Send this story Print this story

Adjust text size

Uploaded: Wednesday, April 29, 2009, 10:23 AM
Updated: Saturday, May 2, 2009, 8:22 AM

'Dream Green' at May Fete Parade today
87th annual May Fete heads down University Avenue

Posted by Vlad, a resident of another community, on Apr 29, 2009 at 10:33 am

Interesting history of modern May Day celebrations:

Web Link

Posted by PukeGreen, a resident of the Crescent Park neighborhood, on May 1, 2009 at 7:16 am

I am getting sooooooo sick of my home city's cult-like focus on green this, green that while everyone has huge houses and huge carbon footprints that I'd like to ask every so-called Green citizen of Palo Alto to realize the extent to which you are total, complete, utterly hypocritical i-d-i-o-t-s. Anthropogenic global warming is a political movement, not a scientific movement, and the fact that it dovetails with May Day is no mistake.

Global Warming Notes

1. There are natural long-term temperature cycles, including 100-year and 1000-year cycles. For example, 800 years ago -- many centuries before humans began to burn fossil fuels in significant quantities -- the Earth's atmosphere was considerably warmer than the highest average global temperature of the past two decades, whereas in between then and now there were periods when temperatures were much lower than they are today. The fact is that global warming periodically occurs, as does global cooling. Polar bears have obviously been able to adapt to these temperature cycles.

2. There are shorter-term temperature cycles of around one decade in length that appear to be influenced to the greatest extent by sunspot activity. The sizeable decline in the average global temperature over the past two years, for example, has coincided with a large decline in sunspot activity (a large rise in the number of "spotless" days).

3. The sunspot-related temperature decline of the past two years has been "inconvenient" for the Global Warming Alarmists because it has resulted in the polar ice caps expanding to their average level of the past 30 years and the global temperature dropping back to 1980s levels, despite the greater amount of CO2 now in the atmosphere. But as discussed in item 5 below, the Alarmists have an ace up their collective sleeve.

4. Some time ago it was discovered that there has been a positive correlation over the millennia between temperature and the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. Al Gore used this correlation to dramatic effect in his much-heralded promotion of the Global Warming cause, but additional data collected since then shows that the CO2 level FOLLOWS the temperature change, not the other way round. In other words, the empirical data suggest that if there is a long-term cause-effect relationship between CO2 and temperature it works the opposite way to the way in which Gore and Co. claimed.

5. There is evidence that the world has embarked on a cooling cycle, but not to worry: the term "Global Warming" is in the process of being replaced by the more general term "Climate Change". Altering the terminology in this way is smart because the Earth's climate has been changing since the beginning of time and will continue to do so REGARDLESS of what mankind does or doesn't do. In other words, the climate alarmists are ensuring that they will have justification for imposing their collective will no matter what.

6. Some scientists extrapolated the most recent upward trend in temperature to yield cataclysmic forecasts. This was akin to someone in the Northern Hemisphere noticing, in August, that the temperature had been rising month after month since March and exclaiming: "If this keeps up we'll all be dead by December!"

7. The claim made by the current US President and other politicians that the science of Global Warming is beyond dispute is a lie. Many scientists dispute the idea that human-generated carbon emissions have a significant effect on global temperature, including the more-than 100 scientists who signed the petition at Web Link and the 31,000 scientists who signed the petition mentioned in this Telegraph article.

8. Despite the US Environmental Protection Agency's assertion to the contrary, CO2 is NOT a pollutant.

Posted by Danny, a resident of the Crescent Park neighborhood, on May 1, 2009 at 11:41 am

OK, "PukeGreen," keep telling yourself that. It's only your children and grandchildren who will suffer the most while you ignore the obvious warning signs. Isn't irresponsibility easy?

Posted by affadavit, a resident of another community, on May 1, 2009 at 12:36 pm

Global Warming - Climate Change - The Green Religion. And yes, it is now a religious movement. Perhaps a little bit of history is in order. The inquisition is near at hand. First Amendment out the window. If you say anything against the religion you are ridiculed, persecuted and ostracized. I recon that in five to ten years we will all look back on this and have a great laugh. Maybe my tomato plants will grow better from now on. Can't wait.

Posted by PukeGreen, a resident of the Crescent Park neighborhood, on May 1, 2009 at 1:07 pm

Yo Danny,

Unlike those in the global warming alarmist camp, I actually know what I'm talking about, and support my thesis with data as was posted in my initial comment; furthermore, I came to my views after having started out assuming exactly what you still blindly believe - oh, and I have 3 children I care about every bit as much as the next parent. Come at me as hard as you want, but come with science and not faith, please.

To be clear, global warming (the man-made variety) is most likely a giant hoax, but the political ship has set a course that it probably won't deviate from regardless of the facts. Additionally, whether or not mankind's burning of fossil fuels is an important cause of "climate change", all things being equal it would certainly be better to have less air pollution. And at this time it seems that the most economically feasible way to achieve a meaningful reduction in GLOBAL air pollution is to expand the use of nuclear power.

Most of the world's pollution is generated by the 5 billion poor people, which means that for a cleaner-energy solution to be truly viable it must also be cheap. The expensive clean-energy solutions that are presently fashionable within the ranks of the 1.2 billion rich people not only don't have the ability to bring about a material reduction in global pollution, they will very likely cause pollution levels to INCREASE by making relatively dirty energy sources even cheaper for the most inefficient energy consumers. For example, the less coal that gets used in the US the lower the international coal price will become, leading to more coal being burned in countries such as China that use energy less efficiently than the US. Lastly, governments put their own economies at a major disadvantage when they force the use of expensive energy alternatives.

The economics of fuel come down to this: per unit of energy delivered, coal costs one-fifth as much as oil but contains one-third more carbon. High carbon taxes (or tradable permits, or any other equivalent) sharply narrows the price gap between oil and the one fuel that can displace it worldwide & in the here and now. The oil nasties will celebrate the green war on carbon as enthusiastically as the coal industry celebrated the green war on uranium 30 years ago.

The other 5 billion are too poor to deny these economic realities. For them, the price to beat is 3-cent coal-fired electricity. China and India won't trade 3-cent coal for 15-cent wind or 30-cent solar. As for us, if we embrace those economically frivolous alternatives on our own, we will certainly end up doing more harm than good.

By pouring money into anything-but-carbon fuels, we will lower demand for carbon, making it even cheaper for the rest of the world to buy and burn. The rest will use cheaper energy to accelerate their own economic growth. Jobs will go where energy is cheap, just as they go where labor is cheap. Manufacturing and heavy industry require a great deal of energy, and in a global economy, no competitor can survive while paying substantially more for an essential input. Wannabe carbon police such as you acknowledge the problem and talk vaguely of using tariffs and such to address it, but carbon is far too deeply embedded in the global economy, and materials, goods, and services move and intermingle far too freely, for the customs agents to track.

...So the suggestion that we can lift ourselves out of the economic doldrums by spending lavishly on exceptionally expensive new sources of energy is absurd. "Green jobs" means Americans paying other Americans to chase carbon while the rest of the world builds new power plants and factories. And the environmental consequences of outsourcing jobs, industries, and carbon to developing countries are beyond dispute. They use energy far less efficiently than we do, and they remain almost completely oblivious to environmental impacts, just as we were in our own first century of industrialization. A massive transfer of carbon, industry, and jobs from us to them will raise carbon emissions, not lower them.

Posted by May Fete Fan, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on May 1, 2009 at 8:07 pm

What does any of this have to do with the parade itself?