Showing posts with label 3- Economics of Global Warming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 3- Economics of Global Warming. Show all posts

Monday, February 7, 2011

A National Disgrace

I just confronted yet another instance of how the US is losing the war for innovation, green technologies, sustainability and energy independence to countries like India and China despite the fact that the inventions put in play are American Inventions.   See Smart Planet - China to develop a greener nuclear reactor

How can that happen?  The usual suspects could be fingered: disrespect for science and engineering, focus on easy answers, industrial vested interests, etc.  I propose that perhaps the worst is "Failure To Communicate" and this is the most blatant example I ever found.

Background

During the Manhattan Project a process to use nuclear materials (nuclear cycle was identified that could generate nuclear power but was not good enough for the explosive reaction needded for nuclear bombs.  Given the objective of the Manhattan Project, it was naturally sidelined.

During the 1950's and 1960's the "less efficient" process was revived, as an option for peaceful power generation. in what became known as the Thorium Nuclear Reactor. It was demonstrated capable to avoid all the most negative aspects of a high pressure nuclear reactor (e.g. meltdown, explosion, highly 1000-years radioactive waste, etc.), but gained little attention.

From the 1970's until today nuclear power developed evermore the popularity of "the turd in the punchbowl" for a variety of legitimate and other reasons.

Today it appears that the media and the voters would prefer confronting an ice age with candles than considering nuclear power generation in the US.  But what if there were an option that avoids many or all of the risks, costs less, produces more and was already tested sixty years ago?

Well,  for that option to go anywhere we'd have to publicize it so that voters would come to understand it, develop confidence in it, accept it and allow construction of this  "new" variety of nuclear plant.

The national tragedy

As it happens, that option appears to exist in the Thorium Nuclear Reactor (TNR)

  • The TNR was designed and tested in the US in the 1960's

  • Our TNR technology is now being test deployed by India and China

  • In the future, when it becomes fully commercial, we will buy it from India and China just as we buy oil from Canada and OPEC today

How can it happen?

Smart Planet reports these facts (hats off to them for reporting at all)

BUT


at the bottom of their report there is also a video surely intended to help the reader better understand the process and the inherent opportunity.

The combination of the report and that video is the disgrace I am talking about.  It is the clearest example of scientists' and science reporters' inability to effectively communicate and make a good case even when all facts appear to be in their favor:

  • The video is 16 minutes long.  Challenge yourself to listen to the end.  It will become a blur, but you'll get key relevant pieces any way.

  • Is the audio in the video speeded up to suit the internet attention span?  Hard to tell.  If it is, shame on the editor, if it is the speakers's natural pace, shame on them.

  • Did all the presenters speak at the same time?  I doubt it.  Shame on the editor.

  • The message is clearly educational about the advantages of the TNR, but you would not know it. The positive technical  details are buried in an alphabet soup and cacophony that hides it all.

  • The speakers in the video, one guesses, are knowledgeable presenters at professional conferences, but sound like drug advertisements disclaiming potential side effects.

  • Comments such as  "no one knows anything about TNR any more because all the original scientists are dieing" would dissuade any politician from going to bat for this technology.

In 1993 Michael Crichton took the media to task (speech at the National PressClub) warning that superficiality and lack of quality in reporting would eventually have disastrous consequences for the media, which undoubtedly it is having.

I suggest that by framing important issues poorly, sloppy, if well intentioned, reporting can have more disastrous consequences than no reporting at all.  We all depend on the media to make informed decisions, to support or obstruct national policies.  On a subject as urgent as the one above, and not particularly popular with the populace, the damage may well exceed the benefit.

When that happens an opportunity the voters and for the nation to stay in the lead is wasted.  India and China move ahead and we are left to wonder why.  As Crichton said, there are no easy answers, but surely bad information or badly framed information will lead us to lousy outcomes.

And that is a national tragedy.

Monday, June 29, 2009

The Gift Of Time

Leaving one's job can be distressing to put it mildly.  Many are living through that stress these days.  However there is another side to that coin: Free Time, time free from the requirement of going to an office and focusing on narrow concerns of your employer. Free time is the opportunity to surf the internet unbound and research the answers to one's curiosity.  Since leaving my last position I have gorged on that opportunity.  Information is freely available, but that most of the time hidden behind too few hours in the day, too much focus on business decisions to be made.

My father, in retirement, with the luxury of plentiful time, became my information digest of all that fit "must read".  Since he died last August I missed his "must read" warnings.  So, starved and eager I've been catching up.  In case I can save you some time or share some of the doors I opened for myself, here is the list with brief comments.  Of course it is all stained by my particular interests and viewpoints.  As my forced freedom permits I will continue this effort. If you want to know when I dig out something new subscribe (RSS or email - top right).
Your comments will be greatly appreciated and your sharing your own "must read" findings even more so.

Global WarmingThe landscape seems to be changing.  As mass hysteria increased and penetrated our political process, dissenting views of scientists seem to get a little more attention in the media. Skeptics have become slightly more vocal. The populace has lost some interest after the high mark of the months leading to the Presidential Election. The fear of the staggering cost of taking action is finally translating into "are we sure enough of this before we spend trillions on it?" or "if India and China's negative impact accounts for 5 times the best that could ever be expected if all participants implemented Kyoto 100%, what difference could Kyoto make? Do we not need a better plan?" (see Fareed Zakaria below).

Must Read/WatchClimate changes are not global warming - Interview with John Coleman, weather scientist and founder of The Weather Channel
Testing The Hypothesis of Global Warming - 5 Tests of CO2 - Prof. Bob Carters at Conference on Climate Change N.Y. 2008
Sen. Inhofe on Al Gore
Charlie Rose and Michael Crichton on Global Warming (skip 22 min. to GW)
20/20 John Stossel: The myth of consensus
20/20 John Stossel: The media and global warming
20/20 John Stossel: Don't fight it, adjust to it
The real greenhouse gas
Why use scare tactics and doctored data if the argument holds?
The debate is not over, Al Gore
Those so convincing photos...
The naked truth of An Inconvenient Truth

 
Geopolitics and Economics
The world is changing and we hardly notice because nationally we are trained by mass media to be concerned only about the US. Our markets are large enough so too many companies think exporting is too much trouble. We are the last industrialized country not on the metric system (along with Myanmar). We are pleased that the whole world is learning English, so we do not learn their languages and our educational system makes sure that some do not master English even here and live speaking a pidgin English in the name of diversity.

Then you run into an interview by Charlie Rose with Fareed Zakaria and in one hour you learn a lot, really a lot. If you read The Economist or The Atlantic regularly you'd learn even more, but few even seem to know they exist.

Is "Peak Oil" not at peak?
Then what about ethanol?

Old Standby Brain food
2008 Did You Know 3.0  the stats keep changing...
2007 Did You Know 2.0
2006 Did You Know

TED Conference  if you are curious, this is heaven
       Jill Bolte Taylor - inside view of her stroke
       Eva Vertes a most brilliant mind

Now be nice, leave some of your favorites "must read".  If they do not agree with mine, so be it, I'll learn from you.  Thank you.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Measuring CO2 concentrations

In August 2006, Georg Beck, a biologist at Merian-Schule Freiburg, Germany, published a study that proved how CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is NOT caused by human industrial activities but it's a natural phenomenon that follows climate variations recurrent in the natural history of the planet. You can find the study's full text at  http://www.climatepolice.com/Co2_report.pdf It is written for the specialist, but there is a Summary at the end, which I transcribe here.180 years accurate CO2 air gas analysis by chemical methods (short version) Dipl. Biol. Ernst-Georg Beck, Merian-Schule Freiburg, 8/2006This is an unofficial extract of E-G Beck's comprehensive draft paper and is for discussion not citing .SummaryAccurate chemical CO2 gas analyses of air over 180 years show a different trend comparedto the literature of IPCC climate change actually published. From 1829 the concentration of carbon dioxide of air in the northern hemisphere fell down from a value of e.g. 400 ppm up to 1900 to less than 300 ppm rising till 1942 to more than 400 ppm. After that maximum it fell down to e.g. 350 ppm and rose again till today, 2006 to 380 ppm. Accurate measurements had been done amongst others by de Saussure 1826, ..........or Scholander 1946 with ....an accuracy of +/-0,0006 Vol% to under +/-0,0003 Vol% =~3 ppm (Lundegardh 1926)...These pioneers of chemistry, biology, botany, medicine and physiology constituted the modern knowledge of metabolism, nutrition science, biochemistry and ecology. Modern climatology ignored their work till today even though it is the basis of all textbooks of the mentioned faculties and was honoured with several Nobel prizes. In total over 90 000 measurements within nearly every year since 180 year gave the following results:1. There is no constant exponential rising CO2-concentration since preindustrial times but a variing CO2-content of air following the climate. E.G. around 1940 there was a maximum of CO2 of at least 420 ppm, before 1875 there was also a maximum.2. Historical air analysis by chemical means do not prove a preindustrial CO2-concentration of 285 ppm (IPCC),as modern climatology postulates. In contrast the average in the 19th century in northern hemisphere is 321 ppm and in the 20th century 338 ppm.3. Todays CO2 value of. 380 ppm, which is considered as threatening has been known several times in the last 200 years, in the 20 th century around 1942 and before 1870 in the 19th century. The maximum CO2-concentration in the 20th century roses to over 420 pmm in 1942.4. Accurate measurements of CO2 air gas contents had been done from 1857 by chemical methods with a systematical error of maximal 3%. These results were ignored reconstructing the CO2 concentration of air in modern warm period.5. Callendar and Keeling were the most important founders of the modern greenhouse theory (IPCC) beside Arrhenius. Literature research confirmed that they ignored a big part of available technical papers and selected only a few values to get a validation of their hypothesis of fuel burning induced rise of CO2 in air. Furthermore these authors discussed and reproduced the few selected historic results by chemical methods in a faulty way and propagated an unfounded view of the quality of these methods, without having dealt with its chemical basis.6. To reconstruct the modern CO2 concentration of air icecores from Antarctica had been used. The presented reconstructions are obviously not accurate enough to show the several variations of carbon dioxide in northern hemisphere.

The scam of CO2 concentrations

Just a self serving play in 5 acts or a global tragedy?Try this for size:Act 1You just lost an election, you have no job outside of politics since that is all you or your daddy ever did, you got money to spend and people who believe you when you claim you invented the internet. Then you imagine a good strategy: find a cause and lead the parade; better yet, make it a real crusade. But how do you find a crusade?Act 2Go to Harvard and listen to some lectures on a subject you know nothing about, get excited, you find a crusade, select data that suits your arguments (and eventually admit the fraud in an interview - that's moxy), use your followers (the one who believed you invented the internet?) and those who like your name to fuel their own crusade - lead the charge.Act 3Some misguided souls follow your arguments ignoring some 3000 scientists that disagree. They buy your hocus pocus "science", you give it a clever name like "inconvenient truth" that smells of conspiracy and implies you are the only honest one to call a spade a spade. Create a crusade leveraging your notoriety on the United Nations, make a movie, become a guru, get a nobel prize (lower case is intentional).Act 4You get our crusade. The world may pay a high price for undertaking misguided efforts premised on untruth convenient just to you. Who cares, you are important, the leader, the guru, the nobel.Fantasy? No, you can do it too with the right resources and character. It has been done.Act 5 (and this is where I hope I can help)At first few, then more (3000+) scientists become incensed at the irrationaity of it all, they see the making of a modern day Inquisition (uncritical belief and fear - a state of fear), of a crusade usefull to some politico willing to "use" well intentioned environmentalists to reinvent themselves. This time it is far more dangerous than claiming to have invented the internet.Reports start circulating. Even young teenagers build web sites debunking the "convenient" hocus pocus (of course they are dismissed as young, ignorant and naive by the Grand Inquisitor). But, in fact there is still serious science out there and people willing to find it, willing to put it in terms we all can understand. Even the wizard admits in interviews having skewed the numbers to incite to action (somewhat like yelling "fire" in a theater?).I am not a scientist or subject matter expert, but I felt compelled to read about the sudden "crisis". In the process I easily found credible dissenting supported and peer-reviewed arguments.As a public service I am posting what seems to make common sense and ask for all to do so - submit a summaries of the argument that we all can quickly digest, and provide the full scientific reports and references linked or attached as back up. Come back and check out what we find, and bring what you find.Let's try to change the end to this play about a self serving monumental ego and fool before it becomes a tragedy of global proportions.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Ignorance is inconvenient and no truth

The only thing more dangerous than fools for leaders is ignorant ready-to-believe followers. Understanding the issues before following the leader is the only way to avoid wars (as we have seen) and crusades that break that national bank and economy for no valid reason.Ask yourself what you think you know and why. Here are some thoughts inconvenient to the Church of Gore, but recognized bymore and more scientists. Read carefully, the stakes are high. What do you believe and why?
Global Warming and the Price of a Gallon of Gasby John Coleman
You may want to give credit where credit is due to Al Gore and his global warming campaign the next time you fill your car with gasoline, because there is a direct connection between Global Warming and four dollar a gallon gas. It is shocking, but true, to learn that the entire Global Warming frenzy is based on the environmentalist’s attack on fossil fuels, particularly gasoline. All this big time science, international meetings, thick research papers, dire threats for the future; all of it, comes down to their claim that the carbon dioxide in the exhaust from your car and in the smoke stacks from our power plants is destroying the climate of planet Earth. What an amazing fraud; what a scam.
The future of our civilization lies in the balance.
That’s the battle cry of the High Priest of Global Warming Al Gore and his fellow, agenda driven disciples as they predict a calamitous outcome from anthropogenic global warming. According to Mr. Gore the polar ice caps will collapse and melt and sea levels will rise 20 feet inundating the coastal cities making 100 million of us refugees. Vice President Gore tells us numerous Pacific islands will be totally submerged and uninhabitable. He tells us global warming will disrupt the circulation of the ocean waters, dramatically changing climates, throwing the world food supply into chaos. He tells us global warming will turn hurricanes into super storms, produce droughts, wipe out the polar bears and result in bleaching of coral reefs. He tells us tropical diseases will spread to mid latitudes and heat waves will kill tens of thousands. He preaches to us that we must change our lives and eliminate fossil fuels or face the dire consequences. The future of our civilization is in the balance.
With a preacher’s zeal, Mr. Gore sets out to strike terror into us and our children and make us feel we are all complicit in the potential demise of the planet.
Here is my rebuttal.
There is no significant man made global warming. There has not been any in the past, there is none now and there is no reason to fear any in the future. The climate of Earth is changing. It has always changed. But mankind’s activities have not overwhelmed or significantly modified the natural forces.
Through all history, Earth has shifted between two basic climate regimes: ice ages and what paleoclimatologists call “Interglacial periods”. For the past 10 thousand years the Earth has been in an interglacial period. That might well be called nature’s global warming because what happens during an interglacial period is the Earth warms up, the glaciers melt and life flourishes. Clearly from our point of view, an interglacial period is greatly preferred to the deadly rigors of an ice age. Mr. Gore and his crowd would have us believe that the activities of man have overwhelmed nature during this interglacial period and are producing an unprecedented, out of control warming.
Well, it is simply not happening. Worldwide there was a significant natural warming trend in the 1980’s and 1990’s as a Solar cycle peaked with lots of sunspots and solar flares. That ended in 1998 and now the Sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer Sun spots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline. Earth has cooled for almost ten straight years. So, I ask Al Gore, where’s the global warming?
The cooling trend is so strong that recently the head of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had to acknowledge it. He speculated that nature has temporarily overwhelmed mankind’s warming and it may be ten years or so before the warming returns. Oh, really. We are supposed to be in a panic about man-made global warming and the whole thing takes a ten year break because of the lack of Sun spots. If this weren’t so serious, it would be laughable.
Now allow me to talk a little about the science behind the global warming frenzy. I have dug through thousands of pages of research papers, including the voluminous documents published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I have worked my way through complicated math and complex theories. Here’s the bottom line: the entire global warming scientific case is based on the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels. They don’t have any other issue. Carbon Dioxide, that’s it.
Hello Al Gore; Hello UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Your science is flawed; your hypothesis is wrong; your data is manipulated. And, may I add, your scare tactics are deplorable. The Earth does not have a fever. Carbon dioxide does not cause significant global warming.
The focus on atmospheric carbon dioxide grew out a study by Roger Revelle who was an esteemed scientist at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute. He took his research with him when he moved to Harvard and allowed his students to help him process the data for his paper. One of those students was Al Gore. That is where Gore got caught up in this global warming frenzy. Revelle’s paper linked the increases in carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere with warming. It labeled CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
Charles Keeling, another researcher at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute, set up a system to make continuous CO2 measurements. His graph of these increases has now become known as the Keeling Curve. When Charles Keeling died in 2005, his son David, also at Scripps, took over the measurements. Here is what the Keeling curve shows: an increase in CO2 from 315 parts per million in 1958 to 385 parts per million today, an increase of 70 parts per million or about 20 percent.
All the computer models, all of the other findings, all of the other angles of study, all come back to and are based on CO2 as a significant greenhouse gas. It is not.
Here is the deal about CO2, carbon dioxide. It is a natural component of our atmosphere. It has been there since time began. It is absorbed and emitted by the oceans. It is used by every living plant to trigger photosynthesis. Nothing would be green without it. And we humans; we create it. Every time we breathe out, we emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is not a pollutant. It is not smog. It is a naturally occurring invisible gas.
Let me illustrate. I estimate that this square in front of my face contains 100,000 molecules of atmosphere. Of those 100,000 only 38 are CO2; 38 out of a hundred thousand. That makes it a trace component. Let me ask a key question: how can this tiny trace upset the entire balance of the climate of Earth? It can’t. That’s all there is to it; it can’t.
The UN IPCC has attracted billions of dollars for the research to try to make the case that CO2 is the culprit of run-away, man-made global warming. The scientists have come up with very complex creative theories and done elaborate calculations and run computer models they say prove those theories. They present us with a concept they call radiative forcing. The research organizations and scientists who are making a career out of this theory, keep cranking out the research papers. Then the IPCC puts on big conferences at exotic places, such as the recent conference in Bali. The scientists endorse each other’s papers, they are summarized and voted on, and viola, we are told global warming is going to kill us all unless we stop burning fossil fuels.
May I stop here for a few historical notes? First, the internal combustion engine and gasoline were awful polluters when they were first invented. And, both gasoline and automobile engines continued to leave a layer of smog behind right up through the 1960’s. Then science and engineering came to the environmental rescue. Better exhaust and ignition systems, catalytic converters, fuel injectors, better engineering throughout the engine and reformulated gasoline have all contributed to a huge reduction in the exhaust emissions from today’s cars. Their goal then was to only exhaust carbon dioxide and water vapor, two gases widely accepted as natural and totally harmless. Anyone old enough to remember the pall of smog that used to hang over all our cities knows how much improvement there has been. So the environmentalists, in their battle against fossil fuels and automobiles had a very good point forty years ago, but now they have to focus almost entirely on the once harmless carbon dioxide. And, that is the rub. Carbon dioxide is not an environmental problem; they just want you now to think it is.
Numerous independent research projects have been done about the greenhouse impact from increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. These studies have proven to my total satisfaction that CO2 is not creating a major greenhouse effect and is not causing an increase in temperatures. By the way, before his death, Roger Revelle coauthored a paper cautioning that CO2 and its greenhouse effect did not warrant extreme countermeasures.
So now it has come down to an intense campaign, orchestrated by environmentalists claiming that the burning of fossil fuels dooms the planet to run-away global warming. Ladies and Gentlemen, that is a myth.
So how has the entire global warming frenzy with all its predictions of dire consequences, become so widely believed, accepted and regarded as a real threat to planet Earth? That is the most amazing part of the story.
To start with global warming has the backing of the United Nations, a major world force. Second, it has the backing of a former Vice President and very popular political figure. Third it has the endorsement of Hollywood, and that’s enough for millions. And, fourth, the environmentalists love global warming. It is their tool to combat fossil fuels. So with the environmentalists, the UN, Gore and Hollywood touting Global Warming and predictions of doom and gloom, the media has scrambled with excitement to climb aboard. After all the media loves a crisis. From YK2 to killer bees the media just loves to tell us our lives are threatened. And the media is biased toward liberal, so it’s pre-programmed to support Al Gore and UN. CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The LA Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press and here in San Diego The Union Tribune are all constantly promoting the global warming crisis.
So who is going to go against all of that power? Not the politicians. So now the President of the United States, just about every Governor, most Senators and most Congress people, both of the major current candidates for President, most other elected officials on all levels of government are all riding the Al Gore Global Warming express. That is one crowded bus.
I suspect you haven’t heard it because the mass media did not report it, but I am not alone on the no man-made warming side of this issue. On May 20th, a list of the names of over thirty-one thousand scientists who refute global warming was released. Thirty-one thousand of which 9,000 are Ph.ds. Think about that. Thirty-one thousand. That dwarfs the supposed 2,500 scientists on the UN panel. In the past year, five hundred of scientists have issued public statements challenging global warming. A few more join the chorus every week. There are about 100 defectors from the UN IPCC. There was an International Conference of Climate Change Skeptics in New York in March of this year. One hundred of us gave presentations. Attendance was limited to six hundred people. Every seat was taken. There are a half dozen excellent internet sites that debunk global warming. And, thank goodness for KUSI and Michael McKinnon, its owner. He allows me to post my comments on global warming on the website KUSI.com. Following the publicity of my position form Fox News, Glen Beck on CNN, Rush Limbaugh and a host of other interviews, thousands of people come to the website and read my comments. I get hundreds of supportive emails from them. No I am not alone and the debate is not over.
In my remarks in New York I speculated that perhaps we should sue Al Gore for fraud because of his carbon credits trading scheme. That remark has caused a stir in the fringe media and on the internet. The concept is that if the media won’t give us a hearing and the other side will not debate us, perhaps we could use a Court of law to present our papers and our research and if the Judge is unbiased and understands science, we win. The media couldn’t ignore that. That idea has become the basis for legal research by notable attorneys and discussion among global warming debunkers, but it’s a long way from the Court room.
I am very serious about this issue. I think stamping out the global warming scam is vital to saving our wonderful way of life.
The battle against fossil fuels has controlled policy in this country for decades. It was the environmentalist’s prime force in blocking any drilling for oil in this country and the blocking the building of any new refineries, as well. So now the shortage they created has sent gasoline prices soaring. And, it has lead to the folly of ethanol, which is also partly behind the fuel price increases; that and our restricted oil policy. The ethanol folly is also creating a food crisis throughput the world – it is behind the food price rises for all the grains, for cereals, bread, everything that relies on corn or soy or wheat, including animals that are fed corn, most processed foods that use corn oil or soybean oil or corn syrup. Food shortages or high costs have led to food riots in some third world countries and made the cost of eating out or at home budget busting for many.
So now the global warming myth actually has lead to the chaos we are now enduring with energy and food prices. We pay for it every time we fill our gas tanks. Not only is it running up gasoline prices, it has changed government policy impacting our taxes, our utility bills and the entire focus of government funding. And, now the Congress is considering a cap and trade carbon credits policy. We the citizens will pay for that, too. It all ends up in our taxes and the price of goods and services.
So the Global warming frenzy is, indeed, threatening our civilization. Not because global warming is real; it is not. But because of the all the horrible side effects of the global warming scam.
I love this civilization. I want to do my part to protect it.
If Al Gore and his global warming scare dictates the future policy of our governments, the current economic downturn could indeed become a recession, drift into a depression and our modern civilization could fall into an abyss. And it would largely be a direct result of the global warming frenzy.My mission, in what is left of a long and exciting lifetime, is to stamp out this Global Warming silliness and let all of us get on with enjoying our lives and loving our planet, Earth.


Saturday, June 14, 2008

Hey Al Gore, anybody home?

While at Harvard did you hear about sunspots? They talked about them in my high school back in Italy in the 60's. Not clever enough for a Nobel perhaps, but at it was real science tested by centuries of observation. Check it out below.
When the world finally discovers the magnitude of your "inconvenient" contributions by way ov conveniently selective data analysis we'll really know you should have been president (you'd make a good match for Dubya). May be the committee will institute a Nobel for Inconvenient Cretinism so you can become a multiple prize winner.
With the debate focused on a warming Earth, the icy consequences of a cooler future have not been considered


By Lawrence SolomonYou probably haven’t heard much of Solar Cycle 24, the current cycle that our sun has entered, and I hope you don’t. If Solar Cycle 24 becomes a household term, your lifestyle could be taking a dramatic turn for the worse. That of your children and their children could fare worse still, say some scientists, because Solar Cycle 24 could mark a time of profound long-term change in the climate. As put by geophysicist Philip Chapman, a former NASA astronaut-scientist and former president of the National Space Society, “It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age.”
The sun, of late, is remarkably free of eruptions: It has lost its spots. By this point in the solar cycle, sunspots would ordinarily have been present in goodly numbers. Today’s spotlessness — what alarms Dr. Chapman and others — may be an anomaly of some kind, and the sun may soon revert to form. But if it doesn’t – and with each passing day, the speculation in the scientific community grows that it will not – we could be entering a new epoch that few would welcome.
Sunspots have been well documented throughout human history, starting in the fourth century BC, with written descriptions by Gan De, a Chinese astronomer. In 1128, an English monk, John of Worcester, was the first person known to have drawn sunspots, and after the telescope’s arrival in the early 1600s, observations and drawings became commonplace, including by such luminaries as Galileo Galilei. Then, to the astonishment of astronomers, they saw the sunspots diminish and die out altogether.
This was the case during the Little Ice Age, a period starting in the 15th or 16th century and lasting centuries, says NASA’s Goddard Space Centre, which links the absence of sunspots to the cold that then descended on Earth. During the coldest part of the Little Ice Age, a time known as the Maunder Minimum (named after English astronomer Edward Maunder), astronomers saw only about 50 sunspots over a 30-year period, less than one half of 1% of the sunspots that would normally have been expected. Other Minimums — times of low sunspot activity — also corresponded to times of unusual cold.
The consequences of the Little Ice Age, because they occurred in relatively recent times, have come down to us through literature and the arts as well as from historians and scientists, government and business records. When Shakespeare wrote of “lawn as white as driven snow,” he had first-hand experience – Europe was bitterly cold in his day, a sharp contrast to the very warm weather that preceded his birth. During the Little Ice Age, the River Thames froze over, the Dutch developed the ice skate and the great artists of the day learned to love a new genre: the winter landscape.
In what had been a warm Europe , adaptations were not all happy: Growing seasons in England and Continental Europe generally became short and unreliable, which led to shortages and famine. These hardships were nothing compared to the more northerly countries: Glaciers advanced rapidly in Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia and North America, making vast tracts of land uninhabitable. The Arctic pack ice extended so far south that several reports describe Eskimos landing their kayaks in Scotland. Finland’s population fell by one-third,Iceland’s by half, the Viking colonies in Greenland were abandoned altogether, as were many Inuit communities. The cold in North America spread so far south that, in the winter of 1780, New York Harbor froze, enabling people to walk from Manhattan to Staten Island.
In the same way that the Earth shivered when sunspots disappeared, the Earth warmed when sunspot activity became pronounced. The warm period about 1000 years ago known as the Medieval Warm Period — a time of bounty in which grapes grew in England andGreenland was colonized — also was a time of high sunspot activity, called the Medieval Maximum. Since 1900, Earth has experienced what astronomers call “the Modern Maximum” — the 20th century has again been a time of high sunspot activity.
But the 1900s are gone, along with the high temperatures that accompanied them. The last 10 years have seen no increase in temperatures — they reached a plateau and then remained there — and the last year saw a precipitous decline. How much lower and for how long the temperatures will fall, if at all, no one yet knows — the science is far from settled on what drives climate.
But many are watching the sun for answers, and for good reason. Several renowned scientists have been predicting for some time that the world could enter a period of cooling right around now, with consequences that could be dire. “The next little ice age would be much worse than the previous one and much more harmful than anything warming may do,” believes Dr. Chapman. “There are many more people now and we have become dependent on a few temperate agricultural areas, especially in the U.S. and Canada. Global warming would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will decrease it.”
We are now at the beginning of Solar Cycle 24, so named because it is the 24th consecutive cycle that astronomers have listed, starting with the first cycle that began in March, 1755, and ended in June, 1766. Each cycle lasts an average of approximately 11 years; each is marked by sunspots that first erupt in the mid latitudes of the sun, and then, over the course of the 11 years, erupt progressively toward the sun’s equator; each is marked by a change in the polarity of the sun’s hemispheres; each changes the temperature on Earth in ways that humans don’t fully understand, but cannot in all honesty deny.
Financial Post Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud.
LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
Photo: The spotless Sun, as it appeared yesterday at 12:48 p.m. The Sun’s spotlessness is giving rise to speculation of another Little Ice Age.
(Solarcycle24.com)

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Crazed By Bad Science?

For many months now I have encountered debates and circumstances that, in my view, demand a concerted effort to: expose charlatan politicians, rediscover facts (scientific facts not convenient or inconvenient ones) and develop rational policies to deal with global warming. I am asking for your participation and collaboration.

Recent observations

  • More and more people are worried about global warming

  • More people are adamant that it 's all human caused

  • Virtually all seem to have come to believe that it is all reversible, if we just wanted to try seriously enough

  • Few appear willing to pay any price for remediation but most will sanctimoniously advocate action at someone else's expense

  • Energy conservation, at least in the US is at best a posturing with virtually no action

Many research papers widely available and unread by the masses show that a general and gross misunderstanding exists for the following reasons:

  • Global warming is UNQUESTIONABLE

  • Valid proof that it is primarily human-caused is scant at best or non existent

  • Much documentation demonstrates that the "human caused" conclusion was reached through data selected to prove a political view, not a scientific conclusion

  • Politicians in search of a crusade have hijacked the subject and the discussion leading the masses to convenient lies and conclusions to build their popularity and importance at the expense of logically grounded policy decisions. In some cases they have even publicly admitted doing so

  • The artistry of popular politicians rests in having framed a very complex subject in simple sound bites that followers could repeat like a mantra to create a state of increasing fear

  • Scientists holding dissenting opinions continue to present their view in technical and scientifically rigorous language that is unread by the masses and has little effect on political opinion and action

The cost of the convergence of the above includes:

  • The virtual impossibility of sensible debate as 1. Global warming as a fact, 2. Human responsibility for it and 3. the possibility of its reversibility are systematically confused so that anyone disagreeing with points 2 or 3 is immediately attacked and tar-feathered as if refusing item 1

  • Incorrectly framed or unfocused debate leads to: a. pursuing quixotic reversibility strategies of staggering cost, b. prevents consideration of policies of amelioration of an unavoidable event, c. dilutes a legitimate effort to change undesirable social habits to improve the stewardship of the planet

The purpose of this blog is to encourage the collection and presentation of scientific truths in as simple terms as "inconvenient truths" have been so that all participants in the discussion may weigh all facts, not just the "inconvenient" ones.

I propose a Wikipedia-like effort where contributors create posts that meet these criteria:

  1. Summarize the message of your post in 200-400 words

  2. Add supporting data and quotations using outside links to pages, PDFS, etc.

  3. Write in outline form with brief simple factual statements and paragraphs of few lines (write for non scientist, for non-engineers, write for 6th graders)

  4. Challenge yourself to communicate in simple terms and leave the subtle nuances and uncertainties in your links and quotations. They will demonstrate your understanding of the complexities and uncertainties involved, but you will create material that the average-Joe (6th grader) may read and may be moved to look at your references and become a rational participant in the debate.

This we MUST do or else we allow ignorant debate of inconvenient truths to lead to the disastrous consequences of ill conceived policies.

Our grand children will leave in a warmer world without doubt, we must incite better stewardship of the planet without a doubt, but we do not need to pay for quixotic crusades that will leave unattended the needs of those who will be impacted the most by global warming (example: if global warming will cause the Seychelles Islands to go under the ocean we need to spend resources to prepare to relocate and aid the poor inhabitants. If we spend the money in a quixotic crusade to reverse warming to find that it is not reversible by humans, we will have nothing left to cope with reality inconvenient as it will be). Let's push to put our money where it can make life better for people that need it not to enlarge the ego of self important and self appointed leaders.

Thank you for your participation.