second International Conference on Climate Change. As opposed to staging a sad affair in which an imaginary consensus of scientists discharge doom-and-gloom scenarios due to excessive engine combustions and mammalian exhalations, my fellow challengers to anthropogenic global warming theory conducted an uplifting, thought-stirring summit. The goal: good science, and how to stop the alarmists from driving energy prices and business regulations upward in the name of averting a contrived climate emergency.

But if there’s one flaw with these lovable libertarians, it’s that they still crave attention from those who practice journalism-formerly-known-as-mainstream. Instead of contentedness with blogs and bursts of information rifling around the ‘Net, they pine for the sunshine of a friendly gaze from reporters on life support. It’s like Derek Smalls eyeing Pamela Des Barres for a little intimacy after the show, but he gets dissed because she’s transfixed by Jim Morrison.\

Similarly the bass-playing Heartlanders got the enviro-groupie treatment from the New York Times’ Andrew Revkin, who favors the established rock stars of environmentalism. The author of Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast (or “I’m with Al Gore’s Band”) and The North Pole Was Here (or “Let’s Spend the Night Together, Jim Hansen”) previewed the event -- held in Manhattan -- only because he couldn’t ignore the up-and-comers in his own backyard.

Not surprisingly he dashed their hopes of groovin’ around and around, and instead applied the usual Society of Environmental Journalists’ marginalization template:

More than 600 self-professed climate skeptics are meeting in a Times Square hotel this week to challenge what has become a broad scientific and political consensus: that without big changes in energy choices, humans will dangerously heat up the planet.
As is common with sycophants who ingratiate themselves to the objects of their literary affection, Revkin defended their honor by ignoring two options that Encarta, for one, offers as the definition of “consensus:”


con?sen?sus

1. general or widespread agreement among all the members of a group


2. a concept of society in which the absence of conflict is seen as the equilibrium state of society
Neither entry would appropriately apply to Revkin’s alleged scientific or political consensus. He cannot, without contortioned countenance, credibly claim there is widespread agreement – either scientific or political. Nor can he assert there’s an absence of conflict over the issue, unless he only spends time in his SEJ/big government science echo chamber. Given that Revkin fits so snugly in the Times’ journalistic lineup, where the themes of his books are a boon to his bio, it does not surprise that all he emphasizes are the enviro-reverbs.

It’s not like he’s unaware of the non-consensus evidence; he just suppresses or ignores it. While Sen. James Inhofe’s list of 650 dissenting scientists and the Oregon Petition Project’s less rigorous, but still significant, 31,000 names hang in the room like bong smoke, Revkin tries to overcome the aroma with IPCC incense:

But two years after the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded with near certainty that most of the recent warming was a result of human influences, global warming’s skeptics are showing signs of internal rifts and weakening support.

What a shock: Pro-big government media promotes big multi-government (that wants big one-world government) organizational effort to advocate for big government-sponsored computer modeling masked as big government pseudo-science. With all these heavy hands, it’s a marvel that the IPCC could only muster 52 scientists to contribute to their alarmist Summary for Policymakers.
Then there’s public opinion. In a January poll Rasmussen found that more respondents believed that global warming was due to planetary trends rather than human causes. And in another Rasmussen survey last month, 54 percent of respondents said the news media exaggerates threats to the planet from global warming. Pew also found in January that of 20 policy issues it asked people to rank in importance, global warming fell last. In addition, a poll by the National Center for Public Policy Research last summer found an overwhelming majority of Americans do not want to spend any more on gasoline or electricity to address global warming, as is proposed under the Lieberman/Warner bill.

And finally, this week Gallup found a record-high 41 percent believe the media exaggerates the threat of global warming. “This represents the highest level of public skepticism about mainstream reporting on global warming seen in more than a decade of Gallup polling on the subject,” the polling firm reported.
The Amazing Revkin noted the Gallup findings on his blog with a inquisitive “what’s going on” tone, inviting readers to fill up his comments section. Many fellow eco-toadies responded. Meanwhile the New York Times is selling both its building and its corporate jet, thanks to circulation and revenue declines. Go figure.


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Paul Chesser is a special correspondent for The Heartland Institute and is director of Climate Strategies Watch. The views he expresses do not necessarily reflect the views of these organizations.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Human-induced warming of the climate system is established fact.

I want to share this article because I know you are more likely to read if I post it here, than if I post the link [ dot Earth Feb 17th, Andrew C. Revkin].
How do we know this to be true? What does it take to get something established as fact? I will try to explain this quandary here the same way that I explain it to myself.
We have come to understand that nothing happens in this world expect as allowed by the laws of physics. What this means is that for every physical action there is going to be a well-defined cause, and a well-defined effect. Quantum mechanical weirdness that operates at atomic scale does not invalidate this physical description of the macroscopic range that is of interest.

Human experience has demonstrated that it is through measurement and physics that we understand the world that we live in. The term “physics” includes also the mathematical description of these laws which permits mathematical models to be constructed to conduct virtual experiments of real-world situations.

In this way, by utilizing global-mean decadal-average quantities, we have come to understand that water vapor accounts for 50 percent of the (33 K, 60 deg F) greenhouse effect. Longwave absorption by clouds contributes 25 percent, and CO2 accounts for 20 percent. The remaining 5 percent of the greenhouse effect is split between methane, N2O, CFCs, ozone, and aerosols. Significantly, CO2 and the minor GHGs do not condense or precipitate at current atmospheric temperatures. This provides a stable reference temperature structure for the fast feedback processes to operate and maintain the amounts of atmospheric water vapor and clouds at their quasi-equilibrium concentrations. Hence the strength of the terrestrial greenhouse is sustained and effectively controlled by the atmospheric temperature floor that is provided by CO2 and the other non-condensing greenhouse gases. (More detail is contained in my Greenhouse Tutorial which is a related supporting commentary.)


The bottom line is that CO2 is absolutely, positively, and without question, the single most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. It acts very much like a control knob that determines the overall strength of the Earth’s greenhouse effect. Failure to control atmospheric CO2 is a bad way to run a business, and a surefire ticket to climatic disaster.


My earlier criticism had been that the IPCC AR4 report was equivocating in not stating clearly and forcefully enough that human-induced warming of the climate system is established fact, and not something to be labeled as “very likely” at the 90 percent probability level. It would seem that the veracity of the human-induced warming would hinge on establishing the pedigree of the observed increase in atmospheric CO2. On this point, the IPCC report is crystal clear. Pages 137-140 of IPCC AR4 describe high-precision in situ measurements of atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa, documenting the steady increase in CO2 along with its characteristic seasonal fluctuation. These measurements, supplemented by analyses of air bubbles trapped in ice core samples, show unequivocally that atmospheric CO2 has increased from a pre-industrial level of 277 ppm in 1750 to present day concentrations that are approaching 390 ppm.

The IPCC report also shows the corresponding decrease in atmospheric oxygen, thus providing irrefutable verification that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is linked directly to fossil fuel oxidation. In Chapter 7, the IPCC report states it clearly: “the increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases during the industrial era are caused by human activities”. Undoubtedly, volcanic eruptions have contributed some atmospheric CO2, but this can only be miniscule as neither the 1991 Pinatubo eruption (largest of the century), nor the 1986 Lake Nyos CO2 eruption that killed thousands, so much as registered a blip in the Mauna Loa CO2 record.


In view of all this, the IPCC AR4 Chapter 9 Executive Summary states that: “It is likely (66 percent probability) that there has been a substantial anthropogenic contribution to surface temperature increases in every continent except Antarctica since the middle of the 20th century.” How can this be considered anything other than inaccurate and misleading?


To understand climate change, it is necessary to know the radiative forcings that drive the climate system away from its reference equilibrium state. These radiative forcings have been analyzed and evaluated by Hansen et al. (2005, 2007). They include changes in solar irradiance, greenhouse gases, tropospheric aerosols, and volcanic aerosols. Of these forcings, the only non-human-induced forcing that produces warming of the surface temperature is the estimated long-term increase by 0.3 W/m2 of solar irradiance since 1750. Volcanic eruptions are episodic, and can produce strong but temporary cooling. All of the other forcings are directly tied to human activity. When it comes to radiative forcing of global climate change, it is abundantly clear that whether we like it or not, or whether we care to admit it, it is humans who are driving the bus.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

NASA

Italy to Plug in Idling Cruise Ships

Italy to Plug in Idling Cruise Ships

How Can We Approach the Issue of Human Population Growth?


Is a question I have pondered for a long time. But first some background:


In 1992, the global population was ~5.5 billion. In 1952 the population was about 2.75 billion. The global population had about doubled in a mere 40 years. By comparison it had taken all human history for the species to reach the 1 billion mark in about 1800. In another 100 years (1900), the population reached about 2 billion. By the 1990’s, about 1 billion people are added to the population every 11 or 12 years. The rate of population growth was at a historical high of 2.0% in 1970. It had fallen to 1.7% in 1992. In 1992, the population was increasing by approximately 88 million people/year. Average fertility rates at ~3.0 birth/woman were still above the replacement rate of 2.1. Even if the fertility rates dropped to 2.0, the world population would still increase 8 billion around 2050 before stabilizing. To make matters worse much of this rapid growth was occurring in very ecologically impoverished places least able to absorb it.


China realized the detrimental effects of having such a large number of people and therefore implemented the 1 child policy in 1979. Today, 1 in every 4 people is Chinese
Most recently, man power in China was evident by becoming the number one exporter of good in the planet, surpassing Germany. But everything ha s a price; China has one of the most environmentally polluted environments in the world and its one of the main contributors of CO2. China was also one of the great producers of CFCs which contributed to the depletion of the Ozone Layer.


I’m not trying to make China seem like the big monster who wants to destroy the world and take away our clean air, the U.S. is a big contributor of CO2 that is increasing the temperature of the planet and wiping out species at a very depressing rate. But the U.S. shows more care about their environment, that’s why they send their waste to China and some countries in Africa. Let someone else deal with it.


At this point, would decreasing the population (either by awareness, religious cooperation, and prevention) really help? And how can we approach this problem? Today, the poorest countries are the most populated, why? Do they not realize that having more children will make them poorer? Religion also plays a major role in the amount of children families have, or if they should have (once they are pregnant).


How can we begin to tell people that they should not have children because they are poor? And that having children or more children will destroy the environment? Which is more important? A poor country with a high population can not progress if the environment is not able to sustain them. Be by not having clean water, food, or other resources. Today around the world unemployment is very high, and the economy is on a coma. Guess who suffers the most.


In countries in which children are venerated, and most people are pro-life (because of religion majority) the problem of population will persist unless there are waves of change, culturally. In other places in which the majority of citizens are highly educated (and prefer to wait longer to have children) their economic success will likely persist. Having said that, the population problem is not happening simultaneously on a global scale; several countries are actually struggling to replace the older generation (i.e. Japan).


To address the concern of overpopulation in their countries, individual governments have –to certain extent-the responsibility to educate and help those who would like to prevent having more children by distributing birth control to those who want it and promoting the use of condoms and eliminating cultural barriers and taboos. Promoting logical thinking wouldn’t hurt either…


 references: UMUCENV644CASE1
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100110/ap_on_bi_ge/as_china_trade