Watch the USA in 'polar vortex' deep freeze – live

How is this snow in USA and no snow in Europe going to affect the Public health in USA and in Europe?

Steven Goddard at Real Science, has two nice quotes in the link below, from Time Magazine (1974 and 2014) where they’ve managed to spin the Polar Vortex into explaining either cooling or warming. These people have no shame, or no common sense. I believe both to be true.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/time-magazine-goes-both-ways-on-the-polar-vortex/

It’s so cold it’s MINUS zero, not just your regular zero, in Detroit, Minneapolis and Pittsburgh!

Where’s the centigrade maps?

Also noticed that temps in the 30 – 40 degree range are now considered “mild” 50’s are down right warm!

Looks like Detroit is still using COBOL – } (-0 degrees)… Grace Hopper would be proud (albeit freezing….)

Now everyone, click your ruby slippers together and repeat: “There’s no place like warm, there’s now place like warm, there’s no place like warm”.

lsvalgaard says:
How can you have record rainfall in Detroit when the temperature is -2F?
How can you have a hail storm in August ? Surface temps to not necessarily match the air temp where precipitation forms and/or falls through.

Of some note:
The current “Record Lows” are those from 1492 or so to now.
Flint arrow points of the Pecos ones and Inca tools date prior.
Ask the people who live in igloos what they know of the weather prior.

What I worry about are the Seville oranges, which I need to make my marmalade every year. I believe the ones we get in Canada are grown in Arizona. They should be in the stores within the next two weeks. Anyone got any news?

According to bbc weather they have no reason to think that the polar vortex has anything to do with this weather. They referenced the Met Office who say the same.
They say it’s just jet stream behaviour.

Jim Cripwell says:
January 7, 2014 at 11:01 am
What I worry about are the Seville oranges, which I need to make my marmalade every year. I believe the ones we get in Canada are grown in Arizona. They should be in the stores within the next two weeks. Anyone got any news?

The western US is in a drought of record proportions so that may effect the citrus crop.

. A similar polar vortex breakout happened also in January1985 shortly after a very warm spell along the east coast of North America in December 1984. Could the past warm spell in November2013 in Northern Asia be behind our current cold spell. These events are both somewhat similar to a SSW event [ Sudden Stratospheric Warming ]which have been happening in December / January every few year but have been happening more frequently recently .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_1985_Arctic_outbreak

I guess for irony’s sake, cspan’s Washington Journal invited the Center for American Progress’s Director of Climate Strategy to spew their climate Change boilerplate. It didn’t take long to figure out what their climate strategy is; green technology boondoggles. I do credit him for being completely unfazed by today’s temperatures, he called it winter.

steveta_uk: As I understand it Polar Vortex = Jet Stream. Just sounds more … evil … so I have no idea what the Met Office is trying to say.

Leon, what your experiencing is not a “storm” per se, even tho the conditions are by definition “blizzard”. The winds from this “polar vortex” (it’s not as far as I can see, but really just a very large, very deep low (940mb), over Ungava at one point, coupled to the jet stream) are pumping strong winds straight down Lake Erie, giving you a solid enduring lake effect blizzard, that will persist until the low moves off and/or breaks up. This winter season has had its fair share early of lake effect snow, with lots of wind. Hopefully Erie will soon freeze and we can move on to “sedate” bright skies winter.

Berényi Péter says:
January 7, 2014 at 12:40 pm
More ice on Lake Michigan than seen in decades
According to Environment Canada, the Great Lakes haven’t had this much ice so early in the season since the late 1980s.
[…]
From a historical perspective, the current ice level is on track to do something we haven’t seen in decades: cover most of Lake Michigan.
————————————————————–
Why is it that a reduction in summer Arctic ice increases extreme weather in the winter on the North American continent while an increase in winter ice over the Great Lakes does nothing?

Anyone care to engage the desperate warmers defending their secular cult?
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/johnransom/2014/01/07/warmers-use-magic-to-create-the-illusion-of-science-n1772595
You’ll never convince these guys, but it’s fun to see them twist logic into pretzels talking about things they don’t understand.

This is what happens when the institutional memory (the media and the Meteorologists) of a country has self imposed Alzheimers.
This was NORMAL weather for this country less than 50 years ago. Every. Winter. Duh.
Good grief. I lived in NW Indiana and it got cold as he!!, it snowed a lot and the wind blew it into snow drifts that would be higher than the cars. Go look at some archival photos of the time.
This ain’t rocket science. If a pattern of weather happened once before, then it’s likely to happen again.
But because of a political agenda suddenly no one can remember the ’50’s or ’60’s or ’70’s and even in some areas the early ’80’s last century. Strangely enough this occurred in the exact same area that it’s happening again now. Imagine that.
(I can’t speak for earlier than that but my parents used to tell me about the storms that THEY lived through in the ’20’s, 30’s and ’40’s)

Not only do we have the only 3 counties in the country with a blizzard warning, but we’ve also got, with temps in the single digits (just rose to 7°F) the only flash flood warning in the country … the winds are such that they pushed so much ice into the ice boom on Lake Erie that it was breached and ice is flowing down the Niagara River and jamming up a few miles from Niagara Falls, raising the river levels for a couple miles upstream.
Current conditions in the country:
http://www.weather.gov/
So far it looks like most activities that were closed today will be closed tomorrow … still way too cold and we’ll all be busy slowly digging out … we should all be back to normal by Thursday.
In the meantime, for only the first time in over a dozen years, the NHL hockey game for tonight in Buffalo has been postponed.

Is it time for the USA to move over to celsius yet?

It seems as though you could model the earth as a heat pump that balances between heat leaving at the poles(plasma fountain, plasma structures that change) and heat coming in at the equator… We measured record cold at the poles so the earth will cool off..
Simple, huh…..

In the News:

4. Chicago’s resident polar bear at the Lincoln Park Zoo stayed indoors. Now, that’s cold.
5. In Minnesota, the record for AAA roadside assistance calls was shattered, with 3,000 members calling on Monday.
link

The polar bear stayed inside? No that is a real comment on the weather!

Does Dr. Monseigneur Gavin Schmidt still believe in warmer winters as a result of carbon dioxide?

June 4, 1999
Warm Winters Result From Greenhouse Effect, Columbia Scientists Find, Using NASA Model
….Other authors of the Nature paper were Gavin A. Schmidt, associate research scientist at Columbia’s Center for Climate Systems Research;…..
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/06/990604081638.htm
———————————————-
Nature – 29 March 1999
Simulation of recent northern winter climate trends by greenhouse-gas forcing
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v399/n6735/full/399452a0.html
———————————————-
NASA Giss – Apr. 23, 2001
Greenhouse Gases Main Reason for Quicker Northern Winter Warming
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20010423/

Climate change is real, it is happening before our very eyes. Change you can believe in.

Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7 says:
January 7, 2014 at 1:14 pm
“But the Coast Guard icebreakers on the Great Lakes have been busy this year”.
ABC News ran a (mostly) good piece about the cold from both an economic perspective as well as the impact on people. They had some good footage of icebreaking in the Saint Mary’s River near my hometown of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. I say it was mostly good because near the end, they brought out the obligatory climate “scientist” (or wannabe scientist) who claimed the cold weather is due to melting ice in the arctic.
As driveby journalists, they really can’t help themselves…

Thanks Anthony. Good article.
At IntelliWeather my favorite map is http://www.intelliweather.net/imagery/intelliweather/templine_nat_640x480_img.htm (National Temperatures with Isopleths – Updated once every hour. – Large Animation)
But http://coolwx.com/usstats/data/temp.png (Hourly United States Weather Statistics: Temperature (°F)) is very good too. Robert Hart also has /pres.png and /cloud.png

Tomorrow, in the (still) bitterly cold, as I get out to begin shoveling out at least a half foot of powdery snow, I’ll have to remind myself that in only 3 days from then we’ll have temps above normal, in the mid-40’s and rain … and Sunday will be even better … no rain, just sun … unfortunately, we still face ~3 months of snow.

poor saskatoon, always coldest. although winnipeg usually gives it a run for that crown every year. saskatoon is a great place by the way, booming actually.

Okay, where is Al Gore? http://tinyurl.com/FrozenAl

FYI, a certain Michael Mann has commented on cbc.ca news:
http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/Technology/ID/2428739814/
They say the best defense is a good offense, but really!

This all looks like the kind of winter weather I grew up with in Wisconsin (1960 – 1980). Seriously.
I was back in WI this year during the week of Thanksgiving. The low of the week was 6F and the high was 31F. Although the local mill ponds were frozen over sufficiently to be safe for ice fishing, skating, and hockey, there were no kids out on them. I guess it’s hard to skate and text at the same time…..
Big Green Lake (270 feet max. depth, Green Lake county, WI) seldom freezes over before January – maybe 1 year in 25 or so. It froze over on Dec 28 this year. It’s shaping up to be a real ‘old fashioned winter’ in the northern tier of the US and Canada.

7 Jan:NBC Chicago: Record-Breaking Cold Grips Chicago
-15 recorded at O’Hare at 7 a.m. breaks record Jan. 6 low set in 1894 and 1988
By 8:30 a.m., the official Chicago temperature had dipped another degree, to -16…
With the wind chill factored in, Monday’s temperatures were in the -40 to -50 degree range and even lower across the Fox Valley…
http://www.nbcchicago.com/weather/stories/Dangerous-Cold-Temps-Chicago-238467651.html

It’s winter.

I see there is a lot of comment in the US press about a “1 in 20 year event”.
For people outside the US like me, it would be useful to know how for back the ?instrumental weather records go back, so we can judge the actual magnitude of the event. Seems more like a 1 in 200 year event in some places.
Help anyone?

Greg Goodman,
In the very unlikely event that you had air warm enough for liquid water droplets to form above a surface temp of -2F, the droplets would freeze long before hitting the ground resulting in hail/sleet not rain.

The cold is coming to Europe next week. Me hopes for the same record cold as the US had.

Jimbo’s links etc… and other similar are what really counts here. Steven Goddard has saved thousands of fraudelant adjusments contradictory statements etc materials which can be used to completely and efficiently counter the warmistas

All that cold sucked down from North pole.
Expect to hear about “the lowest mid winter ice extent ever” as there will be less heat at the margin for a while. I wish there were put and call options on JAXA sea ice.

BBC reports that North American cold records tumble.

BBC – 8 January 2014
Weather records have tumbled across North America, with freezing temperatures even in the southern US.
The most extreme arctic blasts, blamed on a weather pattern known as the polar vortex, were said to have affected nearly 190 million people.
In Kentucky, an escaped prisoner turned himself in to get out of the cold.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25647963

I see that co2 is now the main climate driver, especially during the winter.

How do recent temperature extremes constitute proof that our climate is not changing? I’m not saying it’s conclusive or even good evidence for climate change or global warming, but it certainly does not support the opposing view.
This is obviously a politically charged issue, but I am hoping someone will have some kind of rational argument to give me on this point.
As you may have guessed, my beliefs do align with those of the so-called AGWs, but I am first and foremost a scientist (though not a climate scientist), and I am trying to keep an open mind, as difficult as that can be at times. I hope the fact that I am reading some of the articles on this site is evidence of this.

Gigabiting (@gigabiting) says:
January 7, 2014 at 10:37 am
One thing the polar vortex has shown us is how woefully unprepared we are for the record cold temperatures we’re experiencing. We’re particularly misinformed when it comes to choosing winter warmup drinks. It seems to defy logic, but a cold beverage can help you hang on to body heat better than a hot one.
Remember that most of the world drinks hot tea in hot weather, and Alaska leads the nation in per capita ice cream consumption. It’s counterintuitive but true—hot drinks cool you down and cold drinks warm you up.
http://gigabiting.com/what-to-drink-in-a-polar-vortex/
___________________________________________________________________________
Let me know when it gets cold, so far I’m not impressed but I’ll give you the unprepared, most folks today are not prepared for anything and further they’ll panic over nothing.

The warmistas on The Weather Channel this morning were saying that the bitter cold was caused by warming in the Arctic that “dislodged” part of the polar vortex and send it southward to us. They showed their obligatory graphics showing the “strong” warming trend over the last 50-60 years. For them to make such warmist points during the middle of such immense cold is interesting…

@Bob S.
Great to have an open minded person AGW-inclined persuasion. I think that the onus to prove premise that we are experiencing extraordinary climate change is on the Warmist camp. The Polar Vortex we are experiencing is the status quo for North America, as it was in the 70’s when alarmist proclaimed it heralded Ice-Age-Impending Global Cooling. (See Time Magazine via: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/time-magazine-goes-both-ways-on-the-polar-vortex/)
Note that we have changed from Global Warming (since the globe hasn’t been warming for 15-17 years — even with some interesting temp adjustments applied to the data) to “Climate Change”. Well, the climate always changes. I’m glad we’re not in the midst of an Ice Age, or even a “Little Ice Age”. The world has been much warmer (see the Jurassaic period or the Holocene Optimum) without any interference by man. Furthermore, the rate of temperature increase in the latest warming period (80s-90s) was no more rapid that the previous period (30s-40s — I’m sure someone else here has the reference to the charts I’ve seen in the past.)
What is remarkable is that the IPCC says that man could not have caused the earlier temperature increase, but causes the second (at a 95% certainty level). Yet, the rates were the same. And now, massive increases in CO2 during the last 1 1/2 decades, we have seen no temperature increase.
Few people here deny that extra CO2 from man has no contribution to the climate. We only note that, given physics as we understand it, it can only have a small and declining contribution with increased concentrations. Even the IPCC relies on Water vapor (the models to not predict at all reliably) to get the catastrophic warming.
I hope this helps you.

The purple bit on the first map looks very like the extent of the Laurentide ice sheet during the Wisconsin glaciation (the most recent one). Just sayin’.

Bob S. says:
January 8, 2014 at 6:49 am
“How do recent temperature extremes constitute proof that our climate is not changing?”
They don’t. The climate is always changing. The concept that humans have had any significant contribution to that change or that changes in our behaviour could have any significant impact upon it are what most analytically oriented individuals challenge. According to the climate models temperatures should still be rising along with the CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and they have not risen in 17 years. Models that do not predict should not be the basis for public policy. Warm has historically always been better than cold for human populations and such activities as food production. Without CO2 this would be a dead planet, ie no photosynthesis. There are so many erroneous issues in the AGW plan book one could write a book on the errors in logic, alone.
Monitor this site and you will have plenty of additional data and insites to add to your personal evaluation of what you want to believe.

Who’all wants to get in on a betting pool over whether or not, come the first week of February, NOAA will call January 2014 the hottest January ever recorded?
Side-bet on whether or not there’ll again be a suspiciously Russia-sized, Russia-shaped superhotspot centered on Russia and stopping precisely at Russia’s borders present in the land-based temperature record, the magnitude of which will be enough to skew the entire data set to record highs?

Bob S. says:
January 8, 2014 at 6:49 am
How do recent temperature extremes constitute proof that our climate is not changing?….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Try to get rid of the your preconceived notions about this site. This site has attracted and kept as contributors many scientists. Saying those here think the climate does not change is really quite insulting. It is an attempt to reduce us to unthinking idiots and thereby marginalize us.
For example try William McClenney (geologist):
New Geologic evidence of very very quick climate changes. link
An alternate view: The Antithesis
A discussion of a new paper (2012) Can we predict the duration of an interglacial?
Or try Dr. Robert Brown of Duke University:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/07/a-brief-introduction-to-the-detection-of-climate-and-weather-transitions-using-hurst-rescaling/#comment-1299461
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/01/ipcc-silently-slashes-its-global-warming-predictions-in-the-ar5-final-draft/#comment-1521678
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/18/the-ensemble-of-models-is-completely-meaningless-statistically/

Hi Leon,
I wonder if the blizzard you mention from your youth is the one my mom talks about. It would have been the mid 1940s. It was the year they moved to Erie County from Oklahoma. She describes the snow drifting to the peak of the barn — 40 feet (12m). I might dismiss that as hyperbole, except that I’ve seen the photo my Grandfather made of the kids playing in it.

@ Bob S
Thank you, in return, for your own level-headed response. For the two warming periods I suggest this chart for a beginning: http://d243395j6jqdl3.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/graph.jpg Note that between the two warming periods was a dramatic cooling period, even though CO2 was increasing rapidly. If CO2 can increase while the earth experiences rapid decreases in temperature (such that people worried about the onset of an ice age) what role does CO2 really play? Indeed, today’s “global temperature pause” begs just that question.
In addressing the precautionary principle you mentioned (erring on the side of caution), we must first talk about the costs. If we could eliminate the use of fossil fuels around the world right now we would be dooming billions of people to poverty. Already our misguided Ethanol mandates have raised world food prices making it harder for the poor to eat. Electricity is the engine that has lifted people out of poverty around the world and there is no real substitute source for electricity generation besides fossil fuels. (Nuclear could be a solution, but only if massively developed, and you will find Anthony Watts a great promoter of thorium fusion reactors — much safer than Uranium fusion and something neglected in our mad dash for nuclear weapons.) The de-carbonizing of the world economy would produce or continue massive suffering. To my mind, the needs of the poor must be put above speculations about AGW that lacks scientific rigor. (I recommend to you this essay: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/01/ipcc-silently-slashes-its-global-warming-predictions-in-the-ar5-final-draft/)
In addition, we must consider what problems we spend on. We spend billions of dollars directly as a nation on “green” solutions (and probably a trillion if you count indirect costs such as mandated wind/solar components to electricity). An asteroid impact of catastrophic consequence is inevitable. How much should we spend on that? The supervolcano at Yellowstone will erupt catastrophically. How much for that? An ice age will, inevitably arise. What should we spend on that?
Finally, about peak fossil fuel production. Is it inevitable that we will “run out” of fossil fuels? I speak specifically about methane. Methane is one of the most common substances in our solar system, occurring in places with no hint of life (such as Jupiter’s moon, Titan, where it rains methane). If methane is produced without dead dinosaurs, etc. (the fossils in “fossil fuel”) how can we be certain it is a fossil fuel here. Furthermore, any good economist will tell you we will never “run out” of fossil fuels. What will happen is that, if they become more scarce, they will
a) become more expensive making innovation affordable (whether it is better production such as fraking or it is alternative energy sources such as thorium fusion or some future innovation) and
b) be used less and less until, like whale oil, the are rarely thought of.
I hope this hasn’t been overly long. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

$22.2 billion in taxpayer climate change funding in 2013, with $21.4 billion planned for 2014 http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/legislative_reports/fcce-report-to-congress.pdf Table 1, p. 5

@ RichardLH
Thanks for that great resource. That shows the cyclic nature very well. However, it also shows an increasing trend since roughly the 1920s: the blue line in your link. That is more the issue, I think. The million dollar question: what is causing that trend?
@ Dire Wolf
RichardLH linked to a really nice resource for the historic temperature measurements. It allows you to easily take the convolution the measured data with a prescribed function width, so you can filter out the higher frequency noise in order to see the trends. In Richard’s link the green plot shows a remarkably regular sinusoidal oscillation with a period of roughly 60 years which is imposed upon an increasing function (blue curve) that could be interpreted as having begun circa 1920 based on the data shown. Now, let us postulate that the cyclical function is not anthropogenic since I can’t conceive of anything humans have done in regular 60 year periods that would affect the global temperature. The increasing trend is of unknown origin which is the reason for this debate if I’m not mistaken. I believe this because it explains many things: the two aforementioned warming periods and the milder cooling period in between could easily be explained by a sinusoidal function imposed on a monotonically increasing function. Additionally, the sinusoidal function has been in the decreasing phase over the last couple of decades or so, and the increasing trend has an increasing slope, so instead of a cooling period like that of 50 or 60 years ago, we have a flattening of the data in recent years, explaining the “global temperature pause.” Note that I’m not saying that the increasing trend is anthopogenic, but I don’t see why that is an invalid theory. The AWG interpretation is making sense in terms of this data, but I am open to other explanations. What is your interpretation of this data? What do you think is causing that blue curve?
Good point. It is true that we have to think about the costs of implementing the precautionary principle. This is something that is often overlooked. I do believe there will be costs, but I don’t think the poor are the ones who will suffer most.
First off, I don’t think we should just eliminate the use of fossil fuels immediately. I think it is high time we start phasing them out. This would be a long process, lasting probably a couple centuries.
Second, I completely agree with you on the ethanol mandates. They were a severely misguided and just plain ignorant attempt to burn cleaner fuel. Besides the negative effects on the agricultural economy, if memory serves, it takes about 3 gallons of gasoline worth of energy to process and create a single gallon of ethanol from corn, and ethanol has a lower energy content than gas. Granted it costs energy to produce a gallon of gas, too, the net energy gain of ethanol is far into the red. Really stupid idea. (Sorry for the soapbox.)
Third, the suffering poor. I am highly unconvinced that the poor will bear the brunt of losing fossil fuels. The metric I like to think about when it comes to poverty is income inequality. I want to show you two graphics. The first one shows a metric of income inequality by country: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/international/gini%20map%20large.jpg. The second shows the magnitude of oil production by country: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Oil_producing_countries.2010.png. Now, the correlation isn’t perfect, but income inequality tends to increase with greater oil production. On the small scale, this also seems to be true, since oil money often ends up in the hands of a relatively small group of people. Nigeria is an extreme yet somewhat representative example of this: http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/ross/NigeriaOil.pdf. It’s worth reading at least the first couple pages of that link to see my point.
Fourth, you are right, there is known source that is as easy and energy-rich as fossil fuels. I would argue that is the reason for our addiction to it. While there are no sources that are anywhere near as convenient, there are alternatives. You pointed out nuclear, which I also support along with Watts. Solar and wind are also pretty serious options. Solar in particular is good for developing countries, even disregarding contentious environmental impacts, solar is great as a distributed energy source in regions without an existing electrical infrastructure. A couple summers ago, I spent a month in Ghana in west Africa partially for the purpose of evaluating the viability of alternative energy there. It is a perfect candidate for solar, as I suspect many developing countries are. Outside the larger cities, electrical infrastructure is non-existent. Most smaller villages have no access to electricity, and they will travel hours, believe it or not, in order to charge their cell phones (oddly enough, almost everyone has one). They also have no access to refrigeration for food, or more importantly, medicines. Solar panels have been deployed in a handful of these communities, and they are a huge boost to quality of life, and much, much cheaper than extending the electrical infrastructure or running a generator. Long story short, there are viable alternatives for fossil fuel, and even more convenient ones in select cases. I think they are worthy of being developed further.
Fifth, I really find it hard to appreciate that article with it’s accusatory, one-sided, and subjective language. It is articles like that that gave me my initial negative impressions of this website. But aside from that, looking at the data the article presents, yes the initial predictions of the AGW do seem to be overblown. This goes to show the unreliability of predictions, since they are exactly that: predictions. Does that prove that the current estimates are overblown, too? What I find more disturbing about the data presented is the final figure with the “observations” listed out to the year 2050. That is a prediction, too, and it assumes temperatures will rise linearly at the same rate as the last 60 years. I’m no climate scientist, but that is way oversimplified. I don’t think we should base our public policy solely on these predictions, nor do we. If our government truly adhered to all the AGW warnings, we would be spending a heck of a lot more on climate research and energy alternatives than we do today. The AGWs have not “won” if you want to look at this issue in an adversarial light, nowhere close.
On your next point, the difference between the catastrophes you listed and the issue in question is that, assuming the AGW camp is correct, this potential catastrophe is avoidable and we know how to mitigate it’s effects. The sun will die out in 3 billion years. Today, we have no way of changing that, and we have more pressing issues, so we should spend $0 on that problem.
I feel like you’re arguing semantics with methane not necessarily being a fossil fuel. I think the point is moot. No matter where it comes from, it’s supply is finite on this planet. And producing more would take more energy than you will get back from burning it (conversion efficiencies are less than unity).
The economist’s argument is one I’ve heard before, and while technically true, it ignores important details, and assumes that our rate of innovation and deployment of new tech will keep up with declining fossil fuel resources. My greatest fear on this issue is that fossil fuel production will decline too fast for us to keep up with it, and the transition will be disastrous. This fear is based partially on the fact that we have little idea of how much accessible fossil fuel resources we have left. The economist argument says nothing about the potential discrepancy between the rate of change and the rate of innovation. This is what I meant in a previous post by just sitting back and letting things work themselves out, along with my silly analogy about cheese and lions. Things will be much easier on us long term if we look forward and wean ourselves off fossil fuels slowly, rather than to react to an inevitable drop in their supply.
P.S. No worries about long posts. Thank you for reading mine, as I seem to be an even worse offender 🙂

@Bob S.
Took a little break for real life. Now, just several small notes/questions. Forgive me if this is repetitive of other discussions. I don’t have time to read everything. (I am amazed at how well you have kept up on these discussions.)
1. If, as you have noted the rhythm of the temperature changes over the last century is dominantly natural, why do we need to rid the world economy of carbon-based fuels? What is the utility in that if it is not causing climate catastrophe?
2. You seem to have some experience with solar/wind. However, there are facts that make conversion to these power sources in most of the world impractical. Both take immense tracts of land to replicate what one carbon/nuclear power source does in a much smaller foot print. The microclimate changes from solar/wind (heat islands and sound vibration), plus the impact to fauna (bird kills, especially of raptors, along with bats both from windmills and very hot collectors) make these problematic on large scales. In addition, both produce intermittent energy which must be backed up by conventional production (for industrial/electronic applications), thus demanding duplicate production and inefficient use of the back up source (usually natural gas).
3. The world’s poor are definitively harmed when they are prevented from advancing to 1st world living standards because of lack of adequate reliable energy. In the event of naturally occurring disasters (earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.) it is 1st world technology, construction and infrastructure that militates the death and destruction.
4. When I note that Methane may likely not have a fossil source, I am suggesting that it may not be a legacy fuel (i.e. the leavings of a past, no longer operative process). Methane fields regenerate. If Methane is currently being produced by the earth (through nuclear reaction or heat deep in the mantel) then it may not swiftly “run out”. The fact that it is produced without carbon-based life forms on other planets makes this a possibility that needs to be explored.
5. I am sorry you found Monkton’s article more contentious than you care. I am used to those from British government who express witty and combative reparte (such as on the floor of Parliament) and therefore take it in its cultural context.
Thank you again for being so kind as to take my thoughts in serious discussion.