Saturday, April 18, 2015

Scott Walker Versus Climate Change


Two recent events will give the gentle reader a good idea of where Scott Walker stands on the issue of climate change. If one thought that Walker would take the educated position backed by science, one has not been paying much attention.

First, Walker wants to appoint his former head of the Department of Administration, Mike Huebsch, to the Public Service Commission, which regulates everything from power rates to construction of power plants and other energy related issues.

When being questioned for the confirmation of this appointment, Huebsch put his foot into it:
The question came up during the end of Huebsch’s April 7, 2015 appearance before the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy. State Sen. Mark Miller (D-Monona) asked Huebsch for his views about "whether or not our activities in terms of energy generation are contributing to climate change?"

Huebsch responded that humans have can have an impact on climate change, but said he didn’t believe it is "anywhere near the level of impact of just the natural progression of our planet."

He added: "You know, the elimination of essentially every automobile would be offset by one volcano exploding."
When questioned about it, Huebsch quickly backtracked:
When we asked Huebsch for his evidence, he responded by forwarding us an email he had sent to Miller after the hearing.

"I answered a question you put to me inaccurately and I want to set the record straight," Huebsch wrote. "To your question regarding global climate change I indicated global volcanic activity can equal the emission output by the automobiles in the United States. That is inaccurate and I apologize for the error."

He added: "While the scientific community recognizes the natural impact on climate change due to carbon (CO2)and sulfur (SO2) emissions from volcanic activity, those emissions do not equate to the annual emissions from United States automobiles and other fossil fuel based transportation. I apologize for any confusion this may have caused."
Despite getting caught red-tongued in a brazen lie, the corporate media still couldn't give Huebsch the "Pants on Fire" rating that this statement so deservedly earned.

But that wasn't the most egregious example.

Taking after the ignorance of Florida's Rick Scott, Wisconsin Republicans are also trying to ban the words "climate change," like that is going to make the problem go away:
Discussing climate change is out of bounds for workers at a state agency in Wisconsin. So is any work related to climate change—even responding to e-mails about the topic.

A vote on Tuesday by Wisconsin’s Board of Commissioners of Public Lands, a three-member panel overseeing an agency that benefits schools and communities in the state, enacted the staff ban on climate change. “It’s not a part of our sole mission, which is to make money for our beneficiaries,” said State Treasurer Matt Adamczyk, a Republican who sits on the board. “That’s what I want our employees working on. That’s it. Managing our trust funds.”

Adamczyk raised his concern at a public meeting on Tuesday that the board’s executive director, Tia Nelson, had spent on-the-job time working on global warming. Nelson did indeed work on climate change a bit in 2007 and ’08—at the request of the governor. Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle, who stepped down in 2011, appointed Nelson as co-chair of a global warming task force (PDF). “It honestly never occurred to me that being asked by a sitting governor to serve on a citizen task force would be objectionable,” she said.
Adding insult to injury, Adamczyk has regularly been harassing Tia Nelson, who is the daughter of Gaylord Nelson, the founder of Earth Day.

This type of willful ignorance isn't just a virtue for Wisconsin Republicans, but more of a necessity. If they had to face reality in regards to most topics - whether it be climate change, their failure to create family-supporting jobs or the rampant racism - they wouldn't have a chance.

14 comments:

  1. That pic of Walker looks like someone is tickling his @ss with a feather.

    Does anyone know WTF is wrong with Walker's eyes?

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  2. This is why the DNR does not need any scientists. No one in the Walker administration give them any credibility.

    For example, Chronic Wasting Disease is spreading like wildfire among deer. What is Walker's DNR doing about it? Nothing. They reject scientific-based solutions, such as banning deer feeding and drastically thinning the herd, because Walker voters don't like those solutions.

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  3. Anon934, if you've got links/data on that, leave it here in comments. Capper or Jeff might want to cover.

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    Replies
    1. Wisconsin outdoors writer Pat Durkin is a great source. Email him at patrickdurkin@charter.net.

      http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/outdoors/blogs/2015/02/20/informed-dnr-decisions-depend-research/23774537/
      Informed DNR decisions depend on research

      "How easily we also forget that the DNR's mission is to manage our natural resources with the best available science, not the most popular whim. And yet today we hear DNR administrators citing their online surveys when discussing deer management, and daring to call it "social science." Real sociologists give online surveys little or no credibility. They're not scientifically designed random samplings of the general population. No, they're "self-selecting" popularity polls with less scientific methodology than prom court elections."


      http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/outdoors/hunting/2015/03/13/dnr-downplays-cwd-test-results/70290408/
      DNR downplays CWD test results

      Despite sampling the second-lowest number of deer in Wisconsin's 14-year CWD-testing program, state wildlife officials documented a record 6.1 percent disease rate for 5,414 tests in 2014. That's the third straight year the disease rate exceeded 5 percent of tested deer, as well as the third straight year the number of sick deer exceeded 325.

      The only year in which the DNR collected fewer samples than in 2014 was 2011, when it collected 5,313. The four lowest years for CWD sampling have all been since the Walker administration took office in January 2011.

      ===
      CWD is always fatal. Once deer contract it, their life expectancy is 18 months. They typically look healthy for about the first 16 months of the death sentence before showing its effects. Those signs include drooling, staggering, and stark ribs and spine outlined beneath a ratty hide.

      Not until the fourth paragraph of the DNR news release does it cite disease rates. For instance, a region covering northwestern Dane and northeastern Iowa counties has disease rates of 25 percent for adult bucks (2½ years and older), more than 10 percent for adult females, and 8 percent and 7 percent, respectively for yearling males and females (1½ years old).

      Unfortunately, those Dane/Iowa county prevalence rates aren't current. CWD in that area hit those marks in 2012 and 2013. In 2014, it hit 27 percent and 12 percent.

      More curious is that the news release doesn't mention CWD rates a few miles west of there in north-central Iowa County. The rate there was a record 40 percent and 22 percent, respectively, for adult bucks and does. Further, CWD rates for the area's yearling bucks and does was 18 percent and 15 percent, respectively.

      Make no mistake: The DNR isn't hiding this information. It just isn't sharing or explaining much of it. So, if you're on or near a computer, visit this DNR website: http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/wildlifehabitat/prevalence.html. Next, scroll to the bottom section titled "CWD prevalence trends," study the map, and click on the yellow dots in southwestern Sauk County north of Spring Green, and southeastern Richland County south of Richland Center. Now click on the "prevalence graph" to see the charts that show how fast CWD is increasing in those areas, which had few sick deer only seven years ago.

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  4. I'd be happy I Scotty would just change his underwear more frequently. It's obvious from the pic in this post that he's just dropped a Mr. Hanky in his drawers. He really is a very foul Neanderthal.

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  5. Proof has been hiding in plain sight that change to the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) does not cause climate change. The science is solid. Only existing data and the fundamental relation between physics and math are needed or used.

    Search “agwunveiled” for the proof and identification of the two factors that do cause climate change (95% correlation since before 1900).

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    Replies
    1. Are you talking about the blog post titled “Calculated Mean Global Temperatures 1610-2012?” Why did no scientists sign this paper? It was posted by a mechanical engineer. The paper is a bunch of gobbledygook that primarily blames sunspots. That nonsense was debunked long ago.

      Since you brought up math and physics, here is the overview of the scientific discoveries that prove carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas.
      http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

      Here is the history of the refinement of the mathematics and physics that prove carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas.
      http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Radmath.htm

      Scientific evidence that humans are warming Earth due to burning fossil fuels makes it harder and harder to deny, but troglodytes like Governor Walker, Senator Johnson and you will continue to find gobbledygook to support your unscientific conclusions.

      Here is more scientific evidence that the observed global warming is increased atmospheric concentration of CO2.
      http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2015/02/25/co2-greenhouse-effect-increase/
      First Direct Observation of Carbon Dioxide’s Increasing Greenhouse Effect at the Earth’s Surface
      Berkeley Lab researchers link rising CO2 levels from fossil fuels to an upward trend in radiative forcing at two locations

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    2. Dan Pangburn,

      Right after I posted real science for you to study, I see you are the mechanical engineer who blamed sunspots for Earth’s warming.

      In rereading your nonsense, I see you claim Earth’s climate stopped warming. Refer to notorious global warming skeptic Dr. Roy Spencer’s atmospheric temperature data. His data show a continuing atmospheric warming. The warming would look even worse, except Spencer stopped including data from one key satellite because it was measuring even more warming. What’s up with that?

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    3. Anonymous @ 8:26am: "What’s up with that?"

      Omit data inconvenient to one's thesis: First Rule of Dishonest "Science".

      Delete
    4. Dan Pangburn is unable to defend his junk science.

      Delete
  6. Do-it-yourself climate science:

    This can:
    Prove Al Gore and the consensus are wrong.
    Prove AGW is a mistake.
    Prove the ‘war on coal’ is misguided.
    Prove CO2 has no significant effect on climate.
    Prove climate sensitivity (the increase in AGT due to doubling of CO2) is not significantly different from zero

    Right here. Right now.

    Only existing temperature and CO2 data are used. Fundamental understanding of math and its relation to the physical world are assumed.

    The CO2 level (or some math function thereof) has been suspected of being a forcing. The fundamental math is that temperature changes with the time-integral of a forcing (not the forcing itself). For example, a bloc of metal over a burner heats up slowly, responding to the time-integral of the net forcing (heat from the burner minus the heat loss from convection and radiation). Add a blanket over the block (a ‘step change’ to the loss) and the block temperature increases to a new steady state temperature but the temperature increases slowly (in response to the time-integral).

    Existing data includes temperature and CO2 determined from Vostok, Antarctica (or any other) ice cores for at least a full glacial or inter-glacial period. If CO2 is a forcing, the temperature should change as a transient following CO2 level change instead of temperature and CO2 level going up and down in ‘lock step’ as has been determined from measurements and is widely reported.

    Existing temperature and CO2 (Berner, 2001) assessments for the entire Phanerozoic eon (about 542 million years) are graphed at http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html

    Pick any two points separated in time that have the same average global temperature (AGT) anomaly. The cumulative forcing is the time-integral of the forcing (or a function thereof) times a scale factor. Because the AGT at the beginning and end of the time period are the same and the time-integral of the forcing is not zero, the scale factor must be zero. As a consequence, the effect of the forcing is zero.

    Granted that if the math function consists of an anomaly with respect to a ‘break-even’ CO2 level, a ‘break-even level could be determined to make the beginning and ending temperatures equal, but pick another time period with equal beginning and ending temperatures but different from the first pick and a different ‘break-even’ level might be calculated. Since the possibility of many different ‘break-even’ levels is ludicrous, the conclusion that CO2 has no significant effect on AGT prevails and something else is causing the temperature change.

    Search "agwunveiled" for a somewhat different approach to the proof showing that CO2 has no significant effect on climate and also identification of the two main factors that do (95% correlation since before 1900).

    Identification of the two main factors that do cause climate change are also disclosed in a peer reviewed paper published in Energy and Environment, vol. 25, No. 8, 1455-1471

    ReplyDelete