Man-Caused Global Warming Myth

Mr. George Bush of The Sea Ranch, natural climate change denier, chose a cartoon as his response to the science studies I include in my letters. From his description, it wasn’t a particularly clever cartoon. It’s amazing how the myth of the ostrich hiding its head in the sand has been around since Pliny the Elder (AD 23-79, who said it was in a bush, not sand), just as the anthropogenic global warming myth persists even after over 15 years of flat global temperatures, no accelerating sea level increase, and numerous reports of previous warmer periods.

NASA, with James Hansen famously leading its climate alarmism, just released a study of warming in the Arctic during the past century. According to a graph published on the NASA Earth Observatory site, Arctic temperatures were warmer in the 1930's than now. In addition, the graph shows the Arctic warmed 1.6C over the 19-year period from 1918-1937 at a rate of 0.84C/decade, 75% faster than the 0.48C/decade from 1980-2000. Between these two warming periods, Arctic temperatures dropped as CO2 increased. Thus, alarmist claims that recent Arctic warming is unprecedented or accelerating are bogus.

At the European Geosciences Union meeting, Authors Steirou and Koutsoyiannis, reported global warming over the past century was only about one-half [0.42°C] of that claimed by the United Nations IPCC [0.7-0.8°C].

A paper in the Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology journal finds that the Medieval Warming Period “was warmer than the late 20th century by ~1°C.” The paper adds to the peer-reviewed publications of over 1000 scientists in the Medieval Warm Period Project showing that the global Medieval Warming Period was warmer than the current warming period.

I’m pleased Mr. Bush apparently has accepted the debate offer I’ve had open for over three years. It’s about time.

Obama's Impressive Mediocrity - Leadership

Last week a letter in the ICO mentioned that its author had over four decades of researching and writing in the field of leadership. That reminded me that I have over four decades myself of studying, instructing, and experiencing leadership (and followership) in the Air Force, in business, and in community activities.

Interestingly, the President, the object of the letter writer’s admiration, has demonstrated few attributes of effective leadership, not surprising since as a community organizer and junior politician he had minimal experience leading anything. Instead of examples of effective leadership, the writer provided platitudes; instead of leadership objectives she provided wishful outcomes that haven’t been achieved.

When did the President create a more knowledgeable and participatory electorate? Now Democrats complain that people not understanding Obamacare is the reason huge majorities oppose it. Actually, it should be called Pelosicare because Obama’s vision was so cloudy he stepped aside and let her and Harry Reid create this monstrosity.

The President still blames President Bush and Republicans for his ineffectiveness. His motto: “The buck never got here!” Strange, since Democrats controlled Congress for two years before he was elected, and only lost the House and almost the Senate because of his failures in his first two years. Obama’s recent statement that “the private sector is doing fine” shows a leader out of touch with the electorate (the Misery Index is up 2% since he became president).

The economy has stagnated and the economic growth forecast for the year is under 1.5%, with job growth less than population increase. The chance of recession is 50%, up from 20%. These are not praiseworthy accomplishments.

The writer’s assessment of Obama recalls a performance review of a junior officer commended for using “outstanding methods” while not achieving performance objectives. Translation: he failed, but impressed leadership researchers.

How Insurance Really Works - Not Obamacare

I dislike belaboring the obvious, but often the ICO leaves me no choice. In this instance, it’s the “Shared responsibility” editorial about health insurance, particularly: “The way to pay for it, of course, is for everyone to participate, including those who are currently in good health. That’s how insurance works.”

Except that’s not how insurance works.

Alice and I recently purchased our next 15 years of term life insurance just before our 70^th birthdays. Our excellent health qualified us for the lowest rates for our age group, but we are now paying three times what we did 15 years ago. If we smoked it would be four to seven times our current rate. A term life insurance rate depends on your state, age, gender, height, weight, health classification, and if you are a smoker or when you stopped smoking. If your state of health is in the lowest of four classes instead of the highest, your premium increases about 40%. The healthy don’t subsidize the unhealthy.

Auto and home insurance are similarly discriminatory.

The argument that everyone, insured or not, will place demands on the taxpayer funded system is specious. The Los Angeles Times reported (Cash discount for health care, May 28, 2012), that it was much cheaper to pay for health services in cash than through many health insurers. For example, a $6,707 CT scan cost an insured person $2,336, but only $1,054 if paid in cash and not claimed on insurance. A $4,423 CT abdominal scan through insurance cost $2,400, but the cash price was $250.

One of my friends in Fort Bragg has paid cash for health care all his life, saving a fortune while never burdening taxpayers. For more about paying your own way and saving money, see Paying Cash for Healthcare.

Ocean "Acidity" Mythology

Since Mr. Hunt continues citing a “30% increase in ocean acidity” caused by a change in pH from 8.2 to 8.1, in the interest of scientific accuracy this error demands correction. The equation for the pH of an aqueous solution is logarithmic and defined as pH = -log[ H+ ] .  There are 14 orders of magnitude that define the pH scale from zero to fourteen units as per this equation, so a lowering of alkalinity of .1 units pH cannot equal a 30% increase in acidity as claimed. It is actually .1/14 or only 0.7%. The natural variation of ocean pH can be up to 5% in either direction, making meaningless a variation plus or minus 0.7%.

Neutral pH is 7.0, so acidification is not appropriate terminology. A reduction in pH from 8.2 to 8.1 is a lowering of alkalinity, not an increase in acidification.

“There has historically been much more CO2 in our atmosphere than exists today. For example, during the Jurassic Period (200 mya), average CO2 concentrations were about 1800 ppm or about 4.7 times higher than today. The highest concentrations of CO2 during all of the Paleozoic Era occurred during the Cambrian Period, nearly 7000 ppm -- about 18 times higher than today.

“The Carboniferous Period and the Ordovician Period were the only geological periods during the Paleozoic Era when global temperatures were as low as they are today. To the consternation of global warming proponents, the Late Ordovician Period was also an Ice Age while at the same time CO2 concentrations then were nearly 12 times higher than today-- 4400 ppm. According to greenhouse theory, Earth should have been exceedingly hot. Instead, global temperatures were no warmer than today.”

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.