Can you use hairy soybeans to produce ethanol?

Baaah! Research imitates sarcasm:

The Sheep Albedo Feedback

For PH and all the people that confuse weather and climate... I'm sitting in upstate NY and the high is 71 degrees, breaking the previous record (80 years old) by 7 degrees!

I know the members of the global warming deniers cult (GWDC) will say it's the usual January Thaw, as the weather shifts from Winter to Spring.

Daily high and low records from the U.S. HCN may be found here:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/records/index.php

Number of Record Highest Maximum = 189
Number of Record Highest Minimum = 261
Number of Record Lowest Maximum = 1
Number of Record Lowest Minimum = 0

No worries, keep moving, keep moving! Gotta grow that economy!

Can we have a ban on talking about weather instead of climate, please!

Tornados in Wisconsin in January? What could cause that? Do you think it could be...? Nah, it couldn't be. Just a fluke.

Patrick Henry,

I know we spar a lot about the basic physics of AGW. It turns out that your concerns seem to have more merit than I had given you credit for.

Over at Climateaudit, Steve is having some discussions about his dissatisfaction with the conventional explanations of the enhanced greenhouse effect. I recommend that everyone check it out.

www.climateaudit.org

This whole thing has gotten completely crazy.

How about if we get on to Europe and Russia, India, China, etc to clean up their polluted rivers and waters that dump into the ocean. How about if we put 1/2 this much effort into getting people fed, meds they need, and clean drinking water.

The UN would probably say that's too costly for them, and make us pay anyway.

A better way to increase albedo than planting soybeans is to paint large, flat, urban rooftops bright white. This increases albedo and reduces air conditioning demand. The Florida Solar Energy Center determined this is among the most cost effective energy reduction measure possible for hot, sunny locations. It works well at the rental car pavillion at Houston Intercontinental Airport, Texas.

I'm continually appalled and astounded at the extreme waste of money and brainpower devoted to this natural non-issue foisted upon us by the world domination aspirations of the UN and their socialist useful idiots. One more dime should not be wasted on this inane hypothesis seeing as how there's more than enough real-world observations and explanations for this slightly warming 1500 year cycle.
How rich has AL G. become over this? Last I read he was worth 100 million dollars for speaking what he thinks is happening and being sly enough to start up a carbon offset company to cash in on the gullible public who are demanding action because he says really bad things are going to happen and it's all the developed world's fault. How perfect can a scam get?!Predict the future and supply the cure, all in a days work!
Gotta give the man credit, he's far smarter than I used to think he was...by far.

I want it warmer. Go global warming!!!!!!

One of Roger Pielke's favorite topics is how land use changes affect the climate.

Hi gettingcold,

71 degrees sounds nice. Enjoy it - because the forecast shows it getting cold soon where you are, and we having been freezing out west for the last two winters.

"gettingwarm:
I know the members of the global warming deniers cult (GWDC)"

Please do not refer to me as a denier. That implys that there is some truth to it.

Face it 'warm', the general public is real tired of this constant doom and gloom mess from the eco nuts. It's not even on the news any more.

gettingwarm, I love the nickname "Global Warming Deniers Cult." I'm gonna have to start using that one!

Some more suggestions to help reflect the amount of sunlight.

Require every human to wear aluminum foil (the correct side up of course) on his/her head when going outside.

Require that all cars be white as well as all roads be white (as Brett mentioned above). That could be exciting during the winter when it snowed, trying to drive on white roads. A possible beneficial side effect of that would be a reduction of driving CO2 emitters. And ambulances are normally white so no problem there.

Only plant White corn, for all the ethanol we are going to use.

BTW, I know this means absolutely nothing, and I am talking about weather and not climate, blah, blah. But where I live in the northeast, it never got higher than 55 today yet the Accuweather site and the "other one" both indicated my area got into the low 60's. I live in a semi-rural area (farmland and horse ranches) and generally the temperature on the weather sites can be anywhere from 2 to 15 degrees warmer then it really is.

getting warm:
According to AGW/IPCC data sites only
(let's see if we actually get a reply)
Re your climate versus weather argument:
GISS Dec +.39C notice trend since 2001?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
UAH Dec +.11C Notice trend? notice trend since 200
http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/UAHMSUglobe.html
RSS MSU:-0.05C Notice trend? notice trend since 2001?
http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/UAHMSUglobe.html
and here is more from your mate Hansen:
try and explain this one away (remember "global" = Global = AGW must be occurring everywhere (Co2) its a gas in the atmosphere remember?)
Most argentine stations (1880-2007 solid climate data. Notice trend since 1940?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/csci/csci_station.py?id=301872890003&data_set=2
Paraguay:notice trend since 1940?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/csci/csci_station.py?id=308862480000&data_set=2
Antarctica: Trend?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/csci/csci_station.py?id=700896420008&data_set=2
Bermuda: Trend?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/csci/csci_station.py?id=403716000005&data_set=2
and so on and on (of course I've cherry picked, but according to the AGW I should not be able to, they should be ALL going up). What is the AGW crowd going to do IF temps keep falling after 2008 (Jones hadcrut has already covered himself for 2008 saying he expected them to go down for 2008) but after??? (he said LIKELY to go up!)

Cheers

gettingwarm,

What was the record 80 years ago and how could a record have been set that long ago if record high temps are unprecedented only in the last few decades?

why dont they genetically modify crops to grow white instead of green if you can clone sheep etc this should be dead easy ,turn crops white reflect sunlight = cooler planet

Snowing in the Middle East again this week.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7175558.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4135857.stm

Near record cold and snow in South Asia

http://www.accuweather.com/news-blogs.asp?partner=forecastfox&blog=andrews

Hi cmbclean,

Glad to see that you have an open mind.

It is astonishing to me that any entire scientific cult has been built up around a fundamental violation of the first law of thermodynamics.

OT

The Arctic now has more ice than last year at this time.

Patrick Henry,

I'm not saying that AGW theory necessarily violates thermodynamics. But after doing some more reading, I see the "basic physics" of AGW isn't nearly as simple as I had assumed, and I definitely see where you're coming from on your critiques. I will have to do some more reading. If you take a look at the more detailed explanations given in Steve's discussion, the explanation of the enhanced Greenhouse effect seems to be that the extra GHG's effectively move the level of IR reradiation into space up into the atmosphere. Since these upper levels are colder, the IR radiation is reradiated at lower frequencies and thus with less energy. Which means that less energy will be radiated than was received. Of course, this runs into your objection about trapping energy. Right now,I'm stumped, so I'm going to do somemore reading. One thing I would like to know. How good is the approximation that the earth is in thermal equilibrium? Is the earth an equilibrium system? Does anyone have any thoughts, or better knowledge?

kevinag wrote
"Tornados in Wisconsin in January? What could cause that? Do you think it could be...? Nah, it couldn't be. Just a fluke."

Tell me about it! I live in Kenosha, I was at work, less than a mile from the Kenosha Airport and religiously refreshing accuweather to track the EAS messages. I didnt get to see anything cool past the ominous clouds, but I did get to drive past some of the damage and I know people who saw the tornado that hit the north side of Kenosha.

I also saw the jet stream that sucked that warm moist air up and the cold front that was coming through causing all that turmoil. But I didnt see any reason to think it was CO2 related. Of course it was pretty warm around here, Chicago broke a record for warmest day on Sunday. The record they broke was from 1907!

Of course you wouldnt be doing that denier thing of confusing weather with climate would you?

Well, since we have people repeating the same old mistake that I have already corrected multiple times, I might as well repeat my explanation:

Anecdotal information about local weather conditions are irrelevant to climate change issues. What you're doing is analogous to deducing the state of the economy from the amount of loose change in your pocket.

And Patrick Henry's insinuation that global warming constitutes a "fundamental violation of the first law of thermodynamics" is the wildest poppycock. I won't bother to expand upon this because Patrick is a drive-by shooter: he zooms in to make some wild claim, then speeds away when challenged on it.

Hmmm... Shiny crops eh? Interesting concept. Provided the yields are the same, and car crashes on nearby roads due to the possible glare are kept in check, I don't see a problem with it (LOL).
gettingwarm:

I like that GWDC, nice job with the acronym. It's really not a cult though you know, it's more of a club nowadays.

Hate to tell you but if you go back to the start of the debate over the root cause of the apparent GW, it was those who believe in AGW who first starting mentioning local conditions. The media jumped all over it and we are treated to report after report about the "changes". Please see Joe Sobel's column.

By the way, 67 in Columbus, Oh. Will take that anyday in Jan even if the Bucks have to get smacked by the SEC (again) in the process.

I wonder what the AGW group might really think about this. My suspicion is that those who are really concerned about AGW might also be concerned about bio-engineering.

Hi cmbclean,

Moving the average height of IR radiation upwards is fine. The problem with the theory is that it fails to recognize that the temperature at height also increases. Thus the amount of energy being emitted into space remains at equilibrium with incoming.

Hi Chris Crawford,

Instead of writing such long messages, how about spending some energy attempting to actually follow the conversation?

The frequency of January tornados has unquestionably Increased. What does this have to do with ghg. Perhaps very little? Temperature records the last 15 or so years have been skewed to the warm. What does this have to do with ghg? Perhaps very little. etc. The real issue is the amount of co2 emission which must be curtailed because it only increases the concentration with the average solar constant.

Make no mistake! This is an experiment despite the objection of the esteemed Patrick Henry.

Don't tread on me.

Chris Crawford,

I appreciate your use of pyschographics in a previous post to demonstrate how devisive topics mirror AGW within each respective group. Thank you for also pointing out that politics and dont forget economics play a role in global warming. You dont have to be a scientist to draw logical conclusions regarding the 3 major factors to global warming. Are you a policy maker or an economist? As far as I can see, there is no scientific concensus to the various effects of a theoretical AGW.

Now, if I may participate in your survey:

1. The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a mistake. (Reply: The only mistake was that it was not done in 1991.)
2. Every woman should be able to have abortion on demand in the first six months of her pregnancy. (Every woman already has the right to choose. They can choose to use contraceptives and they can choose to not spread their legs. Using pins to pierce the skulls