The Clean Air Act does not include the Green New deal. A Limerick, a historical review, and a look at the future.

Supreme Court decided: No deal;

The Green New Deal they did repeal.

CO2, it is good;

Greens the Earth, makes more food.

The bureaucrats cannot appeal.

While Climate Change is real, I have in a previous blog explained why rising CO2 levels cannot be even a major cause of Climate change, see here Now, if CO2 isn’t it, then what is?

Before we go any further this is my recollection of how we got to where we are today in trying to save the earth with legislation.

When I came to the U.S.A. in 1968 as an immigrant and resident alien I was appalled at the lack of environmental concern. In my native Sweden we had been very concerned for many years about the lacing of seed grain with Mercury as a preservative. The rivers and lakes had been fertilized four times more than agricultural land, the rivers from the Soviet Union and Poland were full of untreated sewage, so much so that the Baltic Sea was in danger of losing its Oxygen. Things were much worse in the U.S. In Lake Ontario the dead fish piled up on what used to be a good beach, and in Lake Erie the situation was even worse, a tributary river caught fire. When pointing out the stench from all the rotting fish one coworker just said: You think this is bad; in WW II the upper Delaware Bay was so polluted from all the refineries that it stripped the paint off the ships that came into Philadelphia harbor. In those days companies just dumped the parts that were left after refining into the river, and to get the air pollution bearable they built higher and higher smokestacks to dilute the pollution over a larger area.

The lawmakers had been concerned about the environment for quite some time, and in 1963 they passed the Clean Air Act. It was slow in being enacted so they decided to promote the importance of clean air (and clean water), so they decided to promote the cause with an Earth Day. The day chosen was to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s birth, April 22, 1970. (See here). At that time the greatest concern was the impending ice age unless we cleaned up the air. Worldwide temperature would drop by ten degrees by the year 2000 unless the air was cleaned up. They forced the coal plants to install Sulfur scrubbers, and the trout fishes no longer died, and temperatures started rising again.

Many years ago, around 1977 Dr. James Lovelock bought a number of HP Gas Chromatographs to set up in the most remote corners of the earth to study pollution (especially CFC’s) and its effect on the climate. What he found was an unexpectedly large amount of dimethylsulphide (DMS). He was then a paid consultant for Hewlett Packard Analytical, so he came over from his native England a couple of times a year, always willing to hold a seminar for us engineers working at Hewlett Packard, and then joining us for lunch and continue discussion on a wide range of topics, and at one of them he sprung “Daisy-world” on us before it was published, mostly to see if we could poke holes in his hypothesis. It involved a world that consisted of only two flowers, black daisies and white daisies. The computer simulation started out with a cold world and a weak sun. The sun warmed up until suddenly black daisies appear and cover the earth. This warms the earth some more and white daisies appear. As the sun varies in intensity the mix of white and black daisies changes and this keeps the earth at a stable temperature, as they have different reflective properties. He then went on to say that the whole earth is like a living organism.
Some time later he presented the paper and the next year we asked him how it was received. “You won’t believe it”, he answered. ”Now there are people who actually believe the earth is a living organism. They demand follow-up articles that justifies their belief.” He had partly himself to blame, the name he chose was the GAIA hypothesis, Gaia being the Mother earth Goddess. He succumbed to their demands, and in 1979 he published the book: Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. Talking about religion the Mother Earth people now had their goddess, and expressions like. “The earth has a temperature” became commonplace.

In 1983 Margaret Thatcher, the conservative U.K. Prime Minister tried to close down the nationalized coal industry and defeat the Coal unions. She used the argument that CO2 was bad for the environment, and electricity should be generated by anything but coal. After a year she won the fight, and this legitimized the argument that both liberals and conservatives agreed: The major culprit is CO2, and the universal measurement of social responsibility; Carbon Footprint was born.

In the U.S.A. the pressure grew to somehow stop the rise of CO2, and the State of Massachusetts,, joined by the states of California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, the cities of New York, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., the territory of American Samoa, and the organizations Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, Conservation Law Foundation, Environmental Advocates, Environmental Defense, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, International Center for Technology Assessment, National Environmental Trust, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group sued the EPA for not regulating CO2 and some other greenhouse gases. The argument was that since CO2 is a pollutant does fall under the clean air act and can therefore be regulated. The case made its way up the appeals process, and on June 26, 2006, the Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari. It stated that the CAA gives the EPA the authority to regulate tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases. However, in the larger issue of regulating greenhouse gases in general it sent it back to lower court for further clarification. The SC denied the EPA this right, which the Appeals Court had approved. The EPA decided to go ahead and regulate Greenhouse Gases anyway, and that is what the latest Supreme court decision was all about. The EPA does not have carte blanche to regulate greenhouse gases unless it is specifically approved under the Clean Air Act. Congress must first do its job and make it part of the CAA.

Dr Lovelock is an interesting fellow, a true scientist. He grew more and more pessimistic about the future of the earth. In a March 2010 interview with The Guardian newspaper, he even said that democracy might have to be “put on hold” to prevent climate change. Then in an April 2012 interview, aired on MSNBC, Lovelock stated that he had been “alarmist”, using the words “All right, I made a mistake,” about the timing of climate change and noted the documentary An Inconvenient Truth and the book The Weather Makers as examples of the same kind of alarmism. Lovelock still believes the climate to be warming although the rate of change is not as he once thought, he admitted that he had been “extrapolating too far.” He believes that climate change is still happening, but it will be felt farther in the future. Of the claims “the science is settled” on global warming he states:

One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don’t know it.

He criticizes environmentalists for treating global warming like a religion.

It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion.

I don’t think people have noticed that, but it’s got all the sort of terms that religions use … The greens use guilt. That just shows how religious greens are. You can’t win people round by saying they are guilty for putting (carbon dioxide) in the air.
In the MSNBC article Lovelock is quoted as proclaiming:

The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened.

The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now.

The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time … it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising – carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.

Yes, Dr. Lovelock is still alive at age 102. He was the first to discover the CFC over all the world, but he also found an unexpected amount of dimethylsulphide (DMS) in the atmosphere, and that acted as a condensation point for cloud formation. The concentration was highest in areas rich in nitrates and other “fertilizers” that had been released into the ocean from rivers. The South ocean had the least DMS, while areas with many river outlets had the most. He drew the conclusion that he had been an alarmist. The temperatures are not rising anywhere near as fast as climate models have forecast. We have now 64 years of good temperature data to prove it.

in the South Ocean around Antarctica there is very little DMS, and the South Pole winters, with rising CO2 levels being the dominant climate change factor temperatures are actually decreasing by 2 degree Celsius per century. This would mean we are in a world-wide cooling trend, looking forward to the next ice age. Since base temperatures are getting colder, areas with less rivers fertilizing the oceans will experience less rain, such as the American West coaast from south of San Francisco bay to Santiago de Chile will experience drying conditions, the Mexican Gulf, the Eastern Atlantic, the North Sea, and especially the China east coast and the South china Sea will experience increased precipitation. Because of increased cloudiness the Arctic winters will be warmer, but the Arctic Summers will be marginally cooler above 80 degrees. Source DMI

The 2022 winter was above normal (more snow), but sice Apr 10 temps have been below normal.

Greenland is starting to accumulate ice again:

But for the American South West the situation is bleak. Not only is precipitation expected to decrease, the aquifers are being depleted, lake Mead Lake Powell are at about 30% of capacity, in a few years they will be depleted altogether. Lake San Carlos, which supplies the Phoenix area has been empty since April, no water at all flows down Gila river, wells are starting to run dry. When this happens desertification sets in, erosion increases, springs dry up. When it rains it results in the form of flash floods that further increases erosion. This is a disaster in making.

Yet, there is hope. I am making a proposal:

Build a TransContinental Aqueduct. This will solve the water needs for the upper Western Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, lower California, Mexico and the Lower Colorado River basin.

Build a Trans-Rocky Mountain aqueduct. This will solve some of the water needs for Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, upper New Mexico and the Upper Colorado river basin.

Build a South Platte River aqueduct. This will solve the water needs for the greater Denver ares and help preserve the northern Ogallala aquifer.

In further blog entries I will further develop what has to be done.

I will leave you with this teaser:

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the Green New Deal by administrative fiat is unconstitutional. CO2 is not a pollutant, it is on balance good.

The U.S. Supreme Court settled the issue: Whether, in 42 U.S.C. § 7411(d), an ancillary provision of the Clean Air Act, Congress constitutionally authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to issue significant rules — including those capable of reshaping the nation’s electricity grids and unilaterally decarbonizing virtually any sector of the economy — without any limits on what the agency can require so long as it considers cost, nonair impacts and energy requirements.

I have always been very interested in the environment. Nature teaches us so many lessons, the diversity of trees, birds, flowers and wildlife is breathtaking and giving cause to never cease to wonder. It would be a shame to destroy the beauty of it all. Yet we seem to make it worse by concentrating our effort by trying to limit CO2 emissions, rather than tackling the real and more urgent problems.

Let me first explain why I assert that rising CO2 levels, while real is only a minor player in the climate change equation.

The traditional way to approach this scientifically is making climate models. So far, nearly all, except the Russian model have failed to even remotely to predict future temperature changes. IPCC and all their climate models is still failing.

The other approach is to take measurements, and it so happens that we have really good global data for over 60 years. The Amundsen Scott – South Pole weather station, the average temperature of Winter season 2021 (April 2021 – September 2021) reached only -61,0°C / -78°F, and at this temperature CO2 is the dominant greenhouse gas by more than a factor of ten more important than water vapor. We have reliable measurements for the temperature change at the South Pole since 1957. During this time CO2 gas increased 31% to 413ppm, Methane increased 16% to 1.85 ppm and Nitrous oxide decreased, but this is a gas mostly confined to urban areas, and is now below 0.05 ppm worldwide. With CO2 increasing by 31% and water vapor negligible one would expect a temperature rise over 64 years of 0.65 C, or one degree Celsius warmer per century according to extrapolated lab measurements. This is the observed trend:

With 2021 value included the temperature trend is **two degrees Celsius cooler per century**!

At the South Pole snowfall is negligible in the winter, and for the whole year it is only 1.3 inches. No model would have predicted the cooling trend, so there must be other factors that are are more important, since real measurements beat models every time.

Ignoring the South Pole, the climate models are from time to time adjusted, and as the urgency among the ruling class grew, they suddenly showed a much higher rate of future temperature increases, in this case what is supposed to happen to global temperatures for a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial times, from 270ppm to 540ppm.

Source: Mark D Zelinka et al. ” Causes of higher Climate sensitivity in **CMIP6** models” Geophysical Research Letters.

There are two ways to approach this problem. The models make certain assumptions about the behavior of the changing atmosphere and model future temperature changes. This is the approach IPCC has takenfor the last 34 years. These models all fail miserably when compared to actual future temperature changes.

The other way i to observe what is actually happening to our temperature over time as the CO2 increases. We have over 60 years of excellent global temperature data, so with these we can see where, when and by how much the earth has warmed.

The most drastic temperature rise on earth has been in the Arctic above the 80th latitude. In the winter of 2018 it was 8C above the 50 year average. Since then it has come down to the more normal 4C increase. See charts from the Danish Meteorological Institute:

Summer: red, Jun,Jul, Aug. Winter: green, Dec, Jan, Feb Yearly: black

Note, there are no increase at all in the summer temperatures!

Spring: green, Mar, Apr, May. Fall: red, Sep Oct, Nov. Yearly: black

The fall temperature saw an increase of 4C and the spring temperature saw an increase of about 2.5C.

The 2022 winter saw an about 4c increase. The Spring temperatures have from the 10th of March were below or very close to the 1958 – 2002 average. Early Summer temperatures have so far been about 1C below normal. Source: DMI.

There seems to be no cause for immediate panic with the Arctic temperatures. If anything, they seem to moderate. In the Antarctic on the other hand temperatures have been decreasing! As we have seen before, the Amundsen Scott – South Pole weather station, the average temperature of Winter season 2021 (April 2021 – September 2021) reached only -61,0°C / -78°F, which is the coldest value in all-time history! This was 2,5°C /4.5°F degrees lower than the most recent 30-year average at this remote station.

Why are the temperatures not behaving like the models predict?

To get the answer we must study molecular absorption spectroscopy. IPCC and most scientists claim that the greenhouse effect is dependent on the gases that are in the atmosphere, and their combined effect is additive according to a logarithmic formula. This is true up to a certain point, but it is not possible to absorb more than 100% of all the energy available in a certain frequency band! For example: If water vapor absorbs 90% of all incoming energy in a certain band, and CO2 absorbs another 50% of the energy in the same band, the result is that 95% is absorbed, (90% + 50% * (100% – 90%)), not 140%, (90% + 50%).

The following chart shows both CO2 and H2O are absorbing greenhouse gases, with H20 being the stronger greenhouse gas, absorbing over a much wider spectrum, and they overlap for the most part. But it also matters in what frequency range s they absorb.

For this we will have to look at the frequency ranges of the incoming solar radiation and the outgoing black body radiation of the earth. It is the latter that causes the greenhouse effect. Take a look at this chart:

The red area represents the observed amount of solar radiation that reaches the earth’s surface. the white area under the red line represents radiation absorbed in the atmosphere. Likewise, the blue area represents the outgoing black body radiation that is re-emitted. The remaining white area under the magenta, blue or black line represents the retained absorbed energy that causes the greenhouse effect.

Let us now take a look at the Carbon Dioxide bands of absorption, at 2.7, 4.3 and 15 microns. The 2.7 and 4.3 micron bands absorb where there is little black body radiation, the only band that counts is at 15 microns, and that is in a band where the black body radiation has its maximum. However it is also in a band where water vapor also absorb, not as much as CO2,only about 20% to 70% as much. The important thing is that in the frequency band of 14.5 to 15.5 micron CO2 absorbs all the energy available in that spectral range, and it also did it before industrialization when CO2 levels were one third less than today!

The grey area is the difference between total pre-industrial absorption and today, less than 5 % added absorption in the 13 to 17 micron band. Notice that total absorption from ground level to thermopause cannot exceed 100%

From this we can see that increasing CO2 levels is not the cause of climate change, if anything, it is only a only a very minor player. How about Methane?

Methane has only two major absorption bands, one at 3.3 microns, and the other at 8 microns. The 3,3 micron band is where incoming radiation is negligible, and so is outgoing black-body radiation. The 8 micron band is where water vapor is dominant, so Methane turns out to be the don’t care gas.

Water vapor or absolute humidity is highly dependent on the temperature of the air, so at 30C there may be 50 times as much water vapor as CO2, at 0C there may be ten times as much water vapor, and at -25C there is more CO2 than water vapor. At those low temperatures the gases are mostly additive. In the tropics with fifty times more water vapor than CO2, increased CO2 has no influence on the temperature whatsoever. Temperature charts confirm this assertion:

The temperature in the tropics displays no trend whatsoever. It follows the temperature of the oceans, goes up in an el niño and down in a la niña. The temperature in the southern hemisphere shows no trend. In the northern temperate region there is a slight increase, but the great increase is occurring in the Arctic. There is no increase in the Antarctic yet even though the increase in CO2 is as great in the Antarctic and the winter temperature in the Antarctic is even lower than in the Arctic. So CO2 increase cannot be the answer to the winter temperature increase in the Arctic.

There is an obvious answer. When temperatures increase the air can and will contain more moisture and transport this moisture from the tropics all the way to the arctic, where it ends up as snow. Is the snow increasing in the Arctic?

Let us see what the snow statistics show. These are from the Rutgers snow lab.

The fall snow extent is increasing, and has increased by more than 2 percent per year.

The winter snowfall has also increased but only by 0.04 percent per year. The snow covers all of Russia, Northern China, Mongolia, Tibet, Kashmir and northern Pakistan, Northern Afghanistan, Northern Iran, Turkey, most of Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Canada, Alaska, Greenland and part of Western, Eastern and Northern United States.

In the spring on the other hand the snow pack is melting faster, about 1.6 percent less spring snow per year. One of the major reasons for an earlier snow melt is that the air is getting dirtier, especially over China, and to some extent Russia. The soot from burning coal, wood and peat, and from mining dust changes the albedo of the snow. The soot is visible on old snow all the way up to the North Pole. The other reason is that the North Pole is getting warmer. In the fall and winter it is mostly due to increased snowfall, but in the spring, as soon as the temperatures rise over the freezing point, melting occurs earlier. But it takes longer time to melt the increasing snow, so the Summer temperatures remain unchanged or lower.

So the warming of the North Pole, far from being an impending end of mankind as we know it, may even be beneficial. A warmer North Pole in the winter means less temperature gradient between the pole and the tropics, leading to less severe storms. They will still be there, but less severe.

This year’s Arctic ice volume is greater ghan the previous 3 years. and the melting is slower. It is too early to tell if it is a real cooling of the climate, but it is worth noting

There is one great benefit of increased CO2, the greening of the earth!

Thanks to this greening, done with only the fertilizing effect of increasing CO2, the earth can now keep another 2 billion people from starvation, not to mention what good it does for plants and wildlife.

Increasing CO2 is not the cause of climate change.

DeKalb County Georgia and Dominion voting machines proves voting fraud with no limits.

June 3, ATLANTA — The nation’s leading cybersecurity agency released a final version Friday of an advisory it previously sent state officials on voting machine vulnerabilities in Georgia and other states that voting integrity activists say weakens a security recommendation on using barcodes to tally votes.

The advisory put out by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, has to do with vulnerabilities identified in Dominion Voting Systems’ ImageCast X touchscreen voting machines, which produce a paper ballot or record votes electronically. The agency said that although the vulnerabilities should be quickly mitigated, the agency “has no evidence that these vulnerabilities have been exploited in any elections.”

Well, on May 24. DeKalb County held a County commissioner election and the results were as following:

Marshall Orson came in first, Lauren Alexander came in second and Michelle Long Spears came in third. Since no candidate had a majority of the votes, there would be a runoff between the first and second. Michelle Long Spears thought she was more popular than that, so she decided to look how many votes she received in her own precinct. The result were startling. Zero votes. Not only had her husband not voted for her, she hat not even voted for herself! So she demanded and was granted a manual recount. The result of the recount was even more startling.

This time the order was reversed, Michelle Long Spears came in first, Lauren Alexander came in second, and Marshall Owens, the original winner was eliminated from the runoff. And the hand vote count showed 2,810 more votes!

In Dominion speak this is called a minor computer glitch. See the results from Antrim County, Michigan, here.

This calls for a manual recount wherever voting machines were used in the 2020 election, and all primary elections!

The CISA Halderman report is due next week. Stay tuned.

The cause of Climate Change. If it is rising CO2 levels we are all doomed. Controlling CO2 is destined to fail! Yet there is hope.

India is reopening 100 coal mines to ensure that their electrification program stays on course in the face of new realities. International coal prices has more than doubled since the start of 2022, so coal mining is again profitable.

One would think that the world is trying to reduce the number of coal plants. Not so!

This does not include the developing world that is just getting started with, you guessed it, coal plants!

Australia has at least one ally in trying to save the world, the United states of America! California has already eliminated their coal plants, but they are also a great importer of electricity, much of it produced from coal. In the next ten year the U.S. utilities plan to shut down or change the fuel on over 200 coal fired plants, 48 in 2022 alone. Meanwhile , coal is getting scarce. There will be spot shortages this year.

There will be brownouts and rotating blackouts this summer, especially in California and the mid-west.

Natural Gas prices has more than doubled from around $3 per Mega BTU to over $8, while spot price in Europe is over $26 per MBTU. To quote Barack Obama: “Electricity prices will naturally skyrocket”. This means electricity prices have only begun their rise.

The National Electric grids are aging and under increasing stress. The Biden administration has one solution. Commandeering American industry to make more solar panels with components made nearly exclusively from China and lower the import tariffs on solar panel components. California is already producing too much solar power if the wind is also blowing, but not during times of greatest demand, leading to a desperate need for pumped storage or large, very expensive battery banks. California has already given its first warning: Don’t charge your electric vehicles now, or the whole grid will go down. See here.

Yet there is hope. We can switch our electric grid to nuclear energy, but not the dominant Uranium 235 nuclear plants that requires evacuation zones, lots of cooling water and a large regulatory overhead to ensure their safety. No, instead go back to the original source of nuclear power, before making nuclear bombs became the driving source of nuclear development. Thorium based nuclear power, especially the Liquid Fluoride molten salt Thorium Reactor (LFTR). It breeds more fuel than it uses by about 3%, and it generates 0.01% of the nuclear waste of a Uranium 235 plant. It is more efficient and inherently safe. My preference would be to make them in an assembly line and deliver them on standard trucks rather than build them on site. LFTR reactors does not need water for cooling. My preference would be a 100 MW reactor with the molten salt containing the fissile material separated from the cooling system, which could be either gas or molten lead. They could then be spread out over the country with no need for water, be placed near population centers since there is no need for evacuation zones. This would make it possible to have local grids, eliminating the need to expand the national grid.

And with an assembly line production the core units can be delivered in three standard size containers. The total cost including power generation and the permanent enclosure will be less than two dollars per watt, and fuel cost is essentially nil, since Thorium is already mined in excess quantities in rare earth mining.

I do want to save coal for important uses, such as making chemicals and fertilizer, and in the future to produce aviation fuel. By all means, switch to electric vehicles, but not until the electric grid is converted from Coal and Natural Gas to nuclear!

The Thorium Energy security act SB 4242a

This is insanity. In 2011 the Oak Ridge Laboratories had a stockpile of 1400 kg U 233. They have been busy downblending it into depleted uranium to render it useless, and there is now only about 450 kg left.

The bill is introduced. It should be immediately passed in the Senate, and be passed in the house without amendments. Any delay is critical. It is that important. We gave the technology to the Chinese so they can build up their naval fleet with molten salt Thorium nuclear power. Meanwhile we still have some u-233 left, worth billions as a National Security asset. At the very least, we must stop downblending immediately, even before the bill is passed.

Here is the bill itself. The summary is not yet written, but the bill is introduced.

117th CONGRESS
2d Session

S. 4242

To provide for the preservation and storage of uranium-233 to foster development of thorium molten-salt reactors, and for other purposes.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

May 18 (legislative day, May 17), 2022

Mr. Tuberville (for himself and Mr. Marshall) introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

A BILL

To provide for the preservation and storage of uranium-233 to foster development of thorium molten-salt reactors, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. Short title.

This Act may be cited as the “Thorium Energy Security Act of 2022”.

SEC. 2. Findings.

Congress makes the following findings:

(1) Thorium molten-salt reactor technology was originally developed in the United States, primarily at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the State of Tennessee under the Molten-Salt Reactor Program.

(2) Before the cancellation of that program in 1976, the technology developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory was moving steadily toward efficient utilization of the natural thorium energy resource, which exists in substantial amounts in many parts of the United States, and requires no isotopic enrichment.

(3) The People’s Republic of China is known to be pursuing the development of molten-salt reactor technology based on a thorium fuel cycle.

(4) Thorium itself is not fissile, but fertile, and requires fissile material to begin a nuclear chain reaction. This largely accounts for its exclusion for nuclear weapons developments.

(5) Uranium-233, derived from neutron absorption by natural thorium, is the ideal candidate for the fissile material to start a thorium reactor, and is the only fissile material candidate that can minimize the production of long-lived transuranic elements like plutonium, which have proven a great challenge to the management of existing spent nuclear fuel.

(6) Geologic disposal of spent nuclear fuel from conventional nuclear reactors continues to pose severe political and technical challenges, and costs United States taxpayers more than $500,000,000 annually in court-mandated payments to electrical utilities operating nuclear reactors.

(7) The United States possesses the largest known inventory of separated uranium-233 in the world, aggregated at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

(8) Oak Ridge National Laboratory building 3019 was designated in 1962 as the national repository for uranium-233 storage, and its inventory eventually grew to about 450 kilograms of separated uranium-233, along with approximately 1,000 kilograms of mixed fissile uranium from the Consolidated Edison Uranium Solidification Program (commonly referred to as “CEUSP”), divided into approximately 1,100 containers.

(9) The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board issued Recommendation 97–1 (relating to safe storage of uranium-233) in 1997 because of the possibility of corrosion or other degradation around the storage of uranium-233 in a building that was built in 1943.

(10) In response, the Department of Energy published Decision Memorandum No. 2 in 2001 concluding that no Department of Energy programs needed uranium-233 and directed that a contract be placed for disposition of the uranium-233 inventory and decommissioning of its storage facility.

(11) The Department of Energy awarded a contract for the irreversible downblending of uranium-233 with uranium-238 and its geologic disposal in Nevada, which downblending would create a waste form that would pose radiological hazards for hundreds of thousands of years, rather than to consider uranium-233 as a useful national asset.

(12) All 1,000 kilograms of CEUSP uranium-233-based material have been dispositioned (but not downblended) but those containers had little useful uranium-233 in them. The majority of separated and valuable uranium-233 remains uncontaminated by uranium-238 and suitable for thorium fuel cycle research and development. That remaining inventory constitutes the largest supply of uranium-233 known to exist in the world today.

(13) The United States has significant domestic reserves of thorium in accessible high-grade deposits, which can provide thousands of years of clean energy if used efficiently in a liquid-fluoride reactor initially started with uranium-233.

(14) Recently (as of the date of the enactment of this Act), the Department of Energy has chosen to fund a series of advanced reactors that are all dependent on initial inventories and regular resupplies of high-assay, low-enriched uranium.

(15) There is no domestic source of high-assay, low-enriched uranium fuel, and there are no available estimates as to how long the development of a domestic supply of that fuel would take or how expensive such development would be.

(16) The only viable source of high-assay, low-enriched uranium fuel is through continuous import from sources in the Russian Federation.

(17) The political situation with the Russian Federation as of the date of the enactment of this Act is sufficiently uncertain that it would be unwise for United States-funded advanced reactor development to rely on high-assay, low-enriched uranium since the Russian Federation would be the primary source and can be expected to undercut any future United States production, resulting in a dependency on high-assay, low-enriched uranium from the Russian Federation.

(18) The United States has abandoned the development of a geologic repository at Yucca Mountain and is seeking a consenting community to allow interim storage of spent nuclear fuel, but valid concerns persist that an interim storage facility will become a permanent storage facility.

(19) Without a closed fuel cycle, high-assay, low-enriched uranium-fueled reactors inevitably will produce long-lived wastes that presently have no disposition pathway.

(20) The United States possesses enough uranium-233 to support further research and development as well as fuel the startup of several thorium reactors. Thorium reactors do not require additional fuel or high-assay, low-enriched uranium from the Russian Federation.

(21) Continuing the irreversible destruction of uranium-233 precludes privately funded development of the thorium fuel cycle, which would have long term national and economic security implications.

SEC. 3. Sense of Congress.

It is the sense of Congress that—

(1) it is in the best economic and national security interests of the United States to resume development of thorium molten-salt reactors that can minimize long-lived waste production, in consideration of—

(A) the pursuit by the People’s Republic of China of thorium molten-salt reactors and associated cooperative research agreements with United States national laboratories; and

(B) the present impasse around the geological disposal of nuclear waste;

(2) that the development of thorium molten-salt reactors is consistent with section 1261 of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 (Public Law 115–232; 132 Stat. 2060), which declared long-term strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China as “a principal priority for the United States”; and

(3) to resume such development, it is necessary to relocate as much of the uranium-233 remaining at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as possible to new secure storage.

SEC. 4. Definitions.

In this Act:

(1) CONGRESSIONAL DEFENSE COMMITTEES.—The term “congressional defense committees” has the meaning given that term in section 101(a) of title 10, United States Code.

(2) DOWNBLEND.—The term “downblend” means the process of adding a chemically identical isotope to an inventory of fissile material in order to degrade its nuclear value.

(3) FISSILE MATERIAL.—The term “fissile material” refers to uranium-233, uranium-235, plutonium-239, or plutonium-241.

(4) HIGH-ASSAY, LOW-ENRICHED URANIUM.—The term “high-assay, low-enriched uranium” (commonly referred to as “HALEU”) means a mixture of uranium isotopes very nearly but not equaling or exceeding 20 percent of the isotope uranium-235.

(5) TRANSURANIC ELEMENT.—The term “transuranic element” means an element with an atomic number greater than the atomic number of uranium (92), such as neptunium, plutonium, americium, or curium.

SEC. 5. Preservation of uranium-233 to foster development of thorium molten-salt reactors.

The Secretary of Energy shall preserve uranium-233 inventories that have not been contaminated with uranium-238, with the goal of fostering development of thorium molten-salt reactors by United States industry.

SEC. 6. Storage of uranium-233.

(a) Report on long-Term storage of uranium-233.—Not later than 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Energy, in consultation with the heads of other relevant agencies, shall submit to Congress a report identifying a suitable location for, or a location that can be modified for, secure long-term storage of uranium-233.

(b) Report on interim storage of uranium-233.—Not later than 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Chief of Engineers shall submit to Congress a report identifying a suitable location for secure interim storage of uranium-233.

(c) Report on construction of uranium-233 storage facility at Redstone Arsenal.—Not later than 240 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Chief of Engineers shall submit to Congress a report on the costs of constructing a permanent, secure storage facility for uranium-233 at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, that is also suitable for chemical processing of uranium-233 pursuant to a public-private partnership with thorium reactor developers.

(d) Funding.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law, amounts authorized to be appropriated or otherwise made available for the U233 Disposition Program for fiscal year 2022 or 2023 shall be made available for the transfer of the inventory of uranium-233 to the interim or permanent storage facilities identified under this section.

SEC. 7. Interagency cooperation on preservation and transfer of uranium-233.

The Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of the Army (including the head of the Army Reactor Office), the Secretary of Transportation, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and other relevant agencies shall—

(1) work together to preserve uranium-233 inventories and expedite transfers of uranium-233 to interim and permanent storage facilities; and

(2) in expediting such transfers, seek the assistance of appropriate industrial entities.

SEC. 8. Report on use of thorium reactors by People’s Republic of China.

Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Comptroller General of the United States, in consultation with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and the Administrator for Nuclear Security, shall submit to Congress a report that—

(1) evaluates the progress the People’s Republic of China has made in the development of thorium-based reactors;

(2) describes the extent to which that progress was based on United States technology;

(3) details the actions the Department of Energy took in transferring uranium-233 technology to the People’s Republic of China; and

(4) assesses the likelihood that the People’s Republic of China may employ thorium reactors in its future navy plans.

SEC. 9. Report on medical market for isotopes of uranium-233.

Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Director of the Congressional Budget Office, after consultation with institutions of higher education and private industry conducting medical research and the public, shall submit to Congress a report that estimates the medical market value, during the 10-year period after the date of the enactment of this Act, of actinium, bismuth, and other grandchildren isotopes of uranium-233 that can be harvested without downblending and destroying the uranium-233 source material.

SEC. 10. Report on costs to United States nuclear enterprise.

Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Director of the Congressional Budget Office, after consultation with relevant industry groups and nuclear regulatory agencies, shall submit to Congress a report that estimates, for the 10-year period after the date of the enactment of this Act, the costs to the United States nuclear enterprise with respect to—

(1) disposition of uranium-233;

(2) payments to nuclear facilities to store nuclear waste; and

(3) restarting the manufacturing the United States of high-assay, low-enriched uranium.

Kathy Barnette has been accused of saying that Obama was a Muslim, and that Islam itself is a false religion.

Was Muhammad “the Prophet” or even a Prophet?

“The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”

The quote comes from a speech that President Obama delivered to the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September 2012 about the death of U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three others in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. At that time he still blamed a video.

Muslims claim, and the religion of Islam demands that Muhammad was “The Prophet”. This claim comes from what Muhammad called “the Book”, Deuteronomy 18: 17-22

¹⁷The Lord said to me (Moses) : “What they say is good. ¹⁸I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. ¹⁹I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name. ²⁰But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.”

²¹You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?” ²²If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed.

After Muhammad fled from Mecca to Medina he started to proclaim he was “The Prophet” His new followers wanted to make sure he was “the Prophet” so they asked the Jews. The Jews immediately answered “No, he is not The Prophet. The Prophet must be an Israelite, and Muhammad is an Ishmaelite, so he is an impostor”. That didn’t sit well with Muhammad, so he ordered his followers to start praying to Mecca instead of praying to Jerusalem, as had been their practice until then. His always cooperating archangel provided a convenient revelation that that was indeed so. Since then Muslims have prayed to Mecca instead of Jerusalem, and been on the warpath against the Jews.

So, Muhammad was not “The Prophet”. Was he even a Prophet?

Everything a prophet proclaims must come true for him to qualify as a Prophet. One miss, and you are out. One prophecy Muhammad claimed was that the Jews would never be a unified nation again, and that they would not be able to fight militarily against the Muslims.

“They [the Jewish people] will not fight you (even) together, except in fortified townships, or from behind walls. Strong is their fighting (spirit) amongst themselves: thou wouldst think they were united, but their hearts are divided: that is because they are a people devoid of wisdom.” (Surah 59:14).

The seven day war and other wars since the formation of Israel in 1948 proves this prophecy wrong. (The opposite of what was prophecised has occurred)

Logic demands that Muhammad was not a prophet.

The Muslims have chosen another explanation: Israel does not exist, will never exist, has no right to exist and all fighting that has occurred in the Mideast can be explained by other means. There never was a genocide of Armenians, the holocaust never occurred and so forth.

After President Anwar Sadat of Egypt signed the peace accord with Israel together with Begin and President Carter, he was promptly assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

It is my opinion that the only solution possible for peace in the Middle East is a reformation of the Muslim faith, accepting the violent history of Islam, its slavery and oppression, abandoning all physical claims to future world dominance, separating out the spiritual claims, and abandoning their geographical dreams of physically conquering the world. There are plenty of Muslims here in the USA willing to work towards that goal, but unfortunately they are not accepted by President Obama, who still prefers to work with the Muslim Brotherhood and their affiliates.

This is my take on it: Judge for yourselves.

“The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”

The quote comes from a speech that former President Obama delivered to the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September 2012 about the death of U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three others in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. At that time he still blamed a video.

Muslims claim, and the religion of Islam demands that Muhammad was “The Prophet”. This claim comes from what Muhammad called “the Book”, Deuteronomy 18: 17-22

¹⁷The Lord said to me (Moses) : “What they say is good. ¹⁸I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. ¹⁹I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name. ²⁰But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.”

After Muhammad fled from Mecca to Medina he started to proclaim he was “The Prophet” His new followers wanted to make sure he was “the Prophet” so they asked the Jews. The Jews immediately answered “No, he is not The Prophet. The Prophet must be an Israelite, and Muhammad is an Ishmaelite, so he is an impostor”. That didn’t sit well with Muhammad, so he ordered his followers to start praying to Mecca instead of praying to Jerusalem, as had been their practice until then. His always cooperating archangel Gabriel provided a convenient revelation that that was indeed so. Since then Muslims have prayed to Mecca instead of Jerusalem, and been on the warpath against the Jews.

So, Muhammad was not “The Prophet”. Was he even a Prophet?

The seven day war and other wars since the formation of Israel in 1948 proves this prophecy wrong. (The opposite of what was precised has occurred)

Logic demands that Muhammad was not a prophet.

The Muslims have chosen another explanation: Israel does not exist, will never exist, has no right to exist and all fighting that has occurred in the Mideast can be explained by other means. There never was a genocide of Christian Armenians, the holocaust never occurred and so forth.

After President Anwar Sadat of Egypt signed the peace accord with Israel together with Begin and President Carter, he was promptly assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

It is my opinion that the only solution possible for peace in the Middle East is a reformation of the Muslim faith, accepting the violent history of Islam, its slavery and oppression, abandoning all physical claims to future world dominance, separating out the spiritual claims, and abandoning their geographical dreams of physically conquering the world. There are plenty of Muslims here in the USA willing to work towards that goal, but unfortunately they are not accepted by Ex President Obama, who still prefers to work with the Muslim Brotherhood and their affiliates.

The second hint that Barack Obama is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

On September 1 2014 Egypt’s largest newspaper claimed on its front page that Obama is a full fledged member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood called for “a long, uncompromising jihad” in Egypt just days after a delegation of the Islamist group’s key leaders and allies met with the State Department, according to an official statement released last week.

While the President himself did not attend (as far as we know) the State Department meeting was attended by a deputy assistant secretary for democracy, human rights, and labor and other State Department officials.

The Muslim Brotherhood statement also was issued just two days before a major terror attack Thursday Jan 29 in Egypt’s lawless Sinai region that killed at least 25.

“It is incumbent upon everyone to be aware that we are in the process of a new phase, where we summon what is latent in our strength, where we recall the meanings of jihad and prepare ourselves, our wives, our sons, our daughters, and whoever marched on our path to a long, uncompromising jihad, and during this stage we ask for martyrdom,” the statement from the Muslim Brotherhood reads.

Then February 4 2015 ex President Barack Obama met with Muslim leaders in the East Room of the White House, off limit to reporters. We were not to know the content of the President’s message, only that it is none of our business, neither are we to know who attended the meeting, “since they are private citizens and their privacy needs to be protected”.

This does not pass the smell test.

Which leads to verse 22 of the Obama Impeachment song (sung to the tune of “Please release me, let me go”)

I’m a Muslim Brother now,

as they declared Jihad somehow,

after White House sweet powwow.

What’s left of my bark: A weak bowwow.

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

These are my opinions and I do not attribute any of them to Kathy Barnette, except that she has been accused to hold the view that Islam and Christianity are incompatible, you cannot hold both views.

Oh, and one more thing: Kathy Barnette just tweeted:

I have released all my military records. Has Dr. Mehmet Oz released released all his Turkish military records?

Russia has cut off electricity to Finland, natural gas to follow 5/25.

Finland has received 10% of its electricity from Russia. Because Finland refused to pay in Rubles Russia refuses to deliver any more. Big deal. This is spring season in northern Sweden and Finland. As they say: Spring is not a season, it is a natural disaster. The spring floods rush down the rivers and hydro-power is maxed out for up to two months. Sweden can easily replace the needed electricity. Finland relies on Russian natural gas is near 100%, and May 25 is the deadline to pay in Rubles, or it will be cut off too. In addition Russia has threatened Finland to not even think of joining NATO, or there will be unspecified military action.

This has led to unprecedented diplomatic communication between Finland, Sweden and NATO, and not only are they conducting joint Baltic military exercises right now, but both Sweden and Finland may apply for full membership in NATO as early as Monday. Finland is fully on board, and in Sweden only the true Socialists, “Vänsterpartiet” is against it, but they are only a small minority. With this, the Baltic Sea will be fully in NATO hands, fully encircling the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

For Finland this is the end of the Russian dependence and for Sweden this is the final death blow to the Olof Palme doctrine, alliance free at all cost.

When I emigrated from Sweden in 1968 Sweden had three major recipients for their foreign aid: North Vietnam, Cuba and for some reason Tanzania, one country on each continent.

What does it mean to be “Ultra MAGA?”

President Joe Biden explained today in a short speech on inflation that the biggest obstacle to his program is the Ultra MAGA Republicans that has taken over one part of the Republican party rendering governing nearly impossible considering his small majorities in both the House and the Senate.

It is now one week until the Pennsylvania Senate Primary, so it is time to look who to vote for. I saw the same attribute given to Kathy Barnette. Her fatal flaw is that she is Ultra MAGA. So I took a second look at her, and this is what I found. She is Black, and is running as a Republican. She was conceived out of rape when her mother was only 11 years old. She grew up in poverty on a pig farm. She clawed herself up and got both a bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in economics. She has served many years in the Army Reserve. But she has made the most important choice in her life. She is pro- life. As it says in the Holy Bible:

^{Deuteronomy:30:15}See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; ^{Deuteronomy 30:19}I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki declined to say if President Biden believes a 15-week-old unborn baby is a human being during one of her press briefings.

“Does the president believe that a 15-week-old unborn baby is a human being?” a reporter asked Psaki.

“Are you asking me if the president supports a woman’s right to choose? He does,” Psaki said.

This is what a 15 week old unborn baby looks like

The two verses above was from the King James Bible.The context is that Moses, having been forbidden to enter the promised land gave his final instruction to the people before they were to finally end their desert journey by crossing the Jordan River. This is from the New International Bible.

This is one of Kathy Barnett’s commercials telling quite well what it means to be an “Ultra MAGA” person.

I live in Pennsylvania, count me in!

This video is the most … I have ever seen.

This is insanity. Stop downblending our remaining U233 NOW!

Check out this video and see if you will get as upset as I did.

There is one minor error in the video. The Thorium-U233 reactors also produce Plutonium, but it only produces Plutonium238, which is needed for space exploration. We are out of Pu238, only Russia has some left.

The situation: The Department of Energy had 1400 Kg Uranium-233 stored at Oak Ridge National Lab. They are in process of downgrading it to natural uranium by downblending it with depleted uranium. They need 200 tons of depleted uranium to do the task, rendering it unusable for anything.

The decommissioning was approved in 2003 and in 2012 130 million had been spent, before the actual downblending started.

Stop the decommissioning immediately. Build our own Liquid Fluoride Thorium Nuclear Reactor and over time get 600 million dollars worth of electric power and 45g of Plutonium-238. We are out of Pu-238 and can do no more planetary exploration satellites.

The deep space satellites all had Pu-238 power sources. Only Russia has Pu-238 left, and the U.S. was banking on getting it for a friendship price. In addition there are significant unique medical applications in treatment of cancer that can be obtained by radiation from the byproduct of the Thorium process. Below are pictures of the Thorium process and what a Thorium Power plant might look like. (4)

archibald_energy_security_86 — The Plutonium in the Uranium cycle is PU239 and higher, all nasty stuff.

archibald_energy_security_94 — The LFTR does not use water, can be deployed everywhere, even in space.

Memories from the first Earth Day in 1970.

The cause of Climate Change is still up in the air. Sherlock Holmes: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts”. From: “Scandal in Bohemia” by Arthur Conan Doyle.

The very first Earth Day was celebrated April 22 1970, on the 100 year anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Lenin (Владимир Ильич Ленин). True green environmentalists keep telling me it is just a coincidence. I think not.

The first Earth Day in Philadelphia 1970 featured Ira Einhorn (The Unicorn Killer) as master of Ceremonies. For those too young to remember, he murdered his girlfriend , stuffed her in a piece of luggage in his apartment and kept her there for seven years, and no one smelled a dead rat). He was finally convicted many years later. The big environmental scare of that day was the threat of a new Ice Age. The clarion call was: “In the year 2000 temperatures will have fallen 10 degrees”, the culprit was pollution, especially acid rain. The acid rain was so bad in the Adirondacks, Canada, Norway and Sweden that the Rainbow Trout died in droves, and even the oceans were in danger of getting too acid. Regulations were enacted to add scrubbers to coal fired power stations, waste water was purified, and – wouldn’t you know it, the cooling trend reversed itself and was followed by warming. Since the cooling trend was “obviously man-made” they had to find a reason for the sudden warming. Never mind that around the year 1200 there was at least one farm on South West Greenland that exported, among other things, cheese. How do we know that? They have excavated the ruins of a farm, “Gården under Sanden”, buried under a glacier for five centuries. During these five centuries the Northern Hemisphere experienced what is called “the little ice age” a time when the winters could be so cold that in 1658 the Swedish army, cavalry and artillery crossed the Belts in the southern Baltic over ice and sacked Copenhagen. The Belts have not been that frozen since.

Picture left: Gården under sanden excavation.

Picture right: The crossing of the Great Belt 1658.

To predict future climate changes many computer models have been developed dealing with how the earth responds to changes in atmospheric conditions, especially how it responds to changes in CO2 levels. Most were developed in the 1970 to 2000 time frame, a time of rapid temperature rise and as such they were all given a large factor for the influence of rising CO2. Since 2005 we have had a cooling trend, so the models cooperate less and less and are given more and more unreliable predictions. It is no wonder then that they all have failed to model the past. None of them have reproduced the medieval warm period or the little ice age. If they cannot agree with the past there is no reason to believe they have any ability to predict the future. The models are particularly bad when it comes to predict cloud cover and what time of day clouds appear and disappear. Below is a chart of a number of climate models and their prediction of cloud cover versus observed data. Note especially to the right where they completely fail to notice the clear skies over Antarctica.

Is there a better way to predict future temperature trends? When you go to the doctor for a physical, at some point and without warning he hits you under the knee with a hammer and watches your reaction. He is observing your impulse response. Can we observe impulse responses for the earth? One obvious case is volcanic explosions. Sometimes the earth burps a lot of carbon dioxide or methane. But the most interesting response would be how the earth responds to a solar flare with a sudden change in the amount of cosmic radiation hitting the earth. That would give the best indication how the sun and cosmic radiation affects cloud formation. A couple of solar flares lately have been giving us a hint how the cloud cover responds to changes in cosmic radiation, and they are consistent with the latest results from the CLOUD project conducted using the CERN particle accelerator, a confirmation of a theory forwarded by the Danish Physicist Henrik Svensmark. He first presented the theory in 1997 and finally got the results verified and published in 2007, but the prevailing consensus has been slow to accept the theory that the sun as the primary driver of climate change. We have many reasons to be concerned about the well-being of the earth, but rising levels of CO2 is not one of them. In fact, CO2 is our friend. Rising CO2 levels increases crop yields, makes the impact of land use changes less pronounced and the photosynthesis process more efficient, using less water and allowing us to grow crops on land once deemed unprofitable.

Picture right: The CERN Cloud apparatus in 2009.

James Hansen, a world famous climate science activist/NASA physicist writes in one of his publications, called “Earth’s Energy Imbalance and Implications“. It contains a quote that ties nicely in with Sherlock Holmes observation: The precision achieved by the most advanced generation of radiation budget satellites is indicated by the planetary energy imbalance measured by the ongoing CERES (Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System) instrument (Loeb et al., 2009), which finds a measured 5-year-mean imbalance of 6.5 W/m2 (Loeb et al., 2009). Because this result is implausible, instrumentation calibration factors were introduced to reduce the imbalance to the imbalance suggested by climate models, 0.85 W/m2 (Loeb et al., 2009).

There we have it. The observed data does not fit the climate models. Change the observed data! Then use that data to validate the climate models! How convEEnient, as the SNL Churchlady used to say. Shenanigans like this have been exposed in what has been named “Climategate1.0”, followed by “Climategate2.0” and soon to be released “Climategate3.0” This is what happens when politicians take over science and make further funding contingent on obtaining desired results.

This is a re-blog from times past.