Real Science and the Nebulous Consensus Science

Dr. Fred Singer
Professor Emeritus

Several presentations at the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness in Ontario, California, dealt with the issues of anthropogenic global warming promoted by the climate change industry.

Dr. S. Fred Singer, founder of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), and Ken Haapala, current president of SEPP, discussed the “National Environment Assessment: Peeling the Speculative Onion.” Haapala spoke of “climate fears and finance” and our government’s limitations on CO2 emissions as a “policy in search of a problem.”

Because the global warming (climate change) predictions have proven inaccurate, the fear of non-existent anthropogenic global warming should be called correctly “projections,” said Haapala. “None of the models have undergone the rigorous scientific testing required for verification and validation.”

Satellite images taken since December 1978 provided the most rigorous and comprehensive data measured in the mid-troposphere. It is where the greenhouse gas effect takes place. According to Haapala, four sets of measurements taken with weather balloons by two independent groups agree closely.  But a weather balloon does not cover the globe “comprehensively” and surface measurements are taken on land when 71 percent of Earth’s surface is covered by oceans.

Haapala said that “there is good agreement between the average of the two sets of satellite measurements and the average of the four sets of weather balloon measurements, but significant disparity between the average of the model runs and the observations. This disparity is increasing over time.” Because model runs are expensive and time consuming, many of the models proposed by climate change promoters have “only one or two runs.”

Haapala used a graph of global mid-tropospheric temperature 5-year averages of Warming Predictions v. the Real World, graph developed by McNider and Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, to illustrate the wide-gap comparison between 102 model runs and observations. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303945704579391611041331266

Dr. Fred Singer proposed re-directing public concern from Global Warming (GW) to Global Cooling (GC), including a drastic shift in current policies, “abandoning all mitigation of the greenhouse (GH) gas carbon dioxide.”

An expert in remote sensing and satellites with a specialty in atmospheric and space physics, founding Director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service and Vice Chair of the U.S. National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere, Dr. Singer is of the opinion that “a near-term cooling is among the major calamities facing the population on our planet – while concern about global warming is entirely misplaced. A Little Ice Age (DOB cooling) may arrive within decades – perhaps even sooner. The end of our warm Holocene inter-glacial is rapidly approaching.” He suggested that there is little time to lose in survival preparations and a paradigm change from global warming (GW) to global cooling (GC) is vital.

DOB (Dansgaard-Oeschger-Bond) warming-cooling cycles are solar-controlled and have periods of approximately 1000-1500 years. The most recent cooling phase of the Little Ice Age ended about 200 years ago. Singer and Avery’s 2007 book, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years, makes a scientific case for these cycles.

Based on deep-sea sediment cores and ice cores scientists are “reasonably sure” of global cooling while rather shaky on global warming. According to Dr. Fred Singer, Earth has experienced “17 Milankovitch-style glaciations in the past 2 million years, each typically lasting 100,000 years, interrupted by warm ‘inter-glacials,’ typically of around 10,000-year duration. The most recent glaciation ended rather suddenly about 12,000 years ago.” He expects the current warm Holocene to end soon. He believes we “have already entered into the next glaciation” which will be discovered in retrospect.

Dr. Singer believes that Little Ice Ages are not “as severe as the major glaciations,” but “present an important threat to the food supply and to current civilization.” Human survival would be possible in developed nations based on available technology but warfare will become a main threat driven by shortages of food and other essential resources.

Dr. Willie Soon, an astrophysicist who authored The Maunder Minimum and The Variable Sun-Earth Connection, discussed the topic of “How Clean is ‘Clean?’ A Common-Sense Proposal.”  Taking aim at the “half-truth + half-truth must make a whole truth” paradigm, which he called a “lie,” Dr. Soon embarked on describing the imagined environmental consequences of increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels such as human impact issues regulated by the EPA, an organization that loves to tell people how to live.

“Silencing the people who tell the truth about science cannot stand,” Dr. Soon continued.  Ordinary people do not understand that as an honest scientist, “I do not care where the funding is coming from, I am only interested in the scientific truth,” I want to speed up finding out the truth.

Air pollution should have people dropping dead by now, if you are to believe the global warming alarmists. “Where are the bodies,” he asks? We should drop industrial activity, they say. Showing Beijing as an example of air pollution, the “data is all over the place” measured from 1998 until now.  

If Beijing is so polluted as to kill quickly, Soon said, how do you explain the polluted air levels in a smoking lounge at the airport where nobody really drops dead? Levels of particulate matter (pm 2.5 air quality standards also known as fine particle pollution) are much higher in bars and restaurants in South Korea, for example.

Dr. Soon described how he chased study after study to find out evidence that the $9 billion given to Beijing Olympics Committee to improve air quality (the pm2.5), actually worked. “We know the air quality is bad and people cry when reading the paper in Beijing. What did they do?  Shutting down the factories around to get some clean air. How much did they reduce the emission levels?” He found nothing definitive after a long chase of study after study.

Dr. Soon continued that the data shows, for example, that the air in Delhi or Santiago, Chile is more polluted than Beijing on certain days. Can you control the dust particle concentrations from dust storms in Saudi Arabia, Mongolia, or anyplace there is a desert?  There are serious exaggerations coming from the EPA in regards to sudden death from particulate matter in the air. “There is a lot of politics with no scientific evidence to support the case,” Dr. Soon explained.

“The air is getting cleaner yet more people are suffering from asthma.” Are air pollutants causing the problem, asked Dr. Soon? Is it a health crisis? Yet the EPA refuses to release their science data even during testimony in Congress. Dr. Soon added that the EPA administrator said in essence, “You are going to see only what we want you to see.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJaUO2ZFrX4

Dr. Willie Soon co-authored a paper on “Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide” which concluded that CO2 increases in the 20^th and early 21^st centuries “have produced no deleterious effects upon Earth’s weather and climate.” Higher CO2 levels have increased “markedly” plant growth.  http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/other/increasedco2effects.html

The Heartland Institute shared through its Science Director, Dr. Jay Lehr, the following environmental truths about climate change:

1.       Climate alarmism is promoted through selective MSM reporting.

2.       Temperatures around the globe have not risen since 1998.

3.       Climate has been changing for eons and it is “neither unusual nor harmful.”

4.       Antarctic ice is growing “far more than Arctic ice is melting.”

5.       “900,000 years of ice core records show continuous 1,500-year warming cycles.”

6.       When Greenland was green in the 13^th century, temperatures were seven degrees F warmer.

7.       Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant; it is a necessary gas for plant life just like oxygen is necessary for humans to survive.

8.       CO2 concentration levels have risen historically after, not before warming periods.

9.       “Computer models used to forecast future warming cannot calculate the known past.”

10.   $5 billion is spent annually to prove that man (anthropogenic) caused global warming.

While honest scientists are debating and arguing with incontrovertible facts against the nebulous consensus science fed to the climate change industry which is worth potential trillions, an EPA cleanup crew that was supposed to pump out and decontaminate harmful sludge instead “destabilized a dam of loose rocks lodged in the Gold King Mine near Durango and released it into tiny Cement Creek.” As it flowed into the Animas River, the toxic slurry of arsenic, lead, copper, aluminum, and cadmium reached other tributaries, San Juan and Colorado rivers, and flowed 80-miles from the closed mine site. The Navajo Nation president, Russell Begaye, is planning on suing the EPA. “They are not going to get away with this,” he said. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/08/10/navajo-nation-aims-to-sue-epa-over-devastating-mining-spill/

This sad event begs the questions, while the EPA is helping de-develop the U.S. by over-regulating CO2, the gas necessary for plant life, are they responsibly guarding the actual pollution in our soil and water?

 

 

 

Lies and Dang Lies Environmentalists Tell

Alaska
Photo credit: Florentina Cimpian, 2014

“Romantic love is often blind. This is nowhere made more evident than in the environmental infatuation, if not worship, of a natural world which the modern greens will never be able to save no matter how totalitarian the movement becomes.” – R. Mark Musser, author

The green infatuation and Gaia worship were prominent in Hitler’s time. Musser talks about “the green Nazi motive of the Holocaust” in his book, Nazi Oaks. “Unbeknownst to many, the highway to modern environmentalism passed through Nazi Germany. By 1935, the Third Reich was the greenest regime on the planet.”

Environmentalists have been busy for quite some time misinforming the public in a targeted assault against civilization and economic development, private property, and our way of life, under the guise of healing the planet and protecting future generations. As we saw, many influential individuals have become rich beyond belief on the platform of anthropogenic global warming and of the alarmist eventual demise of the planet due to the melting of the ice caps and glaciers flooding the world and swallowing most islands and lands bordering the oceans.

Rep. Hank Johnson went as far as saying during a House committee hearing that he feared the Island of Guam would “become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize” from the weight of 8,000 additional Marines stationed in Guam. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNZczIgVXjg

Environmentalists told us and especially our impressionable children that polar bears were drowning when the ice floes melted. Never mind that polar bears are really good long distance swimmers and their numbers have quintupled. Even the Discovery Channel, a source most viewers believed to be scientifically accurate, irritated the public by presenting fake docudramas in an attempt to “save the sharks.”

The environmentalists assured us that solar power is cheap, clean, and friendly to the planet. But the energy is far from safe, clean, or cheap. The environmental damage to the desert tortoise and many species of birds is alarming. Workers at the solar plant called Bright Source Energy at Ivanpah Dry Lake, California, have named the birds that fly into the plant’s flow of concentrated sun rays “streamers.” The birds that burst into flames in mid-air leave behind a smoke trail.

Wind farms chop millions of birds, including rare and endangered species, and affect animal and human behavior and health negatively as confirmed by Mark Duchamp, President of World Council for Nature. In numerous instances around the world and in Denmark, farmers had to put down animals that attacked each other, had numerous still born, and gave birth to deformed puppies.  www.wcfn.org

When Ronald Reagan was president, the German environmental party, Die Grünen (the Greens,) was blaming him and the U.S. economy for the acid rain that was allegedly killing trees in Europe. A campaign sponsored by the Greens featured a button with a dying tree and the words, “Stoppt Sauere Reagan,” which meant, “Stop Acid Rain,” but the German word for rain is spelled “Regen,” not “Reagan.” It was a play on words, deliberately misspelled to point the finger in the wrong direction, certainly not based on any scientific data.

Rosalind Peterson, President and Co-Founder of the Agriculture Defense Coalition in California, addressed the United Nations on the topic of Geoengineering and Chemtrails.  She explained the weather modification programs covering thousands and thousands of miles using ground base chemicals that are shot into the air or dumped by airplanes, affecting microclimate and the growing season, and crop pollinators.  

Sulphur and other chemicals are dumped or shot into the atmosphere in geoengineering attempts to “help the planet and supposedly mitigate weather warming” but they are hurting agriculture crop production by reducing the amount of sunlight necessary for photosynthesis.

Peterson testified that persistent jet contrails exacerbate global warming because they trap heat and cause serious man-made clouds, changing our climate. She explained that “one persistent jet contrail can spread to 4,000 km and last for 20 hours.”

Persistent jet contrails were unheard of in the 50s and 60s and appeared in the late 1980s. “NASA studies show that part of our global warming problem could be attributed to these types of contrails and the jets that leave them.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5is16A8pfw

In addition to sulphur, nano particles of barium, aluminum, and strontium are sprayed in the upper atmosphere worldwide in a program called atmospheric geoengineering achieved by stratospheric aerosol (chemtrails). Ted Gunderson, the late former FBI Chief, made a passionate plea to stop the “death dumps” because they are killing trees, plants, sea, and animal life worldwide. He mentioned the two locations from which unmarked airplanes fly to do the dumps, Air National Guard in Lincoln, Nebraska and Fort Sill, Oklahoma. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR6KVYJ73AU&feature=endscreen&NR=1

“We have hardly any sun anymore and all of our trees are dying. When you hike through the woods and walk through your towns and cities, you will see that the bark on the trees is turning black, cracking, and in case of the oaks here in NYC and Long Island, the bark is completely falling off!”

It is a fact that wind and solar energy are “parasitic power producers” because they need back-up energy produced through the burning of coal, natural gas, or nuclear and hydro-power generation.

It is also a known fact that large wind and solar power plants can only be built with large government subsidies and the electricity generation is inadequate for our huge economy, it is expensive, intermittent, and unreliable. Many solar power plants have gone bankrupt around the world in spite of government subsidies.

The claim that global warming causes oceanic acidification can be easily debunked because there is insufficient CO2 in the atmosphere (0.04 %) to make a difference in the oceans’ alkaline pH of 8. In order to significantly modify the oceans’ pH, CO2 must come from other sources such as underwater volcanoes.

CO2 dissolved in tap water (seltzer water) is a weak, unstable acid. If you leave a soda can open, the CO2 dissipates and what is left is sweet colored water.

What about the “greenhouse gas effect?” Greenhouse gases (water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone) are defined as “gases in an atmosphere that absorb and emit radiation within the thermal infrared range” in a process that is presented as the “fundamental cause of the greenhouse effect.”  It is believed by environmental science “consensus” that these “greenhouse gases affect the temperature of the Earth.”

Ka-Kit Tung, adjunct professor of applied mathematics at the University of Washington and Xianyao Chen of the Ocean University of China proved in their study published in Science magazine that 30-year global warming and cooling cycles are caused by sun-warmed salty water from the tropics, traveling along ocean currents. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6199/897

Upon reaching the North Atlantic, the saltier tropical water sinks due to its greater density. The process is called warm saltwater subduction. “When [the water] sinks, it goes straight down, and the sinking carries heat along with it.” According to the study, “about 90 percent of the Earth’s heat is stored in the oceans due to the atmosphere’s limited storage capacity.” We are currently in a cooling cycle. Oceanic currents seem to be a thorn in the anthropogenic CO2 global warming agenda. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/oceans-hid-the-heat-and-slowed-pace-of-global-warming/

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recognizes that oceans, covering 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, “play a major role in regulating the weather and climate of the planet.” Water cycles, surface and deep ocean currents, ocean density, atmospheric winds, oceanic convection, and the Earth’s rotation are variables affecting temperature, weather events, and climate. http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/pd/oceans_weather_climate/welcome.html

While we are forced to cut back on carbon dioxide, the gas of life that plants need in order to grow and thrive, horticulturists add CO2 to their greenhouses in order to accelerate the growth of plants and vegetables.

The sun is an important variable that affects global surface temperatures and is conveniently overlooked by the global warming scientists.  During the 20^th century there was a record solar activity that has not occurred in 3 millennia which happened to peak during our global warming period.

“The climate models of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) seem to underestimate the impact of natural factors on the climate change, while overstate that of human activities.”

The two sun events that have direct effects on the globe are solar flares, sudden increases in electromagnetic wave and particle emissions, and coronal mass ejections, erupting filaments at speeds of hundreds to thousands of km/s. Both disturb the “solar wind, the Earth’s magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere systems, causing geomagnetic storms when entering interplanetary space.” http://csb.scichina.com:8080/kxtbe/EN/volumn/volumn_6360.shtml

Carbon is not a pollutant, it is a chemical element and as such, it cannot be released into the atmosphere by itself. C02 is the gas needed for plant life and it is exhaled by all living, breathing animals. Methane is a gas released by all animals. Methane and CO2 are constantly belched by volcanoes on land and under the sea.

At the end of the day, all the rhetoric that environmentalists are bombarding us with every day, using different euphemism to play our heart strings has the common denominator of total control of our daily lives. Even John F. Kennedy made a speech on September 25, 1961 to the U.N. General Assembly, envisioning “satellites as key to global communication and weather control.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajbhi_IIX71Xt=34

The Washington Post publishes almost daily articles promoting global warming/climate change and demonizing those who are skeptics. Apparently “climate change deniers are short on scientific literacy.” We do believe in climate change – it has been changing for millennia. We just don’t believe the progressive version of anthropogenic global warming/climate change. It does not matter how hard the “Green Team” is trying to convince the “God Squad” that humans changed the climate. God and variables in nature are in control. (Washington Post, What, me worry about climate change, George Marshall, August 24, 2014)

“We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” It would be nice if progressives would remember this rhetoric they fancy before they spend the next trillion dollars we do not have that we must either print or borrow. (Washington Post, Jay Fisette, Cities fighting climate change may finally get help, August 24, 2014)

This summer has been so unusually cool; leaves are changing color already in August in Pennsylvania. Environmentalism is not about common sense, factual science, or saving the planet, it is an agenda of “consensus” pseudo-science and enslavement to the wishes of a few.  In the process of implementing this agenda, the politicians and global elites who heavily promote the global warming scam and pass legislation to force the entire planet into compliance are becoming millionaires and billionaires, using our ignorance and stupidity.

 

 

 

Are Germany's High Electricity Rates Coming to the United States?

Environmentalists have told us that we must reduce the escalating levels of CO2 or we risk a complete meltdown of our entire global ice cap and massive planetary destruction. Not only is the ice cap 60 percent larger this year but we have been in a cooling period for the past 16 years. Even the United Nation’s expert on global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), had to admit that their computer modeling predicting global warming Armageddon was wrong.

Based on this alarmist erroneous information, most countries have made and are making fundamental changes to the way they live and do business. Germany was one of the first European countries to jump on the wind and solar renewable energy bandwagon, abandoning nuclear power generation after the Fukushima disaster in Japan. Consequently, according to Spiegel Online International, Germans were forced to pay the highest electricity rates in Europe. “Germany’s energy poverty” hit the underprivileged the hardest when “electricity became a luxury good.” Welfare and pension checks were not adjusted to accommodate for higher prices. Over 300,000 Germans a year have their electricity cut off because they cannot afford to pay their electric bills. “Two-thirds of the price increase is due to new government fees, surcharges and taxes.”

The renewable energy is generating so many tax surcharges, Germans can no longer keep up – there is a surcharge to finance the power grids, and collateral damage charges from energy surplus or deficit, depending on the weather and the time of the day.

In winter time, when the wind stops blowing, the coal and oil power plants are fired up to provide electricity, releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the maligned carbon dioxide that is so necessary for plant life to thrive.

Wind turbines are turned off if there is too much electricity coming from the grid. But consumers have to pay for the “phantom electricity” the turbines are theoretically generating.

On numerous occasions, Germany pays fees to dump already subsidized green energy. Experts call this "negative electricity prices."

Plants, like ArcelorMittal steel in Hamburg that use up a lot of energy, are asked to shut down production if there is an electricity shortage in order to protect the smart grid. Ordinary electricity customers “are expected to pay to compensate these businesses for lost profits.”

Wind turbines on the offshore wind farms on the island of Borkum in the North Sea are spinning but are not connected to the grid yet – the connection cable won’t be ready until next year. The turbines must be kept running with Diesel fuel in order to prevent rusting.

There are many other hidden costs:

-          the ocean cables – and they are not cheap;

-          a giant yellow electrical socket the size of a building that is supposed to store and transport electricity through the cables at a cost of one billion euros but has a lifespan of 20 years;

-          stopping the entire wind generation operation during high seas;

-          stopping the operation when porpoises and their young are spotted (their hearing might be affected but nobody seems to care if humans are affected by the annoying hum);

-          low demand for electricity in the sparsely populated coastal regions, necessitating the installation of high-voltage power lines which transport electricity to the center and southern regions of Germany with a high population concentration;

-          no incentive for electricity storage because it may cause the smart grid to become unstable.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/high-costs-and-errors-of-german-transition-to-renewable-energy-a-920288.html

For Germany, it all adds up to a disaster in the making and an explosion of electricity prices per kWh, at least 40% or more. For those 300,000 or so Germans who cannot pay their bills annually, it is a cave dwelling existence in the dark.  If we consider Obama administration’s “War on Coal,” coal that generates 49% percent of our electricity, high prices are coming soon to our homes via the drone attached to our houses, the Smart Meter.

I recall my childhood with my grandparents who only lived 5 miles from town but did not have electricity until the mid-1970s. It was very hard reading by an oil lamp. We had to go to bed at sundown. No radio, no TV, no reading in the dark, no reading during the day, too many chores to do, nothing but a primitive lifestyle revolving around planting, weeding, and harvesting crops. We gathered in pitch darkness in the road sometimes and exchanged stories about daily happenings. Must must we go back to this lifestyle and why?

 

 

 

 

 

Green Energy Not Ready for Prime Time

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), a prolific English writer, said, “The whole world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.”

As our President promised to “double down” on renewable energy, in spite of the bankrupted Solyndra, three more green energy companies, recipients of stimulus dollars, have collapsed.

Evergreen Energy Inc., a developer of alternative fuel products, filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy in a Delaware court on January 23, 2012. Chapter 7 bankruptcy allows the company to liquidate its assets while being protected from creditors. Evergreen Inc. has $25 million in debt and $240 million in assets. Without further financing, the company cannot continue to operate its K-Fuel facility in China. K-Fuel is a process of “refining coal before it is burned to increase energy densities and combustion efficiencies which reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Solyndra LLC (solar panel maker) and Beacon Power Corporation (energy storage) filed for bankruptcy last year after receiving government loan guarantees.

Solyndra received $535 million in government loan guarantees and listed in its bankruptcy papers $854.1 million in assets and $867.1 million in debt.

Beacon had $72 million in assets and $47 million debt. Beacon had built a $69 million power plant in New York with U.S. Department of Energy loans.

Ener1 Inc., a manufacturer of lithium-ion batteries for electric cars, filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Manhattan claiming heavy competition from Toyota, China, and Korea, and the demise of a major customer, Norway Think Global. Ener1 had received $118.5 million grant from the Department of Energy. The company has $73.9 million in assets and $90.5 million in debt.

Amonix, Inc., a manufacturer of solar panels that received $5.9 billion in stimulus money will cut 200 employees, seven months after opening a factory in Nevada. (Las Vegas Sun)

It appears that producing clean, renewable energy is not such a cheap and affordable proposition after all. In spite of the green movement’s desire to replace “dirty” fossil fuels at all costs, it is not economically feasible to do so at this time.

In addition, the bad news mounts for the progressives who want to send us back to the Stone Age with their global warming fear mongering. The faux “consensus” that global warming is man-made was challenged again by newly released temperature data showing that earth has not warmed in the past 15 years. The temperature readings came from 30,000 measuring stations.

The infamous University of East Anglia Climactic Research Unit and the Met Office confirmed, “The rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.” (Daily Mail)

As various scientists compare and contrast diverse methods of climate modeling that take into account the influence of solar flares and the significance of CO2 emissions, it is evident that there were severe shortcomings and misrepresentations in the theories, data, and readings advanced by progressives.

Leading climate scientists believe that the sun will no longer emit high levels of energy as it did in the 20^th century and will deliver a “grand minimum” of output, opening the possibility of colder summers, very cold winters, and much shorter growing seasons for food. (The Mail)

Some scientists, however, are still very confident that “solar activity is insufficient to offset the dominant influence of greenhouse gases.”

“World temperatures may wind up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more. It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.” (Henrik Svensmark, Director, Center for Sun-Climate Research at Danmark’s National Space Institute)

One can only conclude that the global warming alarm was manufactured based on insufficient or deliberately misrepresented data. The progressives marched on with their agenda to replace traditional fossil fuel energy sources with a non-existent green renewable energy industry, which bankrupted itself in a short time, and the conservatives did nothing to stop them.