U.S. Climate has already changed

[jnpy!$4g3cwk]

The effects of human-induced climate change are being felt in every corner of the United States, scientists reported Tuesday, with water growing scarcer in dry regions, torrential rains increasing in wet regions, heat waves becoming more common and more severe, wildfires growing worse, and forests dying under assault from heat-loving insects.

Such sweeping changes have been caused by an average warming of less than 2 degrees Fahrenheit over most land areas of the country in the past century, the scientists found. If greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane continue to escalate at a rapid pace, they said, the warming could conceivably exceed 10 degrees by the end of this century.

“Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present,” the scientists declared in a major new report assessing the situation in the United States.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/science/earth/climate-change-report.html?hpw&rref=us

Of course, science says one thing, but, special interests say something else. I suppose this is all part of the President's "War on Coal". (There isn't, but, I wish there was such a war.)

The American coal industry is accusing the Obama administration of using the Environmental Protection Agency to end the use of coal despite the president's claim of having an "all of the above" energy policy.

Earlier this year, the EPA issued its Mercury Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which the agency said will eliminate 90 percent of mercury and acid gas released into the air by coal-fired power plants.

"I would say this administration is certainly unfriendly towards coal," Wyo. Governor Matt Mead said. "And in my view it is a war on coal."

Mead proudly pointed out that Wyoming is currently the nation's largest coal producing state. "We export more coal than any other state by far...about 400 million tons per year. Wyoming coal produces a lot of electricity in this country," he said.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/05/01/wyoming-gov-accuses-administration-war-on-coal/

 

[Huntn]

Ultimately as a species our fate will be decided by our actions and if our choices are bad, neither "spin" nor our deity will save us. Savings is for the ones smart enough to learn and make good choices, not fool ourselves. And even that does not guarantee our survival from the asteroid with our name on it.

 

[edk99]

Here we go again.

We need to build more bird killing fields.

The Obama administration has opened up a new front in its war on America’s eagles. For years, the president has relied on wind turbines to orchestrate his eco-genocide. Biologists estimate that wind farms kill as many as 328,000 birds each year by chopping them out of the sky. The administration’s successful weaponization of solar farms will only accelerate the death rate.

Studies indicate that the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in California has proved to be an especially efficient apparatus for eagle extermination. The facility, which was financed in part by a $1.6 billion taxpayer-backed loan from the Department of Energy, has been incinerating innocent birds with heat lasers created by its massive array of 350,000 garage door-sized mirrors.
http://freebeacon.com/blog/the-obama-bird-genocide-is-out-of-control/

 

[lannister80]

Here we go again.

Yup. We just have to keep pounding FACTS into your head until you accept them.

 

[rdowns]

Here we go again.

We need to build more bird killing fields.

war on America’s eagles; his eco-genocide; successful weaponization of solar farms.

Seriously.

 

[Huntn]

Here we go again.

Did your head come out of the sand to make this statement or am I mistaken?

We need to build more bird killing fields.

I'm always wonder how a conservative mouth piece such as the "Washington Free Beacon" would handle this story if it was the Romney Administration? Usually it's not the conservatives who are crying about dead animals, just how the opportunity was lost to make money off of them.

Aside from that I've never understood how birds can fly into a wind generator, because they don't rotate that fast and the blades are visible.

Killing eagles? Having trouble buying that. Regarding the mirrors, I didn't know that kind of a project is used for electrical generation. I thought primarily solar panels are used to absorb sunlight, not reflect it. And if it's being reflected it would be to something like a single point collector like a dish setup would it not?

 

[lannister80]

Killing eagles? Having trouble buying that. Regarding the mirrors, I didn't know that kind of a project is used for electrical generation. I thought primarily solar panels are used to absorb sunlight, not reflect it. And if it's being reflected it would be to something like a single point collector like a dish setup would it not?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility

Yes, the reflecting mirrors are all flat, so they simply reflect sunlight up onto the receiver tower, "unconcentrated". However, all those sunlight beams from the mirrors start to overlap/converge as they approach the tower, so the closer you get to the tower in the beam path, the more beams you're illuminated by. It could easily kill eagles or anything else.

But who cares? (a) This is a tiny patch of desert, and (b) what, coal-fired power plants don't kill birds by the millions every year?

 

[chown33]

Here we go again.

We need to build more bird killing fields.

What percentage of the total annual bird population is 328,000? If you don't know, then how would anyone know if that number is significant or not?

Your sources show no actual eagle deaths. Not even the original Bloomberg article the others cite as the original source.

At first I thought FreeBeacon.com was satire, after seeing the ridiculous photoshopped picture. Then I realized I was experiencing Poe's Law.

 

[Sydde]

Aside from that I've never understood how birds can fly into a wind generator, because they don't rotate that fast and the blades are visible.

It appears that wind power does kill birds – at an average rate of maybe one bird per tower per year.

 

[edk99]

So is all this global warming/climate change talk based on bad science and bending of the numbers to fit a political agenda? Do scientist bend the numbers to look good for political grants? Is John Coleman full of it?

Climate change issue aside I do think we should continue to work towards the use of more environmentally friendly energy resources but I don't think weather patterns we are experiencing now has anything to do with the climate change hype.

’600 page litany of doom’: Weather Channel Co-Founder John Coleman slams Federal climate report: A ‘total distortion of the data and agenda driven, destructive episode of bad science gone berserk’

Coleman: 'When the temperature data could no longer be bent to support global warming, they switched to climate change and now blame every weather and climate event on CO2 despite the hard, cold fact that the “radiative forcing” theory they built their claims on has totally failed to verify.'
'The current bad science is all based on a theory that the increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the exhaust of the burning of fossil fuels leads to a dramatic increase in “the greenhouse effect” causing temperatures to skyrocket uncontrollably. This theory has failed to verify and is obviously dead wrong. But the politically funded and agenda driven scientists who have built their careers on this theory and live well on the 2.6 billion dollars of year of Federal grants for global warming/climate change research cling to this theory and bend the data spread to support the glorified claims in their reports and papers.'

http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/05/07/600-page-litany-of-doom-weather-channel-co-founder-john-coleman-slams-obama-climate-report-a-total-distortion-of-the-data-and-agenda-driven-destructive-episode-of-bad-science-gone-berserk/

 

[lannister80]

So is all this global warming/climate change talk based on bad science

Nope. 97% of climatologists agree that (a) climate change is happening at the most rapid pace ever, and (b) humans are the vast majority of the cause of that change.

If you can't trust 97% of the experts in a scientific field, who can you trust?

and bending of the numbers to fit a political agenda?

Got any evidence of that? Let me remind you that the "climategate" scandal has been refuted over and over and over, and the scientist in question has been exonerated over and over and over.

Do scientist bend the numbers to look good for political grants?

What political grants? You know who decides which scientists get grants? Other scientists (who typically do research grant review/approval for a year or two at NSF or NIH or whatever and then go back to academia)! Not politicians.

And really, at this point I think a scientist would get much more notoriety if he had solid data showing anthropogenic climate change was bunk. Because no one has that.

Is John Coleman full of it?

He's either mistaken, lying, or both. He has a degree in JOURNALISM, and is not even a meteorologist, let alone a climatologist.

Again, listen to the 97% of EXPERTS on the climate.

Climate change issue aside I do think we should continue to work towards the use of more environmentally friendly energy resources

Agreed.

but I don't think weather patterns we are experiencing now has anything to do with the climate change hype.

Get back to me when you have a PhD in climatology.

 

[Huntn]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility

Image

Image

Yes, the reflecting mirrors are all flat, so they simply reflect sunlight up onto the receiver tower, "unconcentrated". However, all those sunlight beams from the mirrors start to overlap/converge as they approach the tower, so the closer you get to the tower in the beam path, the more beams you're illuminated by. It could easily kill eagles or anything else.

But who cares? (a) This is a tiny patch of desert, and (b) what, coal-fired power plants don't kill birds by the millions every year?

Is this supposed to be more efficient than solar panels I wonder?

 

[citizenzen]

Is John Coleman full of it?

Dude, the guy was a TV weather anchor.

From wikipedia (uncorroborated) ...

Views on global warming

Coleman says he became an outspoken skeptic of global warming in 2007 after watching NBC's 'Green is Universal' week, where the studio lights were cut for portions of Sunday Night Football's pre-game and half-time shows.

He went on to call global warming, "the greatest scam in history".

In 2008, Coleman gave a speech to the San Diego Chamber of Commerce blaming the "global warming scam" and environmentalist lobby, for rising gas and food prices. He also declared the scam "a threat to our economy and our civilization."

Coleman has also made appearances on CNN, Fox News Channel and on the Showtime program, Penn & Teller: ********!, to share his global warming views. In 2009, Coleman published an article entitled "The Amazing Story Behind the Global Warming Scam" in which he promotes the idea that many scientists and politicians have been embroiled in fraudulent activity based on incomplete science and a political motive for a world government.

In January 2010, Coleman produced a special report for KUSI-TV, entitled Global Warming: The Other Side, in which he forwards his view on global warming as a scam, and lays out what he believes to be evidence of a deliberate manipulation of world temperature data by NASA and others.

Sounds "full of it" to me.

 

[edk99]

Dude, the guy was a TV weather anchor.
Sounds "full of it" to me.

Ok with that reasoning then Al Gore is full of it too. Thanks for clearing that up.

 

[citizenzen]

Ok with that reasoning then Al Gore is full of it too. Thanks for clearing that up.

I will get too much pleasure as time passes and you become increasingly marginalized by your non-scientific beliefs.

 

[jkcerda]

"human induced"

all of it?

 

[citizenzen]

"human induced"

all of it?

No. I think it's pretty well established that CO2 existed before humans.

 

[ohbrilliance]

I don't think weather patterns we are experiencing now has anything to do with the climate change hype.

Thank goodness for that! I was starting to believe the thousands of qualified climate scientists and reputable international organisations. Your gut feeling changes everything. Phew. Dodged a bullet there.

 

[Huntn]

No. I think it's pretty well established that CO2 existed before humans.

... And humans have introduced huge amounts of green house gases into the atmosphere.

 

[lannister80]

"human induced"

all of it?

Yes, the vast vast majority of it.

----------

Ok with that reasoning then Al Gore is full of it too. Thanks for clearing that up.

Al Gore has 97% of climatologists backing him up. Maybe he misspoke sometimes, but that's because he's a layman.

Just go straight to the scientific articles! It's not hard.

 

[Sydde]

Is this supposed to be more efficient than solar panels I wonder?

No, solar panels are photovoltaic, meaning they convert incoming photons into electrons (turn light directly into electricity); this facility is using sunlight to heat water to steam to drive turbines that turn generators. Overall, it is somewhat less efficient than solar panels because if the number of steps it has to go through to turn sunlight into electricity – including the power that the heliostatic mirrors must use to track the sun in order to stay focused, as well as the inevitable power transmission losses (few power users live in the Mojave, most of that power has to travel to LA, SD or LV, as opposed to your solar panels which are mere meters away from where the power is used).

 

[Renzatic]

We need to build more bird killing fields.

Birds kill themselves in stupid ways all the damn time. Last year alone, I saw 4 birds break their necks by flying headfirst into large plate glass windows, and one smack up against the side of a building so hard, it's beak actually embedded into the wood. They're pretty dumb animals.

For birds that kill themselves by flying into turbines, I suggest we do to them what we do for bird-window deaths: we collect them and eat them.

Free meat from the sky. The circle of life continues.

 

[Sydde]

... I suggest we do to them what we do for bird-window deaths: we collect them and eat them.

Free meat from the sky. The circle of life continues.

Well, and the birds that die from flying into massive solar installations, hey, they come pre-cooked.

 

[citizenzen]

Birds kill themselves in stupid ways all the damn time.

Ideally it could be minimized, but in the quest for a post-petroleum era of energy, a few birds would be a small price to pay.

 

[Renzatic]

Well, and the birds that die from flying into massive solar installations, hey, they come pre-cooked.

It's enough to make you wish chickens could fly.

Ideally it could be minimized, but in the quest for a post-petroleum era of energy, a few birds would be a small price to pay.

I'm honestly surprised they haven't found a way to do it yet. It almost seems that something as simple as changing the color of the blades would be enough.