Warmists are Wrong; Cooling is Coming

The following is the presentation I made on April 17, 2012, to the Southern California Section of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), at their monthly dinner meeting held at Long Beach, California.  The title for the presentation is "What if the Warmists are Wrong? Is Catastrophic Cooling Coming?  Implications."   My heartfelt thanks to Mr. Alan Benson, chair of the Southern California Section, for the invitation to speak.   I also appreciate those who attended, and especially for their questions.  As always, it is an honor to address AIChE members.  

The presentation was approximately one hour, followed by another hour of questions and answers.  The presentation is in three parts, as suggested by the title: 1) Are the Warmists Wrong? 2) Is Catastrophic Cooling Coming? and 3) Implications.   

Background: this topic could easily require a week to present the many aspects and interesting details.  With a mere hour at my disposal, this presentation necessarily hits only the major points.  My purpose here, firstly, was to inform the audience of what has transpired in the climate science arena in part 1, primarily as to the quality of the data and the climate models.  It is important to note the scarcity of agreement between the model projections and actual data.  Secondly, my purpose was to present the case for imminent global cooling in part 2.  Thirdly, my purpose was to describe a few of the many and serious implications for imminent global cooling in part 3, tying this in to what engineers can expect.  Engineers are problem-solvers, and this presents a great many problems to solve.  I also described a few of the legal ramifications of imminent global cooling. 

[Speech text, as transcribed from the audio/video recording.  Minor additions are included to increase read-ability. -- RES]

Thank you, Alan.  I want to talk a little bit about this whole topic of global warming, or climate science and give you a little bit of background about me and why this is important to me.  It's important for a number of reasons. I've been involved in this arena for about the last five years at various levels, all the way from the local level up to the federal level.  I am not a climate scientist, I'm not a PhD.  As Alan told you, I have a bachelors [degree] in chemical engineering, I have a law degree, and I'm an attorney.  My practice does involve laws pertaining to climate change and the science that underlies those laws.

But, as a chemical engineer, as most of you are, I have the tools to assess much of what was done; not only to get some understanding for myself, but to determine what they did, and did they do it right, if there is a right and a wrong.  I think that coming from my background in oil refineries, there is definitely a right and there is definitely a wrong. If we do it wrong, things blow up and people die.  That's one big difference between chemical engineers and climate scientists.  They have the luxury of sitting in their offices and conferences and they can be as wrong as they want.  It doesn't really make that much difference. 

What I want to talk about is experimental design, also data validation and what has been going on the last few years. Where we are at the moment in the saga, if you want to call it that, of global warming, climate change, climate disruption, or whatever the word is these days.

I have three main points tonight, hopefully 20 minutes apiece. The first thing I want to talk about is, are the warmists wrong?   By warmists I mean those who have published papers, or have voiced the opinion that global warming is not only real, it is happening, it is unprecedented and the results will be catastrophic.  Therefore, we must do very drastic things today in order to prevent these catastrophic events from occurring.

The second point will be, is catastrophic cooling coming, which will be exactly 180°. These guys are over here, and the coolists are over here.  [motioning one direction, then the opposite direction]

And finally, implications. Those being, we hear a lot about implications from the warming side; what are the implications of the cooling if it is indeed on the way? Then I want to tie that in to what chemical engineers and other engineers can expect.  It may be something for you to consider as you look into the future of what you want to be doing.

I.  Are the Warmists Wrong?

There are two or three topics here. First, were there any defects in their data? Next, does the model that they use have any defects?  Then, how do the data and the models correspond, are there any mis-matches? And finally, what are the costs and benefit of the mitigation steps that are recommended?

Data defects.

First, let me tell you a little bit about the data. They have an enormous body of data;  terabytes, from temperature locations from around the world, on the order of 10,000 maybe 12,000 sites on land.  Each of those [sites] has data going back some period of years, some as far as 100 years, some a little bit further. The aggregate amount of data they're dealing with is on the order of 150 million data points. This system passed the first hurdle of valid data, scientific data. You want to have a database that is large enough to give good statistics. I think in this case they do. But, they had so much data, it actually didn't work the way they wanted it to. So, they made adjustments to it. This should raise a red flag in everyone's mind, whenever you must adjust your experimental data.  They claim they have some fairly good reasons for doing this, because they were not allowed by the very nature of this problem to construct an experiment to collect data.  They came on the scene rather late and said well, what's the world been doing for the last hundred years?  We cannot go back in time and measure again, let's just take the data we have and see what it looks like.

There are about three or four different types of adjustments they make and I'll talk about those. Then we have this whole topic of improper data inclusion. You may have seen this graph [Figure 1 below]; it's on my blog.  This is actually taken from NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency. It shows what purports to be the rise in temperature [for] the last 130 years. [This is} averaged over the entire world. I want to point to a couple things, if my pointer works.  There's a couple of things of note here, first, the temperature slightly declined until about 1910, then we had a rise until about 1940. We had a leveling off for about 30 years.  Then, starting in about 1975, we have a steadily ascending portion.  Then, the most important, and I want to talk a little bit about this later on, this leveling off [for the past ten years]. That is crucial to the argument of what is happening today.  This is a worldwide mean over the land and the ocean. it was constructed, like I said, using thousands and thousands of points of data to come up with what they say is the average.

  

Figure 1

This slide [Figure 2] is from NOAA, and by the way, if you're making a slide for presentations, please don't do what these guys did. I don't know if you can see this, but there is a yellow line right here. Try to use bright contrasting colors. They did okay with the red and they did okay with the black, but when you have a yellow line here, it is not good. These are the types of adjustments they made and it gives you an idea of the magnitude. These are in degrees F; there is about 0.3 here [black] another 0.3 for the yellow line. A negligible amount here for the red.  This is a slightly declining line here.  We'll talk more about that in a minute to see urban heat island effect.  

Figure 2

So, altogether this is the aggregate [Figure 3]. If we add up all the ones from the previous slide, we have almost one half a degree Fahrenheit of total adjustments. What that means is, from the previous chart, that shows about 0.6° C.  That's approximately 1°F, so basically half of this is due to adjustments. Half of the warming we have seen in the last 100 years is entirely due to adjustments.

Figure 3

(Note total adjustments of approximately 0.5 degrees F)

Next, is a very famous chart [Figure 4] done by a Californian named Jim Goodridge. Mr. Goodridge is a  former state climatologist here in California. He's retired now. He did his research and published his data in about 1996.  He shows the warming trend in California by County. The curve at the top is for counties with a population of 1 million or more as of the 1990 census.  We see a distinct rising trend from about 1910 to 1994.  The line at the bottom shows the same thing, the average for temperatures in California, but this is for Counties with a very small population, 100,000 or less as of the 1990 census.

Figure 4  (source: J. Goodridge)
Goodridge, J.D. (1996) Comments on “Regional Simulations of Greenhouse Warming including Natural Variability” . Bull, Amer. Meteorological Society 77:1588-1599.

[There was ] virtually no warning whatsoever over that 85 years. The line in the middle is for all the other counties between 100,000 and 1 million population.  They have an average rise somewhere between the other two.  The significance of this is that, if CO2 is indeed the cause of the warming, because the counties at the top did warm, why did it ignore the small counties?  How can you do that? That was one of the first things that intrigued me about the entire issue, as an engineer.  And, as Alan said, I have traveled many places around the world - as some of you have, too – and physics works anywhere you go.  It does not pick and choose.  It is not capricious.  I think all of us would agree with that. Yet, CO2 appears to play favorites.  I will show more of that here in a few minutes.

This to me raised a very serious alarm.  How can this be going on, and is it a true physical effect, or is there something else causing the warming?  Or, are we measuring something else and attributing it to CO2?


Next, here's a graph [Figure 5], and I have about three or four of these to show you of individual cities. This is from Abilene, Texas which is right out in the middle of the state, a little bit west of Dallas.  It shows absolutely no warming whatsoever for the past 110 years or so. The slope here, and you probably cannot read that, is actually negative. It is -0.19° per century, round it off -0.2. From an earlier slide [Figure 1], remember we were looking at a warming trend  of about 0.6° per century, which is what the warmists are saying. I want to know why it ignored Abilene?  [note, the following Figures 5 through 11 are from the same source -- RES]

Figure 5

Abilene is not alone, it has a lot of company here. Shreveport [Louisiana] [Figure 6] is not too far away and roughly the same latitude. This trend also happens to be as close to zero as I could find.  That's 0.0001 with a negative sign in front of it.  Again, over 100 years with no warning whatsoever. 

Figure 6

But, here's one [Figure 7] that is an adjacent city. This is St. Louis, Missouri.  It's only about 300 miles away a little bit north and a little bit west of Shreveport, which means the CO2 was roughly the same.  There are no latitudinal adjustments to make here.  This shows a warming and has a positive trend of  almost 1.1°C per century.  Again, we see a disparity.  How can CO2 know to shine its warning rays down on St. Louis but ignore Shreveport?

Figure 7

I don't have time to do all the pairs of cities but if you look on my blog, one can see them. Next, let's have a look here in California. Between the two cities Sacramento and San Francisco, one is warming and one is not. How many of you would believe that San Francisco is the one that is warming?  We have a couple of hands there, so the rest of you think then that Sacramento was the one that is warming?  That's right in the desert, right?  Well, you would be wrong. [Laughter.] Sacramento shows almost no warning whatsoever. And yet, San Francisco shows a very steady warming.  [Figure 8 (San Francisco) and Figure 9 (Sacramento) ]

Figure 8

Figure 9 

Let me show you this, then.  Here's Boston [Figure 10]. San Francisco has a similar curve as Boston and a very steady, very gradual rise.  And yet, back in these early days the scientists tell us there was no CO2 to speak of and it really wasn't increasing. And yet the same slope of the curve exists back here as compared to the latter day. Well, how can that be? What we should see is a flat line, and then a big rise up over here if CO2 was the culprit. Yet, it didn't happen. This is showing a warming of about 1.99, call it 2°C per century.

Figure 10

Now, I have to show you this [Figure 11]; this is the one they got me started on making the speech tonight. This is Eureka, California, a little coastal town north of San Francisco. It was warming pretty good for a while, until, look at this downtrend right in here [from 1990 to 2010].  This is almost 20 years worth of declining temperatures.  I thought to myself, that has got to be wrong.  The more I looked at it, and we will see more of this in a minute, that is actually a valid trend. And I must ask you this, if CO2 is causing the earth to warm, what is wrong with Eureka, where did the CO2 go over Eureka?

Figure 11

Alright, so we saw the problem of having the urban heat island. Big cities have a lot of buildings, a lot of concrete, a lot of asphalt and air conditioning.  All these things produce heat in the urban area. It creates an island effect of heat. We know this is true, if you've ever listened to the weather. They will typically tell you it's going to be whatever temperature it is tonight in the city, and about 5° colder in the outlying areas. And sure enough, that's true.  It is almost always cooler at night in the countryside compared to being in a big city. That is the urban heat island effect.

The question becomes, are there any ideal sites? That is, they have long-term temperature records, with no urban influences? The answer of course is yes, we have hundreds here in the states, almost 400 national parks. We have hundreds more State parks. The national parks are mandated by law to maintain their lands in a pristine condition as much as is possible. Somehow, they missed out on getting those temperatures measured and getting them into the database.  But, to give the scientists a little bit of credit, they have recognized this, primarily due to the work of Anthony Watts of Chico, California. Anthony is famous in this arena.  He owns a blog called Watt's Up With That dot com.  He did some groundbreaking work that showed that the measuring sites are woefully inaccurate around the United States. Roughly 80% of them failed the government's criteria for proper siting. That is, where these things are located. They put them on top of buildings next to air conditioning vents.  They put them next to asphalt parking lots.  They put them at airports where the jet exhaust can get to them. I am not kidding. This is the type of data we are dealing with.

So, in order to correct this, we now have the beginning of what is called the climate reference network. These are supposed to be in the pristine areas. These are supposed to have none of the problems identified earlier. They have redundant temperature sensors, they have automatic data logging, and they have automatic upload to a satellite. Presumably we will have only good data coming out of them. Unfortunately, they started in about 2008. So, we don't have 100 years or more of good data to look at. It will take them a while to obtain that. But at least they recognized the problem and responded to it. So much for the data. The data I think is very shaky. Unfortunately, they have this curve [Figure 1] on which we are basing not only national policy, but international policy.

Model Errors

Now, let's see if we have any fundamental errors in the model. And, we'll look at what's going on there. Again, a little bit of background on myself. I worked for a number of years for a company that produced kinetic models for oil refinery processes. So, I have a little bit of familiarity here. In the early climate models, we're talking in the late 1980s, when the first alarm was raised, and Congress was told that the earth was warming, the model says it's going to warm even more in the coming century so we must do something now. They had three variables and only three variables in the model.

Now, I have to give them some credit. They figured out that the first law of thermodynamics holds. Energy in is equal to energy out. In this case, the energy in to the earth is from the sun. Well, there's a little more from the core cooling, a little bit. But, they figured that that is negligible and I guess that's okay. But, for energy out, the only way energy can escape the earth is through radiation into space. That makes sense because there's nothing touching this so there is no conduction.  There's nothing going past us because we are surrounded by the vacuum of space, therefore there's no convection. All that heat must leave, and I keep waiting for the hand to go up and say,  "but but but but but."

All that heat must leave as radiation; is that true? Well, the answer is No. Because, as engineers you know about this, the energy balance states "In equals Out plus Accumulation."

Where can we accumulate energy here on the earth? Well, primarily we have accumulated heat in the oceans. Because, the land doesn't warm that much. But, the oceans are a pretty good reservoir. So that's part of the problem, we must try to calculate how much the oceans are warming or cooling. But, that's what this first variable is: TSI.  This is for total solar irradiance, the amount of heat and light coming off the sun. They looked at that and said, well it doesn't change very much especially over the period in question. It varies at the most by 0.1%. So, we don't think that's the cause of the warming. What they basically said was if you build a model with just that variable it does not match the curve I showed earlier [Figure 1]. So, let's add another variable, and they put in aerosols. These are volcanic aerosols, mostly sulfur compounds that are placed high in the atmosphere primarily due to very large volcanoes. These act to increase the Earth's albedo.  The albedo is reflectivity so that not all of the sun's energy actually makes it down to the surface of the earth. Roughly the earth has an albedo of about 0.3, which is a wild guess as nobody has measured it. Albedo changes from time to time. This is one of the things they do to adjust the model to call cool things off. Well, this did not help with the warming side but it did help a little with the cooling in the middle [Figure 1]. 

So, they said we need something else to cause warming to make our model match our data. Does that sound backwards to anyone? They said, the only thing that we can think of is CO2. We know it is a greenhouse gas that causes the atmosphere to warm. When they put in CO2 with appropriate parameters to produce the warming necessary, they had a three variable model that matched pretty well. We will see in a minute how its predictability works. This is actually a modeling error, because there are other relevant things.  They admit this, at least some of them do. This last one here is sunspot cycles, but they do not want to talk about that. Clouds are just as much an effect on the albedo as aerosols. They serve as a reflector. Anyone who's been outside when a cloud comes by if it's daytime, we all know, even little children know that it gets cooler. When the sun goes behind the clouds. But that is not in the models. Why is it not in the models? They do not know how to model that. That is one of the problems they have. A problem is that it is such a small phenomenon. Over the whole space of the earth, they cannot model that little bit with the cloud. They are modeling great big chunks of the atmosphere. What about ocean temperature oscillations? This is incredibly important and will become more so when we get to the next section.

It turns out that temperatures on the land are influenced heavily by temperatures in the ocean. I think we know that. If you go to the seacoast the temperature is typically a lot cooler than if you go in the desert. Well why is that? Well because you're close to the water. But, they do not include this either. In fact it is well-known that ocean temperatures oscillate from time to time. They go through periods of warm then they switch over to cold. Nobody knows why and nobody knows when it's going to happen either. We will see more of that in a minute. But that's not in the models. 

Finally, sunspot cycles. This is incredibly controversial. It was considered voodoo science for many years. There is a Danish scientist named Henrik Svensmark who came up with this idea. He said look, we have correlations going back hundreds of years such that every time the sunspots get very weak or disappear the earth gets cold, sometimes brutally cold. And every time the sunspots are strong, the opposite occurs and we have a warming. But there was no causal mechanism and no one could figure it out. It's a long way to the sun, 93,000,000 miles. What is a sunspot going to do from such a distance away? Well, he had a theory and that theory had to do with the magnetic field of the sun. Now we have the proper instruments in space and we can measure the sun's magnetic field. And it does in fact vary substantially, depending on the strength of the sunspot cycle. We will get more to that in a minute. But that's not in the models either. In fact that is heresy to even suggest that those should be in the model. When we have included only a few variables but we know there are others, this is what we know as omitted variable bias. Because, the error term we have in the model must be included in one of the variables and in the case of the climate models, it's in the CO2. Now, I have the word fraud here with a question mark. I'm not accusing anyone of fraud, but if you were to be developing a model and you deliberately with knowledge, did this,  left the variable out, and by doing so you cause harm to somebody, that could be fraud. We are not to that stage yet and we probably never will be. That would imply a willful omission on the part of the climate modelers.

Another fundamental error. You may have heard the term the science is settled. I can tell you some science that is settled. There's a science called gravity. It is fairly well-established. You all know this as the acceleration is 32.2, unless using SI units and I don't know what it is. It's around 10 I think, nine point something.   How many different equations for gravity do we have? Can I get an answer of “one?” I see a few heads nodding yes, there is one. These guys have 20 more or less.  20, 21, 22 depending on what day you asked them.  If the science is settled, why do we need 20 different models? What they do is average them.  They create an ensemble mean of the models. Apparently this is something which is done in the financial world and in the stock market.  If nobody really knows, if you average enough models you can get a trend which is actually useful. So, that is what they are doing here. The science cannot be settled if you have 20 different models required.

Data / Model Mismatch

So let's talk about the mismatch between the models and the data.  The models predict the warming actually they project for the next century about 3.3°C.  Yet the whole warming during the 20th century was only 0.7°C, more or less. We're talking about a factor of four between this century and the next century.  So, how's it going to happen? Well, they say there are accelerating affects.  We’ll be using more energy, the population grows, and there'll be feedback mechanisms kicking in. All of it is conjecture. The match, remember that the warming and almost all this warming, at least half, was due to data adjustments and we think a lot of it was due to the urban heat island influence.  They are measuring the heat coming off of the buildings. Here's a chart [Figure 12] that I took from British Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, from a presentation he made a couple of weeks ago here in California.  The point of this is, again he using yellow here I hope you can see that, the black is the measured temperature trend of the last 20 years from 1990 and this is from University of Alabama at Huntsville I believe. The projected warming rates are here, the one in the middle is the medium scenario, here below is a low scenario, and the upper one is the high scenario. This [middle] is the one that gives you the 3.3° per century if you go out all the way 100 years or so. There is already a widening disparity, if we go back to the first graph I showed [Figure 1] of the temperature with the leveling off spot at the end. There's no leveling off on any of these they all just keep rising. Again the mismatch. 

Figure 12

So what does this mean in terms of mismatch and other things they project will happen?  First we see there is zero warming in the past decade which is about since 1999, really, and we can think about that for a minute.  If we have a graph and I'm just going draw across here with a level line with a zero or no rising trend, but you know some of the sites have a urban heat island so they're actually rising too.  The population increasing, we are using more fuel, China certainly is, India certainly is. They impact what's happening to the earth. How do you get the overall trend that is level? Surely some of the sites must have a decreasing trend to counter those that are warming.  There must be a cooling going on somewhere, it is hidden. They don't want to talk about that but I'm going to talk about it tonight.

Another thing the models have failed on.  They projected there'll be many more hurricanes, massive hurricanes, but it's not happening. We have about the same number of hurricanes and severity as we had back in the 1970s.

There is supposed to be a hot spot in the atmosphere that is directly related to the increase in CO2. They diligently look for this every which way they can. With weather balloons and with atmospheric satellites. There's no hotspot, they can't find it. 

The polar ice is supposed to be melting. Well we have two poles. The Antarctic actually has ice growing.  The temperature there is dropping and has been for the past 50 years. They blew it big on this one. The Arctic? They have a little bit more of a case there we'll see in a minute. I have a chart to show in a minute that the Arctic ice is declining a little bit but there's something very interesting going on the Arctic that they don't want to talk about. 

We are supposed to be having sea level rise.  Not only that, it's supposed to be accelerating. We're supposed be having something like 3 feet of increasing level over the next century. The problem is, and I don't have enough time to put all these graphs up here, sea level has been increasing but the rate has been decreasing. So instead of having a curve that goes up and up and up and up and up. what we have is one that is coming down and leveling off. This cannot be explained in their models, a total mismatch.

Finally, snow. There was actually a scientist that came out and said snow will be a thing of the past. Schoolchildren will only know about it from movies or pictures in textbooks. Well, does anybody remember the snow last year? It was pretty thick around here. And actually this winter not so much here in the United States, but much of the rest of the northern hemisphere it was bitterly cold with much snow. In fact Alaska set a new record for snow and all-time record for snow last winter.  Again the total mismatch.

  

To wrap up the data model, I want to quote from Richard Dr. Richard Feynman, who was one of my favorite scientists.  He is deceased now, unfortunately. What he said was, “when the data does not match the model, you must get a new model.” He was, if you don't know, a PhD in physics, he was a professor at CalTech.  He won the Nobel prize for something called QED, which is quantum electro dynamics; pretty esoteric stuff.  He was a key member of the Manhattan project. He knew his stuff. What happens with our scientists when their model doesn't match the data?  What do they do, they adjust the data. Completely backwards.

Cost / Benefit 

Now, just a little bit on the cost/benefit. What are we talking about here? What is it going to cost to try to reduce CO2 so we don't have the warming which they say is going to happen. Trillions, but how many trillions? So many that it will be a significant fraction of the world GDP.  Or gross domestic product. Standards of living will necessarily decrease. What will we get for our trillions of dollars? Primarily, it's going to be CO2 capture and sequestration which will involve chemical engineers. They also want to replace coal power because it produces quite a bit of CO2 per unit of energy.  They want to replace it with wind, solar, and nuclear and finally, they want to get rid of petroleum by using electric cars.  What will be the benefit of doing this?  Well, that is the big controversy.  Nobody knows, but there are wild estimates.  I have shown here maybe 0.2 to 0.4°C per century and yet we just saw a warning of 0.7 that was actually beneficial. It was very cold back around 1900.  It is a lot better now than it was then, so the question is, are there any benefits at all?  Especially knowing that the models have blown it on basically everything they have ever predicted to happen.  

II.  Is Catastrophic Cooling Coming?

Now, I want to move over to the catastrophic cooling.  This is a part that, as I mentioned earlier with Eureka having a temperature decline, got me started on this.  I have a series of three slides here to show you.  These are from the National Climatic Data Center, another US government agency.  All of this is online, so you can pull it up and look.  This [Figure 13] shows the average temperature over about the last 100 years, actually from just before 1900. I want to point out something right here in the most recent period.  We have a substantial decline in the temperature. Where is this? This is what they call California Climate Division One.  This is the Eureka area, the Northern California coast.  I want you to have a look right in here, this is 1940 decreasing down to 1950.  The rest is either average or slightly increasing.  This turnaround point is 1950. Remember that date because we're going to see it a few more times.

Figure 13

What else is going on, on the west coast of North America? Here [Figure 14] is the section of California just to the south of Climate Division one.  This shows from Monterey Bay down to just north of Santa Barbara. We have the same thing going on; we have a decline to 1950. This is the only place where we have a similar decline of equal slope and equal number of years compared to the most recent decade.

Figure 14

One more [Figure 15]; this the coast of Oregon. The same thing happened: a massive drop recently, and the same thing back in the 40s stopping in 1950. I got to thinking to myself what in the world could have stopped this downward trend?  It was turned around when it was dropping like a rock. How much was this decrease? This is about 20° F per century which is about 11.1°C per century cooling.  This is a massive amount of cooling.  There is more I can show you but there's not sufficient time tonight. 

Figure 15

What is going on here, this [Figure 16] is a chart of ocean temperature changes or oscillations.  This is one for the Pacific Ocean.  The red is warm periods, and the blue is cold. Starting in 1950, we had a roughly 30 year period of cold, but in 1975 it went into the warm regime.  Then, recently a switch back over to the cold.  This occurs roughly every 30 years going cold to warm.   It is now in a cold phase again. 

Figure 16

This [Figure 17] is a chart which is also available on the web from Unisys, look at the cold blue in the Pacific.  This is actually from a couple of days ago [April 15, 2012]. This is what we are talking about, the cold, cold water in the Pacific compared to long-term average.  In this graph, the yellow and orange are warm, and the blues are cold.  The deeper the blue, the colder the water. This has been going on for a while, for at least the last 15 years.  We never read about that in the newspapers, though. 

Figure 17

Here's one for the Atlantic side [Figures 18 and 19], with the blue showing it's getting cooler.  This is known as the NAO Index; it is similar to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation that we just saw.  Here we have the blue indicating cold and red for the warm.  Then, right here in 1950 we went cold as the blue appeared for quite some time.  Yet, something was able to turn those temperatures around and bring them back up.  This one has not yet quite switched back to the cold phase, but we believe it's fairly imminent.  Perhaps sometime in the next few years.  Nobody knows why because this is not well understood.

Figure 18

Figure 19

Now we come to the main point of this speech.  Let's talk about sunspots cycles [Figure 20].   I mentioned earlier that we know from correlations, when sunspots are almost gone or nonexistent, that the earth is far colder than it is today. There were no sunspots at all from about 1645 to 1760, about 100 years.  Around the world, scientists at the time were observing, but could see no sunspots.  This corresponds to what we call the Little Ice Age, also known as the Maunder minimum. Then it warmed up and we can see the sunspots increased.  It got a little colder around 1800 and sure enough the sunspots decreased with that.  It got a little cooler around 1900.  Then look at this: here is 1950.  Here's a very big sunspot cycle, and the next cycle in 1960 was the biggest one yet. In the next graph [Figure 21] we can see also back to 1700.  Here's the 1950 cycle, and the 1960 cycle is the biggest one of all. 

Figure 20

Figure 21

My hypothesis is, that large sunspot cycles overcame the cooling trend of the two oceans cooling.  For the rest of the century, the cycles were fairly big and we had some warming going on.  Also, the oceans were in the red phase.  They also were warming.  Now we have a problem, if you haven't been keeping up. First, let me show you these all lined up. Here's a graph [Figure 22] with the red line down the middle in 1950.  Here is the Pacific Ocean with the blue.  Here's the temperatures on the coast dropping down and then turned around in 1950, and here are the sunspot cycles for that. In 1950 and 1960, the sunspot cycles may have in fact turned the climate around and let it warm up.

Figure 22

Now, what is going on today, and why is this important? The sun surprised the scientists about four years ago.  Ordinarily, sunspot cycles endure for about 11 years, but this one took a bit longer.   It lasted about 12 years which is somewhat longer than normal.  Now we have a projection of the new cycle which is number 24 [Figure 23].  Instead of being big as we normally would see it, it is weak. They are expecting it to peak in the mid 70s although the Figure shows mid-90s, dated January 2012.  [update:  now reduced to 60 in the May, 2012 prediction.]  You can follow this online at spaceweather dot com.   This shows what the sunspots are doing every day.  This is grim.  We now have a prediction that the next cycle, number 25, will be much weaker.  It may be in the level of 20s perhaps even the teens and it may last much much longer and the world will be much colder.

Figure 23

So, is there anything else going on today which would indicate colder, besides the weak sunspot cycle?  Perhaps the world is cooling?  We are seeing the Pacific Ocean is colder; we are seeing the sunspot cycle is weak, now let's look at the Arctic ice.

This graph [Figure 24] is from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, or NSIDC.  Ordinarily the cycle of ice will peak right around the end of February. This is the average from about the past 30 years. The blue line shows the ice extent today, and it actually peaked about two weeks later than average.  Notice that it did not started declining for about three weeks.  Then it finally begins to decline when it was very close to the average.  This is completely unexpected and also not predicted by the models.  The dotted line which is shown is the worst of all time; this is from 2007, when you may remember the Arctic ice was said to be disappearing.  It was an all-time low. So yes, it was at least for the 30 years that we have been looking at this with satellites. This is trying to show you how we are doing today.  They were quick to blow the trumpet when we're down here below the average, but they don't want to talk about it when it gets up here near the average.  This is crucial, something is preventing the ice from melting. Yet we know CO2 is rising. Why isn’t CO2 causing the Arctic to warm up like it's supposed to?  Again, another model bust.

Figure 24

This next chart [Figure 25] is one I would love to see someone do a research paper on. This again shows the northern hemisphere ice anomaly from normal, in millions of square kilometers.  I want to point out three very interesting things on this chart.  

Figure 25

First, we have a fairly homogenous area here [1979-1996] with amplitude almost the same, the beta for those of you who follow stocks.  It is about the same in here and it has a very slight decline but not much. 

Second, here it is completely different [1996 - 2006]. Notice the amplitude is much less compared to the earlier period. It is about half.  The average slope downward in this area is much greater.  

Third, then look at the most recent zone for about the last five years or so, roughly 2007 up to now.  We have now gone back to the larger amplitude and we have almost no trend whatsoever. Why would that be? If the Arctic is warming like they are telling us, and CO2 is doing its job, it is supposed to be more effective in the Arctic that it is anywhere else.  How did this happen? How to we get no change in the trend for the past five years?  They don't have an answer for that, but it would be consistent with the world turning to a cooler phase.

Is there anybody else besides me with this hypothesis? I'm not a scientist, I don't publish scientific papers. I have no reputation at all.  But, there are a few who say this is absolutely true.  There are not many, so they have a minority view.  Here is one, this is Dr. H. Abdussamatov, and please pardon my Texan mangling of a Russian name. He's a PhD from Russia in the solar science field. He stated in print also in conferences where he says forget warming, we have very drastic cooling on the way.  Deep cold is coming.  He also gives us a date: he says by 2014 we will know. What we are talking about is the sunspot cycle 24 that will be well past the peak at that point.  We will be able to predict with more confidence exactly how weak the cycle is and what the next cycle is going to do.  He predicts catastrophic cooling, and when Russians predict catastrophic cooling, I think we need to pay attention.  [audience laughter] Those guys know cold.  There are some others; he is not the only one. He's predicting sunspot cycle 24 which ordinarily has a length of 11 years, will have anything anywhere from 14 to 20 years.  This means much colder.  Cycle 25, which is the next one coming up, will be very weak perhaps 10 to 20 at the peak and who knows how long it will endure.  Again, it's not very well-known and we cannot predict the length very well. 

The fact that cycle number 24 is surprisingly weak gives one some doubt about the entire credibility of sunspot cycle projections.  This was a surprise and the sun may surprise us after all and come back strong again. However, it looks like it's not.  If the oceans remain cold, and sunspot cycles are weak, the catastrophic cooling is coming. 

III. Implications

Now, what are the implications? Well, we all know that unless you're a snowboarder or a skier, cold is bad.  The experiences we had as a society back in the Little Ice Age were very brutal and grim.   People died.  Animals died.  Crops failed.  The bright spot is the winter resorts are going to love it. I don't believe everyone will be as happy as this man [Figure 26] who is shoveling snow.  If you can imagine this level of snow or worse for many months for the entire United States anywhere north of Nebraska.  The Rocky Mountains will likely be impassable due to snow and ice and avalanches.   Chicago will probably become a ghost town. 

Figure 26

So, for what are engineers needed to help in all this?  Everything.   Let me ask a question of the audience:  how many years of stored up food does Earth have? [answer:] One year? [another answer] A little less than one? Anybody else?  Is it two or three, or seven years like in the Bible? Well, I was astonished when I went to look this up.  It is less than three months, depending on which grain you look at.  You can go to the USDA website, where there is a world analysis.  They keep track of how much food is out there.  This make sense in a way, because we are a modern society and we know how to grow things and we know how to store things.   We have not stored too much; maybe the food doesn't taste as good or some of it spoils.  We have become a just-in-time society, but that may be a bad plan right about now.  Depending on which grain, we have anywhere from one month to three months.  That is a serious point.   Can engineers help on the food side? I don't know.

Are there better fertilizers? Are there ways to grow crops that can use your talents? Possibly. Somebody asked me once, and she was not an engineer, and she asked can’t we just grow them all under greenhouses?  I thought well, that will take a lot of material to make the greenhouses. So, maybe.  Perhaps there is some polymer science needed.   What are we to do about hail storms?  Again, maybe there's some polymer science application.  Can we design a polymer so that the hail bounces instead of  breaking through? 

Clothing:  we will need a lot more warm clothing.  This means synthetic fibers. 

Shelter:  almost all of what has been built in the last 70 years or so was during the warm climate. Much of it is not insulated to handle the type of cold that is coming.  I foresee a booming insulation business.  The flat roofs on buildings, not necessarily in California but in the rest of the world and in the northern part of the United States, may not be adequate.  We may need to have some different type of roofs installed.  The roofs must shed snow.

Medical supplies and health services: I believe we will be overwhelmed. Look at the relative death rates from hunger and cold, comparing heat to cold periods.  More people get sick and more people die in the cold winters.

Transportation and industrial output:  this will be huge.  We do not move barges over frozen rivers.  We know this.  When a river is frozen for many months out of the year, how can you get your materials moved?  What about trains or heavy ground transportation; will they work? Probably not. The train is going to cross the Rockies’ grades in the snow and ice?   Likely not.

Industrial output: how does one move materials around?  How do we get raw materials into the factories and the products out?  If we have seen big trucks trying to go up even a small incline during an ice storm, well, they don't.  We can not get trucks to go up or down the Grapevine incline here just north of Los Angeles when snow falls.  Multiply this 1000 times across the northern tier of the United States.

Communications and infrastructure: we know what happens when ice storms or big snowstorms occur.   The system fails.  Why does it fail?  It is due to ice on the lines or tree limbs falling on the lines.  Can you imagine this on the scale something like the Little Ice Age?  We’re going to need serious reconsideration of infrastructure.

Water supply: what does one do for water when everything around you is frozen? Well, you melt the ice.  But, what do you do for heat?  What if you need that heat just to keep the house warm?

Here's another one, population migration: it is entirely possible that some of the northern cities, talking about New York, Chicago, those type of places, where people give up and become what we call permanent snowbirds. They are moving south.  The implications there are huge. It is okay if one hundred thousand people migrate every winter, but what if we have multiple millions on a permanent basis?  We are not equipped to handle this.

Waste disposal: what will we be doing in the wintertime month after month after month when trucks cannot collect the garbage?  Where do we take it?   I don't really know. As engineers, I hope we can help solve these problems.  It probably will require many disciplines and cooperation between disciplines.

Legal Issues

Finally, the legal issues, which are fascinating to me but maybe not so interesting to you so I will go quickly through these.  There are many legal ramifications, and this is only a partial list.

First off, will the cap and trade laws finally become useless, especially AB32 in California?  Will the government, when it gets cold enough will they finally admit they made a mistake?  Being California, I seriously doubt it. [laughter]

Will the coal industry come to the rescue? Right now it is not the darling at the ball; it is a bit out of favor.  Will nuclear power plants come to the rescue? I personally hope not, for what I believe are good reasons, but there may be some who say that nuclear plants are a good thing.

Will shortages of goods lead to rationing?  That is very possible.  What sort of basis will we use for rationing?  That was very controversial during World War II, and it will be even more controversial now. Will there be a perpetual state of emergency? That's a bit of an oxymoron.  Emergency is an abnormal state, but if it is cold for year after year what will we do?  Will the emergency be only in the cold northern states?  What about the warmer states for all the people who migrate?  There're no houses for them, no food for them, and there's no water for them. 

Finally, other human rights for displaced persons: this is a new thing which we've developed over the last 20 or 30 years.  Everybody has a fundamental right to… and then there's a long list. To air, to water, to food, to healthcare, and shelter.  We will see some of that, and it may become immensely important.

Next, in the contracts world, the concept of force majeure: this protects one against things beyond your control such as acts of God.  Things such as hurricanes, ice storms, war, acts of government, major labor strikes, these kind of things. The force majeure clauses will be invoked and this will complicate many contracts for a very long time.

Finally, can a society that is fighting for its very existence afford environmental laws?  I don't have an answer for that. I think we need some environmental laws.  In my travels around the world, I have seen what happens when we have very weak or nonexistent environmental laws. It is not pretty; it is ugly.  I’ve been choking and coughing often in the bad air. I'm glad we have environmental laws, but I think there's a limit.  There is a point at which we are doing more harm than good.  Again, if we are fighting for our existence, maybe those environmental laws can be suspended for a while.

Conclusion

Now, wrapping it up.  In conclusion, we can see climate scientist used a huge database of existing data,  sets that have very poor data.  They adjusted the data, which is something you should not be doing, to produce a warming trend.  And yet, statistics teaches us that an accurate result can be attained with only approximately 2% of the population sampled, if we randomly sample.  Most of us learned that in the statistics class.  So, why was there a rush then to use all the data and adjust it?  It turns out there are some reasons and I'll talk about that later.  I'm running out of time here.   Why not just use good unadjusted data? They did not do that.  To me, and this is my opinion here, climate science alarmism over impending global warming is completely unfounded.   I believe there is no warming problem.  CO2 induced warming, if it exists at all, must be consistent and cannot play favorites. Yet, we saw earlier that it does play favorites.   Some counties are warming in California and some are not, but this is not a California problem.  It happens all around.  It is clear that the data has been manipulated to show a warming trend.  Manipulated is a bit of a strong word there; they would prefer to say appropriately adjusted.  Well, you can take your pick of the words.  It is also clear the CO2 has not warmed adjacent cities or locations, which is physically impossible. It is also clear that the models, in my opinion, are hopelessly simplistic and flat wrong.

Instead of warming, global cooling is a threat with far more grave consequences. The evidence shows we are in a repeat of the decade-long cooling cycle of the mid-20th century.  The important difference this time is we are now in a very weak solar cycle, compared to back-to-back strong cycles in 1950 and 1960.  We know the weak solar cycles always produce cooling, sometimes catastrophic cooling such as the Little Ice Age.  Yet, within a very few years, perhaps two or three if the Russian scientist is right, by 2014 to 2015 we should have sufficient data on which to act.

The implications of a prolonged cold period are absolutely grim. Engineers, I believe, should consider ways that you can use your talents to meet these challenges posed by a colder climate.

Let me say in closing that I have a lot of faith in chemical engineers. I know what we can do. I have seen what we can do, and the world is a better place because of it. However, I hope that you would get involved in this.  It is a major issue, perhaps the issue of our time. I believe chemical engineers have a unique perspective.   I ask that you would consider getting involved in this area. 

Thank you very much, and I'll be happy to take any questions you may have.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq. 

Marina del Rey, California USA

Note: the question and answer period extended for almost an hour.  I will attempt to place the questions and my answers here as an addedum.  - - Roger

Update: March 27, 2014, I updated the link to the NCDC data in part II.  This pertains to Figures 13, 14, and 15.  -- Roger

On Nuclear Power Plants

I was part of a discussion over the past few days on WattsUpWithThat, that started out (the primary topic) discussing Obama's statement that within 5 years, the US would have a car battery that would achieve 130 miles per gallon.   While that is a non-sensical statement from an engineering standpoint, it was made by a career politician who is also an attorney - that is, he has zero background in this.  He did refer to Energy Secretary Chu, a Nobel-prize-winning physicist who should have known better than to make such a statement.  However, it is possible that Obama got it wrong and mis-quoted Secretary Chu.

Batteries contain what is referred to as amp-hours, not gallons, and the amp-hours are available at a certain voltage (within a relatively low tolerance).  That is, the battery's voltage will decline somewhat as the battery is discharged.  Standard car batteries in the US operate at 12 volts, nominally.  Electric car batteries operate at far higher voltages, and this varies depending on the manufacturer.  

At some point in the commentary on WUWT, nuclear power plants were brought up and their virtues were extolled.  I, of course, stand ready to refute any and all such extollations because nuclear power is about the worst way to generate electricity known to man.

As support for my proposition, I cited two studies, one being the excellent analysis by Craig A. Severance, CPA, where he produced results that show a new  US-built nuclear power plant must charge 25 to 30 cents per kWh in order to pay for the investment plus operating costs.    Unfortunately, that paper does not appear to be available on the internet at this time.  Even then, Severance's number is too low because it did not reflect the subsequent US requirement that all new nuclear power plants be designed and constructed to withstand a direct hit from a large commercial aircraft.  Furthermore, the new plants must be designed so that not only the containment building is intact, but also the cooling system and the spent fuel storage area.   I have stated that this requirement should add another 5 cents per kWh to that calculated by Severance, thus bringing the cost to 35 cents per kWh.

The second study I cited, since the doubters in the comment thread demanded "proof," was from the California Energy Commission, a state agency, and their published comparison of multiple generating technologies for both 2009 and for 2018.  The report is "Comparative Costs of California Central Stations Electricity Generation" dated January 2010. One of the technologies is a single reactor, Westinghouse AP-1000 design that produces 960 MW.  Their assessment also concluded that a merchant nuclear plant's levelized cost of electricity is 34 cents per kWh.  They also assessed Investor Owned Utilities and Publicly Owned Utilities, with costs at 27 and 17 cents, respectively.

The WUWT commenters of course disagreed, and cited some other studies giving the cost of power from new nuclear plants at 3 to 6 cents per kWh.   This is, of course, ludicrous.  Anyone with the slightest background in cost estimating and financial analysis will conclude that no project can be built without massive subsidies that costs $8 to $10 billion, requires 4 to 8 years construction time, and produces only 1000 MW electricity at maximum output, plus relies on sale of electricity at 6 cents per kWh.  One must bear in mind that the plant also must shut down periodically for refueling and will incur other operating problems that curtail generation.  Therefore, over the long term, the 1000 MW will be derated to approximately 850 to 900 MW.

There are several key points to keep in mind about the true costs of nuclear power.  First, what is the cost of the design, materials, services, equipment, and labor to construct.   This would be the "instant" cost, that is, if it could all be built in a single month, what would it cost?  Typically, the instant cost is approximately $4 billion for a 1000 MW plant.  California Energy Commission (CEC) used $3.95 billion for 960 MW.   But, of course a nuclear power plant cannot be constructed in a single month and will be built over a period of several years.   The longer the construction schedule, the more that two other items become important: materials and labor inflation, and financing costs.

The great debatable item is the time to construct.  Nuclear power proponents insist that new plants will be built in only 4 years, or 48 months from groundbreaking to first generation.  This has never been the case in the US, and indeed throughout most of the world.  Typical for the US is 7 to 10 years, and some lasted much, much longer.  Even in Europe, the plant being built in Finland is years behind schedule and has issued no expected completion date  (see second half of my article at this link).

As the construction period increases, so too will the costs of materials and labor increase due to inflation.  Nuclear power plants require great quantities of concrete and steel, which are subject to cost inflation.  Also, each year that construction continues adds a higher and higher amount of interest on the financing costs.  For a large nuclear project, it is common for the financing interest alone to reach $1 billion per year in the latter years of construction, especially for a two-reactor plant with both reactors proceeding at the same time.

Another key aspect of a nuclear power plant being constructed is the need to reassess the design and incorporate any lessons learned from recent disasters or mishaps from the approximately 400 operating reactors around the world.  This is frequently cited by nuclear advocates as the key reason plants' costs spiraled out of control in the 70s and 80s, and they insist that such days are behind us and nuclear power plant design is now mature.  This is not the case, as the recent disaster at Japan's Fukushima nuclear complex clearly demonstrated.  That disaster was the result of two almost-simultaneous events, a large earthquake and a large tsunami a few minutes later.   Many nuclear advocates point to the land-locked sites of nuclear power plants in the US and concluded that they are perfectly safe because a tsunami cannot possibly reach them.  However, a recent earthquake on the East Coast shook at least one nuclear power plant and the structural damage is not yet clear.  The simple fact is that we do not know how to predict the largest earthquake that could strike.  We could design for an earthquake of magnitude 7.0 and then experience an earthquake of 8.0 or even 8.5.

Also, earthquakes are not all the same.  Some shake the ground from side to side, others have more vertical shaking.  Some are a combination.  Designs for such earthquakes are very complex.

Yet another key aspect of new nuclear power plants is the intense opposition by well-funded groups that bring lawsuits to halt construction.  The anti-nuclear sentiment is very strong around the world, and in the US.  The memories of the faulty construction, gross abuses during construction, and sheer incompetence of some project management from the 70s and 80s is still very fresh.  If the next round of nuclear power plants also has the same shoddy workmanship, intimidation and threats to inspectors and auditors, the advent of the internet will ensure rapid whistleblowing.  Delays will inevitably result.

Furthermore, it can now be shown via various studies that new nuclear power is not a cost-effective means of generating power  (see Figure 1, below).  It can be argued that the state governing boards must agree to power projects that provide safe, reliable, and low-cost power to the public.   Nuclear power does not fit those criteria.

Figure 1

Relative Costs of Power Generation in 2018

Source: California Energy Commission study from January 2010

Note that the Nuclear Power Plant is the most expensive, except for the

three simple-cycle natural gas plants that are used for peak power only

Finally, nuclear power plants consume far more water per unit of electricity produced than almost any other technology.  The reactor must be kept cooled, and the steam from the turbines must be condensed.  A nuclear plant will deliver approximately 3 times as much heat into cooling water as is delivered as electricity.  In contrast, a natural gas-fired combined cycle gas turbine plant will use approximately one-fourth of that cooling water.  Stated another way, the nuclear plant will require 4 to 5 times as much cooling water.  By cooling water, the meaning here is water that is evaporated in the heat removal process.

For all these reasons, nuclear power plants should never be built.  There are far safer, more cost effective, and less water intensive means of producing electricity for the future.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California

Saudis to Build Nuclear Plants at $7 Billion Each

"[T]he kingdom [of Saudi Arabia] will build 16 nuclear reactors by 2030 at a cost of around $7 billion each." - source.


In an ever-growing list of countries that either are building, or plan to build, nuclear-powered electric power plants, none are building at an affordable cost.  The USA, Finland, China, now Saudi Arabia all publish numbers that indicate a new, 1,000 MW reactor costs anywhere from $7 to $11 billion.  China is building a six-reactor plant for $66 billion, or $11 billion apiece.   The recently-cancelled South Texas Nuclear Project Expansion in the USA was to cost $17 billion, but that was just a dream; no shovel had been turned and no delays had yet started, with the inevitable increase in financing costs.  Fully costed, the STNP expansion would be at least $22 billion, more likely $25 billion.  


At these price levels, electricity must be sold for at least 35 cents per kWh, just to pay for the investment and provide a reasonable return.  


The Saudis indicated that their growing economy requires a 7 percent per year increase in electric power production.  They don't want to burn oil for making power, they would rather sell the oil.  Thus, the need for nuclear power plants.  The Saudis are smart, as I've written before, but they are mistaken on this one.  No economy grows, nor can it grow, at much above 3 percent per year for very long.  A temporary growth spurt might occur of 7 or 8 percent for a year or two, but this is not sustainable.  


Thus, there is no need for the nuclear power plants. The Saudis should, instead, do what the rest of the world does where economics are important: build combined-cycle gas turbine power plants (CCGT).  The Saudis have access to natural gas in the Middle East, and could easily purchase what they don't self-produce.  These CCGT power plants are much more efficient than conventional steam-based power plants, at 59 percent compared to approximately 35 percent.  They also do not use nearly as much water, which is a huge consideration for nuclear power plants.  Where, and how, will the Saudis obtain sufficient cooling water for 16 nuclear power plants?  Nuclear plants require at least twice as much water for cooling, compared to the CCGT plants.  Of course, the nuclear power plants could be built on the coast and use seawater.  This greatly increases the cost of the plant because seawater is more corrosive than fresh water. 


Perhaps the Saudis have another motive, from watching what the Iranians have done in the past several years with their nuclear "power" program.  Perhaps, just perhaps, the Saudis are in a race for parity and do not want the Iranians to have the upper hand, even in nuclear power plants. 


Roger E. Sowell, Esq. 
Marina del Rey, California

EPA CO2 Endangerment Finding Review by OIG

The US EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) released today its report titled “Procedural Review of EPA’s Greenhouse Gases Endangerment FindingData Quality Processes.”

It is important to note that this was a Procedural review and not a Substantive review of the underlying science.   Procedural review merely means comparing the procedures that EPA used to what is required under the various laws and regulations.   Substantive review means evaluating the data and science that EPA relied on in forming their Endangerment Finding.   The Procedural rules that EPA must follow depend on whether the Technical Support Document (TSD) is a “highly influential scientific assessment” or not.  OIG considers the TSD to be a highly influential scientific assessment, but EPA did not.   There is a higher standard of care, or procedures that must be followed, for a highly influential scientific assessment.  It is these additional procedures that OIG found lacking in EPA’s work.

Background

For some background, and a description of a TSD:  As the primary scientific basis for EPA’s finding, the [EPA] relied upon assessments conducted by other organizations [the IPCC, National Research Council, and US Global Change Research Program].  EPA summarized the results of these and other scientific assessments in a technical support document (TSD).  There are specified criteria by which a document is to be judged to determine if it is a highly influential scientific assessment.  OIG presents these criteria in its report as:

“A highly influential scientific assessment is a scientific assessment that: 

·       

• A) Could have a potential impact of more than $500 million in any
  year on either the public or private sector, or
  
  
  B) Is novel, controversial, or precedent setting, or has significant
  interagency interest.”

OIG stated the level of peer review for the highly influential scientific assessments, and goes on to say that:

“For highly influential scientific assessments, OMB guidance requires more attention to peer review consideration such as individual versus panel review, timing, scope of the review, selection of reviewers, disclosure and attribution, public participation, and disposition of reviewer comments. If the material to be disseminated falls within OMB’s definition of highly influential scientific assessment, OMB requires the agency to adhere to the peer review procedures identified in Section III of its bulletin.

OMG guidance also requires that agencies certify compliance with the requirements of the bulletin and information quality guidelines when using influential scientific information or highly influential scientific assessments to support a regulatory action. This certification and other relevant materials should be included in the administrative record for the action.”

Next, OIG discussed what the EPA did procedurally.  “EPA had the TSD reviewed by a panel of 12 federal climate change scientists. This review did not meet all [Office of Management and Budget] OMB requirements for peer review of a highly influential scientific assessment primarily because the review results and EPA’s response were not publicly reported, and because 1 of the 12 reviewers was an EPA employee.”

No public reporting of the 12 scientists’ review, no public reporting of EPA’s response to that review, and having an EPA staff member as one of the 12 scientists were cited as procedural errors. This is essentially, for the first two errors, a lack of transparency.  The public does not know what the reviewers found and reported, nor the EPA’s response, if any.  Were the findings unanimous?  Or, was there a split of opinion?  Did the EPA ignore the review panel’s findings?  At this point, we don’t know.   The obvious conflict of interest from the reviewer who is an EPA staff member should have made his or her opinion or vote irrelevant.   OMB requires an external peer review.

Reasons Given by EPA why TSD was not Considered a Highly Influential Scientific Assessment

“They [EPA} noted that the TSD consisted only of science that was previously peer reviewed and that these reviews were deemed adequate under the Agency’s policy. They also stated that, as described in the final Federal Register notice, the Administrator primarily relied upon assessments conducted by other organizations rather than the TSD, which summarizes the conclusions and findings of these other assessments.”

End Results

It appears that the OIG will allow the Endangerment Finding to stand, and is recommending only that EPA revise its procedures for future.   This could be a wrong interpretation, however nowhere in the OIG report is the EPA required to revise or re-issue the missing transparency documents, nor hold a second and independent review by qualified scientists. 

The fact that only procedures were evaluated means that the clearly false statements and conclusions of many of the peer-reviewed papers and documents were considered acceptable by EPA.  As reported earlier on SLB, the EPA accepted such wildly inaccurate statements as glaciers disappearing in the Himalayas.  Also, as the State of Texas wrote in their recent petition, regarding the Climategate emails,  

"[t]he emails do not reflect the work of objective

scientists dispassionately conducting their work and zealously pursuing the truth. Rather

they reveal a cadre of activist scientists colluding and scheming to advance what they

want the science to be—even where the empirical data suggest a different outcome." Also, "to the extent their [these scientists'] objectivity, impartiality, truthfulness, and scientific

integrity are compromised or in doubt, so too is the objectivity, impartiality, truthfulness,

and scientific integrity of the IPCC report, the CRU temperature data, the NOAA

temperature data, and other scientific research that is shown to have relied on their

compromised research."

Texas' petition also shows how the IPCC authors manipulated the climate temperature data, citing the by-now infamous email of using a "trick" to "hide the decline." Also, especially egregious data manipulation is discussed with Russian and New Zealand temperature data. Such manipulation showed undue warming. Also, the IPCC admitted they have lost critical climate data.

Then the real fun begins, with several major discredited claims, using non-peer-reviewed sources. These include Himalayan glaciers receding faster than anyone thought (the aren't). Also, Chinese temperature data was seriously flawed, and had no source documents. They made up the data. Next, the claim that 55 percent of the Netherlands is below sea level, and subject to inundation from sea level rise. This is erroneous, as only 26 percent is below sea level. The fourth and final example included in the Petition for Reconsideration is the wild claim that "up to 40 percent of the Amazonian rain forest could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation." This was from the non-scientific, but wildly agenda-driven World Wildlife Federation, the WWF.

Apparently, these types of "peer-reviewed" scientific conclusions on the impact of man-made CO2 on the planet's climate are acceptable to the US EPA.  

Roger E. Sowell, Esq. 

Marina del Rey, California

US Long-Term Temperature Trend from NCDC

There is a problem in the NCDC data (National Climatic Data Center, US Department of Commerce, NOAA Satellite and Information Service) for the United States.    The problem is that the reported average temperature trend for the US does not agree with the mean, nor the area-weighted average, of the 48 contiguous states.   NCDC reports the temperature trend for the 48 contiguous states is 1.2 degrees F per century.  However, the mean of the individual states is 0.78 degrees F per century, and the area-weighted average for the 48 states is 0.74 degrees F per century.

This is a problem.  If the NCDC cannot get it right, how much of their data is wrong, and how many other statements issuing from there are also wrong?

Below (Figure 1) is a simple table, listing each of the contiguous 48 states in the US, alphabetically, with the temperature trend next to each state, in degrees F per century.

Figure 1

US 48 Contiguous States and Long-term Temperature Trend, Deg F/Century

Data from US NCDC

The area-weighted average was computed by weighting each temperature trend by the relative geographical area of each state.  This does not change the average much, but gives a better number because small states (Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, etc.) do not have an undue influence over  large states (Texas, Montana, California, etc.)  

Other things pop out upon closer inspection of this table.  

There is a problem of uneven heating in adjacent states.  As an example, Texas shows a trend of zero degrees F per century, yet its neighboring state to the north, Oklahoma, is warming at 0.7 degrees F per century.  This is not likely, nor is it due to CO2 or any other so-called "greenhouse" gases in the atmosphere.  As I have stated before, how does CO2 know to ignore the entire state of Texas, yet concentrate its radiant heat beams on Oklahoma?   Note that, in earlier posts on SLB, I pointed out that adjacent cities have grossly different warming trends, again showing that CO2 cannot do what climate scientists claim it does.  

This gets even worse when one examines Texas' westerly neighbor, New Mexico.  New Mexico is warming at the rate of 0.9 degrees F per century.  How does CO2 know to focus its beams on New Mexico, yet ignore Texas?

Another example is the pair of states, Oklahoma and Arkansas.  Oklahoma, as stated just above, is warming at just under the national average at 0.7 degrees F per century.  Meanwhile, its neighbor to the east, Arkansas, is cooling at minus 0.3 degrees F per century.   Again, one must question how is this possible, if CO2 is responsible for the warming?  How can Arkansas be cooling?   I've been to Arkansas and can attest to the great lush green growth in that state, as CO2 abounds.  

Yet another example is the adjacent states of North Dakota and South Dakota.  North Dakota is warming at the alarming rate of 2.5 degrees F per century.  Its neighbor to the south, South Dakota, however is warming at half that rate, 1.2 degrees F per century.    How does CO2 know to focus so much energy from its heat rays on North Dakota? 

Yet another example is the adjacent states of Pennsylvania, and New York.  Both are of comparable size and located in the Northeast.  Pennsylvania is warming very slightly at 0.1 degrees F per century.  However, New York to its immediate north is warming at a much higher rate of 1.2 degrees F per century.  Again, how does CO2 know to ignore Pennsylvania and concentrate its heat rays on New York?

Then, there is the entire band of states along the edge of the Gulf of Mexico: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia.  Their reported temperature trends are zero for Louisiana, but negative for the others: Mississippi (negative 0.7 degrees F per century), Alabama (negative 0.8 degrees F per century), and Georgia (negative 0.6 degrees F per century).   Contrast those to Florida, immediately south of Georgia, which has a warming of 0.3 degrees F per century.  How could CO2 ignore the southern states but heat up other states? 

There are other curious adjacent states with wide disparities:

California: 0.7 degrees F per century, and Nevada to the east at 2.3 degrees F per century.  

Michigan: 0.1 degrees F per century, and Ohio to the south at 0.7 degrees F per century.  

Finally, the overall trend of 1.1 degrees F per century for the US contiguous 48 states is repeated on the US EPA's website, with the following text:   (note that the EPA website uses 1.1 degrees, while NCDC reports the trend is 1.2 degrees.  Perhaps that is acceptable for government work, and is lost in the rounding error.)  

" 

United States Surface Temperature Trends

Observations compiled by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center indicate that over the past century, temperatures rose across the contiguous United States at an average rate of 0.11°F per decade (1.1°F per century). Average temperatures rose at an increased rate of 0.56°F per decade from 1979 to 2005. The most recent eight-, nine-, and ten-year periods were the warmest on record.

Warming occurred throughout most of the U.S., with all but three of the eleven climate regions showing an increase of more than 1°F since 1901. The greatest temperature increase occurred in Alaska (3.3°F per century). The Southeast experienced a very slight cooling trend over the entire period (-0.04°F per century), but shows warming since 1979."   (bold emphasis added)

Meanwhile, the coastal regions of the west coast (Washington, Oregon, and California) all show a very sudden and steep temperature decline since 2002.    The average for the coastal areas is negative 21 degrees F per century.    One can only wonder why CO2 has abandoned the warming task set for it by climate scientists.   Perhaps the coastal cooling has more to do with the rapidly cooling Pacific Ocean along the west coast of the US.  

In summary, one can only wonder at what other examples of gross exaggeration are to be found upon close inspection of the data, and the conclusions arrived therefrom by the alarmist climate science community.  Also, the individual states show gross disparities in warming rates, from a high of 2.5 for North Dakota to a low of negative 0.8 for Alabama.  Adjacent states show gross disparities that indicate that CO2 cannot be causing any warming at all.  CO2 cannot act capriciously, but must act uniformly if it is indeed a physical phenomenon and not a figment of imagination. 

Roger E. Sowell, Esq. 

Marina del Rey, California.  Where it is indeed growing colder year by year.