Don't Buy "Chainsaw" Autos!

Many Mendonoma friends and neighbors still display “Don’t drink chainsaw wine” bumper stickers, which came to mind as I read a Spiegel article “Mutiny in the land of wind turbines.” 

To refresh our memories, “Chainsaw wine” refers to the now-defunct Preservation Ranch proposal to “plant 1,150 acres of premium, sustainably farmed vineyards on 1,769 acres” (9% of 19,645 acres), which ardent environmentalists fought by abstaining from consuming a non-existing product.

Ardent environmentalists also spear-head the movement in Germany to aggressively replace nuclear and fossil fuel electrical generation with wind power, and so far succeeded in boosting Germany’s electricity cost to $0.31/kWh compared to $0.08-$0.17/kWh in the US.  As wind turbines in Germany have to locate deeper into its interior, productivity per turbine falls to under a third of offshore turbines, while greatly increasing visual and noise pollution, lowering property values, and slaughtering birds, bats, and insects. These are all the typical unintended consequences of blind environmental idealism.

But there’s more: ironically, the increase in land-based wind turbines unleashes a vast chainsaw-wielding army to clear-cut trees for foundations, access roads, and power lines. The German state of Hesse alone plans to cut down forest acreage equal to over ten proposed Preservation Ranch vineyards, and North Rhine-Westphalia wants to do even more.

Since automobiles are the preeminent German export produced by intensive electrical energy exploitation, true environmentalists should join me in fighting the degradation of German forests and loss of CO2-sequestering trees by buying and displaying my bumper sticker “Don’t buy chainsaw automobiles©”.

Unlike “chainsaw wine”, German automobiles are real, not symbolic, and their production is causing real environmental degradation.

Save the world! Buy bumper stickers, not BMW’s!

Unscientific Adoration of "Chasing Ice"

Recently some of my unscientific friends have been carried away with wonder by a movie “Chasing Ice” filmed by an environmental photographer, James Balog, who is not a scientist. Among the obvious flaws not noticed by its gullible viewers is that it only spans a four-year period, and mixes photography shot in May with September. Obviously, this produces dramatic differences in glacier dynamics, although not nearly as dramatic as the period for the same glacier from 1780 AD to 1948 AD. During that period, glaciers in Glacier Bay, Alaska, and in particular the glacier in the Muir Inlet, retreated over 60 miles. Since 1948, the retreat has only been 6 miles, and all this information is courtesy of a very informative US government map, which I am pleased to include for your use and admiration. Truly a picture is worth 1,000 words.

Concerning “Chasing Ice”, I’m reminded of a saying mistakenly attributed to Samuel Johnson that I will paraphrase: “I’ve heard it is true and original. However, what is true is not original, and what is original is not true.”

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

The Keystone Pipeline Will Be Built

This is from a post by Willis Eschenbach, Bodega Bay. He reports that the train with a load of crude oil that derailed and caught fire in Lac-Mégantic, Canada, didn't derail from overspeed or failed brakes or a crash or the usual stuff, but took off on its own. In terms of safety in moving crude oil, railroads are safer than highways, but less safe than tanker ships. Pipelines are the safest.

"There is a proposed expansion of the KeystoneXL Pipeline, to handle an increased amount of heavy crude from Alberta. Opponents of the expansion think that stopping the pipeline expansion will somehow stop the flow of Canadian heavy crude into the US. This is not true for two reasons.

"First, the existing Keystone pipeline is already bringing Alberta heavy crude into the US. The expansion will just, well, expand that amount.

"More to the point, however, is the fact that large amounts of Alberta heavy crude is also being moved into the US by railroad. And not by just any railroad. It’s mostly coming in on the Burlington Northern Railway.

"And by what can only be considered an amazing coincidence, the Burlington Northern Railway is owned by a major Obama donor. And by an even more amazing coincidence, the major donor bought the BNR just three years ago.

"And this was not just any major Obama donor, but Mr. Warren Buffett, a key money supplier for the Obama re-election effort."

This link is to Willis' complete post.
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This Canadian crude is going to market, pipeline or no. If Obama panders to environmentalists and blocks the Keystone, it's transport will be more hazardous and expensive and increase, not decrease, atmospheric CO2. Only plants will benefit.

Climate Change Forever!

We have always had climate change, and until the Sun incinerates the Earth, always will. Today’s warming is unprecedented only if you abuse the word’s meaning by using qualifiers such as “unprecedented in the last sixty years.” Recent global warming is unprecedented only since 1950: warming from 1910 to 1950 (before large human-caused increases in CO2) was 0.5°Celsius; since 1950 total warming was only 0.4°C, including 0°C the past fifteen years.

Unprecedented the past 1,000 years? The Medieval Warm Period was 1°C warmer. Two-thousand years? The Roman Warm Period was 2°C warmer. Four-thousand years? The Minoan Warm Period was 3°C warmer. Ten-thousand years? The Holocene Climatic Optimum was the longest warm period since the end of the Ice Age, and slightly more than 3°C warmer. The past 125,000 years? The Eemian Climatic Optimum was almost 4°C warmer.

A letter last week used theories to define climate change terms, but omitted supporting observations. It’s OK to say that something could cause something, but if it doesn’t a new theory is demanded. Theoretically, doubling atmospheric CO2 could raise global temperature 1.22°C, but while CO2 has climbed steadily for over sixty years, global temperature has not. In fact, the world added roughly 110 billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010, about a quarter of all the CO2 put there by humanity since 1750, yet global temperature has been flat the last fifteen years.

The letter writer cited a “change of weather patterns as compared to our stable Holocene past.” Only climate history ignorance could inspire such a statement. Our Holocene past is filled with changing weather patterns; reading Dr. H. H. Lamb’s excellent climatic histories would dispel ignorance of an unstable Holocene.

When facts disagree with theory, alarmists want to change the facts. Science can't work that way.

A Star is Born!

It only took 70 years for me to make my singing debut. Fittingly, it was in the Point Arena Theater, where in the decade of the 1950s I watched over 1,000 movies, most of them forgettable B-grade Westerns. Most of you reading this have no idea what these Westerns were like, and they were so forgettable, all I can remember is that towards the end the brave settlers were just about to be overrun by the murderous red savages, when faintly, far away, a bugle could be heard announcing the eminent, just in the nick of time, arrival of the Cavalry. We all jumped, and whooped, and cheered in our seats, as the blood-thirsty redskins were bloodily vanquished.

Actually, in those days almost no blood spilling appeared on screen. It was like everyone died of internal injuries.

But as usual, I digress. However, let me continue a digression that may get me back on track. On the screen on that stage at that time there were often moments of movie magic we called musicals. As my buddies groaned while the singers broke into song, and the dancing commenced, my mind immersed me in the wonders that the composers, lyricists, choreographers, directors, singers, and dancers intended for me. I watched “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” so intently as a twelve-year old in 1954 that by the end of the third showing (the best films were shown twice Saturday and once Sunday) I had almost all the lyrics committed to memory. Since Mom cleaned the theater, brother Ron and I got to watch all the films for free.

And here’s the track again. I easily developed a facility for remembering songs, and even today (in my mind) can recall and hear songs I haven’t heard in fifty years. So about two months ago Alice and I went to the Point Arena Theater for a live performance of Steve Martin’s play, “Picasso at the Lapin Agile”. All we knew about the play prior to arrival at the theater was that Steve Martin wrote it – that got our attention! – and that one of our favorite people, Blake More, had a part and had told us the week before that we would enjoy the show.

For Alice and I, the show had an unusual beginning that no one but us noticed: we arrived late, as usual, and as is usual for Point Arena plays, it began late, and for some strange reason the combination of our lateness and the play’s late start got us front row seats. Two of the performers, Bryn Harris and her father, Wayne, were “warming up” the crowd: Bryn was singing French songs to Wayne’s accompaniment on the harmonica. Pretending to be an impromptu street performer, Bryn passed a hat and a few dollars were thrown in. “Now,” said Bryn, “let’s do a sing-along in English.” Turning to her father, she said, “Play the ‘lonely’ song,” and Wayne began “Are you lonesome tonight?” I started singing along, and Bryn overheard me and motioned me to stand with her and sing.

When you’re seventy, you have already done all the “first times” in your life, but I had never spontaneously sung before an audience. Years ago I had participated in karaoke arranged by brother Ron and his wife Kathy at my step-mother Ruth’s 80^th Birthday party in Fortuna. I sang Hank Williams’ “On the bayou” and encored “If you’ve got the money, honey, I’ve got the time.” Now I found myself singing from memory with this young lady, Bryn, and soon realized that Bryn had stopped singing and moved into the audience, leaving me alone to carry on, just as the song reached its emotional climax:

“Do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare?

Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there?

Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again?

Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?”

With an unwarranted confidence, I sang louder and more dramatically, reminding myself to keep my mouth open, don’t rush, and don’t forget to breath. The applause as I finished surprised me, and I grinned and waved briefly, then took my seat. After just a moment, Bryn came over, pulled a dollar from the collection hat, said “You earned it,” and put it in my shirt pocket.

Over the next week I met friends who had been at the performance, and several said that they didn’t know I could sing like that. “That makes two of us,” I replied.

(Photo courtesy of Scott Ignacio)

The Realm of Asinine - Keystone Pipeline Hysteria

The hysteria surrounding approval of the Keystone Pipeline has crossed the border of Ridiculous and entered the realm of Asinine. Thanks to the Recession and natural gas from fracking, the United States is the only developed nation that has met its CO2 reduction goal. North America produces 6.5 gigatons of CO2 emissions annually, and opening the Keystone Pipeline would only increase global CO2 emissions 0.01%. Even after the Keystone Pipeline opens, total US emissions will still be falling, while China will increase its CO2 emissions over 230 times the Keystone Pipeline total each year. As FDR could have said about this issue: “Have you ever heard an ant break wind in a hurricane?”

Numbers must be compared to other numbers to put matters in context. For example, since 1751 (roughly the end of the Little Ice Age), atmospheric CO2 has increased five times faster than human production of CO2 emissions. Science clearly explains that this would be expected as ocean temperatures rebounded from 500 years of Little Ice Age cooling. As a high school chemistry class refresher, cooling water absorbs CO2, and warming water releases it, and that explains why atmospheric CO2 has increased far more than human emissions could cause.

Thanks to China, human CO2 emissions are at record levels, yet (miraculously?) there has been a slight global cooling trend for the past fifteen years, the opposite of what the 44 most sophisticated climate models predicted.

When the Keystone Pipeline is approved, over 100,000 direct and spin-off jobs will be created and the US will be less dependent on unstable overseas oil. Even if the pipeline isn’t built, Canada will produce the oil and deliver it via Canadian pipelines to tankers on its west coast to transport it to China – and probably California, too, until we get fracking.