Man-Caused Global Warming Defectors

The cataclysmic climate changers are casting handfuls of mud at the alarmist wall, hoping something will stick. They have just concluded Rio+20, agreed by one and all to have been a colossal failure. Of course they all agreed that “something must be done”, they just couldn’t agree on what to do, when to do it, and by whom.

Compounding the alarmists’ agony is the steady defection from their ranks. The latest was James Lovelock, “Gaia-ist” theorists, now says that global warming has not occurred as he and others, such as Al Gore, thought it would. In his article in The Telegraph,  Fritz Vahrenholt, one of Germany's earliest green energy investors, reports he is not convinced that humanity is causing catastrophic global warming. He was active on the UN climate change panel and found their science was wanting, cobbled together by activist organizations such as Greenpeace and World Wildlife Federation. Vahrenholt found that climate in the past 10,000 years varied greatly naturally, and that recent temperatures and weather are unremarkable in that context.

Front-page articles this week in The Chronicle and Press Democrat predicted sea-level rise of a foot by 2030, and several feet by 2100. However, the San Francisco tide gauge, the longest continuous tide record in the Western Hemisphere (since June 30, 1854), shows a steady increase of eight inches per century. Arena Cove’s record since 1978 shows a sea-level decline of an inch per century. None of the West Coast records show the acceleration necessary to raise sea level a foot in 20 years.

In the age of the internet, it is easy to find peer-reviewed science showing that our severe weather, sea levels, ocean acidity, temperature, and climate change itself are all well within historical norms.

See for yourselves (Second Thoughts of an Environmentalist ).

Obama's Disappearing Magic Trick

In August 1980, Washington Post reporter Robert G. Kaiser described the speech in which Jimmy Carter accepted the Democrat’s nomination. I've adapted Kaiser’s report by substituting Obama for Carter to make the 32-year-old report into a prediction of President Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democrat’s convention in early September later this year. The following is what the future holds for Obama:

“In his acceptance speech, President Obama tried to explain why he had not become the sort of leader Barack Obama promised to be in 2008. Not surprisingly, this 2012 Obama sounded much more defensive. Obama’s 2008 acceptance speech contained no negative references to John McCain. it was entirely a positive statement.

“However, about a fourth of this speech was devoted to lambasting the Republicans and Mitt Romney. If the Grand Old Party should win in November, Obama said, ‘I see despair. I see surrender. I see risk.’ He also sees repudiation, of course, which explains his defensiveness. 

“Obama's acceptance speech in 2008 was a magical moment, easily the high point of his political career. Obama spoke eloquently that night in measured cadences with a sure sense of himself and his message.

“There was no magic in this acceptance speech. Instead, a weary convention heard the sounds of slogging from a worried politician who knows he's in deep trouble.” 

End of report.

Jimmy Carter's been delighted with the Obama presidency: he’s no longer the worst president of the past 100 years. Bill is celebrating Hillary’s revenge, too. And I’m just happy to share these glad tidings over two months before they occur. 

I also feel Ron Lowe’s pain (all the way from Nevada City) as he bemoans Republicans “walk(ing) away with all the prizes” - Wisconsin, San Diego, San Jose - while Democrats dither. And the “magic” disappears.

Driving a Nail into Man-Caused Global Warming

To the man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. And so it goes with these tree-ring climate reconstructions: no matter what, you get a Hockey Stick, and somehow the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period (and the Holocene Optimum and Roman Warming) are relegated to climatic mythology.

That's when I seek clarity and open my volumes of Dr. H H Lamb, in particular "Climatic History and the Future." There I find that indeed these climatic periods had global existence; lives prospered where later they were devastated, crops were introduced during warm periods which failed during cold, glaciers retreated, advanced, and retreated again, tree lines and sea levels rose and fell, and all of this in the brief 10,000-year period following the Ice Age.

Worldwide, scientists have examined and documented thousands of studies that illuminate natural climate change. The chronicles of our ancestors, through such means as records of weather, population growth and decline, tax rolls, commodity prices, deserted cities and ports, famine and plague, and in many other ways, show that the flat Hockey Stick shaft does not depict the reality of the climate of the past 1,000 years (or before and beyond), and yet all this is lost in unending debate about the significance of tree-ring sample selection.

And after all this, nothing is settled, and the debate rages on: the tempest in a tea pot. Sound and fury signifying nothing (Lamb was British, so the Shakespeare is a small tribute to British genius). All sides claim victory, but continue the fight as if victory achieved nothing. And that is the reality of this debate. The tree rings left out of the debate speak as much to the problem of climate reconstruction as the ones included. They tell no tale, because they are as incapable of telling one as are the ones selected. But all that is heard is the yammering of the hammering.

Ocean "Acidity" Myth

Since Mr. Hunt repeats the same two limited studies of Atlantic sediments and Oregon oysters in each of his letters, I’ll provide information about the science involved.

The oceans have remained alkaline during the last 540 million years.

Rainwater (pH 5.6) reacts with the most common minerals on Earth (feldspars) to produce clays, which consume acids, then alkali is leached into the oceans (making them salty), silica is redeposited in sediments, which consumes acid and is accelerated by temperature. Sea water has a local and regional variation in pH  (7.8 to 8.3, but ranging from 7 to 9 in Chesapeake Bay). Since pH is a log scale, there is not enough CO2 in fossil fuels to create oceanic acidity because most of the planet’s CO2 is locked up in rocks. 

In the Precambrian, reactions rapidly responded to huge changes in climate (-40°F to +122°F), large sea level changes (+1,968’ to -2,100’) and rapid climate shifts from ‘snowball’ or ‘slushball’ Earth to very hot. About 750 million years ago life started to extract huge amounts of CO2 from the oceans, life expanded and diversified, and this process continues (which is why we have low CO2 today).

The history of CO2 and temperature shows no correlation. Compared to now: CO2 was 15 times higher in the Ordovician-Silurian glaciation (ice age). Both methane and CO2 were higher in the Permian glaciation. CO2 was 5 times higher in the Cretaceous-Jurassic glaciation. 

The atmosphere once had at least 25 times the current CO2 content, and now CO2 is the lowest it has been for billions of years.

Algae blooms fed by sewage runoff cause increased alkalinity in less salty areas of bays, and higher acidity closer to the open ocean, so atmospheric CO2 is not a factor. Someone should tell those Oregon oysters.

Inventing the Obama Superhero

Mr. Skibbins is “setting the record straight” about Obama inventively. He said: “Under Obama, Americans now enjoy their lowest tax burden since 1958.” In 1958, Deficit Day was April 5; now it’s May 14. Americans must work 134 days to pay this year’s combined 29.2% federal, state, and local tax bill, plus government borrowing that is not reflected in the tax rate. Deficit Day hasn’t been this late since the end of World War II, when it was four days later.

Skibbins: “Obama created a 20% payroll tax cut for small businesses.” This Republican bill is opposed by Democrats and Obama threatened a veto. Giving Obama credit is like giving Custer credit for Little Big Horn.

Skibbins: “Obama fought (unemployment) down from 10 percent to the current 8 percent and it’s still dropping.” Actually, 8.2% and rising, making this the longest period since the Depression with unemployment above 8%. The labor force is 500,000 workers smaller today than it was when Obama took office.  Counting population growth since then, the economy is actually missing 7.7 million workers, who still exist, and who still don’t have jobs. If labor force participation hadn’t dropped, the unemployment rate would be 11%. That’s the Obama way to fight unemployment – get everyone to stop looking.

Actually, an all time record 5.1 million Americans are suffering long term unemployment for 27 weeks or more, nearly double compared to when Obama entered office in January, 2009.

Skibbins: Bush increased the debt by $5 trillion, Obama $1 trillion. True, Bush increased it almost $5 trillion in eight years, but Obama increased it over $5 trillion in three years, aided and abetted by a profligate Democrat Congress.

Finally, Obama was inexperienced when elected, and it shows. Even New York Times staunch liberal columnist Maureen Dowd has noticed: Dreaming of a Superhero?

Climate Models Have No Clothes

The climate models have no clothes. They have no predictive ability. The proof that they don’t is in the observations of what has happened compared to model predictions. Warming is at a standstill. So is sea level rise. Glaciers in Glacier Bay retreated ten times more from 1780 to 1912 as 1912 to present. Warming still precedes CO2 increases. The “hot spot” ain’t there. Severe weather is not as severe as it used to be. A review of cycles of glaciation and warming during the past 500,000 years show Earth is now in what is established as long periods of glaciation and short inter-glacials.

Ocean pH was 0.8 units lower and atmospheric CO2 was five times higher one hundred million years ago (when marine invertebrates had already been established and successful for over four hundred million years). Recent studies show that some marine invertebrates do better in higher acidity, and that models using strong acids have led to incorrect conclusions about increased ocean acidity. Since very little CO2 absorbed in water becomes carbonic acid, it has very little effect on pH anyway Between 1751 and 1994 surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.25 to 8.14 – since we have many studies that show the warming ending the Little Ice Age began about three hundred years ago, the relationship between current warming, CO2, and ocean acidification seems specious. Since CO2 is released to the atmosphere as oceans warm, there is a disconnect between oceans warming and atmospheric CO2 being absorbed by the oceans. It would appear more likely that oceans would have absorbed CO2 and created more carbonic acid during the Little Ice Age than during the warming that followed. Since atmospheric warming following the Little Ice Age would have preceded ocean warming, a timeline of decreasing pH over three hundred years ago makes more sense.

But back to models. If the models were right, US temperature would have increased at least three times the 1 degree F since 1900 (with most of the increase in the 1930′s). Sea levels would be up more than 6 inches since 1999, instead of less than one inch. Major hurricanes would be hitting the US annually, instead of none in over 3 years. Texas temperatures would be up more than the observed 0.04 degree F since 1884. Or to put it simply, the models would not be so crappy at predicting the future, or in explaining the past.

Ocean Acidity Scare Debunked

A writer to our Gualala weekly newspaper noted (Oyster evidence, ICO, May 11, 2012) that acidity of the oceans are increasing “at a rate in the last 100 years that is 10 times faster than any 100-year span in the last 300 million years.” This is interesting on many levels, most conspicuously because it’s not true. An obvious fault is that ocean pH changes cannot be measured in precise 100-year increments covering the past 300 million years.  However, there’s more.

A 2005 study (Pelejero et al.) spanning the period 1708-1988 found a clear interdecadal oscillation of pH between 7.9 and 8.2 pH units. The study showed many oscillations of 0.2 pH units within the three 100-year periods examined.

A 2009 study (Liu et al.) of the pH history of the South China Sea covering the past 7,000 years shows oscillations of 0.4 pH units, some of which decreased 0.2 pH units in a 100-year period.  About recent increases in ocean acidity, this study concluded: “(T)here is nothing unusual, unnatural or unprecedented about the two most recent pH values. They are neither the lowest of the record, nor is the decline rate that led to them the greatest of the record.”

It’s hard for a statement about acidity increasing “faster than any 100-year span in the last 300 million years” to be true when the rate isn’t the even the fastest in the last 300 years, as one study shows, or in the last 7,000 years per another study.

A 2009 Australian study (Wei et al.) found a decrease in pH of 0.4 units 1935-1940, and an earlier decrease of 0.3 units 1860-1865. Both of these reductions, as all of the previous examples, were obviously not caused by increased atmospheric CO2. It is also obvious that Oregon oysters survived them all, and should persevere.

(The writer sent another letter to our weekly newspaper that basically repeated his first letter without the slightest indication that he had read my refutation above)

According to him, a Columbia University study found we had increased the ocean’s acidity, in his words, “10 times faster than any time in the last 300 million years,” but that’s not what it says. Its headline is “Ocean Acidification Rate May Be Unprecedented,” and the report findings are qualified with the word “may” throughout.

The pH change in question is only a decrease from 8.2 to 8.1 in 200 years. To put this in perspective, a 2011 study, Hofmann, et al., High-Frequency Dynamics of Ocean pH: A Multi-Ecosystem Comparison, found many non-open ocean sites where pH varied by up to 1.4 units in a month. In the more stable and vast open ocean, Hofmann wrote: “Open-water areas (in the Southern Ocean) experience a strong seasonal shift in seawater pH (~0.3–0.5 units) between austral summer and winter.”

A Mediterranean experiment found that corals and mollusks transplanted to lower pH sites were “able to calcify and grow at even faster than normal rates when exposed to the high [carbon-dioxide] levels projected for the next 300 years.” That’s not surprising, since corals and shellfish evolved with CO2 levels 10-20 times higher than present.

Contradicting the Oregon State oyster study he cited, a 2012 Parker et al. study of Sydney rock oysters found that "larvae spawned from adults exposed to elevated CO2 were larger and developed faster" than those from nearby ambient seawater. This study exposed the flaw in the Oregon study that only considered the impacts on larvae, ignoring the carry-over effects passed from adult to offspring.

A 2012 Armin et al. study of cold-water coral found it acclimated quickly and appeared to increase growth under lower pH levels. Again, science robustly debunks ocean acidification fears and alarmism.

We have nothing to fear but Al Gore himself.

Obama's Bummer Week

The news of a week in April reminds me of a joke about a racer who was "so far behind he thought he was leading." Obama began by blurting out that a foul-Tweeting hood (Trayvon Martin) looked like his son. Such hurried race-baiting is more worthy of a Jesse Jackson or an Al Sharpton; certainly neither Bush nor Reagan would have made such a statement. However, if Bill Clinton made a similar remark, DNA matching would be in order, but that's another story.

Speaking of remarks, we now know Obama can speak without a TelePrompTer, at least to Russians, and that his flexibility includes bending over backwards.

Obama's budget lost 412-0 in the House, and since there aren't 412 Republicans in the House (yet), that means every Democrat who voted, voted against it. Obama would have slightly better luck in the Democrat-dominated Senate, where no budget has been passed since 2009.

Finally, the Supreme Court wrecked the Obamacare train, news and pictures to follow (in June) as they say on TV news.

If Obama ran unopposed, he would lose big.