Scrawny but determined to fight in World War I, Howard Ramsey scarfed down banana after banana to bulk up enough to enlist. Today, he is still feisty at 108.
At 16, Frank Buckles lied about his age so that he could go to war against the Germans in France. Now 105, he still runs his West Virginia cattle farm.
Moses Handy, the son of former slaves, and his segregated unit battled the enemy in horrific trench combat. Now 112 or 113, he says that the only doctor he needs is Dr Pepper.
These remarkable "Doughboys"are members of an increasingly fragile fraternity, relics of a world-changing war little remembered today.
Once, they stood 4.7 million strong: American farm boys, factory hands and tradesmen itchy for adventure, all called by their country to fight "the war to end all wars."
Now, on the 88th anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I, there aren't enough surviving U.S. veterans of that defining conflict to fill a platoon.
When 2006 began, an unofficial roster of known remaining American WWI veterans listed about 24 names. Eleven months later, those ranks have dwindled to 12, Scripps Howard News Service has confirmed. Perhaps another 12, who joined the armed forces after Armistice Day and served in the immediate aftermath of the war, still live, as well.
With the men having an average age of 108, it is unlikely that these numbers will hold for long. All are pushing the envelope of human longevity, especially Emiliano Mercado del Toro, of Isabella, Puerto Rico, who at 115 is both the world's oldest living man and the longest-lived U.S. veteran.
"The torch is quickly passing," said retired Brig. Gen. Steve Berkheiser, the executive director of the National World War One Museum.
So is an era that seems ancient by today's standards. Many of these veterans were born under a U.S. flag with just 45 stars and have witnessed three centuries. They have seen 19 presidents lead the nation through seven wars. Their lives began before airplanes, radio, talking movies and antibiotics.
"They're the only generation that has gone from outhouses to outer space," said Muriel Sue Parkhurst Kerr, who heads what's left of the Veterans of World War I of the United States organization.
They also were part of a pivotal war, one that vaulted America onto the world stage for the first time, and set in eventual motion World War II, the Cold War and the Middle East turmoil that continues today.
The mobilization of men was massive. Two million troops were sent to France. In all, 116,516 Americans died, in combat and from the Spanish flu, and 204,002 were wounded.
When it was over, they came home, quietly and without celebrations or veterans' benefits. The only national memorial in the Washington area to the World War I soldiers and sailors is a small plaque at Arlington National Cemetery.
Antonio Pierro saw terrible things when he fought in the Argonne offensive in France. But he returned to a quiet life in Swampscott, Mass., where he worked in a General Electric plant. His longevity - he is 110 - has brought him more attention than anything else.
No one knows for sure how many WWI veterans are alive. There was no national roll kept of their names, and a fire at a St. Louis official-documents repository destroyed as much as 80 percent of the WWI-era military records.
It would not surprise the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is in the early stages of planning a final tribute to the last of the Doughboys, if more than the fast-dwindling 12 exist.
"We hope this attention to them will bring more to light," Scheer said.
So does Will Everett, a documentarian in South Padre Island, Texas, and a WWI buff. Determined to preserve the memories of as many remaining veterans as possible, Everett traveled the country this year to interview them. Part Two of his two-hour radio presentation - narrated by news icon Walter Cronkite - will air at 6 p.m. Sunday on radio station WFDD 88.5 FM in Winston-Salem.
"I feel I'm a keeper of the flame," Everett said.
He and author Richard Rubin, who has interviewed 36 WWI veterans since 2003 for the forthcoming book The Last of the Doughboys, marvel at the stoic resolve and uncommon grit of this generation, and they lament that they are passing into history without the appreciation and recognition that they long ago earned.
"We pride ourselves on being a country that cares deeply about its veterans, and yet, for decades now, we have overlooked, perhaps even forgotten, our World War I veterans," Rubin said. "We should ... remember them as a link to the very best of what America was and a catalyst for the very best of what America is."
#1
Only 4 poilus (WWI grunts) left in France; 1,4 millions killed in the defense of the patrie, 10% of all male population, all to finally arrive to Eurabia. Oh, well.
#2
I will never forget as a youth in Phoenix seeing a Veterans day parade with several WWI vets, and believe it or not a couple of Spanish-American War Vets going by in a car. It was probably 1978. Apparantly a lot of WWI vets who were exposed to Gas lived in AZ because the climate was more comfortable for them, given their lung issues. Also, a lot of retirees in general lived there. They really saw a lot over their lifetimes.
#5
Erich Maria Remarque, author of "All Quiet On The Western Front", did not fight in the war, and yet had a marvelous gift of expressing what those who did went through. But few people are aware of the sequel he wrote to his great novel.
"The Road Back", shows the despair, poverty and misery of the German vets after the war, and features a silent parade of the horribly wounded, crippled and disfigured soldiers, demanding just a pittance on which to survive--a pittance refused by their homeland.
And yet, in the United States, our World War I veterans faced a similar struggle against a government equally unwilling to pay a pittance to impoverished veterans.
#6
Germany was hardest hit by the Great Depression on top of the reparations demanded by the victors, Anonymoose. There was nothing from which to give. That America also did nothing, however, is inexcusably shameful.
#7
Granted, given that the Great Depression was decade later, perhaps my point isn't completely valid, although the need to pay reparations did take a lot out of the German economy.
Britney Spears's first husband, Jason Alexander, has spoken out about his ex's impending divorce from Kevin Federline. Alexander, whom Spears wed in Las Vegas in 2004 (their marriage was annulled 55 hours later), tells TV's Extra of Federline: "I don't hate the guy. I think he made an idiot of himself."
Asked whether he thought Federline married the pop star for her money, Alexander replied, "I don't know, the only thing he's done since they've been married is spend money."
As for the potential custody battle over the couple's two sons, Sean Preston, 1, and Jayden James (born Sept. 12), Alexander said, "He won't get the kids ... he can't take care of his first two." (Federline has two children with ex-girlfriend Shar Jackson.)
Alexander also reached out to Spears, saying, "Give me a call. I'm a good guy to talk to ... and I'm here for you." He admitted, "I still love her."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2006 00:00 ||
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his latest Rap CD has sold 8ooo copies....in a couple weeks. Expect to see him at the local drive-thru, asking if "you wanna biggie-size those fries?"
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/11/2006 7:22 Comments ||
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#4
There was recently some speculation that Britney Shpears was planning a comeback tour. It was greeted with the same enthusiasm as a comback of herpes in remission.
#1
And the Germans believe that homeopathic medicines are much better than pharmaceuticals (all those raw chemicals are much too strong, dontcha know).
#2
I actually know how to do "astrological" readings. I can do them quite well too. It's pure hogwash. It's a fine scam that is run on the ingnorant and gullible. These people also think socialism works too, go figure.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/11/2006 22:18 Comments ||
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#14
I was shocked the first time I read here about the side effects of Saudi endogomous polygamy marriage practices, Frank G. As I recall, on the order of 25% of births have at least one significant genetic birth defect, whether expressed as physical, mental or psychiatric disability. Not likely his parents were acknowledged full sibs, although realistically it's impossible to know the true sperm donor in such complicated living arrangements.
Britain and Ireland on Friday seized on guarded words of support from Northern Irelands feuding Protestant and Roman Catholic political parties, saying that enough progress had been made by the first deadline they had set in a timetable for restoring local rule for the province that they could proceed to try to meet the next one.
But a dispute about policing is casting doubt on whether the Democratic Unionist Party, led by the Rev. Ian Paisley, the veteran Protestant leader, and the main Roman Catholic party, Sinn Fein, can reach agreement by Nov. 24, when they are to nominate leaders for the power-sharing government.
A government executive branch that included Northern Ireland unionist leaders and Sinn Fein collapsed in 2002.
The unionists seek to maintain the political tie with Britain; Sinn Fein is considered the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, which has sought to separate the province from Britain.
In a joint statement, the British and Irish governments said that they were satisfied that party statements had indicated support for a government. Last month in St. Andrews, Scotland, the governments proposed a sequence of deadlines, starting Friday, for the Democratic Unionists and Sinn Fein to agree to share power in an executive apparatus that would take over most governmental powers starting next March.
As for the critical issue of policing, they proposed that London would cede full powers to the local executive branch in 2008.
In their joint statement on Friday, the British and Irish governments said that the St. Andrews Agreement remained the basis of reaching their goal, and that preparatory legislation would be worked on before Nov. 24. The foundations of an agreement, the governments said, are support for power-sharing and the political institutions and support for policing and the rule of law.
The international powers have put off deciding to impose independence on Kosovo in an attempt to forestall extreme nationalists coming to power in Serbia. Serbia yesterday announced an early election for January 21, with the extreme nationalist Radical party tipped to emerge as the strongest party. Simultaneously in Vienna, the UN envoy for Kosovo, Martti Ahtisaari of Finland, and diplomats from the US, Europe and Russia went back on earlier pledges to resolve Kosovo's status this year. They said they would wait until after the Serbian ballot before making public their recommendations.
The basic issue hasn't changed at all, so might as well take forever to figure it out ...
Mr Ahtisaari has been negotiating with the Serbs and Albanians since February in a vain attempt to find a settlement. Since there is no prospect of agreement, he is to propose to the UN security council that the international community impose his recommendations. "I have decided to present my proposal for the settlement of Kosovo's status to the parties without delay after parliamentary elections in Serbia," Mr Ahtisaari said in Vienna.
Serbian officials have been trying to delay a decision on Kosovo and are waging a ferocious campaign warning of the risks to international stability of an independent Kosovo. Last month the prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, rushed through a constitution proclaiming Kosovo forever part of Serbia. The issue will dominate the election campaign.
In a study of the constitution this week, the International Crisis Group thinktank said that Serbia was in effect turning its back on mainstream liberal democracy in Europe and reverting to a role as a nationalist, authoritarian seat of instability in the Balkans.
Mr Ahtisaari, strongly backed by the US and Britain, is certain to recommend that Serbia lose Kosovo, although the province's independence will be hedged with conditions that fall short of full sovereignty for some time to come. Tensions are rising as the deadline for a decision nears. Any longer postponement risks an explosion of seething and eye-rolling frustration among Kosovo's two million Albanians.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/11/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Clinton brokered a deal where Serbs would get permanent sovereignty over Kosovo province. Then he sat by while Muslims destroyed 1300 Orthodox Cathedrals, churches and religious centers, and coerced Serb emigration. Similarly, Bosnian Muslims have shot down every Christian minority plan to raise new churches. Thanks to Clinton, US troops have to watch this as well.
MOSCOW - Russia has sent anti-aircraft systems to Belarus in retaliation against the delivery to Poland of US-made F-16 warplanes, a source in the Moscow-led Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) said on Friday. On Thursday Poland took delivery of the first four of the 48 F-16 fighters it has ordered from US plane-maker Lockheed Martin.
Anticipating the arrival of the F-16s in Poland, Russia has sent to Belarus four S-300 anti-aircraft systems which have already been put into service, according to a source at the headquarters of the anti-aircraft defence alliance of the CIS, quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency.
The CIS is made up of the former members of the Soviet Union less the three Baltic states. The alliance was set up in 1995 by 10 CIS members (all bar Azerbaijan and Moldova) to protect the air borders of the former Soviet republics.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/11/2006 00:00 ||
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Aahhh, the ole 'Tit For Tat', refreshing! The Ruskies are showing us the way. Smells of the aroma of a heating up of the "Cold War" again. Next...Nukes galore, for all to serve; shaken NOT stirred!
...Giving a video blog interview recently, Keith was asked by blogger Amanda, "what would it be like to be the first member of congress as a Muslim and will you be sworn in on the Quran?"
His response: "Well I hadn't really thought about what I was going to use to be sworn in but I assume I would use the Quran. It sounds like a good idea to me."
Some (bloggers) suggested it meant he would pledge allegiance to Islamic law rather than to upholding the Constitution... I Keith Ellison, loyal slave-of-Allah and the Muslim Ummah, swear on the Holy Koran and make oath to work for the transformation of America into an Islamic State and, by Allah, to turn the House of Congress into a Muslim Shura complete with minarets. By Allah, I will work to get Americans tossed out of Muslim countries, while bringing millions of Muslims into America, while adding 3 luscious veiled babes to complete my wife-tray.
#3
Let's hope he doesn't, and that precious moment gets captyured on video ( and it will). Then if no howl erupts from the camel crowd, perhaps the planting of one will start the real fun. See where Keith falls in that......
You know those little robot camel jockeys? We could make little robots that deliver and fetch the Holy Quran on command.
The advertising copy writes itself:
Jihadis, Gitmo prisoners, and Muslims of all faiths needn't ever again worry that an unclean infidel has befouled their Quran, when care of the Holy Book is entrusted to the Quran Caddy 2010 by UmmahCo.
With features like Infidel-o-meter kafir proximity sensors, Pray-right
Mecca finder, Hajj-grade Ablution Spritzing fixtures, and 73rd Virgin" detailing package, The Quran Caddy 2010 is a must have for any serious jihadi.
Fitting venue for Dean - and the topic of the article...
Appearing on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" tonight, Democratic Party chief Howard Dean told host Jon Stewart, "I know half your audience wants us to impeach the president"-- this drew wide cheers -- "but it's not going to happen."
Stewart apologized to Dean for telling him on a previous appearance that the Democrats could not possibly win unless they staked out a clear policy on Iraq and other issues. In Stewart's view, they didn't, and won anyway.
He also noted the two key breakups announced Wednesday: Britney and KFed and Bush and "DFeld," as Stewart called Donald Rumsfeld.
Stewart also said that President Bush seemed a bit humbled during his press conference today and perhaps was ready to compromise and work with the Democrats. Dean reminded him that this was the same person who brought us "Rumsfeld and Cheney."
Later, on the Colbert Report, host Stephen Colbert noted the election success enjoyed by nearly everyone who had appeared on his show this year, such as Rep. Eliot Engel of New York -- who had let him comb his moustache.
John Hall, who won a stunning upset for Congress, also in upstate New York -- after getting what Colbert called "The Colbert Bump"-- returned to the show and the two sang a rousing version of "The Star Spangled Banner." They had done the same in Hall's first visit, but it was cut from the show-- but ended up on YouTube. So this one was for everyone. Hall is the former leader of the rock group Orleans, best known for '70s hits such as "Still the One."
Rep. John Conyers, a leading House proponent of impeaching the president -- and soon to head a key committee -- said Thursday that this notion was now off the table.
#2
..No, they won't move to impeach him. OTOH, they've already dropped hints that a special prosecutor may be named to investigate 'allegations' against Dubya - and if he finds something, well, we'll just have to follow up on it...
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
11/11/2006 6:53 Comments ||
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#3
Of course its off the table - they don't have anything to impeach him for.
#4
The Kossacks should start screaming about "betrayal" any second now.
Posted by: Mike ||
11/11/2006 8:41 Comments ||
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#5
the worst part of this election will be having to endure Jon Stupid and Howard D'Scream continuing to delude themselves that they are something other than pawns in a larger power play.
#6
John Hall, who won a stunning upset for Congress...is the former leader of the rock group Orleans, best known for '70s hits such as "Still the One."
Oh, this group. One of the "world's worst album covers". Anyone know which one is the Congressman?
#9
Isn't there still a house bill on the record calling for inpeachment proceedings? Have they withdrawn this? I won't believe this until the bill is retracted.
#10
Edit last post. House bill 635.The bill is currently sitting in the House Rules Comittee because a new rule must be made to form the Select Committee, according to a few web sites. Withdraw that Howie, and we might believe you.
The Democratic congressman who will investigate the Bush administration's running of the government says there are so many areas of possible wrongdoing, his biggest problem will be deciding which ones to pursue.
There's the response to Hurricane Katrina, government contracting in Iraq and on homeland security, political interference in regulatory decisions by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration, and allegations of war profiteering, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., told the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.
"I'm going to have an interesting time because the Government Reform Committee has jurisdiction over everything," Waxman said Friday, three days after his party's capture of Congress put him in line to chair the panel. "The most difficult thing will be to pick and choose."
Waxman, who's in his 16th term representing West Los Angeles, had plenty of experience leading congressional investigations before the Democrats lost control of the House to Republicans in 1994. That was the year when, as chairman of an Energy and Commerce subcommittee, he presided over dramatic hearings he convened where the heads of leading tobacco companies testified that they didn't believe nicotine was addictive. The scene made it into the movie "The Insider," but Waxman noted Friday that no subpoenas were issued to produce that testimony.
Republicans have speculated that a Democratic congressional majority will mean a flurry of subpoenas and investigations into everything under the sun as retaliation against the GOP and President Bush.
Not so, Waxman said. "A lot of people have said to me, `Are you going to now go out and issue a lot of subpoenas and go on a wild payback time?' Well, payback is unworthy," he said. "Doing oversight doesn't mean issuing subpoenas. It means trying to get information."
Subpoenas would be used only as a last result, Waxman said, taking a jab at a previous committee chairman, GOP Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, who led the committee during part of the Clinton administration. "He issued a subpoena like most people write a letter," Waxman said.
Waxman complained that Republicans, while in power, shut Democrats out of decision-making and abdicated oversight responsibilities, focusing only on maintaining their own power. In contrast to the many investigations the GOP launched of the Clinton administration, "when Bush came into power there wasn't a scandal too big for them to ignore," Waxman said.
Among the issues that should have been investigated but weren't, Waxman contended, were the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, the controversy over the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's name, and the pre-Iraq war use of intelligence. He said Congress must restore accountability and function as an independent branch of government. "It's our obligation not to be repeating with the Republicans have done," Waxman said.
#9
My fearless forecast: The donk leadership, in lockstep with their fringe base, will be be unable to resist opening investigations on everything "Bush". The "I-hate-f'n-Bush" crowd, flush with victory and intoxicated with power will start down the same rabbit holes the trunks did in the mid 90s. Government will enter gridlock as the total focus is getting "Bush". It is almost inevitable.
SIACHEN BASE CAMP: The Indian Army is in no hurry to pull back from its commanding heights on the Siachen glacier, the world's coldest and highest battlefield, saying Pakistan must first accept "ground realities".
"Pakistan has absolutely no claims over Siachen. Our troops are stationed at least 20-30 km west of the glacier. The Pakistanis cannot even get a look in, let alone lay claim to the glacier," said Brigadier Om Prakash, commander of the Indian Army formation responsible for guarding the area.
He was talking to journalists flown in from New Delhi for a briefing on the situation on the glacier, where temperatures plummet to -30 degrees Celsius.
Om Prakash's statement assumes significance in view of the Nov 13-15 foreign secretary level talks between the two countries in New Delhi where Siachen will be one of the key subjects.
looks like a good series of articles, facts, graphs and truthiness, not PC grant apps...check the original article for great graphs, linksBy Christopher Monckton, Sunday Telegraph
The Stern report last week predicted dire economic and social effects of unchecked global warming. In what many will see as a highly controversial polemic, Christopher Monckton disputes the 'facts' of this impending apocalypse and accuses the UN and its scientists of distorting the truth
Biblical droughts, floods, plagues and extinctions?
Last week, Gordon Brown and his chief economist both said global warming was the worst "market failure" ever. That loaded soundbite suggests that the "climate-change" scare is less about saving the planet than, in Jacques Chirac's chilling phrase, "creating world government". This week and next, I'll reveal how politicians, scientists and bureaucrats contrived a threat of Biblical floods, droughts, plagues, and extinctions worthier of St John the Divine than of science.
Sir Nicholas Stern's report on the economics of climate change, which was published last week, says that the debate is over. It isn't. There are more greenhouse gases in the air than there were, so the world should warm a bit, but that's as far as the "consensus" goes. After the recent hysteria, you may not find the truth easy to believe. So you can find all my references and detailed calculations here.
The Royal Society says there's a worldwide scientific consensus. It brands Apocalypse-deniers as paid lackeys of coal and oil corporations. I declare my interest: I once took the taxpayer's shilling and advised Margaret Thatcher, FRS, on scientific scams and scares. Alas, not a red cent from Exxon.
In 1988, James Hansen, a climatologist, told the US Congress that temperature would rise 0.3C by the end of the century (it rose 0.1C), and that sea level would rise several feet (no, one inch). The UN set up a transnational bureaucracy, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The UK taxpayer unwittingly meets the entire cost of its scientific team, which, in 2001, produced the Third Assessment Report, a Bible-length document presenting apocalyptic conclusions well beyond previous reports.
This week, I'll show how the UN undervalued the sun's effects on historical and contemporary climate, slashed the natural greenhouse effect, overstated the past century's temperature increase, repealed a fundamental law of physics and tripled the man-made greenhouse effect.
Next week, I'll demonstrate the atrocious economic, political and environmental cost of the high-tax, zero-freedom, bureaucratic centralism implicit in Stern's report; I'll compare the global-warming scare with previous sci-fi alarums; and I'll show how the environmentalists' "precautionary principle" (get the state to interfere now, just in case) is killing people.
So to the scare. First, the UN implies that carbon dioxide ended the last four ice ages. It displays two 450,000-year graphs: a sawtooth curve of temperature and a sawtooth of airborne CO2 that's scaled to look similar. Usually, similar curves are superimposed for comparison. The UN didn't do that. If it had, the truth would have shown: the changes in temperature preceded the changes in CO2 levels.
Next, the UN abolished the medieval warm period (the global warming at the end of the First Millennium AD). In 1995, David Deming, a geoscientist at the University of Oklahoma, had written an article reconstructing 150 years of North American temperatures from borehole data. He later wrote: "With the publication of the article in Science, I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. One of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said: 'We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.' "
So they did. The UN's second assessment report, in 1996, showed a 1,000-year graph demonstrating that temperature in the Middle Ages was warmer than today. But the 2001 report contained a new graph showing no medieval warm period. It wrongly concluded that the 20th century was the warmest for 1,000 years. The graph looked like an ice hockey-stick. The wrongly flat AD1000-AD1900 temperature line was the shaft: the uptick from 1900 to 2000 was the blade. Here's how they did it:
They gave one technique for reconstructing pre-thermometer temperature 390 times more weight than any other (but didn't say so).
The technique they overweighted was one which the UN's 1996 report had said was unsafe: measurement of tree-rings from bristlecone pines. Tree-rings are wider in warmer years, but pine-rings are also wider when there's more carbon dioxide in the air: it's plant food. This carbon dioxide fertilisation distorts the calculations.
They said they had included 24 data sets going back to 1400. Without saying so, they left out the set showing the medieval warm period, tucking it into a folder marked "Censored Data".
They used a computer model to draw the graph from the data, but scientists later found that the model almost always drew hockey-sticks even if they fed in random, electronic "red noise".
The large, full-colour "hockey-stick" was the key graph in the UN's 2001 report, and the only one to appear six times. The Canadian Government copied it to every household. Four years passed before a leading scientific journal would publish the truth about the graph. Did the UN or the Canadian government apologise? Of course not. The UN still uses the graph in its publications.
Even after the "hockey stick" graph was exposed, scientific papers apparently confirming its abolition of the medieval warm period appeared. The US Senate asked independent statisticians to investigate. They found that the graph was meretricious, and that known associates of the scientists who had compiled it had written many of the papers supporting its conclusion.
The UN, echoed by Stern, says the graph isn't important. It is. Scores of scientific papers show that the medieval warm period was real, global and up to 3C warmer than now. Then, there were no glaciers in the tropical Andes: today they're there. There were Viking farms in Greenland: now they're under permafrost. There was little ice at the North Pole: a Chinese naval squadron sailed right round the Arctic in 1421 and found none.
The Antarctic, which holds 90 per cent of the world's ice and nearly all its 160,000 glaciers, has cooled and gained ice-mass in the past 30 years, reversing a 6,000-year melting trend. Data from 6,000 boreholes worldwide show global temperatures were higher in the Middle Ages than now. And the snows of Kilimanjaro are vanishing not because summit temperature is rising (it isn't) but because post-colonial deforestation has dried the air. Al Gore please note.
In some places it was also warmer than now in the Bronze Age and in Roman times. It wasn't CO2 that caused those warm periods. It was the sun. So the UN adjusted the maths and all but extinguished the sun's role in today's warming. Here's how:
The UN dated its list of "forcings" (influences on temperature) from 1750, when the sun, and consequently air temperature, was almost as warm as now. But its start-date for the increase in world temperature was 1900, when the sun, and temperature, were much cooler.
Every "forcing" produces "climate feedbacks" making temperature rise faster. For instance, as temperature rises in response to a forcing, the air carries more water vapour, the most important greenhouse gas; and polar ice melts, increasing heat absorption. Up goes the temperature again. The UN more than doubled the base forcings from greenhouse gases to allow for climate feedbacks. It didn't do the same for the base solar forcing.
Two centuries ago, the astronomer William Herschel was reading Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations when he noticed that quoted grain prices fell when the number of sunspots rose. Gales of laughter ensued, but he was right. At solar maxima, when the sun was at its hottest and sunspots showed, temperature was warmer, grain grew faster and prices fell. Such observations show that even small solar changes affect climate detectably. But recent solar changes have been big.
Sami Solanki, a solar physicist, says that in the past half-century the sun has been warmer, for longer, than at any time in at least the past 11,400 years, contributing a base forcing equivalent to a quarter of the past century's warming. That's before adding climate feedbacks.
The UN expresses its heat-energy forcings in watts per square metre per second. It estimates that the sun caused just 0.3 watts of forcing since 1750. Begin in 1900 to match the temperature start-date, and the base solar forcing more than doubles to 0.7 watts. Multiply by 2.7, which the Royal Society suggests is the UN's current factor for climate feedbacks, and you get 1.9 watts more than six times the UN's figure.
The entire 20th-century warming from all sources was below 2 watts. The sun could have caused just about all of it.
Next, the UN slashed the natural greenhouse effect by 40 per cent from 33C in the climate-physics textbooks to 20C, making the man-made additions appear bigger.
Then the UN chose the biggest 20th-century temperature increase it could find. Stern says: "As anticipated by scientists, global mean surface temperatures have risen over the past century." As anticipated? Only 30 years ago, scientists were anticipating a new Ice Age and writing books called The Cooling.
In the US, where weather records have been more reliable than elsewhere, 20th-century temperature went up by only 0.3C. AccuWeather, a worldwide meteorological service, reckons world temperature rose by 0.45C. The US National Climate Data Centre says 0.5C. Any advance on 0.5? The UN went for 0.6C, probably distorted by urban growth near many of the world's fast-disappearing temperature stations.
The number of temperature stations round the world peaked at 6,000 in 1970. It's fallen by two-thirds to 2,000 now: a real "hockey-stick" curve, and an instance of the UN's growing reliance on computer guesswork rather than facts.
Even a 0.6C temperature rise wasn't enough. So the UN repealed a fundamental physical law. Buried in a sub-chapter in its 2001 report is a short but revealing section discussing "lambda": the crucial factor converting forcings to temperature. The UN said its climate models had found lambda near-invariant at 0.5C per watt of forcing.
You don't need computer models to "find" lambda. Its value is given by a century-old law, derived experimentally by a Slovenian professor and proved by his Austrian student (who later committed suicide when his scientific compatriots refused to believe in atoms). The Stefan-Boltzmann law, not mentioned once in the UN's 2001 report, is as central to the thermodynamics of climate as Einstein's later equation is to astrophysics. Like Einstein's, it relates energy to the square of the speed of light, but by reference to temperature rather than mass.
The bigger the value of lambda, the bigger the temperature increase the UN could predict. Using poor Ludwig Boltzmann's law, lambda's true value is just 0.22-0.3C per watt. In 2001, the UN effectively repealed the law, doubling lambda to 0.5C per watt. A recent paper by James Hansen says lambda should be 0.67, 0.75 or 1C: take your pick. Sir John Houghton, who chaired the UN's scientific assessment working group until recently, tells me it now puts lambda at 0.8C: that's 3C for a 3.7-watt doubling of airborne CO2. Most of the UN's computer models have used 1C. Stern implies 1.9C.
On the UN's figures, the entire greenhouse-gas forcing in the 20th century was 2 watts. Multiplying by the correct value of lambda gives a temperature increase of 0.44 to 0.6C, in line with observation. But using Stern's 1.9C per watt gives 3.8C. Where did 85 per cent of his imagined 20th-century warming go? As Professor Dick Lindzen of MIT pointed out in The Sunday Telegraph last week, the UK's Hadley Centre had the same problem, and solved it by dividing its modelled output by three to "predict" 20th-century temperature correctly.
A spate of recent scientific papers, gearing up for the UN's fourth report next year, gives a different reason for the failure of reality to keep up with prediction. The oceans, we're now told, are acting as a giant heat-sink. In these papers the well-known, central flaw (not mentioned by Stern) is that the computer models' "predictions" of past ocean temperature changes only approach reality if they are averaged over a depth of at least a mile and a quarter.
Deep-ocean temperature hasn't changed at all, it's barely above freezing. The models tend to over-predict the warming of the climate-relevant surface layer up to threefold. A recent paper by John Lyman, of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, reports that the oceans have cooled sharply in the past two years. The computers didn't predict this. Sea level is scarcely rising faster today than a century ago: an inch every 15 years. Hansen now says that the oceanic "flywheel effect" gives us extra time to act, so Stern's alarmism is misplaced.
Finally, the UN's predictions are founded not only on an exaggerated forcing-to-temperature conversion factor justified neither by observation nor by physical law, but also on an excessive rate of increase in airborne carbon dioxide. The true rate is 0.38 per cent year on year since records began in 1958. The models assume 1 per cent per annum, more than two and a half times too high. In 2001, the UN used these and other adjustments to predict a 21st-century temperature increase of 1.5 to 6C. Stern suggests up to 10C.
Dick Lindzen emailed me last week to say that constant repetition of wrong numbers doesn't make them right. Removing the UN's solecisms, and using reasonable data and assumptions, a simple global model shows that temperature will rise by just 0.1 to 1.4C in the coming century, with a best estimate of 0.6C, well within the medieval temperature range and only a fifth of the UN's new, central projection.
Why haven't air or sea temperatures turned out as the UN's models predicted? Because the science is bad, the "consensus" is wrong, and Herr Professor Ludwig Boltzmann, FRS, was as right about energy-to-temperature as he was about atoms. ht to Ace of Spades
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/11/2006 19:44 ||
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The next United Nations secretary-general promised earnest efforts to reform the world body and bring peace to the Korean peninsula in a farewell speech Friday to South Koreas parliament. Ban Ki-Moon, whose resignation as Seouls foreign minister takes effect Friday, also confessed he feels as if I were standing alone in front of a mountain of unsolved issues. The 62-year-career diplomat takes office on January 1, succeeding Kofi Annan. The reform of the UN, which has been put off for the past 60 years, must be carried out in earnest, he told legislators, stressing a major theme of his campaign for the UNs top post. Regional conflicts that have been spreading around the globe following the end of the Cold War must be brought to an end. Threats from terrorism must also be dealt with... he added. I will take the utmost advantage of my status as the UN secretary-general to help resolve the North Korean nuclear issue and settle peace on the Korea peninsula.
Ban last month vowed to end a crisis of confidence and heal divisions hampering the UNs work.
Ban last month vowed to end a crisis of confidence and heal divisions hampering the UNs work.
He said rebuilding trust in the world body must be a top priority. Annans term was marked by bitter disputes over the US-led invasion of Iraq, and by the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal allegedly involving a senior UN official. Ban has called for internal UN reform to enhance accountability, in particular over senior managers, and greater transparency and accountability in UN procurement. The next secretary-general has said he will appoint a special UN envoy on North Korea when he takes over.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
The donks will not be in power when this check becomes payable. Most of the changes in industry that could total in the 100s of billions will take years to effect into regulation.
The issue is not whether we are in a warming period. The question is how much is attributable to man, and how much is due to the natural variation in a heat engine still emerging from the the last glacial period. Most scientists who are not media-whores like Hansen from NASA agree that man's contribution is a second order effect.
#2
As long as other countries don't have to pay this equally, it's just another way of saying the US doesn't need an industrial base.
And since we can't really survive in a world where everyone else has one and we don't, it's just another way of saying "fuck the US, let's be a tribute kingdom of someone else."
#5
Notice that the article mentions that the US didn't join Kyoto, and yet the US has met the Kyoto goals, while none of those countries that signed the treaty have.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Britney Spears's first husband, Jason Alexander, has spoken out about his ex's impending divorce from Kevin Federline. Alexander, whom Spears wed in Las Vegas in 2004 (their marriage was annulled 55 hours later), tells TV's Extra of Federline: "I don't hate the guy.
I think he made an idiot of himself." 
The next United Nations secretary-general promised earnest efforts to reform the world body and bring peace to the Korean peninsula in a farewell speech Friday to South Koreas parliament. Ban Ki-Moon, whose resignation as Seouls foreign minister takes effect Friday, also confessed he feels as if I were standing alone in front of a mountain of unsolved issues. The 62-year-career diplomat takes office on January 1, succeeding Kofi Annan. The reform of the UN, which has been put off for the past 60 years, must be carried out in earnest, he told legislators, stressing a major theme of his campaign for the UNs top post. Regional conflicts that have been spreading around the globe following the end of the Cold War must be brought to an end. Threats from terrorism must also be dealt with... he added. I will take the utmost advantage of my status as the UN secretary-general to help resolve the North Korean nuclear issue and settle peace on the Korea peninsula. 
