Weekly Climate And Energy News Roundup #502 – Watts Up With That?

The Week That Was: 2022-04-30 (April 30, 2022)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project

Quote of the Week: “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself–nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” – Franklin Roosevelt, inaugural address, March 4, 1933, at the peak of the Great Depression.

Number of the Week: Up to $2.5 Trillion this year

THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)

Scope: Last week, TWTW discussed the closure problem with the global climate models used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its followers such as the US National Climate Assessments, NOAA, NASA, and EPA. Simply, there are too many unknowns and not enough defining independent equations for the models to produce a unique solution. As a result, the IPCC produces a range of solutions and none of them may be even close to the real solution to the question the IPCC pretends to answer: how much will temperatures increase with a doubling of greenhouse gases?

Christopher Essex highlighted a major problem with this multi-billion-dollar modeling effort. The models fail to recognize that the earth may cool. As Joe Bastardi has frequently stated on WeatherBELL Analytics, the numerical weather models don’t “see” cold. Yet it is cooling, not warming, that humanity should fear. We live in the Holocene, a 11,000-year warm Epoch in the Quaternary Period of 2.58 million years which features long times of extensive glaciation, called Ice Ages, interrupted by brief times of warmth. And the Holocene has been cooling for about 8200 years with brief warming periods of a few hundred years such as the Minoan, Roman, Medieval, and today. During these brief warm periods, civilization flourished, during prolonged cooling periods civilization, and humanity, suffered.

TWTW will discuss “Lessons From Paleoclimatology – Conveniently Ignored by the IPCC” a presentation by Earth Scientists Thomas P Gallagher and Roger C Palmer to the Irish Climate Science Forum (ICSF) and CLINTEL.

In addition, TWTW will bring up the lack of federal funding for reporting atmospheric temperature trends, where the greenhouse gases influence the Earth’s temperatures. And it will present issues regarding the assumption of a constant Earth albedo.

Further, another paper on blaming a global extinction on global warming will be discussed in which the editors of AAAS Science failed to grasp the geological changes that occurred for about a million years around 252 million years ago and failed to understand that the intensity of an acid is important and can be measured.

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Beware of Cooling: Earth Scientist Tom Gallagher begins his presentation of changing climate showing what Ireland and the Northern Hemisphere were like 19,000 years ago. Most of Canada was covered with ice. So was Ireland, and much of northern Europe. [No wonder Ireland has no native snakes.] Gallagher emphasizes his focus is on Climate Change (not weather!), climate change is driven by variations in incoming solar energy described by Milankovitch as well as other cycles.

To understand changing climate, we need to understand energy storage and accumulation including the mechanisms and lag times. Often these are missing from climate studies. Gallagher goes into energy transport including ocean currents and how continental drift influences ocean currents. Many papers by climate scientists looking at the history of climate ignore the importance of changes in ocean currents.

Rather than limiting his research to the past 150 years or so, Gallagher goes back to about the time dinosaurs became extinct, about 67 million years ago. He relies on data, (physical evidence, from proxies, fossils, including differences in isotopes of particular atoms) not theory. His data are the earth’s climate history encased in rock and ice as well as sediments in the oceans. He believes that by learning the past we can know more about the present, and are better equipped to forecast the future, but cannot do so with great certainty.

He goes through a graph of temperature and atmospheric CO2 over the Earth’s history to show that there is no correlation over time. Al Gore was wrong in his movie. He shows that sea levels tend to be influenced by glacial periods; more ice means lower sea level.

Over the past 50-60 million years there has been a temperature variation of about 18 ºC (32 ºF). We are now in a brief, quite steady warm period during an Era of pulsating glaciation. Southern glaciation (Eastern Antarctica) began about 34 million years ago. About 15 million years ago the western Antarctic ice sheet began. The northern ice cap (Greenland) began around 3 million years ago.

Gallagher states that the Sun is the primary energy source for climate; the oceans are the primary energy “storage” mechanism; ocean currents are the primary energy “transport” and “collection” vehicle; and the atmosphere has a negligible capacity to store long term climate energy.   [Apparently these natural features of the Earth are too complex for the IPCC and its modelers; so their focus is on the atmosphere, which has a negligible storage capacity – and still get that wrong.]

After explaining why oceans are the best storage of heat (CO2 is a poor one), Gallagher gets to an important issue generally ignored by climate studies looking back in history: what causes changes to ocean currents? He finds that: 1) as continents have drifted, ocean passages have opened and closed over time; 2) as a result, there have been major changes in ocean currents; 3) these changes have affected energy collection and transport and climate.

Gallagher then gets into the issue of Continental Drift. For tens of millions of years starting about 66 million years ago, there was an open seaway near the equator, circulating the energy stored in the oceans. Temperatures were high, water levels were high, there were no ice caps. In the Eocene, about 56 million years ago, the Antarctic was still closed, there was no Drake passage. The Arctic Ocean was closed, temperatures 16-18 C above today. This warmth led a biological boom.

Starting in the Oligocene, about 34 million years ago dramatic climate change, cooling, began. The Drake passage opened, and the Antarctic circumpolar current began, allowing for the beginning of the east Antarctic ice sheet. India was colliding with Asia narrowing the equatorial seaway in that region. In the Mid-Miocene about 14 million years ago, the seaway in between North and South America narrowed as well as the seaway between Asia and Australia. The isolation of Antarctica increased with a widening of the southern polar current. The Antarctic ice cap extended to west Antarctica.

By 3.3 million years ago, the seaway through Panama closed and the seaway in Indonesia narrowed, terminating the Equatorial Current. These events gave us the Quaternary Period beginning with the Pleistocene Epoch which immediately proceeded the current Holocene Epoch. The Earth’s oceans were forced into a North-South pattern, the North and South ice caps and ice sheets expanded. The equatorial heat transport of the oceans no longer moderated the Milankovitch Cycles, and they began to cause large 100,000 and 41,000-year glacial cycles with drastic 10-degree C swings in temperatures.

The default climate condition during the Pleistocene is: Glacial, Cold and Dusty. During periods of glaciation in what are now the great bread baskets of civilization, the Great Plains, the plains of Europe, and Asia, became barren and subject to great dust storms. These storms created huge loess-covered areas. According to the Britannica:

“The world’s largest loess-covered areas lie between latitudes 55° and 24° N: in China on the banks of the Huang Ho; on the margins of the continental deserts of Inner Asia; in Central Asia in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, the foreland of the Tien Shan, and east of the Caspian Sea; and in Siberia along Lake Baikal and the Lena River and in vast regions in the southern parts of the catchment areas of the Ob and Yenisey rivers. In Europe there is an extensive, uninterrupted loess cover in the South Russian Plain, large spots and belts in the Danube Basin, along the Rhine, along the margin of the former inland ice cap in the German-Polish plain, and in the Paris Basin. In North America loess covers the plains of the Platte, Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers and the Columbia Plateau. In the Southern Hemisphere, between latitudes 30° and 40° S, the most significant loess regions include the “pampas loesses” of Uruguay and Argentina and parts of New Zealand.”

According to Gallagher, it is the accumulation of dust on icesheets that brought the Earth out of periods of glaciation, not some imaginary increase in carbon dioxide that has been speculated by since the time of Svante Arrhenius and it was used by the EPA to justify its Endangerment Finding.

Gallagher explains that his data sources include a new source of proxy data that became available in September 2020. [These data sources are ignored by the IPCC, especially by those who created the 2,000-year hockey-stick used in the Summary for Policymakers in the Sixth Assessment report (AR6, 2021)]. According to Gallagher, his data sources have high sample density and accuracy and exceptionally long time series analysis of 18O and 13C in microscopic plankton. He cites a 67-million-year record of temperature and CO2 concentration using isotopic analysis of Benthic Forams from sea sediment cores (Westerhold – Science, Sep 11, 2020). The multiple data sources used in AR6 are pieced together with no demonstration of continuity of measurement.

Gallagher goes on to explain we are living in a neoglacial, not the peak of the Holocene which ended about 8000 years ago. Humanity thrives in warm times, suffers in cold times. The Holocene had a number of abrupt warming periods of 1.5 to 3 degrees C and based on ice core graphics, the rates of temperature rise are similar to one another. Older Holocene warming rates were much faster than now. [The current “feared” 2 C warming is a political trick played by the IPCC and its followers.]

The primary influencers of climate are still here: Solar Cycle; Oceanic Currents; Oceanic Oscillations; and Regional Oceanic Energy. Further the beryllium isotope, Be10, correlates well with sunspot activity, and since 1830s the solar signal is stronger, bringing the Earth out of the Little Ice Age. [At best, carbon dioxide is a bit player in the complex play of the Earth’s climate.] In his video Gallagher covers far more. See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy and https://www.britannica.com/science/loess.

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Fact or Fiction? Each month TWTW checks the Global Temperature Report by the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville to see if the atmospheric temperature trends have changed. Usually, the report comes out a few days after the first of the month. This month it did not come out until April 27. To explain the delay, the report contained the statement that John Christy has been busy with a new position and:

“Please note that Spencer and Christy generate and provide these data on a volunteer-basis as federal funding was terminated a few years ago.”

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is a federal agency with a budget of about $8.8 billion for FY 2022 and a request of $10.5 billion for 2023. In FY 2017 (last data available) the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) had funding of $173 million, 67% from NSF, 3% from DOD, 3% from DOE, 4% from FAA, 5% from NASA, 6% from NOAA, and various other sources.

The climate modelers at NCAR have state of the art computers in a modern facility. They developed an imaginary model using imaginary data of what the atmosphere could be, rather than what it is. Comparing the funding levels between NCAR and the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville demonstrate that Washington prefers the public be informed with atmospheric fiction over atmospheric fact. See links under Measurement Issues – Atmosphere, https://ncar.ucar.edu/who-we-are/funding, and https://beta.nsf.gov/budget#:~:text=The%20President’s%20FY%202023%20budget,from%20the%20agency’s%20current%20budget.

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Earth’s Albedo: In its reports, the IPCC assumes a slightly increasing albedo for the earth to reflect sunlight. In his essays of Basic Climate Physics, AMO physicist Howard Hayden uses the (approximately) same constant. Hayden cautions the readers that his essays cannot be used for prediction but can only be used as a check on the veracity of the climate models. The IPCC makes predictions about temperature rise but never notices that the increased surface radiation due to that warming and the “radiative forcing” from greenhouse gases are utterly incommensurate.  Further, if albedo increases, the difference between increased surface heat radiation and “radiative forcing” increases.

David Whitehouse of Net Zero Watch discusses how complex the Earth’s albedo is. There is no justification for assuming it will remain constant for decades to come. Yet, the UN and the Climate Crisis advocates are insisting we should establish energy policy on a questionable solution to a complex puzzle? No wonder China is not following the leadership of climate crisis advocates. See Challenging the Orthodoxy, Problems in the Orthodoxy, and http://www.sepp.org/science_papers.cfm.

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Additions and Corrections: Reader Ken Towe wrote that the late climatologist Dr. Reid Bryson commented himself on models…his own regarding the Bryson-Dittberner non-equilibrium model of hemispheric mean surface temperature (1976). In 1980 he wrote:

“We cannot have much confidence in modeled future climates unless the model realistically simulates the past.”

Apparently, Bryson understood the importance of a realistic understanding of the earth today before a projection can be accepted as plausible. For the non-equilibrium model see https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/33/11/1520-0469_1976_033_2094_anemoh_2_0_co_2.xml

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New Book: Anthony Watts is the primary author on a new book for teachers and students covering 30 prominent climate topics. TWTW reviewed a draft and found it excellent for its target audience. See links under: Seeking a Common Ground.

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Which Acid? When dissolved in water, carbon dioxide makes a weak acid, carbonic acid (H2CO3).

From Britannica:

“Carbonic acid plays a role in the assembly of caves and cave formations like stalactites and stalagmites. The largest and most common caves are those formed by dissolution of limestone or dolomite by the action of water rich in carbonic acid derived from recent rainfall.

“Carbonic acid is important in the transport of carbon dioxide in the blood. Carbon dioxide enters blood in the tissues because its local partial pressure is greater than its partial pressure in blood flowing through the tissues. As carbon dioxide enters the blood, it combines with water to form carbonic acid, which dissociates into hydrogen ions (H+) and bicarbonate ions (HCO3-). Blood acidity is minimally affected by the released hydrogen ions because blood proteins, especially hemoglobin, are effective buffering agents. (A buffer solution resists change in acidity by combining with added hydrogen ions and, essentially, inactivating them.)”

In brief, without carbonic acid, probably humanity would not exist. It is a weak acid that only partly dissociates into ions.

Volcanoes release significant amounts of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide and hydrogen halides (hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen bromide and hydrogen iodide). When mixed with water (or water vapor) sulfur dioxide makes sulfuric acid (a strong acid) or sulfurous acid (a weak acid). When mixed with water, hydrogen sulfide (H2S) makes a very corrosive acid, sulfuric acid. When mixed with water, hydrogen halides can make hydrofluoric acid (a weak acid) and hydrochloric acid (a strong acid).

Yet, we see another study published by AAAS Science that fails to recognize that volcanoes release compounds far more dangerous to life than carbon dioxide. See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy and Defending the Orthodoxy.

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SEPP’S APRIL FOOLS AWARD – THE JACKSON

SEPP is conducting its annual vote for the recipient of the coveted trophy, The Jackson, a lump of coal. Readers are asked to nominate and vote for who they think is most deserving. The entire Biden Administration won in 2021, so individuals in it are still eligible.

The voting will close on July 30. Please send your nominee and a brief reason the person is qualified for the honor to [email protected]. The awardee will be announced at the annual meeting of the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness on August 14 to 16 at the South Point Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Registration: https://aaps.wufoo.com/forms/qb79fo31o62uh1/; Hotel: https://be.synxis.com/?adult=1&arrive=2022-08-14&chain=6903&child=0&currency=USD&depart=2022-08-15&group=DOC0811&hotel=11548&level=hotel&locale=en-US&rooms=1

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Number of the Week: Up to $2.5 Trillion this year. According to Rystad Energy, thanks to the high oil and gas prices, payments to governments for oil and gas production are expected to reach an all-time high of $2.5 Trillion. Saudi Arabia will be the biggest beneficiary.

In light of these high payments to governments, comments by Benjamin Zycher on President’s Biden’s resuming leasing federal lands for oil and gas exploration are illuminating:

“The Biden administration announced late last week that it would resume leasing of federal lands for fossil fuel exploration and production, but at a scale (144,000 acres) about 80 percent smaller than the 733,000 acres that had been nominated by energy companies for evaluation by the Department of the Interior. (Over 90 percent of the acreage to be offered for lease is in Wyoming.) Moreover, the royalty rate to be paid on future fossil production from these leases is to be increased from 12.5 percent to 18.75 percent.”

Is Washington creating the “price gouging” it blames on oil companies? See links under Cap-and-Trade and Carbon Taxes and Washington’s Control of Energy.

Commentary: Is the Sun Rising?

You can’t just turn down the sun?

By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 27, 2022