Month: July 2014
The Devil Was in The Details, When the EPA Came up With This Scam!
0.02°C Temperature Rise Averted: The Vital Number Missing from the EPA’s “By the Numbers” Fact Sheet
Global Science Report is a feature from the Center for the Study of Science, where we highlight one or two important new items in the scientific literature or the popular media. For broader and more technical perspectives, consult our monthly “Current Wisdom.”
Last week, the Obama Administration’s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled a new set of proposed regulations aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions from existing U. S. power plants. The motivation for the EPA’s plan comes from the President’s desire to address and mitigate anthropogenic climate change.
We hate to be the party poopers, but the new regulations will do no such thing.
The EPA’s regulations seek to limit carbon dioxide emissions from electricity production in the year 2030 to a level 30 percent below what they were in 2005. It is worth noting that power plant CO2 emissions already dropped by about 15% from 2005 to2012, largely, because of market forces which favor less-CO2-emitting natural gas over coal as the fuel of choice for producing electricity. Apparently the President wants to lock in those gains and manipulate the market to see that the same decline takes place in twice the time. Nothing like government intervention to facilitate market inefficiency. But we digress.
The EPA highlighted what the plan would achieve in their “By the Numbers” Fact Sheet that accompanied their big announcement.
For some reason, they left off their Fact Sheet how much climate change would be averted by the plan. Seems like a strange omission since, after all, without the threat of climate change, there would be no one thinking about the forced abridgement of our primary source of power production in the first place, and the Administration’s new emissions restriction scheme wouldn’t even be a gleam in this or any other president’s eye.
But no worries. What the EPA left out, we’ll fill in.
Using a simple, publically-available, climate model emulator called MAGICC that was in part developed through support of the EPA, we ran the numbers as to how much future temperature rise would be averted by a complete adoption and adherence to the EPA’s new carbon dioxide restrictions*.
The answer? Less than two one-hundredths of a degree Celsius by the year 2100.
0.018°C to be exact.
We’re not even sure how to put such a small number into practical terms, because, basically, the number is so small as to be undetectable.
Which, no doubt, is why it’s not included in the EPA Fact Sheet.
It is not too small, however, that it shouldn’t play a huge role in every and all discussions of the new regulations.
*********
* Details and Additional Information about our Calculation
We have used the Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse-gas Induced Climate Change (MAGICC)—a simple climate model emulator that was, in part, developed through support of the EPA—to examine the climate impact of proposed regulations.
MAGICC version 6 is available as an on-line tool.
We analyzed the climate impact of the new EPA regulations by modifying future emissions scenarios that have been established by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to reflect the new EPA proposed emissions targets.
Specifically, the three IPCC scenarios we examined were the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) named RCP4.5, RCP 6.0 and RCP8.5. RCP4.5 is a low-end emissions pathway, RCP6.0 is more middle of the road, and RCP8.5 is a high-end pathway.
The emissions prescriptions in the RCPs are not broken down on a country by country basis, but rather are defined for country groupings. The U.S. is included in the OECD90 group.
To establish the U.S. emissions pathway within each RPC, we made the following assumptions:
1) U.S. carbon dioxide emissions make up 50 percent of the OECD90 carbon dioxide emissions.
2) Carbon dioxide emissions from electrical power production make up 40 percent of the total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.
Figure 1 shows the carbon dioxide emissions pathways of the original RCPs along with our determination within each of the contribution from U.S. electricity production.
Figure 1. Carbon dioxide emissions pathways defined in, or derived from, the original set of Representative Concentration pathways (RCPs), for the global total carbon dioxide emissions as well as for the carbon dioxide emissions attributable to U.S. electricity production.
As you can pretty quickly tell, the projected contribution of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from electricity production to the total global carbon dioxide emissions is vanishingly small.
The new EPA regulations apply to the lower three lines in Figure 1.
To examine the impact of the EPA proposal, we replace the emissions attributable to U.S. power plants in the original RCPs with targets defined in the new EPA regulations. We determined those targets to be (according to the EPA’s Regulatory Impacts Analysis accompanying the regulation), 0.4864 GtC in 2020 and 0.4653 GtC in 2030. Thereafter, the U.S. power plant emissions were held constant at the 2030 levels until they fell below those levels in the original RCP prescriptions (specifically, that occurred in 2060 in RPC4.5, 2100 in RCP6.0, and sometime after 2150 in RCP8.5).
We then used MAGICC to calculate the rise in global temperature projected to occur between now and the year 2100 when with the original RCPs as well as with the RCPs modified to reflect the EPA proposed regulations (we used the MAGICC default value for the earth’s equilibrium climate sensitivity (3.0°C)).
The output from the six MAGICC runs is depicted as Figure 2.
Figure 2. Global average surface temperature anomalies, 2000-2100, as projected by MAGICC run with the original RCPs as well as with the set of RCPs modified to reflect the EPA 30% emissions reductions from U.S power plants.
In case you can’t tell the impact by looking at Figure 2 (since the lines are basically on top of one another), we’ve summarized the numbers in Table 1.
In Table 2, we quantify the amount of projected temperature rise that is averted by the new EPA regulations.
The rise in projected future temperature rise that is averted by the proposed EPA restrictions of carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants is less than 0.02°C between now and the end of the century assuming the IPCC’s middle-of-the-road future emissions scenario.
While the proposed EPA plan seeks only to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, in practice, the goal is to reduce the burning of coal. Reducing the burning of coal will have co-impacts such as reducing other climatically active trace gases and particulate matter (or its precursors). We did not model the effects of changes in these co-species as sensitivity tests using MAGICC indicate the collective changes in these co-emissions are quite small and largely cancel each other out.
Carbon Tax….Nothing But a Huge Rip-off!
The Carbon TAX Scam
In a recent appearance before a congressional committee, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told them that the agency’s proposed sweeping carbon-regulation plan was “really an investment opportunity. This is not about pollution control.”
If the plan isn’t about pollution, the primary reason for the EPA’s existence, why bother with yet more regulation of something that is not a pollutant—carbon dioxide—despite the Supreme Court’s idiotic decision that it is. Yes, even the Court gets things wrong.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is vital to all life on Earth, but most particularly to every piece of vegetation that grows on it. Top climatologists tell me that it plays a very small role, if any, in the Earth’s climate or weather. Why would anyone expect a gas that represents 400 parts per million of all atmospheric gases, barely 0.04% of all atmospheric gases to have the capacity to affect something as huge and dynamic as the weather or climate?
When something as absurd as the notion the U.S. must drastically reduce its CO2 emissions is told often enough by a wide range of people that include teachers, the media, scientists, politicians, and the President, people can be forgiven for believing this makes sense.
What Gina McCarthy was demonstrating is her belief that not only the members of Congress are idiots, but all the rest of us are as well.
Faking Climate Data
“The science is clear. The risks are clear. We must act…” Sorry, Gina, a recent issue of Natural News, citing the Real Sciencewebsite, reported “(in) what might be the largest scientific fraud ever uncovered, NASA and the NOAA have been caught red-handed altering historical temperature data to produce a ‘climate change narrative’ that defies reality.” As reported in The Telegraph, a London daily, “NOAA’s U.S. Historical Climatology Network has been ‘adjusting’ its record by replacing real temperatures with data ‘fabricated’ by computer models.”
The EPA has been on the front lines of destroying coal-fired plants that produce the bulk of the nation’s electricity, claiming, like the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth that coal is “dirty” and must be eliminated from any use.
On July 29, CNSnews reported that “For the first time ever, the average price for a kilowatthour of electricity in the United States has broken through the 14-cent mark, climbing to a record 14.3 cents in June, according to data released last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”
A Carbon Tax
What the Greens want most of all is a carbon tax; that is to say, a tax on CO2 emissions. It is one of the most baseless, destructive taxes that could be imposed on Americans and we should take a lesson from the recent experience that Australians had when, after being told by a former prime minister, Julia Gillard, that she would not impose the tax, she did.They get rid of her andthen got rid of the tax!
As Daniel Simmons, the vice president of policy at the American Energy Alliance, wrote in Roll Call “Australia is now the first country to eliminate its carbon tax. In doing so, it struck a blow in favor of sound public policy.” Initiated in 2012, the tax had imposed a $21.50 charge (in U.S. dollars), increasing annually, on each ton of carbon dioxide emitted by the country’s power plants.” At the time President Obama called it “good for the world”, but Australians quickly found it was not good for them or their economy.
Favored by several Democratic Senators that include New Hampshire’s Jeanne Shaheen, Alaska’s Mark Begich, and North Carolina’s Kay Hagan, the Heritage Foundation, based on data provided by the Energy Information Administration, took a look at the impact that a proposed U.S. carbon tax would have and calculated that it “would cut a family of four’s income by nearly $2,000 a year while increasing its electricity bills by more than $500 per year. It would increase gas prices by 50 cents per gallon. It could eliminate more than a million jobs in the first few years.”
Simmons noted that “It only took (Australians) two years of higher prices, fewer jobs, and no environmental benefits before they abandoned their carbon tax.”
We don’t need, as Gina McCarthy told the congressional committee, “investments in renewables and clean energy” because billions were wasted by Obama’s “stimulus” and by the grants and other credits extended to wind and solar energy in America. They are the most expensive, least productive, and most unpredictable forms of energy imaginable, given that neither the wind nor the sun is available full-time in the way fossil fuel generated energy is. Both require backup from coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy plants.
In addition to all the other White House efforts to saddle Americans with higher costs, it has now launched a major effort to push its “climate change” agenda with a carbon tax high on its list. A July 29 article in The Hill reported that “Obama is poised to sidestep Congress with a new set of executive actions on climate change.”
If we don’t jump-start our economy by tapping into the jobs and revenue our vast energy reserves represent, secure our southern border, and elect a Congress that will rein in the President, the U.S. risks becoming a lawless banana republic. Carbon taxes are one more nail in the national coffin.
Windweasels Think The Rules are made to be Broken!
Oxford MPP Ernie Hardeman calling on energy minister to make wind farm proposal transparent
Oxford MPP Ernie Hardeman
Oxford MPP Ernie Hardeman is calling on the minister of energy to make wind farm proposal processes more transparent to the public and specifically provide information requested about the local Gunn’s Hill wind farm proposal.
“Firstly, I would like to reiterate my position that it is unacceptable that approvals such as this one do not require municipal approval and public consent. In addition, applications can be changed without public involvement, as has happened with the Prowind application,” Hardeman wrote in the letter addressed to Bob Chiarelli, minister of energy.
“East Oxford Community Alliance, a community group opposing the Gunn’s Hill development, has found 26 pages of discrepancies, incomplete documents and inaccuracies yet the ministry has deemed the application complete.”
Hardeman also requested the minister explain why his office has not provided information on the grid connection change proposal, and provided concerns that his constituents are now engaged in costly and lengthy Freedom of Information requests.
Discrepancies and incomplete documents include what Prowind Canada Inc. spokesperson Juan Anderson calls a “small administrative error” of inverting the digits of a location for one turbine proposed for the now 18-megawatt project.
The error located on the paper plans puts one of the turbines about 26 metres from what would be its physical location if the proposal receives approval.
In addition to this error, a previous noise study was included when the proposal was officially changed to reflect the use of a different wind turbine model than the original application. The change of wind turbine model decreases the megawatts of the project from 25 megawatts to 18 megawatts.
Anderson explained as the size of the turbines decreased, so did the noise impact of the project, so public comment did not to be reopened.
“We waited for the ministry’s direction on how to correct the fact we did not have the correct noise report. We actually asked to post for public comment. We re-opened public comment to Aug. 8,” he said.
Anderson explained the change in turbine models came when it was realized the small project might be waitlisted and not able to get the blades when needed.
At the same time, the turbine models were changed, Prowind changed its proposal regarding how the project would connect to the electrical grid.
Originally the project would be cabled to the nearest transmission station, near Woodstock. Now the connection site is much closer and does not require cabling.
The East Oxford Community Alliance has a pending Freedom of Information request regarding correspondence between the Ministry of Energy, Hydro One, and the Ontario Power Authority.
As of most recent correspondence, the request will cost almost $800 to complete and take an additional five months to prepare.
“We can’t get our hands on any document the proponent says is complete and accurate … everything has changed and its no longer the same project. This should be concerning to the public and it makes it difficult to provide public input when all the information is not there,” Joan Morris from the East Oxford Community Alliance said.
Bjorn Lomborg Testifies at Senate Hearing, Regarding Climate Change!
Lomborg’s Senate testimony
by Judith Curry
Because there is no good, cheap green energy, the almost universal political choices have been expensive policies that do very little. There is much greater scope for climate policies to make the total climate cost greater through the 21st century. – Bjorn Lomborg
Yesterday the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety convened a Hearing on Examining the Threats Posed by Climate Change. The Hearing website is [here].
There is no majority or minority statements or opening remarks on the web page. Six individuals presented testimony, five of whom I am unfamiliar with. I’ve read all the testimonies. They’re all interesting, but I think Lomborg’s testimony is important. I had the priviledge of testifying with Lomborg previously this year at this Hearing.
Lomborg’s testimony can be found [here]. From the Summary:
Global warming is real, but a problem, not the end of the world. Claims of “catastrophic” costs are ill founded. Inaction has costs, but so does action. It is likely that climate action will lead to higher total costs in this century. Climate action through increased energy costs will likely harm the poor the most, both in rich and poor countries.
- The cumulative cost of inaction towards the end of the century is about 1.8% of GDP
- While this is not trivial, it by no means supports the often apocalyptic conversation on climate change.
- The cost of inaction by the end of the century is equivalent to losing one year’s growth, or a moderate, one year recession.
- The cost of inaction by the end of the century is equivalent to an annual loss of GDP growth on the order of 0.02%.
- However, policy action as opposed to inaction, also has costs, and will still incur a significant part of the climate damage. Thus, with extremely unrealistically optimistic assumptions, it is possible that the total cost of climate action will be reduced slightly to 1.5% of GDP by the end of the century.
- It is more likely that the cost of climate action will end up costing upwards of twice as much as climate inaction in this century – a reasonable estimate could be 2.8% of GDP towards the end of the century.
- Climate action will harm mostly the poor. Examples from Germany and the UK are given.
- To tackle global warming, it is much more important to dramatically increase funding for R&D of green energy to make future green energy much cheaper. This will make everyone switch when green is cheap enough, instead of focusing on inefficient subsidies and second best policies that easily end up costing much more.
The part of Lomborg’s testimony that I found particularly compelling was the text related to energy poverty. Excerpts:
The first realization needs to be that the current, old fashioned approach to tackling global warming has failed. The current approach, which has been attempted for almost 20 years since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, is to agree on large carbon cuts in the immediate future. Only one real agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, has resulted from 20 years of attempts, with the 2009 Copenhagen meeting turning into a spectacular failure.
The Kyoto approach is not working for three reasons. First, cutting CO2 is costly. Second, the approach won’t solve the problem. Even if everyone had implemented Kyoto, temperatures would have dropped by the end of the century by a miniscule 0.004C or 0.007F. Third, green energy is not ready to take over from fossil fuels.
Current global warming policies make energy much more costly. This negative impact is often much larger, harms the world’s poor much more, and is much more immediate.
Solar and wind power was subsidized by $60 billion in 2012, despite their paltry climate benefit of $1.4 billion. Essentially, $58.6 billion were wasted. Depending on political viewpoint, that money could have been used to get better health care, more teachers, better roads, or lower taxes. Moreover, forcing everyone to buy more expensive, less reliable energy pushes higher costs throughout the economy, leaving less for welfare.
The burdens from these climate policies fall overwhelmingly on the world’s poor. This is because rich people can easily afford to pay more for their energy, whereas the poor will be struggling. It is surprising to hear that well meaning and economically comfortable greens often suggest that gasoline prices should be doubled or electricity exclusively sourced from high cost green sources.
Take Pakistan and South Africa. With too little generating power both nations experience recurrent blackouts that cost jobs and wreck the economy. Muhammad Ashraf, who worked 30 years at a textile plant in central Pakistan, was laid off last year because of these energy shortages. Being too old to get another job, he has returned to his village to eke out a living growing wheat on a tiny plot of land. Instead of $120 a month, he now makes just $25. Yet, the funding of new coal fired power plants in both Pakistan and South Africa has been widely opposed by well meaning Westerners and climate concerned Western governments. They instead urge these countries to get more energy from renewables.
But this is cruelly hypocritical. The rich world generates just 0.76% of its energy from solar and wind, far from meeting even minimal demand. In fact, Germany will build ten new coal fired power plants over the next two years to keep its own lights on.
A recent analysis from the Center for Global Development shows that $10 billion invested in renewables will help lift 20 million people in Africa out of poverty. But the same $10 billion spent on gas electrification will lift 90 million people out of poverty. $10 billion can help just 20 million people. Using renewables, we deliberately end up choosing to leave more than 70 million people – more than 3 out of 4 – in darkness and poverty.
The other thing that struck me in particular was the following text:
The only way to move towards a long term reduction in emissions is if green energy becomes much cheaper. If green energy was cheaper than fossil fuels, everyone would switch. This requires breakthroughs in the current green technologies, which means focusing much more on innovating smarter, cheaper, more effective green energy.
The metaphor here is the computer in the 1950s. We did not obtain better computers by mass producing them to get cheaper vacuum tubes. We did not provide heavy subsidies so that every Westerner could have one in their home in 1960. Nor did we tax alternatives like typewriters. The breakthroughs were achieved by a dramatic ramping up of R&D, leading to multiple innovations, which enabled companies like IBM and Apple to eventually produce computers that consumers wanted to buy.
This is what the US has done with fracking. The US has spent about $10bn in subsidies over the past three decades to get fracking innovation, which has opened up large new resources of previously inaccessible shale gas. Despite some legitimate concerns about safety, it is hard to overstate the overwhelming benefits. Fracking has caused gas prices to drop dramatically and changed the US electricity generation from 50% coal and 20% gas to about 40% coal and 30% gas.
This means that the US has reduced its annual CO₂ emissions by about 300Mt CO₂ in 2012. This is about twice the total reduction over the past twenty years of the Kyoto Protocol from the rest of the world, including the European Union. At the same time, the EU climate policy will cost about $280 billion per year, whereas the US fracking is estimated to increase US GDP by $283 billion per year.
JC reflections
Read the entire testimony, well worth reading and pondering.
I take such economic projections with a grain of salt (where are the uncertainty estimates?), but Lomborg’s point that the cure is likely worse than the disease is compelling.
Of particular concern is the impact of these energy policies on the poor. Lomborg makes this argument extremely effectively, and I can’t believe that more people don’t get this. Last April I gave a climate change presentation to a group of Georgia Tech alumni. Someone in the audience asked: “What did you do for Earth day?” I said Nothing. I think turning out the lights sends the wrong message. I want to see the lights go on in Africa.
We clearly need clean green energy, if not now then in the future. Lomborg argues that our current strategies may be be slowing down the development of these technologies.
I have to say, after reading Lomborg’s testimony, current climate/energy policies have never made less sense.
Health Departments Should Have Turbine Distress Hotlines!
LOCAL HEALTH DEPARTMENTS SHOULD HAVE TURBINE DISTRESS HOTLINES
Carthage anti-wind power advocate appeals Canton wind project approval
Terry Karkos
A Carthage woman has filed an administrative appeal with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection of the eight-turbine wind project on Canton Mountain.
Alice McKay Barnett, an anti-wind power advocate, submitted seven documents of supplemental evidence on July 17 that mostly concerns turbine noise adversely affecting health.The DEP approved the nearly $50 million, eight-turbine Canton Mountain wind project in May. Canton Mountain Wind LLC is owned by Patriots Renewables LLC of Quincy, Mass.The Canton project is part of a larger plan to include similar wind projects in the adjacent towns of Dixfield and Carthage. Construction has already started on the Carthage project — Saddleback Ridge. It is a 34.2 megawatt, 12-turbine wind project that’s expected to be completed in 2015.The Dixfield project, Timberwinds, is still in the early stage of development, according to Patriots Renewables’ website. The proposed project would consist of six to 12 turbines sited on Colonel Holman Ridge in Dixfield.In her petition for review of final agency action against the DEP and Canton Mountain Wind LLC, Barnett writes that she objects to a ruling that the wind developer establish a toll-free complaint hotline designated to allow concerned citizens to call in noise-related complaints 24 hours a day, seven days a week.Barnett said she believes a complaint hotline like that should be in the hands of health officials instead of a wind developer. She cited Spruce Mountain Wind, Patriots Renewables’ 20 megawatt, 10-turbine wind project located in Woodstock.She said that developer “is not responsible to collect data of complaints.” Barnett then cites and includes several examples of that, such as complaints by residents adversely impacted by SMW turbine noise and the developer’s control of noise by purchasing noise easements or making sound agreements with property owners.“I request local health officials maintain a hotline (at the expense of the developer) as they know the local area and the citizens who reside in the impacted zone of industrial wind turbines,” Barnett stated in her petition.”Local health officials could respond directly to complaints on hotline, and then ask county and state for help. Public health nurses continually work to improve the health of individuals, populations, cultures and communities. A public health nurse can enforce laws and regulation,” she stated.Barnett also said the Maine Department of Environmental Health and the Center for Disease Control offered no help. She said wind turbine noise is a health issue and that the DEP and Patriots Renewables are not health experts.She also asked to strike the word “expert” from a page in the Canton Mountain Wind permit, stating the firms listed are paid consultants not experts per the order of the Bower’s Mountain uphold of denial of the Champlain Wind permit on June 5.Additionally, she named five people living in East Dixfield, Jay and Canton and within two miles of the Canton Mountain Wind turbines who have asked that no harm be done to their property.She defined “harm” to include light pollution from turbine blade flicker and red flashing lights, audible wind turbulence noise levels, air turbulence, sound wave emissions (included but not limited to infrasound) disturbance or emanations of any kind of nature that are created in the ordinary course of operations of the Canton wind facility.“They do not want diminished property value,” Barnett said.Cynthia S. Bertocci, executive analyst with the Board of Environmental Protection, replied to Barnett’s appeal in a letter dated July 22.Bertocci told Barnett that her timely appeal contains proposed supplemental evidence that will require a ruling from the board chairman, Robert A. Foley of Wells.Following Foley’s ruling on the proposed supplemental evidence, the board will set a deadline for the filing of comments on the merits of the appeal and notify Barnet of the deadline.Bertocci said information in Barnett’s appeal doesn’t appear in the DEP’s licensing record.Per department rule, a respondent — defined as the licensee or anyone who submitted written comment on the application — can submit written comment on the admissibility of Barnett’s proposed supplemental evidence.They can also offer proposed supplemental evidence in response to Barnett’s evidence and issues raised on appeal, Bertocci said. The respondent’s submission is due within 30 days of the date of the board’s written determination as to which of the appellant’s exhibits constitute proposed supplemental evidence.Bertocci said the board may allow the record to be supplemented on appeal when it finds that the evidence offered is relevant and material and that:* The person seeking to supplement the record has shown due diligence in bringing the evidence to the department at the earliest possible time.* The evidence is newly discovered and by due diligence, could not have been discovered in time to be presented earlier in the licensing process.Bertocci said the deadline for the licensee and anyone who submitted written comment on the application to comment on the admissibility of Barnett’s proposed supplemental evidence, is by 5 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 21.After Foley rules on the admissibility of Barnett’s evidence, the board will set the deadline to respond to the merits of her appeal.
Climate Scientists Less Accurate than the Local Weatherman! LOL!
Climate Science Wrong For 120 Years
Predicting the end of the world is part of the human condition, people have always been convinced Doomsday was just around the corner. From the soothsayers of Roman times casting their runes and reading animal entrails predicting global apocalypse to the soothsayersclimate scientists soothsayers of the 21st Century casting their digital runes and predicting global apocalypse.
Despite the passage of 20 Centuries the modern day rune casters are no more accurate than their distant ancestors were, the expensive and religiously revered “Computer Models” have yet to predict any event that has actually happened, yet their erroneous results still trump observed empirical evidence.
The Climate Change catastrophe is not a new phenomenon, it first appeared as we know it today in the closing years of the 19th Century:
1895 – Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again –New York Times, February 1895
By 1902 the Los Angeles Times was reporting that the glaciers were disappearing, their final annihilation in just a few years was a matter of scientific fact.
Sound familiar?
It should, the 21st Century version of disappearing glaciers is known as Glaciergate.
However 10 years down the road and the Climate Scientists were unsure if the planet was warming or cooling:
1912 – Prof. Schmidt Warns Us of an Encroaching Ice Age – New York Times, October 1912
1923 – “Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada” – Professor Gregory of Yale University, American representative to the Pan-Pacific Science Congress, – Chicago Tribune
1923 – “The discoveries of changes in the sun’s heat and the southward advance of glaciers in recent years have given rise to conjectures of the possible advent of a new ice age” – Washington Post
1924 – MacMillan Reports Signs of New Ice Age – New York Times, Sept 18, 1924
1929 – “Most geologists think the world is growing warmer, and that it will continue to get warmer” – Los Angeles Times, in Is another ice age coming?
1932 – “If these things be true, it is evident, therefore that we must be just teetering on an ice age” – The Atlantic magazine, This Cold, Cold World
Just a year later and the story changed again:
1933 – America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-Year Rise – New York Times, March 27th, 1933
1933 – “…wide-spread and persistent tendency toward warmer weather…Is our climate changing?” – Federal Weather Bureau “Monthly Weather Review.”
For the next 40 years warming alarmism held sway until 1970 when we were all going to freeze to death again:
1970 – “…get a good grip on your long johns, cold weather haters – the worst may be yet to come…there’s no relief in sight” – Washington Post
Less than 20 years later and we were all going to fry again:
1988 – I would like to draw three main conclusions. Number one, the earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements. Number two, the global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect. And number three, our computer climate simulations indicate that thegreenhouse effect is already large enough to begin to effect the probability of extreme events such as summer heat waves. – Jim Hansen, June 1988 testimony before Congress, see His later quote and His superior’s objection for context
1989 -“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.” – Stephen Schneider, lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Discover magazine, October 1989
1990 – “We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing – in terms of economic policy and environmental policy” – Senator Timothy Wirth
The ultimate straw man argument, even if the problem is non existent then dealing with a non existent problem is the right thing to do.
One can only wonder what sort of world Senator Wirth inhabits, then you read his bio and the words Democrat and UN leap out at you, and there is your answer.
It would appear that climate science is cyclic much like the weather and ultimately the climate, it struggles to predict with any degree of accuracy or precision.
More Proof, that “Climate Scam” was Never Intended to Improve Our Environment.
Over the Transom: Climate Scientologists destroy nature in order to save the environment.
I recall reading a piece some time ago by an avid environmentalist who made a point lost on his fellow environmentalists: So-called “alternative” energy can have an effect on the environment even worse than conventional energy.
This article about a plan to destroy a forest in Germany makes that point better than he ever could. It seems that a developer plans to erect 60 giant wind turbines in an untouched forest that is the pride of the region of Palitinate.
That’s too much for the locals:
“According to Die Welt, hungry wind park developers with deep pockets plan to install 60 wind turbines, each 209 meters (700 feet) tall in the area. Unsurprisingly this looming large-scale green industrialization of this particularly idyllic landscape has become too much to take, even for the most avid climate activist groups. Die Welt writes that for the first time all ten local environmental groups have closed ranks against the project, says Bernd Wallner of the Pfälzerwald-Verein (Palantinate Association).”
An unsightly solar array occupies what had been acres and acres of farm and forest on the Mercer County College campus These people are learning the less so many New Jerseyans have already learned: Wind and solar projects can be much more irritating and ugly than any other source of power.
I wrote here about how some beautiful farm fields and tree stands at Mercer County College were bulldozed for an unsightly solar array that stretches for acres.
And then there was that horribly misguided idea of putting a wind turbine right in the middle of the small town of Ocean Gate. The houses in that Shore community are on small lots, which means many are withing hearing range. It sounds like a dryer with some loose change rattling around within.
Meanwhile the power produced by these plants can cost up to 400 times as much as conventional power according to this article. That’s because conventional gas and coal plants have to be online to make up for the unpredictable surges in wind and solar power.
I have long argued that belief in the alarmist view of anthropogenic global warming is more of a religion than a science. The true believers are essentially puritans who feel guilty about having ample electricity at their disposal. So they dream up ways of making it more expensive and less accessible.
Good for them, but if they really believed global warming was such a threat then they would be pushing the only technology that is capable of generating huge amounts of power with no CO-2 emissions. That’s nuclear power. The Germans plan to phase it out.
But somehow I suspect they won’t follow through on those plans. At a certain point, an industrial country needs power. And Germans already pay twice as much for it as we do. I don’t think they’re going to let their economy destroyed because of the work of a bunch of climate “scientists.”
I put the word in quotes because the real experts in this field are not the climatologists. By the very nature of their studies, climatologist have a vested interest in further alarmism about global warming. The more alarmism, the more money gets spent on their studies.
But the true experts are the physicists. Not surprisingly, the most prominent among them like to point out that this is a field that requires much more study before any definitive conclusions can be arrived at. The most prominent such physicist is Freeman Dyson
of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Dyson, who may be the smartest man on the planet, has told me in some detail why he is a climate-change skeptic.
Despite the complicated nature of the problem, Dyson can talk to regular people about it. That’s because he is a writer of many books that explain scientific concepts to laymen.
So was Richard P. Feynman. Feynman, who worked on the atom bomb back in World War II, was the author of a number of books including “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman.”
The book is a compendium of anecdotes by Feynman about his various adventures working on the bomb, learning how to crack safes, and deducing the science of picking up women in bars.
No one with a sense of humor could be offended in the least by any of it. But the world of science has becomes so politically correct these days that a writer was canned from a leading science publication for being insufficiently offended by the book.
This Washington Post piece explains how blogger Ashutosh Jogalekar got the boot:
Commenting on recent biographies of Feynman, Jogalekar noted the physicist’s “casual sexism,” including his affairs with two married women, his humiliation of a female student and his delight in documenting his strategies for picking up women in bars. But while expressing disappointment in Feynman’s behavior, Jogalekar essentially dismissed it as a byproduct of the “male-dominated American society in the giddy postwar years.”
Within a day of the column’s appearance, Scientific American pulled it from its site, with another note from Brainard: “The text of this post has been removed because it did not meet Scientific American’s quality standards.”
It turns out that the Scientific American people are also trying to bowdlerize writers for expressing frank opinions on the connection between genetics and intelligence. That should tell you all you need to know about why global-warming alarmism remains ascendant in the media: To these p.c. types, propaganda trumps science every time.
And by the way, no one is actually questioning the science behind Feynman’s theories on how he could best pick up women. Note this one outraged writer’s piece on the controversy.
“Basically, Feynman was convinced that buying women things and expecting sex as payment was respecting them. In order to do anything different, he had to disrespect them and think of them as horrible demons.”
No, what Feynman was doing was running an experiment in how to pick up women. He decided they don’t fall for guys who chase them too much.
In the book, he describes how a bartender in New Mexico taught him that lesson and how it worked out in practice. He then concludes that “I never really used it after that. I didn’t enjoy doing it that way. But it was interesting to know that things worked much differently from how I was brought up.”
Now that, boys and girls, is the scientific mind at work. It would have been fascinating to see how Feynman treated all the hype over global warming. Unfortunately he died in 1988.
Solar Activity More Likely to Cause Global Warming, than CO2
SOLAR ACTIVITY – NOT CO2 – COULD CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING, NEW PAPER SAYS
The impact of carbon dioxide on climate change may have been overstated, with solar activity giving a better explanation of changes in the Earth’s temperature, according to Chinese scientists.
A new paper published in the Chinese Science Bulletin has found a “high correlation between solar activity and the Earth’s averaged surface temperature over centuries,” suggesting that climate change is intimately linked with solar cycles rather than human activity.
The paper, written in Chinese, says that there is also a “significant correlation” between solar activity over the past century and an increase in Earth’s surface temperatures over the same period. The correlation between solar activity and water temperature is even higher than the correlation between solar activity and land temperature.
The paper, by Dr Zhao Xinhua and Dr Feng Xueshang, adds that a peer-reviewer said the results “provide a possible explanation for the global warming”.
In a press release, posted on the Hockey Schtick blog, The researchers say:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claimed that the release of the anthropogenic greenhouse gases contributed to 90 percent or even higher of the observed increase in the global average temperature in the past 50 years.
However, the new paper casts doubt on the IPCC’s assertion:
Research shows that the current warming does not exceed the natural fluctuations of climate. The climate models of IPCC seem to underestimate the impact of natural factors on the climate change, while overstate that of human activities. Solar activity is an important ingredient of natural driving forces of climate. Therefore, it is valuable to investigate the influence of solar variability on the Earth’s climate change on long time scales.
Indeed, the study says that the “modern maximum” – a peak in solar activity that lasted much of the last century – corresponds very well with an increase in global temperatures.
There has been increasing evidence in recent years that global warming is linked with solar activity. In 2009, Professor Henrik Svensmark from the Danish National Space Centre,said that the last time the Earth experienced unusually high temperatures, in the later Medieval period, there had also been an increase in solar activity. When this activity dropped, it led to the “little ice age” of the seventeenth century.
In 2011, three further papers suggested the Earth could be heading for a new “little ice age” as solar activity drops once again. Frank Hill of the National Solar Observatory in New Mexico said: “The fact that there are three separate lines of evidence all pointing in the same direction is very compelling.”
Honest, Unbiased Scientists Reject Global Warming Hysteria!
Dr. Don Easterbrook Exposes Global Warming Hoax
Global Cooling is Here
Evidence for Predicting Global Cooling for the Next Three Decades
Department of Geology, Western Washington University
Article originally published, 11/2/2008
Re-Published 10/29/2013
Addendum Video: 3/26/2013 Presentation to WA Senate committee added 12/4/2013 by HSaive
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Global Research Editor’s note
The following article represents an alternative view and analysis of global climate change, which challenges the dominant Global Warming Consensus.
Global Research does not necessarily endorse the proposition of “Global Cooling”, nor does it accept at face value the Consensus on Global Warming. Our purpose is to encourage a more balanced debate on the topic of global climate change.
INTRODUCTION
Despite no global warming in 10 years and recording setting cold in 2007-2008, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change (IPCC) and computer modelers who believe that CO2 is the cause of global warming still predict the Earth is in store for catastrophic warming in this century. IPCC computer models have predicted global warming of 1° F per decade and 5-6° C (10-11° F) by 2100 (Fig. 1), which would cause global catastrophe with ramifications for human life, natural habitat, energy and water resources, and food production. All of this is predicated on the assumption that global warming is caused by increasing atmospheric CO2 and that CO2 will continue to rise rapidly.
3/26/2013 Presentation to Washington State Senate Committee on Climate Change – In addition to evidence contrary to IPCC, Dr. Easterbrook alleges media bias and manipulation of data by East Anglia, NASA, NOAA and NSF. (TVW Original Broadcast)
Archive Backup Video
Figure 1. A. IPCC prediction of global warming early in the 21st century. B. IPCC prediction of global warming to 2100. (Sources: IPCC website)
However, records of past climate changes suggest an altogether different scenario for the 21st century. Rather than drastic global warming at a rate of 0.5 ° C (1° F) per decade, historic records of past natural cycles suggest global cooling for the first several decades of the 21st century to about 2030, followed by global warming from about 2030 to about 2060, and renewed global cooling from 2060 to 2090 (Easterbrook, D.J., 2005, 2006a, b, 2007, 2008a, b); Easterbrook and Kovanen, 2000, 2001). Climatic fluctuations over the past several hundred years suggest ~30 year climatic cycles of global warming and cooling, on a general rising trend from the Little Ice Age.
PREDICTIONS BASED ON PAST CLIMATE PATTERNS
Global climate changes have been far more intense (12 to 20 times as intense in some cases) than the global warming of the past century, and they took place in as little as 20–100 years. Global warming of the past century (0.8° C) is virtually insignificant when compared to the magnitude of at least 10 global climate changes in the past 15,000 years. None of these sudden global climate changes could possibly have been caused by human CO2 input to the atmosphere because they all took place long before anthropogenic CO2 emissions began. The cause of the ten earlier ‘natural’ climate changes was most likely the same as the cause of global warming from 1977 to 1998.
Figure 2. Climate changes in the past 17,000 years from the GISP2 Greenland ice core. Red = warming, blue = cooling. (Modified from Cuffy and Clow, 1997)
Climatic fluctuations over the past several hundred years suggest ~30 year climatic cycles of global warming and cooling (Figure 3) on a generally rising trend from the Little Ice Age about 500 years ago.
Figure 3. Alternating warm and cool cycles since 1470 AD. Blue = cool, red = warm. Based on oxygen isotope ratios from the GISP2 Greenland ice core.
Relationships between glacial fluctuations, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and global climate change.
After several decades of studying alpine glacier fluctuations in the North Cascade Range, my research showed a distinct pattern of glacial advances and retreats (the Glacial Decadal Oscillation, GDO) that correlated well with climate records. In 1992, Mantua published the Pacific Decadal Oscillation curve showing warming and cooling of the Pacific Ocean that correlated remarkably well with glacial fluctuations. Both the GDA and the PDO matched global temperature records and were obviously related (Fig. 4). All but the latest 30 years of changes occurred prior to significant CO2 emissions so they were clearly unrelated to atmospheric CO2.
Figure 4. Correspondence of the GDO, PDO, and global temperature variations.
The significance of the correlation between the GDO, PDO, and global temperature is that once this connection has been made, climatic changes during the past century can be understood, and the pattern of glacial and climatic fluctuations over the past millennia can be reconstructed. These patterns can then be used to project climatic changes in the future. Using the pattern established for the past several hundred years, in 1998 I projected the temperature curve for the past century into the next century and came up with curve ‘A’ in Figure 5 as an approximation of what might be in store for the world if the pattern of past climate changes continued. Ironically, that prediction was made in the warmest year of the past three decades and at the acme of the 1977-1998 warm period. At that time, the projected curved indicated global cooling beginning about 2005 ± 3-5 years until about 2030, then renewed warming from about 2030 to about 2060 (unrelated to CO2—just continuation of the natural cycle), then another cool period from about 2060 to about 2090. This was admittedly an approximation, but it was radically different from the 1° F per decade warming called for by the IPCC. Because the prediction was so different from the IPCC prediction, time would obviously show which projection was ultimately correct.
Now a decade later, the global climate has not warmed 1° F as forecast by the IPCC but has cooled slightly until 2007-08 when global temperatures turned sharply downward. In 2008, NASA satellite imagery (Figure 6) confirmed that the Pacific Ocean had switched from the warm mode it had been in since 1977 to its cool mode, similar to that of the 1945-1977 global cooling period. The shift strongly suggests that the next several decades will be cooler, not warmer as predicted by the IPCC.
Figure 5.Global temperature projection for the coming century, based on warming/cooling cycles of the past several centuries. ‘A’ projection based on assuming next cool phase will be similar to the 1945-1977 cool phase. ‘B’ projection based on assuming next cool phase will be similar to the 1880-1915 cool phase. The predicted warm cycle from 2030 to 2060 is based on projection of the 1977 to 1998 warm phase and the cooling phase from 2060 to 2090 is based on projection of the 1945 to 1977 cool cycle.
Implications of PDO, NAO, GDO, and sun spot cycles for global climate in coming decades
The IPCC prediction of global temperatures, 1° F warmer by 2011 and 2° F by 2038 (Fig. 1), stand little chance of being correct. NASA’s imagery showing that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has shifted to its cool phase is right on schedule as predicted by past climate and PDO changes (Easterbrook, 2001, 2006, 2007). The PDO typically lasts 25-30 years and assures North America of cool, wetter climates during its cool phases and warmer, drier climates during its warm phases. The establishment of the cool PDO, together with similar cooling of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), virtually assures several decades of global cooling and the end of the past 30-year warm phase. It also means that the IPCC predictions of catastrophic global warming this century were highly inaccurate.
The switch of PDO cool mode to warm mode in 1977 initiated several decades of global warming. The PDO has now switched from its warm mode (where it had been since 1977) into its cool mode. As shown on the graph above, each time this had happened in the past century, global temperature has followed. The upper map shows cool ocean temperatures in blue (note the North American west coast). The lower diagram shows how the PDO has switched back and forth from warm to cool modes in the past century, each time causing global temperature to follow. Comparisons of historic global climate warming and cooling over the past century with PDO and NAO oscillations, glacial fluctuations, and sun spot activity show strong correlations and provide a solid data base for future climate change projections.
The Pacific Ocean has a warm temperature mode and a cool temperature mode, and in the past century, has switched back forth between these two modes every 25-30 years (known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or PDO). In 1977 the Pacific abruptly shifted from its cool mode (where it had been since about 1945) into its warm mode, and this initiated global warming from 1977 to 1998. The correlation between the PDO and global climate is well established. The announcement by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) had shifted to its cool phase is right on schedule as predicted by past climate and PDO changes (Easterbrook, 2001, 2006, 2007). The PDO typically lasts 25-30 years and assures North America of cool, wetter climates during its cool phases and warmer, drier climates during its warm phases. The establishment of the cool PDO, together with similar cooling of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), virtually assures several decades of global cooling and the end of the past 30-year warm phase.
Figure 6. Switch of PDO cool mode to warm mode in 1977 initiated several decades of global warming. The PDO has now switched from its warm mode (where it had been since 1977) into its cool mode. As shown on the graph above, each time this has happened in the past century, global temperature has followed. The upper map shows cool ocean temperatures in blue (note the North American west coast). The lower diagram shows how the PDO has switched back and forth from warm to cool modes in the past century, each time causing global temperature to follow. Projection of the past pattern (right end of graph) assures 30 yrs of global cooling
Comparisons of historic global climate warming and cooling over the past century with PDO and NAO oscillations, glacial fluctuations, and sun spot activity show strong correlations and provide a solid data base for future climate change projections. As shown by the historic pattern of GDOs and PDOs over the past century and by corresponding global warming and cooling, the pattern is part of ongoing warm/cool cycles that last 25-30 years. The global cooling phase from 1880 to 1910, characterized by advance of glaciers worldwide, was followed by a shift to the warm-phase PDO for 30 years, global warming and rapid glacier recession. The cool-phase PDO returned in ~1945 accompanied by global cooling and glacial advance for 30 years. Shift to the warm-phase PDO in 1977 initiated global warming and recession of glaciers that persisted until 1998. Recent establishment of the PDO cool phase appeared right on target and assuming that its effect will be similar to past history, global climates can be expected to cool over the next 25-30 years. The global warming of this century is exactly in phase with the normal climatic pattern of cyclic warming and cooling and we have now switched from a warm phase to a cool phase right at the predicted time (Fig. 5)
The ramifications of the global cooling cycle for the next 30 years are far reaching―e.g., failure of crops in critical agricultural areas (it’s already happening this year), increasing energy demands, transportation difficulties, and habitat change. All this during which global population will increase from six billion to about nine billion. The real danger in spending trillions of dollars trying to reduce atmospheric CO2 is that little will be left to deal with the very real problems engendered by global cooling.
CONCLUSIONS
Global warming (i.e, the warming since 1977) is over. The minute increase of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere (0.008%) was not the cause of the warming—it was a continuation of natural cycles that occurred over the past 500 years.
The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling, perhaps much deeper than the global cooling from about 1945 to 1977. Just how much cooler the global climate will be during this cool cycle is uncertain. Recent solar changes suggest that it could be fairly severe, perhaps more like the 1880 to 1915 cool cycle than the more moderate 1945-1977 cool cycle. A more drastic cooling, similar to that during the Dalton and Maunder minimums, could plunge the Earth into another Little Ice Age, but only time will tell if that is likely.
Don J. Easterbrook is Professor Emeritus of Geology at Western Washington University. Bellingham, WA. He has published extensively on issues pertaining to global climate change. For further details see his list of publications
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