Climate mania impoverishes electricity customers here and abroad

Russ Steele

Several readers have forward the Financial Post article below on how climate mania is impoverishing citizens ad alternative energy schemes are used to drive up the cost of energy.  Even though this is a world wide impact,  there is also a connection to California.  First this from the Financial Post: Lawrence Solomon: Green power failure

The North American exemplar of acting on the perceived threat of global warming is Ontario, which dismantled one of the continent’s finest fleets of coal plants in pursuit of becoming a green leader. Then, to induce developers to build uneconomic renewable energy facilities, the Ontario government paid them as much as 80 times the market rate for power. The result is power prices that rose rapidly (about 50% since 2005) and will continue to do so: Ontarians can expect power prices that are 46% higher over the next five years, according to a 2010 Ontario government estimate, and more than 100% higher according to independent estimates. The rest of Canada may not fare much better — the National Energy Board forecasts power prices 42% higher by 2035, while some estimates have Canadian power prices 50% higher by 2020.

Another reader saw the California connection on the CARB website:

If you go to the CARB web site, http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/capandtrade/capandtrade.htm, you’ll find this sentence, “California is working closely with British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba through the Western Climate Initiative to develop harmonized cap and trade programs that will deliver cost-effective emission reductions.”

The question is if Canadian Provinces are going to harmonize Cap and Trade programs, that will also result in the harmonization of energy costs. We can also expect our power prices to go up 45 to 50 percent as well. However, the Financial Post article points out that the rest of the US is seeing stable or slight declines in the price of electricity. As energy prices rise in California, they will be  declining in the rest of the US as power companies adopt more cheap natural gas. As fracking produces more gas the price continues to drop.

The question one reader asks is:

Will the abundant supply of cheap natural gas overcome the renewable mandates to keep California’s rates from rising or will California’s rate payers see price rises like they did in Ontario?

Given what we know about CARB’s single minded focus on creating a Cap and Trade slush fund and the environmental wacko legislators in Sacramento, who are taking big time political donations from all the “go green” VCs, I have serious doubts that California will ever take full advantage of cheap natural gas and move away form the more expensive alternative energy schemes, there is just too much money involved, and too little political power in the hands of rate payers.

Solar Activities Intensifies

Russ Steele

There is a huge sunspot, AR1476, that is crackling with M-class solar flares which appears to be on the verge of producing something even stronger according to spaceweather.com .

The sunspot’s ‘beta-gamma-delta’ magnetic field harbors energy for X-class flares, the most powerful kind. Earth is entering the line of fire as the sunspot rotates across the face of the sun.

Stay alert. You can monitor the Sun at spaceweather.com. You can also sign up for a text alert of a powerful flare on your cellphone for a few bucks.

It is those X-Class flares that can raise havoc with electronic systems, including satellites and power grids.  In the morning I am putting my spare cellphones, scanners and computers in a metal container. Stay tuned.

Some Random Thoughts on Some Missing Dots

Russ Steele

First the dots:

• Putin is back in power in Russia, one of America’s strongest competitor for Arctic resources.

• Russia is claiming the Arctic and the mineral resources including oil and gas that is evident there.

• Russia is building more than a dozen icebreakers, including some nuclear powered icebreakers.

• America’s only two heavy icebreakers are out of service and the third is headed to the scrapyard in Texas.

• The Democrats in Congress are convinced that global warming is just around the corner and the Arctic will soon be ice free, reducing the need for a modern icebreaker fleet.

• In February 1940, Arctic ice averaged 6.5 feet thick.  Ice thickness is year the same as it was 72 years ago.

• Bering Sea Ice set a record for more ice in April than any time since 1980,  when satellite measurements started.

• To bring heating oil to Nome Alaska this year the US Coast Guard had to request help from Russia.

Now for some missing dots. The US is preparing for global warming and Russia is preparing for the coming grand minimum when Arctic ice will be blocking northern hemisphere seaports in the winter and possibly in the summer without icebreaker support. Northern Alaska’s sea ports will be blocked by sea ice just like this year, year after year.   Ice bergs like the one that sank the Titanic will once again be creating trouble in the shipping lanes on both coasts.  More ships will be trapped in ice fields requiring rescue.

Now, I ask you what possible go wrong with this scenario?

Arctic Ice Area Approaching Abnormally High Range

Reblogged from Real Science by Steven Goddard

Note: Real Science blog has been hacked with the hackers claiming that Steven Goddard has died. He is very much alive and his alternative site is HERE.

In a sure sign of devastating global warming, Arctic ice area is nearly one standard deviation above normal:

ssmi1_ice_area.png 1667×1250

Meanwhile, Antarctic ice has been above normal for the entire year.

via Arctic Ice Area Approaching Abnormally High Range | Real Science.

Sun with Four Poles?

Russ Steele

Could the sun end up with for poles? What would be the impact on earth?

Details at the Next Grand Minimum HERE. 

Man-made climate change ‘a pagan religion’

Russ Steele

This came in over the email transom, and is recommended by a regular reader of this blog. It cuts to the core of our discussion with Steven Frisch, who is unable to discuss the science of global warming, resorting instead to appeals to authority, which is a fundamental tenet of an ideology.

In a new book French philosopher Pascal Bruckner called the belief in climate change “a pagan religion.”

Watch more from Bruckner, who describes how this belief follows a “pagan religion” scenario where man must be punished for sinning against mother earth in this video:

http://downloads.cbn.com/cbnnewsplayer/cbnplayer.swf?aid=29173

You thoughts on the video are most welcome in the comments.

Consensus Reality Check

Russ Steele

In the comments section of this post Steven Frisch wrote:

The truth is the overwhelming majority of climate scientists, and scientific organizations agree that the climate is changing, that it is at least substantively human caused, and that it is a serious threat. You guys can crwo (sic) all you want about whether or not the word ‘consensus’ is a scientific term, but that does not change the facts.

Here are some facts from P. Gosselin writing at the No Tricks Zone. Max Planck Institute Director Admits “Physical Causes Unclear…Models Inconsistent With Observations”!

More cracks like never before are appearing in Germany’s climate alarmism.

Global temperatures remaining flat over 15 years, defying model projections.

Not long ago global warming science was considered settled here. So much so that climate protection has long since been institutionalized.

Now it’s all starting to look like a very expensive mistake. The threat of a spectacular crumble is becoming real.

Michael Odenwald of warmist news magazine FOCUS has written a status report on global warming science: “Global Warming: “A Matter of Standpoint”.(In German, see English quotes below)

As the title suggests, the dispute depends on how one looks at the data, and so the science is becoming more unsettled than ever. German media is beginning to report on the growing number of contradictions.

David Whitehouse: Time to recognize the temperature stagnation As Odendahl describes, the big dispute raging today is whether global warming is continuing, or if it has stalled. According to HadCRUT4, global temperature has remained constant from 1997 to 2011.

FOCUS writes:

However, [David] Whitehouse explains further, the IPCC had predicted a temperature increase of of 0.2°C per decade because of the anthropogenic greenhouse effect. But this warming has not occurred. ‘We are now at a point where temperature stagnation is dominating the climate development. One cannot ignore that, even if is not 30 years,’ Whitehouse believes. ‘It is now time for the IPCC and the scientific community to recognize the temperature stagnation as reality.“

FOCUS author Odendahl then adds:

With this, it is becoming very clear that the scientific debate over the greenhouse effect is not yet over.

Steven can read the rest of the report HERE, but it clear that the climate models cited by all the “consensus scientists” have failed to model reality.  Someday real soon now those  ”consensus scientists” will have to wake up to reality.  For the past 15 years the planet has not warmed and in some regions has started to cool.  What will Steven do then, when his religious beliefs in AGW are destroyed by reality?

If You Wait Long Enough Some One Else Will Do It

Russ Steele

For years I have been noodling the idea of comparing George Orwell’s book 1984 with the current circumstances that we find our selves in dealing with the real truth about global warm, or if you prefer climate change.  Today, I discovered that I can quit noodling about the idea as Art Horn, a much better writer than I am, has done the deed, in an article published in the Energy Tribune: We Live in Nineteen Eight Twelve.

In 1949 George Orwell published his now legendary book 1984. The book told a story about a world run by three super governments. Those governments had complete control over the lives of the people who lived in them. In the county of Oceania where the story takes place “The Party” was the absolute ruler and made all laws and wrote all “truth”. The Party would simply write whatever it wanted to about anything so as to keep control over everything. All private property had been confiscated. There were no privately run companies. All of the so called truth was published and broadcast from the “Ministry of Truth”. In reality whatever truth was really out there was never published or broadcast. In effect there was no real truth, only convenient truth. The truth could be changed from day to day even hour to hour depending on how the Party wanted the “truth” to serve them. There are interesting parallels in today’s world. Just because some of the warnings Orwell sounded back then didn’t appear to materialize in 1984 doesn’t mean he had the wrong ideas. His timing was just a little off. For instance today the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA (can you say The Ministry of Truth) declared on Monday, December the 7th (Pearl Harbor Day) that carbon dioxide represent a serious health threat to all Americans. The justification for this declaration came from a 2007 Supreme Court decision calling carbon dioxide pollution and is therefore covered by the Clean Air Act.

You can read the rest of this excellent article HERE. This is my favorite paragraph

The Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) is a division of NASA located on the campus of Columbia University in New York. In 1999 it produced a graph of United States temperature anomaly from 1880 to 1999. It clearly showed that the year 1934 was much warmer than the next warmest year, 1998. The anomaly showed that 1934 was 0.6 degrees Celsius or 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than 1998. By the time the graph of United States temperature anomaly had undergone several “adjustments” by the Goddard Institute the 2010 version showed that remarkably, 1934 had “cooled” 0.3 degrees Celsius or 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit and equally amazingly, 1999 had warmed 0.4 degrees Celsius or 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit! Now in the new reality 1998 was warmer than 1934. These “adjustments” to the temperatures were not done all at once. They were done in tiny steps over a period of 11 years. Does this sound familiar? “If all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed-if all records told the same tale-then the lie passed into history and became truth’’. Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. By cooling the past gradually and warming the present the new truth will show that the earth is warming much faster than it actually is.

Some Thoughts in Future Food Security

Russ Steele

I have posted some thoughts on food subsides and food security in our future at The Next Grand Minimum:  Robust Agriculture Sector Will Be Key to Survival During Next Grand Minimum

Dr S. Fred Singer on “Hockey Stick” Mann’s Book

Russ Steele

Dr. S. Fred Singer is a professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and director of the Science & Environmental Policy Project.  His specialty is atmospheric and space physics.   He is an expert in remote sensing and satellites, he served as the founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service and, more recently, as vice chair of the US National Advisory Committee on Oceans & Atmosphere. He is one of the grand old men of climate science.

Dr Singer has an excellent article at the American Thinker titled: Climategate Heads to Court, but it was this part of his article I found most interesting, having read most of the Climategate e-mails, far more than our local lefty warmers have read and understand.

In his book, Mann distorts the e-mail record from the “Climategate” leak; those e-mails have not been altered or edited in any way.  They document a conspiracy among a clique of British and U.S. climate scientists to control what goes into IPCC reports, and to keep contrary views by skeptics from being published in recognized science journals by manipulating the peer-review process.

The most complete discussion of the Climategate e-mails can be found in The Hockeystick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science by Andrew W. Montford.  A more technical discussion has been ongoing in McIntyre’s blog at www.climateaudit.org.

Mike Mann also attempts to mislead readers by citing “facts.”  He does this by mixing up temperature level (measured in degrees C) with temperature trends (degC per decade) — hoping no one would notice.  While current levels are high (since the climate is still recovering from the LIA), the trend has been essentially zero for more than a decade — in spite of rapidly rising CO₂ concentrations.

In reading Mann’s original papers, I noticed something very strange: his temperature record (blue curve in the IPCC report) based on proxy data suddenly stops in 1978 and is joined smoothly to the thermometer record from weather stations (red curve), which shows a steep rise in temperature.  By contrast, atmospheric temperatures measured from weather satellites show only insignificant warming between 1978 and 1997 — as do the independent data from weather balloons around the world.

Puzzled by this disparity, I e-mailed Mann (then at the U. of Virginia) and politely asked about his post-1978 proxy temperatures.  All I got in return was a nasty reply — which only served to confirm my suspicion that Mann was hiding the data because they disagreed with the widely accepted thermometer record, which had suggested the existence of global warming.  I believe that this is the true meaning of the phrase “Mike’s Nature trick,” used in the leaked Climategate e-mails — in conjunction with “hide the decline.”  It all suggests manipulation of crucial data.

Naturally, I am anxious to learn if Mann’s suppressed post-1978 data show a warming.  If they don’t, then the U.N.-IPCC’s case for AGW collapses — and so do all policies to control the greenhouse gas CO₂.  These policies include emission trading (“cap & trade”), carbon sequestration from power plants, and various costly schemes for developing alternative, “green” forms of energy.  We may have already wasted hundreds of billions of dollars — for no good purpose.  If so, then Mann and his supporters have much to answer for. 

You can read the rest of the article HERE.  We are all waiting for the truth to come out. Dr Singer concludes:

One way or another, the truth will come out.  And when it does, we will witness a major earthquake that will encompass IPCC scientists, politicians in America and Europe, and the U.N.  Let’s hope we don’t have to wait too long for this to happen.

 

 

An Inconsistency On the Left

Russ Steele

I was reading KQED’s Climate Watch this evening,  which is my go-to-place to keep track of what the environmental wackos are doing to wreck the California economy.  KQED does a great job of tracking them down and reporting on their activities. Their latest report is on “the voice of the ocean,” Jean-Michel Cousteau.

Jean-Michel Cousteau is the son of legendary ocean explorer, Jacques Cousteau, and chairman of Ocean Futures Society, a non-profit dedicated to exploring, protecting and educating the world about our oceans. He was vocal in condemning BP’s Gulf oil spill and has frequently highlighted the link between climate change and the state of our oceans and coastline.

A native of France, he now calls Santa Barbara home and describes California’s response to climate change – its AB32 Global Warming Solutions Act and proposed cap and trade system – as a step in the right direction. But he also explained why we need to do a lot more.

“It’s an issue of understanding and changing our ways,” he said. “Creating new ways of serving our needs and taking care of the environment at the same time.”

He’s talking specifically about renewable energy and points out that algae are propelling US Navy ships and commercial airplanes. He emphasizes the advances being made in solar and wind energy and even cites a hotel in Bora Bora that is using temperature differences in the ocean depths to power its air conditioning system. All this without petroleum and its hefty environmental impact.

Surprisingly, despite his dives to examine the BP oil spill devastation in the Gulf of Mexico, Cousteau still had good things to say about Big Oil; pointing out that oil companies like Shell, Total and BP are investing in renewable energy.

And than I remembered this from a couple of days ago at Market Watch:

BP added its name Wednesday to the list of companies exiting the solar power industry. Read about BP’s decision.

It’s a startling about-face for a company that 11 years ago staked its future on its ability to profitably pursue renewable energy. For then-CEO John Browne, the decision was obvious. The era of cheap hydrocarbons was coming to a close and it was high time to address global climate change.

Leading the charge, Browne gave BP a greener logo and launched its “Beyond Petroleum” campaign, pushing into solar, wind and biofuels.

But BP’s (US:BP) commitment to the cause could also be seen as more of a public relations gimmick than a serious investment. While spending millions of dollars going green, it spent billions more on its traditional oil and gas business.

Meanwhile, the promise of solar power soured for BP. Once touted as the industry of the future, it has since become the industry of China, whose factories have flooded the market with cheap solar panels. Competitors steamrolled by China accuse it of commoditizing the industry. Others claim it is flat-out dumping solar panels in other countries to amass market share. Whatever the case, China appears to be winning this one.

I guess someone should tell “the voice of the ocean” that BP is no longer investing in renewable solar energy.  Maybe not, tell him that BP’s entry into renewable energy may have been a head fake just to keep the environmentalist off their backs.

Medieval Warm Period Was a Global Event

Russ Steele

In the local online global warming blog debates, and in columns in the Union, one of the issues was the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), which cast serious doubt on Mann’s “Hockey Stick” which has been the poster child for the local warmers and the Air Resources Board staff.   First they denied there was a MWP based on the “hockey stick” which use a statistical trick to make it vanish, but the temperature record in Europe demonstrated that it was real. The warmer’s finally had to admit it did exist in Europe, but only in Europe they claimed.

The warmers needed to make the WMP vanish, because it was warmer during the WMP than it has been during the Modern Warming Period, which we are currently experiencing.  Hard to make the case that SUV were responsible for global warming, if the WMP was a global event.

Now there is more peer reviewed evidence that the WMP was a global event in a paper forthcoming in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.  From the Syracuse press release:

The scientists studied ikaite crystals from sediment cores drilled off the coast of Antarctica. The sediment layers were deposited over 2,000 years. The scientists were particularly interested in crystals found in layers deposited during the “Little Ice Age,” approximately 300 to 500 years ago, and during the “Medieval Warm Period,” approximately 500 to 1,000 years ago. Both climate events have been documented in Northern Europe, but studies have been inconclusive as to whether the conditions in Northern Europe extended to Antarctica. . .

“We showed that the Northern European climate events influenced climate conditions in Antarctica,” Lu says. “More importantly, we are extremely happy to figure out how to get a climate signal out of this peculiar mineral. A new proxy is always welcome when studying past climate changes.”

How inconvenient for the warmers.  They’ll have to think up some new talking point to make the MWP insignificant.

H/T to Power Line for reporting on this paper.

 

Monckton’s Schenectady showdown

Russ Steele

If your ever wondered why the global warmers will not debate the issue with knowledgable observers like Lord Monckton?  Here is a clear example posted at Watts Up With That, in a well written essay by Justin Pulliam. Long essays can be a boring pain, but this one reads more like a detective story.  Enjoy!

Monckton’s Schenectady showdown | Watts Up With That?.

Monckton vanquishes Union College “Greens too yellow to admit they’re really Reds”

Guest post by Justin Pulliam

Attendees listen to Monckton’s speech at Union College.

THE NEWS that Lord Monckton was to give his “Climate of Freedom” lecture at Union College in Schenectady, New York, had thrown the university’s environmentalists into a turmoil. The campus environmentalists set up a Facebook page announcing a counter-meeting of their own immediately following Monckton’s lecture. There is no debate about global warming, they announced. There is a consensus. The science is settled. Their meeting would be addressed by professors and PhDs, the “true” scientists, no less. Sparks, it seemed, were gonna fly.

Traveling with Lord Monckton on the East Coast leg of his current whistle-stop tour of the US and Canada, I was looking forward to documenting the Schenectady showdown. I have had the pleasure of listening to His Lordship at previous campus events. He is at his best when confronted by a hostile audience. The angrier and more indignant they are, the more he seems to like it.

The Union Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) sponsored the lecture, which was video streamed by CampusReform.org (where a video recording is available). The afternoon of the event, Lord Monckton appeared on the CFACT leaders’ hour-long weekly show on the Union College radio station. As a result, that evening 200 people packed a campus lecture theater to hear Lord Monckton speak.

As they filed in, Lord Monckton was chatting contentedly to a quaveringly bossy woman with messy blonde hair who was head of the college environmental faction. Her group had set up a table at the door of the auditorium, covered in slogans scribbled on messy bits of recycled burger boxes held together with duct tape (Re-Use Cardboard Now And Save The Planet). “There’s a CONSENSUS!” she shrieked.

“That, Madame, is intellectual baby-talk,” replied Lord Monckton. Had she not heard of Aristotle’s codification of the commonest logical fallacies in human discourse, including that which the medieval schoolmen would later describe as the argumentum ad populum, the headcount fallacy? From her reddening face and baffled expression, it was possible to deduce that she had not. Nor had she heard of the argumentum ad verecundiam, the fallacy of appealing to the reputation of those in authority.

Please read the rest of the post.  It only gets more interesting, with some outstanding learning moments on now science should be done.

Monckton’s Schenectady showdown | Watts Up With That?.

Photo by Charlotte Lehman

The Sun In A Funk — Sun Spots Not Peaking, in Decline

Russ Steele

At this point in solar cycle 24 the sunspot should be near peaking, the sun should be very active with lots of spots in both the southern and northern hemispheres of the sun. Those monitoring the sun are observing a decline a sun spots, that is similar to past declines during other Grand Minimums.   I have posted a summary at the Next Grand Minimum.

• Anthony Watts has more details at: The sun is still in a funk: sunspot numbers are dropping when they should be rising
•  Joe D’Aleo has some more thoughts in a post at ICECAP : The Sun Back in a Funk

The bottom line.  Every time the sunspots vanished the earth got cooler. Scientist are still exploring the exact mechanism as to why this happens, but we know from the history books, and the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Cores, the lack of sunspots are linked to cooling on earth.

Spots are declining. I will update when Feb data is available.

Satellite Temperatures are still down:

Stay Tuned!

2012 Weblog awards – Clean Sweep for Climate Skeptics

Russ Steele

“The Bloggie” winners have been announced and it was a clean sweep for the blogs that have been skeptical of global warming and climate change. All of these blogs have been quoted here on this blog, some quite often.

CONGRATULATIONS TO:

• Jo Nova In Australia for Best Australian or New Zealand Blog -  Jo Nova

• Tallbloke in England for Best European Blog – Tallbloke’s Talkshop

• Steve McIntyre for Best Canadian Blog – Climate Audit

• Anthony Watts for Best Technology Blog - Watts Up With That

Anthony also won the Life Time Achievement Award !  A Special Congratulation to my friend Anthony.