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MILWAUKEE -- The bitter cold and record snowfalls from two wicked winters are causing people to ask if the global climate is truly changing.

The climate is known to be variable and, in recent years, more scientific thought and research has been focused on the global temperature and how humanity might be influencing it.

However, a new study by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee could turn the climate change world upside down.

Scientists at the university used a math application known as synchronized chaos and applied it to climate data taken over the past 100 years...

Eventually, the systems begin to couple and the synchronous state is destroyed, leading to a climate shift.

"In climate, when this happens, the climate state changes. You go from a cooling regime to a warming regime or a warming regime to a cooling regime. This way we were able to explain all the fluctuations in the global temperature trend in the past century," Tsonis said. "The research team has found the warming trend of the past 30 years has stopped and in fact global temperatures have leveled off since 2001."

The most recent climate shift probably occurred at about the year 2000.

Now the question is how has warming slowed and how much influence does human activity have?

"But if we don't understand what is natural, I don't think we can say much about what the humans are doing. So our interest is to understand -- first the natural variability of climate -- and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural," Tsonis said.

Tsonis said he thinks the current trend of steady or even cooling earth temps may last a couple of decades or until the next climate shift occurs.

travelinman67 wrote:"Mr. Gore, you have calls holding on every line. Mr. Gore? Mr. Gore, are you in there? Mr. Gore? What should I tell these people Mr. Gore? Oh, dear...I wonder if Mr. Tman is hiring? "

UW-Milwaukee Study Could Realign Climate Change Theory
Scientists Claim Earth Is Undergoing Natural Climate Shift

POSTED: 3:18 pm CDT March 15, 2009

http://www.wisn.com/weather/18935841/detail.html

MILWAUKEE -- The bitter cold and record snowfalls from two wicked winters are causing people to ask if the global climate is truly changing.

The climate is known to be variable and, in recent years, more scientific thought and research has been focused on the global temperature and how humanity might be influencing it.

However, a new study by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee could turn the climate change world upside down.

Scientists at the university used a math application known as synchronized chaos and applied it to climate data taken over the past 100 years...

Eventually, the systems begin to couple and the synchronous state is destroyed, leading to a climate shift.

"In climate, when this happens, the climate state changes. You go from a cooling regime to a warming regime or a warming regime to a cooling regime. This way we were able to explain all the fluctuations in the global temperature trend in the past century," Tsonis said. "The research team has found the warming trend of the past 30 years has stopped and in fact global temperatures have leveled off since 2001."

The most recent climate shift probably occurred at about the year 2000.

Now the question is how has warming slowed and how much influence does human activity have?

"But if we don't understand what is natural, I don't think we can say much about what the humans are doing. So our interest is to understand -- first the natural variability of climate -- and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural," Tsonis said.

Tsonis said he thinks the current trend of steady or even cooling earth temps may last a couple of decades or until the next climate shift occurs.

...another day, and the scam becomes a bit more apparent...

Appaholic wrote: This will just speed up the installation of the carbon-credit kiosks.....

Three global warming researchers stranded in the North Pole by cold weather were holding out hope Wednesday as a fourth plane set off in an attempt deliver them supplies.

The flight took off during a break in bad weather after “brutal” conditions halted three previous attempts to reach the British explorers who said they were nearly out of food, the Agence France-Presse reported.

“We’re hungry, the cold is relentless, our sleeping bags are full of ice,” expedition leader Pen Hadow said in e-mailed statement. “Waiting is almost the worst part of an expedition as we’re in the lap of the weather gods.”

Hadow, Martin Hartley and Ann Daniels began an 85-day hike to the North Pole on February 28 to measure sea ice thickness, the AFP reported.

With bad weather hampering supply flights, the team is was down to half-rations, battling desperate sub-zero temperatures and unable to proceed, the AFP reported.

"It'll be a relief to get our new supplies," Hadow said in a statement Wednesday. "Until (the plane) does arrive, we need to conserve energy and can't really move on."

The expedition now expects to arrive at the North Pole in late May.

Spoiler: show

...and a few laughs at the psychological expense of some GW activists...http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/ ... 17,00.html

Insurance companies must start disclosing how climate change is likely to affect their businesses, state insurance regulators decided Tuesday.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners voted to require insurers to submit annual "climate-risk" reports, an unusually aggressive stance on the environmental issue from industry regulators.

The officials acted after concluding that climate change threatens insurers in two ways. It increases the risk of extreme weather events such as floods and wildfires, which would boost claims. And it is prompting governments to cap industrial carbon emissions that contribute to global warming -- a move threatens the profits of companies such as coal-fired utilities in which insurers commonly invest.

Climate change "will have a huge impact on the insurance industry," particularly on property and casualty insurers, said Joel Ario, Pennsylvania's insurance commissioner and the head of the association's global-warming task force.

The commissioners' decision shows how the politics of climate change are shifting. In the past, a handful of insurers have expressed concern that the phenomenon threatens their portfolios. Most of those companies have been based in Europe, which already has imposed carbon-emission limits. But momentum is moving in the U.S. toward some sort of emission constraint, as the Obama administration and Democratic lawmakers have said they intend to impose such a cap.

The insurance commissioners' decision came only after delicate negotiations over how tough to make the environmental requirements. Environmental activists wanted insurers to have to disclose specific information about how their businesses might be threatened by climate change, said Andrew Logan, director of the insurance program at Ceres, a Boston-based environmental group involved in the talks. The activists believe such disclosures will help them press their case in Washington for a tough federal cap on carbon emissions.

Many insurers resisted. In the end, the regulators stipulated that insurers need not provide information that is "quantitative," that is "forward-looking," or that insurers "in good faith believe is commercially sensitive or proprietary."

What information insurers choose to disclose will become public next year. Insurance companies with annual premiums totaling more than $500 million must submit their first annual climate-risk disclosure reports by May 1, 2010.

Some carriers aren't happy with the regulators' decision. David Kodama, director of policy analysis for the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, which represents more than 1,000 insurance companies, said his group is concerned that insurers that provide climate-risk information could face lawsuits alleging that their information isn't detailed enough.

travelinman67 wrote:Explorers On Global Warming Expedition Stranded in North Pole by Cold Weather

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,509735,00.html

Three global warming researchers stranded in the North Pole by cold weather were holding out hope Wednesday as a fourth plane set off in an attempt deliver them supplies.

The flight took off during a break in bad weather after “brutal” conditions halted three previous attempts to reach the British explorers who said they were nearly out of food, the Agence France-Presse reported.

“We’re hungry, the cold is relentless, our sleeping bags are full of ice,” expedition leader Pen Hadow said in e-mailed statement. “Waiting is almost the worst part of an expedition as we’re in the lap of the weather gods.”

Hadow, Martin Hartley and Ann Daniels began an 85-day hike to the North Pole on February 28 to measure sea ice thickness, the AFP reported.

With bad weather hampering supply flights, the team is was down to half-rations, battling desperate sub-zero temperatures and unable to proceed, the AFP reported.

"It'll be a relief to get our new supplies," Hadow said in a statement Wednesday. "Until (the plane) does arrive, we need to conserve energy and can't really move on."

The expedition now expects to arrive at the North Pole in late May.

...just for laughs...

Spoiler: show

...and a few laughs at the psychological expense of some GW activists...http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/ ... 17,00.html

Shell will no longer invest in renewable technologies such as wind, solar and hydro power because they are not economic, the Anglo-Dutch oil company said today. It plans to invest more in biofuels which environmental groups blame for driving up food prices and deforestation.

Executives at its annual strategy presentation said Shell, already the world's largest buyer and blender of crop-based biofuels, would also invest an unspecified amount in developing a new generat­ion of biofuels which do not use food-based crops and are less harmful to the environment.

The company said it would concentrate on developing other cleaner ways of using fossil fuels, such as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. It hoped to use CCS to reduce emissions from Shell's controversial and energy-intensive oil sands projects in northern Canada.

The company said that many alternative technologies did not offer attractive investment opportunities. Linda Cook, Shell's executive director of gas and power, said: "If there aren't investment opportunities which compete with other projects we won't put money into it. We are businessmen and women. If there were renewables [which made money] we would put money into it."

Shell said biofuels fitted its core business of providing fuels, logistics, trading and branding. Cook added: "It's now looking like bio­fuels is one which is closest to what we do in Shell. Wind and solar are interesting [but] we may continue to struggle with other investment opportunities in the portfolio even with big subsidies in many markets. We do not expect material investment [in wind and solar] going forward."

The company also confirmed that it would increase its dividend payments this year by about 5% to $10bn.

Friends of the Earth (FoE) criticised Shell for freezing investment in renewables such as wind in favour of biofuels. "Shell is backing the wrong horse when it comes to renewable energy – biofuels often lead to more emissions than the petrol and diesel they replace," the campaign group said.

Shell has about 550 megawatts of wind farm capacity around the world, enough to power a city the size of Sheffield when the wind blows. Last year, it pulled out of the 1,000MW London Array project, the joint venture to build what would be the world's largest offshore wind farm, in the Thames Estuary. Former project partner E.ON has yet to decide to continue with the £3bn investment needed.

Outgoing chief executive Jeroen van der Veer admitted that the company had suffered some "technology baths" in the past when it backed unprofitable technologies. "We don't do it [renewables] all."

The company has predicted that by 2025, 80% of energy will come from fossil fuels and 20% from alternative energy sources. Yet it is spending just over 1% of its budget on alternative technologies. Over the past five years, only $1.7bn of the $150bn it has invested has gone towards alternative energies.

dbackjon wrote:Biofuels do not work without subsidies.

And we ceased being a capitalist country on January 20th.

travelinman67 wrote:

dbackjon wrote:Biofuels do not work without subsidies.

And we ceased being a capitalist country on January 20th.

Accuracy...

travelinman67 wrote:

dbackjon wrote:Biofuels do not work without subsidies.

And we ceased being a capitalist country on January 20th, 2001.

Accuracy...

As the clock ticks down towards December's historic UN Copenhagen conference on climate change, the frenzied efforts of the warmists to panic us over all that vanishing Arctic and Antarctic ice are degenerating into farce.

That great authority Ban Ki-moon, the UN's Secretary-General, solemnly tells us that the polar ice caps are "melting far faster than was expected just two years ago". Yet the latest satellite information from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (passed on by the Watts Up With That blog) shows that, after the third slowest melt of April Arctic ice in 30 years, the world's polar sea ice is in fact slightly above its average extent for early May since satellite records began in 1979...

...Meanwhile, up in the Arctic, after yet another delay for bad weather, the hapless Catlin trio, sponsored by an insurance firm which hopes to make money out of alarm over global warming, continue their painful progress towards the distant North Pole, measuring the ice with an old tape measure and assuring Prince Charles by satellite telephone that it is "thinner than expected".

When the trio heard a passing aircraft, which they hoped was bringing much-needed supplies, they little realised it was a DC-3 carrying an international team of scientists, using the latest electro-magnetic induction equipment to discover rather more efficiently that the ice was in fact "twice as thick" as they had expected.

A last symbolic drama was the fate of another three-man expedition aiming to publicise the effects of climate change. Followed by schools across Britain, they were aiming to reach Greenland in a "carbon-free" boat powered only by wind and the sun. Last week, after running into appalling weather, they were rescued by – it had to be – a US oil tanker. I wonder whether the schoolchildren were told.

travelinman67 wrote:Shell dumps wind, solar and hydro power in favour of biofuel
Tim Webb
guardian.co.uk,
Tuesday 17 March 2009

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009 ... ell-energy

Shell will no longer invest in renewable technologies such as wind, solar and hydro power because they are not economic, the Anglo-Dutch oil company said today. It plans to invest more in biofuels which environmental groups blame for driving up food prices and deforestation.

Executives at its annual strategy presentation said Shell, already the world's largest buyer and blender of crop-based biofuels, would also invest an unspecified amount in developing a new generat­ion of biofuels which do not use food-based crops and are less harmful to the environment.

The company said it would concentrate on developing other cleaner ways of using fossil fuels, such as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. It hoped to use CCS to reduce emissions from Shell's controversial and energy-intensive oil sands projects in northern Canada.

The company said that many alternative technologies did not offer attractive investment opportunities. Linda Cook, Shell's executive director of gas and power, said: "If there aren't investment opportunities which compete with other projects we won't put money into it. We are businessmen and women. If there were renewables [which made money] we would put money into it."

Shell said biofuels fitted its core business of providing fuels, logistics, trading and branding. Cook added: "It's now looking like bio­fuels is one which is closest to what we do in Shell. Wind and solar are interesting [but] we may continue to struggle with other investment opportunities in the portfolio even with big subsidies in many markets. We do not expect material investment [in wind and solar] going forward."

The company also confirmed that it would increase its dividend payments this year by about 5% to $10bn.

Friends of the Earth (FoE) criticised Shell for freezing investment in renewables such as wind in favour of biofuels. "Shell is backing the wrong horse when it comes to renewable energy – biofuels often lead to more emissions than the petrol and diesel they replace," the campaign group said.

Shell has about 550 megawatts of wind farm capacity around the world, enough to power a city the size of Sheffield when the wind blows. Last year, it pulled out of the 1,000MW London Array project, the joint venture to build what would be the world's largest offshore wind farm, in the Thames Estuary. Former project partner E.ON has yet to decide to continue with the £3bn investment needed.

Outgoing chief executive Jeroen van der Veer admitted that the company had suffered some "technology baths" in the past when it backed unprofitable technologies. "We don't do it [renewables] all."

The company has predicted that by 2025, 80% of energy will come from fossil fuels and 20% from alternative energy sources. Yet it is spending just over 1% of its budget on alternative technologies. Over the past five years, only $1.7bn of the $150bn it has invested has gone towards alternative energies.

Huh?

Renewables are not profitable?

Well...then...

...who's going to invest in them?






...maybe, if the government "levels the playing field" by taxing the beejeezus out of bio and fossil fuels...

...but then...that's punitive government intervention to shut down an industry...

...which can't happen in a capitalist democracy...but could in a socialist country...

Huh...??

D1B wrote: don't know which sticht is more tiresome, your energy/GW rants or my fabricated psychosis.

AZGrizFan wrote:

D1B wrote: don't know which sticht is more tiresome, your energy/GW rants or my fabricated psychosis.

You want should I answer that for you?

D1B wrote:

AZGrizFan wrote:
You want should I answer that for you?

Answer it when more than 1 person notices one of your threads.

AZGrizFan wrote:

D1B wrote:
Answer it when more than 1 person notices one of your threads.

At least my posts are short enough to actually read, Ted.

And I don't start threads, I FINISH them.

D1B wrote:

AZGrizFan wrote:
At least my posts are short enough to actually read, Ted.

And I don't start threads, I FINISH them.

Yeah, like this thread, you finish it flat on your ass... Z, aint it time for you to retire? Permanently from posting on message boards? You used to be funny and engaging. Ever since McCain lost, you've been, well, boring and predictable....

AZGrizFan wrote:

D1B wrote:

Yeah, like this thread, you finish it flat on your ass... Z, aint it time for you to retire? Permanently from posting on message boards? You used to be funny and engaging. Ever since McCain lost, you've been, well, boring and predictable....

All I did was offer to answer your question, Ted. You're the one that went off the fucking deep end (again). Go finish your manifesto.

D1B wrote:

AZGrizFan wrote:

All I did was offer to answer your question, Ted. You're the one that went off the fucking deep end (again). Go finish your manifesto.

Uh, you said "go finish your manifesto" on the other thread, like 25 seconds ago.

Col Hogan wrote:I'm not a scientist...and I don't play one on television...

But everything I've read indicates to me that while man may be having some impact...it's simply some impact on a natural cycle...our carbon emmissions may have sped up the warming trend...that just gets us to the next cooling trend earlier than nature would have with no interference...

AZGrizFan wrote:

D1B wrote:
Uh, you said "go finish your manifesto" on the other thread, like 25 seconds ago.

You're delusional, Ted. I said no such thing. Go finish your manifesto.