Extreme weather is hampering attempts by a team of three British explorers to examine the effects of climate change on Arctic sea ice around the north pole… the extreme weather, even by Arctic standards, has affected much of the team’s standard kit. They’ve had breakages to equipment such as stoves and skis.
Read more here. And background to the expedition here.
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Defining ‘The Greens’ (Part 1)
According to George Megalogenis writing in the Weekend Australian neither the “right” nor the “left” in Australia can now win power without the support of the Greens.
But what exactly do the Greens stand for?
I recently suggested there are different types of Environmentalists, for example there are those like Tim Flannery who support geoengineering solutions to cool the planet, while Goreists tend to be more interested in changing societal attitudes.
According to the website for the Australian Greens, their vision is for a “fair, independent and sustainable” Australia. The home page has a banner stating they are about “peace and non-violence, grassroots democracy, social and economic justice and ecological sustainability”.
No one could disagree with any of this, but what does it mean in terms of the environment, power and politics?
Who Should Pay?
It’s quite amusing that, according to Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, the developing world wants the developed world, primarily the U.S., to pay them to cooperate with us on CO2 emissions. I say amusing because any money we send to China for its help, we first have to borrow from the Chinese. The world’s “richest” nation is its largest debtor nation. Eric Dalton, the Wall Street Journal.
New ED for Greenpeace USA
Greenpeace USA today announced that Phil Radford, well-known among a new generation of environmental leaders for his grassroots organizing achievements, will serve as its next executive director. Read more here.
Fossil Fuels Fail to Explain Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Levels: AEF Media Release
CHAIR of the Australian Environment Foundation, Jennifer Marohasy, today welcomed new research by Australian physicist, Dr Tom Quirk, suggesting natural environmental forces, more than just fossil fuel emissions, could be contributing to the elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide [CO2].
“Most CO2 from fossil fuels is emitted in the northern hemisphere and it takes at least six months to spread to the southern hemisphere, which means that concentrations in the northern hemisphere should go up before they do in the southern hemisphere. In fact, they go up simultaneously, which suggests that manmade CO2 emissions are not the only contributor to the rise in global CO2 and there must be some other source.”
The new research paper published in the journal ‘Energy and Environment’ explains that given 95 percent of CO2 from fossil fuel is emitted in the northern hemisphere then some time lag might be expected due to the sharp year-to-year variations in the estimated amounts left in the atmosphere.
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On the First Principles of Heat Transfer: A Note from Alan Siddons
CLIMATE concerns look surreal when you examine modern assumptions (“the settled science”) on the basis of first principles like conductive, convective and radiative heat transfer, specific heat (where water is king) and density. To me, they paint a picture 180° contrary to the greenhouse theory consensus.
In my view, the earth’s surface can do nothing except heat the air molecules that surround it, and thus be cooled in turn (convective transfer follows, of course, but the surface must heat the air first). Yet the prevalent gossip is all about how air molecules heat the surface. That alone is surreal.
Listed below is mostly a collection of what various academic and engineering sources say about heat transfer, i.e., the conditions by which Body A is able to raise Body B’s temperature. While they don’t explicitly refute the IPCC’s notion of back-radiation, they DO insist that if A is radiating 100 watts per square meter at B and B is radiating 50 at A, heat transfer follows a one-way path from A to B. That is, B alone gets hotter and no “mutual heating” occurs. By contrast, observe what the IPCC depicts: mutual heating.
One-way heat transfer renders null and void the repeated assertion that A (the earth’s surface) gets hotter by thermally exciting B (IR-reactive gases). The unalterably more-to-less flow of thermal energy is the very essence of the second law of thermodynamics and it prohibits “mutual heating,” meaning that “radiative forcing” by IR-reactive gases is entirely a product of the imagination, a complete reversal of cause and effect.
Moreover, if earth’s surface temperature then shifts focus to heat RETENTION rather than heat GAIN, the FIRST thing to investigate is a substance called water, which covers 70% of our planet, is 800 times denser than sea-level air, and is FAMOUS for retaining heat! Solids are roughly 2000 times more dense than air and must also be considered.
In any case, hinging the whole affair on trace gases that intercept a small portion of the earth’s IR spectrum is so outlandish a premise I’m amazed that anyone can offer it with a straight face. Gases are the runt of the litter, the least able to hold onto heat and the first in line to confront the vacuum of space. Light passes through air at 99.97% of its optimum speed and yet we propose that a few of the gases it contains CONTROL the earth’s emission to space? As I say: surreal.
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Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
