More Fear and Costs on Climate Change

    According to the National Research Council (NRC), the Earth is warming at unprecedented rates, which will lead to floods, droughts, raging storms, and heat waves. A picture of a flooded street in Belmar New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy is included. The report goes on to say that these extreme natural events are related to US security. It doesn't say how this relationship exists, but it does recommend monitoring climate-change impacts on 12 to 15 countries because of this national security. In addition it also recommends that 50 or so other country should be watched because of potential humanitarian concerns. These items constitute the bulk of the report by Jeff Johnson in the November 19 issue of Chemical and Engineering News.

    Unfortunately, the NRC gives no reference supporting their conclusion of these impending disasters. Hurricane Sandy is used as an example, but no mention is made of a recent report on the Weather Channel that in the last several years, there was one other hurricane larger than Sandy. The report also does not mention the Hurricane of 1938, which devastated Long Island, New York, nor the drought that existed in the Southwest for several years in the 30s.

    In essence, we have the usual claptrap that extreme climate change is in progress and the implication that it is caused by carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. The government objective is to influence the public to approve a carbon tax in order to reduce such devastation. Note also that the national security issue has now been injected, which will require significant additional funding for "monitoring and careful selection of variables likely to affect climate change in some 12 to 15 countries, and the need to watch 50 or so other countries for humanitarian concerns brought about by climate change".

    I wonder how soon, if ever, we can expect some rational thinking on the part of government leaders. Climate change exists and has always existed. The basic causes are so large that the puny activities of man have little to no effect on climate. As climate change continues, it is man's obligation to adjust to the changes, not to try to influence those changes. As an example of futility, what would be man's chances of changing the relationship between night and day, which is distinctly a factor controlling climate?

Man-Made Global Warming

Open letter to the editor of Chemical and Engineering News:

Dear Dr. Rouhi,    I was extremely disappointed with your editorial in the November 12 issue.    You appear to be taking up the same drum beating previously used by your predecessor Rudy Baum. I can partially excuse Rudy. He is a political hack, but I initially gave you more credit as a scientist.    The issue is man-made global warming.    In your editorial, you dwell on the anecdotal instance of Tullo's house on Staten Island and seem to use that as a basis for stating that, "Weather events of super storm Sandy's magnitude and devastation are increasing in frequency". That seems to be a rather silly conclusion, if you relate it only to Tullo's house. However if you are relating it to more general experiences, what are they? The directors of the TV weather channel do not seem to support that view.
    If we want to talk about anecdotal instances, I can understand your inability as a young person to recall the Hurricane of 1938 or the Dustbowl in the '30s. However I lived through both those times, and although I was personally not affected, I recall many of the reported details.
    The Hurricane of 1938 missed Manhattan and Staten Island. It went a little farther East and smashed Long Island. It changed the topography, such that the Department of Interior had to redraw topographical maps of Long Island.
    The Dustbowl was of longer duration. Fortunately, PBS is now running a several-part series on TV. I don't think that you need to watch the few hours of presentation, but you might look at some patches and get a better idea of what it was about. See if you can find the sections on the dust clouds, which are very impressive.
    Notice that those two events, one of short duration and one of longer duration, occurred more than 70 years ago. I don't know what the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was at that time, but we could look it up. Why did it take 60 years to come to some conclusion, likely erroneous, that increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration are responsible for climate change? Sandy was no worse than the Hurricane of '38 and the Dustbowl of the '30s.
    As a scientist, you have an obligation to scientifically support any generalizations you may make. What data do you have which shows a connection between global warming and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration? If you can find no data which logically support your theory, you should stop beating the drum.
    One of my Associates said, "What we are facing is the adoption by political elites of policies to mitigate it [global warming].  They believe that it is "settled science" and are using the political process to promulgate laws and regulations intended to provide some control over global warming.  It is largely out of the hands of skeptical scientists to control the political process.  It will only be controlled by reducing the political power of those elites".
    Are you part of the problem?

The Hoax of Global Warming

From:   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released--chart-prove-it.html#ixzz2CK5e2bUd

 

"The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week. 

The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.

This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years."
    
Yesterday, Pres. Obama again waved the fear flag of global warming. Either the President is ignorant of the facts or he has a political agenda. I suspect it is the latter, which would be to establish a carbon tax on the burning of fossil fuels. This would lead to a significant increase in government revenues at the expense of the public, by which it will pay through higher electricity, heating, and gasoline prices