Could the Sun be in charge of climate changes, not our measly CO2 contributions?

A Climate Cycle Delivered Our Cold Spring

by dennis t. avery

Churchville, VA: Lots of us are commenting on the U.S. having the second coldest spring in the official thermometer record (starting ca. 1860) and the coldest since 1975. Remember, too, that in 1975 major news magazines were predicting a sudden return to the next Ice Age! This cold spring highlights another climate cycle that has nothing to do with CO₂.

The cycle that link the two coldest springs is the 60-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Both of these cold springs occurred during a cold phase in the Pacific, which is the planet’s largest heat sink. When the sun is very warm, the Pacific absorbs much of that heat. When the sun is less warm, the Pacific gradually cools. Scientists don’t yet understand clearly why the sun varies in total activity. We do understand, however, that this is the reason global temperatures move up and down in spurts of about 30 years. The PDO is a relatively short cycle superimposed on the longer 1,500-year Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle and the 100,000-year Ice Age cycle.

The PDO wasn’t discovered until 1996. Fish experts began to realize that something was periodically shifting the salmon’s ocean food (plankton and tiny crustaceans) north and south—from the Columbia River region to the Gulf of Alaska and back. It happened about every 30 years. The salmon’s food likes warmth better than cold, so when the Pacific is cooler, the salmon and their food supply thrive farther south.

Fish catch records show the PDO was cool from 1890–1924, warm from 1925–46, cool again from 1940–1976, and warm again from 1976 to about 2007. NASA’s Jason satellite confirmed in 2008 that the PDO had shifted cool again in 2007. That means the cold springs are likely to remain a feature of our weather until about 2037.

By the way, the salmon catches are erratically recovering in the Pacific Northwest. Last year Oregon’s best run was Chinook salmon, with a total catch of 380,000 compared to just 35,000 in 2008 as the cycle was just beginning to turn cold. By the time the 1976 cooling was winding down Oregon was catching more than 1 million Chinook per year.

Last week, Germany’s Green Radio (sponsored by its Federal Department of the Environment) interviewed an expert identified as Henrik Kirchof about the world’s interrupted global warming. He said, “A big role may be played by the oceans . . . if the surface water temperatures increased sharply until 15 years ago but now have stagnated, then it means that the ocean is absorbing more heat than it did before. You can suspect this, it’s very plausible, but you cannot prove it because of [measurement problems].”

Sorry, Dr. Kirchof, but there’s another possibility—that the oceans are receiving less heat from a “quiet “ sun during a long and cool sunspot cycle. What if the sun is in charge of our climate after all? 

Be grateful for our moderate warming. When it stops warming, history tells us the climate will get far colder and more violent. In history, Europe’s population nearly tripled during the warm phases when food was plentiful, then shrank radically as starvation and food wars arrived with the cold.

We should expect some additional global warming after this PDO ends, as occurred from 1976–1998, but nothing as dangerous as the computers models claim. Unless our paltry increase in human-emitted CO₂ emissions have somehow rearranged the whole universe, the sun will continue to be the controlling factor in our climate.

Dennis T. Avery, a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., is an environmental economist. He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years. Readers may write to him at PO Box 202 Churchville, VA 2442; email to cgfi@mgwnet.com. Visit our website at www. cgfi.org

Why this author wishes he were wrong. Read and remember and tell your friends all the right reasons for the Keystone XL Pipeline!!

How I Wish I Was Wrong About The Keystone XL Pipeline

By Jay Lehr, Ph.D

Science Director

The Heartland Institute 

Most people do not realize that major oil pipelines extending 2,151 miles from the Canadian Tar Sands have already been completed and are operational from Hardisty, Alberta, east through Saskatchewan and Manitoba and south through eastern North and South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas and then on to refineries in southern Illinois and central Oklahoma carrying 590,000 barrels of oil each day.

If they did, they would certainly wonder what is the uproar about adding the capacity of an additional 830,000 barrels a day through new pipelines from Hardisty, Alberta, through eastern Montana and southwestern North Dakota where it would pick up United States oil from the now famous Bakken Fields then move further east through South Dakota and Nebraska  to Steele City, Nebraska, where the existing pipeline travels on to Cushing , Oklahoma, and then continue it about 500 more miles to the Gulf Coast of Texas where so many refineries are located.

Canadian oil is cleaner than most we get from Venezuela and the Persian Gulf.  If we do not get the Canadian oil, it will not slow development of the tar sands, which is a supposed goal of the environmental activist, as Canada will simply build a pipeline to Vancouver and sell the oil to Asian countries.

Marita Noon, Executive Director of Energy Makes America Great, Inc., blogging on March 4 quoted the Heritage Foundation as follows: “the project will create some 179,000 jobs on American soil, and continue good trade relations with a close ally."  What is not to like? Well plenty. 

Prominent environmental activist Paul Ehlich is famous for having said 30 years ago that having cheap energy was the equivalent of putting a machine gun in the hands of an idiot child.  That, I am afraid, is exactly what our alphabet soup of environmental activists groups believe, which is certainly why they support wind and solar energy with all their energy and funds because they know it will never be cheap. In fact they know it will never be even economically feasible.  

Now they are panicked over the game-changing ability to develop heretofore uneconomical shale gas with the advent of horizontal drilling and hydro-fracking, the latter technology having been used for 60 years in conventional oil drilling, without any environmental damage whatsoever.

For years now our government has ordered up environmental impact studies on the Keystone XL Pipeline, and when a study concluded that there were not serious problems, they ordered up a new study.  There have been four in all, the latest from the State Department of all agencies, which again concluded that there would be no major environmental impact to limit the pipeline's construction.  Now the State Department is interested in public feedback despite the fact there have been tens of thousands of public comments already.

In mid-March 17 Democrats voted with 45 Republicans in the Senate for a budget amendment supporting the pipeline, which was up from 11 Democrats voting for a similar amendment last year.  That is good news as is a recent Fox News Poll reported on in the Wall Street Journal on March 27 that 70% of registered voters support construction of the pipeline.

Add to that the conflicted unions, which while voting Obama into office are four square in favor of the pipeline for the jobs it will bring.  So how can the pipeline lose? Easily is the answer.

Recently the environmental activists staged a demonstration in Washington to convince the President not to give in.  Few showed up and some were even arrested, but it was not a loss as environment expert Daryl Hannah, best known for her role as a mermaid, stated that the State Department report was “totally wrong, flat out totally wrong”.  Can the President challenge that?  I think not.  His office is a wholly owned subsidiary of the green movement, which has financed billions and billions (as Carl 
Sagan used to say when referring to stars) of failed green projects. 

But there could still be a happy ending for most of us.  It is called “the railroad."  Remember the old, nearly or really bankrupt railroads of the 1970s?  Well, they are back and stronger than ever.  Currently they have saved North Dakota from overflowing with a glut of oil by filling miles and miles of tank cars on Warren Buffet’s Burlington Northern Line with 500,000 barrels of oil each day and carrying it to refineries on the west coast of the United States. By year's end, their capacity will rise to 700,000 barrels a day. They are capable of building new track connecting the Dakotas with our Gulf Coast, unless Obama figures that this would be an environmental hazard as well.  Stay Tuned.

Climate Changes! We all are conservationists! Don't believe BOGUS alarmism!

EARTH DAY'S CREDIBILITY DAMAGED BY DOMINANCE OF CLIMATE ACTIVISTS

Legitimate environmental concerns being shortchanged by focus on bogus global warming scare 

By Tom Harris

Ottawa, Canada, April 22, 2013:  "Earth Day participants must distance themselves from the climate scare or risk the event degenerating into irrelevance,” said Tom Harris, executive director of the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC). Noting the intense climate focus in this year’s Earth Day Network advertising, Harris warned, “As the hypothesis that humanity’s carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions are causing dangerous global warming falls into disrepute, all those associated with the climate alarm will also lose credibility.”  

ICSC Science Advisory Board member, Dr. Tim Ball, former University of Winnipeg climatology professor, explained, “All sensible people are environmentalists. We all want clean air, land and water and to protect species at risk to the degree possible considering the many other important demands on society.”  

“But controlling global climate through restricting emissions is unscientific nonsense,” Ball continued. “The greenhouse gas most under attack by climate campaigners, CO₂, is a benefit to the environment, its rise resulting in more crop yield and a densification of forests.”  

ICSC Chief Science Advisor Dr. Bob Carter, of James Cook University in Australia pointed out that, “The global temperature statistic has not risen since 1997 despite an increase in emissions of 8%. This nullifies the main argument presented by climate campaigners.”  

“Climate changes all the time, and it is important that civil hazard organisations are prepared for its extremes,” said Carter. “But as demonstrated by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, of which I am a contributing author, there are thousands of scientists and peer-reviewed science papers that refute the hypothesis that human emissions of CO₂ are causing dangerous warming.”  

ICSC Energy Issues Advisor power consultant Bryan Leyland of New Zealand added, “Yet hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent subsidizing wind, solar and wave power in an effort to reduce CO₂ emissions. None of these new renewable energy technologies can provide electricity when needed during times of peak demand. All of them are at the mercy of the wind, sun, tides and waves. In addition, the capacity factor—the ratio of the average output to the maximum output—varies between 10% and seldom exceeds 40%. So, for instance, 1000 Megawatt (MW) coal or nuclear power stations each generate the same amount of energy as several thousand MW of renewable energy. Regardless, independent research shows that they do little to reduce emissions of CO₂, a gas that promotes plant growth and, as we now know, has no measurable effect on the climate.”  

“Coal, natural gas, hydro and nuclear power can provide a reliable supply of all the electricity we need for the foreseeable future, and at a low cost,” said Leyland. “Expensive and intermittent renewable energy technologies can never play more than a bit part in electricity generation.”  

Ball provides a sample of how climate alarmism has resulted in the misappropriation of funds worldwide: “Canadian Environment Minister Peter Kent said last monththat ‘Canada has invested more than $10 billion since 2006 to reduce greenhouse gases, to improve energy efficiency, to develop green infrastructure.’ But, overall energy efficiency has actually declined as politicians like Kent have forced so-called “green” alternate energy sources on society to appease climate campaigners. Had the $10 billion been spent on reducing pollution and improving and expanding existing energy sources such as coal-fired electricity generation, both the economy and the environment would be in far better shape.”  

This author concludes, “It is crucially important that practical environmentalists dissociate the movement from ideologically-driven climate activists. Otherwise, society will throw Earth Day, and indeed the whole environmental movement, into the dustbin of history.”

________________________________________________________________________________

The ICSC is a non-partisan group of scientists, economists and energy and policy experts who are working to promote better understanding of climate science and related policy worldwide. We aim to help create an environment in which a more rational, open discussion about climate issues emerges, thereby moving the debate away from implementation of costly and ineffectual “climate control” measures. Instead, ICSC encourages effective planning for, and adaptation to, inevitable natural climate variability, and continuing scientific research into the causes and impacts of climate change.  

ICSC also focuses on publicizing the repercussions of misguided plans to “solve the climate crisis”. This includes, but is not limited to, “carbon” sequestration as well as the dangerous impacts of attempts to replace conventional energy supplies with wind turbines, solar power, most biofuels and other ineffective and expensive energy sources. 

________________________________________________________________________________

For more information about this announcement or ICSC in general, visit http://www.climatescienceinternational.org, or contact:  

In North America:

Tom Harris, B. Eng., M. Eng. (Mech. - thermofluids)
Executive Director, International Climate Science Coalition

P.O. Box 23013
Ottawa, Ontario K2A 4E2
Canada

Email: tom.harris@climatescienceinternational.net

Phone: 613-728-9200

In Australia: 

Professor Robert (Bob) M. Carter, PhD, Hon. FRSNZ
Chief Science Advisor, International Climate Science Coalition
Emeritus Fellow, Institute for Public Affairs, Melbourne

Marine Geophysical Laboratory
James Cook University
Townsville, Queensland, 4811
Australia

Email:  bob.carter@jcu.edu.au

Phone (mobile): +61-(0)419-701-139
Phone (evening): +61-(0)7-4775-1268

In New Zealand:

Bryan Leyland, M.Sc., FIEE, FIMechE, FIPENZ, consulting engineer
Energy Issues Advisor, International Climate Science Coalition
Auckland 1022
New Zealand

Email: bryanleyland@mac.com

Phone: +64 9 940 7047; mobile: +64 21 978 996

In Europe:

Professor Ole Humlum, PhD
Science Advisory Board member, International Climate Science Coalition
Professor of Physical Geography, Department of Physical Geography
Institute of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

E-mail: ole.humlum@geo.uio.no

Phone: +47 79 02 33 00 (department); +47 79 02 33 20 (direct).  Fax: +47 79 02 33 01.

Webpage: http://www.unis.no/35_staff/staff_webpages/geology/ole_humlum/olepersonal.htm 

Will he or won't he? What will Obama decide on the Keystone XL pipeline? Are you among the 63 percent or the 23 percent?

Most Americans want Keystone, but does Obama care?

Pew Research Center's new poll encouraged the gas price-conscious with its headline, "Keystone XL Pipeline Draws Broad Support," and a score box showing 63 percent supporting and only 23 percent opposing the pipeline that would transport oil from Canada's Alberta oil sands through the Plains states to refineries in Texas.

However, the report quickly deflated that optimism with a terse note identifying the minority: "except among liberals." We have seen time and again that the liberal 23 percent can be a majority to executive-order-wielding President Obama.

As his administration approaches a decision, lame-duck politics says he could go either way -- even with his own State Department's favorable environmental impact report on the XL's construction permit.

And even with Alberta Premier Alison Redford saying that an Obama rejection would damage U.S.-Canada relations. "Canada relies on the U.S. for 97 percent of its energy exports," Redford said, and "sees the new pipeline as critical to its economic well-being."

What is Obama likely to do? A substantial majority of Republicans (82 percent) favor the pipeline, so revenge is not an unthinkable motive for a possible rejection.

However, 70 percent of independents and 54 percent of Democrats also favor the XL. Fogging the crystal ball is the ideological split among Democrats: 60 percent of the party's conservatives and moderates support building the pipeline, compared to just 42 percent of liberal Democrats. That considerably flattens Obama's heavy-lifting slope toward a potential rejection, but doesn't level it.

Obama's decision may hinge on pleasing his base of global-warming advocates; this whole Keystone XL controversy was carefully conceived and organized as a "globally significant response" to global warming by shutting down Alberta's oil sands.

It was generated by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund using earmarked grants to recruit "a network of leading US and Canadian NGOs" with a "coordinated campaign structure" to act as its public face, according to a leaked PowerPoint presentation.

The Rockefeller funding for the campaign against Canadian energy exports was exposed in October 2010 by Vivian Krause in Toronto's Financial Post. Later that fall, Krause testified before a Canadian House of Commons committee, prompting an audit of the Canadian arm of the Tides Foundation by the Canada Revenue Agency (Canada's equivalent to the IRS). By Krause's calculations, Tides, a co-funder of the Rockefeller campaign, has distributed $19 million to anti-Keystone groups since 2008.

I spoke to Krause by telephone and asked why the Rockefeller presence behind the anti-XL campaign was virtually invisible. She told me that it has been done quietly, but not secretly.

"The strategy is articulated in discussion papers, but who reads them?" she said. "The grants have been disclosed in online databases for years, but nobody bothered to add them up and connect the dots."

Nobody except Vivian Krause, that is. Her Twitter account says, "I follow the money & the science behind enviro campaigns." Her research and writing are impressive.

Her blog profile states, "I work from my dining room table, using Google on my own nickel. Not part of any political party, any industry, or any campaign." Her work deserves more attention in the United States.

Krause's discovery and expose of the Rockefeller millions behind the anti-Keystone XL campaign could become a factor in Obama's pipeline construction decision.

It has already created Canadian suspicion of environmental groups dancing on the strings of U.S. foundation money. It's not the money itself Canadians fear, it's the power over national energy policy that it can buy by proxy.

One can hope that Obama does not wish to be suspected of dancing on the same Rockefeller policy power strings as the Big Green bigwigs who were recently arrested protesting at his front door.

Examiner Columnist Ron Arnold is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise.

Fan those sparks to a flame - fight on for conservative viewpoints

Enough being depressed about the elections

Think about other dark times in our history … gather strength – and get back to work!

Chris Skates

Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying on our backs and hugging the elusive phantom of hope, until our enemies have bound us hand and foot?

– Patrick Henry

I don’t know about you, good reader, but I am tired. I am tired of talking and hearing about politics. I am tired of talking heads on “expert” panels telling me what “most Americans” truly want, or truly believe in, when those same experts clearly have no idea what I think or what anybody I know thinks.

I am tired of losing. I am tired of losing elections, my income through taxes, my country through a trampling of the Constitution, my culture to hedonism, my children’s future through liberalism – and my once energized political campaigners to depression.

When I am honest with myself, since the election there have been times when I’ve had to force myself to write my columns. I wonder if anybody is listening, or if anyone cares about what is happening. Even among those loyal Americans who are reading this and that care very deeply, even among my fellow conservatives, I sense an overall feeling of burnout and defeatism. I know it is there because I’ve struggled with it myself. 

But the message I want to share with each of you today, and the message I think Patrick Henry was communicating back in his era was this: Get over it!!

Remember, I am talking to the man in the mirror as much as I am talking to anyone. But do any of us really have anything to be “burnt out” about? When we compare the challenges and sacrifices that we face to those faced by our founding fathers, the soldiers at Valley Forge, the prisoners on the Bataan Death March, or the paratroops and Army troops who shivered and died during the Battle of the Bulge – we begin to feel very soft and very silly.

I recently had a chance to talk to a man whose father flew fifty combat missions as a waste gunner in WWII. His father NEVER talked about the war. When he tried to talk about it, he got so emotional that he couldn’t finish the story. This man told me that one day his father did share one of his most difficult experiences. He had completed the milestone of his fiftieth air combat mission, and therefore the war was over for him. He didn’t have to go up again.

He could have caught a flight back to the US, but he chose to wait for his best friend, who was on his 49th mission. When his friend was leaving for number 50, the two agreed that they would celebrate and then fly back home together. His friend’s plane came back to base terribly damaged. When it landed the father knew in an instant that his friend was dead. He had to fly home alone.

“You don’t know,” the father wagged a finger at my friend that day. “You don’t know what we went through. I can’t describe it in words. You don’t know what we went through, so that you could be free and have the quality of life that you have now.”

So what should our generation do? Should we throw up our hands and quit trying to change the government through the legal and peaceful means that were won and preserved for us? Should we dig bomb shelters and buy survival food, and then turn on “American Idol” – and tune out of the public discourse, as we wait for the whole American system to collapse?

I know many of us are discouraged. I know the “mainstream media” force us to compete in a heavily rigged game. I know that we have been, and continue to be, blindsided by the ferocity with which our protections against an intrusive state are being bulldozed, and the way our values have suddenly become passé. Still, we barely know what tough times are.

We have yet to absorb anything like the blows that our ancestors took, while never wavering.

If we learned nothing else at the Conservative Political Action Committee events, we should have learned this: The heart is there. The fight is there in the people. Our fellow political soldiers have not given up.

It is therefore incumbent upon every one of us to fan those sparks to a flame. We have to be our own media. Rush, Beck and Hannity, et cetera are not enough. We must inform our own neighbors. We must cajole the non-participants in our own communities into full engagement and participation.

We have to fight, and then falter, and then get up and fight some more. With or without this or that minority group or special interest group’s vote, there are more than enough people in this country to defeat the nation-collapsing progressive agenda.

Ninety three million eligible voters did not vote in 2012. We must make it our mission to bring those voters to the polls in 2014 and 2016 as conservative voters.

Patrick Henry’s challenge to his countrymen is all the more fitting now. This is no time to let up, no time to give up, and no time to surrender.

____________

Chris Skates is an energy specialist and novelist who won the best historical fiction award from the Christian Writers Association for The Rain: A Story of Noah and the Ark, and rave reviews for his second novel,Going Green: For Some It Has Nothing To Do With The Environment.