More buckets of icy cold energy reality by Paul Driessen

Democrats, Green New Dealers and UN gabfest attendees need to get ‘woke’ on eco-energy

The full-court press is on for climate chaos disaster and renewable energy salvation. CNN recently hosted a seven-hour climate event for Democrat presidential aspirants. Every day brings more gloom-and-doom stories about absurd, often taxpayer-funded pseudo-scientific reports on yet another natural event or supposed calamity that alarmists insist is due to fossil fuels that provide 80% of US and global energy.

MSNBC just hosted another two-day Democrat presidential candidates climate forum at Georgetown University – where I spoke at a contrarian program. Meanwhile, a big Climate March took place in New York City, while protesters tried to block Washington, DC streets. They were all kicking off the UN’s “Global Climate Week” in NYC, featuring a Youth Climate Summit and UN General Assembly event where world leaders will demand “global action” to supposedly stop the supposed climate crisis.

Their standard solution is biofuel, solar, wind and battery power. My recent article dumped buckets of icy cold reality on several of those claims. They obviously need to be doused with a few more icy buckets.

To reiterate: Wind and sunshine are free, renewable, sustainable and eco-friendly. However, the lands and raw materials required for technologies to harness this widely dispersed, intermittent, weather-dependent energy to benefit humanity absolutely are not. In fact, their environmental impacts are monumental.

The Democrat candidates and their supporters want to replace coal and gas backup power plants with batteries, to ensure we have (much more expensive) electricity even when intermittent, weather-dependent wind and sunshine refuse to cooperate with our need for 24/7/365 power for our electricity-based homes, schools, hospitals, factories, businesses, computers, social media and civilization.

So let’s suppose we blanket the United States with enough industrial-scale wind and solar facilities to replace the 3.9 billion megawatt-hours Americans used in 2018 – and we manufacture and install enough king-sized batteries to store sufficient electricity for seven straight windless or sunless days.

We would need something on the order of one billion 100-kilowatt-hour, 1,000-pound lithium and cobalt-based battery packs – similar to what Tesla uses in its electric vehicles. (This does not include the extra battery storage required to charge up the cars, trucks and buses we are supposed to replace with EVs.)

All these batteries would support the millions and millions of Green New Deal solar panels and wind turbines we would have to build and install. They would require prodigious amounts of iron, copper, rare earth metals, concrete and other raw materials. And every one of these batteries, turbines and panels would have to be replaced far more often than coal, gas, nuclear or hydroelectric power plants.

Indeed, what are we going do with all those worn-out and broken-down turbines, panels and batteries? The International Renewable Energy Agency has said disposing of just the worn out solar panels that the UN wants erected around the world by 2050, under the Paris Climate Treaty’s solar energy goals, could result in two times the tonnage of the United States’ total plastic waste in 2017!

So another icy cold reality is this: All this “free, renewable, sustainable, eco-friendly, ethical” energy would require the biggest expansion in mining the world has ever seen. But when was the last time any environmentalist or Democrat supported opening a single US mine? They detest mining.

Which brings us to the dirtiest pseudo-renewable, pseudo-sustainable energy secret of all – the one these folks absolutely do not want to talk about: slave and child labor.

Because of rabid environmentalist opposition, the United States and Europe no longer permit much mining within their borders. They just import minerals – many of them from China and Russia. And the same groups that extol the virtues of wind, solar and battery power are equally opposed to Western mining companies extracting rare earth, lithium, cadmium, cobalt and other minerals almost anywhere on Planet Earth – even under rigorous Western labor, safety, environmental and reclamation rules.

That means those materials are mined and processed in places like Baotou, Inner Mongolia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, mostly under Chinese control. They are dug out and processed by fathers, mothers and children – under horrific, unsafe, inhuman conditions that few of us can even imagine ... under almost nonexistent labor, wage, health, safety and pollution standards.

Those renewable energy, high-tech slaves get a few pennies or dollars a day – while risking cave-ins and being exposed constantly to filthy, toxic, radioactive mud, dust, water and air. The mining and industrial areas become vast toxic wastelands, where nothing grows, and no people or wildlife can live.

For cobalt alone – say UNICEF and Amnesty International – over 40,000 Congolese children, as young as four years old, slave away in mines, from sunrise to sundown, six or even seven days a week. That’s today. Imagine how many will be needed to serve the “ethical green energy utopia.”

Green New Dealers demand sustainable, ethical, human rights-based coffee, sneakers, T-shirts, handbags and diamonds. Absolutely no child labor, sweat shop, or toxic, polluted workplace conditions allowed. But they have little or nothing to say about the Chinese, Russian and other companies that run the horrid operations that provide their wind turbines, solar panels, smart grids – and batteries for their cell phones, Teslas, laptops and backup electrical power.

I’ve never seen them make ethical wind turbines, solar panels and batteries an issue. They’ve never protested outside a Chinese, Russian or Congolese embassy, or corporate headquarters in Beijing, Moscow or Kinshasa. They probably don’t want to get shot or sent to gulags.

And just a few weeks ago, California legislators voted down Assembly Bill 735. The bill simply said California would certify that “zero emission” electric vehicles sold in the state must be free of any materials or components that involve child labor. The issue is complicated, the legislators said. It would be too hard to enforce. It would imperil state climate goals. And besides, lots of other industries also use child labor ... they “explained.”

As Milton Friedman said, there is no free lunch. Wind, solar, biofuel and battery power are not free, clean, green, renewable or sustainable. America must not let delusion, dishonesty and ideology drive public policies that will determine our future jobs, prosperity, living standards, freedoms and civilization.

What Green New Dealers are talking about has nothing to do with stopping dangerous manmade climate change – or with real sustainability, resource conservation or environmental protection. It has everything to do with increasingly socialist, largely taxpayer-financed activists, politicians, regulators and crony capitalists controlling people’s lives; dictating our energy use, economic growth, job opportunities and living standards; and getting richer, more powerful and more privileged in the process.

Meanwhile poor, minority and working class families – pay the price. And destitute families in hungry, impoverished, electricity-deprived nations pay the highest price. China, India, Indonesia and Africa are not about to give up their determined efforts to take their rightful, God-given places among Earth’s healthy and prosperous people. They are not going to stop using fossil fuels to reach their goals.

They are not going to let anyone – including the UN, EU, US Democrats and other eco-imperialists – tell them they can never enjoy those blessings. Or they will be “allowed” to improve their health and living standards only at the margins, only to levels achievable with wind, solar and cow dung power.

That’s why, even as the United States reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by 12% between 2000 and 2017 – India’s plant-fertilizing CO2 emissions soared by 140% and China’s skyrocketed 194% – further greening Planet Earth. In 2019 alone, China alone will add more coal-fired generating capacity than what all existing US coal-fired power plants generate.

While all these countries continue using more and more fossil fuels to improve their economies, health and living standards – why in heaven’s name would the United States want to join Green New Dealers and other crazies in an environment-destroying ban-fossil-fuels economic suicide pact?

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate, environmental and human rights issues.

Calculating the Angular Dependence of Planar Radiation Upon a Sphere

The incidence of planar radiation upon a sphere, such as that from the sun upon the Earth, is an important calculation for climate science, so I am going to demonstrate that calculation.  This post repeats the previous post content, but adds graphs of properties as a function of surface normal angles of the sphere.

Let the amplitude of the planar radiation be P₀, which is commonly expressed as W/m².   The incident radiation on the sphere surface normal to the planar radiation will have an intensity of P₀.  As one examines a unit surface area of the sphere which is non-normal to the planar wave of radiation, the unit area of the sphere intercepts less and less of the planar radiation the greater the surface normal angle is with respect to the direction of the plane wave.  Let us call the angle from the center of the sphere to the point on the surface upon which the planar wave has normal incidence and the surface annulus of points equidistance from the normal incidence point θ.  The surface of the hemisphere facing the planar radiation then consists of a normal point and a series of annuli, one for each Δθ that we choose.  The annuli have increasing radii perpendicular to the planar wave of radiation.  The angle θ to describe these annuli varies from 0 to π/2 radians or 90̊.  We will use the radian units.  Let the radius of the sphere be R.

Each annulus has a circumference of 2πR sin θ and it intercepts an annulus of the planar radiation wave with the same circumference, but with a narrower width than the annulus on the sphere surface has for θ > 0.  The width of the planar wave annulus that projects onto the sphere surface is given by Δθ R cos θ.  Thus, at angle θ the area of the plane wave of radiation intercepted by the sphere at angle θ, is

A_I (θ) = 2πR² sin θ cos θ Δθ

Integrating over the range from 0 to π/2 for θ, we find the area of the planar wave of radiation which is intercepted by the sphere.  The integral is

A_I = 2πR² ∫₀^π/2 sin θ cos θ dθ

The value of the integral is ½ sin²θ, which for these limits of integration yields a value of  ½.  Consequently, we have an obvious result that

A_I = πR²

which helps to confirm that we have A_I (θ) right. The total incident planar wave power on the sphere (all on one hemisphere) is then

I_T = P₀ A_I = πR² P₀

The total area of the sphere, A_S, is 4πR², so we can rewrite this as

I_T = (1/4) A_SP₀

Averaging over the entire area of the sphere, the total incident plane wave intensity average per unit area is then P₀/4.

Let us examine the intensity of radiation on equal areas of the sphere surface now.  The first area is a circle on the sphere whose surface normal is perpendicular to the wave front and whose area is given by 

π ( R sin θ₀ )²

The irradiance of this area is P₀ times this area, so finding the irradiance per unit area means we divide by the area of this circle and arrive at P₀.  To normalize this to one, we further divide by P₀. to make the result more universal for any radiant power.

The subsequent total irradiance values are those of the annuli, which are given by A_I (θ).  To find the irradiance per unit area on the annuli surface of the sphere for comparison with the irradiance per unit area on the normal facing circle, the A_I (θ) values are all divided by the circumference of the annuli times the width of the annuli, so the per unit area relative irradiance values to compare with that of the center circle normal to the radiation wavefront are:

(2πR² sin θ cos θ Δθ) / (2πRsin θ)( R Δθ) = cos θ

If we make the inner circle sized to have an arc of 1̊ or  π/180, then θ₀ = 0.5̊.  Using a step size of 1̊  each annulus will subsume an arc of π/180, then we have the normalized irradiance per unit surface area on the sphere for θ shown in the plot below:

Let us now plot the total irradiance of the sphere as a function of the angle between the wave front and the sphere surface normal.  This is just

A_I (θ) = 2πR² sin θ cos θ Δθ,

where πR² is just the intercepted area of the plane wavefront.  So to keep this a generalized function for any sphere radius R, we will divide A_I (θ) by πR².  Recall that the integral of the product sin θ cos θ over the range of angles from 0̊ to 90̊ is ½, so the integral of A_I (θ) / πR² over this range is 1.  What this means is that A_I (θ) / πR² is the fraction of the total incident radiation on the sphere at the surface normal angles θ.  This fraction of the radiation incident on the sphere for θ is plotted below using a 1̊ step size (The sum of the fractions of the incident radiation is 0.999898506, which is pretty close to 1.):

The total radiation incident upon the sphere maximizes at 45̊ even though the radiation density is greatest at 0̊.  This is because the circular area with a 1̊ arc at 0̊ is very small and the area of the annuli for larger angles gets larger and larger as θ increases, even as the radiation density decreases.

Calculating the Cross Section of Planar Radiation Upon a Sphere and Finding the Average Radiation Intensity Over the Sphere

The incidence of planar radiation upon a sphere, such as that from the sun upon the Earth, is an important calculation for climate science, so I am going to demonstrate that calculation.  Some people have doubts about the common claim that the average incident intensity of solar insolation upon the Earth per unit area is one-quarter of the radiation intensity at that part of the Earth where the surface is at normal incidence to the solar radiation.

Let the amplitude of the planar radiation be P₀, which is commonly expressed as W/m².   The incident radiation on the sphere surface normal to the planar radiation will have an intensity of P₀.  As one examines a unit surface are of the sphere which is non-normal to the planar wave of radiation, the unit area of the sphere intercepts less and less of the planar radiation the greater the surface normal angle is with respect to the direction of the plane wave.  Let us call the angle from the center of the sphere to the point on the surface upon which the planar wave has normal incidence and the surface annulus of points equidistance from the normal incidence point θ.  The surface of the hemisphere facing the planar radiation then consists of a normal point and a series of annuli, one for each Δθ that we choose.  The annuli have increasing radii perpendicular to the planar wave of radiation.  The angle θ to describe these annuli varies from 0 to π/2 radians or 90̊.  We will use the radian units.  Let the radius of the sphere be R.

Each annulus has a circumference of 2πR sin θ and it intercepts an annulus of the planar radiation wave with the same circumference, but with a narrower width than the annulus on the sphere surface has for θ > 0.  The width of the planar wave annulus that projects onto the sphere surface is given by Δθ R cos θ.  Thus, at angle θ the area of the plane wave of radiation intercepted by the sphere at angle θ, is

A_I (θ) = 2πR² sin θ cos θ Δθ

Integrating over the range from 0 to π/2 for θ, we find the area of the planar wave of radiation which is intercepted by the sphere.  The integral is

A_I = 2πR² ∫₀^π/2 sin θ cos θ dθ

The value of the integral is ½ sin²θ, which for these limits of integration is ½.  Consequently,

A_I = πR²

The total incident planar wave intensity on the sphere (all on one hemisphere) is then

P_T = P₀ A_I = πR² P₀

The total area of the sphere, A_S, is 4πR², so we can rewrite this as

P_T = (1/4) A_SP₀

Averaging over the entire area of the sphere, the total incident plane wave intensity average per unit area is then P₀/4.

There is NO climate emergency! by Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris

There is NO climate emergency!

Climate models predict disaster – but real world evidence shows no such thing

Dr. Jay Lehr & Tom Harris

Speaking at the 13th International Conference on Climate Change, held July 25 in Washington, DC, Dr. Roy W. Spencer of the University of Alabama in Huntsville said: “There is no climate crisis. Even if all the warming we’ve seen in any observational dataset is due to increasing CO2 (carbon dioxide), which I don’t believe it is, it’s probably too small for any person to feel in their lifetime.”

And yet, that same month, Democrat Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Earl Blumenauer and Democrat Senator Bernie Sanders introduced a non-binding resolution that demands a “national, social, industrial and economic mobilization” – to “halt, reverse, mitigate and prepare for the consequences of the climate emergency, and to restore the climate for future generations.” Six Democrat presidential candidates immediately supported the resolution, as a way to spur “sweeping reforms” to stem a “dangerous rise in global temperatures.”

In their view, apparently, asserting a climate emergency makes it a reality and justifies national or even global control and transformation of our energy, social, industrial, economic, legal and social systems.

Thus, in an effort to drum up support for its costly “carbon tax,” the Liberal government of Canada has also declared a climate emergency. So has Britain’s Parliament, to back up a call by opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn for “rapid and dramatic action” to protect the environment , following weeks of protests by the Extinction Rebellion climate movement, the Reuters News Agency reported.

The Climate Mobilization group proclaimed that “Over 790 local governments in 17 countries have declared a climate emergency and committed to action to drive down emissions at emergency speed.”

In considering whether this makes any sense, let’s take a page out of Blumenauer’s book and, as he put it, “tell the truth about the nature of this threat.”

The so-called emergency is based on nothing but the over-active imaginations of activists who put too much faith in computer model forecasts, while ignoring historic records and observational data that tell us nothing extraordinary or unprecedented is happening – and demonstrate that the models are wrong.

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies asserts that between 1880 and 2017 there has been only slightly more than 1 degree C (1.8 F) rise in the so-called global average temperature, despite a supposed 40% rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) database of state-wide extreme weather records, arguably the best of its kind in the world, shows that so far in 2019 only one weather record has been set: the lowest temperature in Illinois history.

In 2018, the only records set were: the largest hailstone in Alabama history; the most rainfall in a 24-hour period in Hawaii; and the most precipitation in one year in Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and West Virginia. Many of these records broke, sometimes barely, records that had stood for many decades. 

In 2017, the only record set was for the fastest wind gust in California. No records were set in 2016. In 2015, only two records: the most precipitation in a year in Arkansas and the largest hailstone in Illinois history. In 2014, only one record: the most rainfall in a 24-hour period in New York.

And so it goes, year after year, as we move into the past with the occasional state record set, as one would expect due to natural climate variability. In the first 18+ years of the 21st century, only two states recorded their maximum temperatures: South Carolina in 2012 and South Dakota in 2006. Contrast that with 1936, when 15 states set their all-time maximum temperature records.

Meanwhile, NOAA’s updated coastal sea level tide gauge data for 2016 show no evidence that the rate of sea level rise is accelerating. Seas are rising no faster than they have for many decades.

NOAA’s hurricane records go back to 1851. The data show that for almost 12 consecutive years – October 24, 2005 (after Wilma) until August 25, 2017 (Harvey) – not one major or moderate (Category 3-5) hurricane made landfall in the continental United States. That is the longest such period in history. In 2018, for the first time ever, not one “violent” (F4-5) tornado touched down in the United States.

To the great frustration of climate alarmists, the real-world instrumental record clearly shows that, not only is no climate emergency underway, but today’s climate is actually quite stable. Aside from the drive for world socialism, the climate scare is based on only one thing: computer model forecasts of what some say could happen someday if we do not restrict our use of fossil fuels to reduce CO2 emissions.

However, the models do not work. That’s because they focus predominantly on greenhouse gases, and because scientists do not understand planetary climate processes well enough to know what mathematical equations to program into the models. Observations demonstrate that the actual rate of warming between 1979 and 2017 is one-third of what the average of 102 different climate models predicted. In fact, that climate model average is now almost one full degree Fahrenheit above what satellites have measured!

It is also important to realize that your own local weather forecasts just one week ahead are accurate only half the time. Let’s drill a bit deeper into this scandal.

For the better part of three decades, governments have financed more than one hundred efforts to model our planet. They continue to do so even though none of the models has been able to recreate (hindcast) the known past, or after a decade of study accurately predict what was to happen just ten years later.

People are led astray, because generally speaking, the public has no clue what mathematical models actually are, how they work, and what they can and cannot do. To provide a simple insight into this complex subject, before we build airplanes or buildings, we make small scale physical models and test them against the stress and performances that will be required of them when they are actually built.

When dealing with systems that are totally beyond our control, we try to describe them with computer programs or mathematical equations that we hope may give answers to questions we have about how the system works today and in the future. We attempt to understand the variables that affect the system’s operation. Then we alter the variables and see how the outcomes are affected. This is called sensitivity testing and is the very best use of mathematical models.

Historically, we were never foolish enough to make economic decisions based on predictions calculated from equations we think might control how nature works. Perhaps the most active area for mathematical modeling is the economy and stock market. No one has ever succeeded in getting it right, and they have far fewer variables than Earth’s climate, which is governed by many powerful natural forces.

Yet, today, in the climate sphere, we are doing just that – and using the models to justify massive changes in our energy and economic systems. While no one knows all the variables affecting climate, there are likely hundreds of them. Here are some important factors for which we have limited understanding:

1) seasonal, annual and decadal changes in solar irradiation; 2) energy flows between the ocean and atmosphere; 3) energy flows between the air and land; 4) balance between Earth’s water, water vapor and ice; 5) the impacts of clouds, both trapping heat below and preventing solar radiation from reaching Earth; 6) understanding the planet’s ice; 7) changes in mass among ice sheets, seal levels and glaciers; 8) our ability to factor in hurricanes and tornadoes; 9) the impact of vegetation on temperature; 10) tectonic movements on ocean bottoms; 11) differential rotation between Earth’s surface and its core; and 12) solar system magnetic field and gravitational interactions.

Despite this vast uncertainty, today’s modelers claim they can forecast our planet’s climate for decades or even a century in the future – by looking primarily or solely at “greenhouse gases.” And they want our leaders to manage our energy, economic, agricultural, transportation and other systems accordingly.

Yes, there is a climate-related emergency. It is the threat to our way of life in the free democratic world – imposed on us by climate alarmists, many of whom do not really care about climate change, people or the environment. It is an assault no less frightening and damaging than the wars that have plagued mankind since the dawn of time. It’s time for people and governments to stand up to the power-hungry alarmists.

Dr. Jay Lehr is Senior Policy Advisor with of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) and former Science Director of The Heartland Institute, in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Tom Harris is Executive Director of ICSC and a policy advisor to Heartland.    

The Wages of Progressive Elitist Political Sins in California

Progressive elitist political sins have very real consequences.  It is often said that California leads the nation in trends such as progressive elitism.  It is certainly the intent of many of the major Internet media companies based in California, such as Google and Facebook, to lead America into a socialist future.  The California Budget and Policy Center has compiled the data on low wage, mid wage, and high wage workers in California for the last 40 years.  The eye-opening inflation-adjusted, real wages are plotted below:

Apparently, progressive elitist policies only work for elitists and only hurt those the elitists claim they are trying to help.  Over 40 years, low wage workers in California were mostly worse off than they were in 1979 and only the recent expansion of the economy has managed to bring them to a very slight improvement over 1979 of 4%.  Mid wage earners have been very nearly flat in earnings per hour over this entire 40 year period.  The upper 10% of wage earners have done comparatively OK under California progressivism with a 43% real increase, though even this is only a 1.075% increase per year.

In comparison, the national real median personal income is:

Nationwide, real median personal income went up by 39% from 1979 to 2016 and it went up further in 2017.  This median national real income is not on a per hour basis, as is the data above on California workers.  However, in 1980 the average worker worked 38.1 hours a week and now the average worker works 34.4 hours/week, so one could multiply the gains in the national median income by about 1.1 for a comparison with the CA data above, though I am not doing that in the subsequent numbers I discuss.  If the national median personal income data excluded the population of California, whose population is about 12% that of the entire U.S., the increase would have been greater.  In fact, with some simple algebra one calculates that the median non-California worker's real income increased by about 44%, which means that outside of California, median income workers did as well as the top 10% of California workers did over the 40 years since 1979.  And that despite the fact that real incomes in many other states have also been held hostage to the sins of progressive elitist politics.

The wages of California progressive political sins are even worse than is suggested by this data.  The inflation adjustment on California worker wages is a national inflation rate, not a California cost of living adjustment.  California progressive politics has caused housing costs to soar.  Their regulatory state has caused costs on many businesses to soar as well and these costs have to be passed on to the people living in California.  State taxes are high.  The cost of living in California is about 13.4% above the national average, or about 15.2% above the national cost of living excluding California.

The California practice of suppressing individual rights has bad consequences for more than one's economic well-being, but the economics of it are bad enough.  Once again, I will remind my readers that economic growth rates are like interest rates, as they go up they have a most remarkable compounding effect on the size of the economy.  A rapidly growing economy makes a very much bigger pie to benefit everyone over a 40 year period, which is the time that most Americans have to look forward to before they die.  Many of us have even longer time-horizons for our concerns, since we have children and grandchildren we love and want to see flourish in freedom, prosperity, and security.

My youngest granddaughter just celebrated her first birthday.  If the national economy grows at a rate of 3% a year for the next 90 years, it will be 14.3 times as big as it is today.  Such growth rates are very achievable, if our governments do not excessively interfere with the private sector.  A 2% growth rate for 90 years yields an economy only 5.9 times its present size.  I expect the 14.3 times larger economy will have much more to offer my granddaughter as her life comes to a close than will an economy 5.9 times larger.  It might even offer her many more years of enjoyable life.  Of course, a real Progressive Elitist government outcome could be a negative growth rate or a 1% growth rate, where the latter economy in 90 years would be only 2.4 times the size of the present economy.

Hiding the Warm Past to Build Climate Alarmism

Tony Heller at Real Climate Science has provided another interesting post on how NASA GISS makes a practice of hiding the warm past to build the case for climate alarmism.  Here is how NASA GISS has massaged the data over time to leave out earlier, warmer parts of the climate record, cool the more distant past data with adjustments (fudges), and warm the recent past (despite increased urban heat island effects):

It is not the measurements that count, it is the result you want that counts at NASA.  This adulteration of governmental records should land these people in prison, as a reader, Tom Anderson, has pointed out in his comments from time to time.

Some might argue that the temperature data has not been accurate and it needs various corrections.  If corrections of this size are actually needed, then the data is simply not useful for the purpose of making decisions about the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars or tens of trillions of dollars and for the purposes of deciding which industries will be murdered and which will be subsidized.  I would argue that the corrections made are more likely to be of the opposite sign than the reality  of man-made effects on the local temperatures around weather stations justifies.

The Washington Post Again Falsely Trumpets Global Warming Alarm

Update:  The article in the Washington Post, whose arguments I tear to shreds in this post, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for 2020 for:

Explanatory Reporting

Staff of The Washington Post

For a groundbreaking series that showed with scientific clarity the dire effects of extreme temperatures on the planet.

Complete nonsense is Pulitzer Prize worthy in the minds of the elitist collectivist left who make these awards.

Now my post of 18 August 2019 describing the intellectual fraud begins:

The August 14, 2019 Washington Post had a front page, above the fold article which continues to fill the entirety of pages A10 and A11:

This article is also posted on-line here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/climate-environment/climate-change-america/?noredirect=on

There is a salient bias exhibited here.  The temperature change is measured from 1895 to 2018.  Why is 1895 the starting time for that measurement?  Because 1895 was a very cold year.  Let us examine the average US temperature plot below by Statistica:

The average temperature in 1895 was 50.34⁰F and in 2018 it was 53.53⁰F, so the temperature difference was 3.19⁰F or 1.77⁰C.  Had the Washington Post chosen to start the comparison in 1900 when the average US temperature was 52.77⁰F, then the increase in average temperature from then to 2018 would be 0.76⁰F or 0.42⁰C.  Now no one seriously believes that man-made global warming caused 1900 to be 2.43⁰F or 1.35⁰C warmer than 1895.  So, a change of weather, not a change of climate was the likely cause of this substantial difference in temperature over a 5 year period.  But this 5-year change is 67.5% of the 2⁰C temperature change that the Washington Post, on the authority of the UN, is claiming is a critically disastrous temperature increase.  The choice of a particularly cold starting point for a comparison of temperatures is a common trick of the alarmist game-plan.

The warmest spots on the map from the Washington Post article are about 3⁰C warmer relative to 1895.  Subtract the 1.35⁰C difference in the average temperatures to shift to a 1900 starting point in time and there are no spots in the U.S. with a 2⁰C increase relative to 1900.

There is a second interesting problem which is revealed by the map itself.  Carbon dioxide is always said to be a well-mixed atmospheric gas by the catastrophic man-made global warming crowd.  While it actually is not as well-mixed as they represent it to be, its variations are nonetheless gradual and spread over large areas.  Yet, the hot spots in the Washington Post U.S. map are in very much smaller sized areas.  If the warmer areas are warmer due to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, then those areas should be of much larger dimensions than those of the map.  The strong temperature differences in the map are much too localized and suggest that they are due to chaotic weather differences, not real climate differences.

Further examination of the U.S. temperature change map shows a large area in the Southeastern U.S. where the temperature has actually cooled since 1895 as shown in the light green color.  If one maintains that the warming of 3⁰C in some small areas is due to an increased carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere since 1895, then isn't the near 1⁰C cooling in the Southeastern U.S. also due to that same increase in carbon dioxide?  The larger area and more gradual changes in the cooled area is a better match for the somewhat well-mixed carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere.  There actually are cooling effects due to carbon dioxide as I have many times pointed out in prior articles.  Those who have greatly exaggerated the warming effect of CO₂, claim the cooling effects are insignificant.  Remove the exaggeration of the warming effect and the several cooling effects are not so trivial and many of them are not saturating or saturating as rapidly with increased atmospheric carbon dioxide as is the warming effect.  I am not actually claiming that the cooling in the Southeast is due to carbon dioxide.  It is unlikely that it is.  However, if you are in the business of assuming that the temperature change since 1895 is due to carbon dioxide, then you ought to consider its cooling effects also.

Some of the hottest areas are near our two largest metropolitan areas, New York City and Los Angeles.  Perhaps these areas have warmed due to the urban heat island effect since 1895?  Virtually all the growth of population in southern California and in Arizona around Phoenix has occurred since 1895, undoubtedly contributing to that major hot spot in the Washington Post temperature map.  The article is full of stories about the warming of the state of New Jersey.  Averaging the population of that state from the 1890 and 1900 U.S. Census results to estimate the 1895 population, the 1895 population was about 1,660,000 people.  With the advent of automobiles, it became possible for people working in New York City and in Philadelphia to live in New Jersey, so those metropolitan areas expanded far into New Jersey.  The population of New Jersey in the 2015 estimate is 8,958,000, which is a increase by a factor of about 5.4 times compared to the 1895 population.  There are extensive urban heat island effects in New Jersey as a result.  The article bewails the fact that the only state in the contiguous 48 states with an average temperature increase above 2⁰C is little Rhode Island.  Its population in 1895 was about 387,000 people, which by 2015 has increased to about 1,056,300.  This factor of 2.7 increase in population in this high population density state has most likely also been accompanied by a significant urban heat island effect.  The warmer area around Miami is another area affected by a very large population increase since 1895.

Many of the areas showing the larger increases in temperature are also low population areas such as that on the California - Oregon border and southeastern Oregon, the area on the Utah - Colorado border, most of Maine, and the stretch across northern Michigan, northern Minnesota, most of North Dakota, and northern Montana.  An examination of the number and quality of weather stations in these areas used to generate this data might turn up interesting results.  Could it be the case that these high temperature areas are largely projections of temperatures outside these areas?  In any case, since the population density is low in these areas, any affects on humans is also likely to be low.  These are not particularly warm areas in the first place, so any warming that does occur is quite likely to be welcome.

Outside of the warmer areas of the Southwest and a small area around Miami, most of the areas showing the most warming since 1895 are rather cool parts of the U.S.  Given that Americans are much inclined to take vacations in warmer climes during the winters from such areas as the Northeast whose warmer winters since 1895 are much decried in the Washington Post article, it is hard to see the warming of such cooler parts of the U.S. as a general disaster.  People upon retirement still move to much warmer parts of the U.S. such as Florida and Arizona.  Apparently, they rather like warmth, however the Washington Post may pretend that warmth is a catastrophe.

Yes, it may be true, as lamented in the article, that ice cannot be cut from northern New Jersey lakes as it used to be for ice boxes, but then again we now have refrigerators. If we did not have refrigerators, the disappearance of that northern New Jersey ice might be a disaster.  Perhaps the Washington Post wants us to lose the use of electricity and to force us to return to the use of ice boxes as a result. In that context, it is a disaster that this return to primitivism in the name of radical environmentalism may be harder to accomplish.  This is not one of my goals and I do not believe it is a goal of most Americans either.

I have carried out the above discussion generally accepting the temperature record data provided by the Washington Post article.  However, the thermometer temperature data of 1895 and of 1900 has been heavily adjusted downward and recent data has been heavily adjusted upward by NASA GISS.  The U.S. temperature data given below is based on the USHCN2 historical network, which adjusts recent thermometer readings upwards by a substantial amount before releasing the data to the public.  Here is a comparison of the high and low daily temperature results for the measured or unadjusted data compared to the adjusted data, as discovered by Tony Heller in a 2010 post on Real Science:

The fact that this data cuts off about a decade earlier than 2018, makes little difference, since the temperature has changed very little in the last decade.  More of the country has cooled both at night and during the day since 1895 than has warmed according to the unadjusted measurement data. Parts of the Northeast have still warmed, as has much of the Southwest, including southern California.  There is some warming along the Utah - Colorado border, parts of northern Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana.  But most of the Southeast, the Midwest, and the Central and Southern Plains states have cooled.  Nighttime temperatures have cooled less and warmed more than daytime temperatures, which is generally a good thing in that the daily temperature differential is slightly decreased.

This Washington Post article by four of their radical Climate Change writers, is an excellent lesson in the massive dishonesty of the catastrophic man-made global warming alarmist faction.  There is no attempt to distinguish the general warming of the post Little Ice Age period from any real effects that might be caused by increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  There is nothing but assumption that the official data warming since the particularly cold year of 1895 has been due to man's use of organic fuels.  They are most insistent that mankind should feel a strong, collective sense of guilt that it is destroying the Earth and the future of mankind.  This is baloney.  It is moldy, rotten baloney.

It is a very sad observation that so many Americans actually believe in this irrational nonsense.  It is even sadder that every scientist in the nation is not working hard to reveal this con game.  Quite a few of them are on the take and many of them are intimidated by the lockstep socialism, political correctness, and radical environmentalism of our academic institutions and most of our information media.

Obama: No nation on earth comes near the mass violence of the United States -- True or False?

Conrad Black, on American Greatness, has an article on mass violence and Obama's claim about the USA as the leading mass violence nation in the world.  Here is a quote from Black's article that I found particularly interesting:

President Obama’s assertion on Monday that “No nation on earth comes near” the proportions of the mass violence problem of the United States is false. The Crime Prevention Research Center has made an exhaustive study of the incidence of mass killings, following the FBI definition excluding incidents that kill fewer than four people and gang fights over turf, or incidences of authentic guerrilla war. By these standards, covering from 1998 to 2015, and 53 attacks and 57 shooters within the United States and 2,354 attacks and over 4,800 shooters in the rest of the world, the U.S. accounts for 1.49 percent of the world’s killings, 2.2 percent of the attacks, and 1.15 percent of the public shooters, although the United States has 4.6 percent of the world’s total population. Out of the 97 countries rated, the United States ranked 64th in attacks and 65th in fatalities. And the other countries compared were not the world’s 96 least organized and civilized national jurisdictions. 

Norway, Finland, Switzerland, and France, the first three very high standard of living countries, all have at least 25 percent more mass killings per capita than the United States. The other 96 countries as a group, including relatively very nonviolent countries such as Canada, Australia, and Singapore, have had a rate of increase in mass killings that is 291 percent higher than that of the United States.

There is no reason to allow the facts to get in the way when you want to make gun ownership as nearly impossible as it is in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore.  One has to wonder why Obama and the Democrats generally want to set up conditions in the USA that will lead to increases in the overall level of gun violence one should expect upon emulating the gun laws of these Democrat-controlled violent cities.

For now most of the discussion is about withholding gun ownership from the mentally ill.  How will that work when the Democrats are already saying that not only are people who voted for Trump the Deplorables, but that they must be insane people.  Or, recall that the American Psychiatric Association classified many homosexuals as suffering from sexual orientation disturbance until 1987.  Can law enforcement across the breadth of the USA be counted on not classifying homosexuals as disturbed individuals?  Or can we be sure that rational egoists will not be described as suffering from anti-social disturbance?  Or that so-called white males will be said to suffer from white patriarchal disturbance?  At least in some parts of our country, these would seem to be quite possible outcomes down the road just a bit.  It behooves us to be very, very wary.

Fraud and corruption bring big payoffs by Paul Driessen

California judges provide stage for kangaroo court justice over Roundup weedkiller

            

San Francisco area juries have awarded cancer patients some $80 million each, based on claims that the active ingredient in Roundup weedkiller, caused their cancer – and that Bayer-Monsanto negligently or deliberately failed to warn consumers that the glyphosate it manufactures is carcinogenic. (It’s not.) Judges reduced the original truly outrageous awards of $289 million and even $1 billion per plaintiff!

Meanwhile, ubiquitous ads are still trolling for new clients, saying anyone who ever used Roundup and now has Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma or other cancer could be the next jackpot justice winner. Mass tort plaintiff law firms have lined up 18,500 additional “corporate victims” for glyphosate litigation alone.

Introduced in 1974, glyphosate is licensed in 130 countries. Millions of farmers, homeowners and gardeners have made it the world’s most widely used herbicide – and one of the most intensely studied chemicals in history. Four decades and 3,300 studies by respected agencies and organizations worldwide have concluded that glyphosate is safe and non-carcinogenic, based on assessments of actual risk.

Reviewers include the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, European Food Safety Authority, European Chemicals Agency, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Germany’s Institute for Risk Assessment, and Australia’s Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority. Another reviewer, Health Canada, noted that “no pesticide regulatory authority in the world considers glyphosate to be a cancer risk to humans at the levels at which humans are currently exposed.” Therefore no need to warn anyone.

The National Cancer Institute’s ongoing Agricultural Health Study evaluated 54,000 farmers and commercial pesticide applicators for over two decades – and likewise found no glyphosate-cancer link.

Only the France-based International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC), says otherwise – and it based its conclusions on just eight studies. Even worse, IARC manipulated at least some of these studies to get the results it wanted. Subsequent reviews by epidemiologist Dr. Geoffrey Kabat, National Cancer Institute statistician Dr. Robert Tarone, investigative journalist Kate Kelland, “RiskMonger” Dr. David Zaruk and other investigators have demonstrated that the IARC process was tainted beyond repair.

The IARC results should never have been allowed in court. But the judges in the first three cases let the tort lawyers bombard the jury with IARC cancer claims, and went even further. In the Hardeman case, Judge Vincent Chhabria blocked the introduction of EPA analyses that concluded “glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic in humans,” based on its careful review of many of the studies just mentioned.

He said he wanted “to avoid wasting time or misleading the jury, because the primary inquiry is what the scientific studies show, not what the EPA concluded they show.” However, IARC didn’t do any original studies either. It just concluded that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic,” meaning studies it reviewed found limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans, plus sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in lab animals that had been exposed to very high doses or lower doses for prolonged periods of time. In other words, under conditions that no animal or human would ever be exposed to in the real world.

It is also instructive to look at the three San Francisco area courtroom proceedings from another angle – an additional line of questioning that would have put glyphosate and Roundup in a very different light, and might have changed the outcome of these trials. Defense attorneys could have asked:

Can you describe your family cancer history ... your eating, exercise and sleeping habits ... how much you eat high-fat foods ... how often you eat fruits and vegetables ... and your other lifestyle choices that doctors and other experts now know play significant roles in whether or not people get cancer? 

How many times in your life [Johnson is 47 years old; Hardeman 70; Alva Pilliod 77; Alberta Pilliod 75] do you estimate you were exposed to substances on IARC’s list of Group 1 definite human carcinogens –including sunlight, acetaldehyde in alcoholic beverages, aflatoxin in peanuts, asbestos, cadmium in batteries, lindane ... or any of the 125 other substances and activities in Group 1? Have you ever smoked? How often have you been exposed to secondhand smoke? How often have you eaten bacon, sausage or other processed meats – which are also in Group 1? 

How many times have you been exposed to any of IARC’s Group 2A probable human carcinogens – not just glyphosate ... but also anabolic steroids, creosote, diazinon, dieldrin, malathion, emissions from high-temperature food frying, shift work ... or any of the 75 other substances and activities in Group 2A? How often have you consumed beef or very hot beverages – likewise in Group 2A? 

How many times have you been exposed to any of IARC’s Group 2B possible human carcinogens – including bracken ferns, chlordane, diesel fuel, fumonisin, inorganic lead, low frequency magnetic fields, malathion, parathion, titanium oxide in white paint, pickled vegetables, caffeic acid in coffee, tea, apples, broccoli, kale, and other fruits and vegetables ... ... or any of the 200 other substances and activities in Group 2B? 

Pyrethrin pesticides used by organic farmers are powerful neurotoxins that are very toxic to bees, cats and fish – and have been linked by EPA and other experts to leukemia and other cancers and other health problems. How often have you eaten organic foods and perhaps been exposed to pyrethrins? 

Large quantities of glyphosate have been manufactured for years in China and other countries. How do you know the glyphosate you were exposed to was manufactured by Bayer, and not one of them? 

In view of all these exposures, please explain how you, your doctors, your lawyers and the experts you consulted concluded that none of your family history ... none of your lifestyle choices ... none of your exposures to dozens or even hundreds of other substances on IARC’s lists of carcinogens ... caused or contributed to your cancer – and that your cancer is due solely to your exposure to glyphosate. 

Put another way, please explain exactly how you and your experts separated and quantified all these various exposures and lifestyle decisions – and concluded that Roundup from Bayer-Monsanto was the sole reason you got cancer – and all these other factors played no role whatsoever.

News accounts do not reveal whether Bayer-Monsanto lawyers asked these questions – or whether they tried to ask them, but the judges disallowed the questions. In any event, the bottom line is this:

It is bad enough that the IARC studies at the center of these jackpot justice lawsuits are the product of rampant collusion, misconduct and even fraud in the way IARC concluded glyphosate is a “probable human carcinogen.” It is worse that these cancer trials have been driven by plaintiff lawyers’ emotional appeals to jurors’ largely misplaced fears of chemicals and minimal knowledge of chemicals, chemical risks, medicine and cancer – resulting in outrageous awards of $80 million or more.

Worst of all, our Federal District Courts have let misconduct by plaintiff lawyers drive these lawsuits; prevented defense attorneys from effectively countering IARC cancer claims and discussing the agency’s gross misconduct; and barred defense attorneys from presenting the extensive evidence that glyphosate is not carcinogenic to humans. The trials have been textbook cases of kangaroo court justice.

The cases are heading to appeal, ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court. We can only hope appellate judges will return sanity, fairness and justice to the nation’s litigation process. Otherwise our legal system will be irretrievably corrupted; products, technologies, companies and industries will likely be driven out of existence; and fraud, emotion and anarchy will reign.

Jackpot-justice law firms and their anti-chemical activist allies are already targeting cereals that have “detectable” levels of glyphosate: a few parts per billion or trillion, where 1 ppt is equivalent to 1 second in 32,000 years. Talc and benzene – foundations for numerous consumer products – are already under attack. Advanced technology neonicotinoid pesticides could be next.

It’s all part of a coordinated, well-funded attack on America, free enterprise and technology, using social media, litigation, intimidation and confrontation. Our legislatures and courts need to rein it in. 

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy and environmental policy.


Comment by Charles Anderson:

Modern society with its rich choices of values and its high level of security is highly dependent on a huge number of chemicals.  There are also an abundance of naturally occurring chemical in our environment.  In many cases, a chemical necessary for the support of human life is beneficial only when it has the correct balance in our complex human system.  Too much of it or too little of it can cause the human system to fail.  Many chemicals will become harmful if they are too concentrated in the human body and many such over-concentrated chemicals are carcinogenic.  Whether a given chemical is beneficial or carcinogenic or otherwise harmful depends highly upon its concentration.  It can be devilishly difficult to establish the bounds within which a chemical is beneficial in the body and beyond which it is harmful.

This has proven very difficult for the FDA for instance in regard to the safety of many widely and commonly eaten foods even.  Study after study has taken a conclusion opposite to that of a prior study once held in high regard by the FDA.

Our ability to measure chemicals in complex mixtures to very low concentrations such as parts per trillion means we can find a host of chemicals in the human body or in the foods we eat.  The fact that a chemical that can be harmful in higher concentration is present does not at all mean that it will cause any harm at a lower concentration.  The toxicity of a chemical, or for that matter of radiation, is highly dose dependent.  For instance, selenium is an element beneficial to the body at a suitably low concentration.  It is often found in multi-vitamin tablets.  Yet, selenium at higher concentrations is very toxic.  There are many other elements which have similar toxicity characteristics.  Examples are potassium, sodium, chromium, iron, molybdenum, and zinc.  Even water is toxic if it becomes too concentrated in the human body.  People have died because they drank too much water too rapidly.

Juries and the courts are often too subject to findings that a chemical exposure has caused the disease that some unfortunate person has suffered.  They are emotionally sorry for the suffering.  They are often biased against for-profit companies.  They ogle the deeper pockets of a company than those of the suffering person as an easy means to help the suffering person.  Unfortunately, much injustice results.  By soaking an often very innocent company with fines and penalties, many people are hurt.  The company management, the owners, the employees, the companies customers, and oftentimes the companies' retirees are all hurt.  The fact that members of a jury, defense lawyers, and judges often do not know very much about science is also a great problem.  Juries and courts need to be much more rational and much more responsible.

I have served as an expert witness on scientific issues involved in court cases, as have some of my Ph.D. scientist employees at my laboratory, Anderson Materials Evaluation, Inc.  I have encountered numerous opposing expert witnesses who were ridiculously creative in the stories they told about the science pertaining to the case.  Unfortunately, juries and judges tend to understand little of what the experts tell them and as is the case with most people and the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis, they make their judgment based on a count of experts on each side.  In a litigation case, the count is usually even, so the scientific testimonies cancel out.  Sometimes they also assume that the company is better able to buy the favorable testimony of an expert and so their expert is more likely to be lying about the science.  The jury decision is then made on the basis of human emotions.  The suffering person is likely to win and the company is likely to lose.  This is not a valid process for achieving a just result.