You already know this, but diets high in meat contribute to global warming. That’s because cows fart methane.

By burping, belching and excreting copious amounts of methane — a greenhouse gas that traps 20 times more heat than carbon dioxide — India’s livestock of roughly 485 million (including sheep and goats) contributes more to global warming than the vehicles the animals obstruct. [Source: Time, April 2009]

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) agriculture is responsible for 18% of the total release of greenhouse gases world-wide (this is more than the whole transportation sector). [Source: Time for Change, 2008]

All that methane might be causing temperatures to rise. One of the solutions, being embraced all over the world, is to use natural gas instead of burning coal. Germany, for example, expects to replace nuclear energy with that from natural gas. But as New Scientist has pointed out (and governments have ignored), there is a big problem with natural gas…. It leaks methane, just like cows.

The US Energy Information Administration estimates that more than 8 billion cubic metres of gas are lost each year somewhere between the point of production and reaching homes across the nation.

…natural gas is made mostly of methane, which has more than 20 times the global warming potential of CO₂ over a 100-year period. So gas that leaks from the system instead of being burned has a significant environmental impact.

…2.2 to 3.8 per cent of shale gas leaks out at the well site and an additional 1.4 to 3.6 per cent leaks during transport, storage and distribution – enough to make shale gas a bigger contributor to global warming than coal.

Note: I don’t believe in man-made global warming. This article is for those that do, and worry about the future of our planet…

Natural Gas Worse Than Coal is a post from: 2012 Blog

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Very wet rain events are the trigger. The heavy rain induces thousands of landslides and severe erosion, which removes ground material from the Earth’s surface, releasing the stress load and encouraging movement along faults.

…found a strong temporal relationship between the two natural hazards, where large earthquakes occurred within four years after a very wet tropical cyclone season.

The two countries that were used to demonstrate the connection are Taiwan and Haiti – avoid these places after a very wet cyclone season…

—–

Two sunken islands almost the size of Tasmania have been discovered in the Indian Ocean west of the Australian city of Perth.

…the two islands that now are covered by about a mile (1.5 kilometers) of ocean water.

“The sunken islands charted during the expedition have flat tops, which indicates they were once at sea level before being gradually submerged,” Whittaker said in a statement. The rocks retrieved from the islands also surprisingly suggested the islands weren’t always underwater.

Tasmania is 364 kilometres (226 mi) long from north to  south, and 306 kilometres (190 mi) from west to east. By comparison, Plato said that Atlantis extends:

“in one direction three thousand stadia [about 555 km; 345 mi], but across the center inland it was two thousand stadia [about 370 km; 230 mi].”

Not a bad fit, though I don’t think anyone is seriously claiming a connection yet.

Hurricanes = Earthquakes / Another Atlantis Candidate is a post from: 2012 Blog

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Apocalyptic warnings that islands such as the Maldives will sink beneath the waves are far-fetched, said Nils Axel-Morner, former head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University.

He says that any rise in sea levels is to do with natural historic fluctuations.

A supervolcanic eruption in Yellowstone Park sends lava and mud flowing toward populated areas, and clouds of ash drifting across the country. The fallout destroys crops and livestock, clogs machinery, and makes cities uninhabitable. Those who survive find themselves caught in an apocalyptic catastrophe in which humanity has no choice but to rise from the ashes and recreate the world…

In Brief: Sea Levels & Supervolcano: Eruption is a post from: 2012 Blog

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The image is from aviso.oceanobs.com and shows the change in the average sea level for the northern hemisphere. The data is from the European Union’s Envisat satellite, which was  launched in 2002. Now NASA will tell you that the recent dip is due to the switch from El Niño to La Niña conditions. Well if that’s enough to reverse the previous 7 years of rising seas, that’s excellent news.

If you were to take the chart back prior to 2004, I’m sure you’d see continual rises over the long term. That’s normal. Because since the end of the last Ice Age seas have risen 100 meters! Nothing to do with human activity…

Meanwhile, US Hurricanes are on the decline:

Falling Sea Levels & Fewer Hurricanes is a post from: 2012 Blog

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Very conveniently, this graph that appeared in newspapers globally last week, within stories that proclaimed that global warming was real after all, ends at the year 2000. Because beyond that date, despite rising emissions, global temperatures flatlined.

Professor Richard Muller, of Berkeley University in California, and his colleagues from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures project team (BEST) claimed to have shown that the planet has warmed by almost a degree  centigrade since 1950 and is warming continually. 

Published last week ahead of a major United Nations climate summit in Durban, South Africa, next month, their work was cited around the world as irrefutable evidence that only the most stringent measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions can save civilisation as we know it.

…Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no  scientific basis.

Prof Curry is a distinguished climate researcher with more than 30 years experience and the second named co-author of the BEST project’s four research papers.

…In fact, Prof Curry said, the project’s research data show there has been no increase in world temperatures since the end of the Nineties – a fact confirmed by a new analysis that The Mail on Sunday has obtained.

Another Misleading Global Warming Graph is a post from: 2012 Blog

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It is a fact that the average global temperature has not risen in the last decade. This highlights the difference between computer models and actual measurement and observation. Because the computer models vary greatly, we get figures of between a 1 and 6 degree Celsius rise by 2100. And yet temperature isn’t rising, which means the models are wrong. This week two faults were highlighted, and it makes me wonder how believable the models are, or did they just tweak the numbers until they had figures that pleased the Powers-That-Be?

Data from NASA’s Terra satellite suggests that when the climate warms, Earth’s atmosphere is apparently more efficient at releasing energy to space than models used to forecast climate change may indicate.

The result is climate forecasts that are warming substantially faster than the atmosphere, says Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. The previously unexplained differences between model-based forecasts of rapid global warming and meteorological data showing a slower rate of warming have been the source of often contentious debate and controversy for more than two decades.

In research published this week in the journal Remote Sensing, Spencer and UA Huntsville’s Dr. Danny Braswell compared what a half dozen climate models say the atmosphere should do to satellite data showing what the atmosphere actually did during the 18 months before and after warming events between 2000 and 2011.

“The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show,” Spencer said. “There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans.”

Meanwhile another reason has arrived, bringing a possible solution to global warming that no sane politician would dare to suggest – encourage China to pollute their skies!

The huge increase in coal-fired power stations in China has masked the impact of global warming in the last decade because of the cooling effect of their sulphur emissions…

Yep, although the computer models managed to count CO2 emissions from Chinese power stations, they seemingly ignored sulphur emissions – so which other factors have they got wrong if they missed such an easy one?

Capping off a bad week for climate change scientists, one of their number has been accused of misconduct.  “Charles Monnett was one of the scientists whose observation that several polar bears had drowned in the Arctic Ocean helped galvanize the global warming movement”, and this is the study that Al Gore misrepresented, by saying it was ice melting that was killing polar bears, rather than a storm. Seems like Mr Monnett is the fall guy, to protect Mr Gore.

In case you are wondering, many 2012ers do believe that man-made climate change will be our downfall, so I like to present my (opposite) view.

Real science uses observation and measurement. And the planet is not currently getting any warmer. Try telling that to the Climatic Research Unit. You’d think this UK think tank could provide the raw data on global temperatures, but the best you’ll find in their entire site (correct me if I’m wrong…) is this distorted graph that gives the wrong picture to curious citizens:

If they were to show previous centuries, it wouldn’t look alarming at all.

Meanwhile in Australia, popular newspaper columnists Terry McCran and Andrew Bolt have been pointing out problems with the new Carbon Tax of the Gillard government:

• It is named Carbon Tax, a tax on carbon pollution. This is a deliberate ploy to confuse people into thinking it is black soot that is being taxed. To the contrary it is CO2, which is not listed as a pollutant, and as we were taught in high school, is what we breathe out and plants breathe in. Naming it correctly would let people realise that it is not pollution being taxed, but a gas that is an integral part of Gaia.
• Chief Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery lives by the sea, despite warning in 2006 of sea rises of 15+ meters
• Prof Peter Ridd (James Cook University) says skeptics should also be funded
• An Australian coastal researcher has shown that sea level rises are reducing
• Tony Blair is being paid at least £700K per year advising an American company on climate change, just as David Cameron sides with Julia Gillard

NASA: Global Warming Model Wrong is a post from: 2012 Blog

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One of the driest places on Earth was hit with a blizzard:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14067245

Australian mining towns have their coldest days in 30 years:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/mining-communities-shiver-20110714-1hfma.html

Meanwhile in the northern hemisphere, the British Met Office says this should be their coolest summer in two decades:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2013379/Met-Office-warns-cold-rainy-summer.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

The extremes of temperature are widening, and weather is getting wilder. Yet the orthodox models for climate change still have human-generated global warming as their starting point… and average temperatures have remained the same for the last 15 years.

A very compelling interview with Lord Monckton, a man who rescinded his political power, is well-credentialed and very intelligent, and is fighting the lies of global warming advocates, is available at Alex Jones’ InfoWars.com:
http://www.infowars.com/exclusive-interview-lord-monckton-talks-about-nwo-master-plan/

Snow Falling on Atacama Desert is a post from: 2012 Blog

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I’ve put in enough research to have decided that there is insufficient evidence to support the concept of man-made climate change, and that any warming or cooling is to do with the Sun. In the 1970s scientists were warning us about an oncoming Ice Age. Now it is global warming. For anyone who is undecided, and especially Australians like me who will soon be paying $$ to fix this supposed problem (even though the fix would be impossible without China and the USA joining in), and ClimateGate didn’t sway you, consider these:

• Last week’s Summer Solstice saw snow in Colorado
• A NASA scientist who champions global warming has perhaps illegally earned more than $1 million from his activities
• Sven Teske, an activist with Greenpeace International, peer reviewed his own work for the IPCC
• Global temperatures have been flat for the past 15 years.
• Central England had the coldest start to winter since 1659.
• Presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty is a climate change skeptic

Clearly real is that in recent times we have seen more extreme weather events. To me this indicates a need to prepare for the worst. Carbon offsets are not the answer, survivalist tactics are.

I mean, climate change is normal, look at this chart showing temperatures from the last few thousand years:

(full size image here)

[Today's post inspired by an article at the Calgary Herald: Scientists grow cool to global warming theory ]

Global Warming Running Out of Steam is a post from: 2012 Blog

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The best solution may be the one used routinely to treat water at the Savannah River Site. The process combines activated carbon, reverse osmosis, and ion exchange. If one doesn’t get the iodine-131, two others have a chance to capture the radiation through other means.

And that may be the best solution for the average drinker of tap water as well.

Easy! But if you are thinking that running your drinking water through activated carbon, reverse osmosis, and an ion exchange isn’t easy, perhaps consider moving away from nuclear threats.

—

The 37 meter tsunami isn’t historical, nor specifically predicted for the future. It was this year’s Japanese tsunami. Deduced from high-water marks.

That’s tall enough to engulf a 10-story building. But “we think we will see [evidence of] bigger waves in other areas,” says Satoko Oki, a seismologist at the University of Tokyo’s Earthquake Research Institute.

The Japanese are #1 experts on tsunamis, and they underestimated the potential risk. Don’t make the same mistake.

—

I’m  climate change believer – but it’s the Sun, not us, and a mini Ice Age is just as likely as rising temperatures (they’ve not risen in the last 10 years, just shifted about). Here’s something not often reported… growing glaciers:

Not only on Mt. Shasta, glaciers are also growing in Washington and Alaska.

Look at Washington State. The Nisqually Glacier on Mt. Rainier is growing. Glaciers on Glacier Peak in northern Washington are growing. And Crater Glacier on Mt. Saint Helens is now larger than it was before the 1980 eruption.

Or look at Alaska. Glaciers are growing in Alaska for the first time in 250 years. Two years ago in May, Alaska’s Hubbard Glacier was advancing at the rate of seven feet (two meters) per day – more than half-a-mile per year. In Icy Bay, at least three glaciers advanced a third of a mile (½ km) in one year.

Removing Iodine-13 / 37 Meter Tsunami / Glaciers growing is a post from: 2012 Blog

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Experts are saying the sea levels will rise by 13 feet in the next thousand years. This is the first time such a long-range forecast has been made, and presumably the authors will never see their work disproved. I presume this work, which focuses on climate change, does not consider that the long-term rise since the last Ice Age will cause a good degree of rise anyway. The good news is an architectural group has designed an extravagant ark to survive the rising sea (seemingly moving to higher ground is not an option).

A race of giants may have sprung from a mutant gene that first emerged around 1,500 years ago and causes uncontrolled body growth, scientists believe. The ‘gigantism gene’ was identified in the DNA of an 18th century man known as the Irish Giant who stood almost eight feet tall. Make it 10,000 years and I suggest this mutation arose during the last global cataclysm. Or 3,000 years and it makes sense of the Bible, which tells us “there were giants on the Earth in those days, and also afterward” (Gen 6:4).

News.com.au mentions the rumors concerning Betelgeuse going supernova in 2012. While the explosion could occur tomorrow, or in 2012, it could also happen 1 million years from now.

Sea Rise Ark / Irish Giant Gene / Betelgeuse is a post from: 2012 Blog

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