85 comments on Freedom from Oil - a review
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GAIA Host Collective
I can feel a 200 post thread on "Yes we're warming", "No, we're not warming" coming from all sides now. The air is getting close, my chest is hurting, I collapse in a daze only to be awakened hours later by a medic, saying I passed out. I am confused and stumble out the door.
The bright hot sun blinds me and burns my face, the cold wind bites through my skin. I run in panic from the voices inside my head of reason and madness fighting each other to find the truth. I sit down by the lakeside and watch the waves lapping against the shore and become calm.
amen
I do think its the people who deny GW that want you to "collapse in a daze" - if you can't bedazzle them with brilliance them confuse them with BS.
Are you seriously saying that somebody like me who is a AGW denier thinks that peak oil does not exist? Or that we should just trash the environment? This is a rather absurd conclusion at best.
I do think that it is horrible that when I have visted LA that my eyes, lungs, nose burn. I do think that we should clean up our act and stop dumping crap everywhere. However even if I do think that things that regulate our climate are beyond our control does not mean that I say BURN IT ALL!!
I have a car that gets 30mpg, I run CF lights in my house. I am growing my own food. I recycle everything I can and so on.
I do not believe in climate models for a few reasons.
1) Hurricanes cannot be modeled with decent reliability yet.
2) Daily weather cannot be accurate
3) yearly trends are usually wrong
4) Models do not take everything into account such as death of trees, oceanic variability based on temperature and CO2 released due to this, Bacteria creating methane, humans breathing, yeast!... They wonder why they get it so wrong? LOL is all I can say.
5) Fringe scientists who try to bring rebuttals are considered to be lunatics. However their observations do hold merit just do not generate $$ for companies that wish to push the ever greening products.
6) Its hip, If it is hip and lots of people are onboard who do not know anything about climate science are touting it there is a problem. Real Estate anyone?
7) Are we to think that we are so super-beings that we can piss off the planet that has been around for so long?
8) The Sun well its the Sun nuff said.
9) Their models are proven wrong and even based on false data that is later realized. Even the hockey stick is considered to be fallacy now.
10) Higher C02 leads to higher plant growth speeds and therefore consumes more. Think of what happens when over abundance of food occurs in the wild with animals. Consume Consume Consume "die-off" stabilized" Regardless of our actions now we are scrapnoids if we are indeed the cause.
11) Arctic ice is refreezing at record rates
12) Solar Cycles are very impacting on weather
13) Water Vapor is by far more important of a greenhouse gas than C02
14) If there was true global warming sound science backs up that warming in the arctic would occur first nobody argues this. Hurricanes would be less frequent as the mechanism of hurricanes is nothing more than heat transfer from the lower to higher latitudes.
15) If there was higher warming there would be a increase in water vapor and rainfall overall. However there is extended drought over most of the planet that just does not set well with warming.
16) As above Colder leads to there being less rainfall and less evaporation thus drought. Drought leads to dust that blocks sunlight further making it colder.
17) There is no sound science to explain why the southern hemisphere is cooling now.
18) There has been natural climate variables that have occurred such as the little ice age and medieval warming period that exceed today in terms of speed and time.
19) greenland was fertile for the vikings therefore must have melted a lot more than today and yet life survived.
20) during earths history cool climates is the majority of the time therefore we should count our lucky stars that we exist in a time that is rather warm.
I just have to rationalize with myself on what I think is sound science. However think what you want. As I said I am not one to think polluting the atmosphere or soil/water is a good idea. I think we should quit for sure and find more reasonable means to get the energy we need. And maybe even use the word that is so hated these days... SACRIFICE!!! and do with out to make better for all.
In can speak to the Greenland fertility issue.
Throstur Eysteinsson is Ass't Directer of the Icelandic Forest Service, has been working with Greenland to set up their first tree plantings and has a PhD in forestry from the Univ. of Maine. He also quite erudite.
Wait a minute. I have no expertise at all on climate change in Greenland, but here we have a witness from the 14th century who went to Greenland and described what it was like. Then we have some guy in the 21st century who says the guy in the 14th century was wrong about what he says he saw? I think we should give the greater weight to the eyewitness testimony.
Throstur's points are valid. There is no apparent source for wheat in Greenland (since it was never grown in Iceland, the only known contact with Greenland), just barley. And a warmer climate in Greenland should have helped Iceland (which has a better climate today). Yet Icelanders never grew wheat.
No archaeological evidence of either apples or wheat.
As the name suggests, Greenland was subject to massive Real Estate hype, of which the bishop might have been part. Post-pagan Iceland murdered far fewer men (and lost fewer "a viking") so emigration of surplus population was probably a good thing.
The sea ice records of the Icelanders showed more ice in the 1300s & 1400s than today.
Alan
Alan:
You might try
*Ivar Bardson/Bardarson, Det Gamle Grnlands Beskrivelse, edited from handwritten MS by Finnur Jonsson, Copenhagen 1930. The original was written by a monk who, among other things, dined on the wild cattle that were roaming the place in the 1340's.
Cheers
HO
(the square comes because I don't know how to put an o with a slash through it into this format).
Short of checking for it in the National Library of Iceland, any idea how to get it ?
Or a detailed summary ?
I can kind of/sort of read Icelandic/Old Norse.
Alan
I only just tracked it down this far. But there is are a group of folk that write about this on a discussion board, which I came across trying to find a translation. Incidentally travel at the time was not narrowly restricted and so it is perfectly possible that they acquired seed grain as part of the trade that they engaged in - selling polar bear skins etc into Europe. The church was also heavily involved in the colony.
Archaeologists love to comb through waste dumps. No evidence of wheat or apples there.
Iceland has a milder climate, and much stronger trade links, than Greenland. They have never grown wheat there (including today). As an aside, Iceland has a variety of trees to chose from that will grow well or marginally.
So far (I will confirm) only Siberian larch has been planted in Greenland.
{
[edit] A number of tree species have been planted in Greenland (Scotch Pine 100+ years ago, today 2.5 to 3 m tall). Several species survive but only Siberian larch can be said to grow. And only along the interior Fjords of the south (where the Eastern Settlement was).
The Western Settlement was treeless (and charcoal less), but the Eastern Settlement had limited short willows & birches along the interior fjords, but a very limited resource that would have been pressured by sheep farming. And iron could well have been an essential export from the Newfoundland Settlement. Unfortunately, access to Newfoundland required trees to make ships from.
[I might mention that apple orchards and sheep farming are incompatible without extensive fences, the sheep will rapidly kill the trees w/o high and extensive fences (Icelanders traditionally free range their sheep, fences were impractical). Fruit trees have sugar in their bark are are "sheep candy" AFAIK. Another strike against Greenlandic apple trees.]
Throstur also pointed out that the concept of sustainable development came from forestry. A 1713 book on silvaculture Economics in German was the first mention, he said the name of the author but I forgot[/edit]
There is no other historic record of wheat or apples, both of which would have been trade goods with Iceland, which had neither.
Throstur's theory of collapse of Greenland and not Iceland is that Iceland had small trees large enough to make charcoal, Greenland did not. Charcoal is needed to make iron (note that Viking Settlement in Newfoundland (perhaps 150 people max) had an iron foundry). Iron is needed to harvest hay. Hay is needed to keep sheep & cattle over winter. Once Greenland's declining trade links deprived them of iron, starvation was just a matter of time.
Such a theory argues against apple trees.
Greenland Vikings were never a large colony. Even much larger, and closer Iceland would go over a year without a trade vessel at various times in their history. (Although such years were rare and were complained of in the chronicles of the time).
Alan
That is, of course, the same bishop that Throstur politely called a liar. And made claims not supported by excavations of old settlements or other historical accounts.
Alan
Are you seriously saying that somebody like me who is a AGW denier thinks that peak oil does not exist?
Nope
Or that we should just trash the environment? This is a rather absurd conclusion at best.
Nope
do think that it is horrible that when I have visted LA that my eyes, lungs, nose burn. I do think that we should clean up our act and stop dumping crap everywhere. However even if I do think that things that regulate our climate are beyond our control does not mean that I say BURN IT ALL!!
Nope - never said that nor have I implied that you or anyone else who is a GW denier said as such
I would like to see a majority of trained climate scientists interpret climate data and come to the conclusion that GW as a trend is wrong. But it is not to be. As for the 20 point post - it kinda reinforces my point. Spread confusion.
so instead of answering my 20 questions you decide its a good idea to say its just confusion. Cool! way to go on a rebuttal.