The Real Green Machine

(Re-posted from my column in The Brenner Brief)

CO2 not the villain in global warming fight

Appalachian Cove Forest|CREDIT: Wiki Commons

Global warming fight pointing fingers at CO2

A recent Reuters article has a headline which illustrates just how insane the global warming fight has become.  Without the least bit of embarrassment or for that matter objective analysis Reuters headline reads “Act fast to curb global warming or extract CO2 from the air-UN.” Extract CO2 from the air?

The entire premise of the “man-made” global warming hypothesis is predicated on a narrative, a narrative which itself is predicated on pseudo-science.  The narrative is that CO2 (carbon dioxide) being a greenhouse gas is warming the atmosphere and man’s burning of fossil fuels is responsible for this increased CO2  and thus global warming. The first point that needs to be understood is that CO2 is not toxic, not pollution and not even that “smokey” substance coming out of smoke stacks or car exhausts you see every time a news agency does a report on “climate change.”  Carbon dioxide is a harmless invisible trace gas that is vital for all life on planet Earth.  Does the term “carbon based life” ring a bell?

Everything on earth is made up of combinations of different elements – all of which can be found on the periodic table. Considering that the periodic table contains 118 elements itseems a pity that organic life tends to feature only five or six of those elements in any vast quantities. The main one being carbon. It would be impossible for life on earth to exist without carbon. Carbon is the main component of sugars, proteins, fats, DNA, muscle tissue, pretty much everything in your body…

Carbon dioxide is after all what we exhale, perhaps the UN ought to recommend periods of mandatory breath holding as a means to “extract” CO2 from the air.  But Co2, what little of it that there is in the air, is absolutely vital to our planet.   As the renowned physicist Freeman Dyson explains:

“The fundamental reason why carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is critically important to biology is that there is so little of it. A field of corn growing in full sunlight in the middle of the day uses up all the carbon dioxide within a meter of the ground in about five minutes.  If the air were not constantly stirred by convection currents and winds, the corn would stop growing.”

The Reuters article gives away this important fact when they explain one of the methods being contemplated to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Theproposal which ironically is listed under the sub-heading of “Riskier Options” in the article is this:

Simpler methods to extract greenhouse gases from the air are to plant trees, which soak up greenhouse gases as they grow.

The truth is that this “simpler method” this “Riskier Option” is actually an ongoing natural process that needs no administration from an international political body, it is called the carbon cycle.  This particular aspect of CO2  extraction  has been a part of Earth’s ecosystem for millions of years.  Even if you buy into the idea that “man-made” carbon dioxide is heating the Earth any place outside of computer model forecasts of a political and financially motivate cadre of activist scientists, Old Ma Nature is fully capable of absorbing our excesses. In fact nature thrives on this particular man-made excess.

Back in 2003 as the global warming scare was beginning to be hyped as a cataclysmic man-made disaster a group of scientists at NASA’s Earth Observatory published an article, entitled “Global Garden Gets Greener” where they reached the following conclusion:

Leaving aside for a moment the deforestation and other land cover change that continue to accompany an ever-growing human population, the last two decades of the twentieth century were a good time to be a plant on planet Earth. In many parts of the global garden, the climate grew warmer, wetter, and sunnier, and despite a few El Nino-related setbacks, plants flourished for the most part.

The study represented a time frame when the Earth actually was warming. The fact that there has been no discernible heating of the Earth’s atmosphere for sixteen years ought to have buried this agenda driven “theory” but given the investment in it by so many powerful institutions and governments it is doubtful it will die an easy death.  The lack of warming however does not mean that mankind has not continued to pour this plant food, CO2, into the atmosphere in ever-increasing quantities.  This disconnect between the climate cult’s projections for warming as opposed to the reality of the world we live in, has caused an ever more frantic effort by the cult to explain away reality.

It has also been a boon for plant life on Earth, though propaganda by the “experts” would lead you to believe the opposite in 2009. Despite  evidence to the contrary and relying only on their cherished computer models the alarmist scientific community declared that the Amazon forest would soon wither and die away due to droughts. This they proclaimed was the direct result of mankind’s insatiable desire to advance through the burning of fossil fuels.  Their Cassandra calls were echoed throughout the media such as this from the UK Guardian :

Global warming will wreck attempts to save the Amazon rain forest, according to a devastating new study which predicts that one-third of its trees will be killed by even modest temperature rises. The research, by some of Britain’s leading experts on climate change, shows that even severe cuts in deforestation and carbon emissions will fail to save the emblematic South American jungle, the destruction of which has become a powerful symbol of human impact on the planet. Up to 85% of the forest could be lost if spiraling greenhouse gas emissions are not brought under control, the experts said. But even under the most optimistic climate change scenarios, the destruction of large parts of the forest is “irreversible”

Irreversible is a pretty definitive claim and one that one would hope that scientists would not use lightly or without definitive proof, but science just isn’t what it used to be and what was irreversible in 2009, well we shall let the facts speak for themselves.

On the home page of Prof. Ranga B. Myneni’s Climate and Vegetation research group in the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University is this remarkable map of the planet Earth.

What is remarkable about this map is not the areas that are green, you would expect that, but these areas are where the Earth has become greenerin the past three decades. In other words what you are seeing based on actual satellite observations is the greening of the Earth. But it gets better.Studies show the reasons behind this remarkable greening and this is where the reality of life’s natural processes deviate sharply from the computer model world of the climate cult. The study shows that 50% of this increased greening is the result of “climate constraint” e.g.temperature, water or solar radiation having been relieved, meaning improvements for plant growth.   For example an area of land where plant growth was once limited due to lack of water has, in the past three decades, seen an increase in water and therefore there has been additional “greening”. But the more remarkable finding is that the reason for the remaining increased greening is the direct result of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide.

CO2, as we were taught in grade school biology far from being a killer is in fact the very breath of life, it is after all what you breathe out, and plants need in order to grow and provide us with oxygen.  Ninety Eight percent of oxygen in the atmosphere is the result of photosynthesis by plants and other organisms; photosynthesis is not possible without carbon dioxide.

This reality could no longer be denied when in 2013 a group of scientists had to back track on their previous predictions  of the Amazon’s demise and admit that they had not factored in the positive effect of  CO2 on the Amazon’s ecosystem and like the gods they believe they are issued a reprieve for the worlds largest rain forest. Evidently nothing is irreversible or actually “settled science”.  From Reuters in 2013:

The Amazon rainforest is less vulnerable to die off because of global warming than widely believed because the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide also acts as an airborne fertilizer, a study showed on Wednesday. The boost to growth from CO2, the main gas from burning fossil fuels blamed for causing climate change, was likely to exceed damaging effects of rising temperatures this century such as drought, it said.

In fact the new study which factors in the positive effects of CO2 shows that the nasty bi-product of the industrial age, CO2, is a net positive to the Amazon rain forest.  The cult in its quest to scare the world into submission to their agenda had chosen to leave the calculations, intentionally or not, out of their revered climate models until the science showing the opposite results became overwhelming. It is entirely possible that climate models were not previously capable of forecasting the positive effects of CO2 on plant life however the fact that CO2 is a plant fertilizer and is a boon to plant life is not some new scientific discovery, it is well-known biological factgoing back to the eighteenth century.  They just chose to ignore that grade school biology in order to advance their doom and gloom “scenarios.”

The simple truth is that far from being the scourge of planet Earth, CO2 is its life milk.  Mankind in our advancement from caves to space has remarkably, some might say divinely, stumbled upon a green machine which we should proudly embrace called the Industrial Revolution. Carbon Dioxide released by our burning of fossil fuels far from being destructive is in fact a blessing to both plants and mankind and that is the reality which is being denied by a scientific community which has lost all perspective in its quest to advance political causes.

The other possibility

But what about another possibility - that the calculations are wrong? 

What if the climate models - which are the very basis for all discussions of what to do about global warming - exaggerate the sensitivity of the climate to rising carbon dioxide?

David Shukman, Science editor BBC

The idea that their theory is wrong is so foreign to believers in catastrophic climate change that they  refer to the obvious provable fact of the models being wrong as just a possibility rather than the reality it is. There is no doubt that the models are wrong, it is not a possibilityy it is a fact.

But so smitten are the true believers that they are having a difficult time coming to grips with what to many is a religious belief. They are trying to come to grips with with a situation that they have viewed as an article of faith. Consider this from the same David Shukman in the same article.

On top of that, the scientists say, pauses in warming were always to be expected. This is new - at least to me.

It is common sense that climate change would not happen in a neat, linear way but instead in fits and starts.

But I've never heard leading researchers mention the possibility before ( emphasis mine)

The reason the BBC editor who we assume is as well informed on climate change science as anyone had never heard of this "pause" scenario before is simply because it has never been a part of the narrative, or the theory.  This is easily provable.

In 2007, half way through the current "pause" in global warming, the IPCC released their most recent assessment report, Here is what they had to say about the short term outlook on global temperatures

For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios. Even if the concentrations of all greenhouse gases and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.1°C per decade would be expected. {10.3, 10.7} ... 

... the best estimate for the low scenario (B1) is 1.8°C (likely range is 1.1°C to 2.9°C), and the best estimate for the high scenario (A1FI) is 4.0°C (likely range is 2.4°C to 6.4°C).

So the IPCC boldly claimed that there models, regardless of which CO2 scenario used, projected that temperatures would rise at a 0.2 C pace for the next two decades. In order to put that in perspective the actual per decade increase in global temperatures for the period 1970-1998 was .17 C. This means that the IPCC was projecting an accelerating increase in global temperatures of .03 degrees for the next two decades beyond what it had been the previous two decades. That was their projection. They even went so far as to say that there was already so much CO2  in the climate system that just maintaining it at 2000 levels would still result in a 0.1 C per decade increase.

They knew by 2007 that we had not kept CO2 at 2000 levels. In January of 2000 it was 369.14 by January of 2007 it had reached  382.49. But had we kept it at 2000 levels the IPCC projected that temperatures would still increase by 0.1 C per decade. Under no scenario that was presented in the IPCC AR4 report did they project a pause in warming either in the short or long term.

What  has actually happened, out in the real world? Global temperatures have increased at a per decade rate of 0.04 C between 1998 and 2012 or one fifth of the IPCC projection (-.16 C) and decelerated from previous warming by 0.13 C. So not only has the globe not warmed as the IPCC predicted it would, it has not even kept pace with the previous warming, by a long shot.

Of course all the wizards of smart are coming out now and telling us that this is all to be expected

Prof Rowan Sutton, Director of Climate Research at the University of Reading, said: "Within the field we have taken for granted that there will be variations in the rate of warming, it is totally accepted and is no surprise ...[it] would correct to say that wasn't the message that we communicated more widely and that probably is a failing."

And Professor Stephen Belcher, head of the Met Office Hadley Centre, said observations and models showed that on average there were - or would be - two pauses in warming every century.

Sutton even goes so far as to claim that a pause of 20 years was even projected in some models

Professor Rowan Sutton, of Reading University, said computer simulations or models of possible future climate scenarios often show periods of ten years with no warming trend - some even show pauses of 20-25 years.

In other words he is now claiming that rather than the 0.2 degree per decade warming projected by the IPCC for the next two decades, the climate science community was always aware that there might be no warming whatsoever. Perhaps this is true but did they mention this important little caveat in their report? No they did not.  Do their projections in their "gold standard" assessment report reflect this possibility? They do not.

As David Shukman observed "I've never heard leading researchers mention the possibility before" so he inquired about this lack of communication.

I asked why this had not come up in earlier presentations. No one really had an answer, except to say that this "message" about pauses had not been communicated widely.

So let's review. The climate science community through it's "gold standard" agency, informs the world that not only will global warming continue, it will accelerate. They made this pronouncement in the middle of what we now know was a "pause" in the warming. Prior to and following the release of their "prestigious" AR4 report there is not one word about the potential for a "pause" in the warming but in fact there are countless studies and stories claiming that the warming was worse than they had expected.

“The science is quite decisive,” said Michael Mann, a professor at Penn State University. “There is a very robust consensus about the reality of climate change and the need to confront it quickly.”...

“Carbon dioxide emissions cannot be allowed to continue to rise if humanity intends to limit the risk of unacceptable climate change. The task is urgent and the turning point must come soon,” said Somerville.Officials around the globe aim to avoid warming Earth by more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit compared to preindustrial times. The idea is to avoid a “tipping point” that causes catastrophic and irreversible changes to weather patterns and landscapes. 

Without a significant change in course, global warming could reach 12.6 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, the scientists said Tuesday.

Nowhere in all these studies or countless press releases has there been any indication of a "pause" or future pause. In fact in the midst of the actual pause both the GISS and HadCrut the "KEEPERS" of the temperature records "updated" their data sets which significantly altered the global temperature records upwards. One wonders what the pause would have looked like had these "official records"  not been "updated". Actually you need not wonder, just compare the satellite readings to the GISS, HadCrut measurements.

So what is the other possibility? The other possibility is not a possibility at all -it is a fact. The actual global temperatures, irregardless of the measuring agency, has not been anywhere close to those projected by the IPCC and the climate science "consensus" community. Their model's calculations are wrong yet they continue to not only promote their output as being accurate, but also literally thousands upon thousands of scientific studies in varied fields are undertaken and promoted based on these model projection's false input.

Garbage in, garbage out.

Another case study in climate change alarmism

People who have payed attention to the alarmist narrative of global warming are seldom surprised when yesterday's apocalyptic predictions are suddenly transformed into today's far less dire scientific study, usually found on the back page.

This pattern of shouted alarm morphing into ho hum is becoming so common it is a wonder that the climate community doesn't just close up shop in shame and embarrassment. But the hubris necessary to actually perpetrate such a false narrative is such that they simply change the theory to fit current climatic conditions.

A recent example of an alarmist narrative suddenly wiped away with little notice has to do with the Amazon. Reuters brings us the good news that

"Amazon forest more resilient to climate change than feared - study"

The Amazon rainforest is less vulnerable to die off because of global warming than widely believed because the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide also acts as an airborne fertilizer, a study showed on Wednesday. 

The boost to growth from CO2, the main gas from burning fossil fuels blamed for causing climate change, was likely to exceed damaging effects of rising temperatures this century such as drought, it said.

The fact that CO2 is a "plant fertilizer" seems to be a new realization to the wizards of smart who have been keeping the world on edge these past couple of decades as they cash their tax payer funded checks. After years of demonetization of CO2. Reuters felt compelled to reluctantly and briefly explain that yes carbon dioxide actually does play a very significant and beneficial role in nature, as anyone over thirty years old remembers from their grade school science class, though who knows what is taught today.

Plants soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and use it as an ingredient to grow leaves, branches and roots.

This grade school biology has finally made its way into the calculations of climate scientist and they have now issued a reprieve for the world's largest rain forest. Not only that but we are being informed, again reluctantly, that CO2 far from being a negative to the Amazon is actually a net positive.

It estimated that the damaging effects of warming would cause the release of 53 billion tons of carbon stored in lands throughout the tropics, much of it in the Amazon, for every single degree Celsius (1.8F) of temperature rise.

The benefits of CO2 fertilization exceeded those losses in most scenarios, which ranged up to a 319 billion ton net gain of stored carbon over the 21st century. About 500 to 1,000 billion ton of carbon are stored in land in the tropics.

As if increased heat would not also be beneficial to plant growth....in a jungle environment. Oh well we will take what we can get from the scientific community, they have such a hard time admitting what to most people is common sense.

"I am no longer so worried about a catastrophic die-back due to CO2-induced climate change," Professor Peter Cox of the University of Exeter in England told Reuters of the study he led in the journal Nature. "In that sense it's good news."

Gee thanks Prof, we were really worried about it, especially after you and your peers put out stories like this just four short years ago.

From the UK Guardian in 2009

"Amazon could shrink by 85% due to climate change, scientists say" 

Global warming will wreck attempts to save the Amazon rainforest, according to a devastating new study which predicts that one-third of its trees will be killed by even modest temperature rises.

I guess these scientist did not take grade school science and did not know about the whole "plant fertilizer" properties of the demon gas carbon dioxide. They were all to worried about CO2 induced warming killing off the Amazon and made sure that as the Reuters article pointed out that the "die off because of global warming ...[is] widely believed."

And why is the Amazon rain forest die off so widely believed? From the 2009 Guardian article

Chris Jones, who led the research, told the conference: "A temperature rise of anything over 1C commits you to some future loss of Amazon forest. Even the commonly quoted 2C target already commits us to 20-40% loss. On any kind of pragmatic timescale, I think we should see loss of the Amazon forest as irreversible."

You got that? One of the hottest most humid environments on Earth was going to be "irreversibly lost" due to global warming. Even 1C rise in temperature was predicted to reek havoc on our South American jungles.

It is a good thing that good old Professor Cox came along and set them straight. Oh wait what is this ? From the Guardian story just four short years ago.

Peter Cox, professor of climate system dynamics at the University of Exeter, said the effects would be felt around the world. "Ecologically it would be a catastrophe and it would be taking a huge chance with our own climate. The tropics are drivers of the world's weather systems and killing the Amazon is likely to change them forever. We don't know exactly what would happen but we could expect more extreme weather." Massive Amazon loss would also amplify global warming "significantly" he said.

"Destroying the Amazon would also turn what is a significant carbon sink into a significant source."

So the reason people believe that global warming is going to destroy the Amazon and create a global "ecological catastrophe" is because that is precisely what Peter Cox was telling the world four years ago.

Of course the good professor and his like minded peers would simply say that recent scientific studies have superseded their previous conclusions. Of course the whole tenor of these people is like kids who set off fire crackers in a crowded theater then after the panic has created mayhem point out that they are innocent because after all it was not a real machine gun .

But science or truth was not the purpose in the first place was it? If you think about it, the scientific knowledge to reach the conclusion they reached in 2009 as opposed to what they know today is not that much different. As a matter of fact the only thing that changed is the data they put into their models.

The scientists said the study was a step forward because it used models comparing forest growth with variations in the rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

So all that they did different in this study was factor in forest growth as a result of increased CO2, which leads one to believe that they did not previously factor this into their models. 

In other words the previous catastrophic model scenarios were based on the warmer temperatures that CO2 is believed to cause without determining what effect that same CO2 would have on plant growth which every scientist knows CO2 generates, (we would hope)

This, in a nutshell, is exactly how modern science operates when it comes to "climate change". Look for and factor in only the negative impacts while ignoring or hiding the positive and limiting factors in order to promote worse case scenarios thus creating alarm. Then as with this new Amazon study, when the truth can no longer be hidden, quietly and without shame, tell the truth.

But the damage is done, the agenda has been pushed "Forward", the narrative has been established  our children have been indoctrinated and the lie has circled the globe for four years before the truth has even put on its shoes.

Thank you Professor Peter Cox for being case study in climate change alarmism.

BEST, NOVIM and the other solution

Recently there has been much discussion about Dr. Richard Muller and his recent testimony before congress. When the public discussion of the BEST organization began  I posted a couple quick investigations that I did on the group behind BEST, the Novim Group.

When I found out that Anthony Watts as well as other individuals I highly respect were involved I pretty much dropped the matter, though I have always had my suspicions. As a lead into what I am about to post I wish to re-post some of the concerns I had from the original post:

This Berkley Earth Surface Group is part of the Novim Group. It appears based on a quick review of their literature that they are very much into Geo-Engineering. In fact  in a linked PDF which is described as a Novim Overview their Executive Director Michael Ditmore is quoted:

 .... When it comes to climate change, he said, the world doesn’t have time to let politics and innuendo block the best available scientific thinking from reaching the public. 

“The problems are not unsolvable, but we’re running out of time,” Ditmore said.

It seems to me that Mr. Ditmore has already determined in his own mind that man made climate change/global warming is not something to be determined through study of the temperature records but rather an established fact in need of  immediate control.

This was my primary concern about the BEST project, Novim a group whose obvious belief in  AGW as a pending catastrophic crisis was behind the effort to independently determine the historical temperature record. Does that seem a bit odd? It did to me.  Further  the only known actions that I can determine that Novim has taken was a report on geo-engineering feasibility, which I breifly described :

Of perhaps a more important note Jason J Blackstock the lead writer of their paper on geo-engineering is  Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment at CIGI- Centre for International Governance Innovation, love those international governance organizations. This seems like it would be an important position to put on one's resume which makes one wonder why it was left off of the Novim's web site biography of Mr Blackstock. Especially since he was not only the primary author of their paper but also the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) coordinator at COP-15
Among other writings of Mr Blackstock we find this

. Despite mounting evidence that climate change could be more severe and rapid than estimated by the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), progress toward globally reducing carbon emissions remains alarmingly slow. Concern over the global failure to act on climate change has been the dominant motivation behind scientists' recent convening of several prominent reviews of geoengineering - the intentional, large-scale alteration of the climate system - as a potential recourse for moderating the impacts of climate change. These scientific reviews (particularly the Royal Society and Novim reports on geoengineering in 2009) found existing geoengineering concepts to be fraught with uncertainties and potential negative side effects, making them unsuitable as an alternative to dramatic emission reductions. Nevertheless, they recommend greatly expanding research, as the risks of unabated climate change could prove far worse than the risks of geoengineering.

It seems that for a group which claims

“Novim doesn’t take a position, doesn’t advocate a policy,” Ditmore said. “We provide a factual basis … so that policy makers can take a strong position on an issue and know that they’re backed up by the science.”

They have taken a very strong position and back an agenda.

So with this in mind I went back and watched Dr Muller's complete presentation again. The first thing you will note from this screen shot at the beginning is the credits for Dr Muller primarily focus on his company:

Dr Muller is a retired professor but he is still very much a businessman which you can check out at the web site for Muller and Associates.  Nothing wrong with that for sure, but always remember that in order to have a business you have to have either a product or a service to sell.
 
 The presentation itself was downloaded onto You Tube by CITRIS , The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society, I love those organizations that have societies interest as their focus. They generally are closely linked to those organizations that are all for global governance.  The host organization was i4energy  all part of that academic, government, private partnership that California is so famous for.

Let's begin our review at about the  3:00 minute mark. Dr Muller puts up this graph while he goes into a discussion on the importance of cloud cover in the whole global warming debate.

While we stare at this graph for the next few minutes he rightly notes the great uncertainty about the effects of cloud cover in the scientific debate on global warming. He even points out that  "if we were to have a 2% increase in cloud cover we would not have global warming".

All of this leads us in the realist camp to cheer Dr, Muller, because he is pointing out a very important factor which many have been trying to publicize for years.  

However  beginning at around the 4:20 mark  he says : (All emphasis mine)

"if you believe we can get a favor from God by praying, I suggest you pray that cloud cover will kick in because if my evaluation is right when I show you what the problem is and if the global warming models are right, and I think they are very likely right, then we are going to have global warming."

Consider that for a moment. Immediately after explaining the great uncertainty in the hypothesis behind global warming he says he believes the global warming models are right. Not only that, he emphasizes  his belief in those models by suggesting that we pray that they are wrong, why? Well look at that chart that has been plastered on the screen behind him as he speaks.

After this he makes the most remarkable statement:

"Yet there is nobody proposing any solution about what to do about it...."

Now there are many things that can be said about the whole global warming/climate change debate, but the assertion that "nobody is proposing any solution" is not one of them. In fact many would argue, myself included,  that the entire global warming theory was ginned up specifically in order to impose a solution. Which I believe is Dr. Muller's intent is as well, just a different solution.

Is Dr. Muller so uninformed that he has not heard of cap and trade, or carbon taxes, or all the green energy projects being subsidize by governments around the world? Of course he is not that uninformed. Indeed later in the presentation we find exactly how informed he is about the solutions to climate change.

 He goes on to say

"let me show you why I don't think there is any solution ..."

So what Dr. Muller is saying is not that no solutions have been proposed, what he is actually saying is that all the solutions proposed will not work.

And the realist community cheers on their new champion. 

In his presentation he again goes on about the increasing C02 emissions in the world for which as he rightly points out there is no workable solution. This he emphasizes with his next graph:

He now gets into a discussion of the fallacy of the current thinking as expressed by the Al Gore camp. The belief that China and other developing countries have the right to increase emissions and it is the responsibility of the United States to cut back because we are the the primary source of the original problem.

Of course this is an unworkable solution because as has been demonstrated countries will commit economic suicide attempting to unilaterally decarbonize, so the political will to do so is  waning. Which Dr. Muller points out in a discussion about the failed Copenhagen summit, which he jokingly takes credit for due to his WSJ Op-Ed.

He then shows another slide which graphically shows the fallacy of the proposals to reduce GHG as proposed by the Al Gore camp.

And the realist community cheers. Finally someone from the "mainstream" is pointing out the utter nonsense to the proposed solutions being foisted on the world by Al Gore and his progressive ilk.

He drives this point home over and over again with statements such as "So much of what I hear at Berkley are solely  feel good measures"

But always remember as Dr. Muller tears down many of the the alarmist/warmist sacred cows both here and in the rest of the video, he has made it clear what he believes to be true, "if the global warming models are right, and I think they are very likely right" . This is what he believes, in fact he is so concerned that the models are correct that he is asking his audience to pray that the cloud  hypothesis/solution will save us. Let me restate that:

Dr Muller is asking his audience to pray that the cloud  hypothesis/solution will save us, because all of the other solutions are obviously unrealistic.

At one point in his lecture he points to the chart  and reminds the audience that "out here [the future] we are very likely to have a lot of global warming" Why? because he believes in the models, despite everything he says that is critical of the science and the advocacy behind the theory of man made global warming  he believes that it is true and dangerous to our future " I suggest you pray that cloud cover will kick in".

It is at this point in the lecture about eleven minutes in that he starts tearing apart the IPCC....well sort of. He ends his critic with this:

OOPS, he let his true beliefs slip," the temperature rise is in pretty good shape"  A statement which he will shortly contradict.

For the next 15 minutes or so he goes through many aspects of the science behind global warming giving a very critical discussion on much of it. He takes special aim at two of the realist communities villains Al Gore and James Hansen.

  Watching this portion of the lecture one could believe that Dr Muller is making a case against the theory of man made global warming, he is pointing out all the hyperbolic beliefs which are not scientifically accurate. This again however is a complete contradiction from much of what he has previously stated in the lecture. Previously he stated that most of the IPCC research is correct and that the models are probably right. On the one hand he destroys much of the science that points to the effects of global warming while simultaneously maintaining that the science behind global warming is somehow accurate.

Contradictions seem to be Dr Muller's method of operation. As an example during his recent testimony to congress he said:

Prior groups at NOAA, NASA, and in the UK (HadCRU) estimate about a 1.2 degree C land temperature rise from the early 1900s to the present.  This 1.2 degree rise is what we call global warming. Their work is excellent, and the Berkeley Earth project strives to build on it.  

Putting aside the much commented on inaccuracy of the 1.2 degree C claim, he also claims that the existing work by NOAA, NASSA and Had CRU is excellent. So why set up a new study to compete with them? Perhaps because they all have been tainted to various degrees by charges of inaccuracies, bias, shoddy statistical analysis and out and out corruption by no less an authority than..... Dr Muller himself;

The contradictions in Dr Muller's public positions on the science of global warming is obvious. On the one hand he says that virtually all the science flowing from the IPCC and the various proponent individuals and organizations is shoddy yet he believes that the science that underpins it which is the product of those same indviduals and organizations is accurate.

Nowhere is this contradiction more obvious than in the next section of his lecture when the good doctor goes after the  "Hockey Stick" and "climategate".  This is what made Dr Muller an instant hero in the realist community. This portion of the lecture went viral though it only represents 5 minutes of a 52 minute presentation.

He basically destroys the reputation and research of most of  climate science's  most notable super stars and yet he believes the science they promote is sound, amazing.

So that there can be no doubt as to what Dr. Muller believes I will skip ahead here to a the Q&A session of the tape where he answers a question about a future ice age, The question and and answer is not as important as what it shows about Dr. Mullers obvious beliefs about global warming.

He believes that in the near future, "global warming will totally dominate....due to carbon dioxide" which is why the remainder of his presentation (after tearing apart the Hockey Stick) was about energy sources. Which sort of makes sense since this lecture was put on by an organization dedicated to improving energy efficiency, a noble cause.

The presentation rushes to an end with a discussion on energy such as the need for the US to convert to more natural gas use and culminating with this slide:

All, if you believe that man made global warming is a threat, is all too true.

Obviously Dr Muller believes that man made global warming is a threat and that the solutions put forward to date will not suffice to address that threat. He maintains this in spite of his many criticisms of the science underlying global warming. This an extremely contradictory position to maintain and it leads one to question why an obviously brilliant man would hold these contradictory views. I mean really how can someone spend an hour in a point by point discussion on the distortions, inaccuracies, and potential corruption by an entire field of science then say that their conclusion is valid. Does that make sense?

Putting aside the whole contradiction of Dr Muller's beliefs, let's look at the possible solutions if in fact he believes what he just presented. The presentation of energy options which Dr Muller gives is really nothing new, all of it has been gone over in other forums by other people. It is well presented and the challenges against implementing them well defined but again really nothing new. In fact a summary of the presentation would be

*The science behind global warming is shoddy
* Global warming is a threat to our future
*For society to advance we will probably exacerbate the global warming problem
*The current alternatives will probably not solve the problem.

So what are we to do? Left unsaid in all this is the group behind BEST, Novim. And what has Novim's emphasis been on, geo-engineering.

It is not as if anyone actually has to follow through with a geo-engineering solution, particularly not now, when the problem is "in the future". But it might behoove policy makers to consider preparing for such options by doing R&D on geo-engineering should the eventuality arise.

After all the United States did not defeat the Soviet Union by actually nuking them but we certainly did have the capacity to do so by building a strategic defense system second to none.

If you were convinced that global warming was a real possibility but that there was no economically viable way to achieve a reduction in emmision via the Al Gore camp model, what would your only option be?

Prepare to nuke global warming, I know that recently the idea of actually using nuclear bombs to cool the Earth has been presented, but I am speaking figuratively not literally. Nuking global warming in the geo-engineering sense would be all the silly ideas that have been outlined by various people and organizations....such as the Novim Group.

Boy what an out too! Not only do governments not have to destroy their economies, the Greens can still push all their little schemes for alternative energy and we can create an entirely new military geo-engineering industrial complex to defeat the red peril of our time, global warming...well the future global warming. Can you imagine all the cool sulfur dioxide spewing boats that could be built and deployed around the world, just in case the UN ever decided the time had come to save the world.

The current agenda has been discredited, both the scientific institutional entities such as the IPCC, NASA, NOAA etc as well as the solution agenda centered around cap and trade and the degradation of Western Economies as promoted by Al Gore, James Hansen etc.

Time for a new set of players with a new set of tools. BEST and supposedly independent organizations to substantiate the threat and new, less oppressive tools to fight that threat such as geo-engineering.

I really see no reason why companies and institutions such as i4 energy,  Muller and Associates, the Novim Group and a never ending shadow group of organizations, individuals and entities should not lead the way into a better future for planet Earth and mankind....do you?

"I suggest you pray that cloud cover will kick in"

Evil Fruit

Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
 Mathew 7:17 KJV 


I was reading Judith Curry's  thoughtful post at her web site about the "hide the decline" controversy. I was struck by the perception that she was concerned that the whole "Hockey Stick/ "hide the decline " could be a real stain upon her chosen profession. The passage that caught my attention was this

The question I am asking myself is what is my role as a scientist in challenging misuses of science (as per Beddington’s challenge)? Why or why not should I personally get involved in this?

Really, as a scientist should she get involved in corruption of her science ? I'm definitely not a scientist or I suspect anywhere near being as intellectually qualified as Ms Curry, hell I don't even know what Beddington's challenge is. However as someone who originally came to the global warming debate with no predetermined view on the subject, I pretty much believed  the entire global warming  science as portrayed by the media was true, after all the scientist agreed... right ? Scientist are basically honorable people, after all the very nature of science is seeking the truth...right?


I would probably have gone through life believing this and have remained blissfully unaware of the the greatest scientific scandal in history had I not stumbled upon a blog over at the Weather Underground site and become interested in the debate. What began to change my attitude from benign acceptance to complete "denial" of the theory of catastrophic man made global warming was the attitude of the proponents of the theory.  What grated me the most as I became interested in the debate was the utter contempt proponents of AGW displayed towards those who questioned their narrative. Had it just been childish bloggers  it would probably not have gotten on my nerves, but it was the so called consensus community that promoted this abrasive and dismissive approach which  they displayed towards those who dared question the narrative. Nowhere was this more grating to me than the way they treated the people who should have been  at least listened to in the climate science community but instead were ridiculed and mocked. As I wrote in part:

What motive does an established respected scientist at the end of their career have to take on the entire science community? To have an entire lifetime of distinguished work besmirched and ridiculed by the very people whom just years before, they taught.

The recently deceased Reid Bryson was for years known as the father of modern climatology a geologist and meteorologist, the first director of the Institute for Environmental Studies, made a Global Laureate by the United Nations Global Environment Program. This man’s stature in the world of climate sciences can not be disputed.

" All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd. Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air."…… "You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide".

Why would such a man say such things? What was there to gain? He was already recognized as one of the greatest scientist of his time and yet he basically tells the science field he has belonged to his entire life , the field of science he is considered one of the founders of- “you are full of crap”. He is just one example but ask yourself, what was his motive, fame ? money ? All he received for his position against the AGW theory was ridicule from a bunch of pygmies.

Observing the debate I was more and more reminded of the old lawyers adage

When the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When the law is on your side, argue the law. And when you don’t have either the law or the facts on your side, pound the table!

 The more I studied the issues and the arguments the more I realized that the AGW crowd really did not have the facts on their side, though they did have the law (appeal to authority) what they primarily did was pound the table, and if anybody got in their way pound them too.

The most important tool they have at their disposal is an old progressive trick, actually it is not a trick at all it is the entire foundation of progressive ideology, progress, incrementalism. Move the narrative forward at all cost and don't allow your opposition to go back to show the fallacy of the previous assertion. Make your point of view the accepted view regardless of whether or not it is built on a pile of crap which on future review can be proven wrong. It matters not, the narrative has become accepted by a larger and larger segment of society.  They have eaten the corrupted fruit so feed them more.

Without going back too far, which others have done, there has been three critical quasi-scientific events in promoting the AGW agenda, all of which have been shown to be wildly exaggerated assertions and in some cases out and out fraud. In order they were:

James Hansen's testimony before congress in June of 1988
 
The publication and promotion of the "Hockey Stick " in 1999 and it's prominent place in the IPCC TAR report
 
Al Gore's  Docudrama "An Inconvenient Truth" in 2006

None of these are really science, in all three cases they were more about promoting an ideology than proving a theory. Yet these three events were used like a sledge hammer to stifle debate and convince a trusting public of something that in all three cases would later be proven to be either false, exaggerated or out and out fraud. These are large branches of an evil tree  which the climate science community continues to feed off as if they did not know that much of their science is based on the promotion of provably false claims. The gluttony of corruption and greed is so pervasive that it is better to close ones eyes to that which is so obvious to the untainted, lest you stain your elitist white smock.

Despite Ms Curry's lack of interest in "tree rings" the fact remains that if the MWP was warmer than today and global in nature, nearly all the silly studies being done today are based on a falsehood. But it is far worse than that, this evil tree has grown roots into a global multifaceted entity whose tentacles corrupt everything it touches from politics, to education (at all levels) to economies, and ultimately into the very soul of human trust in one another so necessary for the advancement of our species. 

My daughter has lived her entire twenty five years of life being bombarded by nonsensical science. This science was a seed planted by devious and deceptive people which has grown into a giant tree which cast a dark shadow over humanity, frightening and misleading children, corrupting institutions needed for the well being of society, spending and misdirecting vast resources which humanity so desperately needs for real progress. The harm done by just the "Hockey Stick/ hide the decline" is incalculable, the fruits of lies seldom are easily computed.


I am a nobody that is blessed to live in a time when I have a computer and the internet, but few will read this so it will have little effect on the "great debate". But people like Ms Curry are respected scientist who have a world wide audience, yet she asks "what is my role as a scientist in challenging misuses of science "

Your role Ms Curry is to seek and tell the truth, I once believed that was what scientist did perhaps you know better.


If an honest man is wrong, after demonstrating that he is wrong, he either stops being wrong or he stops being honest.
- Anon

For you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.

Algae, Algae everywhere!

Remember when aerosols were all the rage? I do but as a reminder a portion of one of my post from last year titled:

Everyone thinks they are saving the planet

The absurdity of the entire AGW theory and the unintended consequences are sometimes both staggering and amusing. Consider this article from Popular Science "New Clean-Fuel Rules For Ships Could Actually Hurt the Environment". It discusses the seemingly very worthwhile new regulations to cut air pollution from the overseas shipping industry.

The regulations call for reducing the sulfur in shipping fuel—which is basically unrefined petroleum sludge—from 4.5 to 0.5 percent by 2020. Scientists project that this switch will cut sulfur-pollution-related premature deaths from 87,000 worldwide per year to 46,000.

Of course we want to reduce these known pollutants from the atmosphere...right? I mean it is all about man not leaving a mark on the ecosystem ...right? But not so fast there Eco Warriors:

But the sulfate aerosols spewing from supertanker smokestacks also produce planet-cooling clouds called ship tracks, which form when water droplets coalesce around sulfate particles. These clouds, which are big enough to be seen from orbit, reflect sunlight back into space, preventing the equivalent of up to 40 percent of the warming caused by human-produced carbon dioxide. “The IMO has done a good job addressing air-quality issues,” says Daniel Lack, an atmospheric scientist at NOAA. “But there’s a climate impact that wasn’t necessarily considered.”

So by cutting real pollution we in fact will be eliminating the mitigation of (imaginary) pollution -CO2. But that's not all !:

Worse, the fuel switch won’t improve ships’ carbon emissions—if the industry were a country, it would be the sixth-largest CO2 emitter. The IMO plans to regulate CO2, but until then, it might be best to leave well enough alone.

Got all that? Now consider that our Eco Warriors and their mad scientist allies have been so concerned that we are going to fry the planet by spewing evil CO2 into the atmosphere that they are regularly spending countless (tax payer) dollars investigating the possibility of spewing these same real pollutants into the skies to save us from the imaginary one.

So at the same time part of the Eco-scientific community is studying the negative affects of sulfate aerosols on the Earth:

Reductions of SO2 emissions in the 70-90% range should be required for both new and existing ships as soon as possible, but no later than 2015—

Another group of Eco-scientist is trying to figure out the best way to pump it back in.

We used a general circulation model of Earth's climate to conduct geoengineering experiments involving stratospheric injection of sulfur dioxide and analyzed the resulting deposition of sulfate. When sulfur dioxide is injected into the tropical or Arctic stratosphere, the main additional surface deposition of sulfate occurs in midlatitude bands, because of strong cross-tropopause flux in the jet stream regions. We used critical load studies to determine the effects of this increase in sulfate deposition on terrestrial ecosystems by assuming the upper limit of hydration of all sulfate aerosols into sulfuric acid. For annual injection of 5 Tg of SO2 into the tropical stratosphere or 3 Tg of SO2 into the Arctic stratosphere, neither the maximum point value of sulfate deposition of approximately 1.5 mEq m−2 a−1 nor the largest additional deposition that would result from geoengineering of approximately 0.05 mEq m−2 a−1 is enough to negatively impact most ecosystems.

And everyone thinks they are saving the planet and making a good buck in the process. Of course this is nothing new to us.

Please feel free to read the entire post as it gives a good reason to be very leery of organizations like the Novim Group who are all the rage lately for being behind the Berkley Earth Surface Group. But the point I wish to make is that when you base a theory on so many unknowns and pretend that this theory is fact, you are constantly in danger of being at cross purposes and contradicting yourself. Another example is algae.

In one study, NOAA scientists modeled future ocean and weather patterns to predict the effect on blooms of Alexandrium catenella, or the toxic "red tide," which can accumulate in shellfish and cause symptoms, including paralysis, and can sometimes be deadly to humans who eat the contaminated seafood.

"Our projections indicate that by the end of the 21st century, blooms may begin up to two months earlier in the year and persist for one month later compared to the present-day time period of July to October," said Stephanie Moore, one of the scientists who worked on the study.

But the impact could be felt well before the end of this century -- as early as 2040, she said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Having recently experienced an onslaught of the "Red Tide"  where I live here in Florida, it is not a pleasant experience. I personally could not go near the ocean for several week because it affected my breathing. So I in no way want to downplay the harm of "Red Tide" on peoples health or marine life, though I would point out that it is a natural occurring event which has been around predating by millions of years the invention of the internal combustion engine. The point I wish to make is that studies are being done trying to link this particular algae growth to man made global warming and of course painting a picture of gloom and doom.  The question though is increased algae good or bad ?

 The portion of the article which first caught my attention though was this:

In another study, NOAA scientists found that desert dust that is deposited into the oceans from the atmosphere could also lead to increases of harmful bacteria in seawater and seafood.

Researchers from the University of Georgia found that adding desert dust, which contains iron, to seawater significantly stimulated the growth of Vibrios, a group of ocean bacteria that can cause gastroenteritis and infectious diseases in humans.

The mention of desert dust stirred some brain cells in my tired old brain which led me back a short time ago when I read this in Science Daily:

Dust Storms In Sahara Desert Sustain Life In Atlantic Ocean

ScienceDaily (July 19, 2008) — Research at the University of Liverpool has found how Saharan dust storms help sustain life over extensive regions of the North Atlantic Ocean.

Well that seems like a good thing, doesn't it? According to this study it is a very good thing

They found that plants are able to grow in these regions because they are able to take advantage of iron minerals in Saharan dust storms. This allows them to use organic or ‘recycled’ material from dead or decaying plants when nutrients such as phosphorous – an essential component of DNA – in the ocean are low.

Professor George Wolff, from the University’s Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, explains: “We found that cyanobacteria – a type of ancient phytoplankton – are significant to the understanding of how ocean deserts can support plant growth. Cyanobacteria need nitrogen, phosphorous and iron in order to grow. They get nitrogen from the atmosphere, but phosphorous is a highly reactive chemical that is scarce in sea water and is not found in the Earth’s atmosphere. Iron is present only in tiny amounts in sea water, even though it is one of the most abundant elements on earth.

“Our findings suggest that Saharan dust storms are largely responsible for the significant difference between the numbers of cyanobacteria in the North and South Atlantic. The dust fertilises the North Atlantic and allows phytoplankton to use organic phosphorous, but it doesn’t reach the southern regions and so without enough iron, phytoplankton are unable to use the organic material and don’t grow as successfully.”

In case you did not know phytoplankton is a form of algae, which according to the study in 2008:

“These findings are important because plant life cycles are essential in maintaining the balance of gases in our atmosphere. In looking at how plants survive in this area, we have shown how the Atlantic is able to draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through the growth of photosynthesising plants.”

So here we have studies that are at cross purposes. On the one hand global warming will cause more desert dust which will create more bacteria causing human illnesses. On the other hand we have a study showing that those dust storms are essential to "maintaining the balance of gasses in our atmosphere" .

But we are not done there. My old memory was pricked a bit more when they mentioned iron in the water which led me back to this:

Green Algae Bloom Could Stop Global Warming

The researchers, aboard the Royal Navy’s HMS Endurance, have found that melting icebergs off the coast of Antarctica are releasing millions of tiny particles of iron into the southern Ocean, helping to create huge ‘blooms’ of algae that absorb carbon emissions. The algae then sinks to the icy depths, effectively removing CO2 from the atmosphere for hundreds of years.

According to lead researcher, Prof. Rob Raiswell of Leeds University, “The Earth itself seems to want to save us.”


Scientists have known for some time that artificially created algal blooms could be used to absorb greenhouse gases, but the technique has been banned for fear of causing unforeseen side effects in fragile ecosystems. However, based on the UK team’s evidence that the process has been occurring naturally for millions of years, and on a wide scale, the UN has given the green light for a ground-breaking experiment later this month.

The team will seek to create a massive algae bloom by releasing several tons of iron sulphate into the sea off the coast of the British island of South Georgia. The patch will apparently be large enough to be visible from space...

So here we are again. Instead of sulphate in the atmosphere we now have scientist dumping sulphate in the oceans to create algae to stop global warming while other scientist are warning that increased algae caused by global warming is a health hazard. In addition we have another group of scientist telling us that the algae created by Saharan dust is dangerous while another group is telling us that it is essential to our very survival.

But it does not end there, it never ends, we have a whole other group of scientist telling us that algae is the possible solution to not only our energy needs but also a slolution to our sewage problems.

Using Algae to Clean Wastewater, Make Fuel

A wastewater treatment plant might seem like the last place to find a fuel for the future, but a team of researchers has done just that.

Researchers at Rochester Institute of Technology are using algae grown in wastewater to produce biodiesel. They say the process is “doubly green” because the algae consume pathogens in the water even as they can be used to produce biofuel.....

Focusing on sewage is probably a good thing since returning to our original article on algae we are faced with this:

Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee warned that an increase in severe rainstorms could cause more sewage overflows, which would release disease-causing bacteria, viruses and protozoa into drinking water and onto beaches.

The researchers in this study used climate models to show that spring rains are expected to increase in the next 50 years, and with that increase, ageing sewer systems are more likely to overflow because the ground is frozen and rainwater can't be absorbed.

Perhaps if we quit spending so much money on these studies we could fix our aging sewer systems...just saying. After all in our warmer world we have to worry more about the frozen ground in springtime...right?