Friday, September 8, 2017

Two New Studies Destroy Climate Crisis, Greenhouse Gas & Carbon Claims | Principia Scientific International

Two New Studies Destroy Climate Crisis, Greenhouse Gas & Carbon Claims



Two New Studies Destroy Climate Crisis, Greenhouse Gas & Carbon Claims

Written by John O'Sullivan







It’s official: the greenhouse gas theory and the litany of fake
science claims it spawned about carbon dioxide climate forcing suffer
two hammer blows in the peer-reviewed literature.


Shrewdly relying only on accepted chemistry and
physics plus official data from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), experts from the ‘hard’ sciences present two new
papers offering an objective appraisal of the science argued over in the
politicized global warming debate.
With the first paper addressing the greenhouse gas
theory of climate and the second paper dissecting the alleged role of
carbon dioxide, these peer-reviewed studies throw cold water on the
purported ‘settled science.’
First Paper Demolishes Greenhouse Gas Claims
Set out in ‘Role of greenhouse gases in climate change
the first of the two papers from the Sage Energy & Environment
Journal demolishes the most quoted descriptions of the greenhouse gas
theory. [1]
Identifying and dismantling the six key pseudo
scientific claims woven into the ‘settled science’ the authors refute
the following:
(a) radiation trapped between the Earth’s surface and its atmosphere;
(b) the insulating blanket of the atmosphere that keeps the Earth warm;
(c) back radiation from the atmosphere to the Earth’s surface;
(d) Infra Red absorbing gases that hinder radiative
cooling and keep the surface warmer than it would otherwise be – known
as ‘otherwise radiation’;
(e) differences between actual surface temperatures of the Earth (as also observed on Venus) and those based on calculations;
(f) any gas that absorbs infrared radiation emitted
from the Earth’s surface towards free space. It is shown that none of
the above descriptions can withstand the rigours of scientific scrutiny
when the fundamental laws of physics and thermodynamics are applied to
them.
The authors, who are experts trained in higher-level
physics and chemistry, painstakingly apply a fresh eye to the convoluted
and often contradictory assertions made by ill-trained researchers in
the infant science of climate studies. It was discovered that due to
deficiencies in understanding of the tougher concepts of thermodynamics,
the poorly-trained generalists within the tight-knit climate community
had overly relied on 19th century half-baked and simplistic interpretations.
Specifically, the authors identify how certain key
historic figures from the Victorian era – the originators of the
greenhouse gas theory – held an obsession for fanciful ideas that carbon
dioxide (CO2) operates within ‘fixed air’ and oxygen was
‘dephlogisticated air.’
Those originators of the greenhouse gas hypothesis
were firm promoters of the phlogiston theory – a concept even more
firmly debunked by modern science and the later laws of thermodynamics.
Both hypotheses went hand in hand and relied on each other.
While those misconceptions about the nature of gases
was abandoned by modern science, the mechanism from the ‘greenhouse’
analogy became strangely re-born in the 1970’s when it was seen to be a
useful fit for a political agenda.
Certainly, those nineteenth-century greenhouse
gas/phologiston believers earnestly performed laboratory experiments in
labelled flasks and containers of gases, liquids and solids. As the
author’s noted:
“An added difficulty is that so far no way
has been found to be able to readily transpose or correlate experiments
conducted in the contained, static, isothermal and isobaric conditions
of a laboratory to the great vastness of earth’s atmosphere.“
In short, it appears the very barrier of the lab’s
glass containers themselves was inadvertently misappropriated within the
mechanism of a supposed ‘greenhouse’ atmosphere. That is, they imagined
a glass-like barrier applied to the earth’s open atmosphere. We know
today that our atmosphere is an ‘open system’ merging gradually into the
vacuum void of outer space, unlike the closed system of a lab flask or
any glass-pane greenhouse.
The limits of their laboratory apparatus combined
with their obsession with the later discredited phlogiston concept – set
alongside the fact their ideas pre-dated the foundation of the laws of
thermodynamics – led those Victorians to their ‘greenhouse’ errors.
Second Paper Demolishes Carbon Dioxide Claims
The second damning paper is ‘Role of atmospheric carbon dioxide in climate change‘ and similarly analyses official data and claims before eviscerating them. [2]
Sensibly, the authors begin by citing a wealth of
non-controversial and official data concerning what is known and
accepted about carbon dioxide. The data examined includes:
(a) Vostok ice-core measurements;
(b) accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere;
(c) studies of temperature changes that precede CO2 changes;
(d) global temperature trends;
(e) current ratio of carbon isotopes in the atmosphere;
(f) satellite data for the geographic distribution of atmospheric CO2;
(g) effect of solar activity on cosmic rays and cloud cover.
The authors find that:
“Nothing in the data supports the supposition
that atmospheric CO2 is a driver of weather or climate, or that human
emissions control atmospheric CO2.”
Both papers are likely to be relied upon by other
experts from the ‘hard’ sciences who have for years doubted the
far-fetched and unphysical claims made in the fledgling climate science
community.
A great many physicists, chemical scientists,
geologists and mathematicians have long doubted the claims made premised
on dubious parameters fed into government computer models. They will be
emboldened further to speak against the cherry-picked alarmist
narrative by these two new papers.
As the authors conclude in the second paper:
“As demonstrated, empirical evidence does not support
the claim that anthropogenic CO2 emissions cause global warming and/or
climate change. We suggest that without adequately proven evidence being
demonstrated – should it exist in the first place – such a conclusion
can not be adduced from the known facts. “

THE BAD AT SCIENCE GUY: Bill Nye Tries to Link Global Warming To Hurricanes, Fails Basic Hurricane Science

THE BAD AT SCIENCE GUY: Bill Nye Tries to Link Global Warming To Hurricanes, Fails Basic Hurricane Science | Daily Wire




THE BAD AT SCIENCE GUY: Bill Nye Tries to Link Global Warming To Hurricanes, Fails Basic Hurricane Science



Bill Nye
John Lamparski/WireImage



Speaking with Dan Rather on Sirius XM, Bill
Nye, The Bad-At-Science Guy, argued that the hurricanes the U.S. is
experiencing have been strengthened by global warming.

Rather
precipitated Nye’s odyssey into absurdity by prompting, “Any doubt in
your mind that climate change is contributing to both the increased
number of hurricanes and the strength of the hurricanes?”

Nye pontificated:

Well,
it’s the strength that is almost certainly associated with global
warming. Now, everybody, global warming and climate change are the same
thing. As the world gets warmer and there’s more energy in the
atmosphere, you expect storms to get stronger. You also expect ocean
currents to not flow the way they always have, and that will make some
places cooler and some places warmer.

The problem in southeast
United States and Mexico is that these hurricanes are very powerful, and
as I say all the time, they’re very expensive. We are all gonna pay for
Harvey; we are all gonna pay for Irma, one way or the other. And so I
want, I would prefer, as a guy born in the U.S., got my engineering
degree and my license in the U.S., worked in aerospace for over twenty
years in the U.S., I would like the United States to be the world leader
in addressing this, rather than the World Sit-On-Its-Handsers. So
anyway, the more heat energy in the atmosphere strengthens the storms,
Dan.

PhD meteorologist Ryan Maue, fed up, issued a succinct reply to point out a flaw in Nye’s analysis:

The
widely-propounded idea that global warming is causing either more
hurricanes or making existing hurricanes more powerful flies in the face
of this fact, as the Washington Examiner reported:

After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, some climate modelers
predicted such storms would be more frequent in a warmer world, while
others predicted the opposite, and still others said there was no
connection between warming and hurricanes. What ensued was an
historically unprecedented 12-year absence of major (category 3 or
higher) hurricanes making landfall in the United States, until Harvey,
which ties for 14th-most intense
hurricane since 1851. The events after 2005 were "consistent with" some
projections, but any other events would have been as well.

Nye's remarks below:

In major Supreme Court case, Justice Dept. sides with baker who refused to make wedding cake for gay couple

In major Supreme Court case, Justice Dept. sides with baker who refused to make wedding cake for gay couple



In major Supreme Court case, Justice Dept. sides with baker who refused to make wedding cake for gay couple

In
a major upcoming Supreme Court case that weighs equal rights with
religious liberty, the Trump administration on Thursday sided with a
Colorado baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.


The Department of Justice on Thursday filed a brief on behalf of baker
Jack Phillips, who was found to have violated the Colorado
Anti-Discrimination Act by refusing to created a cake to celebrate the
marriage of Charlie Craig and David Mullins in 2012. Phillips said he
doesn’t create wedding cakes for same-sex couples because it would
violate his religious beliefs.

The government agreed
with Phillips that his cakes are a form of expression, and he cannot be
compelled to use his talents for something in which he does not believe.

“Forcing
Phillips to create expression for and participate in a ceremony that
violates his sincerely held religious beliefs invades his First
Amendment rights,” Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey B. Wall wrote in the
brief.

Play Video 3:00
Plaintiff in landmark Supreme Court case says: 'One person can change the world'






The
DOJ’s decision to support Phillips is the latest in a series of steps
the Trump administration has taken to rescind Obama administration
positions favorable to gay rights and to advance new policies on the
issue.

But Louise Melling, the deputy legal counsel of
the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the couple,
said she was taken aback by the filing.

“Even in an
administration that has already made its hostility” toward the gay
community clear, Melling said, “I find this nothing short of shocking.”

Since
taking office, President Trump has moved to block transgender Americans
from serving in the military and his Department of Education has done
away with guidance to schools on how they should accommodate transgender
students.

The DOJ also has taken the stance that gay
workers are not entitled to job protections under federal
anti-discrimination laws. Since 2015, the Equal Employment and
Opportunity Commission has taken the opposite stance, saying Title VII,
the civil-rights statute that covers workers, protects against bias
based on sexual orientation.

Federal courts are split on that issue, and the Supreme Court this term might take up the issue.

Indeed,
lawyers for Jameka Evans, who claims she was fired by Georgia Regional
Hospital because of her sexual orientation and “nonconformity with
gender norms of appearance and demeanor,” on Thursday asked justices to
take her case.

Citing a 1979 precedent, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit rejected her protection claims.

Taking that case, along with Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission,
would make the coming Supreme Court term the most important for gay
rights issues since the justices voted 5 to 4 in 2015 to find a
constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry.

The
case of Phillips, a baker in the Denver suburbs, is similar to lawsuits
brought elsewhere involving florists, calligraphers and others who say
providing services to same-sex weddings would violate their religious
beliefs. But these objectors have found little success in the courts,
which have ruled that businesses serving the public must comply with
state anti-discrimination laws.

Mullins and Craig
visited Masterpiece Cakeshop in July 2012, along with Craig’s mother, to
order a cake for their upcoming wedding reception. Mullins and Craig
planned to marry in Massachusetts, where same-sex marriages were legal
at the time, and then hold a reception in Colorado.

But
Phillips refused to discuss the issue, saying his religious beliefs
would not allow him to have anything to do with same-sex marriage. He
said other bakeries would accommodate them.

The civil
rights commission and a Colorado court rejected Phillips’ argument that
forcing him to create a cake violated his First Amendment rights of
freedom of expression and exercise of religion.

The court said the baker “does not convey a message supporting same-sex marriages merely by abiding by the law.”

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

OMG…NPR: 25 Million Votes For Clinton ‘Completely Fake’ – She Lost Popular Vote

OMG…NPR: 25 Million Votes For Clinton ‘Completely Fake’ – She Lost Popular Vote 







OMG…NPR: 25 Million Votes For Clinton ‘Completely Fake’ – She Lost Popular Vote


A study published by NPR reveals that over 25 million Hillary Clinton
votes were completely fraudulent, meaning that the Democratic candidate
actually lost the popular vote by a huge margin.


A study by the Pew Center claiming that over 800,000 non-citizens
voted for Hillary Clinton failed to take into account dead and
fraudulent voters which totalled over 25 million “registered voters”.


According to reports, illegal aliens combined with dead voters and
“multiple state” voters explains why Hillary appeared to have won the
popular vote over Trump during this years presidential race.


“A report by the Pew Center on the States finds that more than 1.8
million dead people are currently registered to vote, and 24 million
registrations are either invalid or inaccurate,” NPR reported in 2012,
which is ironic given how NPR is heavily controlled by Democrats.


And many of the dead, registered voters somehow keep voting Democrat
from beyond the grave, most recently in Philadelphia, Penn. and
Colorado.

It’s also worth noting that the U.S. population has increased since
2012, meaning that there’s likely more dead and invalid voters than
before.


“…The Pew study found that almost 3 million people are registered to vote in more than one state,” NPR added.


That’s because when a new resident registers to vote in a state,
officials usually never bother to tell his former state about the change
in voter residency.


Under the “catch and release” immigration program by the Obama
administration, illegal aliens were routinely given bus tickets to
travel to other states by immigration officials, so it was theoretically
possible for non-citizens to register to vote in a border country
illegally, then register to vote in another state after their
taxpayer-funded bus dropped them off.

Clinton won most of the 163 most populous counties in the US that
account for half of the total votes in the election, including dense
urban areas in New York and California, yet she only won the popular
vote by 2.8 million votes, which reveals the lack of enthusiasm voters
had for her in comparison to Trump – and that Democrats would have
depended more on illegal votes.



A portion of the 24 million invalid voter registrations combined with
a portion of the 1.8 million dead voters and the over 800,000 known
illegal voters could explain the difference of 2.8 million votes, and
it’s worth noting that the 800,000 figure could be a low, conservative
estimate.



That said, a popular vote victory is meaningless; if the president
was elected by popular vote, then both Trump and Clinton would have
campaigned in entirely different states because only densely population
regions of the U.S. would decide who would become president.Without the electoral college, the United States of America would be
reduced to the United States of New York and California, with 48 other
vassal states.


Yet notice how Clinton campaigned in other, less populated states.
They knew the popular vote was meaningless ahead of the election.However, the popular vote is useful as a barometer for voter fraud
since the most populous countries are also the most susceptible to
election tampering by illegal, invalid and dead voters.

14 Things the MSM Won't Tell You About DACA

14 Things the MSM Won't Tell You About DACA




14 Things the MSM Won’t Tell You About DACA





Whenever a Republican wants to move forward — you know, pass
some legislation or even enforce the law as already written, they
always, always, ALWAYS have to run through a mainstream media
propaganda gauntlet dedicated to the status quo, loyal only to the
Democrat cause and by extension opposed to anything resembling progress.

Obamacare is an objective disaster; nonetheless, the media fights
tooth and nail to save it. Our tax code is a backwards,
prosperity-stifling haven for corporatist special interests;
nonetheless, the media will do everything in its power to ensure not a
single word is altered.



Then there is illegal immigration, which, like abortion, the MSM
treats as its own personal sacrament.  Flooding America, primarily Red
States, with illegal Democrats who also serve the interests of a Big
Business Complex desperate to keep wages low and unions non-existent,
there is nothing our corrupt media will not do to keep that illegal
flood flooding.


And so, as President Trump prepares to keep one of his biggest
promises and end President Barry’s un-constitutional Deferred Action for
Childhood Arrivals (DACA) amnesty program, all we are seeing from our
establishment media is the usual-usual propaganda: flat-out lies,  half
truths, the ignoring of vital pieces of information and points of view,
and most of all, emotional blackmail.


Man alive, the emotional blackmail.


If your only understanding of this complicated issue comes from the
MSM, of course you are outraged over the fact that Trump is about order
an army of jackbooted ICE agents to kick in daycare center doors, snatch
up all the “brown children,” and then hurl the angelic toddlers (with
actual rings of gold hovering over their heads) into cattle cars headed
south.






Hopefully the list below will offer some clarity and context. The first point, I think, is the most important.


  1. This Is Only the Fault of the Parents
My wife was born in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and came to America as a
small child. But she was brought here by her parents legally and
remained here legally until she obtained her citizenship, something she
prizes above most everything else. This is how immigration is supposed
to work. If you ask my wife about DACA, she blames the parents of these
children who, unlike her own parents,  broke the law and put their
children in this situation.


If your parents don’t pay the rent, is it the landlord’s fault when you are evicted, or is it the fault of your parents?


If your parents sneak you into Disneyland without paying, is it
Disney’s fault when you are booted out, or is it the fault of your
parents?


If your parents sneak you into a country illegally, is it the
country’s fault when you get deported, or is it the fault of your
parents?






Blaming America or Trump or anyone other than the parents for any of this, is a ruse, a con, a rhetorical trick.


  1. DACA Recipients Are Illegal Aliens
This simple fact has been so downplayed and memory-holed, it just needed to be spoken out loud.


  1. DACA Is a Massive Amnesty Program
Although the DREAMers are in the country illegally, DACA allows some
800,000 to stay in the country legally without any kind of penalty.
Qualified DREAMers are not only given a two-year deferment from
deportation, they are eligible for a work permit, which means they can
legally take a job in America.


  1. DACA Recipients Are Not the Children
DACA is eligible only to those aged 15-32.


A very large percentage of DACA recipients are adults, not children or even minors.






  1. DACA Recipients Take Jobs Americans WILL Do
The idea that illegal aliens take jobs Americans won’t do is, of
course, a lie. Plenty of Americans, most especially young Americans,
would love the opportunity to work on a construction site or some other
manual labor job. Moreover, if the wages were better, plenty of American
would be willing to work in the fields. An untold number of young
Americans who live in farm communities already do. But when you flood
the country with illegal and/or foreign workers this — by design —
suppresses wages to a point where only those willing to be exploited are
willing to do this work for almost no money.


Nevertheless, even this lie does not apply to DREAMers, many of whom
have a high school diploma or a GED, and a work permit. These are not
field workers, these are hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens
competing for the same jobs against the 4 million young Americans who
enter the workforce every year.


  1. Some DACA Recipients are Criminals
Over 5 years, between 2013 and 2017, a total of 2,139 DACA recipients lost their amnesty benefits “due to criminality or gang affiliated concerns.”


The DACA screening process is in reality a joke, a rubber stamp.


  1. DACA Is Not a Law, It Is the Violation of Law
President Obama’s DACA program is not a law or even a policy. Rather,
it is a brazen violation of the immigration law as written and passed
by the American people’s representatives in congress.






People in the country illegally are supposed to be deported and
repatriated into their own country. That is the law here in America.
That is the law in every country in the world, including Mexico.


  1. Most DACA Recipients are Not Overachievers
It seems as though every time we see a DACA recipient in the media,
he or she is the next Albert Einstein, someone on the verge of curing
cancer and poverty.


The reality is actually quite different:


“The [DACA] eligibility bar was set very low, explicitly
allowing people with multiple misdemeanor and certain felony convictions
to be approved. Only a handful of the applicants were ever interviewed,
and only rarely was the information on the application ever verified,”
said Jessica M. Vaughan, director of policy studies at the
Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies….


“[T]his statistic undercuts the image of DACA that has been spread by
the pro-illegal alien groups and the news media, that the DACA
recipients are mostly college kids. This is not true. We don’t know much
about the population, but one of the few credible studies that has been
done, by a scholar at Harvard University, found that at most are more
than 22 years old, and only about 20 percent graduated from or attended a
four-year college. A significant share never went beyond high school.
This is not really all that surprising, since over 72 percent come from a
family at or below poverty level and accessing some public assistance.”
While there are some true-life scholars in the DACA program, these are not a representative sample:


For example, one-third of the people in the study sample
who are older than age 25 hold four-year college bachelors’ degrees or
better. In contrast, an August 2013 report by the pro-amnesty Migration
Policy Institute showed that only 7.5 percent of the 800,000
DACA-qualified illegals who were 18 or older had four-year college
degrees or better. An August 2017 study by the MPI showed only 5 percent
of 832,000 DACA illegals who were older than 18 had four-year college
qualifications.


Also, the 7.5 percent graduation rate reported by the new study is
roughly one-quarter the 33 percent of native-born Americans with
four-year degrees.
  1. DACA Is Wildly Unfair to Americans, Most Especially Young Americans Just Starting Out
You followed the rules. Your parents obeyed the law. You are one of
the 4 million Americans ready to enter the workforce every year, eager
to begin your own life, to pursue the American dream, but you have to
compete against hundreds of thousands of line-jumpers for the same
entry-level job.


Moreover, this flood of labor depresses your wages.


  1. DACA Was Already Litigated and Debated in 2016
The American people have already had the DACA debate. Hillary Clinton promised to expand DACA. Trump promised to end DACA.


Trump won.


  1. DACA Encourages More Illegal Immigrants
Although DACA does not officially grant amnesty to the children of
illegal immigrants who have arrived after 2007, the message is still
clear: America does not have the will to enforce its own immigration
laws. Of course that message works as a magnet for illegals.  If you recall


Obama declared his DACA amnesty in 2012. Central
Americans saw the announcement, read the details — and roughly 400,000
people headed north during the next four years.
Moreover, making that trek is dangerous, especially from South
America. People die of exposure and are exploited, sometimes sexually,
by the Coyotes they hire to lead them here.


Illegal immigration is a lose-lose for everyone but Democrats who
desire the votes and business owners who do not want to pay a legal
resident a fair market wage.


  1. In Most States, DACA Recipients are Eligible for Welfare Benefits
AZCentral:


Once DACA applicants are approved and receive a temporary
employment authorization card, they can apply for a Social Security
Number. Under this number, they can report wages and pay taxes.


DACA beneficiaries cannot receive federal benefits such as welfare
and food stamps. Some states allow for state-funded benefits, but
Arizona specifically prohibits it.
  1. Unless It Is Stopped, DACA Will Never Stop Growing
Every year, more and more illegal aliens become eligible for DACA’s illegal and unconstitutional amnesty program.


Obama’s deputies low-balled his election-campaign
giveaway by initially predicting it would only reach about 560,000
younger illegals who were supposedly brought into the United States by
their parents before they turned 16.


But the amnesty has already provided almost 900,000 work-permits and
Social Security cards to illegals who say they are aged 36 or less. More
than 92 percent of the applicants got their DACA approvals, with a
rejection rate of only 7 percent. The amnesty is expected to rise above
1.9 million people as additional younger illegals become adults and try
to enroll in Obama’s giveaway.
  1. DACA Ignores Some Criminal Behavior
Center for Immigration Studies:


DACA applies to individuals up to age 31 (as of June
2012, so 35 now) — hardly children; consequently, many Dreamers have
long-since terminated their studies and most have committed multiple
felonies in order to get jobs — Social Security fraud, forgery, perjury
on I-9 forms, falsification of green cards and drivers’ licenses,
identity theft, etc. Dreamers continue to commit these job-related
crimes right up to the day their DACA status is approved and they obtain
work permits and their own genuine Social Security numbers.


In addition, many illegal aliens qualifying for DACA status have
previously been arrested and convicted of multiple misdemeanors and some
have previously been or continue to be associated with violent gangs,
as evidenced by a report in the Seattle Times that states that over
1,500 Dreamers have had their DACA status revoked since 2012 due to
their involvement with criminal gangs.



On the true merits, the DACA debate is a loser for the Left and their
media — which is why the 14 facts above must remain largely unspoken.

Monday, September 4, 2017

The Simple Proof of Man-Made Global Warming

The Simple Proof of Man-Made Global Warming



The Simple Proof of Man-Made Global Warming

The two most basic Smoking Guns proving that carbon from fossil fuels is warming the Earth.  


by Brian Dunning



Skeptoid Podcast
#549

December 13, 2016





Listen:






I encourage everyone to listen to this episode, or to read and
share its transcript online. Today I'm going to talk about some simple
factual observations that anyone can make, that unambiguously prove
human activity is driving warming of the Earth. I'm not going to mention
climate models, politics, predictions, economics, or how many
scientists agree or disagree — any of the topics on which there is
debate. I'm only going to share a few of the most solid basics, the
results of absolute measurements, over which there is no debate. These
are the things nobody disagrees with, but so few people understand.
Despite its contentious topic, this episode is intended to be — and
should be — completely non-controversial.


I am only going to make two points today, and they are to share two
of the "smoking guns" by which we know that this is happening. They are
simple to understand, and they are based on basic science that everyone
should remember from school. They do not depend on models or
predictions, but upon simple direct observations. They are that the
rising CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere is definitely produced by human activity, and that that same CO2
is warming the planet. Nothing in this episode is disputed, or is
subject to alternate explanations, but too few people are aware of these
facts. So let's begin with:


Proof that the atmosphere's excess CO2 is human generated

You might think that carbon is carbon, and that if we find there's more CO2
in the atmosphere, its source can't easily be proven. But chemistry is a
bit more complicated than that; there are different kinds of carbon, as
there are of most elements. They're called isotopes. One isotope of
carbon is carbon-14. Cosmic rays bombard the Earth at a rate that is
more or less constant over time. When they do, they strike atoms in the
upper atmosphere, kicking out neutrons. These neutrons then collide with
the most common atoms in our atmosphere, nitrogen. This collision kicks
a proton out of the nucleus and turns the nitrogen into carbon with two
neutrons too many: the unstable and radioactive carbon-14, instead of
the normal stable carbon-12.


You've heard of carbon dating; this is done by comparing the relative
amounts of carbon-12 and carbon-14 in a sample. Living things, like
animals and trees, are in equilibrium with the atmosphere. As they eat
and breathe and interact, they contain the same proportions of carbon
isotopes as the atmosphere. When they die, that carbon-14 decays over a
long time, and since the organism is no longer eating and breathing, no
new carbon-14 comes in, and eventually the only carbon remaining is
carbon-12 (and some carbon-13). Fossil fuels like oil and natural gas
come from plants that died millions of years ago and have no carbon-14
left. The CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels contains only carbon-12.


When a forest fire burns, the CO2 in the smoke came from
living or recently dead fuel, so the smoke contains the same proportions
of carbon-12 and carbon-14 as the atmosphere. This is the case with
nearly all natural sources of CO2. We can carbon date the CO2
in the atmosphere, and tell exactly how much of it comes from humans
burning fossil fuels. It's a direct measurement. It leaves no room for
interpretation.


There is one natural source of CO2 that contains only
carbon-12, and which is often pointed out by climate deniers as the real
source of all of this new carbon-12: volcanoes. Volcanoes worldwide
constantly erupt, both on land and under the sea. They do so at a fairly
constant rate. We measure their output, and we know that annually,
worldwide volcanic activity averages about 200 million tons of CO2
added to the atmosphere, all with carbon-12, which is indistinguishable
from the carbon-12 produced by burning fossil fuels. However, each
year, we measure a total of about 29 billion tons of CO2
added to the atmosphere. That's more than 100 times the amount volcanoes
can account for. The only possible source of all the rest of that new
CO2 is fossil fuel burned by humans.


This, in short, is the "smoking gun" that proves the increase in CO2
in the atmosphere is caused by humans burning fossil fuel. It's not a
conjecture or a model or a prediction, it's a measurement that anyone
can reproduce, and isotopes are isotopes, and don't have alternate
explanations.


Some have said that 29 billion tons is not a problem, because of how
small that is compared to the atmosphere's total existing carbon load.
It's true that 29 billion tons is a drop in the bucket compared to the
750 billion tons that moves through the carbon cycle each year, which is
our name for the natural processes by which carbon is exchanged between
the atmosphere and the oceans and vegetation. Each year, of that 750
billion tons, the ocean absorbs a net gain of about 6 billion, and
vegetation absorbs a net gain of about 11 billion. They're only able to
absorb about half of the 29 billion we're adding. The other half — about
15 billion tons each year — remains in the atmosphere, after maxing out
the Earth's ability to absorb it into its system. These numbers, too,
are reproducible measurements; not conjectures, models, or predictions.
The system is provably absorbing all it can, but still unable to keep
up.


Proof that that human-generated CO2 is warming the planet

We
also do not need models or predictions to directly measure the source
of heat in the atmosphere. There are five gases that are primarily
responsible for the greenhouse effect. They are CO2, methane, water vapor, nitrous oxide, and ozone. We can tell this because of spectroscopy.


Spectroscopy is a method of detecting elements by looking at how
electromagnetic radiation passes through them. Different elements have
electrons in orbits at varying energy levels, and this affects the way
they resonate. It's the reason why neon lights produce different colors
depending on what gases we fill them with. It's also the way we're able
to tell what proportions of hydrogen, helium, and other elements are in
distant stars: the spectrum of light coming from them has peaks and
valleys that are chemical fingerprints of exactly what gases are in
them.


The Earth's surface is warmed by the sun, and as a warm globe in
space, the Earth itself emits that same heat right back out, as infrared
radiation. If we go outside and point a spectrometer at the sky, we can
see there are peaks and valleys in the infrared spectrum. Some
wavelengths of heat fly right out into space unhindered, while other
wavelengths are absorbed by the atmosphere, and that heat stays there,
where we're able to detect its wavelength with our spectrometer. And
exactly the same way as we're able to identify the elements in a distant
star, we're able to identify exactly which greenhouse gases are
trapping the Earth's radiative heat. This is how we were able to
identify those five main gases. And this isn't new; we've understood
this for 200 years. It's a direct measurement that anyone with a
spectrometer can reproduce. Not a model, not a prediction, not a guess.


Water vapor, which is the most prominent, defines the basic shape of
the greenhouse spectrum. Most of the infrared radiation that escapes the
Earth goes through a window left open by water vapor, which we call the
infrared window. This window in the spectrum, which is pretty wide, is
centered around a wavelength of about 10 µm (micrometers). At higher and
lower wavelengths, water vapor absorbs much of the Earth's radiated
heat, so the Earth has always relied on this open window in the spectrum
to allow the excess heat to escape. One end of the infrared window is
overlapped by CO2's absorption range, which is centered around 15 µm. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere acts like a sliding door which widens or narrows the infrared window. As CO2
increases, the infrared window is narrowed, less radiation escapes into
space, and more heat is absorbed by the atmosphere. At the other end of
the infrared window, around 7.5 µm, methane has a similar effect,
contributing about 1/4 as much warming as CO2.


Spectroscopy is hard science. We don't have to model or predict.
Simply by pointing our instruments at the sky, we can, right now,
directly observe and identify the greenhouse gases, and measure exactly
how much radiative energy the atmosphere is absorbing and keeping here
on Earth. This direct, non-ambiguous spectroscopic reading is the
"smoking gun" that proves the excess heat energy being trapped in our
atmosphere is due to CO2. That excess CO2 is produced by humans burning fossil fuels.


We've also measured the Earth's infrared spectrum from space, looking
down from satellites, to see which wavelengths of heat energy are being
trapped by gases in the atmosphere, and which wavelengths are escaping.
We started this in 1970 with the IRIS satellite, giving us a baseline
to compare against future measurements. It was followed in 1996 with
the Japanese IMG satellite, and again with the AIRS satellite in 2003,
and the AURA satellite in 2004. They paint a very clear picture. We
subtract new readings from the old readings to see the delta, to see
exactly where in the spectrum any change has occurred. Within that
infrared window defined by water vapor, there is one big spike. It is
the 15 µm range of CO2. This is explicit, unambiguous proof that the increased heat in our atmosphere is due to CO2.
It has nothing to do with models or predictions; it is a direct
observation, it is hard chemistry and basic physics, not guesswork or
extrapolation.


As we burn fossil fuels, the CO2 in the atmosphere
increases, the infrared window narrows, less heat radiates away from the
Earth, and more heat goes into the Earth's system. These are simple,
solid facts.


In this episode, I've tried to limit everything to just facts that
are not in dispute. That means I haven't included any estimates or
predictions. Why? Because I'm trying to take opinion and ideology-driven
spin completely out of the picture. I don't have an answer or a
solution for people who prefer to view this particular science question
through the filter of an ideology. Earth science measurements and facts
are ideology-free, just like astronomy and mathematics and zoology. The
impact that human use of fossil fuels is measured to have already made
to the Earth system is bewildering. It is from this point, from the
non-ambiguous, factual, black-and-white characterization of our
atmosphere and oceans, that we must ask ourselves whether any
ideological twisting of the facts is truly the best path forward. We
have to accurately understand a problem in order to devise a properly
informed solution.


Please, if you have any curiosity about any of the topics we've just
discussed, see the references section at the bottom of this transcript,
where you'll find links to articles and videos that are both thorough
and easy to understand. You can go into much greater depth if you're so
inclined. What's important is what you choose to do with this
information, and that part I will leave up to you.



By Brian Dunning


Cite this article:

Dunning, B. "The Simple Proof of Man-Made Global Warming." Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media,
13 Dec 2016. Web.
4 Sep 2017. <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4549>






References & Further Reading

Cheng,
L., Trenberth, K., Fasullo, J., Boyer, T., Abraham, J., Zhu, J.
"Improved estimates of ocean heat content from 1960 to 2015." Science Advances. 10 Mar. 2017, Volume 3, Number 3.


Editors. "Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming." Skeptical Science. John Cook, 11 May 2008. Web. 10 Dec. 2016. <http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-global-warming.htm>


Editors. "Which produces more CO2, volcanic or human activity?" Hawaii Volcano Observatory. US Geological Survey, 15 Feb. 2007. Web. 10 Dec. 2016. <http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/archive/2007/07_02_15.html>


Lallanila, M. "What Is the Greenhouse Effect?" Planet Earth. Live Science, 12 Apr. 2016. Web. 10 Dec. 2016. <http://www.livescience.com/37743-greenhouse-effect.html>


McClain, C. "A Story of Climate Change Told In 15 Graphs." Deep Sea News.
Craig McClain, 23 Sep. 2015. Web. 10 Dec. 2016.
<http://www.deepseanews.com/2015/09/a-story-of-climate-change-told-in-15-graphs/>


Monroe, R. "How Much CO2 Can the Oceans Take Up?" The Keeling Curve.
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, 3 Jul. 2013. Web. 10 Dec. 2016.
<https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/2013/07/03/how-much-co2-can-the-oceans-take-up/>


NOSAMS. "What is Carbon Dating?" National Ocean Sciences Accelerator Mass Spectrometer. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 10 Mar. 2015. Web. 10 Dec. 2016. <http://www.whoi.edu/nosams/page.do?pid=40138>


Riebeek, H. "The Carbon Cycle." Earth Observatory.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 16 Jun. 2011. Web. 10
Dec. 2016.
<http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/page1.php>


Sunday, September 3, 2017

It Wasn’t Comey’s Decision to Exonerate Hillary – It Was Obama’s

It Wasn’t Comey’s Decision to Exonerate Hillary – It Was Obama’s



It Wasn’t Comey’s Decision to Exonerate Hillary – It Was Obama’s
 
by Andrew C. McCarthy 
September 2, 2017 12:33 PM 
@AndrewCMcCarthy 
 
The thing to understand, what has always been the most important thing
to understand, is that Jim Comey was out in front, but he was not
calling the shots.

On the right, the commentariat is in full-throttle outrage over the
revelation that former FBI Director Comey began drafting his statement
exonerating Hillary Clinton in April 2016 – more than two months before
he delivered the statement at his now famous July 5 press conference.

The news appears in a letter written to new FBI Director Christopher
Wray by two senior Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans, Chairman
Chuck Grassley and Senator Lindsey Graham. Pundits and the Trump
administration are shrieking because this indicates the decision to give
the Democrats’ nominee a pass was clearly made long before the
investigation was over, and even long before key witnesses, including
Clinton herself, were interviewed.

It shows, they cry, that the fix was in!

News Flash: This is not news.

Let’s think about what else was going on in April 2016. I’ve written
about it a number of times over the last year-plus, such as in a column a
few months back:

On April 10, 2016, President Obama publicly stated that Hillary
Clinton had shown “carelessness” in using a private e-mail server to
handle classified information, but he insisted that she had not intended
to endanger national security (which is not an element of the [criminal
statutes relevant to her e-mail scandal]). The president acknowledged
that classified information had been transmitted via Secretary Clinton’s
server, but he suggested that, in the greater scheme of things, its
importance had been vastly overstated.

This is precisely the reasoning that Comey relied on in ultimately
absolving Clinton, as I recounted in the same column:

On July 5, 2016, FBI director James Comey publicly stated that
Clinton had been “extremely careless” in using a private email server to
handle classified information, but he insisted that she had not
intended to endanger national security (which is not an element of the
relevant criminal statute). The director acknowledged that classified
information had been transmitted via Secretary Clinton’s server, but he
suggested that, in the greater scheme of things, it was just a small
percentage of the emails involved.

Obama’s April statements are the significant ones. They told us how this
was going to go. The rest is just details.

In his April 10 comments, Obama made the obvious explicit: He did not
want the certain Democratic nominee, the candidate he was backing to
succeed him, to be indicted. Conveniently, his remarks (inevitably
echoed by Comey) did not mention that an intent to endanger national
security was not an element of the criminal offenses Clinton was
suspected of committing – in classic Obama fashion, he was urging her
innocence of a strawman crime while dodging any discussion of the crimes
she had actually committed.

As we also now know – but as Obama knew at the time – the president
himself had communicated with Clinton over her non-secure, private
communications system, using an alias. The Obama administration refused
to disclose these several e-mail exchanges because they undoubtedly
involve classified conversations between the president and his secretary
of state. It would not have been possible to prosecute Mrs. Clinton for
mishandling classified information without its being clear that
President Obama had engaged in the same conduct. The administration was
never, ever going to allow that to happen.

What else was going on in May 2016, while Comey was drafting his
findings (even though several of the things he would purportedly “base”
them on hadn’t actually happened yet)? Well, as I explained in real time
(in a column entitled “Clinton E-mails: Is the Fix In?”), the Obama
Justice Department was leaking to the Washington Post that Clinton
probably would not be charged – and that her top aide, Cheryl Mills, was
considered a cooperating witness rather than a coconspirator.

Why? Well, I know you’ll be shocked to hear this, but it turns out the
Obama Justice Department had fully adopted the theory of the case
announced by President Obama in April. The Post explained that,
according to its sources inside the investigation, there was “scant
evidence tying Clinton to criminal wrongdoing” because there was “scant
evidence that Clinton had malicious intent in [the] handling of e-mails”
(emphasis added). Like Obama, the Post and its sources neglected to
mention that Mrs. Clinton’s felonies did not require proof of “malicious
intent” or any purpose to harm the United States – just that she
willfully transmitted classified information, was grossly negligent in
handling it, and withheld or destroyed government records.

As I recounted in the same May 2016 column, the Obama Justice Department
was simultaneously barring the FBI from asking Mills questions that
went to the heart of the e-mails investigation – questions about the
process by which Clinton and her underlings decided which of her 60,000
e-mails to surrender to the State Department, and which would be
withheld (it ended up being about 33,000) as purportedly “private” (a
goodly percentage were not).

This was the start of a series of Justice Department shenanigans we
would come to learn about: Cutting off key areas of inquiry; cutting
inexplicable immunity deals; declining to use the grand jury to compel
evidence; agreeing to limit searches of computers (in order to miss key
time-frames when obstruction occurred); agreeing to destroy physical
evidence (laptop computers); failing to charge and squeeze witnesses who
made patently false statements; allowing subjects of the investigation
to act as lawyers for other subjects of the investigation (in order to
promote the charade that some evidence was off-limits due to the
attorney-client privilege); and so on. There is a way – a notoriously
aggressive way – that the Justice Department and FBI go about their
business when they are trying to make a case. Here, they were trying to
unmake a case.

Knowing all these things, as we now do and have for a year, I’m baffled
by complaints that Comey allegedly made “his” decision not to charge
Clinton before key witnesses were interviewed. The main issue is not
that witnesses hadn’t been questioned; it is that by April 2016,
restraints were already in place to ensure that witness interviews would
be fruitless, and that any incriminating information they accidentally
turned up would be ignored or buried.

The decision not to indict Hillary Clinton was not made by then-FBI
Director Comey. It was made by President Obama and his Justice
Department – Comey’s superiors. If you want to say Comey went along for
the ride rather than bucking the tide (as he concedes doing when Lynch
directed him to call the Clinton probe a “matter,” not an
“investigation”), that’s fair. But the fact that Comey already knew in
April what he would say in July has long been perfectly obvious. The
Obama administration was going to follow its leader. What Comey
ultimately stated was just a repeat of what Obama was openly saying in
April, and what Obama’s Justice Department was leaking to the press in
May.

Bottom line: In April, President Obama and his Justice Department
adopted a Hillary Clinton defense strategy of concocting a crime no one
was claiming Clinton had committed: to wit, transmitting classified
information with an intent to harm the United States. With
media-Democrat complex help, they peddled the narrative that she could
not be convicted absent this “malicious intent,” in a desperate effort
to make the publicly known evidence seem weak. Meanwhile, they quietly
hamstrung FBI case investigators in order to frustrate the
evidence-gathering process. When damning proof nevertheless mounted, the
Obama administration dismissed the whole debacle by rewriting the
statute (to impose an imaginary intent standard) and by offering absurd
rationalizations for not applying the statute as written.

That plan was in place and already being implemented when Director Comey
began drafting the “findings” he would announce months later. But it
was not Comey’s plan. It was Obama’s plan.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/451053/not-comeys-decision-exonerate-hillary-obamas-decision