Following up on the cold spring story from Friday, one of the favorite mantras of the global warming community has been that global warming brings earlier spring seasons. If a bird shows up earlier than someone in Yorkshire expected, a news story often appears at The Guardian or BBC explaining that it is due to “man made global warming.” A Google search of “global warming early spring” produces more than 300,000 hits.
So what happens when nature refuses to cooperate? Below are some claims from the top ten, interspersed with recent observations from the cold spring season of 2009.
Today’s NCEP forecast for the US – cold across the entire country + Canada + Mexico
Accuweather spring snow forecast through today. I’m guessing that no one is planting crops in Nebraska today.
Global warming causes quakes, early spring
Earthquakes?
Global warming brings early spring to Arctic
Three people based their spring backpacking trip on that theory:
Catlin Arctic Explorer Martin Hartley
Current spring conditions in the Arctic
| Weather |
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-35°C℃ |
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Mild winter rattles Russians : Psychiatrists warn lack of cold, sun, snow lead some into depression
Today’s NCEP forecast for Russia – severe springtime cold
Perhaps all that extra CO2 is being affected by the global recession, and is unable to find employment in it’s normal line of work – trapping heat.
Protesting snowmen on the unemployment lines – H/T to Jennifer Marohasy
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I think because of our impact on the earth and probably the changes earth has in rotation with the sun that we can no longer depend on the months to tell us what season we are in or should be in. When i was a kid April was definitely spring and it was always raining, but now its still snowing at points in April. so we should depend on the months, they’re just there to show how time has passed not how seasons have passed.
Pierre Gosselin (08:00:47) :
Ron de Haan
Shhhhhhhhhh…
Mentioning sunsüpots here will cause spots to appear. It’s Anthony’s Gore effect.
Really? We’re getting around five in. of snow today in SE Michigan.
SUNSPOTS! SUNSPOTS! SUNSPOTS! SUNSPOTS! SUNSPOTS!
;^)
Woohoo!! I’m definitely getting a Tshirt made up! 😉
There are always things like this happening. There really is nothing to see here.
Global warming? hah!. And carbon offsets? A hoax. I just go t 4 billion carbon offsets for free! I feel better.
http://www.freecarbonoffsets.com
So will you.
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>>Mention of the Spanish wind generated electricity reminded
>>me that you can see this in real time.
>>https://demanda.ree.es/eolica.html
Hey, that’s a really good resource. Shame the UK does not have anything similar. Can we get monthly graphs on it??
The thing that initially stands out is the diurnal variation – can you imagine trying to cope with that?
Its like ordering flour for a bakery, and the supplier saying, “well, we might deliver 200kg tomorrow, or perhaps 50kg, or maybe none at all.” I think most shoppers would go to another bakery…
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I am attempting to determine exactly how much mularky is in this story
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090406/ap_on_sc/arctic_ice
ralph ellis (00:37:05)
You wrote, quoting me: ” ” What really gave (the grid) fits was when we had to stop that motor (genetrator) during an emergency – when it tripped off-line they had some problems.” “
Mr. Ellis, I request that you do not mis-quote me by inserting words in my statement. I did not use the words “(the grid)”, nor did I use the word “(genetrator)”. My statement stands as I wrote it at (16:29:20), because I was referring to a MOTOR.
In general, for future reference, it is never a good idea to add words to a direct quote. Deletion is occasionally acceptable, but only if one uses an ellipsis “. . .” Adding or deleting words to a quote can get the writer into serious trouble.
My actual quote is:
“What really gave HLP fits was when we had to stop that motor during an emergency. We called them to let them know as soon as we could, but when it tripped off-line they had some problems.”
Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Aron (07:45:45) : A deep cooling would cut productivity in northern hemisphere farming while increasing drought elsewhere.
I think you will find that cold cuts productivity everywhere. Maybe more so at extreme latitudes than at the equator, but that would be extreme latitudes of either hemisphere. Australia and Argentina would have issues with grain production too…
Europeans, Chinese, North Americans and Japanese will be more reliant on importing food from southern nations
Don’t know how to break it to you, but North America would be one of the least food short places. We make vastly more food than we eat. Massive quantities are exported. Even with a 50% reduction, North America could feed itself. It is those folks who import from us that would have an issue…
Food production is global, and global producers will only export what is over their domestic needs. Australia, Argentina, U.S.A., Canada, Ukraine, and to a lesser extent S.E. Asia for rice are the major food exporting locations (with Brazil adding capacity fast). Everybody else is likely to have an issue (more or less in direct proportion to their present import levels). But if you think the USA or Argentina are going to be exporting grain while their own population is going hungry, think again…
We better let politicians know that they need a contingency plan to get developing nations to improve their irrigation of lands and farming method otherwise everyone suffers.
There are already such programs everywhere that produces food. Agricultural improvement is one of the key programs for just about every government on the planet with a fairly large number of the worlds Universities being “ag” schools. Texas A&M are the “Aggies” not for quaint cultural reasons but because that is their purpose, to improve agriculture. Ditto U.C. Davis (and U.C. Riverside that started in Citrus and still has a few thousand acres IIRC) and dozens of other universities all over the place…
Colonisation is no longer a possibility so rapid co-operation and development is the only option.
Actually, eating the cows and pigs is a faster and traditional option. Then you eat the grain that would have been fed to the livestock and it goes a lot further. 10 times further for cows. 3 times for pigs. (That is, the ‘feed conversion ratio’ for a cow is about 10:1 – it takes 10 pounds of feed to make one pound of cow). You actually get more than that since the grain is ‘dry’ but the meat is ‘wet’ so in reality you can feed about 20 people on the grain for each one eating meat today. Basically, we could get by if we just added a couple of meatless days each week.
This does not mean zero meat… Ruminants, like cows, can eat the leaves and stalks (“silage”) that humans can not digest. A well run farm can produce meat and grain and make more food than if making only grain, thanks to ruminants ability to eat what we can not. FWIW, rabbits are a very very small ruminant of the ‘hindgut’ fermenter type (cows are ‘foregut’ fermenters) so it is possible to use this system on a very small scale. Which is part of why rabbits are in the livestock exhibits at many county fairs.
This is also why goats are so popular. They can eat darned near any plant, make more milk per pound than just about anything else (one goat makes more than one family can consume, thus the popularity of cheese making) along with wool / fleece and all in a package that can be as small as 20 lbs for the dwarf breeds.
So if we ever really really had a food shortage, one of the simplest improvements we could make would be to take all the millions of tons of straw and crop wastes that we just let rot each year and feed it to ruminants, but keep the grain for ourselves. (Think of all the lawn clippings and leaves we ‘dispose’ of…) We don’t do this today because it’s cheaper to feed them grains than to truck all the lettuce trimmings out of the lettuce field and over to a feed lot; but that could change in an emergency.
BTW, there is also the choice of the “victory garden”. I grow a fair amount of my families vegetables on a plot about 25 feet by 40 feet or so. I’m still working off the green beans I canned at the end of last season and I’ve already got fresh green bean sprouts up for about a week now. I’ll likely have carryover of excess canned beans this year… Look at all those lawns and think lunch. Yes, it can be done and has been done before. Oh, and there are plenty of cold tolerant plants that could be grown. Kale grows under light snow, for instance. Peas also are cold tolerant as are Fava Beans. It’s a long list…
And finally, you can grow about 10 times as much food per acre in a green house as in an open field. All you need to do is apply power. If we head into a Dalton Minimum type even with very cold weather crimping food supplies, expect to see an explosion of greenhouses. So coal and nuclear power can be turned into food.
There is no shortage of food and we can produce a great deal more fairly easily. We most likely could not do this in less than a couple of growing seasons, so it is not a coping behaviour for a catastrophic event (like a volcanic winter) but it will work fine for slow onset events like global cooling.
And it does not require taking anyone else’s stuff or getting cooperation from any other nation. You can do it in your back yard on your own (and I do… as a hobby.)
>>Mr. Ellis, I request that you do not mis-quote me by inserting
>>words in my statement
So you were using a ruddy great motor instead of a generator?? Whatever, but the result is the same – electrical suppliers (the grid in the UK) do not like large changes in either supply or demand.
That is why wind power is so useless, and why THE DANISH HAVE NEVER USED ANY OF THEIR WIND POWER, despite being a leading producer of wind power (they sell it to the Scandinavians instead).
http://www.thomastelford.com/journals/DocumentLibrary/CIEN.158.2.66.pdf
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Roger Sowell (11:53:12) : What would be the effect of filling in the Arctic Ocean, so that warm ocean currents could not melt away the ice. Would this produce a polar region similar to Antarctica, with a permanent ice cap?
You don’t need to fill in the whole thing, just block enough of the currents that it can’t melt from below (such as the Bering St.) It would freeze through fairly directly and prompt the next ice age. Not a great idea…
Has anyone heard of such a proposal?
Not me.
ralph ellis (14:23:12) :
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>> The Chinese could:
>> 1. Start selling, in all markets, their US Treasury Bonds.
They dare not – it would cause a run on the value of the US dollar, and reduce the value of their immense dollar holdings.
Um, no. See:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/chinese-food-fight/
for a simple way they can do this and links to places showing they are thinking along these lines. They also broached the idea of a world currency as an alternative to the dollar… They know the game and they can play it very very well. There has already been a failed auction of UK Guilts and a US Treasuries auction that succeeded, but with higher rates than expected. This tells me the Chinese are already cutting back. They have also gone on a spending spree doing things like handing $10B to Petrobras to fund the completion of a new oil field (on the proviso that they get first dibs on the oil…) and made a pitch for a few billions worth of an Australian minerals miner.
It doesn’t take too many $10B to $100B dollar mineral plays to soak up a $Trillion … They can do this inside of a year without breaking a sweat. (Heck, I think I could get it done in under 3 months with barely a ripple visible if I had too – and was employed by China to do it.) Roll $250 B into shorter maturities so it looks like you are still buying. Divert $250 B into buying miners and oils. Repeat second month. Repeat 3 rd month. You now have $250 B in 6 month or less T bills. Sit back and clip coupons for 6 months or swap them for Euro bonds…
Oh, and just for fun, the IMF has been given the go ahead to sell 400 TONS of gold to fund global banking socialism (my editorial…) and they have specifically said they will do it institutionally so as not to disrupt the world gold price. So all China has to do really is offer to help them with their little problem of finding a buyer… and you can soak up another $10B right there.
There are also a bunch of countries activating currency swaps with the Fed (I think Mexico was just announced) so with little effort they could “help” these countries by swapping Tbills for that countries bonds or cash – then bleed some of those back into the broad global market for other currencies if desired.
Right now the world banking system is desperate for “tier one” capital, and that is what TBills and Bonds are. They can make any deals they want for any collateral in the world (often at 50 cents or less on the dollar for real estate right now) and dump a few hundred billion in one long weekend… just like the Fed has already done. So you go to Citigroup or UBS and say “I’ll give you $100B of US Treasuries and you give me a portfolio of these selected stocks, bonds, gold, real estate holdings, foreign currency deposits, etc.” Want to buy the best logistics properties in the entire world? Prologis needs to raise a few billion to rollover some debt paper (same is true for many REITS globally). So they can just ‘help’ the REIT sector and end up owning some of the best land in the world on the cheap, then they would love some inflation (dollar collapse) to raise the value of their real estate in nominal terms…
BTW, the reason a bank would give you cash for a T bill or bond is because the fractional reserve banking system lets them create money. If they have $1B of “Tier One TBills Reserves” that can create (depending on the reserve ratio required) on the order of $5B to $10B of ‘deposits’ fairly directly (through a process only of interest to economists, so I’ll skip it…). So turning a few hundred $B of Treasuries into something like Euros, Yen, Sterling, Francs, Reals, and Kroner could be done rather directly and almost overnight with little impact on the market price of Treasuries or the Dollar. Basically you say “I have $100B of Treasuries and I’d like you to turn that into a $100B checking account denominated in {insert currency desired here}” sign some papers and walk out with your checkbook… (At least if you are a sovereign country dealing with a money center bank…)
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>>They also broached the idea of a world currency as an alternative to the dollar…
I’m sure they would, because they know that this would cause a hell of a problem for the USA (economic war, just as the article says). The USA has ‘reserve currency’ dollars floating all over the world. If all these were repatriated and turned into World Dabloons (or whatever name they may get), the US dollar will tumble mightily.
Whatever happens, the USA has a problem. Its currency has been bouyed up by Chinese bond purchases, so if China stops buying and starts sellin, the dollar falls. Yes, China can play a cute game and pretend not really to be selling, but at some point confidence in the dollar may be lost and it will fall over a cliff.
Interesting times lie ahead, and not only in climate change.
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In fact, these issues are intimately linked. There is a large body of people, including the EU parliament, who are looking to a One World Government. This is why they have been looking for ‘World Issues’ that can demonstrate that the world needs unifying.
This is why we have Global Warming, instead of regional warming. They want to impress us that everything is global and needs a World Government to fix the problem. Same with the Global Banking Crisis. This is all driven at a high level, which is why all the media are playing the same tune.
The New World Order needs a One World Government.
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Birds moving north due to global warming:
http://www.physorg.com/news158261792.html
“Right now the world banking system is desperate for “tier one” capital, and that is what TBills and Bonds are. They can make any deals they want for any collateral in the world (often at 50 cents or less on the dollar for real estate right now) and dump a few hundred billion in one long weekend… just like the Fed has already done.”
OT but of common interest. Bernake(sp?) has said the Fed will soak up $1 trillion in T bonds if necessary, but it was reported recently that he has not begun to do so. My feeling is this adds inflationary pressure, if not instantly, at following offerings. Granted the huge increases in debt are largely only budgeted, to be spent, perhaps, in the future, but what risk for Stagflation exists in your opinion?
Odd things are happening in North Dakota. We’re coming out of a Dec-March period that was 5 degrees below the norm (that means it was really cold), and we’re just shy of our snowiest winter ever in Bismarck. But the robins showed up in droves several weeks ago. We still have a least a foot of snow left to melt, so maybe the lack of food sources has caused the birds to concentrate, but I can’t recall a spring when their numbers seemed so great.
As for the arrival of Spring, given the variability from year to year, I don’t know how anyone can identify a trend. I have a crab apple tree that over the past 20 years has bloomed as early as April 14 and as late as May 10.
The latest NCDC figures show Jan-Mar 2009 to be significantly warmer in the West, mostly normal elsewhere with Maine + N. Dakota cooler than average.
Most places, apart from the most Northerly Mid-West states are drier or much drier than average.
So 2009 in the US is shaping up as slighly warmer than 2008.
I wonder if John Holdren is working on something like that 😉
[snip – OT -see new story on main page]
Larry
Counselor, I think further research would show that HLP indeed is part of the ERCOT ‘gridded’ electric supply system here in Texas. Interconnected electrical systems provide benefits by what is termed (in the industry) “greater reliability and system stability”.
Adding wind power eats into this margin and reduces that which is
termed “power system security”, and ‘security’ does not mean ‘physical security’ e.g. putting up fences and locking doors, but rather the ability to main 60 cycle-per-second (Hz) operation across an interconnected region (‘grid’) AND also maintain a determined power ‘flow’ from generation facililties to load centers (business and residential customers) as well as between even larger interconnnected regions.
It is NO SMALL TRICK to 1) maintain the spinning synchronization of power-producing machinery (rotary generation equipment, whether steam or hydro) across a ‘coupled’ interconnected network (again, ‘the vaunted grid’), hence, terms were created to express the degree to which such a system was ‘secure’ from impulses and disturbances. 2) Secondly, along with this spinning synchronization POWER FLOW must also me maintained in a determined, specified and controllable manner across the system and from each source of generation, without over-demanding from each source.
Lets educate, starting with this opening excerpted from: http://www.pserc.wisc.edu/ecow/get/publicatio/1997public/Redisieee.pdf
“Power system stability problems are caused by many
factors. The generation pattern and load pattern, which
represent generation and load at every bus, are among the
leading factors. A poorly scheduled generation or load pattern
can reduce a system’s ability to transfer power while
maintaining its security and reliability. Intensive studies on
the economic dispatch problem assume that the system can
maintain its security and reliability. The optimal power flow
(OPF) program does consider both economic dispatch and
stability, but it requires heavy computations. With open
access transmission in the future deregulated environment,
poorly scheduled generation patterns and load patterns from
competitive bidding, will be seen more and more often. These
patterns might cause many stability problems.”
Primer relating to ‘Maintaining Security’ (warning: dry content):
http://www.iea.org/Textbase/work/2004/transmission/ray2.pdf
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>>A poorly scheduled generation or load pattern
>>can reduce a system’s ability to transfer power while
>>maintaining its security and reliability
Indeed. And I wonder why we have not heard more from the poor beleaguered grid operators who have to deal with this ridiculous renewable power. We know they are having problems, because grid instability is increasing in countries with a lot of wind power.
So where is the government report on the situation? This is, after all, not simply an a problem of electrical security but national security too. A nation without power is open to all kinds of security problems, from civil unrest to terrorism and even to invasion.
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