Utopia, you are standing in it!

There continues to be a lack of clarity as to the distinction between changes in the heat content of the climate system  (global warming and cooling), and climate change,  in the media and by the presidential candidates.  There are erroneous views on the climate issue being presented.

As an example see the Washington Post article on August 19 2011 by Joel Achenbach and Juliet Eilperin titled

Climate-change science makes for hot politics

The article includes the text [highlight added]

“Four years ago in New Hampshire, campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, John McCain said to voters, “I do agree with the majority of scientific opinion, that climate change is taking place and it’s a result of human activity, which generates greenhouse gases.” He made global warming a key element of every New Hampshire stump speech.

This week in New Hampshire, the governor of Texas and newest presidential contender, Rick Perry

source of image

UPDATE JUNE 17 2012

My son had an insightful discussion on this subject in his post

The Narrow Defintion of Climate Change

where he refers to two of his papers

The terminology in the field of climate and environmental science is filled with jargon words and the misuse of definitions. I have posted on this issue before with respect to the terms “global warming” and “climate change” in my posts

The Media (and Presidential Candidates) Remain In Error On The Distinction Between Global Warming And Climate Change

and

Recommended Definitions of “Global Warming” And “Climate Change”

To properly define these two terms…

The Commonwealth Government has released a second version of its draft legislation dealing with religious discrimination issues, for further comment before it is formally introduced into the Federal Parliament in the New Year. There are a number of important changes from the previous drafts which in my view make it a much better package of amendments. But there are areas for improvement.

Back in the late 1980s and 1990s there was a fashion for popular science books, and I read as many as I could, becoming better informed about the three major subjects which dominated the lists – cosmology, paleontology with an emphasis on human origins, and environmental biology.

Among them were a number of books by E.O. Wilson, particularly the brilliant Diversity of Life (1992), which gives an unparalleled sense of the wonder and diversity of the natural world, and Richard Leakey’s book, The Sixth Extinction (1995). This latter is an often quite technical account of discoveries and debates in paleontology and environmental biology which, taken together, suggest that the rate at which humanity is killing off species of animals, plants, fish and other fauna amounts to a holocaust, a global extermination, which ranks with the other Big Five mass extinction events that have punctuated the 500-million year story of life…

January 16, 1547 – Grand Duke Ivan IV of Muscovy becomes the first Czar of Russia, replacing the 264-year-old Grand Duchy of Moscow with the Czardom of Russia.

Ivan IV Vasilyevich (August 25, 1530 – March 28, 1584), commonly known as Ivan the Terrible, or more accurately, “Ivan the Formidable” or “Ivan the Fearsome”, was the Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533 to 1547 and the first Czar of Russia from 1547 to 1584.

Ivan IV was the son of Vasili III Ivanovich Grand Prince of Moscow (1479 – 1533) and and his second wife, Elena Glinskaya, daughter of Prince Vasili Lvovich Glinsky from Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Serb Princess Ana Jakšić, member of the Jakšić family.

Ivan IV, Czar of all the Russia’s.

When Ivan was three years old, his father died from an abscess and inflammation on his leg that developed into blood poisoning. Ivan was proclaimed the Grand…

Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. That is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn.
(River out of Eden, page 112)

Three things become clear early in this book:

1. Dawkins is very argumentative He can barely state a fact or idea without immediately imagining a scientific illiterate misunderstanding it, or a creationist arguing against it, or the tradition of thinkers who’ve adopted a contrary position, and then – whooosh! – he’s off on one of his long-winded digressions devising metaphors and analogies and thought experiments (‘imagine 20 million typists sitting in a row…’) devoted to demolishing these opponents and their silly beliefs.

The neutral reader sits back, puzzled as to why Dawkins feels such a continual necessity to find enemies and argue against them, constantly and endlessly, instead of just stating the facts about the natural world in a lucid, calm way and letting them speak…

Environmentalist judge gives free pass to climate activists.  Where will this lead?

CGTN reports approvingly Climate activists win landmark case over Federer demo at Credit Suisse.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Swiss climate protesters have won a landmark legal battle against investment bank Credit Suisse, which could transform the way that climate activism is prosecuted in Switzerland in future.

A judge ruled on Monday that the danger posed by climate change means activists from the climate group Breakfree were not guilty of trespassing when they occupied a branch of the Swiss investment bank two years ago to demonstrate against the financiers’ funding of fossil fuel projects.

In November 2019, a group of young people wearing tennis kits and wigs staged a tennis-themed sit-in at a Credit Suisse branch in Lausanne. Their goal was to convince Swiss tennis player Roger Federer to end his sponsorship deal with the…

Company hails start of the ‘electric aviation age’ after 15-minute test flight in Vancouver

The world’s first electric commercial during its maiden flight in Richmond, British Columbia Photograph: Jonathan Hayward/AP

The world’s first fully electric commercial aircraft has taken its inaugural test flight, taking off from the Canadian city of Vancouver and flying for 15 minutes.

“This proves that commercial aviation in all-electric form can work,” said Roei Ganzarski, chief executive of Australian engineering firm magniX.

The company designed the plane’s motor and worked in partnership with Harbour Air, which ferries half a million passengers a year between Vancouver, Whistler ski resort and nearby islands and coastal communities.

Ganzarski said the technology would mean significant cost savings for airlines and zero emissions. “This signifies the start of the electric aviation age,” he said.

Civil aviation is one of the fastest-growing sources of carbon emissions as people increasingly take to the…

I’ve written about some of Elizabeth Warren’s statist proposals, but watching last night’s Democratic debate convinced me that I need to pay more attention to Bernie Sanders’ agenda.

When he ran for president last time, I warned that his platform of $18 trillion of new spending over 10 years would be “very expensive to your wallet.”

This time, “Crazy Bernie” has decided that his 2016 agenda was just a down payment. He now wants nearly $100 trillion of new spending!

Even CNN acknowledges that his platform has a staggering price tag.

…the new spending programs Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed in his presidential campaign would at least double federal spending over the next decade… The Vermont independent’s agenda represents an expansion of government’s cost and size unprecedented since World War II… Sanders’ plan, though all of its costs cannot be precisely quantified, would increase government spending as a…

This is part 3 in the series on the prediction that glaciers in Glacier National Park will be gone by 2020. You might want to see to part 1 and part2 if you haven’t already

During my research on the “All gone by the year 2020” prediction, I also encountered the Wikipedia page about the Glacier National Park (U.S.). My attention was immediately drawn to the sequence of the predicted estimates when glaciers would be gone according to a Wikipedia contributor (my emphasis):

Based on the warming trend of the early 2000s, scientists had estimated that the park’s remaining glaciers would melt by 2020;[52] however, a later estimate stated that the glaciers may be gone by 2030.[5]

As it is stated, it is seems that the “glaciers would melt by 2020” prediction came first and was followed by the later “gone by 2030” prediction…

So what’s new? Nothing really, but these issues show few if any signs of being resolved in the near future. Governments intending to pressure or force people to buy EVs are going to be unpopular with millions of car users, it would seem. Woolly climate propaganda isn’t impressing many buyers.

Ipsos, the global research and insights organization, says it has uncovered the thoughts of consumers regarding BEVs, Green Car Congress reports.

These new findings are released in the second module of the Ipsos Global Mobility Navigator Syndicated Study, in which 20,000 consumers worldwide shared their opinions on alternative engines and what it would take to get them to consider one.