text:
Scientists Just Say No to 'Chemtrails' Conspiracy Theory
Conspiracy theories can be stubborn, particularly in the echo chamber of the internet.
One persistent belief in some quarters is that the government — or business, perhaps — is deploying a fleet of jet aircraft to spray chemicals into the sky to control the population, food supply or other things.
As evidence, they point to what they call "chemtrails," which are more commonly known as contrails, or condensation trails, produced at high altitudes as water vapor in jet engine exhaust condenses and freezes.
Adding fuel to the chemtrails theory is the fact that there are a few legitimate reasons for atmospheric spraying — "seeding" clouds to make rain, for example — and in recent years there has been some research on the idea of spraying chemicals as a potential way to fight global warming.
But now, scientists have become more organized in their efforts to shoot down the idea, conducting a peer-reviewed study in Environmental Research Letters that debunks chemtrails supporters' claims.
The goal, the researchers say, is not so much to change the minds of hard-core believers, but to provide a rebuttal — the kind that would show up in a Google search — to persuade other people to steer clear of this idea.
Steven J. Davis, a climate scientist at the University of California, Irvine, said he had the idea for the study after a conversation with a salesman at a mattress store.
When the man found out what he did for a living, Dr. Davis said, "he had very serious questions about what we were going to do about the chemtrails problem."
Dr. Davis said that when he got home, he searched the internet for peer-reviewed studies on the conspiracy theory, but found none.
The theory has been popularized on websites that display photographs of contrails but are described instead as chemtrails that persist in the atmosphere and contain harmful chemicals like strontium, barium and aluminum.
Continue Reading @ The New York Times . . .
State of the Climate: 10 years after Al Gore declared a 'planetary emergency'
Top 10 reasons Gore was wrong
By Anthony Watts via Watts Up With That?
As I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, ten years ago today, Al Gore said we had only a decade left to save the planet from global warming. But Earth and humanity has been doing just fine since then.
People that know money over at Investor's Business Daily, said that "We Know Al Gore's Been Running A Global Warming Racket" and listed five ways they ascertain this, I'm going to list those, embellish them, and add a few of my own. IBD writes:
While preening at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2006 during the premiere of his "An Inconvenient Truth" fib-umentary, Gore made his grand declaration. The former vice president said, in the words of the AP reporter taking down his story, that
"unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return." In Gore's own words, he claimed we were in "a true planetary emergency."
Ten years later, he's probably hoping that everyone has forgotten about his categorical statement…
Meanwhile he's been busy turning his gloom and doom predictions into cash and assets. here is their list (first 5, with my embellishments), and 5 more items -Anthony
1 – Satellite data says that Earth hasn't warmed in nearly 20 years. Yes, 2015 supposedly "smashed" the previous temperature record. But actually it was the third-warmest year on record according to satellites.
Claims of "hottest ever" in 2015 have been due in part to a strong El Niño in 2015 (which even climate scientist Dr. Richard Betts grudgingly admits to) and some statistical sleight of hand by NOAA to boost temperatures. They said in 1997, that the current absolute temperature of the Earth was warmer by several degrees that today, but they've since changed their methodology and say that's no longer the case…however, their initial claim lines up with what we see in the satellite record above about 1997 and 1998 when the supersized El Niño happened.
Continue reading @ Watts Up With That?
Satellites show no 'global warming' for 18 1/2 years –
No North Pole warming for nearly 14 years! No South Pole warming for 37 years!
U.S. has had no warming for 18 years
South Pole sees no warming for 37 years. 'For the whole of the satellite record, the South Polar region has had a negative trend. So much for a fingerprint of warming due to the enhanced greenhouse effect being greater warming at the Poles!'
There has been zero trend for exactly half the record, (and for an increase in CO2 concentration of 37 ppm).
Southern Hemisphere:
The Pause has lengthened again. For more than half the record the Southern Hemisphere has zero trend.
Tropical Oceans:
Continue Reading – – – Satellites show no 'global warming' for 18 1/2 years – No N. Pole warming for nearly 14 years – No S. Pole warming for 37 years! | Climate Depot
What I Learned about Climate Change:
The Science is not Settled
By David Siegel via www.ClimateCurious.com
What is your position on the climate-change debate? What would it take to change your mind?
If the answer is It would take a ton of evidence to change my mind, because my understanding is that the science is settled, and we need to get going on this important issue, that's what I thought, too. This is my story.
More than thirty years ago, I became vegan because I believed it was healthier (it's not), and I've stayed vegan because I believe it's better for the environment (it is). I haven't owned a car in ten years. I love animals; I'll gladly fly halfway around the world to take photos of them in their natural habitats. I'm a Democrat: I think governments play a key role in helping preserve our environment for the future in the most cost-effective way possible. Over the years, I built a set of assumptions: that Al Gore was right about global warming, that he was the David going up against the industrial Goliath. In 1993, I even wrote a book about it.
Recently, a friend challenged those assumptions. At first, I was annoyed, because I thought the science really was settled. As I started to look at the data and read about climate science, I was surprised, then shocked. As I learned more, I changed my mind. I now think there probably is no climate crisis and that the focus on CO2 takes funding and attention from critical environmental problems. I'll start by making ten short statements that should challenge your assumptions and then back them up with an essay.
1 • Weather is not climate. There are no studies showing a conclusive link between global warming and increased frequency or intensity of storms, droughts, floods, cold or heat waves.
2 • Natural variation in weather and climate is tremendous. Most of what people call "global warming" is natural, not man-made. The earth is warming, but not quickly, not much, and not lately.
3 • There is tremendous uncertainty as to how the climate really works. Climate models are not yet skillful; predictions are unresolved.
4 • New research shows fluctuations in energy from the sun correlate very strongly with changes in earth's temperature, better than CO2 levels.
5 • CO2 has very little to do with it. All the decarbonization we can do isn't going to change the climate much.
6 • There is no such thing as "carbon pollution." Carbon dioxide is coming out of your nose right now; it is not a poisonous gas. CO2 concentrations in previous eras have been many times higher than they are today.
7 • Sea level will probably continue to rise — not quickly, and not much. Researchers have found no link between CO2 and sea level.
8 • The Arctic experiences natural variation as well, with some years warmer earlier than others. Polar bear numbers are up, not down. They have more to do with hunting permits than CO2*.
9 • No one has shown any damage to reef or marine systems. Additional man-made CO2 will not likely harm oceans, reef systems, or marine life. Fish are mostly threatened by people, who eat them.
10 • The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and others are pursuing a political agenda and a PR campaign, not scientific inquiry. There's a tremendous amount of trickery going on under the surface*.
Could this possibly be right? Is it heresy, or critical thinking — or both? If I've upset or confused you, let me guide you through my journey.
Continue Reading at ClimateCurious.com – – –
Also See: How a liberal vegan environmentalist made the switch from climate proponent to climate skeptic (wattsupwiththat)
Climate Change & CO2: What They Haven't Told You
What They Haven't Told You about Climate Change
By Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, via Prager University on Facebook
Since time immemorial, our climate has been and will always be changing. Patrick Moore explains why "climate change," far from being a recent human-caused disaster, is, for a myriad of complex reasons, a fact of life on Planet Earth.
The Truth about CO2
By Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, via Prager University on Facebook
Global Warming activists will tell you that CO2 is bad and dangerous. The EPA has even classified it as a pollutant. But is it? Patrick Moore provides some surprising facts about the benefits of CO2 that you won't hear in the current debate.
Mind-Blowing Temperature Fraud At NOAA
The measured US temperature data from USHCN shows that the US is on a long-term cooling trend. But the reported temperatures from NOAA show a strong warming trend.
Measured : ushcn.tavg.latest.raw.tar.gz
Reported : ushcn.tavg.latest.FLs.52j.tar.gz
They accomplish this through a spectacular hockey stick of data tampering, which corrupts the US temperature trend by almost two degrees.
The biggest component of this fraud is making up data. Almost half of all reported US temperature data is now fake. They fill in missing rural data with urban data to create the appearance of non-existent US warming.
The depths of this fraud is breathtaking, but completely consistent with the fraudulent profession which has become known as "climate science"
10 Ludicrous Conspiracy Theories On Depopulation
By Marc V. via Listverse
As we've mentioned before, conspiracy theories can be found anywhere on the planet and can encompass just about any subject matter under the Sun. They are used to explain any mysterious event, albeit with a reasoning that can only be described as certifiably insane. Of course, the conspirators are almost always identified as belonging to a cabal of rich and powerful individuals, which brings us to the topic of depopulation. Overpopulation, exhaustion of natural resources, or evil designs are but a few of the reasons why depopulation conspiracy theories still occupy a special place in the minds of the paranoid.
10 • Pacte De Famine
Contrary to the popular notion that they are products of the American mind, depopulation conspiracy theories and their beginnings should actually be credited to the French, with their infamous Pacte de Famine (Famine Pact) in the late 18th century. During that period, a combination of unfavorable weather and relatively poor farming methods produced a severe food shortage across many regions of France, resulting in the raising of the prices of food and other basic commodities.
Due to this unfortunate event, many of the middle and lower classes—especially the peasants—believed that the aristocracy or some other shadowy group was secretly controlling the price of grains to control their burgeoning population. The paranoia led to the Flour War, a collective term for the series of riots and revolts that broke out in the affected areas. Incidentally, this atmosphere of fear and distrust helped to kick-start the French Revolution.
9 • The Human Genome Project Is A Eugenics Program
We've previously discussed the Human Genome Project and the innumerable benefits it has brought to the human race. However, such a massive, well-funded program is not without its controversies. For one, there is a conspiracy theory which says that the project is actually nothing more than a cover for eugenicists to develop better methods of exterminating those people whom they have deemed inferior and unfit for this planet.
According to this conspiracy, the end goal of the project is the identification and elimination of "bad genes" across the world. Mapping out the human genome would allow the supposed conspirators to build better diseases and other biological weapons to subtly sterilize and wipe out inferior races. Even drugs would be customized to eliminate the targeted groups around the globe. As to the identity of the conspirators, it's anyone's guess. Of course, the usual suspects would include the CIA, the military, the Illuminati, or any other "evil" group.
8 • Global Warming Is An Excuse To Depopulate The World
By itself, global warming is already a very controversial topic. Its very existence is a constant subject of heated debate between affirmers and deniers. As if that isn't enough, a few crazies in the deniers' camp have stated that the campaign to stop global warming is really just a ruse to implement a depopulation program.
According to them, the crusade to cut back on fossil fuels and substances harmful to the environment would actually mean decreasing large-scale food and energy production throughout the world. This man-made famine and poverty would then result in a worldwide genocide and the destruction of the global economy, making it easier for whoever is behind the scheme to implement a New World Order. They claim that the ban on DDTs has already resulted in the deaths of more than 100 million people, while the ban on CFCs is killing 40 million people annually.
Note: Mason I. Bilderberg's personal views on global warming:
Damn The Atomic Weight Deniers!!
Before i forget . . .
Because i'm a Mann-Made global warming skeptic and i hear the very anti-scientific phrase "settled science" ad nauseum, i see a lot of humor and irony in the following story regarding settled science suddenly being unsettled:
Atomic Weight Changed for 19 Elements (PDF Here)
From the article:
Nineteen elements on the periodic table — including gold, cadmium, arsenic and aluminum — are getting their atomic weights adjusted.
The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) announced that they've approved new weights for the elements thanks to more precise measurements and better calculations of the abundance of certain isotopes (atoms of an element with different numbers of neutrons).
Just when you thought all the science in the periodic chart was settled! Damn you atomic weight deniers!! Damn you!
Climate science in 'Jeopardy'
By Anthony J. Sadar and JoAnn Truchan via Washington Times
Scientific practice is a bit off these days. It seems as if the promoters of man-made climate change only want one answer for the cause of every climate phenomenon. Among them:
The reason why thermometers are rising so quickly worldwide. The reason worldwide temperatures have leveled off in the past 17 years. The cause of the higher-than-average hurricane season in 2005. The cause of the lower-than-average hurricane season in 2013. The reason there has been so little snowfall in the U.S. and Europe. The reason there has been so much snowfall in the U.S. and Europe.
If climate science were a category on the popular game show "Jeopardy," where the answer must be in the form of a question, there would be but one response allowed for the cause of all these contradictory events: "What is man-made climate change?"
Not every "unusual" atmospheric condition or event evokes the humans-are-responsible answer, however. Oftentimes, to attract unwary audiences, not-so-unusual but still unfamiliar events are exaggerated by purveyors of pernicious prognostications.
Take the "polar vortex" scare. This natural phenomenon was proffered as something new, something frightening, something produced by people living comfortably as a result of the use of carbon-based fossil fuels. Of course, it is none of that. This is verified by the Glossary of Meteorology, published by the American Meteorological Society in 1959, in which this well-known phenomenon was clearly defined, not hyped.
As the ancient Ecclesiastes writer observed, there really is "nothing new under the sun."
Certainly, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) practices the sort of science that gives the desired response first, then seeks the appropriate corresponding questions.
The IPCC defines its role as "to assess … the risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation." In other words, the IPCC assumes from the get-go the desired answer that anthropogenic climate change is a fact. It is then the game of researchers, enticed with prized government grants, to find the evidence that always lead to that conclusion.
The Cooling World (April 28, 1975 – Newsweek Magazine)
By Mason I. Bilderberg – August 22, 2014
Forty years ago global cooling was the alarmist du jour for scaring the hell out of everybody. "Science" was predicting drought, extended dry spells, floods, desolation, food shortages, devastating tornadoes, catastrophic famine, long freezes, temperature increases and even a reversion to the "little ice age" when the Thames was frozen so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City. (source: the article featured below)
"Scientists" were wringing their hands, worried sick, because they saw "few signs that government leaders anywhere [that] are … prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food."
The article ends with the same old tired refrain that is repeated ad nauseam by every alarmist everywhere every time the world is about to end (again): "The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality."
Yes. "Science says", we must ACT NOW! It is imperative to do something immediately – if not sooner – to prevent planetary destruction.
So, from my personal magazine collection i present to you these snippets from a climate-related article published in Newsweek magazine on April 28, 1975. Click the image to download a PDF copy of the entire article in all its alarmist glory.
Enjoy 🙂
Global Warming: Why The IPCC sees exactly what it's looking for
By Mason I. Bilderberg (MIB)
Imagine you've owned the same car since 1988 and for all these years you've always brought your car to the same mechanic. Now imagine the street sign to the right belongs to the mechanic you've been using all these years. Read the sign carefully.
Would you be at all surprised if this mechanic was only focused on muffler and exhaust related issues? So much so that maybe you too became overly focused on your muffler and exhaust?
Given your choice of shops is strictly limited to muffler and exhaust repairs, how can you ever expect to accurately diagnose problems NOT muffler or exhaust related?
The answer is, you can't.
So what does a fictional muffler shop have to do with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? Take a look at the IPCC street sign:
Above is the IPCC mandate as defined by the U.N.[1] [2]
That's right. Underneath all their papers, studies, rhetoric and obfuscation, lies the IPCC's "muffler and exhaust" mandate as defined by the IPCC's creator – the United Nations. Now you know why every one of their "findings" is "human-caused."
"The IPCC does not have a mandate to consider any other causations for alleged climate change, such as natural ones related to solar change and ocean circulation cycles — just presumptive human causes, such as fossil fuels.
"The IPCC sees a human climate-fingerprint everywhere because that is what they are looking for." – S. Fred Singer[3]
My muffler analogy may not be the best example, but i think you get the idea: The next time you see a headline or hear a person touting another monumental, human-caused climate finding by the IPCC, remind them how the IPCC is finding what they're looking for in the only place they're looking.
Mason I. Bilderberg (MIB)
[1] – Download the mandate by following this chain of links: IPCC > Procedures > Click "Principles Governing IPCC Work" and choose your language to download the PDF – OR – you can download a copy here (PDF)
[2] – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 by, and operates under the control and monitoring of, the United Nations(source).
[3] – Siegfried Fred Singer (born September 27, 1924) is an Austrian-born American physicist and emeritus professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia. (Source: Wikipedia)
Plastic from the Air, Global Warming Solution or SCAM?
By Thunderf00t via YouTube
Always depressing to see the level of scientific illiteracy in the mainstream media and in many cooperation.
So Fox News, CBS, The Weather Channel and USA today all had articles on 'aircarbon' which purports to pull carbon out of the air through a hose.
They generally try to be as vague as possible, but claim they are making carbon out of the air, and that this will be cheaper than regular plastic.
Thats Bullshit on every level:
Firstly if they are making a polymer out of carbon dioxide, you need to put a load of energy into it. More than you would have gotten from burning the oil and creating that carbon dioxide in the first place.
If they are talking about pulling methane out of the air, they are so full of bull it beggars belief. Methane in the air runs at about one part per million. Just pumping enough air to do this would cost more energy than just making a polymer out of oil.
Thirdly, if they are talking about making this polymer from biogas/ biomethane.. then all their claims about making it out of the air are outrageously misleading!
Some ball park figures:
1kg of oil makes ~ 1kg of plastic.
Methane is about 1 part in a million in air. So to make 1kg of plastic requires 1 million kg of air (1000 tons). Air is about 1kg per cubic meter so to extract 1kg of 'air plastic' from the air would take about 1million cubic meters of air. About the volume of the empire state building!!
Another Ice Age?
By Mason I. Bilderberg – August 12, 2014
From my personal magazine collection is this climate-related article published in Time magazine on June 24, 1974:
Follow the links below the image to view the entire article, it makes for great reading. If you replace the word "cooling" with the word "warming" and replace the phrase "ice age" with the phrase "scalding cauldron of death and destruction" it's just like an Al Gore speech but without the monotonous, lack-of-inflection robot voice.
Enjoy 🙂
In Search of … The Coming Ice Age
Intro by Mason I. Bilderberg (MIB)
In this day and age of global warming alarmism people either forgot or don't know that there was a time only 35 years ago when "scientists" were screaming and warning us of the coming ice age.
Below is an episode of "in Search of …", a 1970s show hosted by Leonard 'Mr. Spock' Nimoy that explored mysteries of the day. This particular episode first aired in May, 1978 and explores "The Coming Ice Age."
I find this episode interesting because they present the same historical data and trends we're familiar with today – including the 40 year temperature decline that had begun 40 years earlier. But in the late 70s alarmists interpreted this data to mean an ice age was imminent.
Then in the early to mid 80s temperatures showed some warming and some of these same scientists spun around 180 degrees and declared the globe was now warming instead. A great example of this flip-flop is "Stanford University's noted global warming alarmist and Al Gore advisor Stephen Schneider"(source) who appears in this 1978 episode endorsing and discussing the coming ice age – only to flip to a global WARMING alarmist position when it was convenient.
With the lack of warming over the last 17 years, i wonder how long before "science" decides we're not headed for a scalding cauldron of death and destruction. Let me guess: as soon as somebody figures out how to create a multi-billion dollar industry to support and tax the new alarmist position.
Enjoy the "science" from 1978 🙂
About those 97% of climate scientists . . .
By Mason I. Bilderberg (MIB) – June 23, 2014
As you know, i am a global warming skeptic. If you wish to catch up on what i believe and why, i recommend looking to the menu at the top of each page where it says "Global Warming."
Very briefly, this how i split the issue:
I have always had issues with the question, "Do you believe in global warming?", because it's really two questions:
- Has the earth warmed (over some time frame)?
- Are humans responsible?
Because simply answering "yes" to the above question can be misunderstood to mean you agree warming has occurred AND that humans are primarily responsible, i always split the issue:
- I do agree there has been some warming over the last 100 years, BUT
- I'm not convinced humans are the main cause. I'm inclined to think our climate is primarily driven by the same natural forces that have driven our climate since the earth was created 4.5 billion years ago – and humans are a small part of that natural cycle.
Today i want to revisit an aspect of the global warming theory that i covered in my article "Global Warming: I Have Questions."
Specifically, i want to add an addendum to my previous challenges of the much touted "97% of scientists agree global warming is real" meme.
For some background, this 97% figure comes from a study conducted by climate scientist John Cook of the University of Queensland's Global Change Institute and it is quoted ad nauseam by global warming reality deniers as proof that "97% of climate scientists agree global warming is real and humans are the cause."
To date, i had been unable to track down a copy of this 2013 study. I thought maybe i had just been looking in all the wrong places, then i come to find out "the University of Queensland in Australia is taking legal action to block the release of data used by one of its scientists (John Cook) to come up with the oft-quoted statistic that 97 percent of climate scientists agree that mankind is causing global warming.[1]"
More on the University of Queensland threatening lawsuits over the use of Cook's '97% consensus' data for a scientific rebuttal can be found here, here and here.
Interesting, eh? 97% of scientists agree but nobody can use the data in a rebuttal. Gotta love it.
But alas, i finally found a PDF copy of this elusive study and i've had a chance to read through it for myself (PDF copy here) and below is my rebuttal.
This rebuttal of the study doesn't get into the questionable methodology used by John Cook and his fellow authors. I'll leave that for another day and another time. Why? Because i don't want to muddy the waters. I don't need to. Taken at face value, the study does NOT say "97% of scientists agree global warming is real."
Let's start on page 3 of the study where they explain how the total number of papers examined was determined:
The results and their findings are then depicted on page 4 of the study, in this table. The colors are not in the original table; I added these colors to make it easier to follow along with my breakdown that follows.
Interpretation of this data is as easy as 1, 2, 3 …
- 11,944 papers were analyzed.
- 3,896 of these papers expressed a position endorsing anthropogenic global warming (agw).
- 3,896 is 32.6% of the 11,944 papers.
CONCLUSION: 32.6% of the papers agree global warming is real.
That's it. I've done nothing to adjust or interpret these numbers. What you see is what you get: 32.6% of the papers agree global warming is real.
What? What am i missing here? How does Cook et al twist 32.6% into the oft-quoted 97%?
I'll tell you what's missing – and it explains why the University of Queensland is threatening lawsuits over the use of this data for any scientific rebuttals:
They simply ignore the 7,930 papers not expressing a position.
That's right, they simply ignored the 7,930 papers not expressing a position and qualified their 97% findings by saying the "percent of papers with a position on anthropogenic global warming (AGW)".
The bottom line is, without any interpretation, taken at face value, without any qualifying language, this study says:
32.6% of scientists agree global warming is real!
That is the plain language of this study. Period.
Now remember i said i wasn't going to get into the methodology of this study? Well, i'm not. But somebody far more qualified than myself has, and this 32.6% gets horribly worse for the authors of this study.
Find out why there is only a 0.3% climate consensus!
Mason I. Bilderberg (MIB)
Also See:
John Kerry reaches new highs of beclowning himself with temperature
I'm pretty sure he'll blame his blathering on the heat. You have to wonder if privately, many leading climate alarmists are saying quietly "shut up John you are blowing our argument".
(CNSNews.com) – Secretary of State John Kerry told an audience in Mexico on Wednesday that temperatures in Europe and in Vietnam were "unprecedented" and broke "every record that's ever been seen." However, although it was hot that day, he was off the mark.
View original post 281 more words
Climate Change in 12 Minutes – The Skeptic's Case
I am a
global warming climate change climate disruption skeptic. I catch a lot of heat (pun intended) for my skepticism.
But i have my reasons and this video does a very level-headed job of explaining where skeptics are coming from in the
global warming climate change climate disruption debate.
If you're a
global warming climate change climate disruption believer and you wish to understand the skeptic's perspective, i ask you to watch just the first 2 minutes.
The first 2 minutes of this video does an excellent job of spelling out the very thin line between believers and skeptics. So close, yet so far.
This video appears to be based on an article written by Dr. David M.W. Evans called The Skeptic's Case. As such, you might find the video easier to understand if you read along with the original text (The Skeptic's Case) or download the PDF here.
Actually, the PDF text version is worth downloading as a standalone resource for those times when people ask why you're a
global warming climate change climate disruption skeptic.
Enjoy 🙂
Mason I. Bilderberg
By Dr. David M.W. Evans via YouTube
- On YouTube
- On The Web
- PDF version
Global Warming: Pop! Goes the Weasels!
By Mason I. Bilderberg – 5/8/2014
As you might know by now, i have serious doubts about the
global warming climate change climate disruption theory. Quite frankly, i'm not convinced. At all.
There's just too much funny business going on with the language and the alleged "science."
If you want a more comprehensive insight into the reasons for my doubts, i suggest reading two articles i recently wrote: Global Warming: I Have Questions and Global Warming: Heads they win, tails you lose.
One of the topics i hit upon in my second article (Global Warming: Heads they win, tails you lose) is the use of weasel words in the global warming debate.
This is a real hot point with me – the use of misleading language to distort the
global warming climate change climate disruption argument. If you have to lie, distort and otherwise mislead people to sell your wares, there's a problem.
As a recent example, over at techtimes.com is this ominous sounding headline:
Scary, eh?
The first two paragraphs read:
Carbon dioxide levels are the highest they have been in the history of mankind, according to a new study.
Researchers from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego, California made an analysis of carbon dioxide levels, finding concentrations at their highest level in 800,000 years. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. Investigators found 401.33 parts per million of the greenhouse gas in the air.
To spot weasel wording you normally would look for some kind of qualifier language within the claim. In this instance, the phrase "800,000 years" jumped off the page at me.
So i naturally asked myself, "Self, why . . . why would they limit this claim to a time frame of 800,000 years when we know the earth is at least 4.5 billion years old and we know scientists have calculated carbon dioxide levels going back AT LEAST 500 million years?"
Here is why: to distort the truth.
Look at the graphs below. First thing to note is the Y axis on both graphs represents the level of CO2 concentration in parts per million (ppm). The Y axis on both graphs are of equal size, this allows you to have an accurate perspective when comparing the CO2 levels between the two graphs.
The top graph represents the last 1 million years. The blue squiggly line represents the CO2 levels for the last 800,000 years that are referenced in the techtimes.com article.
The bottom graph represents the last 600 million years. The blue line represents the CO2 levels for the last 600 million years.
Take a look:
Now do you see why the techtimes.com article couched their scary headline within the 800,000 year time frame? Had they gone back any further they wouldn't be able to write their tabloid headline! (Added bonus: 800,000 years allows them to use the catchy phrase "since the existence of mankind" which helps advance the "blame mankind" narrative.)
Mason I. Bilderberg (MIB)
More on my
global warming climate change climate disruption perspective:
Top Ten Good Skeptical Arguments (Global Warming)
As suggested by a friend, I'm following up my Top Ten bad global warming arguments list with a Top Ten good arguments list. These are in no particular order, and I might have missed something important.
These ten were just off the top of my head….there's no telling what might be lingering deeper in my brain.
I have avoided specific alternative causal mechanisms of natural climate change, because I view them individually as speculative. But taken as a whole, they represent a class of unknowns that can't be just swept under the rug just because we don't understand them.
For some reason, all of these ended up being phrased as questions, rather than statements.
1 • No Recent Warming. If global warming science is so "settled", why did global warming stop over 15 years ago (in most temperature datasets), contrary to all "consensus" predictions?
2 • Natural or Manmade? If we don't know how much of the warming in the longer term (say last 50 years) is natural, then how can we know how much is manmade?
3 • IPCC Politics and Beliefs. Why does it take a political body (the IPCC) to tell us what scientists "believe"? And when did scientists' "beliefs" translate into proof? And when was scientific truth determined by a vote…especially when those allowed to vote are from the Global Warming Believers Party?
4 • Climate Models Can't Even Hindcast How did climate modelers, who already knew the answer, still fail to explain the lack of a significant temperature rise over the last 30+ years? In other words, how do you botch a hindcast?
5 • …But We Should Believe Model Forecasts? Why should we believe model predictions of the future, when they can't even explain the past?
6 • Modelers Lie About Their "Physics". Why do modelers insist their models are based upon established physics, but then hide the fact that the strong warming their models produce is actually based upon very uncertain "fudge factor" tuning?
Also See:
- Skeptical Arguments that Don't Hold Water (drroyspencer.com)
- Global Warming: Heads they win, tails you lose. (iLLuMiNuTTi.com)
- Global Warming: I Have Questions (iLLuMiNuTTi.com)
How did the IPCC's alarmism take everyone in for so long?
By Christopher Booker via Telegraph
When future generations come to look back on the alarm over global warming that seized the world towards the end of the 20th century, much will puzzle them as to how such a scare could have arisen. They will wonder why there was such a panic over a 0.4 per cent rise in global temperatures between 1975 and 1998, when similar rises between 1860 and 1880 and 1910 and 1940 had given no cause for concern. They will see these modest rises as just part of a general warming that began at the start of the 19th century, as the world emerged from the Little Ice Age, when the Earth had grown cooler for 400 years.
They will be struck by the extent to which this scare relied on the projections of computer models, which then proved to be hopelessly wrong when, in the years after 1998, their predicted rise in temperature came virtually to a halt.
But in particular they will be amazed by the almost religious reverence accorded to that strange body, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which by then will be recognised as having never really been a scientific body at all, but a political pressure group. It had been set up in the 1980s by a small band of politically persuasive scientists who had become fanatically committed to the belief that, because carbon dioxide levels were rising, global temperatures must inevitably follow; an assumption that the evidence would increasingly show was mistaken.
Five times between 1990 and 2014 the IPCC published three massive volumes of technical reports – another emerged last week – and each time we saw the same pattern. Each was supposedly based on thousands of scientific studies, many funded to find evidence to support the received view that man-made climate change was threatening the world with disaster – hurricanes, floods, droughts, melting ice, rising sea levels and the rest. But each time what caught the headlines was a brief "Summary for Policymakers", carefully crafted by governments and a few committed scientists to hype up the scare by going much further than was justified by the thousands of pages in the technical reports themselves.
Each time it would emerge just how shamelessly these Summaries had distorted the actual evidence, picking out the scary bits, which themselves often turned out not to have been based on proper science at all. The most glaring example was the . . .
Debunking every IPCC climate prophesy of war, pestilence, famine, drought, impacts in one line
By Joanne Nova via JoNova
We could spend hours analyzing the new IPCC report about the impacts of climate change. Or we could just point out:
- Everything in the Working Group II report depends entirely on Working Group I. (see footnote 1 SPM, page 3)
- Working Group I depends entirely on climate models and 98% of them didn't predict the pause.
The models are broken. They are based on flawed assumptions about water vapor.
Working Group I, remember, was supposed to tell us the scientific case for man-made global warming. If our emissions aren't driving the climate towards a catastrophe, then we don't need to analyze what happens during the catastrophe we probably won't get. This applies equally to War, Pestilence, Famine, Drought, Floods, Storms, and Shrinking Fish (which, keep in mind, could have led to the ultimate disaster: shrinking fish and chips).
To cut a long story short, the 95% certainty of Working Group I boils down to climate models and 98% of them didn't predict the pause in surface temperature trends (von Storch 2013) . Even under the most generous interpretation, models are proven failures, 100% right except for rain, drought, storms, humidity and everything else (Taylor 2012). They get cloud feedbacks wrong by a factor 19 times larger than the entire effect of increased CO2 (Miller 2012). They don't predict the climate on a local, regional, or continental scale (Anagnostopoulos 2010 and Koutsoyiannis 2008). They don't work on the tropical troposphere (Christy 2010, Po-Chedley 2012, Fu 2011, Paltridge 2009). The fingerprints they predicted are 100% missing.
Even the IPCC admits in the fine print that the models don't work.
PBS' Conversation with global warming skeptic Anthony Watts
Climate Change Skeptic Says Global Warming Crowd Oversells Its Message
September 14, 2012
Intro by Anthony Watts via Watts Up With That?:
Here's the story/transcript from Spencer Michels, along with video that follows. I have not seen the piece that will be airing nationally yet, and I don't know how much of me they use, but this just appeared on the PBS website.
One note: when they talk about "heat sync" they really meant to say heat sink. – Anthony
Intro by PBS:
It was about 105 degrees in Chico, Calif., about three hours north of Sacramento, when we arrived at the offices of one of the nation's most read climate skeptics. Actually, Anthony Watts calls himself a pragmatic skeptic when it comes to global warming. Watts is a former television meteorologist, who has been studying climate change for years. He doesn't claim to be a scientist; he attended Purdue. He's the author of a blog, Watts Up with That?, which he calls the world's most viewed site on global warming. For a story I was working on for the PBS NewsHour, Watts was recommended by the Heartland Institute, a conservative, Chicago-based non-profit that is one of the leading groups that doubt that climate change — if it exists — is attributable to human activities.
Watts doesn't come across as a true believer or a fanatic. For one thing, he has built a business that caters to television stations and individuals who want accurate weather information and need displays to show their viewers. He has developed an array of high tech devices to disseminate weather data and put it on screens. He has several TV stations around the country as clients.
But Watts' reputation doesn't come from his business — IntelliWeather — but rather from his outspoken views on climate change. He says he's been gathering data for years, and he's analyzed it along with some academics. He used to think somewhat along the same lines as Richard Muller, the University of California physicist who recently declared he was no longer a skeptic on climate change. Muller had analyzed two centuries worth of temperature data and decided his former skepticism was misplaced: yes, the earth has been warming, and the reason is that humans are producing carbon dioxide that is hastening the warming the planet.
Watts doesn't buy Muller's analysis, since, he believes, it is based on faulty data. The big problem, as Watts sees it, is that the stations where temperatures are gathered are too close to urban developments where heat is soaked up and distorts the readings. So it looks like the earth is warming though it may not be, he says.
EDITORIAL: The dubious apocalypse of global warming
The climate isn't changing, but doomsday rhetoric is rising
The world isn't warming. The Climate Depot website obtained the latest satellite measurements and found the Earth's thermostat hasn't budged since September 1996.
That's 210 straight months without any trend of the planet growing hotter, or colder, by even a tenth of a degree. This ought to be good news for buyers of a Toyota Prius or carbon-dioxide offsets. They could imagine themselves as having saved the world. But they're more depressed than ever.
Matthew Ranson, an economist, describes in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management the chaos that he thinks awaits. "Between 2010 and 2099," he writes in the peer-reviewed journal, "climate change will cause an additional 22,000 murders, 180,000 cases of rape, 1.2 million aggravated assaults, 2.3 million simple assaults, 260,000 robberies, 1.3 million burglaries, 2.2 million cases of larceny, and 580,000 cases of vehicle theft in the United States." No estimates of mopery or pillaging.
Mr. Ranson said he examined the effect that temperature has on crime rates, based on FBI records. The numbers recognize the obvious criminal preference to rob and pillage in balmy conditions; a blizzard is bad for everybody's business.
He speculates that a great crime wave would follow the heat wave predicted by computer models of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The U.N. panel is raising its rhetoric, too. London's daily Independent reports that the panel predicts crop yields will fall by 2 percent every decade, leading to malnutrition and starvation. There will be floods, fires, civil war, hay fever, heat waves, boils, various itches, pestilence and plagues on mankind.
95% of Climate Models Agree: The Observations Must be Wrong
Via Roy Spencer
I'm seeing a lot of wrangling over the recent (15+ year) pause in global average warming…when did it start, is it a full pause, shouldn't we be taking the longer view, etc.
These are all interesting exercises, but they miss the most important point: the climate models that governments base policy decisions on have failed miserably.
I've updated our comparison of 90 climate models versus observations for global average surface temperatures through 2013, and we still see that >95% of the models have over-forecast the warming trend since 1979, whether we use their own surface temperature dataset (HadCRUT4), or our satellite dataset of lower tropospheric temperatures (UAH):
Whether humans are the cause of 100% of the observed warming or not, the conclusion is that global warming isn't as bad as was predicted. That should have major policy implications…assuming policy is still informed by facts more than emotions and political aspirations.
And if humans are the cause of only, say, 50% of the warming (e.g. our published paper), then there is even less reason to force expensive and prosperity-destroying energy policies down our throats.
I am growing weary of the variety of emotional, misleading, and policy-useless statements like "most warming since the 1950s is human caused" or "97% of climate scientists agree humans are contributing to warming", neither of which leads to the conclusion we need to substantially increase energy prices and freeze and starve more poor people to death for the greater good.
Yet, that is the direction we are heading.
And even if the extra energy is being stored in the deep ocean (if you have faith in long-term measured warming trends of thousandths or hundredths of a degree), I say "great!". Because that extra heat is in the form of a tiny temperature change spread throughout an unimaginably large heat sink, which can never have an appreciable effect on future surface climate.
If the deep ocean ends up averaging 4.1 deg. C, rather than 4.0 deg. C, it won't really matter.
True Fact: The Lack of Pirates Is Causing Global Warming
By Erika Andersen via Forbes
It's true. This extremely scientific graph proves it:
You can see that as the number of pirates in the world has decreased over the past 130 years, global warming has gotten steadily worse. In fact, this makes it entirely clear that if you truly want to stop global warming, the most impactful thing to do is — become a pirate.
Hope you're laughing. My husband told me this wonderful premise a few months ago, and I couldn't resist sharing it with you, for a very specific reason. I'm fascinated by why it's so funny. I believe it's because it's an only slightly more extreme version of the fake logic we hear every day — the conclusions that pass for critical thinking in these days of completely unleashed 24-7 communication. For example:
- Someone who has cancer drinks gallons of lemon water and their cancer goes into remission: they create a website to talk about how lemon water cures cancer.
- A business is doing badly and they move to a new building and things start to pick up: the CEO writes a book about how changing your environment is the key to success.
- Statistics show that people who leave their jobs after less than a year are more likely to smoke: someone starts a campaign to reduce smoking by encouraging people to stay at their jobs longer.
My older sister, a very wise and smart woman who is a political scientist at Syracuse University, teaches a statistics class to freshmen, where she endeavors to teach them critical thinking. She talks about this as being the most common error in logic: confusing simultaneity with causality. In other words, assuming that because two things are happening at the same time, they exist in a cause and effect relationship with each other.
Because anyone can say anything anywhere these days (pretty much), there's a lot of fuzzy thinking floating around that seems more legitimate than it would have in former times because it's in print. Now, don't get me wrong: I'm a huge proponent of free speech. I just feel we all have to be more discriminating than ever before about what we believe. Not cynical or negative: discriminating.
So, when someone proposes a cause and effect relationship between two things – reduction in pirates causing global warming; Obama creating the global economic crisis; young people ruining American business – ask for the data that shows they're related, rather than simply that they're happening at the same time.
But if you're dead set on becoming a pirate, I'm not going to stop you.
Global Warming: Heads they win, tails you lose.
By Mason I. Bilderberg (MIB), January 30, 2014
Let's start this article by examining the deceptive use of words and phrases and later i will explain how i believe such deceptions are used in the global warming debate.
A few examples of what i mean.
What exactly is being promised by a sign in a store window that says, "Save up to 50% on everything in the store?"
Does it mean:
- The discount is 50%
- The discount is somewhere between 0% and 50%
- The discount applies to everything in the store
- The discount only applies to some things in the store
- Nothing in the store is discounted
- All of the above.
Of course the correct answer is "F" – all of the above.
This is a classic case of advertisers intentionaly using deceptive wording to create a false impression. In this case, the meaning of the words "… up to . . ." can mean anything from 0% to 50%, which renders the rest of the statement meaningless. So even if NOTHING in the store is discounted, this sign is technically true.
Though this kind of deceptive wording might be obvious to some, you might be surprised to learn how many people reading such a sign will interpret it to mean everything in the store is heavily discounted. Deception sells.
Another example . . .
Look at the NutriSystem ad to the right. NutriSystem ran print ads like this along with TV commercials and the promise-sounding sales pitch, "… lose all the weight you can at Nutri/System for only $199. Don't wait, call now."
Wait a second, back up the truck. Did you catch the deception in this pitch?
For only $199 you will lose all the weight you can? I'm sure you see the problem with this wording. So did the Federal Trade Commission (PDF).
If you don't lose any weight, then this would be all the weight you can lose. See? NutriSystem didn't lie – you DID lose all the weight you can – now pay $199!!
One more quick example and i'll move on to global warming . . .
This used car salesman on the right. Is he guaranteeing you a loan or is he promising to accept your loan application (so he can toss it into the round file)? There's a big difference.
How about car dealerships that promise "guaranteed credit" or "cash for all trade-ins!"
Do these sales pitches sound like you will get all the credit you need to buy your dream car and maximum dollars for your used car trade-in? Or do they really mean you'll get $5 of credit at 25% interest and a whopping $10 for your used car trade-in?
Words mean things. How words are used, misused or not used at all (conspicuous by their absence), also has meaning and can give us a glimpse into the motives behind the words.
I was going through some global warming articles about a week ago and i found this statistic in an article from LiveScience.com:
My gut finds this statistic hard to believe. It just seems too high compared to other polls i've seen in the last few years on the same subject. Two years ago it was reported to be about 50%, now it's reported at 63%? We haven't seen any warming in over 15 years and the belief in global warming has climbed? Time to investigate.
So i found the survey upon which this statistic is based (Download the PDF) and i found something interesting on page 34 – the definition of global warming as it was defined for the respondents of this latest survey (November 2013):
For the purpose of responding to this survey, there are 3 criteria to consider to determine if you are a global warming believer:
- If temperatures have increased over the last 150 years,
- future temperatures may increase, and
- the worlds climate may change as a result.
Recall the "50% off" sign, the NutriSystem ad and the used car salesman ad at the top of this article. Now look at the wording in the above three criteria. There is one word that renders two of the three criteria completely meaningless.
Do you see it?
The weasel word is "may" in the second and third criteria.
"May" is synonymous with "optional" – something may, OR may NOT, occur.
Thus the three criteria above and these three criteria below are exactly the same from a logic standpoint:
- If temperatures have increased over the last 150 years,
- future temperatures may OR may NOT increase, and
- the worlds climate may OR may NOT change.
With the second and third criterias rendered meaningless, the question of whether global warming is real comes down to one, single question:
- Have temperatures increased over the last 150 years?
As reported in my last global warming article, this is the temperature record for the last 150 years:
Like asking if the earth is round, answering the question "Have temperatures increased in the last 150 years?" comes down to a simple, objective, recitation of fact:
- Yes, the squiggly line is higher on the right side of the graph than it is on the left side of the graph.
Because neither the definition used to assess the answer to the question nor the question itself asks the respondent to consider anything beyond the vertical movement of the squiggly line, the answer to the question cannot be construed as agreeing with the more expansive definition of global warming and the theoretical causes:
Watershed! BBC Now Sees Sun Developing Into A Potent 21st Century Climate Factor As A Real Possibility!
By P Gosselin via NoTricksZone
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, but surely, the once diehard the-science-is-settled mainstream media are conceding that the climate debate isn't over after all – and likely not by a long shot. And if you pay attention, you can see them quietly opening that back door for the quick exit.
The cracking started long ago, and now chips and pieces of the global warming science are starting to fall on the floor around us.
Earlier today the BBC featured a short report "Has the Sun gone to sleep?"
This report looks at the implications of a protracted quiet solar period, potentially lasting decades. Global cooling is turning out to be a real possibility, now even at the BBC!
Today we know a huge body of historical observations shows there is a pronounced relationship between cold winters in Europe and low solar activity. Moreover there's a huge body of persuasive evidence, comprising mainly proxy datasets, that show the phenomenon is not regional, but global. As much as the BBC tries to play that down, the video holds a couple of big surprises.
Mirrors the Maunder Minimum!
The BBC starts by telling its viewers that the current solar maximum "is eerily quiet". Solar physicist Professor Richard Harrison says the sun hasn't been this quiet in 100 years and that the current activity mirrors the activity of the 17th century – the Maunder Minimum, the time of the dreadful Little Ice Age. What we have here is the BBC telling viewers to associate low solar activity with potential cold.
At the 3-minute mark, the BBC reporter asks the key question: "Does a decline in solar activity mean plunging temperatures for decades to come?" For an answer the BBC interviews three scientists.
Could impact the climate – "not fully understood"
Scientist Dr Lucie Green actually thinks that low solar activity could affect the climate, but she isn't sure "to what extent", and then even points out that varying amounts of solar radiation impact the globe's upper atmosphere and that this is something scientists "don't fully understand". Therefore, don't rule anything out.
"Fastest solar decline in 10,000 years"!
At the 4:17 mark, Mike Lockwood says we are witnessing the fastest decline in 10,000 years. He then claims that there's a close to 20% chance that we may be actually entering a Maunder-like minimum. As one of the scientists who is more than 95% sure that man is now causing the climate change, 20% seems to be a very high figure and so we might suspect Lockwood's true probability figure to be much higher than 20%.
Note how Lockwood does his best to portray solar impacts on climate as being regional phenomena, affecting the Jet Stream and Europe's climate, but not the global mean climate. Lockwood here is not being completely forthcoming.
Sun now on par with human activity?
RELATED: BBC's six-year cover-up of secret 'green propaganda' training for top executives | Mail Online
ALSO SEE: Video – Has the Sun gone to sleep?.
Global Warming: I Have Questions
By Mason I. Bilderberg (MIB)
Question: What happens when a skeptic like myself questions the global warming theory in a facebook group that considers themselves skeptics?
Answer: I get labeled a conspiracist, conspiratard, sheeptard, right-winger, troll, denialist and all kinds of other interesting things. It was also suggested that i do certain things to myself and go away.
As Mr. Spock would say, "Fascinating, Jim."
I have always had issues with the question, "Do you believe in global warming?", because it's really two questions:
- Has the earth warmed (over some time frame)?
- Are humans responsible?
Because simply answering "yes" to the above question can be misunderstood to mean you agree warming has occurred AND that humans are primarily responsible, i always split the issue:
- I do agree there has been some warming over the last 100 years, BUT
- I'm not convinced humans are the main cause. I'm inclined to think our climate is primarily driven by the same natural forces that have driven our climate since the earth was created 4.5 billion years ago – and humans are a small part of that natural cycle.
It's this position that gets people all worked up. But why do feel this way? Because i have questions.
What period of time are global warming believers referring to when they use phrases like, "the warmest 'on record'", "since records have been kept" or "since measurements began"?
Al Gore is notorious for using these kinds of references to a mystery time frame. When he says "this is the hottest year 'since measurements began'", am i the only one wondering when "the measurements began"? After all, if the measurements began at 5 o'clock this morning, then by noon it really would be the warmest since measurements began, wouldn't it?
Here is Al Gore from 1997 using these types of vague references to a mysterious period of time:
The IPCC[1] (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) used similar language in their 1990 Scientific Assessment report when they wrote, "the five warmest years on record have been in the 1980s.[2]"
Sounds ominous, doesn't it? It almost sounds like they're saying, "the five warmest years since the beginning of time have been in the 1980s," or "the five warmest years EVER have been in the 1980s," doesn't it?
The truth is, when the IPCC, Al Gore and the other global warming theorists compare temperatures to "the record" (i.e. "The warmest on record") they are actually referring to the last 150 years of temperature data. Allow me to explain. Here are the temperatures from the last 1,000 years:
With current temperatures located on the far right of the graph and the dotted line representing temperature conditions near the beginning of the twentieth century[3], you should notice something right off the bat.
Beginning about 950 AD and continuing for about 400 years until almost 1350 AD there is a period of time when the temperatures were warmer than they are today. According to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – 1990), this warmer period is referred to as the "Medieval Warm Period."
The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was warmer than any temperatures seen today, so global warming theorists must use a period of time after the Medieval Warm Period to make claims of record breaking temperatures.
Here is that period of time referred to as "the record"[4] by global warming theorists when they say "… on 'the record'":
The above graph is "the record" as depicted in the 1990 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Scientific Assessment Report. It only goes back approximately 150 years to the year 1860.
From the same IPCC report: "The instrumental record of surface temperature is fragmentary until the mid-nineteenth century, after which it slowly improves[5] . . . " and it "shows current estimates of … surface temperature over land and ocean since 1860.[6] [7]" [all emphasis mine]
So when the IPCC[8] and other global warming theorists say, "the warmest temperatures on record," what they're really saying is, "the warmest temperatures since 1860!"
Now look again at the 1,000 year temperature graph, this time with "the record" put in perspective:
It becomes clear why global warming theorists say "the warmest temperatures on record" - because if they were honest and said "the warmest temperatures since 1860," the deception would become as painfully obvious as it is here.
What else do you notice? Notice where "the record" begins on the 1,000 year timeline. It begins at the end of a period in history called the "Little Ice Age." The Little Ice Age (LIA) is a 500 year period of cooling that occurred from about 1350 to approximately 1850[9].
I'm sure it's just pure happenstance that the purveyors of global warming use the end of an ice age as their temperature comparison starting point. Sort of like wanting to convince your friends you're a gambling guru by bragging about how you won $3,000 on your last day in Las Vegas while conveniently forgetting to mention how you lost $5,000 on your first day in Vegas. You're the man (until your friends learn the inconvenient truth)!
For more perspective let's go back some more. Here is 8,000 years of temperatures:
[1] http://www.ipcc.ch/
[2] 1990 IPCC Scientific Assessment, page xxix.
[3] 1990 IPCC Scientific Assessment, Page 202.
[4] 1990 IPCC Scientific Assessment, page xxix.
[5] 1990 IPCC Scientific Assessment, page xxviii.
[6] 1990 IPCC Scientific Assessment, page xxviii.
[7] Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record
[8] http://www.ipcc.ch/
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age


text:
Dea Dia Organics
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Our blog has moved!
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Resolving to get connected in 2011?
As a lover of lists, I found an interesting listing of the Top Ten Reasons to Eat Local. As farmers, we feel it's important to provide the connection for our customers to our farm, as mentioned in this excerpt, "By eating local, people are able to reconnect with local farmers, and through local farmers, reconnect with the earth. Many people first begin to understand the critical need for this lost sense of connectedness when they develop personal relationships with their farmers and actually visit the farms where their food is produced. We cannot build a sustainable food system until people develop a deep understanding of their dependency upon each other and upon the earth."
It's this connectedness that caused us to develop our CSA program. We hope you'll join us for our 2011 CSA season of connectedness with your food and your farmer!
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Dea Dia in the News
While not everything is completely accurate in the story (especially the sales numbers and only mentioning Jeff being responsible for one of our kids :)), it is an interesting piece & video. Check out!
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Weekend Away...At Home
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Chick Check!
Watch & read about our collective chicks that will be spending with winter with us all at their Prairie Hens blog.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Week 4: Last Fall CSA Share
It's that time of year when we reflect and think about the things we're thankful for. The wonderful family and friends that surround us and supports our decision to farm. Mother Nature who is our guide through the rhythms of the season, challenges us continuously and allow us to grow. Our CSA members who give us ideas, support and your ongoing trust to provide healthy food.
As we close out our vegetable farming season with your last box, we now hope to move to a season of rest and family time. We'll spend December & January ordering seeds, planning our fields, educating new farmers, reading, learning and of course, tending to our animals at the farm. We hope to post a note or two to our blog to keep you posted on what we're thinking ;)
In the meantime, thank you for joining our inaugural fall share! Since this was our first go at a fall share, we'll be curious to hear your feedback (we'll send you a quick survey). We hope that you'll enjoy some of your storage veggies at your Thanksgiving table!
Have a wonderful winter & we look forward to seeing you again this spring!
The Miller Family
This week in your box:
- Baby Salad Mix
- Spinach
- Turnips - These are still young so they shouldn't need to be peeled. Also don't forget to use the greens, they are delicious cooked!
- Rutabaga - Peel and cook like a potato, we love them mixed in with mashed potatoes.
- Parsnips
- Baby Beets
- Red and Green Bok Choy
- Kohlrabi
- Onions
- Garlic
Top 5 Ways to Prepare Kohlrabi
Root Vegetable Gratin with Blue Cheese (you could use the turnips in this too!)
Soba Noodles with Wilted Bok ChoyBaby Beet & Turnip Salad
1/2 tablespoon Herbes de Provence
1 tablespoon whole peppercorns
1 tablespoon fennel seed
1 tablespoon cumin seed
2 pounds baby beets
1 teaspoon kosher salt
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic, smashed with skin on
2 cups mixed baby greens
1 small sweet onion, sliced thin
1 pound baby turnips, sliced thin
1/4 pound blue cheese
Mix: In a clean coffee grinder, blend ingredients to desired texture.
Salad: Preheat oven to 375 degrees. To prepare the beets, cut leaves and stems off, leaving an inch of stem. Clean beets well with a vegetable scrubber and cut off the root tip. Layer a sheet of foil, then a sheet of parchment paper. Place beets on the parchment paper and sprinkle with 1 teaspoon kosher salt, olive oil, garlic and Z mix. Seal beets by closing parchment and foil like an envelope. Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Let the beets cool to room temperature. Toss greens with 2 tablespoons of olive oil and add them to a large serving platter. Slice the beets thinly and lay them slightly overlapping each other on top of mixed greens. Lay sliced onions and turnips on top of the beets and greens. Drizzle the remaining olive oil over the entire plate and sprinkle with crumbled blue cheese.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Week 3: Fall Share
This fall on the farm has been dramatically different than past years. In the past at this time of the year, I would be just about finished with the field work and farm chores would be slowing down dramatically. My work would be moving inside analyzing how things went, closing out our books and getting into planning for next year. This year I am still trying to do all of that but we also still have a lot going on at the farm. There are still veggies growing in the field under, sometimes under cover cloth and sometimes (days like today) in the open. I just finished building a winter hoophouse for our hens and moved them in yesterday. We are caring for our new baby chicks and watching them grow bigger every day. Later this week I will begin retro-fitting part of a barn to house our two gilts (a fancy farmer term for an un-bred female pig) to begin our pig breeding program. Although it has been challenging from a stamina perspective, I am enjoying having such a diverse range of projects. It has also been very rewarding to see big projects completed and to see how well our crops can continue to grow into the fall. We feel all these new ventures are important to our long term success and sustainability of our farm. So, just wait....there's many more adventures to come this spring!
We hope you have a great week and enjoy your eggs and veggies!
In your veggie CSA box this week you'll find...
- Stir Fry Mix - A delicous mix of baby kale, mustards, and asian greens. These greens are still young and tender and we rarely cook them for more than a couple minutes. They are also delicious on sandwiches and burgers.
- Carrots
- Broccoli
- Parsnips
- Celeriac - Also called celery root, it's a staple in European kitchens. Why is this? Because of its diversity and because of its nutritional benefits. A 1/2 cup of celeriac, which is approximately 112 grams, contains only 30 calories. Additionally, celeriac contains no cholesterol or fat and provides an excellent source of dietary fiber. Because of its taste and consistency, it is also a flavorful additional to meals that require lower calories or certain dietary restrictions.
- Hakurei Turnips - One of our CSA members reminded us to use the delicious greens from these turnips. They are packed with nutrients and make a great addition to soup or stirfry!
- Buttnernut Squash
- Red & Green Cabbage
- Shallots - Taste between an onion and garlic. If you don't use them all shallots keep very well lasting well into winter.
- Three Ways to Cook Greens in Under 10 Minutes - Hot Wilted Greens, Greens with Warm Pecan Dressing, Pasta with Dark Greens
Quick Celery Root Salad with Capers and Lemon
Southeast Asian Squash Curry - You can adjust the amount of curry depending on how you like it.
Serves 4. Published May 1, 2008. From Cook's Illustrated.
If you don't have a microwave-safe bowl large enough to accommodate the entire amount of spinach, cook it in a smaller bowl in 2 batches. Reduce the water to 2 tablespoons per batch and cook the spinach for about 1 1/2 minutes.
3 (6-ounce) bags baby spinach (about 16 cups) 1/4 cup water 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil , plus 2 teaspoons for drizzling 3 large shallots , sliced thin crosswise (about 1 cup) Table salt 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar 1/3 cup chopped pecans , toasted 1 1/2 ounces feta cheese , crumbled (about 1/4 cup)
1. Place spinach and water in large microwave-safe bowl. Cover bowl with large microwave-safe dinner plate (plate should completely cover bowl and not rest on spinach). Microwave on high power until spinach is wilted and decreased in volume by half, 3 to 4 minutes. Using potholders, remove bowl from microwave and keep covered for 1 minute. Carefully remove plate and transfer spinach to colander set in sink. Using back of rubber spatula, gently press spinach against colander to release excess liquid. Transfer spinach to cutting board and roughly chop. Return to colander and press a second time.
2. Heat 2 tablespoons oil and shallots in 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Cook, stirring constantly, until shallots are golden brown, 3 to 5 minutes. Add spinach to skillet, using tongs to stir and coat with oil. Sprinkle with 1/4 teaspoon salt and continue stirring with tongs until spinach is uniformly wilted and glossy green, about 2 minutes. Sprinkle with vinegar and pecans; stir to combine. Drizzle with remaining 2 teaspoons oil and sprinkle with feta. Season with salt to taste and serve immediately.
Serves 4. Published September 1, 1994.
Since the vegetables are steamed, the flavor of this puree is sweet and intense. The puree can be refrigerated for up to three days. It can also be frozen in an airtight container.
1 1/2 pounds parsnips , peeled, cut into 2 1/2-inch lengths, and halved (or quartered and cored, if necessary) 1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter , softened
1. Place parsnips in steamer basket in large saucepan with 1 inch of water. Bring to boil; cover and steam over high heat until parsnips can be easily pierced with a thin-bladed knife, about 10 minutes. Reserve cooking liquid.
2. Transfer mixture to food processor fitted with steel blade or to a food mill. Puree, adding reserved cooking liquid (about 1/4 cup) to achieve desired consistency. Return puree to skilled and reheat, stirring in butter. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

subset: commoncrawl


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BioMed Research International
Volume 2017, Article ID 1278329, 2 pages
Machine Learning in Multimodal Medical Imaging
1Shaanxi Key Lab of Speech & Image Information Processing (SAIIP), School of Computer Science, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China
2School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China
3Faculty of Computational Mathematics & Cybernetics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
4Berkeley Biomedical Data Science Center (BBDS), Biological Systems and Engineering Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
5Biomedical and Multimedia Information Technology (BMIT) Research Group, School of Information Technologies, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
Correspondence should be addressed to Yong Xia; nc.ude.upwn@aixy
Received 15 February 2017; Accepted 16 February 2017; Published 5 March 2017
Copyright © 2017 Yong Xia et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
How to Cite this Article
Yong Xia, Zexuan Ji, Andrey Krylov, Hang Chang, and Weidong Cai, "Machine Learning in Multimodal Medical Imaging," BioMed Research International, vol. 2017, Article ID 1278329, 2 pages, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/1278329.


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A few years ago I became aware of the cartoon special "The Berenstain Bears Meet Bigpaw" (1980). Because of my long time interest in Bigfoot I just had to see this one. One of the libraries in our area had the cartoon on VHS and I borrowed it. It seemed strange that I had not seen this when it aired in 1980. I would have been eleven at the time and it seems like it would have been right up my alley. When watching the VHS tape of the show it did seem somewhat familiar. Perhaps I had seen it and had forgotten it. Or perhaps the fact that I watched the tape couple times made it start to seem familiar to me even though it really wasn't. Either way, I liked the show and had a feeling that The Little Monster would enjoy it as well. I wanted to introduce Bigfoot to her at some point, but didn't want to frighten her off or give her nightmares with something too scary. "The Berenstain Bears Meet Bigpaw" turned out to be the perfect way to give her a bit of Bigfoot-related material without terrorizing her. We regularly read Berenstain Bears books at bedtime so she was already familiar with them. We first watched "Bigpaw" together three years ago when she was three years old. It has since become a regular thing that comes out around Thanksgiving--and occasionally at other times during the year. About a year after first watching the show I found an old VHS tape of it at a book sale at our local library for about a quarter or so. It may have been the very same tape we had watched earlier.
This year I introduced the show to The Tiny Creature (The Little Monster's little sister) for the first time. She seemed to like it too. They both found it just a tiny bit scary the first time they watched it. That's the perfect reaction. While it's hard as an adult to imagine watching something as kid-friendly as this and finding it scary, that's exactly what I love about the innocent imagination of children (and what I miss about myself now that I'm a grown-up). It's what makes watching old bad monster movies that you'd only laugh at as an adult a thrilling and scary experience as a kid.
The story is about how Bear Country has a Thanksgiving legend about a creature that will come to town and destroy everything if the bears "become selfish and greedy, and unkind to the needy, and insufficiently thankful for nature's great bounty". Mama bear realizes that the legend is coming to pass when she sees a big pawprint in a pan while "reading the harvest honeycomb".
|The harvest honeycomb's frightening harbinger of doom for Bear Country
|And the actual footprint of the legendary Bigpaw!
Of course the whole point of the story is to teach a lesson about being a good and thankful person. Bigpaw makes his appearance and inspires fear and hatred in the bears. It turns out that he's actually nice, and it's a big misunderstanding. This recalls another lesson that I've been pointing out to The Little Monster in a lot of the books that I read to her at bedtime, namely that you can't judge a book by its cover.
Here's the townspeople discovering that Bigpaw is on his way
|Bigpaw makes his first appearance in the show
|He certainly makes an imposing impression
|But Brother and Sister Bear quickly learn the true nature of the monster
Brother and Sister enter the ominous Sinister Bog
Bigpaw makes his debut and sings his very catchy theme song
Brother and Sister Bear are the first to realize the truth about Bigpaw when they encounter him in Sinister Bog, but of course the grown-ups won't listen to them. Everything comes to a head as an army of bears climb the nearby mountain to do battle with Bigpaw. He is up at Echoing Ledge merely relaxing at and preparing to take a nap by his campfire, but the amplified echoes of his yawns and the enlarged image of his shadow as he stretcthes projected by his fire make him seem every bit as fearsome as everyone already believes he is.
|Bigpaw relaxing at Echoing Ledge...
Bigpaw prepares to topple a stack of boulders onto his attackers, but stops when he notices that Brother and Sister are in the path of the rocks. He saves them and everyone realizes the truth about Bigpaw. They then invite him to join them for Thanksgiving dinner.
I still wonder if I saw this show when it first aired. It certainly became pretty rare in the years since. Now it's one of my (and The Little Monster's) favorite holiday programs. I never read a lot of Berenstain Bears books as a kid, but really like reading them to The Little Monster now. My VHS tape of "The Berenstain Bears Meet Bigpaw" is very old, but I'm pretty sure that it's now available on DVD. One of these days I might just have to get a new copy. If you have kids (or are a kid at heart yourself) it might be worth checking the show out too. Here it is (in four parts) on YouTube:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
One last thing. We just watched "The Berenstain Bears Meet Bigpaw" for the first time this Thanksgiving season yesterday. The Little Monster is now in Kindergarten and the students all visit the school's little library once a week to take out a book. Yesterday (knowing that we were planning on watching the show when she got home from school) she picked out "The Berenstain Bears' Thanksgiving" as her book. It is actually a retelling of "The Berenstain Bears Meet Bigpaw" with a different (more commercial?) title. It even has a lot of the same dialogue that is in the show. I don't know if the book or the show came first, but I was pretty happy to see that The Little Monster had brought it home with her. After watching the show after school I ended up reading the book to her at bedtime.
Happy Thanksgiving!


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Decision Makers: UPS -- What Can Brown Do for You?
To many people, UPS is the way to get that almost-late birthday or Christmas gift to arrive on time. Every day the company delivers 15.5 million packages. That's 15.5 million tracking numbers. This takes a lot of manpower, so it should come as no surprise that the company also delivers 408,000 weekly paychecks worldwide.
The company is well-known by it's former slogan, "What Can Brown Do For You?" It's also gained a foothold in pop culture. In the movie Legally Blonde the hot UPS guy makes a woman speechless. Same thing happens in Debbie Macomber's The Shop on Blossom Street; the protagonist's romantic interest is Brad, a handsome UPS driver. And in a decidedly unscientific survey more than 50% of those polled reported that their UPS deliverymen is "Very hot," or "Looks sexy in shorts." We should note that women deliver for UPS as well.
So what's it like to work at UPS? More progressive than you might expect from Big Brown.
A unique element to the work environment is that employees are discouraged from eating lunch at their desks and encouraged to opt for the company cafe instead. The policy extends beyond the corporate headquarters. An obvious advantage is fewer crumbs in your keyboard but the higher-ups believe the informal networking that happens increases efficiency. And yes, top executives put in cafeteria face time along with people way down the ladder.
We spoke with Matt Lavery, UPS's manager of corporate workforce planning, to get some insights for aspiring employees.
Leave the Suit and Tie at Home
The old "wear a suit no matter what" doesn't necessarily apply to job interviews here. "The majority of our applicants are applying for positions that would never require them to wear a suit," says Lavery. "However, it is always important to look presentable." If your potential position at UPS would have you wear a suit then interview in one. Interviewing to work in the warehouse or as a driver? Look neat. Unsure? ASK!
Don't Call in Sick to Interview
If you're looking for a job while you're employed it can be difficult to schedule an interview. But don't call in sick to meet with your UPS interviewer. Lavery recommends scheduling an interview over a lunch hour or after work. "That demonstrates a commitment to ethical behavior," he says. (Don't miss National sick day has employees calling in for no good reason.)
Seriously, Silence Your Cellphone
You know those not-so-subtle reminders in the movie theaters to shut off your phones or risk a pummeling from your fellow theatergoers? Remember that the next time you interview. Lavery frequently sees applicants answer their phones during interviews! As you can imagine, those folks do not get hired. It seems like common sense, but Lavery says the reminder is necessary.
The Priceless Tip
If you've learned nothing else, this tip from Lavery will make the ten minutes you've spent reading this article entirely worth your time: He suggests using social media to contact people who work in the position you're seeking. This way you have a good sense of the job and the working conditions before you interview. Moreover, your interviewer is likely to be impressed that you made the effort. Lavery notes, "Someone who is motivated and can work independently is highly desired, and it is far more impressive to demonstrate those qualities than to list them on a resume."


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Saving Catholic Education
Over 50 years, the U.S. Catholic school population has dropped by almost two-thirds.
Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Catholic Education Foundation announced a campaign to raise $100 million for Catholic schools in our area.
Catholic education in the United States is in dire straits. A report from Loyola Marymount University in June found that Catholic schools continue to close even though they graduate 98% of their high school students and send almost all of them onto college. In the early 1960s, the U.S. had over 13,000 Catholic schools with 5.5 million students. Today there are 6,900 schools with two million...


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Tagesmutter (Munich)
Hi everybody,
We've just moved in from Hamburg. My daughter Protected content old) was there by a tagesmutter. I was very content with this person, therefore I'm looking here also for a tagesmutter (Munich, Bogenhause area). I would very much appreciate if anyone knows and can recommend us one.
Many thanks in advance


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Toke Makinwa Denies Pregnancy Rumours
Just yesterday, rumours of OAP Toke Makinwa being pregnant surfaced on the web. Well, Toke has debunked the rumour. She tweeted this morning(hours after the baby news),saying she needs to call her personal trainer. She probably just added weight around the belly. Check out the tweets and photo:


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|Mmmmm! Almond bread!
Yesterday I made Almond Bread. Yummy!
Thanks to Charitabelle from our online community, Kitchen Table, who shared her delicious recipe for 6 Grain Bread with all of us. To make my bread a little cleaner I subbed almond flour in place of white flour.
Please note it is not a straight substitution, therefore you will need more than 3 cups of almond flour. I used about 4 1/2 cups.
Slather a slice with almond or apple butter and you've got a delicious, Eat Clean treat.


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GrooveMixer Pro is the real-time music beat sequencer for composing music grooves on yourAndroid. GrooveMixer Pro is ad-free version of GrooveMixer app.To try FREE demo pleasego to this link: http://groovemixer.com/get/This handy drum machine includes pattern sequencer, 8-channel step sequencer, pattern/channelmixer, sample list with file manager for importing WAV, AIFF, DS, OGG or FLAC sounds from your sdcard.GrooveMixer Pro is the great solution for music composers to make trap, hip hop, house, dubstep, RnBand other music tracks. This beat maker was created for mobile musicians wanted to sketch theirmusic rhythm ideas everywhere.Product features:• Drum machine with 256 patterns• Volume mixer with monosolo buttons• Stereo mode supported• Step sequencer with 8 channels• Piano roll mode to pitch instruments• Beats per minute (BPM): 20-400• Friendly and easy-to-use interface• Save and load your groove beats• Export sound beats to audio WAV, AIF, DS, OGG, FLAC files• Sample preview before using in app• Samples are loaded from SDCARD• Classic TR-808, TR-909 and Linn drum kits• Unlimited song length• Support various time signatures• Built-in zip extractor to install downloaded sample packs• DrumSynth files can be importedFriendly and well designed user interface works good on small and large screens. This music creation tool works without any restrictions.
Look our demos (songs/tracks) or read tutorials on http://groovemixer.com/tutorials/ site.GrooveMixer Pro is developed by Sergey Nikitin (Flexbyte Software) and published by TechnologyImproves the World Ltd under license agreement.


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mom to my latest platform for connection, ideas sharing, and (most importantly) fun.
Over the past few months I've been considering starting a blog, trying to pin down exactly why. Am I just searching for a new way to connect with others? Do I miss having a blog, which I used to update on a daily basis throughout my high school years? Do I just think I have a whole lot of great ideas and for some reason, people might want to hear them (that question was more to keep myself in check)? So I did what most people do, and I googled it. What was the reason behind this new craving of mine?
The answers that came up were numerous, but many struck a chord with me. When it comes down to it, I'm about as extroverted as they come. I build energy off of meeting new people, exchanging fun ideas, and engaging in insightful conversation. I love hearing about what others think, and building who I am based on the encounters I have. So, I suppose that is where this leads me. Not only to navigating a new blog, but to Navigating Living.
So here's the scene –
My name is Kayla, and I'm a student at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, studying International Development and Evaluation. Besides those two obvious passions, I also foster pets through an organization named Pet Project Rescue, go for runs around the lake I live near, and explore as well as practice new trends in living a healthy lifestyle. The last passion is where I'm hoping this blog goes, or at least the goal I'm slowly stumbling (sometimes gracefully) towards.
While going through basic schooling I constantly felt myself thriving for more. As I got to college, I was able to find my career passions and begin building on those, travelling extensively and engaging in sectors such as International Law, Human Rights, and Conflict Resolution. Quickly I found International Development, and knew I hit my ultimate passion. My life was quickly uprooted from central Pennsylvania, off to the
tundra beautiful city of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
And here is where I have truly learned the most about life and living.
All of the studying, dedication, and hard work to get me here has been wonderful, and it has all brought me to a fantastic life with infinite reasons to be happy. But as I began to really become a part of the Minneapolis culture, I started learning about the reasons that coincide to make this city the healthiest in the US, and the importance of valuing your physical and mental health on the same level that you do for your work and your relationships. I believe that the three of these are incredibly related, but that we commonly toss one above the other, forgetting that they cannot be pulled apart as separate entities. It's the success of one that leads to the success of the others.
So after finding my passions, exploring different countries, and building my life, I believe that now is the time to really explore the little things that make me happy, and value those in the same way that I have been valuing the other sectors of my life for so long now. This blog will become a collection of the things I find that seem like they can brighten my day, and help to point me in a healthy direction, and will also be a great opportunity to share and bounce ideas off of one another as well.
I hope that you'll join me in my new journey, and help me build the chapters!


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Cutting gardens are an odd duck these days, but there was a time when people routinely set aside a part of the yard to raise flowers for the vase.
A well-planned and -tended cutting garden could provide months of floral treats, from the pussy willows and daffodils of March to the dahlias and salvias of September. Perhaps the renewed interest in vegetable gardening will lead to a revival in cutting gardens, which need the same sort of terrain (flat and sunny) and methodical attention.
But what would happen if an entire landscape was devoted to the vase? The result would be something like Bob Wollam's 11-acre spread on the rural fringes of Northern Virginia. Seven of the acres are given to raising cut flowers for local markets and florists.
A thick row of zinnias extends for hundreds of feet in a rainbow, much like the sequential color schemes of Gertrude Jekyll, the mother of the English flower garden. An acre or so of the panicled hydrangea covers a hillside in domed mopheads, now aging to a sublime rose color. I have never seen such a massing of the shrub. Elsewhere, sunflowers are in a sloping field in various stages of maturity, some still young so late in the year.
Here at Wollam Gardens, on the outskirts of Jeffersonton, Va., in Culpeper County, all the ways we segregate plants go out the window. Annuals, shrubs, and tropicals grow cheek by jowl for their flowers, stems, leaves and buds. This melange in the field becomes a harmonious medley in the vase, a transforming alchemy that has played to the human psyche for centuries. Dutch Masters painted impossibly eclectic floral arrangements, familiar to anyone who has walked the galleries of a great art museum or slept in a chain hotel. The framed prints, if we note them, speak to the bounty of the garden and the joy of being one's own florist.
For Mr. Wollam, a former marketing executive with Exxon Mobil, the enterprise has grown steadily over the past 18 years. He has two farm managers and half a dozen part-time helpers. He said that in spite of the recession he has seen sales grow by about 10 percent this year. He and his staff sell at eight area farmers markets and deliver to 14 florists. They offer packages for weddings and parties, and plans are in the works to expand further.
To those who think all flowers these days come from Colombia or through the Dutch flower markets, Wollam has news.
"It's certainly a terrific time for local flower growers. Our time has come. We have finally been able to break the noose of the importers," he says.
Some of Wollam's flowers are difficult or require a greenhouse. These include the lovely roselike lisianthus, the pastel-hued Icelandic poppies and the fragrant trusses of sweet pea. But other plants are within reach of the home grower: The decorative and waterlily forms of the dahlia, easy to grow with a little devotion, look fabulous when harvested.
I'm looking at a white plastic bucket full of Wollam's newly harvested dahlias, all varieties of a series called Karma, bred for their cutting qualities, with long stems and a long vase life. Karma Maarten Zwaan is a newer member of the lot, with creamy white petals unfurling from a faintly yellow center. Karma Thalia is a rich magenta that "goes with so much," says Wollam. Karma Naomi is a deep crimson with dark leaves. Karma Choc is an even darker red. The variety Karma Sangria is a cactus form, pink salmon with a yellow center, but Wollam has found it doesn't grow as tall as the others, a prerequisite for cutting. Of them all, his customers favor the white Maarten Zwaan. "The demand for that has been incredible," he says.
Zinnias are the classic cutting annual. "We only grow those that are powdery-mildew-resistant, with large flowers and great colors," he says. That includes Uproar Rose, a double-flowered magenta zinnia, and Benary's Giant Lime, which is a pale green. After years of being trendy, this color has yet to fall from grace.
Both zinnias and dahlias love to be cut. This forces new flower stems to form for cutting a few weeks later. In both plants, Wollam says, it's important to take long stems initially or the stems that regrow won't be long enough for cutting.
On the threshold of autumn, the cut flower farm is full of the lushness of the late season. But it is an inherently dynamic garden, where the flowering crops change dramatically month to month. In April and May, it is an entirely different landscape. The fields and greenhouses are awash in ranunculus, sweet peas, and poppies. Tulips are a big crop. Wollam sticks to late-season varieties, the so-called French tulips: tall, thick-stemmed beauties such as Maureen, a creamy white, and Big Smile, a cheerful golden yellow. Among the frilled parrot tulips, he likes Apricot Parrot, which is apricot flushed pink and very much of the season. He also grows lily-flowered tulips.
By mid-May he is harvesting two herbaceous peonies that he raves about, Red Charm, and Cytherea. They take three or four years to bloom heavily.
Sunflowers are an important crop for Wollam, who plants them, along with oriental lilies, every two weeks for a continuous crop. Sunflower varieties have been developed for cutting, proceeding from seed to flower in a short 60 days. The Pro Cut series features at least six varieties of different hues.
All these herbaceous flowers are pretty obvious candidates for the vase, but shrubs, too, provide months of blooms. Wollam stops by a ditch (the ditches are used to grow wet-loving shrubs and perennials such as willows, ilex, and mints) and cuts a long whip of a branch. It's a pussy willow named Salix chaenomeloides, and once he strips the leaves, I see plump red buds that will erupt as silver gray catkins in March. When the weather turns cold the stems will redden, too. Once sold as a forced late-winter stem, its red bud scales alone make it a candidate for holiday decorations, for which half of his crop is now taken.
In early April, a viburnum called the European snowbush is harvested for its little green-white mopheads. Around the same time, Wollam cuts the larger mopheads of the Chinese snowball viburnum, Viburnum macrocephalum Sterile, and customers think they have some early-season hydrangeas. In fact, those start in midsummer with the Annabelle and other smooth hydrangeas, which age from white to green to tan.
In August, the panicled hydrangeas begin, and they are still being cut now as rose-colored mopheads. Wollam favors the variety Limelight for its large, upright lime-white blossoms, aging to rose-pink. After cutting, he says, put the stem in two inches of warm water and wait for all the water to be taken up. It will then stay a fresh pink color for at least two months, he says.
Wollam knows a few other tricks of the trade. If the golden yellow petals radiating from the dark center of a sunflower are blemished or missing, he plucks them all out to reveal an encircling ring of small green buttons, decorative in a different way. A poinsettia relative named euphorbia will wilt uselessly if simply cut in the heat of the day, but a stem harvested in early morning or evening, and then placed in a pail of hot water for three hours and kept in the shade, will remain turgid. Wollam goes one further than the shade treatment, conditioning his freshly cut stems in a large refrigerated shed kept at 38 degrees.
The annuals are grown through six-inch netting. It's an ingenious system of staking. Two metal fence stakes — they're called T-posts — are placed at each end of a row. The netting is affixed to a wooden bar placed on the far side of each pair of stakes, keeping the netting taut. As the flowers grow, the bars on each end, and the netting with them, can be raised to keep pace with the plants.
Wollam took early retirement from the oil company in part because of the frustration of dealing with its layers of bureaucracy. In his early 50s, he embarked on a whole new life. "I said, I'm going to do something with plants," he says.
Editor's note: For more information on preserving cut flowers, check out this Monitor article or read a blog post by Judy Lowe for tips on prolonging the life of Valentine's Day roses.
For more on gardening, see the Monitor's main gardening page, which offers articles on many gardening topics. Also, check out our blog archive and our RSS feed. You may want to visit Gardening With the Monitor on Flickr. Take part in the discussions and get answers to your gardening questions. If you join the group (it's free), you can upload your garden photos and enter our next contest. We'll be looking for photographs of fruits. So find your best shots of summer's blueberries, peaches, plums, etc., and get out your camera to take some stunning shots of early fall apples. Post them before Sept. 30, 2009, and you could be the next winner.


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