[asa] global warming

This is for Burgy. Yes, Atilla should be ashamed of himself for being so
liberal! :-) And yes, Burgy and I go way back and I always appreciate his
comments and I always speak directly as he does.

Before I start answering Burgy's note, I just ran into this quote from the
Libyan oil minister in an article by Simon Webb, "OPEC sees no need to pump
more after price surge,"Reuters, June 8, 2008
http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSL0832567120080608?feedType=R
SS&feedName=businessNews&rpc=23&sp=true

>>>
"Still, concern over long-term supplies and declining output from producers
outside OPEC have also lifted the oil price. Ghanem said on Sunday that oil
was getting more difficult and costly to produce and that global supplies
were nearing their peak.

"The easy, cheap oil is over," he said. "Peak oil is looming."
<<<

Notice the title of that article. Everyone in Opec was saying that the world
doesn't need more oil. Take that as meaning, we have no more oil to give
you.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: j burg [mailto:hossradbourne@gmail.com]
> Sent: Sunday, June 08, 2008 1:41 PM
>
> FWIW, I've seen a number of posts come through recently with pictures.
> So there must be a way to do it.
>
> "I'm going to unsubscribe"

>
> I hope not. Your inputs are always welcomed. At least by me.
>
> (Comment to other list members. Glenn and I go back many years. We are
> close friends, even if he is somewhere to the right of Atilla the Hun
> and I am even farther to the left. <grin>)
>
> His comments on oil supply have been amazing on target over the years.
> You may not like what he writes. But his credibility is high. At least
> with me.

Yes I will. Time is no longer a luxury and these debates take far more time
than I have. I am busier since I 'retired' than I was as an employee. I now
spend much time studying the energy problem because I have such big bets in
that field and have now for 4 years. I want to know everything there is to
know about energy and that takes time. My broker, watching what I am doing
is using me as his private energy analyst but telling others about me
because of my success. It isn't really so difficult to figure out what is
going to happen. All one needs to do is look at the production numbers and a
few other things. But, I want to thank David, Steve and Al and you for your
kind welcome.

>
> Glenn and I also disagree on GW; I was surprised to learn that from
> his last post here:

I told you on TW but I guess you didn't read it.

>
> These are the GW arguments I accept:
>
> 1. GW is a real phenomenon
> 2. GW is not a "good thing."
> 3. GW has several causes; a major one is CO2 emission from humans.
> There is also a methane component, but it is small in comparison.
>
> These are the GW arguments I am agnostic about:
>
> 4. We can, as a civilization, substantially mitigate GW and avoid "bad
> things."
> 5. We WILL do the above.
>
> My reasons for accepting what I do accept is that I see the IPCC
> report as a scientific consensus by the experts who should know. I
> have read that in the past 5 years that the number of scientific peer
> reviewed papers challenging the IPCC findings is -- zero.

Sigh, if I get into this, I will have to stay a bit longer and I really
don't have time for a GW debate I would point everyone to a thread on
Theology web global cooling. If you subscribe and log in, you can see the
pictures and data that have convinced me that this is nonsense.

 As a true market contrarian and a challenger of all ideas, I decided to
look into the validity of the thermometer data. It is utterly atrocious. At
http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/weather_stations/
You can see pictures of actual weather stations in use. The guy who put all
this together is a meteorologist. I really don't think putting the
thermometer above an airconditioning exhaust fan is a good idea. LA used to
have its thermometer on the third story of a parking garage and were getting
record after record temperatures. Then they moved it to a park across the
street, the temperature dropped 1.5 degrees and they no longer had
records!!!

I have added http://home.entouch.net/dmd/Weather_paso_robles.jpg

and
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/Weather_paso_robles_plot.jpg

from the same source--Watt's web searches. One isn't going to get a good
temperature reading on concrete!!! Garbage in; garbage out as they say. I
suspect that the rise in temperature is due to cement in the cities, where
the thermometers are. The cities didn't used to have cement you know. 100
years ago they didn't.

Now, I know from geology that the earth had 3000 ppm of CO2 in the
Cretaceous and life didn't end. So I can't figure out why on earth 600 ppm
is so utterly fearful.
Early in late Miocene.
"The first evidence of C4 biomass being a significant part of local
ecosystems in the Old World is about 7 to 8 my. Carbonates from preserved
paleosols in Africa, Asia, and Europe older than 8 my have del 13 C values
from about 10 to 12 permil. Figure 7 and table 2 show that there are
compatible with a maximum P(CO2) level of about 700 ppmV." Thure E. Cerling,
"Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere: Evidence from Cenozoic and Mesozoic
Paleosols," American Journal of Science, 291(1991):377-400, p. 394

Other values taken from that paper are:
P(CO2)
Miocene Pakistan <700
Miocene E. Africa <400
Eocene Wyoming <600
L. Cretaceous Texas 2500-3300
Spain 1600-2600
U. Triassic/
l. Jurassic New Haven 2000-3000
New Haven 2500-4200
Fundy Rift 3000-6000
Thure E. Cerling, "Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere: Evidence from Cenozoic
and Mesozoic Paleosols," American Journal of Science, 291(1991):377-400, p.
394

So, I see no reason to fear a small rise that we are seeing today. It
certainly isn't worth trillions to mitigate that which isn't a problem.

Now, I also ran into a chart the upper three curves are estimates of CO2
content of the atmosphere over the Phanerozoic from proxy data. They don't
correlate with the O18 temperature record worth a bucket of warm spit. If
CO2 was the thing which drives the temperature, why on earth don't the
temperature and CO2 rise and fall together? It is because CO2 isn't
important. The whole CO2 affair was started when Margaret Thatcher, wanting
to kill the coal unions forever started funding research places that would
say bad things about CO2 coming off of coal!
Here is the picture I spoke of above.
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/WeatherPhanerozoicTempCO2.jpg

Now suppose someone decides they don't like that argument about the
Phanerozoic. Ok, CO2 has no impact on the deuterium temperature record from
the Vostok core. You never see the data plotted for only the past 11,000
years. There is a reason for that--it shows global cooling.

http://home.entouch.net/dmd/WeatherVostokPostglacialTemp.jpg
 Here is what I said about the above photo on Theologyweb where people are
getting very quiet when I challenge GW.

>>I am still having fun looking at the data in the Vostok core which shows
that global warming is a bunch of hooey. Today I did a post-glacial chart of
the deuterium temperature and then I put on top of it the CO2 from the
Vostok core up until 2342 bp which is the most recent gas sample from the
core. After that I carried it out according to some of the charts and data I
have seen, 280 ppm up until the middle part of the 19th century and then 300
in 1960 and 400 today.

Now, compare the earth's temperature variations with the lack of variation
in the CO2 data.

Also note that the chart I made yesterday which showed the data back to 3200
and showed that it was warmer then, well that warm period is still there,
but what I didn't know was that just prior to that was a much warmer
epoch--an epoch that lacked both cars and CO2. Indeed, if you look at the
time from 10000 years ago to the present, it is actually a cooling off time.
And there is a significant portion of this time that was warmer than it is
today, yet over and over we are told that today's temperatures have no
parallel in the past. What absolute cow patties that is. The other day a guy
climbed the NY Times building and put up a sign that global warming kills
more people each day than 911 did. What a mass slaughter it must have back
before 3200 years ago. Those poor people

You can clearly see us coming out of the glacial ages at the far end of this
presentation of the data.

So, will anyone please explain why, if global warming is such a worry, CO2
doesn't seem to control the temperature very well? Indeed, according to the
Vostok core's deuterium data, the temperature is going down [just] as the
CO2 is going up right at the present time.
<<<

I would point out that the deuterium temperature deduced from the Vostok ice
core actually shows the earth is cooling for about the last 50 years. For
those who don't know how it works, water with one of the hydrogens having a
neutron along with the proton are harder to evaporate from the ocean. They
need a little bit extra heat to evaporate. So, when it heats up, there is
more deuterium in the precipitation and when it cools there is less. There
is less today than there was 3200 years ago and most of the time before that
back to 10,000 years. The last 100 years don't show anything anomalous. Yet
our thermometers do. Can one say CEMENT!

>
> Not being a climate scientist, I have a bias towards accepting their
> report.

It doesn't take a climate scientist to know that it is stupid to put
thermometers where they are putting them. This guy Watts has teams
systematically surveying all the stations. 69% of them are bad and 13% have
an active heat source within 10 meters!!!! And we are willing to give our
money over to those guys to fix a problem that doesn't exist. See
http://www.surfacestations.org/

>
> I also noted that Gore's book AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH has been
> scientifically vetted and judged to be 98% accurate. The biggest point
> Gore makes, of couses, is that this ought not be a political issue. We
> are all in this together.

Burgy, consensus doesn't phase me. There was once a consensus among
geologists that continental drift didn't happen. Herds are usually wrong
unless there is absolute experimental proof of what they say. When I first
became aware of peak oil, there was no consensus on it. Most people even in
the oil industry thought I was out of my mind. My broker begged me not to do
what I did investmentwise. Consensus often is consensus on how to get
funding. Look at Greg Lisle, the guy who did that work with E8. He left
physics because the only thing he could get funding for was string theory,
yet his work on E8 might be very very profound. He has fit all the known
particles into E8 with predictions of particles to come. It remains to be
tested but string theory faddishness wouldn't have gone where he did.

As to the accuracy of Gore's book, did they include the pictures of actual
weather stations I show here? Of course not. Did they show the last 10,000
years of the deuterium temperature record from the Vostok core? Of course
not. I never saw that until I downloaded the data YESTERDAY to see it for
myself. One can't have truth if one has bad data, hides data, and acts as if
anyone who questions your conclusion is an idiot.

I am not going to stick around to defend what I said here. If people want to
look into the data as I have, they can't. If they want to merely believe
what others tell them that is their prerogative. I am kind of tired of
trying to convince people to be logical and think about what they are
taught. Time is so short and I have things I want to do. Money is to be made
by taking advantage of the herd.

But one thing my experience with this peak oil thing has taught me. There is
lots of money to be made by not believing the group-think of the herd.
Herds, like yec, republicanism, liberalism, conservatism, communism, we are
not about to run out of oil etc, are huge echo chambers in which everyone
hears back in slightly different words what they themselves said. Then they
think everyone agrees with them (which is what you assumed in your GW
comment), they often don't think anyone outside the group can think clearly,
and they feel confirmed because so many are saying the same thing. This is
what it was like to be a YEC, guys! And groups tend to push out those that
disagree with them. All groups tend to denigrate the intelligence of those
outside the group. It is a form of tribalism. When I started asking
questions of YECs they started distancing themselves from me. I was no
longer fully part of the tribe. Go into a group of GW believers and doubt
it, and you will be piled on, and they will think you have been soundly
thrashed, but they haven't even heard the contrarian view.

Last week, my broker called me and told me that all the talking heads on TV
were saying that oil prices were headed lower. These are the traders and
people who should know oil. I told him that I would look at the data again
and see what I thought. The next morning, Thursday morning before the Market
opened, I called him and told him that I simply didn't see it in the data.
I said that I suspected that there was support for the price at $120. Oil
was at that time $122. Thursday oil shot up $6/bbl, the largest rise in
history in one day. Then Friday it shot up almost $11. The herd of talking
heads on TV were wrong. One of those talking heads has been wrong
consistently for 5 years and is still a respected talking head. See
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/cera.htm
 As our Lord says, "Broad is the path that leads to destruction." Don't get
caught up with the herd. I have never lived my life in the herd and have
always gone my own direction, marching to my own drummer. I wouldn't have it
any other way.

BTW, I suspect, but can't be sure, that oil will drop a bit tomorrow. Right
now it is only down 84 cents in Asia, which actually surprises me a bit.

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Received on Sun Jun 8 21:12:10 2008