Open Choke

Hot Under The Climate Collar...

With a hat tip to Gene Ames III...

CLIMATE THINGS WE KNOW (with citations)

 

The warmest year in the U.S. in the last century was 1934, not 1998.

Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2000; Taylor, J. M., GISS,Hansen caught doctoring more data, Environment and Climate News, Feb. 1, 2009.

 

Carbon dioxide concentration has been continually rising for nearly a hundred years. It continues to rise.

Keeling, C.D., and T.P. Whorf. 1996. Atmospheric CO2 records from sites in the SIO air sampling network. In Trends: A Compendium of Data on Global Change. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A.

 

Carbon dioxide concentrations at present are near the lowest in geologic history.

Berner, Robert A. “3Geocarb II: A Revised Model of Atmospheric CO₂ over Phanerozic Time”. American Journal of Science. Vol. 294: 56-91. (January 1994).

 

Global temperature peaked in 1998 on this cycle, and has been episodically declining ever since.

U.S. Temperatures 2008:Back to the Future?World Climate Report Januaary 7, 2009.

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2009/01/07/us-temperatures-2008-back-to-the-future/

 

Declining Earth temperature in the face of rising carbon dioxide concentration is proof that natural climate change drivers are significantly more important than carbon dioxide.

Logical statement, incontrovertible.

 

During the last 100 years temperature has both risen and fallen, including the current decline.

 http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2009/01/07/us-temperatures-2008-back-to-the-future/

 

All the changes in temperature of the last hundred years are in normal historic ranges, both in absolute value and rate of change.

http://nsidc.org/data/gisp_grip/index.html

Lamb, H. H., 1995, Climate, History, and the Modern World: 2nd Ed., Routledge, NY, 433 p.

 

There has been a tremendous reduction in sunspots coincident with the temperature decline.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/01apr_deepsolarminimum.htm

 

Effects of temperature change are absolutely independent of the cause of the temperature change.

Lamb, H. H., 1995, Climate, History, and the Modern World: 2nd Ed., Routledge, NY, 433 p.

 

There is a statistically significant correlation between solar activity and temperature over the last 300 years, which represents the entire historical record for solar activity. 

Hoyt, D. V., and K.H. Schatten, 1997, The Role of the Sun in Climate Change: Oxford University Press, New York, 279 p.

 

The temperature correlation with carbon dioxide levels is not significant.

Hoyt, D. V., and K.H. Schatten, 1997, The Role of the Sun in Climate Change: Oxford University Press, New York, 279 p.

CO2 overlay from Keeling, C.D., and T.P. Whorf. 1996

 

There are no data that definitively relates carbon dioxide levels to temperature changes.

There is no reference because there are no data.

 

The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide is logarithmically muted with increasing concentration.

Svante Arrhenius, 1906, Die vermutliche Ursache der Klimaschwankungen, Meddelanden från K. Vetenskapsakademiens Nobelinstitut, Vol 1 No 2, pages 1–10.

 

Voluminous historic records demonstrate the Medieval Climate Optimum was real and that the “hockey stick” graphic that attempted to deny that fact was at best bad science.

Lamb, H. H., 1995, Climate, History, and the Modern World: 2nd Ed., Routledge, NY, 433 p.

McIntyre, Stephen and Ross McKitrick, 2003. Corrections to the Mann et. al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and  Northern Hemispheric Average Temperature Series. Energy & Environment Vol. 14, No 6, pp. 751-771, October 26, 2003

 

Global hurricane, cyclonic and major storm activity is near 30 year lows.

Starkel, L., 2002, Change in the Frequency of Extreme Events as the Indicator of Climatic Change in the Holocene (in Fluvial Systems).  Quaternary International 91:25-32.

 

Any increase in cost of damages by storms is a product of increasing population density and property value inflation, not due to any increase in frequency or severity of storms.

Logical statement, reflecting  inflation of property values and  increasing construction on coasts.

 

Polar Bears have survived and thrived over periods of extreme cold and extreme warm over hundreds of thousands of years, extremes far in excess of temperature modern changes.

Mayewski, P.A.; Meeker, L.D.; Whitlow, S.; Twickler, M.S.; Morrison, M.C.; Bloomfield, P.; Bond, G. C.; Alley, R.B.; Gow, A.J.; Grootes, P.M.; Meese, D.A.; Ram, M.; Taylor, K.C.; Wumkes, W. “Changes in Atmospheric Circulation and Ocean Ice Cover over the North Atlantic During the Last 41,000 Years”. Science, Vol. 363. (March 1994).

 

The 2009 minimum Arctic ice extent was significantly larger than the previous 2 years.

National Snow and Ice Data Center, Boulder, CO, 2009.

 

The 2009 Antarctic maximum ice extent was significantly above the 30 year average.

<http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2009/10/06/antarctic-ice-melt-at-lowest-levels-in-satellite-era/>

 

Ice caps have only been present on earth for 20-25% of geologic time.

Any historical geology text book.

 

Rate and magnitude of sea level changes observed during the last 100 years have fallen within normal historical ranges.

http://sealevel.colorado.edu/

 

Global temperature changes naturally all of the time, in both directions and at many scales of intensity.

Any historical geology text book.

 

The word “ever“ is misused by media and in public pronouncements alike in climate-related pronouncements.  It does not mean “in the last twenty years,“ or “ the last seventy years.” It means the last 4.5 billion years.

Any historical geology text book.

 

The word “unprecedented” cannot be legitimately used to describe any climate change in the last eight thousand years.

Davis, John C., and Geoffrey Bohling, 2001, The Search for Patterns in Ice-Core Temperature Curves: in Gerhard, Lee C., William E. Harrison, and Bernold M. Hanson, eds.,2001, Geological Perspectives of Global Climate Change: American Association of Petroleum Geologists Studies in Geology #47, Tulsa, OK, p. 213-230.

 

The release of e-mails and files from Hadley has demonstrated scientific malfeasance, at best.

Benny Peiser, CCNet 177: CRU Data Affair Rocks Britain

Consensual Adults

What do you figure the consensus is about the leaked documents hacked from a prominent Climate Research Institute associated with East Anglia University?  Apparently the "anthropogenics" wouldn't let the "non-anthropogenics" play in any Climate Research Reindeer Games.

 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125883405294859215.html

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=2188feb3-802a-23ad-4de4-3fbc0a92e126&Issue_id

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/24/hiding-evidence-of-global-cooling/

And the community wonders why it isn't held in high regard anymore?

More Proof They Think You're A Moron...

Among the significant and mounting evidence that the United Nations and the flying monkeys that work for that august institution believe that we are complete and utter morons, comes this newsflash:

 http://www.gmanews.tv/story/177346/climate-change-pushes-poor-women-to-prostitution-dangerous-work

Clearly, mo' billions should now be spent towards researching this.  Especially the more esoteric aspects of this laughably unscientific train of thought beyond just storm displacement of the poor.  For instance, what about the important questions surrounding "changing" air pressure from our horribly "changing" climate on the human limbic system and potential driving mechanisms that could make women from ALL  political and social classes whores, red-headed men juvenile pederasts, and partially explain the curious phenomenon that is Lady Gaga?

Or maybe we should just throw a bucket of water on that increasingly useless and dangerous institution and melt it away.  "Melting, I'm melting!!!!"

Ecosystem Collapse...

I am reading a book called "Panic in Level 4" by author Richard Preston, who also authored "Hot Zone", about the ebola virus.  One of his chapters focuses on an exotic tree parasite, the woolly adelgid, that is wiping out Eastern Hemlock.  The stories pose an interesting issue about how humans affect the ecosystem merely by our advancements in travel and international commerce.  One reviewer called it "a sobering reminder of the delicacy of our ecosystem".

 I do not subscribe to the "delicacy" point of view or the "man is evil" point of view that many take as a default position on this.  I look at it more as "humans are an interesting and powerful natural agents of change".

In any case, Mr. Preston describes lovingly the few hundred year old ecosystem supported by these majestic trees and the "ecoystem collapse" that is currently taking place via these exotic fauna that feast on the tree needles.  Do you know what happens during and after an "ecosystem collapse"?

Another beautiful and "delicate" ecosystem takes its place. 

I love descriptions and phrases that are meant solely to manipulate my emotions.

Fraud By Any Other Name...

An interesting read by an Australian climatologist.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24036736-7583,00.html

There is within it an idea we should expand upon... he suggests that the Australian Labour Party should tread lightly here because the consequences of their being wrong, which is looking more and more likely every day, would lead to their being non-electable in the future.

Hmmmm.  Having been a bit of a student of class action lawsuits against evil corporations brought to their knees for fraud and deception, often times for nothing at all, ala Dow Corning, it seems like dangerous territory.  Could a class-action tort be brought to bear on Al Gore, so many of the non-profit anti-capitalist propogandists, and legislators who vote on the basis of this sleight of hand to defraud us all? 

Of course, government exempts itself from fraud liability... with the attendant standards towards veracity for those in government reflecting this clemency. In fact, it is unlikely that any agency head or legislator would last more than 4 weeks in the private sector because what is standard operating procedure WITHIN the Borg itranslates into prison time and shareholder lawsuit fodder in corporate America. 

But Al Gore, his corporations, the Friends of the Earth, and all the rest... massive damages?  Biggest ever, in fact?  $50 billion spent in the last 18 years and the conclusions are more and more suspect...

Consider that Nobel Laureate Gore in front of that impressive image in "inconvenient truth" showing us how global temperatures and CO2 concentrations mimic one another.  Causality, he showed and said.  Zooming in on the graph, though, the CO2 lags temperature by 800 years across the board... but he DIDN'T zoom on the graph.  He, how to best put this... Lied. Not in a GW Bush "I really think and hope these are WMD plants, because the CIA said they might be", or "Al Qaida has some folks in Iraq, so they are in cahoots" kinda lie.  No, Al laid a Billy Sol Estes fertilizer tank misdirect kinda LIE on all of us.  Temperature drives carbon uptake, not the other way around.  Mr. Gore is an expert.  He has won a Nobel Prize for his propog... I mean, expertise. Did he not know?  Was it an honest mistake?  C'mon.  Inconceivable. 

Had Mr. Gore been, say, a Tobacco Executive, and had he intentionally lied as clearly and distinctly about his product as he did in that movie in that one particular instance (soon to be an opera, I am told), he would be in jail, and his company or industry would be paying out, say, 250 billion in damages.  

Mr. Gore, with a lifetime of public service, believes, like most long-time public servants I encounter, that you and I are stupid and because of that, lying to us is alright, because we don't know any better.  We would be much happier if we just didn't question them so much.  As a marketing guy and a senate aide told me over beers one night in DC... there are two rules of (marketing) (politics).  The first is that the People Are Stupid.  The second is "See Rule Number One".  I am not kidding about this.

The damages of this particular lie are easy to quantify... 2% of the GDP.  That is what it is calculated to institute our useless cure to a unsolvable "problem". In fact, a lawsuit, or idea of one is not without precedence.  Several have been quoted, a young Kennedy representative a recent example (Patrick, perhaps? His generation of the bloodline is particularly unsuccessful), that Americans who voice their skepticism towards the, ahem, "purity" of massively funded research by those with an endgame agenda, and no, I don't mean the oil companies, should be sued or arrested.  For doubting!  This seems extreme to me.  Kind of Fascist.  Or National Socialist, if you get my drift.

This should interest a clever plaintiff attorney...

An Excellent Talk On Global Warming...

The Alabama State Climatologist presenting to a class at Auburn.  The questions at the end attempting to disparage him via his funding sources and not his dataare telling.

The Business of Global Warming...

Every time a climate expert comes out saying that maybe, just maybe, global warming isn't this huge human existential deal, there is a pile on about the poor slob having "industry funding" with the strong inference that such an opinion is moot because he or she is beholden to "dirty money" that would thus necessarily sway the results. It seems to me that this argument is a double-edged sword.

A little Memorial Day googling indicated that U.S. taxpayers spend $4 billion dollars a year in Global Warming research.  It is not clear how much more private money ala Al Gore etc. is added to that funding... at least $350 million in PR as per their press release.

Also controversial and difficult to find is the number of climatologists in the world.  One source claims 31,000, but, as another pointed out, this means that every climate program on earth churns out 10 per year that stay in the profession.  The 31,000 number is touted by its progenitor as "vetted scientists and engineers".

So at least 4 billion dollars going to as many as 31,000 S&E's "researching" Global Warming.  That is a funding rate of a little more than $130,000 per year per S&E researcher that is actually de facto contingent on the existence of a Warming Crisis. 

Makes ExxonMobil's $181,000 contribution that invalidated a research group's conclusions seem pretty paltry, doesn't it?  Following the money is a handy tool.  Make no mistake, Global Warming Alarmism is a huge industry, whether it is true or not.

A good read by Kudlow...

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_lawrence_kudlow/striking_out_on_energy

Global Warming- The Disaster! Crumbles a Bit More.

Interesting article-

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23411799-7583,00.html

"Well-meaning intellectual movements, from communism to post-structuralism, have a poor history of absorbing inconvenient fact or challenges to fundamental precepts" excised text from an article in "The Age" and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Also...

Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth stillwarming?"

She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"

Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up ... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant."

Thoughts on a Easter Weekend...

This is a great post on the economy...

http://engram-backtalk.blogspot.com/2008/03/periodic-fiscal-insanity.html

He also has another post where he addresses income equality.  He discovers we DO have it relative to Europe, but that overall we are better off, EXCEPT at the bottom end.  In essence, equalizing income drags EVERYONE down.  His research caused him to change his mind on the subject.  One of my favorite bloggers.

I made the "unfortunate decision" in January to participate in a chat forum on www.peakoil.com.  It was terrifying.  At the very top of the page was a poll that showed 51% of the people on the forum wanted us to run out of oil soon.  The forum was dominated by posters that "Are Concerned With The Environment" and "Fighting Global Warming" that have found in hydrocarbons all that is wrong with mankind. 

I was immediately and roundly decried as a greedy moneyhound.  Ideological debates are not really winnable, as I once again discovered.  I wonder when I will ever learn?

I went back and reread the thread today, hoping that time and distance would provide a better perspective and clarity.  It did, indeed.

First, the majority of the posters (those that want an immediate end to the hydrocarbon age, and which account for a predominance of posters on this site) attacked anyone who posted anything about large scale reserves being found today, and discounted heavily those reserve numbers as fallacious.   One comment read "<The Big Number> came from an Exxon engineer and the <Very Low Number> from a scientist not in the industry.  Which do you believe?" 

Uhhhh.  Trick question?  Probably the industry expert opinion.  My bankers would certainly agree.   He knows what he is talking about and he actually has something to lose being wrong.  Of course, in socialist in environmentalist clothing land, where NO ONE has anything to lose being wrong, where the "preventative principal" holds form control, only dilettentes with social engineering agendas are held to be "non-corrupt" purveyors of wisdom.  Too bad my banker won't accept this level of expertise to loan money on.  Being rational, they only do it when the dilettente social engineers actually talk the government into guaranteeing the bank's loan portfolio on stupid invetsments.

In essence, this is a world where ignorance is deemed supreme to expertise... IF ignorance agrees with my opinion.  Hmmm. In other words, these folks are terrified that there might be MORE recoverable hydrocarbon than less.

Second,  several, the majority really, did not really believe in human ingenuity.  A couple stated it outright.  They apparently believe that human progress is the product of governmental and inter-governmental mandates.  I was roundly attacked for making a statement that human ingenuity was at work in all aspects of energy efficiency, including oil and gas, and that we should keep an open mind with regards to where those breakthroughs may occur. One fellow discounted out of hand that human progress could recover more hydrocarbons, despite much evidence to the contrary.

Eventually, the truth emerged.  Several of the posters claimed Hydrocarbons evil because they have allowed human population, greedy capitalism, and industrialized society to grow and prosper.  One woman, who admitted to being a "human doombat" looked forward with glee to the destruction of society and and "couldn't wait to hear the wails of human despair as they faced the pits of hell while <she> crunched her apple, ate wild lettuce, and read her latest fantasy book".  Unlike ol' Open Choke, who tried to provide reserves facts and an open mind to where energy could or should be derived, and was attacked on a very personal level, nary a peep of criticism came the way of our misanthropic apple cruncher.  The argument that environmentalism has devolved into a cover for a human death cult couldn't have been more starkly made.

Clearly, there were plenty of idealistic folks that are not human-haters on this forum... they are seeking how renewable and low carbon load energies could be adopted for the benefit of mankind, and are not anti-human per se.  Nearly all are convinced that hydrocarbons are keeping us from living in Tomorrow World.  Revolutionaries, really.  Willing to destroy in order to build.  Not concerned with the human sacrifice necessary to transition RIGHT NOW. 

These concerned me the most.  They don't seem to be great students of history, they certainly don't believe in free market solutions to anything, and don't believe in a human ingenuity focused solution.  They are mightily attracted to the dark side of heavy handed, single point, "damn the consequence" intervention.  They despise business and businessmen.  They find it easy to condemn business men as carrion feeding of the body of society, and society a stupid bunch of cows willingly subjugated to the needs of bug business.  They think of themselves as enlightened and the only ones not sullied enough to do the hard work of keeping the stupid people from getting what they want, and making sure they get only what they need... defined by the enlightened.  I think "elititist" is a term appropriately applied. 

Why do you think that is?  What has convinced them that good solutions come exclusively through the power of a central authority? It was amazing how many of the comments mimic'ed Lenin's "a few eggs get broken to make an omelette" quote. Damn what the majority... the stupid people... want.  They will be happy with what we give them.  Let them eat Wind and Solar Cake. 

Beware the "perfect" society.  History shows that individual liberty, life, and property are the first casualties when we chase after that chimera.