Massachusetts Democrat Senator goes "ad hominem"

Senator Edward J. Markey has jumped on the bandwagon set in motion by the recent NYT article about Dr Willie Soon.  He's got nothing intelligent to say about climate change so is attacking those who do.  But a debate about persons tells us nothing about the truth or falsehood of what those persons say.  The test of truth its agreement with reality and 18 years of global temperature stasis is a reality that heavily favors the skeptics, not the Warmists.

The fact is that a small minority of skeptics do receive some funding from business.  But pro-Warming organizatons receive much larger sums from business.  For instance early in this century Exxon gave Stanford $100 million and BP gave Princeton $20 million.  So why is funding from business wrong when it goes to skeptics but right when it goes to the Green/Left?  There is no intelligent answer to that question.  It is just tribalism at work

Senator Edward J. Markey is calling on coal and oil companies to reveal whether they are funding scientific climate change studies after his staff reviewed newly obtained documents illuminating the relationship between a researcher for a Cambridge-based institution and energy interests.

The Massachusetts Democrat will send letters to fossil fuel companies, trade organizations, and others with a stake in carbon fuels, aiming to reveal other climate-change-skeptical scientists whose work has been subsidized by those parties, a Markey spokesman said via e-mail.

“For years, fossil fuel interests and front groups have attacked climate scientists and legislation to cut carbon pollution using junk science and debunked arguments,” Markey said in a statement. “The American public deserve an honest debate that isn’t polluted by the best junk science fossil fuel interests can buy. That’s why I will be launching this investigation to see how widespread this denial-for-hire scheme stretches within the anti-climate action cabal.”

The documents reviewed by Markey’s staff were obtained by Greenpeace, the environmental group, through the Freedom of Information Act. They show a relationship between Dr. Willie Soon, a solar researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and several fossil fuel companies who’ve funded his research on climate change. The Cambridge-based center is a joint project of Harvard University and the Smithsonian Institution, though Soon is employed by the Smithsonian side. The center has previously said that Soon’s views are his alone and not reflective of the institution.

In 2013, the Boston Globe profiled Soon, who has spent much of the past decade studying the sun’s effect on climate change and downplaying the role of carbon emissions. Some climate scientists and environmental groups have questioned the scientific basis of his work.

Willie Soon, a Harvard-Smithsonian Center astrophysicist, has established himself as a front-line combatant in the partisan crossfire over the climate.

Since 2001, Soon has received more than $1 million in grants from the ExxonMobil Foundation, Southern Company, the Texaco Foundation, the American Petroleum Institute, and other organizations either affiliated with fossil fuel companies or active in undermining carbon’s role in climate change, according to documents that have been previously reported. Soon also is affiliated with the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank known for its conferences on climate change skepticism.

SOURCE





NOAA AND NASA-GISS, ‘You Have Done Enough’

On January 16, 2015, Associated Press Science Writer Seth Borenstein published a story titled “The heat is on; NOAA, NASA say 2014 warmest year on record.” Within days of this publication information was cited that NASA and NOAA data showed 2014 global temperatures weren’t statistically different from the years 2005 and 2010.

Associated Press Science Writer Seth Borenstein wrote a February 19 article titled “U. S. winter has been a tale of two nations” in which NOAA said January 2015 was the second warmest January in history behind 2007.

Further citations of NOAA and NASA-GISS temperatures by Science Writer Borenstein include: “Warming Earth heading for hottest year on record,” “NOAA:  Globe sets 5th hottest-month record of 2014,” and “Global warming makes for hottest June ever.” In response to Seth Borenstein’s December 2, 2014 article “Hotter, weirder:  How climate change has changed Earth,” Paul Homewood wrote the article “Educating Seth Borenstein” which refutes claims of wilder weather, hotter temperatures, rising oceans, and reduced sea ice.

The land surface temperature data used by NOAA and NASA is subject to errors in measurements at temperature stations that were rural 100 years ago and are now in urban areas due to population growth.  This is called the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHIE) which results in local temperature increase due to accumulations of concrete and asphalt.  A more accurate means of measuring global temperatures is by satellites that map most of the earth’s surface.  The influences of UHIE are small due to urban areas being such a small portion of the earth’s area.

Professors John Christy and Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama (Huntsville) post global temperature data for the period from December 1979 to present.  Their data is shown as a temperature anomaly which is the difference between measured temperatures and the 30-year average temperature from 1981 to 2010.  The three warmest annual temperatures from 1979 were 0.420 degree C. for 1998, 0.400 for 2010, and 0.275 for 2014.  Over the 204 months that span 1998 to 2014, 50 months were higher than the corresponding month in 2014.  Clearly 2014 was not the warmest year in the period of satellite temperature measurements from 1980 to 2014.

Satellite temperature data for January 2015 was 0.35 degrees C.  Temperatures for 1998 was 0.47, 2007 was 0.42, 2010 was 0.56, and 2013 was 0.51.  Clearly January 2015 was fifth warmest in the 37 years of satellite measurements.

The satellite data shows essentially a pause in global warming since 1998 or a period of 17 years.  During this period atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increased the highest rate (2 parts per million per year) in thousands of years.

One of the sources of surface temperature data is the United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) which gives temperature data in the contiguous United States.  Walter Dnes wrote an essay “USHCN Monthly Temperature Adjustments” which gives references  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 that describe in detail monthly adjustments to USHCN data from 1872-to-present.  These adjustments made present temperatures warmer, earlier temperatures cooler, and eliminated the 1930s period of heat waves and droughts.

In the United States there has been no media attention to global temperature adjustments and the population assumes all news reports true.  Reporters take advocacy roles carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels causes global warming.

The United Kingdom has been exceptional in reporting news of bogus temperature data.  British journalist James Delingpole wrote the January 30, 2015 article “FORGET CLIMATEGATE:  THIS ‘GLOBAL WARMING’ SCANDAL IS MUCH BIGGER” which points out the world’s three surface data sources for global temperatures have adjusted their raw data.   The sources are NASA-GISS, NOAA which maintains the dataset known as the Global Historical Climate Network, and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit and Met Office data records known as Hadcrut.   Mr. Delingpole found no satisfactory reasons for temperature adjustments.

The British “The Global Warming Policy Foundation” sends newsletters around the world to inform the public about news regarding global warming and attempts at mitigation.  Its February 9, 2015 newsletter The Biggest Science Scandal Ever refers to three recent publications about adjustments to global temperature data:

The first article is “The Fiddling With Temperature Data Is The Biggest Science Scandal Ever” by Christopher Booker in The Sunday Telegraph, 8 February 2015.  Mr. Booker points out temperature data in the Arctic were adjusted to eliminate warming 75 years ago that caused greater ice melting than seen today.

The second article by Paul Homewood “Temperature Adjustments Transform Arctic Climate History” Not A Lot Of People Know That, 4 February 2015 describes in detail temperature adjustments made to Arctic temperature stations by NASA-GISS.  Almost every temperature measuring station from Greenland in the west to the middle of Siberia in the east was altered to eliminate strong warming in the early 1940s followed by cooling.   This provided NASA-GISS with argumenta global warming takes place today from unprecedented Arctic ice melting.

The third article “Globally Averaged Land Surface Temperatures, 1900-2014 (GHCN) Sea Level Info, 9 February 2015  by Dan Burton describes arguments by Dr. Kevin Cowtan that NOAA’s adjustments are correct are in fact wrong.  Examining Dr. Cowtan’s own data that he claimed inconsequential adjustments showed the warming from 1900 to 2014 was increased by 35 percent.

For another point of view of the controversy over global warming, the Global Warming Policy Foundation published a paper February 10, 2015 by Bernie Lewins “Herbert Lamb and The Transformation Of Climate Science” which re-examined the legacy of the father of British climatology Hubert Lamb (1913-1997).  “After leading and establishing historical climatology during the 1960s, Hubert Lamb became the founding Director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (CRU). What is not widely known is that, in contrast to current research directions at CRU, its founding director was an early and vocal climate sceptic.  Against the idea that greenhouse gas emissions were (or would soon be) noticeably warming the planet, Lamb raised objections on many levels. ‘His greatest concern was not so much the lack of science behind the theory,’ Mr. Lewin said, ‘it was how the growing preoccupation with man-made warming was distorting the science.’”

The winter of 2015 is becoming one of the coldest and greatest snow-laden winters in United States history with global warming alarmists still maintaining global warming taking place.  The mainstream media supports this claim.  “Disgraced NBC news anchor Brian Williams said it is “difficult to reconcile in the dead of winter,” when he reported on Jan. 16, the misleading claim that 2014 was the warmest year on record.”

Associated Press Science Writer Seth Borenstein has been the source of NOAA and NASA-GISS temperature data fed to the general public.  In light of adjustments to global temperature data that allowed some reporters to cite 2014 the warmest year in recorded history, it is fitting reporter Seth Borenstein be nominated for the Brian Williams 2015 Award For Accuracy in Science Reporting.

Advocates for energy policies to mitigate non-existent global warming caused by carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels such as President Obama’s Climate Action Plan use global temperature data as the main argument for their actions.   It is senseless to use such questionable data for making decisions that have economic costs of trillions of dollars and lead to lower living standards for those in the United States.  Of possibly even greater consequences are these policies condemn those living in poor countries to perpetual poverty.  It was abundant, cheap fossil fuels of coal, oil, and natural gas that uplifted developed nations from the drudgery, misery, and shortened lifespans of the eighteenth century and earlier.

Perhaps the best response to the falsification of global temperatures is the June 9, 1954 words of attorney Joseph Welch during the 30th day of the McCarthy-Army hearings in which Senator Joseph McCarthy unjustly accused Americans of being dangerous Communists.  Mr. Welch said, “You have done enough.  Have you no sense of decency, Sir?”  Within months of Joseph Welch’s comment, Senator McCarthy was disgraced and ruined.  This hypocrisy of false global temperature data to push the end of fossil fuel use must end.

Congress should hold hearings to determine the veracity of global temperature data. The nation should not waste money having two different agencies collecting global temperature data. NASA-GISS should be eliminated and NASA returned to its mission of studying aeronautics and space exploration.  Those involved with promoting advocacy over science and altering temperature data should suffer consequences.

A hundred years from now, historians will look back on the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and wonder if a universal madness had overcome the planet. The numerous environmental groups, like fleas on a dog, promoting burning fossil fuels caused catastrophic global warming will have some soul-searching explaining to do.  Politicians who succumbed to the same reasoning will suffer a similar fate.

SOURCE





Judge Orders EPA to Stop Clandestine Anti-Mining Collusion

Natural resource industry leaders nationwide shuddered in February 2011 when the Environmental Protection Agency announced its intent to veto the proposed copper, gold and molybdenum-rich Pebble Mine in southwestern Alaska – before the developer even had finished its preliminary design.

Without warning, the EPA had nullified a half-dozen basic laws and seized power to itself without authority.  The shock went viral: “If they can do it to Pebble, they can do it to us.”

It was so stunning that Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, then the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said, “It’s unprecedented—even for the EPA—to attempt to shut down a project before the developer has the opportunity to apply for a permit.”

How could this happen in a nation of laws and due process?

The appalling answer can be found in a 138-page briefing paper Pebble Limited Partners filed last year with its lawsuit against the EPA in the U.S. District Court of Alaska.

The secret behind the EPA’s pre-emptive strike against Pebble Limited Partners was a three-pronged cabal–lavishly funded by left-leaning environmental groups–of environmentalist coalitions, anti-mining scientists and anti-mining assessment consultants who were secretly given illegal access to and power over EPA strategy and decision-making, according to the Pebble group’s brief.

Big Green’s devastating, years-long anti-Pebble campaign was the second-most-expensive environmentalist assault ever, right behind the ongoing war of climate alarmists against climate skeptics. Green forces assumed Pebble was dead.

It is not. In November, U.S. District Court Judge Russel Holland responded to Pebble Limited Partnership’s lawsuit with a preliminary injunction against EPA, ordering the agency to stop its attack. Holland’s ruling does not resolve Pebble Limited Partnership’s complaint that EPA pursued an unlawful, biased and predetermined outcome against it, but it does presume the company could prevail on the merits at trial and gives it time to make its case.

Not only can the Pebble group now obtain documents through the discovery process and question individuals under oath, but the EPA Inspector General’s office also is conducting an investigation into the matter, and several congressional oversight committees have begun to look into it as well.

The EPA is so accustomed to judicial deference that officials couldn’t believe Judge Holland’s ruling. They even sent back a request for clarification, saying, “EPA does not interpret the order as otherwise impacting essentially internal Agency work on this issue, including work related to public comment review or internal deliberations.”

Judge Holland clarified his ruling. The EPA, he said,  is barred from any activity whatsoever to advance its work on the Pebble issue. Period.

Pebble Limited Partners’ all-out counterattack against EPA is highly unusual. Most industries treat regulators with great caution for fear the agency will strike back on subsequent projects.

Pebble CEO Tom Collier told The Daily Signal, “We’re pushing back pretty hard; it’s true. We’re a single-asset company, unlike most under EPA regulation, which have many projects to protect. We’re preparing pointed depositions of some very powerful regulators during the discovery process, something that most could not risk. We will gain access to emails, meeting records and documents that EPA either refused to produce or redacted so completely that all vital information was hidden. The next six months will be interesting times for the EPA and everybody involved.”

Those involved with EPA include not only government officials, but also a number of anti-mine cohorts, according to Pebble Limited Partnership’s brief.

An “anti-mine Coalition” is alleged to have “secretly advised EPA on how the Agency should develop its strategy, made critical recommendations on who EPA officials should recruit, how the Agency could best leverage the Alaska Native Tribes, and how to formulate EPA’s messaging in a way that would minimize anti-federal government backlash among Alaskans,” the brief states.

This coalition, according to the brief, included Trout Unlimited, the Center for Science in Public Participation, The Nature Conservancy, the National Wildlife Federation, The Wilderness Society, the Alaska Conservation Foundation and five other groups. The activism of these groups in various anti-Pebble campaigns is confirmed in numerous news stories and IRS grant reports.“ Anti-Mine Scientists” are alleged to have “provided EPA with the tailor-made ‘science’ that the Agency was seeking and meshed with EPA’s predetermined conclusions about the allegedly adverse impact of mining activities.” The brief names 18 scientists, some from major universities.

The “Anti-Mine Assessment Team” allegedly included “individuals who are not employed by the federal government, who provided advice and recommendations to EPA, developed the direction of the Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment, and contributed to, and drafted, the Assessment and its Appendices.” The Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment is the document EPA used to justify its pre-emptive veto of Pebble mine. The brief identified 15 individual team members by name.

“Billionaire Club” donors drove much of the coalition with large prescriptive grants. The private foundation of Intel magnate Gordon Moore gave $1.1 million to the Alaska Conservation Foundation for “Pebble mine campaign coordination,” and $833,000 to The Nature Conservancy for “Pebble mine science and risk assessment” – ironic for a firm whose livelihood depends on massive use of copper.

The private foundation of electronics billionaire William Hewlitt gave $150,000 to Trout Unlimited for “prevention of development of Pebble Mine.” The private foundation of the jewelry company Tiffany’s gave $200,000 to The Nature Conservancy and $100,000 to the Alaska Conservation Foundation to kill Pebble, according to IRS Form 990PF reports.

Even in the preliminary study phase, Pebble provided well-paying jobs for the nearby Alaskan Native village of Iliamna. As a result, the median income for a family was $61,250, no families lived below the poverty line and there was no measurable crime rate, unlike most Southwest Alaska fishing towns.

Abe Williams, president of Anchorage-based Nuna Resources, an Alaskan Native organization that supports economic development and boasts 200 associate members, said the EPA’s actions have been devastating

“The people of the entire Iliamna area have seen a massive decline of economic activity and the loss of jobs as the EPA worked collusively with special interests to kill the Pebble project,” Williams told The Daily Signal. “This has left much uncertainty for our hopes to build sustainable economies. We have asked the EPA over and over for a fair and balanced process, but I’m very skeptical about the EPA and its ability to achieve fairness here.”

Tom Collier’s bold leadership of Pebble Limited Partnership’s fight for fairness has given Williams and many workers in Southwest Alaska at least a flicker of hope. Now it’s up to the federal courts.

SOURCE





The climate con goes on

Climate Chaos, Inc. and media allies ban news and books on climate realism

Paul Driessen

Some 200 nations may sign a “modest” Kyoto II climate treaty, say December 2014 media reports from Lima, Peru. But will developing nations agree to stop using coal to generate electricity? No. Curtail economic growth? No. Cease emitting carbon dioxide? Maybe, but only a little, sometime in the future, when it is more convenient to do so, without binding commitments. Then why would they sign a treaty?

Primarily because they expect to get free energy technology transfers, and billions of dollars a year in climate “mitigation, adaptation and reparation” money from Western nations that they blame (and which blame themselves) for the “dangerous climate change,” rising seas and “extreme weather” that they claim are “unprecedented” and due to carbon dioxide emissions during the 150 years since the Industrial Revolution began. These FRCs (Formerly Rich Countries) have implemented low-carbon energy policies and penalties that have strangled their economies, dramatically increased energy prices and killed millions of jobs. But now poor developing countries demand that they also transfer $100 billion per year, for decades (with most of that probably going to their governing elites’ Swiss banks accounts).

Where is this likely taking us? President Obama has long promised to “fundamentally transform” the U.S. economy and ensure that electricity prices “necessarily skyrocket.” His edicts are doing precisely that. And now Christiana Figueres, the UN’s chief climate change official, has declared that her unelected bureaucrats are undertaking “probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the [global] economic development model.” [emphasis added] Her incredible admission underscores what another high-ranking IPCC official said several years ago: “Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection. The next world climate summit is actually an economy summit, during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.”

Why would any sane families or nations consign their fates to such insane, perverse arrangements? The arrangements are being imposed on them, through force, fabrication and fraud.

Poor, middle and working class families will get little but more layoffs, further reductions in living standards and longer postponement of dreams. But meanwhile Climate Chaos, Inc. (Big Green, Big Government, alarmist scientists, crony corporatist “green” energy companies, and allied universities and scientific groups) will become richer, gain more control over our lives and livelihoods, and rarely be held accountable for the damage they cause. Retracting their “dangerous manmade climate change” tautologies would endanger their money, power and reputations.

That’s why their hypotheses, assertions, intentions and computer models always trump reality. It’s why they are increasingly vicious and relentless in vilifying realist scientists like Willie Soon who challenge their “97% consensus” and “manmade climate catastrophe” mantras – and in demanding that the news media ignore experts and analyses that do not toe the Climate Chaos line. They denigrate realists as “climate deniers” (deliberately suggesting Holocaust denial) and “oil industry shills” (while hiding their own suspect ethics, data “adjustments,” and Big Green billion-dollar Russian and other funding sources).

Realists get precious little (or no) oil money and constantly underscore the role of climate change throughout Earth and human history. What we contest is the notion that climate and weather fluctuations today are manmade, unprecedented and dangerous. Alarmists deny that Earth’s climate is often in flux, solar and other natural forces drive weather and climate, and atmospheric carbon dioxide plays only a minimal role. Real-world evidence demolishes virtually every alarmist claim.

The climate reality record is presented in a readable, thought-provoking new book, About Face: Why the world needs more CO2; The failed science of global warming, by late U.S. economist Arthur Hughes, Australian geologist Cliff Ollier and Canadian meteorologist Madhav Khandekar. Sea level is rising at only1.5 mm per year now (six inches per century), they note, and there is zero evidence that the rate is escalating or that coastal communities are at risk. Nor is “ocean acidification” a legitimate problem.

Alarmists use it to replace other disproven scares with a new panic. Earth’s oceans have never been acidic. They are mildly alkaline. Their enormous volumes of water cannot become acidic – that is, plummet from an 8.2 pH level 150 years ago and their current 8.1 pH into the acidic realm of 7.0 or lower, due to the tiny amount of atmospheric CO2 attributable to fossil fuel use, in less than five centuries, experts explain.

The tiny effect of rising CO2 levels on climate contrasts sharply with their enormous benefits to plant growth and agriculture. Not only is more CO2 “greening” deserts, forests and grasslands; it is increasing grain and food yields worldwide, and helping people in developing nations live longer, healthier lives.

Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are not in danger of collapsing, the About Face authors demonstrate; in fact, they are growing. Similarly, contrary to another scare, extreme weather events are not increasing.

No Category 3-5 hurricane has struck the United States for a record nine years, and Earth’s temperature has not budged for 18 years. Claims that 2014 was “the hottest year on record” are based on airport and urban measurements that are higher than rural locations and are always “adjusted” upward, with year-to-year differences expressed in hundredths of a degree. Outside those areas, for most of the world – the 70% of Earth’s surface that is oceans and 85% of land area that is mountains, deserts, grasslands, tundra, and boreal or tropical rain forests – practically no data exist. So NASA and other alarmists falsely extrapolate from their manipulated urban data to fill in massive gaps for the other 95% of the Earth.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Northeast is suffering through record snows and its lowest winter temperatures in decades, and America’s East Coast air has been 25-30 degrees F below normal. England’s winter death rate is almost one-third higher than normal: nearly 29,000 deaths in a two-week period in January 2015, largely because people can no longer afford to heat their homes properly, due to UK climate policies.

What’s really going on? Our sun “has gone quiet again, during what is likely to be the weakest sunspot cycle in more than a century,” dating back to 1906, says Vencore weather analyst Paul Dorian.

Alarmists don’t want to talk about that – or about what is happening in Asia. BP’s Energy Outlook 2035 report forecasts that China’s oil, natural gas and coal use will increase by some 50% and its carbon dioxide emissions by 37% over the next 20 years. India’s energy production will soar 117% – with fossil fuels accounting for 87% of all demand in 2035. Its CO2 emissions will also skyrocket. So even if the USA and EU eliminated fossil fuels, atmospheric carbon dioxide would continue to climb.

Climate alarmists want the newspaper and television media to ignore this information and the “skeptics” who might present it. Bill Nye “the science guy” recently asked MSNBC to link all weather events to climate change. “Just say the words climate change” when you talk about this winter’s cold and snow,” he begged. A new study shows how widespread these repulsive practices have become.

Quoting one journalist, a George Mason University analysis found that U.S. media outlets “pretty much” agree that climate change “is real, it’s happening, and we’re responsible. That debate is over.” As a result, “critics are no longer being interviewed,” the study said. In the view of “mainstream” media outlets, seeking or presenting both sides on the climate issue is a “false balance.” At least one news organization now has an explicit editorial policy “discouraging reporters from quoting climate change deniers in environment or science coverage,” the Washington Examiner noted.

Media reputations are at stake. They’ve been in bed so long with the Climate Chaos complex that acknowledging the critical role of natural forces, the expertise of climate realists, the debate that still rages, or the Grand Canyon between climate crisis claims and real-world evidence would destroy what little credibility the media still has. It would also start the collapse of the Climate Chaos house of cards.

But the real stakes are much higher. They are the businesses, jobs, families, living standards and liberties that will be increasingly threatened if President Obama, EPA, Big Green and the United Nations remain free to impose their climate and energy agenda. Responsible governors, state legislators and members of Congress must get involved, block these actions, and roll back the destructive policies.

Via email




'World's Largest' Solar Panel Business Collapses

by Dr Klaus L.E. Kaiser

The solar photo-voltaic (PV) industry has another victim: Q-CELLS plant in Thalheim, Germany. As of March 1, 2015, the plant will cease production altogether and will only be selling PV panels made in Malaysia, 550 of its previous workforce of 800 will be laid off. Not that long ago, in 2007, the company had a workforce of 1700 and claimed to be the world’s largest producer of PV panels.

The Super-Greens just can’t win. Wind-power by turbine, PV panel manufacturers, ocean wave power device builders and the like have fallen off the renewable energy-cliff, one by one. What’s happening? Were they not supposed to rescue the world from Al Gore’s prophecies of doom and gloom, runaway overheating of the earth from a few parts per million of anthropogenic (man-made) carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air? Hasn’t the ice cap in the Antarctic disappeared yet? Are there still any polar bears left in the Arctic? If so, why haven’t they drowned yet?

I’m sure you could add more questions to those above. The list of evil effects ascribed to “climate-change-causing-CO2,” and other demons is getting longer each day and it’s getting hard to keep track of them all.

Grand View

You really need to step back and look at things from the right perspective in order to get to the Grand View. Not only has the earth’s climate changed continuously for about 4,000,000,000 years, just because earliest mankind arrived some 200,000 years ago and civilization of any sort perhaps 5,000 years ago, it does not mean that the earth’s climate has given up changing; far from it. Of the immense ice shields covering the northern parts of North America, Europe, and Asia, not much is left.

Most of that land that was covered mile high in ice is now taiga, tundra, or boreal forest. There is no evidence whatsoever that our stone-age ancestors’ fires in some caves in the Pyrenees or elsewhere had anything to do with that. It was a natural phenomenon produced by the sun’s radiation and the earth’s movement in that interplanetary space. Therefore, there is no reason to suspect that in the future things will be any different; nature is going to keep “all options on the table,” all the time.

Nature’s Options

Just don’t be lulled into thinking that the current “climate change” will continue in the same direction as before, forever. In fact, there are many indications that the warming period of the 1970s to early 1990s has already come to an end—-perhaps rather soon and too fast. One, if not the major influence on earth’s climate are the sunspots. In rough terms, the more there are, the warmer it is on the globe. Guess what: the number of sunspots is hitting a one-hundred year low, right now; as of Feb. 18, 2015, there is just one sunspot left. Not that the event was entirely unexpected, most people familiar with the cyclical nature of sunspot abundance had predicted it for a while. However, I surmise, even some of them are a bit surprised about their rapid decline experienced currently.

Sunspot Cycles

The current 11-year sunspot cycle we are in (cycle 24 since the mid 1600’s), had been expected by many observers to show comparatively low activity, though presumably not quite as low as currently seen. Why is that of concern, you might ask?

Over the last few hundred years, ever since the sunspots were continuously observed and recorded in our history, there were two prolonged periods of low sunspot numbers. They coincided with temperature extremes known as the “Maunder Minimum” lasting from around 1645 to 1715 and the “Dalton Minimum” from about 1790 to 1830.

During both of these periods of low sunspot numbers, the northern hemisphere experienced well below normal temperatures. They did not just result in severe colds during the winters but also in shorter summers with crop failures and subsequent starvation by many of the (then much fewer) people in this region. Such times could reappear much faster than thought, especially with that many more mouths to feed on the globe.

If there is any hope to prevent a future starvation catastrophe at all, it must be in the form of much higher agricultural yields than available from traditional seeds and traditional farming methods. So-called organic farming, using traditional plant varieties, without any, or with only very limited fertilization with vital nutrients like phosphorus-, nitrogen, and -potassium supplements can no longer provide all the food required. That is, even if there is no sunspot cycle cataclysm. So, where are we now?

February 2015

While President Obama stated in his recent State of the Union address that “2014 was the planet’s warmest year on record”, apart from the fact that this claim has widely been disputed, even if it were true, you wouldn’t know it from the cold currently gripping this continent. The five Great Lakes, comprising a surface of area of 90,000 square miles are just about frozen over, for the second winter in a row. At the moment, the Lake Superior, L. Huron, and L. Erie are completely frozen over and Lakes Michigan and Ontario partially. That certainly does not happen every winter.

Perhaps some of the polar bears from the (hot) Arctic may show up here soon, just to cool off.

SOURCE




Flashback to 2007

In February 2007 an article by Jay Austin (Assistant Professor, Large Lakes Observatory/ Department of Physics, University of Minnesota, Duluth) appeared in various media which was headed: "Rapid warming of Lake Superior".  Some excerpts:

Lake Superior is Changing. Fast. Lakes like Superior appear to be responding more quickly to climate change than we previously suspected. Our current hypothesis as to why this is occurring has to do with the simultaneous decline in the amount of ice found on these lakes...

This research has recently been accepted for publication at Geophyiscal Research Letters, and was performed by myself and my colleague Steve Colman....

To conclude, summer temperatures in Lake Superior (and Huron and Michigan, by the way) are increasing due to two separate but related trends: summer air temperatures are increasing, and winter ice cover is decreasing. Both of these effects add to produce the observed response of around a degree C per decade increase in Lake Superior water temperatures.

SOURCE. The "rapid warming" didn't go on for long, did it?

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