Friday, 18 July 2008

More Bad News For Global Warming Enthusiasts

The man made global warming theory continues to unravel. The latest convert is Australian David Evans. He was the scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model for measuring Australia's compliance to the Kyoto Protocol.

When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.

The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

David points to three reasons he has changed his mind on the topic.

  1. There is no greenhouse signature. If global warming were occurring there would be a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the temperature there for decades and have not found a hot spot. Since there is no hot spot greenhouse gasses can't be the cause of global warming.
  2. The current warming trend ended in 2001 and the last year saw an drop of about one degree Fahrenheit.
  3. New ice cores show that temperature increases preceded rises in atmospheric carbon during the last six warming cycles over the last 500,000 years. Which is cause and which is effect?

Hate to bust your bubble global warming environmentalists, but the facts are starting to get in the way of your dogma. I guess you are going to have to find a new reason why we need to implement socialism and destroy capitalism. It was a nice try, but sometimes the truth just gets in the way.

Posted by brians at 2:18 PM in Political Issues
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Thursday, 17 July 2008

Global Warming Hoax Continues Crumbling

I have long been an opponent to the idea that man made CO2 emissions was causing global warming. The planet changes not over years or decades or even centuries. It changes in the scale of thousands of years.

The earth has gone through periods of much warmer and much colder weather than today. The trends of even 50 years don't mean much to me or prove global warming. Like every natural cycle, they can last a long long time. I fully expect the planet to begin cooling again as we leave a time of heavy solar activity. It turns out we may have already turned the corner. The planet has been cooling since 2001. In fact a pronounced downward trend has occurred capped by last years greatest drop in temperatures since we have kept records.

I am not the only one who doubts global warming. Now the American Physical Society is reconsidering its position on global warming.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) concluded that anthropogenic CO2 emissions probably caused more than half of the “global warming” of the past 50 years and would cause further rapid warming. However, global mean surface temperature has not risen since 1998 and may have fallen since late 2001. The present analysis suggests that the failure of the IPCC’s models to predict this and many other climatic phenomena arises from defects in its evaluation of the three factors whose product is climate sensitivity:

  1. Radiative forcing ΔF;
  2. The no-feedbacks climate sensitivity parameter κ; and
  3. The feedback multiplier ƒ.

Some reasons why the IPCC’s estimates may be excessive and unsafe are explained. More importantly, the conclusion is that, perhaps, there is no “climate crisis”, and that currently-fashionable efforts by governments to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions are pointless, may be ill-conceived, and could even be harmful.

The article is a good read for those interested in math. It does an excellent job covering the mathematics behind the models and why they fail. Since the article is so techinical, I will attempt to articulate the reason for the model's failure.

The problem with all "computer models" is the fact that they can not accurately predict chaotic systems. If it were possible then we would be able to predict the daily weather with 100% accuracy.

The IPCC started by creating an already flawed computer model to reflect the changes in the temperatures from CO2 emissions. When they did they created a feedback loop caused from CO2 emissions. The problem occurs when doing iterative analysis on feedback loops. They can quickly amplify the results significantly.

The result of these models was spiraling out of control temperatures. Allowing the modelers to claim catastrophic predictions for the future. The only problem is the feedback value they used for CO2 can not be sustained mathematically. In other words, the model they used was crap. If the models they used were accurate the earth would not be undergoing the current cooling phase.

As temperatures continue to cool over the next decade, we will once again learn a big lesson in the hubris of man and the amazing durability of our planet.

Posted by brians at 11:10 PM in Political Issues
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Wednesday, 16 July 2008

Happy Cost Of Government Day!

Our term of indentured servitude for government ends today. Now we can spend the rest of the year working for ourselves.

Posted by brians at 1:41 PM in Political Issues
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Monday, 14 July 2008

Solving Our Energy Dependency Problem: Oil Shale

Oil shale is a sedimentary rock which contains a significant amount of solid organic material. This substance is known as Kerogen. What does this have to do with our energy problem? Well it turns out that is possible to convert Kerogen into oil shale which is similar to crude oil. In short it can be used as a replacement for crude oil.

That is interesting and all, but how can that help us reach energy independence? Because the USA has an enormous reserve of oil shale. How big is it? Let's compare it to the known crude oil reserves in the world.

As you can see, our shale reserves dwarf the total oil reserves of the world's current crude oil leaders. It seems we could within 10 years reach energy independence if we only tapped our own natural resources!

If it is so great why hasn't it been used already? Because it is more expensive to process. Research has shown that initial cost of shale oil will be around $70 to $95 a barrel with costs declining once operations are in place to $30 to $50 a barrel.

So shale oil is only feasible when a barrel of oil is in the $70 - $90 a barrel range. Hmmm, crude oil is currently priced at $140 a barrel. Even when the oil bubble bursts oil prices will only fall into the $80 a barrel range, the cost of shale will roughly be the same cost as crude. And over time it will assuredly be cheaper. I think it is time America started investing in shale oil now. It can provide the U.S. with 100% of it's oil needs for some time into the future. Such an announcement would put pressure on the current oil market forcing down prices now. Plus it would buy us the time we need to find and develop alternative energy sources that are economically feasible and not oil dependent.

Posted by brians at 5:14 PM in Political Issues
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Monday, 7 July 2008

Socializing Health Care Is Bad Idea

One of the major issues of this year's presidential election is the growing costs of health care. Much of the discussion this year by Democrats has been on the adoption of some type of single payer system in the U.S. Moving us down the path to a socialized health care system.

While I share most people's frustration over the costs of health care, we need to reject liberal solutions proposed by Obama and his fellow Democrats. Why? Let's ask the architect of Canada's socialized system what he now thinks about his own creation.

Once again we see that liberalism fails wherever it is tried.

Posted by brians at 10:04 PM in Political Issues
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The Price Of An Increased Minimum Wage

Today the Courier Journal has a wonderful sob story about how difficult it is for teens to get jobs in today's market. I assume the point of the story is tell us how rotten the economy has become. The gloomier life is the more likely people will respond to Obama Mesiah's promise of hope and change.

I don't see it that way. I see the higher teen unemployment as the natural result of raising the minimum wage. Last year when the left railed at the inequity of a low minimum wage, they claimed that people couldn't make a living on the minimum wage. At the time, I and others pointed out that most of the people who make the minimum wage are teenagers. They would be the ones most effected by the new law as companies tried to get by with less labor.

Low and behold the laws of economics work. Now we are seeing a difficult time for teenagers trying to get jobs. I don't think it is mere coincidence that a rise in teen unemployment lines up perfectly with the increase in the minimum wage. Unfortunately, the article ignores the effect of raising the minimum wage on job availability. I guess that would hit to close to home for the useful idiot class. They would have to come face to face with the reality that their liberal policies are the root cause of higher teen unemployment.

Posted by brians at 8:28 PM in Political Issues
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