Scientists Predict: Another Ice Age Is On The Way - in 1958!

The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington, March 29, 1958

Scientists Predict: Another Ice Age is on the way (Article by Leslie Lieber)

(Those who were hardest hit by last month’s snowstorms may think the next ice-age is already upon us. Others may think it will never come. Whatever you think, it would be comforting to pay no attention to the weather forecast presented on these pages.


Unfortunately Maurice Ewing and William L. Donn are not men to be taken lightly. Dr. Ewing ranks as one of America’s leading oceanographers and geophysicists, its top authority on the world beneath the sea. President of the American Geophysical Union and director of Columbia University’s Lamont Geological Observatory, he has personally designed much of the equipment now used in underseas exploration.


His colleague, Dr. Donn, is Associate Professor of Geology, Brooklyn College, and Chief Scientist, U.S. Atlantic Island Observatories Program for the Inter- national Geophysical Year.

The two scientists point out that the full scientific presentation of their new theory, with graphs and weather charts, has already been made in scientific journals, but say “we have been pleased to co-operate with Mr. Lieber in presenting to the general public some of the highlights of our ideas.”)



Two leaders in their field say the enormous glacier that buried half the world 11,000 years ago is due back and present a startling theory to prove it.

Eleven thousand years ago — give or take a thousand years — the last of the great ice-age glaciers which blanketed the American continent from Northern Canada to the banks of the Missouri River began its retreat from the face of the earth. Known as the Wisconsin stage, it rang down the curtain on four separate Ice Ages which had come and gone during the preceding million years.

Since that time, mankind has been too busy with the problems of everyday living to worry about the staggering possibility that another continental glacier might be in the making. Undoubtedly our Neanderthal ancestors lived in the same ignorant bliss during the warm interludes between Ice Ages. The last thing they suspected was that their temperate weather would ever end. It did, though — in glacial onslaughts which drove them either into local caves or on long treks southward.

Modern man’s hunch that the Ice Age has gone for good is based on what he firmly believes to be common sense. How, we ask, can a new Ice Age possibly be shaping up when everybody knows that existing glaciers — like those in the Swiss passes and Alaska — are melting? How could new ice hulks creep in upon us while weather experts are announcing that even the North Polar ice caps are thinning? And what about the fact that weather records show the weather has been growing warmer over the years - so warm in fact that certain glaciers are melting fast enough to raise the level of the world’s oceans? Can such signs really foreshadow the coming of a new Ice Age?

The answer is very definitely yes — if you listen to two leading oceanographers, Drs. Maurice Ewing and William L. Donn. As a result of extensive research, these eminent scientists believe, in short, that the earth is passing through an interglacial period and that the cyclic phenomena which produced continental glaciers in ages past are at work producing another Ice Age. Its advent may be a matter of thousands of years. It could also conceivably be upon us in a few centuries.

Now how can slightly warmer climate and rising sea levels foster a cataclysm as drastic as another Ice Age? First you must understand just how a glacier is formed.

The glaciers that once blanketed a great part of the earth did not, as is popularly believed, gradually spread out from the poles, nor were they caused by a sudden plunge in the earth’s temperature during the Pleistocene Age.

Continuous Snowfall

Glaciers, Dr. Ewing explains, are created purely and simply when more snow falls than melts. Sub-zero temperatures are only one factor. Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Islands, for instance, share the same frigid latitude. But snow-covered Greenland lies under a perpetual blanket of ice whereas the Arctic Islands, with only light snow precipitation, are not glaciated.

Drs. Ewing and Donn reason that the great Ice Ages were produced by practically continuous snowfall coming from some rich source of moisture which has now been shut off.

It is becoming known that the thickest ice concentration during the glacial periods was in the Hudson Bay region. The Ewing-Donn conclusion is that the snow clouds must have gathered their moisture from the Arctic Ocean.

In other words, the Arctic Ocean in the Ice Age was itself free of ice, and offered thousands and thousands of square miles of water surface to winds blowing towards Northern Canada, Europe and Siberia.

The Ewing-Donn theory holds that the barrier standing between us and another Ice Age is a steadily thinning layer of about six feet of ice covering the Arctic Ocean, Should it melt completely, the birthplace of glaciers would be reopened. The weight of evidence from both American and Russian scientists is that the Arctic is warming appreciably. This could mean that all the conditions which led to the four ice-cycles of the last million years are still in operation.

There is an agent which, during past epochs, has repeatedly been able to melt the ice floes of the Arctic. According to Ewing and Donn, that great defroster is not the sun, but the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

Whenever the tepid Atlantic has found a passageway into the Arctic, it has melted ice faster than the frigid air could form it.

As of this moment Ewing and Donn feel that this ‘hot-water faucet” has been turned on.

Why is it that the warm waters of the Atlantic can reach the Arctic Ocean now — for the first time since before the last glacial stage? It is possible because of the considerable rise in sea-level during the past few thousand years. Normally the Atlantic can’t flow freely into the Arctic because it must pass through several narrow bottlenecks between Greenland and Norway. (Denmark Strait and Faeroe Channel) So shallow is the ocean floor between the Arctic and Atlantic — much of it less than 50 fathoms - that little interchange occurs. But with a rise in sea-level the influx of warm Atlantic water into the Arctic increases many fold.

This traffic is not just one-way. There is a mutual interaction between the two bodies of water: the Arctic seas, swollen by their own melting ice, flow southward into the Atlantic, cooling it.

Some years ago Professor Harold Urey of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography discovered a revolutionary method of determining the temperature at which deep-sea shells were formed. Scientists now know, for instance, that a temperature decline in the surface waters of the Atlantic Ocean, due to the influx of cold Arctic water, was a prologue to the last Ice Age. From 90,000 B.C down to 11,000 years ago it plunged eight degrees Centigrade, a very significant decrease.

Dramatic Discovery

The fact that the temperature of the ocean is definitely tied up with ice ages came to light when sediments were cored out during various oceanographic cruises on the Lamont Observatory s research vessel Vema, In ancient ooze Ewing and Donn found marine evidence that an abrupt change in marine life took place in Atlantic and Caribbean waters approximately 11,000 years ago, at the precise time the Wisconsin ice stage was ending. What was this new development? The organisms dramatically changed from cold-water types to warm-water types.

In other words, something had happened (simultaneously with the disappearance of glaciers) to warm up the Atlantic Ocean. The only explanation is that its supply of “icewater” was blocked. What had happened? The Arctic Ocean had once again become covered by ice. The Canada-bound winds no longer found moisture there to stock up on.

And on the American continent, the snow-starved ice sheets gradually wasted away.

Examination of sediment from 11,000 years ago in the Arctic Ocean seems to show the reverse side of the corn. With the Atlantic no longer able to penetrate, the marine fauna switched from warm back to cold-water types. In other words, the pendulum had finally swung the other way, ending an ice cycle.

Just as high sea levels cause glacial periods, so do low sea levels result in a return to the kind of bottleneck that shuts the Arctic off from its warm-water source and ends the glacial period. Lower sea levels are caused when amounts of ocean water become locked in glacial ice.

How The Glaciers Started

Thus sea level has controlled the glacial- interglacial cycles of the past million years, and in turn, the glacial conditions have controlled sea level.

But, how did it all begin? What started these cycles? Much scientific evidence now exists for the startling theory that the crust of the earth can slip, and change its position relative to the interior. Such slipping would cause different places on the surface to be at the poles in different geological periods. There is also evidence to suggest that before the glacial period of the Pleistocene Era the mid-Pacific Ocean was at the North Pole and the South Atlantic was over the South Pole. To have the poles thus situated in open sea would prevent the formation of polar ice caps, since free interchange with warmer equatorial waters would keep them relatively warm.

The North Pole is now situated over the isolated Arctic Ocean, the South Pole over the Antarctic continent. With the poles no longer in freely circulating water and the cooler temperature of the higher latitudes isolated and concentrated, they became sources of cold polar air. Ewing’s and Donn’s startling theory is that this is what started the glacial period, and that as long as the poles remain thus isolated, glacial periods will wax and wane as the sea level rises and falls.

In case of another Ice Age, millions of those living in the most urbanized areas of Europe and the United States would have to flee southward.

But as bad as things would be, another Ice Age would offer tremendous compensations: the major desert areas .of the earth — 12,000,000 square miles —would again become arable, fertile, well-watered lands.

Should another Ice Age strike, the man who controls the Sahara could rule the earth! — The End

I Agree with Dr Fred Singer - Global Warming is Bunk!

When was the last time you read that "controvesial speaker Al Gore" would be appearing? That's right, never, because the media has decreed the science of global warming is settled, and speaking on the side of a settled topic by definition cannot be controversial. So with great interest I went to the Coloradoan.com to read: Skepticism: Controversial speaker Fred Singer says that global warming and climate science 'bunk'

After reading the article, I was inspired to post the following comment, and this led to a rambling, polite discussion over a couple of days with Dr Scott Denning, Monfort Professor of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, and occasionally less polite discussions with a couple of other commenters.

My opening comment:

Scott Denning's statement about all the heat generated by burning fossil fuels is quite foolish. What does he think caused five periods of greater warming than the current one in the past 11,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age? More recently, 39 of the 50 states records of hottest days were set over 50 years ago. Coral mounts rising ten feet above current sea levels show that temperature and sea level were much higher 4,000 years ago at the end of the Holocene Climate Optimum. Just 1,000 years ago the global Medieval Warm Peiod was warmer, sea levels were higher, and humanity prospered. We are now coming off the Little Ice Age (1350 to 1850 AD) and the warming we are now experiencing is a natural rebound from the coldest period of the past 11,000 years. If you won't listen to skeptics, lend an ear to the Earth - it tells the story of natural climate change eloquently.


Zippy-1 (the first commenter)

Your logic is flawed. None of your examples negate the 'greenhouse effect' warming caused by rising CO2 levels from humans burning fossil fuels. And 39 states temperature records? Come on. Even if you're correct cherry-picked local examples are meaningless in the context of global average annual temperatures, which puts the most recent decade as the hottest on record. 2010 was tied for the hottest full year on record and the first half of 2011 is a record.

Dr Scott Denning's reply to my comment:

Hi Michael,

Simple question ... simple answer. Earlier climate changes were caused by heat coming into the Earth and heat going out from the Earth. Modern climate change responds to precisely the same physics that past climate changes responded to.

Is there some reason that you think the Earth warmed and cooled in the past when heat was added or subtracted, but that somehow the extra Watts of heat from CO2 "don't count?"

Interesting theory. I guess as a scientist I have to be a bit skeptical of the logic though.

Most of us understand that adding heat to things warm them up. Always has. Always will.

Best regards,

Scott Denning
Monfort Professor of Atmospheric Science

My reply to Dr Denning:

Dr Denning

The portion of additional CO2 created by the burning of fossil fuel is only a tiny part of the CO2 created naturally by oxidation by plants, animals, and decay of plant matter. And in all that, CO2 is only 0.04% of the atmosphere by volume, of which only 3% is produced by human activity. In previous periods of warming, when CO2 was 10 to 20 rimes current levels, the Earth has plunged into ice ages while CO2 was still at high levels. The Holocene Optimum of 8,000 to 4,000 years ago was much warmer than now and followed the Ice Age which ended 11,000 years ago, yet CO2 was much lower. The additional warmth of the Holocene Optimum did not come from burning fossil fuels, just as hundreds of other periods of warming were not caused by increased CO2.

There is now good scientific reason to doubt the existence of a "greenhouse warming effect."

The Monterrey science research institute also recreated Wood’s test into the effect of longwave infrared radiation trapped inside a greenhouse. Unlike Pratt it found that Wood’s findings were correct, absolutely valid and systematically repeatable. The Bio Cab man affirms, “ the greenhouse effect does not exist as it is described in many didactic books and articles.”

Put simply, one of the aforementioned professors has their reputation perilously on the line and Nahle is gunning for an explanation from his U.S. Rival. A clue to the outcome: Pratt isn't even qualified in science - he's a (warmist) mathematician specializing in computers.

Professor Nahle’s findings will come as no surprise to anyone who is up to speed with the other big climate story that has raised huge doubts over any so-called greenhouse effect. NASA now admits global warming just isn’t happening despite ever-rising levels of CO2.

Laughably, the once illustrious U.S. space agency is blaming no warming this century on China."

A closing point - current warming started 300 years ago

My reply to Zippy-1:

"39 of the 50 states records of hottest days were set over 50 years ago."

Zippy-1

These are not cherry-picked. I simply googled heat records by state and found a table from USA Today. The initial reason I did this was because Al Gore and His Acolytes have now adopted a new appoach to alarmism by claiming all severe weather events are evidence of man-caused climate change. Kevin Trenberth also has made this claim. As far as this being the hottest period on record, I noted in a previous post that Greenland ice cores for the past 10,000 years show that not one of the past 100 years were warmer than 9,100 of the past 10,000. So much for exceptional warmth.

Current warming is "unprecedented" only if you think climate began after Al Gore earned his D's at Harvard.

The next reply from Dr Scott Denning

Good morning Michael,

I asked you why past climate changes can be explained by changes in heating, and you replied that there isn't much CO2 in the atmosphere. (Note: that's what I said and it's true; CO2 is only 0.0387% by volume) Then you said most CO2 doesn't come from combustion. (Note: that's also true, since 96% of CO2 is produced by natural, not human sources)Then you claimed the greenhouse effect doesn't exist (Note: this is not exactly true, since I only provided quotes from the scientists that say the greenhouse effect doesn't exist.

I'll ask you again: if changes in heating produced ice ages and warm periods in the past as you mention, why on Earth do you expect extra watts of heat from CO2 to have no effect now? Have the laws of thermodynamics changed? (Note: thousands of times in the past cooling began when CO2 was high; enormous quantities of CO2 were being added to the atmosphere from the warming seas and from decay - that's oxidation - of vegetable matter, and heat is heat)

We don't expect global warming because 39 states are hot today. We expect global warming because adding heat to things changes their temperature. Don't believe me? Put a pot of water on the stove and see what happens! (Note: conversely, we expect global cooling when the orbital dynamics that caused global warming are reversed)

Have a great day,

Scott Denning

My reply to Dr Denning:

Where did all the extra heat come from when the temperatures were much higher five times in the past 10,000 years since the end of the Ice Age than they are now? CO2 was much lower then. In fact, even now it is close to its lowest level in parts per million going back about a billion years. Several things are undeniable: CO2 levels have been over ten times current atmospheric levels previously without causing run-away warming; in all instances, warming began before CO2 increased, and cooling began when CO2 was high and before it started dropping; CO2 and the rest of the atmosphere is warmed by convection, just as trapped air in a greenhouse is - unlike a greenhouse, the warm air rises and mixes with the cooler air above; CO2 has neither the volume nor properties to cause a difference in temperature to the point that it could be distinguished from natural environmental noise.

A thought I am now developing is that the current production of heat by the Earth is very small compared to periods when plants grew, died, decomposed to form huge deposits of coal and oil, and along the way emitted enormous quantities of CO2 - which further fed plant growth. Of course, the same is happening today, only the naturally produced CO2 is much less because the plant mass is so much smaller, although it is over thirty times what is produced by human activity.

A comment from Elmer Jones:

I haven't heard anyone explain why the earth's glaciers are melting at a pronounced rate according to those that have studied them . I give little weight to those people whom have not studied them. Where did the North polar ice cap go?

Why is the Greenland ice cap melting at an advanced rate? If heat is being generated internally by the planet then what is the cause? There is too much body of evidence to prove that "yes indeed the ice deposits are melting."

My reply to Elmer Jones:

A map of Glacier Bay, Alaska, shows glacier retreat of 60 miles from 1760 to 1912, and only about six miles since. Glacier retreat and advance during the past 11,000 years since the last Ice Age has been extensively studied and documented by such climate experts as H H Lamb, "Climatic History and the Future", and the founder of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, now famous for its role in Climategate. A study of glacier history shows glaciers are not now retreating at an advanced rate, and neither is the Greenland ice cap. In fact, Greenland ice cores show that Greenland was warmer for 9,100 years of the past 10,000 than for any year of the past 100. Glaciers in the Alps retreated further 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warm Period than during the recent warming. The Alpine glaciers advanced during the Little Ice Age (1350 to 1850 AD) then began retreating over 100 years before significant increases in atmospheric CO2. Current retreat is uncovering man-made artifacts that were created during the Medieval Warm Period, then covered during the Little Ice Age, and are now being exposed again. Russian Arctic studies have determined there were several periods in the past 11,000 years since the last Ice Age when there was less Arctic ice than now, particularly during the much warmer Holocene Climate Optimum when it was so much warmer than present that sea levels were over ten feet higher than now at the peak of Holocene warming about 4,000 years ago. There are coral mounts ten feet higher than the current sea level that prove it was much warmer and sea levels were higher then - corals don't grow out of the water, you know, and they grow particularly well in warm water. I hope I answered your questions, Elmer. This information, and a lot more, is written clearly in the Earth for all to see that seek it with open minds and scientific curiosity.

Then I passed this reply on to Dr Denning:

Some more musings about current natural climate change. Where did the heat come from over 200 years ago when CO2 was low?

A map of Glacier Bay, Alaska, shows glacier retreat of 60 miles from 1760 to 1912, and only about six miles since. Glacier retreat and advance during the past 11,000 years since the last Ice Age has been extensively studied and documented by such climate experts as H H Lamb, "Climatic History and the Future", and the founder of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, now famous for its role in Climategate. A study of glacier history shows glaciers are not now retreating at an advanced rate, and neither is the Greenland ice cap. In fact, Greenland ice cores show that Greenland was warmer for 9,100 years of the past 10,000 than for any year of the past 100. Glaciers in the Alps retreated further 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warm Period than during the recent warming. The Alpine glaciers advanced during the Little Ice Age (1350 to 1850 AD) then began retreating over 100 years before significant increases in atmospheric CO2. Current retreat is uncovering man-made artifacts that were created during the Medieval Warm Period, then covered during the Little Ice Age, and are now being exposed again. Russian Arctic studies have determined there were several periods in the past 11,000 years since the last Ice Age when there was less Arctic ice than now, particularly during the much warmer Holocene Climate Optimum when it was so much warmer than present that sea levels were over ten feet higher than now at the peak of Holocene warming about 4,000 years ago. There are coral mounts ten feet higher than the current sea level that prove it was much warmer and sea levels were higher then - corals don't grow out of the water, you know, and they grow particularly well in warm water. This information, and a lot more, is written clearly in the Earth for all to see that seek it with open minds and scientific curiosity.

Then I replid to Zippy-1:

"Your logic is flawed. None of your examples negate the 'greenhouse effect' warming caused by rising CO2 levels from humans burning fossil fuels."

Your logic is flawed. Current warming began over 100 years before human activity caused any significant increase in CO2 levels. The Little Ice Age ended by 1850 or earlier, and there were two periods of much more rapid warming than now from 1850 to 1945. Ironically, as CO2 increased steadily after 1950, there was a cooling period that lasted until 1975, then warming, then cooling the past decade.

And I further reply to Zippy-1:

Concerning "hottest on record" temps, if you go to: http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/cag3/hr-display3.pl  (which is a government website) you will see a chart of contiguous US temperatures for the past 115 years which show an increase of about 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit during that period, roughly half before 1950 and half after. This NOAA chart also shows no warming for 12 years, and that 2009 and 2010 were the lowest annual temperatures since 1994. As far as a decade being the hottest on record, you are lucky science can't break out any but the most recent warm periods by decade. Suffice it to say, since Greenland ice cores show 9,100 of the past 10,000 years were warmer than any of the past 100, there were centuries 4,000 to 8,000 years ago that were hotter than the past decade.

Then Dr Denning replied to me:
Michael,

The Earth's surface receives virtually all of its heat from only two sources: incoming radiant energy from the Sun and from the warm air above us. Believe it or not, almost two-thirds of the total comes from the air. This is easily measured by comparing the total energy in at night to that during the day. It's not in dispute. Energy leaving the surface is mostly through radiant energy as well, with about 20% going up as convective heat transfer and evaporative cooling.

Whenever more heat comes in than goes out, the Earth's surface warms up. Whenever more heat goes out than comes in, the Earth's surface cools off. This is what explains the difference between day and night, summer and winter, Miami and Minneapolis. Pretty simple.

In fact, this simple physics also explains EVERY CLIMATE CHANGE THE EARTH HAS EVER EXPERIENCED. So all of your examples of warmer and colder periods in the past, the Little Ice Age, the Big Ice Age, the Age of the Dinosaurs, everything.

Precisely the same physical laws also govern the changes that will certainly occur if the amount of radiant energy delivered to the Earth's surface increases by 8 Watts per square meter when China and India build modern industrial economies using coal.

Look, I'm not selling something smelly here: adding heat warms things up. Removing heat cools things off. That's how climate has worked for billions of years. That's how it will continue to work for the rest of our children's lives.

I do appreciate your interest in the science. Contrary to your original comment, there's nothing foolish about this!

Sincerely,

Scott Denning
Monfort Professor of Atmospheric Science
Colorado State University

I persist in disagreeing with Dr Denning:

Where did the heat come from over 200 years ago when CO2 was low?

A map of Glacier Bay, Alaska, shows glacier retreat of 60 miles from 1760 to 1912, and only about six miles since. Glacier retreat and advance during the past 11,000 years since the last Ice Age has been extensively studied and documented by such climate experts as H H Lamb, "Climatic History and the Future", and the founder of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, now famous for its role in Climategate. A study of glacier history shows glaciers are not now retreating at an advanced rate, and neither is the Greenland ice cap. In fact, Greenland ice cores show that Greenland was warmer for 9,100 years of the past 10,000 than for any year of the past 100. Glaciers in the Alps retreated further 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warm Period than during the recent warming. The Alpine glaciers advanced during the Little Ice Age (1350 to 1850 AD) then began retreating over 100 years before significant increases in atmospheric CO2. Current retreat is uncovering man-made artifacts that were created during the Medieval Warm Period, then covered during the Little Ice Age, and are now being exposed again. Russian Arctic studies have determined there were several periods in the past 11,000 years since the last Ice Age when there was less Arctic ice than now, particularly during the much warmer Holocene Climate Optimum when it was so much warmer than present that sea levels were over ten feet higher than now at the peak of Holocene warming about 4,000 years ago. There are coral mounts ten feet higher than the current sea level that prove it was much warmer and sea levels were higher then - corals don't grow out of the water, you know, and they grow particularly well in warm water. This information, and a lot more, is written clearly in the Earth for all to see that seek it with open minds and scientific curiosity.

And Dr Denning replies:
You've asked where the heat came from 200 years ago when we began warming from the Little Ice Age. You've also told me to look at the Earth for answers. Fine. Notice that there's no need to yell at me or insult me. I'm being pretty reasonable and answering you politely.

Regarding the warming that began at the end of the Little Ice Age the answer is the Sun. The warming actually began more like 300 years ago following a period when the sun dimmed by about 1 Watt per square meter (compared to 1367 Watts per square meter today) during the Maunder Minimum. As the sun gradually brightened, even that tiny change (1 W out of 1367) steadily warmed the Earth's climate and produced all those changes you wrote about.

Regarding listening to the Earth, I've been doing it professionally for almost 30 years now. My undergraduate degree was in geology and I used to work in the oil industry. I'm not the crackpot socialist you might imagine! Paleoclimate has always been fascinating to me and I've read thousands of pages of that material over half my lifetime.

Natural climate change shows us a very clear picture of the response of the Earth to changes in the amount of energy coming in and going out. During the last Ice Age 18,000 years ago ice sheets covered much of North America, Europe, and Asia which made the albedo much higher so that sunlight was reflected to space. Cold oceans and fertilization by iron in dust at that time allowed the oceans to dissolve nearly 1/3 of all the CO2 in the air. Together the brighter surface and lower CO2 levels reduced the energy input by about 7.5 Watts per square meter (7.5 times as much as the Little Ice Age). And the changes persisted much longer, allowing climate to cool drastically.

By the time my children are old, Earth's surface will receive 8 Watts per square meter more energy than it did in 1800 (if India and China go big for coal). Do you see why I'm concerned?

Sincerely,

Scott Denning

Again I respond to Dr Denning

Thank you for your replies. I won't SHOUT AT YOU or write insulting things (some pointed comments in this thread are addressed to a Zippy-1), although physics I've learned has convinced me that a colder object (air) does not warm a warmer one (earth), or a smaller one (air) a massive one (ocean), The air does not have the mass to contain heat sufficient to provide two-thirds of warming. On a contrary note, the Sun warms the earth, and after sundown the earth warms the air. My sense of touch confirms this daily.

Of course, increasing levels of CO2 only correlate with temperature 22% of the time, and as Kevin Trenberth said, it's a travesty that the current lack of warming can't be explained. That is why China aerosols have been plugged in to explain the lack of warming, even as the aerosols are due to the enormous quantities of coal the Chinese are burning. Aerosols seem to be a wild card, played when the climate models don't add up.

I have no concern for my grandchildren in a warming world. As Bjorn Lomborg suggests, "Cool it" and adapt. Adaptation has been the genius of humanity for thousands of years, through much warmer and much colder periods. My reading of H H Lamb's "Climatic History and the Future" makes me welcome the idea of a warmer, higher CO2 environment because of high food production. The lessons of the Little Ice Age, of crop failures and starvation and population displacements, incredibly violent and ruinous storms, horrendous flooding and loss of millions of lives in the Yellow River region of China, flooding and enormous erosion on the coasts of England and the Netherlands, and many more disasters than you would get in a warm climate.

Civilization thrived in recent warm periods. The Holocene Climate Optimum of 8,000 to 4,000 years ago, the Roman Warm Period of 200 BC to 500 AD, the Medieval Warm Period (850 to 1300 AD), and the current warm period following the Little Ice Age. Fear cold, not warm.

I See the Future of Renewable (Green) Energy - It Ain't Pretty

In comments concerning where nenewable energy was heading - meaning wind, solar, and biomass - a commenter "Bad Andrew" said: "If anyone tells me he knows for sure what will happen to renewable energy in 40 years, I will laugh at him."

I waved my hand excitedly and commenced to prognosticate:


I know Bad Andrew, I know! Wind and solar will still be diffuse and unreliable. Other renewables like tide and biomass will still be somewhere in the future, but will not be a better alternative than they are now, and in the case of biomass, much worse.

However, in 40 years nuclear will have moved from its infancy into adolescence, and will be providing over half of the power needs of China, India, and the United States. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors will be doing most of the work, but other nuclear will be investigated and found very promising. Fusion will definitely be closer to becoming the renewable power source for all future needs.

People will laugh thinking of the foolishness of wind, solar, carbon sequestration, biomass, and there will be a special Hall of Shame for Al Gore and anyone involved in promoting ethanol. The world will be a better place because abundant, inexpensive energy will enable citizens of developing nations to achieve lives of comfort, well being, and promise for the future.

And at 108 years of age, I will be enjoying a long, active life, and regretting it won't last forever so I can witness all the miracles of mankind.

Rising Sea Levels Alarmism

Mann et al are back at it; this time their alarmism is about sea levels rising.

Sea level has risen an average of 4 feet per century since the end of the Ice Age: 420 feet in 100 centuries. Fortunately, almost all of it occurred in a short period 10,000 years to 8,000 years ago. Since then sea level reached 10 to 20 feet higher than now during the 10 degrees warmer Holocene Optimum until reaching a peak about 3,000 years ago, then started falling. However, the Medieval Warm Period featured 12th Century sea levels eight inches higher than now, the Little Ice Age had sea levels 12 inches lower, and for the past four centuries sea levels have been increasing an average of six inches per century, and the rate of increase has been falling in the past half century.


It doesn't appear that alarmist studies reflect the sea level history going back 10,000 years when sea level was 420 feet lower, or the fluctuations in the six periods of warming in that period, of which the current period is the least. The only thing that makes the current warming seem remarkable is that it follows the Little Ice Age, which was the coldest period since the end of the Ice Age. We have actually been on a cooling trend since the end of the Holocene Optimum about 4,000 years ago; each succeeding warm period has been cooler than the preceding.

None of this is conjecture about atmospheric carbon dioxide; it was much lower than now even though average temperature was higher. None of this requires computer models; it's all been compiled in studies reported voluminously in books such as H H Lamb's "Climatic History and the Future" published in 1977. No trees had to be bored and cored, and analyzed for growth factors such as moisture, temperature, carbon dioxide fertilization, divergence from the instrumental record, and the like. Instead, such records as crops - vineyards in England 1,000 years ago - glacier retreat and advance, coral mounts that were 10 feet above current sea level 3,000 years ago, and sediments that indicated ocean temperature was 10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer then.

These current studies seem detached from other science and climatic history. They exist in a land of make believe, where what you desire now changes the past to fit the present.

Soviet historians did this whenever present facts made an event in the past an inconvenient truth. I thought that all ended around 1984, but "science" seems to have picked it up as the Soviet Union collapsed. Perhaps science will be next...

It Ain't Necessarily So

Columnist Amy Goodman criticized Sarah Palin for her Paul Revere statement, but then continued that recent bad weather was a sign we need to stop global warming. Since Goodman used Sarah Palin as an example of conservative ignorance, I did what I always do when confronted with liberal columnist climate change assertions: I looked at the science, and at what even “warmist” scientists were saying about the link between bad weather and climate change.




Not surprising to me, since I’d already read voluminous articles about it, scientist after scientist said that there is no demonstrated link between recent bad weather and man-caused warming. The New York Times: Thomas R. Karl, director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. “(I)n the early part of the 20th century, there was also a tendency for more extreme events followed by a quiet couple of decades.”

In New Science: “Martin Hoerling at the US NOAA. ‘A lot of these extreme conditions are natural variations of the climate. Extremes happen, heat waves happen, heavy rains happen.’

“’Drought across the southern US - and heavy rains across the north of the country - are a result of La Niña,’ says Michael Hayes, director of the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. An extended holding pattern in the jet stream, the same type of "blocking event" that caused last summer's heat wave in Russia, is responsible for this year's European droughts, says Michael Blackburn of the University of Reading, UK.”

“As for the apparent convergence of droughts worldwide, Mark Saunders of University College London says current conditions aren't that unusual. News media may simply be more tuned in to reporting extreme weather events.”

Sarah Palin erred on historical trivia, but Amy Goodman’s ignorance of science contributes to wasteful resource allocation. Goodman does harm.

Slaying the Sky Dragon - Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory (Amazon Reviews)

I'm having a very enjoyable exchange on Amazon.com concerning reviews of "Slaying the Sky Dragon - Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory."

One reviewer commented:
"you can transfer energy to the earth from a reflective green house layer even if the energy level of the earth is higher."


To which I replied: (The charts I show are not part of my Amazon reply because I could not load them on Amazon. I wish I could. They support my replies very well)
"This reviewer confuses insulation with reflection. He also confuses a greenhouse which prevents the air warmed by the heated earth from mixing with the outside air, with the insulating effect provided primarily by water vapor in the atmosphere. If he would look at the historical record he would find many periods when warming began long before CO2 increased, and when cooling began when CO2 was much higher. In both cases warming and cooling soon - in 800 years or so - caused the oceans to release or absorb CO2, respectively.

If CO2 has always been driven by climate change, and has never been the driver, how did it get behind the wheel now when even current levels of CO2 are historically very low? It is much easier to understand current warming of one degree F per century to be a rebound from the end of the Little Ice Age 300 years ago, than as a product of a very recently increase of an atmospheric trace gas.

Compare a night in an equatorial desert to a humid, summer night in Michigan - the atmosphere above each containing the same tiny concentration of CO2 - and then determine what you want to do with your coat. It goes on, in the desert, and stays off in Michigan. And water vapor does its balancing magic, just as it has for billions of years.

My reply generated the following from "Freedom Ride":
The commenter fails to understand radiative forcing, fails to recognize that this massive, geologically near-instantaneous increase in GHGs is unique in climate history, fails to recognize the fundamental difference between H2O and the other GHGs, and apparently does not know that the increasing absolute humidity is a feedback effect of increasing concentrations of the persistent GHGs, principally CO2.


In short, Mr. Combs does not know what he is talking about. He *is* skilled at repeating some rather old, shop-worn denier talking points, at least. No doubt he finds them reassuring, bless his heart.

Which inspired me to reply:
Freedom Ride makes many misstatements, none more egregious than that the increase in CO2 is unique, since for most of the Earth's history atmospheric CO2 has been multiples higher. The fundamental difference between H2O and other so-called greenhouse gases is that H2O comprises over 95% of the total, and that the increase of water vapor from warming provides a negative feedback through clouds and through heat transport in the atmosphere to increased warming.


Freedom Ride continues the alarmist method of making sweeping statements without providing any observational proof or support. As an example, the existence of six periods of greater warming since the end of the Ice Age just over 10,000 years ago are robustly supported by world-wide studies, as is the fact that these periods were characterised by stable atmospheric CO2.

Current sea level rise is unremarkable at eight inches per century and slowing, and can be compared to 420 feet of increase since the end of the Ice Age - an average of over four feet per century.

Also sea level studies have shown coral thrived about 6,000 years ago three to six feet above what is now sea level. Even an alarmist must concede that higher sea level then, evidenced by coral growth, proves greater warmth then.

My points are not old, shop-worn denier talking points. They have come from the reading of numerous compilations of historical facts by such climate greats as H. H. Lamb, and primarily are just repititions of what the Earth is telling us. Vineyards in England 1,000 years ago, where they fail today, is a fact that knows no politics.

Soon Freedom Ride replied:
Again, Combs reveals his ignorance. He apparently does not know (unsurprising, since apparently he gets his information from non-scientific sources) that in ancient times of much higher CO2 concentrations, insolation was much lower.

Combs posts a number of non sequiturs and moldy-oldie denialist assertions which may be disregarded. He's is an AGW denier, the intellectual equivalent of HIV/AIDS deniers, evolution deniers, moon landing deniers, etc. He employs the same tactics: anomaly hunting, cherry picking, Gish galloping and flat-out bs'ing. He is an ideologue--a Libertarian, perhaps?--oppressed by the irresistible march of science. Science is his enemy: he carefully ignores the unanimous, published affirmations of every major scientific professional association in the world. He searches the internet for comforting propaganda, which he presents here to insulate himself from cognitive dissonance. While it may satisfy him, it is transparently silly to anyone aware of the facts.
 
And I immediately countered:
"Combs reveals his ignorance. He apparently does not know (unsurprising, since apparently he gets his information from non-scientific sources) that in ancient times of much higher CO2 concentrations, insolation was much lower."

Freedom Ride, your ad hominem attacks far exceed your science. About insolation, "Earth's Climate: past and future," William F. Rudman:

"Insolation has varied around a constant long-term mean and has followed the same tilt and precession cycles for millions of years. Consequently, its fundamental character has stayed the same. As a result, we can use the same insolation curve throughour the full 3-Myr history of northern hemisphere glaciation illustrated by this conceptual model."

Mr. Ride. So far I have seen no science in any of your posts. Will any be forthcoming?

Has Mr. Ride gotten off the bus, or is he finally searching for some facts to throw back at me?


So far he is pitching a "no fact-er".

This Amazon exchange is very satisfying. If I presented similar comments on a website like Realclimate.com, they would never be posted.

Election 2012 - Republicans Have Choices, Democrats Are Stuck

The media have all but announced Obama reelected. Not for any Obama accomplishments. In fact, the media are getting pretty good now at chronicling his lack thereof:

• Obamacare is despised. Every Democrat-supporting group with any political pull - which pretty much is all groups that support Democrats - is getting waivers from Obamacare.
• War in Libya without Congressional approval under the War Powers Act, while continuing in Afghanistan and Iraq.
• Guantanamo still open, terrorists to be tried there by military tribunals.
• Extended Bush tax cuts.
• Reauthorized Patriot Act.
• Set records for deporting illegal aliens.
• Upset Israel and offended Jews with his ham-handed remarks about returning to 1967 borders, then alienated Muslims by trying to explain he didn't really mean what he said.

No, the media are conceding victory to Obama because they deem the Republican field of candidates weak.

If memory serves, the media said the same prior to Jimmy Carter standing for reelection. President Reagan defeated Jimmy easily. And for George H. W. Bush - the only real opposition were Republicans Perot and Buchanan, which let Bill Clinton slip right in. When Clinton ran for reelection he was so unpopular following the Hillarycare debacle and Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 that Republicans were sure any Republican could beat him, and ran the only one who couldn't.

But the Republican field is not weak. As Ramesh Ponnuru notes, the top Republican candidates all have extensive executive experience as governors. He contrasts this to the zero years of executive experience of the three Democrats in 2008, Obama, Hillary, and Edwards. Based on their records the past three years, none of them have improved their positions, although Hillary is looking much better to Democrats in comparisons to Obama.

Two things are obvious concerning Election 2012: Republicans will dominate election coverages, and from this crucible a powerful candidate will emerge stronger and sharper from enduring the white-hot forge of competition.

Enough mixing of blacksmithing metaphors.

But isn't that what competition achieves?

The good become better, and the best become unbeatable.

California Democrats and Teachers' Unions - Servant and Master

"When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children." So said the late Albert Shanker, founder and long-time president of the United Federation of Teachers, and later also president of the American Federation of Teachers. But he also said: "A lot of people who have been hired as teachers are basically not competent." Of course he still worked unceasingly to keep the incompetents paying union dues.


The fact that the California Democrat Party is a wholly owned union subsidiary was again demonstrated this past week. A bill to allow school districts to use performance rather than seniority as a criterion for laying off teachers didn’t get six votes and died in committee. Three Republicans voted for, two Democrats against, and five Democrats abstained.

California Teachers Association members left their classrooms to pack the hearing room to voice their opposition, but needn’t have bothered - campaign records show that Democrats on the committee received $176,200 from the two largest teachers’ unions since 2004. Republicans got zip.

Shanker would have applauded.

Global Warming - Much Ado About Nothing

Sometimes the best proof can be found in the camp of the enemy, crafted by their hands.


When the discussion is of global warming, the first point to examine is: "Is it warming?"

The answer is "Yes, and it has been for about 200 years since the end of the Little Ice Age."

That should answer the next question: "Is the warming man-caused or natural."

Obviously, the answer is: "Natural, since the Little Ice Age (1350 - 1800 AD) was a period of natural cooling following the much warmer than present Medieval Warm Period (950 - 1350 AD)."

Since no studies of the Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age have hypothesized let alone proven changes in atmospheric CO2 as causation, the inevitable conclusion is that natural climate change forces were at work.

Now, how much natural warming is there?

According to United States government statistics, and their NOAA Satellite and Information Service website, the United States has been warming at a rate of one degree Fahrenheit per century for the past 116 years.



One degree Fahrenheit per century.

One degree Fahrenheit per century?

Is this a big deal?

If so, why?

Al Gore says catastrophes are coming because of this warming.

One degree Fahrenheit per century?

Al says glaciers are melting.

True. In fact at least one since 1760-1780 AD, at Glacier Bay, Alaska. From 1760 to 1912 it retreated over sixty miles.



Al, since mankind was not causing significant increased atmospheric CO2 during the period 1760 to 1912 AD, what made the dramatic glacier retreat then different from the much less dramatic glacier retreat now?

Al, inquiring minds want to know.

What's the big deal?

Hurricane Al Gore

When Al Gore is faced with reports of numbing cold and record snow, he says "Weather is not climate."

However, when Katrina hit, or Australia suffered drought, or fires burned out of control in Russia, Al said these are signs of global warming.

Come to think of it, now Al claims that any unusual weather is proof of global warming.

In that regard, so does Dr. Kevin Trenberth.

Desperation is rampant in the camps of the true believers in anthropogenic global warming.

They are dying for Nature to throw them a crumb.

The latest direct hit they are taking is a study that shows warming reduces the strongest winds. That is part of the explanation of why hurricanes and tornados have been so quiet for several years. That plus normal cyclical variations that track well to a natural 30-year cycle of increasing and decreasing storm energy.



Of interest in the study was a photo of the cover of Gore's book "Our Choice - How We Can Solve The Climate Crisis (Young Reader's Edition)." In keeping with Al's hurricane obsession, it shows three northern hemisphere hurricanes. Two are rotating counter-clockwise, and one clockwise. That is definitely a first for northern hemisphere hurricanes. Prior to Al and his expertise, they all rotated the same direction.

Quick, Al! What's the right direction for northern hemisphere hurricanes?

That's right, Al, counter-clockwise.

Two out of three, or 67%, is about what one would expect from the mediocre student Al was in his collegiate days.

Having a U S Senator for a father really helps when your grades are too low to get you into Harvard,  doesn't it Al?

Rendition Worked!

Rendition worked! Water boarding in a secret overseas prison led to Osama Bin Laden’s last trip: a slide down a different sort of board into a watery grave. Thanks, President Bush. Mission accomplished.

Which is the Old, and which is the New? James Cameron shows Arnold "The Way"

James Cameron Brings Arnold Schwarzenegger to Amazon to See Firsthand a Battle Between Old and New Energy

I guess Cameron thinks wind and solar are new, and hydro is old. Actually, wind, solar, and hydro are all old. Each has huge environmental and societal liabilities. Hydro floods useful land and displaces its inhabitants, and wind and solar use huge amounts of scarce resources - including useful land - degrade the environment, don't produce energy cost effectively, relaibly, or efficiently, and produce nothing at all without government subsidies at the beginning and throughout the life of the wind and solar installations. Among the three, hydro makes the most sense because it is reliable, dispatchable, and controllable, and is generally cost effective. It also provides what developing nations need most, abundant energy to fuel their economic growth.

What can the world learn from our former California Governor Schwarzenegger?

As a Californian, and a one-time supporter of his election to governor, I am well qualified to answer my own question.

Governor Schwarzenegger was a total failure as governor of California. Among many fundamental errors he made was his mindless pursuit of green-energy jobs. They weren't created, and California had one of the highest rates of unemployment at over 12% in the United States. When the number of job seekers who dropped out of seeking employment because of frustration are counted, the actual unemployment rate doubled.

California's wind and solar farms are expensive, taxpayer subsidized, inefficient, and ineffective. They show no sign of ever being better than their current level of abject failure.

I lived within view of the wind farm at Altamont Pass for nine years. Besides not producing enough energy, even at highly subsidized rates, to avoid bankruptcies of their owners, the only thing the wind turbines did on the rare occasions their blades were turning was to kill rare eagles, raptors, and bats. And to be a much too visible eyesore on what should have been pristine views of rolling hills.

Only desperate fools seek guidance from the "Governator," whose only claim to fame is how he made California even worse than he found it.

Putting the "Own" back in Homeowner

The Wall Street Jounal had an almost great article about home ownership, or how little most of own after years of making mortgage payments. Putting the "Own" back in Homeowner One of my pet peeves is the mortgage interest deduction, which encourages us to never pay off our mortgages.

The mortgage interest deduction makes no sense, and I'm in real estate. In fact, no incentives to home ownership make any sense. We need to have a mobile workforce to satisfy rapidly changing job market needs, not only in skills, but in geography. Right now the collapsed housing market in rural Northern California has many people trapped far away from the best job markets. If they leave they're forced to sell their home at a great loss, or rent it and suffer negative cash flow while trying to make rent or house payments at their new place of employment..


Home mortgage interest deduction makes as much sense as not taxing employer-provided health insurance as compensation. Where do we keep coming up with these dumb ideas? Oh, that's right, we don't. Politicians do, then buy our votes.

Global Warming Causes Earthquakes? Really?

Several "scientists" have been quoted saying that the number and size of recent earthquakes is due to anthropogenic global warming. Click this link to go to one of them.

These studies and the articles about them are such consumate pieces of pseudoscience, it's impossible to pay them serious attention, but I'll force myself. Persons who pay any credence to them have no concept of plate tectonics, geological time frames, and the comparative masses of earth, air, and water (here is a link to a great site by a Czech physicist who explains it clearly and fully). Don't they know most of the Earth's ice melted away over 15,000 years ago as the last Ice Age ended?

Apparently coincidence is now causation. Since the last Ice Age ended 15,000 years ago, research such as of Greenland ice cores shows at least six periods of greater warming than present, with warming diminishing since the Holocene Optimum 8,000 years ago. As for the intervening periods, they have been getting cooler, with the Little Ice Age 1150 to 1850 AD the coldest so far.

Along comes a bit of warming, a natural rebound from Little Ice Age cooling, and it is matched with increasing atmospheric CO2. Suddenly coincidence becomes cause, and research is launched with the charter of showing a theory based on the non-existent greenhouse effect as being driven by change in the trace gas, CO2. Oddly enough, flawed research based on tree rings as proxy for temperature - ignoring water, nutrients, competition for sunlight, disease, and other components of tree growth - research that strains to look back 1,000 years, and portions of which today show cooling when they should reflect warming - high jacked UN IPCC climate science (and Al Gore) on a wild-climate change goose chase.

It appears now that the inherent weakness in the CO2 caused warming effect is becoming obvious, so every effect is now in search of an anthropogenic global warming cause. Science is turned on its head, and where there once was a head, other body parts prevail.

EPA and Science are Strangers

The EPA is trying to regulate atmospheric carbon dioxide as a pollutant, which is sheer stupidity. It is essential for healthy plant growth, and humans can live in an environment breathing ten times the current level of atmospheric CO2 with no negative health consequences.

Ask any submariner.

I think the EPA only discovered science yesterday, about the day after Al Gore did. Serious students of climate know that there have been at least six periods of greater warming in the past 15,000 years since the end of the Ice Age, and that current warmng is the weakest of the six. The greatest warm period recently was 8,000 years ago in the Holocene Optimum, and the following warming periods have steadily decreased in amplitude.

The latest warming hardly registers, even when compared to the Medieval Warm Period only 1,000 years ago. The only thing that makes it seem significant is that it comes right at the end of the Little Ice Age, the coldest period of the past 15,000 years.

Now we're in a state of lesser warming following greater cooling, which means that run-away warming is not what we need to worry about. Since warming didn't run away when atmospheric levels of CO2 were ten or more times the present, there is no reason to think it will in our current period of both low CO2 and temperature.

Unless your teacher of climate change was just born yesterday.

Will someone dry the wet behind Mr. Gore's ears?

Public Employee Union Thugs in Wisconsin

Recently a news service headlined that as a result of their defeat in Wisconsin, unions vow to target Republicans. When did the news equivalent of “dog bites man” become headline worthy?

In Wisconsin some police, firefighter, and teacher union leaders sent a letter (click here) to local businesses that contributed to Governor Scott Walker, threatening that these businesses publicly support the unions or: “In the event that you cannot support this effort to save collective bargaining, please be advised that the undersigned will publicly and formally boycott the goods and services provided by your company.”

Translation: “We’re going to make them an offer they can’t refuse.”

FDR, who opposed public employee unions, is rolling over in his grave.

Is ending public employee collective bargaining that critical for getting budgets under control? Yes, and a liberal columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, Chip Johnson, proved this point (in this article, Oakland police, firefighter pay devouring budger) using a database of local government salaries and compensation compiled by state Controller John Chiang's office. In Oakland, current pay and pension costs of police and firemen are pushing everything else out of Oakland's budget. Even the police budget: over 80 recently hired and trained policemen had to be laid off, still leaving Oakland with a $46 million budget deficit. One reason for police layoffs: the Oakland firefighters’ contract ensures no layoffs, minimum staff requirements aboard fire trucks, and no station closures. One union dog eats the other.

But the police aren’t complaining, although Oakland residents are; eight of the ten highest paid in Oakland are police, and 440 of the 500 highest paid are police and firemen.

Wisconsin taught a valuable lesson that should benefit both Democrats and Republicans. If you don’t like the way the game is going, and you grab the ball and run away, it only works if your opponents don’t have any to spare.

The Sixth Major Extinction

According to an extremely poorly researched and presented article in Nature magazine, man-caused global warming will cause Earth's sixth great mass extinction. I won't go into the weaknesses of the article in a deep scientific manner, because I'm not a scientist. I'll leave that sort of thing to Al Gore.

But for the science, or lack of it, please go here.

I'll continue with observations of a more general nature which I have gleaned from reading and listening to experts, and briefly describe below.

In the Galapagos we watched finches adapting rapidly to natural cycles of change in their food stocks. In my brief (by geological measurement) lifetime thousands of previously unknown species have been identified, many of apparently recent vintage. An astute observer of Greenland would note dramatic natural changes in just the past 1,000 years involving fish, birds, mammals, and plants adapting to the cold and ice of the Little Ice Age following the much-warmer-than-today Medieval Warm Period. Through all the natural changes, nature has produced winners and losers, and then reversed the game. Now we are in a brief interglacial period characterised by unusal warmth, compared to the glacial periods just preceding and, most assuredly, soon following.

Button up your overcoats. We're going to be one of the challenged species when it gets cold.

California Democrats Say Financial Mess is Republicans' Fault

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Governor Brown missing budget deadline! Republicans’ fault!


Brown isn’t getting the two Republican votes each in the Senate and the Assembly he needs to call a special June election for voters whether to extend taxes. It’s Déjà vu all over again. In May 2009 Governor Schwarzenegger got the votes and put tax-increase propositions on the ballot. The voters defeated them 2 votes to 1. Then, as now, Democrat politicians said that if the propositions didn’t pass then drastic cuts would be made to education and health services. Then, as now, none were.

Now the sorry state of California’s finances are the Republicans’ fault, even though Republicans for years haven’t had enough votes to raise or lower anyone’s taxes, or to either cut or raise spending. Blaming Republicans is like blaming the street sweeper after the horse parade for all the manure on the road. Believe me, he wishes it never got there in the first place.

Republicans are trying to use the only clout they have to get the majority Democrats to work on the problem. From what has been in the news recently, so far the Democrats haven’t found one program that could stand even the slightest cut. “Cut spending? We need to raise it!” they cry, as they fall in line behind “Economist” Paul Krugman of the New York Times.

Governor Brown talks some spending cuts, but he knows that even if he gets the tax extensions on the ballot, and by some miracle they pass, he still won’t be able to wring promised spending cuts from the Legislature. Even his seizure of redevelopment funds, which cities like Santa Rosa are working hard to circumvent, only moves spending from one account to another.

More smoke and mirrors.

A Ridiculous Budget Proposal

Obama’s Defense budget request for fiscal year 2011 is $549 billion, plus $159 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan. The federal deficit for 2011 will be $1.5 trillion, an increase of $200 billion. If all defense spending were eliminated, the deficit would still be $792 billion (almost twice any deficit 1946 through 2008). Defense cuts totaling $78 billion have already been proposed by the Pentagon, roughly equal to Social Security’s deficit for 2011 but not its ten-year $600 billion deficit.


We could eliminate defense R&D, $79 billion for 2011. However, liberals paradoxically remind conservatives of innovations from government expenditures, but overlook that almost all were military related: the Internet (sorry Al), GPS, cell phone, satellites, jet aircraft, space exploration, &etc.

We could save a large portion but not all of $138 billion by firing all defense department personnel. You would still be stuck with paying about $60 billion for retired military and Defense Department civilians. Of course that would save an additional $200 billion, because without people you don’t need to pay for operating and maintaining all of their bases and equipment.

This exercise is ridiculous, and only Liberals take it seriously. My point is that the defense budget-cutting Devil is in the details. Cutting waste and unnecessary expenditures is always a good idea, but I remember the political battle over closing unnecessary military bases 1988-1995. Dovish Senator Boxer became a Defense hawk trying to save over twenty unneeded California military bases.

Entitlements (Medicare and Social Security), bloated federal agencies (Commerce, Education, Transportation), and the upward-spiraling costs of ObamaCare are the real uncontrolled spending. The President and Democrats should stop trying to exploit these issues for political gain and work with Republicans to cut spending.

Democrat Double Standards

Democrats applying double standards is nothing new, but events of the past week have made them starkly clear. Republicans trying to make a tiny 0.017% cut in the federal budget are assailed for bringing the country to its knees on one hand by Democrats, and on the other hand Democrats call Republicans cowards for not being true to their vows to cut even more. The tiny Republican minority in California is given full responsibility for not leading California out of its dreadful budget mess, even though the only thing Republicans can do is stop a tax increase. When California voters were last given the opportunity to raise taxes in May 2009:


“By a margin on nearly 2 to 1, Californians rejected a package of propositions that would have extended increases on the income, sales, and car taxes; shifted money from dedicated funds; and borrowed against lottery revenues. The taxes would have shaved $6 billion off a $21 billion budget shortfall stemming from a decade-long unwillingness to match desired spending and expected revenues.”

Minority Republicans, not the overwhelming majority Democrats, are the ones reflecting the will of Californians.

Republicans can’t cut spending – only Democrats can.

When Republicans are in the majority – Wisconsin for example – their courageous attempts to cut spending are met by Democrat desertion of the democratic process, aided and abetted by unethical behavior by Democrat doctors and teachers. According to the AP, Wisconsin doctors have passed out hundreds of notes to excuse public employee work absences without examination; “they seem to be suffering from stress.” Madison family physician Lou Sanner said his notes are “as valid as any other work note I’ve written for the last 30 years.”

Fraudulent doctors and teachers. Just the sort of leaders the youth of America can look up to.