Peak Climate?
Back in 1956, geophysicist M. King Hubbert advanced a theory that the United States would peak in its oil production within the next decade. Ever since the day of reckoning passed around 1970, those who buy into this postulation have warned us the proverbial end is near, and that we need to change our oil-thirsty ways. The peak oil theory continues to affect our lives, but there are two key areas where the influence is felt the most.
Massive subsidy spending by government in so-called alternative sources of energy — like solar panels and wind power — drives up our national debt by billions annually, while corporate average fuel economy standards which dictate how many miles per gallon a manufacturer’s overall fleet of cars must achieve have made cars less safe in case of an accident. Both have redistributed capital from what could be more productive pursuits into a vain attempt to turn the clock back to a pattern of weather which was more hospitable.
On that note, the other day I read with interest that the University of East Anglia — ground zero for the Climategate scandal which rocked the scientific community — has quietly released data showing the Earth’s temperature had reached its modern peak fifteen years ago. Since then, the temperatures have remained steady or even dropped slightly.
So the question has to be asked: have we now passed peak climate?
Perhaps the news may be hard to believe in a winter where much of the eastern United States has enjoyed balmy, springlike weather, but some who study climate now theorize that we’re heading into a period of cooler-than-normal temperatures based on the observations of solar activity over time. Others foresee a cooling due to lengthy cycles in ocean temperatures, which are now receding.
It may not matter which of these theories are correct in the end if global temperatures are really getting cooler. Obviously a long-term temperature decline will have effects on the food supply as well as the cost of energy; however, we may also have to endure a shortage of hot air from scientists and politicians who previously bloviated unceasingly about the need to do something about global warming. Usually their solutions either involved cutting back on America’s opulent lifestyle, giving away more of our tax dollars through government to particular favored industries, or both.
But let’s face it: there’s also a delicious irony at play here. Just the chance that the so-called experts — who were so smug in their certain knowledge that they were right — are being left with egg on their faces makes the revelation that Earth is indeed going through a climate change independent of mankind’s influence that much better. It almost makes you want to enjoy a balmy February day by starting up that gas-guzzling SUV to go to the grocery store and buy a juicy steak to toss on the gas or charcoal grill. Why wait until Earth Day to annoy the zealots?
First of all, there is no “peak” to the hysteria of zealots when there is the possibility of their gaining political power from that hysteria. Josef Goebbels wrote at length on this subject, and was in my opinion the 20th Century’s Grand Master of the technique. (He helped his Fuhrer start a world war with it, after all.)
Second, here in Ohio, while we have had less snow than in a few recent winters, we have had a record number of days of temperatures below freezing. The lack of snow indicates low humidity, which is somewhat at variance with the predicted effect of “greenhouse gases” according to the AGW computer models. OSU’s climate research department (very pro-AGW, and funded under a government grant from EPA for that reason) is very put out that the weather isn’t behaving according to their computer models- also based on AGW orthodoxy. (After all, you don’t generally keep getting government funding if you’re telling those who hold the purse strings something they don’t want to hear.)
Finally, the Department of Agriculture has new guidelines for when and where to plant seeds, which will appear on the back of seed packets sold in the U.S. next year. (I’m talking about that little map of the USA with the blue, green, yellow, orange, etc. colored bands and the list of calendar dates saying when to plant the seeds.) It’s the first revision of the “planting map” in twenty years, and yes, it is based on the AGW model.
It shows the yellow (lowest temps in the 30s) up the Pacific coast to the Columbia river basin (i.e., the border with British Columbia), lowest in the ‘teens (green) north into southern Michigan, the tens (blue) no further south than the middle of Illinois and Indiana, and the minus tens to twenties (light purplish) barely entering the Lower Forty-Eight at all, in the very northern parts of Montana, North Dakota, the north half of Minnesota, and a very little bit in Wisconsin.
In short, warmer overall temperatures across the U.S., and a proportionately longer growing season, with the ability to plant certain less-hardy crops further north than historical.
Frankly, I hope they’re right. One of the often-overlooked advantages of a warmer Earth would be such improved agricultural potential in temperate areas, as the sub-polar climate regions contract.
But the data coming from the real world (record cold and snowfalls along the coastlines here and in Europe, sub-arctic cold on the European mainland, excessive dry cold here in the Great Lakes area, etc.) tell me that overall, things are getting colder, not warmer. No matter what the (politically-inspired and “social engineering”-motivated) AGW computer models say.
For an example of how this could turn out (badly), read “The Last Centurion” by John Ringo, paying particular attention to Book One, chapters seven through nine, Book Two, chapter one, and basically all of Book Three.
clear ether
eon
Stop reading my mind! *This is a joke*
Yes, read The Last Centurion. It’s fun, a fast read, scary, and contains no descriptions of kinky sex, if that’s been keeping you away.
My only complaint is that Ringo did not do a bibliography, either in the book or on his web site.
The new Department of Agriculture hardiness zones are based on climate data from 1976-2005 while the old ones are based on 1974-86. Being from Ohio, I recall the bitter winters in the late 1970′s (Blizzard of ’78) and freezing my way to classes in the winter of 1985, which was the winter of Reagan’s second inaugural I cited in the piece. If you figure these hardiness zone maps are based on annual minimum temperatures and a string of cold winters comprised a significant portion of the data, it’s no wonder the new maps show warmer weather – even if most of these winters were just average, they “bend the curve,” so to speak.
I would expect over the next 20 years that those who live on the northern fringes of hardiness zones will find that those plants they figured on growing won’t make it through the winter. The revised maps two decades from now will likely look something like the ones being supplanted, although maybe not as severe.
But the demise of global warming may have an impact on certain industries, too. For example, here in Maryland we’ve seen an increase in the number of wineries which grow their own grapes. A significant long-term cooling may make that business untenable and force growers into other lines of work. Given that I try to keep these articles to around 800-1000 words I gave short shrift to the projected solar minimum in Cycle 25, while some feel may echo the Maunder Minimum during the Little Ice Age of the 17th and 18th centuries. Obviously we could have the chance to test the hypothesis of lower sunspot activity equaling lower global temperatures if the lack of sunspots persists.
Sun spots correlate far better to global temperature than does CO2. http://www.petitionproject.org/gw_article/Review_Article_HTML.php Figure 13.
I had never put the Peak Oil idea next to AGW, however. Amusing. Thanks.
“Just wait for the next Republican to take office, and we’ll hear once again about the homeless freezing to death on sewer grates in a vain effort to keep warm.”
Take careful note of that one sentence. If you take away nothing else from this article, at least take note of this statement and PAY ATTENTION to the professional propagandist tactics used by the Libs – in particular Leftist media scum – in their endless pursuit of power. Do not expect the Leftists (or any “progressive”, Republican progressives included) to ever stop their campaigns to achieve absolute power over you, your pocketbook and your day-to-day decisions. The majority of the so-called “studies” conducted by the professional progressive university cabal are merely fig leaf covers to give them a supposed scientific legitimacy for their own intrinsic desires for power over others.
The Leftists/progressives who are so fond of explaining how religions of old were simply invented from whole cloth in order to give legitimacy to the ruling classes and from which we still need to be freed, are themselves knee deep in their own invented pseudo-scientific religion, one that (they believe) will give them the new devine right to rule. Bogus “scientific” knowledge makes them (so they claim) so much more enlightened, wise and evolved than we mere mortals that we must relinquish all doubt and reason to their supremely enlightened nobleness. If I had a dime for every time I heard or read “New studies show…” blah blah blah.
Any studies coming out of Berzerkley (for example) are guaran-G.D.-teed to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that republicans are repressed and ignorant, have just barely crawled out of the primordial slime.
Much of the whole academic study thing can be tossed into the sewer along with anthropogenic global warming.
As I was replying to Eon’s comment and saw yours, it occurred to me that the big push in homeless awareness indeed occurred on Reagan’s watch and during a period where we were in a run of relatively cold and snowy winters in the eastern part of the country. If we are entering a similar period now and a Republican is elected, the problem and propaganda will return.
Of course, if Obama is re-elected the homeless freezing to death will become more common, so much so in fact that it will be in the agate type of print media if covered at all.
Global Warming comes and goes but Climate Change is forever. Long live the hysteria!
The penultimate paragraph illustrates that the real problem with the hysteria is that it’s anti-technology. We’ve heard for decades that the “deniers” are knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who think Rob Petrie invented the Petri dish when, in reality, it’s the “warmists” who are anti-science. Our history is one of adaptation yet the “warmists” say “we can’t change, we’re all doomed”. They’re the equivalent of the “flat earthers” back in the Middle Ages. If our ancestors had listened to them then we wouldn’t have the wheel… perhaps they descend from the Incas?
At its core, the Global Change crowd is anti-technology. They abhor the use of tools to adapt to new circumstances and to utilize the Earth’s resources for our benefit. They deeply resent Man being the highest lifeform on the planet. They see themselves as the Court Magicians in some Feudal Realm with the rest of us living beside Obama’s brother in a mud hut. Of course, when I say “living” I mean “freezing, starving and sitting in the dark”. Scratch a “warmer” and a Luddite will bleed.
Imagine. They’ve progressed so far they’ve managed to convince the Armed Forces that going “green” was necessary. At a cost of 10s of billions, every year, and it doesn’t improve our warfighting capacity one whit. May be be detrimental.
Can’t limit hysteria when it underlies a fundamental religious and political conviction, like belief in man caused global warming.
And has served as a source of agenda driven funding for so many people who will have to find some other lucrative gig. (Not to mention as a source of disdain and superiority towards those who don’t Believe. Or as a mechanism for worldwide control for groups like the UN’s IPCC)
The zealots will mumble and grumble, go underground, curse Mommy Earth…
“How dare you trash our religious convictions ? We’re freaking scientists ! We’re the Creators of Computer Climate Models ! (you know, the ones that get All the Right Answers as a function of the the data & parameters that We input)”
By agitating for a change in paradigm from fossil fuel as a source of energy to ‘renewable’ sources, the greenies obfuscate the issue.
Neither of those are the paradigm here. They have confused the map for the territory.
We burn fossil fuels for energy because it makes economic sense, and that is the paradigm. If wind and solar made economic sense, we would use them, but they dont. That they dont is evident by the fact that they have to be subsidized. What they want is a change in paradigm from making economic sense to making no economic sense.
If wind and solar suddenly made sense and we began to use them, we would then hear the same people railing against ‘big wind and solar’ and the evil fatcats who are extorting our money. What really bothers them is that we commoditize things. Again, the commodity itself is not the paradigm, commoditizing is. They just want us not to. Ultimately what they are opposed to is industrial civilization.
The most obvious case I have seen of this is a woman who was commenting on the NYT website. She was leading a movement to ‘remineralize the earth’. Essentially she wanted us to dismantle everything we have made and bury it back in the earth. According to her the earth was sick because we have been ‘gutting’ it for so long, i.e. mining and drilling and farming.
In the final analysis, the greenie movement is driven by mental illness.
Thank you Old Mexican.
I agree with pretty much everything you say with one exception, that the greenie movement is driven by mental illness. These people live in a comfortable Western world where they are almost completely insulated from the harsh realities of life on this planet, so they develop an endless parade of highly abstract (and irrational) assertions about how life is and, more importantly, how it *should* be according to their little coddled minds. The world in which Modern Liberals succeed is almost always a world that has had the normal feedback mechanisms (failure = negative feedback, success = positive feedback) intentionally destroyed, so their success is only based on their adoption and reguritation of “accepted” Liberal dogma. It is a very perverse secular/religious dogma that posits any number of imposibilities and works tirelessly to prevent reality from ever being allowed to interfere with their cozy little world of codified lies and false premises.
I know, because I used to be part of that world. Escape is possible, but because of the all-encompassing nature of that world, where your entire life is structured around the false Liberal constructs you accept on faith and your circle of friends is of like mind, leaving the Liberal religion can be very difficult. Multiply those factors by 1000 if your Liberal world in on campus.
It has been noted before that today’s environmentalism is a product of wealth and prosperity. Poor people in Third World countries cannot afford the luxury of sitting in coffee shops pontificating on the environmental evils of modern industry, or why DDT should be eschewed in favor of ineffective insecticides. Starving people can’t install solar panels or windmills to provide electricity to unwired yurts. The very people denouncing our industrialized society can only do so because of it. The very energy sources they decry are the reason they themselves are prospering.
I think that pretty well sums up why the smug arrogance of the New Left, at least for environmental issues, can deviate so far from reality and still have ANY credibility. With increasing wealth comes an increasing level of ideas founded in ever higher levels of abstraction which the “elect” believe represent increased wisdom and enlightenment, and there is no place on Earth more secure from the harsh realities of life than an American university. The depths to which the secure and unchallenged given over completely to narcissistic licentiouness (the modern day Liberal college environment) will descend is breathtaking.
Its no wonder why “The Center Cannot Hold”.
This is drifting off-topic, but my nephew (Ph.D, Entomology, NDSU) advocates dusting the upper walls and ceiling of human habitat with DDT. Wide-scale dispersal in the 1960s was clearly a bad thing, but DDT is very effective on organisms with high surface area to weight ratios (i.e. flying insects.) Putting it on the upper walls plays into flying insects’ behavior of bouncing against a surface (thereby coating themselves with DDT) as they land.
Indeed, we are dealing with Luddites. Our scientists cannot protect us if hysteria tips the scales.
“Our scientists cannot protect us if hysteria tips the scales.”
More to the point, I would say our scientists cannot protect us if they – and the underlying science – are as corrupt as any common politican. The efforts of the New Left over the last fifty or so years to politicize every aspect of life (My fav is Howard Zinn – “You can’t be neutral!”) and to centralize as much power in the federal government that they hope to control has led us also to the hopeless corruption of almost every dicipline and profession. We have devolved from a society consisting of a few intensely corrupt Leftist crusaders (like the NYT criminal Duranty) to a popular culture where Duranty level lying mouthpieces are the norm, and they infect and corrupt every area of an increasingly diseased society.
On a more hopeful note, the greenies may have done us a bit of a favor by arranging for more of the oil to be left underground until it really gets cold. Not what they intended, but God does work in mysterious ways…
No, it is never a “favor” to society to insist on inefficient allocation of resources. Ironically those that will suffer the most from such inefficient allocation are the poorest who the liberals always claim to care more about than the evil capitalists.
Are you really not in favor of, say, rationing what food is available during a severe famine? Remember, the economically efficient approach is that only those who can pay for food’s astronomical prices get anything to eat. (Actually, the alternative to rationing in a famine is the law of the jungle, because nobody is going to sit around and starve because they cannot afford food.) Similarly people will disagree with you after, say, a terrorist attack if the richest get medical care and die anyway because they are too injured to live while those who have less money die — even though they could have lived — because they don’t get the medical care they need. Doctors customarily handle situations like this using triage (treat first those who can survive if they get taken care of immediately) rather than the more market efficient procedure of holding an auction for their services on the spot.
As you can see from the previous examples, market efficiency only goes so far — in extreme situations the choices boil down to rationing or the law of the jungle. Believe me, if the climate gets cold enough there will be gasoline rationing and thermostat police to see that you only use up your fair share of fuel (or else armed thugs taking your house apart to see whether you have anything they can use). In a real emergency, societies always choose rationing or fall apart. Market efficiency is just not an option.
Al Gore for President!!! He invented the Internet and reversed Global Warming!!!
Ultimately, the most lasting consequence of the Climate Changers corruption of science is that they have destroyed trust in science.
On a related note, anybody ever drink Absinte? Tried it for the first time today, it rocks.
Corrupt science to redistribute wealth in the name of the “environment”
I truely believe most celebrities have invested in these schemes and push it to line their own pockets – Bono, DeCaprio, Bon Jovi etc
Old Lock Box Al now doesn’t need one for social security; he’s made $100m off taxpayers and corporations
http://ilovecarbondioxide.com/p/about-us.html9(I Love C02)
I can see now by the few comments on this article that conservatives have won the day and Global Warming or Climate Change is nothing more than a farce too bad some people made money from it…I think a lawsuit is in order here!
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2012/02/09/greens_playing_lethal_games_with_energy_273239.html
Scam artists making a fast buck off AGW hysteria doesn’t bother me.
The potential for innocent people dying in large numbers due to avoidable weather-related hardship, because the “deep ecologists” want it that way for philosophical reasons, bothers me a great deal.
clear ether
eon
Eon
“avoidable weather related hardship ” ??
Are you refering to a plane diverting around a storm or do you really belive we have any control on the weather ?
If it’s the latter I have a diving rod for sale Mr Wizard
Read the article.
My definition is the same as the author’s, that being, “People freezing to death due to lack of heat when a more rationally-designed energy grid would be able to supply same when needed”.
No, we can’t control the weather. That’s why we need to be able to cope with what it can do to us.
Europe’s energy grid, in its present and projected near-term form, fails that test rather badly.
clear ether
eon
…conservatives have won the day
I’d say that truth and facts have won the day, or are at least holding the day at present.
Manmade global warming (or not) ultimately isn’t a function of anyone’s ideological stand, anybody’s opinion.
Drives the ideologues nuts that they the planet itself, the sun, the water currents, the clouds, the glaciers….are deniers of their theology.
Man made global warming is just the latest in Leftist induced mass hysterias. Heterosexual aids, silicone breast implants, ALAR, nuclear energy, GM food, etc. etc. all have been tried and all are false. But the Left is never held to account for this nonsense and with the help of the News Media this latest hysteria will be forgotten and, again with the help of the News Media, yet another “crisis” driven hysteria will be created.
The first thing the next Republican in office needs to do is fire James Hansen from his position as head of the GISS (Goddard Institute of Space Sciences). As the group supposedly in charge of keeping the historical temperature data, he has tasked the GISS with revising temperature records in a way to show a steady increase in global mean temperature throughout the 20th century. Not surprisingly, this means revising the historical temps downwards prior to 1950 and upwards after 1980. This is data fudging at its worst.
As the “father of global warming”, it should be obvious that he has a conflict of interest between his position as head of GISS (data collection) and his career of global warming advocacy. With his expressed commitment to AWG theory, it’s impossible to not think that he might use his position to manipulate, revise, stifle, and filter official data to support his “baby”.
Unfortunately, when his conflict was exposed earlier, the syncophantic media rose to his defense and tried to portray him as some Galileo that George Bush and other “deniers” were trying to censure. In the end, the media won the day, and now everyone is afraid to challenge Dr. Hansen. He has free rein to use GISS as his personal tool to promote AWG without question, oversight, or criticism. The result is that all temperature data from GISS is now suspect.
The next Republican president and/or congress needs to pull a Harry Truman and get rid of this parasite, and stand up to the inevitable firestorm of protests and smears. Hansen is arguably the single most responsible person for the billions of dollars and growth that have been wasted on this chimera. And still he is allowed to keep poisoning the well. Getting rid of Hansen would be a first great step is ending the global warming hoax and hysteria.
Hansen (reportedly) said a few years ago, words to the effect that…”It’s ok to fudge and exaggerate the AGW facts in service to the overarching goal of bringing the ignorant on board.”
I freely paraphrase, but that was the disgusting gist of what he was reported to have said.
Hansen has publicly boasted that he cannot be fired because he has friends in high places. I take this to mean that our own government, military, or some agency or organization with great power wants him exactly where he is and doing exactly what he is doing. He’s happens also to be a crackpot religious fanatic, which his minions, curiously, ignore.
The global warming scare is far too big, far too well-financed, and has far too many governments involved to be a fluke or accident. I suspect it’s a front or cover, including a way of hiding or cloaking expenditures, for something entirely unrelated. Now, where’s my tinfoil hat???
No, it’s What it Say On The Package, as the TV Tropes & Idioms site would label it. A consortium of academics, social reformers, ecologists, and other members of the “enlightened elite’” working together on something they all agree is guaranteed to give them great political power. Which they believe they deserve on the basis of their self-perceived inherent superiority.
If anyone is getting money under the table out of this, it’s probably groups like Earth First!, who will use it to finance acts of “civil disobedience” like their recent arson of construction vehicles in California.
Mostly though, the money from government grants is probably being used to bankroll more studies, intended to net more government grants. With a side order of “green” business start-ups, like Solyndra.
Like Obama’s “stimulus” spending, it’s money thrown down a hole. But the anti-civilization crowd see it as justice; they get the money and an amped-up lifestyle, and it isn’t being spent on “evil” things like nuclear powerplants.
As for Hansen’s “friends in high places”, think the Democratic Party’s leadership, and the President. With the help of the MSM, they’ve ridden this issue (among others) right to the top, and as long as Hansen is useful as a sort of “green Goebbels”, they’ll protect him no matter what he does.
clear ether
eon
Even Bush couldn’t get rid of Hansen, so there’s more to this than meets the eye.
NASA, NASA GISS, EPA, and NOAA have all been caught, repeatedly, cooking the books, altering records, falsifying maps, etc. up to the present moment. This goes way beyond partisan politics.
I think the genesis of this charade lies with the realization that people more easily give up their freedoms in time of war. Instead of a war in the normal sense, we make a war against industry to save humanity (very noble!). Once you have everyone convinced it’s a matter of life and death, grabbing power is like picking apples off a tree. Fortunately, Mother Nature decided not to cooperate before the coup succeeded.
As for Hansen, if nothing else he’s meticulous. When he says he has friends in high places, I’m sure it means he kept all the dirty evidence on everybody in the ground work stages of IPCC and the creation of this manufactured crisis. If he goes down (like felony prone), I bet he’ll sing like a canary. All the more reason to turn the screws.
Pardon me, but I have a small nit to pick.
Temperatures are never hotter or cooler: they are either higher or lower because temperature is a measurement. The air or the water or your cup of coffee can be either hotter or cooler. Likewise cars and aiplanes do not travel at fast speeds and turtles do not travel at slow speeds. The cars go at high speeds and the turtles at low.
I just do not like to see this kind of carelessness in articles with which I generally agree. It subtracts something from their overall credibility.
Do not get your hopes up. If you have been following the whole global warming/climate change/ extreme climate debate you will know that those scientists with egg on their faces will shortly be frying up omelets. I am willing to bet that many of the same folks who said co2 was causing the earth to wram up will figure out that in the end, through some very complicated (and partially secret) mechanism, co2 has actually been cooling the worlds climate and thus must be curtailed.