"Carl Sagan testifying before Congress in 1985 on climate change"

The video below popped on YouTube. Watch carefully from 3 mins 20 seconds or so, this is where he launched (or re-launched) the Big Climate Lie.

Note how Sagan constantly refers to "Earth's surface", not mentioning clouds. By implication, he is including clouds when considering solar radiation absorbed (or else his calculation wouldn't give the answer of about 30 degrees), so the obvious next question would be "Do clouds and cloud free ocean/land surface, in total, radiate upwards the same amount as they absorb in solar radiation?", as a reality check if nothing else, to which the answer is a resounding "Yes."

If the answer were "No", then this would raise a lot of questions - maybe there is a positive (or a negative) Greenhouse Effect? if so, what causes it?

Sagan neatly sidesteps this obvious question, and at 4 mins 20, launches into an alternative reality where clouds don't exist, and the solar radiation absorbed by clouds and oceans/land is all directly absorbed by the land/oceans. If it were, it would be a lot cooler - he is mathematically correct in saying that land/oceans would be about 30 degrees cooler than they are (the accepted figure nowadays is 33 degrees). James Hansen explained the calculation in more detail in 1988, three years later.

[Enjoy the cutaway shots of Al Gore with dollar signs rolling in front of his eyes.]

At 4 mins 30 Sagan concludes, "And why is it too low... it's too low because something was left out of the calculation. What was left out of the calculation..?"

An attentive listener would have screamed, "The clouds, you moron!", but nope.

Sagan of course trots out his preferred answer: "The Greenhouse Effect" and then waffles on about CO2 trapping heat and all that nonsense.

Fun Online Poll Results: Who is the least deserving Nobel Peace Prize winner?

Thanks to all 157 who took part. The final results were

Al Gore and the IPCC (2007) 53%
Barack Obama (2009) 25%
Henry Kissinger (1973) 11%

Also rans:
United Nations Peacekeeping Forces (1988) 3%
Kofi Annan and the United Nations (2001) 2%
5% voted 'Other' and Yasser Arafat got the most nominations in that category.

There was a quite a good debate in the comments; some thought that Al Gore was least deserving because he peddles his MMGW nonsense out of naked commercial self-interest; others said that at least he'd never ordered anybody to be murdered. So, Obama, you're going to have to try a bit harder. Try ordering people killed for personal financial gain or something!
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This week's Fun Online Poll asks "How much land in England (by surface area) is still undeveloped?", which is a general knowledge question as much as anything. To save you time Googling the answer, I'm assuming the findings on page 44 of this to be correct.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Reader's Letter Of The Day & an extreme case of Godwin's Law.

From today's FT:

Sir, I have always admired the way the FT avoids the economists' stereotype. Regrettably, this does not seem to extend to coverage of non-economic issues. Regarding El Niño: your July 3 Science Briefing informs us that it "threatens to create more hurricanes", while the Lex Column tells us that it "lowers the incidence of hurricanes"

"On the one hand" indeed.

Robert A. Nalewajek, Cos Cob, CT, US.

Warming to the theme*, for an extreme case of Godwin's Law, see Al Gore: Climate-Change Fight Like Battle Against Nazis.

* Geddit?

"Gore seeks 100% green energy"

Is he mad?

Most certainly not...

Mr Gore is an investor in renewable energy technologies, through his chairmanship of Generation Investment Management, a fund management company managed by David Blood, former head of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Since last year, he has also been a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, the Silicon Valley venture capital fund, which is seeking to make sizeable investments in renewable energy companies.

Myron Ebell makes an excellent point further down the article “We couldn’t come close to [his] goal of producing all our electricity from solar, wind, and geothermal energy in 10 years without coercive, even authoritarian government.”

But Myron isn't quite up to speed with modern jargon. You don't "telecommute from home", you either "telecommute" or you "work from home".

A bit of a mix up, shurely...

I thought Doris Lessing had won this year's Nobel Prize for fiction, but it appears they have now given it to Al Gore instead.

Stewart Dimmock, champion of commonsense (2)

It was all a damp squib. Under judicial review rules, judges can only say whether the government complied with its own rules; if the judge finds it didn't, the government just changes its own rules. As WOAR pointed out in the comments on my previous post.

Meanwhile, The Thought Police has been having a go. Apparently:

- This is "another attempt by the well organized and ruthless climate denial lobby". Wot? The 'climate denial lobby'? Nobody's disputing the existence of 'climate', for f***'s sake.

- By extension ... "A similar case could be made for issuing guidance on films about the Holocaust ...". Right. So because he doesn't like the tone of a pseudo-scientific film, he must be racist scum who deserves to die, a bit like Ahmad Inadinnerjacket, you piece-of-shit, Szamko*?

- Stewart Dimmock stood as a candidate for The New Party, whose Philosophy And Principles seem fair enough to me as they are writ.

- Ah, here we go, the chap is only a lorry driver ... so clearly his opinions count for nought against those of a cosseted son of a US Representative and Senator. As an aside, may I point out that at UKIP's conference, we passed a Branch Motion in favour of charging foreign lorries for using UK roads?

* CV: "Ex-student of history, now a refugee from the academy - trying to put those hard learned research skills to some practical use"

Stewart Dimmock - champion of common sense

According to today's Metro*, Stewart Dimmock has sort of won his Court case, saying that Al Gore's film should not be shown to all schoolchildren as it is brainwashing.

The judge** agreed that the film "contained statements about climate change for which there was insufficient scientific evidence".

So far, so good, unfortunately, the Department for Children, Schools and Families have now decided that the film will be shown in a "more balanced way".

What the f*** does that mean? Either you show it or you don't!***

* Update - LFB has found the link on the BBC website here. Interesting how the right-wing Metro reported this as a victory for Mr Dimmock but the left-wing BBC presented it as a victory for Al 'Lying F***wit' Gore, who according to something that Tim W uncovered, has bought himself a beachfront property, despite his claims that sea levels are going to rise by 22 feet. What a complete f***ing bastard.

** It appears that not all judges are bastards, liars or f***wits.

*** WOAR gives a full explanation of how little this means in the comments. As ever, ta muchly for that, WOAR.