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Earl Aagaard’s opinions about everything that interests him. Og also enjoys gardening, travel, reading, woodbutchery, and lots of other stuff.

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Environment

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

FILE UNDER…..“STUDY CONFIRMS SUN COMES UP IN THE EAST”.

I suppose most of us have learned that “the ecological Indian” is a myth….but just in case the coffin needs ANOTHER NAIL, here it is.

Continue reading

Posted by Earl on 02/22 at 03:05 PM
Science • Environment • Comments •

Friday, January 13, 2006

THIS IS *NOT* FROM THE RONALD REAGAN CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES.

If you’ll remember, the Kyoto Protocol (can we call it “defunct”, yet?) allowed reforestation efforts to compensate for the emissions of excess carbon dioxide.  Imagine the kerfuffle in the environmental community at a recent study published in Nature, the preeminent science journal in Britain. 

In a discovery that has left climate scientists gasping, researchers have found that the earth’s vegetation is churning out vast quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent even than CO2. This is not a product of trees and plants rotting, which everyone already knew was a source of methane; it is an entirely natural side-effect of plant growth that scientists had somehow missed. Yet it is by no means trivial: preliminary estimates suggest that living trees and plants account for about 10 to 30 per cent of the methane entering the atmosphere.

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Posted by Earl on 01/13 at 12:38 PM
Science • Environment • Comments •

Friday, September 09, 2005

SO YOU WANTED TO LEAVE NEW ORLEANS?  TURNED BACK AT GUNPOINT…..

I STILL don’t know whether to believe this or not….the fact that UPI is carrying it doesn’t give it any additional credibility in my book.

As they made their way to the bridge in order to leave the city “armed Gretna sheriffs (sic) formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads.”

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Posted by Earl on 09/09 at 08:39 PM
Science • Environment • Politics • Comments •

PICTURES OF NEW ORLEANS AFTER THE DANCE WITH KATRINA!!

197 PHOTOGRAPHS by a guy who lived there…...and lived through it. 

Incredible.

(Hat tip: The Corner)

Posted by Earl on 09/09 at 08:32 PM
Science • Environment • Politics • Comments •

Monday, August 08, 2005

IS THE SKY FALLING?  OR ARE THINGS MUDDLING ALONG PRETTY WELL, ENVIRONMENTALLY?

Foreign Policy magazine has published a DEBATE between Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club, and Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Global Crises, Global Solutions. 

Fascinating reading.  Carl Pope:

You ask for my priorities. We should stop cooking the books, make those who take from the global commons pay, and invest that revenue as wisely as we can. The result of these steps will not be Dr. Pangloss’s “best of all possible worlds.” But I am shocked that anyone believes we will get better results by continuing to treat the Earth as if it were Enron.

and Bjorn Lomborg:

You end by repeating your claim that we are cooking the environmental books. No. We know there are environmental problems. But we face other challenges, too. Let’s tackle the ones where we can do the most good first. The rich world is dealing with many of its environmental problems because it can afford to. If the poor world became wealthier, they would follow suit. Tackling pressing issues such as disease, hunger, and polluted water will do obvious good and give the poor the chance to improve the state of their world.

We’ll all be mightily affected in various ways, depending on who wins the philsophical battle here.  READ the whole thing

Posted by Earl on 08/08 at 09:24 AM
Science • Environment • Comments •

Sunday, May 01, 2005

BACK WITH A BANG!!

I’ve been making and grading exams for the end of the semester for about three weeks, now.  Today was Commencement, and all the seniors marched and got their diplomas.  Now all I have left is the grading of papers written for projects in two classes - will finish and get grades posted by tomorrow (Monday). 

Meanwhile: THIS ITEM is really kind of scary.  If the political culture we see gaining strength in America doesn’t stop with institutions of higher learning and the main-stream media, but moves right on into our science journals…...we’re in even more trouble than it appears.  The Telegraph, a British newspaper carries the story—here are the first couple of paragraphs:

Leading scientific journals ‘are censoring debate on global warming’
By Robert Matthews
(Filed: 01/05/2005)

Two of the world’s leading scientific journals have come under fire from researchers for refusing to publish papers which challenge fashionable wisdom over global warming.

A British authority on natural catastrophes who disputed whether climatologists really agree that the Earth is getting warmer because of human activity, says his work was rejected by the American publication, Science, on the flimsiest of grounds.

READ THE REST….  (Hat Tip:  windsofchange.net)

Posted by Earl on 05/01 at 11:18 AM
Science • Environment • Comments •

Monday, February 21, 2005

SOME GOOD SENSE ON GLOBAL WARMING OUT OF GERMANY

The polar ice caps are disappearing! The Gulf Stream is soon to reverse! Right? Well, maybe. But calling such apocalyptic theories into question is becoming more and more difficult for skeptical scientists. Meanwhile, the public is getting tired of being fed a diet of fear.

The two scientists who authored this article recently published - in Science, the world’s pre-eminent scientific journal - a refutation of the “hockey stick” beloved of the global warming extremists.  What was the result?  They were personally attacked.

Prominent members of the climate research community did not respond to the article by engaging use in a dispute over the facts. Instead, they were concerned that the worthy cause of climate protection had been harmed.

Other scientists are succumbing to a form of fanaticism almost reminiscent of the McCarthy era. In their minds, criticism of methodology is nothing but the monstrous product of “conservative think-tanks and misinformation campaigns by the oil and coal lobby,” which they believe is their duty to expose. In contrast, dramatization of climate shift is defended as being useful from the standpoint of educating the public.

  Read the whole article…..

Posted by Earl on 02/21 at 01:19 PM
Science • Environment • Comments •
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