Guest essay by David Archibald
In President Obama’s war on coal, and thus the US economy, what would be the cheapest way to start the counter-attack? The most effective allocation of funds would be to achieve what Nebraska set out to do. At the urging of State Senator Beau McCoy in late 2013, the Nebraska Department of Agriculture was tasked with commissioning a report on cyclical climate change. The budget for the exercise was $44,000. That right, for a mere $44,000 Nebraskans would be told what was going to happen to their climate. If the Sun was going to sleep with the consequence that cold air from the Canadians would come south faster and longer, Nebraskans would be forewarned and fore-armed. Alas, the effort was abandoned when promoters of global warming in the state offered to do it for free.
The danger to the promoters of global warming was that the stillborn Nebraskan climate report would have been the first government-sanctioned report on the planet to say that carbon dioxide and the burning of coal are nothing to worry about. A report on cyclical climate change would say that there is something far more serious coming that is going to smack our civilisation like a freight train. That serious thing is one of the cycles that the Nebraskans were going to be told about. One day the science of climate cycles might get out to Nebraska but in the meantime they will be wondering why their winters are getting colder and Spring seems to be delayed and how can they begin planting while their fields are still covered in snow.
It is one thing for books to be published which warn of the severe, solar-driven cooling coming (I’m on my third) and for retired academics to voice concerns over the low standards of US Government-funded climate science, but much more moral authority comes from the imprimatur of government. And any government can do it. Any government with coal mines, or coal-burning power plants, and tens of thousands of jobs at stake could wonder if the EPA view of climate science was all that there was to be known on the subject. Pennsylvania could do it, North Carolina could do it and Texas could do it to name a few. Half the states of the Union could do it and should do it.
As the climate reports come in, the vague, almost-impossible-to-believe notion that the Obama Administration’s war on coal through the EPA is a peculiar form of malicious self-loathing will be seen with crystal clarity. That there is no scientific basis for what the EPA is attempting to do whatsoever. That the degradation and disruption that the EPA is intent upon is a loathing for America as it is, pure and simple. Instead of the loftiest ideals of “thinking of the children” and so on, President Obama and the EPA are driven by the basest of motives – that their fellow Americans be poorer with reduced opportunities.
Now it is up to the states to defend themselves in the war on coal. Nobody else has the power or the interest at the moment. If they wish to defend themselves and their way of life, the first step is to acquire the armament appropriate to the battle. That would be a report on climate that they have commissioned and have ownership of. One government’s report on something like climate is as good as another’s. Thickness doesn’t matter so much. A 40 page report from the State of Pennsylvania that said that carbon dioxide is tuckered out as a greenhouse gas and that we had better prepare for solar-driven cooling would send the EPA into apoplexy. So where is Pennsylvania’s report on climate, and those of all the other states that have so much to lose? Hasten now, so much time has been lost already.
David Archibald, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., is the author of The Twilight of Abundance: Why Life in the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short (Regnery, 2014).
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_Jim says:
April 5, 2014 at 7:17 pm
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“80 deg C translates to 176 deg F. Seems a little warm, maybe?”
Not at all, 80C is a conservative estimate for the oceans in the absence of a radiatively cooled atmosphere made on the basis of empirical experiment. A non-radiative atmosphere would essential turn all the would oceans into evaporation constrained solar ponds. It is possible to drive transparent materials to over 120C with surface strength sunlight alone without solar concentration. You can run a (very inefficient) steam engine of a flat plate collector.
And how does our atmosphere cool? – “By transport of warm air masses to the poles; see: Hadley Cell, Mid-latitude cell and polar cell. Loss of sensible heat is via radiation from land surfaces in which the transported or advected air masses are eventually in contact with in the boundary layer. This is basic Meteorology and not generally in contention exc by those unfamiliar with these processes …”
“by those unfamiliar with the processes..” Cute.
No, conduction back to the land is not what cools our atmosphere, nor does it play a primary role in driving global circulation despite Trenberths attempted re-write. Radiative subsidence plays a critical role in driving tropospheric convective circulation. Coriolis forces break this circulation into three cells north and south of the equator. And as most of the energy leaving our planet is OLR from the atmosphere, radiative gases are clearly the primary cooling mechanism for our atmosphere.
A non-radiative atmosphere cannot cool our oceans as it would have no effective way to cool itself. Conduction back to the remaining 29% land is not an effective cooling mechanism –
A. 29% land couldn’t provide enough radiative cooling to offset the energy entering the a non-radiative atmosphere from the oceans.
B. Gravity creates a bias in conductive flux between the atmosphere and surface. The surface is far better at conductively heating the atmosphere than it is at cooling it. In meteorology a night inversion layer is a good example of this effect. Gravity brings colder air to the surface at night minimising conductive flux. Gravity brings colder air to the surface during the day, maximising conductive flux.
So the bottom line? Climastrologists have made a fist-biting mistake that even highschool kids will be able to understand. The have essentially claimed our radiative atmosphere is warming our oceans when it is clearly cooling them. And the only effective cooling mechanism for our atmosphere is radiative gases. These gases therefore cool our planet at all concentrations above 0.0ppm. Global warming due to CO2 is therefore a physical impossibility.
Dr Norman Page says:
April 5, 2014 at 7:54 pm
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This is correct there are no cases liquids or solids on our planet that act as a theoretical “blackbody”. In the case of our deep oceans covering 71% of the planets surface the answer is “not even close”. Climastologists have used basic S-B calculations to claim that the oceans acting as a blackbody, in the absence of DWLWIR and atmospheric cooling, would have a Tmean of -18C. Empirical experiment shows they are in error by around 98C.
Does this sound incredible? Then think again. The same calculations applied to the moons surface disagree with empirical measurement by the Diviner mission and the recent Chinese Jade rover by 90C.
Instead of black or grey body calcs based on a single figure for “emissivity”, they should have used the science of “selective coatings” or surfaces. Here multi-spectral emissivity, albedo, absorption, internal conduction and specific heat are taken into account.
Our oceans are effectively an “selective coating” covering the planet 5 km deep. Blackbody calculations were never going to work.
By happy circumstance, the only way we can prepare for cooling just happens to be cheap, reliable energy for all people, even the poor, and vibrant economies worldwide. Even if cooling, by some miracle doesn’t occur, or is relatively minor – say, similar to mid last century, not only has no harm been done, but all people worldwide are better off, with higher living standards, even the poor. Unless that is what they don’t want.
No Jimbo, it’s not. First of all, that would involve long-range planning for the future. Second, we have hundreds of years of coal “in the ground” and saving a small amount of a highly abundant resource will make little difference centuries from now. Nor or we trying to save our coal for the future while burning up other nation’s coal now.
I’m actually fairly convinced you’re not being serious in your comment. However, we’ve heard that same idea expressed quite seriously before and it’s always been specious.
Mark and two Cats says:
April 5, 2014 at 12:07 pm
“Where is the outcry? Where is the scrutiny?
We are in deep, deep trouble.”
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The social/cultural pendulum has done swung too far off-center to the “left” to ever swing back again ….. and it will remain there until total economic collapse occurs and the rioting, pillaging, burning, anarchy and killing subsides and some new form of government or governments “rise out of the ashes” but said government(s) will not be anything like it originally was.
The US as a civilized nation and “Rule of Law” is in deep, deep trouble.
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hunter says:
April 5, 2014 at 1:32 pm
“If you are in the coal business, then NG is a problem. ”
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Not so. If you are in the coal business, then government is your primary problem.
Coal operators can compete against NG ……. but coal operators and power generators can’t compete against government taxes, restrictions, mandates & price-fixing, …… against the lefty liberal tree-hugging “greenies” socialists and conservationists, …….. against the Public School System that is teaching the children/students to hate them, ……. against all the Trial Lawyers that have free reign to sue the coal industry for any and everything the aforementioned can “think up” to accuse them of ……. and against the elected politicians who will do anything to appease all of the aforementioned.
And wrong, …. “a reasoned, well presented message countering the alarmist claptrap of AGW promoters” …. would not make one iota bit of difference …. simply because the AGW promoters and their friends control the majority of all the “microphones” …. in the Public Schools, …. on the “airways” ….. and in the halls of government.