Archive for the ‘Nature’ Category
Posted on: May 2, 2016
- In: corruption | Economics | environment | global warming | green economy | Nature | Uncategorized
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4/15/2018: The Charney Sensitivity of Homicides to Atmospheric CO2: A Parody
3/21/2018: Extraterrestrial Forcing of Surface Temperature and Climate Change: A Parody
3/17/2018: From Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity to Carbon Climate Response
2/14/2018: Uncertainty in Empirical Climate Sensitivity
8/272017: Effect of Fossil Fuel Emissions on Sea Level Rise
7/5/2017: Responsiveness of Atmospheric CO2 to Fossil Fuel Emissions
7/12/2017: Limitations of the TCRE: Transient Climate Response to Cumulative Emissions
12/1/2016: Illusory Statistical Power in Time Series Analysis
11/21/2016: Some Methodological Issues in Climate Science
11/15/2016: Responsiveness of Polar Sea Ice Extent to Air Temperature 1979-2016
11/1/2016: Responsiveness of Atmospheric CO2 to Fossil Fuel Emissions: Part 2
10/30/2016: Unstable Correlations between Atmospheric CO2 and Surface Temperature
10/21/2016: The Acid Rain Program Part 1: Lake Acidity in the Adirondacks
10/16/2016: Effective Sample Size of the Cumulative Values of a Time Series
9/30/2016: Generational Fossil Fuel Emissions and Generational Warming: A Note
9/24/2016: The Trend Profile of Mean Global Total Column Ozone 1964-2009
9/15/2016: Trend Profiles of Atmospheric Temperature Time Series
08/22/2016: Spurious Correlations in Time Series Data
07/23/2016: SDG: Climate Activism Disguised As Development Assistance
06/13/2016: The United Nations: An Unconstrained Bureaucracy
5/18/206: Changes in the 13C/12C Ratio of Atmospheric CO2 1977-2014
5/16/2016: Shale Gas Production and Atmospheric Ethane
5/6/2016: The OLS Warming Trend at Nuuk, Greenland
4/30/2016: Dilution of Atmospheric Radiocarbon CO2 by Fossil Fuel Emissions
4/19/2016: The Hurst Exponent of Sunspot Counts
4/12/2016: Seasonality and Dependence in Daily Mean USCRN Temperature
4/1/2016: Mean Global Total Ozone from Ground Station Data: 1987-2015
3/15/2016: Latitudinally Weighted Mean Global Ozone 1979-2015
2/1/2016: The Spuriousness of Correlations between Cumulative Values
1/21/2016: An Empirical Test of the Chemical Theory of Ozone Depletion
11/2015: The Hurst Exponent of Precipitation
11/11/2015: The Hurst Exponent of Surface Temperature
10/14/2015: Responsiveness of Atmospheric Methane to Human Emissions
10/6/2016: An Empirical Study of Fossil Fuel Emissions and Ocean Acidification
9/19/2015: Decadal Fossil Fuel Emissions and Decadal Warming
9/1/2015: Uncertain Flow Accounting and the IPCC Carbon Budget
8/21/2015: Responsiveness of Atmospheric CO2 to Anthropogenic Emissions
7/15/2015: A Robust Test for OLS Trends in Daily Temperature Data
6/2015: A General Linear Model for Trends in Tropical Cyclone Activity
3/1/2015: Uncertainty in Radiocarbon Dating: A Numerical Approach
10/20/2014: Simulation as a Teaching Tool in Finance
6/25/2014: The Rise and Fall of the Arbitrage Pricing Theory
6/11/2014: There is No Chaos in Stock Markets
3/23/2014: The Hamada Equation Reconsidered
The notion that our carbon dioxide emissions are causing the oceans to warm at an alarming rate making glaciers flow faster into the sea (Staying afloat in a sinking world, Bangkok Post, November 24, 2010) is logically and scientifically flawed in many ways. I would like to cite only one of them and it has to do with the Argo Project. It was launched with much fanfare about six years ago. Thousands of robotized floats were installed in oceans around the globe to measure “just how fast the ocean is warming”. By their own reckoning, these measurements provide the most accurate and comprehensive sea temperature data available to them. Yet, mysteriously, the hype went out of the Argo Project almost as soon as it was implemented. Not only that, the Argo data are apparently being shunned by climate scientists who prefer the old measuring devices whose inadequacy was apparently the reason that they had sought funding for Argo. NASA’s JPL, the keepers of the Argo data, admitted that it is because there are no trends in the temperature or salinity data from the Argo floats. Had the data showed the kind of warming they had hoped to find, the media would have been inundated with that information. The fundamental bias in climate science is that data that do not support its presumptions are not considered valid.
- In: Bangkok Post | environment | global warming | History | Nature
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The so called “climate change vulnerability index”, that is likely causing great economic harm to countries like Bangladesh and India by implying that they pose higher risk to investors, is based on the proposition that “there is growing evidence that climate change is increasing the intensity and frequency” of weather related natural disasters.
In fact there is no such evidence. This idea was included in the IPCC’s 2007 assessment report based on a peer reviewed research paper but that paper having been shown to be flawed, the IPCC has since made a full retraction of this claim (UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters, The Sunday Times, January 24, 2010).
However, this orphaned idea has taken on a life of its own in the media. It thus remains in the media and apparently even with the architects of the “climate change vulnerability index”. The perpetrators of this falsehood are likely the real vulnerable parties having exposed themselves to lawsuits by countries suffering economic harm from their flawed prophecies of doom.
- In: Bangkok Post | environment | global warming | History | Nature
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It is reported that there are 6.8 billion humans living on our planet but that it is endowed with natural resources and ecosystems that can support only 4.5 billion humans. The pressure on the ecosystem thus induced will cause a mass extinction of species by way of global warming and climate change. The scale of the mass extinction will be comparable with the extinction of dinosaurs (UN urges action to save species, Bangkok Post, October 19, 2010). It is the old and completely discredited Paul Ehrlich Population Bomb hype of the 1960s and 1970s (2001 an Overpopulation Odyssey, Los Angeles Times, October 22, 1974). It has been resurrected to be recycled in the fancy new language of global warming and climate change. It presents known falsehoods as climate science.
The new global warming hype is thus exposed as nothing more than the old overpopulation pig with lipstick. It is a continuation of the movement by human beings against the habitation of the planet by other human beings but not themselves. This time around, not limited resource consumption, but carbon dioxide emission is presented as the proxy for destructive human activity.
Ironically, in the same issue of the Bangkok Post, we read that Europeans are alarmed that phthalates in toys can damage the sexual development of children (The problem with hazardous phthalates, Bangkok Post, October 19, 2010). Those who really believe in the alleged dangers of overpopulation should be comforted by the population control effect of phthalates. That they are alarmed shows that the global warming mass extinction alarm is a lie disguised as science, and that overpopulation is not a concern that there are too many of us but that there are too many of them.
Here we find the alarming report that “Penises are shrinking and genitals becoming malformed because of phthalates an environmental scientist has warned in a new book detailing the challenges facing human reproduction. Dr Shanna Swan writes that humanity is facing an “existential crisis” in fertility rates as a result of phthalates, a chemical used when manufacturing plastics that impacts the hormone-producing endocrine system.
MORE EVIDENCE THAT THE “FAMILY PLANNING” STERILIZATION PROGRAMS IN THE THIRD WORLD FUNDED BY THE WEST WHERE WOMEN ARE PAID HANDSOMELY TO ACCEPT A STERILIZATION PROCEDURE is not something that we are likely to see in their home country. IT’S A CASE OF RACISM DISGUISED AS ENVIRONMENTALISM.
Fear based environmentalism
Posted on: September 15, 2010
- In: environment | global warming | green economy | History | Nature | ozone hole | Uncategorized
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1960s: The over-population theory explores the fear that there are too many people on earth and they are breeding too fast. It is predicted that by 1987 human activity will exceed the planet’s ability to sustain us with food, energy, and raw materials. The scenario, explored in the movie “Soilent Green”, is predicted to includes Biblical famine and death, anarchy, and the devolution of human society possibly including cannibalism. Human activity will have destroyed the earth’s ability to sustain human beings.
1970s: The “limits to growth” theory disseminates the fear that society will collapse by the year 2000 because there is a hard upper limit to the amount of fossil fuels, minerals, and other planetary resources that we can consume and therefore a limit to the level of economic growth that is achievable. Continued economic growth will run into this upper limit and cause a complete collapse of civilization as we know it.
1970s: The first ozone depletion scare campaign is waged against the development of the SST high altitude airliner with the allegedly scientific argument that nitric oxide (NOx) in the jet exhaust will deplete ozone in the ozone layer. The campaign is successful and the SST program is canceled. Their success emboldens environmental extremists and the modern version of planetary environmentalism based on fear takes form. Twenty years later the same scientists, alarmed by falling NOx concentration in the lower atmosphere declared that “NOx is the immune system of the atmosphere” because it prevents chlorine from depleting ozone.
1980s: The second ozone depletion scare campaign is waged against refrigerants that contain CFC chemicals saying that human activity was causing an ozone hole over the Antarctic and causing the establishment of the Montreal Protocol and a comprehensive ban on the most efficient and inexpensive refrigerants used worldwide. The ozone depletion science is proven wrong but the media that helped hype the ozone hole scare are silent on the issue. The ozone hole scare quietly disappears from the media.
1990s to present: The global warming scare campaign rises like a Phoenix from the ashes of the failed ozone hole scare campaign with the theory that carbon dioxide from fossil fuels accumulates in the atmosphere, traps heat, and warms up the planet with catastrophic consequences of Biblical proportions.
Reference: Is the weather chaos linked to warming, Bangkok Post, August 25, 2010
A recent article on global warming (Is the weather chaos linked to warming, Bangkok Post, August 25, 2010) refers to the heat wave in Russia and the floods in Pakistan to imply that there exists empirical evidence that shows that global warming is causing extreme weather. There are repeated references to alleged statistical evidence as in the following sentence fragments: “the statistical evidence shows that much of this is starting to happen”, “the statistics suggest that this is happening”, “climate change skeptics dispute statistical arguments”, “researchers offer evidence to show that weather extremes are getting worse”, and so on. Yet, hidden in the mass of alarmist statements about catastrophic man made climate change are these complete contradictions: “It will be a year or two before scientists publish definitive analyses of the Russian heat wave and the Pakistani floods”; “If you ask me as a person do I think that the Russian heat wave has to do with climate change , the answer is yes, but if you ask me as a scientist whether I have proof, the answer is no”. In other words there is no statistical evidence. Contradictions of this kind are characteristic of the post Climategate genre of climate catastrophe alarmism. The contradictions cancel out and leave a net information content of zero.
Cha-am Jamal
Thailand
Glacier mass balance
Posted on: July 23, 2010
- The dynamics of glaciers that feed rivers are best understood in terms of a mass balance which states essentially that: input – output = accumulation.
- The input term is usually the amount of precipitation in the glacial basin that flows to the glacier. The output term is the meltwater that feeds the river plus evaporation. If the accumulation is positive the glacier is growing and if it is negative it means that the glacier is shrinking.
- If it is shrinking it could mean one of two things. Either the amount of precipitation is declining relative to the melt rate; or the melt rate is increasing relative to precipitation. There is a big difference between these two scenarios in terms of water flow in downstream rivers.
- In the former case, the water flow in downstream rivers would remain unchanged while in the latter case, there would be an increase in flow possibly associated with rising river levels and flooding. In the absence of rising river levels downstream, it is not possible to conclude that the glacier is retreating because of an increase in the melt rate.
- Yet, all instances of glacial retreat are presented by climate science as an effect of increased melt rate caused by global warming without providing the necessary data on changes in the flow rates of downstream rivers that the glacier feeds.
Chaamjamal, Thailand
Himalayan glaciers melting again
Posted on: July 22, 2010
Reference: Our beaker is on the boil, Bangkok Post, July 21, 2010
In its 2007 assessment of climate change, the IPCC had warned that global warming is causing Himalayan glaciers to melt and recede and that this process, unchecked by their prescribed intervention of carbon emission reduction, would dry up Asia’s great rivers including the Yellow, the Yangtze, the Mekong, and the Ganges and leave more than a billion people without water (Himalayan glacier melts to hit billions of poor, Bangkok Post, December 7, 2009).
Skeptics were quick to point out that glacial meltwater plays a very minor role in feeding these rivers and that therefore the loss of glaciers would not affect these rivers in the way postulated by the IPCC. The IPCC was forced to make a full retraction of this assessment.
Soon thereafter climate scientists started looking for rivers in the region that do depend on meltwater from Himalayan glaciers in order to resurrect their glacial-melt agenda. They came up with the Indus and Brahmaputra rivers as possible candidates on the basis of their dependence on glaciers (Our beaker is on the boil, Bangkok Post, July 21, 2010).
The Brahmaputra does receive a greater portion of its water from glacial melt than the Ganges, but at about 8% or so it is still too small a fraction to cause the river to “dry up” without glacial meltwater. The Indus, however, is a different story for there the complete loss of glacial meltwater would cause a 24% decline in flow and that would indeed be a catastrophic impact.
There is a small problem with geography, however. The source of these rivers is not in the region where the receding glacier is identified. In particular, the source of the Indus is in the Karakoram range where most glaciers – including the Siachen glacier that feeds the Indus – are growing and advancing and certainly not receding.
The assertion that global warming will cause the Indus and Brahmaputra to run dry is based on data from the wrong glacier and is therefore not valid. It is yet another example where climate science has attempted to generalize local data when such generalization is not possible. All glaciers in the Himalayas are not receding. Many are advancing and many more are at steady state – neither advancing nor retreating; but you won’t hear about them from climate scientists because they cannot be used to evoke fear and loathing of carbon dioxide. This kind of fear based activism appears to be an integral and important part of the science of climate science.
Cha-am Jamal
Thailand
- In: Bangkok Post | global warming | Nature | Thailand
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- All through August of 2008 the National Disaster Warning Centre of Thailand warned citizens living in Bangkok and Samut Prakarn provinces to prepare for disaster because the worst storm and storm surge in 50 years was predicted to hit the region in August or September due to climate change.
- The forecasters said that the storm would have winds of 118 km/hr, waves 2.2 to 4.5 meters, and a huge storm surge that would wipe out everything in its path. These warnings appeared in various forms almost daily in newspapers and television and caused widespread panic and economic cost in the affected regions.
- The dreaded storm surge never came. The heroic weather forecasters who had become media darlings overnight quietly faded from public view and the whole sordid affair was soon forgotten.
Cha-am Jamal, Thailand
- Reduced water flow caused by dams upstream allows brackish water to encroach farther into deltas than it normally does and thereby to adversely affect traditional agriculture in coastal regions. Yet, the UNDP is trying to pin the salinity problem in the Mekong delta on global warming knowing full well that dams in China have significantly reduced the flow in the Mekong River (Salty waters parched earth, Bangkok Post, July 18, 2010).
- In any case, if drought and salinity are devastating rice farming in the Mekong delta, it is not evident in the production statistics which show that overproduction has left the delta awash in rice with the urgent problem being low demand and falling prices, not global warming (Vietnam rice growers face low prices, Bangkok Post, July 19, 2010).
Cha-am Jamal
Thailand
Thongchai Thailand 