Perpetual Innovation

Category: Skeptics

  • Those Sneaky Climate Alarmists

    A video came cycling around to me that provided gleeful evidence that the Climate Alarmists use sneaky methods to distort the information and make everyone shake in their boots because the world will end in less than 12 years. This guy, Tony Heller (aka Steven Goddard), even went so far as to create a tool to find the best point in any trend graph for best (mis)representing data.
    As with many such reports, I would always like to find myself wrong, and to discover that I’ve become a Climate Alarmist for nothing. All that lost sleep, spending time developing business ideas and models that are both sustainable, politically viable, and profitable.
    Sadly, Heller is simply a fraud. He used his own tool to make fun of activists, and to distract people from facts. Here is a great video by Mallan Baker that takes on a couple of Heller’s debunk graphs to debunks the junk.
    Why is Heller talking Continental US and pointing at specific US cities when we are talking GLOBAL warming. The US had some wicked hot years during the Dust Bowl, for example.

    Wikipedia can be the best overview source for highly active and rapidly updated pages like these: Global Warming, Climate Change, Sustainability in general, and Climate Change Denial.
    By now you know that everyone knows that there’s global warming. Thermometers tend not to lie.
    But I keep finding people who have been convinced that warming is not very much, or that it is a natural cycle to earth, or that humans are only responsible for a fraction of the warming we are experiencing.
    Even the oil companies now acknowledge that there’s global warming, but their business model is not conducive to any of the logical approaches to deal with the issue aggressively. In fact, according to internal documents, the oil companies have know for half a century that global warming was a byproduct of their product and hidden this from the public in order to protect their business-as-usual profits.

    With current technology, we can easily measure the energy that comes from the sun, and the amount that is reflected back into space. All evidence shows global warming is happening, and at an accelerating pace. You can use lots of good data sources related to land, ocean, air, ice coverage, etc. Statistically, solar flares, volcanoes, El Nino and other major factors can be isolated; warming can easily be primarily attributed to human factors.

    We don’t have time to debunk the deniers, people and lobbyists who are paid by deep fossil interests. We need to go about becoming more sustainable, like as if our collective lives depend on it. Business-as-usual (oil, gas, coal) is unsustainable. Being unsustainable is something that must change, sooner or later. Being unsustainable has a way of becoming more and more expensive, and coming to an ungraceful end.

    Fortunately, we will actually save money (i.e., more profits) from doing smart and sustainable things. Solar and Wind are now far cheaper than fossil fuels in most locations (even when combined with battery). Renewable energy is especially cheaper when considering all the externality costs of fossil fuels (pollution, health, national security).

    Energy efficiency offers a perpetuity of savings. The greenest gallon of gas is the one never pumped, refined, shipped and burned. The greenest electricity is the negawatt. We also like Teleworking, the greenest commute is zero-distance which consumes no time.

    Let’s all start with those things that can be done immediately (within weeks or a few months) and those that offer a perpetuity of savings. We need to start putting the magic of compounding to our advantage, not toward more non-sustainable practices.

    < * Notes & References * >
    Wikipedia is a great source on Climate Change. Start with the Global Warming Book.
    An excellent source for fact/fiction/myth is: SkepticalScience.com (I’ve never seen anything there that was not supported with sources and provable with current data.)

    The log entry for Baker video:
    A few days ago, noted Climate Change commentator Tony Heller released a
    new video with some killer facts that completely exposes the conspiracy
    over climate change.

    Or does it?

    Let’s discuss.

    The Mallen Baker Show is aimed at all people who see themselves as
    change makers, with commentary on issues and change movements with a
    particular focus on climate change and environment, social issues, free
    speech and corporate social responsibility.
    References in this video:
    Tony Heller’s original video
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8455K…
    The National Climate Assessment Report
    https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/down…
    Extreme heat and cold graphs
    https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicator…
    Wildfires analysis
    https://andthentheresphysics.wordpres…
    Interview with Dr Ottmar Endenhofer, IPCC (in German)
    https://www.nzz.ch/klimapolitik_verte…

    Integrated sea ice graph
    https://web.archive.org/web/201905241…
    Piecing together the arctic sea ice history
    https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-pos…

  • Invest Yourself – Roaches, Never Just One

    Free Investment Newsletter | Invest Yourself:

    I really like what they (Robert B. Rinear) say on the currency. That all seems very very
    true.  The currencies in the world are
    all crap. The best may be Japan and they can’t keep the Yen low enough to be a     competitive exporter so it is wreaking havoc on their economy…
    The Yankee Dollar is a piece of crap. But we are less crappy then the
    Yuan or the Euro.  We are the best house
    in a slum-blighted neighborhood. 
    You can only have all the currencies in the world artificially low for
    so long. Especially if all the effects are compounding, year over year. I
    really do think that real assets, like land and gold, will slingshot into the
    stratosphere sometime rather soon, say 1 to 3 years.
    But the same thing that they complain about, the talking heads at CNN,
    they did themselves. Go look at any of the databases, since recorded history,
    on any of the measures you chose, and you will see that the global warming is
    very real, and accelerating. It also     coincides well with populations explosion and industrialization.  And it is a compounding effect. Panicking certainly doesn’t make
    sense, but ignoring facts and data supporting global warming means the “hoax”
    is on you.
    Give a look at: https://www.skepticalscience.com/
    (Real science and no crap, discussing the real facts and actual data about
    Climate Change & Global Warming. It is very real by every measure that is
    measurable.)
    Want to know about Sustainability, look at my book (www.TinyURL.com/SustainYBook/) created
    from live Wikipedia links on Sustainability. The Intro is by Elmer Hall and created the
    dynamic links to carefully selected Wikipedia articles (pages). The pages in
    this book represent the best, most current and most accurate single source of
    information related to sustainability and climate change in the world.

    Sustainability. The world currencies are not!… 
    Ever growing greenhouse gas emissions,  sustainable we are not.

    ‘via Blog this’

  • Skeptical Science on a Skeptical Scientist: Patrick Moore on climate change

    Is there really a debate as to whether humans are contributing to Global Warming?

    This will take you some time, so if you are looking for a couple quick sound-bites, skip this entire post, and absolutely, skip the videos.

    Dr. Patrick Moore was recently pointed out to me as a qualified scientist and a active skeptic of Global Warming. Read about Moore on Wikipedia. He was an active founder of Greenpeace, but left the greenie organization when they become too radical. He thinks that Greenpeace has moved toward more social and anti-capitalistic agendas, not so much the protection of the environment that Greenpeace was founded on.

    Now he is very skeptical of many things, especially the man-made contribution to global warming.

    Moore has become a PR guy for some of the most criticized companies and industries by environmental groups. Working, and consulting for ‘the enemy’ is not at all a bad thing. Being in the economic engine side of energy production, metals, etc., can give people detailed insight into complete solutions to major issues. But this does not seem to be how Moore functions; his interviews and books seem to actually be an extension of his job as a PR guy. See the criticism at the end of his Wikipedia page.

    (Wiki note: The Wikipedia entry seem mature, with about 700 edits, 21 over the last 30 days and the most recent edit today. No editorial complaints. Note that there are no articles outside links to this page, so Moore does not seem to be the indisputable expert he might lead us to believe.)

    There are many interviews of Moore that seem rational and reasonable enough on the surface: Hannity Feb 2014, and Fox Business Network with Stuart Varney pushing his book, Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout. But, don’t watch these videos unless you are willing to go look that the scientific breakdown of what Moore has to say. Point by point, issue by issue.

    This is a blog by John Mason (2012, Aug 25).
    Unpicking a Gish-Gallop: former Greenpeace figure Patrick Moore on climate change:

    Mason takes on the details of an interview in which Moore lavishes on facts, figures, assumptions and conclusions. And Mason breaks it down point-by-point with the best facts that exist today. Mason gives some of the best, and most factual, address of the issues associated with “Global Warming” and those who would say their “ain’t no such thing”. And he did it all without “sensationalist scare tactics”.

    When you are done, ask yourself: Who was the most shrill and panic? Who presented the facts with the most facts? Who’s probabilities are most probable, give the facts?

    This SustainZine blog does not devote much time to the debate over “Global Warming”. Life’s too short. There is global warming. Moore and Mason agree on this. Humans contribute to global warming. Moore says only a little; Mason (and the IPCC scientists) say humans contribute a lot to global warming. One of the last skeptical climate scientist Richard Muller, said that there was global warming and that humans are a major cause. Blogs here. Muller’s research was funded by the Koch brothers.

    This blog, however, focuses on Sustainability. Sustainability is good. Activities and business models that are non-sustainable are broken models. (Hah, you thought I was going to say “Bad”.). A steady move toward 100% sustainability is not only a good plan, it is a sane plan. (Hah, you thought I was going to use the words “insane not to do so…”.)

    So let’s get past this foolish debate and have real people and real companies start making real progress toward sustainability. If businesses and communities and individuals take long enough to get started on serious efforts to become sustainable, then governments will (start to) take charge.

    What probably scares people more than Global Warming itself, actually, is that Governments far and wide will jump into the mix to “fix” things.

    We especially like efforts that will save money, save time, save resources and reduce our impact on the environment. Usually, we “don’t need no government” for that. (Actually that, not entirely true, but subject of another story.)

    Responsible vs. Irresponsible.
    You choose?

    ‘via Blog this’