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.

Unscientific San Francisco Chronicle

John Diaz’s article “Truth and Denial” (Insight, page E3, San Francisco Chronicle, February 26, 2012) was remarkable for its lack of science in a supposedly scientific editorial. Diaz made a perfunctory denunciation of the fraud (and probable forgery) perpetrated by “Scientist” Peter Gleick on The Heartland Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Chicago.

In his article Mr. Diaz lightly condemned Gleick while trying and convicting The Heartland Institute and man-caused global warming skeptics of crimes against humanity. According to Mr. Diaz: "The scientific consensus that human activity is accelerating global warming is solid; the only real debate is about the magnitude and timing of the consequences. Its effects are already apparent. Melting glaciers and ice caps. Sea-level rise. Severe storms and drought. Devastated crops."

The fact that global warming is not accelerating, and that numerous reputable and respected scientists deny its consequences did not enter into Mr. Diaz's labeling of skeptics as "deniers", furthering the ongoing effort to establish and maintain an odious link with Holocaust deniers. Mr. Diaz obviously is unaware that glaciers have been retreating for over 300 years since the end of the Little Ice Age. In Glacier Bay, Alaska, retreat was over 50 miles from 1780 to 1912, and only six miles since. Sea level rise has decelerated, according to Europe's new sophisticated satellite system, and is trending at about six inches per century or less, the same as the two previous centuries. The alarmist forecast for the San Francisco Bay Area of six feet by 2100 would equal the highest rate of increase per century experienced at the end of the Ice Age about 10,000 years ago, when there was vast quantities of ice to melt and global temperature was much higher than today. Concerning severe storms and drought, and devastated crops, even dedicated "warmist" scientists deny linkages, and respected neutral scientists such as the Doctors Pielke, Senior and Junior, dismiss it entirely.

Mr. Diaz also assumes with no evidence that skeptics are well funded, but if he had chosen to read the fraudulently acquired Heartland Institute budget, and compared it to warmist organization budgets - Sierra Club, Greenpeace, World Wildlife Federation, etc. - he would be confronted by the facts that the Heartland Institute budget is only a small fraction of the budgets of any one of these organizations, that only a small portion of Heartland's budget was applied to climate change, and that Big Oil provides far more money to warmists than to skeptics.

Mr. Diaz, I can easily substantiate skeptic science positions by inquiring government, not skeptic, sources. Mr. Diaz, it seems you and many other "reporters" have lost your nose for news when it comes to natural climate change. 

Insulting the Working Poor?

It is an inconvenient truth that income inequality is not caused by the 1%, but by the growing segment of society which lacks marketable skills and education. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, 40% of babies are born to single moms and each year half a million teens have children. Are Republicans the only ones who think this is a problem?

A study in Sweden found that single-parent children were twice as likely to have serious health problems, addictions, mental illnesses, and to commit suicide. This was not a right-wing hate study. Of course, other studies have found the same problems here which are contributing to a rapidly growing underclass that requires ever-increasing support services such as day care, Medicaid, housing assistance, and remedial education, to name just a few chronic and increasing problem areas. Will these problems go away if we avoid looking at a primary root cause? That’s what we’ve been doing, and it’s only getting worse.

Unemployment is bad at 8.6% (12% in California), and only looks like it is getting better because of seasonal hiring. However, good jobs go unfilled because Americans don’t have the education, skills, or required willingness to work. Many high-tech, high-paying jobs go begging unless businesses can hire foreign workers. In Wyoming (3.5% unemployment) over 16,000 high-paying energy jobs go unfilled because Americans are unwilling to relocate and work hard. Fifty years ago in Point Arena many of us worked at jobs that only illegal immigrants will take now, which depresses wages for unskilled and undereducated Americans, including college graduates.

The cartoon “Zits” summed it up nicely: Jeremy wants to major in music theory to “totally justify playing in a band while racking up $100,000 in student loans and graduating with minimal marketable skills.” Unfortunately, he’s not alone.

One of our local college students read the above in our local weekly newspaper. He is a history major, so I understand him erroneously writing that I “insult the working poor whose taxes pay (my) military pension.” However, the bottom 48% pay none while the top 25% pay 90% of personal income taxes, so the working poor pay nobody anything. Fifty years ago my poor working-class family paid income taxes instead of receiving tax credits. Now Alice and I pay income taxes (including on Social Security) which total more than my military retirement.

I also understand him confusing facts from studies of employment and single-parent families from Sweden and the United States and considering them my opinions, since few today value facts over opinions.

I don’t insult the working poor, since for many years that included my family. After we towed our trailer to Point Arena in 1949 we lived in an abandoned high school building. In 1954, when I was 12 and brother Ron was 11, we borrowed a workhorse and dug a full-sized basement and helped build the house east of the Pacific Charter School. Pop was an oil field “roughneck” before becoming a lumberjack, and Mom cleaned the Arena Theater and hotels before her crippled leg prevented her from walking downtown, so she cut and set hair in our kitchen.

I bucked hay bales for Vic Soldani and Walt Stornetta, worked at Bojock Lumber and the Biaggi Lane veneer mill, hand-milked a cow, and other jobs. My friends did as much or more. None of the best Point Arena High graduates, including me, received scholarships.

To supplement my Air Force income I drove school buses, and later taught accounting, management, and economics at night for eight colleges in a 10-year period.

Our local college student apparently overlooked my solutions: pursue marketable skills and education; go where the jobs are and work hard; discourage single parenthood. 

How High's the Water, Momma?

Letters to our local weekly newspaper, the Independent Coast Observer, disputing my position that global warming is natural often criticize me without any contradicting facts, yet I have repeatedly submitted that current warming began about 300 years ago. A clear, undisputed example can be found in Glacier Bay, Alaska, where maps from 1780 show glacier retreat of about 60 miles from 1780 to 1912, and only six miles since (almost 0.5 mile per year for the first 132 years, and only 0.06 mile per year for the last 100 years).

Melting glaciers are obviously of interest to us and other coastal dwellers, since Al Gore predicted they would cause 20 feet of sea-level rise by 2100. Luckily for us, nearby San Francisco has the oldest continually operating tide gauge in the Western Hemisphere and, since June 30, 1854, it has recorded a total increase in sea level of eight inches (0.05 inches per year). However, to satisfy Al’s prediction the rate of rise will have to immediately accelerate by a factor of 55 times from the current rate of 0.05 inches per year to 2.76 inches per year for the next 87 years. I predict Al Gore will be left with over 19 feet in his mouth.

A significant increase is unlikely, since the worldwide rate of sea-level rise has been decelerating recently to about four inches per century (0.04 inches per year). That coincides with the slight global cooling of the past 15 years. Of course, none of these scientific observations agrees with any of the climate models, so the climate modelers say the observations are erroneous (see link).

It’s like the denial by the man whose wife caught him in bed with another woman.  “Who are you going to believe, your loving husband or your lying eyes?”

The models or the facts?

Democrat Math

A writer to the Independent Coast Observer (our local weekly newspaper) recently demonstrated that many public employee jobs at an average annual salary of $65,000 could be saved by diverting campaign finance money to fund their continued employment. This is truly an apples and oranges concept: public employees are paid from taxes; campaigns are financed by contributions. How the money would get from the one pot to the other puzzles me. Short of an outright donation to the government, which I encourage all Liberals who think they aren’t taxed enough to make, this is not doable.

However, I surmise the letter writer’s point was that funding Republican campaigns was a waste of money, and that Democrats spending twice as much was not, since this was not mentioned. This inspired me to examine government money wasted supporting clean energy development which could be better used.

In a January report, CBS News featured 12 clean energy companies that were having trouble after collectively being approved for more than $6.5 billion in federal assistance. Five already filed for bankruptcy: the junk bond-rated Beacon, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy, and the infamous Solyndra. Abound Solar Manufacturing, Longmont, Colo. recipient of a $400 million federal loan guarantee, just laid off 280 workers, 70% reduction of its workforce.

Using Republican math, $6.5 billion would fund 100,000 public employee jobs at $65,000 each per annum to vote for Democrats. Using Liberal math, Democrats would take credit for saving 100 million public employee jobs even if the unemployment rate stayed over eight percent, and still get all their votes.

Since there are only 310 million Americans, the Democrat claim would not pass the smell test but that wouldn’t stop them from making it or their Liberal supporters from believing it. Democrats just get a lot more from numbers than Republicans can.

Sober Reflections On Memorial Day

The day after Memorial Day is a good time for reflection. On Memorial Day itself, the hordes of tourists packing up at the end of their three-day weekend, the lingering odor of burnt chicken, the flash of anger that Google couldn’t come up with a clever logo for Memorial Day like they do for even slightly significant events, these are among the things that sabotage the inner quiet that I need for reflection.

I also need time with Memorial Day. Time to find my own place in it, even after all these years. Primarily, I thank those who served, suffered, died, to keep us free. After serving over 21 years in the Air Force, am I one of them? Or am I always just one of the grateful, thankful that they did the hard work? Upon sober reflection – over twenty-five years without drinking a drop of alcohol – I’m one of the grateful.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m proud of the job I did in the Air Force. I often worked long hours, was tired, uncomfortable – day-long bus rides in Korea will do that to you – but I did that as a civilian, too. The month I worked stripping edgings at Bojock Lumber Company, Manchester, California, while I was on leave from the Air Force in 1963, was physically more dangerous than anything I encountered in my Air Force career.

However, I like to be thanked for my service, because it tells me something I like to know about the person thanking me. They treasure their freedom and liberty, and they know that it didn’t come free. They’re thanking me because I’m a symbol, a representative, of all who served with me, who are serving now, and who served before me. It’s a long line, and if it’s ever broken, mankind will be cursing their chains and slavery, perhaps for all time.

Democrat Math Simulator

When Alice and I returned last week from our travels to my birthplace (and where she grew up), Southern California, I was pleased to read an exposition on budgeting (Self-centered, ICO February 3, 2012) by Mary Mobert that mentioned me. I enjoy such discussions; Economics was my undergraduate minor and I was an Air Force Budget Officer for over ten years. However, her letter reminded me less of academic studies and more of the practical admonition to “compare apples to apples” and to “mind your decimal point.”

She noted that “Republicans spent a record $12.5 million in ads” in the Iowa caucus. However, adjusted for inflation, they spent the same in 2008. Interestingly, in 2008 Democrats spent $26 million for ads in the Iowa caucus, more than Republicans spent in 2008 and 2012 combined. Why isn’t this the record?

I had some trouble with her math until I put my computer in Democrat Math Simulator mode (DMS). Before, when I divided the $12.5 million the Republicans spent by the 122,000 Iowa voters who participated, I came up with $102.45 per voter. When I turned on the DMS, I got Mrs. Mobert’s $102,459 per voter. In another quote from her ICO letter: “Iowa campaign funds alone (the $12.5 million) would insure (sic) the salaries of 192,308 teachers, police, or firefighters (public employees) who earn an average of $65,000 a year.” When I turned off the DMS, the number became 192.3 public employees, or 192,115.7 less.

In 2008 Obama spent $730 million vs. McCain's $333 million. In 2012 Obama wants to spend $1 billion, which would pay for 15,384.6 public employees at $65,000 each (15,384,615 by DMS).

Now I see the Republican problem. We just can’t get as much out of a buck as Democrats can using their Democrat Math Simulator.

Non Sequitur - A Natural Global Warming Denier Cartoon

(Click on cartoon to enlarge it)

This Non Sequitur cartoon by Wiley Miller ran in our area newspapers the San Francisco Chronicle and the Santa Rosa Press Democrat yesterday (January 11, 2011). In the same newspapers, and in on-line news aggregators such as Drudge Report and Google News, were reports of record setting snow storms in Alaska, and the London Daily Mail reported that thousands of Britons were trapped by 18 feet of snow at Alpine ski resorts.

At Cordova, Alaska, the snow was so deep that 97 members of the Alaska National Guard have been put on snow shoveling duty. And they are struggling just to keep up.

Last snow season, we Californians were treated (or subjected) to a very long and heavy snow season. The Central Sierra Snow Lab reported 207 inches (17.2 feet), the fifth highest snow depth in roughly the past 100 years.

I hope Mr. Miller enjoys the snow-free days wherever he is, and counts his blessings that he isn't shovelling snow in Alaska, or trapped in the Alps. Since the Earth has been warming naturally and sporadically for 400 years since the Little Ice Age, and recently has been cooling as much as warming as CO2 steadily increases, perhaps Mr. Miller will stop denying that climate change is natural, and has been for billions of years.

Card Carrying Former Member of the Working Poor

In a letter to our local weekly newspaper, the Independent Coast Observer of Gualala, California, a UC Davis history major erroneously said I insult the working poor whose taxes pay (my) military pension. However, the bottom 48% pay none while the top 25% pay 90% of personal income taxes, so the working poor pay nobody anything. Fifty years ago my poor working-class family paid income taxes instead of receiving tax credits. Now Alice and I pay income taxes (including on Social Security) which cover most of my retirement.

I also understand him confusing facts from studies of employment and single-parent families from Sweden and the United States and considering them my opinions, since few today value facts over opinions.

I dont insult the working poor, since for many years that included my family. After we towed our trailer to Point Arena in 1949 we lived in an abandoned high school. In 1954, when I was 12 and brother Ron was11, we borrowed a workhorse and dug a full-sized basement and helped build the house east of the Pacific Charter School. Pop was an oil field roughneck before becoming a lumberjack, and Mom cleaned the Arena Theater and hotels before her crippled leg prevented her from walking downtown, so she cut and set hair in our kitchen.

I bucked hay bales for Vic Soldani and Walt Stornetta, worked at Bojock Lumber and the Biaggi Lane veneer mill, hand-milked a cow, and other jobs. My friends did as much or more. None of the best Point Arena High graduates, including me, received scholarships.

To supplement my Air Force income I drove school buses, and later taught accounting, management, and economics at night for eight colleges in a 10-year period.

The history major apparently overlooked my solutions: pursue marketable skills and education; go where the jobs are and work hard; discourage single parenthood.