Our newly reelected President used his Inaugural Address and the State of the Union to advocate that we must take action to combat man made global warming. He said there have been increases in droughts and violent storms. I’m frustrated because those statements are easily proven to be false. Most of the media have once again simply ignored the fact that the President is speaking from beliefs not supported by facts. George Will is one exception. His latest article, which focused on the nonsense of having a State of the Union address, mentions comments about climate change. “Data are unkind to his assertion that climate change is causing storms to become more violent and drought to become more prevalent.” “Hurricane and other tropical cyclone activity are at a three-decade low, and Nature journal reports that globally ‘there has been little change in drought over the past 60 years’.” Continue reading
Category Archives: Global Warming
United States Had Hottest Year Ever
Fans of global warming have been celebrating that the U.S. had the highest average recorded temperature in 2012, and the national media was full of stories about the horrors to come. Reports that indicate there is no global warming trend were displayed less prominently. One report mentioned that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that the average temperature for the entire world barely made it into being one of the top ten years. The average was 58 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a full degree above the twentieth century average.
Another article that did gain a rather large headline on page 19A of the January 6, 2013 Denver Post reports that China is experiencing unusually cold weather. The national average temperatures are the lowest in almost three decades. Snow and ice have created havoc and knocked out power in several provinces. That information should be remarkable to advocates of the theory that global warming is being caused by man’s carbon dioxide emission, since China has been busy outstripping the U.S. in those emissions. Continue reading
Climatism!
The subtitle of this excellent, well-researched book by Steve Goreham is “Science, Common Sense, and the Twenty First Century’s Hottest Topic.” The book is over 400 pages long including notes and references. It provides both practical and technical details disputing the insistence that “The Science is Settled, Man is Causing Global Warming.” The book presents ample evidence that the science is far from settled and that man has had little impact on climate. However, there is a dire warning that you will be labeled a “Denier” if you question the politically correct positions. Those who have worked diligently to develop the “global-warning-disaster created- by-man-scenario” have invested their reputations in that outcome. They will eagerly attack anyone who has the audacity to ask, “But is it supported by science?” Science at one time was dependant on freedom of thought and criticism that required explanation based on facts. On this subject, questioning the legitimacy of the predictions is equivalent to when people were accused of being witches and treated badly. (This is my comment, and is not in the book.)
The Author’s Note points out that people aren’t shocked when the five day weather forecast isn’t accurate, but are willing to accept that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations knows what the climate will be in 2100. The dominant public assumption is that the IPCC predictions are accurate, but the number of scientists who question the predictions has grown rapidly despite the attacks they know will be leveled at them for being “skeptics” or “deniers.”
The author proposes the title Climatism for the ideology that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate, “…an extreme form of environmentalism that is using the natural climatic changes of Earth to re-define our societies.” Those who advocate that ideology want to limit population growth and replace all hydrocarbon-energy production with solar and wind power. What they don’t mention is that those energy sources cannot provide even a fraction of the energy produced by hydrocarbons, which means that society will have to do without. There has been a slight warming, but evidence is presented that the cause is likely natural and has nothing to do with the activities of man. ”
If global warming is from natural causes, then all efforts to stop the Earth from warming are not only futile, but destructive to our way of life and economic prosperity of the developing nations.”
No book on climate change would be complete without an analysis of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” A judge in London ruled that the film could be used as part of school curriculum, but the teachers must point out there were nine scientific errors or assertions not supported by scientific evidence. The nine corrections did not include mention that the film does not point out that the carbon dioxide increases lag the temperature increases. Therefore, temperature increases are the cause of carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere (carbon dioxide is less soluble in warm ocean water). The basis of the climatism ideology that man’s generation of carbon dioxide is the cause of climate change is therefore false from the beginning. That didn’t stop Dr. James Hansen, an outspoken climatist from saying, “CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, those CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.”
There is a summary of the eight disasters that climatists predict with descriptions of why the predictions are already known to be incorrect. The dominant disaster predictions are rising sea levels (the sea has had a steady rise of 6-7 inches per century), devastating hurricanes (frequency and strength have not increased) and increased famine and death from droughts and floods (droughts and floods have not increased). Of course there is the concern about polar bear drowning, although polar bear populations have doubled since 1950. One of my granddaughters read that increased carbon dioxide will lead to acidification of the oceans and coral bleaching, but the actual data indicates the increase in water temperature and is having a positive effect on coral growth.
It is true that the climate will change just as it has always changed. The Medieval Warm Period occurred from about 900 to 1,300 A.D., and Vikings were able to settle and prosper in Greenland. The climate then moved into the Little Ice Age, and the last written evidence of the settlement was in 1408. The year 1816 is known as the “Year Without a Summer,” and that is the only known instance of a missing oak tree ring.
Chapter 5 presents data that, not surprisingly, solar activity is the main driver of global temperatures. “The scientific results…indicate that the varying activity of the Sun is indeed the largest and most systematic contributor to natural climate variations.” “There is little doubt that solar-wind variability is the primary cause of climate change…Once the IPCC comes to terms with this finding, it will have to concede that solar variability provides a better explanation of…warming than greenhouse gases.” Conversely, solar activity has declined. By April 2009 the sun had hit a 100-year low in sunspot activity and a 50 year low in solar wind pressure.
The saddest bit of evidence offered by the book is the discussion of Dr. Michael Mann’s infamous “Hockey Stick Curve.” The actual record of temperatures from about 900 A.D. is shown along with the modified graph that became known as the “hockey stick” on page 149. The actual graph shows the Medieval warm period and Little Ice Age with a slight upward trend in the late 1900s. The “hockey stick” graph shows basically unchanging temperatures until a sudden spike upward to much higher than anything that had been measured in a thousand years. It is said the Mann data “…contains collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components, and other quality control defects.” In other words, the graph was and is a fraud.
The climate research community was shaken when an unknown hacker downloaded and posted more than a thousand documents from the University of East Anglia, the “…world’s leading source of global temperature information.” The emails revealed “…a high level of bias toward man-made warming…” One email quoted Dr. Kevin Trenberth of UCAR lamenting a cooling trend didn’t match predictions and referred to it as “…a travesty…”
There are detailed discussions of the flaws with solar, wind, and biofuel energy production. I won’t detail them here to be consistent with my goal of keeping reviews to two pages or less. I will jump ahead to pages 393 -394 where the story of the P-38 “Glacier Girl” is told. A flight of planes being sent from the U.S. to Britain in WWII was forced to land on the ice of Greenland. An expedition set out in 1981 to retrieve the planes from the well-documented location. The planes were eventually found under 270 feet of solid ice.
Climate Change Continues
I’ve written in previous blogs that I think Al Gore and the others who pound the drum of manmade global warming should change the title of their mantra to “climate change.” They would finally be right this if they predict climate change, because the climate has always changed and it always will. The warnings in the 1970s were that man was going to create a global cooling climate disaster. The climate did change, but there was a warming trend instead of the predicted cooling. Some researchers responded by developing computer models that correlated warming temperatures to carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. They never mention the oceans warm when the sun is more active and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases. Man has no control over the warming of oceans that causes higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
A recent Denver Post editorial took both Barrack Obama and Mitt Romney to task for not proposing more aggressive actions to battle climate change. Much of the basis for the editorial is the low level of Arctic ice coverage. The Sea and Ice Data Center indeed does show that ice levels dropped below the average levels and the 2007 levels beginning around the first of August. I expect the Post was also influenced by the record number of over 90 degree days this summer. However, there are other indications that “catastrophic global warming” is not occurring. A web site that has numerous graphs of the average temperature of Gulf of Mexico waters shows 2011 had one of the largest drops in temperature in eighty years.
The book Climatism reviewed on that link of this web site is a good place to start if you want to read details of why man is not the cause of global warming and most if not all of the efforts to develop alternative energy sources are doomed to fail because of simple economics.
Carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. were at a twenty year low last year because significant amounts of power are being generated with recently inexpensive natural gas. Power generated with natural gas creates half the carbon dioxide compared to coal. One report says that it is expected there will be 175 coal burning plants will be replaced by natural gas plants over the next five years.
Michael Mann of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University seemed to be grumbling about the improvements created by the shift from dirtier-burning coal to natural gas. He commented that “ultimately people follow their wallets on global warming.” Roger Pielke, Jr., a climate expert at the University of Colorado had a bit different take. He said, “There is a very clear lesson here. What it shows is that if you make a cleaner energy source cheaper, you will displace dirtier sources.”
Some environmentalists aren’t happy about the good news. They don’t like the “fracking” that has resulted in production of huge amounts of natural gas and caused the price of the fuel to drop by more than half. They believe the practice will pollute underground water sources and cause leakage of methane to the atmosphere despite the belief by many government officials that the practice is safe if done properly. My suspicion is that those who are grumbling are mostly worried that there will be even less emphasis on development of expensive solar and wind generated energy. “Installation of new renewable energy facilities has now all but dried up, unable to compete on a grid now flooded with a low-cost, high-energy fuel.” The massively advertised “shift to renewable energy” has added scant amounts of power generation. “Wind supplied less than 3 percent of the nation’s electricity in 2011…and solar power was far less.”
I won’t be in the grumbling camp. I find it refreshing that ingenuity and economics have resulted in improved air quality.
Global Warming is Causing Global Cooling
A recent National Snow and Ice Data Center’s report on Arctic Sea Ice Extent must be confusing to those who have been telling us the melting of Arctic ice is proof that there is global warming caused by human activity. The first graph shows that ice coverage is still below the 1979-2000 average, but is about a million square kilometers greater than 2006-2007. The written descriptions would seem to want people to think sea ice is still on the decline despite this recent increase. For example, it says, “This year’s maximum ice extent was the ninth lowest in the satellite record…” “Ninth lowest” is emphasized while the recent large increase in ice coverage is mentioned in passing.
The global warming theory is that increasing carbon dioxide levels will cause higher temperatures and more ice melting. That isn’t what has happened the last few years. One of the global warming advocates said that the fact temperatures aren’t rising with carbon dioxide levels is a “travesty.” The earth seems to be thumbing its nose at the theories, and that is considered to be a “travesty.”
I’ve written in previous posts that the only certainty is that the climate will change as it has throughout earth’s history. I now think there is another certainty, and that is the global warming advocates will use any data to justify their beliefs. In 2010 the fact that people on the East Coast were in their snowbound homes was “proof” of global warming. The actual words in the article “Climate Change Debate is Heating up in Deep Freeze” by John M. Broder were “…that occasional cooling is consistent with global warming, because ferocious storms and intense weather events are caused by global warming.” And now you know the source of the confusing title to this posting.
Global warming advocates have jumped at the chance to blame recent unusually warm weather in parts of the U.S. and tornado outbreaks on global warming. I didn’t read that the brutal cold in Europe was also caused by global warming. However, I’ve learned to take for granted that any weather result can be attributed to global warming. Matt Drudge noted on his web site that a 2010 Senate hearing on global warming was canceled because of the weather. The federal government was shuttered by a snow storm.
There are numerous indications that the predicted global warming is not happening. There is a report by Dean Nelson and Richard Alleyne titled “Some Himalayan glaciers are advancing rather than melting, study finds.” The report challenges the 2007 UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the glaciers would be gone by 2035. The new report advocates that half of the 286 glaciers are increasing in size instead of melting. The report also observes that global warming has little to do with what happens to glaciers. The “…key factor affecting their advance or retreat is the amount of debris—rocks and mud—strewn on their surface.” The debris prevents the glaciers from melting.
My hope is that there is sufficient energy from the sun to cause warmer temperatures. Those higher temperatures along with higher carbon dioxide levels would have all manner of positive effects. There are correlations between warmer temperatures and lower human death rates. Warmer temperatures and higher carbon dioxide levels contribute to increased plant growth. Faster growth of forests is good. Increased food production is an even better.
I know that the core of global warming advocacy is directed at convincing us human activities, and especially activities that are involved with energy production and manufacturing, are bad for the earth. I selfishly appreciate having relatively low cost energy to heat and cool our home and keep the lights and computer running. I also appreciate the life style provided by a healthy economy. I wish I could believe that “climate science” is really about science and not about a political judgment that we humans are a scourge on the pristine earth on which we are imposing.
Game Over, The Impending Economic Collapse
I posted a review of a book “Game Over” by Stephen Leeb in which it is predicted that the U.S. economy is doomed to collapse because the world has reached what is called “Peak Oil.” All commodities are limited, and the developing world is demanding more of its share. Another review on the same subject titled “Reinventing Collapse” by Dimtry Orlov which gives virtually the same prediction, although that book is about comparing what the U.S. collapse will look like compared to what happened with the Soviet Union.
President Obama might have hastened the eventual collapse of the U.S. economy by his recent rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline. The pipeline is proposed to bring Canadian tar sand oil to the U.S. to be refined. Federal law requires that government projects be subjected to detailed environmental impact studies under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA approval was given to Keystone XL after three years of study found the project would not have an adverse environmental impact. However, the powerful Environmental lobby hates the idea of the project and threatened to not support the Obama reelection campaign if he approved the project.
The President said he rejected the project because the “arbitrary date” set by Congress did not give enough time for full review (despite the lengthy NEPA review). I speculate that most Presidents would have at least complained about Congress passing a law with a deadline for action by the President. However, I also speculate that the President made a calculated political decision. He needs the environmental movement to support his campaign with volunteers to man the phone banks and do the door to door work to get his vote out next November. The Unions wanted the jobs that would be created by pipeline, but I’m guessing Mr. Obama knows they will vote for him over any Republican candidate. Nate Beeler’s political cartoon in The Washington Examiner on January 18 expresses a different perspective. It shows a caricature of President Obama dusting off his hands after tying a pipe labeled “Keystone XL Jobs” into a hangman’s noose. Another figure holding a sign “Need Job” is asking, “IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE FOR ME or YOU?”
“Game Over” documents that alternative energies such as solar, wind, and biofuels can’t replace the energy provided by carbon-based fuels in the near future or ever. An article in the Wall Street Journal by Robert Bryce has interesting information about popular alternative energy sources and nuclear power. It would take 770 square miles of land covered with wind turbines to replace the two Indian Point nuclear reactors that sit on 250 acres of land and provide 30 percent of the energy used by New York City. There isn’t enough iron oxide to build enough towers and wind mills to come close to replacing electricity produced from carbon-based production. It isn’t yet certain that solar panels produce more energy than is required to construct, operate, and maintain the panels. An area the size of Illinois would have to be planted in switch grass for biofuel to replace one-tenth of the energy produced by oil. Biofuel production as advocated by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, “…is a fool’s errand.”
The Canadians are saying they know they will sell the oil, probably to the Chinese, if the U.S. continues to block the Keystone XL pipeline. The argument that the oil is “too dirty for use” won’t impress a world that is demanding more oil. It will be burned somewhere, and Mr. Obama may have assured it won’t produce jobs and energy here.
“Game Over” predicts that runaway inflation and devaluation of the U.S. dollar along with declining commodity resources will be a centerpiece of an economic collapse. The worst case scenario is that the developed nations, which have created complexity along with wealth, will collapse in the midst of violence and starvation. Perhaps that possible outcome will somehow overcome the resistance to nuclear energy. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and the Japanese tsunami disasters certainly have given nuclear energy a bad reputation. The waste generated is another subject popular with critics. However, the “…American commercial nuclear power industry, over its entire history, has produced about 62,000 tons of high-level waste. Stacked to a depth of about 20 feet, that would cover a single football field. Coal-fired power plants in the United States, by contrast, generate 130 million tons of coal ash a single year.” (That is an interesting observation, but remembering what causes a nuclear criticality would tell you that stacking high level waste isn’t a good idea.)
There has been a stream of comments and counter comments about the Bakken field in the Dakotas and how much that huge deposit could help with U.S. demands for oil. The field is producting just under half a million barrels of oil a day, which is stretching the infrastructure ability for collection and shipment. There are also arguments about the “fracking” to improve extraction. The Bakken field is generating oil and arguments. There is an interesting discussion about how much the field might be able to produce on Snopes. That source says production from the field has already peaked at about half a million barrels a day.
I speculate that many people will eventually think developing the Bakken fields, want Canada to sell us oil transported though some pipeline, and/or building more nuclear plants are all acceptable alternatives to starving in the cold and dark. I also speculate that President Obama’s choice to block the Keystone XL pipeline will prove to be unpopular with a majority of Americans when they eventually can’t afford to fill the gas tanks of their cars or when the charging stations for their battery powered cars aren’t receiving electricity from the power plants. Maybe people won’t really care until they aren’t able to use their electricity-powered computers, cell phones, and other electronics or when they have to walk or bike to get anywhere.