Are you fucking kidding me? Rudy Giuliani was on Good Morning America this morning, and had the audacity to claim,

“What he [Obama] should be doing is following the right things that Bush did – one of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama.”

Honestly, how do we continue to let these people be our “elites”? I guess as long as he gets away with saying it on national TV.

Some in the media have decided to de-emphasize the import of joining a Facebook group to express outrage at proroguing Parliament. “So you got 25,000 30,000 85,000 people to join your page? It takes no commitment to join a Facebook page.” How about this for commitment? My disgust for Harper and his gang is so strong that I have changed from “always been Conservative” to “anything but Conservative”. I have become more active in politics and write letters to the editor and to politicians, even when those things are very much not in my personality. I participated in a 24-hour fast to protest inaction in Copenhagen (in fact, I carried it on to 40 hours).

Actually, the prorogation itself doesn’t even bother me that much, it’s the thuggish, neo-con, hyper-partisan, anti-science tactics in general.

For me, joining the group was just one tiny action among many, all to try to get the neo-cons out of the Conservative party, and Canada, for good. So don’t tell me it’s not meaningful.

And anyway, today’s poll says a majority of Canadians disagree with the prorogue, and almost 40% think it was to evade the Afghan torture issue.

Top 10 Worst Thing About The Bush Decade. This is not inherently about Conservative v. Liberal or Republican v. Democrat, this is about rich v. poor. But it gets to the core of everything that bothers me in the US and Canada today, and the oligarchs dominate conservative messaging.

Sugar: The Bitter Truth, it’s long but valuable. I think it’s safe to summarize as follows: Chronic fructose consumption is the cause of the epidemic of “Metabolic Syndrome” in North America today.

T Pyxidis is less than a kiloparsec away and seems to be overdue to become a Type 1a supernova, which would be very, very bad.

I don’t see much I can do to influence the conversation over global warming, but I have to do everything I can. So this morning, I emailed the following to Stephen Harper, Jim Prentice, Bob Dechert (my MP), The Toronto Star, The Globe & Mail and The National Post. Ideally, I want everyone to know about this, and I want everyone to know that everyone knows. I believe this clearly shows that 1) the composition of the atmosphere is changing and 2) it is us that’s causing that change, two hurdles for many people to accept AGW.

Anyway, it’s quite long and has some basic calculations. If you can, please take time to familiarize yourself with the numbers, I think this is how we should be trying to get the message out. The extreme short version is that global annual CO2 emissions equal 1% of total atmospheric CO2, and CO2 is rising by about 0.5% every year but you should go through the numbers for yourself.

Dear sirs,

I am writing to beg you to take this letter seriously, listen to what I have to say and check the numbers for yourselves. It may sound like hyperbole but I truly believe this may be one of the most important letters you will ever receive. We are at a critical time, where we need a fair, ambitious and binding deal very soon or it may be too late. Obviously the media isn’t responsible for educating the public, but there are people that should be held acccountable for actively misinforming. Of course, I apologize in advance for sounding condescending if you already understand these numbers.

As you know there is substantial public confusion about whether climate change is real and whether it’s being caused by us. Part of the blame certainly lies with the scientists and their poor communication but the media in general is also partly to blame because of their instinct to provide “balance”. Of course, business and government have lead the disinformation campaign, as thoroughly documented in “Climate Cover-Up” by James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore. The issue has been completely politicised, but it’s not a political issue and it’s not appropriate to treat it as one. That said, though I’m *completely* opposed to the development of the tar sands at all, I think the future of humanity is important enough that everyone at least understand the issues and negotiate in good faith.

There are really two aspects, both quite unintuitive, that must be understood. First, that we are actually changing the composition of the atmosphere and second that changing the atmosphere is capable of changing the climate itself. Every scientific explanation I’ve ever seen focuses on the complicated physics of “radiative forcing” and how CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas. Meanwhile, activists assume people understand the science and that it’s just a matter of convincing them to take action. but I don’t think 1 person in 100 understands any of it, aside from their position on whether it’s a problem or not. This is the crux of the problem, if it doesn’t intuitively make sense, it’s easy to dismiss as a scam, which is exactly what many have done.

I can’t help with the physics part because I’ve never made much of an attempt to really understand it myself. I’m just a guy sitting on my couch and for the life of me I don’t understand how this angle hasn’t been publicized more but I’ve read a lot and have never seen these calculations. When I thought of it this way, it seemed so much more obvious. I hope you agree. I’ll just give you the numbers and let you confirm them in any way you seem fit. Contact an appropriate scientist to help.

First, the mass of the atmosphere. It seems like a completely impossible calculation, but it’s actually quite trivial to at least get an estimate. The mass of a column of air to the edge of the atmosphere is about 14.7 psi, the average air pressure at sea level. Calculate the surface area of the Earth in square inches, multiple by 14.7 psi, and presto, there’s the mass of the atmosphere. The Earth’s radius is about 3,960 miles and the area of a sphere is 4 π r² (obviously the Earth isn’t a perfect sphere because of mountains, etc but as seen from space, it’s close enough for this calculation). So the surface area comes out to about 197,000,000 square miles, or about 7.91 x10^17 square inches! Times 14.7 gives the mass of about (from now on, I won’t continue repeating “about”) 11.6 x 10^18 pounds or 5.28 x 10^18 kg. It’s easier to call that 5,280,000 gigatonnes (divide by 1,000 for tonnes, divide by another billion for gigatonnes). This is easily verifiable fact #1, the atmosphere weights a bit more than 5,000,000 gigatonnes.

The atmosphere is currently approximately 390 parts per million CO2 *by volume*. At first, I thought that meant * 390 / 1,000,000, but CO2 is denser than air so you have to multiply the result by 44 / 29, the ratio of the density of CO2 to the density of “air”.
5,280,000 * 390 /1,000,000 * 44 /29 gives 3,100 gigatonnes total CO2 in the atmosphere, another easily verifiable fact (here’s a reference, http://micpohling.wordpress.com/2007/03/30/math-how-much-co2-by-weight-in-the-atmosphere/ and it also lists the weight of CO2 for a few different concentrations). Wikipedia confirms both of these numbers.

Now, find the global total CO2 emissions for 2008. One source is at http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9023772&contentId=7044468 click on the map on the right where it says download the excel workbook. In the contents worsheet, click on “carbon dioxide emissions”, it will take you to worksheet 40. Row 87 gives the total CO2 emissions each year from 1965 to 2008. Cell AS87 gives the value for 2008, 31,577.8 million tonnes, i.e. about 31.6 gigatonnes CO2. Here’s another reference that gives the same value http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5793BB20090810

I can again show you a calculation that helps make sense of this number. It’s more complicated, and quite shocking, but completely real. Let’s consider regular gasoline, which is basically 89% octane and 11% heptane. For order of magnitude calculations, let’s just consider the octane. The chemical formula for octane is C8H18 and the combustion equation is 2C8H18 + 25O2 = 16CO2 + 18H2O. Ignoring the oxygen consumed and water produced because they’re irrelevant here, for every 2 molecules of octane burned, 16 molecules of CO2 are produced! The atomic weights of H, C and O are 1, 12 and 16 respectively, so the molecular weight of octane is 8 * 12 + 18 * 1 = 114. Similarly, the molecular weight of CO2 is (12 + 2 * 16) = 44. The end result is that for every 2 * 114 = 228 g of gasoline, 16 * 44 = 704 g of CO2 is produced. This is “conservation of mass”, and is completely unintuitive because we tend to think the gas is burned up and disappears. The reality is the reaction consumes a lot of oxygen from the atmosphere, and we are converting gasoline into 704 / 228 = 3.1 times as much CO2 by mass! It doesn’t matter how fuel efficient your car is, either, regardless much gas you use, 3 times the mass is released as CO2 (this doesn’t even include the “carbon footprint” of producing, refining and transporting the fuel). Now, go to http://fueleconomy.gov pick a car and see how much CO2 it produces. For a 2010 Lexus RX 350 AWD with the default driving assumptions, 9.2 tonnes of CO2 a year would be produced. Now multiply by maybe 500,000,000 for the total number of cars in the world, very roughly 4.6 gigatonnes of CO2 a year, just from cars.

Add all the other uses of jet fuel, coal, natural gas etc., I think the 31 gigatonne number starts to seem more reasonable. That’s about 5 tonnes of CO2 for every human on the planet, *every year*.

Therefore, the numbers tell us that in 2008, we dumped 31 gigatonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere that already had 3,100 gigatonnes in it, i.e. 1% of the total. How did that affect the ppm? Check ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_annmean_mlo.txt In 2007 it was 383.71 ppm, in 2008, 385.57, an increase of 1.86 ppm or 0.48% (the reason it’s less than 1% is that about 50% is consumed by plants or absorbed into the ocean, causing acidification, another problem). That doesn’t sound like much, but consider that before the Industrial Revolution it’s been estimated to have been about 280 ppm, in 1959 it was 315.98 and in May 2009, it topped 390 ppm.

The argument that CO2 is “plant food” is misleading at best, because we’re creating way more of it than plants can use, simply because the CO2 level is rising. The benefit to plant growth is also likely to be offset by more severe weather. If you even want to try to blame volcanoes, you need to account for how the 1% that we’re emitting does nothing while only the volcanoes contribute to the increase. Finally, there is one difference that you must account for any other “natural cycles” argument – that difference is that it’s us changing the atmosphere faster than any natural cycle ever has.

Furthermore, once you have these numbers in front of you, saying things “CO2 is an infinitessimal part of the atmosphere” becomes deliberately misleading. I’ve shown you exactly how much it is. And despite what Michele Bachmann says, CO2 is a dangerous gas to humans and animal life in general. At 1,000 ppm, the effects of CO2 poisoning begin to be felt. The IPCC has predicted that CO2 could be as high as 970 ppm by 2100, when your grandchildren might still be alive.

The IPCC (and science in general) is very cautious about claiming certainty, but I believe that I’ve shown clearly 1) how the atmosphere is changing, and 2) that it’s human activity that’s causing it.

As for the “greenhouse effect”, CO2 has been known to be a greenhouse gas for over 150 years (see John Tyndall and Svante Arrhenius). To claim otherwise, you need a lot of very good evidence. In fact, Arrhenius calculated that doubling CO2 (from about 290 ppm at the time) would cause 5-6C of warming, *very* close to today’s estimates. As the atmosphere warms, the ocean has actually been absorbing a lot of the heat, this is what leads to more severe hurricanes, more extreme rain or snow events, etc. The next time you catch yourself thinking “What happened to global warming?” during a really extreme winter storm, this is exactly what has been predicted.

Now, what to do with this info? As I suggested, verify it with a scientist. Even more interesting would be to see if the denier scientists can confirm any of this. I expect Heartland Institute, Cato Institute, George C. Marshall Institute, Fraser Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Cooler Heads Coalition etc. won’t be able to because they’re not scientists, they’re conservative think tanks dedicated to the principals of free markets and limited government (see the About page on their websites). Might even make a good bit of investigative journalism for the newspapers.

If I’ve made a significant mistake, please let me know, otherwise, now that you have the facts, if you use contradictory numbers as “science” without the required proof, I will consider it deliberate fraud. By all means, debate the costs, the mechanisms, the checks & balances, etc, but government and the media have to start accepting facts as facts and being accountable for deliberate misinformation.

Jeff Stone
stone1343@gmail.com

Finally, we found a real scientist, Patrick Michaels (with an ’s’) but unsurprisingly, he works for the Cato Institute, who I’ve discussed *many* times before.

http://mediamatters.org/research/200405200001

Michaels is part of a small and dwindling cadre of scientists who remain skeptical about the effect of human activities on global warming and the seriousness of the potential impact.

http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=4

Dr. Patrick Michaels is possibly the most prolific and widely-quoted climate change skeptic scientist. He has admitted receiving funding from various fossil fuel industry sources. His latest book, published in September 2004 by the Cato Institute, is titled: Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media.

Doesn’t mean his science his wrong, but if he’d actually proved anything, don’t you think the deniers would be featuring his talking points a little more prominently? Maybe I’ll look into it a little deeper some day…

Ezra Levant thinks KAIROS hates Israel,

I rather liked KAIROS’s old website, because it was so damned honest. They hated Israel with a passion. Just to be fashionable, they talked a bit about Sudan, where 300,000 Darfuris have been murdered. But the only nation that moved KAIROS to call for a mass economic boycott was those damned Jews.

That was fine with the Chretien government and fine with the Martin government and fine with the Liberal Party’s porch Jew, Irwin Cotler. They kept giving seven-figure grants of taxpayers dollars to KAIROS, without ever asking why a group that claimed to represent most Canadian Christians needed to beg for alms from Caesar.

It was so easy. Step one: ask for money. Step two: get it. So why not let it all hang out on their website? All of their venom for the Jews.

I love this. Thanks to Springer of the Blockhead Tories for reviving my passion.

I’ve been looking at Sort of Political’s blog some more and I’m really impressed at how much he is part of the problem…

He has a few links to Joanne Nova’s “The Skeptic’s Handbook”, which has been debunked. Joanne herself has an entry in DeSmogBlog’s Skeptic Disinformation Database, with a couple interesting quotes,

Joanne Nova holds a Bachelor of Science degree in microbiology from the University of Western Australia.  She also has a Graduate Certificate in Science Communications from the Australian National University.  After graduation, Nova joined the Shell Questacon Science Circus, a Shell-sponsored program that employs university students to travel around Australia teaching interactive science programs to children.

and,

Mistakenly Referred to as a Climate Change Expert

Although Joanne Nova has not published any research in peer-reviewed journals, she is often presented as an expert in the area of climate science.  For example, Fred Singer’s Science & Environmental Policy Project mistakenly described Joanne Nova as holding a PhD in meteorology.

Furthermore, Nova has been a speaker at the Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change where she is listed as one of several specialists on the issue of global warming.  In 2009, she gave a presentation entitled, “The Great Global Fawning: How Science Journalists Pay Homage to Non-Science and Un-Reason.”

Joanne Nova has also given presentations for the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and the Cooler Heads Coalition.  The Cooler Heads Coalition is run by CEI and its mission is to “dispel the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific, and risk analysis.”  Members of the coalition include conservative think tanks such as FreedomWorks (formerly Citizens for a Sound Economy), the Heartland Institute, Frontiers of Freedom, the George C. Marshall Institute, JunkScience.com, the National Center for Policy Analysis, and the Fraser Institute.

The International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) lists Ms. Nova as a “qualified endorser” of the Manhattan Declaration.  The ICSC defines a qualified endorser as an individual that is “well-trained in science and technology or climate change-related economics and policy.”

Gee, she’s in with all of the great disinformers… Check them out individually at the Disinformation Database or Exxon Secrets,

Fred Singer & his Science and Environmental Policy Project

Heartland Institute

Competitive Enterprise Institute

Cooler Heads Coalition

George C. Marshall Institute

Fraser Institute

If it wasn’t so fraudulent, it would be funny…

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/35243_Why_I_Parted_Ways_With_The_Right

1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.)

2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)

3. Support for throwing women back into the Dark Ages, and general religious fanaticism (see: Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.)

4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.)

5. Support for homophobic bigotry (see: Sarah Palin, Dobson, the entire religious right, etc.)

6. Support for anti-government lunacy (see: tea parties, militias, Fox News, Glenn Beck, etc.)

7. Support for conspiracy theories and hate speech (see: Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.)

8. A right-wing blogosphere that is almost universally dominated by raging hate speech (see: Hot Air, Free Republic, Ace of Spades, etc.)

9. Anti-Islamic bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam, into support for fascism, violence, and genocide (see: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.)

10. Hatred for President Obama that goes far beyond simply criticizing his policies, into racism, hate speech, and bizarre conspiracy theories (see: witch doctor pictures, tea parties, Birthers, Michelle Malkin, Fox News, World Net Daily, Newsmax, and every other right wing source)

And much, much more. The American right wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and off the cliff.

I won’t be going over the cliff with them.

Amen.

We all know you don’t believe in global warming, but here’s a friendly tip for you. When you finally realize how badly you’ve betrayed humanity for your retirement fund, you’re gonna need to start saying you’ve been fighting the good fight all along, like you always do. To help you out, you might want to find some examples now of conservatives who DO believe the whole global warming thing. Surely there must be some? Don’t worry, in the meantime I’ll do my best to ensure that no one ever forgets who fought so dishonestly for so long to deny it.

Which do you like better:
“Conservatives: The ones who managed to delay meaningful action against global warming for 20 years.”
“Conservatives: The ones who put Big Oil ahead of humanity for 20 years.”
“Canadian Conservatives: The ones who are actually so stupid that, even in 20 years, they couldn’t figure out that global warming wasn’t a political issue.”
“Canadian Conservatives: The ones to blame when the ocean erases your small island country.”

I use the 20 year figure because it was 1989 that Global Climate Coalition was formed. Do you remember the Global Climate Coalition? They’re the ones whose own scientists told them in 1995 that climate change “cannot be denied”, yet they continued denying it until 2002.

The numbers aren’t so complicated, you might even understand them yourself if you finished high school, I can even show where the numbers come from:

Total CO2 currently in the atmosphere ~ 3,100 gigatonnes
Total 2008 CO2 emissions ~ 31 gigatonnes

Historic CO2 levels:
280 ppm before the Industrial Revolution
316 ppm in 1959
325 ppm in 1969
337 ppm in 1979
353 ppm in 1989
368 ppm in 1999
peaked over 390 ppm in May 2009

Models predict CO2 as high as 1360 ppm by 2100.

What value of CO2 do your experts say we should aim to stabilize at, how do we accomplish that and what effects might we face at that level? Remember that at 1000 ppm, people start finding the air stuffy.

My experts say 350 ppm and I believe them a lot more than I believe the American Petroleum Institute or Exxon Mobil.

Anyway, not expecting an answer anytime soon…

All my love,

stone1343

After Christie Blatchford got smacked-down again and again and again and again and again and again and again for being the propaganda mouthpiece for war criminal Peter MacKay, her friend Rosie DiManno seems to have had today’s column dictated by Jason Kenney. Bad timing for Rosie, because also today, Independent Jewish Voices issued a press release,

Jewish group slams Minister Kenny’s attack on Kairos
OTTAWA, Dec. 21 /CNW Telbec/ – Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) condemns Immigration Minister Kenny’s politicized move to defund social-justice church-group Kairos, which received government funding for 35 years. Kenny said this occurred because, in 2007, Kairos offered a grant to Sabeel, a Palestinian NGO that doesn’t mirror Conservative policy.

“This is the new McCarthyism. If you don’t tow the government line, you get your funding cut. From this week’s conference in Israel to the Canadian Parliamentary Committee to ‘Combat Anti-Semitism’, Kenny strives to stifle all criticism of Israel, falsely labelling it anti-Semitic,” says IJV spokesperson Sid Shniad.

Having worked with Sabeel, IJV was surprised by the accusation. “Sabeel doesn’t tolerate racism, especially, anti-Semitism,” Shniad said.

Explaining why the funding was cut, Kenny’s office referred to a report of NGO Monitor, a right-wing Israel-based activist group, which had erroneously stated that Sabeel supported sanctions against Israel.

NGO Monitor is headed by Gerald Steinberg, a professor at Bar Ilan, known as Israel’s most right wing university. Sabeel has made no statement on sanctions or divestment.

IJV is appalled.

It’s early yet, so only one smackdown of this one so far.