A Nod To The Gods

But, but, December heat wave?

Not only are we shattering temperature records on Christmas, 2015 will also almost certainly finish as the hottest year on record.

As of Thursday morning, temperatures reached 71 degrees in New York City, around 35 degrees above average. The predicted high will be 74, and as families gather for dinner, it will be in the high 60s. New Yorkers hit the beach to soak up the sun.

It’s called weather dumbass, but I’m sure they will try and spin this as “climate change” since the global warming thing isn’t working for them.

That was quick.

Part of the reason this Snowzilla storm is expected to dump so much snow is because it is pulling abundant moisture. As the planet warms because of excess heat trapped by human-emitted greenhouse gases, the atmosphere can hold more moisture. Scientists already expect heavy downpours to increase because of that. But there’s been little research into what that means for “epic blizzards” like this one. here…

New York Blizzard 1888

The weather preceding the blizzard was unseasonably mild with heavy rains that turned to snow as temperatures dropped rapidly.^[1] The storm began in earnest shortly after midnight on March 12, and continued unabated for a full day and a half. The National Weather Service estimated this Nor’easter dumped as much as 50 inches (130 cm) of snow in parts of Connecticut and Massachusetts, while parts of New Jersey and New York had up to 40 inches (100 cm).^[3] Most of northern Vermont received from 20 inches (51 cm) to 30 inches (76 cm) in this storm.^[4]

Hmmm…I didn’t know the carbon levels were that high back then.

Physicist Howard Hayden, a staunch advocate of sound energy policy, sent me a copy of his letter to the EPA about global warming. The text is also appended below, with permission. As noted in my post Access to Energy, Hayden helped the late, great Petr Beckmann found the dissident physics journal Galilean Electrodynamics (brochures and further Beckmann info here; further dissident physics links). Hayden later began to publish his own pro-energy newsletter, The Energy Advocate, following in the footsteps of Beckmann’s own journal Access to Energy I love Hayden’s email sign-off, “People will do anything to save the world … except take a course in science.” Here’s the letter:

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Howard C. Hayden
785 S. McCoy Drive
Pueblo West, CO 81007

October 27, 2009

The Honorable Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator
Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington, DC 20460

Dear Administrator Jackson:

I write in regard to the Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act, Proposed Rule, 74 Fed. Reg. 18,886 (Apr. 24, 2009), the so-called “Endangerment Finding.”

It has been often said that the “science is settled” on the issue of CO2 and climate. Let me put this claim to rest with a simple one-letter proof that it is false. The letter is s, the one that changes model into models. If the science were settled, there would be precisely one model, and it would be in agreement with measurements.

Alternatively, one may ask which one of the twenty-some models settled the science so that all the rest could be discarded along with the research funds that have kept those models alive. We can take this further. Not a single climate model predicted the current cooling phase. If the science were settled, the model (singular) would have predicted it.

Let me next address the horror story that we are approaching (or have passed) a “tipping point.” Anybody who has worked with amplifiers knows about tipping points. The output “goes to the rail.” Not only that, but it stays there. That’s the official worry coming from the likes of James Hansen (of NASA­GISS) and Al Gore. But therein lies the proof that we are nowhere near a tipping point. The earth, it seems, has seen times when the CO2 concentration was up to 8,000 ppm, and that did not lead to a tipping point. If it did, we would not be here talking about it. In fact, seen on the long scale, the CO2 concentration in the present cycle of glacials (ca. 200 ppm) and interglacials (ca. 300-400 ppm) is lower than it has been for the last 300 million years.

Global-warming alarmists tell us that the rising CO2 concentration is (A) anthropogenic and (B) leading to global warming.

(A) CO2 concentration has risen and fallen in the past with no help from mankind. The present rise began in the 1700s, long before humans could have made a meaningful contribution. Alarmists have failed to ask, let alone answer, what the CO2 level would be today if we had never burned any fuels. They simply assume that it would be the “pre-industrial” value.

• The solubility of CO2 in water decreases as water warms, and increases as water cools. The warming of the earth since the Little Ice Age has thus caused the oceans to emit CO2 into the atmosphere.

(B) The first principle of causality is that the cause has to come before the effect. The historical record shows that climate changes precede CO2 changes. How, then, can one conclude that CO2 is responsible for the current warming?

Nobody doubts that CO2 has some greenhouse effect, and nobody doubts that CO2 concentration is increasing. But what would we have to fear if CO2 and temperature actually increased?

• A warmer world is a better world. Look at weather-related death rates in winter and in summer, and the case is overwhelming that warmer is better.
• The higher the CO2 levels, the more vibrant is the biosphere, as numerous experiments in greenhouses have shown. But a quick trip to the museum can make that case in spades. Those huge dinosaurs could not exist anywhere on the earth today because the land is not productive enough. CO2 is plant food, pure and simple.
• CO2 is not pollution by any reasonable definition.
• A warmer world begets more precipitation.
• All computer models predict a smaller temperature gradient between the poles and the equator. Necessarily, this would mean fewer and less violent storms.
• The melting point of ice is 0 ºC in Antarctica, just as it is everywhere else. The highest recorded temperature at the South Pole is -14 ºC, and the lowest is -117 ºC. How, pray, will a putative few degrees of warming melt all the ice and inundate Florida, as is claimed by the warming alarmists?

Consider the change in vocabulary that has occurred. The term global warming has given way to the term climate change, because the former is not supported by the data. The latter term, climate change, admits of all kinds of illogical attributions. If it warms up, that’s climate change. If it cools down, ditto. Any change whatsoever can be said by alarmists to be proof of climate change.

In a way, we have been here before. Lord Kelvin “proved” that the earth could not possibly be as old as the geologists said. He “proved” it using the conservation of energy. What he didn’t know was that nuclear energy, not gravitation, provides the internal heat of the sun and the earth.

Similarly, the global-warming alarmists have “proved” that CO2 causes global warming.

Except when it doesn’t.

To put it fairly but bluntly, the global-warming alarmists have relied on a pathetic version of science in which computer models take precedence over data, and numerical averages of computer outputs are believed to be able to predict the future climate. It would be a travesty if the EPA were to countenance such nonsense.

Best Regards,

Howard C. Hayden
Professor Emeritus of Physics, UConn    found here

Linked is a list of 107 failed predictions. It would be hilarious if not for the fact that our economy is being handcuffed due to all of these alarmists.

I have listed the last 20 but if you want to read them all go here.

85. June 30, 1989, Associated Press: U.N. OFFICIAL PREDICTS DISASTER, SAYS GREENHOUSE EFFECT COULD WIPE SOME NATIONS OFF MAP–entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ‘eco-refugees,’ threatening political chaos,” said Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program. He added that governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect.

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86. Sept 19, 1989, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “New York will probably be like Florida 15 years from now.”

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87. December 5, 1989, Dallas Morning News: “Some predictions for the next decade are not difficult to make…Americans may see the ’80s migration to the Sun Belt reverse as a global warming trend rekindles interest in cooler climates.”

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88. Michael Oppenheimer, 1990, The Environmental Defense Fund: “By 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots…”(By 1996) The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers…The Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands.”

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89. April 18, 1990, Denver Post: “Giant sand dunes may turn Plains to desert–huge sand dunes extending east from Colorado’s Front Range may be on the verge of breaking through the thin topsoil, transforming America’s rolling High Plains into a desert, new research suggests. The giant sand dunes discovered by NASA satellite photos are expected to re-emerge over the next 20 t0 50 years, depending on how fast average temperatures rise from the suspected ‘greenhouse effect’ scientists believe.”

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90. Edward Goldsmith, 1991, (5000 Days to Save the Planet): “By 2000, British and American oil will have diminished to a trickle….Ozone depletion and global warming threaten food shortages, but the wealthy North will enjoy a temporary reprieve by buying up the produce of the South. Unrest among the hungry and the ensuing political instability, will be contained by the North’s greater military might. A bleak future indeed, but an inevitable one unless we change the way we live…At present rates of exploitation there may be no rainforest left in 10 years. If measures are not taken immediately, the greenhouse effect may be unstoppable in 12 to 15 years.”

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91. April 22, 1990 ABC, The Miracle Planet: “I think we’re in trouble. When you realize how little time we have left–we are now given not 10 years to save the rainforests, but in many cases five years. Madagascar will largely be gone in five years unless something happens. And nothing is happening.”

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92. February 1993, Thomas E. Lovejoy, Smithsonian Institution: “Most of the great environmental struggles will be either won or lost in the 1990s and by the next century it will be too late.”

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93. November 7, 1997, (BBC commentator): “It appears that we have a very good case for suggesting that the El Niños are going to become more frequent, and they’re going to become more intense and in a few years, or a decade or so, we’ll go into a permanent El Nino. So instead of having cool water periods for a year or two, we’ll have El Niño upon El Niño, and that will become the norm. And you’ll have an El Niño, that instead of lasting 18 months, lasts 18 years.”

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94. July 26, 1999 The Birmingham Post: “Scientists are warning that some of the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within ten years because of global warming. A build-up of greenhouse gases is blamed for the meltdown, which could lead to drought and flooding in the region affecting millions of people.”

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95. October 15, 1990 Carl Sagan: “The planet could face an ‘ecological and agricultural catastrophe’ by the next decade if global warming trends continue.”

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96. Sept 11, 1999, The Guardian: “A report last week claimed that within a decade, the disease (malaria) will be common again on the Spanish coast. The effects of global warming are coming home to roost in the developed world.”

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97. March 29, 2001, CNN: “In ten year’s time, most of the low-lying atolls surrounding Tuvalu’s nine islands in the South Pacific Ocean will be submerged under water as global warming rises sea levels.”

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98. 1969, Lubos Moti, Czech physicist: “It is now pretty clearly agreed that CO2 content [in the atmosphere] will rise 25% by 2000. This could increase the average temperature near the earth’s surface by 7 degrees Fahrenheit. This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter.”

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99. 2005, Andrew Simms, policy director of the New Economics Foundation: “Scholars are predicting that 50 million people worldwide will be displaced by 2010 because of rising sea levels, desertification, dried up aquifers, weather-induced flooding and other serious environmental changes.”

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100. Oct 20, 2009, Gordon Brown UK Prime Minister (referring to the Copenhagen climate conference): “World leaders have 50 days to save the Earth from irreversible global warming.”

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101. June 2008, Ted Alvarez, Backpacker Magazine Blogs: “you could potentially sail, kayak, or even swim to the North Pole by the end of the summer. Climate scientists say that the Arctic ice…is currently on track to melt sometime in 2008.”
[Shortly after this prediction was made, a Russian icebreaker was trapped in the ice of the Northwest Passage for a week.]

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102. May 31, 2006 Al Gore, CBS Early Show: “…the debate among the scientists is over. There is no more debate. We face a planetary emergency. There is no more scientific debate among serious people who’ve looked at the science…Well, I guess in some quarters, there’s still a debate over whether the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona, or whether the Earth is flat instead of round.”

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103. January 2000 Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund commenting (in a NY Times interview) on the mild winters in New York City: “But it does not take a scientist to size up the effects of snowless winters on the children too young to remember the record-setting blizzards of 1996. For them, the pleasures of sledding and snowball fights are as out-of-date as hoop-rolling, and the delight of a snow day off from school is unknown.”

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104. 2008 Dr. James Hansen of the Goddard Space Institute (NASA) on a visit to Britain: “The recent warm winters that Britain has experienced are a sign that the climate is changing.”
[Two exceptionally cold winters followed. The 2009-10 winter may be the coldest experienced in the UK since 1683.]

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105. June 11, 1986, Dr. James Hansen of the Goddard Space Institute (NASA) in testimony to Congress (according to the Milwaukee Journal): “Hansen predicted global temperatures should be nearly 2 degrees higher in 20 years, ‘which is about the warmest the earth has been in the last 100,000 years.’”

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106. June 8, 1972, Christian Science Monitor: “Arctic specialist Bernt Balchen says a general warming trend over the North Pole is melting the polar ice cap and may produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2000.”

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107. May 15, 1989, Associated Press: “Using computer models, researchers concluded that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide [USA] two degrees by 2010.”

Wow. I watched this last night and was impressed with Patrick Moore and his stance on how Greenpeace had turned into a leftist ideological group versus what he had envisioned it being. Then he proceeds too wipe out the science computer models showing human caused global warming.

http://youtu.be/ZfAcvV7cq10