Guest post by Professor Will Alexander
Roadmaps
The key word used during the COP 17 discussions was ‘roadmap’ used by the European Union delegation.
The following is a map of my travels through southern Africa. My two principal destinations at the time were surf fishing along the remote Skeleton Coast of Namibia in the northwest, and studying river behaviour in the Caprivi Strip in the north where the roads meet.
Roads that we have travelled
There are vast climatological differences in the regions of southern Africa from the high rainfall along the Drakensberg escarpment in the southeast through to the arid Namib desert in the northwest. This is the world’s oldest desert.
Nowhere in the developed world will you find such a wide and interesting range of climatic conditions within two days travel in any direction. No wonder the international scientists as well as their South African counterparts operating from air-conditioned offices at the foot of Table Mountain, are so ignorant of natural climatic variations in both time and space.
The roads least travelled
These days the fashion is to mount a Garmin instrument on the dashboard of your vehicle, then enter the addresses of the start and the end points. When on the move, obey the voice instructions as you approach the forks in the road along the route. My version also emits a loud sound when it detects an electronic speed trap ahead.
I have also installed a tracking device so that the exact position of the vehicle can be determined if it is stolen. What is more, the route followed by the vehicle can be recovered at any time on my computer. As my photographs include the date and time, I can also determine the time and place where each photograph of the local flora and fauna was taken.
I offered to supply my set of photographs with this information to the South African National Biodiversity Institute. They remained silent as this was not the information that they wished to see.
I was able to prove that their claims of the disappearance of our unique plant and animal species, published in peer-reviewed literature, had no foundation in fact.
Global climate computer models (GCMs)
Whenever I produce evidence that floods and droughts have not increased in magnitude or frequency during the past 150 years they refer me to the evidence produced by their highly complex GCMs to the contrary. These models are so large and complex that there are only half a dozen or so of them in the world.
How can we challenge these models when they can even determine whether the rainfall in the region falls mostly in winter or summer? They go even further. They can predict that if global temperatures increase by more than 2°C this will have catastrophic consequences on the world’s human, animal and vegetal populations let alone our agriculture and industries.
We have to believe them because we experience this increase in temperature between breakfast and morning tea every day of our lives. We also experience these 2°C temperature changes when we travel from Johannesburg to Pretoria and back again while all that traffic along the route emits those huge volumes of poisonous carbon dioxide that we breathe in along the way.
If you know anyone who is familiar with these huge computer models, I suggest that you ask them this very simple question:
How long will it take rainfall at a constant rate to completely wet a piece of ground?
This is the problem that the famous Albert Einstein gave to his 10-year-old son.
Let me offer a clue. When half the area is wet, where will the next raindrop fall? This is an extremely important issue as it goes to the very heart of climate prediction modelling. If the models cannot predict how long rainfall will take to wet a piece of ground how can we trust their complex predictions?
Basic English
This is my final puzzle.
The agreement reached at COP17 was titled “Durban platform for enhanced action“.
I had great problems in understanding the meaning of this title, particularly as Durban is my birthplace and English is my home language.
My wife and I are here on holiday in Plettenberg Bay. We have a small Chamber’s Mini Dictionary that we use when playing Scrabble with our family. These are the definitions in the dictionary.
Platform: a raised level surface such as that for passengers at a railway station.
Enhance: to make appear greater or better, (my emphasis).
Action: a deed, an act, a law case, or what happens in a film or play.
South Africa has eleven official languages. I wonder how this title will be translated into our own official languages, let alone those of the rest of the world.
Conclusions
Returning to the real world, I firmly believe that there are few if any scientists in southern Africa who have a wider, longer, and more scientific experience in the interfaces between the climatological, hydrological, environmental and sociological sciences than I have.
Equally, I believe that this whole global warming/climate change issue is no more than a monumental scam perpetrated by the affluent nations to protect their economic supremacy, regardless of the effects on the many millions of poor and disadvantaged populations of Africa and elsewhere.
I do not for one moment believe that the nations of the world will abide by the nebulous decisions reached by COP17 in Durban, with legal ratification by 2015, and implementation by 2020. It is not going to happen.
Seasonal wishes
I leave you with my sincerest seasonal best wishes. I apologise for offering these very serious issues for your solution at this time of joy and celebration.
Finally, and more seriously, you may be interested in this opinion from this morning’s newspaper.
“The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed” – Steven Biko
The most important asset that you have is your mind. Keep it clean and healthy. Ignore all that nonsense from those who are not even aware of their own ignorance.
Nice to see the professor using a British vehicle, Land Rover Discovery 2. So they do sell overseas.
re:
I’m not sure how you see that working, particularly in the short run? Although I understand that China or some segment therein, has expressed similar sentiments some time ago. Is it because it’s thought that the additional controls will wind up causing super high cost power? Or??
I can say that it seems to me that AGW will break developed nations economies…. and if we actually transfer billions of dollars to underdeveloped nations in such as way that it doesn’t all just go into dictators fat pots, then the underdeveloped nations ought to be a little better off, at least in the short run.
All of the push toward ‘mitigating’ or studying AGW have cost the developed nations massive mounts of money. A year or two ago it was estimated that the USA alone had spent over $79 BILLION already (iirc, over the past 10 years or so), between research funds, mitigation funds, and so on. I don’t believe that estimate even included the $6 to $9 BILLION given to auto manufacturers to retool so they could produce either hybrid or all electric vehicles. I don’t know if that figure included stimulus funds either – many billions had been allocated specifically for green or alternative projects (think the $1/2 Billion failed Solyndra as one example). Or the $3.3+ Billion for the California train to nowhere, now estimated to cost more then 3x’s it’s original estimate, at $99 Billion, with up to an additional $20 Billion depending on route. I believe the total set aside or promised for high speed rail nationally is $13 Billion, if they haven’t raised the amount again. For something that’s been a total failure financially pretty much everywhere tried. Last I checked, there was only a single bullet train in the world that was not only to cover operating & maintenance costs, but was working on or had covered capital costs also. Only a handful manage to cover just op & maintenance costs, and never come close to covering capital expenditures.
Meanwhile, the UN is pushing for $100 Billion in funds to be transferred annually from developed nations to undeveloped nations. Carbon trading has shifted some manufacturing to undeveloped nations, all in the name of AGW – and of the fact that a number of different massive scams have already occurred. Scams that have netted the crooks literally billions of dollars, and/or shifted work/manufacturing overseas only to discover that the project overseas didn’t actually meet the carbon trading requirements. Meanwhile, EPA is about to release new massive regs on electrical power stations, the “utility MACT’ estimated to costs taxpayers over $11 Billion annually. .
So it sure seems to me that AGW won’t serve to help increase the power or economy of our nations at all… and at least in the short term, if implemented, might help underdeveloped nations – tho clearly not nearly so well as if that money were provided for GOOD projects, instead of boondoggles and trash and miserable efficiencies.
Frankly, I think it’s pretty much bad for everyone worldwide, other than utopian one world government types, or utopian man’s an evil plague who’s numbers need to be reduced drastically types. Sigh.
All this for science that is so far utterly unable to even be on par with the null hypothesis of natural climate changes, let alone ahead enough such that science could support the new AGW hypothesis. If it can’t break the null, it’s safe to say that there simply isn’t any scientific support for the hypothesis.
Professor Alexander
Thank you for posting at WUWT.
I am sorry to see that your paper Development of a multi-year climate prediction model published in WRC Knowledge Hub Water SA Volume: 31 No.2, April 2005 is now pay-walled.
Do you have an author’s pre-print PDF copy that you can post and share online?
Nowhere in the developed world will you find such a wide and interesting range of climatic conditions within two days travel in any direction.
You might wish to visit Idaho.
For those interested you can find a small collection of works by Will Alexander here:
http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/forums/showthread.php?tid=660
You don’t have to register or login, just download what you fancy.
[ “How long will it take rainfall at a constant rate to completely wet a piece of ground?” ]
After checking my calculations, I’m satisfied I have the correct answer.
I used proxies to verify my work. Namely, the Mr Mann Tiljander upside down sediments . Which EPA described as a “more sophisticated” than averaging of right-side-up proxies as done in Loehle and McCulloch.
My Calculations:
\dfrac{d}{dt} \Phi (t,x(t),y(t),z(t)) = \dfrac{\partial \Phi}{\partial t} \dfrac{d(t)}{dt} + \dfrac{\partial \Phi}{\partial x} \dfrac{dx}{dt} + \dfrac{\partial \Phi}{\partial y} \dfrac{dy}{dt} + \dfrac{\partial \Phi}{\partial z} \dfrac{dz}{dt} = PRN
Double Checking:
\frac{{\hbar ^2 }}{{2m}}\frac{{\partial ^2 \psi (x,t)}}{{\partial x^2 }} + U(x)\psi (x,t) = i\hbar \frac{{\partial \psi
(x,t)}}{{\partial t}}= PRN
PRN defined:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/pro+re+nata
I will post my graph as evidence….. but…….hang on…. someone is knocking on my door.
Albeit; I have no observational evidence, I will be submitting my work to secure a grant from DoE and the Economic Stimulus Fund.
http://images.cafepress.com/image/31043177_400x400.jpg
Apparently it’s (just barely) possible to travel from the lowest point in North America (in Death Valley, -282′, -86 m) to the highest point in the contiguous United States (Mt. Whitney, 14,505′, 4,421 m) in just under 48 hours.
On foot.
See the Wikipedia entry for the Badwater Ultramarathon.
Seems it should be easy within two days to drive from the starting point at Badwater, Death Valley, to a place to scramble up Mount Whitney (and down again), and then drive on to the Pacific Ocean.
All within a single day of Los Angeles, California:
the below from usaparks.about.com: Use the information below for driving distances and approximate drive time from Los Angeles, CA to selected US National Parks.
Channel Islands National Park, Distance: 66 miles, Approximate time: 1.25 hours
Along a section of the Californian coast you will find one remarkable national park. But it is not your typical park. In fact, Channel Islands National Park is made up of five separate islands – Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel, and Santa Barbara – all stunning in their own rite. Rich lands of wildlife, flowers, plants, and stunning views are here for visitors to explore.
“Crater Lake National Park, Oregon, Distance: 736 miles, Approximate time: 12.3 hours
It is hard for visitors to forget their first view of Crater Lake. On a clear summer day, the water is such a deep blue many have said it looks like ink. With stunning cliffs towering over 2,000 feet above, the lake is tranquil, stunning, and a must-see for all who find beauty in the outdoors.
Death Valley National Park, Distance: 304 miles, Approximate time: 5.75 hours
Death Valley is the largest national park unit outside of Alaska and includes more than 3 million acres of wilderness area. This large desert, nearly surrounded by high mountains, contains the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere. The area includes Scotty’s Castle, the grandiose home of a famous prospector, and other remnants of gold and borax mining.
The Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, Distance: 492 miles, Approximate time: 8 hours
About five million people visit Grand Canyon National Park each year and it comes as no surprise why. The main attraction, Grand Canyon, is a mammoth gorge stretching 277 miles showcasing amazing depths of colorful geology. It boasts some of the nation’s cleanest air and a great deal of the park’s 1,904 square miles are maintained as wilderness. Visitors cannot help but be blown away by stunning views from almost any vantage point.
Joshua Tree National Park, Mojave Desert, California, Distance: 168 miles, Approximate time: 3 hours
The 1,017,748-acre park draws more than 1.3 million visitors per year. Few areas more vividly illustrate the contrast between high and low desert.
Lassen Volcanic National Park, California, Distance: 557 miles, Approximate time: 9.5 hours
Lassen Peak erupted intermittently from 1914 to 1921 and, before the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens in Washington, was the most recent volcanic outburst in the contiguous 48 states. Active volcanism at the park includes hot springs, steaming fumaroles, mud pots, and sulfurous vents.
Redwood National & State Parks, Distance: 737 miles, Approximate time: 12.7 hours
Comprising 45 percent of all the old-growth redwood forest remaining in California, this park – together with four other parks in California – are a World Heritage Site and International Biosphere Reserve. The ancient coast redwood ecosystem preserved in the parks contains some of the most majestic forests scenery anywhere in the world.
Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Park, Distance: 237 miles, Approximate time: 4.5 hours
Ranging from 1500′ to 14,494′ in elevation, these adjoining parks protect immense mountains, deep canyons, huge trees, and diverse habitats. Great groves of giant sequoias, (including the General Sherman Tree, the world’s largest living thing), Mineral King Valley, and Mount Whitney (the highest mountain in the U.S. outside of Alaska), are spectacular attractions in Sequoia National Park. Two enormous canyons of the Kings River and the summit peaks of the High Sierra dominate the mountain wilderness of Kings Canyon National Park.
Yosemite National Park, Distance: 311 miles, Approximate time: 5.9 hours
Yosemite is home to some of the nation’s most spectacular waterfalls, meadows, and ancient sequoia trees. Within its 1,200 miles of wilderness, visitors can find everything nature defines as beauty—wild flowers, animals grazing, crystal clear lakes, and amazing domes and pinnacles of granite.