Those Stubborn Facts: 35-Year Cooling of South Pole Confirmed By NASA - Antarctica Ice Sheets Safe



Antarctica south pole cooling 35 years satellite co2 those stubborn facts nov2013The IPCC's climate science has long claimed that human CO2 emissions are producing an accelerated global warming, with a "runaway" warming trend, which is then being amplified in the north and south polar extremes. This dangerous warming is, of course, causing the ice sheets to melt, unleashing catastrophic sea level rise, and thus swamping coastal regions and low-lying islands, as we speak!

Hmmm.....despite over 845 billion tons of human CO2 emissions being added to the biosphere since 1978, that predicted dangerous warming, and associated catastrophes, have yet to materialize.

A BIG-TIME FAIL, no? As many are now saying, a rather robust and very significant embarrassment for all of the "consensus" involved: including the IPCC, the United Nations' science "experts," the governing elites and bureaucrats.

This huge fail is amplified because the South Pole region that includes Antarctica has done the opposite - literally a cooling temperature trend over the last 35 years.

NASA's satellites have now been measuring global temperatures for a full 35 years (420 months through November 2013), including the Antarctic. The above chart documents the measured southern polar region temperatures.

As can be seen, there has been a cooling trend - granted, a very tiny -0.04°C/century, but it remains far removed from the IPCC's unicorn science of "amplified" and dangerous polar warming.

And not only has it not warmed, the Antarctic sea ice has grown to a record amount.

Well, you might now be wondering if that imminent, catastrophic Antarctica ice sheets melting and collapse are still imminent...as predicted. Nope. Eating a huge amount of that cooling crow, the IPCC has recently labeled that outcome as "extremely unlikely".....Ooops!!

In summary, those stubborn facts that are the archenemy of climate change alarmists are without mercy - after 35 years of high tech measurements, the South Pole region has nada, zilch, goose egg, naught, aught, nil, nix, nothing, null, zero, zip and zippo warming. Nuff said.

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The Supreme Court is Undermining Science and Society‏

By Alan Caruba

The Supreme Court has taken up another case based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s campaign of lies that carbon dioxide is the cause of “climate change” and claims about the quality of air in the United States. The Court is composed of lawyers, not scientists.

At this point in the present era, the Court has made rulings that run contrary to the original, clear intent of the U.S. Constitution and has wrought havoc on our society.

In 1973 it ruled that the killing of unborn babies was protected and millions since then have been deliberately killed. It extended protection to sodomy and same-sex marriage. It is destroying the fabric of our society that has served Americans well for more than two hundred years.

It ruled that the Affordable Health Care Act was a “tax”, enabling the Obamacare to be unleashed with the subsequent loss of health care plans by millions of Americans, often the loss of their personal physician, and the requirement that deeply-held religious opposition to contraception and abortion be negated by a law that requires their beliefs be overruled and denied.

In 2007, I wrote a commentary that was published in The Washington Times. I criticized a Supreme Court ruling that carbon dioxide (CO2) was a “pollutant”, opening the door to the EPA’s rapacious intent to control all aspects of our lives based on this lie that is used to justify its war on coal-fired plants that provide nearly half of all the electrical energy we use daily.  “CO2 is not a pollutant,” I wrote, “It exists in the Earth’s atmosphere and every blade of grass and every tree depends on it.” It plays no role whatever in the Earth’s climate.

The Clean Air Act and revisions passed in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1990s. The original regulation of air pollution was a good idea, as were the laws affecting clean water, but the EPA has since used pollution to impose a vast matrix of regulations that do not reflect the fact that the nation’s air and water is now as clean as it ever can be.

Carbon monoxide emissions have fallen from 197 million tons to 89 million tons. Nitrogen oxide emissions fell from 27 million tons to 19 million tons. Sulfur dioxide emissions fell from 3l million tons to 15 million tons. Lead emissions fell by more than 98%.  Particulate emissions (soot) fell by 80%. The air in the U.S. is considerably cleaner, but the EPA’s assertions continue to be made to expand its regulatory power and to attack the sovereignty of the states.

A case that was recently argued before the Court is another EPA effort to rewrite the Clean Air Act, asserting that it be given authority to regulate the flow of alleged “pollution” between “upwind” states and those who receive particulates and gases under its control. Some 27 states are considered “upwind” and those states along with all others have their own air control laws. In states that are more heavily industrialized and which have a large number of coal-fired plants on which the EPA wants to impose expensive standards that have no basis in fact.

A coalition led by Texas of more than a dozen other states brought a case, Environmental Protection Agency v. EME Homer City Generation, opposing the EPA’s regulatory re-write of the Clean Air Act. In August 2012, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the EPA which appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Wall Street Journal noted that “The D.C. Circuit only rarely overturns EPA rules, which shows how out of bounds the cross-state regulation is. The Supreme Court should overturn it for violating the federalist intentions of Congress, but there is also the added judicial incentive to show this increasingly rogue agency that it can’t rewrite the law as it pleases.”

The U.S. has been harmed by the many laws whose justification is based on the totally unscientific hoax regarding CO2. During the 101st and 111th Congresses, there were 692 laws introduced containing the term “greenhouse gas” when, in fact, CO2 is NOT such a gas, playing no role whatever in trapping warmth to affect the weather and/or climate of the Earth.

Stringent domestic laws and regulations, moreover, do not take into consideration the role of many other nations whose emissions are far greater than those produced here. However, reducing their emissions will have no effect on the Earth’s climate. The Earth is in what will likely be a lengthy cycle of cooling based on reduced solar radiation. It recently snowed in Egypt and in Israel where snow has long been a rarity.

The Obama administration’s “war on coal” has used the EPA to inflict an attack on the nation’s capacity to provide energy and the EPA has not ceased from using every ruling it has imposed to degrade the nation’s ability to maintain and expand the industrial base it needs to provide for economic growth, an increase in jobs, and the sovereign right of states to determine their own response to the need for clean air. The U.S. is a republic composed of separate republics.

At this point, control of the nation’s air and water quality should be returned in full to the states and the EPA should be eliminated as the threat to the nation it has become. The Supreme Court has played a role in this threat, ruling without any attention to real science, traditional values, and the clear intent of the Constitution.

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THE HEALTH RISKS OF SMALL APARTMENTS

Greenies hate "sprawl" but living in tiny spaces can cause psychological problems

New York City has a housing problem. Currently, it has 1.8 million one- and two-person households, and only one million studios and one-bedroom apartments. The obvious solution seems to be to develop more small residential units.NY apartment

But how small is too small? Should we allow couples to move into a space the size of a suburban closet? Can a parent and child share a place as big as a hotel room?

In January, Bloomberg’s office announced the winner of its 2012 competition to design and build a residential tower of micro-units—apartments between 250 and 370 square feet—on a city-owned site at East 27th street in Manhattan. According to the Mayor’s press release, the winning proposal, by the Brooklyn-based firm nARCHITECTS was chosen for its innovative layout and building design, with nearly 10 foot ceilings and Juliet balconies that give residents “substantial light and air.”

But as New York City’s “micro-apartment” project inches closer to reality, experts warn that micro-living may not be the urban panacea we’ve been waiting for. For some residents, the potential health risks and crowding challenges might outweigh the benefits of affordable housing. And while the Bloomberg administration hails the tiny spaces as a “milestone for new housing models,” critics question whether relaxing zoning rules and experimenting with micro-design on public land will effectively address New York’s apartment supply problem in the long run.

“Sure, these micro-apartments may be fantastic for young professionals in their 20's,” says Dak Kopec, director of design for human health at Boston Architectural College and author of Environmental Psychology for Design. “But they definitely can be unhealthy for older people , say in their 30’s and 40’s, who face different stress factors that can make tight living conditions a problem.”

Home is supposed to be a safe haven, and a resident with a demanding job may feel trapped in a claustrophobic apartment at night—forced to choose between the physical crowding of furniture and belongings in his unit, and social crowding, caused by other residents, in the building’s common spaces. Research, Kopec says, has shown that crowding-related stress can increase rates of domestic violence and substance abuse.

For all of us, daily life is a sequence of events, he explains. But most people don’t like adding extra steps to everyday tasks. Because micro-apartments are too small to hold basic furniture like a bed, table, and couch at the same time, residents must reconfigure their quarters throughout the day: folding down a Murphy bed, or hanging up a dining table on the wall. What might seem novel at the beginning ends up including a lot of little inconveniences, just to go to sleep or make breakfast before work. In this case, residents might eventually stop folding up their furniture every day and the space will start feeling even more constrained.

Susan Saegert, professor of environmental psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center and director of the Housing Environments Research Group, agrees that the micro-apartments will likely be a welcome choice for young New Yorkers who would probably otherwise share cramped space with friends. But she warns that tiny living conditions can be terrible for other residents—particularly if a couple or a parent and child squeeze into 300 square feet for the long term, no matter how well a unit is designed.

“I’ve studied children in crowded apartments and low-income housing a lot,” Saegert said, “and they can end up becoming withdrawn, and have trouble studying and concentrating.” In these situations, modern amenities—such as floor to ceiling windows, extra storage and a communal roof deck— won’t compensate for a fundamental lack of privacy in a child’s home every day.

She also doubts whether it’s a valid public goal to develop smaller units on city land. “In New York, property is just gold,” she points out. “Isn’t this something a developer could do in a [Brooklyn] neighborhood like DUMBO and make a lot of money?” By the same token, if micro-apartments are indeed the wave of the future, Saegert argues, they increase the “ground rent,” or dollar per square foot that a developer earns and comes to expect from his investment. So over time, New Yorkers may actually face more expensive housing, paying the same amount to rent a studio in the neighborhood where they used to be able to afford a one-bedroom. With the gradual erosion of zoning rules, the micro-apartment could very well become the unit of the future, the only viable choice for a large number of renters.

Beyond the economic impact of smaller spaces, our homes also serve an important role in communicating our values and goals, or what scientists call “identity claims.” We tend to feel happier and healthier when we can bring others to our space to telegraph who we are and what’s important to us.

“When we think about micro-living, we have a tendency to focus on functional things, like is there enough room for the fridge,” explained University of Texas psychology professor Samuel Gosling, who studies the connection between people and their possessions “But an apartment has to fill other psychological needs as well, such as self-expression and relaxation, that might not be as easily met in a highly cramped space.”

On the other hand, Eugenie L. Birch, professor of urban research and education and chair of the Graduate Group in City Planning at the University of Pennsylvania, says this certainly isn’t the first time we’ve had this debate over micro-living. New York has grappled with the public health costs of crowded living conditions and minimum apartment standards throughout its history.

“Over time, New York City developers conceived of many ways to address the need for affordable housing,” said Birch. “They built slums in the 19th century that reformers fought against. Other solutions have been boarding houses, missions, shelters, and what came to be known as single room occupancy units or SROs.”

While it might be stressful to live in crowded conditions, consider the alternative.

Rolf Pendall, director of the Urban Institute’s Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center asks: Where would all these people be doing business and living without the density? Would they be commuting longer distances or earning less, and is living farther from economic opportunities “better” for them? In that context, Pendall says he welcomes micro-apartments as long as they fit within the larger housing ecology of the city, and don’t ultimately displace other types of units for families.
The problem is, there’s often a discrepancy between housing standards and actual housing conditions. Countless New Yorkers illegally share apartments, and current zoning rules can create poor living environments—dilapidated kitchens or dark, dingy rooms with a window that opens onto a brick wall. A worst case scenario would yield hundreds of thousands of micro-apartments and poor conditions.

For this project, while New York may be taking a step backwards in terms of square footage, Eric Bunge, a principle at nArchitects, (the firm that created the winning micro-apartment design), is adamant that the city is taking a big step forward in terms of actual living conditions.

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A Science Journal Sting

Want to get your work published in a scientific journal? No problem if you have a few thousand dollars you are willing to part with.

These days a number of journals display trappings of a journal, promising peer-review and other services, but do not deliver.  They perform no peer review, and provide no services, beyond posting papers and cashing checks for the publication fees. There has been a recent dramatic increase in the number of publishers that appear to be engaged in the practice, growing by an order of magnitude in 2012 alone. (1)

Network of bank accounts based mostly in the developing world
From humble and idealistic beginnings a decade ago, open-access journals have mushroomed into a global industry, driven by author publication fees rather than traditional subscriptions. Most of the players are murky. The identity and location of the journals’ editors, as well as the financial workings of their publishers, are often purposefully obscured. Invoices for publication fees reveal a network of bank accounts based mostly in the developing world, reports John Bohannon. (2)

A striking picture emerges from the global distribution of open-access publishers, editors and bank accounts. Most of the publishing operations cloak their true geographic locations Some examples: The American Journal of Medical and Dental Science is published in Pakistan, while the European Journal of Chemistry sees publication in Turkey. (2)

Inspired by the experience of a colleague in Nigeria, who felt deceived by a certain journal—one with a business model that involves charging fees to the scientific authors ranging from $50 to more than $3,000, the above-mentioned John Bohannon, a biologist at Harvard, submitted 304 versions of a wonder drug paper to open-access journals. More than half of the journals accepted the paper, failing to notice its fatal flaws. (2)

The paper, about a new cancer drug, included nonsensical graphs and an utter disregard for the scientific method. In addition, it was written by fake authors, from a fake university in Africa, and as a final flourish, changed it through Google Translation into French and back to English. Collaborators at Harvard helped Bohannon make it convincingly boring. (3)

“Any reviewer with more than a high-school knowledge of chemistry and the ability to understand a basic data plot should have spotted the paper’s short coming immediately. Its experiments are so hopelessly flawed that the results are meaningless,” Bohannon wrote in the journal Science. And yet his informal sting operation revealed that 156 publishers completely missed the hints. (2)

Whether fee-charging open-access journals were actually keeping their promise to do peer review

Bohannon wanted to find out whether fee-charging open-access journals were actually keeping their promise to do peer review—a process in which scientists with some knowledge of a paper’s topic volunteer to check it out for scientific flaws. In the end, what he concluded was that ‘a huge proportion’ of the journals were not ensuring their papers were peer reviewed.  He added that his experiment could be the tip of the iceberg, and that peer review at traditional journals—not just fee-based open-access journals—could be just as bad. “It could be the whole peer review system is just failing under the strain of the tens of thousands of journals that now exist.” (4)

Some examples of the issue with ‘prestigious’ journals:

In a classic 1998 study, Fiona Godlee, editor of the prestigious British Medical Journal (BMJ), sent an article containing eight deliberate mistakes in study design, analysis and interpretation to more than 200 of the BMJ’s regular reviewers. Not one picked out all the mistakes. On average they reported fewer than two; some did not spot any. (5)

Another experiment at BMJ showed that reviewers did no better when more clearly instructed on the problems they might encounter. They also seemed to get worse with experience. Charles McCulloch and Michael Callahan, of the University of California, San Francisco, looked at how 1,500 referees were rated by editors at leading journals over a 14-year period and found that 92% showed a slow but steady drop in their scores. (5)

The Economist adds, “As well as not spotting things they ought to spot, there is a lot that peer reviewers do not even try to check. They do not typically re-analyze the data presented from scratch, contenting themselves with a sense that the authors’ analysis is properly conceived. And they cannot be expected to spot deliberate falsifications if they are carried out with a modicum of subtlety.” (5)

On another front, The Institute of Medicine estimates that only 4 percent of treatments and tests are backed up by strong scientific evidence; more than half have very weak evidence or none. (6)

John Ioannidis reported that one-third of studies published in three reputable peer reviewed journals didn’t hold up. He looked at 45 studies published between 1990 and 2003 and found that subsequent research contradicted the results of seven of those studies, and another seven were found to have weaker results than originally published. In other words, 32% did not withstand the test of time. (7)

This translates into a lot of medical misinformation. Ioannidis reviewed prestigious journals including The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and Lancet along with a number of others. Each article had been cited at least 1,000 times, all within a span of 13 years.

These results are worse than it sounds. Ioannidis had been examining only the less than one-tenth of one percent of published medical research that makes it to the most prestigious journals. Throw in the presumably less careful work from lesser journals discussed earlier, and take into account the way the results end up being spun and misinterpreted by university and industrial PR departments and by journals and it’s clear that whatever it was about the wrongness that Ioannidis had found in these journals, the wrongness rate would only worsen from there, notes David Freedman. (8)

All of this does not mean that medical studies are of no value or that health reports are always wrong. It simply serves as a warning that science is fluid, not static or absolute. It does suggest that every time you see a headline claiming that X causes cancer or that Y prevents it, some skepticism might be in order.

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THE LATEST GREENHOUSE GAS SCARE: PFTBA

Written by Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser

Perfluorotributylamine (PFTBA) is the latest greenhouse gas scare (GHGS). The media and web sites like countercurrents.org  are full of statements like “PFTBA is 7,100 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at warming the Earth” according to University of Toronto scientists who claim to have found an average of 0.18 parts per trillion of PFTBA in the Toronto air samples.

What does it mean for you – or not?

Greenhouse Gas Theory

The Greenhouse Gas Theory (GHGT) which – please know, is nothing but a theory – was invented 200 years ago and repudiated 100 years ago.

Al Gore and many non-governmental organizations use it regularly to tell you that we are all going to either (i) fry in hell, or (ii) freeze in the dark, and have to adjust our life styles of that of the Cro-Magnon or Neanderthal people, who lived a few ten-thousand years ago in caves.

Numbers in Perspective

In case you are not quite sure about the numbers and units of measurement (parts per trillion) touted, let me give you more useful and comparable information in the table below:Compound air concentration



In simple terms, a trillion is a million millions (by North American counting) or, what I have previously termed it, an “Illion-12.” As you can see from the table, when comparing the concentration of PFTBA in the air over Toronto to that of the major constituents, nitrogen and oxygen in the same parts per trillion units, it is miniscule. Even the “evil” carbon dioxide gas is 2,000,000,000 times more prevalent in the atmosphere. So, let’s go on to the claimed “greenhouse gas” effect.

PFTBA’s GHG Effect

The media reports say “PFTBA is 7,100 times more effective … than carbon dioxideover a 100-year time frame.” That statement, of course, is meaningless. Why not look at it over a 1,000-year or 1,000,000-year time frame? What’s wrong with its effect that is has to be expressed in units of 100 times the (actual) effect?”

The calculated “radiative forcing” of PFTBA is 0.00015 W per square meter. That is approximately 1/100,000,000 of the energy received on the earth’s surface from the sun’s radiation in mid-summer when the sun is straight overhead on a cloudless day. In other words, that calculated forcing is equivalent to about 0.001 seconds of the strongest sunshine you could experience on earth.

Your guess is probably correct, PFTBA’s calculated effect is so miniscule that it would be difficult to determine experimentally. Even if the 7,100 (time-multiplied) factor were correct, the cumulative effect (if any) of other atmospheric constituents, such as CO2, would have to be multiplied by the same time factor.

Therefore, the claimed GHGT effect of PFTBA would only amount to 1/2,000,000,000 of that of the CO2 in the atmosphere. That’s unless the earth’s atmosphere were to experience a rapid loss of its CO2, which would mean that nearly all life on earth would also rapidly come to a screeching halt.

We should be thankful for the CO2 in our air. As to the effect of PFTBA, forget it.

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Dow Chemical holds back on investment in Europe, cites climate policies

EU proposals to limit the amount of free emission permits in its cap-and-trade program boost industry costs, and are one reason Dow limited capacity expansion in the region for the past 12 years. That compares with Dow's $4 billion of US investment planned for the next four years.

Europe’s “backfiring” climate and energy policies are adding to high natural gas costs and holding back Dow Chemical's investment in the region, said the company’s director of global climate change policy.

European Union proposals to limit the amount of free emission permits in its cap-and-trade program boost industry costs, and are one reason Dow and other chemical makers limited refining capacity expansion in the region for the past 12 years, Russel Mills said by phone from Zurich on Dec. 12.

That compares with the Midland, Michigan-based company’s $4 billion of US investment planned for the next four years, he said.

Dow, the biggest US chemical maker, joined companies including ExxonMobil in a Dutch court challenge to the European Commission’s decision to reduce the pollution rights it hands out to factories, Mills said. Manufacturers may seek compensation of about 4 billion euros ($5.5 billion) in total for the lost free permits, according to Utility Support Group, an adviser to some Dutch chemical factories on the matter.

“It really is a slap in the face for manufacturers,” Mills said. “Maybe they underestimate the efficiency with which markets can work if they are allowed to work.”

Commission spokesman Isaac Valero-Ladron in Brussels declined to comment when reached by e-mail.

Lower portion

The EU is seeking to curb a surplus of permits in its carbon market that pushed prices to a record low and eroded the incentive for companies to invest in emission-reducing technologies. The commission decided in September to lower the handout of free allowances to factories by 12% in the eight years through 2020.

Under the bloc’s emissions trading system, permits to emit carbon dioxide are mostly allocated for free to factories, which must surrender enough to match their CO2 output or pay fines. Power companies must pay for their allowances. Mills and Utility Support Group argue the commission isn’t giving enough free carbon rights for manufacturers’ heat generation and waste-gas production.

European gas prices are already relatively high, with the cost of the fuel in the UK more than twice the level in the US. BASF in Germany, India’s Tata Chemicals and Lotte Chemical of South Korea shut plants in Britain this year.

ExxonMobil’s Dutch unit is also appealing against the commission decision to cut free allowances, Richard Scrase, a Leatherhead, England-based spokesman for the company, said Dec. 12. The move was “a standard procedure to preserve our rights in anticipation of more data transparency from the EU commission on its calculation of free ETS allowances,” he said.

Europe’s adoption of renewable energy subsidies, Germany’s shift from nuclear power and the EU’s effort to support carbon prices are all adding to industry costs, Dow’s Mills said.

Nations embracing carbon markets need to “make it a low- cost club not a high-cost club,” he said.

EU carbon permits for December 2014 dropped 0.8% on Monday to 4.88 euros a metric ton on ICE Futures Europe in London. The benchmark contract was as high as 31 euros a ton in 2006

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