climate – Page 31 – Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment.

Polar Ocean Challenge in trouble. Too much Arctic ice.

On June 19th 2016, the Polar Ocean Challenge expedition left Bristol in the boat Northabout to circumnavigate the North Pole anticlockwise. By doing this they hoped to demonstrate that the Arctic sea ice coverage shrinks back so far now in the summer months that sea that was permanently locked up now can allow passage through.

Permanent irreversible change in the sea ice landscape of the Arctic seems to them inevitable. This will / is already having global economic political, social and environmental implications. The goal seems lofty and idealistic enough.

There is only one major problem. The Arctic Ice Cap isn’t cooperating. Let us take a look at the polar ice cap on Aug 6, 2015.

The North East Passage was open for clear sailing the whole Russian coastline and they planned to go through the North East Passage ice choke point, Cape Chelyuskin on or about Aug 5. 2016. It is now Aug 8, and the boat is huddling in a sheltered cove waiting for the ice to melt. Taking a look at the Arctic ice cap for Aug 6, 2016.There seems to be a lot of melting left to be done before they can pass through the choke point.

How bad is it? The total Arctic ice volume on Aug 6 last year was around 6250 cubic kilometre. This year the volume on Aug 6 was about 8000 km3, a year to year increase of about 28%. The ice volume is now very close to the 30 year average.

Reality has a way of getting in the way of the best laid plans and the most ambitious climate models.

If you want to follow the future adventures of the ship Northabout, their website is http://polarocean.co.uk/calendar/

Update: Looking at the tracker, Northabout seems to have passed Cape Cherlyuskin the afternoon of Aug 9, only 4 days behind schedule. They should be able to sail another 50 miles or so before hitting heavy pack ice.

Record July cold from Greenland. Early winter? A Limerick.

On August 1, 2016 the Danish Meteorological Institute’s measuring station registered an appalling -30.7 ° C at the ice cap’s summit as the month of July expired. (elevation 10500 feet)

“This is the lowest temperature for July we have from this station,” said DMI senior climatologist John Cappelen.

The previous record was -27.7 ° C on 30 July 1992.

Winter came early to Greenland

Nature has dealt it a mean hand.

It begins to unfold,

record temperature cold.

Melting? In fantasy dreamland.

Hillary Clinton rejects the Keystone XL pipeline. Warren Buffett endorses Hillary Clinton. Crony Capitalism at its best.

Hillary Clinton has decided against building the Keystone XL pipeline, thus satisfying the environmentalists that want to wean us off our dependency on carbon based products, such as fuel, food and fertilizer. The arguments for denying the decision are nearly exclusively political, while the arguments to build the pipeline are concerns for our national security and economy.

Here is the deal:

Canada has the tar-sands and is extracting the oil. This was not our decision. If we don’t buy the oil, China will.

We are importing crude oil from the Middle East (Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, etc.), Nigeria, Venezuela and other volatile places, leaving us exposed to supply and price disruptions.

We export refined products to the Caribbean islands, which by the way have a larger carbon footprint per person than the U.S. This is good business, since the islands are too small for a refinery.

It takes more energy to run a refinery up north in a cold climate than in hot, humid Baytown, Texas.

The last time a major oil refinery was built in the U.S was 1976. A small refinery was built in 1993, in Valdez, Alaska. The US. regulatory climate is hostile to refineries. Colombia, O.K, U.S. No.

Warren Buffett bought Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad in February 2010 and paid 44 Billion dollars for it. The railroad paid Berkshire Hathaway 2.25 Billion in dividends during the first 13 months. Warren Buffet bought the railroad after President Obama took office.

Right now the crude oil is transported from the Athabasca tar sands to Houston mostly by Warren Buffet’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC railroad. It is among U.S. and Canadian railroads that stand to benefit from Hillary Clinton’s decision to reject TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL oil pipeline permit.
With modest expansion, railroads can handle all new oil produced in western Canada through 2030, according to an analysis of the Keystone proposal by the U.S. State Department.
https://lenbilen.com/2012/01/25/warren-buffet-profiting-from-working-on-the-railroad/
The cost of transporting the oil is about #14 dollars per barrel, much of it the cost of energy (CO2). The pipe-line can do the job for about seven dollars per barrel, much of it capital costs.
We can see what happens when transporting crude oil: https://lenbilen.com/2013/07/07/ttain-derailment-in-quebec-and-keystone-xl-pipeline-a-limerick/

Warren Buffet is a major player in the Obama Administration; he has frequent access to the White House and is a major contributor to Obama and the Democrats’ campaign. It is therefore in his self interest to endorse Hillary Clinton.

Sarah Palin succinctly coined the phrase: “This is Crony Capitalism.”

By not importing oil from Canada the total carbon footprint will increase. We lose, and Canada loses. (I am not concerned that the CO2 is increasing, but that a valuable natural resource is excessively depleted.) Now it turns out that Canada has left the Kyoto Protocol, thereby being free to burn as much of its carbon as they want. Was that really what the environmentalists wanted?

So why is Hillary Clinton against the Keystone XL pipeline? Here are seven possibilities:

1. Like Obama, Hillary is a true believer that ”this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”. As a politically correct environmentalist her role can not be overestimated .

2. Hillary is deliberately wrecking our economy to create a more fair society of shared sacrifices, refuses to have an energy policy that will create jobs, but will support protest movements and foment unrest.

3. Hillary is acting on orders from Global Governance people that do want U.S. to be totally dependent on international law and U.N. mandates.

4. Hillary wants to show leadership in implementing the Paris Climate Conference 2015, and its associated treaty.

5. Hillary and Obama want to show leadership on something, like touting the “breakthrough” agreement with China, where China is allowed to emit six times as much CO2 by the year 2030 as the U.S.

6. The real reason? Like Obama, Hillary is fully bought and paid for. https://lenbilen.com/2014/02/14/the-real-reason-obama-wont-approve-the-keystone-xl-pipeline/

7. Hillary is half insane and surrounded by bad advisers.

This is the best I can do to explain the reasons for this decision.

Verse 91 of the Obama impeachment song: Executive order fireworks finale.

It is now less than one hundred days left of Obama’s reign.

He will finish with a barrage of executive orders: Regulation frenzy like the finale of a fireworks display.

The thing with regulations is that they can be undone by his successor, and that is why this election is so important. All his political appointees will be replaced by new ones.

Obama is doing what he can to make his regulations permanent by having his political appointees promoting only hard core progressives to the top career positions in every department. Previous presidents have relied more on promoting the most qualified candidates to these positions. This will make it so much harder to change the direction of the bureaucratic inertia. Bureaucrats, once given power, are loath to relinquish it.

Should Donald Trump win the campaign it is therefore of utmost importance he chooses department heads that are capable of fighting the bureaucratic behemoth. Luckily, the Republican bench of candidates is deeper than ever.

Should Hillary be elected, regulations will become even more stifling and will increase crony capitalism, which depends on favorable regulations to prevent competition. This will time cause an economic gridlock.

This leads to verse 91 of the Obama impeachment song (as if sung by President Barack Hussein Obama to the tune of “Please release me, let me go”)

Less than hundred days remain

of fundamental transform pain.

All my efforts were in vain,

I was ineffective, end my reign.

Here is the complete impeachment song: https://lenbilen.com/2015/02/25/the-complete-obama-impeachment-song/

More terror worse than ISIS. First HFC’s, then Methane. Obama, Kerry, Sanders, Clinton full of delusion. A Limerick.

The air in the air Londonderry

is terror, says charlatan Kerry.

HFC’s must depart,

next we go for the fart:

Desist! No more dairy in Derry!

From European Commission Global Methane Reduction Actions

Methane emissions vary considerably by sector with the agriculture sector accounting for 50% of the total emissions. The development of the top six sources of anthropogenic methane emissions between 1990 and 2010 in the EU are shown below and demonstrate the success of the EU and national efforts.

While agriculture and waste are accounting for 81 % of total EU methane emissions fugitive emissions from the energy sector are below

the global figures and account for 19 %. Oil &Gas and coal exploration are a minor source and are expected to decline over the next decades.

Meanwhile back in North America: The time is right for a continental approach to methane reductions. June 2016, President Peña Nieto, President Obama and Prime Minister Trudeau met in Ottawa for the North American Leaders’ Summit (NALS), and energy and environment issues were ripe topic for trilateral cooperation.

After all, it was North American action at NALS that catalyzed global action on hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), another dangerous greenhouse gas, when the three countries proposed a joint amendment to the Montreal protocol in 2009. Similarly, cooperative action on methane at the next NALS would further solidify the countries’ climate leadership and could catalyze global action. Without question, Mexico joining the United States and Canada methane reduction goal of 40-45% is the largest climate commitment NALS can deliver.

John Kerry: Refrigerators and terrorists. A Limerick.

My terrorist fridge has been hacked.

No teens had its content ransacked.

But more evil than ISIS

is the climate change crisis.

Says Kerry: It’s HFC’s packed.

Source, Washington Examiner: “Air conditioners and refrigerators pose as big a threat to “life on the planet” as the threat of terrorism,” Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday.

Kerry was in Vienna negotiating a global climate deal to phase out chemicals used as refrigerants in basic household and commercial appliances such as air conditioning and refrigerators, called hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs. The chemicals are a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions that many scientists blame for contributing to global warming.

Kerry made the remarks as part of a pep talk for negotiators working through the weekend to amend a 1987 treaty called the Montreal Protocol to deal with the chemicals.

“Yesterday, I met in Washington with 45 nations — defense ministers and foreign ministers — as we were working together on the challenge of [the Islamic State], and terrorism,” he said. “It’s hard for some people to grasp it, but what we — you — are doing here right now is of equal importance because it has the ability to literally save life on the planet itself.”

Totally unrelated? From Julie Hort, Business insider Jan 16,2014:

Security researchers at Proofpoint have uncovered the very first wide-scale hack that involved television sets and at least one refrigerator.

Yes, a fridge.

This is being hailed as the first home appliance “botnet” and the first cyberattack from the Internet of Things.

A botnet is a series of computers that seem to be ordinary computers functioning in people’s homes and businesses, but are really secretly controlled by hackers. The Internet of Things is a new term in the tech industry that refers to a concept where every device in your house gets its own computer chip, software, and connection to the Internet: your fridge, thermostat, smart water meter, door locks, etc.

To a hacker, they all become computers that can be hacked and controlled.

In this case, hackers broke into more than 100,000 everyday consumer gadgets, such as home-networking routers, connected multi-media centers, televisions, and at least one refrigerator, Proofpoint says. They then used those objects to send more than 750,000 malicious emails to enterprises and individuals worldwide.

The Arctic is melting! Time to order more Ice breakers.

Politico penned an article with the title “Finland finds global warming’s upside.”

“The country’s icebreaker business is booming as the shrinking ‘ice cap’ (sic) opens up new opportunities.”

This is the official line, the shrinking Arctic ice sheet. A more realistic assessment is the increasing oil ans gas exploration by the Russians, and the desire to open up the North East Passage for oil and gas export for a longer season.

Finland has been making ice-breakers for a very long time. The Northern Baltic freezes over and on cold years there is no ice free harbor in Finland in February.

When Finland was under economic treaties with the Soviet Union after WWII the major export from Finland to Russia was ice breakers.

This reminds me of an anecdote from that time.

The Russian Government had ordered a large ice breaker, and before building is started they go over the drawings with the Finnish contractors. The Russians notice a room named Sauna. “What is that for?” they ask. The Finns explain: “We always have a Sauna on a ship this size to keep the crew sane, healthy and happy.” ” And how do you use it?” the Russians asked. “Well, you heat up the Sauna to as hot as you can stand it, and then everybody sit in it naked until they can take it no more, then run out and jump into ice cold water for about one minute, and so they feel good for the rest of the day,” the Finns answered. The Russians looked bewildered and said: “You really do that? You mean, mixing officers with regular crew? We must have two Saunas, one for the officers and one for the crew.” So the Finns added an Officers Sauna to the plans, built the ice breaker, and at the inspection the Russians reacted in horror. “What?, the crew and the officers have identical saunas with the same wooden benches? You must make the officer’s sauna more prestigious!” So the Finns copper clad the benches in the officers sauna!

I have no idea if the story is true, but I get this sizzling feeling from the bottom of my seat every time I think of it.

Earth day 2016. Sign the Paris agreement!

Obama is signing in Paris

a document meant to ensnare us.

Constitution? Who cares?

He wants One World affairs

With doomsday predictions to scare us.

It is typical that Obama didn’t sign the agreement himself, but did send John Kerry instead. After all, it had to be done on Lenin’s birthday, also known as Earth day, and Obama was engaged in a self invited private luncheon with Queen Elizabeth and meddling in the political affairs of the United Kingdom.

Obama claims he has the authority to give away the sovereignty of the United States, putting it under U.N. regulations without the approval of Congress.

Maybe so, since this world changing document has no vehicle for enforcement. But if that is the case, why even bother?

The U.S. Army though has as its highest priority pledged to honor “Earth Day” by “reasserting its pledge to address the implications of climate change and assess associated risks to national security.”

Way to go.

Earth Day 2016. Let’s clean the air! A Limerick.

It’s time for the annual Earth day

to celebrate Lenin’s old birthday.

Less “carbon pollution”

is not the solution.

Plant trees and clean up! Ban all hairspray!

The very last sentence is meant as a joke. Unfortunately it isn’t. Most countries have switched out ozone-depleting propellants with non-depleting forms because they signed 1987’s Montreal Protocol, a landmark international agreement signed by 191 countries with the goal of phasing out the production and use of CFCs and other ozone depleting chemicals.It is reported that the phase out of the chemicals is now about 90 percent complete.

Just because those hairspray and shaving cream cans aren’t depleting the ozone layer doesn’t mean they are actually good for the environment. They still contain hydrocarbons and/or compressed gases, much more efficient greenhouse gases than CO2. Every time you hit the button, then, you are raising your “carbon footprint”, albeit ever so slightly.

Modern-day, CFC-free aerosol sprays also emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that contribute to ground-level ozone levels, a key component of asthma-inducing smog. The state of California is now regulating consumer products that contain VOCs—and aerosol sprays are not the only targets: Fingernail polish, perfumes, mouthwashes, pump hair sprays, and roll-on and stick deodorants also emit them.

Meanwhile, back in Sep 22, 2011 FDA ruled: Over-the-counter asthma inhalers containing chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) will cease to be made or sold after Dec. 31, 2011

Users of Primatene Mist then had to switch to a prescription product to treat their asthma. Asthma accounts for one-quarter of all emergency room visits in the U.S. each year, with 2 million emergency room visits. Each day 11 Americans die from asthma. There are more than 4,000 deaths due to asthma each year, many of which are avoidable with proper treatment like over-the-counter asthma inhalers.

The reason for their phase out is U.S. in complying to a U.N. mandate to phase out all CFC’s since they burn up the ozone layer over Antarctica, and to a lesser degree over the North Pole.

During the heydays of CFC production the world produced about one megaton annually of all types of CFC combined. This led to an increase in CFC of about 25 parts per trillion in the atmosphere per year. After 1994 the CFC’s were phased out and replaced with HCFC’s. The total amount of CFC’s in the air is now decreasing by about 1 percent per year.

A quick calculation shows that over the counter inhalers release maybe 100 tons of CFC’s per year. This would increase the level in the atmosphere by 0.002 parts per trillion per year. Since CFC’s now are decreasing by 20 parte per trillion /year it would speed up the decrease by 1/10000.

So this banning of CFC inhalers will decrease the time to return to previous levels from 100 years to 99 years and 361 days. And for this we are banning $10 inhalers and forcing asthma sufferers to use prescription devices at more than 40 dollars, and increase the number of emergency room visits, and even asthma related deaths. For four days in a hundred years?

And the replacement propellants contains VOC’s, which increases the ground level ozone levels, leading to more asthma inducing smog.

In the meantime the Ozone hole is closing again by itself, maybe due to actions already taken.

FDA and EPA gone mad.

Verse 83 of the Obama Impeachment song: Global Warming drives us crazy.

Here is the link: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/04/04/fact-sheet-what-climate-change-means-your-health-and-family

The White House claims are alarmism at its worst, mostly complete nonsense.

On Obama’s visit to Cuba, he said in the joint press conference with Raúl Castro:

Our governments will (…) work together to protect the beautiful waters of this region that we share. And as two countries threatened by climate change, I believe we can work together to protect communities and our low-lying coasts.”

This brings us to verse 83 of the Obama Impeachment song (as if sung by President Barack Hussein Obama to the tune of “Please release me, let me go”)

Global Warming drives me mad

I said to Castro, my comrade.

Common sense is gone, too bad.

I can only say: You have been had.

Here is the complete impeachment song: https://lenbilen.com/2015/02/25/the-complete-obama-impeachment-song/