From the Australian Herald Sun comes The concert no warmist would applause where Bono’s hypocrisy is succinctly pointed out.

Bono was cheered in 2008 by the Keen for Green group for several reasons:

• Bono participated in a tree planting ceremony
• Bono and U2 participated in a protest against a nuclear power plant
• Bono is an avid recycler
• Bono drives an ethanol powered car

But, the article goes on, U2′s latest traveling show tours on six 747′s and uses 55 trucks (presumably semis).

Good gosh!  But, Bono’s an environmentalist or something, and his institute says it’s about raising awareness which is why he can in good conscience fly his hat first class.

Too bad his institute doesn’t contribute that much of the proceeds to the cause.

ONE gives only a pittance in direct charitable support to its causes — something Borochoff said the average donor might not realize.

The Bono nonprofit took in $14,993,873 in public donations in 2008, the latest year for which tax records are available.

Of that, $184,732 was distributed to three charities, according to the IRS filing.

Meanwhile, more than $8 million was spent on executive and employee salaries.

And he avoids taxes, which effects the amount of money available to the poor.

U2 moved their publishing arm to Holland in 2006 after the Government capped tax-free earnings for artists at €250,000. The band was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the royalties scheme. 

Nessa Ni Chasaide, of the DDCI, told Mr Lenihan millions of euro were being lost through similar tax-avoidance schemes which she claimed kept cash, in the form of foreign aid, from the poorest people in society.

Now to the points above.

• Tree planting ceremonies do nothing, which is why the root word ‘ceremony’ means ‘a formal event performed on a special occassion’.  Sorry, ‘raising awareness’ isn’t a justification in the web connected world of the new millenium.
• Protesting against a nuclear power plant?  What is the U2 approved alternative energy source in the United Kingdom?  Wind?  Nope.  Solar?  Nope.  Hope?  Nuclear is the U.K.’s best bet to get off coal and oil.
• Recycling is garbage. 
• Come on Bono, even Al Gore realizes that burning your food and poisoning your water while driving up food costs for the poor is not a good way to power a car.

Wonder what Al is whispering in Bono’s ear up there?  I’ll bet a dollar it’s “I’ve got them so whipped, I could shove this microphone straight into their keysters and they’d thank me for the revelation.”  And if not, well it would be worth a buck to hear them deny that’s what was said.

This condemnation,
laceration,
dissertation,
on my motivations..

Let it go, uh-huh, and so fade away-a-a

Oh, no, wait, those weren’t the words, were they?

This year’s climate party is in Cancun and after Brad Pitt was unable to save the world last year in Copenhagen, the delegates decided to get right to the point: money.

There are two aspects of the money issue.  One aspect is the paleo-climatic zealots demanding ever increasing fundings in a vain effort to find the physical evidence that would prove their dogma, while the second aspect is the world’s politicians capitalizing on the fear the eco-zealots have instilled in the population.

FoxNews reports from the Associated Press:

Hoping to revive momentum in the talks, delegates look for decisions leading to better terms for developing nations to obtain patented “green” technology from advanced countries, and toward a system for compensating poorer nations for protecting their forests.

In particular, the developing world wants a significant deal on finance, a decision to establish a green fund to handle billions in aid dollars pledged by developed nations to help poorer countries adapt to a changing climate by, for example, building shoreline protection and upgrading water systems to deal with drought, and to install clean energy sources.

But the undeveloped world and the developing world want the money now:

More immediately, less-developed nations will raise concerns about short-term aid, “fast-start finance” promised in the Copenhagen Accord.

“There’s been too little for small island developing states. It’s a trickle,” said Grenada’s U.N. ambassador, Dessima Williams, chair of an alliance of island states.

and:

Poorer nations complain much of the money may not be new, but funds simply reshuffled from other development programs. At Cancun, they’re expected to demand a clearer accounting of fast-start finance.

I seriously doubt any but the most naive tree hugger actually believed a continuous planet-wide party of 15,000 people was about the environment.

I’m all for helping people, and I’m proud that as an American I know my tax dollars support food, medicine and shelter for the less fortunate around the world.  I also like having the discretionary income available to contribute to the 2004 tsunami victims and the recent Haitian earthquake relief efforts and whatever else I want to donate my money to.  I don’t mind those monies spent at all.

I do mind however when governments come begging, saying I’m not giving enough, and demanding that I support their continued existence in their historical lands while they ignore geology and history and use inflammatory commentary such as the following to wrench out as many dollars from fools as possible:

If too little is done, temperatures this century may rise by up to 6.4 degrees C (11.5 degrees F), leading to severe climate disruption, say scientists of the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Now the threat is 11.5 degrees F this century!  The end is nigh, and always has been, for the zealots.

If you, as an island nation floating on top of a coral atoll, wish to drink all the fresh water that you’re floating on and sink your island, it’s not America’s fault.

If you, as a forested nation that has yet to find a profitable existence, wants to extort money from America with the threat you’ll cut down your forests if we don’t give it to you, I’ll call.  Cut them down.  Cut them all down.  If you can make money from cutting them all down, your people would have done so a century ago.  You think we need the oxygen produced from your tiny amount of mature trees?  We don’t.  Growing plants use more oxygen than mature ones, and besides, the rain forests produce a very small amount of the world’s oxygen.  Look it up.

If you, as a nation that is undeveloped for reasons of cultural preference, are asking for money, I have to ask what you would want it for as it will only influence your cultural decision to remain as you have for thousands of years.

Money is the problem that drives this madness, so I say we stop giving money to those who ask.  Instead, we should give technologies, techniques, equipment, expertise and other items necessary to accomplish ends.

I expect if America simply said “no” to requests for money then there would be a great reduction in the numbers of hands reaching out, and that of those still asking for assistance almost all would actually require it, and would be appreciative of the assistance provided.

Got an auto reply from Dave Perlman’s email address which is a couple weeks off, looks like he’s deleting emails that don’t reach him during office hours:

I’m out of the office until Monday, November 15  If your e-mail is personal, try my home phone or resend it Monday. ALL incoming e-mails will be automatically deleted until I return.  Sorry, and many thanks.

========================================================
This e-mail message is intended only for the personal
use of the recipient(s) named above. If you are not
an intended recipient, you may not review, copy or
distribute this message.

If you have received this communication in error, please
notify the sender immediately by e-mail and delete the original message.
========================================================

I have added a new category “emails to journos” where I will document correspondence or lack thereof between myself and those I choose to email.

This first piece regards the San Francisco Chronicles’ Dave Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor and follows:

The story is the narrative not the science.

Like a good cheerleader, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Dave Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor is merrily reporting the news that lakes are part of the environment and will warm as Earth’s temperatures continue to drive away from those experienced during the Little Ice Age.

Dave Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor, is reporting on news that Lake Tahoe has warmed.  Let’s look at some of Dave Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor’s article to see how he has chosen to frame his argument:

The world’s largest lakes, including Lake Tahoe, have been warming rapidly for 25 years as the global climate changes, NASA scientists report.

The above is a definitive statement that the world’s largest lakes have been warming rapidly for 25 years.  It leaves little to the imagination.

And a little further down Dave Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor, makes another definitive statement:

In a report just published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Philipp Schneider and Simon Hook of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena say the warming rate of all the major lakes observed by the satellites has averaged nearly a full degree Fahrenheit per decade.

And then a quote from one of the JPL scientists involved:

“This is just one of several lines of evidence that global warming is really taking place,” Hook said. “The evidence is striking and worldwide.”

Yes, we are all in agreement that the aforementioned Little Ice Age has ended, the evidence is indeed striking and worldwide.

Further down we get the obligatory answer to “why do we care”:

As lakes like Tahoe grow warmer, the regular mixing of water between the surface and the bottom slows, Schladow said. Dangerous chemicals like heavy metals and phosphorous, which normally are locked in bottom sediments, become soluble, so they pollute the entire lake.

“The result is to change the lake’s entire ecology,” he said.

And after a bit more dutiful discussion of temperature and effects, we have some interesting numbers introduced into Dave Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor’s article:

For their report, Schneider and Hook selected 176 of the world’s 364 largest lakes and gathered measurements only at night and only from selected lake areas, far from surrounding land.

I believe myself to be a reasonable person, and from the tidbits of facts and theory presented by Dave Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor, I come away from the article with the impression that 176 of the largest lakes in the world were studied and found to be warming by as much as 1 degree F per decade, and that this will have detrimental impacts on the local ecologies of these lakes, potentially allowing dangerous chemicals to mix in the waters and creating oxygen free dead zones in the waters after some undisclosed and apparently unexplored temperature tipping point is reached.

Very horrible, and very much what Dave Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor has selected for his readers to believe.

Being a science journalist should require the journalist to have the mind of a scientist, but sadly there is no such requirement.

Not being a science journalist myself, but simply a layperson, I am left wondering how lakes around the world contend with the detrimental mixing of heavy metals and phosphorous producing dead zones mentioned in this scare piece? 

Why, all the lakes in Africa must be positively poisonous and rancid as they are no doubt much warmer than Lake Tahoe.  Here the United States Geologic Survey states that Lake Tahoe varies from 40-50 degrees F in winter, and 65-70 degrees F in summer (several paragraphs down).  While here are the temps for Lake Victoria in Africa, which are given in degrees Celsius, and range from 55 to 104 degrees for the max and min when converted to Fahrenheit.

So, Lake Victoria is always 5 decades of warming greater than Lake Tahoe’s winter temperature, and as much as 500 years of warming greater than Lake Tahoe’s winter during each and every summer.  Lake Victoria’s summers are as much as 300 years of warming above Lake Tahoe’s summers.  Wherever the detrimental threshold is for Lake Tahoe, it is obviously quite a long ways off as I can confidently describe Lake Victoria as “flourishing”.  300-500 years has produced very many interesting changes in the climate as chronicled by Tony Brown at Climate Reason here.

Is Lake Victoria a particularly warm or hot lake?  I have no idea, I simply thought of it first.

Perhaps during their last eco-jaunt around the world to raise awareness for why not to jaunt around the world, the JPL scientists discovered Pitch Lake on Trinidad and Tobago?  Surely the IPCC has destined there?  Any Douglas Adams fans in the readership?  Remember the party that continuously circled the planet leaving trash and waste everywhere?  That’s the IPCC.

Maybe Dave Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor was just being lazy, after all here is NASA’s press piece on the same study.  About the same information Dave Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor supplied in his article.

Maybe Dave Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor’s boss simply permits Dave to paraphrase NASA press releases?

What point am I driving home here?  That the story is the narrative not the science.  The science is not the story, only carrying water for the AGW crowd is the story.

Here is what I mean.  When I first read this story I was on MSNBC who chose to include more information than Dave Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor chose to include.  MSNBC’s article is one by Seth Borenstein from the Associated Press who includes the following important information from the JPL scientest Simon Hook quoted above:

Overall, 41 lakes increased temperatures in a statistically significant way, with another 59 individually warming but not enough to be considered significant. Only four showed temperature drops, but not significantly, Hook said.

It turns out that only 41 lakes showed significant warming which is a far cry from the 176 reported by Dave Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor.  By significant we have to remember that Simon Hook is a scientist, and he is therefore referring to statistical significance, meaning a clear trend, which is why Simon Hook, actual scientist and not a chronicle science editor, states that 59 did warm but it wasn’t significant.  And Simon Hook, actual scientist and not a chronicle science editor states that four lakes actually cooled.

Let’s check Dave Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor’s math.  Dave Perlman, Chronicle Scientist Editor reports that 176 lakes warmed by up to 1 degree F per decade over the last 25 years.  The actual author of the paper Dave Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor was paraphrasing states 41 lakes warmed in a statistically meaningful way and 59 others showed measurable but insignificant warming.  176 >> 41 + 59  (Dave that means 176 is “very much greater than” the sum of 41 and 59 (which by the way is only 100)).  And in actuality, only 41 warmed not 176, and a far cry from the opening paragraph which hints that all of the largest 364 lakes would show statistically significant warming, but that only 176 were sampled.

Why would some not be sampled?  This was conducted by satellite after all.  Surely, the remaining 188 large lakes could be easily sampled?  Why were these 188 large lakes not chosen for sampling?  Does this hint at Simon Hook’s strange word choice when he states that “only” four lakes cooled?  Were the 188 ignored based on the probability they had likely cooled, and the remaining minority of 176 were chosen because they likely warmed, and the JPL scientists were “only” wrong about four?  Any actual journalists alive anymore?

And, of course, Dave Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor fails to mention the four lakes cooled in a statistically meaningful way.  That is, almost one tenth of the lakes cherry picked for this study showing a statistically measurable cooling trend.

Given the facts absent in the NASA press release, can I forgive Dave Perlman’s story (it’s now a story as it no longer can be considered an article)?  Only if one or more of the following are true:

• Dave Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor only plagiarizes or paraphrases
• Dave Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor has no journalistic skills
• Dave Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor has no knowledge of the scientific method

Otherwise, Dave Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor is simply carrying water for the alarmist crowd that seems to populate the comments section on so many of the San Francisco Chronicle pseudo-articles that make it to the front pages of the news aggregation sites I read.

NASA is a national embarrassment for putting out press releases that allow shills like Dave Perlman to regurgitate rhetoric, disseminating half truths wrapped in folklore to perpetuate this religion of the Cult of the Carbon Cow.

Google currently shows 73,300 results for “nasa lake tahoe warming”, most of which on the first four pages are from shills like Dave Perlman.

If this rant seems familiar to the good reader, I’ve covered ridiculous reporting such as this before during the recent Peterman ice shelf calving scare.

Returning to the Associated Press article by Seth Borenstein and reported by MSNBC, we have this passage:

“It fits with what we see with air temperature measurements,” Hook said. “We were surprised that in some places the lakes appear to be warming more than the air temperature.”

The next question to look at is why the lakes seem to be warming faster than the air or land, Hook said. One reason could be the way lakes warm — in a more gradual manner than land but also slower to cool.

None of our science reporters seem to pick up on these interesting statements by Simon Hook.

The first interesting statement is that the lakes are warming faster than the air surrounding them, thermodynamics tells us then that the air cannot be warming the lakes.

Alternatively, as suggested by the second statement, the lakes are warmer than the surrounding air due to the fact that heat capacitance of water is greater than that of air, and as the air around the lakes has cooled, the waters are slowly following the trend.  But, it can’t be cooling, right?  I don’t think it is, only four lakes showed statistical cooling trends, and after all these 176 100 41 lakes have shown a warming trend.  Or, I assume they have.

Has anyone actually read Simon Hook’s paper yet?  Oh yeah, the story is the narrative not the science.

If the climatologists have spoken and the future is known, then why are there still climatologists?

What’s the difference between an astrologer, a fortune teller, and a climatologist?   I don’t know either.

Ocean acidification is a call-to-alarmism phrase for the eco-loons as of late.  We’ve discussed it here and here.  Other sites have discussed it much better no doubt.

While surfing the tubes, I ran across this article regarding the oldest shrimp yet discovered.  Here he is in a Kent State pic:

Doesn’t look much different than what I’m currently feeding my blue ribbon eel and Atlantic lionfish.

I’ve discussed my salt water fish/reef keeping hobby several times on this site and would wish that every climatologist be required to take up the hobby and demonstrate proficiency before allowed any further grant monies.

What I believe the climatologists could learn from the salt water fish/reef hobby include:

• temperature swings of several degrees don’t matter that much
• temperature differentials do not cause currents in water
• lighting is the most important quality to the success of the creatures
• limestone buffers the effects of CO2
• pH changes are daily occurrences

If ocean acidification is such a threat, one would have to wonder about this quote from the tale of our shrimp friend up there:

“When the animal died, it came to rest on the seafloor,” he said. “The muscles then were preserved by a combination of acidic waters and a low oxygen content as the animal was buried rapidly.”

The shrimp apparently lived and thrived in water that was actually acidic, not alkaline as the “ocean acidification” scare cautions us about.

Now, would I suggest dropping the pH of a reef tank?  Of course not, the creatures populating the reefs today have evolved under the conditions that have persisted over the last many generations of their kind.  However, the article linked does prove conclusively that actually acidic water will not prevent shrimps from growing shells.  And given that so many of today’s species were evolving back when our shrimp friend was, it seems that metabolic processes can counter pH changes.  Just like in my tanks today.

And just in case there is some concern that perhaps this one shrimp species was unique, the article concludes:

The shrimp lived in deeper waters of the ocean where currents were too weak to destroy it. Other animals that were found in the same rock include the extinct ammonites, nautiloids, brachiopods and sponges.