water – Page 22 – Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment.

2013, the year with the fewest tornadoes on record and no major hurricanes making landfall.

In their desire to sensationalize natural disasters the typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda is billed by the media as the most powerful typhoon ever. Yet it was only a category 4 typhoon at landfall. The higher speeds were estimated from satellite images. Now, its eye and size was enormous, so the damage from the storm-surge was much larger than the wind damage. Likewise, Super-storm Sandy wasn’t even a hurricane at landfall, but the storm-surge was the third largest recorded on the east coast, the other two occurring during the little ice age.

Likewise, the recent tornado outbreak in the Midwest with 82 tornadoes in one day in November is the fourth largest outbreak on record, but the total number of tornadoes for the year is the fewest ever recorded.

Both are used to advocate the case for global warming, but I maintain that the case for global cooling makes for the stronger case.

The number of strong typhoons in the Pacific is decreasing, (maybe only temporary, the future is hard to predict) see Figure.

The number of strong hurricanes in the North Atlantic is at 0 for a record time span.

The number of tornadoes is at a record low for 2013 (even with the 82 tornadoes of Nov 17 included).

These figures indicate that we are in a sweet spot as to the frequency of natural disasters. As the temperatures keep falling we will experience even fewer hurricanes and typhoons, but the spring and fall storms may be more severe since the temperature difference between the Arctic and the Tropics is increasing. (The temperature in the tropical doldrums stays more or less constant thanks to the thermostat effect of thunderstorms.)

You don’t believe me? Check out the growth in Antarctic ice and the reversal of the Arctic Ice decrease. (The freezing point of water is a constant, so if if the ice is growing it must get colder.)

The solution to the global cooling? There is no solution. We are at the mercy of the sun, which is entering a 40 or more year cycle of less activity.

We can lessen the impact of the cooling by encouraging CO2 emissions. The increase in CO2 has a very positive effect on the environment, making plants grow better, using less water in the process, and water is often the limiting factor in plant growth. This is already showing up in satellite data proving the planet is getting greener. This is good for both Flora and Fauna. In addition the Spring and Fall storms will be less severe. Oh, and a planet with more vegetation is less prone to erosion. And it staves off starvation for both man and beast. Good news all around.

On the other hand, issues like using prime farmland to produce ethanol from corn, cutting down the rain forests of Borneo to produce bio-fuel, real air pollution, water pollution, mining concerns and recycling still remain, so there is much to do to ensure we leave this earth a better place than we entered it.

Forecast of drought in Britain brings record April showers. Time to change climate models?

It is hard to make predictions – especially about the future (Yogi Berra, Niels Bohr, et al.)

The Met Office has caused a storm of controversy after it was revealed their £30million supercomputer designed to predict climate change is one of Britain’s worst polluters.
The massive machine – the UK’s most powerful computer with a whopping 15 million megabytes of memory – was installed in the Met Office’s headquarters in Exeter, Devon.
With a total peak performance approaching 1 PetaFlop — equivalent to over 100,000 PCs and over 30 times more powerful than what was in place before. It is capable of 1,000 billion calculations every second to feed data to 400 scientists and uses 1.2 megawatts of energy to run – enough to power more than 1,000 homes.

So what glorious new and accurate information are they producing now?

Met Office 3-month Outlook
Period: April – June 2012 Issue date: 23.03.12

SUMMARY – PRECIPITATION:
The forecast for average UK rainfall slightly favours drier than average conditions for April-May-June as a whole, and also slightly favours April being the driest of the 3 months. With this forecast, the water resources situation in southern, eastern and central England is likely to deteriorate further during the April-May-June period. The probability that UK precipitation for April-May-June will fall into the driest of our five categories is 20-25% whilst the probability that it will fall into the wettest of our five categories is 10-15% (the 197-2000 climatological probability for each of these categories is 20%).

CONTEXT:
As a legacy of dry weather over many months water resources in much
of southern, eastern and central England remain at very low levels.
Winter rainfall in these areas has typically been about 70% of average,
whilst observations and current forecasts suggest that the final totals for
March will be below average here too. The Environment Agency advises
that, given the current state of soils and groundwater levels in these
areas, drought impacts in the coming months are virtually inevitable.

That was the prediction.

Ho well did they do?

Here is the result for April 2012:

2012 had wettest April for 100 years, Met Office says.

It has been the wettest April in the UK for over 100 years, with some areas seeing three times their usual average, figures from the Met Office show.

I am really impressed by their newfound forecasting ability.
So impressed I have written new lyrics to Merle Travis song: Sixteen tons (Popularized by Tennessee Ernie Ford)

Some people say people are made outta mud
Alarmists and warmists, they’re chewing their cud,
Chewing their cud and follow Al Gore
A mind that’s a-weak can you ask for much more?

More than one megawatt, and what did they get?
Another prognosis and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call ’em ’cause you must let ‘em be
They sold their souls to the IPCC.

They came in one mornin’ when the sun didn’t shine
They picked up their papers and continued the grind
They had sixteen conditions, mostly falsified bull
And the straw boss said “Well, a-bless my soul”.

More than one megawatt, and what did they get?
Another prognosis and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call ’em ’cause you must let ‘em be
They sold their souls to the IPCC.

They came in one mornin’, it was drizzelin’ rain
their prognoses had failed them again and again
The boss harshly told them, You will do many more
Do as I tell you, and agree with Al Gore.

More than one megawatt, and what did they get?
Another prognosis and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call ’em ’cause you must let ‘em be
They sold their souls to the IPCC.

The threatenin’ drought, it just didn’t last.
and hidin’ the warming that occurred in the past
Their ol’ man Mann and his hockey stick.
Conditions like that nothing ever will click.

More than one megawatt, and what did they get?
Another prognosis and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call ’em ’cause you must let ‘em be
They sold their souls to the IPCC.

(Here is an older version of the song:)

CO2, Man’s best friend.

They published a book I can recommend

It tells CO2 is our very best friend.

The warming is done.

Saturated*, we won.

Too hard for you warmists to comprehend?

The book is called “The many benefits from atmospheric CO2 enrichment.” and can be ordered from: http://www.valeslake.com/bookmart.htm

From: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/other/benefits_of_co2.html A synopsis can be downloaded in pdf form:

Click to access 55_benefits_of_co2_pamphlet.pdf

* The atmospheric rise in CO2 has no bearing whatsoever on temperatures in tropical and moderate climates for two reasons: It is swamped by water vapor which determines the final temperature rise. During the ice age the tropical temperature was about the same as it is today. Secondly the temperature rise due to CO2 has reached its upper limit because the free wave length of Infrared light in the frequencies of CO2 absorption is thirty to sixty feet, which means there is saturation of energy absorption, and fundamental physics holds that you cannot absorb more than all available energy for that particular frequency. There is a small additional absorption at high altitudes over the poles, so they will warm up a couple of degrees if we go from 380 to 1000 ppm of CO2. This too is good, the storms will be less severe, (the worst North Atlantic storms recorded occurred during the little ice age), and the polar bears like it a little bit warmer. (They might get competition from increased biodiversity though). The snowfalls over Greenland and Antarctica will increase, the glaciers will again increase. The biggest problem yet to be solved is insufficient amount of water in the 10:40 corridor. Even there CO2 is coming to our aid, for it enables vegetation using less water, and the yields are greater too!

Obama was right! The sea levels are beginning to drop. A call to action.

In a campaign speech Jun 2 2008, in all humility candidate Obama said this:

The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment—this was the time—when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.

Well, what do you know? The sea levels are beginning to drop in 2010.

(1) Thank you Obama that the global temperatures are beginning to drop.

(2) Thank you Obama that the excessive heat caused by human activity are beginning to rain out in Australia and Brazil, central Europe and many other places. Thank you Obama for delaying and diminishing Solar Cycle 24, allowing record amounts of Cosmic radiation to reach the earth, giving us more clouds, rain and snow, thereby cooling the planet.

(3) Thank you Obama for protecting our land from all further development, so that our standard of living can be more in line with third world countries.

(4) Thank you Obama for your tireless efforts to usher in Global Governance through Article 21, Cap and trade legislation, giving us mercury lightbulbs that splat mercury all over the nursery when they break, working to sign the Children’s protection act, The Law of the Sea Treaty and everything else coming from the wise leadership of the United Nations.

Thank you Obama for your tireless efforts to protect a woman’s right to choose by denying Federal Funding to doctors and hospitals that have moral qualms about aborting the lives of yet to be born babies, and providing federal funding for abortions.

Again, where would we be, and what could we do without you? Could a return to abiding by constitutional principles change anything? Could reining in a multitude of czars, putting them under congressional oversight rather than giving them carte blance to implement regulation of laws that have not been read before passed prevent some of this? By doing nothing, will all this go away?

But yet, there is hope. As God says through the Prophet Jeremiah in Lamentations 3:21-23 (King James Version) 21This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. 22It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. 23They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. And again, a call to action: 2 Chronicles 7:14 (King James Version) 14If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

Dihydrogen Monoxide, the main source of greenhouse gases. A Limerick.

UN climate kooks want to cripple US economy and ban H2O.

Some people will sign anything that includes phrases like, ”global effort,” “international community,” and “planetary.”

Such was the case at COP 16, this year’s United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico.

This year, CFACT students created two mock-petitions to test U.N. Delegates. The first asked participants to help destabilize the United States economy, the second to ban water. The first project, entitled “Petition to Set a Global Standard” sought to isolate and punish the United States of America for defying the international community, by refusing to bite, hook, line and sinker on the bait that is the Kyoto Protocol.

The petition went so far as to encourage the United Nations to impose tariffs and trade restrictions on the U.S. in a scheme to destabilize the nation’s economy. Specifically, the scheme seeks to lower the U.S. GDP by 6% over a ten-year period, unless the U.S. signs a U.N. treaty on global warming. This would be an extremely radical move by the United Nations. Even so, radical left-wing environmentalists from around the world scrambled eagerly to sign.

The second project was as successful as the first. It was euphemistically entitled “Petition to Ban the Use of Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO)” (translation water). It was designed to show that if official U.N. delegates could be duped by college students into banning water, that they could essentially fall for anything, including pseudo-scientific studies which claim to show that global warming is man-caused. Despite the apparently not-so-obvious reference to H2O, almost every delegate that collegian students approached signed their petition to ban that all too dangerous substance, which contributes to the greenhouse effect, is the major substance in acid rain, and is fatal if inhaled.

Perhaps together, the footage associated with these two projects will illustrate to mainstream America the radical lengths many current U.N. delegates are willing to go to carry out an agenda no more ethical, plausible or practical than the banning water.

And now for the Limerick.

Dihydrogen monoxide must now be banned

The thought of its use must forever be canned

So the delegates spoke

in Cancun, what a joke.

It wasn’t exactly what Watt once had planned.

Save the Chesapeake Bay. A Limerick.

Last September we went down to Virginia Beach for four spectacular days. The weather was perfect, the surf was building day by day and I swam with the Dolphins! They came within 30 feet of me, a school of more than a dozen. Above the Blue Angels trained, first two, then four, then all six in perfect formation. The approaching hurricane Igor slowed down to 7 mph instead of the predicted 14 which gave the people of Bermuda one more day to prepare, and by then it will have gone down in energy one more level. As we (my wife and I) do every year we take a look at the status of the Chesapeake Bay on the way down and up. To the most casual observer it seems that the deterioration has stopped and a slow recovery is in place. To be an environmentalist means you take a regional approach to a problem and attack it as a regional matter. The solution for Chesapeake Bay is quite different from the Everglades, the Bayous or the water needs of the West. Then on the news comes this insane call to arms: Global Climate Disruption.

All I can do is make another Limerick:

We’re trying to save our Chesapeake Bay.

Why Climate Disruption? And Global? No way!

It’s all about land use,

And water and refuse.

The Ice Age and Warm Period, they went away.

Water, the real climate challenge, much bigger than CO2.

The safe, clean water essential to all life is rapidly running out in much of the world. Yet the politicians are concentrating on air pollution in the form of CO2 and methane as if a catastrophe is about to hit us. The world has gotten colder the last 11 years, and the future trend is down, unless the sun does something quite unexpected. In the meantime much of the world’s safe water supply is disappearing. The western US, much of the 10-40 corridor, Australia and western South America are using up its safe water much faster than it is replenished. In addition, what is left is getting polluted.Let me give you an anecdotal example.

A few years ago I was part of a team that made wet processing equipment for making computer chip wafers. It involved cleaning and etching using isopropyl alcohol, hydrocloric, sulphuric, and hydrofluoric acid as well as Ozone, all potent stuff. To collect the used chemicals we had designed a 5-way output port, so the chemicals could be collected separately. The equipment was made and shipped off to South Korea. It was assembled in a brand new, state of the art positive air pressure clean room facility. The processing equipment was installed, and under the 5-way port was a large funnel, going to the drain and directly out in the sewer.

A couple of years before, in the US we had a leaking valve, so a small amount of hydrofluoric acid got discharged into the sewage. This poisoned the sewage processing plant, and a large fine was levied. No such worry in Asia. The sewage goes directly out in the ocean to be diluted.

In China many of these facilities are inland, so large water aquifers get poisoned for centuries to come. These are the people we entrust with our future production of just about everything, since we will have to cut down on our energy use thanks to an administration hostile to energy development, while China is exempt, building dirty coal-fired plants as fast as they can.They install scrubbers, but scrubbers cost money to run, so they are frequently out of service ( being “serviced”). This results in a large brown upper atmosphere smog extending from China to Pakistan acting as a giant heat sink.