Just who are the 3% of climate scientists?

You don’t need to be a scientist to understand the science of global warming.

One, carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas.

Two, carbon dioxide is created by burning carbon: wood, coal, oil and its by-products.

Three, if wood is used and replanted, we have a virtuous cycle.  Wood is burned and trees take up the carbon dioxide, making more carbon

Four, if coal or oil are burned, they are taking carbon from under the ground, but there seems to be few ways to convert this carbon dioxide into underground carbon.
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Five, geothermal on a large scale is not an answer.  It may not be adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, but it is taking heat from underground that is not put back underground.

Six, nuclear energy is not the answer.  First, it generates a lot of heat that must be dissipated somewhere.  Second, what do you do with the very hazardous waste?

That leaves only with wind, solar and tidal power.  It is bad enough that there are naysayers about global warming, but each of these energy sources has problems with storage for when they are not available.  No wind, no sun, or no nearby tides.

The way technology is changing, the storage problems may be solved in the next ten years or so.  Battery technology is improving in power and cost.  Will dynamos or capacitors be far behind?

Oh, by the way, who employs the three percent who claim not enough evidence has been gathered to confirm global warming.  Could it be polluters?  Even EXXON scientists are saying that global warming exists.

"Eppur si riscalda!” - “And yet it warms”, a variant of “Eppur si muove” - “And yet it moves”, incorrectly attributed to Galileo after he recanted his findings to the Pope.

Quote of the Day: TV viewers vs. newspaper readers

"Yes, I know, people should be paying more attention [to candidates climate change plans or lack thereof]— but this nonetheless tells us how easy it is for voters who rely on TV news or don’t read stories deep inside the paper to miss what should be a central issue in this campaign."

- Paul Krugman, "What About the Planet", New York Times, 2016-10-07, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/opinion/what-about-the-planet.html

Oklahoma, tornadoes, Pat Robertson, God, and James Imhofe

Pat Robertson supposedly stated that the deadly tornado that destroyed homes and killed people in Moore, Oklahoma was because people didn't pray enough.  See "God and the Moore Tornado", Roger Talley, Examiner, 2013-05-25.  This in turn cites "Pat Robertson: Tornadoes Could Have Been Stopped If People Had Prayed", Huffington Post, 2013-05-20, which in turn uses a video from other sources.

What exactly did he say?  If you watch the video, both the Examiner, which seems to have a bias toward religion, and almost all the other "short quote" media, didn't give the full context of Robertson's statement.  In the video, Robertson gives a scientific explanation of tornadoes, stating that this is the way God set things up to provide thermal balance for the earth.  He then asks why people build in places with known dangers.  He does state that God could have stopped the tornado if enough people had prayed.  That is quite a different statement than God punished Moore because not enough people prayed.

This pokes a bit of a hole in the joke that I have, but I'll push on anyway, partly because the Examiner article put this spin on it.  What if the Moore tornado was a warning from God?  Could it have been a warning not about prayer but about re-electing James Imhofe to the U.S. Senate?  After all, Sen. Imhofe is one of the chief global-warming deniers in Congress.

All kidding aside, the data is not in on the connection between global warming and tornadoes.  As usual, we have the usual suspects jumping to draw their own conclusions.  On one side global warming doesn't exist because scientists have not found a definitive link between tornadoes and global warming, and on the other side tornadoes must be increasing in severity because of global warming. Actually, global warming could increase them or global warming could decrease them.  For a balanced view on the research in progress, see "Tornadoes and Global Warming", Robert Kunzig, National Geographic, 2013-05-22.

Simple reason for global warming

For millennia humans burned wood for cooking and heat.  As long as there were a large number of trees, trees absorbed the CO2 from the fires and created new trees.

Then humans pulled coal and oil from beneath the ground and burned it.  The rate of CO2 being put into the atmosphere increased dramatically.  Furthermore, because trees all over the world were being cut down faster than they could be replaced, the absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere decreased.  The increase in atmospheric CO2 traps more heat and thus warms the Earth overall.

Those who deny the human effect on global warming must believe that 1+1-1 equals 3!