NC Media Watch

2008 International Conference on Climate Change

Russ Steele

Here is the list of speakers with bios at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, 2-4 March in New York.  It is sold out, except for press registration.  It could be the press has decided to ignore the conference. Why?  If you read all the way to the end of the list of 100 speakers, you will find Anthony Watts who will be talking about the Surface Station Survey project. Go Anthony!   

La Nina is growing stronger, could signal Pacific cool shift

Russ Steele

This from ICECAP and METSUL in Brazil this morning:

Preliminary data indicate that the monthly SOI for February will be around 20.5, according to the Australian daily monitoring tool. The final number will be released on Monday (March 3rd) by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), but it is already possible to anticipate a major and historic milestone. The monthly value for this February can be the highest ever, since data began in 1876, for any month of February.

If the average stays above plus 20, as indicated by the data released so far by the Queensland government, it would be the highest monthly value since November 2000. If we only consider this time of the year (Northern Hemisphere winter and Southern Hemisphere Summer from December to March), it would only be 7th occasion with a monthly SOI value over plus 20. The Southern Oscillation Index peaked over 20 at this time of the year previously in the years of 1889 (December), 1890 (January), 1917 (December), 1950 (December) and in 1974 (January and March).

Read the rest of the story here,  it includes a reference to Anthony Watts work and WOOD-TV's Craig James, both go to guys when you want factual information.

Are you in the 11% who will appreciate this?

Russ Steele

William F. McClenney, Professional Geologist has written a five part series he submitted to ICECAP for readers evaluation. He changed sides during his multi-year, painstaking research into all aspects of anthropogenic versus natural causes of climate changes. 

From ICECAP in his own words:

“The results of this research are startling.  Not only can I safely state that the chances of AGW occurring due to greenhouse gases (GHG) is remote at best, and if it did occur might very well be the first time in the geologic record, but that GHG theorists are simply on the wrong side of the decimal point in this debate.”

Here is a sample from Part Five:

And this is where we come face to face with the Nine Times Rule again. I fell for it, you fell for it, and possibly worst of all, at present anyway, is California REALLY fell for it. Which means this is a really tough rule to break, huh? California passed a law with a remarkable presumption. We are going to stop Global Warming (that’s all over the world, mind you), by passing a law which will erect a complex carbon credit trading scheme, which, at the end of the day, will no doubt reduce emissions of an innocuous colorless odorless gas which has never been a problem, and shows every physical property of not being able to really contribute to Global Warming.

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch, the planet continues to go drunkenly on its way through its orbit. Even with very questionable mathematics and physics for CO2, we are really going to not only pass laws, and continue to pass more laws against what isn’t the problem, while not paying any attention to that drunken orbit of ours which is not only predicted to, but has caused spectacularly larger effects on our climate? Is this what they mean by “pissing in the wind”? If we don’t divert all revenues from all carbon schemes (like AB32) to a “Fix Earth’s Rickety Orbit” fund, then we will have done less than a hill of beans (pun intended) worth of difference. Because those 400 foot sea level rises just keep on coming, right on the heels of those 100k year long ice ages. Those things are astronomical, and recent data shows many of the other planets are cooling off now.

Grasp the full depth of these papers you need read all five parts, which can be found at ICECAP under the title: The Sky is Falling - or Revising the Nine Times Rule.

If some one has the other side of the story, I would love the hear it. Please comment below.

Reducing VMT by 80% could impact Nevada County's economy?

Russ Steele

Energy experts from Monash University in Australia have calculated the carbon emission standards recommended by the government will require an 80 percent reduction in automobile use. The experts said that overseas airplane trips, and car travel needed to be cut by 80 per cent if there is any hope of avoiding "dangerous" climate change.  “The car is doomed,” said Associate Professor Damon Honnery. Details here.

If the same science applies to California, then automotive use will have to be restricted here also.  Californian's drive 329,267 million vehicle miles per year, this comes down to about 9,113 Vehicle Miles Traveled per capita. In a two car family that is 18,226 VMT per year. To save the planet an 80% reduction would leave each family about 3,646 VTM for critical tasks, like buying food and trips to the doctor.  Do you think that people will use their critical milage allocations for a trip to Nevada City and Grass Valley to do a little touring, have dinner out and stay in a local B&B?  I think not.

Reducing VMT by 80% would make commuting very difficult. A commute to Sacramento is about 120 miles per day, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year works out to be 28,800 miles a year. An 80 percent reduction in the commute VMT would allow a commuter to go to work about 40 days a year. Assuming the commuter would use his/her allocated VMT for work related tasks.

 

Nevada County's tourism and recreation economy is highly dependent on vehicles, especially cars. The Air Resource Board is still working on the solution to CO2, of which about 40% is generated by automobiles.  If they have any hope of meeting the mandated greenhouse gas reduction goals, they have to restrict or curtain the use of automobiles.  Could our economy survive if we had to reduce our VMT by 80%, 60%, 40%, or 20%.  As the ERC develops a new economic development strategy they must consider this pending restriction in automotive use by CARB in 2012.

Let's hope that global cooling saves our local economy from total disaster.

UPDATE:  American Thinker has more on the Australian Report here

La Nina is staying for a while, keep the duvet handy

Russ Steele

I was going post on the length of our current La Nina, but Anthony Watts at  Watts Up With That was ahead of my power curve. Past multi-year events include: 1949-1951,1954-1956, 1961-63, 1970-1972, 1973-1976, 1998-2001.

Some memories from those La Nina years:

Fourth of July morning 1951, Cobalt Idaho, five inches of snow in our yard. We had planned a picnic on Panther Creek. In stead we went down stream to a Salmon River picnic ground and huddled around a camp fire while we cooked our hot dogs.

Winter of 1954/55, shoved six feet of snow off of my the roof of my Grandmothers house up on Banner Mountain. We were with out power for about 12 days.

Winter of 1962 arrived at Loring Air Force Base. Snow so high that winter we had to tunnel from the Bachelor Officers Quarter to the Officers Club. After one storm we had to jump out of a second story window to dig out the doors. 

Winter of 1963 at Loring AFB, following our wedding our friends had to shoved out the front walk of our duplex so I could carry Ellen across the threshold. With 11 feet of snow in the yard, we could not see out the first floor windows.

Winter of 1972 Montgomery AFB, first snow in 50 years, daughters made a snow man.

Bought a generator in 2001, following multiple power outages in previous years.

Are Kansas legislators smarter than California legislators?

Russ Steele

Patrick J. Michaels writes in the American Spectator, and on the Cato Institute web site. His recent  article Carbon Copies  raises an interesting question in my mind.  Which legislature is smarter, Kansas or California?

The Kansas Legislature has wisely written a proposed tax on carbon dioxide emissions out of this year's energy legislation. That's the good news: As originally written by the Committee on Utilities, the Sunflower Energy bill's CO2 tax would have been a first, and a very bad precedent. The bad news is that the original bill will be copied and wind up before other legislatures that are more likely to pass it, like those of California and Oregon.

A CO2 tax will largely be levied on utilities that exceed modest limits on their carbon dioxide effluent, so consumers won't "see" it — except in their electric bills. They'll send in their monthly checks, quite unaware that the new tax revenues are likely to be shoved into a slush fund for solar energy, windmills, biodiesel, ethanol and other green gadgetry boondoggles.

Never mind that even the New York Times now acknowledges that biofuels add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than the equivalent amount of conventional fuels, or that the diversion of a third of the U.S. corn crop to ethanol production has driven world food prices up so much that we are now witnessing riots, including a major one in Jakarta last month.

Bad bus, bad, bad bus

Russ Steele

In the quest for sustainable energy sources that spare the air, some environmentalist let their enthusiasm got ahead of some rational analysis. One area the environmentalist's over look is suitability of a system for the intended task and the life cycle costs of the system. What are the operating cost from purchase to disposal. One local example was the compressed gas vehicles the Gold County Stage bought, and then they discovered the buses had power problem in the hilly terrain, and became a maintenance nightmare.  Costs soon out ran the benefits.

Now the folks in the Valley and Bay Area are having similar problems with their zero emissions  hydrogen powered buses. This grand experiment to power buses with hydrogen fuel cells sounded great at the start, but now reality has set in. Details are in a  Mercury News article by Gary Richards

VTA finds hydrogen buses cost much more to run than diesel vehicles

Green, yes. But a new report from the VTA says the $18 million state-mandated pilot project costs too much green - and raises troubling questions about whether the program should continue.

The most glaring figure: Zero-emission buses - or ZEBs - cost $51.66 to fuel, maintain and operate per mile compared with just $1.61 for a 40-foot conventional diesel coach. They break down much more frequently, and replacement parts are next to impossible to order, according to the report.

What is the Grass Valley Walgreens strategy?

Russ

Greg Moberly, a Union Reporter, writes the Council's Walgreens decision in limbo

A plan to build a controversial Walgreens in Glenbrook Basin remains on hold after the Grass Valley City Council narrowly rejected one appeal but held off deciding on another.

But these were the paragraphs in Greg's report that started me wondering about "the strategy."

The council held off on a second appeal by land-use planner Steve Enos of the Planning Commission's approval of the Walgreens - this time citing objections to its design and whether it was pedestrian friendly enough.

At the urging of Johnson, the Council agreed to form a subcommittee to review the design and consider options such as making it more pedestrian friendly. Johnson and Arbuckle will sit on the subcommittee and are expected to report back to the Council on April 8.

Back in the mid 90s when I was first appointed to the Transportation Commission, we were discussing the traffic impact from a future development. During a lull in the meeting,  one of the City Councilmen from Nevada City leaned over and whispered, "the strategy is to delay the project." Let me paraphrase what he went on to say. The local political strategy is to delay and delay some more, until the developers runs out of money and just goes away. If you just tell them no, they can file a lawsuit.

It seems to me this whole Walgreens decision has gone on long enough. I hope the delay, delay, and delay some more strategy is not the one being used by the Grass Valley City Council. How will we ever know if the design is "pedestrian friendly" enough, that is such a subjective term. If Walgreens has met the established Grass Valley design standards -- approve the application! I am sick and tired of looking at that run down closed dealership. It does not say much about a community that let an eyesore like that remain standing for years and years.   

Another "Watts Up With That" winner

Russ Steele

Anthony Watts writes this morning at Watts Up With That:

In doing problem analysis it always good to step back and look at the problem from a different point of view.  The same it true of data analysis, something that Anthony Watts did and was surprised by the results. His path to insight is too long to post here, so let me share his conclusion in the hope you will take a longer look at Watts Up With That.  The graphics tell the story, James Hansen and his team of temperature adjusters have distorted the data to match their view of the world, while the satellite data is more representative of the real world. 

I was surprised to learn that only 5% of the GISS data-set was on the cool side of zero, while a whopping 95% was on the warm side. Even with a rising temperature trend, this seems excessive. When the distribution of data is so lopsided, it suggests that there may be problems with it, especially since there appears to be a 50% greater distribution on the cooler side in the HadCRUT data-set.

Interestingly, like with the satellite data sets use the same sensor on the spacecraft, both GISS and HadCRUT use many of the same temperature stations around the world. There is quite a bit of data source overlap between the two. But, to see such a difference suggests to me that in this case (unlike the satellite data) differences in preparation lead to significant differences in the final data-set.

It also suggests to me that satellite temperature data is a more representative global temperature metric than manually measured land-ocean temperature data-sets because there is a more unified and homogeneous measurement system, less potential bias, no urban heat island issues, no need of maintaining individual temperature stations, fewer final adjustments, and a must faster acquisition of the data.

I have been a strong advocate of using the satellite temperature data on this blog.  This analysis coupled with my surface station survey experience strengthens my view that the satellite data is the currently the best estimate of the global temperature. But, it is just an estimate.

Who am I, and where am I going

Russ Steele

The local newspaper is poking into my back ground and community relationships, apparently looking for some conflicts of interest. Here is my disclosure before you read about it in the Union.

1. I am native of Nevada County, born in a clinic in Nevada City. I grew up roaming Pioneer Park, the slopes of Banner Mountain, and the Panther Creek drainage in Idaho. I was introduced to the  the "good old days" in Nevada County early in my life,  as my mother's side of the Thomas family has been here since the mid 1800s. I worked at the Empire Mine before it closed in 1956.  I lived part of those "good old days."

2. I am a cold war vet with 20 years in the Air Force as an Electronics Warfare  Officer, retiring as a Lt Colonel. I am patriot, with some insight to how the military works, yet think it is time to move beyond fighting the last cold war and move more aggressively in our war on radical Islamic terrorism. Kill, or be killed.

3. I have been an economic development volunteer for over ten years and a past GV/NC Chamber Board member. I am currently on the Economic Resource Council Board, a Sierra Environmental Studies Foundation Board member, and a Nevada County Transportation Commissioner. In my spare time I am a freelance writer, writing for regional and national magazines and an active blogger on local issues here, and on other local blogs, specifically the ERC blogs, SESF blog and The Dalton Minimum Returns. For several years in the 1990s I wrote a column for The Union.  I am working on two books one on cobalt mining in Idaho and the other on technology development in Nevada County from 1950 to 2000.

4. Only recently introduced to the "The Law" by Bastiat I find comfort and agreement in the ideas expressed in this small book on security, liberty and property. Nanny government is destroying our nation, restricting our freedom, taking our property, and doing little to make us feel secure.