Anyways, I was curious to see who did this website since it seemed to be fairly sophisticated and I was surprised to find that the website is linked to a Filip Hammarstrom from Sweden. One can easily find this sort of information out using the free services like Domain Tools “WhoIs Search”.
A simple Google search of his name pops up one of Sweden’s largest production companies, Palladium, which has a Filip Hamarstrom is listed as a “Director & Editor” in the Contact page. This priduction company has done multiple videos for various different companies and organizations including the UN.
Now, could it be chance that the Filip who has registered the site has the same name of the Filip who works at Palladium? Sure, weirder things have happened. But with the professional quality of the videos at The Year 2048, one would think a production company, or at least someone familiar with these sorts of things, was involved. Plus, if you look at the address given from the WhoIs Search and compare it to the address of Palladium, you find that it is just a 15 minute drive.
Why is this all important? Well it just shows that foreign nationals are trying very hard to influence our election. I wasn’t able to find anything that directly associated these ads with the Obama campaign but if anyone else can find a connection, be sure to link to it in the comment section.
Alaska’s glaciers grew this year, after shrinking for most of the last 200 years. The reason? Global temperatures dropped over the past 18 months. The global mean annual temperature has been declining recently because the solar wind thrown out by the sun has retreated to its smallest extent in at least 50 years. This temperature downturn was not predicted by the global computer models, but had been predicted by the sunspot index since 2000.
The solar wind normally protects the earth from 90 percent of the high-energy cosmic rays that flash constantly through the universe. Henrik Svensmark at the Danish Space Research Institute has demonstrated that when more cosmic rays hit the earth, they create more of the low, wet clouds that deflect heat back into outer space. Thus the earth’s recent cooling.
Unusually large amounts of Alaskan snow last winter were followed by unusually chilly temperatures there this summer. “In general, the weather this summer was the worst I have seen in at least 20 years,” says Bruce Molnia of the U.S. Geological Survey, and author of The Glaciers of Alaska. “It’s been a long time on most glaciers where they’ve actually had positive mass balance (added thickness).”
Hmm…you see that? The temperature models didn’t predict this downturn in temperature but the sunspot had it right since 2000.
Seems like Obama doesn’t want to take a position on the bombing of an al Qaeda agent in Syria. Going off his previous statements of supporting taking out targets in Pakistan, it should seem like he would support this recent action. Of course, with a week before the election, we aren’t going to see him take a potentially controversial stand.
- The Weekly Standard has more on this here.
I stumbled upon this ad surprisingly on IMAO and was very shocked by what it is implying. First watch the ad and make sure you finish it:
Yea, pretty horrible right? I thought it was just one of those simple Democrat leaning ads at the beginning but was shocked to see it end with the message “Vote Obama ‘08.” Honestly, this ad implies that a vote for Republicans will mean a vote for a ruined future, 40 years down the road.
I wasn’t able to find anything about them or if they are affiliated with anyone in a cursory search. The cinematography is pretty good so I would suggest that someone dig a little bit deeper into this.
This past Thursday, October 23, 2008, Dr. James Hansen came to the University of South Carolina to speak on his favorite topic, Man Made Global Warming. This event was sponsored by USC’s School of the Environment and is part of a series of talks on the environment and climate.
As one might expect, the place was packed with Hansen fans and the questions after the initial speech were very friendly towards his position. I was tempted to ask a question but that would have involved me not getting a videotaped response which wouldn’t have been worth it..
The goal of this article is not to be a complete rebuttal to his speech but instead to point out some flaws I found in his argument. If you wish to watch the whole 45 minute long speech, it can be viewed here:
Dr. Hansen claims that that this drastic drop in temperature experienced around 50 million years ago was due to the drop in CO2 at the same time. However, there is another theory out there that would explain the drop in temperature. This theory, proposed by Nir Shaviv, takes into account the position of our planet in relation to the rest of the galaxy. Take a look:
“About 60 million years ago, the Sun with the Earth in company encountered that region, which was populated then as it is now by bright, short-lived stars. The Solar System came from the far side of the bright arm, as we see the Milky Way now. It emerged on the near side about 30 million years ago. There, the number of exploding stars was at a peak, and so was the intensity of cosmic rays generated by them.
“Shaviv adopted the Danish findings about the climatic effect of cosmic rays, and their capacity to chill the world by increasing the low cloud cover. In this interpretation, global temperatures fell between 60 and 30 million years ago and Antarctica acquired its ice sheet. As the Sagittarrius-Carina Arm receded, the cooling hesitated, and it would have reversed if the wanderers through the Galaxy had not run into an extra fragment of concentrated bright stars called the Orion Arm.
“Published in 2002, Shaviv’s analysis accounted not only for the most recent hothouse-to-icehouse transition but altogether for four major chilling events since animals first became conspicuous on the planet, a little over 500 million years ago.” (Svensmark, 136).
Much of the historical warming and cooling stated by Hansen in this section of his speech could be explained by this cosmic rays theory.
The problem that I have about this is that it leaves the viewer with the idea that there is less and less ice without stating the fact that even though more and more is melting in the summer, the past winter we are getting all of it come back. In fact, because of extremely cold temperatures last winter, the sea ice has expanded and gotten thicker in some areas.
Also, these measurements Hansen cites only go from 1979 to the present, a woefully short amount of time to declare that the sea ice is getting dangerously low in a historic perspective. Just look at historical accounts of early to mid 1900s captains navigating ice free northern waters.
Also, during his whole spiel on the arctic ice, he doesn’t really address Antarctica. The reason this is important is that Antarctica ice, as a whole, is growing and has grown roughly 5mm/year (Solomon, 41). In fact, during this period of warming, Antarctica is acting as a water sink that is actually contributing to lowering the sea level an estimated .08mm/year (Solomon, 41).
He didn’t even bother to acknowledge this fact or address this issue even though us “skeptics” often use this argument.
Alright, I did get to go see James Hansen speak last night but its taking forever for me to get all the video stuff worked out so it might not be until Sunday that I am able to post an article. Hopefully it won’t take that long but I want to make sure I am fairly thorough in my analysis. Anyways, he did say some stuff that was fairly outrageous along with completely glossing over a lot of the arguments deniers tend to use so I hope to point those out when I post my analysis of his presentation.
The Seattle-based company has come up with a system for generating algal blooms in wastewater facilities and then feeding the algae to other microbes. These other microorganisms in turn metabolically convert the algae into high-value industrial chemicals like propyl butyrate, said CEO Kelly Ogilvie, speaking at the Dow Jones Alternative Energy Innovations conference taking place in Redwood City, Calif.
Why? That chemical sells for $801 a gallon, a heck of a lot more than $4 a gallon algae-based biodiesel, he noted. An algae biofuel company might get $500 worth of oils out of directly harvesting and processing algae. The indirect method proposed by Blue Marble can yield $4,000 worth of chemicals from a ton of algae. Harvesting a ton of the green goo costs about $190, he said.
And there are environmental benefits as well. Wastewater treatment isn’t cheap or easy. Municipalities spend huge amounts of money dumping chlorine into wastewater to clean it out. Wild algae can take out nitrogen and other compounds from the water as well as the chemical-based processes without the environmental degradation and fossil fuel consumption involved in producing and spreading industrial chemicals in the first place. Plus, unlike chemically treated wastewater, the process yields a feedstock (algae) that can be converted into a valuable product. Other plant matter can be fed into it.
You can read about some other algae wastewater ideas here and here.
At least this is what a new poll by IBD/TIPP suggests. Instead, it found that the 18-24 age group is solidly in McCain’s corner. Gosh, and here I was hoping that my peers wouldn’t turn out on election day.
I find this fairly unbelievable that USA Today has an article in the paper today discussing how we are seeing some of the ‘worst storms on record’ in the United States but doesn’t blame in on Global Warming at all. In fact, they have a quote by Dr. Landsea saying that the evidence of global warming affecting our past hurricane seasons is ‘tiny.’ Instead, they blame the destructiveness of the past couple hurricane seasons on natural variations and the growing populations on the coast. Take a look:
“We’ve had quite an intense increase in hurricane activity,” said Kevin Trenberth, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. “We may be in this cycle for another 20 years.”
The increased populations in coastal communities and the loss of wetlands, which serve as a natural buffer against hurricanes, mean the USA is confronting one of the more dangerous and expensive hurricane periods ever, Trenberth said.
(…)
Some meteorologists say the increased storm activity is caused by a naturally occurring cycle of activity that hatches more storms in the Atlantic.
These are likely due to a natural climate fluctuation in the Atlantic,” said Chris Landsea, a scientist with the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Kerry Emanuel, a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied climate effect on hurricanes, says global warming and human-caused climate change is contributing. But Landsea has said evidence that global warming is affecting hurricanes “is pretty darn tiny.”
And I think it’s ‘pretty darn’ amazing that USA Today actually gave the last words about the global warming/hurricane connection to a skeptic.
