Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Exxon Pulls Funding to Skeptics

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NEW YORK – Exxon Mobil Corp is pulling contributions to several groups that have downplayed the risks that greenhouse gas-emissions could lead to global warming, continuing a policy started in 2006 by Chief Executive Rex Tillerson.

Exxon will not contribute to some nine groups in 2008 that it funded in 2007. It said in its corporate citizenship report that the groups’ “position on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner.”
The groups Exxon has stopped funding include the Capital Research Centre, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, Frontiers of Freedom Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute, and the Institute for Energy Research, according to Exxon spokesman Gantt Walton.

Read more here: http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/48489/story.htm

Greenpeace Steals Whale Meat?

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On Thursday the ABC ran a story from Greenpeace entitled Greenpeace says whalers stealing meat
by North Asia correspondent Shane McLeod:

In Japan, environmental group Greenpeace says it has uncovered evidence of widespread theft of whale meat from the country’s scientific whaling program.

Greenpeace has intercepted a box of whale meat it says was illegally taken off the the whaling ship the Nisshin Maru by a member of its crew.

Spokesman Junichi Sato says the meat could be worth thousands of dollars on the black market.

“This is the valuable part of the whale,” he said.

“It’s made into whale meat bacon, which has a high value.”

The whalers responded with a media release ‘NISSHIN MARU CREW GIVEN WHALEMEAT FOR FAMILIES’:

Nisshin Maru crew members are given a certain amount of whalemeat to take home to their families, Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha in Tokyo, Japan, said today in response to Greenpeace Japan claims.

“The gifting of whalemeat to Nisshin Maru crew members is a time-honoured tradition in recognition of the hard work these men do spending many months a year away from their children and wives,” the President of Kyodo Senpaku, Mr Kazuo Yamamura, said today.

“Our sailors spend four months of the year away from their families and are attacked by environmental terrorists while working, so providing a gift of whalemeat for them on their return home is just a little extra we can do for these men.

“It is a sad day when Greenpeace denigrates our crew for being given a few kilos of whalemeat,” Mr Yamamura said.

Then the ABC reported in an article entitled Company accuses Greenpeace of whale meat theft on May 17, 2008, that it might have been Greenpeace who actually did the stealing:

A Japanese trucking company has told police that Greenpeace Japan has stolen whale meat, a day after the conservation group accused whalers of embezzlement.

Seino says a box of cargo was taken by Greenpeace from its branch office in the city of Aomori in north-east Japan.

Climate Change and the Commercial Fishery (Again)

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I posted a graph from L.B. Klyashtorin via Walter Starck on May 4, 2008, with comment from Walter that “I have never seen a more succint and telling argument to refute carbon dioxide government climate change”.

The graph though was not of the highest quality, and so Louis Hissink has had it redrawn:

fish n climate copy ver2.jpg

The original post is here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/003005.html
Thanks Louis for the better quality graph.

Why Stop a Debate?

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“People only insist that a debate stop when they are afraid of what might be learned if it continues.”
George Will, in reference to climate science

via Fred Singer.

We Live in an Electric Universe (Part 3) by Louis Hissink

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In a NASA media release entitled ‘Electric Hurricanes’ it was suggested that because Emily, Rita and Katrina were all exceptionally powerful hurricanes, their sheer violence somehow explains their lightning. But in the same media release, Richard Blakeslee, from the Global Hydrology and Climate Centre, says that this explanation is too simple.

“Other storms have been equally intense and did not produce much lightning,” he says. “There must be something else at work.”

That “something else at work” is the electric Birkeland currents that power the hurricanes, operating in dark current plasma mode, so little or no lightning is observed.

Birkeland currents are really filaments of electric current that from magnetic attraction are free to rotate around each other, but at the same time coming closer together generates a short range repulsive force that insulates them from each other, thereby maintaining their identity and forming a twisting rope that as the filaments get closer, just like a spinning ice skater bringing in her arms, start to spin even faster. Paired Birkelands are really just electric whirlwinds or a plasma vortex.

The movement of hurricanes over the earth’s surface seems much like that observed for sunspots.

Kristian Birkeland showed the gross features of sunspots in his Terrella experiments where electric discharges, from a donut of plasma around the magnetised sphere, move from mid to low latitudes on the sphere as the electric current increased.

Hissink_part3_Figure 1.jpg
The sun’s plasma torus in UV from the SOHO Mission.

The simplest model for the 22 year magnetic sunspot cycle involves modulation of the electrical power input from the galaxy to the solar circuitry which seems to behave like a secondary winding on a transformer responding to varying DC currents to produce a magnetic field which switches polarity.

The earth is linked to the sun by enormous magnetic flux ropes (or Birkeland currents), and from the behaviour of the auroras and sunspot activity it is entirely likely that the earth’s weather might also be an electrical phenomenon linked to the magnetosphere.

Hissink_Part 3_Figure 2.jpg
Birkeland rope

Louis Hissink
Perth

We Live in an Electric Universe, Part 1
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/003038.html

We Live in an Electric Universe, Part 2
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/003047.html

Activism on Carbon Emissions Built on Specious Data?

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“Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA) is a massive database containing information on the carbon emissions of over 50,000 power plants and 4,000 power companies worldwide. Power generation accounts for 40% of all carbon emissions in the United States and about one-quarter of global emissions. CARMA is the first global inventory of a major, emissions-producing sector of the economy.” At least that is according to CARMA an initiative of the Center for Global Development, a Washington-based think tank.

But according to environmental consultant Shakeb Afsah, of Performeks, the overall data and the analytical architecture of CARMA are flawed. Afsah’s findings are detailed in a new report ‘Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA): Climate Activism Built on Specious Data’ at a new website, www.climatedataduediligence.org.

Afsah says he arrived at this conclusion by checking the following: 1) the precision of CARMA’s ranking, (2) the extent of the numerical differences between CARMA’s and USEPA’s annual CO2 estimates, (3) the lack of correlation between CARMA’s and USEPA’s carbon intensity values, (4) the predictable pattern of error in CARMA’s annual CO2 estimates, and (5) the logical and quantitative inconsistencies in CARMA’s next decade predictions of CO2 emissions. This report concludes that CARMA’s statistical methodology for estimating CO2 emissions of power plants is incompatible with the protocols for CO2 monitoring and verification recommended by the US Government, IPCC and the European Commission. Because climate management requires considerable coordination across countries, CARMA’s conflicting methodology, data and results can upset the fledgling progress towards international consensus.

According to the CARMA website they are very proud of the data they provide to users, but are also keen for feedback.

But according to Afsah, he first informed CARMA’s about data quality issues on December 4, 2007, and after five months there has been no serious response or suggested disclaimer on the CARMA website.