Climate change – Page 25 – Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment.

Environmentalists unite! Bring back the clothesline!

Some time ago we moved up to beautiful State College, PA, happy valley, where the thousand hills keep rolling on. It is said to be the best place for mental health in the nation and people seems to be happy, some driving their Toyota Priuses, some of them still displaying their Obama bumper stickers. But one thing is missing. With all these environmentalists around, where are the clothes lines? It turns out they are deemed unsightly, especially by home owners association by-laws.

In the next valley, in another world, the Amish are proudly displaying their Monday wash, their clotheslines are proudly displayed in the front yard. It is a magnificent sight.

They even have boys and girls clotheslines!

Am I missing something? When the EMP pulse comes, either by a solar flare or a nuclear missile, the Amish never made themselves totally dependent on the electric grid. I fact, they shun getting connected to the “English” as they call it. That doesn’t mean they do not use electricity. Their cell phones are recharged via solar panels, and their buggy headlights are of the LED type, which drain only one seventh of the power on their marine batteries (solar recharged, of course).

So, who are the “flat earthers”? Certainly not the Amish. They are good stewards of the environment and obey all the new regulations (albeit grudgingly) from the Chesapeake Bay Commission.

Cut dairy emissions 25% by 2020. Fart tax anyone? A

The White House has proposed cutting methane emissions from the dairy industry by 25 percent by 2020. Although U.S. agriculture only accounts for about 9 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, it makes up a sizeable portion of methane emissions — which is a very potent greenhouse gas.

Picture left: The cows are coming home to get milked, well nourished from a healthy grass diet
Picture right: Research cow from Argentina fitted with a methane collecting backpack. This cow is fed feedlot style.

You cannot accuse EPA to be lax;
It works very hard to propose a fart tax.
They are running on fumes:
Tax the bovine perfumes!
Throw all the bums out! Let us give them the axe.

In preparation of Earth day 2014. Cause of climate change is still up in the air.

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. The big environmental scare of the 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 Sulfur scrubbers to 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 similar 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 permafrost 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 southwestern Baltic over ice and sacked Copenhagen.

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 1998 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 eruptions. 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). (Picture shows James Hansen arrested outside White House fence during one of his demonstrations.)

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” This is what happens when politicians take over science and make further funding contingent on obtaining desired results.

The coldest winter half-year in over a century!! It’s climate change all right. More CO2, please!!

I am sitting in my office in Boalsburg, Pa. looking at the bird feeder. The birds are as busy as ever feeding. It is 15 degrees F so they need the food. Some song birds have come, the Robins are bobbing, but where is the spring? Last night the report on the satellite data came out via CFACT and it showed we had the coldest winter half-year (equinox to equinox) in over a century! Only two years ago we had the warmest winter ever. This was well publicized. Will this be equally treated?

The other figure is the maximum snow cover for the season in the Northern Hemisphere. It has been growing in the last 50 years. This year was no exception with total snow well above the trend line.

I take more stock in snow totals than temperature measurements. The freezing point of water doesn’t change. Many temperature stations are placed in airports near the runways. This is fine and good for the pilots that must rely on the micro climate of the runways to make proper take-off and landing calculations, but they do not show the true temperature away from the airport.

I maintain we are more likely to have a new little ice-age than a temperature run-away because of CO2 rise.

The Great lakes had the greatest ice cover in over 35 years:

https://lenbilen.com/2014/03/05/the-great-lakes-ice-cover-91-the-most-in-35-years-a-limerick/

CO2 is not “Carbon Pollution”?

https://lenbilen.com/2014/02/22/co2-the-life-giving-gas-not-carbon-pollution-a-limerick-and-explanation/

The storms and other extreme weather are at new lows!!

https://lenbilen.com/2013/11/18/2013-the-year-with-the-fewest-tornadoes-on-record-and-no-major-hurricanes-making-landfall/

The Antarctic ice cover hit new records two years in a row!!

https://lenbilen.com/2013/10/18/a-new-little-ice-age-is-looming-ten-days-in-new-all-time-record-for-ice-in-the-antartics-a-limerick/

Summarized in “eleven sgns we are entering a new little ice age.

https://lenbilen.com/2013/08/12/eleven-reasons-we-are-entering-a-new-little-ice-age/

The Great Lakes ice cover 91%, the most in 35 years! A Limerick.

The "vortex" has chilled the Great Lakes.
Keep shov'ling those "Climate Change" flakes!
For new records are set
Warmers losing their bet.
It's cold on our yearly "Spring Breaks".


The values for ice coverage on the Great Lakes as of Mar 4:

Lake Superior 95.2889%

Lake Michigan 92.4497%

Lake Huron 95.9375%

Lake Erie 95.8338%

Lake Ontario 31.9431%, the weighted average 91,0% (data from http://coastwatch.glerl.noaa.gov/statistic/ice/ice_stat_2013_2014.txt )

The forecast from NOAA was for 58 to 62% maximum ice-cover for 2014. We are now at the greatest ice cover since 1979, the second highest value since accurate records are kept with a couple of cold nights left to go. The average for the last 40 years is an ice maximum of 51.4%. See fig:

There is still an arctic blast ongoing. Detroit had a new snow record for January. It will take a long time to melt all this ice and snow come spring. It takes 80 calories to melt one gram of ice, but only twenty to heat it from zero to 20 degrees C (68 F) . This may affect the length of the growing season.

Is is climate change, or only unusual weather?

CO2, the life giving gas, not “Carbon Pollution”. A Limerick – and explanation.

CO2, the life-giving gas, not “Carbon Pollution”. A Limerick – and explanation.

What then is this “Carbon Pollution”?

A sinister, evil collusion?

CO2, it is clean,

Makes for growth, makes it green,

A transfer of wealth, a solution.

Let me first state I am serious about this Limerick. It is not even tongue in cheek. I am an engineer with a degree in technical physics and look at the earth as a “living” organism that responds to changes in its environment.

First, the increase in CO2 concentration itself and how nature responds to it.

Second, the effect it has on the earth’s temperature and all its consequences, and finally

Third, the acidification of the oceans.

CO2 concentration has increased from about 280 ppm in pre-industrial times to 400 ppm today, and is increasing at a rate of 2 ppm per year. We are way past the point of no return, 350 ppm which would lead to a temperature catastrophe. (1) But instead, something rather interesting is occurring. The earth is getting greener! (2) This 40 % increase in CO2 the last 250 years has led to a more than 30 % increase in agricultural production all by itself without adding fertilizer or using higher yielding seeds. (3) Thanks to this we can now feed an additional two billion people on earth without starvation. The news are so good, that the per capita food production is increasing, even as the population is increasing. (4)

Look at it this way. The value of basic agricultural products is more than 1.5 trillion dollars worldwide. 30% of that is due to increased CO2. That means that the CO2 emitted is worth 450 billion dollars, spread out over all farmers and ranchers worldwide. This wealth transfer is occurring right now, and knows no national boundary. It is a gift from the developed countries to the rest of the world. Who could be against that?

It turns out that this wealth transfer occurs without global governance. The leaders of the world will not have their say in who gets the wealth transfer, the U.N. bureaucrats will not get their cut, and politicians cannot get a campaign issue since it occurs without their involvement.

So to recapture the initiative they renamed this life-giving gas “Carbon pollution” and managed somehow to get the Supreme Court to agree with the notion that CO2 is a pollutant.

How can that be? They argued that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, which is true. It is second only to water vapor. It is responsible for about 9 degree Celsius rise in global temperature, and if CO2 increases, so does the greenhouse effect and the temperature increases. This in turn leads to more water vapor in the air, and water vapor is the strongest greenhouse gas, so there is a risk of reaching a “tipping point” when we could experience a thermal runaway of the planet. All of this is true, so U.N. and many governments around the world have sponsored studies to model climate change, over a hundred models have been constructed, and they all come up with rather gloomy forecasts. The research is so intense that over 3 billion dollars of government monies are spent yearly on climate change research.

All models show a similar pattern, a fairly steep and more or less linear rise in temperature as CO2 increases. There is only one major thing wrong with them. They do not agree with what is happening to the global temperature. We have now had 224 months (Sep 2015) without any global warming, in fact, the trend is down. (5)

What is wrong with the models? They all assume a passive earth, where there is no negative feedback to the changing environment. It turns out, the earth has a “governor”, and it can be expressed in one word, albedo, which means “whiteness” or how much of the incoming sunlight that gets reflected back into space.

The major albedo changers are the amount of ice around the poles and clouds, but even land use changes such as forests cut down and replaced by agriculture and urbanization.

When there is snow or ice on the ground, more sunlight gets reflected and it gets colder still. Urban heat islands are warmer than the surroundings, airports are warmer than its surroundings. Interestingly, that is where we are placing our new weather stations. (This is great for pilots that have to evaluate take-off and landing conditions, but is less than ideal for climate research. But then again, climate research has moved from the realm of physical science to political science, where different rules do apply.)

The most important albedo changers of the earth are clouds. Without them no land based life would be possible since clouds serve both as rainmakers and temperature stabilizers. If there were no clouds the equilibrium temperature at the equator would be around 140 degrees F.

Over the oceans, in the so called “doldrums” where there are no trade winds, the mornings start with a warm-up, and when the conditions are right a shower or thunderstorm occurs. The ambient temperature is usually between 84 and 88 degrees when this happens. As CO2 concentrations increase thunderstorms occur a few minutes earlier and last a little bit longer, but they are no more severe and as a result the average temperature stays the same. (5)

In desert areas of the world this temperature regulator doesn’t work well, so deserts will receive the full force of temperature increase which is 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit per doubling of CO2 levels.

In the temperate region the temperature increase will be somewhere in between. Dry days will be warmer, cloudy and rainy days will have the same temperature as before, since the regulator starts to function.

The polar region is a special case. None of the models have done a good job at modeling the clouds at the poles, especially the South Pole. (6) They will warm up more than 2 degrees F, how much is a question. In the South average temperatures will rise from – 70 degrees F in the interior all the way to maybe – 63 degrees F, and come closer to freezing in the summer at the northern edges. There may be added snowfall that will expand the ice sheet. The Antarctic ice sheet has set new records since record keeping began, and is at the moment bottoming out at 30% more ice than the 30 year average. (7)

The North Pole region is even more complicated since it is partially land, partially ocean. The oceanic ice cap has been shrinking at a fairly constant rate the last 30 years, but last year it broke the trend and grew back to break the trend line. The winter snow cap has remained at about the same level year to year with a slightly positive trend line, this year being no exception. So, why is the snow cover growing slightly, but ice cover shrinking? The common explanation has been global warming, but the ice cover kept shrinking even as the temperature increase leveled off. There are two possible explanations: Warming oceans and changes in pollution. The North Atlantic Oscillation has been mostly positive (warmer) since 1970 and has only recently turned negative, so that is certainly part of the cause of the shrinking of the icecap, but another candidate is even more likely: Carbon Pollution. With that I do not mean CO2, but good old soot, spewing out from the smokestacks of power plants in China. 45% of all coal burned is burned in China, often low grade lignite with no scrubbers. The air in Beijing is toxic to humans more days than not. Some of that soot finds its way to the arctic and settles on the ice, changing its albedo, and the sun has a chance to melt the ice more efficiently. This occurs mostly in the months of August and September when the Sun is at a low angle anyway, so the changing of the albedo has very little effect on temperature. The net result of all this is that the temperature in the North Pole region will rise about 3 degrees Fahrenheit for a doubling of the CO2. This will have a very minor effect on the Greenland ice cap since they are nearly always way below freezing anyway (-28 degree C average). The largest effect will happen in August and September in the years when all new snow has melted and the soot from years past is exposed. This happened two years ago with a sudden drop in albedo for the Greenland ice. It will also lead to an increase in the precipitation in the form of snow, so the net result is the glaciers may start growing again if the amount of soot can be reduced.

The conclusion is: The temperature regulator of the earth is working quite well, and the increase in temperature at the poles is welcome as it lessens the temperature gradient between the tropics and the polar regions, which in turn reduces the severity of storms, since they are mostly generated by temperature differences and the different density of warm, humid and dry, cold air. (8) The Polar Bears will do quite well, their numbers have more than doubled in the last 50 years.

What about ocean acidification? As CO2 increases, a lot of it will be absorbed in the oceans, thereby making the oceans more acid. This is true, but CO2 is a very mild acid and has a minor acidic influence. Of much more importance is acid rain. At one time in the 70’s some lakes in Norway had a Ph. of about 4.5, enough to kill most trout fishes. In Sweden it was said they fertilized their rivers and lakes four times as much as tilled soil, leading to significant acidification of both the Baltic and the North Sea. The Baltic Sea is still in danger of total oxygen depletion. By comparison to these dangers CO2 in the ocean is only a very minor disturbance. Clean the rivers and lakes first!

Oh, and one more thing. The sea level rise is a natural phenomenon of tectonic plate movements, the Atlantic Ridge is rising and the Eastern Seaboard is sinking. These movements will continue to occur regardless of the climate.

John Kerry said in Indonesia the other day: “The science is unequivocal, and those who refuse to believe it are simply burying their heads in the sand. We don’t have time for a meeting anywhere of the Flat Earth Society. And in a sense, climate change can now be considered another weapon of mass destruction, perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction. “

The opposite is true, increased levels of CO2 is a major vehicle of wealth distribution.

The increase in temperature is manageable and even desirable in most regions of the world, desert areas and areas prone to flooding being the exception.

In conclusion:

CO2 is a clean gas, necessary for life, and an increase in the amount of CO2 is highly desirable.

The very minor increase in temperature is on balance beneficial, since it leads to a less violent climate, with fewer storms, hurricanes and tornadoes.

The increase in CO2 makes us able to feed another 2 billion people on earth, not to mention additional wildlife.

Ocean acidification is a problem, not so much from CO2, but from sulfuric acid, nitrates and other pollutants. (9).

The increase in precipitation is beneficial, except in areas already prone to flooding. It is especially welcome in arid areas.

On the other hand the great conservationist SARAH PALIN once said: “We’ve got to remind Americans that the effort has got to be even greater today toward conservation because these finite resources that we’re dealing with obviously – once oil is gone it’s gone, once gas is gone, it’s gone. And I think our nation has really become kind of spoiled in that arena.”[Fox News, Hannity’s America, 10/12/08]

Coal, oil, peat, wood and natural gas are our best raw material to sustain life as we know it, and are far to valuable to waste on electricity production, so let us switch electricity production to thorium based nuclear energy (10). Coal can be converted to jet fuel and gasoline, air planes have no alternative fuels.

I welcome constructive comments. Tell me where I am going wrong. I have done my very best to look at what is really happening to the earth and from there draw conclusions, rather than rely on climate models.

Notes:

(1). This is a message from 1010global.org. Their aim was to reduce carbon emissions by 10% in 2010.

A religious message from 1010global.org. And a Limerick

(2). The earth is getting greener! https://lenbilen.com/2013/03/19/co2-the-solution-to-climate-change/

(3).

(4).

(5). Reality versus climate models.(6) Projected cloud cover for various climate models versus reality.

(7)

(8).

(9).

Feb 2005 ocean map

The oceans have a Ph slightly above 8 except in the area of the Northern Pacific ocean which gets acid rain from China and their dirty coal plants. The CO2 level is more uniformly distributed, and therefore ocean acidification is due nearly exclusively from insufficient scrubbing of Sulphur compounds, not CO2.

Here is a chart of Ph values

Notice that every interger increase means a factor of 10 less acidic (or basic). Acid rain is tthen 10000 times more acid than sea water, totally dwarfing the effect of CO2.

(10). https://lenbilen.com/2012/02/15/nuclear-power-and-earthquakes-how-to-make-it-safer-and-better/

Eleven reasons to switch to Thorium based Nuclear Power generation.

Eleven more reasons to switch to Thorium as Nuclear fuel.

Nuclear Power. Why we chose Uranium over Thorium and ended up in this mess. Time to clean up.

Energy from Thorium. Save 500 Million from the Budget now!

Update Aug 27:

There is a new book out:

About Face! Why the World Needs More Carbon Dioxide is easy reading from two scientists and an economist. About Face! is the product of two scientists and an economist. The scientists are Madhav Khandekar in Canada and Cliff Ollier in Australia, plus economist Arthur Middleton Hughes in the USA.

It will change your understanding of climate science and explain how we can save millions of lives and billions of dollars per year.

Available on Amazon here

A religious message from 1010global.org. And a Limerick

An inconvenient spoof?

What we have here is a return to the old Baal worship, much condemned in the Bible. Elijah’s epic challenge at the mount of Carmel comes to mind. The Asherah poles (or groves) everywhere on prominent places in the middle East gives an illustration how widespread it was among the Canaanite’s and adopted by the Israelites.
A short excerpt from a sermon by pastor John Mabray of Rivermont Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Lynchburg, Va. explains it like this:
Ritualistic Baal worship looked like this: Adults would gather around the altar of Baal. Infants would then be burned alive as a sacrificial offering to the deity. Amid horrific screams and the stench of charred human flesh, congregants – men and women alike – would engage in bisexual orgies. The ritual of convenience was intended to produce economic prosperity by prompting Baal to bring rain for the fertility of “mother earth.”
The natural consequences of such behavior – pregnancy and childbirth – and the associated financial burdens of “unplanned parenthood” were easily offset. One could either choose to engage in homosexual conduct or – with child sacrifice available on demand – could simply take part in another fertility ceremony to “terminate” the unwanted child.
So this is what modern progressives are reduced to. It is an old religion in new clothes, and it has incorporated the environmental movement. Since it is a religion Government has no business regulating it, including “Cap and trade”
The Limerick:
On this little movie I’ll hold my applause,
exploding of children just for “a good cause”,
for it lowers the bar,
have we now sunk this far?
It’s freedom of speech, the establishment clause.

Beef, what’s for climate; Is cattle herding the missing link in restoring the balance of nature?

Beef, what’s for climate; Is cattle herding the missing link in restoring the balance of nature?
We live in an increasingly complex world where it seems everything is going in the wrong direction leading to an inevitable cataclysmic catastrophe. Unless of course we give all power over to the politicians who will through regulation and targeted taxation lead us right. Carbon Dioxide levels are rising, and everybody knows by now that it is the second most important green-house gas, next only to water vapor. Theory has it, as CO2 increases, so will temperatures, and since air can hold 7% more water vapor for every 1 degree increase Celsius, there is a gain in the system of a factor of 3 or more according to IPCC (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). So if we double the amount of CO2 we could expect a warming of the earth of between 3 and 6 degrees, warm enough to make large parts of the earth uninhabitable.

This theory seemed to hold true between the years 1970 and 1997. Since then there has been no increase in global temperatures, but CO2 levels have increased a further 8% making the correlation between CO2 levels and temperature more and more implausible.
This does not mean we have no reason for worry. Large land areas are turning into unproductive wilderness, mostly in the 10-40 Corridor which is where the bulk of the world’s population lives. There simply is not enough water to make these areas productive again. When an area is opened up for agriculture from forestation, average temperature rises up to one degree Celsius. When an area is turned from grassland to wasteland, temperatures rise. These are the areas where all recent temperature increases have occurred. The ice is growing in the Antarctica; the snowpack is growing in the Northern hemisphere. The summer ice in the Arctic is diminishing, but that is due to air pollution, nearly all coming from China, which alone uses 45% of all coal mined in the world, most of it low grade Lignite. They do put scrubbers on the power plants, but they cost money to operate, so they are often down for “service” and it is cheaper to pay off the inspectors than to scrub.
We learn from the ice core data of Greenland that we are at the last leg before a new glaciation. Enter CO2. Thanks to increased levels of CO2 we have now postponed the new ice age.
Some days ago I was alerted to a video from a TED talk by Dr. Allan Savory in Los Angeles.Please watch it in its entirety.

He draws some interesting conclusions, and claims the only chance we have to restore nature’s balance is to reintroduce the large herds of beasts that once roamed the savannas and steppes. But you cannot just have a bunch of cattle roam free, they have to be herded in an intelligent way to restore the productivity of the land. Let us again open up the Federal lands for cattle and sheep herding in a way that will restore their potential to host more animals, wild and tame and restore the balance of nature.

The cause of Climate Change is still up in the air.

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” A. Conan Doyle.

The first Earth Day in Philadelphia 1970, April 22 (the 100 year anniversary of Lenin’s Birth) featured Ira Einhorn (The Unicorn Killer) as master of Ceremonies. The big environmental scare of the 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 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 permafrost 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.

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.

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.

Climate Change is now Global Climate Disruption. A Limerick.

(CNSNews.com, Sep 14 2010) – John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, says that the term “global warming” is “a dangerous misnomer” that should be replaced with “global climate disruption.”

This calls for a Limerick:

First Warming, then Climate Change, now Global Climate Disruption:

John Holdren has seized a political option.,

So when shove comes to push,

He can blame it on Bush,

In case of a major volcanic eruption.