CNN's Lou Dobbs loses credibility with Sunspots story, then stumbles and stumbles, and keeps on stumbling.

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Image:"tvlistings.zap2it.com/tv/lou-dobbs-tomight/EP00591104"

Is Lou Good and Bad? Is Lou good or bad?

In times past, I admired some/many of Lou Dobbs "investigations," and I know, for example, that if the US Attorneys followed the evidence in Texas Credit Union closings about ten years ago, they would lead directly to Bush and Alberto Gonzales' interference along with thefts from these institutions by board members and directors of these member-owned institutions and money trails to their supporters. It was similar to the Neil Bush and Keating Five arrangement, but with Neil Bush it was theft from Colorado's Silverado Savings and Loan to which Neil Bush had been appointed to the board of directors. The Lou Dobbs team skated around the Texas situation. The tracks are still there for the new Justice Department -- and we may see the recall of Alberto to stand before those he was in charge of directing.

Bush so far denies pardons for Ramos and Compeon:

I have supported Lou's attempts to highlight the Border Patrol agents (Ramos and Compean) imprisoned wrongly by US Justice Department under A. "Gonzo." http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/15/convicted-border-patrol-agents-hoping-for-bush-par/

UPDATE: Jan 19,2009: BUSH Commutes Ramos and Compeon's sentence.

But now, Lou is doing a serious disservice to America by suggesting there is a "debate" about Global Warming -- and compounding it by accepting for his program, the paid global warming deniers, "as news,' and conducting non-critical "interviews," of quite frankly, a class of miscreants purposely clouding the worlds future for their personal gain. The Lou Dobbs "contributing producer" is trying to tap into the "global warming denial payroll" -- and is broadcasting pieces by people that the entire science community has distanced themselves from since they are on the fossil-fuel interest's payroll. They are not scientists of stature, and to some real scientists, as pariah-like as James Watson (of the Watson and Crick Helix of DNA) and his comments in England. These deniers are much less respected than Watson who uttered a mis-interpreted statement he has not been able to escape.

This several year-long "drift" of "Lou Dobbs Tonight" into totally fictional realms now threatens his credibility for every news-talk subject he engages. If Lou Dobbs continues this kind of "story telling," I suggest Kitty Pilgrim float her views to Lou Dobbs discreetly and seek employment exposure elsewhere, where the quality of the news-talk is totally verifiable and truthful. Global Warming is a fact. She should be building a firewall between herself and Lou's endorsement of such things as the "Heartland Institute", Senator Inhofe, and other pawns of the Fossil Carbon crowd.

Sorry Lou, this is to you:

Lou, you have damaged your credibility substantially. You may be scientifically illiterate, and naive, but the people you guest and speak with need real vetting. Through your taxes, and mine, we pay for the best science done in the interests of the people of the world through our federal science research agencies. And the information is "take to the bank stuff" -- and the predictions made from them are as good as can be made. If you mess with Mother Nature, you really can get burned. You should spend one show with the real scientists whose careers are tangible and whose scientific reputations are implacable and whose scientific work is peer reviewed and assessed by the people who know what they are investigating, assessing and putting up for independent verification.

Lou, if you want to become seriously frightened, you need to visit James Lovelock, and walk the moors with him. Unfortunately, he is now 88 and tires more easily than when he was a kid your age. If you really understand what he tells you, you will be changed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=RM4AahMTfxEC&dq=James+lovelock&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=K12MSPtUgc&sig=NoIptX1oU_uFFtFm8YFoPdARX-I&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result#PPP1,M1

Some (Many) scientists, do not agree with him -- and both think and hope he is desperately wrong in his prediction. More and more, there is recognition that Lovelock is the one who placed the interrelatedness of the ecosystem into perspective showing how complexly inter-linked life on Earth truly is. He does not think humans come out of this -- even as soon as the end of this century we are in. I have more faith that if we educate the population, including people like you -- we might be able to save the future for our children.

There is no "debate." Not in the sciences, so do not pretend there is. Global warming and it's causes (man-made sources) are just facts. The danger is imminent, and billions will die directly as a result of it. The longer these kinds of false reports you and your producers select are communicated to viewers as "a controversial news subject," the less grasp or understanding of our planet's future can be honestly communicated.

This "fuzzy understanding" you promote to your viewers is something, I think, you should be held accountable for doing. I used to like your program. To me, you had credibility, and the stories you presented were credible. Not now, and likely this taint will spread to the credibility or incredibility of most of your stories. "Lou Dobbs Fantasies Tonight?"

Yet, to me, this is not a "coincidence." Lou's orchestrations are timed for the current "stimulus package" and some of the things being recommended in line with the stimulus. So what is this line up?

This "global denier run-up" is occurring since the fossil fuel interests are terribly afraid of the possibility of the Carbon Tax and Dividend Plan overplaying the Carbon Cap and Trade Plan. All the Cap Plans fail in the effort to remove fossil fuel burning and should be replaced by a direct Carbon Tax -- which is collected at the carbon source or port of entry and returned to Americans on a per capita basis directly to their bank accounts, and might amount to nearly $1000/ month for a family of four. (What would you do with your $12,000 per year dividend? You might start buying fuels and cars and appliances that don't cost so much since they would be built to avoid the carbon tax.. For example, bio fuels from renewables would not have a carbon Tax applied to them. So they would be cheaper. That might be enough of an incentive to get you the flex fuel vehicles, for cheaper bio fuel transportation energy or even a move to plugin transportation hybrids.)

But here comes Lou Dobbs to the "Attempted Rescue" of Big Carbon, you know, Coal, Oil, Gas, Tar sand, Shale. Dobbs is in great company. Republican Bob Corker.TN, asks Energy Secretary Designate, Steven Chu, in the confirmation hearings, if he (Nobelist Chu) supports Caps or Tax -- and Chu has to answer according to the Obama Wall Street linkage that he goes with the President-elect, even though he knows that Cap and Trade is wrong. Chu knows it is better for America if we go directly to Carbon Tax and Dividend giving the tax money directly back to the American people. But Does Obama know this?

Lou Dobbs disservice: Failing America; Sunspots?

In the last year, Lou Dobbs has had several segments of "fantasy" concerning Anthropogenic Global Warming, headlining that instead of a global warming problem -- we are entering an "Ice Age." The amazing thing is that he seems to believe his fantasy and is probably getting paid handsomely by fossil fuel interests. He has had several of the most outstanding failures and non-practicing former scientists as "experts" testifying that because of the paucity of sunspots at present, the Earth is headed into an Ice Age. And Lou's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" show pictures ice standing above the skyscrapers of New York City, poised to engulf New York like it may be engulfed in a hundred and fifty thousand years if we abandon it or die off in global warming.

These deniers are grasping at anything that they can use to earn a "fossil fuel dollar." Right now these deniers are grasping at anything to confuse the public and Lou Dobbs is either being sucked into their scheme or is part of the denial mechanism, and should be expected to be held accountable under the coming environmental conspiracy laws. The deniers are grasping at anything that might "sound good" to the non-scientific public, and it is Sunspots at the moment.

So look here: These are the sunspot numbers by observers actual counting of them over quite a few solar cycles.

http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/zurich.gif

(Image:Marshall Space Light Center, NASA)

It is by now well known that the year 2008 has turned out to be the 9th warmest year on record. That is 9th warmest year(!) of 140 some years where we have very good records, amid hundreds of years for which we do not have quite as precise records.

Lou Dobbs Panel of "Climate Experts" (Yes, you can laugh) do not show to you the actual observational data, nor the models real scientists use -- but they do pronounce a bunch of truisms and anecdotal grandmotherisms that don't hold up under scientific examination.

You must realize, they are being paid as "mouthpieces" by the Fossil Carbon interests of Coal Oil and Gas -- and, yes, they are using the Tobacco Company Model of Denial. Environmental conspiracy laws will change this. And it is not about "smoking" health and death -- it is about planetary health and death. These Lou Dobbs guests are helping in the heat poisoning of your planet as surely as they would try to addict your kids to drugs and tobacco.

But look at the sunspot numbers:

http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/ssn_yearly.jpg

(Image:Marshall Space Light Center, NASA)

Can you imagine if there were huge numbers of sunspots and they covered even larger than usual areas of the Sun? Would the energy received at the distance from the sun where the Earth orbits be larger or smaller and by how much?

In addition to the fact that when the Sun has a lot of Sunspots, the amount of energy delivered to Earth, and referred to as the Solar Constant, is slightly higher than the amount of energy delivered to Earth when there are fewer Sunspots.

This seeming conundrum has interested scientists, too. They have been observing not only the number of Sunspots but the area and latitude at which Sunspots occur in the solar cycle.

(Image:Marshall Space Light Center, NASA)

Does this diagram show that the sunspots are going to suddenly diminish? This diagram offers a concise way of visualizing the location of the majority of Sunspots through the solar cycle, and also constrains the dynamic theories which explain the location in latitude, strength of the magnetic field and polarity of Sunspots.

The long term trend of the Sun's energy production is that it will steadily rise -- and it will eventually be so much energy that Earth's oceans will boil into space -- and life will be terminated on Earth. This will begin in about 1100 million years, will take around a billion years and be truly and fully complete in about 3 billion years -- unless we overload the Earth's Atmosphere with such an excess of CO2 that we force the runaway greenhouse -- making our planet look like Venus, much much sooner than it will be otherwise.

Personally, I think and believe, but am terrified, that we puny humans can force a large step toward our inevitable "Venus" conditions, now that the Sun's output is within about 10% of the lower value needed to initiate the process.

By continued pouring of massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, loading it with enough CO2 to melt all the ice, we can force an irreversible step, in fact several of them. We can not likely kill all the bacteria still in the rock and ocean bottoms so a few scattered bits of life can find a way to evolve to more complexity, but it does really depend on the volume of ocean evaporated into water vapor.

I hope if large life, like us, and the forests and plethora of larger bio forms are extinguished for short-term fossil fuel profit interests -- that after we are gone, surviving smaller organisms will still exist that can remove the CO2 over as much as several million years to allow a rebirth of life, or an explosion of life as appeared in the Cambrian. Depending on how badly we affect the atmosphere, I am hopeful that life can recover, perhaps for much of a billion years left to it. (As Venus is, Earth will become.)

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/Fig3_irradiance_s.gif

Image: NASA, Goddard Institute Space Sciences

This image (above) shows the current solar irradiance as measured by satellite and the values along the left side ranging from 1362 to 1369 watts/meter2 where the change is variably concentrated in an amount of less than 2 watts/meter2 or 2/1367 or 0.0015 %. in the range of 1-tenth of 1 percent power range. Below, in two graphs, you can see the "climate forcing" of the Sun with Sunspots or not and there is no cooling toward an "ice age." Never mind that the deniers want to string another red herring in the public's path.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/efficacy_fig28.gif

Image NASA

NASA Text:"These agents can be categorized into three areas: greenhouse gases, other man-made (anthropogenic) forcings, and natural forcings. The greenhouse gases consist of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N20) and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Other anthropogenic forcings consist of black carbon (soot, formed by incomplete combustion), reflective aerosols (tiny airborne particles that reflect sunlight back to space), soil or dust, land cover changes, and forced cloud changes. Natural forcings include changes of the sun's energy."

There is no doubt that when conincidental occurences on the edge of the climate fluctuations shown in the graphic below, that there is some correspondent areas of climate and sunspot numbers but these also show warm periods with sunspot paucity. Going one step further, although solar energy sustains life on Earth, changes in irradiance of the current scale do not lead to an Ice Age. Period. The problem is warming, man-caused.

Image: NASA

The scale on the left is in effective forcing Watts/meter2 relative to their values in 1880.

More sunspots. . .

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/images/solcon/eddy_strip.gif

(Image NASA)

NASA TEXT: "Above: Inferred variations in solar intensity (red and green lines) over the last 900 years appear to be related to the severity of winters in London and Paris. The red line is deduced from the abundance of a heavy form of carbon (carbon-14) in tree rings. This "isotope" of carbon is formed in the upper atmosphere when incoming cosmic rays smash into carbon dioxide molecules. When the Sun's activity is low, its weakened magnetic field lets more cosmic rays into the solar system, so carbon-14 abundances go up. (Notice on the graph that the scale for carbon-14 is upside down.) This image by scientist John Eddy is based on an earlier one that appeared in Science, 192, 1189 (1976)."

Dr. John Eddy pioneered much of the tree-ring/solar connection we now understand, and where we have old or fossilized tree rings to examine, we can get a very solid indication of the Sunspots on the Sun and the nature of the "climate" here on Earth at the time the trees were growing. Dendrochronology has blossomed and large segments of time in the recent past are becoming more accessible as we extend tree-ring studies ever farther into the past.

If we, homo sapiens, can make it through the next few years, we may be able to decide to have an Ice Age or not -- you know "schedule" an Ice Age. Of course, that will take ability to control energy on a scale somewhat larger than we are able to now. By controlling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere we can greatly effect the beginning or end of Ice Ages. Yes, the orbital characteristics, the tectonics of continental placements, as well as the ocean basins, and water -- all affect climate in ways that we eventually might use in keeping the Earth as a livable home world. At the present moment, however, we need to keep from cooking the planet.

Lou Dobbs, you are a smart guy -- so this should not be too difficult for you -- in fact it should be easy. If you do persist in supporting the Global Warming "Deniers," the transparency of your payroll shines out and you join those who are exacerbating the problem. I think you need to rethink your show topics and apologize to us. Are your ratings that bad?