Apologies for Light Blogging

Timothy Birdnow

Sorry folks; blogging will be light today (or none). I have a lot of balls I'm juggling today.

Cheers!

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HUNTER BIDEN: FIRST THE TIMES, NOW THE POST

Dana Mathewson

We’ve noted several times recently that Hunter Biden’s corruption is getting more attention from the mainstream media, which makes you wonder whether "Operation Remove Joe” has commenced in earnest.

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Minimal Sea Level Rise

This from James Ervin:

Sea level continues to rise at the LOWEST range of rates predicted in the first IPCC report. The reports since the late 1980s warned that the rate of rise would accelerate by year 2000. It didn't.

- Steric sea level rose 101 mm since 1993 at rate of 3.4 mm/yr according to satellite altimetry.
- Sea level on the coasts rose 52 mm at a rate of 1.8 mm/yr since 1993 according to long-term tide gauges around the world.

Neither method shows any appreciable acceleration in the rate of rise. The alarmist predictions failed again.
https:// tidesandcurrents .noaa.gov/ sltrends/ sltrends_station .shtml?id=94101 70

For years scientist said that the rate of sea level rise was going to accelerate by year 2000.

June 23, 1988 at testimony before Senate committee, Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, Senior Scientist, Environmental Defense Fund testified that: "Global mean temperature will likely rise at about 0.6 degrees F per decade and sea level at about 2.5 inches per decade.” "These rates are about six times recent history.” https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/climate/2015-paris-climate-talks/from-the-archives-1988-global-warming-has-begun-expert-tells-senate

As of 2022, the rate of sea level rise is still 0.7 inched per decade according to all the long-range tide gauges around the planet.

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Why They Hate DeSantis

Lance Sjogren

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Pushing Electric Vehicles

This from David Walker:

EVs are a ruse for mass transit. As the government continues to strangle far more effective modes, the de facto and ad hoc push for EVs ensures the masses will be compelled to exchange their key fobs for transit tokens, for whatever public conveyance they purchase.

This particular issue is bipartisan. Gov's Tom Ridge, Pete Wilson, Christine Todd Whitman, George Pataki, and others (all Republicans) were proponents.

I've been tracking it since 1989, and it was re-started in earnest shortly afterward via enhanced emissions inspections (I/M-240, ASM5015, ASM2525, etc.) admin'd by monopoly contractors, with the goal of scrapping all older vehicles and converting them to NOX emissions for sale to stationary sources, and artificially causing new car shortages to drive up prices. Now there are all manner of mandates that are, once again, really intended to drive people out of their cars.

It was back then, at least at first; but the informants (William Yellowtail, EPA Region-8 Admin; and Richard Kamin, NJ-DMV director) made it clear the aim was to transition people out of their cars and into mass transit.

Today the justification is contextual fraud (AGW and "scarcity").

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Why Global Warming is an act of Faith

This from Roy W. Spencer's excellent blog:

Why Blaming Recent Warming on Humans is Largely a Matter of Faith

As I continue to see all of the crazy proclamations of how human-caused climate change is disrupting lives around the world (e.g., the Feb. 28 release of the IPCC report from Working Group 2, [Pielke Jr. analysis here]), I can’t help but return to the main reason why human causation for recent warming has not been convincingly established. I have discussed this before, but it is worth repeating.

As a preface, I will admit, given the lack of evidence to the contrary, I still provisionally side with the view that warming has been mostly human-caused (and this says nothing about whether the level of human-caused warming is in any way alarming).

But here’s why human causation is mostly a statement of faith…

ALL temperature change in any system is due to an imbalance between the rates of energy gain and energy lost. In the case of the climate system, it is believed the Earth each year absorbs a global average of about 240 Watts per sq. meter of solar energy, and emits about the same amount of infrared energy back to outer space.

If we are to believe the last ~15 years of Argo float measurements of the ocean (to 2000 m depth), there has been a slight warming equivalent to an imbalance of 1 Watt per sq. meter, suggesting a very slight imbalance in those energy flows.

One watt per sq. meter.

That tiny imbalance can be compared to the 5 to 10 Watt per sq. meter uncertaintyin the ~240 Watt per sq. meter average flows in and out of the climate system. We do not know those flows that accurately. Our satellite measurement systems do not have that level of absolute accuracy.

Global energy balance diagrams you have seen have the numbers massaged based upon the assumption all of the imbalance is due to humans.

I repeat: NONE of the natural, global-average energy flows in the climate system are known to better than about 5-10 Watts per sq. meter…compared to the ocean warming-based imbalance of 1 Watt per sq. meter.

What this means is that recent warming could be mostly natural…and we would never know it.

But, climate scientists simply assume that the climate system has been in perfect, long-term harmonious balance, if not for humans. This is a pervasive, quasi-religious assumption of the Earth science community for as long as I can remember.

But this position is largely an anthropocentric statement of faith.

That doesn’t make it wrong. It’s just…uncertain.

Read the entire article; it's brilliant ( as we expect from Dr. Spencer.)

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Antarctic Ocean Outgassing

Timothy Birdnow

The cornerstone of climate change alarmism is that industrial emissions are responsible for all of the observed rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide. All of it.

Those of us with brains know this is not true, but we are generally shouted down.

BUT, as it turns out atmospheric carbon dioxide continued to rise at the same rate it had been rising when industrial emissions were curtailed during the pandemic, and that strongly suggests a natural explanation for rising levels.

Well, here is another factor to consider.

Storms in the Antarctic region are responsible for a considerable outgassing of carbon dioxide from the oceans.

Half of all carbon dioxide bound in the Earth's oceans are in the deep south.

So, is the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide a cyclical thing, a natural part of the environment?

I suspect as much.

From the article:

Storms over the waters around Antarctica drive an outgassing of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to a new international study with researchers from the University of Gothenburg.

The research group used advanced ocean robots for the study, which provides a better understanding of climate change and can lead to better global climate models.

The world's southernmost ocean, the Southern Ocean that surrounds Antarctica, plays an important role in the global climate because its waters contain large amounts of carbon dioxide. A new international study, in which researchers from the University of Gothenburg participated, has examined the complex processes driving air-sea fluxes of gasses, such as carbon dioxide.

I would point out that Antarctica is a highly volcanic region. Much of this carbon dioxide may well be a result of outgassing from inside the planet.

This explains some of the unseasonably warm days seen around the Antarctic Peninsula.

It also may well explain why some of the "missing heat" found in the oceans are deep in the southern oceans and nowhere else.

The Antarctic Ocean appears to be full of volcanoes.

So, is it really "missing heat" or rather heat from geothermal activity? And is this perhaps driving the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide? We estimate how much we are putting in the air not by surveying all of our industrial emission sources but by simply subtracting what we think the natural sources are putting out and assume the rest is caused by Man. But is it really?

Industrial emissions dropped during the pandemic yet co2 levels continued to rise.

Now why do you suppose that is?


One has to wonder if global warming is not really a function of geomagnetic effects and Milankovitch cycles. We may be seeing an increase in volcanism in the southern oceans disgorging co2 in the process and producing the mild warming we've witnessed.

Remember, there are only 4+ molecules of carbon dioxide for every TEN THOUSAND molecules of air, and of that we are responsible for less than one molecule. If that.

And while the stratosphere has cooled (ostensibly because heat is being trapped at the lower levels) we aren't really seeing the troposphere heat up as it should be.http://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/05/the-weakness-of-tropospheric-warming-as-confirmed-by-airs/

Also, the "missing heat" is somehow going into the oceans (moving downward when heat normally rises) and disappearing. Put a couple of beers in a cooler, one on top of the ice and one below. Which is colder? My beer has never been warmer at the bottom of the cooler.

This is a strange form of planetary warming. And it is a very mild warming. (0.13* per decade since 1980, if wwe believe we are making accurate temperature measurements, which are in fact rather dubious. We know NASA and NOAA have fudged the data, lowering historical temperatures to make warming appear greater.)

James Ervin adds:

You are making an interesting point.

The vast majority of Antarctica has been cooling slightly for most of the last century to the present.

But, the western 1/5th of the continent sits over one of the largest volcanic provinces in the world and is warming dramatically. Over 80 percent of all ice melt across Antarctica is measured near the volcanoes.

See Loose et al. (2018) Evidence of an active volcanic heat source beneath the Pine Island Glacier https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04421-3
"These geochemical measurements provide an independent line of evidence of present-day subglacial volcanism in Marie Byrd Land. They also support a growing list of studies revealing that regional volcanism is a recurring characteristic of the basal boundary beneath the WAIS."

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Kiddie Kissin'

Timothy Birdnow

Really? THIS is their priority?!

GOP bill would eliminate age requirements for marriages in Tennessee
wjhl.com.

The GOP can't think of a better hill to die on than marrying their 13 year old cousins?

I suppose next they'll rescind a ban on feudin'.

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Russia Begins Withdrawing Forces from Kiev

Steven Schueler

Tim adds:

I predicted Putin would start talking after rampaging, and that he would eventually cut a deal that made it look like he won, at least in Russia. And Biden will claim a win.

I think this is the first stage of this war winding down.

The talks will not doubt drag on for some time. Putin wants the port cities and wants a corridore through Ukraine for his oil and gas pipelines to Europe. He can always take Ukraine by slow strangulation. This wasn't a war of conquest so much as a war of economics.

As usual the media has it completely backwards.

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The Unworkable Wind Scheme

Stephen Heins:

Tim adds:

Windmills are 17th century technology. They are a bit more efficient than the ones used by the Dutch back then, but not much. The fact is if wind were to be commercially viable we would need a much different approach. Spinning blades are just too inefficient to make this viable. We need a more creative approach - or simply chuck the whole thing as unworkable.

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Russia's EMP Threat

Timothy Birdnow

The Russians have a contingency plan to use an EMP attack on the United States.

https://defconwarningsystem.com/digest/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Russia-EMP-Threat.pdf

Years ago I wrote about a possible EMP attack by North Korea. An EMP aka Electromagnetic Pulse attack involves airbursting an atomic bomb. When any atomic bomb - be it fission or fusion - is detonated it releases a burst of gamma rays which strip electrons from the air. These form a very powerful, fast moving wave in the atmosphere which (a Compton Effect) which blows out electronics. It rises too fast for conventional surge protectors so it takes everything out.

Congress commissioned a study which concluded after my American Thinker article came out (and I took some heat from commenters who clearly were government agents trying to put the lid on this) stated that there would be a 90% kill rate after one year. So America would drop down to about 32 million people! The rest would die.

This would alter the entire world. The international economy would collapse at minimum.

And would we nuke Russia for PROPERTY DAMAGE which is what some liberals would argue this was. No doubt there will be pressure on Biden to not retaliate. And he may not.

See, everything operates with computers these days. No vehicles built after 1979 are without computers. So nothing would run, not trucks, not trains, not farm equipment, nothing. Only a few old cars and maybe some things like lawnmower would still operate. Maybe a few mopeds. But there would be no crops planted or harvested. There would be nothing moving to market. There would be no food, no water (as most water pumps would be out), no communications. We would be back in 1800, only we would have a 21st century population and no 19th century technology available. It would have to be rebuilt from scratch.

In short, it would basically be the end of the world as we know it.

But, but, but...we have made strides in hardening our systems, right?

Well...

From the above quoted paper:

The U.S. has taken steps to harden some military facilities, but not against a new Russian super EMP.

(Hardening usually consists of putting stuff underground or in a Faraday Cage. There are ways to build equipment that is hardened into a Faraday cage, but apparently the Russians have a superior weapon that can still get to this stuff.)

So, if push comes to shove Putin could launch one single rocket and take out the entire country.

What else is waiting in the wings for us? This rush to war is a very dangerous thing for our leaders. And it is being done for political reasons more than anything else, so the Democrats don't lose power.

One wonders if martial law is not far off?

I need to get the Ozark Hilton in shape for a long stay, perhaps.

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Biden Blocking Lithium Mining

Steven Schueler

Biden is hampering mining of lithium on US soil forcing reliance on Chinese sources. This is FACT,

Our piece of shit president may talk about increasing US production but his administration's actions say the opposite.

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As a Man Thinketh

Selwyn Duke

https://www.selwynduke.com/2022/03/the-rise-and-fall-of-post-religious-america.html

Most Americans may not "feel” their faith influences their political affiliation. But the reality is that "First Things” — a person’s personal philosophy or theology, his "world view” — absolutely influence secondary matters such as politics.

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The War Drones On

Christopher Lee forwards this:

The Drone Operators Who Halted Russian Convoy Headed for Kiev

"They built a range of surveillance drones, as well as large 1.5-metre eight-rotor machines capable of dropping bombs and rocket-propelled anti-tank grenades, and created a system called Delta, a network of sensors along the frontlines that fed into a digital map so commanders could see enemy movements as they happened. It now uses the Starlink satellite system, supplied by Elon Musk, to feed live data to Ukrainian artillery units, allowing them to zero in on Russian targets.”

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Forensic Evidence

John Conlin

What did Chris Rock have on his face when he woke up this morning?
FRESH PRINTS!

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Mathematical Models that don't Work

This from Steven Milloy:

Academic uses models to show Germany can quit Russian energy.

Skeptical German Chancellor Olaf Scholz decries "mathematical models that don't work."

Great point. Let's apply it to climate.

Full story: https://junkscience.com/2022/03/german-chancellor-decries-mathematical-models-that-dont-work/
May be an image of text that says '1.6 1.4 90 CMIP5 Climate Models vs. Observations Global Average Temperature, running 5-Year Means Satellite warming trends ('79-2013) lower than 88 models (97.8%) (97. Surface warming trends ('79-2013) lower than 86 90 (95.6%) 1.2 ပ 1.0 Over 95% of Climate Models Agree: The Observations Must Be Wrong 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0.0 HadCRUT4 Surface UAHLowerTroposphere Lower Troposphere -0.2 -0.4- 1983 1988 1993 1998 2003 2008 2013 2018 2023 2028'

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Smackable Smiths

Selwyn Duke

Tim adds:

Seems to me Smith and his wife are the ones who should be getting smacked.

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About that Sea Level Rise

This from Tom Leeds:

This is a lengthy scientific document that studies sea level rise in the Pacific region, including Australia. It completely debunks the often repeated statements that the sea level is rising at alarming rates.
"Relative sea-level rise and land subsidence in Oceania from tide gauge and satellite GPS", © 2020 Alberto Boretti, published by De Gruyter.
(This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.)

Basically it looks at sea level rise in the Pacific region, and the full study can be found at:

https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/nleng-2020-0007/html?fbclid=IwAR0HVkEXNNqk69XaASfGVXeXDnM-pXKnFVQyuAexGlBzMDiS30-yA2WqjJc

The oceans have been rising for millennia. Miami is sinking from over building and other factors. The trend in Miami is to build as close to the water as possible. This isn’t ‘climate change’, it’s man’s stupidity. It’s unresearched factoids like this that are making people understand they’ve been duped by AGW.

This measured data shows that none of these California locations are experiencing coastal sea level rise acceleration since climate alarmist first made such erroneous and flawed sea level acceleration claims before the U.S. Senate in 1988.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/03/13/ca-sea-level-rise-alarmist-study-ignores-30-years-of-noaa-data-with-no-coastal-sea-level-rise-acceleration/

https://www.academia.edu/41442552/Scientists_caught_adjusting_sea_level_data_to_create_false_impression_of_rising_oceans?email_work_card=interaction-paper

Then there is the problem of the very ground on which Miami Beach and much of South Florida sits.
Made from the remnants of ancient coral reefs, the porous limestone beneath the region is not unlike Swiss cheese, with natural underground "pipes” that allow water to bubble up to the surface.

The bedrock in parts of Florida is "made from the remnants of ancient coral reefs” because, not so long ago, it was underwater, when sea level was 1-2m higher than it is today. There are also "remnants of ancient coral reefs” outboard and in much deeper water than modern coral reefs, because, also not so long ago, sea level was about 100m lower than it is today. This is called glacioeustasy what sea level does during ice ages. We are fortunate to be living in an interglacial stage of an ice age.
Sea level isn’t doing anything now that it hasn’t been doing for the past 200 years.

James Ervin adds:

Wow! Boretti (2020) that you linked is quite a study.

The paper examines 14 long-term tide gauges covering almost half the planet from Sydney Australia to Prince Rupert, Canada.

"All the LTT tide gauges of the Pacific consistently show a small sea-level rise, with a significant contribution by subsidence, and negligible acceleration."

Watson 2018 - How well do AR5 Sea Surface-height model projections match observed rates of sea level rise at the regional scale? https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/6/1/11/htm

"Conclusion: ... This paper provides a snapshot of how closely current rates of sea-level rise from observational data records (tide gauges) are represented by the ensemble mean of the AR5 model-projection products at the regional scale, considering 19 sites across the global ocean over the period of common coverage (2007–2016). …
However, the error margins are quite wide, masking the fact that the mean "geocentric” velocity for the model-projection products are higher than the mean of the observational records for nearly all stations across all RCP experiments, and are likely in the range of 1.6–2.5 mm/year. At the 95% confidence level across all RCPs, there is no clear spatial pattern to the larger differences between the mean velocities of projection model outputs and the observational records."

They tend to change the data when it shows any cooling that does not agree with the models.

Another line of evidence: "contribution of thermal expansion to sea level rise was actually 50 percent larger than previous estimates." Yet, tide gauges and satellite altimetry continue to show no appreciable acceleration in the rate of sea level rise.

https:// tidesandcurrents .noaa.gov/ sltrends/ sltrends_station .shtml?id=150-0 21
Look up actual tide gauge data or any of the recent regional studies that are available. The actual science does not detect the acceleration implied in the blog pages.

Examples:
• Duvat (2018) A global assessment of atoll island planform changes over the past decades. https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/wcc.557 and Boretti (2021) Why the low-lying islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans are expanding? https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12517-021-08972-6 • Meli et al (2021) Sea-Level Change along the Emilia-Romagna Coast from Tide Gauge and Satellite Altimetry. https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/13/1/97/htm
• Watson (2020) Updated Mean Sea-Level Analysis: Australia https://meridian.allenpress.com/jcr/article/36/5/915/441297/Updated-Mean-Sea-Level-Analysis-Australia
• Watson (2019) Updated Mean Sea-Level Analysis: South Korea https://bioone.org/journals/journal-of-coastal-research/volume-35/issue-2/JCOASTRES-D-18-00138.1/Updated-Mean-Sea-Level-Analysis-South-Korea/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-18-00138.1.full
• Houston and Dean (2011) Sea-Level Acceleration Based on U.S. Tide Gauges and Extensions of Previous Global-Gauge Analyses http://www.geography.hunter.cuny.edu/~fbuon/EES_717/references/ocean/jcr_dean_gauge.pdf and Houston (2021) Sea-Level Acceleration: Analysis of the World’s High-Quality Tide Gauges https://www.jstor.org/stable/27000331

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Arguing with Idiots, Global Warming Addition XXV

Timothy Birdnow

On the Wattsupwiththat Facebook page I had an argument with another Gang-greenous alarmist type.

Rob Healy says:

Sea levels are rising, ice sheets are thinning, glaciers are retreating, oceans are warming, average temperatures are rising. All easily measurable, and they have been measured.

My friend from across the pond John Lees replies:

Rob Healy And when the oceans are found to be cooling - then just "correct" the data: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/OceanCooling

Healy retorts:

What we found was that ocean heating was larger than scientists previously thought, and so the contribution of thermal expansion to sea level rise was actually 50 percent larger than previous estimates.”
You didn’t read this did you? The above quote is in the conclusion.

Jim Church jumps in:

Rob Healy Even if this is true it doesn’t mean anything more than what’s happened for eons previously—both

more...

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No Simple Definition of Sex?

Selwyn Duke

https://www.selwynduke.com/2022/03/usa-today-on-ketanji-brown-and-whats-a-woman-science-says-theres-no-simple-answer.html

Children learn to differentiate between the sexes by two years of age.

Or, at least, that’s what we were told.

Now even Supreme Court nominees are confused about, for example, what a woman is — or so it appears. Journalists are, too, ostensibly.

Tim adds:

In 2Timothy2:23 Paul admonished to "reject foolish and ignorant speculations". He gave that admonition precisely because he knew that human beings are not that smart and lose the threat of what is being discussed if they think too hard.

I've seen philosophers talk themselves right out of existence. The fact is there are obvious, undeniable truths to what a man is and what a woman is. It isn't rocket science. It is only a complicated issue because it has been way overthought by people who are looking to justify what is pleasing to themselves. The answer is not simple only because the questioner does not wish it to be.

In short, it's a ruse to justify promoting a form of insanity and moral torpitude.

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