Venango County Tea Party Patriots

A non-partisan, non-profit, non-member, association dedicated to educating the public and promoting the principles of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free market economics, and all other lawful activities.

climate change

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Did Climate Change Bring Down the Mayans?

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is giving nearly $78,000 of taxpayer funds to the Trustees of Boston University to study whether “climate change” was a primary cause for the decline of the Mayan civilization in Guatemala between 1000 BC and 900 AD.

According to the grant abstract, “the study will provide a detailed record of human occupation and environmental change” in the Maya Biosphere Reserve forest of northeastern Guatemala. This lowland area was where the Maya settled in pre-Columbian times. Researchers note that “climate change and environmental degradation have been proposed as the primary causes of extensive demographic decline” in the Maya population on two separate occasions.

Awarded on July 20, 2013, the $77,795 grant will conduct select excavations and a high-resolution analysis of fossils throughout the Holmul region. Pollen samples will be gathered to study agricultural activity, isotopes to study climatology, and soil samples to assess vegetation growth and water movement.

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All the President’s Men Talk Climate Change

The Obama administration is working climate change into speeches given not only by President Obama, but also by the people who serve him.In Mumbai, India on Wednesday, Vice President Biden warned that rising sea levels will overcome India as well as Biden’s home state of Delaware, if both countries don’t deal with the “worldwide” problem.

And speaking at a Ramadan Iftar dinner in Washington on Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry spoke of climate change in a religious context.

“For many of us, respect for God’s creation, in almost every scripture really, demands and translates into a duty to protect and sustain God’s first creation. Our response to climate change ought to be rooted in a fundamental sense of shared stewardship of the earth that emerges from that tradition,” Kerry told the Muslims and others gathered at the Ramadan event.

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Temperature Sees a Whopping Near Zero Increase in Past 15 Years

In a June 20 interview with Spiegel Online, German climate scientist Hans von Storch said that despite predictions of a warming planet the temperature data for the past 15 years shows an increase of 0.06 or “very close to zero.”

“That hasn’t happened,” Storch said. “In fact, the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) – a value very close to zero.”

Spiegel asked Storch why the Earth’s temperature has not risen significantly in the past 15 years despite 400 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) being emitted into the atmosphere from human activities.

“So far, no one has been able to provide a compelling answer to why climate change seems to be taking a break,” said Storch, a professor at the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg and director of the Institute for Coastal Research at the Helmholtz Research Centre in Geesthacht, Germany.

“We’re facing a puzzle,” Storch said. “Recent CO2 emissions have actually risen even more steeply than we feared.

“As a result, according to most climate models, we should have seen temperatures rise by around 0.25 degrees Celsius (0.45 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 10 years,” he added.

“That hasn’t happened,” Storch said. “In fact, the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) — a value very close to zero.

Storch said the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would have to address these facts in its next climate assessment report due out late next year.

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