SLB Traffic Sets a Record

I'd like to thank all those who visit Sowell's Law Blog, or SLB. Someone asked me if those who read this blog are called "Slawbers," and I told her I had not heard that one. I suspect there is a better term out there somewhere.

This week was notable for a couple of reasons. First, the traffic increased such that 1000 new visits occurred in only six days. That is the shortest time to 1000 new visits thus far. Second, the world-wide appeal continues, much to my amazement. To all those from countries around the world (90 thus far!), greetings and welcome. It is an honor for me to know that so many people around the world read SLB.

Most Popular Pages

A few pages are much more popular than others, which is to be expected. Early in 2009, in March, the Busted Earth Hour page received many hundreds of visitors. Then in July 2009, Nuclear Nuts had many hundreds of visitors. That one struck a nerve in the nuclear proponents camp! In September, 2009, the page on Hurricanes in Los Angeles was picked up by Watts Up With That and received several hundred visitors. That one ridiculed the man-made global warming proponents, something that is not done often enough in my view. Then, on the first of November, I placed a comment on WUWT with a link to my page on Chemical Engineer Takes on Global Warming, and many hundreds of visitors resulted. That page is the single most visited page on SLB, accounting for approximately 15 percent of all visits. In all modesty, that page should be required reading for every policy maker around the world. Then several hundred more visitors read EPA Declares GHGs a Danger, in mid-December.

However, the most recent ten days has had a flood of visitors, reading Eureka CA Headed for Ice Age, also No Warming From CO2, and Cold Winters Created Global Warming.

The business of exposing the man-made global warming nonsense for what it is, a doctrine unsupportable by engineering, physics, math, and common sense, is too important to be neglected. There are already laws on the books that are forcing enormous changes on our economy and way of life, for example, AB 32 in California. Other such laws are in various stages of development not only in the USA but around the world. It is imperative that these laws be stopped, repealed, or vastly softened in their effects. Good public policy must be based on sound science, and not deceptions, lies, or statistical tricks. There are too many real problems facing policy makers in each country without battling a non-existent foe such as man-made global warming.

That is one of my goals in writing SLB.

Again, my thanks to all who visit and leave a comment on SLB. I do moderate comments, so there is not an instant turnaround. Please be patient, as I read them all and post those that are not spam and are not abusive. Contrary views are welcome, just be nice about it.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Marina del Rey, California

Cold Winters Created Global Warming

[Update: see Is Abilene Alone? below; and see this link for temperature graphs supporting the statements below.]

Is it possible to create something like global warming, using cold winters? Isn't global warming supposed to have the result that the globe is actually warming (hence the name)? This article shows how it was done.

It is said that figures don’t lie, but liars sure do figure. If an organization set out to stop the world from using oil and coal, plus natural gas if possible, an excellent way to do this would be to find a way to “prove” that the CO2 produced from burning such fossil fuels causes the entire planet to heat up at an alarming rate. The over-heated planet would experience great upheavals such as coastal flooding from rising sea levels, polar ice caps melting, increased number and strength of tropical cyclones (hurricanes), severe droughts but also floods, greater spread of terrible tropical diseases, and others. One would use temperature data, but would first massage the data just a bit to use “anomalies” instead of actual temperatures, where anomalies are the differences between actual temperatures and expected or “normal” temperatures. This is, by the way, an excellent way to “hide the decline,” but that is a topic for another post. Instead of displaying actual temperatures for thousands of towns and cities and rural areas and oceans, to minimize confusion one would combine all the anomaly data into a single line on a chart, such that the line shows a rapid increase during the past 25 to 30 years. This one chart would then be used in presentations world-wide, and in official publications, to persuade policy-makers to enact legislation and approve treaties to curb fossil fuel use. Sound familiar? It should. A number of organizations did this, among other things, to create a climate crisis. This article will show a portion of how that crisis was created, using nothing but a few cold winters. Can cold winters create a global warming crisis? That sounds counter-intuitive, or perhaps plain wrong. But, it can.

Why would anyone (or organization) want to do all the above, plus refuse to publish the underlying temperature records for the thousands of locations world-wide? If the underlying data showed that CO2 cannot be the cause of the warming, or if the warming was not really occurring, one would not want the underlying data published.

A Digression for Basic Statistics

A bit of a digression here, to discuss how a trend in temperatures can be determined. More basically, how a trend can be found for any set of data. This is very elementary statistics, found in almost every good statistics textbook and online in several places. The basic principle is the same as a teeter-totter, or see-saw on a playground. A see-saw has a horizontal board that is supported in the center, and each end goes up and down opposite the other end. The trend line is much like the horizontal board. Depending on the data, the trend may be up or down. The trend is also referred to as the slope of the line that best “fits” the data. In statistics-speak, the trend line is a straight line that minimizes the sum of the least squares of the differences, but that is beyond the scope of this article. If data is about the same over a given time frame, some data points higher and some lower, there is no trend up or down. This would be like balancing the see-saw with each end at the same level. (Figure 1).

Figure 1 (data with essentially no trend)

(click on figure for expanded view in new window)

Modern spreadsheet technology simplifies the trend-line calculation, such as Microsoft Excel ™. Figure 1 shows a formula Y = .0031x + …, this is the equation of the trend line, with 0.0031 the slope of the line, or the trend. This is very close to zero, or no trend either up or down.

Now, if one were to simply decrease the values of a few of the numbers at the lower left corner of the figure by a very small amount, such as shown in Figure 2, the trend line increases to 0.0357. Only eight data points were changed, out of 360 data points in the graph. (see circled portion) Yet, the slope of the trend line changed by almost a factor of twelve. The significance of this will be shown in a moment.

Figure 2 (data with lower temps circled)

(click on figure for expanded view in new window)

The data for Figure 1 and Figure 2 are taken from the Hadley Center’s Climatic Research Unit’s data that they voluntarily released into the internet, for Boise, Idaho, in the U.S.A (Boise is file 726810). The x-axis is in years, and the y-axis is degrees C for the average monthly temperature at Boise from 1940 to 1970. Boise was chosen for Figure 1 and Figure 2 because the period from 1940 to 1970 has almost zero trend.

The Abilene, Texas Data

The temperature trend for the last 25 years of the 20^th century, plus the first nine years of the 21^st, in Abilene, Texas, was upward at the rate of 0.0312 degrees C per year, or an alarming rate of 3.12 degrees C per century. (Figure 3). See the equation Y = 0.0312x - 44.031, where the value 0.0312 is the slope of the trend line.

Figure 3 (1975 – 2009 for Abilene with cold winters near 1980’s circled)

(click on figure for expanded view in new window)

The climate alarmists maintain that man’s emissions of CO2 caused such a rapid increase world-wide, and further increases in CO2 will create additional catastrophic global warming. Yet, the data for Abilene shows the same pattern from Figure 2 above, that is, much colder winter temperatures from 1976 to 1985, but not warmer summers. These colder temperatures are circled on Figure 3. These circled winter temperatures were not colder than those recorded since the 1880’s. The unique aspect is that several winters in succession were colder than normal. The succession of cold winters “tipped the see-saw” downward on the left, and upward on the right, thus creating the appearance of a rising temperature, or warming trend, when there clearly was none. The maximum summer temperatures for Abilene are no greater than for previous years, and the most recent winter temperatures are actually colder than several earlier periods during the previous 120 years (see Figure 4). As shown above in Figures 1 and 2, the trend line can be increased by a factor of twelve when data such as the colder winters around 1980 appear. The similarity between the lower left portions of Figure 2 and Figure 3 is apparent.

Figure 4 (full data for Abilene, Texas)

(click on figure for expanded view in new window)

No, the simple fact is that there is no warming in Abilene, but there were a few cold winters around 1980. And that is how the climate “scientists” “created” global warming where there is none (this is, at least, a part of the story).

Other parts of the false global warming story were told by E.M. Smith on his Chiefio blog. Smith shows how the temperature record was tampered with to produce an apparent warming: by adding thermometers in warm places, and deleting thermometers from cold places over the years. Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony Watts also published (free for download) a compendium of articles with references showing the tampering with the world’s temperature record.

Is Abilene Alone?

The false warming shown in Abilene, created by colder winters around 1980, would be easily dismissed if this had only happened at one site. But it happened in many, many locations. In the USA alone, and again using data from Hadley and their voluntarily released CRU3 data, this false warming occurred in at least 15 other towns and cities, including San Antonio, Texas; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Columbus, Ohio; Meridian, Mississippi; Cape Hatteras, North Carolina; New Orleans, Louisiana; Concordia and Dodge City, both in Kansas; Evansville, Indiana; Peoria, Illinois; Boise, Idaho; Des Moines, Iowa; Miami, Florida; Grand Junction, Colorado; and Montgomery, Alabama. There are sure to be others, however, I have not yet completed graphing all 80-plus locations in the USA data.

UPDATE 1: (January 30, 2010) Have finished analyzing 45 out of 87 cities/towns in the HadCRU3 data released onto the internet, just a bit more than 50 percent of the total. The results and conclusions that can be drawn from 50 percent of the data will not be far off from the final results, so here's a report now. I am working on posting have posted graphs showing the temperature trends for each several of the cities, with more to follow. This will likely be in one or possibly several other posts with links in and to this post.

The Abilene effect is indeed prevalent across most of the USA, excepting the dry desert Southwest and far West coast. A series of cold winters from 1976 to 1985 created the illusion of global warming. The average trend, counting all 45 files analyzed thus far, for the 25 years from 1975 to 2000, is upward at 4.5 degrees C per century (0.045 degrees C per year). However, this is almost exactly matched by the upward trend from 1910 to 1940 of 4.1 degrees C per century (0.0409 degrees C per year). The intervening years, 1940 to 1970, show almost zero temperature change at -0.7 degrees C per century (-0.0070 degrees C per year).

The city with the greatest warming during 1975 to 2000 is Del Rio, Texas, with 8.8 degrees C per century. Next greatest is Columbus, Ohio (8.2 degrees C per century), followed by New York City, New York (7.8 degrees C per century).

However, Washington, D.C. had the greatest cooling during 1975 to 2000, at a rate of 9.7 degrees C per century. As shown earlier, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Eureka, all in California, also cooled during that 25 year period.

The conclusion remains valid, that CO2 is not the cause of either warming or cooling. What appears to be responsible for the temperature trends are fluctuations in winter temperatures, as summer temperatures do not change much for a given city over time. [end Update 1]

UPDATE 2: (Feb 4, 2010) The final results do not change much with all 87 U.S. cities completed, as expected. The upward trend from 1975 to 2000 is 4.0 degrees C per century, still matched by the rise from 1910 to 1940 of 4.3 degrees C per century. The 1940 to 1970 period remains flat at -0.5 degrees C per century.

Cities with rapid temperature increases from 1975 to 2000 also include Reno, Nevada at 9.0 degrees C per century, and Providence, Rhode Island at 9.7 degrees C per century.

Marquette, Michigan joined the list of rapidly cooling cities from 1975 to 2000, at 6.5 degrees C per century. [end update 2]

Conclusion: No Global Warming from CO2

The conclusion is clear: there is no global warming due to CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, but there is deliberate selection of a statistical quirk in the data for the final quarter of the 20^th century. A few colder winters in the decade from 1976 to 1985 caused an increasing temperature trend. Climate scientists seized on this, coupled it with an increase in fossil fuel consumption during the same period, and declared fossil fuel burning (man’s activities) to be the cause of global warming due to increased CO2.

Don’t believe a word of it.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Marina del Rey, California

Obama Urges US to Build Nuclear Power Plants

President Obama just finished his 2010 State of the Union Address, and the nuclear nuts must be going ballistic with uncontrolled joy. Much like a runaway nuclear fission reactor. Obama stated (my paraphrase) that the US must build more nuclear power plants that are safe and clean. I think that is what he said. Perhaps it was safer and cleaner. Either way, what he said reminded me of my earlier posting on why nuclear power plants should never be built, titled "Nuclear Nuts." Rather than re-type the entire post, here is the link.

Here are the concluding two paragraphs of "Nuclear Nuts":

"The only thing positive about a nuclear power plant is the fuel is cheap. But, there are energy sources that are cheaper still. Four of those energy sources are solar, wind, wave, and ocean current. A fifth is geothermal, but it is very limited. Yet a sixth is hydroelectric, but there is virtually no possibility of increase. The natural resources of those first four power sources are enormous, and have scarcely been tapped to date. Each has features to recommend it, and each has certain drawbacks. But the drawbacks to not include the use of ultra-hazardous materials, do not include generation of deadly toxic wastes that endure for decades or centuries, and do not include power sales prices at 35 cents per kwh or more. Even the reliability issue is minor and getting smaller with new developments.Innovative and cost-effective storage systems are under development and testing in the national laboratories for wind, wave, and solar, which will forever make moot the reliability issue. Ocean current will not require energy storage systems, as the ocean currents flow no matter what is happening in the environment around them.

In conclusion, the propositions that nuclear energy is safe, reliable, affordable, a huge boon to mankind, and releases no toxics to the environment are clearly wrong. The facts clearly show this. No amount of dreaming or wishing or hoping by the gentleman or anyone else with similar opinions will change that."

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Marina del Rey, California

Time to Stop AB 32 and Rely on Valid Science

The California Air Resources Board, ARB, has a summary page on their website, containing their view of the beneficial effects of implementing AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. The basic information presented there does not add up. Here is what the webpage states:

"Benefits to California of Reducing GHG Emissions

Two separate and independent economic analyses show that significantly reducing California's global warming emissions is expected to create jobs and wealth in California.

Reduced GHG emissions by 2020 would result in a net increase of 83,000 jobs and $4 billion in income due primarily to reduced energy costs, says an analysis conducted by the University of California, Berkeley. More economic benefits of less GHG emissions are predicted.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, "Leading economists from UC found that eight policies can take the state over half way to meeting the 2020 reductions. These policies, such as cleaner standards for vehicles and capturing methane from landfills, can increase the Gross State Product by approximately $60 billion, and create over 20,000 new jobs." " [end of quote from ARB climate change website; note, "UC" is University of California; GHG is greenhouse gases]

Even if any of the above numbers were to be true (and that is a very big IF), the benefits, as stated, are miniscule in a state the size of California. For example, if income state-wide were to increase $4 billion annually in 2020, the money in each worker's pocket would be approximately $5 per week. ($4 billion per year, 16 million workers in California, is $250 per year per worker, and 52 weeks per year provides approximately $5 per week per worker). On this slim, very slim increase in spending - roughly two cups of fancy coffee per week - the entire economy is to be upended by AB 32.

The gain in employment is also very, very small when the entire California work force is considered. As above, the number of persons employed in California at the end of 2009 was approximately 16 million (source: California Employment Development Department, EDD). Adding 83,000 workers to a working force of 16 million represents an increase of 0.52 percent. As I write this, California is losing jobs at the rate of approximately 17,000 per month, and unemployment stands at 12.5 percent, one of the highest rates in the country.

The fact is that AB 32 creates a few jobs for government bureaucrats, for renewable energy design firms, for a small group of solar panel installers, and for a few workers who install renewable power plants such as wind farms and solar power plants. ARB states that the $5 per week per worker will also be spent on coffee, and that will create jobs for coffee shop employees. These are the green jobs.

The reality is that many businesses and industrial facilities will simply shut down rather than spend the huge sums to comply with AB 32. The cap and trade provision will require companies to pay approximately $20 to $30 per metric ton of CO2 emitted. That does not seem like so much, until one realizes that a single oil refinery will face a cap and trade bill of approximately $150 million per year. There are approximately 20 oil refineries in California. A 500 MW natural gas-fired power plant would face a cap and trade bill of approximately $70 million per year. There are many dozens of such power plants in California.

The tragedy of all this is, of course, that the "science" behind global warming due to greenhouse gases (which includes CO2 in the scientists' view) is completely false. Engineers such as Dr. Pierre Latour, and myself, have published on this, and have each made acclaimed speeches across the country on this topic. Recent developments (late 2009 and January, 2010) show that the supposed warming of the earth's average temperature in the 20th century was falsified, the peer review process was perverted, the temperature records themselves were adjusted and manipulated, and the IPCC report relied on questionable studies (not peer-reviewed, in fact, taken from general non-science magazines). The Wall Street Journal reported that the IPCC's alarmists predictions for melting glaciers in the Himalayan mountains was completely wrong (they are not melting), and the IPCC's statement that warming produces more intense storms and natural catastrophes (heat waves, droughts, etc) were also bunk. The IPCC authors clearly knew the truth, but published their outlandish claims anyway. (As an aside, one must wonder how long they thought they would hide the truth, especially in this era of the internet, and literally hundreds of millions of internet users world-wide. The ability to fact-check by millions of independent persons should give pause to those who seek to dis-inform.)

Examination of long-term temperature records for several small towns in the USA, and the three largest cities in California (San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego) showed not only no warming, but rapid cooling during the past 20 to 30 years for Eureka, California, Los Angeles, California, and San Diego, California. In fact, if the trend in Eureka does not reverse soon, there will be an ice age in Eureka. The temperature in Eureka is dropping at an average rate of 15 degrees C per century, yet the average temperature is only 10 degrees C. Eurekans actually have nothing to worry about, as the temperatures oscillate up and down. Still, the recent sudden decline is interesting!

The science that we call Physics cannot do what the climate scientists claim for CO2. Physics is impartial, and when it works, it works in all places. One cannot have a valid physical phenomenon that works sometimes, or only in certain areas. For example, no matter where one builds a fire on the earth, the fire produces heat, the flames flicker upward away from the center of the earth, and the closer one approaches the fire, the more radiant heat is felt on the skin. Yet, CO2 is not warming Eureka, California, nor Los Angeles, nor Abilene, Texas. But something caused San Francisco to warm just a bit in the last 25 years of the 20th century. Furthermore, almost all of the cities show a steady and consistent temperature increase from 1910 to 1940. In fact, the temperature rise in those three decades is considerably greater than the rise from 1975 to 2005. Yet, we know that CO2 is much higher concentration in the atmosphere today compared to 1940. How, then, did the temperatures increase in the 1920s and 1930s without CO2 to help them along?

Indeed, the very foundations of AB 32 are shown not to be true, even though CO2 is increasing worldwide. The preface to the AB 32 statute states that more and more heat waves will occur in California, droughts will occur more often and with greater severity, sea levels will rise, and the snowpack will melt earlier each year producing water shortages, among other dire consequences. Yet, as mentioned above, the cities are cooling, some dramatically. Heat waves are not occurring as predicted. The drought is likely over, as the state has wave after wave of large storms bringing rain and snow. The calclim.dri.edu website shows the state has more than the average rainfall for this point in the water year, which would not occur during a drought. Sea levels off the coast of California are dropping, not rising as predicted. None of this should be true, if CO2 were in fact the cause of global warming as the IPCC scientists insist that it is. The facts rule, every time.

It is time to quit pretending that CO2 causes the earth's temperature to change, time to put aside the falsified IPCC reports with their non-peer-reviewed but agenda-driven conclusions, and time to stop AB 32 before California slips even further into the abyss of unemployment, state and local budget deficits, and all the other problems that will come as companies close their doors and move to other regions of the country and the world.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Marina del Rey, California

Chevron Mulls Closing Refineries

As I wrote earlier (see this link), Chevron has troubles in California, specifically with their two refineries. Chevron has other refineries, both in the USA and overseas. Chevron announced that they are evaluating their downstream (refining and marketing) business and will have a plan in place by third quarter 2010. There will likely be some job losses. My view is that there will also be one or more refineries sold, shut down, or scaled back. Should the Richmond, California, refinery be shut down, the environmentalists will celebrate. They likely have the champagne on ice already (probably just apple juice, since champagne contains CO2 to create the tiny bubbles).

The Richmond refinery is old and has antiquated technology in several areas. Chevron has a capital program that would upgrade the refinery to more modern technology, which will also reduce emissions of various pollutants. This upgrade project was halted by environmental groups.

Meanwhile, the US economy sputters, and California does no better. Gasoline and diesel demand are reduced, so that refineries are operating at historically low rates. The official number from EIA this past week had refineries operating at just above 78 percent of their capacity. The utilization normally is low in the heart of winter, as now, however this is abnormally low. The usual swing from summer to winter utilization is around 10 to 12 percent. The utilization will likely fall to 76 percent by mid-February, perhaps lower as more people lose their jobs. In such a market, Chevron must decide how to most profitably revise their refining business.

Having been through this before in the 1980's, I have some insight as to how a refining company reaches such decisions. The company projects the future demand for products, as best they can, in each marketing region. California is almost completely isolated as a marketing region, meaning what is consumed in California is also refined in California. The product specifications for gasoline are much tougher in California due to clean air issues. Then, the company assesses all the other refineries in that marketing region, and ranks them from best to worst as to profitability and long-term viability. In the current business environment, the refineries with the least likelihood of profitability are candidates for closure. Future regulations such as AB 32 (implementation in 2012) also play a big role. AB 32's cap and trade provision will require each refinery to pay hundreds of millions dollars each year for their CO2 emissions. Under that scenario, it could very well be that foreign refineries will produce gasoline to California specifications, and companies such as Chevron will import those products rather than run a refinery in California.

It will be quite interesting to watch the California refining industry over the next several months. When refineries shut down, jobs are lost, tax receipts are reduced, government deficits increase, and lives are disrupted, among many other consequences.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Los Angeles Headed for Ice Age in 150 Years

That is correct,the heading above is not a typo. Los Angeles, California, a huge city of approximately 13 million people on California's south coast, is rapidly headed for an ice age. Within the next 150 years, Los Angeles will have an average annual temperature of zero deg C (32 deg F), if the trend from the past 30 years (1980 to 2010) continues. The cooling trend is 10.9 deg C per century. The present annual average temperature is only 17 deg C, therefore it will require about one and one half century, or 150 years, to reach zero. Note that an earlier posting on SLB showed that Eureka, California, is also heading for an ice age, which is due in only 67 years. Los Angeles can observe their preparations and learn from their experience.

Extrapolating a recent temperature trend is exactly what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) did and is still doing in their alarmist tactics to persuade the world's governments to reduce CO2 emissions, as the IPCC maintains that CO2 and other greenhouse gases will create horrific conditions for all mankind. What I have done above is using their tactics, to illustrate the horror (a local ice age) for one of the largest cities in America, Los Angeles, California. See below for the temperature record that supports the conclusion that Los Angeles is headed for an ice age in 150 years.

The graph of monthly average temperatures (see Figure 1 below) dates to 1894, and is taken from the Climatic Research Unit of the Hadley Research Center in England. Although their data anomalies for worldwide average temperature are somewhat suspect after the Climategate scandal, it is possible that the manipulations and falsifications occurred during the data averaging among all locations, rather than at the individual city level. In any event, the data shown below is taken as-is from the files posted by Hadley on the internet. The Los Angeles file is 722950, located in the folder labeled "72."

Figure 1

(click on image for larger view in new window)

As was the case with some other towns' temperature history, including Abilene, Texas, and Eureka, California, Los Angeles shows a distinct warming trend from 1910 to 1940 of 0.058 deg C per year (5.8 deg C per century), which continued from 1940 to 1970 at 0.055 deg C per year (5.5 deg C per century). The temperatures increase from 1975 until about 1982, then begin a steep decline. The overall trend from 1975 to 2009 is -0.067 deg C per year (-6.7 deg C per century). However, the temperature trend from 1982 to 2010 is —0.109 deg C per year ( a decline of 10.9 deg C per century).

The temperature decline from 1975 to 2010 is approximately twice as great as the decline for San Diego, California, and for Eureka, California, yet the inland city of Fresno, California shows no such decline.

As the IPCC and other climate alarmists state repeatedly, CO2 in the atmosphere is causing the climate to warm rapidly. Apparently, the CO2 around Los Angeles did not get the word. Perhaps there is no CO2 in Los Angeles? Well, no, that is not likely, as there are a number of huge power plants that burn natural gas, several oil refineries that convert approximately ten percent of the input oil into CO2, millions of cars and trucks burning fuel each day, and thousands of trees, shrubs, and many acres of grass in the area. The trees and other plants are irrigated with imported water because the area is semi-arid with very little precipitation. Such trees and other plants require vast amounts of CO2 to grow. In addition, 13 million people produce quite a lot of CO2 each day just by breathing.

Once again, it is clear that whatever causes the earth's climate to warm or cool, that something is not CO2. Physics does not permit arbitrary application of a physical principle such that it works in one location but not in another. Clearly, Los Angeles is cooling and cooling quite rapidly. Meanwhile, CO2 in the atmosphere continues to climb.

Los Angelenos should take heed of their recent temperature trend, and take appropriate measures to adapt to the looming ice age. One hundred and fifty years is not a long time, when one has all the attributes of one of the world's largest cities, including two major ports (at Long Beach and at Los Angeles), skyscrapers, subways, suburbs, sports stadiums and arenas, and Hollywood movie studios. Angelenos do not cope well with cold. Anything below 60 degrees F (about 16 degrees C) is cause for complaints.

NOTE: for those unfamiliar with my writings, I do not for a moment believe that Los Angeles is headed for an ice age. I know without any doubt that such temperature trends are temporary, and Los Angeles will soon bounce back into their normal temperature range. The above was written deliberately with the same alarmist tone that the IPCC uses and used in their frantic effort to stop fossil fuel use around the world. I write frequently on the topic of repealing California's global warming law known as AB 32. That law was passed with the expectation that California was heating up too much and too rapidly due to excess CO2 in the atmosphere. Apparently, Los Angeles' CO2 did not get the word on that, either.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Marina del Rey, California

No Warming in Sacramento Either

There is no warming in Sacramento, even though CO2 has increased steadily over the decades. In fact, it is slightly cooler today than it was in 1853. Also, it is getting cooler in the recent decades, at the rate of almost 0.9 degrees per century.

As part of a series on the global warming caused by atmospheric CO2, based on the Hadley data known as CRU (Climatic Research Unit), results for Sacramento, California are shown and discussed below. Sacramento data begins in 1853, and shows almost zero warming or cooling over the entire 156 year period (see Figure 1 below). The net change is a slight cooling trend of -0.0029 deg C per year (-0.29 deg per century).

Figure 1

(click on image for a larger view in a new window)

The global warming hysteria is not supported by the data, as Sacramento clearly shows. The warmists' theory is that increased CO2 in the atmosphere, especially that portion caused by man's activities such as burning fossil fuels, creates a warmer atmosphere and hence higher temperatures. CO2 does not act alone, according to the warmists, instead it increases the amount of water vapor and that also acts as a greenhouse gas to further increase the warming. There is a multiplier effect, it appears, so that a small increase in CO2 leads to large increases in overall warming.

Yet the data for Sacramento shows slight variations when broken into shorter time frames. There is a very slight cooling from 1853 to 1910 of -0.0044 degrees C per year (-0.44 deg per century). Then, from 1910 to 1940, a noticeable increase in temperature occurred of 0.0487 deg C per year (4.87 deg C per century). This warming trend from 1910 to 1940 is shown consistently among all the California sites in the hadCRU data. Then, Sacramento experienced a very slight warming trend from 1940 to 1970 of 0.007 deg C per year (0.7 deg C per century). Then the trend reversed, so that from 1975 to 2009 the temperature decreased at -0.0087 deg C per year (declined 0.87 deg C per century).

These trends are not at all consistent with the IPCC and other warmists' theory that CO2 causes global warming. In fact, if CO2 did cause the temperature to change at all, the data for Sacramento would be impossible. The fact is that CO2 has increased steadily for decades, yet the Sacramento temperatures have been declining.

There is no warming in Sacramento. There is no cause for alarm or need for action to curb CO2 emissions, either. Yet, Sacramento politicians and the Governor (Schwarzenegger) created AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, designed to sharply cut CO2 emissions as a means to stop global warming. Sacramento politicians should walk around outside their offices a little more, and contemplate the fact that there is no warming, in fact, it is cooling in Sacramento. This is not an isolated instance, either. As previously shown on Sowell's Law Blog, it is also cooling in Eureka and San Diego.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Eureka (CA) Headed for Ice Age in 67 Years

That is correct,the heading above is not a typo. Eureka, California, a beautiful small town on California's north coast, is rapidly headed for an ice age. Within the next 67 years, Eureka will have an average annual temperature of zero deg C (32 deg F), if the trend from the past 18 years (1992 to 2010) continues. The cooling trend is 15.6 deg C per century. The present annual average temperature is only 10 deg C, therefore it will require only two-thirds of a century, or 67 years, to reach zero.

Extrapolating a recent temperature trend is exactly what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) did and is still doing in their alarmist tactics to persuade the world's governments to reduce CO2 emissions, as the IPCC maintains that CO2 and other greenhouse gases will create horrific conditions for all mankind. What I have done above is using their tactics, to illustrate the horror (a local ice age) for one beautiful small town in America, Eureka, California. See below for the temperature record that supports the conclusion that Eureka is headed for an ice age in 67 years.

The graph of monthly average temperatures (see Figure 1 below) dates to 1886, and is taken from the Climatic Research Unit of the Hadley Research Center in England. Although their data anomalies for worldwide average temperature are somewhat suspect after the Climategate scandal, it is possible that the manipulations and falsifications occurred during the data averaging among all locations, rather than at the individual city level. In any event, the data shown below is taken as-is from the files posted by Hadley on the internet. The Eureka file is 725940, located in the folder labeled "72."

Figure 1

(click on image for larger view in new window)

As was the case with other small towns' temperature history, including Abilene, Texas, Eureka shows a distinct warming trend from 1910 to 1940 of 0.034 deg C per year (3.4 deg C per century), then a slight cooling from 1940 to 1970 of -0.013 deg C per year (-1.3 deg C per century). But, Eureka then begins an interesting temperature odyssey. The temperatures increase from 1975 until about 1992, then begin a steep decline. The overall trend from 1975 to 2009 is -0.036 deg C per year (-3.6 deg C per century). However, the temperature trend from 1992 to 2010 is —0.156 deg C per year ( a decline of 15.6 deg C per century).

The temperature decline from 1975 to 2010 is approximately the same as for San Diego, California, yet the inland city of Fresno, California shows no such decline.

As the IPCC and other climate alarmists state repeatedly, CO2 in the atmosphere is causing the climate to warm rapidly. Apparently, the CO2 around Eureka did not get the word. Perhaps there is no CO2 in Eureka? Well, no, that is not likely, as there are huge stands of very large trees in that area; the trees are giant redwoods known as Coast Redwoods. Such trees require vast amounts of CO2 to grow.

Once again, it is clear that whatever causes the earth's climate to warm or cool, that something is not CO2. Physics does not permit arbitrary application of a physical principle such that it works in one location but not in another. Clearly, Eureka is cooling and cooling quite rapidly. Meanwhile, CO2 in the atmosphere continues to climb.

Eurekans should take heed of their recent temperature trend, and take appropriate measures to adapt to the looming ice age. Sixty-seven years is not a long time, when one has a world-class harbor (Humbolt Bay), a port, and giant redwood trees to preserve and protect.

NOTE: for those unfamiliar with my writings, I do not for a moment believe that Eureka is headed for an ice age. I know without any doubt that such temperature trends are temporary, and Eureka will soon bounce back into their normal temperature range. The above was written deliberately with the same alarmist tone that the IPCC uses and used in their frantic effort to stop fossil fuel use around the world. I write frequently on the topic of repealing California's global warming law known as AB 32. That law was passed with the expectation that California was heating up too much and too rapidly due to excess CO2 in the atmosphere. Apparently, Eureka did not get the word on that, either.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Marina del Rey, California

Abilene TX Not Impacted by Global Warming

As I wrote earlier at this link, the small town of Abilene, located just a few miles west of Dallas, Texas, seems to have been (and remains today) completely immune to CO2-induced global warming for the past 120-plus years. Such an outcome is not possible if CO2 had the properties (warming the globe) that climate alarmists insist it has. One cannot have some areas warming due to CO2, and other areas completely unaffected. Physics does not work that way, as physics is impartial. It either works, or it does not.

How can I say such a thing, and does my statement have any credibility? I think it does, because I studied physics in undergraduate university, and in the same physics classes as those majoring in physics. I also studied chemistry, again competing with those majoring in chemistry and pre-med students. I also studied mathematics, including statistics, calculus, and differential equations, again competing with those majoring in math. All of these, and more, were required courses to receive a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering. I would say I am quite qualified to speak on the subject. Based on the hundreds of educated, technical people in the audiences where I give speeches, many others agree.

However, I really like the sentiment expressed in a comment on that Abilene posting, where an anonymous reader wrote that (my paraphrase) It is a good thing that scientists in 1940 did not know that the past 30 years had such a high rate of temperature increase (it was 4.5 degrees per century, or 0.045 degrees per year). That is 50 percent greater than the rise from 1975 to 2009, that has caused such alarm among modern climate scientists. Also, it is a good thing that the politicians in 1940 did not know and did not outlaw CO2 emissions based on that then-recent temperature increase. Had they done so, there would never have been sufficient oil to conduct World War II (meaning the Allies would have lost, Hitler's Nazis would have won, and we would all likely be speaking German and living a very different - and likely much worse - lifestyle.) Also, there would never have been the amazing increase in material wealth and lifestyle improvement since the 1950's, again all due to increased oil, natural gas, and coal usage. Oil provided not only cheap transportation, but more importantly the feedstocks for petrochemicals such as medicines and plastics. Natural gas provided cheap heating fuel, and the raw materials for important agricultural fertilizers. Coal, of course, fuels power plants around the country and provided just about the cheapest power available for all sorts of uses.

Mr. Anonymous then concluded by saying, Sometimes it is best for scientists just to shut up. Now is one of those times. (again, my paraphrase).

Hear, hear, Mr. Anonymous.

No Warming From CO2

In the never-ending debate over man’s role in increasing global temperatures, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is claimed by the alarmists to be the culprit responsible for causing unstoppable warming. But is it? What does the temperature record show?

The temperature record is a complicated thing. Zero credibility is given (by many, including me) to the results of the major scientific organizations that purport to monitor the earth’s atmosphere and ocean temperatures, and for many very good reasons. One of those reasons is that the earth is too big, and too varied, and proceeds through too many hourly, daily and seasonal changes, for a global average temperature to have any meaning. Another is the below-mentioned data manipulation, still another is bad locations of measuring instruments. However, it is instructive to observe the temperature record from a single site, especially a site with many decades of temperature readings. Such sites are available to everyone via data published over the internet.

I chose several sites, all small towns in the USA, and examined the temperature records. The data is from the discredited Hadley Research Center’s CRU3 data set. Briefly, the Hadley Center is in England, and is the center of the "Climategate" scandal in which thousands of emails, computer program listings, and other documents were either deliberately leaked or hacked (no one is quite sure which) but in either case were published on the internet in November 2009. As part of Hadley Center’s response, many hundreds of temperature records were published. I downloaded the entire dataset for archiving and my own research purposes. I will refer to the dataset as CRU3.

A word about the discredited CRU3 data. Among the allegations leading to the charge of discredited data include deliberate falsification of data in order to show a warming trend over the last part of the 20^th century. That warming trend is, according to the climate alarmists, due to CO2 placed into the atmosphere by man’s activities, primarily burning coal, oil, and natural gas but also from decomposing garbage in landfills. Even if the datasets are manipulated, and the data shows a warming where there is none, is it possible to find anything worthwhile from examining such datasets? I believe there is, as this article will demonstrate.

The premise that I started with is, if CO2 is responsible for warming the earth, then it should be based on physics and therefore must behave the same, no matter where on earth the behavior occurs. Physics is impartial. As some have expressed it, gravity works no matter where one stands on the earth. CO2, therefore, must cause warming wherever CO2 exists, not just in a few isolated areas. However, CO2 alone is not the cause, according to the climate alarmists. They hold that small increases in CO2 creates additional water vapor in the atmosphere, and that water vapor does the majority of the warming. Still, the effect must be the same in small towns as well as in big cities. Therefore, it will be possible to verify the premise, or falsify the premise, by examining the temperature records for small towns and big cities, all within the same hemisphere and roughly the same latitude. Hemispheres (north and south) have opposite seasons, and different latitudes have great variations in seasons, so those effects can be minimized.

In the CRU3 dataset, folder “72” contains 87 temperature files (or records), all in the USA. Some are large cities, including Miami (FL), Atlanta, San Antonio, El Paso, San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, among others. Others are small towns, including Ely (NV), Abilene (TX), and Meridian (MS), among many others.

Below in Figure 1 is the temperature record for Abilene, Texas, from 1886 to 2009, approximately 120 years. Abilene is dataset 722660 in the CRU3 dataset. The graph in Figure 1 was produced by copying the data into Microsoft Excel (TM) and performing simple graphing with trendline. The data is the monthly average temperatures for each year, which range roughly from 0 to 32 degrees C. The squiggly white line through the middle is a moving 12-month average. The solid black line through the middle is the linear trend line.

Figure 1

(click on graph for a larger view in a new window)

The overall trend of the temperature data shows essentially zero change, with the actual trend of -0.0019 degrees C per year, or -0.19 degrees C per century. So much for CO2 causing global warming. If any warming were to be occurring, and that warming is due to CO2 in the atmosphere, it must warm the earth equally. Abilene is certainly not isolated, instead, it is on a rolling plain just west of Dallas. Plants grow quite well in Abilene, as the trees, shrubs, grass, and agriculture show quite well. Plants need CO2 to grow.

However, the graph above shows some interesting things when examined in smaller pieces. For example, the climate alarmists claim that the last 25 years, since 1975, warmed at a much higher rate than previous years. Usually, the warmists' mantra is that the latter half of the 20th century was the warmest on record, or for the last 1000 years, or something dire like that. Does the Abilene data show this? I had a look at the 1975 to 2009 data, and the trend is positive, with a slope of 0.031 degrees C per year, or 3.1 degrees per century. Yet, the trend from 1910 to 1940 shows a much higher trend, of 0.045 degrees C per year, or 4.5 degrees per century. Finally, the bit in the center, from 1940 to 1970, shows a distinct cooling trend of -0.0224 degrees C per year, or -2.24 degrees per century.

Well, then, how about the claim that winters are much warmer in the recent 30 years, since 1975, and summers are hotter? No, the Abilene data refutes those claims, too. Winters were clearly warmer in the period 1907 to 1955 compared to 1975 to 2009. Summers were hotter from 1910 to 1955.

From the data plotted above, the sole reason for a warming trend since 1975 is unusually cold winters beginning in 1976 and ending in 1985. Five of the winters in that decade were colder than usual, with no previous decade having more than one equally cold winter.

Cherry-Picking Allegation

The climate alarmists will, as they always do, level a charge of cherry-picking the data by my selection of Abilene for this analysis. It is an empty charge, with no merit, as similar results are found from several other small towns with long temperature records, including Meridian, Mississippi, Dodge City, Kansas, Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and Fresno, California.

Large City Results

So, then, do the large cities show a similar trend as Abilene? I had a look at three large cities, San Antonio, Texas, El Paso, Texas, and San Diego, California. Both El Paso and San Antonio are relatively near Abilene, both are inland, both have large populations (more than 1 million), with substantial growth in population since 1950. (Abilene is approximately 200 miles from San Antonio, and 400 miles from El Paso). San Diego is a very large city of more than one million population, is at almost the identical latitude as both Abilene and El Paso, has substantial population growth since 1950, but is located on the coast of California.

San Antonio and El Paso show almost identical results, with a small warming trend overall, greater warming trend from 1975 to 2009, but a warming trend of nearly the same degree from 1910 to 1940. The cooling trend from 1940 to 1970 is present, or almost entirely flat for El Paso. The warming from 1975 to 2009 is greater than for Abilene, at 0.049 for San Antonio, and 0.062 for El Paso. Since the CO2 was likely the same for all three cities, yet the large cities had much greater population growth, it is likely that urban heat island heating is the cause of any measured warming in the cities. El Paso shows a warming trend for winters and summers from 1975 to 2009. Yet, the warming trend for El Paso from 1910 to 1940 shows warmer summers but relatively constant nights.

San Diego Cooling

San Diego shows quite a different temperature trend than either El Paso or San Antonio. First, the biggest difference is that San Diego shows cooling from 1975 to 2009, at the rate of -0.0315 degrees C per year, or -3.15 degrees per century. How can this be? Perhaps CO2 is absent from the air over San Diego? No, there are plenty of trees, shrubs, and grass in San Diego and the plants are growing quite well. San Diego also shows a slight warming trend where all the other cities showed cooling or neutral from 1940 to 1970. In San Diego, the trend from 1940 to 1970 was 0.0185 degrees C per year, or 1.85 degrees per century. Yet, the early century period was consistent with all the others, as the warming trend from 1910 to 1940 was 0.0406 degrees C per year, or 4.06 degrees per century.

One might argue that San Diego is cooled by the Pacific Ocean, and thus it could be expected that effect to overwhelm the warming from the CO2. But how then did the city show a warming trend from 1910 to 1940?

Inconsistent CO2

For the climate alarmists to have credibility, they must show that CO2 has an effect in all locations, not just a favored few. CO2 clearly is not consistent, and therefore cannot be the cause of any climate change. Even when one uses their own data, published by their own Hadley Research Center, with all its manipulations and falsifications, clearly the temperature records for the cities in this small study show no abnormal warming in the final quarter of the 20th century, a flat or cooling trend in the middle of the century, and a major city showing a cooling while the others show a warming. CO2 is just a simple, three-atom molecule, one carbon plus two oxygens. It has no capacity for choice or selection or arbitrariness. Yet, the temperature records of San Diego, San Antonio, El Paso, Abilene, and others show that temperature trends are not consistent. Whatever is causing the earth's temperature to increase and decrease over time, and there is no argument that this occurs since ice ages come and go, that something is not CO2.

References:

City/town.............CRU File Number

Abilene, TX ............ 722660

Meridian, MS.......... 722340

Ely, NV.................... 724860

El Paso, TX............. 722700

San Antonio, TX.... 722530

San Diego, CA........ 722900

Cape Hatteras, NC. 723040

Fresno, CA.............. 723890

by Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Chevron Departing Bay Area - Maybe

Chevron, a major international oil company, has a refinery in Richmond and its headquarters nearby in San Ramon, California, both on the San Francisco Bay. A recent article states that Chevron may have had enough of battling California (the state) and Californians (the eco-nuts) in its quest to upgrade and modernize the Richmond refinery. Chevron may just shut it down, and perhaps import gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel that is refined somewhere else. Goodbye to the jobs, to the taxes that support the local and state economy.

Chevron might consider relocating the headquarters to more friendly areas. Exxon did when it departed New York and moved to Dallas, Texas. The difference to the bottom line between New York's tax rates and Texas' made a big difference to Exxon's bottom line (now ExxonMobil after aquiring Mobil). Chevron could use the boost to its bottom line, too.

And nothing would be more fitting than for a huge corporation, with thousands of employees in California, to move out of California. Other industries have downsized or departed entirely. Cars are no longer made in California (after the sole remaining plant shuts down, as they have stated they will.)

Some Californians will likely say goodbye and good riddance if Chevron shuts down and departs. They view the corporation as an evil on society, causing pollution that injures or sickens or kills people prematurely. These same people drive their cars to their protest meetings, heat their homes with natural gas, depend on emergency generators fueled by diesel, and fly to their vacations and holidays in jets that burn jet fuel. All made by oil and refining companies, very likely Chevron, although there are several others in the state.

I hope Chevron does shut down the Richmond refinery and use it just as an import terminal. I hope Chevron does close its doors in San Ramon and move the headquarters to another state with lower taxes and no Global Warming Solutions Act like AB 32.

On the other hand, closing the refinery may not be possible. Shell tried to shut down a refinery in the Bakersfield area recently, and was required instead to find a buyer who would keep it running. Anti-trust reasons were brought up because the supply-demand balance in California is very tight (or it was in those days, it has improved somewhat now with the economic recession). The reasoning was that prices would soar if that one (and it was very small) refinery was closed, which would be an anti-competitive practice. Shell found a buyer, sold the refinery, and the buyer soon filed for bankruptcy, proving Shell was correct in their assessment that the refinery could no longer be run profitably. Will a US Senator intervene against Chevron if Chevron wants to shut down the Richmond refinery? Why should she, if Chevron imports the fuels? No harm, no foul, just bring in ships with products rather than ships with crude oil. India has plenty of refining capacity with products for sale.

California. What a place. Fantasies are written almost daily in this state, and some are made into movies to entertain the world. Some are actually quite good, while most are junk. Yet the front page news stories are far more entertaining than the film world's products. Imagine this script, where a large state writes law after law to cripple its industries, decrease employment, enrich consultants and doom-sayers, employ armies of lawyers, drive out employers, stays eternally in massive budget deficits in the amount of roughly $24 billion each year, spends half its state budget "educating" children who cannot read or write upon graduation, then that same state advertises itself as The Golden State where everyone is free, the weather is fabulous, and business opportunities abound.

Nah, couldn't happen. No state would be that dumb.