Courtesy of NASA, a historical perspective on global warming. In the following graphs, the dotted line represents the present global average temperature of about 15° C (59° F) [which is far too cold for my taste].

It looks like we are coming out of an ice age, an event that happens about once every 100,000 years.

A closer look at just the last ten thousand years or so (modern times, in geological terms) reinforces this perspective.

Note that while the birth of man predates the beginning of the Holocene epoch by more than a hundred thousand years, it is this period that saw modern man’s transition from a tribal savage to the builder of civilizations. The natural warming cycle created an environment that was favorable to Homo sapiens sapiens’ success.

Zooming in even closer shows that even with our huge belching factories and miles of chugging SUVs, we haven’t managed to bring up the temperature to when dudes used to ride around in steel suits and heavy wool underwear:

The most recent small drop in average temperature caused the Little Ice Age of 1500-1700 AD, which history describes. Mountain glaciers advanced in Europe and rivers like the Thames in England froze solid, which doesn’t happen now.

Hmmm, I wonder if the fact that the sun is warming again up has anything to do with our little temperature “problem”. I heard a rumor that the sun somehow influences our weather.

Image from Global Warming Art.com, which notes:

It is widely believed that the low solar activity during the Maunder Minimum and earlier periods may be among the principle causes of the Little Ice Age. Similarly, the Modern Maximum is partly responsible for global warming, especially the temperature increases between 1900 and 1950. Residual warming due to the sustained high level of activity since 1950 is believed responsible for 16 to 36% of recent warming.

Hat Tip to Say Anything, who quips:

It’s almost like the globe has been getting warmer and colder for hundreds of thousands of years with or without humans being around to cause problems.

Weird huh?

Update: Yet another scientist questions the models used for calculating man’s impact, saying that cosmic rays have a larger impact than previously believed. Hat Tip to Bill Hobbs, who links to yet another explanation.

So says Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) in remarks concerning the results of a report by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) set to be published next February:

A United Nations study due for release early next year will reportedly lower estimates of mankind’s impact on the earth’s climate by 25 percent, a development a leading climate change skeptic in the U.S. Senate says will pour “cold water” on “global warming alarmism.”

Welcome to the club, Senator. Those of us with an understanding of the scientific method have been sceptics since the beginning.

An auto research firm collected detailed data for two years and was able to calculate the real cost of a vehicle, converting it to “dollars per lifetime mile” to make it easy to understand and compare vehicles.

They found these to be the Energy Cost per Mile:

• Honda Accord Hybrid — $3.29
• Conventional Honda Accord — $2.18
• Industry average of all vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2005 — $2.28
• Hummer H3 — $1.949

The most expensive car to operate is the luxurious Maybach from Mercedes Benz, costing the owner an average of $11.58 per mile (not surprising given the $300K+ purchase price). The cheapest is the ungliest Toyota ever built, the Scion xB, at just $0.48 per mile.

We believe this kind of data is important in a consumer’s selection of transportation. Basing purchase decisions solely on fuel economy or vehicle size does not get to the heart of the energy usage issue.

Ah yes, one of those “feel good” decisions that doesn’t turn out so well in the long run. Yet lots of liberals are happily humming along in their tiny hybrids. (Personally, I’d take a Hummer, but not that wimpy H3 — I want the real thing.)

Hat tip to NRO’s Jonah Goldberg, who notes:

It seems to me that pro-hybrid car types would make the argument that they’re trying to create a market for new technologies which would bring these energy costs down and would help wean us of our “addiction” to foreign oil. Both of those are good arguments but this study  — and this is just one study — does seem to undercut some of the sanctimony we occassionally hear about how hybrids are good for the environment right now.

What pollutes more than aerospace manufacturing, apparel, hotels and semiconductor manufacturing? According to a new university study, making movies pollutes:

Special effects explosions, idling vehicles, teams of workers building monumental sets and other aspects of the Hollywood movie business contribute to Los Angeles’ poor air quality, a university study finds. The film and television industry and associated activities make a larger contribution to air pollution in the five-county Los Angeles region than almost all five other sectors researched, according to the study by the University of California at Los Angeles. … Only petroleum manufacturing produced more emissions.

And while some limousine liberals drive trendy electric cars, don’t look for any of them to insist on making green movies that do away with huge, expensive sets and special effects.

Remember the hysterical rantings of “scientists” and “experts” in the aftermath of Katrina that the heavy hurricane season was just the beginning? That human occupation and thoughtless exploitation of the planet was causing global warming and so hurricanes would continue to batter our coastlines in escalating numbers and increased ferocity?

There was even the “Bush is to blame” delirium happening.

Flash forward to today: Tropical storm Paul has been upgraded to hurricane status as it moves towards Baja California.

Paul, as in “P”, as in the 16th letter of the alphabet.

Meanwhile, in the Atlantic, what we we on? Isaac? That would be nine storms so far this year. Anyone even hear anything about Alberto? Beryl? Chris, Debby, Enesto, Florence, Gordon or Helene?

I didn’t think so. Those would be the names of the eight previous Atlantic storms this year.

This time last year we were in the midst of Wilma.

This hurricane season isn’t over yet, but yeah, the “experts” strike out again. Heard anything from the Gorebot recently?

Tree-huggin’ whackos want the government to regulate what you exhale, and have actually made it to the Supreme Court:

Environmentalists, repeatedly rejected by the democratic process and unable to pass the Kyoto Protocol or their radical agenda, are doing what liberals invariably do when defeated in the marketplace of ideas: turning to the courts.

On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to review Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, in which environmental lobbies and twelve activist states petition the Court to label everyday carbon dioxide a “pollutant” and compel the EPA to regulate it.

That’s right – carbon dioxide, the clear, odorless, non-toxic, natural substance that we exhale with every breath and that plants require to flourish, is now a “pollutant,” according to environmentalists. Plaintiffs thus seek to impose the Kyoto Protocol via litigation, superseding the electoral process and imposing tremendous costs upon the American economy.

I would think of something clever in the “what’s next” category, but how can I? There’s nothing left! Human waste, farts, and now breath are all considered pollution by these morons.

Technorati Tags: Kyoto Protocol,
Environmental Protection Agency,
EPA,
Tree-hugging Whackos,
Enviroweenies,
Environmentalists.

John Robinson was the government’s chief scientist during the during the Exxon Valdez cleanup and is a veteran of “maybe three or four hundred” of oil spills. He says that monitoring has shown that the cure was worse than the problem:

“The very aggressive way we went about it – I have to fault myself on this, because I’m the one that directed it, turned out to be a much more serious problem than the oil was. We were killing more things – I mean we were really killing things with the steaming hot water that we were blasting on the shoreline; the oil wasn’t anywhere near that effective at causing things to be killed, so that all of our sites were much better off for not having been cleaned up for a period of years.

“After a decade, things began to level out to where you weren’t able to tell which area had been cleaned up and which hadn’t; for a period of ten years though, the places that were cleaned up were in a lot worse shape.”

So why do we need groups like ELF when we have the U.S. government that bows down to extremist tree hugging hysteria?

Technorati Tags: Oil Spills,
Environmental Terrorism,
Environmental Extremism,
Tree Hugging Hysteria,
Exxon Valdez.

Relevant energy quote of the day, from the Other Side of Kim:

So the next time you pass a hippie, kick his ass, because he’s more to blame for high gas prices than Exxon is.

Indeed, after years of obstructing every means of energy production, the Democrats have suddenly embraced the issue because it’s another “blame Bush” mallet. Leave it to The American Thinker to remind us:

Oh really?

• This is the party that stopped the nation building nuclear plants.
• This is the party that toyed with carbon taxes.
• This is the party of Al Gore, now right in the middle of publicizing An Inconvenient Truth, “by far the most terrifying movie you will ever see.”
• This is the party that won’t let oil companies prospect for oil off the left and right coasts.
• This is the party whose activists prevented the US from building new petroleum refineries.
• This is the party that filibusters against drilling for oil in an arctic wilderness that just happens to be right next to a major oil pipeline with spare capacity.

Wizbang! also weighs in on this topic.

What is disturbing is when Republicans act like Democrats and try to blame big oil, urging investigations. That’s because they don’t want you to know that they, our political servants desperate to hang on to their positions, are to blame. The are responsible for decades of poor energy policies and millions of dollars wasted in uneconomical “alternate energy” research. Yet tax revenues from the oil industry has continued to climb.

FACT: “Big oil” makes just nine cents profit on a gallon of gas today.

FACT: “Big oil” has averaged just 5.8 cents profit on a gallon of gas over the last five years. [HT Glen Dean via Gut Rumbles]

FACT: Government taxes rake in an average of 46 cents on every gallon of gas, 18.4 cents of which goes to the federal government.

FACT: “Big oil” paid in taxes more than three times what they earned in profits from 1977 to 2004:

According to Department of Energy data, from 1977 to 2004, federal and state governments extracted $397 billion by taxing the profits of the largest oil companies and an additional $1.1 trillion in taxes at the pump. In today’s dollars, that’s $2.2 trillion – enough to buy a Toyota Prius for every household in the nation.

FACT: From 1977 to 2004, major U.S. oil companies’ domestic profits totaled just $643 billion, while state and federal taxes on gasoline and diesel totaled an astounding $1.34 trillion [HT to TaxProf Blog]. As the Tax Foundation points out, profits taken by “big oil” are highly volatile, while taxes garnered at the gas pump has never retreated:

Click for larger image

FACT: The blending of ethanol mandated by the federal government is a fawning concession to farmers at the very real expense of the American consumer. Ethanol:

• Does not deliver the same energy as gasoline, so diluting gas with ethanol means that the consumer gets between 25 to 40 per cent fewer miles per gallon, necessitating more stops at the pump — which translates to less money in the wallet.
• Cannot be shipped through pipelines because it attracts water, so it must be shipped one tank truck or barge at a time. Expensive, so the consumer suffers.
• Is not being produced domestically in the quantity necessary to meet the demand, and we all know that with a free market when supply is fixed and demand rises, the consumer suffers.
• Cannot be economically imported because the federal government has imposed an oppressive 54-cent-per-gallon tariff.
• Worst of all, the ethanol blend was originally intended to reduce pollution in our smoggiest cities, yet because of its higher volatility the use of ethanol blends likely increases smog production.

In other words, our politicians mandate an uneconomical gas additive and then guarantees higher prices by strangling supply in order to increase pollution — all in the name of saving the environment.

FACT: The Unites States has the most complex regulations for blending gasoline on the planet.

FACT: China may be drill 50 miles off the Florida coast, as may be Spain, Canada and others by working with Cuba, yet exploration and development is forbidden off the Florida coast:

FACT: Mexico has discovered ten billion barrels of crude 60 miles off the Mexican coast, yet American companies are forbidden to search hundreds of miles of our coastline.

What have we done to deserve such poor treatment at the hands of our elected servants?

Other random related notes:

• China’s government-subsidized oil industry is operating at a loss, depressing prices and encouraging over consumption — which drives up prices over here. More at Glittering Eye.
• Random Thoughts from Marybeth has a suggestion for congress: rather than sending everyone a $100 check, spend the money on a new refinery. Now that’s long-term thinking!
• There’s a Tennessee company selling stills so you can make your own moonshine ethanol [HT Digg].
• The nuclear industry has hired a Greenpeace co-founder and an ex-EPA chief to promote the building of reactors. Listen to them!

One final note on “excess profits” that our politicians are so concerned about, from Rich Tucker [HT to ¡No Pasarán!]:

And oh, by the way, Exxon’s “excessive” earnings were 7 percent higher in the first quarter — exactly the same percentage growth as the 7 percent announced by media company E.W. Scripps Co. And former Los Angeles Times Editor John Carroll recently noted that the average newspaper profit margin remains 19.5 percent.

Is it time for an “excess profits tax” on media owners?

Technorati Tags: Gas Prices,
Big Oil,
Energy Policy,
Energy,
Gasoline,
Free Markets,
Democrat Obstructionism,
Screwed by the Government.

The storm that I watched from my back porch last night stretched across eight states and killed at least 23 people. It continues to move eastward and a tornado watch for western North Carolina remains in effect until 11 a.m. this morning.

Fifteen of the deaths occured in western Tennessee as tornados ripped through five counties near Memphis (Dyer, Carroll, Haywood, Gibson and Fayette) — but not Shelby County where Memphis is located. Eight deaths were from Gibson County alone where 1,200 buildings were damaged. It is also where the capricious storm showed its nature:

“By the time the (tornado) sirens started going off, it was at our back door,” Sisk said today. “I didn’t hear a train sound, I heard a roaring.”

She and the children ran into a closet.

“The next thing I knew, everything was falling apart,” Sisk said.

The tornado blew apart the home and flung the Sisks into their yard, where they huddled in the grass until it passed over. Sisk said she watched as the tornado hit and damaged the Jimmy Dean Foods sausage plant across the street.

Nothing remained of Sisk’s wood-frame home today except for the concrete steps.

A nearby house was destroyed, and Sisk said she had been told the elderly couple who lived there had died. Another neighbor’s home was sitting on the lawn, blown about 30 feet off its foundation.

Virtually every building in Marmaduke, Arkansas suffered damage, with an astounding 50% of them destroyed. Half the town has been evacuated over safety concerns of such as gas leaks.

The National Weather Service reports that every county in southwest Ohio suffered damage. Christian County in Kentucky has declared a state of emergency as rescue crews struggle to clear roadways and restore power.

Softball sized hail was reported in several places across Arkansas. About 300,000 people remain without power today, with businesses closed and families trying to pick up their lives again.

Marmaduke, Arkansas, where half the town was destroyed.

Technorati Tags: Thunderstorms,
Hail,
Tornados,
Storms,
Storm Damage,
Weather.

A team of German scientists have determined that plants produce massive amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas that is believed to be second only to carbon dioxide in its impact on global temperatures:

They produce about 10 to 30 percent of the annual methane found in the atmosphere, according to researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany. …

“Significant methane emissions from both intact plants and detached leaves were observed … in the laboratory and in the field,” Dr Frank Keppler and his team said in a report in the journal Nature.

Methane, which is produced by city rubbish dumps, coal mining, flatulent animals, rice cultivation and peat bogs, is one of the most potent greenhouse gases in terms of its ability to trap heat.

Concentrations of the gas in the atmosphere have almost tripled in the last 150 years. About 600 million tonnes worldwide are produced annually.

The scientists said their finding is important for understanding the link between global warming and a rise in greenhouse gases.

So even as European countries consistently fail to meet their commitments for cutting carbon dioxide, plants are making certain we keep having warm winters in America. But wait, there’s more!

Keppler and his colleagues discovered that living plants emit 10 to 100 times more methane than dead plants.

Scientists had previously thought that plants could only emit methane in the absence of oxygen.

Q: What has changed in the last 150 years? A: America has been becoming more green! Yep, the Indians must have known what they were doing when they burned land to clear it for farming.

The answer to stopping global warming is obvious — cut down the rain forests and do more strip mining!