April 16, 2008
Update on President Bush's climate policy remarks today
He stopped short of the kind of mandatory cap program proposed by McCain, Clinton/Obama and rest of the nincompoops on that side of the issue, but he surely gave gave aid and comfort to the alarmists today. There's no excuse for President Bush to get this wrong. Yet, here we are. Many will take some cheer that he praised nuclear power several times. Well, I'm pro-nuclear even without giving a whit of credit to the CO2 alarmist view.
April 16, 2008
PLEASE CONTACT WHITE HOUSE BEFORE 2 PM TODAY
The folks at RightMarch.com emailed a plea a few minutes ago which prompted me to write the following letter, using their automated system:
SUBJECT: Please don't lend credence to the CO2 alarmists
Dear President Bush:
I have spent literally thousands of hours since early in your administration reviewing the scientific basis for the type of alarm about CO2 expressed by your first Treasury Secretary. Claims by alarmists that the science is settled enough for purposes of major policy change are bunkum. The field of climate science encompasses so many specialties that few, if any, scientists have time to really understand the limitations of research commonly touted as authoritative. A great example is the so-called hockey stick graph which was quickly embraced by IPCC as sort of a poster child for their 2001 report. The hockey stick graphic was even portrayed as policy-relevant by its inclusion in the Policymakers Summary document which was leaked in the autumn of your 2000 campaign. The full report wasn't released until 9 months later. By then, the hockey stick had become what I've come to think of as an "icon of calamitology". I urge you not to give the alarmists the slightest benefit of any doubt you may have. I've long told folks that abundant and cheap electricity gives your average Joe today a life better, in many ways, than Kings used to enjoy. Unnecessary CO2 controls are bad for liberty, bad for the economy, and the notion that the results will have any predictable effect on global or regional climate is an exaggeration.
Mr. President, my industry is nuclear power. If these CO2 controls are adopted, my industry will surely benefit, at least in the short run. But every appeasement of the CO2 alarmists further empowers them and their shoddy science. And I have no doubt that these same fraud-mongerers will not long tarry before turning their attention to other targets, including my industry.
Please don't empower the alarmists!
Very truly,
NUCLEAR.COM
Steve Schulin,
Founding Editor
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Here's the text of the alert which promptedme to jot off the above missive:
URGENT -- CONTACT THE WHITE HOUSE BEFORE 2:00 PM TODAY (WEDNESDAY):
http://capwiz.com/sicminc/mail/?id=20004&type=PR
ALERT: This is an URGENT EMERGENCY ALERT! President Bush is scheduled to give a major speech on global warming policy TODAY at 2:45 PM. A former WH official has warned us that "It will be very bad." Our intel is that he will not support the environmentalists' "cap-and-trade" or a carbon tax explicitly, but he WILL call for setting national mandatory targets and lay out principles for the kind of legislation he would sign.
This is exactly what we were afraid of. We’ve been able to STOP the implementation of "Kyoto Accord" environmentalist extreme measures in Congress -- but now, the President might side-step our efforts and do it himself!
We MUST try to convince him NOT to!
TAKE ACTION: Enacting further mandatory limits on emissions would be especially unwise at this time, as the U.S. economy totters on recession and consumer confidence sags from rising food and energy prices. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the Kyoto process, with its built-in momentum for ever more unrealistic emission reduction targets, is economically ruinous and, hence, politically unsustainable.
We need to try to stop this nonsense QUICKLY -- before the President's speech. Please CALL the White House at 202-456-1111 NOW -- or email comments@whitehouse.gov -- and urge President Bush NOT to give in to the radical environmentalists and abandon the prudent and successful course he’s followed during the past seven years. Or, click below NOW to "compose your own letter" to him now:
http://capwiz.com/sicminc/mail/?id=20004&type=PR
P.S.: This is URGENT-- the President's speech is TODAY, Wednesday, April 16th. Call or send him a message RIGHT AWAY. Thank you!
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April 12, 2008
New, unexpected findings on cloud forcing, from study of 1300 images from thermal infrared camera, taken in Central England between 16 February and 27 April 2007
Ref: Smith, S., and R. Toumi (2008), Direct observation of cloud forcing by ground-based thermal imaging, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L07814, doi:10.1029/2008GL033201.
The radiative impact of clouds on the Earth's surface is an important factor in determining the climate. It can be quantified in terms of the surface Cloud Radiative Forcing (CRF), which is the change in radiative flux occurring when clouds are introduced into a clear atmosphere. During the day, the total CRF is the sum of a longwave (LW), terrestrial component (CRFLW), which warms the surface, and a shortwave solar component, which has a cooling effect. At night, the absence of sunlight means that all forcing is provided by CRFLW. Several studies in recent years, using differing methods and climatologies, have observed surface CRFLW, showing significant and consistent nonlinearity as a function of cloud amount (c). ... These results indicate that climate sensitivity to clouds is greater for high c values than for low values. It is perhaps an unexpected result - if clouds are assumed to be optically thick and radiating at a constant temperature, then the LW flux emitted by the cloud field (Fcl) would simply be the fraction, c, of the flux observed when the cloud totally covers the sky (Fc). Against a clear sky flux Fs the surface CRF arising from this 'black plate' assumption would be:
CRF = Fcl - Fs = [cFc - (1 - c) Fs] - Fs = c (Fc - Fs).
If (Fc − Fs) remains independent of cloud cover, a linear relationship between cloud amount and CRF would thus be produced. Model cloud schemes may also have problems capturing the nonlinearity and magnitude of CRFLW, because they use gridbox-averages of cloud optical thickness to calculate fluxes. This produces an overestimate of the average shortwave cloud albedo, and by inference the LW cloud emissivity as well. Hence an 'effective emissivity', similar to the shortwave 'effective optical thickness' suggested by Cahalan et al. [1994] should be considered.
No explanation of the observed nonlinearity between CRFLW and cloud amount has so far been suggested. There are difficulties in measuring CRFLW -- extensive time averaging is employed and the clear sky flux Fs must be inferred either from monthly averages of fluxes on separate clear days, or from the use of radiosonde profiles and a radiative transfer model. This study is the first where researchers have directly measured instantaneous CRF in the 7.5--13 μm region. They identify two main contributions to nonlinearity, and show significant differences between CRF during the day and the night.
... The causes of deviation from linearity in CRF are found to be two-fold: first, large cloud amounts tend to be associated with the presence of low clouds, which exert a larger surface CRF than higher clouds. Secondly, emissivity increases with cloud cover ...
Significantly greater average forcing is found for local hours of daytime due to optically thicker cloud emitting with a greater contrast in flux against the background sky compared to that at night. Daytime forcing is also less linear because of the greater influence of cloud at higher altitudes.
March 17, 2008
Snows and record cold in Chingai, China - 3 million face starvation
... six months of snow and record low temperatures have created a catastrophe in the Chinese province of Chingai. According to China’s official news agency, 500,000 animals have died and three million people face starvation.
[Source: Christopher Booker (The Daily Telegraph), "FAVOUR FOR THE STRATEGIC PARTNER", Calcutta Telegraph (India), March 17, 2008]
January 30, 2008
The Republican field of candidates is not in the least depleted, because Alan Keyes is on the ballot in many states
I hope everyone who lives in the remaining Republican primary states will consider voting for Alan Keyes. Here's why I will be voting for him:
* He understands where our rights come from. The Declaration of Independence refers to us humans as being endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, including the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These rights are not given to us by kings, or by our fellow men, but by our Creator. This is truth, says the Declaration. And not just any ol' kind of truth, but self-evident truth. Do you agree? I do. And so does Dr. Keyes. I believe that this understanding of the source and nature of our rights is the best hope of preserving our liberties.
* He understands the unique role of the USA in the world. Dr. Keyes has more foreign policy experience than any of the other candidates. He served President Reagan's National Security Council as a staffer. He also served as the U.S. Ambassador to a U.N. organization during Reagan administration. He was the only candidate in the 2000 debates to voice opposition to the intervention in the former Yugoslavia. He will, I think, bring wisdom and commitment to the current war against the jihadists and their allies.
* He understands that the federal income tax system should be scrapped. If you haven't heard Dr. Keyes discuss the many onerous aspects of our tax system, I hope you'll go to alankeyes.com and watch a clip or two -- the one with "income tax" in the title is a fine place to start. Click here to see the 4-minute clip now.
A thoughtful pdf file about why others have come to the same conclusion about Alan Keyes is available here (eight pages long, 2.4 megabytes in size). Please feel encouraged to read it, and I hope you'll consider printing out copies to share with others, too. Some want you to believe that one of the early vote leaders is the inevitable choice. Well, simple math reveals that if only 5 folks are gladdened by this posting today, and each of them gets the same message out to five others tomorrow who conclude as they do, and so on and so forth, it won't be long until Dr. Keyes is ringing up big percentages of the votes. He's doing his part, campaigning in Texas right now. But if his voice is to be heard, he needs folks like you and me to help others know that there's a great choice on how to cast their votes available.
And by the way, Dr. Keyes appears to be the only candidate left amongst the Republicans who remains sceptical of the alarmist view about CO2 and climate.
January 12, 2008
New Antarctic peninsula ice core shows snow has doubled since 1850
In the global warming "debate", there's few videos more dramatic than those showing sections of ice collapsing into the ocean. All else being equal, loss of land ice would tend to raise sea level. In matters of climate, however, its a rare case where all else remains equal. A paper by Elizabeth Marshall et al., published today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters helps in understanding what's going on, weather-wise, in the Antarctic peninsula.
Antarctic precipitation is difficult to measure directly, primarily because of problems with blowing snow. Any increase in snow in the interior would tend to counter, in terms of net sea level change, loss of land ice into the sea. Satellite altimeter data [Davis et al. (2005); and Wingham et al. (2006)] indicate an increase in elevation in the western Peninsula for 1992–2003, thought to be due to greater snowfall. Turner et al. (2005) reported that at the Faraday station (located in the northwestern part of the peninsula), precipitation-days increased at a rate of 12.4 days per decade between 1950 and 1999. Modeling results suggest that the observed changes in Southern Annular Mode of atmospheric circulation would result in increased snow accumulation in the central and southern regions of the peninsula, but decreased accumulation in northeast. A 2006 paper by Monaghan et al. suggested no significant change in snowfall across the continent as a whole since the 1950s.
Today's paper, covering the period 1850 - 2006 as captured in the Gomez ice core, reports that "At the beginning of the record annual accumulation is relatively stable until about 1930 when it begins to increase steadily. Following a slight reduction in accumulation in the late 1960s, the most rapid increase occurs in the latter part of the record." The researchers compare the Gomez core data with that from other cores, and present a variety of insights arising from the record, as illuminated by modeling work. The coherence of the data with changes in atmospheric indexes -- one being the forementioned "Southern Annualar Mode" (SAM) and the other being the "El Nino Southern Oscillation" (ENSO).
Figure 1 from the new paper is shown below. It graphs the "Annual accumulation ot Gomez (dashed blue) and running decadal mean accumulation at Gomez (solid blue), Dyer Plateau (red), James Ross Island (black) and ITASE01_05 (green) in meters of water equivalent per year) between 1850 and 2006. The inset map shows locations of core sites and stations mentioned in the paper.
[Source: Thomas, E. R., G. J. Marshall, and J. R. McConnell (2008), A doubling in snow accumulation in the western Antarctic Peninsula since 1850, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L01706, doi:10.1029/2007GL032529. Published 12 January 2008]
November 27, 2007
Loehle multiproxy paper (Nov 2007 E&E) looks different than hockey stick
Dr. Craig Loehle has been working with paleoclimate proxy data for some years. He has a paper in this month's Energy & Environment which uses a variety of proxies from around the world in an attempt mainly to help answer the questions of whether the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were global in scope. Here's a comparison of the 1,000-year "hockey stick" graph used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (in the 2001 Assessment Report) with the approximately 2,000-year temperature graph of the eighteen datasets selected for use by Loehle.
In a discussion over in sci.environment, a scientist took exception to Loehle's statement in the paper that "It is clear that the 1995-year reconstruction shown here does not match the famous hockey stick shape (Crowley, 2000;
Crowley and Lowery, 2000; Jones, 1998; Jones et al., 1999; Mann and
Jones, 2003; Mann et al., 1995, 1998, 1999; Overpeck et al.,1997)." I agree with Loehle, and I hope this comparison shows why. A pdf of the new Loehle paper is available here.
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This is a brand new website, and this page is the first draft. Thanks to Lumpy and the other nice folks in alt.marketing.online.ebay usenet group for encouraging a more user-friendly page design than I've used for years over at nuclear.com. The format you see here was the product of the online web page creator at pages.google.com. I'm a Mac user, and I'm sorry to report that the google tool doesn't work so well with the Firefox browser they suggest. Trying to add the image source links for the two graphs was literally an exercise involving hitting a moving target. The dialog box would move offscreen as the cursor approached the button to add the link. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the site over the coming years, and please feel welcome to send suggestions or other comments to me at the email link below.
