Our RV Adventures

On ‘Climate Change’

This being ‘Global Climate Strike Day’, whatever that is. I thought I’d jump in and stir the pot a little. Or a lot, depending on your point of view, I guess.

First off, NOAA, you know the US Government’s Weather Bureau, says that their new system of remote weather stations shows no warming since 2005

No US Warming Since 2005

“In January 2005, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) began recording temperatures at its newly built U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN). USCRN includes 114 pristinely maintained temperature stations spaced relatively uniformly across the lower 48 states. NOAA selected locations that were far away from urban and land-development impacts that might artificially taint temperature readings.”

These new sensing locations were necessary because most of the old ones, some dating from the 1930’s and originally sited out in the open countryside, were now in built-up areas, next to office buildings, factories, and highways. All sources of localized heat. So NOAA decided to build a completely new system.

And that new system shows NO WARMING since 2005. So no warming in the last 14 years, and probably no real warming since the 1930’s. And this lack of warming matches up pretty well with the global satellite readings.

fogs

Or how about these Global Warming ‘Facts’

Or how about the fact that ice cores going back 150,000 years show that CO₂ levels lag temperature rise, and don’t lead it.

Carbon dioxide increases historically lag temperature increases. “In 1985, ice cores extracted from Greenland revealed temperatures and CO² levels going back 150,000 years,” . . .  in 1999 it became clear that carbon dioxide rose and fell after temperatures did. By 2003, we had better data showing the lag was 800 ± 200 years. CO₂ was in the back seat.”

Or how about the fact that 95% of carbon dioxide emissions come from natural sources, and not man.

Less than 5% of carbon dioxide emissions are produced by man. Web searches turn up what seems like an endless list of stories and blog posts reporting that CO₂ levels in the atmosphere have reached or exceeded 415 parts per million. This has been almost universally treated as the tip of an imminent disaster, as man has pushed greenhouse gas emissions beyond a dangerous threshold.

Or there’s a study by NASA almost 20 years ago details how the main reason for cyclic climate change is the SUN. You know that big ball of flaming gas around 93 million miles away.

The sun’s rotation, orbit, and tilt, along with the earth’s rotation, orbit, and tilt says this:

If we had to sum the whole thing up in one simple phrase, it would be this: The biggest factor influencing weather and climate patterns on earth is the sun, period. Depending on the earth’s position to the sun at any given time, climate conditions are going to vary dramatically, and even create drastic abnormalities that defy everything that humans thought they knew about how the earth worked.

For more on this idea, think about it like this.

What would happen if the sun suddenly DOUBLED its output? Think it would get hotter on the earth?

What would happen if the sun suddenly HALVED its output? Think it would get colder on the earth?

What do you think?

Earth’s climate has always cyclical. Scientist have confirmed that over the 600 million year or so the earth had been almost completely covered in ice and snow at least twice, and maybe more. Called the Snowball Earth effect, these periods lasted at least 10 million years.

So what caused these?

On a most recent time scale, we know the last Ice Age ended around 10,000 years ago. During that one almost half of the US was covered in mile-deep sheets of ice.

So what causes these repeated Ice Ages, and what causes them to go away?

Maybe the sun’s orbit moving further from the earth due to these orbital variations?

And then moving back closer thousands of years later?

For more info about these orbital variations, check out this about Milankovitch Cycles

On an even more recent time scale, we have the Medieval Warming, the Little Ice Age, and even the Dust Bowl. The last one is a little controversial, but many scientists think that this is a possibility, and not the fact that farmers weren’t plowing the right way.

And recently, the ‘settled scientists’ can’t seem to keep their stories straight.

Back in the 1920’s it was Global Cooling.

Then in the 1930’s, it was Global Warming (i.e. the Dust Bowl, remember)

Next up, in the 1970’s, they ‘settled’ on Global Cooling again.

And of course, now we’ve circled back around to Global Warming again.

For more info on this, check out this article from 2006 called Fire and Ice.

Or this one entitled Climate Change Has Been A Routine Scare Tactic Since the 1930’s

Complete with newspaper headlines.

And of course there are the ‘predictions’. Thought ‘wild-ass guesses’ might be a better description.

How about these?

1967 — Stanford University expert Paul Erlich predicted “time of famines” in 1975.

1971 — A top NASA expert predicted an “ice age” by 2021.

1988 — It was predicted that the Maldives would be under water by last year.

2008 — Gore said the Arctic would be free of ice by 2013.

2009 — Prince Charles said there was just 96 months left to save the world.

For some more detail on this, check out this article, complete with newspaper articles. Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions

fogs
And finishing up, here’s the first 20 predictions from a list of 41 failed predictions.

1. 1967: Dire Famine Forecast By 1975
2. 1969: Everyone Will Disappear In a Cloud Of Blue Steam By 1989 (1969)
3. 1970: Ice Age By 2000
4. 1970: America Subject to Water Rationing By 1974 and Food Rationing By 1980
5. 1971: New Ice Age Coming By 2020 or 2030
6. 1972: New Ice Age By 2070
7. 1974: Space Satellites Show New Ice Age Coming Fast
8. 1974: Another Ice Age?
9. 1974: Ozone Depletion a ‘Great Peril to Life
10. 1976: Scientific Consensus Planet Cooling, Famines imminent
11. 1980: Acid Rain Kills Life In Lakes
12. 1978: No End in Sight to 30-Year Cooling Trend
13. 1988: Regional Droughts (that never happened) in 1990s
14. 1988: Temperatures in DC Will Hit Record Highs
15. 1988: Maldive Islands will Be Underwater by 2018 (they’re not)
16. 1989: Rising Sea Levels will Obliterate Nations if Nothing Done by 2000
17. 1989: New York City’s West Side Highway Underwater by 2019 (it’s not)
18. 2000: Children Won’t Know what Snow Is
19. 2002: Famine In 10 Years If We Don’t Give Up Eating Fish, Meat, and Dairy
20. 2004: Britain will Be Siberia by 2024

In fact, not one of these 41 predictions, made by these ‘leading Climate Changers’ has come true.

0 for 41 is not a good record.

OK, I’m off my soapbox. Feel free to jump in.

Thought For The Day:

fogs

Apparently, in some parts of Houston, it’s 3 feet (and more) high and rising. It’s been raining pretty steadily for 3 days now, and it seems now that there’s heavy flooding all over the Houston area.

A local TV weatherman reported that over 43” of rain had fallen northeast of Houston towards the TX-LA border in the last few days.

And although we had some high water in the ditches yesterday, by this afternoon it was just about gone. It was still raining lightly when we left about 1pm for lunch at Yummy Yummy’s.

We haven’t seen the sun in the last few days, and it hasn’t gotten above 75°. Not exactly cold, but good enough for a couple of bowls of Yummy’s Hot & Sour Soup. And those ‘couple’ of bowls were both for me.

Jan had to get her own.

Jan and I have gotten hooked on an new BBC series (at least new to us), but unfortunately, it’s a short term addiction.

Don’t know how many of you are Rowan Atkinson/Black Adder/Mr. Bean fans, but back in 2016 – 2017 he did a short-lived series based on 75 novels by Georges Simenon.

Atkinson plays Jules Maigret, a world-weary, measured and insightful detective, and are set in Paris in the 1950s.

And by ‘short-lived’, they did two 2-hour episodes in 2016, and then two more in 2017, with unfortunately, no more forthcoming.

The four episodes are presently showing on Ovation, and are well-worth your viewing, whether you’re a Rowan Atkinson fan or not. The cinematography is great, and it turns out that Atkinson is as good a serious actor as he is a comedy one.

Check it out.

Ardis, one of our Viking Bunch, sent over some photos she found on her phone that show our antepenultimate Taste of Germany meal on our Viking Cruise.

Jim and Deb

Mike and Melissa

Ardis and Larry

Ardis said that they’re doing another Viking cruise next March, this one from Paris to the Swiss Alps, and wanted to know if we were interested in accompanying them. But as I mentioned before, Jan said she would beat me to death with my own arm if I ever took her on another 8-10 hour flight.

And even our 3+ hour flight to NYC in December is pushing it.

Thought For The Day:

It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit. – Noel Coward

fghfgh