Stuck on Stupid: climate activist tries to superglue himself to UK Prime Minister

Activist tries to superglue himself to Gordon Brown

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 12:57 AM on 23rd July 2008

During these turbulent economic times, Gordon Brown is keen for the country to stick by him.

However, this probably wasn’t quite what he had in mind.

Dan Glass, of the climate change pressure group Plane Stupid, today tried to superglue himself to the Prime Minister at a Downing Street reception.

Stuck on you: Mr Brown with Dan Glass

As Mr Glass, 24, was introduced to the Premier, he laid a glue-covered hand on his sleeve.

He also took the opportunity to urge Mr Brown to change his mind on the Heathrow airport expansion.

Mr Glass told the assembled guests: ‘Do not worry - this is a non-violent protest. We cannot shake away climate change like you can just shake away my arm.’

Mr Glass, who had smuggled pouches of glue into the event in his underwear, added later that Mr Brown laughed off the protest.

‘He was just grinning about it,’ he said. ‘He didn’t seem to take me seriously.’

Mr Glass, an invited guest, was allowed to stay at the reception for 40 minutes after the stunt. When he left, he tried to glue himself to the gates of Downing Street - but had his hand detached by a police officer.

‘I didn’t have much glue left by that point,’ he said.

Algal Blooms: Not Caused by Global Warming

It seems that global warming is as easy to blame as “the devil made me do it” these days. Almost anything can be blamed on global warming it seems. It has become the new universal evil, replacing the threat of communism as the new global menace. But it doesn’t always deserve the blame for things that happen in our world, and with a little digging, you can often find that blaming global warming for a variety of ills and changes is about as credible as blaming the boogeyman. Consider algae blooms for example.

Earlier this year we saw this story

Harmful Algae Takes Advantage Of Global Warming: More Algae Blooms Expected

ScienceDaily (Apr. 7, 2008 ) — You know that green scum creeping across the surface of your local public water reservoir? Or maybe it’s choking out a favorite fishing spot or livestock watering hole. It’s probably cyanobacteria — blue-green algae — and, according to a paper in the April 4 issue of the journal Science, it relishes the weather extremes that accompany global warming. more…

Now we have this new factual story:

Scientists solve riddle of toxic algae blooms
Ed Struzik, Canwest News Service, Published: Tuesday, July 22, 2008

EXCERPT: After a remarkable 37-year experiment, University of Alberta scientist David Schindler and his colleagues have finally nailed down the chemical triggers for a problem that plagues thousands of freshwater and coastal ecosystems around the world.

Fifty years ago, no one knew what exactly caused algae blooms to appear on lakes and rivers. There was some evidence to suggest that carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous, which are associated with agricultural runoff and waste water, were responsible. But small-scale experiments weren’t able to show which were more important.

Schindler seemed to solve the problem when he and his colleagues conducted a number of groundbreaking experiments in northern Ontario in the 1960s and early 1970s. In a famous 1974 aerial photograph published by the journal Science, two portions of their experimental Lake 226 were highlighted. One side was treated with carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous. The other was treated with just carbon and nitrogen.

The side receiving phosphorous rapidly developed a huge bloom of blue-green algae. The side not receiving phosphorous remained in near-pristine condition.

Schindler’s latest series of long-term experiments shows that nitrogen removal completely fails to control blue-green algae blooms. He proved this by manipulating nitrogen and phosphorus levels on Lake 227 for 37 years. Nitrogen control, he found, only encouraged algae blooms.

more…

Conclusion? Phosphates and Nitrogen. Not global warming.

 

Sidebar to Spencer testimony today - Barbara Boxer tosses an insult, implies Limbaugh is involved in Spencer’s testimony

Update: video link added below at 730PM PST (H/T to Joe S.)

From C-SPAN, Click for video player

When you watch this video it is clear Ms. Boxer does not have any interest in listening to what Dr. Spencer had to say, nor does she apparently care that she just insulted him on national television. Ms. Boxer, have you no shame?

From the Rush Limbaugh show, some sparks flew when Boxer beclowns herself at the end of Dr. Roy Spencer’s testimony. (Link to testimony here)
Excerpt-

Limbaugh transcript: I’m going to make Barbara Boxer the official clown of the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.  Can you believe this?  Folks, I can’t tell you how much I wish my mom and dad were alive to see all of this.  To have a brilliant and independent scientist, a former NASA scientist, be insulted simply because he has an association, a tongue-in-cheek association. We don’t have an official climatologist here.  I just know Dr. Spencer and I learn from him.  He’s a scientist, a scientist that we all know and love and trust here.  He’s written a great book about global warming, and these snide little Democrats, these little liberals just have to go, eh, eh, eh.  Dr. Spencer is now going to be more famous than he ever thought he would be. (laughing) Can you believe this?  “I just want everybody to make sure they know what’s really happening.” What’s really happening, Senator Boxer?  What’s really happening?  (laughing)  “I just wanted to point that out for people to understand.”  Yeah, like I wrote his testimony, I wrote his talking points, I even had a secret wireless communication in his ear. I was answering questions they were asking. (laughing) And Obama says there’s going to be unity.

Transcript follows:

Roy Spencer’s testimony before congress backs up Monckton’s assertions on climate sensitivity

Dr. Roy Spencer went to Washington to give testimony today to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Here is his presentation. While not as technical as Lord Moncktons paper at APS (since it had to be simplified for a congressional hearing), it nonetheless says the same thing - climate sensitivity is overstated by models and not supported by observational data. - Anthony

Update: See the complete testimony on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzf6z-oHP8U

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Testimony of Roy W. Spencer before the
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on 22 July 2008

A printable PDF of this testimony can be found here

I would like to thank Senator Boxer and members of the Committee for allowing me to discuss my experiences as a NASA employee engaged in global warming research, as well as to provide my current views on the state of the science of global warming and climate change.

I have a PhD in Meteorology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and have been involved in global warming research for close to twenty years. I have numerous peer reviewed scientific articles dealing with the measurement and interpretation of climate variability and climate change. I am also the U.S. Science Team Leader for the AMSR-E instrument flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite.

1. White House Involvement in the Reporting of Agency Employees’ Work

On the subject of the Administration’s involvement in policy-relevant scientific work performed by government employees in the EPA, NASA, and other agencies, I can provide some perspective based upon my previous experiences as a NASA employee. For example, during the Clinton-Gore Administration I was told what I could and could not say during congressional testimony. Since it was well known that I am skeptical of the view that mankind’s greenhouse gas emissions are mostly responsible for global warming, I assumed that this advice was to help protect Vice President Gore’s agenda on the subject.

This did not particularly bother me, though, since I knew that as an employee of an Executive Branch agency my ultimate boss resided in the White House. To the extent that my work had policy relevance, it seemed entirely appropriate to me that the privilege of working for NASA included a responsibility to abide by direction given by my superiors.

But I eventually tired of the restrictions I had to abide by as a government employee, and in the fall of 2001 I resigned from NASA and accepted my current position as a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Despite my resignation from NASA, I continue to serve as Team Leader on the AMSR-E instrument flying on the NASA Aqua satellite, and maintain a good working relationship with other government researchers.

2. Global Warming Science: The Latest Research
Regarding the currently popular theory that mankind is responsible for global warming, I am very pleased to deliver good news from the front lines of climate change research. Our latest research results, which I am about to describe, could have an enormous impact on policy decisions regarding greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite decades of persistent uncertainty over how sensitive the climate system is to increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, we now have new satellite evidence which strongly suggests that the climate system is much less sensitive than is claimed by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Another way of saying this is that the real climate system appears to be dominated by “negative feedbacks” — instead of the “positive feedbacks” which are displayed by all twenty computerized climate models utilized by the IPCC. (Feedback parameters larger than 3.3 Watts per square meter per degree Kelvin (Wm-2K-1) indicate negative feedback, while feedback parameters smaller than 3.3 indicate positive feedback.)

The Green Inquisition

From Project Syndicate

by Bjørn Lomborg

COPENHAGEN – When it comes to global warming, extreme scare stories abound. Al Gore, for example, famously claimed that a whopping six meters (20 feet) of sea-level rise would flood major cities around the world.

Gore’s scientific advisor, Jim Hansen from NASA, has even topped his protégé. Hansen suggests that there will eventually be sea-level rises of 24 meters (80 feet), with a six-meter rise happening just this century. Little wonder that fellow environmentalist Bill McKibben states that “we are engaging in a reckless drive-by drowning of much of the rest of the planet and much of the rest of creation.”

Given all the warnings, here is a slightly inconvenient truth: over the past two years, the global sea level hasn’t increased. It has slightly decreased . Since 1992, satellites orbiting the planet have measured the global sea level every 10 days with an amazing degree of accuracy – 3-4 millimeters (0.2 inches). For two years, sea levels have declined. (All of the data are available at sealevel.colorado.edu.)

This doesn’t mean that global warming is not true. As we emit more CO2, over time the temperature will moderately increase, causing the sea to warm and expand somewhat. Thus, the sea-level rise is expected to pick up again. This is what the United Nations climate panel is telling us; the best models indicate a sea-level rise over this century of 18 to 59 centimeters (7-24 inches), with the typical estimate at 30 centimeters (one foot). This is not terrifying or even particularly scary – 30 centimeters is how much the sea rose over the last 150 years.

Simply put, we’re being force-fed vastly over-hyped scare stories. Proclaiming six meters of sea-level rise over this century contradicts thousands of UN scientists, and requires the sea-level rise to accelerate roughly 40-fold from today. Imagine how climate alarmists would play up the story if we actually saw an increase in the sea-level rise.

Increasingly, alarmists claim that we should not be allowed to hear such facts. In June, Hansen proclaimed that people who spread “disinformation” about global warming – CEOs, politicians, in fact anyone who doesn’t follow Hansen’s narrow definition of the “truth” – should literally be tried for crimes against humanity.

American physicists warned not to debate global warming

Original article from the UK Register:

By Andrew Orlowski (andrew.orlowski@theregister.co.uk)

Published Monday 21st July 2008 16:04 GMT

Bureaucrats at the American Physical Society (APS) have issued a curious warning to their members about an article in one of their own publications. Don’t read this, they say - we don’t agree with it. But what is it about the piece that is so terrible, that like Medusa, it could make men go blind?

It’s an article that examines the calculation central to climate models. As the editor of the APS’s newsletter American Physics Jeffrey Marque explains, the global warming debate must be re-opened.

“There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution. Since the correctness or fallacy of that conclusion has immense implications for public policy and for the future of the biosphere, we thought it appropriate to present a debate within the pages of P&S concerning that conclusion,” he wrote (http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/editor.cfm).

American Physics invited both believers and sceptics to submit articles, and has published a submission by Viscount Monckton questioning (http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/monckton.cfm) the core calculation of the greenhouse gas theory: climate sensitivity. The believers are represented (http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/hafemeister.cfm) by two physicists from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, who state that: