When I was a lad in Sweden there was still a saying: “If you make it through February, you go around one more year.” Now, with climate control even in our cars, central heating, Air conditioning, cleaner water, regional protection against floods, tornado and hurricane warnings, the death rate from weather related catastrophes has been reduced by 98.9% in a hundred years. Not so from non-climate related deaths, such as earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. The death rates from these events now exceed climate related events.
Here are the charts from Bjorn Blomborg, director of Copenhagen Consensus Center.
This picture was taken Nov 15 from our porch in Boalsburg, PA. It was a very early snowfall.
Last night it was 11 F in Boalsburg, a new low for this date, and tomorrow night may set a new all time low for November since records begun.
This is of course local weather, but looking at the whole picture it seems to get colder in the Northern Temperate Region and in the Arctic in spite of temperature readings showing higher than average temperatures.
Let me explain: Everybody knows that in the Summer clouds cool by day and warm by night. Up North in Winter clouds containing snow, warm the atmosphere both day and night, and yet they cool down by depositing snow.
We are having earlier snowfalls in the Northern Hemisphere
This chart is from yesterday and is from the Canadian department of ‘Environment and Climate Change’, so we can rest assured that the amount of snow cover is not over-estimated.
From Rutgers University climate lab comes this chart of fall snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere. This year’s snow cover is about 5% larger than last year at the same day, so we can clearly see that the increasing trend is not broken; if anything, it is accelerating.
From sunshinehours.net comes this chart, showing the Arctic ice cover has grown from being the lowest on record in October to the highest in the last seven years for Nov 21.
This is confirmed by the Danish Ministries for Energy, Utilities and Climate. The charts can be found at polarportal.com.
The
confirms that it was not just a flash-over of ice on a calm ocean, but real ice accumulation at a record clip since October.
This trend of increasing Fall snow and ice accumulation has not been well published. The earlier Spring arrivals with heavier than normal snow-melts have, but the reason for early Springs is not primarily increasing CO2. A bigger impact comes from the brown clouds emanating from mostly China.
The soot from these clouds make its way all the way up into the Arctic and is deposited on the snow, changing the albedo, leading to an earlier snow-melt.
When it comes to reporting of results from valid research, what is published is often cherry-picked to satisfy political agenda. True climate research is by no means settled, and the future is, at some time we will enter into the next ice-age, which is the normal state of the Earth. The negative temperature feedback from clouds limits the temperature rise. The Tropics has found its temperature, no amount of increasing CO2 will change that, the lack of increase in the tropospheric hot-spot in the tropics as the CO2 level increased from 320ppm to 410 ppm proves that. The insrease, if any is less thas 1/7 of what the models predict. In the Arctic there will be a winter temperature rise, mostly because of increased snowfall, and to a minor degree from increased CO2. The increased snowfall in the Arctic make the winters warmer (about 5 C), but the Summers cooler (about 1/2 C)
(From the Danish Meteorological Institute)
Climate Studies are fascinating, the Science is far from settled, we are still at the beginning of understanding the major temperature regulator of the world: Clouds.
(1) Amazon is moving its headquarters from Seattle to Crystal City, Virginia, next to the Reagan airport, and to Long Island City, Queens, New York. This makes eminent sense from a business standpoint, Washington D.C. to maximize its influence on lawmakers, and New York City to maximize its influence on world business. The cost of living is comparable, all 3 cities are among the most expensive in the world. Here is where it makes no sense:
(2) In a letter to Washington Post employees, Jeff Bezos promised to “follow the truth” wherever it leads. If he is serious about that commitment, his first order of business should be to ensure that climate denial no longer has a place at the paper, including the editorial pages. Join us to make sure Jeff Bezos makes strong climate coverage a top priority at TheWashington Post. (From “forecast the facts.”) (Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post through Nash Holdings).
(3) The cost to Virginia taxpayers 1 Billion, to New York City taxpayers 1.2 Billion.
(4) Jeff Bezos’ net worth today: around 90 Billion Dollars.
(5) This is probably the most puzzling aspect of the move. The proposed property sits next to the East River in the floodplain. It and all joining streets were flooded in Hurricane Sandy. According to U.N. it is sure to be flooded occasionally in 2020, frequently in 2030, and constantly in 2080.
Where the trees are, there is where the new headquarters are to be built. Flooding risk, anyone?
The great physicist Stephen Hawking died at the age of 74 in 2018. He had Lou Gehrig’s disease for over forty years and was the longest survivor of that disease in the world. He was interviewed before his 70th birthday and was asked if there were any mysteries left in the universe that was above his intellect. His answer was: “Women. They are a complete mystery to me.”
With his book “The Grand Design,” the late Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking appeared to have further bolstered his reputation as a latter-day Charles Darwin. He went on to explain that the universe created itself from nothing.
Hmm. Let us see: Genesis 1:1 In the Beginning God Created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:3 (King James Version) And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. Psalm 14:1 (King James Version) The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Yet there remained mysteries even for Stephen Hawking. Women remained a complete mystery to him. To understand women one cannot deny the spiritual dimension.
And that is where God comes in. The spiritual dimensions were there before the physical time and space. God can never be accepted or understood while rejecting the spiritual dimension.
Forty nine years ago the space future looked bright. A Limerick.
I remember it like yesterday. We sat up late in the evening of July 20 1969 and watched the first landing on the moon, in real-time and transmitted over all 3 networks. Later President Nixon commented: “This is the greatest week in the history of the world since Creation.” Be that as it may, it was watched by about 500 million people world-wide and the future looked bright. Look at us since then:
Twenty-two years a girl was born with undeveloped optical nerves and mild cerebral palsy. She was not expected to live more than at most one year. But God had other plans for her. At age two she began to sing. Her love for singing praises to God has never ceased. And so, in God’s providence she was chosen to sing at the 2017 inauguration interfaith prayer service. And sing she did! Her name is Marlana VanHoose, a little girl, but with a voice.
Meanwhile, the media was busy tracking the protest rallies all around Washington that day. I watched all day and never saw it.
How did the audience that was privileged to watch react? It is worth to listen to it a second time, this time around watching the reaction of the public in attendance, notably Melania Trumps reaction.
After the song Melania led the standing ovation to acknowledge God’s grace, not only for the song, but for the whole day and for the whole presidency.
This is what give us evangelicals hope. She not only sang it, she also sang the third and fourth verses, so often omitted in public settings, especially in interfaith services. Why is that so important?
Let us look at the history of “O store Gud”, and how it came to be the most favored Hymn of at least three presidents before Donald Trump!
Clouds have always been my fascination. They come and go, form and disappear, cool by day and warm by night. But most impressive of all are thunderstorms, forming when the temperature and humidity are high, transport a lot of water vapor to higher elevations, there condensing as rain or ice, coming down, cooling and watering the earth. Clouds and thunderstorms are the thermostat of the earth. Without it the earth would respond like climate models, predicting a sharp temperature rise as carbon dioxide levels increase. The models are all flawed, since they predict a hot spot in the troposphere over the equator, but there is none. The thunderstorms in the tropical doldrums take care of that. “Settled science” instead has settled on ignoring the lack of the hot spot, for to acknowledge it would make the global warming claim invalid.
I thank God for providing us with a thermostat that protects the earth from overheating, and especially for thunderstorms!
Such was the case in July 1885, when Carl Boberg, a 26 year young pastor of a small congregation of the Swedish Missionary society was the honored guest of the ladies’ auxiliary annual picnic, held in a meadow near Mönsteråsviken, (a bay of the Baltic Sea in southeastern Sweden). The day was perfect, the sky was clear, pleasant temperatures, the cows were grazing on the meadow, the birds were singing, in short, a pastoral idyll. Then it happened. In a few short minutes thunderclouds appeared out of nothing. There was no time to go home, so they all sought shelter in a barn close by. The rain came down hard, and lightning struck a nearby tree. Then as suddenly as it started the rain stopped and all was calm. In Sweden it turns much cooler after a thunderstorm, and the birds sing like they got a new lease on life.
They all went home, and the young pastor pondered the events of the day. He
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Koltrast, Turdus merula
Uppland
heard the Coalthrush singing its melodic, beautiful drill and in a distance he heard the church bells ringing from Kronobäck’s church. The bay was calm like a mirror, and inspired he started penning the song “O store Gud”. Here is the first verse:
O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder, Consider all the works Thy Hands have made; I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed.
Refrain: Then sings my soul, My Savior God, to Thee, How great Thou art, How great Thou art. Then sings my soul, My Savior God, to Thee, How great Thou art, How great Thou art!
He continued to write and write of all the mighty works that God has made and what He has given us through His word, and continued long into the night. Before going to bed he had penned over twenty verses. The next Sunday he wove the poem into his sermon. They all loved it, but that was about it. Slowly the word got around the poem was pretty good, after much editing down 9 verses were published in the local newspaper Mönsteråstidningen in 1886. Carl Boberg didn’t make any efforts to publish it further, and was surprised when he heard it sung a few years later to a Swedish folk melody (in 3/4 tempo). This was then published in the periodical “Sanningsvittnet” (witness of the truth) in 1891.
It was translated into German by an Estonian, Manfred von Glehn. Five years later it was translated into Russian by Ivan S. Prokanoff, the Martin Luther of modern Russia. It was published in a book with the title “Cymbals”.
Later, while in the Carpathian Mountains of what is now Western Ukraine the English Missionary couple Hine heard the song sung in Russian, this time as a wandering song in march tempo. He got impressed by God’s great works in the Polish mountains, and as Stuart Hine heard the people singing it on their way to church he penned a translation. This become the second verse:
When through the woods, and forest glades I wander, And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees. When I look down, from lofty mountain grandeur And see the brook, and feel the gentle breeze.
Refrain
From now on the English version is different than the Swedish original. This is the origin of the third verse: It was typical of the Hines to ask if there were any Christians in the villages they visited. In one case, they found out that the only Christians that their host knew about were a man named Dmitri and his wife Lyudmila. Dmitri’s wife knew how to read — evidently a fairly rare thing at that time and in that place. She taught herself how to read because a Russian soldier had left a Bible behind several years earlier, and she started slowly learning by reading that Bible. When the Hines arrived in the village and approached Dmitri’s house, they heard a strange and wonderful sound: Dmitri’s wife was reading from the gospel of John about the crucifixion of Christ to a houseful of guests, and those visitors were in the very act of repenting. In Ukraine (as I know first hand!), this act of repenting is done very much out loud. So the Hines heard people calling out to God, saying how unbelievable it was that Christ would die for their own sins, and praising Him for His love and mercy. They just couldn’t barge in and disrupt this obvious work of the Holy Spirit, so they stayed outside and listened. Stuart wrote down the phrases he heard the Repenters use, and (even though this was all in Russian), it became the third verse that we know today: And when I think, that God, His Son not sparing; Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in; That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing, He bled and died to take away my sin.
Refrain
The second world war broke out, and the Hines were forced to return back to England, but they continued their ministry. The fourth verse was was added by Stuart Hine after the Second World War. His concern for the exiled Polish community in Britain, who were anxious to return home, provided part of the inspiration for Hine’s final verse. Hine and David Griffiths visited a camp in Sussex, England, in 1948 where displaced Russians were being held, but where only two were professing Christians. The testimony of one of these refugees and his anticipation of the second coming of Christ inspired Hine to write the fourth stanza of his English version of the hymn. According to Ireland: One man to whom they were ministering told them an amazing story: he had been separated from his wife at the very end of the war, and had not seen her since. At the time they were separated, his wife was a Christian, but he was not, but he had since been converted. His deep desire was to find his wife so they could at last share their faith together. But he told the Hines that he did not think he would ever see his wife on earth again. Instead he was longing for the day when they would meet in heaven, and could share in the Life Eternal there. These words again inspired Hine, and they became the basis for his fourth and final verse to ‘How Great Thou Art’:
When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation, And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart. Then I shall bow, in humble adoration, And then proclaim: “My God, how great Thou art!”
Refrain
The complete song was soon published, not in England but in the Soviet Union (in English). The famous Gospel singer George Beverly Shea got hold of it, liked it a lot, but he wanted to change two words in the first verse: Instead of works, he wanted to use worlds, and instead of mighty he wanted to use rolling. Very reluctantly Stuart Hine agreed, but only for use in the Billy Graham Crusades. It was first sung in Canada in 1955. It became so popular that in Billy Graham’s 1956 New York Crusade it was sung at all 99 events, and from there the song spread out through all the world, even back in Sweden where the new version became the popular one. One of the visitors to this Crusade was the little boy Donald Trump, who went with his Father and Mother and Brother (and Sisters?) to listen. God’s word never returns void.
It started innocently enough. In 2012 the California power demand was nearly constant, with power varying 20% from maximum to minimum hourly demand.
Then California decided to have 50% of renewable energy by 2030, mostly by solar and wind, and passed it into law, but the hydroelectric capacity could not be increased due to “environmental concerns”.
The push for renewable energy has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, so the goal may be met in 2020, not 2030. There is one major problem.
What can be done when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine? The electric need must still be met. And therein lies the problem. The sun only shines during daytime, and there is already a surplus of energy in the middle of the day. This affects the prices for peak power, so mush so, that wind and sun generated energy has to pay to feed the grid. They are heavily subsidized, so as long as the amount they have to pay is less than the subsidy the grid will be fed, and the base generation will have to be lowered to stabilize the grid. The prices range from minus five cents/kWh to about 55 c/kWh. (The peak price has been as high as 98 c/kWh during peak demand.
Burt that is only part of the problem. The non-renewable electricity providers will have to double the electricity production every day between 5 and 8 p.m. every day. Using capacitors to even out the grid variations solves 0.3% of the problem.Some can be done by using the dams for power generation, but the grid is not built to handle the drastically increased demand, and environmental fights makes it impossible to build out the grid. In addition, the dams are far away from the areas that need the electricity, in other words, it is a mess.
And the consumer is left to pay the extra costs, and the taxpayer is left to pay the extra subsidies.
Talking about subsidies: Electric cars are subsidized to the tune of 2500 to 7500 dollars, and they are recharged when? They are driven mostly during daytime, and when people come home they are put in the charger – at 55 c/kWh to the utility.
Clean energy is not cheap, and it is not clean since the non renewable electric production capacity still has to be fully built up for the time when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.
We are bound in time and Space. God is not. As the Prophet Isaiah wrote a long time ago (In chapter 55)
6 Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near:
7 Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
10 For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:
11 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment. 