Gored

H/T Jack Cashill

People That Don't Eat Peanut Butter Are Racist

And you may ask why the title? Here is why. And yes the connection is rather tenuous. But so is Al Gore's claim.

H/T Watts Up With That

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Al Gore's Hockey Stick

Over at Watts Up With That they are discussing Al Gore's
marital and hotel difficulties in relation to a hockey stick graph that is most amusing.

So I thought I'd add a few words to a most ribald discussion.

It was all the fault of improperly labeled RAP music. Just ask Tipper.

Tipper is definitely a victim of No Law.

And for those that don't get the joke: A hint.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Blood And Gore

Yeah. I know you are not going to believe this, but David Blood and Al Gore have written a piece for the Financial Times. They ask why businesses don't focus more on the long term. News flash for Blood and Gore. If you are not in business next week it makes no difference at all what your plans for next year are. With that out of the way a look at some of the comments to this bit of Blood soaked Gore might be in order.

1. Metro586 | November 27 2:19am

Al Gore should give his Nobel Peace Prize back.

2. lily | November 27 2:20am

plaasjaapie I completely agree. I don't know why people continue to take this man seriously and even less why the MSM as well continue to treat him like a hero. Maybe it all fits into their own agenda somehow.

3. Dipperdap | November 27 2:20am

I'm ashamed that AlGore is from Tennessee. He and his pseudo-science are nothing but a fabrication and he is the liar an chief of all of it. Its going to be fun to watch this snake oil salesmen squirm when the fraud trials start. ITS ALL A LIE.

4. unwedmatter | November 27 2:23am

The predictions, the extrapolations, the very claims advanced by this warming movement, are now exposed as bogus....N.Z., NASA and CRU, can no longer be trusted. Fool us once.....

5. paultrommer | November 27 2:24am

How can the FT actually climb in bed with this con man? He is selling snake oil and you give him a forum? Pretty sad.

23. One_American | November 27 3:33am

Al Gore is in dire need of a thorough tar and feathering, followed by an uncomfortable ride on a rail where the general public throws rotten garbage in his face.

This "Global Warming" scam will go down as the biggest fraud in the history of mankind - and Al Gore and the rest of the O-Bow-Mao Marxist policy enablers and whining leftist money-grubbing thieves will be the ridicule of many generations to come - and America and the world will be much better off when it comes to pass.

The Financial Times leans left (why else would they publish Gore?) but it appears they are out of touch with their audience.

The topper in my mind (of the ones I have read so far) is this little Gem where Gore enters Palin Territory.

24. Adam Smith | November 27 3:41am |

Why would anybody listen to the insane rantings of such an incredibly stupid person?

In my short perusal of the comments I didn't find any Gore supporters. But there are about 180 comments total.

After looking further I did find one. #57. The commenter comes up with a most excellent argument. It is all Bush's fault. Lulz. Luzer.

It Is All Al Gore's Fault

By now you have all heard that a bunch of formerly secret e-mails and data relating to climate science have been revealed. It is casting serious doubt on the integrity of a number of the big names in the field and also adding to doubt about the size of the role of CO2 in climate change.

My solution to the current situation? Audit all the material.

But that is not my main point here. I want to give credit where credit is due. If Al Gore hadn't invented the Internet none of this would have been possible.

If you want to read about my meager contribution to the development of the Internet you can look here. I guess that means I had something to do with the revelations as well. Heh.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize - Country Doomed

President ∅ has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. I'm not going to name all the losers who have won that award. But I will name a few. Al Gore - for Global Warming. The Globe is cooling. Jimmy Carter for bringing Peace to the Israelis and Palistinians. The war never stopped. Yasser Arafat for being a Peace Maker. He started Stupidfada II - and lost.

Well you get the drift. The Peace Prize is usually a sign that the policies praised will fail. Usually sooner than later.

Expect a war. A big war. Soon.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Gains Of 30 Years Wiped Out

click for larger image
It looks like the era of Global Warming is Over. Icecap reports:

Many scary stories have been written about the dangers of catastrophic global warming, allegedly due to increased atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) from the combustion of fossil fuels. But is the world really catastrophically warming? NO. And is the warming primarily caused by humans? NO.

Since just January 2007, the world has cooled so much that ALL the global warming over the past three decades has disappeared! This is confirmed by a plot of actual global average temperatures from the best available source, weather satellite data that shows there has been NO net global warming since the satellites were first launched in 1979.

Since there was global cooling from ~1940 to ~1979, this means there has been no net warming since ~1940, is spite of an ~800% increase in human emissions of carbon dioxide. This indicates that the recent warming trend was natural, and CO2 is an insignificant driver of global warming.

Furthermore, the best fit polynomial shows a strong declining trend. Are we seeing the beginning of a natural cooling cycle? YES. Further cooling, with upward and downward variability, is expected because the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has returned to its cool phase, as announced by NASA this year.

You know this is really terrible news for financial outfits like Lehman Brothers.

LONDON - Lehman Brothers shut down its carbon emissions trading desk after the bank filed for bankruptcy protection, a source close to the company told Reuters on Monday.

"Everything's stopped, blocked ... it's a bit anarchic," he said.

Lehman declined to comment on the matter.

Trouble ahead, trouble behind. And speaking of behind. Who was helping Lehman to make carbon trading popular?

Al Gore’s carbon trading business GIM was banked with Lehman Bros. It will be interesting to see how this will play in the future but I suspect that this increases the risk of participating in Carbon trading. Merrill Lynch was also deeply involved in this business.

Last year Lehman Brothers released a long and highly publicized report about climate change in which they preached about decarbonization, trying to make their investors keep getting high profits from the Kyoto carbon trade scheme and the support of huge public subventions. All that, of course, with the applause of the usual choir of politicians, the entire media and the Greens.

Last year Lehman Brothers released a long and highly publicized report about climate change in which they preached about decarbonization, trying to make their investors keep getting high profits from the Kyoto carbon trade scheme and the support of huge public subventions. All that, of course, with the applause of the usual choir of politicians, the entire media and the Greens.

A year ago they couldn’t predict their bankruptcy but were predicting the climate 100 years ahead. Thousands of green militants have been using the Lehman report as a proof of global warming and impending chaos. Lehman Bros said it! sacred words! Its scientific advisor is James Hansen!

Well what do you know? Gore and Hansen. Two of the most prestigious names in the Carbon Trading and Global Warming Science business. If you have any stock in those two guys now is the time to short it, before it goes to ∅.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Green Speculation

Commenter RAH at the Belmont Club (5:26 pm) speculates on how the Green Movement and CO2 hysteria have played into the hands of the Russians.

Russian President Medeyev was Gazprom President. In his new position he is buying contracts from other countries. Venezuela sells oil to Russia; Libya just signed a contract with Medeyev and Gazprom. I believe that they got the contracts from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. Saudi Arabia provides oil to the US as well as Kuwait and they are our client countries.

They have been trying to secure outside sources for oil and gas. They recently this spring went to the artic to lay claim to the sources that may be there. Both Sweden and Finland are contesting those areas. Canada also has interest in the artic. The sea ice in the artic actually has changed and the melt has been prominent in the Russian area. The Canadian ice has been getting thicker. The Russia took advantage of the open sea to explore and lay claim. Russia has been the primary interest in the PARS field in Iran that the French company just pulled out.

So Gazprom has known about the need to get more sources since this is Medeyev’s obsession. The clash for oil sources will be the 21st century issue for some time to come. The fools who decry no oil for blood are clueless about how seriously nations will get to secure their energy. Energy is really the life and blood of a nations economy.

After the Soviet fall the Communist and Marxists groups and agitators went into the Green Movement. The Green Movement and the global warming scare have been targeted at Europe. Now it is curious that Russia has been from the 1990’s trying to become Europe’s energy supplier as the Green movement has insisted that power generation be only from natural gas and not coal that Germany has in abundance. Also they forced Germany under Schroeder to phase out the nuclear power generators. Later Schroeder went and worked for Medeyev’s Gazprom.

There is a true collusion from the promoters of Global Warming and the Green Movement that has been strangling Europe to work against its own national interests.
The vociferous attack against those that speak out about global warming as a product of human produced CO2 has been very strong and picked up by the liberal left and almost accepted doctrine in the West. Now we are just starting to show the cracks in that movement and science with bad methodology and sensors and cook algorithms.
Now what would be a good idea is to look at the funding of these groups and see if they have been funded or a disinformation campaign by Russia. The timing is right and the interests do coincide.

Russia never stopped working against the US and since we are their competitor on the world stage it is not surprising. Russia has fomented terrorism in Libya from the 1970’s and then in Syria and Iraq and Iran. They are also working in South America with Venezuela and Bolivia. So Russia has never stopped the Cold War it just went in different direction and form

Speculation of course. But it rings true. The parts fit. So who is funding AL Gore? And isn't it time McCain dropped his carbon tax ideas?

In any case it also fits with the idea of the Uber Enviros being like Watermelons: Green on the outside Red on the inside. They should be ashamed of themselves. Starting resource wars and all especially in the midst of plenty (at current prices).

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Fresh Kills

Green is not selling the way it used to. This is old news and it is the Onion. But it marks the start of a trend.

STATEN ISLAND, NY–An estimated 450,000 unsold copies of Time's special April 22 Earth Day issue were trucked Monday from the magazine's New Jersey distribution center to the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island.

The discarded copies of the issue–which features articles about conservation, biodiversity, and recycling, as well as guest editorials by President Clinton and Leonardo DiCaprio–are expected to decompose slowly over the next 175 years.

"Unfortunately, 'Earth Day 2000' wasn't as successful as we had hoped," Time managing editor Walter Isaacson said. "After selling out of such special issues as 'The Future Of Medicine,' 'Baseball At 100,' 'The Kennedys: An American Dynasty,' and 'Celebrating The American Automobile,' we thought we had another winner with this one. But of a press run of 485,000, only 35,000 sold. I guess we overestimated the demand for a full-color, 98-page Earth Day issue printed on glossy, high-pulp paper."

How about some more recent evidence from a more reputable source?

Green issues don't sell say a number of publishers.

As global warming was first becoming a cause célèbre a few years ago, many serious environmentalists worried that green was in danger of becoming a fad -- something that would inevitably recede from consciousness after overtaxing our limited pop-cultural attention span.

Sad to say, that prediction shows signs of coming true. Last week, The New York Times noted that the advertising industry is pulling back from green-themed marketing, having "grasped the public's growing skepticism over ads with environmental messages.

And advertisers' concerns are buttressed by the recent sales figures for magazines that have published a "Green Issue" this year. Time's Earth Day issue was the newsweekly's third-lowest-selling issue of 2008 so far, according to ABC Rapid Report. A typical issue of Time sells 93,000 or so copies on the newsstand; the April 28 installment, which substituted green for red in the magazine's trademarked cover design, sold only 72,000.

Enviro hysteria does not sell the way it once did.

The New York Times says ad agencies are starting to get it.

At an annual gathering of the advertising industry a year ago in Cannes, the environment was the topic du jour. “Be seen, be green,” one agency urged on the invitation to its party at a hillside villa.

Al Gore, invited by another agency, delivered a message linked to “An Inconvenient Truth,” his book and film about climate change: That the ad industry could play an influential role in encouraging businesses and consumers to change their ways and slow global warming.

The sun was still beating down on the Côte d’Azur last month as advertising executives from around the world returned for this year’s festival. But Mr. Gore was nowhere to be found, and the party buzz was about the American presidential election, the Euro 2008 soccer tournament and even the business of advertising itself. Green marketing, while booming, had lost some of its cachet.

So let me give you an anecdote of my own. Instapundit linked to a piece I did on the decline of carbon hysteria, The Globe Reverberates With Laughter, and the comment section just went nuts. As one commenter noted: politicians ought to be careful. Elections get lost big time when public opinion changes and politicians don't. Take the question of drilling for more oil in the USA. I made a bumper sticker about it that is rather cute: Without Lubrication, which looks at the change in attitudes about drilling for oil in America and off its shores. A nominally green issue. About 60% of the American public thinks more oil is of greater importance than reducing the risk of oil spills to zero. The reason? Green is fine as long as the pocket book effects are small or well hidden. That is no longer the case.

Democrats may be in for a rougher time this year than they expect. I have some advice for them: "It's the price of gasoline, stupid."

H/T Counting Cats in Zanzibar

The New Alternative

This is a response to a post and the subsequent comments about AL Gore's plan for powering America with alternative energy in ten years.

First:

Al Gore is an idiot.

Second:

He is a promoter. He stands to get very rich if he can persuade Congress to implement his schemes.

Third:

Solar scientists are predicting a little ice age. How many solar scientists are on the IPCC? Hint: less than one.

Fourth:

Al is totally ignorant of logistics. Just making all the solar cells required in 10 years is not possible. The best place to put them is the desert. Not many power lines in the desert. What is the total world solar cell production capacity? We can make maybe 100 MW (peak electrical output) per year. We need to make 500 GW or so just for America (and that just covers the power when the sun is shining). Wind power is more promising and the upper Mid West is the best place. Problem? Power lines.

Fifth:

The longer we put off going solar the better the technology will be. So what should be done now is what is economically feasible. No subsidies or mandates. Same for wind.

Sixth:

The #1 problem with alternative energy is storage. Al says nothing about that.

Seventh:

To make all this come together we will need 2 MV DC power lines. How many 2 MV DC power lines are there any where in the world? Zero. Who is currently planning on building any? No one.

Did I mention Al Gore is an idiot?

Well maybe not so much. He has conned a lot of rubes after all.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

A Man With Real Experience

Yes. When it comes to war and peace we need to heed the words of a man with real experience. Al Gore.

Gore said in 1988 that his experience in Vietnam:

"...didn't change my conclusions about the war being a terrible mistake, but it struck me that opponents to the war, including myself, really did not take into account the fact that there were an awful lot of South Vietnamese who desperately wanted to hang on to what they called freedom. Coming face to face with those sentiments expressed by people who did the laundry and ran the restaurants and worked in the fields was something I was naively unprepared for."

So the war was a mistake. OK. I don't buy that. But Al and I agree that the bigger mistake was abandoning the freedom lovers in South Viet Nam. A mistake the Democrats are intent on repeating in Iraq. How stupid do you have to be to repeat a mistake with truly terrible consequences a second time?

I believe you don't have to be stupid to do that. You have to be a Democrat.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

The Gypsy Curse

I like the New Al Gore's current persona.

"The sky is falling. The sky is falling. However, do not fear. This is your lucky day. I'm selling indulgences".

This is a great step up from the "your money has the gypsy curse" scam. After all there is no scientific proof that the gypsy curse works (well except for the gypsy).

Prompted by a discussion at Althouse

What Is The Value Of Gore's Nobel?

It will raise the value of his speeches by at least 10,000 gallons of jet fuel.


Cross Posted at Classical Values

A Shill For Al Gore?

Coyote Blog has a bit up on the latest Climate Change scandal. The error in the data making 1998 the hottest year on record. James Hansen is head of GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) the source of the error. Michael Mann (inventor of the guaranteed hockey stick method - feed any data in, random numbers are good - get a hockey stick out) stated he was 99% certain that 1998 was the warmest year on record for the last 1,000 years. Actually it is the second warmest year on record in the last 73 years. That means he was only off by 927 years. Not bad for a professional. The error has been corrected in remarkably short time. However, it has brought to light something rather interesting.

James Hansen gets money from a foundation run by John Kerry's wife Teresa Heinz Kerry.

Newsweek portrays James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, as untainted by corporate bribery.

Hansen was once profiled on CBS' "60 Minutes" as the "world's leading researcher on global warming." Not mentioned by Newsweek was that Hansen had acted as a consultant to Al Gore's slide-show presentations on global warming, that he had endorsed John Kerry for president, and had received a $250,000 grant from the foundation headed by Teresa Heinz Kerry.

You don't suppose the money has biased Hansen do you? Me either. I put such talk down to idle speculation, innuendo, and ugly rumor. Like all true scientist who understand that CO2 is causing global warming, the man is beyond reproach. I think those inquiring into the underlying data and adjustment methods of NASA/Goddard's GISS temperature record are just a bunch of climate hooligans and should be ignored. Mr. Hansen is in charge of GISS. He works for the government. His honesty and integrity are beyond reproach. No need to audit the books.

Cross Posted at Classical Values and at The Astute Bloggers

It Is Uncertain

Space.com has an interesting report on the variability of the solar constant (them scientists are really good with the non-sequiturs).

In what could be the simplest explanation for one component of global warming, a new study shows the Sun's radiation has increased by .05 percent per decade since the late 1970s.

The increase would only be significant to Earth's climate if it has been going on for a century or more, said study leader Richard Willson, a Columbia University researcher also affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The Sun's increasing output has only been monitored with precision since satellite technology allowed necessary observations. Willson is not sure if the trend extends further back in time, but other studies suggest it does.

"This trend is important because, if sustained over many decades, it could cause significant climate change," Willson said.

In a NASA-funded study recently published in Geophysical Research Letters, Willson and his colleagues speculate on the possible history of the trend based on data collected in the pre-satellite era.

"Solar activity has apparently been going upward for a century or more," Willson told SPACE.com today.

Significant component

Further satellite observations may eventually show the trend to be short-term. But if the change has indeed persisted at the present rate through the 20th Century, "it would have provided a significant component of the global warming the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports to have occurred over the past 100 years," he said.

That does not mean industrial pollution has not been a significant factor, Willson cautioned.

Scientists, industry leaders and environmentalists have argued for years whether humans have contributed to global warming, and to what extent. The average surface temperature around the globe has risen by about 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1880. Some scientists say the increase could be part of natural climate cycles. Others argue that greenhouse gases produced by automobiles and industry are largely to blame.

Willson said the Sun's possible influence has been largely ignored because it is so difficult to quantify over long periods.

Difficult to quantify. I think that represents the current state of climate science in a nut shell. There are a lot of things difficult to quantify given the current state of climate science. Like cloud feedback for instance. We do not know whether clouds are a positive or negative feedback element in the climate equation. Convieniently it is assumed positive and a value is assigned which makes the effect of CO2 more intense.

A separate recent study of Sun-induced magnetic activity near Earth, going back to 1868, provides compelling evidence that the Sun's current increase in output goes back more than a century, Willson said.

So if we have no data or poor data an effect is ignored.

Fine.

It then means you have to increase your uncertainty bands. By how much?

Well that is uncertain.

Now all this would be academic except we are basing policy decisions on where to spend real money extracted by force by governments based on models that are clearly inadequate.

Cross Posted at Classical Values and at The Astute Bloggers

Al Be Doh!

Terrible pun. About what you ask? Al Gore and the Climate Menace. It is my way of saying - Al is not too smart, but saying it in a way that segues into the topic at hand. Which is: what is the maximum possible temperature of the earth and are we near it? Which is all tied up with Maxwellian thermal distributions, the Stephan-Boltzman Law, Planck's Law, and albedo (get it? al be do). Which will all be explained shortly.

My friend Eric sent me this interesting piece that asks an important question. What is the maximum temperature of the earth? Which is why the above science comes into play.

Black bodies

A black body absorbs all of the light that reaches it. It has an absorptivity of 1. Thermodynamics states that objects at thermodynamic equilibrium radiate as much energy as they receive. The Stefan-Boltzmann equation describes the energy flux as it relates to temperature for a body in thermodynamic equilibrium:

S= σ T⁴

Simplified the energy radiated by a perfect radiating body goes up as the fourth power of the temperature of the body. An interesting and important point is that a perfect radiator is also a perfect absorber. An absorbtivity of 1 is equal to an albedo of 0. Conversely an absorbtivity of 0 is equal to an albedo of 1. (1 - absorbtivity = albedo)

Which brings us to the next point:

Postulate 1: The average temperature of a body in thermodynamic equilibrium with an external energy source can never exceed the temperature of a black body in the same environment.

This is true for a number of reasons. One of which is the conservation of energy. If you have two black bodies in the same environment and one was hotter than the other you could get energy out of such a system by absorbing heat at the higher temperature and rejecting it at the lower temperature. Now if you took that energy and re-injected it into the black body you should be able to make the temperature of the black body rise thus getting even more energy out of the system. Perpetual motion. i.e. it can't happen. So a black body in thermal equilibrium with a source is going to have a temperature defined by the source and its distance from the black body.

Postulate 2: The maximum temperature of a body in thermodynamic equilibrium with an external energy source can never exceed the temperature of black body in the same environment.

So neither the average nor the maximum can exceed the black body temperature. Other wise you could get perpetual motion from black bodies. So you think a perfect reflector would help? Nope. Perfect reflectors do not radiate energy. You can't pump energy into a perfect reflector in thermal equilibrium. Because if such a thing was possible the temperature would rise without limit. Then you could extract thermal energy from it by rejecting the heat to a black body. You could take the energy extracted and use it to raise the temperature of the white body making even more energy available. i.e. perpetual motion. Not going to happen.

One other important point. A perfect white body couldn't absorb ANY heat because its temperature would become infinite if you continued to pump heat into it. Another little stumbling block.

Postulate 3: The greenhouse effect can never produce a temperature that is higher than the temperature of a black body in the same environment

If it could it would violate thermodynamics principles and we could in theory have a perpetual motion machine. Not going to happen.

So there is a maximum temperature that the earth can reach no matter how many zillions of tons of green house gasses are pumped into the atmosphere.

So the question is what is that temperature?

It should now be clear that the maximum temperature of Earth can be no higher than the maximum temperature of an equivalent black body. We will now try to evaluate what that maximum is. For simplicity, all values and graphs have been obtained from Wikipedia unless otherwise stated.

The moon is quite close to a black body. It is estimated to have an absorptivity of 0.88. Conveniently the moon is nearly in the same environment in space as the Earth. The maximum temperature found on the moon is approximately 390° K. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann equation described earlier the maximum flux on the moon is

αS = σ T⁴

which for our values gives a flux of 1491 w/m². Already we have a problem. The flux on Earth from the sun as measured by satellites is widely reported to be around 1366 w/m², or significantly lower. Why the discrepancy? It is interesting to note that even with only these three elements, moon data, sun data, and the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, we end up with slightly inconsistent results, which may give us some insight into the level of uncertainty in the data that still remains in this area. Since we are interested in the maximum temperature we will take the maximum value of 1491 w/m².

The earth is approximately spherical and receives light from the sun on a cross-sectional area of a circle, but radiates thermal energy from the area of a sphere. The ratio of the spherical area to the circular area is 4. Dividing the incoming energy flux by 4 gives the Earth an approximate maximum temperature of 285° K. Again we have another inconsistency as this maximum temperature is below the widely reported global average temperature of 288° K. Also the earth has an uneven distribution of temperatures and therefore an uneven distribution of flux, the end result of which would be to lower the average temperature even more. Still the result is quite close and it suggests that the Earth is behaving very closely to a black body and is operating very close to its maximum possible temperature.

Which leads to a restatement of the last bit as a postulate:

Postulate 4: The earth is operating very close to its maximum possible temperature.

Again, this will cause many to pause as it goes against the conventional wisdom. However we will attempt to provide two pieces of evidence to support this case:

- ice ages and the runaway greenhouse effect

- climate variability/stability

So let us look at the ice age data. Specifically the interglacial periods (like now) when the earth warms up after an ice age. What is postulated is that when an ice age ends the earth's temperature rises rapidly to a maximum (due to positive feed backs) and stays there with very little fluctuation in termperature while during the ice age phases the fluctuations are significant. Which would mean that the earth's albedo (reflectivity) varies a lot during ice ages, and not very much during warm periods.

The most likely cause of the ice ages is due to fluctuations in the intensity and the distribution of solar radiation caused by changes in the tilt in the Earth's axis. This theory was first described by the Serbian scientist, Milutin Milankovitch, in 1938. There are three major cyclical components of the Earth's orbit about the sun that contribute to these fluctuations: the procession (tilt of the Earth's axis), as well as Earth's orbital eccentricity and orbital tilt. The exact cause and effect relationship between orbital forcing and ice ages is still a matter of great debate, however the match of glacial/interglacial frequencies to the Milankovitch orbital forcing periods is so close that orbital forcing is generally accepted. Other theories include greenhouse gas forcing, changes in the Earth's plate tectonics, changes in solar variation, and changes in absorptivity due to dust and gases spewed by volcanoes.

The exact cause of the ice ages is not critical to our discussion other than to note that the Earth appears to have two metastable states: an ice age period and a warm period.

I refer to the metastable states as "strange attractors" from chaos theory. What that says is that you have a local maximum or minimum in an unstable system and once you are far enough from the "strange attractor" the system will tend to rapidly switch states. When a system oscillates between two such states it is said to be bifructed. Which is just a fancy way of saying two stable states. In electronics we have a circuit that does that. It has positive feedback in both directions once you are far enough from a stable input. The circuit is called a Schmidt trigger. Once the input gets out of the stable region it switches rapidly to the alternate stable state. Positive feedback all the way.

Postulate 5: The transition from Ice Age to warm period and back to Ice Age is achieved through a runaway greenhouse effect and its opposite

Another remarkable feature is the relative stability of the climate at the peak of the warming cycle. The variability of temperatures during an ice age is relatively high compared to periods of warming. However this makes perfect sense if one considers the climate as being "pinned" to the upper limit during the warm periods and therefore remaining stable due to strong positive feedback. At the upper limit, the major driver of upper temperatures becomes solar input as this is the only thing remaining that can effectively increase temperatures.

Once your effective albedo is close to zero the temperature is only determined by black body considerations. No amount of additional radiation capture within the body is going to change the temperature. There is no kind of heat trap we can devise which will increase the temperature above the black body limit. In fact we can only raise the temperature locally on such a black body by concentrating the energy from a given area on a smaller area. However that will increase the radiation from the hotter area and the average temperature of the body will in fact decline, because radiation goes up as the fourth power of temperature. You can't beat mother nature. In fact here is a good point to give the three laws of thermodynamics in laymans terms:

1. You can't win - there is no way to beat the system, energy is conserved
2. You can't break even - there will always be losses
3. You can't get out of the game - the rules always apply

When it comes to thermal systems there can never be any such thing as perpetual motion. There is always a maximum of work that can be extracted from two bodies at different temperatures. Sadi Carnot figured that one out. The work out can only be equal to the heat energy in if the cold body that the heat is rejected to is at absolute zero. Otherwise there will be a certain amount of heat that must flow into the cold body. That heat is unavailable for work.

Postulate 6: The runaway greenhouse effect ends when the Earth has achieved a effective absorptivity as close to unity as it can get after which the earth becomes insensitive to further positive feedback changes.

Can there be a tipping point or a runaway greenhouse effect from a sudden injection of CO2/methane or the melting of ice?

No there can not. The Earth has already experienced a runaway greenhouse effect thousands of times during its lifetime. Each time it is run to the maximum possible level that it can, bringing us the much more habitable climate that we have today. It is not possible for there to be a tipping point to spiral us into a third metastable climate state that has not been shown to exist during the entire history of Earth. Barring a sudden change in input from the sun, changes in climate upwards can only occur in a smooth, slow and limited fashion. A tipping point is possible, however, towards another ice age as has happened thousands of times before.

So there you have it. The green house gasses (mainly water vapor) have done their job in changing the albedo of the earth to close to zero. The albedo can never go below zero no matter how much CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere.

Ian Schumacher, the author of the bits quoted above, follows a little different argument than I do on the matter of thermodynamics. The results are the same. Which means you should compare what I said to what Ian has written. In other words - read the whole thing.

H/T Eric of Classical Values

A Party of Traitors

The Mary McCarthy story about a Democrat Mole in the CIA is breaking hard against the Democrats. There are ties in this to Joe Wilson. Communist fronts. The Tides Foundation. Teresa Kerry. John Kerry. Sandy Burglar. Zbigniew Brzezinski. General Wesley Clark USA (Ret.). General Anthony Zinni. Richard Clarke. Randal Beers. Valerie Plame/Wilson. Bill Goddfellow (Mary's Husband). Anthony Lake. Bill Clinton. Al Gore. George Tenet. Joseph Sestak. John Deutch. That just about blows their whole national security line up.

As a sting operation The Fake Prison/Torture Story will go down as probably the #1 intelligence sting of all time. Thanks to the help of Dana Priest it won a Pulitzer Prize. Whoever wrote the Euro prison/torture story for the stingers took it right out of the "Janet Cooke and Jimmy's World" playbook. That story could have been the template for this story. Lurid but plausable. The Captain has more about the sting. Really the sting as designed is right out of "Bodyguard of Lies". Tell a story close enough to the truth that plays to the opposition's prejudices. Give it multiple independent corroborating sources. Watch the foe take the bait.

A.J. Strata has more links. As does Tom Maguire.

I think the Democrat party has just hit an iceberg. I do not believe they can keep afloat from this one. I expect they will lose seats in the mid term elections. I rate the Dem chances in 2008 as less than 10% chance of getting the Presidency.

Let us harken back to WW2 when Thomas Dewey declined to use intel that would have harmed the war effort in his bid to unseat FDR. We have come a long way baby.

Technorati:

Mary McCarthy, CIA Leaks, Democrat Mole, Joe Wilson, Communist Front, Tides Foundation, Teresa Kerry, John Kerry, Sandy Burger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Wesley Clark, Anthony Zinni, Richard Clarke, Randal Beers, Valerie Plame, Valerie Wilson, Bill Goddfellow, Anthony Lake, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, George Tenet, Joseph Sestak, John Deutch, Dana Priest, Pulitzer Prize, Bodyguard of Lies