The road to Hell is trod by (reduced) Carbon Footprints

The linked article on “The Low-Carbon Economy” is distressing to me, as is anything with the potential to mess up my life.  Not being of the hair-shirted climate change self-flagellate persuasion, I have not bought into the “climate change” dogma prevalent today, and therefore look very closely at anything coming from “experts” (I’m sick of inverted commas already in the first paragraph) that has the potential to affect me.

The Economy is a nebulous phantasm at the best of times, as is anything which deals with abstracts. The abstracts here are trillions of units of fiat currencies, the default reserve currency still (at time of writing) the $US.  Whatever it is, billions and trillions of these notional credit instruments flash electronically around the globe daily, and somehow maintain everyone’s confidence that we know what we’re doing. 

2008 was the most recent time the wheels came off (or the bubble burst, choose your metaphor) but you can expect some sort of serious economic reverse roughly every decade.  I understand in general how this works, but one of the things I understand very definitely is that people supposedly much smarter than me use financial instruments of their own clever devising to manipulate these money flows for their own benefit.

This entire Sci-Am article is a study in rent-seeking, which sums up the entire Carbon Trading and Green Energy industries as far as I can tell.   As I’ve said many times before, a lot of these Greens are really Watermelons (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) and have ridden this bandwagon for all it’s worth as a means of wealth distribution from First to Third World countries.  An example:

Using green bonds and modified insurance portfolios
If the top financial layer includes big institutional investors and banks, then a second tier of untapped finance lies with insurance companies extending policies to the most vulnerable populations in the developing world.

Through the use of mobile phone-based services and micro-credit institutions, a great deal of insurance has already been extended to what Jim Roth of LeapFrog Investments calls the “emerging consumer.” Over the past eight years, the social investment fund has backed a portfolio of companies selling insurance products totaling $40 million, of which $33 million went to low-income consumers in Africa and Asia.

“It’s an optimistic story,” said Roth, noting that the vast majority of those consumers had never owned insurance before.

“A key difference is they have less money. So the kinds of insurance policies they can buy tend to have lower premiums and less benefits.”

Governments in the developing world are also now pooling their resources into sovereign insurance funds that make payouts for climate adaptation programs, said Fatima Kassam of the African Risk Capacity Insurance Co., a specialized agency of the African Union. Niger received a $25 million payout last year, having paid in with a $3 million premium. “Governments are coming together to change the model on disaster management,” said Kassam.

Let’s be clear about one thing to explain why I’m so bent about this sort of foolishness.  The “insurance” is for climate change adaptation/mitigation.  Since “climate change” can mean literally anything at all that weather/climate does, no traditional insurance company (i.e. one which intends to stay in business) would write policies like this. This is very thinly-disguised wealth transfer.

 

The problem is that despite quantitative easing and no physical standard for our notional currencies, “wealth” is a zero-sum game; the wealth has to come from someone.  I am NOT a redistributionist; “law and order Libertarian” is probably closer to the mark, so I object to beggaring ourselves to make African kleptocrats richer.   

Green energy policies in the UK dramatically raised electricity prices as subsidized (to the producers) wind projects were forced into the market. Although this is now easing, it took clawing back the policies that started it, and similar things have happened in other places too.  Coal is the big thing to hate these days (Obama leading the pack) but it has the advantage of being cheap and abundant.  It’s also dirty, but modern scrubbing tech cleans it up quite acceptably, at least as long as you don’t consider CO2 to be pollution. 

This is where activists end up eventually, when all of the low-hanging fruit has been picked.  Back in the 1960s and 70s pollution was a real problem, and people rightly took action to clean it up. With the sulfur dioxide (acid rain) dealt with in the 1980s, North America and Europe ran out of serious, widespread environmental pollution sources.  Coincidentally or not, this is right when Global Warming popped on the radar as the next apocalypse.  Note that we (and both ice caps) are still here, despite all of the doom-laden pronouncements from 1988 onward.  Beware the “green intentions” of any climate lobby, and follow the money to see why people are really doing what they're doing.

There's a 'nac for that

Environment Canada this spring predicted a really hot summer. Living in the area predicted to be affected by this, I can say that they were right out to lunch, it being cool and wet, but mostly cool. They have now predicted a mild winter; I am sceptical to say the least. The Farmer's Almanac has come out with this prediction, which on past performance and personal observation I am more inclined to believe:

“It’s going to be colder, it’s going to be snowier … it’s not pretty.”

According to the almanac, central Canada, in particular, is expected to experience winter’s nasty bite.

“From Calgary to Quebec, we’re going to be up to our neck,” Burnett said.

One of the few exceptions will be southwestern Ontario, which will be cold, but with below-normal snowfall.

Burnett said forecasts show that while Toronto and the surrounding region will experience a deep-freeze, it’s going to be drier this winter, with “fluffier snow.”

Atlantic Canada, meanwhile, is set for a milder, but wet winter season, according to the almanac.

‘Baby lamb’ of summers next year

It may seem far in the future, but warmer temperatures will return – eventually.

Summer in Canada is expected to be milder and wet, with hotter and drier temperatures concentrated in Western Canada.

“Nothing really spectacular in the summer,” Burnett said

 

I don't of course know their exact method of generating these, but I do know that sunspot activity plays a significant part. Let's take a look at things we know to be true:

• We had a long, cold winter last year with the ice not melting completely on Lake Superior well into June
• During that winter, solar activity was at "the most anemic in 100 years,"

The sun is what keeps us alive, but there is a narrow range of variability in which we will be able to survive, and an even slimmer one in which we will thrive. Cold long winters mean a lot of things, foremost is shorter growing seasons, but they are also the way that ice ages start. The current "Climate Change" shibboleth permeates government agencies and the media, even though it's increasingly obvious to the impartial observer that they have no idea what they are talking about. This I feel explains the unsubstantiated wishful thinking which produces a relentless series of erroneous predictions.

Yes' I'm contrasting this with the Old Farmer's Almanac, another set of predictions, but the Almanac has a much better success rate than any of the expensive computer climate models the Climate Change crowd keep relying on. Really though, as soon as it changed from Global Warming (which we could all understand) to Climate Change, it ceased to have any linkage to what it was all about (CO2) in the first place.

If CO2 has the impact Al Gore etc. claimed, the constant upward march of the CO2 concentration over the years would have been linked to an increase in global temperatures as less of the sun's energy escaped back to space. That has not happened, nor have all of the icecaps and glaciers melted away with attendant catastrophic (to our costal cities) rise in sea level. What has happened is that data and media have been manipulated to make it look like at least some of that has happened, but it simply has not been getting appreciably (if at all) warmer out here in the real world.

So what? Forced to make a choice, I'll put my money on the Almanac's model, since it makes sense and because they don't have an agenda (that I can see or think of). In the end we'll see what we get and the computers have no hope of keeping up with reality. Be ready to bundle up, and get that snow blower tuned. I won't cry if I'm wrong on this one, but I'll be prepared.

Plus le Climate Change, plus c'est la meme chose

I haven't been much into the Global Warming/Climate Change wars of late, but it's always on my radar.  I have some very real concerns about the climate changing, but they all involve things getting colder.  Even on the equator you can grow food, not so much in the polar and sub-polar zones.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s most accurate, up-to-date temperature data confirm the United States has been cooling for at least the past decade. The NOAA temperature data are driving a stake through the heart of alarmists claiming accelerating global warming.

Responding to widespread criticism that its temperature station readings were corrupted by poor siting issues and suspect adjustments, NOAA established a network of 114 pristinely sited temperature stations spread out fairly uniformly throughout the United States. Because the network, known as the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN), is so uniformly and pristinely situated, the temperature data require no adjustments to provide an accurate nationwide temperature record. USCRN began compiling temperature data in January 2005. Now, nearly a decade later, NOAA has finally made the USCRN temperature readings available.

According to the USCRN temperature readings, U.S. temperatures are not rising at all – at least not since the network became operational 10 years ago. Instead, the United States has cooled by approximately 0.4 degrees Celsius, which is more than half of the claimed global warming of the twentieth century.

 Of course this isn't news to anyone who isn't blinded by Luddite anti-Western dogma, as it has most certainly not been getting warmer for most of us on the ground for quite a while.  I recall (subjective of course) a time in the mid to late '90s when I did feel it was getting warmer in the summer, particularly the intensity of the sun.  I have felt rather the opposite of that for most of the time since then, certainly this century, and this involves travel to other parts of the world.

This wasn't lost of the powers that be in the Warmist camp, hence the "Climate Change" re-branding.  I would argue that was the beginning of the end for them, as "climate change" is meaninglessly vague and attempts to equate literally any climate event with the increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.

The one thing everyone agrees with is that CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing, largely due to human activity.  From there things go off the rails and it gets pretty-much ideological.  Appeals to "science" are common from the Climate Change intelligentsia, but let's look at empirical (testable) effects of CO2.

First, it is half-assed (in scientific parlance) as a Greenhouse Gas (GHG), far outpaced by water vapour and methane.  Specifically, its' IR (heat) absorption window (wavelengths) is overlapped by that of water vapour.  What that means is as Freeman Dyson (a man much smarter than me and likely you) said, CO2 will have most if not all of its' GH effect in cold, dry areas.

"Aha!  That means the ice caps will melt and the sea level will rise!"  Except that that hasn't happened.  

World's not gonna end just yet, Chicxulub willing...

I loved P.J. O'Rourke's book All the Trouble in the World , and this Wired article is more in that same vein:

Religious zealots hardly have a monopoly on apocalyptic thinking. Consider
some of the environmental cataclysms that so many experts promised were
inevitable. Best-selling economist Robert Heilbroner in 1974: “The outlook for
man, I believe, is painful, difficult, perhaps desperate, and the hope that can
be held out for his future prospects seem to be very slim indeed.” Or
best-selling ecologist Paul Ehrlich in 1968: “The battle to feed all of humanity
is over. In the 1970s ["and 1980s" was added in a later edition] the world will
undergo famines—hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in
spite of any crash programs embarked on now … nothing can prevent a substantial
increase in the world death rate.” Or Jimmy Carter in a televised speech in
1977: “We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by
the end of the next decade.”

Predictions of global famine and the end of oil in the 1970s proved
just as wrong as end-of-the-world forecasts from millennialist priests. Yet
there is no sign that experts are becoming more cautious about apocalyptic
promises. If anything, the rhetoric has ramped up in recent years. Echoing the
Mayan calendar folk, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday
Clock one minute closer to midnight at the start of 2012, commenting: “The
global community may be near a point of no return in efforts to prevent
catastrophe from changes in Earth’s atmosphere.”

I particularly like Ridley's description of humanity as a "moving target" and strongly encourage you to read the whole article.

A lack of historical (even recent) perspective bedevils efforts to compete with the hectoring Luddites who would hold us back. The "climate change" crowd for example will ignore all "inconvenient" information which would detract from their agenda of dismantling our technological society. Points of No Return are routinely passed without undue incident, increasingly destructive weather events are taken out of context of the development which has occur ed in that area since the last "worst" hurricane, flood, tornado, etc.

I'm picking on the Warmists again, but in this case it's because they encompass all of the goals of Greenpeace, The Club of Rome and all the rest of them, e.g. there are too many people, and bundle that with the dogma of CO2 as the worst thing since dioxin. The problem with all of these people is that they only have influence in First World countries, places where the birth rate has already plummeted, in most cases below replacement rate and what industry that remains has cleaned up far past where it was even during the Acid Rain era of the 1980s.

The hope of this planet to absorb the ongoing population growth of the Third world and the pollution of the Second is the technological base of the First. Technological advances require prosperity, prosperity requires not being straightjacketed by red tape and excessive taxation. If the world does end due to something less catastrophic than the sun exploding, it will probably be something that sufficiently advanced tech and production capacity could have at least mitigated.

There are PLENTY of "world-ending" bolide (asteroid) impact examples to choose from, so let's take the Cretaceous dinosaur killer as a case study. As things stand, one of these comes our way we're fucked; what could change the odds? Enter Planetary Resources, or other private sector asteroid mining outfit. Yay! Capitalism will save us all out of the goodness of its' altruism, right?

Of course not. What they would however do in their self interest is develop the means to get to asteroids whipping around our system and then take them apart. The tech to do that will also include a highly motivated system to find and track NEOs, the essential first step in averting a bolide catastrophe. In warfare it's "Find, fix, strike" and the principles apply here too.

It is an inescapable fact that motivated people accomplish much more than plodding clock punchers, and the best way to motivate most people is money. Making money off of asteroid mining will require the same tech that one would need to have a chance of averting a major asteroid strike. It may also require large thermonuclear devices, currently held as a monopoly by governments, so there is certainly room for Public and Private to work together here.

None of this matters to the malcontent misanthropes who would have us all living in huts, and then complain about all of the trees we cut down to build and heat them. Well fuck them; the rest of us would like to avoid the "nasty brutish and short" lives of our ancestors and we need to fight those idiots to keep things moving forward. After all, if Mankind is to survive

For all but a brief moment near the dawn of history, the word 'ship'
will mean simply - 'spaceship.' (Arthur C. Clarke)

Some actual "science" in the Climate Wars

"Global Warming" has been losing steam (ahem) for some time now as people realize that the dire predictions of environmental Armageddon have not been manifesting as prophesied. Here is one of the biggest Green prophets recanting in the face of facts. I wish this wasn't noteworthy, but here we are.

Two months ago, James Lovelock, the godfather of global warming, gave a startling interview to msnbc.com in which he acknowledged he had been unduly “alarmist” about climate change. The implications were extraordinary.

Lovelock is a world-renowned scientist and environmentalist whose Gaia theory — that the Earth operates as a single, living organism — has had a profound impact on the development of global warming theory.

Unlike many “environmentalists,” who have degrees in political science, Lovelock, until his recent retirement at age 92, was a much-honoured working scientist and academic.

Here's the money part:

Lovelock still believes anthropogenic global warming is occurring and that mankind must lower its greenhouse gas emissions, but says it’s now clear the doomsday predictions, including his own (and Al Gore’s) were incorrect.

He responds to attacks on his revised views by noting that, unlike many climate scientists who fear a loss of government funding if they admit error, as a freelance scientist, he’s never been afraid to revise his theories in the face of new evidence. Indeed, that’s how science advances.

Emphasis mine. If you don't revise your theories in the face of new facts, that's dogma, not science. Therefore the "consensus" on "Climate Change" is... Here's a part I particularly like:

As he puts it, “so-called ‘sustainable development’ … is meaningless drivel … We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant. I personally can’t stand windmills at any price.”

I wonder how many of the people who advocate wind power live anywhere near a wind turbine; anecdotally, everyone who lives near them that I've heard of HATES them. The mere sight of them makes me angry, I guess as a symbol of oppressive "Green" religion and a lack of critical thinking.

In any event, Loveleock has been very influential and the hope is that this will undermine the Gores etc. and make some erstwhile environmentalists actually think. I don't hold out a lot of hope for that as the facts were available before, but every little bit helps. More nuclear power and natural gas, and no more wind turbines and solar farms; abundant clean energy is what will allow us to survive. The universe is about what works, not what appeals to your sense of "social justice".

Snow more to say about "Climate Change"?

"The science [of man-caused Global Warming] is settled" my ass:

BBC 16 Jan 2007

Scientist's fear for Snowdon snow

Scientists have been studying the changing snowline on the mountain for 14 years.
Snowdon could lose all its snow in less than 15 years as climate change continues to take hold, it is claimed.
Wales' highest mountain has seen its snow covering fall by about a third in 10 years, Bangor University scientists and environmentalists have found.
Measurements show significant warming on Snowdon since the 1960s. Average spring temperatures are up about 2.5C.

Now this:

BBC 10 June 2011

Summer snow falls on summit of Snowdon

This was the scene on top of Snowdon at lunchtime on Friday
The summit of Snowdon under a white blanket of snow: it's a picture postcard cliche.
But if you thought this photograph was taken in the dark days of winter then think again.
The wintry scene, at the Snowdon Mountain Railway's terminus near Hafod Eryri, was photographed at 1300 BST on Friday - in the middle of June, days before the start of Wimbledon and just over a week before the summer solstice.
Around the UK this week counties have been declaring drought conditions after one of warmest and driest springs in memory. Parts of Wales, too, have been experiencing very dry weather.

Even when Nature shows them that they have no idea what is happening or what's going to happen, the Changeistas have to shill their agenda. The "warmest and driest springs in memory" follow abnormally (for recent times) cold snowy winters in the UK.

I don't claim to have the last word on this, but the hypocrisy of some groups and individuals is staggering. There is absolutely NO PROOF that the earth is still warming, as opposed to local fluctuations in climate. The satellite temperature measurements are the closest we have to a global average, and as best I can tell they show no warming since 1998. Particularly since 2007 we've not been all that warm and the Arctic ice is recovering in area and thickness.

You can look this all up (I've seen it all but can't be bothered to look it up for links presently) and make up your own mind, though I advise a lot of cross-checking of facts and sources. That's standard research, but this of course only applies to people who want to KNOW what's going on; those who've already made up their minds don't need anything as crude as observations.

Models are the basis for all of the alarmist predictions, and not a single one of them has been right so far. They keep pushing the timelines farther out to make them unverifiable, which is the antithesis of Science. It's political and idealistic and accordingly dangerous. For reference, Hitler and Osama bin Laden were also idealists.

Power madness

Germany's coalition government has announced a reversal of policy that will see all the country's nuclear power plants phased out by 2022.

The decision makes Germany the biggest industrial power to announce plans to give up nuclear energy.

Environment Minister Norbert Rottgen made the announcement following late-night talks.
Chancellor Angela Merkel set up a panel to review nuclear power following the crisis at Fukushima in Japan.

There have been mass anti-nuclear protests across Germany in the wake of March's Fukushima crisis, triggered by an earthquake and tsunami.

This is first and foremost a huge mistake. Germany gets 23% of it's power from nuclear and this will need to be replaced. The biggest problem is that I hear about "sustainable" and "green" replacements, but I've not heard a plan yet, let alone one that uses existing tech.

Next, it's panicky nonsense; this economic policy fiasco was precipitated by the recent disaster in Japan, but apparently geology/geography is not taught in German schools. Central Europe is in a low-tectonic activity zone (certainly compared to Japan) and all but the Baltic coast is totally immune to tsunami. This is the radical Greens at work, as there is no rational reason to completely junk such a large part of their energy production.

The costs of this (increased energy costs leading to decreased economic competitiveness, etc.) have implications throughout the Euro zone, and if Greece etc. need bailouts down the road, who will be able to do it? The death knell has yet to sound for the Euro, but the ringers are limbering up. Death pool for the Euro anyone?

Earth Hour is Bullshit

This will be quick but topical, with Dirt Hour tomorrow. Turning off your lights for an hour is completely pointless from an environmental standpoint, and anything you could do that would make a significant contribution to lessening electricity demand would drastically reduce your standard of living.

The rising cost of everything is doing a good job of that already, and energy costs are the biggest part of it. Turn off all of your lights for the hour if you want, but I challenge anyone to convince me that it will make any difference to anything. The link shows base load and peak power output, and Earth Day is more likely to put a strain on the system when everyone turns their lights back on at the same time than anything else.

You can't have your climate change cake and eat it too.

(BBC) An extensive study of tree growth rings says there could be a link between the rise and fall of past civilisations and sudden shifts in Europe's climate.

A team of researchers based their findings on data from 9,000 wooden artifacts from the past 2,500 years.

They found that periods of warm, wet summers coincided with prosperity, while political turmoil occurred during times of climate instability.

This is not rocket science. If it's nice, life is better and (because) food grows well; if it's shitty food gets scarce and life generally sucks. So far no surprises, so what am I getting at here?

This is actually a big deal due to the source (BBC) as it flies in the face of the "establishment" climate change line. There is no possible way that human industrial activity caused these fluctuations, as what we would consider "industry" in this sense is maybe 200 years old, and I'd say more like 100.

You can suppress history, re-write it, do what you want, but you don't (can't) change the facts. In many cases the facts are nebulous, but data is what it is. You may not have enough, and it can certainly be manipulated (Climategate, anyone?) but when it's all there and you connect the dots you will get as close to the truth as is possible.

So if I'm the editor of this piece, do I have an angle? I'm being slightly (justifiably) paranoid in assuming a motive for passing this, but the bulk of the traditional media is still in the thrall of the Warming/Changing/Disrupted climate racket. I suspect that this is intended (editorially) to fan the flames of panic over Climate Change, which have been fading for some time.

If so, it's a big mistake. Sure unstable climate is distressing to people, as they can't predict it. By definition on a dynamic planet weather is changeable; the moon has no weather and is therefore quite predictable. Mars, which retains a thin atmosphere has experienced it's own "global warming" a few years back when the icecaps melted earlier than expected. You know for sure even more than here on Earth 2000 years back that human activity didn't cause that, but predictions are still complex. Once you get oceans and the associated heat transfer mechanisms (el Nino, la Nina, hurricanes, etc.) it gets unworkably complex to model accurately. That is not a flippant remark either; existing models cannot even (with all the historical data fed in) reproduce historical weather from the same start time.

It shows how polarized this stuff is that I can't just read an article anymore without suspecting the political slant it represents. This isn't obvious propaganda, but I can see how it may be a stalking horse for the real deal. On the other had, it's a great logical stick to beat them with on this whole "Climate Disruption" scam, though not in the league of that "10:10 No Pressure" video from last fall. Though not data driven, that video did a LOT of damage and I had more to say about it back in October.

I really hope that this is simply a science article, reporting on solid field and lab work. Most people don't pay attention to things that don't affect them, and Climate X (for whatever they'll re-brand it next) has shot its bolt with the general populace. If intended to introduce buzzwords and themes of disaster in support of the dystopian energy-starved future the Greens and fellow travelers want for us, this is another fail.