Geoheresy

2006-12-02T23:53:00.000-08:00

BLOG Move

As part of the Wandering Hissink's change in domicile arrangements Geoheresy has relocated to a new server and can be read at the following url - http://geoheresy.bigblog.com.au/

One reason is that adding content to it does not count in my ISP traffic volume (its free!).

The second is that this blog's editing pages has become less than useful - so it is time to move on.

2006-11-29T13:44:00.000-08:00

MAINSTREAM MEDIA INNUMERACY

My attention was drawn to the latest media reporting that CO2 has increased 2.5% per year since 2000 according to the Global Carbon Project reported here. The source document is of two pages with lots of pretty coloured graphics (presumably on the basis that pictures are equivalent to a thousand words) and available here.

Now they state in Policy Document 5 "That the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 was 2.05ppm per year,.." (page 1).

Express this as a percentage we calculate (2.05/1,000,000)x100 = 0.000205% per year.

Or should they have said (2.05/380)x100 = 0.54% per year?

Either way rather much smaller than 2.5% per year isn't it.

Wikipedia states that according to NOAA 97% of atmospheric CO2 is created from natural sources leaving 3% to human activities.

And As of 2006, the earth's atmosphere is about 0.038% by volume (381 µL/L or ppmv) or 0.057% by weight CO2.

3% of 381 ppmv = 11.43 ppmv which is the human contribution

AND

if each year an extra 2.05 ppmv of CO2 is added to atmospheric CO2, then the anthropogenic component is 3% of 2.05, or 0.06 ppmv by definition.

PER YEAR THE ANTHROPOGENIC CONTRIBUTION TO CO2 EMISSIONS IS 0.06ppmv or

0.00000615% of CO2 per year.

Each year we therefore seem to add 0.06 ppmv to 11.43 = 11.49 ppmv

The earth, all by itself, adds, at the current interpreted rate, 1.99 ppmv per year to CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

Figure it out!

HUMANS - 0.06ppmv CO2 per year
GAIA - 1.99ppmv CO2 per year

2006-11-24T03:04:00.000-08:00

The following preface has been lifted from the plasma site and the book will be available after Thanksgiving, so I am told - LH.

Preface

In recent years we have read about the “discovery” of black holes, neutron stars, cosmic strings, and such things as dark energy and invisible matter. Anyone who reads Sagan, Hawking, and the other popular astronomy writers can see how complicated and counter-intuitive the concepts of modern astrophysics are becoming. Even so, until recently, I assumed that astronomers and astrophysicists knew what they were talking about.

Now – I’m sure they do not.

It was when astrophysicists began saying things that I, as an electrical engineer, knew were wrong that I began to have serious doubts about their pronouncements. But I agonized over whether those doubts were legitimate. Even though my life-long avocation has been amateur astronomy, my formal background is in engineering – not astronomy or cosmology.

Earning a doctorate in electrical engineering eventually led to my teaching that subject at a major university for thirty-nine years. What troubled me most was when astrophysicists began saying things about magnetic fields that any of my junior-year students could show were completely incorrect.

If astrophysicists were saying things that were demonstrably wrong in my area of expertise, could it be that they were making similar mistakes in their own field as well? I began to investigate more of the pronouncements of modern astrophysicists and the reasoning behind them. This book is an account of what I unearthed when I started digging into this question.

It is becoming clear that knowledge acquired in electric plasma laboratories over the last century affords insights and simpler, more elegant, more compelling explanations of most cosmological phenomena than those that are now espoused in astrophysics. And yet astrophysicists seem to be intent on ignoring them. Thus, lacking these fundamental electrical concepts, cosmologists have charged into a mind-numbing mathematical cul de sac, creating on the way a tribe of invisible entities – some of which are demonstrably impossible.

I have tried to hack a path through these hypotheses, contradictions, and alternative explanations that will be clear and understandable for the average interested reader to follow. The answers to the questions we ask are not stressfully convoluted and arcane – rather, they are logical, straightforward, and reasonable – and long overdue.

I hope your journey through these pages will be meaningful, educational, perhaps exciting, and most important of all, eye-opening.

DES

Reviews:

Scientists Respond

“I really love this book. It is causing me to rethink a great deal of my own work. I am convinced that The Electric Sky deserves the widest possible readership…. I felt genuine excitement while reading and felt I was delving into a delicious feast of new ideas.” – Gerrit L. Verschuur, PhD,

University of Manchester. A well-known radio astronomer and writer, presently at the Physics Department, University of Memphis. He is the author of "Interstellar matters : essays on curiosity and astronomical discovery", and "The invisible universe – The Story of Radio Astronomy” as well as many other books and scientific papers.

“You don't have to be an astronomer to enjoy this book. It's an exciting story about how a small group of physicists, engineers and other scientists have challenged the ‘establishment’ – the ‘big science’ astronomers who are reluctant to listen to anyone outside their own elite circle.” – Lewis E. Franks, PhD,

Stanford University, Fellow of the IEEE (1977), Professor Emeritus and Head of the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Massachusetts (Retired).

“Gravity was the focus of 20th century astronomy. For the 21st century, it will be electromagnetism and plasmas in addition. This forthcoming scientific revolution is presaged by the rapid pace of discoveries about our own star, the Sun, and its total plasma environment, and discoveries about the nature of the interstellar medium." – Timothy E. Eastman, PhD, Head of Raytheon's space physics and astrophysics groups.

He is well known for his work on magnetospheric boundary layers and the initial discovery of the Low Latitude Boundary Layer.http://www.plasmas.org/space-astrophys.htm

“It is gratifying to see the work of my mentor, Nobel Laureate Hannes Alfvén enumerated with such clarity. I am also pleased to see that Dr. Scott has given general readers such a lucid and understandable summary of my own work.” – Anthony L. Peratt, PhD,

USC, Fellow of the IEEE (1999), former scientific advisor to theU.S. Department of Energy and member of the Associate Laboratory Directorate of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is the author of Physics of the Plasma Universe and numerous published papers.

Source

2006-11-24T00:12:00.000-08:00

THE EARTH AND ITS ELECTRICAL CONNECTION

One of the more interesting observations made by a new Australian blogger linked by John Ray here is the fact that from the hours of 3AM to 6AM, when the sun is not shining because its late at night and before dawn, temperatures have not changed for the last 5 years while the maxima and minima have.

AGW due to CO2 increase has to be of a uniform extent globally, so this pre-dawn discrepancy is significant.

Also we learn that Cosmic Rays affect the formation of clouds on the surface of the earth, according to Danish research. And what are cosmic rays? Charged particles in motion, and most of us of a practical nature would call that “electricity”. (Gravitationalists would call the cosmic rays).

Now we learn that NASA scientists have worked out that Jupiter’s auroras are electrical phenomena -

“a new study reports that one of the bright spots in this aurora is the footprint of a continuous electrical exchange between Jupiter and another moon, Europa. In October of 2005, the journal Geophysical Research Letters published a report from a research team headed by Denis Grodent of the University of Liège, Belgium, noting the team's discovery of a short auroral tail linking Jupiter to Europa. The report notes that this footprint is similar to that of Io, but less energetic. Grodent's team based its report on a study of 45 Hubble images of the Jovian aurora showing Europa's footprint and its swirling "tail".”

and

“An electrical interaction between Jupiter and its moons means that the bodies are charged. (As soon as you grant that one body is charged, the other body is also charged in relationship to it). Jupiter is not an island. It stands in a dynamic electrical relationship to the Sun, just as does the Earth. It is now known that charged particles from the Sun, not a terrestrial "dynamo", power Earth's auroras. The same thing can be said of Jupiter's auroras, though this was as contrary to astronomers' assumptions as was the confirmation of the Sun's input to terrestrial auroras. Work by scientists at the University of Leicester in the UK found “a strong correlation between the strength of the solar wind and the behaviour of [Jupiter’s] auroras". But this was "completely the opposite result to the one we were expecting from our predictions".

Of course, what is surprising or illogical from one vantage point may be "reasoning from the obvious" in another.

A: Jupiter interacts electrically with its moons.
B: Jupiter interacts electrically with the Sun, as does the Earth.
C: The planets in the Solar System are charged bodies.
D: The sun has an electric field.

Suddenly the elephant so long "hidden" in the living room of astrophysics is exposed. Since the sun gives off proton storms, and the protons in the solar wind are being accelerated away from the sun, it should have been obvious all along that the Sun is the center of an electric field…

E. Electrical transactions between the Sun, the planets, and the planets' moons are only to be expected in the Electric Universe.

Electrical connectivity is thus confirmed by every level of investigation; it is not just the reason for Io's "volcanic" plumes; it is the reason why Saturn's moon Enceladus similarly spews out icy particles in high energy jets; it is why Europa and other moon of Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus display vast networks of channels that can only be explained as electric discharge scars; it is why the planets have teardrop shaped Langmuir sheaths; it is why Mars, moving on an orbit more elliptical than Earth's, is periodically overtaken by global dust storms and Everest-sized "dust devils"; it is why the Earth discharges to space through sprites and elves; it is why remote comets discharge so brilliantly as they approach the inner solar system; it is why "asteroids" can become comets if their orbits are sufficiently eccentric; it is why comets sometimes break up as they move through the Sun's electric field.”

Source

“It is why the Earth discharges to space through sprites and elves”.

Discharges what to space – Energy? Surely not.

So here we have a clue as to why global climate models are not only inconsistent but totally unpredictable – they assume the earth is an electrically neutral body suspended in an electrically neutral space in which gravitation is the only force.

Consider the fact that the Sun’s charged particles power the earth’s auroras – or in lay terms, moving charged particles is electricity – so when we see the sun at dawn what we do not see is the flow of electricity from the sun to the earth. In fact willy-willy's are now known to have up to 10,000 volts potential difference and we don't see those electrical forces either, just as a vorterx of wind, often capable of causing enormous damage.

And we know that electric currents passing through resistive loads generate heat. So maybe the heat we get from the sun is part radiant and part electrical, and if the sun is part of a galactic electrical circuit, which itself is part of an ever larger one, then any change in the sun’s electric potential would affect the earth too.

And if the earth is part of a solar electrical circuit, which the above data seem to suggest, then the flux of energy, and of course heat, is not factored into any GCM. This is why there is so much scepticism over anthropogenic global warming.

And we thought it was all due to CO2!

2006-11-23T01:12:00.000-08:00

Obnoxiously Persistent Australians

Professor Bob Carter wrote a letter to some very important newspapers who seemed not to have published it. It was posted on CCnet and it is reproduced here for the record.

November 5, 2006

Dear Sir,

Professor Mike Hulme, Director of the Tyndall Climate Centre, has had an epiphany. He writes on BBC News Viewpoint that "It seems that it is we, the professional climate scientists, who are now the (catastrophe) sceptics". He adds "The language of catastrophe is not the language of science", a truth that has been a long time coming from the UK's climate "professionals".

Professor Hulme shows breathtaking chutzpah, for the view that he is now espousing is closely similar to that long held by thousands of professional scientists around the world. These persons are derogated as "climate sceptics" but are actually agnostic regarding the probability of dangerous human-caused change. They take just the balanced, empirical approach to the climate change issue that Professor Hulme now recommends.

Nonetheless, it is good to have the professor's reassurance that the Tyndall Centre and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are no longer going to support their views of climate change with "a cascade of value-laden assumptions which do not emerge from empirical or theoretical science".

No more hockey-sticks then?

Bob Carter

Professor R.M. Carter
Marine Geophysical Laboratory
James Cook University
Townsville, Qld. 4811
AUSTRALIA

2006-11-23T00:46:00.000-08:00

GREENPEACE AGENDA

I'll probably be excoriated as a typical red-neck mining type but a recent post on John Ray's Greenie Watch from Spiked-online quoted this comment:

Over at Greenpeace, Mark Strutt, who was until recently senior climate campaigner at Greenpeace UK (he’s now Greenpeace International’s agriculture spokesperson), takes a similar stance. ‘Greenpeace wouldn’t be interested in this sort of thing. We’re looking for reductions in the use of fossil fuels rather than these technologies that in all likelihood would come to nothing.

(reacting to a proposal to mitigate AGW by technology)

WRONG WRONG WRONG! They don't want solutions to global warming, they want to stop the extraction of coal and oil - and that means killing the mining industry.

Those of us who have been in the mining industry for a long time have always viewed Greenpeace's agenda as one of eliminating the mining industry.

Greenpeace must be congratulated on the magnificent job they have done with Global Warming and essentially turned an anti-mining agenda into one of a global nature enlisting the wider community by inventing the specious science that CO2 emitted by humanity will result in a catastrophic climatic disaster.

Greenpeace wants to eliminate the coal miners, the mining and oil industries, and as they have failed to achieve that goal with a direct frontal attack, they instead, in true Fabian fashion, went undercover and resumed the war under the aegis of climate change.

Except that some of us, the climate sceptics, were not fooled by the donning of the sheeps wool to hide the real motive of the environmental movement - the elimination of the mining industry.

If they were successful in achieving that goal, then the future for humanity would be bleak indeed - imagine a close to nature lifestyle worse than the worst of the peasants living in North Korea today.

Greenpeace has but one agenda - the extinction of the world mining industry and the coal industry is but the first step.

What a tragedy so many fine minds have fallen for specious nonesense of AGW.

2006-11-18T21:03:00.000-08:00

Conclusion:

Real-world measures suggest moderate to strong negative feedback, currently unnamed and un-quantified, mitigates the Earth's thermal response to additional radiative forcing from both human activity and natural variation. Justification for amplification factors >2.5 for unmitigated positive feedback mechanisms is not evident in empirical measures. It is not clear whether any amplification factor should be applied or even what sign any such factor should be. Nor is there evidence to support such large λ values in GCMs. Division of real-world measures continue to exhibit the same surface thermal response derived by Idso for contemporary local, regional and global climate, for ancient climate under a younger, weaker sun and for Earth's celestial neighbors, Mars and Venus.

In the absence of support for amplification factors and in view of their erroneously large λ values it is apparent that the wiggle fitting so far achieved with climate model output is accidental or that these models contain equally large opposing errors in other portions of their calculations such that a comedy of errors produce seemingly plausible results in the short-term. In either case no confidence is inspired.

On balance of available evidence then the current model-estimated range of warming from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide should probably be reduced from 1.4 - 5.8 °C to about 0.4 °C to suit observations or ≈ 0.8 °C to accommodate theoretical warming -- and that's including ΔF of 3.7 Wm-2 from a doubling of pre-Industrial Revolution atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, a figure we suspect is also inflated.

The bottom line is that climate models are programmed to overstate potential warming response to enhanced greenhouse forcing by a huge margin. The median estimate 3.0 °C warming cited by the IPCC for a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide is physically implausible.

Source

Note: Every GCM assumes as a start that doubling CO2 results in a rise in atmospheric temperature.

It might be expressed thus:

Future T = F(CF) - Feedback where F(CF) is the climate forcing and Feedback an innumerable number of factors which decrease the effect of F(CF).

F(CF) has never been determined experimentally - it is at best a GUESS!

This is not science, this is pure junkscience.

2006-11-18T17:33:00.000-08:00

CLIMATE IN-SENSITIVITY

The Monbiot-Monckton debate continues in splendid fashion and now the climate surrealists are wading in with argumentum ad hominem over climate sensitivity. (One is left to one's own devices to find it in the Surreal Climate site - as the Wandering Hissink does not bother with it).

Preamble

The definition of climate sensitivity is as follows:

In IPCC reports, equilibrium climate sensitivity refers to the equilibrium change in global mean surface temperature following a doubling of the atmospheric (equivalent) CO2 concentration. This value is estimated, by the IPCC Third Assessment Report primarily on the basis of climate models, to be "likely to be in the range of 1.5 to 4.5°C" [1]. More generally, equilibrium climate sensitivity refers to the equilibrium change in surface air temperature following a unit change in radiative forcing, expressed in units of °C/(W/m2). In practice, the evaluation of the equilibrium climate sensitivity from models requires very long simulations with coupled global climate models, or it may be deduced from observations

Source

Climate sensitivity has NEVER been determined experimentally by measurement, so no one really knows what its value is. Considering that this concept is the MOST important issue in the climate debate, one would have thought that its experimental determination would be of paramount importance.

Christopher Monckton has added a second reply to some comments made by one Schmidt on Surreal Climate but with the ad homs deleted as indicated in the following reproduction sent to me by email today.

Chuck it, Schmidt!

Commentary on a posting by one Schmidt on a website run by him with, inter alios, two of the authors of the universally-discredited UN graph purporting to erase the mediaeval warm period.

Passage, some substantial, were deleted as merely ad hominem where marked +++ and are not considered. The passages which appear to contain what looks as though it were science are reproduced in Roman face. Commentary is in bold face.

“+++ The two pieces [Monckton in the Daily Telegraph, November 5, 2006, and Milloy at http://www.junkscience.com/] both spend a lot of time discussing climate sensitivity +++ . We have often made the case here that equilibrium climate sensitivity is most likely to be around 0.75 +/- 0.25 C/(W/m2) (corresponding to about a 3°C rise for a doubling of CO2). Both these pieces instead +++ show +++ that climate sensitivity must be small (more like 0.2 W/m2, or less than 1°C for 2xCO2). Our previous posts should be enough to demonstrate that this can't be correct, but it [is] worth seeing how they +++ get these answers. +++ . Any temperature change (in°C) divided by any energy flux (in W/m2) will have the same unit and thus can be compared. +++ ”

My article was explicit that the units for what the UN calls “lambda” are degrees C per watt per square metre. If Schmidt dislikes the use of these units, he should take the matter up with the UN.

“Readers need to be aware of at least two basic things. First off, an idealised 'black body' (which gives of radiation in a very uniform and predictable way as a function of temperature - encapsulated in the Stefan-Boltzmann equation) has a basic sensitivity (at Earth's radiating temperature) of about 0.27 °C/(W/m2). That is, a change in radiative forcing of about 4 W/m2 would give around 1°C warming. The second thing to know is that the Earth is not a black body! On the real planet, there are multitudes of feedbacks that affect other greenhouse components (ice alebdo, water vapour, clouds etc.) and so the true issue for climate sensitivity is what these feedbacks amount to.”

Climate feedbacks are of course mentioned in my article. Also, the supporting calculations explicitly state that Earth/troposphere emissivity was taken not as 1 (for a blackbody) but as ~0.6 (for a greybody). Schmidt had seen the calculations, because he mentions the “M climate model”, to which the article did not refer by name. Schmidt knew that the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, often called the “blackbody” equation, is in fact capable of representing not only blackbodies (emissivity 1) that absorb and, by Kirchhoff’s law, emit all radiation, but also whitebodies (emissivity 0) that reflect all radiation, and all greybodies in between. Schmidt’s implication is that the equation applies to blackbodies only. A zoologist lifted this unfortunate implication from Schmidt’s blog without verification and repeated it in a UK newspaper, which was obliged to print an article correcting this and other errors on the following day.

“ +++ . Ignore all the feedbacks - then you will obviously get to a number that is close to the 'black body' calculation. +++ Any calculation that lumps together water vapour and CO2 is effectively doing this +++.”

My article, far from ignoring feedbacks, demonstrated that, even if positive and negative feedbacks cancel, the entire 20th-century mean surface air temperature increment can be accounted for. Also, in the accompanying document the official explanation for the discrepancy between observed and projected temperatures – namely, climate feedbacks – is explicitly stated.

"As we explain in our glossary item, climatologists use the concept of radiative forcing and climate sensitivity because it provides a very robust predictive tool for knowing what model results will be, given a change of forcing. The climate sensitivity is an output of complex models (it is not decided ahead of time) and it doesn't help as much with the details of the response (i.e. regional patterns or changes in variance), but it's still quite useful for many broad brush responses. Empirically, we know that for a particular model, once you know its climate sensitivity you can easily predict how much it will warm or cool if you change one of the forcings (like CO2 or solar). We also know that the best definition of the forcing is the change in flux at the tropopause, and that the most predictable diagnostic is the global mean surface temperature anomaly. Thus it is natural to look at the real world and see whether there is evidence that it behaves in the same way (and it appears to, since model hindcasts of past changes match observations very well).”

The “hindcasts” don’t match observations well: as the article pointed out, there is a large shortfall between observed and projected temperatures, which led the Hadley Centre to divide its projections by three. The article also mentioned evidence on both sides of the case for the oceans acting as a heat-sink to account for the shortfall, and it mentioned Stern’s 84% of projected forcing taken up by the oceans.

“So +++ try dividing energy fluxes at the surface by temperature changes at the surface. +++ , this isn't the same as the definition of climate sensitivity - it is in fact the same as the black body (no feedback case) discussed above - and so, again it's no surprise when the numbers come up as similar to the black body case.”

To avoid points like this, my methodology was identical to that of the models on which the UN relies. I used its definition of radiative forcing, its forcing equation and its all-ghg-to-CO2 ratio, all of which are explicitly quoted in my calculations, which Schmidt has seen.

“ +++ climate sensitivity is an equilibrium concept. It tells you the temperature that you get to eventually. In a transient situation (such as we have at present), there is a lag related to the slow warm up of the oceans, which implies that the temperature takes a number of decades to catch up with the forcings. This lag is associated with the planetary energy imbalance and the rise in ocean heat content. If you don't take that into account it will always make the observed 'sensitivity' smaller than it should be.”

My article explicitly mentioned, took into account, and gave evidence for and against, the ocean notion.

“Therefore if you take the observed warming (0.6°C) and divide by the estimated total forcings

(~1.6 +/- 1W/m2) you get a number that is roughly half the one expected.”

Using the UN’s CO2 forcing equation, and its all-ghg-to-CO2 ratio, I calculated the 1900-1998 forcing from all ghgs as 1.99wm-2. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann equation for the Earth/troposphere system as a greybody with dT 0.6C, I calculated the 1900-1998 forcings from all sources as 1.98wm-2. The two values are near-identical, suggesting either the cancellation of positive and negative feedbacks or the ocean notion, or some combination of the two.

“ +++ If you ignore the fact that there are negative forcings in the system as well (chiefly aerosols and land use changes), the forcing from all the warming effects is larger still (~2.6 W/m2), and so the implied sensitivity even smaller.”

Again, I used the UN’s assumptions, which is that all non-ghg forcings are not as well understood as ghg forcings, and that – by deduction from its table of forcings – all non-ghg forcings broadly self-cancel. This point was clearly explained, and illustrated with the UN’s forcings table, in the supporting calculations, which Schmidt has seen

“Of course, you could take the imbalance (~0.33 +/- 0.23 W/m2 in Hansen et al., 2005) into account and use the total net forcing, +++ ”

I cited Hansen et al. (2006), an update making a similar point.

“And finally, you can +++ imply that all the warming is due to solar forcing.”

My article correctly showed that, if one takes 1900 and not 1750 as the start-date for solar forcings, so as to coincide with the 20th-century temperature rise of 0.6C relied upon by the UN, its own table of solar-irradiance proxies shows a base 20th-century solar TSI increment of some 4wm-2, equivalent to about 0.7wm-2 outgoing at the tropopause after allowing for albedo and disc-to-sphere. This is before adding climate feedbacks, for which the UN’s current multiple of base forcing is approximately 2.7 according to Sir John Houghton in a reply to a question from me on the subject. Thus one multiplies the solar forcing by the feedback coefficient to get forcings plus feedbacks – i.e. 1.9wm-2, which is close to the 2wm-2 actually observed. However, the accompanying calculations, which Schmidt has seen, made it very clear that I had assumed, as a base case, no solar forcing above that mentioned by the UN, and that I had compared that case with others, some of which had considered 20th-century solar forcings greater than those assumed by the UN.

“ +++. Either there are important feedbacks or there aren't. You can't have them for solar and not for greenhouse gases. Our best estimates of solar are that it is about 10 to 15% the magnitude of the greenhouse gas forcing over the 20th Century. Even if that is wrong by a factor of 2 (which is conceivable), it's still less than half of the GHG changes. And of course, when you look at the last 50 years, there are no trends in solar forcing at all. +++ ”

My article explicitly addressed the need to apply climate feedbacks to all forcings and said the UN had not done so. See Solanki and Usoskin (2005) for a conclusion that the Sun has been hotter, for longer, in the past 50 years than in the past 11,400 years. Recent papers apparently disputing this have failed to take account of Solanki’s point that it is the combination of the amplitude and duration of the recent solar activity that is exceptional, not the amplitude alone.

2006-11-17T03:18:00.000-08:00

THE QUIGGIN CONVERSION

Australian Keynesian economist Professor John Quiggin has decided that the debate over global warming is over, and has ceased to bother with any argument contrary to his, from what I assume is his newly acquired, stance of conversion to the secular faith of AGW.

I posted a comment (no 119 I think) but as JQ seems to edit his blog, I adopt a precautionary position and copy it here.

John,

In Science there is no debate about facts - the hypothesis is either true or false.

What part of the sentence I just wrote have you difficulty with?

If it's consensus then it is not science and never has been.

So global warming theories are not science but technically sophisticated religion, for which you have fallen, hook, line and sinker.

2006-11-16T14:33:00.000-08:00

This wasn't gibberish. I got my facts right on global warming

(Christopher Monckton replies to Monbiot's appalling article - and I learnt that George Monbiot is a zoologist, so I was wrong to say he wasn't a scientist in the previous post which I somehow managed to make disappear into the ethernet - I also discovered the Guardian was forced to print Monckton's reply. What is it with the political left that they have to slur and vilify the opponent by ad hominems rather than by ad rem. Is it because they cannot counter an argument with reasoned argument?)

There are many questions about climate change which still need answers, says Christopher Monckton Wednesday November 15, 2006The Guardian

It's a shame that George Monbiot didn't check his facts with me before using his column to describe my two recent Sunday Telegraph articles on climate change as "nonsense from start to finish" (This is a dazzling debunking of climate change science. It is also wildly wrong, November 14). He implies that a classically trained peer ought not to express scientific opinions. It's still a free country, George. And at least I got the science right.

George says my physics is "bafflingly bad" and contains "downright misrepresentation and pseudo-scientific gibberish". Yet he himself nonsensically refers to "lambda" as a "constant" in the Stefan-Boltzmann radiative-transfer equation. Lambda is not a constant, and it's not a term in the equation. (my emphasis)

He wrongly states that the equation only describes "black bodies" that absorb all radiant energy reaching them. No qualified physicist would make such a schoolboy howler. Of course the equation isn't limited to black bodies. Its emissivity variable runs from zero for white bodies to 1 for black bodies. The Earth/troposphere system is a rather badly-behaved grey body with emissivity about 0.6. (my emphasis)

He lifted these errors verbatim from a blog run by two authors of a now-discredited UN graph that tried to abolish the medieval warm period. I'd exposed the graph in my articles. Check your sources, George.

He says I was wrong to reinstate the medieval warm period cited by the UN in 1990 but abolished by it in 2001. A growing body of scientific papers, some of which I cited, shows that the warm period was real, global and up to 3C warmer than now. Check them out, George.

He says I shouldn't have said the Viking presence in the middle ages shows Greenland was warmer than now. The Viking farmsteads in Greenland are now under permafrost, and you can't farm permafrost.

He says I was wrong to say James Hansen told Congress in 1988 that world temperature would rise 0.3C by 2000. Hansen projected 0.25 and 0.45C, averaging 0.35C. Outturn was 0.05C. I fairly said 0.3C and 0.1C. He says my source was a work of fiction by Michael Crichton. It wasn't: it was Hansen's graph.

He says I overlooked the difference between the immediate and delayed temperature response to changing conditions. In fact I expressly addressed it, citing evidence on both sides of the theory that the delayed air-temperature response arises from warming of the oceans.

He says I said the warming effects of carbon dioxide had been "made up". I didn't. I said all were agreed that there was more CO2 around and that we could expect some warming. But there is no consensus on how much.

He says I claimed to know better than the UN's scientists. I'm arrogant, George, but not that arrogant: I said the contrarians were probably a lot closer to the truth than the UN.

Too many facts wrong. Too much argument ad hominem instead of ad rem. Too much ignorance of the elementary physics of radiative transfer and equilibrium temperature.

Still, gie the puir numpty a cigar - at least he spelled my name right.

(Viscount Monckton of Brenchley is a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher.)

Source

2006-11-11T19:51:00.000-08:00

ECORELIGION and ABIOTIC OIL

It seems pretty clear our climate-changers are members of a new religion judging by the resistance to published refutations of BOOP (Biological origin of Petroleum).

The most bizarre statement so far is that the Fischer Tropsche process is occurring at the base of the crust to form hydrocarbons from buried organic matter.

Let's get a few facts straight - generally speaking the geothermal gradient is about 23.5 deg C per km, and higher in volcanic regions. Pressure also increases with depth of burial and sedimentary rocks that do become buried might reach a very low metamorphic grade, perhaps lower greenschist?

Where is oil found? from surface to depths of about 5000 metres and a useful of recovery versus depth is here. This places a limit to which sediments can be buried to, ie about 5ooo metres down. Sedimentary basins can get up to 15km in thickness as shown here.

The Fischer Tropsche method simply combines carbon monoxide and hydrogen using either a nickel or iron catalyst to produce hydrocarbon synthesis at 150 Bar and 700 K (or 427 deg Celsius).

Now 150 Bar represents a depth of burial of about 5km but a temperature of 427 degrees Celsius suggests a depth (using 23.5 deg C/km) of 18 km.

We have a small problem here, because for the FT method to work as believed by some BOOPERS then at this temperature the metamorphic grade is based on mineralogy lower amphibolite. However gas fugacity in the rock is also important and the appearance of key metamorphic index minerals can cause quite some confusion.

In any case if we assume a depth of 150 bar (or about 5km) then assuming the average geothermal gradient of 23.5 per km, implies a temperature of 5*23.5 or 117.5 degrees Celsius, and at that temperature the FT process does not proceed.

Petroleum science solves this problem by invoking hundred of millions of years for the initial organic matter to spontaneously transform into petroleum. This is much like proposing that if we get the feedstock for the FT process and pressurise it to 150 bar but only raise the temperature to 117.5 degrees Celsius and then wait for 100 million years, hydrocarbons will be produced.

This is of the "Do A" then a miracle occurs "creating B" type of logic. The miracle occurs during the 100 millions or more years of burial.

The deepest sedimentary basins are 15 km, and again using the geothermal gradient used above, expected temperatures are 352 degrees Celsius. Pressures? About 4000 bar.

Metamorphically that would place the host rocks into lower amphibolite facies but we don't find oil in metamorphic rocks do we ?

A more complete refutation of BOOP is available at Gas Resources Corp.

2006-11-01T03:58:00.000-08:00

The Measurement of Temperature

When measuring the mass of an object one places the object on a weighing scale and notes the reading. One is there allowed to state that the mass of object "A" is 10 kg, as an example.

When measuring temperature new problems occur - a measurement of temperature is that when two objects are in thermal equilibrium, (meaning no heat moves from one or the other body). Here we have a thermometer (calibrated in the standard manner) and another object whatever that might be, ice-cube or ice berg.

One then might state that the temperature is 0 degrees Celsius, and one might additionally state that the temperature of the ice-berg is 0 degrees Celsius.

But when a climate scientist states the mean temperature tomorrow is going to be 15 degrees Celsius, what physical object is going to be at 15 dC?

An iceberg and an icecube are both at Zero degrees Celsius but the thermal effect of either is quite significant. So simply stating that something is at X degrees Celsius means nothing physically. Temperature is an intensive variable independent of the quantity of material it is associated with.

Something to ponder over while reacting to a Stern Report.

2006-11-01T02:55:00.000-08:00

INTENSIVE VARIABLES!!!!!

Seems few understand the point made here about intensive variables (and your lowly scribe is somewhat busy with editing AIG News and other more important issues at his present place of work to spend too much time explaining the blindingly obvious, so posts here are at home during a spare moment for the forseeable future).

That written, I noticed the hubbub with the Stern Report that was, to put it mildly, somewhat alarmist. What is it with the Anglish of the social democratic hue that mountains need to be made from molehills. Politics? Yes indeed for the looney left, along with the morphed Greenies, seem to have some serious electoral affect, necessitating politicians of both sides to court them.

Joe Cambria was reported in Tim Blair's blog to have actually read the Stern Report and noted the following inanities:

Page 23, chapter four of the Stern Report:

Gender inequalities will likely worsen with climate change.

UPDATE. Climate change will also cause forced marriage.

Then Benny Peiser reported in CCnet OPEC's opinion of the Stern Report:"A hard-hitting report on climate change published by the British government on Monday has no basis in science or economics, OPEC's Secretary-General Mohammed Barkindo said on Tuesday." Source

I am also reading Ludvig Von Mises' "Nation, State and Economy" in which Mises deliberates on the nature of nations.

Why is the English Nation so prone to imperialism of ideological, economic or ecological causes?

Modern geological thought is dominantly that of the English world - the UK, USA, Canada and Australia. Why?

And why has this national group inflicted humanity with the barbarity of socialism? What was it in English culture that allowed Marx and Engels the opportunity to publish their inanities?

And now they want to inflict on us the totally punitive prescriptions of AGW.

Or is it the establishment of an Ecological Totalitarian Dictatorship?

2006-10-30T02:33:00.000-08:00

Intensive variables

HM's man in Puerto Rico has rattled the geoheresy cage yet again so it seems your lowly scribe has still not explained it as well as he ought have. Well Geoheresy thinks its blindingly obvious but as George Orwell wrote last century"

"There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them".

As I have an AIG News to get out nothing will be posted here until I get time and also figure out for once and all how to easily put tabled lists on Blogger.

LH

Update: A colleague telephoned me at work today asking about available drilling rigs, and also mentioned he came across my various web-posts. His conclusion was that probably 99% of the geological profession would agree with my position on AGW.

Probably the main reason why geologists are not involved in the IPCC process - we are too earthy and too cynical to be conned by the bureaucratic BS in the UN process.

2006-10-28T01:38:00.000-07:00

CLIMATE CHANGE OF THE GODS

The ramifications of the recent Danish experimental confirmation that Cosmic Rays affect cloud formation on earth remains poorly reported in the media. Ramifications? Quite because Cosmic Rays are essentially charged particles travelling at or near the speed of light and hit the earth from all directions.

Charged particles? Electricity in other words and indirect confirmation of the theories proposed by the Electric Universe

So what are the ramifications? Quite simple - the earth's climate is dominated by the earth's electrical interaction with its immediate environment. Changes in climate are due to external influences on the earth, whether from fluctuations in the cosmic ray flux or the interaction between the earth and other cosmic bodies as interpreted by Velikovsky from ancient texts from all civilisations.

Steve Milloy writes an excellent summary of the Danish research which is reproduced below:

Blunting the greenhouse panic

A new study provides experimental evidence that cosmic rays may be a major factor in causing the Earth's climate to change. Given the stakes in the current debate over global warming, the research may very well turn out to be one of the most important climate experiments of our time-if only the media would report the story.

Ten years ago, Danish researchers Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen first hypothesized that cosmic rays from space influence the Earth's climate by effecting cloud formation in the lower atmosphere. Their hypothesis was based on a strong correlation between levels of cosmic radiation and cloud cover-that is, the greater the cosmic radiation, the greater the cloud cover. Clouds cool the Earth's climate by reflecting about 20 percent of incoming solar radiation back into space.

The hypothesis was potentially significant because during the 20th century, the influx of cosmic rays was reduced by a doubling of the Sun's magnetic field, which shields the Earth from cosmic rays. According to the hypothesis, then, less cosmic radiation would mean less cloud formation and, ultimately, warmer temperatures-precisely what was observed during the 20th century.

If correct, the Svensmark hypothesis poses a serious challenge to the current global warming alarmism that attributes the 20th century's warmer temperatures to man made emissions of greenhouse gases.

Just last week, Mr. Svensmark and other researchers from the Centre for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish National Space Centre published a paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A-the mathematical, physical sciences and engineering journal of the venerable Royal Society of London-announcing that they had experimentally verified the physical mechanism by which cosmic rays affect cloud cover.

In the experiment, cosmic radiation was passed through a large reaction chamber containing a mixture of lower atmospheric gases at realistic concentrations that was exposed to ultraviolet radiation from lamps that mimic the action of the Sun's rays. Instruments traced the chemical action of the penetrating cosmic rays in the reaction chamber.

The data collected indicate that the electrons released by the cosmic rays acted as catalysts to accelerate the formation of stable clusters of sulfuric acid and water molecules-the building blocks for clouds. [For more details about Mr. Svensmark's hypothesis and experiment, including high-quality animation, visit here]

"Many climate scientists have considered the linkages from cosmic rays to clouds as unproven," said Mr. Friis-Christensen who is the director of the Danish National Space Centre. "Some said there was no conceivable way in which cosmic rays could influence cloud cover. [This] experiment now shows they do so, and should help to put the cosmic ray connection firmly onto the agenda of international climate research," he added.

But given the potential significance of Mr. Svensmark's experimentally validated hypothesis, it merits more than just a place on the agenda of international climate research-it should be at the very top of that agenda.

Low-level clouds cover more than a quarter of the Earth's surface and exert a strong cooling effect. Observational data indicate that low-cloud cover can vary as much as 2 percent in five years which, in turn, varies the heating at the Earth's surface by as much as 1.2 watts per square meter during that same period.

"That figure can be compared with about 1.4 watts per square meter estimated by the [United Nations'] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the greenhouse effect of all the increase in carbon dioxide in the air since the Industrial Revolution," says Mr. Svensmark.

That is, cloud cover changes over a five-year period can have 85 percent of the temperature effect on the Earth that has been claimed to have been caused by nearly 200 years of manmade carbon dioxide emissions. The temperature effects of cloud cover during the 20th century could be as much as 7 times greater than the alleged temperature effect of 200 years worth of additional carbon dioxide and several times greater than that of all additional greenhouse gases combined.

So although it has been taken for granted by global warming alarmists that human activity has caused the climate to warm, Mr. Svensmark's study strongly challenges this assumption.

Given that the cosmic ray effect described by Mr. Svensmark would be more than sufficient to account for the net estimated temperature change since the Industrial Revolution, the key question becomes: Has human activity actually warmed, cooled or had no net impact on the planet?

Between manmade greenhouse gas emissions, land use patterns and air pollution, humans may have had a net impact on global temperature. But if so, no one yet knows the net sign (that is, plus or minus) of that impact.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Svensmark's potentially myth-shattering study has so far been largely ignored by the media. Though published in the prestigious Proceedings of the Royal Society A, it's only been reported-and briefly at that-in The New Scientist (Oct. 7), Space Daily (Oct. 6) and the Daily Express (U.K., Oct. 6).

The media's lack of interest hardly reflects upon the importance of Mr. Svensmark's experiment so much as it reflects upon the media's and global warming lobby's excessive investment in greenhouse gas hysteria.

Now it is fast becoming clear that climate science is scientifically incomplete - climate science does not include the noble profession of geology yet the earth is our principal area of study - most importantly past climates which affect how rocks are eroded and the subsequent development of sedimentary rocks.

Climate science seems to have isolated itself in its inclusive world of computer modelling and dominated by, if the three mean spirited letters to The Age below are any indication, technicians rather than scientists.

But climate science is not the only scientific discipline that suffers from peer-reviewed mediocrity - astronomy is another discipline divorced from physical reality as demonstrated here. Black holes, neutron stars, magnetic fields without corresponding electric current and an obsession with computer modelling similar to that of climate science.

We geologists are also extensively involved in computer modelling but with one crucial difference - we actually test our models by drilling and mining, so we know all the pitfalls and errors that can occur in computer modelling geology and geophysics and avoid them. We therefore recognise that the much vaunted climate models are nothing but superbly programmed instances of BS. Climate it a non-linear chaotic system and any scientist who asserts such systems can be simulated (or modelled) is in thrall of his own specious reasoning.

The worst error climate science has made to date is the computation of the earth's thermal state by the grid cell method used by Jones et al. In effect the addition of "intensive" variables when patently such a mathematical operation is impermissible. Adding temperature is no different to adding percentages (both are intensive variables) and getting the nonsensical result of 120% of some physical property. In terms of temperature its reduces to asserting that adding water at 4 degrees Celsius to another body of water at 10 degrees Celsius will result in a combined result of water at 14 degrees Celsius. Total nonsense physically but quite possible mathematically. It's called innumeracy in polite circles though others might suggest a stronger term.

One fact has also emerged from reading the three letters below - a visceral hatred of geologists and a presumption we are paid mercenaries of the fossil fuel industry. Clearly The Age, a proven left-wing newspaper, has once again shown its lack of balance in not presenting both sides of the climate debate. It implies by the total negative reaction my letter that no other scientists support the climate sceptic position.

Quite wrong. And also quite wrong are the conclusions climate science makes of their primary assumption that producing CO2 into the atmosphere will produce a run-away Greenhouse effect.

NEW MINES ?

One other interesting fact is also emerging - the mining industry's inability to find new "world class mines" whether iron ore, diamond, copper or whatever. What mineral deposits we have found can be shown to be, with some minor exceptions, restricted to the easily accessible outcropping parts of the earth.

Some of us are starting to wonder whether our basic geological theories are wrong and it seems this is so but will be a topic for another time.

2006-10-27T16:46:00.000-07:00

AGW RELIGION

Chatting with Warwick Hughes last night on divers matters (mainly on what is going to happen to the U238 Spot Price next week after a Canadian mine flooding) left us both with the sad conclusion that the lunatics are in charge of the asylum climate wise.

It is clear that the mainstream media (predominantly left-wing) have closed the issue for the debate and judging by the political weather-vanes, mass-belief in AGW (anthropogenic global warming) seems to have taken hold.

Humanity seems to experience episodic panic sessions of impending global catastrophe but few have made the effort to understand the basis of this pervasive fear. The psychoanalyst Immanuel Velikovksy was one who did manage to understand it and his successors continue the work here.

The present obsession with impending doom can be traced back to about 1500 BC when the earth underwent a global climate catastrophe when it interacted with two other planets - Venus and Mars. Much of the Middle East's populations were destroyed and remembered in the stories of the Old Testament. It was in all senses a global climate catastrophe that terminated the Bronze Age.

What Velikovsky recognised was a tendency by humanity to suppress the feelings and experiences of those times by developing a collective amnesia but replayed and acted out in wars and doomsday cults. It culminated in the total rejection of anything of a geological catastrophic nature and an over-emphasis of uniformitarian concepts in which catastrophes were expunged from the scientific paradigm.

Those past catastrophic events are remembered as fantastic myths but which actually have a basis in historical fact. Modern science totally denies this but then turns about face and has no problem believing in future global catastrophes.

It was Velikovsky's contention that it was the denial of past catastrophes that fuels the modern day belief in future catastrophes - a species level collective memory that we still have not come to grips with. It explains the periodic surges of religious fervour, of ending times when humanity is to be punished for its sins. AGW and Islam are but the latest of these self destructive urges humanity inflicts on itself.

But once the mob are in control there is little anyone can do but to step out of the way and let the movement run out of steam. So many now believe in AGW that a critical mass has been achieved and nothing will stop it until it runs out of its self generated impetus.

Hence there remains little point in contradicting a mass belief. After all so many believe in the Resurrection that contradicting it with fact changes nothing. So also AGW it seems.

So the debate is closed as madness has taken over humanity once again.

2006-10-27T04:46:00.000-07:00

THE AGE letters page online I extracted when I did a Google on my name. Good Grief. I reproduce them here unabridged.

Climate science is reliable

Louis Hissink (Letters, 9/1) asserts there are flaws in the Nature paper on species extinctions due to global warming. He claims climate is poorly understood and almost impossible to model.

This outdated statement could not be further from the truth. After decades of research, most climate processes now are well understood and modelled. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment of climate change science and scenarios for the 21st century remain valid, and in many cases have been strengthened by recent research.

Note: In this particular case this comment is quite in error as the recent discovery that cloud formation is dominated by cosmic rays (aka electrical currents).

It is beyond doubt that, since the Industrial Revolution about 200 years ago, greenhouse gas concentrations have been steadily rising due to human activities.

Hissink claims we have had far warmer periods in the recent past, specifically around 1000AD. This is based on scientific papers that have since been discounted as flawed.

Note: This is a barefaced lie - it is a total denial of the Medieval Warming Period for which there is overwhelming historical evidence. Perhaps it's because history is not longer taught in Australian Universities that such erroneus views are held by climate scientists.

In the face of uncertainties acknowledged and discussed by scientists, responding to climate change requires a precautionary and risk-management approach. Being over-cautious might be unnecessarily costly, while ignoring the potential for serious risks could expose many regions to major problems.

Note: After stating "it is beyond doubt" we now about turn and become overly cautious. Good grief.

To minimise risks and optimise benefits we should explore options for both adapting to climate change and for reducing emissions.
Kevin Hennessy,
CSIRO Atmospheric Research, Aspendale

Getter warmer, that's for sure

As a climate scientist, one becomes used to the constant stream of anti-greenhouse rhetoric emanating from the geologists' fossil-fuelled corner, but Louis Hissink's letter must surely take the cake.

Note: His opening sentence merely displays his ignorance. There are no fossil fuels, and are comments are not dominated by fossil fuels. Perhaps the good Dr could cite one scientific experiment in which hydrocarbons (other than methane) have been produced at the pressures and temperatures assumed for the base of sedimentary basins.

The peer-reviewed literature has repeatedly verified the enhanced greenhouse effect (as predicted by models), and all available global temperature records together with associated paleo-climatic data show rapid global warming in the past century.

Note: Really ? Peer reviewed literature is nothing more than group think. Contrary data are ignored.

The great majority of climate research and observations leaves little doubt that global warming is real and is with us now. On current trends we will see temperatures by 2100 about two degrees warmer than at present.

Note: Global Warming as distinct from Anthrpogenic global warming - the two are not synonymous.

These temperatures are likely to be the warmest in the past 4 million years. Any increase in our use of fossil fuels in coming decades will very likely send temperatures even higher, indeed by some scientific estimates by up to six degrees by 2100.

Note: Fossil fuels? Petroleum is not a fossil fuel nor is coal. My correspondent obviously is happy violating the second law of Thermodynamics.

Contrary to ill-informed opinions, climate models are in fact objective mathematical simulations of the atmosphere. These models have reached a level of sophistication that can accurately simulate the large-scale climate variability and change both in the present and in the past.

Note: This is where the BS starts - climate is a non -linear chaotic system and cannot be mathematically modelled despite the specious reasoning in this letter.

While Hissink may be blissfully comfortable with the great unnecessary greenhouse climate change experiment we are currently undertaking, one would hope the great majority of humanity is not.
Dr David Jones,
Ferny Creek

Climate change now too rapid

Louis Hissink's letter debunking global warming and the threatened extinction of one million species reeks of propaganda from the fossil fuel industry. So it is no coincidence that he is a consulting geologist.

He says the earth's climate naturally swings from cool to warm, then asks why we would expect millions of species to die out in the next warming cycle.

The answer is simple. The warming cycle acts over geological time - measured in thousands of years. The current warming cycle fuelled in the main by oil, coal and gas burning, is happening over decades. The environment will change far too fast for many species to adapt.

Increasing concentration of CO2, melting ice caps and glaciers, rising sea levels, record maximum and average temperatures, excessive droughts, floods and cyclones forecast a grim future for the world.

If we keep listening to the vitriol of the oil industry and its supporters, there will be no hope for the future.

Note: Of course the facts are that I am not part of the oil industry nor am I supported by it.

Andrew Arthur,
Malak, NT

2006-10-27T04:01:00.000-07:00

Drought in NSW & Oz?

Warwick Hughes (with whom I often visit and telephone to learn the latest in Oz mining stocks) has an interesting graph of the rainfall at the Cararact Dam in NSW.

There is a fair bit of hubbub over drought in Australia recently, especially in the national press, so it's useful to look at a few basic facts.

One of the most pertinent is the use of cloud seeding to alter the local climate in NSW from WWII (1950 to ?? 1980's). Cloud seeding worked of course, and would be the immediate conclusion to explain the sharp increase in rainfall recorded in 1952 at the Cataract Dam.

A close study of the graph above would also show that since the cessation of cloud seeding in NSW 25 years ago, or so, (and no, one cannot easily find any data on this), rainfall has returned to previous levels.

So yes, we can significantly alter the climate it seems but whether that change is good or bad totally depends on one's political position. This is not science.

2006-10-27T00:54:00.000-07:00

ICESHEET AGE IN ANTARCTIC

There is a general belief that the ice sheet at Antarctica is very old but apparently some of the ice sheets melted some 2000 years ago according to this reference - Pudsey, C.J., and J. Evans. 2001. First survey of Antarctic sub-ice shelf sediments reveals mid-Holocene ice shelf retreat. Geology 29(September):787.

The abstract reads: The retreat of five small Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves in the late 20th century has been related to regional (possibly anthropogenic) climate warming. We use the record of ice- rafted debris (IRD) in cores to show that the Prince Gustav Channel ice shelf also retreated in mid-Holocene time. Early and late Holocene-age sediments contain IRD derived entirely from local ice drainage basins, which fed the section of ice shelf covering each site. Core- top and mid-Holocene (5–2 ka) sediments include a wider variety of rock types, recording the drift of far-traveled icebergs, which implies seasonally open water at the sites. The period when the Prince Gustav ice shelf was absent corresponds to regional climate warming deduced from other paleoenvironmental records. We infer that the recent decay cannot be viewed as an unequivocal indicator of anthropogenic climate perturbation.

Ahem. A massive melting episode 2000 years ago?

2006-10-27T00:30:00.000-07:00

EARTH HEAT - Radioactive Decay or from Electrical Currents?

It is generally assumed that the source of the earth's internal heat is from the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium. Along with heat the decay of these two elements also produces the noble gas Helium but there is a small problem - well actually a big problem - most of the helium is missing according to a paper "A Scarcity of Gas," Science, 292:2219, 2001.

Intelligent Designers would interpret this fact as proof of a youthful earth but alas that's not necessarily the case at all.

So what is the source of the earth's heat since the lack of Helium suggests its not from radioactive decay.

The earth does have a magnetic field and all magnetic fields are created by electric currents, so obviously there is a large electric current operating inside the earth. And if we realise that electric currents in resistive loads such as rocks generate heat, then it is more than likely that the earth's internal heat is being produced by electrical currents rather than from the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium.

And what maintains the earth's electric currents? If we recognise that the earth is an electrically charged sphere spinning in a solar plasma, then the earth is part of a complex electrical circuit with the sun and the rest of the planets in the solar system.

So any fluctuations in the earth's thermal state, (or temperature) would thus be related to possible changes in the solar electrical circuit.

This source of energy, and thus heat, is not factored in any GCM, so there is no surprise here that these GCM's have problems predicting the existing climate let alone future ones.

2006-10-21T03:51:00.000-07:00

AGW THEORY REMAINS UNTESTED

"the CO2 warming theory remains untested and unverified. Beyond wiggle-matching, no experimental evidence has been produced to show that an increase in CO2 can accelerate the water cycle and increase greenhouse warming with water vapour. In fact, ice core evidence from the past shows that it doesn't". (C.f. Dr. Ian Clark, Professor - Geosciences, University of Ottowa, source

One would have thought that the most crucial test of AGW would be to have tested the primary hypothesis detailed above.

That neither Climate Sceptic nor AGW proponent has ever pointed to any experimental data either confirming or refuting that hypothesis forces one to one conclusion - the hypothesis remains untested.

Just as the Biotic Oil theory - no-one has experimentally created petroleum from organic matter at the temperatures and pressures assumed to exist at the bottom of sedimentary accumulations.

So what is going on?

Why are we relying on the art of persuasion and consensus to prove scientific fact instead of experiment?

Professor Phillip Stott has pointed to a change in the "paradigm" here but as any scientific paradigm relies on a consensus, it cannot, from first principles, be called scientific.

A scientific fact is self-evident and need only be disproven by one scientist by experiment. So when a group of scientists decide by consensus that something is "ABC" one can be quite sure that it is not science but self re-enforcing group think.

Anthrpogenic Global Warming is an example of technical group-think.

2006-10-15T06:02:00.000-07:00

Climate - it's the earth stupid.

(Climate is what happens at the interface between the earth and solar plasma it is in - and really has nothing much to do with human effects such as creating plant food, AKA CO2.) Of course if one knows next to nothing about geology and geophysics, one might be tempted to blame humanity for the imagined future climate catastrophe that is thought to occur from the computer modelling of rather incomplete GCM's - ones which have no inputs from geophysical and geological forces. Almost as if the earth were, from a climate science point of view, irrelevant.

Oh and Cosmic rays are nothing more than ions from space hitting the earth. Ions? Charged particles? Electricity might be another word one could use?

The following abstract and summary has been lifted from the latest NCGT newletter which will be available on the internet in two issues time. To read it now you need to subscribe to the newsletter.

TECTONIC FORCING FUNCTION OF CLIMATE - REVISITED:
FOUR ELEMENTS OF COUPLED CLIMATE EVIDENCE OF AN
ELECTROMAGNETIC DRIVER FOR GLOBAL WARMING

[Follow up article to “A Tectonic Forcing Function for Climate Modeling”
in Proceedings of 1996 Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting, Brisbane, Australia, EOS Trans. AGU, Paper # A42A-10. 77 (22):W8]

Bruce LEYBOURNE –Geophysics (Geostream Consulting LLC, Bay St. Louis, MS, USA)
E-mail: leybourneb@hotmail.com
Bill ORR – Climate (Earth Climate Research Institute (ECRI), Parker, CO, USA)
Andy HAAS -Computational science (Dataura Systems DBA, Sierra Vista, AZ, USA)
Giovanni P. GREGORI - Geomagnetics (Istituto di Acustica O. M. Corbino, Roma, Italy)
Chris SMOOT –Seafloor tectonics (Geostream Consulting Advisor, St. Louis, MO, USA)
Ismail BHAT - Himalayan geology (Geostream Consulting Advisor, Srinagar, India) ABSTRACT

Aristotle’s four elements earth, water, air, and fire define the climate systems earth-ocean-atmosphere and solar-wind coupled forces. This elemental interplay revives ancient knowledge for building a new Earth climate model based on observational evidence considering earthquakes’ electrical nature, solar coupling and links to ocean/atmospheric dynamics.

Clustered earthquake swarms at 10-33km depths, which burst pulse over short several day to week periods appear correlated to subsequent Sea Surface Temperature (SST) anomalies and are suggested by the authors to be a driver of global warming phenomena. These shallow (base of the crust) clustered earthquakes found in National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) data sets are compared to National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) SST satellite anomaly data. SST anomaly patterns lag earthquake clusters consistent with studies (Blot, 1976; Blot, et al., 2003) on thermal energy migration rates. Thermal transfer rates above 33km depths were determined at 0.15km/day. Thus heat transfers from 10 km depths in the Adriatic and Mediterranean regions take about 67 days or 2 months which is consistent with approximate timing of subsequent SST anomaly patterns. These SST anomaly patterns overlying earthquake events are hypothesized to be the result of increased heat emission from seafloor volcanic extrusions and/or associated hydrothermal venting. The volcanism is triggered by electrical bursts from the core-mantle-boundary induced by solar coupling to the internal geodynamo. The resulting clustered seismic activity is hypothesized to be electrical in nature and is associated with joule heating at density boundaries near the base of the lithosphere (Gregori, 2000 & 2002). Bottom ocean currents tend to redistribute heat in unpredictable patterns causing a general regional warming or in some cases, such as the Pacific El Nino temperature signatures, thermal plumes appear evident. Adriatic, Aegean, and North African (Algerian) earthquake events appear to be associated with the anomalous heat wave in the 2003 European summer. Thermal energy from the Adriatic earthquake event may have triggered the two week reversal of ocean circulation patterns in the Adriatic. The circulation changed from counter clockwise to clockwise, which could be consistent with an anomalous burst of geothermal flow.

Summary: How can earthquakes induce changes in the global climate? It is hypothesized that shallow clustered earthquake events may induce deep ocean thermal convection by the aforementioned joule heating mechanism, creating magma extrusion and hydrothermal venting. This in affect may overturn ocean circulation patterns on an episodic basis. Magnitudes vary based on electrical energy inputs being generated by inner core jerks or CMBE’s. Episodic changes in ocean temperature and height patterns, along with atmospheric pressure are teleconnected globally to internal geoid, gravity, and magnetic field changes associated with CMBE earthquake generation. This may affect weather patterns, hurricane formation, tornadoes, and ocean/atmospheric circulation.

In the examples illustrated, timing of earthquakes to local warming events and SST anomalies may be much more than coincidence, and are suggested by the authors to drive global warming and ocean circulation reversals. Increases in seismic activity are known to cause increases in venting rates and temperatures along the East Pacific Rise (EPR, Walker, 1988 & 1995) and Juan de Fuca Ridges (Johnson, et al., 2000 & 2001). Increases in seismicity have also been documented to signal an approaching El Nino phase up to six months or more beforehand on the EPR (Walker, 1999). These time lags are consistent with shallow lithosphere thermal transmigration times observed, and these patterns are repeated several times in data sets since 1964 and are unexplained by current geophysical models. Impacts of this discovery and associated research should enhance the understanding of forcing mechanisms within the climate system. A “unified” research approach toward predicting severe weather and global climate change based on tectonic links to the climate system could improve modelling and predictive abilities within the earth sciences. Understanding components of tectonic modulation in earth-ocean-atmosphere-space-coupled Aristotle models should enhance predictive abilities in GCMs. This research may open a new body of science, creating a paradigm shift in the understanding of our planet’s climate, enhancing a multi-disciplinary approach to climate research.

Weblinks:
(1) http://neic.usgs.gov/
(2) http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/climo.html
(3) http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1998/ofr-98-0767/
(4) http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/ocean.html

2006-10-01T02:16:00.000-07:00

WHAT GLOBAL WARMING?

Lubos Motl has picked up on Spencer and Christie's latest lower troposphere data which shows an absence of global warming.

CO2 emissions will rapidly be distributed over the planet so clearly this northern hemispheric warming has nothing at all to do with the earth's atmospheric chemistry. Rather it points to a proliferation of human life in the northern hemisphere - and any proliferation of life has to be a good thing.

One other point I have noticed recently is the ploy by AGW proponents to invoke the moral oblication to reduce emissions. Moral obligation?

Quite clearly AGW is not self-evident - for if it were this blog would not exist, and as a result of not being self evident, AGW proponents need to persuade us with argument that global warming is real. If it were real, no argument would be necessary!

2006-09-17T03:44:00.000-07:00

Tuvalu Facts

Nothing like a few facts to set things straight, is there?

"We want the islands of Tuvalu, our nation, to exist permanently forever and not to be submerged underwater merely due to the selfishness and greed of the industrialised world. This is why we had proposed right from the outset, for the establishment of a legally binding framework to set targets and timeframes for renewable energy given the direct link between energy and climate change

…Tuvalu therefore calls on the Summit to commit additional resources to implement, besides energy & climate change initiatives, other key focal partnership areas such as water & sanitation, transport & communications, health improvement, human resource development & capacity building, tourism & trade".

Address to World Summit on Sustainable Development by the Honourable Saufatu Sopoanga, the Prime Minister of Tuvalu [2002].

I thought the link was between CO2 and Climate Change not energy.

And I was unaware that climate had anything to so with the motives of the industrialised world when the largest assumed production of "energy" (or is it Greeny Gases) will come from the un-industrialised world which Tuvalu is part of.

I especially like the dream of the Honourable Saufatu Sopoanga, the Prime Minister of Tuvalu - "We want the islands of Tuvalu, our nation, to exist permanently forever".

In a geodynamically active world where areas once temperate become arctic, where the Greeks lived in Alexandria 8 metres under the sea in the Nile Delta, where Aceh was rendered asunder by a mere tsunami....

Stupid is, as stupid does.

2006-09-16T16:15:00.000-07:00

PEAK OIL CLAPTRAP

As is common during periods of credit expansion when the various Reserve Banks increase the money supply, prices rise, oil prices being no exception. And during those times Peak Oil theories are resurrected by the doomer-gloomers to prove that we are running out of oil.

One of the more interesting comments made by the Oil-Doubters is that of inventory irregulatories :

OPEC's "Spurious Revisions" AKA "Cooking the Books"

During the 1980s, several OPEC countries issued some rather "interesting" upwardly revised estimates of their proven reserves of petroleum. Ron Swenson, proprietor of the website HubbertsPeak.com explains:

Many OPEC countries have been announcing reserve

numbers which are frankly very strange. Either their

reported reserves remain the same year after year,

suggesting that new discoveries exactly match production,

or they have suddenly increased their reported reserves by

unfeasibly large amounts.

Source (You have to scroll down to find it)

On the 5th September it was reported that Royal Dutch Shell discovered a massive deep oil find in the Gulph of New Mexico (source) which could increase US oil reserves by 50%.

Now if current oil OPEC oil reserves are magically increased together with new oil finds being discovered 5 miles down, then the view of the HubbertsPeak site, that the oil producers are cooking the books might be completely wrong.

Instead we might consider the Russian-Ukrainian theory of Abiotic oil, popularised by the late Tommy Gold, but more accurately summarised here, then it is quite possible that Gold's deep hot biosphere is continually producing hydrocarbons which are continually replenishing the existing OPEC oil fields.

In fact recent statements made by oil industry executives confirm that we are not running out of oil and are possibly awash in it.

So why are oil prices so high (along with commodities). Apart from the Chinese and future Indian demand for raw materials, we must also look to the increase in the money supplies produced by the various central banks.

2006-09-09T18:45:00.000-07:00

WHY LIBERALS ARE FASCISTS
Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
Thursday, 31 August 2006

(I sourced this viewpoint from here and Australian readers should realise that "Liberal" is a US label for socialist, here members of the ALP, Democrats and Greens, among others).

Doesn't it seem odd that the kids who started the 60s anti-establishment protest riots on college campuses with the Free Speech Movement (Berkeley, 1964) are the college professors or politicians today who most vehemently suppress free speech among their students or constituents in the name of political correctness?

How can this be? How can worshipping at the shrines of Diversity, Tolerance, and Multiculturalism result in trials and expulsions for students, or jail for citizens, who express ideas with which the worshippers are not in agreement?

The answer is the intimate connection between Subjectivism and Fascism.

The core metaphysical assertion of liberals is that there are no absolute truths, factually or morally. What's true for you may not be true for me, it's all a matter of perspective, who are you to say what is right or wrong, true or false.

Truth is a matter of subjective opinion, it is relative to the values of different people. This belief, which lies at the very center of the liberal view of the world, is known as Subjectivism or Relativism.

It's opposite, Objectivism, the assertion that there are in fact absolute truths, both moral and factual about the nature of reality regardless of anyone's opinion or desires, horrifies liberals. They think such an assertion leads straight to tyranny and fascism.

Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), the founder of Fascism as a political movement (after the Latin fasces, the bundle of rods used by Rome to symbolize strength through unity) vehemently disagreed.

In his 1921 essay Diuturna (The Lasting, that which endures), Mussolini made it clear that moral relativism was his rationale for Fascism:

If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and those who claim to be the bearers of objective immortal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, we Fascists conclude that we have the right to create our own ideology and to enforce it with all the energy of which we are capable.

Liberals follow Mussolini's conclusion to the letter. Preaching tolerance, they have no tolerance for anyone's opinions but their own. Anyone they disagree with they call �racist' or �sexist' or �homophobic' or some other denigration.

Liberal intolerance, of course, goes way beyond mere disagreement and name-calling. They want to criminalize the beliefs and actions of those with whom they disagree.

They succeeded this week in California. On Tuesday (August 29), Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law (SB 1441 sponsored by a lesbian actress turned state senator, Sheila Kuehl) specifically requiring "any program or activity that...receives any financial assistance from the state" to support transsexuality, bisexuality, and homosexuality or lose state funding.

The Democrat-run California Legislature is passing an entire raft of such fascist laws. Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuez made it bluntly clear: "Our purpose is to outlaw traditional perspectives on marriage and family in the state school system."

He and his fellow Democrats have the Orwellian nerve to call their legislative fascism "tolerance education."

Liberal "tolerance" is forcing people at the point of a gun to believe and act as liberals demand. You don't get more fascist than that.

California's Attorney General, Bill Lockyer, is, however, trying. He is actually trying to criminalize disagreement on "global warming."

In his lawsuit against such prominent scientists as MIT Professor of Meteorology Richard Lindzen and Harvard astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas, Lockyer accuses them of being "climate skeptics," who are playing "a major role in spreading disinformation about global warming."

Until recently, Lockyer was positioning himself to run for California governor, challenging Schwarzenegger. They could have had a debate as to which one is more fascist than the other. (No one should be shocked by Schwarzenegger, by the way. He married a Kennedy!)

The only way to combat liberal lunacy like that on exhibit in California is to attack it at its source: liberal subjectivism leading directly to fascism.

It will do no good for liberals to bleat about religious absolutists, be they Christian or Moslem, who believe they have a right to force people into behaving as they want because that's what the Bible or the Koran says.

That's a red herring. Don't let liberals switch the issue. The issue here is the fundamental contradiction in their world-view, not anyone else's. Liberals cannot argue for relativism in morality and claim there are no moral truths, then claim their moral values magically have more validity than anyone else's.

When you argue there are no objective moral truths, the only way to settle a moral disagreement is at the point of a gun. Mussolini understood this, and he had the intellectual honesty to admit it.

Liberals understand it too, but they don't want to admit it, least of all to themselves. It still makes them fascists, nonetheless.

Demonstrating how and why liberals are fascists is their Achilles' Heel. Name-calling is a liberal specialty, and they are fond of calling their opponents "fascists." But using reason and logic to expose how they are demonstrably in fact fascists can be effective.

Combat liberalism by publicly exposing it as fascism. California would be a good place to start.

2006-09-09T01:59:00.000-07:00

Blogger has moved to a new server and service.

So things will be interesting for the next few weeks and blogging will be stopped until it is all sorted.

:-0

2006-08-13T02:57:00.000-07:00

More Global Warming Bulldust

I made the mistake of clicking on the Firefox webbrowser "latest headlines" and my eye was caught by " Greenland melt 'speeding up"article.

(Yes dear reader, my main computer now is an Apple Mac-mini and UNIX).

Essentially the method used to determine the mass of ice on Greenland is to note changes in the earth's gravity field as measured by the GRACE satellite.

Gravity? First identified by Sir Isaac Newton and defined by him, so we are told, gravity is the force exerted on matter by the presence of other matter. The force obeys the inverse-square lur (Sorry Clouseau) and mighty be it.

Measure gravity from a satellite? Yes, quite easy providing one has accurate positional data. An extra problem is the absolute quantum of the measurements and here we are dealing with micro-fractions of a number and instrument sensitivity and accuracy crucial.

In any case the article linked above is silly, probably because the author is a BBC journalist.

Consider "But once the influence of the atmosphere and the oceans is removed, the variations mostly reflect changes in the mass of ice sheets and of water stored in the ground."

Huh?

Atmospheric mass is measurable but inexplicable. OK, assume their procedure is valid.

Oceans? No argument there.

From which they conclude that measured mass changes are due to changes in the mass of ice sheets and water in the ground.

Problem.

No one knows what the mass of water in the ground is.

So the rest of the report is bulldroppings.

2006-08-13T02:01:00.000-07:00

Velikovsky was right after all

Velikovsky dated the Hebrew Exodus at 1450 BC plus or minus a few years. Now we learn from the latest research that the Exodus occurred at 1500 BC and to be shown on the Discover Channel and scheduled to air on August 20 at 7:00 p.m. Central time. The Director is Simcha Jacobovici. Executive Producer is James Cameron, Director of Titanic. A summary of the previous dates is available here where dates range from 1440 BC to 1290 BC.

In 1950 Immanuel Velikovsky wrote a book which caused an enormous unedifying reaction from science - Worlds in Collision. It described how some 3500 years ago the earth experienced a global catastrophe when it and Venus as well as Mars had near collisions. Venus was interpreted as a recent planet ejected from Jupiter (or Saturn depending on whose interpretation of mythology one accepts) and universally feared by our ancestors. (It might of interest to note that after this "event" most of our ancestors became Venus or planet worshippers and it was only when the Hebrews invented the abstraction of God that paganism was replaced with modern religious practices).

What prompted the writing of Worlds in Collision was Sigmund Freud's publication "Moses and Monotheism" in which Freud suggested that Moses wasn't Jewish. Velikovsky, also a pyschoanalyst, found that strange and set about on research to disprove Freud's thesis by looking at the ancient Jewish and Egyptian texts. Strange indeed when both were Jewish and one insisted that Moses was not Jewish, already.

Velikovsky found some unusual issues especially the fact that at Moses' time in history, and the well documented escape of the Jews from Egyptian bondage, as told in the old testament and rabbinical sources, as the Exodus had no parallel documentation in assumed contemporary Egyptian records. That is, the assumed Egyptian documents did not recognize the Hebrews or Jews, nor did those records mention any plagues or other events in the Hebrew documents.

What Velikovsky did find was an obscure papyrus dated some 800 years earlier that seemed to describe similar natural events recorded by the Hebrews. From this Velikovsky decided that either Egyptian history was artificially expanded or Jewish history was artificially compressed. Given two unambiguous chronological events, Exodus and the arrival of the Macedonian Alexander into Egypt at 330 BC, Velikovsky started to compare the ancient histories. The results of that work was published in various books not detailed here but essentially Egyptian history was expanded. A sticking point with this interpretation is that Velikovsky was recognized as a chronological fundamentalist in that he could not accept any change to Hebrew chronology because there is some solid evidence that this chronology is also problematical, if Professor Gunnar Heinsohn's work is an indication.

Never the less, it now seems that the Hebrew Exodus occurred at about the 15th Century BC.

Velikovsky made other predictions about the physical state of Venus and Jupiter and has been proven correct on those too, so one suspects that we are in for another paradigm change in history.

I am off bush for three weeks so dispatches will cease until I return. I have also had to reluctantly stop writing for Henry Thornton as my present duties as editor of AIG News, as well as the responsibilities associated with full time work in mineral exploration demands too much of my time and attention. It is, after all, a well demonstrated fact that males of the species have difficulty multi-tasking!

2006-08-11T16:43:00.000-07:00

Some Airy Thoughts

Hydrogen (H2) is a gas that when present as 100% as a gas phase is rather explosive when ignited with a electric spark. Automobile lead-acid batteries tend to release H2 when being charged, hence the admonition to do it in a well ventilated area and not to create sparks. I write from personal experience!

Yet when H2 is in the air we breathe it does not explode at all nor do we assume that a single molecule of H2 is 'exploding'. This is because H2 is absent in the air as a discrete gas phase with unique properties which identify it as H2. As air does not spontaneously explode when an electric spark passes through it, we assume that h2 has become somewhat inactive in a physical sense. And if it is "exploding" at the atomic level (combining with O2 to form water) then how would we know anyway?

CO2 as a 100% phase has also unique properties that are well documented and not denied. It has a high specific heat too. But like H2 when present in minute quantities in air, its physical properties as a gas phase also become irrelevant.

It is the the physical properties of air that are important in climate studies, not its chemical composition. This suggests that CO2 as 0.04% by volume has no effect on air's thermal properties.

2006-08-11T04:31:00.000-07:00

BLACKHOLES of the Astronomical kind

The science of astronomy has defined a black hole as a region in 3 dimensional space having an infinite density, or, in some of the more lucid descriptions available on the internet, a region in space where the density is so great that no physical object can escape from it.

The concept of a black hole is developed from Einstein's theory of relativity which recently has been shown to be incorrect from a review of the famous Michelson-Morley experiement aimed at proving, or disproving, the existence of the aether (Stephan J. G. Gift, "The Relative Motion of the Earth and Ether Detected, Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 20, No2, pp 201-214, summer 2006).

What is a black hole? Mathematically it is defined by the calculus when the well known relationship of D (density) = M (mass) / V (volume) when either M --> infinity or V --> 0.

As Blackholes are considered essentially "points" in 3-D space, we accept that the volume of the black hole is very small.

Point in space? No such physical object. A point is a mathematical abstraction` required by the requirements of relativity theory.

So I was somewhat amused to read the following email from a fellow traveller:

"Yesterday I attended a meeting of the Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics at my neighborhood observatory, Mount Stromlo, a mere 10 minutes drive from home. The subject was "Gravitational Wave Detection." The experience was surreal, hearing top astronomers blithely talking about coalescing black holes and neutron stars with the familiarity of everyday experience.

However, we are talking about hypothetical objects that defy the principles of physics (e.g. "singularities") doing non-physical things (how do you "merge" two black holes when it takes an infinite amount of time to "cross" an event horizon?) and giving rise to hypothetical waves that travel at the speed of light - when it is easily shown that gravity operates at near-infinite speed.

About half of professional astronomers think that a gravity wave will be detected within the next 10 years.

It is like observing a group of medieval scholars discussing how many angels could fit on the head of a pin.

Lewis Carroll would be proud of them."

The same sort of intellectual argument also can be identified with global warming science.

2006-08-09T05:33:00.000-07:00

250,000 Geoscientists agree

2006 is the year of the planet and the IUGS has released a short handout "Earth and Life - origins and diversity" which includes the image below.

Note the rising increase in atmospheric oxygen and decreasing CO2 over geological time and that to make CO2, carbon has to bond with 2 oxygen atoms, so the plots of O2 and CO2 are interesting enough in themselves. (I expect the Adhominator and his mentor, Professor John Quiggin, will offer specious rebuttals).

Note that the mass species extinctions have no obvious relationship to CO2.

Note that average global temperature has little correlation with CO2 content.

After all if 250,000 geoscientists concur.......

More information can be obtained here

2006-08-08T05:13:00.000-07:00

ECONOMICAL NONESCIENCE

I lifted this from John Quiggin's recent post-

"While economists in general are trained to evaluate all arguments sceptically, there is one big exception - Free Trade. Most economists are wedded to the idea of free trade to the point that many will routinely reject the results of mainstream economic analysis in favour of logically incoherent claims about dynamic effects, ‘cold showers’ and so on.

For a variety of reasons, I apostasised from the free-trade religion early on and, for a while, became an outright protectionist in reaction. Now, I don’t have a preconceived position either way, and try to assess the issues on their merits.

One point that comes out of any neoclassical economic analysis is that, at tariff rates below around 10 per cent, the (traditional trade-theoretic) benefits associated with a reduction to zero are trivially small. This is because the welfare loss associated with a tax are proportional to the square of the tax rate, and the square of 0.1 is 0.01 (1 per cent)."

"While economists are trained to evaluate..." means that economists don't think.

Robots are trained.

The rest of Quiggin's discourse has as a consequence to be dismissed.

Postscript:

Of course the black market, the cash economy, the economy which does not exist, is another proof that Quiggin quaffles quack!

What economist has been taught, er sorry, trained that theory!

2006-08-06T01:44:00.000-07:00

MWP - Europe hot - Central Pacific Cool - a paradox?

An interesting debate is going on Steve McIntyre's climate audit blog concerning the apparent fact that during the MWP the central Pacific was cool while Greenland etc was warmer.

This raises the interesting problem of a high latiutude country like Greenland got warmer while the central Pacific region, on the equator, became cooler.

It bears pointing out too that then Greenland had an ice-free northern coast that today remains icebound all year round, (Thanks to Doug Hoyt for this), so it is pretty clear for Greenland at least, the LIA is still with it.

So how can this paradox be resolved?

Depends on what intellectual tools one has and to which fools you listen to but if one careens the earth slightly putting Greenland closer to the equator, (putting England even closer) then that rotational shift would cause the central Pacific region to go to higher latitudes, and thus into cooler climes. I am emphatically not describing a movement of tectonic plates but a physical careen of the earth, by the way.

So let's assume that during the MWP period England was where Spain is now, and Greenland where England is now for the sake of argument. During the same period the Central Pacific area would probably be where Japan is now.

And then something happened to the earth to cause the LIA.

The CHOSON annals link the LIA with unprecedented meteoric activity and other global climate events which cause concern. Gavin Menzies points to the collapse of the Ming Dynasty at that time, the Moa became extinct in New Zealand and the Europeans were grappling with a calendar that was inaccurate.

Is it possible that the earth passed through a meteorite swarm and from the electromagnetic interaction between it and the swarm had its axis of rotation slighltly shifted, moving Greenland to its present latitudes, and the Central Pacific towards the equatorial regions?

It's best to demonstrate this using a standard geographical globe at home since I cannot really manage to show it graphically here, relying on my ability to describe something I understand in three dimensions.

This explanation of a careening earth can deal with the paradox of having Europe in a more temperate region and the Central Pacific in a cooler latitude during the MWP and in different climate regions today as evidenced by the data.

This explanation is only plausible if the principles of the Electric Universe are accepted as accurate - it cannot be explained by the present Newtonian gravitational interpretation of the cosmos and solar system. In this system climate changes are due to changes in the chemical composition of the earth's atmopshere or changes in the interaction between the sun and earth, the "solar" effect.

(I might add that the earth is closer in shape to a perfect sphere than a billiard ball, so any arguments based on the earth having an equatorial bulge resisting any axial translation of its rotation won't wash).

Things become all the more interesting if we accept that the solar system and cosmos is an electrical system dominated by plasma and electrical forces some 10E39 more powerful than gravitational forces.

Perhaps past climate changes were also the result of the earth being suddenly moved to a new axis of rotation.

I might add these ideas are not new and are found in the heretical texts. I can only lay claim to suggesting that the LIA might have been caused by a slight change in the earth's orientation around its celestial axis. After all what were the Ming Chinese doing surveying the earth at the time as suggested by the book 1421? Re surveying it because the old astronomical data on which the calendars were based were out of whack?

CLIMATE PROBLEMS

2006-08-02T04:00:00.000-07:00

One of the interesting aspects of global temperature aggregation to determine the global mean temperature is the use of grid cells defined by units of latitude and longitude and averaging the mean temperature readings within each grid cell. It is a well established procedure in climate science but that does not mean it is correct, for physically what does a grid cell represent? (Geoscientists have a special interest in this type of calculation because it is no different to the protocols and methodologies used in mineral ore-reserve estimations).

Put quite simply, the existing method of mean temperature aggregation is fundamentally wrong. A grid-cell defined by, say, 5 degrees of latitude and longitude, is not a physical object but an abstract concept used in navigation or map creation. As a grid cell is therefore physically a non-existent object it cannot have a temperature at all. So what does the aggregated temperature relate to? Simply a group of numbers on a 2D polygon defined on an imaginary spherical surface, (which while defined in 3D still remains a surface, and surfaces cannot have a temperature).

This means physically that the mean global temperature computed this way is scientifically meaningless. It is similar to aggregating gold assays by ignoring the density and volume of the samples which, as geoscientists know from hard experience from the mining of ore-bodies whose grades are based on this method of aggregation, are usually over estimated. Little wonder then that climate science ends up with a warming earth when using such aggregation methods.

Another problem with global warming is the assumption of CO2 as an independent physical phase in the atmosphere that affects its thermal balance, (the basis for the assumption that CO2 is a problem in the first place).

The earth’s atmosphere is comprised of three principal phases – a gas comprised chemically of N2, O2 and here 0.04% by volume CO2, a liquid phase of water as suspended droplets, and a solid phase of airborne particulates or aerosols.

Physically the gas phase is air and the thermal properties of air important, not that of CO2. CO2 as a physical phase does not exist in the atmosphere since no where are any two CO2 molecules in contact with each other to allow the assumption that CO2 is a physically independent object and thus capable of being treated as an independent factor.

Global warming, or Climate Change, is a specious concept.

2006-05-20T18:09:00.000-07:00

LHCrazyworld Closed

This is a new blog that replaces LHCrazyworld which was closed on the 18th May 2006.

It had served its purpose in light of the collapse of the Kyoto Protocol, the collapse of the EU carbon trading market and the fact that Canada is joining the AP6.

Some semblance of rationality has returned to the political sphere as a result of the political left losing electoral credibility, but it will be shortlived until the next time because the mob, having a short memory, will be mesmerised yet again by the left's specious policies only to re-elect them when times get better, proving history does repeat itself from humanity forgetting its past mistakes.

This blog will present new ideas in geoscience while also, when opportunity arises, pointing out instances of junkscience which Junkscience does not cover.

I will be too busy for the next 6 weeks on other matters so leave you with some cartoons to ponder over.

Cartoon Credits to Non Sequitor