NC Media Watch

Being #2 can be really cool - maybe too cool?

Russ Steele

As we come to the end of 2008, the sun remains spotless with 266 spotless days. This makes 2008 the second least active year behind 1900. Joe D'Aleo at ICECAP has a year end analysis.

The total number of spotless days this solar minimum is now at around 510 days since the last maximum. The earliest the minimum of the sunspot cycles can be is July 2008, which would make the cycle length 12 years 3 months, longest since cycle 9 in 1848. If the sun stays quiet for a few more months we will rival the early 1800s, the Dalton Minimum which fits with the 213 year cycle which begin with the solar minimum in the late 1790s.

In 2006 I wrote a paper published the Sierra Environmental Studies Foundation that summarizes the case for a return to a Dalton Minimum: TR0612-8: Cooler Temps -- Dalton Minimum Returns?

Global warming hype could be masking a more immediate climate problem. A problem that could have a larger impact on our lives than global warming over the next 20 years. Solar scientists have predicted the return of the Dalton Minimum, which was the result of two low intensity sunspot cycles lasting over 28 years. During the early 1800s the average temperatures in the Mid West were 2-4 degrees cooler than the 20th Century average. In many areas it was much dryer than average, especially along the California coast. We have already started to see some ocean cooling as we leave sunspot cycle 23 and enter sunspot cycle 24, the first of the two predicted minimum cycles.

You can down load a pdf copy from SESF Reports  Check out some of the other reports while you are there, including George Rebane's Numeracy Series.

It will be interesting to see where 2008 global temperatures fall, declining or rising at years end. Stay Tuned, 2009 is going to be an interesting year for sun watchers. I check SpaceWeather.com every morning for the latest sunspot information. 

Riding with a tax collector on board

Russ Steele

The title of this post is the same title on an article I wrote for he Capitol Journal, which was published in December of 2004.

 "Gasoline is approaching, or is over $2.00 dollars a gallon depending on where you live. Rising gasoline prices are forcing gas guzzling vehicles owners to take a second look at more fuel-efficient hybrids. Buyers are no longer forced to compromise on space, as they did when purchasing the innovative Honda Insight or Toyota Prius. They can now choose hybrid full size pickup trucks, SUVs and high performance sedans. Large-scale acceptance of these new fuel-efficient vehicles will have a long-term impact on the nations transportation infrastructure, according to transportation experts."

You can read the whole article PDF here.

Now four years later we learn that the issue of putting a tax collector on every vehicle has come up in Oregon again.  Hasso Hering writes in the Albany [Oregon] Democrat-Herald: Kulongoski to pursue mileage tax

A year ago, the Oregon Department of Transportation announced it had demonstrated that a new way to pay for roads — via a mileage tax and satellite technology — could work.

Now Gov. Ted Kulongoski says he’d like the legislature to take the next step.

As part of a transportation-related bill he has filed for the 2009 legislative session, the governor says he plans to recommend “a path to transition away from the gas tax as the central funding source for transportation.”

What that means is explained on the governor’s website:

Global warming and global cooling are cycles - enter the cooling cycle

Russ Steele

Click for a larger view. 

Don Easterbrook, Dept. of Geology, Western Washington University, has posted his AGU paper on potential global cooling on Watts Up With That.

Abstracts of American Geophysical Union annual meeting, San Francisco 2008:  Solar Influence on Recurring Global, Decadal, Climate Cycles Recorded by Glacial Fluctuations, Ice Cores, Sea Surface Temperatures, and Historic Measurements Over the Past Millennium

Global, cyclic, decadal, climate patterns can be traced over the past millennium in glacier fluctuations, oxygen isotope ratios in ice cores, sea surface temperatures, and historic observations.  The recurring climate cycles clearly show that natural climatic warming and cooling have occurred many times, long before increases in anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 levels.  The Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age are well known examples of such climate changes, but in addition, at least 23 periods of climatic warming and cooling have occurred in the past 500 years. Each period of warming or cooling lasted about 25-30 years (average 27 years).  Two cycles of global warming and two of global cooling have occurred during the past century, and the global cooling that has occurred since 1998 is exactly in phase with the long term pattern.  Global cooling occurred from 1880 to ~1915; global warming occurred from ~1915 to ~1945; global cooling occurred from ~1945-1977;, global warming occurred from 1977 to 1998; and global cooling has occurred since 1998.  All of these global climate changes show exceptionally good correlation with solar variation since the Little Ice Age 400 years ago.

The full text here.

If these projections are valid, we have to consider the long term impacts on California and Nevada County. Rather than more greenhouse gas regulations we should be worrying about how we will cope with increased cooling and shorter growing seasons in a major agriculture region that feeds the world.

Global warming just does not compute, says Hanson

Russ Steele

No, not that Hansen from NASA.  I have always been a fan of Victor Davis Hanson, a Roman  Greek history professor and modern thinker from Fresno, who seems to be well grounded in the world we live in. Therefore, I would like to share some of this thoughts at the NRO Corner on global warming and the current economic slow down.

It Doesn't Compute...
I'm very puzzled by the nexus between the current downturn and concern about global warming. Given that we were told we had to immediately cut back on carbon emissions (even before sustainable alternative energies are in place), largely by curbing our lavish energy-dependent lifestyles, why then all the concern about stimuli and global depression? Surely, the world right now is sort of what the radical Gorists wanted to see, since the current cutback in gasoline usage, and general economic slowdown are radically restricting the burning of fossil fuels in a manner that even the most optimistic green utopian could hardly have envisioned just few years ago? In other words, in the booming 2004-6 years, radical suggested scale-backs would have probably led to something akin to what we are experiencing now? So why the gloom instead of headlines blaring—"The Planet Continues to Green—as Archaic Consumption Practices Erode Further!"

But, even with the global economic downturn, what happens if CO2 continues to rise at the same pace is has over the last 30 years.  We diving less, using less power and that is what the greens wanted. I wonder did the greens checked with Mother Nature?  What was her plan?  Stay tuned we are about to find out, the sun is still quiet and the PDO has shifted.  Life is about to get very interesting.

More evidence Obama's science adviser is a left-wing partisan

Russ Steele

A Power Line post adds more evidence that President-Elect Obama has picked a partisan science adviser who is will to use the power of the state to silence any science research that confront his political views. This is not how real science is done, this is how politics distorts real science. 

Paul at Power Line writes about an exchange of letters discussing global warming and John Holdren, Obama's new science adviser:

Professor Tipler notes the discreditable role played by Obama's chief science adviser, the left-wing partisan John Holdren:

AGW supporters are also bringing back the Inquisition, where the power of the state is used to silence one's scientific opponents. The case of Bjorn Lomborg is illustrative. Lomborg is a tenured professor of mathematics in Denmark. Shortly after his book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist," was published by Cambridge University Press, Lomborg was charged and convicted (later reversed) of scientific fraud for being critical of the "consensus" view on AGW and other environmental questions. Had the conviction been upheld, Lomborg would have been fired. ...

I find it very disturbing that part of the Danish Inquisition's case against Lomborg was written by John Holdren, Obama's new science advisor. Holdren has recently written that people like Lomborg are "dangerous." I think it is people like Holdren who are dangerous, because they are willing to use state power to silence their scientific opponents.

I highly recommend reading the whole post at Power Line, it is an intelligent examination of global warming politics.

It is the reporting - Stupid

Russ Steele
I am sure we have all wondered why our relatives, the clerk in the store and your doctors receptionist all believe in the global warming hoax.  Well it could be how climate change is reported. One sided at best and out right advocacy at it's worst. Below is a front line review of TV Global warming reporting by Art Horn, a TV Meteorologist for 25 years.

TV Reporters and Global Warming

As a meteorologist who has worked in the television news business for 25 years I've had the good fortune to work with many street reporters. Given my length of service and the significant turnover of reporters that I have observed in that span of time I have worked with hundreds of them. Some remain on the local level for their entire careers and a few climb the ladder an make it all the way to the network level. In many cases there is very little if any difference in the ability of those who make it to the top to those who stay local. It is my observation that those who make it to the network level are simply those who network management feels can help generate the largest audience. This is fine, after all if you have a circus and there is no one under the tent than there is no circus.

Idaho cobalt mining book is almost done

Russ Steele

I spent the afternoon with my daughter Caitlin Steele-Williams working on the final edits on my book Cobalt: The Legacy of the Blackbird Mine. Caitlin is a book designer living in San Francisco and was home for the Christmas Holiday.  We took this opportunity to do the final edits, pushing for a press run in January 2009.

The book is about cobalt mining in the Blackbird Canyon of Idaho from 1892 to 2008. It examines community life in the 1950s on the edge of a Idaho wildness area where the mining company built a town for 1,200 people. This book is a hybrid publishing project, that combines a hard copy book, which is limited to black and white pictures, with a Wordpress blog called Cobalt Memories that will include additional chapters, color photos, and video clips which could not be included in the hard copy. Book buyers will have access to this additional material on the web at Cobalt Memories.

My hope is that other will join the conversation and add their own Cobalt stories, from personal experiences growing up the 1950s, to the legislation which led to the establishment of a super-fund clean up site, to the ongoing exploration and development in the Blackbird Mining District today.    

Fearless Fred Singer's Forecast - Frustration

Russ Steele

S. Fred Singer is an atmospheric physicist with a passion for debunking the global warming myths of our time, and has some thoughts on what's ahead for Obama's Green Team in 2009. 

Fred’s Fearless Forecast for 2009: Continued ‘no warming’ – and much else

So here we have them: Obama’s three scientists­Steve Chu, John Holdren, and Jane Lubchenco. All with sterling credentials – a Nobel laureate in physics, a recent president of the AAAS, a recent head of the International Council of Scientific Unions – but with minimal knowledge of climate science, except what they may have gleaned from reading the IPCC summary. Yet all three seem supremely confident that they will drastically change US climate policy.

Well, let me be the first with the bad (for them) news: Within a year or so, they are going to be an awfully frustrated bunch.

My fearless forecast for 2009: Big amount of activity by Congress, with lots of ‘Cap&Trade’ bills to limit CO2 emissions. Waxman, Markey, and Pelosi in the House; Boxer, Lieberman, Bingeman, and maybe even McCain in the Senate. It will take off, but it won’t fly: There is the prohibitive cost of any real C&T, raising energy prices and killing jobs -- while the economy is in the dumps.

CARB in conflict with the truth again

Russ Steele

First it was CARB AB-32 Scoping Plan economic analysis that failed peer review, and now we find out that there are some major issues with the studies that support the new diesel regulations. At the PolitickerCA.com we learn that:

"Chris Reed, an editorial writer for the San Diego Union-Tribune, reports that the California Air Resources Board is investigating whether one of the scientists who authored a study used by the board to justify new limits on emissions lied about his education."

Digging a little deeper at the San Diego Union Tribune blog we find that this little bit of deception was uncovered when CARB refused to accept a study showing that there was insufficient statistical evidence to support the claims made against diesel exhaust. 

Chris Reed writes on his blog:

Merry Christmas or Happy Holiday

Russ Steele

To those who celebrate Christmas:

To all others who visit here: