Science

Facing up to the true costs and benefits of wind energy

by William Yeatman on June 23, 2004

in Science

This paper [PDF] places the past (1950-2000) and prospective (2010-2025) contribution of wind energy in the context of overall US energy consumption and US electricity generation.  The paper demonstrates that the contribution of wind has been and will be tiny — despite the massive subsidies and mandates being provided, unwisely, by federal and state governments.

 The paper notes that the wind industry, US Department of Energy (DOE) and DOE’s National Renewable Energy “Laboratory” (NREL) — using our tax dollars — has been highly successful in misleading the media, public, Congress and other federal and state regulators and legislators about the costs & benefits of wind energy.  The advocates have grossly overstated the benefits of wind energy, and greatly underestimated the environmental, ecological, economic, scenic and property value costs of wind energy.

 The false and misleading claims by the advocates have led to government policies, programs and regulations that are detrimental to the interests of consumers and taxpayers.

 The paper also admits that it is difficult, given the success of the advocates’ propaganda, to reverse bad federal and state wind energy policies, programs and regulations.  However, it notes that emerging citizen-led efforts around the world (e.g., US, UK, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Australia, and New Zealand) are beginning to be effective in bringing the TRUTH about wind energy to the attention of the media, public and government officials.

Climate models fail to predict monsoon patterns

by William Yeatman on June 22, 2004

in Science

A recent study in the April edition of Quaternary Science Reviews found that Indian Ocean monsoon patterns do not follow the variations predicted by global climate models.  In fact, the Indian Ocean monsoon rainfall patterns elicited the exact opposite variations predicted by the models.

Traditionally, climate models predict that a rise in the Earths temperature coincides with a significant increase in the rainfall patterns in the Indian Ocean area.  However, the study found that Indian Ocean monsoon rainfall has not only declined dramatically during the recent global temperature increase, but also declined during past periods of warming. 

By developing high-resolution stable isotope records from three contemporaneously-deposited stalagmites located in a shallow cave in Southern Oman, the research team, led by Dominik Fleitmann of the Institute of Geological Sciences at the University of Bern, examined the rainfall patterns in the region over the past 780 years.  They found that throughout the past eight centuries the relationship between monsoon rainfall and climate contradicted the results of global climate prediction models.

The researchers specifically pointed to a major temperature spike that began in the early 1400s as further evidence.  The abrupt warming (and following cooling period) created an initial decline in rainfall followed by a subsequent increase.  A review of this report can be found on www.co2science.org.

Announcement: climate model study

by William Yeatman on June 22, 2004

in Science

The George C. Marshall Institute has published a pamphlet entitled, Climate Models: A Primer, by William OKeefe and Jeff Kueter, the Institutes President and Executive Director respectively.  It may be found on the web at http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/226.pdf .

AAAS panel concentrates on politics

by William Yeatman on June 22, 2004

in Politics, Science

Dropping any pretence of objectivity on the issue, Science magazine editor Donald Kennedy and the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Alan Leshner, put together a conference boosting global warming alarmism in Washington, DC on June 15.

The panels comprised many well-known figures from the alarmist camp, including several associated with the ozone layer scare of the late  80s and early 90s.  Many of the panelists concentrated on worst-case scenarios, such as the melting of the entire Antarctic ice sheet (even though the ice sheet has been growing during a period of cooling) mentioned by Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton, or on misleading signs of warming, such as the melting of Kilimanjaros glaciers (which has continued despite proven localized cooling), referenced by Lonnie Thompson of Ohio University.

Many speakers were keen to use the event as a bully pulpit to venture beyond science into politics: You hope that somehow people will understand that we have got to do something now, said Joyce Penner of the University of Michigan.  Some people get it some people are driving hybrids. But there is a problem with the American public.

The models…are good enough to tell us we ought to be starting now to do what we can to reduce emissions, according to Oppenheimer.

In this country it depends a lot on what happens in the next election, said Daniel Schrag of Harvard University and a fellow fan of The Day After Tomorrow with Al Gore. I don’t think we can expect to change the minds of this administration in the next couple of months.

As Roger Pielke, Jr. of the University of Colorado wrote on his Prometheus web site, in contrast to the commentary on the issue by politically-oriented groups, It is another thing altogether when a purportedly non-political professional association like the AAAS, ostensibly working for common interests, legitimizes the practice [of the politicization of science].

Emissions still rising in Japan

by William Yeatman on June 22, 2004

in Politics, Science

Last month the Japanese government reported that greenhouse gas emissions for fiscal 2002 were 7.3 percent higher than the 1990 level. The Environment Minister Yuriko Koike said the Japanese government will now have to come up with very drastic measures in order to meet Japans Kyoto protocol target of cutting emissions to 6 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

Government figures indicate that household and office emissions have increased.  This may have resulted from expanded home ownership and a burgeoning service sector.  Even while the energy efficiency of air-conditioners and automobiles has increased dramatically, Chiho Mito of the Energy Conservation Center, Japan, said, The energy saved by new technologies is offset by the increase in the number of [them].

Carbon dioxide emissions from the industrial sector have declined slightly.  Nevertheless, Hirata of Kiko Network stated this was largely the result of a stagnant economy, a trend that could easily reverse.  Hirata said the government may need to track emissions data for businesses and mandate reductions as they see necessary.  This would curtail economic production by restricting the amount of energy that companies expend (Japan Times, June 17).

Climate modeler admits to being often wrong

by William Yeatman on June 22, 2004

in Science

Two years after beginning a $20 million study of the effects of cirrus thunderhead clouds on the climate, NASA researchers have discovered that they play a significant part in determining how much sunlight is reflected back into space.

The studies directly contradict assumptions inherent in climate models, meaning that the role of cirrus formations in predicting climate will have to be reconsidered.

Weve got some amazing results that no one anticipated, says Anthony Del Genio, a climate modeler with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University in New York, told the Christian Science Monitor (June 24). It’s humbling to find out how often you’re wrong.

The Monitor summarized, One of the most fundamental questions surrounds the size of the ice crystals that make up tropical cirrus clouds. A team led by Timothy Garrett at the University of Utah found that the ice crystals in anvil cirrus over south Florida are smaller and reflect light more effectively than most models assume. The results suggest that when the clouds are thick as they first form over the top of a thunderhead, they reflect substantially more light back into space than models currently show.

The researchers also found, however, that the ice crystals carried nitric acid, which acted as antifreeze, so therefore allowing more water present as vapor.  Water vapor is the principal greenhouse gas.  In one case, the ice crystals were formed around dust from a plume that blew across the North Atlantic.  Again, this effect had not been accounted for in climate models.

Warming to increase or decrease mortality rates

by William Yeatman on June 22, 2004

in Science

Two recent studies on the relationship between warming and mortality rates have reached contradictory conclusions.  According to a report by the Columbia University Earth Institute, rising temperatures will increase mortality rates.  However, a University of Virginia study points out that, Lives saved in conjunction with warm winters do tend to offset the additional deaths associated with warmer conditions in July and August. 

The Columbia University report by members of the New York Climate and Health Project examines linkages between climate change and problems such as ozone pollution and heat-related stresses and estimates that heat-related mortality in New York City could more than triple by the 2080s.  Researchers down-scaled global climate change models to make predictions for regional areas.  In contrast, the U. Va. study by Robert Davis and colleagues used temperature data in 28 major U.S. cities to find that temperature currently does not have a major influence on monthly mortality rates in US cities. 

The discrepancy between the two studies can likely be explained by the Columbia studys using global climate models to forecast regional impacts, a practice that is widely discredited in the scientific community.  For example, in an article about a conference on regional climate modeling in Lund, Sweden, Nature magazine, reported (Apr. 8) that, Participants admitted privately that the immediate benefits of regional climate modeling have been oversold in such exercises as the Clinton Administrations US regional climate assessment (the National Assessment on Climate Change).  The magazine also summarized participants beliefs that, Policy makers expectations of precise local regional projections need to be dampened down.  The use of real-world data rather than dubious extrapolations from models suggests that the U. Va. study is closer to the truth.  (Greenwire, June 22).

Another new paper disputes surface temperature record

by William Yeatman on June 8, 2004

in Science

Historical climate data that had previously been thought to exhibit a slight warming trend has come under fire in another newly published scientific srticle (see story in the last issue on the McKitrick and Michaels paper). The United States Historical Climatology Networks (USHCN) temperature database, the most widely used and highly respected database available for regional scale analysis in the U. S., has been shown to have significant biases toward higher temperatures that have apparently been overlooked in years past. This finding is evident despite the fact that the dataset had been previously adjusted for a variety of temperature discrepancies, ranging from missing temperature data to the transition from mercurial to electronic sensing equipment. Scientists Robert C. Balling Jr. and Shouraseni Sen Roy found in their recent study published in the Geophysical Research Letters (May 1, 2004) that the USHCN temperature data is considerably upward biased.

Using spatial entropy to estimate disorder in the pattern of temperature changes across the 1,221 USHCN climate monitoring stations, Balling and Roy found that some “questionable warming signals” existed at some stations. Spatial entropy is a measure of disorder or dissimilarity of the distribution of the USHCNs weather stations.

Continuing, “Stepwise multiple regression analyses were conducted with latitude, latitude squared, longitude, longitude squared, and elevation aspotential independent variables in explaining spatial variance in the temperature change values.” They found all of the independent variables to be highly significant with regards to the temperature increase, meaning that some bias must exist within the dataset.

The authors explained their results. “We find that over the (USHCN) network, the spatial entropy levels are significantly and positively related to the observed temperature trends suggesting that stations most unlike their neighbors in terms of temperature change tend to have a higher temperature trend than their neighbors.” Balling and Roy added, “One could conclude that the network still contains unproven warming signals possibly related to lingering urbanizations effects.”

They concluded the article by explaining, “While the developers of the United States Historical Climatology Network have made substantial efforts to eliminate effects of time of observation biases, changes in measuring equipment, station relocations, and urbanization, our results suggest that the adjusted records continue to contain any number of contaminants that increase the temperature trend (warm) at some stations.”

And another new paper challenges temperature data

by William Yeatman on June 8, 2004

in Science

And yet another new scientific paper finds other methodological problems in commonly accepted temperature data. Temperature readings could be positively influenced by “heat island” effects created by the overwhelming proximity of temperature monitoring stations to industrialized regions.

Researchers Jos De Laat and Ahilleas Maurellis, of the Earth Oriented Science Division at the National Institute for Space Research in the Netherlands, conducted a study using a global industrial activity dataset which reveals the spatial distribution of various levels of industrial activity over the planet. De Laat and Maurellis divided the surface of the earth into industrial and non-industrial sectors and plotted their corresponding temperature data from the years 1979 to 2001. They found that, “Measurements of surface and lower tropospheric temperature changes give a very different picture from climate model predictions and show strong observational evidence that the degree of industrialization is correlated with surface temperature increases as well as lower tropospheric temperature changes.” The scientists also added that as the degree of industrialization increases, the temperature increases.

They explained that due to the fact that temperature measurements are most commonly monitored in areas that “are often conducted in the vicinity of human (industrial) activity,” there exists an overstatement of warming. De Laat and Maurellis concluded that, “The observed surface temperature changes might be a result of local surface heating processes and not related to radiative greenhouse gas forcing.” The article was published in Geophysical Research Letters on March 11, 2004. An excellent review of it can be found at www.co2science.org.

Vikings preferred Mediterranean climate

by William Yeatman on June 8, 2004

in Science

The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change has just produced a good review of the evidence concerning the effects of global cooling on the Viking settlements on Greenland from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries (available at www.co2science.org).

Recent reports reconstructing environmental conditions in the vicinity of Igaliku Fjord, South Greenland before, during and after the period of Norse habitations of Greenland have found that the Vikings flourished during times of warming, and that their eventual fall can be linked to falling temperatures.

Susanne Lassen and colleagues Antoon Kuijpers, Helmar Kunzendorf, Gerd Hoffmann-Wieck, Naja Mikkelsen, and Peter Konradi have published a report appearing in The Holocene (Vol. 14, #2, March 1, 2004) specifically discussing Norsemen and the changing Greenland climate. They examined the eventual abandonment of the Viking settlements on Greenland and pointed to an “unprecedented influx of (ice-loaded) East Greenland Current water masses into the innermost parts of Igaliku Fjord” as the culprit.

They concluded that the “stratification of the water column, with Atlantic water masses in its lower reaches, appears to have prevailed throughout the last 3200 years, except for the Medieval Warm Period.” During this period, the scientists believe that living conditions were suitable for settlement and provided an opportunity for the Vikings to prosper, primarily due to the increased nutrients and marine food available.

That was until the Little Ice Age. The combination of a decline of marine food and deteriorating growing and living conditions on land made it difficult to survive. Lassen et al. concluded that, “Climatic and hydrographic changes in the area of the Eastern Settlement were significant in the crucial period when the Norse disappeared.”

A similar study conducted by Karin G. Jensen and also appearing in The Holocene (Vol. 14, #2, March 1, 2004) came to similar conclusions. “Life conditions certainly became harsher during the 500 years of Norse colonization,” Jensen claimed. The auther added that this climate change “may very likely have hastened the disappearance of the culture.”

The co2science.org review (from their June 2 newsletter) concluded by explaining the present-day effects of this study. “Since the peak warmth of the Medieval Warm Period was caused by something quite apart from elevated levels of atmospheric CO2, or any other greenhouse gas for that matter, there is no reason to not believe that a return engagement of that same factor or group of factors is responsible for the even lesser warmth of today.” We would only add that the Vikings or Normans conquered Sicily from the Arabs between 1060 and 1091. They found the climate much more agreeable.

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