A musical take on cap and tax… er, trade.
day 25
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I discovered just a little while ago that access to individual posts on this blog was unavailable and commenting was not available. This was because of something I did with some files on the server earlier today — not a web host issue. I knew that I should have checked after I was done, but didn’t.
It’s all back to normal now. It was only a 30 second fix, because it’s something that happened before and I knew where to look.
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A couple of days ago, a park visitor from Spain was injured by a Yellowstone National Park bison (aka American buffalo).
“At approximately 11:25 a.m., the woman and her husband were using a pay phone in the Canyon lodging area with their backs to the road. According to witnesses, two bull bison walked down the road, passing within 20 feet of the couple. One of the bison left the road, walked up behind the woman and butted her into the air. The couple, who were facing away from the road, did not see the bison.”
The woman was taken to the Lake Clinic where she was treated for minor injuries and released.
This quite an unusual event. Bison are not usually aggressive unless someone has encroached upon their space. We have seen numerous instances where people have gotten way too close to these critters and nothing happened. Park regulations require that a minimum distance of 25 yard must be maintained from bison.
Bison are very, very common in the Canyon area.
We still hope to make it to Yellowstone this year. However, we may not have as much time available as we had originally thought.
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Climate change legislation — The Waxman/Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act pass by a very slim margin today in the US House of Representatives. I actually watched some of the debate on CSPAN. I’ve got just a few comments.
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Climate change — I read material on climate change almost every day.
I am absolutely appalled at the gloom and doom, the-sky-is-falling alarmism that is in the media on a daily basis.
I’m not sure at what point I stopped simply accepting anthropogenic (human caused) global warming. I can say that for well over a year I’ve been reading a lot of climate change related material and have a much better understanding of the topic than I once had. My first blog post on climate was It’s not a hypothesis… It’s not a theory… it’s a CONSENSUS! last year.
Below is some of what I’ve come to believe and understand related to the Earth’s climate.
Carbon Dioxide Absorption Peaks
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You’ve heard the claims:
“The entire global scientific community has a consensus on the question that human beings are responsible for global warming.” — Al Gore
“In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth’s climate is being affected by human activities…” — The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, by Naomi Oreskes, Science 3 December 2004: Vol. 306. no. 5702, p. 1686
I’ve looked for the consensus. I haven’t found it. I’ll let you know if I do.
Even if there is a consensus, it’s of little value if the underlying basis of the consensus is faulty:
It is amazing that some political leaders proclaim the debate over global warming is “over” when some of the meteorological community’s best minds continue to clash over the nature and magnitude of a phenomenon that could entirely offset the effects of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. (Climate Change Reconsidered , the 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), page 17)
The hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming and the predictions of future temperature rise are heavily dependent upon computer models that do not incorporate many of the significant complexities of Earth’s climate. See The problem is in the modeling.
Is consensus science or is consensus politics?
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Predictions of global warming hinge not upon proven scientific principles but, rather, upon climate models — in other words, computer programs.
Unfortunately, even modern advanced computers appear to be unable to accurately model the complexities of all the diverse natural and human related processes that do or may impact global climate. Climate Change Reconsidered , the 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), states:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) places great confidence in the ability of general circulation models (GCMs) to simulate future climate and attribute observed climate change to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. It says “climate models are based on well-established physical principles and have been demonstrated to reproduce observed features of recent climate … and past climate changes … There is considerable confidence that Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCMs) provide credible quantitative estimates of future climate change, particularly at continental and larger scales” (IPCC,
2007-I, p. 591).To be of any validity, GCMs must incorporate all of the many physical, chemical, and biological processes that influence climate in the real world, and they must do so correctly. A review of the scientific literature reveals numerous deficiencies and shortcomings in today’s state-of-the-art models, some of which deficiencies could even alter the sign of projected climate change.
The first chapter of the recently published NIPCC report is “Global Climate Models and Their Limitations
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The sun wasn’t totally spotless in April. Unfortunately, the most recent new spot is an old spot.
“Say WHAT?” You ask. “How can a new spot be an old spot?”
Sunspot polarity, March 27, 2008 magnetogram
Right now, the sunspot activity is in a low period between sunspot cycles. Sunspots are features on the sun that are cooler that their surrounding areas. That’s why they appear dark.
Sunspots are also magnetic features, having polarity, with north and south poles, much like a magnet. Their magnetic alignment — where the poles are in relationship to each other — is dependent upon what hemisphere they are in and, more importantly to this discussion, what solar cycle they are in.
Sunspot polarity is reversed from one sunspot cycle to the next. During the solar minimum period when sunspot activity is at the lowest, sunspots from both cycles can appear. Most of the recent sunspots have had the polarity for cycle 24; they have been “new” sunspots. The most recent sunspot has the polarity of cycle 23; thus, an “old” sunspot.
Sunspot 1016, April 30, 2009
There were but 2 sunspots, as I recall, during the month of April, neither of them very significant. Overall solar activity remains low. According to spaceweather.com, “Until these old cycle sunspots go away, the next solar cycle will remain in abeyance.”
What does it all mean?
It wasn’t that long ago that scientists were predicting a much different level of activity for the sun. A March 10, 2006 NASA article headlined Solar Storm Warning, said:
This week researchers announced that a storm is coming–the most intense solar maximum in fifty years. The prediction comes from a team led by Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). “The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one,” she says. If correct, the years ahead could produce a burst of solar activity second only to the historic Solar Max of 1958.
It looks like they really missed the mark.
Last month, in The Sun Has Lost Its Spots — Part 2, I asked, “What happens when the solar indicators remain low for an extended period of time?”
A number of scientists are projecting that global warming is over, for now, and that global average temperatures will be dropping for the next 20 to 30 years. This is based on predictions that solar output will remain low for an extended period of time.

A number of indicators seem to be supporting the idea that global warming has stopped for now.
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I used to accept that the Earth was warming because of rising concentrations of carbon dioxide, although I was a little troubled by some of the media buzz around it. The electric power company I worked for had committed to limiting its carbon emissions at or below its 2000 levels, so there had to be substance behind global warming theory.
I’m not sure at what point I stopped simply accepting anthropogenic (human caused) global warming. I can say that for well over a year I’ve been reading a lot of climate change related material and have a much better understanding of the topic than I once had. My first blog post on climate was It’s not a hypothesis… It’s not a theory… it’s a CONSENSUS! eleven months ago.
Below is some of what I’ve come to believe and understand related to the Earth’s climate.
Carbon Dioxide Absorption Peaks
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Climate change “alarmists” want to stop the use of coal and predict that the fabled Northwest Passage will be free of ice and passable in the near future.

West Seattle Herald, Seattle, Washington, March 26, 1931
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Spotless Sun - April 5, 2009
A little over 2 months ago, I wrote about the extended lack of spots on the sun (The Sun Has Lost Its Spots).
The sun has remained essentially spotless since then and has been blank 87% of 2009 through April 4th. In 2008, the sun was blank 266 out 366 days (73%) and was the blankest year since 1913.
We are currently in the solar minimum phase of the solar cycle — the part of the cycle where the fewest sunspots appear. A typical solar minimum is 485 days. The current solar minimum is 594 days and counting.
A typical solar cycle is about 11 years in length, with lengths since 1900 varying from 9.8 years to over 12 years. The current solar cycle length, which began in May 1996, is approaching 13 years, though several years ago the end had been projected for Spring of 2007. According to sunspot expert Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, “We’re experiencing a very deep solar minimum.”
NASA has taken an interest in the current solar minimum and has solicited proposals “to study the causes and consequences of the minimum of Solar Cycle 23.” Scientists intending to propose a study have to let NASA know of their intent by April 17th and their proposals must be submitted by June 5th.
Besides a dearth of sunspots, other solar indicators are also much lower than normal.
The sun is the source of the energy that warms Earth and likely has a significant impact on climate and climate change.
What happens when the solar indicators remain low for an extended period of time?
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I’m not a scientist and will never be one; thus, I’ll never participate in the scientific investigation of climate change.
However, I do have a fairly technical background and do have some ability to do a little bit of critical thinking and evaluation, so I’ve been doing quite a bit of online research related to climate change. I must admit that a good share of what I’ve read is by people who are skeptics — sometimes called deniers by some of the most ardent global warming alarmists — to one degree or another of human caused global warming.
I’ve included links on the site to quite a few of the items I’ve been looking at and I’ll continue adding more as I find them.
For any who may be interested, the links can be found from the drop down menu on the top bar by clicking on References and then select the appropriate category, as shown in the picture on the right.
I’ll be going back to review a lot of these, including those that I have printed out, to refresh my memeory and to weigh some of the newer (to me) material against some that I read a while ago.
My reading is derived from a number of sources.
I have two google news feeds related to the topic. One of them sends me news stories containing the key phrase climate change. The other feed gives me stories that contain the words sunspot and solar.
I am also subscribed to several blogs that are related to climate change. Most of them can be found on the sidebar on the right side of this page.
Other sources include
those found on Google searches on words or phrases related to what I am currently trying to understand
links from other pages or sites
My blogging plans for On Climate are to publish on a semi-regular basis, probably a couple of times a month, but it may be more or less often than that depending on what other things are happening in my life and on my other blogs.
(In the interest of consolidating online material, this post and the reference material was moved from a blog that has been inactive since last year. — MpG 9/11/2010)
Blogs
Web Sites
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Climategate
November 21, 2009
While I haven’t blogged about it for a while, I read material related to global warming climate change every day, so it was with great interest yesterday morning that I read of the release of allegedly stolen anthropogenic global warming climate change correspondence.
I had woken early for some reason and was unable to get back to sleep. By 4:30, I was up and checking email, blogs and the news-feeds that I subscribe to.
A little over an hour later, I was downloading the files.
It’s going to be interesting to see where this is going to end up. Articles are already appearing in the mainstream media.
See new article: Climategate update.
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