If you wonder where today’s temperature fits in with the grand scheme of time on Earth since the dinosaurs were wiped out, here’s the history. We start with the whole 65 million years, then zoom in, and zoom in again to the last 12,000 from both ends of the world. What’s obvious is that in terms of homo sapiens history, things are warm now (because we’re not in an ice age). But, in terms of homo sapiens civilization, things are cooler than usual, and appear to be cooling.
Climate alarmists believe the world is warming, and that this is caused exclusively by man-made carbon dioxide. ‘Global Warming” is now stretched to Climate Change”, but it must be stressed that carbon dioxide can only produce warming: the deceptive change of name does not change the alleged process.
To demonise carbon dioxide further it is supposed to cause ‘acidification’ of the oceans. They claim that anthropogenic carbon dioxide causes the ocean to become more ‘acid’, which dissolves carbonate. This despite the fact that the oceans are alkaline, and have never been acid throughout their existence on Earth. We are implored to reduce the production of anthropogenic carbon dioxide to ‘protect’ the ocean. In this article I show that such claims are baseless, and indeed that carbon dioxide is beneficial to the ocean.
I am a retired Surveyor who spent his whole career (1965 to 2010) measuring and recording:
Water depths, to enable safe navigation of ships and boats into harbours.
Coastal features, such as shorelines and beaches, to monitor changes in depth that occur over time.
Near shore constructions, such as sea walls, groynes wharves, piers and jetties and boat ramps to monitor their effect on the surrounding areas.
In order for these depth measurements to have any coherence they have to be related to a common reference level. In Australia this common reference level or Datum is the Australian Height Datum (AHD).
AHD is a mean sea level datum and was established by analysis of data from recording tide gauges which operate in ports around Australia and which in some cases have been operating for around a century. (see below) I have not found any proposal that this datum be changed due to the rising sea level.
AHD was adopted by the National Mapping Council in May 1971 as the datum to which all vertical control for mapping was to be referred.
We are confident that all of our readers have read or heard for a number of years that 97% of all scientists believe that mankind has played a role in changing the earth’s climate. While it should have been recognized long ago as an urban myth, one of those stories that hang around regardless of a lack of any supporting facts. Rarely a day goes that a global warming alarmists do not use it to promote their cause of enlarging government and reducing personal freedom through the promotion of fear about our future.
Many articles have been written to refute this claim but they all dig into the statistical weeds. Common sense alone should set you straight. If the reader wishes he or she read could read the original paper by Naomi Oreskes that started it all in Science Magazine in December of 2004. Be aware you might die laughing. (more…)
Solar panels on Nevada’s Nellis Air Force Base generate 15 megawatts of electricity perhaps 30% of the year from 140 acres. Arizona’s Palo Verde nuclear power plant generates 900 times more electricity, from less land, some 95% of the year. Generating Palo Verde’s output via Nellis technology would require land area ten times larger than Washington, DC – and would still provide electricity unpredictably only 30% of the time. Now run those solar numbers for the 3.5 billion megawatt-hours generated nationwide in 2016.
Modern coal or gas-fired power plants use less than 300 acres to generate 600 megawatts 95% of the time. Indiana’s 600-MW Fowler Ridge wind farm covers 50,000 acres and generates electricity about 30% of the year. Calculate the turbine and acreage requirements for 3.5 billion MWH of wind electricity.
Delving more deeply, generating 20% of US electricity with wind power would require up to 185,000 1.5-MW turbines, 19,000 miles of new transmission lines, 18 million acres, and 245 million tons of concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass and rare earths – plus fossil-fuel back-up generators for the 75-80% of the year that winds nationwide are barely blowing and the turbines are not producing electricity.
The global warming hysteria was reaching a crescendo in the lead up to the climate confab in Copenhagen in 2009 when a civic-minded person released the Climategate emails, deflating the whole thing. Those emails, concocted from the fevered imaginations of the scientists involved.
Nigh on 10 years have passed since then and we are currently experiencing another peak in the hysteria that seems to be coordinated worldwide. But why? Why now? The global warming scientists have plenty of time on their hands and plenty of money. Idle curiosity would have got some to have a stab at figuring out what is going to happen to climate. Do they see an imminent cooling and they have to get legislation in place before that is apparent? (more…)
Just to keep you abreast of what is going on in France…
You may have heard of the Yellow Vests, who triggered our president Macron into embarking on a “Grand Debate”, mainly on the internet. It is mostly a closed questionnaire with circular arguments on the most surreptitious ways to shoehorn the energy transition, without offering to question its legitimacy in the first place. However, looking closely at the fine print, contributors like associations can still express an open opinion.
On our side Rémy Prud’homme is an emeritus professor of economics, former consultant to the OECD, occasionally to the World Bank, and visiting professor at the MIT. As such he is our chief economist within the steering committee of the French Climato-Réalistes. He came up with the attached “ENERGY TRANSITION IN FRANCE: USELESS, COSTLY, UNFAIR”, initially in French of course. See: https://saltbushclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/energy-transition-in-france.pdf [PDF, 346 KB]
We thought you may like to know that we Froggies are enduring the same attacks as everywhere in the western world and that we like to voice our concern.
Sympathetically yours,
Pierre Bouteille, on behalf of the French Climato-Réalistes
by Jerry Ellis and Sir Rod Carnegie 20 February 2019
The Chairman of the Saltbush Club, Mr Jerry Ellis, today warned that Australia needs more reliable baseload power.
“With the population and the economy growing, but with electricity availability and reliability in decline, we are racing headlong into a brick wall of blackouts.
“Recession and disruption will probably follow, bringing to mind those memorable 1990 words of Paul Keating: ‘This is the recession we had to have’. Except in this case the recession will be self-inflicted.
Earth is a dangerous place. Of all the species that have ever lived, over 95% have already been extinguished by natural disasters.
Just 15,000 years ago
Ice, not global warming, is the big killer and this recurring calamity often strikes quickly. Thousands of mammoths and other animals were killed by ice storms and their snap-frozen bodies are still entombed in ice around the Arctic. Just 15,000 years ago great ice sheets smothered the northern hemisphere as far south as Chicago, Moscow and London and all life had migrated towards the equator. This deadly ice had gripped Earth for about 50,000 years.
RSS
