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

Earth Day 2024. This year’s feature: Microplastics are bad (and they are). A Limerick.

We celebrate Lenin’s old birth day

in what is renamed the new Earth Day.

This years theme; it is said

microplastics are bad

in water and food in the worst way.

When I came to the U.S. as a resident alien 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 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 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 ten 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 four 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 warming by night, so clouds act as the major temperature regulator on earth. That is why the tropical temperature was about the same in the tropics 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 take 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? They will be less cold in the winters, it will snow more but the summers will be about the same, held largely at the melting point of water.

The last 44 years we have good satellite data of the temperature rise, CO2 rise, all pollutants , cloud cover and the like, so we can examine the earth how it has responded to the rising CO2 levels, and the results are very surprising: CO2 rise contributes less than 5% of the increase is due to the CO2 rise, nearly all the changes are due to water effects, either as increased water vapor and decreasing clouds. Here are the results:

Effect from rising CO2: 0.04C or 0.19 W/m2; 4,66% of total

Effect from increasing water vapor: 0.37 C or 1.75 W/m2; 42.9% of total

Effect from rising Methane: 0.036 C or 0.17 W/m2, 4.17% of total

Effect from rising N2O: 0.0065 C or 0.031 W/m2 0.8% of total

Effect from rising Ozone: 0.0034C or 0.016 W/m2 0.4% of total

Effect from rising HFCs : 0.0015 C or 0.007 W/m2 0.2% of total

Effect from decreasing cloud cover: 0.39 C or 1.89 W/m2. 46.4 % of total

Warming of the Northern Arctic: 0.1 C. or 0.475 W/m2;11.6% of total

Cooling from pollution aerosols: 0.1 C or 0.475W/m2; – 11.6% of total

Temperature increase from greening of the earth 0.0063C or 0.030 W/m2; 0.7% of total

Temperature decrease from areas of desertification 0.0015C 0.007 W/m2; 0.2% of total

TOTAL TEMPERATURE CHANGE 1980 to 2022: 0.8522 C or 4.077 W/m2

If this is hard to believe, check it from my blog entry:It’s water and clouds causing climate change, CO2 is only a minor contributor, and so is Methane. Reality check from 42 years of satellite data.

While I realize that increasing CO2 levels contribute to climate change, it is on balance positive, since the earth is increasingly fertilized by increasing CO2 In fact the earth has been more than 15% greener since industrial age by increasing CO2 alone, enabling us to feed 2 billion more people without increasing fossil fuel generated fertilizer. The extra greening means more clouds generating aerosols, which is good except where it already rains too much.

Where we have a problem is with the arid areas, where much water is drawn from the aquifers, the best clean water there is. When the aquifers are deleted desertification sets in. This has already happened in Kazakhstan, where lake Aral disappeared as soon as the Amu- and Syr-darja rivers were siphoned off to produce cotton. This worked fine for about ten years, then the lake dried up, the rains stopped and the rivers dried up. China has built 12 dams in the Mekong river, so now the once reliable yearly floodings stopped and the harvest in the lowlands are disrupted. The once reliable Nile river is a shadow of its former self, all the silt stays above the Aswan Dam rather than fertilizing the lower Nile. The U.S. southwest aquifers are being drawn down and will no longer produce anywhere near as much water as they used to. The whole American Southwest is slowly undergoing desertification. We need to rethink our use of water rather than waste trillions of dollars on CO2 control, which will solve only 5% of the problem.

The other problem with water is waste quality. A most pressing problem is micro plastics. Some of it comes from tire wear. Electric cars are heavier than gasoline cars, leading to more tire wear. Another problem is with water sanitation, Microplastics does not accumulate well in silt,neither does it break down easily. Another problem is antibiotics excreting in the urine of both people and animals, birth control and other medications excreted through urine will act as harmful pollutants,

We have our work cut out for us. There are solutions to all of these problems, but they all require energy, either as heat or electricity. The only possible solution is nuclear power, specifically molten salt nuclear power. Nuclear power can be generated from U233, U 235 and Plutonium 239. These are the available options. We have already used up most of the U 235, which is less than 0.7 percent of the available Uranium. Small modular Reactors can use Thorium, spent Nuclear fuel and depleted Uranium for fuel, all with using special mixtures to sustain a generation. One specially exciting option is to use a molten salt generator as a heat source and incinerate plastics and other trash without supplying Oxygen. That will produce hot gas that will be used for electricity generation, and the resulting Carbon can be made in the form of Graphene.

These are exciting times. We have the solutions ready to clean up the earth by going nuclear with SMRs of many types. They will lessen the mining demands on the earth significantly as they operate under atmospheric pressure. In addition they will make us less dependent on expanding the national grid, the power can be generated where it is used. I could go on, but here are The many cases why Thorium Nuclear Power is the only realistic solution to the world’s energy problems.

Thorium is the long time solution. In the short time we should deplete the nuclear Plutonium waste as fast as possible.

Hot enough? Hillary Clinton is full of hot air. A Limerick.

This tweet from the twice defeated presidential candidate and 2016 election denier Hillary Clinton caught my attention for its many factual errors. This is the forwarded tweet:

It begins with factual recording from the Washington Post. It is a record string of very hot days in Phoenix. In fact, today is the 25th day of over 110F, and continuing.

The next headline is from CNN tells of the heat wave all over the south, where nearly every community in the area shows one heat record after another. The count is more than twice as high now. The heat wave continues. About the only record not broken is the maximum temperature in Death Valley, still standing at 134°F (57°C) on July 10, 1913.

Not to be outdone, MSNBC chimes in with “We are in uncharted territory”, which is true since worldwide satellite measurements didn’t start until 1979. So it isn’t very surprising that new records will be set. The time frame is only 44 years.

But Forbes magazine takes the cake: The once serious business publication states that July 4 was the hottest day in over 100,000 years! The real temperature after the little ice age isn’t even back to the medieval warm period, much less the Roman warm period, even less than the Minoan warming

Even more interesting is the temperature in the Holocene Climate optimum:

From this chart we can see, even as there were no global measurements taken it was warmer during 8000 of the last 10,000 years, at least according to the Greenland Ice Cores.

But back to the Hillary tweet: CBS claimed that Earth just had the hottest June on record. What they forgot to mention was “since worldwide satellite records began in 1979”

This calls for a Limerick

The Climate change pace in this plot

shows voting next fall means a lot.

No original sin

if Republicans win

since temperatures will be less hot.

From Wattsupwiththat.com comes this interesting plot: (Thanks, David Middleton)

From this we can see that the global temperature changes according to hadcrut4gl are:

During the presidency of George H W Bush temperatures fell by 0.20 C/decade

During the presidency of Bill Clinton temperatures rose by 0.26 C/decade

During the presidency of George W Bush temperatures fell by 0.04 C/decade

During the presidency of Barack H Obama temperatures rose by 0.42 C/decade

So far , during the Presidency of Donald J Trump global temperatures have receded 0.24 C.

President Donald J Trump ended his presidency with a temperature decline of 0.37C/decade.

So far, during Joe Biden ‘s presidency temperatures are up 0.18C, and that was before the latest heatwave.

It seems the hot air is coming from Democrats, and with Republicans cooler minds prevail

And a bonus question. During the 1930s the number, length and severity of U.S heatwaves was much worse. Who was president for most of that time?

Oh and by the way, in the 1930s the CO2 level was around 300 ppm. It is now 418.4 ppm or 40% higher.

The train-wreck in Ohio. A pollution history and the content of the railroad tank cars. A Limerick.

A TRAIN-WRECK AT EAST PALESTINE.

THE GOVERNMENT SAYS: ALL IS FINE

NO DISASTER RELIEF.

THERE’S NO NEED TO DEBRIEF.

“THEY VOTED FOR TRUMP: HOLD THE LINE.”

In 1868, 1883, 1887, 1912, 1922, 1936, 1941, 1948 and 1952 the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio caught fire. Here is a picture of the 1948 fire.

( Cleveland Press Collection, Cleveland State University Library)

The river caught fire a few more times, but nobody cared until 1969, the last time it happened. I remember in 1965 hearing thee song ‘Pollution’ by Tom Lehrer

In the second World War the oil refineries dumped the unwanted products from the refining process in the Delaware River, and things got so bad it stripped the protective paint from the hulls of ships coming in to the Philadelphia harbor.

We tend to forget how bad things were before there were any substantial environmental regulations. Factories solved their exhaust problems by building higher chimneys, spreading the poison over a larger area.

The content of the derailed tank cars.

There were five tank cars in the derailed part containing Vinyl Chloride. Vinyl Chloride is a gas, stored under pressure ( 3,5 atmospheres at room temperature). When the cars derailed, there was fire from burning and Norfolk Southern were afraid the cars would overheat and explode, so they drained them and dumped the vinyl chloride in a trench and set fire to it rather than hosing down the cars with water to lower the temperature. Vinyl Chloride when burning produces hydrochloride and carbon monoxide. Combined with water vapor it produces hydrochloric acid, which causes instant emphysema among other things. In addition it is a known carcinogen.

One tank car contained Ethylene Glycol Mono-butane Ether. It is a known health hazard but not a carcinogen as far as I know.

One car contained Ethylhexyl, Acrylate and the tank was breached and the content spilled. There should be no particular health hazard from this tank car.

One car contains Isobutylene, a flammable gas. Most of it is still in than car.

One tank car contained ButylAcrylate and al its content was spilled on the ground. It is now being leached into the soil and has now been detected in the Ohio river just upstream from Cincinnati. It is not particularly toxic in the small concentration moving down the Ohio River, but yet.

And there was to tank cars containing benzene, a known carcinogen, but none of the benzene has leaked out.

The question is:What are the long term effects of this major spill and fire. Time will tell. It sometimes takes decades for cancer and respiratory diseases to develop.

Oh, and by the way, it is simpler, safer, much cheaper and more efficient to use pipelines. With a thousand derailments a year it is a wonder these types of catastrophies do not disrupt the supply chain more than they do.

Finally, a unifying photo from 9/11 memorial.

From kids at the Shanksville crash site

Joe Biden was filled with delight.

He dropped mask with a smile

hugged a girl, all the while

MAGA, Trump, I’ll be back; what a sight!

Yes, this was the unifying photo-op of the year! Joe Biden is embracing the girl with a Trump cap. Next to her is a girl with Make America Great Again Cap. Right in front of Joe is a girl with an Americorn t-shirt. And to the right is a happy boy with a tough looking Donald Trump t-shirt that says: “I’ll be back” In the upper left corner is a “Q delivers” box. This is the future generation of America!

On this, the 20:th anniversary of September 11, let us remember the cross at Calvary, the cross at Ground Zero, and the cross we all have to bear after the surrender in Afghanistan

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Psalm 14:1)

https://lenbilen.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ground_zero_cross.jpg

The original location where the iron cross was found.

For Muslims, atheists and humanists the cross is an offense since it is to them the stench of death. But to us who believe it is the symbol of redemption and new and eternal life in Christ. If they were not pricked in their hearts when they see the cross they would not be offended.

Christ died on the cross at Ground Zero.

We have only one risen hero.

But the fools reject grace,

stay condemned, cannot face

The truth in The Cross at Ground Zero.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. (St. John 3:16-17)

https://lenbilen.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/iron-cross.jpg

An intermediate location for the cross

https://lenbilen.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/cross.jpg

The final place for the Iron cross near the 9/11 museum.

In 2015, the guest host on OAN shared these thoughts on Aug 28, in preparation for 9/11.

These were the final words of Governor Sarah Palin after a successful week anchoring “On Point” with the One America News.

Governor Palin is a true servant. Her parents, Chuck and Sally Heath, worked at the stinky Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island, New York in January and February 2002 as part of a federal Department of Agriculture program.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Heath said he and his wife had worked to keep sea gulls and rats from scavenging the human remains in the debris. Mr. Heath, then 70, a retired science teacher, and Mrs. Heath, then 68, a retired secretary, had worked for the Agriculture Department for 15 years. They traveled around the world dealing with “nuisance” animals like rats and bears.

“A lot of people just didn’t like the job, it was kind of a morbid thing,” he said of the work at the landfill. “But I thought it was part of history.”

This is the attitude of a servant.

After the 9/11 attack the country got together to rebuild the country again. Many quoted Isaiah 9:10 “The bricks have fallen down,
but we will rebuild with dressed stone;
the fig trees have been felled,
but we will replace them with cedars.”

Isaiah 9:10 has been quoted by politicians as a message of resilience and hope. This message was scribbled by President Obama in 2012 on a building near Ground Zero. Other Politicians have quoted Isaiah 9:10. John Edwards quoted it directly on the third anniversary of 9/11, not realizing that the message is not one of hope, but of utter arrogance. Today’s message by President Biden is “Build back better”, same message, one of utter arrogance. It is clear from the context:

What comes before the message that came down on Israel? Of course verse 6 and 7:

Child born: Shows the humanity of Christ

Son given, shows the deity of Christ

It also shows the unity of God, Father, Prince of Peace, Wonderful Counselor, three aspects of God, three in one, the triune God, the Trinity.

https://lenbilen.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/slide1091.jpg

This message brings us full circle back to Jesus Christ, the one who died at the original Ground Zero, but rose again. There will be no “build back better” unless there is a revival, a return to God, a great awakening. This present government has by its actions shown that American Exceptionalism is dead, we will do better by abandoning our citizens and allies and negotiate with terrorists who will be fully installed in Afghanistan on 9/11. We will from now on be under Global Governance.

The aim of China is to be the dominant force in the world by 2030. Recent events have made them speed up the time table by at least 5 years after successfully interfering in the last election by openly favoring Joe Biden. The greatest fear of the Chinese Government are the 300 million or so closet Christians, a number that just keeps growing. The other fastest growing churches are the Christians in Iran and Afghanistan. In Myanmar Christians are now openly persecuted and some are killed, in Pakistan many are persecuted for blasphemy. There are now more Christian martyrs than ever in history, and even our own State Department considers evangelical Christians our greatest threat, greater than Taliban.

Pray for a worldwide revival of God’s people and an even greater awakening of Biblical Proportion!

Climate change: IPCC report is ‘code red for humanity’. Not so. The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest in many years, and the Arctic ice sheet and Greenland ice are doing quite well, thank you. A Limerick.

Antarctic’s and Greenland’s ice grow

the cool-down is starting to show

The new climate change fear

is that cooling is near

but you’d be the last one to know.

The cooling down in the Antarctic has led to the largest ice sheet in many years for this day. Check the chart: In only four years out of the last 43 has there been more ice.

So, how are the northern polar region shaping up?

The ice in the Arctic will stay

In Greenland it snowed every day

New white snow, what a sight!

Reflects back all the light

No climate change here, this i say.

Back in 2012 the Greenland ice sheet had an unprecedented melt, and the prediction was that all the Arctic ice would be melted in September of 2015, having reached the Climate tipping point from which there is no return to a normal climate unless we reorganized the whole planet into a new totalitarian global governance society.

Well, the tipping point didn’t happen, so hopefully global governance will not happen either, even though many are trying.

These are the latest charts for arctic temperatures, ice and snow for August 26:

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is meant_2021sat.png

While still below average, it is the most ice for this day in the last ten years.

The ice-pack on Greenland has been melting much less than normal during the melting season

And yesterday’s snowfall over Greenland

Remember, H2O is a condensing gas, when cooled off it condenses into clouds. Clouds sometimes gives rain, and without rain life on land will cease to exist. In the Arctic, instead of rain it snows all times of the year, especially in Greenland. It rains for a month on the coast, but over 2000 feet it is all snow all the time when there is precipitation.

Clouds cool by day and warm by night, a one percent difference in cloud cover means more than the increase in CO2.

The only place where cloud cooling doesn’t work is in deserts. There is an Arab proverb: “All sunshine makes a desert.” The climate change danger is not more CO2, but making more deserts. The American South-west is in danger of being “desertified” unless we restore the fragile water balance in the region. To solve the problem I am proposing a Transcontinental Aqueduct, from the Mississippi river to the Colorado river, using a lot of power, but also producing a lot of peak power and hydro-power storage facilities on the way, and i so doing tripling tht hydro-power ccapacity of the whole nation.

Climate change: IPCC report is ‘code red for humanity’. Not so fast. The Arctic ice sheet and Greenland ice is doing quite well, thank you. A Limerick.

The ice in the Arctic will stay

In Greenland it snowed every day

New white snow, what a sight!

Reflects back all the light

No climate change here, this i say.

Back in 2012 the Greenland ice sheet had an unprecedented melt, and the prediction was that all the Arctic ice would be melted in September of 2015, having reached the Climate tipping point from which there is no return to a normal climate unless we reorganized society into a more totalitarian global governance.

Well, the tipping point didn’t happen, so hopefully global governance will not happen either, even though many are trying.

These are the latest charts for arctic temperatures, ice and snow for August 15:

The ice-pack on Greenland has been melting much less than normal during the melting season

And yesterday’s snowfall over Greenland

Remember, H2O is a condensing gas, when cooled off it condenses into clouds.

Clouds cool by day and warm by night, a one percent difference in cloud cover means more than the increase in CO2.

The only place this doesn’t work is in deserts, if no clouds form Forget CO2, but let us not make any more deserts. The American South-west is in danger of being “desertified” unless we restore the fragile water balance in the region.

Lake Oroville going dry, but why?

Once full was the Oroville Lake.

Now empty. How much does it take?

No pumped power galore

for the windmills to store.

Blame Climate change, not your mistake.

In 2016 then Governor Jerry Brown declared that California was in a permanent state of drought, so they might as well atart to prepare for water rationing.

The Lake Oroville Dam had a large crack in its spillway, and it was part of the regular maintenance to fix it, but since they were in a permanent drought the lake would never again be full, so there was no need, and certainly no hurry to fix it. Then in 1917 it started to rain again, the lake started to overflow, and instead of a less than 20 million maintenance task it became an over 1 Billion dollar rescue effort with helicopters trying to dump stones in the eroded parts of the dam

That was in early 2017. then in early 2019 it was full again, and with proper conservation measures there was enough water for 5 to 7 years with normal rainfalls from then on, so not to worry. Look where the lake levels are now:

Lake Oroville water level 8 8 639.67 feet

power. But that is not allSince today’s level is below the intake for hydro-power there will be no power from Oroville dam until spring melting season, thus depraving California about 440 MW of power. But that is not all, it also eliminates Oroville Dam of 117 MW power as a Hydro-power storage “battery” for excess wind power, so more wind turbines will have to be shut off when the wind is blowing since there are no customers for excess power. On the other hand, when the wind is not blowing it will have to be replaced by coal or natural gas, which are in insufficient supply. The future is full of brownouts, and rotating blackouts.

This is how the Oroville Lake looks now:

What is most galling is that of the water released in March of this year, before farmers really started to use water, 91% of the released water went into the San Francisco Bay to save the Delta Smelt, a totally useless fish, but protected. For the moment I can not think of a more inept way to run a water and energy business.

The Arctic ice sheet and Greenland ice is doing quite well, thank you. A Limerick.

The ice in the Arctic will stay

In Greenland it snowed every day

New white snow, what a sight!

Reflects back all the light

No tipping point here, this i say.

Back in 2012 the Greenland ice sheet had an unprecedented melt, and the prediction was that all the Arctic ice would be melted in September of 2015, having reached the Climate tipping point from which there is no return to a normal climate unless we reorganized society into a more totalitarian global governance.

Well, the tipping point didn’t happen, so hopefully global governance will not happen either’ even many are trying.

These are the latest charts for arctic temperatures, ice and snow for Jan 11:

Notice the temperature has been below normal for the first half of the melting season.

The icepack on Greenland has barely started melting during the melting season

Notice the difference between this year and 2012

And yesterday’s snowfall over Greenland

Notice, Greenland only melts at the edges, the ice pack is always frozen

Remember, H2O is a condensing gas, when cooled off it condenses into clouds.

Clouds cool by day and warm by night, a one percent difference in cloud cover means more than the increase in CO2.

The only place this doesn’t work is in deserts. Forget CO2, but let us not make any more deserts.

The greatest climate change crisis is water, not CO2.

The Fear spreads on Capitol Hill

And Climate change fear breaks their will.

AOC: In Ten years

our world disappears!

She acts as a New Green Deal shill.

Quote from Alexandria Occasio-Cortez in January 2019: “Millennials and Gen Z and all these folks that come after us are looking up, and we’re like, ‘The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change, and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?’ ” she said.

I beg to differ.

We live in only one world. As a concerned citizen I realize we have immense environmental challenges before us, with water pollution; from plastics in the ocean, excess fertilizer in the rivers, poison from all kinds of chemicals, including antibiotics, birth control and other medicines flushed down the toilet after going through our bodies, animals fed antibiotics, pest control, weed control and so on. Increasing CO2 is not one of the problems, it will in fact help with erosion control, and allow us to feed more people on less agricultural land with proper management, and require less fertilizer and water to do so. In fact, proper water management is a larger problem, with some rivers no longer even reaching the ocean. All water is already spoken for, especially in the 10 to 40 degrees latitude, where most people live and want to live.

But before w go into that, allow me to be somewhat technical and give the background to why I know we will never experience the thermal runaway they are so afraid of.

Many years ago I worked at Hewlett Packard on an Atomic Absorption Detector. It was a huge technical success but a commercial failure, as it was too expensive to use for routine applications. However it found a niche and became the detector of choice when dismantling the huge nerve gas stockpiles remaining from the cold war. I was charged with doing the spectrum analysis and produce the final data from the elements. One day two salesmen came and tried to sell us a patented device that could identify up to 21 different elements with one analysis. They had a detector that divided the visual band into 21 parts, and bingo, with proper, not yet “fully developed” software you could now analyze up to 21 elements with one gas chromatography analysis. What could be better? We could only analyze correctly four or five elements simultaneously. It turns out the elements are absorbing in the same wavelength bands, scientifically speaking they are not orthogonal, so software massaging can only go so far. It turned out that the promised new detector was inferior to what we already had and could only quantify three or 4 elements at the most.

In the atmosphere the two most important greenhouse gases are water vapor and CO2 with methane a distant third. Water vapor is much more of a greenhouse gas everywhere except near the tropopause, high above the high clouds and around the poles when the temperature is below 0 F, way below freezing. A chart shows the relationship between CO2 and water vapor:

Image result for h20 and co2 as greenhouse gases

Source: http://notrickszone.com/2017/07/31/new-paper-co2-has-negligible-influence-on-earths-temperature/

Even in Barrow, Alaska (renamed Utqiaġvik since 2016), water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas. Only around the South Pole (And North Pole) does CO2 dominate (but only in the winter).

All Climate models take this into account, and that is why they all predict that the major temperature increase will occur in the polar regions with melting icecaps and other dire consequences. But they also predict a uniform temperature rise from the increased forcing from CO2 and the additional water vapor resulting from the increased temperature.

This is wrong on two accounts. First, CO2 and H2O gas are not orthogonal, that means they both absorb in the same frequency bands. There are three bands where CO2 absorbs more than H2O in the far infrared band, but other than that H2O is the main absorber. If H2O is 80 times as common as CO2 as it is around the equator, water vapor is still the dominant absorber, and the amount of CO2 is irrelevant.

Secondly, gases cannot absorb more than 100% of the energy available in any given energy wavelength band! So if H2O did absorb 80% of the energy and CO2 absorbed 50%, the sum is not 130%, only 90%. (0.8 + 0.5×0,2 or 0.5 + 0.8×0.5). In this example CO2 only adds one quarter of what the models predict.

How do I know this is true? Lucky for us we can measure what increasing CO2 in the atmosphere has already accomplished. For a model to have credibility it must be tested with measurements, and pass the test. There is important evidence suggesting the basic premise is wrong. All greenhouse gases work by affecting the lapse rate in the tropics. They thus create a “hot spot” in the tropical troposphere. The theorized “hot spot” is shown in the early IPCC publications. (Fig A)

Fig. B shows observations. The hot-spot is not there. If the hot-spot is not there, the models must be wrong. So what is wrong with the models? This was reported in 2008 and the models still assume the additive nature of greenhouse gases, even to the point when more than 100% of the energy in a given band is absorbed.

How about Methane? Do not worry, it absorbs nearly exclusively in the same bands as water vapor and has no measurable influence on the climate.

But it will get warmer at the poles. That will cause melting of the ice-caps? Not so fast. When temperature rises the atmosphere can hold more water vapor, so it will snow more at higher latitudes. While winter temperatures will be higher with more snowfall, this will lower the summer temperatures until the extra snow has melted. And that is what is happening in the Arctics

As we can see from this picture, the winters were about 5 degrees warmer, but starting from late May through early August temperatures were lower. It takes time to melt all the extra snow that fell because of the warmer winter air, able to contain more ice crystals.

No, the real climate crisis is water, not enough of it in the areas of the world where people want to live, and nothing in the U.S. is more precarious than the American southwest, or the Colorado river basin.

Many years ago the city of Denver had a problem. The land east of the Rocky mountains is dry, rain is sparse and the aquifers were being depleted. The city was growing rapidly, still small by today’s standard, but they were thinking big and looked for a really good water supply. There was one fairly nearby: the Colorado river. There was only one small problem, it was on the other side of the continental divide. They were building a railroad tunnel under the continental divide anyway, so for a few million dollars extra they added a water tunnel, with a capacity of 36 m3/s of water flow, and it has been draining water from the Colorado River basin since 1936.

As an engineering feat it was quite impressive, and the population west of the Rocky Mountains was minuscule. This has changed and the demand for water in the Southwest is enormous and increasing. Las Vegas alone is now about the same size as the City of Denver. (The Denver Region is about 5.5 million)

Let us take a look at the Colorado River watershed:

Beside the Moffet tunnel that diverts Colorado River basin water to Denver and Colorado springs, Water is diverted to Salt Lake City, the upper Rio Grande in New Mexico, and the big one, water is diverted to Los Angeles and the lower Imperial Valley in California

Much of the water from the Colorado River basin is used for agricultural purposes. This is a picture of the irrigation in the lower Imperial valley and Mexico.

This is important: The Colorado River water is all spoken for. It never reaches the Gulf of California. Once upon a time there was a good shrimp harvest at the mouth of the Colorado River. No more.

There is one state left, Arizona. It is one of the fastest growing states in the U.S

All their water has to be drawn from the Colorado River basin.

So, how is the water situation in the South-west? Right now they are in the most severe drought since 2016. Here is the map:

But there is plenty of water in Lake Mead, right? Take a look:

The water level is 155 feet below full pool. Lowest level since 2016

And the descent is much faster than in 2016.

But the major feeder into Lake Mead is the output from Lake Powell. How does that look today?

Oops: The water level is as of May 25 43 feet lower than in 2020, and the snow-pack of not yet melted snow is almost non- existent.

The extreme drought is nearly all over the South West. Mandatory water restrictions for the whole Colorado River basin seem inevitable this summer and for the foreseeable future. As long as people love to move to the U.S. Southwest, something must be done.

Yes, water is the critical resource we need to manage. It must be priority together with roads and bridges. The Eastern states has excess water. So let us build a large number of dams up the Missouri and Platte rivers and pump water up to Denver and Colorado Springs, and maybe even reverse the Moffet tunnel to supply the Colorado River basin with extra water.

This will take a lot of electrical energy. As long as we depend on fossil fuels to provide the electricity this is futile. We have to find another source to provide electricity.

These are my suggestions

Do not worry about increasing CO2 levels. The major temperature stabilizer is clouds, and they will keep the earth from overheating by reflecting back into space a large amount of incoming solar radiation. Always did, and always will, even when the CO2 concentration was more than 10000 ppm millions of years ago. Ice ages will still come, and this is the next major climate change, maybe 10000 years from now, probably less.
Clean up rivers, lakes and oceans from pollution. This is a priority.
Limit Wind turbine electric energy to areas not populated by large birds to save the birds. Already over 1.3 million birds a year are killed by wind turbines, including the bald and Golden Eagles that like to build their aeries on top of wind turbines.
Do not build large solar concentration farms. They too kill birds.
Solar panels are o.k. not in large farms, but distributed on roofs and on city parking lots to provide backup power.
Exploit geothermal energy in geologically stable areas.
Where ever possible add peak power generation and storage capacity to existing hydroelectric power plants by pumping back water into the dams during excess capacity.
Add peak power storage dams, even in wildlife preserves. The birds and animals don’t mind.
Develop Thorium based Nuclear Power. Russia, China, Australia and India are ahead of us in this. Streamline permit processes. Prioritize research. This should be our priority, for when the next ice age starts we will need all the CO2 possible.
Put fusion power as important for the future but do not rush it, let the research and development be scientifically determined. However, hybrid Fusion -Thorium power generation should be developed.
When Thorium power is built up and has replaced coal and gas fired power plants, then is the time to switch to electric cars, not before.
Standard Nuclear Power plants should be replaced by Thorium powered nuclear plants, since they have only 0,01% of the really bad long term nuclear waste.
Start thinking about recovering CO2 directly from the air to produce aviation fuel. This should be done as Thorium power has replaced coal and gas fired power plants.
This is but a start, but the future is not as bleak as all fearmongers state.

Thorium Nuclear Power is the only viable long term solution to our energy needs.

Here is a list why:

1. A million year supply of Thorium available worldwide.

2. Thorium already mined, ready to be extracted.

3. Thorium based nuclear power produces 0.012 percent as much TRansUranium waste products as traditional nuclear power.

4. Thorium based nuclear power will produce Plutonium-238, needed for space exploration.

5. Thorium nuclear power is only realistic solution to power space colonies.

6. Radioactive waste from an Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor decays down to background radiation in 300 years compared to a million years for U-235 based reactors. A Limerick.

7. Thorium based nuclear power is not suited for making nuclear bombs.

8. Produces isotopes that helps treat and maybe cure certain cancers.

9. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors are earthquake safe, only gravity needed for safe shutdown.

10. Molten Salt Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors cannot have a meltdown, the fuel is already molten, and it is a continuous process. No need for refueling shutdowns.