Inside the Asylum

It's one of those memes of global catastrophe that everyone seems to have heard of. The poor bees are all dying. At last we have some common sense on the subject in the New Scientist magazine. The short version: bees have declined in some regions, but have significantly increased in others, and anyway, even if bees went extinct it wouldn't cause a global meltdown of agriculture. It's time to stop worrying and learn to love the bomb. Or something.

This seems to summarize the Obama Regime pretty well:

"This should not be a partisan issue," Obama said, urging bipartisan answers on a day largely devoted to raising campaign money for fellow Democrats. "The closer we get, the harder the opposition will fight."

Earlier in the story, there are some other priceless and almost cliche Obamantics:

President Barack Obama said Friday that opponents of his energy bill are disputing the evidence of global warming in a cynical ploy to undermine efforts to curb pollution and steer the nation to greener energy sources. Obama said some opponents "make cynical claims that contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence when it comes to climate change — claims whose only purpose is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary."

Firstly there are those vague nay-saying "opponents" ... he loves to use straw-men and nameless critics who he can then attack ... even if they don't actually exist. This time he's even more transparent than normal. Let's have the look at his straw-man position: opponents love pollution and hate things that are good for the environment. They oppose him because they are cynical, and they want to oppose necessary change. Oh, and don't forget the "scientific evidence" ... that is overwhelming despite the fact there hasn't been any global warming for a decade. Yes, I can feel the urge to go out and hug a chimney on a coal fired power plant, I want to swim in polluted waters, I want to dance in noxious gas clouds ... I love pollution because I'm cynical. I get off on opposing necessary changes. What other reason could I have for opposing the Dear Leader?

A new electric car is about to hit the market in England. It's called the Lightning.
Here's how the company describes it:

Forget electric cars that compromise the driving experience.
For the sheer thrill of immediate, powerful acceleration and with a top speed capability of more than 130mph, the electric Lightning will be a difficult proposition to beat.
Car ............................................ 0-60mph .................. Power
Jaguar 5.0 V8 XK Coupe .................... 5.2 Secs .................. 380 bhp
Electric Lightning GT sub .................. 5.0 Secs .................. 500+ bhp

The bad news? It's going to cost about 120,000 pounds. Oh well.

I've heard it said before that the wars of the 21st Century will be fought over water, not oil. Let's hope this isn't a taste of things to come, as the Chinese attempt to deal with their massive water shortage in the north by diverting water from the south, which has got the Indians concerned it's going to divert water running off the Himalayas away from them ...
At the same time, even parts of southern China are facing drought, something that's pretty unusual.

Early snow fall in both USA and Europe is, of course, yet another piece of evidence for global warming. Don't ask me how, it just is. Belief in global warming requires all the faith of a major religion, so facts don't really come into it.

An autumn storm brought snow to parts of Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey, the earliest snow on record in some towns used to harsh winters.

Winter has made a sudden and unwelcome early arrival in Poland... Rain across the country's western regions is set turn into sleet and snow in central districts, while eastern and southern provinces are already struggling to cope with the first snowfalls of the season.

It's good for skiers:

snow falling to low levels in Austria over the next few days. Expect excellent skiing on the glaciers when visibility improves by the weekend

Unseasonably extended snow season in Australia, early snowfall in Europe ... what else can it be other than global warming?

This kind of proves the point made earlier: any news concerning there being more polar ice isn't newsworthy, such as the fact the Antarctic melt was the least ever recorded. On the other hand, a group of scientists with a vested interest in proving global warming announce a future projection that there'll be no Arctic ice in 10 years during the summer, and hey, what do you know, it's headline news around the world. Let's hammer home the point:

''With a larger part of the region now first-year ice, it is clearly more vulnerable,'' said Professor Peter Wadhams, part of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at the University of Cambridge, which analysed the data. ''The area is now more likely to become open water each summer, bringing forward the potential date when the summer sea ice will be completely gone.''

You see, the fact that something is "likely" and has "potential" is more newsworthy than something that is an actual, you know, fact. Panic mongering follows:

Martin Sommerkorn of the World Wildlife Fund said the Arctic sea holds a central position in earth's climate system. ''Such a loss of Arctic sea ice cover has recently been assessed to set in motion powerful climate feedbacks which will have an impact far beyond the Arctic,'' he said. ''This could lead to flooding affecting one-quarter of the world's population, substantial increases in greenhouse gas emissions from massive carbon pools and extreme … weather changes.''

You know ... one of those really accurate models (with a zero percent success rate in predicting future climatic activity) has shown there could be a powerful massive substantial extreme impact. Panic everyone! Oh, and don't forget to donate money to the WWF to avert this powerful massive substantial extreme emergency.

Oh, you don't believe me about the vested interests of the team announcing the findings? Aside from the obvious (continued research grants, riding the gravy train at Copenhagen, etc., and lots of juicy high profile media coverage), there's this:

Fresh off the ice! Pen Hadow and Ann Daniels available to speak at your event... Pen and Ann are established speakers on the international circuit with clients that have included M&S, BP, BA, IBM, Vodafone, NatWest and Bank of America

The website doesn't mention the speakers' fee ... so presumably they appeared for all these companies to speak gratis, out of the goodness of their hearts and a firm belief in the righteousness of their cause ... And if you believe that, I've got a second-hand car to sell you.

The ice isn't melting ... or at least, not as fast as usual. It must be Global Warming! As the blog World Climate Report asks,

Where are the headlines? Where are the press releases? Where is all the attention? The ice melt across during the Antarctic summer (October-January) of 2008-2009 was the lowest ever recorded in the satellite history.

A guess it's a kind of inconvenient truth.
(Via Tim Blair)

Global Warming continues to punish New Zealand with soaring temperatures. Or not:

Well over 100 cars remained stuck on the snow-covered Napier Taupo Road last night, and several hundred people spent a second night in makeshift accommodation after a heavy snowfall cut off State Highway 5. State Highway 1 between Taihape and Turangi was also closed because of the bad weather. A further 30 centimetres of snow was expected to fall in parts of the central North Island last night and today.

Even as winter comes early to the Northern Hemisphere, winter isn't ready to give up its icy grip in the south. It must be global warming!

Dozens still trapped by snow, civil emergency declared

We've known for a long time that humans are not "descended from apes" ... or at least, not any apes present on the planet today. The great apes, chimpanzees etc., share a common ancestor with humans, but they diverged a long time ago and went their own separate ways. Despite knowing this, a false assumption has persisted, that the common ancestor must have looked something like a chimpanzee. That notion has now been assigned to the trash can of scientific history. Fossil remains from about 4.4 million years ago that they are calling Ardi, show that a number of major changes had already occurred. Ardi demonstrates a number of features that modern humans possess, but chimps do not. For example, the teeth were already showing a marked reduction in size, and the skeletal remains show that it could function quite comfortably in both trees and upright on the ground. The discovery of 3.2 million year old Lucy was big news ... the discovery of Ardi is much more important. It's "back to the drawing board" time for a bunch of evolutionary scientists.

The infamous hockey stick, purporting to show that global temperatures have been sky-rocketing in the 20th Century, has now been conclusively proven to be a load of nonsense. The conclusion was reached based on cherry-picked data designed to produce just that result. Flying in the face of scientific integrity, the original authors had until very recently done everything they could do deny anyone else access to their original data-set. As a result their conclusions could not be independently tested. Now that has finally happened, it turns out the hockey stick is more of a baseball bat ... with no upward curve at all. The stick is dead.

Earlier in the year I posted about unexpectedly heavy and early snow fall in New Zealand during the Southern Hemisphere winter. The Southern Hemisphere winter isn't quite ready to let go either. Australian ski fields are celebrating fresh snow fall,

residents are hailing the recent three-day snowfall as the best of the season

Now we're approaching the North Hemisphere winter, there's ... unexpectedly heavy and early snow fall (in Turkey). It's all because of man-made Global Warming you see. When it gets hotter, it's because of Global Warming. When it gets colder, it's because of Global Warming. There's simply nothing that Global Warming cannot do!

Earlier-than-expected snowfall affected daily life in numerous provinces around the country on Monday. High plateaus in the northeastern provinces of Gümüşhane, Trabzon and Rize, and the Central Anatolian province of Sivas received heavy rainfall on Monday. Search and rescue teams are working to help residents that were caught unaware by the early snow. In most parts of the plateaus, snow cover reached a depth of 30 centimeters. Roads connecting the provinces to dozens of villages have been closed due to the heavy snowfall. In Trabzon alone, roads to 25 villages have been completely closed to traffic.Temperatures dropped significantly in eastern Anatolia on Monday. Temperatures in the eastern province of Erzurum were recorded at -5 degrees Celsius on Sunday night. The temperature in Ardahan was recorded at -2 degrees Celsius early Monday morning.

Oh well, that's just Turkey. Or Not.

The first day of fall feels more like the first day of winter for some of the mountain West, with light snow and chilly temperatures across Colorado and freeze warnings for higher elevations in New Mexico, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah and Arizona.

There's also this prediction:

U.S. Northeast May Have Coldest Winter in a Decade [because of a weak El Nino]

Don't forget to wrap up in warm clothes when you go out to protest against evil corporations and global warming.

Yes, the province of Heilongjiang, the most northerly part of China, has passed a law requiring parents to prevent their children from falling in love. They post some comments in reaction to the new law too.

Student's parent, Ms Zhang: It will guarantee children's healthy development.
My child will be 15 years old this year, and I'm quite worried that "young love" will affect his school achievements... Making a law to prevent young love will guarantee children's healthy development, and is a demonstration of love to minors.

Netizen Mo Jinjin: It is completely unnecessary to make a law to prevent young love.
"Even an upright official finds it hard to settle a family quarrel." It is completely unnecessary to make a law to prevent young love. Laws should discipline measurable and detailed acts but not intangible affection, not only because there is no standard to measure this affection, but also because there is no feasible method to enforce such a law.

Whatever next? Personally, I'm in favor of a law against death. Heck, you might as well pass a law to limit climate change ... oh, wait ...

Leaders from the world's emerging economies and G8 countries have agreed to limit global warming to within 2 degrees Celsius

In my earlier post about the solar minimum, I jumped the gun in summarizing July's activity, forgetting there are of course 31 days in the month. Doh. This means that I was incorrect in saying that July was in equal-10th position with May 2008. Since July in fact had 24 days spotless days, that means it was 9th equal (for lack of sunspots) with November 2007. It's also worth noting that at the time, October 2007 (28 days spotless) and November 2007 (24 days) were considered to be the peak of the minimum. It wasn't until July 2008 that we had any months with less activity. Nobody ever dreamed that more than 20 months later we'd still be seeing an equally quiet sun.

To continue playing with the statistics, the average number of spotless days per month in 2008 was 22.4, and in the first seven months of 2009, that average is 20.9. Yes, it's a little lower ... but hardly enough to declare that the minimum is approaching its end. The simple truth is that no prediction concerning the sun has proved accurate, and we just don't know what it's going to do next.

Exactly how this is going to affect the Earth, again, no one knows ... but if the primary source of energy for the whole freakin' planet is doing something weird, only a fool would consider that it won't have any impact. Of course, there are a lot of fools out there who won't for a minute acknowledge that anything other than human activity could play a role in climate change, despite the fact that there was actually rather a lot of it on this planet before mankind came along. But anyone who points that out must (of course) be in the pay of the evil oil and gas industries. (Speaking of which, where do you sign up? I'm sick of doing their work without pay. I want my wages of sin.) The gospel of Global Warming cannot be denied.

What a difference a couple of weeks makes. Mid-way through July, there was all this excitement that the sun was finally waking up from its extended quiet spell. Sunspots were picking up, peaking at 26. Well, since the last sunspots on July 11th, there's been not a peep out of our celestial neighbor. That gives us a total of 23 spotless days for July, which, as I said earlier, equals the second quietest month of the last solar minimum. Even by current standards, it's no slouch. Of the 26 months (more or less) that the current minimum has been running, July is 10th equal, tying with May 2008. Also, let's put in context the peak sunspot number of 26 during the last month ... out of interest, I went into Spaceweather.com's archives, and looked at the sunspot number for July 30, 2002 ... the sunspot number was 304.

Instapundit keeps using a line: "I'll believe it's a crisis when the people saying it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis." Well, here we have a classic example. We keep hearing about the dangers of generating power from fossil fuels ... and it should be obvious to all that nuclear power is the best (and possibly only) solution to cut back on a large portion of this fossil fuel use. Wind and Solar Power are never going to be able to take up the slack anytime soon. A vital ingredient for nuclear power is enriched uranium. Well ... now we come to the test. Does the US government believe that our current level of fossil fuel use is an urgent problem. Today, we get the resounding answer ... NO.

A planned Ohio uranium enrichment plant seems doomed after U.S. officials refused to grant it a $2 billion loan guarantee, officials say. The decision by the U.S. Department of Energy to refuse the loan guarantee to the proposed USEC Inc. facility in Piketon, Ohio, means the effort has begun to "demobilize," a company spokeswoman told Tuesday's Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch. USEC was seeking the loan to help it build a $3.5 billion advanced technology uranium plant.

The share price of USEC plunged from $6.19 range to $4.05 at close of trade. Yeah ... Cap and Trade was urgent ... but having enough enriched uranium for nuclear power generation so we can cut back on emissions? Not so much.
[Update] I guess I shouldn't be surprised by this: USEC's chief executive says:

"President Obama promised to support the loan guarantee for the American Centrifuge Plant while he campaigned in Ohio. We are disappointed that campaign commitment has not been met."

Just like he promised to support C-17 production while he was campaigning ... Is it too early to cough "lying b*****d" every time Obama opens his mouth?

I guess the problem with telling a highly successful lie is that it tempts you to do it again ... and again. The first big lie that worked so well was "elect Obama, and it will save you money!" ... Well, that one worked like a charm. So then came, "we must reform health care so that it will save us money!" At first, that one seemed to be working (though the attractiveness of that one has rapidly waned as even the people who voted for Obama add two and two together and know that it sure doesn't add up to three, as do members of his own party.)

Now we get the latest in the same line:

THE Obama Administration's climate change negotiator has warned that any country that delays enacting laws will miss out on a huge wave of investment waiting for the regulatory dam to break.

That's right ... pass laws that will tax your industry and raise your energy costs ... and it will make you money! Yes, that's right. Action against Global Warming is the new path to economic growth.

Something tells me that this lie is going to be about as successful as "she means nothing to me" and "I was thinking of you at the time."

Well, for a while there everyone (everyone who cares about such things, that is) was getting excited about the increase in solar activity. After some record breaking periods of minimal activity, things seemed to be hotting up. In particular, a whole series of Cycle 24 sunspots started appearing, which seemed to herald that Cycle 23 was truly dead, and that it was only a matter of time until we departed from the current extended minimum, and resumed a normal upturn towards the next solar maximum. This was especially true earlier this month, because we saw 9 days of continual Cycle 24 sunspots and the sunspot number peaked at 26 (on July 6th), a level not seen since the current minimum commenced. On the 6th, Spaceweather.com hailed the last sunspot activity in these terms:

Solar observers haven't seen an active region like this one in more than two years. It is big, complex, and rapidly growing: movie. The magnetic polarity of the sunspot, revealed by SOHO magnetograms, show that it is a member of new Solar Cycle 24. This makes sense: New research shows that solar jet streams are beginning to stimulate new-cycle sunspot production. Sunspot 1024 appears to be a sign of the process at work, heralding more to come.

However, since that sunspot zone disappeared around the edge of the sun (July 11th), there has been no further activity from the sun. We've now been 13 days without a sunspot, and (shock, horror, turn to Revelations) we've now arrived at the 666th spotless day since the current minimum started. Together with the first 3 days of July, that makes 16 spotless days this month (so far). Compared to the heights of the current minimum, that seems like a fairly small number. Back in July/August/September 2008 for example, we only had six days without sunspots. We need to give this number some context, by comparing it to the last solar minimum. I'll list the six most inactive months for the last minimum (in terms of spotless days): 26; 23; 15; 12; 12; 12 ... in other words, even assuming the sun is covered with spots for the rest of July, 16 spotless days is still damn quiet. It only seems active, because the six most inactive days for this minimum are: 31; 29; 28; 28; 28; 27. (see Solarcycle24.com for the details)

Now here is the part that we really do need to pay attention to. For the last couple of days there has been some activity on the sun that seems to herald a forthcoming sunspot. Today, we have the polarity of that activity ... and it belongs to our old friend, Cycle 23. Back in March 2008, a story on NASA's website asked the question,

"Solar Cycle 23, how can we miss you if you won't go away? Barely three months after forecasters announced the beginning of new Solar Cycle 24, old Solar Cycle 23 has returned. (Actually, it never left.)"

Yep, those forecasters sure have a great record when it comes to predicting future climatic activity based on their various models. Aren't we lucky that the models work so much better concerning the Earth's climate, and that the science is settled on the future of global warming. Oh wait...
[See here for a post where I recently discussed flawed attempts to predict solar activity.]
[Update. The Cycle 23 disturbance seems to have dissipated without ever quite achieving the status of a sunspot. Is this good news or bad news? The sun remains inactive, and July now has 17 spotless days instead of 16, with another 6 days left in July, which means the this month could potentially equal the second most inactive month for the previous solar minimum. It's hardly cause to start celebrating the end of the minimum.]
[Make that 18 spotless days (July 26th) and counting ... Incidentally, this means July has now overtaken June, which had 17 spotless days.]