DEBUNKING THE OCEAN-CIRCULATION-COLLAPSE SCARE

An oceanographer charts the ebb and flow of opinion on ocean currents

(By Carl Wunsch, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA)

Many scientists believe that high-latitude cooling drives the ocean's currents as cold, dense water sinks then flows towards the Equator, creating a convective heat engine. Since I was a student in the 1960s, when a colleague at MIT, Thomas Rossby, had seemingly shown that such a flow could be set up in the lab, this view has been entrenched. But a flaw in the heat-engine model was pointed out as early as 1908 by the Swedish meteorologist Johan Sandstrom.

Heating a saucepan from below causes an instability: lower, warmer fluid rises and displaces the fluid above, leading to a vigorous convection current. In the ocean, heating and cooling both occur at the same level - the surface. Sandstrom argued that this situation should be stable. In my student days, Sandstrom's argument was simply dismissed because he had considered an ideal, non-turbulent fluid. Recently, however, some of us became interested again - in part because of public concern that the ocean circulation is 'shutting down', and more sensibly because of the need to understand the oceanic energy budget.

In one example, two experimentalists revisit the problem (W. Wang & R.- X. Huang J. Fluid Mech.540,49-73; 2005) and find that cooling salty water at or below the level of heating always produces some motion. So Sandstrom wasn't strictly correct. But the observed flow is so weak that the efficiency with which the ocean converts heat to motion must be vanishingly small. The circulation in the ocean - and in retrospect, in Rossby's original experiment - depends on details of how cold and warm waters mix. That means the winds and tides are the real drivers of the ocean currents. How long will it be until the literature catches up?

(Article above from Nature, "Research Highlights", 2 February, 439, 512 - 513 of 2006).






LITIGATE, LITIGATE, LITIGATE!

Judicial time wasted on attacking a reasonable opinion. All in the hope of legal loot, of course

A federal judge blasted former Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine Todd Whitman on Thursday for reassuring New Yorkers soon after the Sept. 11 attacks that it was safe to return to their homes and offices while toxic dust was polluting the neighborhood. U.S. District Judge Deborah A. Batts refused to grant Whitman immunity against a class-action lawsuit brought in 2004 by residents, students and workers in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn who said they were exposed to hazardous materials from the collapse of the World Trade Center. "No reasonable person would have thought that telling thousands of people that it was safe to return to lower Manhattan, while knowing that such return could pose long-term health risks and other dire consequences, was conduct sanctioned by our laws," the judge said. She called Whitman's actions "conscience-shocking," saying the EPA chief knew that the fall of the twin towers released tons of hazardous materials into the air. A call to a spokeswoman for Whitman was not immediately returned.

The judge let the lawsuit proceed against the EPA and Whitman, permitting the plaintiffs to try to prove that the agency and its administrator endangered their health. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and reimbursement for cleanup costs and asks the court to order that a medical monitoring fund be set up to track the health of those exposed to trade center dust. In her ruling, Batts noted that the EPA and Whitman said repeatedly - beginning just two days after the attack - that the air appeared safe to breathe. The EPA's internal watchdog later found that the agency, at the urging of White House officials, gave misleading assurances.

Quoting a ruling in an earlier case, the judge said a public official cannot be held personally liable for putting the public in harm's way unless the conduct was so egregious as "to shock the contemporary conscience." Given her role in protecting the health and environment for Americans, Whitman's reassurances after Sept. 11 were "without question conscience-shocking," Batts said.

Source





HUGE ROW PREDICTED ON UK EMISSION CUTS AS BRITISH PUBLIC TURNS AGAINST CLIMATE TAXES

Ministers expect a "huge row" with businesses over plans to cut greenhouse gas output under the European Union's emissions trading scheme. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs intends to push ahead with tougher limits on emissions than are required under EU-wide plans set out by the European Commission last month. Businesses in energy-intensive sectors covered by the scheme fear this will put them at a disadvantage compared with competitors in other member states.

By the end of March, the government will publish its draft "national allocation plan" showing how much carbon dioxide businesses will be allowed to emit in the second phase of the emissions trading scheme, from 2008 to 2012. Businesses argue that the government is creating an unnecessary burden by adopting unilaterally a tougher standard for cutting emissions. Other EU countries will base the calculations for their national allocation plans on their commitments to reduce greenhouse gases under the Kyoto protocol on climate change. This will mean many member states have to impose much stricter reductions on their industry than they face at present. Cuts of about 6 per cent on average from 2008 will be required, according to the Commission.

However, the UK is on track to meet its Kyoto targets, so British businesses could expect to receive broadly similar emissions limits in the second phase of the trading scheme as in the first, which began on January 1 2005. However, the government is committed to its own, more stringent, targets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent by 2010. These targets were an election manifesto pledge. Defra wants to base its calculations for the national allocation plan on that tougher target, meaning that businesses covered by the EU scheme could expect a significant reduction in their allowances to emit greenhouse gases.

Margaret Beckett, environment secretary, said: "Our allocations for phase one [of the trading scheme] should be viewed as the minimal starting point for phase two allocations." Another minister told the Financial Times he expected emission cuts to be required from business to help to meet government targets, and predicted a "huge row" with business over plans to tighten the screw on industry's emissions. He said some businesses were co-operating on emissions reduction but others were resisting.

Ian Peters, director of external affairs at the EEF, the engineering employers group, said: "If we were to aim for the [government's own] targets, then clearly that would put UK manufacturing at a severe disadvantage compared with European businesses. Our concern is that British manufacturing is already under enormous pressure." He called for more of the burden of cutting emissions to fall on consumers, transport and other business sectors outside manufacturing. Plans to bring service businesses and small businesses within the scope of emissions trading are under consideration.

But environmental groups called for further reductions of emissions from businesses. Matthew Davis, climate change campaign director for WWF, said: "If you don't put more pressure on business, how do you meet the 2010 targets? It is a bigger challenge [to persuade consumers to cut their emissions] than to get businesses to accept further cuts."

About half of the UK's total emissions are estimated to be created by consumers. But a recent Mori poll found that although most people supported action on climate change, only 12 per cent were in favour of regulations or taxes to encourage people to use energy more efficiently.

Source






REALITY CHECK AGAIN: FROZEN TSUNAMI, MASSIVE SEA ICE SURGES LARGEST IN ALASKA FOR 25 YEARS

There is an awful lot of weather lately that is looking very pesky for the global warmers. "Gaia" must be playing a joke on them. First we had the record cold in Europe and now below we see the latest news from Alaska:



Huge ridges of sea ice brimmed over the Arctic Ocean and crashed onto a Barrow roadway earlier this week, threatening to cut off traffic and knock out power poles in the state's northernmost town. The two massive ice surges, known to Alaska Natives as ivus, were the city's largest in more than a quarter of a century and stunned residents who had never seen large blocks of ice rammed ashore. "It just looked like a big old mountain of ice," said L.A. Leavitt, 19, who left his night-shift job at the city early Tuesday morning to check out the ridges.

Ivus are like frozen tsunamis and crash ashore violently. They've killed hunters in the past and are among the Arctic's most feared natural phenomena. Residents said the northernmost ivu, about 20 feet high and 100 feet long, contained car-sized blocks and left coastal Stevenson Road with only one lane. The ice stopped about 30 feet short of a borough pump station that provides access to Barrow's underground water and sewer system, said North Slope Borough disaster coordinator Rob Elkins. Elkins said strong winds from Russia and eastward currents began pushing pack ice toward Barrow on Saturday. By late Monday night, thick sea ice, which is called multiyear ice and can sometimes grow as thick as 40 feet, had shoved the younger, thinner ice onto shore.

Elkins, who got a 5 a.m. wake-up call from police, said a second ivu on the south side of town came to rest near a smaller coastal road and an empty playground. That ridge stretched about 200 feet. "It was just an amazing sight," said Elkins, a five-year Barrow resident. "It looks like huge stacks of huge ice cubes." The ivus, about two miles apart, had stopped moving by the time Elkins arrived. But the borough quickly called out bulldozers to clear the ice. Elkins also assembled a joint-agency response team, with Inupiaq whaling captains providing traditional knowledge of ice behavior and scientists reading satellite weather, Elkins said.

As winds from the west slowed that afternoon, an army of heavy equipment had cleared the road. Whalers also pointed out that a protective pressure ridge had formed more than a mile offshore. Whaling captain Charlie Hopson, who coordinates oil spill responses in the area, said he could see large blocks of ice churning slowly in the frozen ocean.

For whalers, the approach of multiyear ice presages a good spring season. Whalers need a solid platform of near-shore ice for safer travel and for butchering. "We always want this thing to happen before the whaling season to help get the ice solid and safe to travel on and then we can pick our way out to the lead," Hopson said.

Whaling co-captain Lloyd Leavitt, who attended the response meeting as special assistant to the mayor, said he hadn't seen such a big ivu since 1978. That's when winds peaked at 80 mph and blocks of multiyear ice about 12 feet thick slid ashore like pancakes from a frying pan. "It knocked down all the power poles on the beach front, every last one from the Barrow mechanical building to Browerville," he said.

***************************************

Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

*****************************************