earth day – Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment.

Earth day 2022. It’s all about water in the thirsty American Southwest.

It’s time for the annual earth day

to celebrate Lenin’s old birthday.

Let us plant some more trees

bring the water, yes please.

A Trans-Rocky-Mountain waterway.

The American Southwest is beginning to become desertified. More water is used up than falls in the Colorado River. All water and more is spoken for. The Gila River used to provide about 1.3 Million acre-feet yearly to Arizona. It is now all used up, and the aquifers are being depleted. Since 40 million people are dependent on the Colorado River and the Gila river and the population is rapidly growing the only real solution is to bring in more water to the American South-west. It will be expensive and require a lot of power, but the alternative is a depopulation of the American South-west. Something like it did already happen when the rivers Amu Darya and Sur Darya became used for irrigation and the Aral Lake dried up, the rains ended and the land east of the lake became more or less a desert.

Here are two proposals to save the American Southwest, Lake Mead, Lake Powell Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, West Texas, Mexico, South California, Nevada and help Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas with their water shortage and pumped water storage.

The Trans-Rocky-Mountain Aqueduct will save Lake Powell and Lake Mead, and rejuvenate the American South-west.

The TransContinental Aqueduct. A realistic way to save Lake Mead and reverse the desertification of the American SouthWest.

Together they will double the amount of water provided to the American Southwest and more than triple the amount of pumped storage capacity for the whole nation. When we shift from gas and diesel to electric vehicles the pumped storage capacity must be increased, or the extra electricity must still be provided by fossil fuels. Solar and wind power requires pumped storage to reduce the strain on the electric grid, when the cars need to be re-charged at lunch and dinner time.

Earth day 2020, the 150 year birthday of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, a.k.a. Lenin. A Limerick.

We celebrate Lenin’s old birth day

in what is now renamed the Earth Day.

It’s a globalist plot;

it’s the climate change: Not!

It’s capitalism besmirch day.

When I came to the U.S. as a green card immigrant from a beautiful, clean Sweden in the spring of 1968 I was horrified at what I found. In Sweden they were worried about the fact that some lakes were fertilized four times more than the agricultural fields, acid rain killed the trouts in the already acid lakes and seeds laced with Mercury as a preservative killed off most of the eagles and owls. None of this seemed to bother the Americans. Coming in to Rochester in N.Y the stench from the dead fish washing up on the shore of lake Ontario was strong, I read of a river catching on fire in Ohio and the smell of coal burning power plants without scrubbers was bad, almost as bad as in the coal and steel region of Germany. It was also the height of the Vietnam wars, and people were protesting. Many of the protestors were communists at hart, and they also turned to pollution. The aerosol pollution led to a decrease in global temperatures, so the mantra was: The ice age is coming! The worst prediction I read was that the global temperatures would be then degrees Fahrenheit lower by the year 2000! Most predictions were not that wild, but they all pointed down, ice age, here we come! The urge to clean up the pollution grew stronger and the Earth Day movement was formed, but they had to find just the right day to have the first. Since this was to become a global movement they decided on the birthday of Lenin, his 100th, very fitting for a globalist movement. That was 1970 in Philadelphia, featured Ira Einhorn (The Unicorn Killer) as master of Ceremonies.

Now fifty years later the mantra has changed to climate change, specifically carbon pollution and carbon footprint. As the scientists were wrong then, the ice age is coming soon, so they are wrong now. The rise in CO2 causes climate change all right, and it would be really bad unless something else also changes as the CO2 concentration changes. Water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas, much stronger than CO2, and they both add to the greenhouse effect, but only at temperatures below freezing. In the tropics there is 50 times as much water vapor as there is CO2, so the tropics is not affected at all by rising CO2 levels. In the Arctic the situation is quite different. Water vapor is also a condensing gas, and forms clouds in the atmosphere. Clouds cool by day and warm by night, but the effect of cooling by day is much larger than the cooling by night, so clouds act as the major temperature regulator on earth. That is why the temperature was about the same as now when the CO2 level was over 10000 ppm, 25 times as large as now hundreds of millions of years ago. There is zero risk of overheating, there is no “tipping point” on the warm side, the clouds tale care of that. On the other hand we know that because we have too little CO2 in the air we will have a new ice age. When will it come? Not in the next thousand years, in fact, by increasing the CO2 levels we will delay the onset of the next ice age. What will happen at the Poles? There will be less cold in the winters, it will snow more but the summers will be about the same, melting more snow.

As to the corona virus the scientists predictions have so far been way off the mark, which just goes to show that making models before all facts are known produces faulty predictions every time. As Yogi Berra once said: “’It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future’” “… never make predictions – especially about the future”.

Earth day 2019, a Limerick and some thoughts on why we need more CO2

It’s time for the annual Earth Day

to celebrate Lenin’s old birthday.

CO2, it is clean

Makes more food, makes it green.

Rejoice! Let us have a green mirth Day!

We are called to take care of ourselves, be good stewards of the Earth, and strive to leave it a better place than we entered it.

To do a good clean-up job takes a lot of energy. That is true for the whole Eco-system as well as the toilet bowl.

All our energy comes from the Sun in one way or another, except for nuclear energy. If the cosmic radiation changes, or the total energy output from the sun changes, or our polar orbit and attitude changes, all of these factors will lead to climate change. 95 percent of the time the earth is in an ice-age, interrupted by short warm periods. We are now at the bog-building phase of an interglacial period, which means, the next phase is another ice-age.

This warm period is unique since we are experiencing rapidly increasing levels of CO2. Will that cause a rise in temperatures rendering the earth uninhabitable, or will it prolong the warm period, or – will it hasten the arrival of the next ice-age?

According to 75 out of 77 ( the origin of the “97% of all”…. ) Climate Scientists that in the previous 5 years had published multiple, peer reviewed papers, paid for by their respective academic institutions, which in turn was paid for mostly by their governments, claim “The science is settled”, and we will experience a rapid climate change, rendering parts of the world uninhabitable, and a series of other calamities will befall us unless we take strong, immediate action to reduce the output of CO2 from burning fossil fuels.

But there are in excess of 30,000 other scientists that have signed up “Science is by no means settled” and CO2 is not a pollutant, but a life giving gas that is only a minor contributor to the temperature rise. Other factors are at least as important and we should concentrate on real pollution, clean air and clean water.

So, who is right?

The last ice age had lasted for over 50,000 years. The ice stretched over most of North America down to the Finger Lakes. Western Europe down to Mid Germany and extending into Western Siberia were also under heavy ice. For some reason Eastern Siberia and Western Alaska was not under heavy ice. The sea level was about 400 feet lower than today and then suddenly temperatures rose, and after a 300 to 500 years delay C02 levels rose from about 185 ppm, barely sustaining life up to about 280 ppm, after which CO2 levels stabilized and remained in a slight decline until recently.

I grew and went to school in Sweden. At that time the way Sweden exited the Ice age was taught in all schools, the signs from the ice age were everywhere. We learned the exit from the exit could be expressed with the acrostic BYAL, signifying four phases in the deglaciation. Here is the timeline (after the pictures of the Baltic)

10,000 years ago: The Baltic ice lake. Outflow through Oresund, Rapid ice melt, temperature about the same as today, CO2 280 ppm.

9000 years ago: The Yoldia Sea. As ice recedes, salt water enter for a short while until land rises to again form a lake. CO2 280 ppm. Temperatures slightly higher than today.

8000 years ago: The Ancylus lake. The outflow is first through Svea Alv, then as land rose the outflow switched to Oresund. Temperatures were higher than today. CO2 level 280 ppm. River flows at the emptying of the Ice lakes causes formation of “giant kettles”, an example of which is shown in the figure below:

The largest of Brobacka’s “jättegrytor”, with a diameter of 58 feet. This particular giant kettle might have been mostly formed by a stream under the ice cap while the ice was melting.

6000 years ago: Most of the inland ice has now melted, and the Oceans have risen to today’s level, so the Belts and Oresund open up and the Litorina Sea is formed. temperatures are higher than today, CO2 level was 280 ppm.

3500 years ago: The Minoan warming period. Temperatures much warmer than today. Elm, Hazel, Oak and Linden grew way up in the Bothnian bay, today the northern limit is about 250 miles further South. The CO2 level was 280 ppm.

2000 years ago: The Roman warming period. Great times up North. Wine grapes grew in the British Midlands, the Scandinavian population grew rapidly. CO2 level was still 280 ppm.

1500 years ago: Climate is turning colder, migrations out of the Nordic and Germanic countries. Harvest failures. CO2 level was constant at 280 ppm.

1200 years ago: Rapid depopulation, Bubonic Plague, failed harvests, mass starvation, climate turning much colder. CO2 level 280 ppm.

1000 years ago: Medieval warming period. Climate about one degree warmer than today. Leif Ericson sails to America. Cheese farms established on Greenland. CO2 level 280 ppm.

500 years ago: Little Ice age. Climate much colder than today. The Swedish army, including artillery crosses the Belts on ice in 1658. CO2 level 280 ppm.

Why am I going through all this? All these climate changes occurred with the CO2 level being constant at 280 ppm. The land in Northern Sweden is still recovering from the Ice age, and land is still rising out of the ocean at the rate of up to three feet per century. The temperature is still recovering from the little ice age, but is not yet back to the Medieval Warming period, much less the Roman warming period, not to mention the Minoan temperature optimum. The CO2 level has risen to 405 ppm, but CO2 is only a minor player in affecting Climate change.

As I have mentioned in a previous blog: https://lenbilen.com/2017/04/10/thanks-to-clouds-the-temperature-governor-is-alive-and-well-on-planet-earth/ clouds are the temperature regulators, and it will do us well to concentrate on the real threats to our earth on Earth Day, such as clean air (CO2 is clean air) and clean water.

When you celebrate Earth Day 2019 look up to the sky. If there are any clouds, especially cumulus clouds, look how they form, change and dissipate, and marvel that they are the regulators of the climate so we never have to worry about a thermal runaway, no matter what level of CO2. We will have another ice age though, but more CO2 will delay its onset.

When the real cool-down occurs, we will have to produce a lot more energy than now, otherwise we will all be doomed. Increased CO2 levels only slows town the onset of the next ice age. In addition there is not enough free carbon left in the world to carry us through. Only Thorium based nuclear energy ( https://lenbilen.com/2017/07/14/twenty-two-reasons-to-rapidly-develop-thorium-based-nuclear-power-generation/ )

or maybe fusion energy will have a chance of carrying us through.

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

It’s time for the annual Earth day

to celebrate Lenin’s old birthday.

Less “carbon pollution”

is not the solution.

Plant trees and clean up! Ban all hairspray!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FDA and EPA gone mad.

Earth day 2015. A Limerick.

It’s time for the annual Earth day

to celebrate Lenin’s old birthday.

Less “carbon pollution”

is not the solution.

Plant trees and clean up! Don’t call mayday.

We are called to be good stewards of the Earth, and strive to leave it a better place than we entered it.

To do a good cleanup job takes energy. That is true for the whole Eco-system as well as the toilet bowl.

All our energy comes from the Sun in one way or another, except for nuclear energy. If the cosmic radiation changes, the total energy output from the sun changes or our polar orbit changes, all of these factors will lead to climate change. The normal state for the earth is an ice-age, interrupted by shorter warm periods. We are now at the bog-building phase of an interglacial period, which means, the next phase is another ice-age. This warm period is unique since we are experiencing rapidly increasing levels of CO2. Will that cause a rise in temperatures rendering the earth uninhabitable, or will it prolong the warm period, or -will it hasten the arrival of the next ice-age?

The political class has made the decision increasing CO2 is bad, leading to thermal runaway and they base this on climate models that assumes a logarithmic response of the effect of rising CO2 levels, coupled with a gain, since absolute humidity also rises with temperature, and since water vapor is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, there must be a strong gain in the system. In so doing they are the true Climate Change Deniers, since they deny the strong negative feedback from changing clouds and thunderstorms.

There is a group of people that deny Climate Change has anything to do with human activity, and all that happens is what has always been: Climate changes over time. This too is too simplistic.

The third group, Climate Change Scientists, try to observe what is really going on apart from models, to get a grip on which way Climate is changing. We now have enough data that a scientific approach can be taken by looking at data.

1. The Antarctic ice-sheet is at new record levels for this time of the year, 28th 2015 Daily Record for the Antarctic – 1.8 million square kilometers above the 1981-2010 mean.

2. The arctic ice-mass is no longer shrinking, but stabilizing.

The trend line has been broken since 2011, and ice mass is increasing again (for now). Ice mass is a lagging indicator, so a better concurrent indicator is point 4.

3. The Greenland ice-mass has stopped shrinking, and is now increasing.

This chart needs some explanation. The total ice mass of Greenland is about 2.85 million Gt. The changes so far this season is an accumulation of about 500 Gt. This will partially melt away during summer, and some ice will be lost through calving, so the net loss of ice has been about 200 Gt per year, at which rate all the ice might be lost in 14250 years. 2014 was the first year in a long time Greenland added ice, and the 2015 season is following the same pattern.

4. The Arctic snow-cap maximum is again increasing, and has been increasing since 1990.

But that is not really the story. The snow-cap is increasing earlier. Here is the November snow-cap:

This chart shows an increase so the snow comes earlier and earlier.

We can also see the snow is melting faster and faster. Why is that. Which brings us to point

5. The changing albedo of the ice and snow cap.

6. Ten years since a major hurricane hits the Eastern United States, a new record.

7. Global hurricane, typhoon, tropical cyclone activity is trending down.

8. Global droughts are diminishing.

Fraction of the global land in D0 (abnormally dry), D1 (moderate), D2 (severe), D3 (extreme), and D4 (exceptional) drought condition (Data: Standardized Precipitation Index data derived from MERRA-Land).

As we can see droughts are not increasing, there is a slight decrease in worldwide droughts over time.

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.