August 13, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

We have made a lot of progress in cleaning up the environment.  Air quality is now a lot better, on average, than it was 50 years ago.  In London, England, for example, blue skies  are now the norm, while just a few decades ago the infamous London smog was a frequent visitor and often caused the deaths of many people.  The air quality in London is now much better than it was before at any time since the height of the industrial revolution.

Living- and health standards improved.   Average life expectancies rose, for example in the U.S.A., from about 59 years for women and 52 years for men in 1930 to 79 years for women and 73 years for men by 1996. (Source: USA Population Figures for the Years 1980 to 1996)

Yet, there is all-pervasive alarmism that the sky is falling and that we are all going to die.

A large dose of reality is required to illustrate how far we have truly come in a relatively short time and how much success we had in coping with what once, not all that long ago, were apparently insurmountable problems.

Portrait of an Unhealthy City: New York in the 1800s
From: Columbia University | By: David Rosner

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION | As New York City ascended from a small seaport to an international city in the 1800s, it underwent severe growing pains. Filth, disease and disorder ravaged the city to a degree that would horrify even the most jaded modern urban dweller. David Rosner, professor of history and co-director of the program in the History of Public Health and Medicine at the School of Public Health at Columbia University, paints a vivid portrait of a city in the throes of an ecological crisis….(Full Story)

And here is a video recording of a deservedly glowing report of the roles of human ingenuity and of exchange of skills and goods in human evolution, by Matt Ridley at TED : TED - Ideas worth spreading.  It is one of the best presentations on the subject of human ingenuity I have ever had the pleasure of watching. (Watch the video, 16 minutes)

Here is another video, this time of a presentation by Hans Rosling, Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institute, on What stops population growth? (10 minutes)

Dr. Rosling’s presentation of dynamic graphs is excellent and very informative.  He ends his presentation with, “The only way to stop population growth is to have small families.”  That is technically correct, but it seems to me, going by the information contained in his presentation, that Dr, Rosling should have added the proviso, “and that can only be brought about by ending war and creating wealth for all.”

It should not be necessary to point out that the best and perhaps only way to create wealth for all is to make cheap energy accessible by all.  It is neither humane nor practical to keep a quarter of humanity in the dark, without access to electricity and refrigeration.

________________
Thanks for some of the links in this posting are due as follows,

• Portrait of an Unhealthy City,  John F. Hultquist
• Video recording of Matt Ridley’s presentation, pointman
• What stops population growth?, chris y

Those links were provided through comments posted in a discussion thread at wattsupwiththat.com: The Three Chinas and World Energy Demand, Posted on August 13, 2010 by Anthony Watts, Guest post by Thomas Fuller.

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August 9, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

The following shows excerpts from two research efforts that explain why CO2 contents of the atmosphere are not worth worrying about.

theresilientearth.com

Why Carbon Sequestration Won’t Work
By Doug L. Hoffman, 2010 08 08

For those who believe in anthropogenic global warming, carbon dioxide is public enemy number one. They warn that CO2 must be avoided at all costs or Earth will heat up uncontrollably causing all sorts of ecological havoc. One proposal for avoiding global warming is the sequestration of CO2 by trapping it at combustion sites or extracting it directly from the air. Supposedly, such sequestration could help avoid a large rise in atmospheric CO2 from the use of fossil fuels, avoiding the hellish fate that surely awaits mankind otherwise. Referred to as carbon capture and storage (CCS), the coal industry has seized on sequestration as a way to get greens off their backs and stay in business. However, it is not clear how effective different types of sequestration and associated leakage are in the long term, or what their consequences might be. A recent paper takes a critical look at the sequestration option….

In the ocean storage option, CO2  is injected at depths between 2,500 and 3,500 m ( 8,000 to 11,500 ft), in the low–mid latitude reaches of the ocean. Total dissolution of the CO2 into the water column was assumed. Quite unsurprisingly, not all of the carbon injected stayed sequestered, and their were some rather draconian side effects as well.

The study found that deep-ocean carbon storage leads to extreme acidification and CO2 concentrations in the deep ocean, together with a return to the adverse conditions of a business-as-usual projection with no sequestration over several thousand years. In other words, it won’t work in the long run and it will mess up the oceans. Bad idea….

…unsurprisingly, the model simulations found that all three of the leaky geological storage scenarios didn’t eliminate global warming, they just postponed it….

Depending on the storage mechanism, side effects include damaged underground aquifers and expansion of ocean “dead zones.” Moreover, once started down the sequestration route, mankind would be committed to a continuous effort for a length of time longer than all of human history past. What a deal….(Full Story)

By co-incidence, climaterealists.com shows an article, “Mean Free Path of Photons through the Troposphere and Time of Crossing Path of Photons,” by Dr. Nasif S. Nahle, Scientific Research Director at Biology Cabinet, 2010 08 09.

That article states that,

The CO2 is diluted in the atmosphere in a concentration of 0.038%, and it has been proposed by the IPCC as a main driver of the climate on Earth. Contrary to what the IPCC proposes, the physics of the thermal energy transfer indicates smashingly that the CO2 is not capable of changing the temperature of the atmosphere in a significant way….

The cited study report states that,

The water vapor in the atmosphere, at an average density, allows the photons go into the troposphere towards the outer layer of the tropopause in 0.024 s. Compared the water vapor ability to avoid the escape of photons from the atmosphere with the capacity of the atmospheric CO2 to avoid the photons escape to the outer space (0.0042 s), we can assure with 100% of certainty that the CO2 is irrelevant on warming the atmosphere or the surface. (p. 12, second-last par.)….

If we consider also that the carbon dioxide has a total absorptivity and total emissivity by far lower than those of the water vapor, we can fairly conclude that the carbon dioxide is not a driver of the climate on the Earth. The whole climate is driven by the hydrological cycle, and the main retainers of the solar thermal energy are the oceans, the land, the subsurface materials and the water vapor….(p. 13, 4th par., Full Report)

There it is, carbon capture and sequestration is a wild goose chase, a cure for a non-existing problem, but a lot of people will be employed to earn revenues — and even far more will be forced to pay for all of that — so that a few parties hyping up that particular, unfounded climate-change scare can make hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars in profits.

For those who argue that the science on all of that is settled, no, it isn’t!  The only thing that is settled is that there is an enormous profit incentive, and that there will be an enormous amount of profit that can be made for as long as those who need to pay for it all are willing to have the wool pulled over their eyes.

Posted in Propaganda debunked, Alarmist Insanity, Climate Change, Emission Incidents & Issues | Print | No Comments »

August 6, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

If you ‘ve got a cabbage-worm problem in your garden, here are some links you should check out:

A description of cabbage butterflies (or cabbage worms):

Controlling cabbage worms

A few comments on what is being said at that page:

Hand-picking is a chore, not necessarily pleasant and somewhat never-ending — until frost kills off the butterflies.

Rotenone is a powerful pesticide, a biological pesticide that degrades quickly — used in organic gardening — but you must be careful about using it.  Don’t eat or breathe it in.  They say that it is safe to use it, provide you wait a day before harvesting.
We have used it and never died yet.

Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt for short, is safest, as it will not infect people or mammals, but I don’t know how quickly it works on cabbage worms.

When I first planted a garden at the farm (in 1974), I asked people about what they did to protect against cabbage worms when no effective and relatively safe pesticides were available yet.  The old-timers told me that they made garlic tea, which they then diluted with water and sprayed on their cabbage-family plants (all cabbages, cauliflower, broccoli, brussel sprouts, kohlrabi, etc.).  I never used it and don’t know how effective it is.

By the way, a couple of years ago we had an infestation of cabbage worms on our columbine.  I used Rotenone.  It killed all of the cabbage worms within a day.  Wish I had used it earlier, though.  Rotenone is a natural, poisonous alkaloid that is extracted from some plants (e. g.: chrysanthemums).

Here is some information on Rotenone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotenone

Happy hunting,

Walter

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August 5, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

All of South America experienced a very harsh cold spell in mid-July that killed more than 400 people (mostly children), much life stock and many alpacas. (See Historical Cold Snap Freezes South America, July 21, 2010)

Now another consequence of the extreme cold spell emerges.

BoliviaBella.com

1 Million Fish Dead in Bolivian Ecological Disaster

(3 Aug. 2010 - Update: The number of dead fish and other water-dependent wildlife has increased to about 6 million.)

Over 1 million fish and thousands of alligators, turtles, dolphins and other river wildlife are floating dead in numerous Bolivian rivers in the three eastern/southern departments of Santa Cruz, Beni and Tarija. The extreme cold front that hit Bolivia in mid-July caused water temperatures to dip below the minimum temperatures river life can tolerate. As a consequence, rivers, lakes, lagoons and fisheries are brimming with decomposing fish and other creatures….(Full Story — make sure to watch the video at the end of the article)

It would be surprising if the fish-die-off would not affect other South-American nations as well.

The mainstream media in the anglo-sphere kept totally silent on the ecological disaster and instead continued all along with raising alarm about catastrophic man-made global warming.

Posted in Censorship, Wildlife, Weather, Climate Change | Print | No Comments »

August 3, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

A Critical Review of Global Surface Temperature Data Products
Ross McKitrick, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics
University of Guelph
Guelph Ontario Canada
July 26, 2010

This is a preliminary version of a report to be published in fall 2010 by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (http://thegwpf.org/) London, UK.

Comments and corrections are welcome: please send them to rmckitri@uoguelph.ca.

A PDF file (1.17 MB) of the preview of the report is accessible here.

For anyone wondering why a professor of economics gets involved in environmental issues, purported climate change trends result in policy decisions that will ultimately cost, globally, trillions of dollars and will make or break not only the economies of nations but the world economy itself.

Ross McKitrick is well qualified to write his current report on the state of the quality of the global surface temperature record and to state his well-founded concerns about the lack of confidence-inspiring quality of that record, expressed in his report, namely that,

The overall conclusion of this report is that there are serious quality problems in the surface temperature data sets that call into question whether the global temperature history, especially over land, can be considered both continuous and precise. Users should be aware of these limitations, especially in policy-sensitive applications. [Last paragraph on page 4 of the report]

Indirectly but inexorably (through vastly rising taxes and living costs), we all are users of the temperature data of unacceptable quality that is being used to justify policy decisions to address problems that quite likely are not man-made and quite likely by far not as severe as they are made out to be.

The policy decisions based on temperature trends derived from temperature data of demonstrated questionable quality will cost us as Canadians hundreds of billions of dollars and will have serious, negative impacts on our quality of life and standard of living.

We should all join in wishing Professor McKitrick the best of success in making policy makers around the world pay close attention to his well-founded concerns.

Once more, read the PDF file (1.17 MB) of the preview of Ross Mckitrick’s report.

Posted in Taxes, Propaganda debunked, Climate Change | Print | No Comments »

August 3, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

From U.S. Senator Inhofe EPW Press Blog, August 2, 2010

Posted by Matt Dempsey Matt_Dempsey@epw.senate.gov

News9.com OKC  

EPA to Crack Down on Farm Dust

August 01, 2010

By Jacqueline Sit

Watch: Farmers Call Possible EPA Crack Down on Farm Dust ‘Ridiculous’

Link to Article

Comment on the Story on Inhofe Facebook Page

Posted in Alarmist Insanity, Climate Change, Community & Industry | Print | No Comments »

August 2, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

Soot, in addition to CO2, is alleged to be the culprit of the day that drives climate change.

Although mentioned on occasion during the past few years, the remarkable thing now is that there have been two study reports lately that almost coincided with their release dates in identifying a neglected cause of alarm about climate change.  The first one of those was a University of Iowa News Release, July 27, 2010, announcing research published in the July 25 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience.

The second one was on research into the effects of soot on climate change by Stanford University’s Mark Jacobson, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, July 29, 2010.

Especially the second one of those studies, the one by Mark Jacobson, has been picked up by the media, who are now in another feeding frenzy worrying over another cause of man-made “climate change”, soot that causes global warming, of course.

It seems to me that Mark Jacobson’s concerns, apparently based in part on the output of computer models, given that he previously voiced concerns that fit in well with many other Green causes, may not be entirely objective but possibly at least somewhat tainted by the agenda he helps to promote.  It appears that the computer models he used for his research were helpful in creating the evidence he needed to support his hypothesis.

According to Wikipedia, Mark Jacobson’s ideas on what is prim and proper in relation to mankind’s relationship with nature were expressed in and include the following:

• A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030, Scientific American, November 2009, p. 42;
• Nuclear power is too risky CNN.com, February 22, 2010;
• His group’s development of the world’s first wind map based on data at the height of modern wind turbines has served as a scientific justification for the wind component of the Repower America and Pickens Plan energy proposals.

The article by Mark Jacobson is not as of yet available to normal mortals.  The views expressed in the Journal of Geophysical Research are hidden behind a pay wall.  However, a number of journalists who write on environmental issues had something to write about; and they obviously loved what they read.  The Edmonton Journal, chiming in with the escalating onslaught on our climate sensibilities, blessed us with one particular interpretation by Randy Boswell, writing for Postmedia News.

The Edmonton Journal, 2010 08 02, page A3

Soot does climate change’s dirty work

Controlling black carbon best way to stop Arctic warming — study

By Randy Boswell, Postmedia News August 2, 2010

From reading the article, it is not always clear whether the views expressed are those of Marc Jacobson or the opinions of Randy Boswell.  For that reason I will largely ignore who said anything and focus my comments on the assertions presented in the article published in the Edmonton Journal.

Given that the effects of soot estimated by Mark Jacobson concern “the visible residue of burned wood, crops, oil, biomass and other fuels”, it is difficult to understand how the soot emitted by the burning of wood, crops and dung in, for example millions of cooking fires in India, can be affordably controlled when most of the operators of those cooking fires can’t even afford proper chimneys, let alone any means of scrubbing soot from the smoke of their fires.

Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see a demonstration of how soot from India, with a residence time in the atmosphere of about a week, winds up in the Arctic, let alone in the Canadian portion of it.

Still, never daunted by such practical considerations, Mark Jacobson stated about soot that,

“We have to start taking its effects into account in planning our mitigation efforts, and the sooner we start making changes, the better.”

It is not clear whether it was Mark Jacobson or Randy Boswell who is the source of this:

As of mid-July, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center showed Arctic sea ice is retreating at about the same pace it did in 2007, when an unprecedented summer meltdown sparked alarm among scientists and governments.

There is no run-away melting of the Arctic sea ice.  Arctic sea-ice extent is presently substantially above what it was at this time of the year in 2007, about the same what it was in 2008 and 2009, and somewhat below the monthly average for the 1979-2006 interval at this time of year.  If soot is a major reason why Arctic sea ice is melting, its effects cannot be discerned in the observable trends of sea-ice extent, and neither can those of CO2.

The article states that “Previous research has identified soot as a significant factor compounding the recent, record-setting Arctic meltdown.”  It fails to identify the research that did so, but it asserts that “Jacobson’s research not only accounts for the warming effect of soot as it settles on snow and ice, but also the atmospheric impact as black-carbon particles suspended in the air absorb the sun’s heat and create higher ambient temperatures.”  Alright, I’ll bite, what is the evidence?  The article offers none.

The subsequent loss of sea ice only reinforces warming by replacing frozen ocean with dark stretches of open water, Jacobson notes.

Really?  Dark stretches of open water caused by soot?  If that were undisputably so, then why do the dark stretches of open water for August 1, 2010 cover a far smaller area than they did on August 1, 2007?

Arctic sea-ice extent Aug 1, 2010

Arctic sea-ice extent Aug 1, 2007

The article asserts that,

“There is a big concern that if the Arctic melts, it will be a tipping point for the Earth’s climate because the reflective sea ice will be replaced by a much darker, heat-absorbing, ocean below,” he states. “Once the sea ice is gone, it is really hard to regenerate because there is not an efficient mechanism to cool the ocean down in the short term,”

that “the impact of soot on worldwide warming has been seriously underestimated,…” and that,

“In 2007, the U.S. scientists behind another study of soot’s climate impact — also published in the Journal of Geophysical Research — identified Canada as key to any global effort to reduce the effect of black carbon emissions.”

Nevertheless, the article fails to identify what portions of soot affecting the Arctic meltdown stem from the various contributors, such as China, Russia and European nations, and how Canada’s curbing of its relatively insignificant contribution will have a significant impact on slowing down the alleged and apparently non-existent melting of the Arctic sea-ice due to soot.

“One of the co-authors, University of California researcher Charlie Zender, said in 2007 that fallen soot had the effect of “placing tiny toaster ovens into the snow pack.”

Still, the article asserts that, in referring to an earlier article on the impact of soot,

“Zender said at the time that although all nations contribute to the problem of snow impurity through the long-range transport of pollutants, Canada bears particular responsibility to push for cleaner-burning fuels and reduced industrial emissions of soot,”

and that,

“Just as Brazil is the custodian of the Amazon, a world resource whose deforestation has all sorts of negative consequences, so is Canada a custodian of an important swath of snow-covered land that helps to cool the planet,” he stated.

So, it is not quite obvious what Canada can do to save the globe, but I suppose that having Canadians pay more taxes to provide for more funding to enable the search for novel ways to raise alarm about a global meltdown would be a good start for keeping alarmist researchers well employed.
(Full Edmonton Journal Story)

Other than that, the Danish Meteorological Institute identifies that for virtually all of the summer this year the arctic temperatures were well below the average for the 1958-2002 interval:

(Click to see full size)

Clearly, notwithstanding any of the modelling used for raising alarm about climate change, the real world shows no obvious evidence that the growing production of man-made soot causes increasing arctic temperature trends. Moreover, while the arctic sea-ice extent experiences its annual reduction, the antarctic sea-ice extent is one of the largest it has been for as long as satellite measurement of that were made.

(Click to see full size)

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August 1, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

Got a news item or comment that does not fit one of the existing discussion threads?  Post it here as a comment.

For URLs, make sure that you just copy and paste them as simple character strings.  Do not use any HTML tags for URLs.

Do not post complete news articles.  Usually the headline and identification of the source, date, URL and a short explanation are sufficient.

Posted in Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

August 1, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

Greenpeace and other Greens have for decades promoted an atmosphere of alarmism that has been the major cause of wide-spread bans on the development of nuclear power generation in many developed nations, while at the same time far more deadly, damaging and excessively-costly alternative energy-generation schemes were rammed through development.

The hype and hysteria fueling that alarmism is being brought to a well-reasoned and practical end in Belarus.

Belarus to Repopulate Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
by Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski
July 28, 2010

On July 23, Novosti, Interfax, Interia, other Belarusian, Russian, and Polish news agencies announced that the government of Belarus decided to resettle hundreds of thousands of people back into the 2,000 ghost-villages in the Chernobyl exclusion zone from which they had been hastily removed 24 years ago.  (Full Story, PDF file, 82kB)

Dr. Jaworowski identifies in his article that,

Calculating by unit of energy produced, the Chernobyl catastrophe caused 0.86 deaths per gigawatt-year of electricity produced, which is 47 times less than for hydroelectric power stations (40 deaths per GWe-year), including the 230,000 fatalities caused by the 1975 collapse of the dam on the Banqiao river in China.

(More on the negative aspects of alternative sources of energy)

Posted in Energy Issues, Propaganda debunked, Alternative Energy Sources, Community & Industry, Explosions & Fires, Emission Incidents & Issues | Print | No Comments »