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You wouldn’t think so if you read recent press reports. Just like this time last year, the global press is bombarding the public with alarming reports coming from the bottom of the world. From the Discovery Channel on April 28th, 2009 “Huge Ice Shelf Breaks From Antarctica, Fractures.” From National Geographic News on April 30th, 2009 “Giant Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapses.” From Reuters on April 28th, 2009, “New York City-sized Ice Collapses off Antarctica.”

Exactly one year ago, similar stories circulated, and if anything, they were more alarming. On March 25th, 2008, the BBC reported “Antarctic Ice Hangs by a Thread,” a result, they stated, of “unprecedented global warming.” But these reports, both last year and this year, are talking about the same ice shelf – the Wilkins Ice Shelf, an insignificant bit of floating ice that is located on the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Didn’t it break up last year? How many times do we recycle the alarm over the seasonal melting of the same few thousand square miles of floating ice (ice that floats cannot contribute to sea level rise), off a continent that exceeds five million square miles in area?

Apparently over and over. An excellent analysis posted on April 17th, 2009 by Ron de Haan entitled “The Antarctic Wilkins Ice Shelf Collapse: Media recycles photos and storylines from previous years,” documents how the Wilkins Ice Shelf has been reported by the mainstream media to be ominously collapsing every year now since 1999. Haan also provides satellite photography back as far as 1993 showing the end-of-summer thaws and mid-winter maximums for the Wilkins Ice Shelf. Not much has changed over the past 15 years. Thank goodness for the blogosphere to help us accurately assess the cryosphere!

The assumption in all these stories that report on the Wilkins Ice Shelf, and other melting ice around the Antarctic Peninsula, is that global warming is the cause, and that they are representative of a general melt occurring throughout Antarctica. And if this were true, this would be alarming, since 90% of the world’s land based ice is in Antarctica. So is the ocean warming around Antarctica, and is Antarctica’s overall total mass decreasing?

GLOBAL SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE ANOMALY – APRIL 2009

As of April 2009, sea surface temperatures surrounding Antarctica are mostly colder than average. (Image: NOAA)

The answer to both of these questions is almost certainly no. As this recent imagery from NOAA indicates, the southern ocean is actually colder than average. Except for a few areas directly south of the Indian Ocean, and in the area south of Patagonia and surrounding the Antarctic Peninsula, the rest of the ocean surrounding Antarctica – virtually all of the South Pacific and South Atlantic – is cooler than average. This data indicates no reason to believe ocean temperatures are causing overall loss of ice mass in the Antarctic; with the exception of the insignificant quantity of ice on the Antarctic Peninsula, they suggest the opposite.

CURRENT SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE SEA ICE AREA

As of May 2009, sea ice surrounding Antarctica is about 1.0 million square kilometers greater than average. (Image: University of Illinois)

What about the ice mass of Antarctica? Along with land based ice, which can raise sea levels when melted into the ocean, another significant indicator of polar temperature is the extent of floating sea ice. As the above table prepared by researchers at the University of Illinois indicates, the actual sea ice surrounding Antarctica is well above average. The black line represents the last 12 months of sea ice area, based on satellite data. You can see the sea ice reached a peak of 15 million square kilometers around September, during the peak of the southern winter. You can see it dropped to a low of 2 million square kilometers in mid-February, at the height of the southern summer. Currently the sea ice surrounding Antarctica is 7 million square kilometers and rising. The red line, however, is what is significant, because the red line indicates whether or not the sea ice is above or below the historical norm. And as you can see, as of May 2009, Antarctic sea ice is about 1.0 million square kilometers above normal.

Just like last year, to assist in the research for this post I contacted Dr. Roger Pielke Sr., a climatologist at the University of Colorado whose blog www.climatesci.org is one of the most balanced forums and respected sources of technical information on global climate anywhere. In response to my inquiry, he wrote the following: “The sea ice around the continent is far above average (ref. UIUC). Also, note the colder than average sea surface temperatures around Antarctic (ref. NOAA). If the media is going to discuss the Wilkens Ice Shelf, they should also discuss this other data. The expansion of the sea ice coverage implies a cooling.”

Related Posts:

Reforesting Reduces Droughts
Global Warming & Greentech
Pessimistic Reporting, Optimistic Data
How Much for a Degree?
Climate Science
Antarctica’s Ice Mass
Aquabirds & Aquabuoys
Arctic Cooling on Schedule
Greenland’s Ice Melting Slowly
Greenland’s Ice Cap
Antarctic Ice

Droughts are a farmer’s worst nightmare: Crops meant for the dinner table wither away in the dry heat leaving people hungry and farmers broke.

Not all plants are as sensitive to drought, though, and it is the genetic makeup of these more resilient plants that is of interest to scientists who feel the need to develop crops that can handle drastic shifts in their environments.

U.S and Finnish researchers recently discovered the specific gene responsible for controlling the amount of water released by the plant as it absorbs carbon dioxide-more specifically, the gene that controls the plant’s stomata.

The stomatic pore in a tomato leaf. (Photo: Wikipedia)

All leaves are covered with stomata, which are tiny pores used to suck up carbon dioxide and to release water vapor back into the air.

Some of the ‘hardier’ plants close up their stomatal pores when ozone levels increase.

This reaction also reduces the amount of water lost during the harsher seasons. (It is interesting to note that plants suffer from excessive amounts of ozone rather than thriving in a CO2 rich environment when they use this specific gas for growth.)

The gene in question controls when the stomata are open or closed. Unfortunately, with their stomata closed, plants are unable to absorb the excessive amounts of CO2 in our atmosphere.

Up to 95% of water loss occurs through these pores while they are open, so manipulating the genetic makeup of plants to increase their sensitivity to droughts (forcing them to close their stomata) could have a positive effect on their survivability: A little water lasts much longer.

This may slow plant growth since CO2 is a necessary component for photosynthesis and plant development (with the stomatal pores closed, less CO2 makes it into the plants’ system), but a smaller plant is still better than a dead one.

Researchers claim that within the next few years plants could be genetically modified to hold on to the precious water that is so hard to come by during a drought, while still being able to absorb the CO2 they need for photosynthesis.

This is a win-win situation: It will allow crops to survive in arid regions while also sequestering the atmosphere’s CO2.

via Science Daily

As a physicist, my belief is that one of the reasons that intelligent energy policies have not gained sufficient traction is that we are allowing those with political agendas to define some key energy terms.

Probably the most significant concept that we have unwittingly gone along with is the definition of the word “renewable.” Giving some critical thought to this moniker is no academic matter, as the majority members of the US Senate’s Energy Committee is currently pushing for a national Renewable Portfolio Standard (see: “Title VIII – Renewable Portfolio Standard” to view a draft). Their decision as to what is a “renewable” will have profound technical, economic and environmental consequences on the United States.

To my knowledge there is no official definition of this bandied about term. When asked, the meanings proffered vary quite a bit, but the key difference between a renewable and non-renewable is usually the rate of replenishment. Consider this typical definition: “Renewable is an energy resource that is replaced in a reasonable amount of time (our lifetime, our children’s lifetime)…”

Such a word as “reasonable” is subjective — not scientific. Who determines what is a reasonable amount of time, and what is it: 20 years? 100 years? 500 years? The reason the definition of renewable is focused on time, derives from the concern that we may exhaust some electrical energy sources, relatively soon.

But how much is enough to have? For instance, if we have 100 years of some fuel, would the replenishment rate really be that important? Clearly, within the next 100 years of use, there will be some profound changes made regarding the efficiency and applications of said fuel’s implementation — in ways we have little understanding of today.

Look at the well-reasoned expectations that were had in 1950 about what would happen in 2000 from this article published in Popular Mechanics in February 1950 entitled “Miracles You’ll See.” The message is that almost ALL of the best guesses were wrong.

In the same vein, prior technology predictions by experts (like Einstein) have also proven to be significantly off the mark. From Listverse, take a look at this list of “Top 30 Failed Technology Predictions.” Who among us will stand to say that we have a better understanding of technology than did Einstein?

In that light, consider the case for nuclear being “renewable.” First we should answer how much longer will our nuclear fuel supply last. Consider:

a) The Nuclear Energy Institute’s website, on a page entitled “How It [Nuclear Power] Works,” says: “The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2008 jointly produced a report saying that uranium resources are adequate to meet nuclear energy needs for at least the next 100 years at present consumption levels. More efficient fast reactors could extend that period to more than 2,500 years.” It is absurd to say that a 2500 year supply doesn’t qualify this as renewable.

b) In addition, there are several proven alternatives to uranium as a source. One example is Thorium, which is much more plentiful than uranium. For a superior discussion about “The Sustainability of Mineral Resources” (and specifically uranium) read the end of this analysis entitled “Supply of Uranium” from the World Nuclear Association.

c) Bernard Cohen (Professor Emeritus of Physics at Pittsburgh University) has stated in an analysis entitled “How Long Will Nuclear Energy Last” that breeder reactors have enough raw material energy source to last us over a Billion years. That’s Billion with a “B.” When considering these sample facts, an important thing to keep in mind is this quote from some scientists at an excellent University of Michigan site: “Only 40 years ago, nuclear energy was an exotic, futuristic technology, the subject of experimentation and far fetched ideas.” (ref. Nuclear Energy & Society, by Ilan Lipper and Jon Stone).

Hard as it might seem to believe, but most of this nuclear development has occurred in just the tiny space of 40± years — so having any fuel supply that lasts 100± years could cover an enormous amount of new development.

Secondly, some definitions of “Renewable” include a reference to “power derived from natural sources” (e.g. this opinion piece in the business section of the Arizona Star, published last month, entitled “Don’t Reclassify Nuclear Power as Renewable”). Of course “natural sources” is amusingly non-descriptive since essentially all sources of electrical power are based on natural materials, and that includes nuclear.

To read more about this I’d strongly recommend Bill Tucker’s excellent book Terrestrial Energy, or a more condensed discussion he wrote here entitled “The Case for Terrestrial Energy.”

CONTRIBUTION TO CO2 EMISSIONS REDUCTIONS

A University of Michigan study calculated that since 1973, the overwhelming majority of emissions reductions in the U.S. have been the result of nuclear power generation.

A third factor sometimes appearing in the definition of “Renewable” is a reference to a power source’s ability to reduce CO2 (e.g. “clean”). That same University of Michigan site (above) has this very informative graph about how (worldwide) we have been able to reduce CO2 since 1973.

Now, for the sake of comparison, let’s quickly look at the flip side of this question, at the poster child for renewables: wind power. The indisputable fact is that an indispensable part of wind power electricity production is the requirement of LARGE amounts of land.

For instance, best estimates are that wind power requires more than a thousand times the land that nuclear does, to generate the equivalent amount of 24/7 power. BUT, that essential element of wind power generation (land) is NOT ”replaced in a reasonable amount of time.”

Before a source is labeled as “renewable” shouldn’t ALL of its major components be renewable? Otherwise, it would be like having all the materials to assemble a car, but no tires. The evidence says that we will run out of appropriate US land for industrial wind power before we run out of fossil fuel for electrical power sources. So considering this information, which is the true renewable: wind power or nuclear energy?

About the Author: John Droz received undergraduate degrees in physics and mathematics from Boston College, and a graduate degree in physics from Syracuse University. He subsequently worked for GE/AESD (Utica, NY), Mohawk Data Sciences (Herkimer, NY), and Monolithic Memories (Cupertino, CA). For over 25 years Droz has been an environmental activist and is a participating member of several environmental organizations including the Adirondack Council, Association for Protection of the Adirondacks, Residents Committee to Protect the Adirondacks, Sierra Club, and the NYS Federation of Lakes.

Sometimes truth is like the tortoise, slow to reach its destination, but nonetheless unstoppable. (Photo: EcoWorld)

“There can be little doubt that the issue of global warming presents green entrepreneurs with many tempting opportunities and it’s only natural that one would want to exploit these opportunities.”

Moreover, environmental opportunities are accompanied by the satisfaction of cloaking the profit motive in virtue. Still, it pays to remember that for any enterprise there is a responsibility, and one of those responsibilities is the ability to detect bullshit, or as it is more formally called, due diligence. You have been told since 1988 (if your memory should go back that far) that the science of global warming is settled and that all scientists agree. Those of you who are intimate with physics, know that no such claim would even be made for the standard model or for general relativity. Those of you who have attended college will have difficulty remembering classmates who studied climate – certainly not the obvious ‘rocket scientists.’ So how does it happen that a primitive, backwater science dealing with a complex system involving some the most formidable equations in physics and innumerable unexplained features come to be characterized by a certainty that escapes the strongest of sciences? And what exactly is the certainty claimed for given the innumerable facets of this issue? It is certainly not about the various catastrophic scenarios.

Most of you will recognize that the rhetoric of global warming is not the rhetoric of science, it is the rhetoric of politics, and, quite frankly, global warming has always been a political movement. As a political movement, it is characterized by an unusual degree of ugliness. Scientists who legitimately question the alarmism are regularly associated with holocaust denial – an insult to the scientist and a belittling of the holocaust by associating the real murder of millions with a guess about some future problem. And for over 20 years, it has, moreover, been an excellently organized political movement. There has, in fact, been no comparably organized opposition.

My first point is that as far as scientists go, most of the atmospheric scientists and oceanographers who I respect do endorse global warming (without generally being specific about exactly what they are endorsing). The important point, however, is that the science that they do that I respect is not about global warming. Endorsing global warming just makes their lives easier. For example, my colleague, Kerry Emanuel, received relatively little recognition until he suggested that hurricanes might become stronger in a warmer world (a position that I think he has since backed away from somewhat). He then was inundated with professional recognition.

Another colleague, Carl Wunsch, professionally calls into question virtually all alarmist claims concerning sea level, ocean temperature and ocean modeling, but assiduously avoids association with skeptics; if nothing else, he has a major oceanographic program to worry about. Moreover, his politics are clearly liberal. Perhaps, the most interesting example is Wally Broecker, whose work clearly shows that sudden climate change occurs without anthropogenic influence, and is a property of cold rather than warm climates. However, he staunchly beats the drums for alarm and is richly rewarded for doing so.

For a much larger group of scientists, the fact that they can make ambiguous or even meaningless statements that can be spun by alarmists, and that the alarming spin leads politicians to increase funding provides little incentive to complain about the spin.

Second, most arguments about global warming boil down to science versus authority. For much of the public, authority will generally win since they do not wish to deal with science. For a basically political movement, as the global warming issue most certainly is, an important task is to coopt the sources of authority. This, the global warming movement has done with great success.

Thus, for over twenty years, the National Academy had a temporary nominating group designed to facilitate the election of environmental activists. The current president of the academy is one of these. The American Association for the Advancement of Science has been headed by James McCarthy and John Holdren in recent years, and these have been public advocates for global warming alarm. Holdren is now President Obama’s nominee for science advisor. There are numerous further examples. How often have we heard a legitimate scientific argument answered by the claim that the alarmist scenario is endorsed by, for example, the American Physical Society (regardless of their lack of expertise in the issue)? How often have you heard innocuous claims by some society or another taken as endorsements of alarm? How often have you heard that any particular argument has been dealt with by realclimate.org (a clear advocacy website designed to assure warming alarmists that the basis for alarm still exists)?

Thirdly, the success with respect to the second item also gives the climate alarm movement control over carrots and sticks – which, in turn, is what makes it expedient for most scientists to go along. Note that the carrots are as important as the sticks, though the sticks matter a great deal when grants, publication and promotion are at stake.

With respect to carrots, for example, John Holdren was long on the board of the MacArthur Foundation which has awarded ‘genius’ grants to numerous environmental activists. Ironically, an award allegedly honoring the late Bill Nierenberg (who served as director of Scripps Oceanographic Institution), a very perceptive and active skeptic of climate alarm, is now given annually to an alarmist. One could go on at great length. At the stick end, one simply has to note that Science and Nature have both publically taken positions against publishing anything that opposes the notion of dangerous anthropogenic warming, while publishing highly dubious science endorsing the notion.

The process of coopting science on behalf of a political movement has had an extraordinarily corrupting influence on science – especially since the issue has been a major motivation for funding. Most funding for climate science would not be there without this issue. And, it should be added, most science funded under the rubric of climate does not actually deal with climate, but rather with the alleged impact of arbitrarily assumed climate change. All impacts depend on regional forecasts, and quoting the leading scientist at the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (widely regarded as the foremost atmospheric modeling center), Tim Palmer, such forecasts are little better than guesses.

Nonetheless, regional forecasts are at the heart of numerous state initiatives to ‘fight’ climate change. These initiatives are usually prepared by the Center for Climate Strategies (CCS), a Pennsylvania-based environmental advocacy group that purports to help states determine for themselves how to develop climate change policies. In reality, according to Paul Chesser of the John Locke Foundation, CCS tightly controls these commissions, who consider proposals mostly from a menu of options presented by CCS themselves. Nearly all the choices represent new taxes or higher prices on energy, increased costs of government, new regulations for businesses, and reduced energy-producing options for utilities, and therefore consumers. CCS is funded largely by a multi-million dollar global warming alarmist foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

What can the entrepreneur who wants to get to the bottom of this mess do? The most obvious point is to better understand the science, and to notice the obvious breaches of logic. Logic ultimately has to trump alleged authority. Moreover, there is generally a deep disconnect between consensus statements that commonly only repeat the trivial points that there has been some warming and that man’s emissions have caused some part of this, and the claims of catastrophe made by advocates. Pay attention to these differences. Note especially that citing various changes that are observed is simply to note that the earth is always changing; it is hardly evidence of man’s role in such changes.

With respect to better understanding the science, it is my view that the observations of almost a decade ago that outgoing long wave radiation associated with warmer surface temperatures was much greater than models predicted provided as good evidence as one could hope for that model sensitivities were much too high. However, without an adequate understanding of the physics, the point is largely missed. How can one communicate this to the public? Actually, the science isn’t all that hard.

John Sununu (formerly Bush I’s chief of staff, governor of New Hampshire, and professor of mechanical engineering at Tufts University) offered an easily appreciated example of positive and negative feedback. In your car, the gas and brake pedals act as negative feedbacks to reduce speed when you are going too fast and increase it when you are going too slow. If someone were to reverse the position of the pedals without informing you, then the pedals would act as positive feedbacks: increasing your speed when you are going too fast, and slowing you down when you are going too slow.

Alarming predictions depend critically on the fact that models have large positive feedbacks. The crucial question is whether nature actually behaves this way? The answer is may well be no. In the common (though admittedly somewhat inaccurate) picture of the greenhouse effect, greenhouse substances (mainly thin high clouds and water vapor, but also CO2, methane, freons, etc.) act as a blanket, inhibiting the emission of infrared (heat) radiation. We know that in the absence of feedbacks (in which water vapor and clouds allegedly act to amplify the effect of added CO2), an increase in temperature will lead to a certain increase in this heat radiation (also known as outgoing longwave radiation, OLR). With positive feedbacks, this amount of radiation will be reduced (in terms of the ‘blanket’ imagery, the blanket has gotten thicker). Current models do, indeed, predict this. The feedback processes actually operate on very short time scales, and the earth’s temperature also undergoes relatively rapid fluctuations (associated with internal phenomena like El Nino). In response to such fluctuations, the emitted heat radiation will also fluctuate.

In these diagrams we actually have a crucial piece of information that tells us that models are greatly exaggerating climate sensitivity. It tells us that the greenhouse blanketing effect in models is about 7 times greater than it is in nature.

As we see in the accompanying figures from a paper by Wielicki et al (2002), the actual fluctuations in heat radiation are substantially greater than those produced by models forced by the observed temperature fluctuations. They are also greater than what would be expected in the absence of feedbacks. This implies that nature is, as any reasonable person might suppose, dominated by stabilizing negative feedbacks rather than destabilizing positive feedbacks. It has been noted that the climate in models is an example of unintelligent design – something modelers are far more capable of than is nature.

From 1985 until 1989 the models and observations are more or less the same – they have, in fact, been tuned to be so. However, with the warming after 1989, the observational spikes characteristically exceed 7 times the model values. This corresponds roughly to a sensitivity of 0.5C for a doubling of CO2. Note that the ups and downs of both the observations and the model (forced by observed sea surface temperature) follow the ups and downs of temperature.

Getting people (including many scientists) to understand this is crucial. Once it is understood, the silliness of the whole issue becomes evident – though those who are committed to warming alarm as the vehicle for agendas ranging from a postmodern coup d’etat to simple personal profit will obviously try to obfuscate matters. Although the above results were confirmed by at least four other groups, there did appear a paper in 2006 by Wong, Wielicki et al that attempted to eliminate the observed discrepancy with models by adjusting the data. In this particular case, satellite orbital decay was shown to largely reduce the secular change in emitted heat radiation between the 80′s and 90′s. However, the episodic fluctuations remained substantially greater than those produced by the models. It is an interesting feature of climate science that when data disagrees with models, the data is inevitably ‘corrected’ to eliminate the disagreement. The ‘corrections’ in my experience are not implausible; the data, after all, is subject to numerous uncertainties.

However, the fact that such changes inevitably act to bring the data into better agreement with highly uncertain models is, in fact, highly implausible. There are many reasons why the weakness of the arguments for catastrophic anthropogenic warming are little known (though increasingly suspected by the general public). Some of these reasons are institutional. Those who note the weaknesses are limited by minimal resources.

Indeed, given the minimal resources available to those who are truly interested in how climate actually works, and the immense resources and power of the environmental movement, it is astounding that resistance has been as effective as it has been. That said, one should not underestimate the impressive degree of organization behind the climate alarm movement. Notable, in this regard, has been the Climate Action Network that has coordinated the activities of hundreds of environmental NGO’s since 1989. To be sure, there have been petitions by 100′s to tens of thousands of scientists opposing global warming alarm. These have been largely ineffective. However, there is now afoot a movement for these thousands of scientists to resign en masse from scientific and professional organizations wherein a few activist members have managed to speak for the entire membership in taking unrepresentative stands on the warming issue. Such a movement would make clear the shallowness of the claims of institutional authority.

The global warming issue has done much to set back climate science. In particular, the notion that climate is one dimensional which is to say that it is totally described by some fictitious global mean temperature and some single gross forcing a la increased CO2 is grotesque in its oversimplification. This error is perpetuated by those attempting to ‘explain’ climate with solar variability. Unlike greenhouse forcing, solar forcing is so vague that one can’t reject it. However, acting as though this is the alternative to greenhouse forcing is asking for trouble simply because it endorses the oversimplified paradigm. Remember, we are dealing with a small amount of warming (a few tenths of a degree concentrated in two relatively brief episodes) in an inadequately observed system. The proper null hypothesis is that there was no need whatsoever for external forcing in order to produce such behavior. The unsteady and even turbulent motions of the ocean and atmosphere are forever moving heat from one place to another on time scales from days to centuries, and, in doing so, they leave the system out of equilibrium with the sun leading to fluctuations in temperature. The thought that these turbulent fluctuations demand specific causes is absurd – about as absurd as calling for specific causes for each whirl in a bubbling brook.

Finally, I would suggest that history supports the notion that science eventually favors the truth, and I am confident that when this point is finally reached global warming alarm will be viewed as another inexplicable mania. There are many reasons for being confident of this. However, we have just gone over one of the most important scientific reasons. The satellite records of outgoing heat radiation show that the climate is dominated by negative feedbacks and that the response to doubled and even quadrupled CO2 would be minimal.

In a field as primitive as climate science, most of the alleged climate scientists are not even aware of this basic relation. And these days, as we have seen, attempts will be made to alter the data. Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that the public is not likely to understand this as well. On the other hand, the fact that the global mean temperature anomaly has not increased statistically significantly since at least 1995, does not actually disprove anthropogenic global warming, but for the public this failure may well be crucial. (It may already have been crucial for the otherwise inexplicable surge in global warming propaganda over the past three years.)

For some of us, this is an occasional source of frustration, but one must always remember that this is a political rather than a scientific issue, and in a political issue, public perception is important. Moreover, the temperature record does demonstrate at least one critical point: namely, that natural climate variability remains sufficiently large to preclude the identification of climate change with anthropogenic forcing. As the IPCC AR4 noted, the attribution claim, however questionable, was contingent on the assumption that models had adequately handled this natural internal variability. The temperature record of the past 14 years clearly shows that this assumption was wrong. To be sure, this period constitutes a warm period in the instrumental record, and, as a result, many of the years will be among the warmest in the record, but this does nothing to mitigate the failure of nature to properly follow the models. To claim otherwise betrays either gross ignorance or grosser dishonesty (see Figures 2 and 3 from data from the UK Meteorological Office). When it comes to global warming hysteria, neither has been in short supply.

About the author: Richard S. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (http://web.mit.edu). This paper was prepared for a keynote address delivered by Linzen at the AlwaysOn GoingGreen cleantech investor conference, held March 9-11th in Boston. This transcript is posted here with permission from the author, and the video of this address can be found at the GoingGreen East Program Archives; scroll through the program and click on Lindzen’s opening keynote at 8:30 a.m. on March 11th.

A recent article in New Scientist by Fred Pearce entitled “Rainforests may pump winds worldwide” describes a new meteorological theory wherein vast forests play a critical role in generating winds that pump water around the world through the atmosphere. Here is how Pearce summarizes this theory:

“How can forests create wind? Water vapour from coastal forests and oceans quickly condenses to form droplets and clouds… the gas [from this evaporation] takes up less space as it turns to liquid, lowering local air pressure. Because evaporation is stronger over the forest than over the ocean, the pressure is lower over coastal forests, which suck in moist air from the ocean. This generates wind that drives moisture further inland. The process repeats itself as the moisture is recycled in stages, moving towards the continent’s heart. As a result, giant winds transport moisture thousands of kilometres into the interior of a continent.

The volumes of water involved in this process can be huge. More moisture typically evaporates from rainforests than from the ocean. The Amazon rainforest, for example, releases 20 trillion litres [20 cubic kilometers] of moisture every day.

‘In conventional meteorology the only driver of atmospheric motion is the differential heating of the atmosphere. That is, warm air rises,” Makarieva and Gorshkov told New Scientist. But, they say, “Nobody has looked at the pressure drop caused by water vapour turning to water.’”

This theory, which is somewhat out of the mainstream, is nonetheless compatible with well known but less ambitious connections between forests and precipitations. In our November 9th, 2006 post entitled “Reforesting Brings Rain,” we reference an MIT study “Deforestation, Desertification and Drought,” wherein the authors conclude “deforestation along the southern coast of West Africa (e.g., in Nigeria, Ghana and Ivory Coast) may result in complete collapse of monsoon circulation, and a significant reduction of regional rainfall.”

The role forests play in alleviating droughts and moderating weather may have more to do with their ability to store and transpirate massive volumes of water than their role as “carbon sinks.” (Photo: NASA)

In our post of November 30th, 2007 entitled “Hydraulic Redistribution” we reference a UC Berkeley study “Deep-rooted plants have much greater impact on climate than experts thought,” which contends that rainforest trees, through hydraulic lift (energy provided by evaporation of water out of the leaves) “transpirate” sufficient volumes of water into the atmosphere to increase and moderate precipitation, which impacts the climate globally. Transpiration from rainforests add moisture to clouds blowing in from the ocean, giving them critical mass to release evaporation from the ocean as rainfall, adding to the reserves of land based fresh water and reducing incidence of droughts.

It is important to understand that climate change, such as it is, refers to three distinct and only somewhat overlapping phenomenon; global warming, extreme weather, and droughts. And in all three cases, particularly in the case of droughts, these studies are all suggesting the cause of undesirable climate change, and the cure, may have more to do with the health and extent of our global forest canopy, and less to do with anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

Earlier this week, on April 15th, 2009, not coincidentally the day each year when tax returns are due from America’s workers, there were “tea parties” held throughout the United States – approximately 2,000 separate events, some drawing over 10,000 people. It is probably accurate to estimate several hundred thousand people participated.

In Sacramento, California, at what was reputed to be one of the biggest events, there were over 5,000 people in attendance at peak, but given the duration of the event, well over three hours, and the apparent turnover of people arriving and departing, probably closer to 10,000 people actually participated.

Looks like grass-roots to me. (Photo: John Gewalt)

Press coverage of these events in mainstream media – apart from Fox News – was somewhat cursory. Part of the reason for this was the dubious fact that Fox News not only covered the event, but actively promoted the event for weeks prior, and sent many of their star correspondants to actually speak at some of the larger events. Is Fox reporting news or creating news? This is a fair question.

In the New York Times on April 16th, in a column entitled “Tea Parties Forever,” Paul Krugman leveled several observations and accusations, including these: Obama is NOT a socialist, these events were NOT grassroots events, and that these “tea parties have been the subject of considerable ridicule, and rightly so.”

Huffington Post commentator Drew Westen, also in an April 16th column entitled “The Five Strands of Conservatism, Why the GOP is Unraveling,” said “When you get caught gutting the regulations that had kept us for 70 years from another stock market crash like the crash of 1929 and another collapse of the banking system like the one that occurred during the Great Depression, and when your policies throw millions of people out of their homes, jobs, retirement, and doctors’ offices, the next bottle of elixir you sell is not likely to fly off the shelf…”

Despite the active role of Fox News in making this event happen, however, despite Paul Krugman’s scorn, or Drew Westen’s suggestion that only Republicans caused the economic mess we’re in today, the concerns of yesterday’s tea party protesters are valid. The United States is indeed at risk of overreacting to the current economic crisis by expanding the role of government when what has been at issue was never the size of government, but the quality of government.

No matter who caused this event to happen, and no matter who were there, in Sacramento the roars from the Tea Party being held on the west side of the Capitol could easily be heard on the grass to the east of the Capitol. And for the most part, along with Democrats and media professionals, California’s Republican politicians were nowhere to be found.

The aim of democratic politics is to strike a balance between legitimate but conflicting interests. It is therefore inaccurate and unhelpful when left of center commentators mock the notion that America might be drifting towards socialism, or that socialism isn’t so bad anyway. It is also innacurate and unhelpful to define one of the fundamental planks of the Republican Party, fiscal conservatism, as part of a totally discredited whole.

An editorial in the New Yorker on March 16th, 2009, made an observation somewhat representative of this leftist, triumphalist mentality, when it wrote “Republican jibes that the [U.S. 2009] budget was ‘socialist’ should be treated with the respect they deserve, which is to say none…”

A more constructive editorial in the April 2009 edition of Harper’s, in an editorial entitled “Shine, Perishing Republicans,” by Garret Keizer, includes this gem, “These two imperatives, that of self-reliance and social responsibility, of the Republican heart and the Democratic heart in their purest forms, are the crux of any sustainable community.” In recognizing that moral worth emanates from both sides of the political spectrum, Harper’s has credibility.

Socialism is real, it can creep into a society gradually, and when fully realized it is tyranny, orchestrated by credentialed opportunists and nomenklatura of all stripes, and it begins by embracing increasing sectors of the economy, and we all disagree only as to where one might identify the tipping point. One of the most insidious, to-date effectively invisible agents of socialism is environmentalism in general, and global warming fear in particular. It is absurd and only self-serving to suggest that socialism, fascism, communism, or any other authoritarian ‘ism might not be as likely to originate from the political left as from the right.

Self reliance and social responsibility, along with fiscal conservatism, are values that any party and any successful policy agenda can and should embrace. The value of environmentalism cannot be viewed apart from, in its application, compatibility with pluralistic economic growth, individual initiative and expression, and private property rights. The tea parties of April 15th, regardless of their provenance, reflected genuine values necessary for any sustainable community.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota reported recently that the production of ethanol fuelstocks may consume as much as three times more water than previously thought, depending on where they’re grown.
They found that ethanol fuelstock grown in Iowa uses the least water — about 6 gallons of water for each gallon of ethanol. While fuelstock grown in Minnesota uses about 19 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol.
And that’s just on the farm. The researchers found that total water use in the production of a single gallon of ethanol is up to 2,100 gallons of water — from farm to fuel pump — depending on the regional irrigation practice in growing corn. Although a dozen states in the Corn Belt consume less than 100 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol, making them better-suited for ethanol production.
Annual bioethanol production in the U.S. is about 9 billion gallons, according to the University of Minnesota researchers, who published their findings in an article titled “Water Embodied in Bioethanol in the United States” in the April 15 issue of the American Chemical Society’s journal.

Previous studies estimated that a gallon of corn-based bioethanol requires 263 gallons to 784 gallons of water from the farm to the fuel pump. Trouble was, those estimates were calculated without considering regional irrigation practices.
No doubt water usage needs to be weighed in policy discussions involving the location of ethanol plants. If not, there’s a good chance we’ll see ethanol plants about as sensible as an ice factory in the Mojave Desert. It’s important for policymakers to scratch from their lists those regions that have high water-usage ratios. Let’s instead steer them to places like Idaho, to encourage a smarter and more sustainable approach to biofuels. By Lee Bruno

Old Saybrook, Ct. (April 2009) — Infiltrator Systems reaffirms their commitment to both the environment and the wastewater industry with a new look and a full line of wastewater treatment products. Backed by over 20 years of experience, the company continues helping wastewater professionals grow their business through continued innovation. Over the past eighteen months Infiltrator Systems has launched a new Quick4 leachfield chamber model, and the Aquaworx division providing advanced treatment solutions and the TW™-Series Septic Tank product line. Now they are introducing the SmartRock engineered media system. Infiltrator now offers a full range of quality septic products from one reliable source.
“The advances in the onsite industry overall have created an outstanding opportunity for professionals who keep up with the very latest trends,” says Roy Moore, President of Infiltrator Systems. “Our commitment to the wastewater industry is to not only provide the most reliable and innovative line of products, but to offer the highest level of technical support to the installer, regulator, designer, distributor, and consumer.”
Infiltrator products meet increasingly stringent environmental and regulatory requirements. Through their understanding of the marketplace and the integration of engineering, manufacturing, science, green materials, and technological expertise, Infiltrator is able to continue its commitment to providing innovative water treatment through environmentally sustainable solutions.
“The onsite industry has evolved so dramatically in recent history, that it is difficult for all of those impacted to keep up with the technology and issues that affect their daily life,” comments Jim Bransfield, Marketing Manager at Infiltrator. “Our goal is to make that easier by providing the most accurate and useful information possible.” Up-to-date product information can be found on their website at www.infiltratorsystems.com. The company is based in Old Saybrook, Connecticut and includes a staff of Field Representatives and an in-house Technical Resources Department. To reach Infiltrator Systems by phone, call 1-800-221-4436.
Infiltrator Systems is a Graham Partners portfolio company. Graham Partners is a leading, lower middle market industrial private equity firm with over $1.5 billion under management (www.grahampartners.net). Graham Partners seeks to acquire industrial companies that participate in growth manufacturing niches where it can leverage its unique combination of operating resources and financial expertise.

There’s no better way to take the pulse of innovation than to survey R&D spending. And there’s no better time than during a downturn, because history tells us that this is the opportunity for businesses to gain advantage by investing and growing.

Two recent R&D surveys, one from the Wall Street Journal and the other from McKinsey were released recently and both confirm that many companies are still spending on R&D (for now).

(Photo: Battelle Institute)

So what about green investment? Are companies spending on cleantech? They should be, since transforming energy markets (which is critical) will require an unprecedented level of R&D.

But the challenges are enormous. The energy industry is the largest on the planet, with sales of more than $2 trillion a year, and industrial labs and government have scaled back R&D drastically over the past 20 to 30 years.

Still, the Obama administration seems at least to recognize the need. It has outlined an ambitious policy to invest in energy R&D, a big reversal from previous years of shrinking energy R&D budgets. Whether the government can sustain the investment is unclear (R&D is expensive) but the gains from R&D today will far exceed the up-front cost 20 years down the road.

Encouragingly, the Battelle Institute, which tracks R&D investment, predicts cumulative spending by companies, government and universities will rise 3 percent this year, although it predicts a decline in 2010. Battelle notes that R&D cuts during the downturns of the 1980s and 1990s took more than five years to return to prior spending levels.

Companies keeping up R&D funding include Microsoft, which spent 21 percent more in fourth quarter 2008 over 2007, while revenue was virtually flat. IBM is also spending on R&D, partly because of government-stimulus money. IBM says it plans to keep its R&D spending at the same level it was last year. Corning claims it will cut everything else possible before cutting R&D. Corning executives devised a strategy last summer called “rings of defense” to put into play during this downturn. In this strategy, R&D is in the innermost ring.

On the flip side, McKinsey cites evidence that some companies are pondering reductions in R&D spending. In its survey, 40 percent of respondents say their companies are actively seeking to reduce R&D costs. Some 34 percent of executives surveyed said R&D budgets are lower in 2009 than they were in 2008. The majority also said they’re taking a new approach to R&D in the current economic circumstances, with many turning to shorter-term, lower-risk projects.

That’s a little alarming, considering the historical benefits of investing in long-term innovation. But at least some realize that slowing R&D amounts to gradual self-destruction. “Companies by and large realize that large reductions in R&D are suicidal,” said Jim Andrew, senior partner at the Boston Consulting Group, in the WSJ story. “It is the last shoe to drop.”

Published in 1968 “The Population Bomb” became an enormously influential book, postulating, among other things, that humanity’s population growth, at current rates of expansion, would within perilously few centuries become a spherical ball of human flesh expanding at the speed of light in all directions into the universe. Like other such doomsday tracts, the Population Bomb extrapolated select demographic trends into the future, and predicted catastrophic shortages – land, food, energy, water, even the air itself.

Now we know better. We know, for example, that greater overall prosperity combined with female literacy – both ineluctable trends – lead to declining human populations, not an exploding population. Within the next century, humanity’s most likely demographic challenge will be how to maintain economic and scientific vitality amidst an aging and declining human population. We know that human population is unlikely to ever exceed 10.0 billion, and that most people seem to voluntarily prefer living in fairly dense urban areas. Despite the apocalyptic and emotionally compelling visions of doomsaying artists and analysts, from Soylent Green to the Population Bomb, these Malthusian messages are incorrect.

With respect to energy, for example, even though easily extracted light crude may becoming somewhat scarce in the world, at $100+/BBL, our planet’s remaining supply of fossil fuel is in no way limited by any realistic constraints. As we document in “Fossil Fuel Reality,” at 1.0 quintillion BTUs of energy consumption per year – 100 million BTUs per person per year on a 10 billion person planet, we have a 300 year supply of likely fossil fuel reserves. This clearly affords us plenty of time to discover and deploy cheap fusion power, or whatever.

With water the argument of the Malthusians remains more credible, at least on the surface. Water is the “new oil,” and pundits predict wars over water as humanity’s industrializing multitudes relentlessly consume more water than ever. The raw materials of prosperity are energy and water, and there are already alarming examples of regional water scarcity that could disrupt the lives and delay the economic development for billions of people. Nonetheless the Malthusians are wrong about water, too.

Ethiopian raindancers – now joined with the raindancers of technology & free enterprise. (Photo: Wikipedia)

For thousands of years, human societies turned to raindancers who would perform their sacred rites in an attempt to bring on livegiving rains. But to address the water needs of 10 billion thirsty humans it is not necessary to only bring on the raindancers of antiquity – we now have several new promising technologies that will deliver water abundance at a global scale.

Desalination is a cost-effective, energy-efficient option for many water challenged regions – it can offer a backup source of water as well as a less expensive source of water. Using California’s Los Angeles basin as an example, a desalination plant constructed for $5.0 billion dollars could desalinate 1.0 cubic kilometers of water per year from the California Channel, enough water to satisfy the urban residential needs of 5.0 million Angelenos (ref. Desalination Costs). And the perhaps 5-to-1 waste water brine could easily be safely dispersed by outfall pipes running well into the California Channel, where more than 20 sverdrups (one Sverdrup equals 35 thousand cubic kilometers of water) of ocean water per year is passed along the coast by the California current.

The energy to desalinate water, 2.0 kilowatt-hours per cubic meter, is less than the amount of energy necessary to move, for example, up to 6.0 cubic kilometers of water per year over the Tehachapi Mountains (a lift of about 700 meters), from California’s Central Valley into the Los Angeles basin. That is, at somewhere between 500 and 700 meters of lift, it takes more energy to pump water over a mountain than it takes to desalinate an equivalent quantity from the ocean.

Another technological raindance, again using California as an example, is seasonal runoff harvesting. During even routine droughts, especially now that California’s policymakers intend their state to host up to 50 million residents within a couple of decades, Californian’s fret over finding enough water for the burgeoning annual needs of environment, agriculture, industry, and residents. But even during droughts, often during spring, there can be significant torrential storms that will each introduce cubic kilometer quantities of runoff, temporarily overwhelming streams and rivers downstream from reservoirs. If anything, this runoff often can seriously disrupt ecosystems, and should instead be captured and sequestered. At the same time, hydrologists estimate there are at least 10.0 cubic kilometers of aquifer storage already identified in California, with far more storage than that potentially available. California needs to develop systems to harvest runoff and refill her acquifers. In addition to percolation ponds and direct injection facilities, this particular raindance will require massive construction of weirs and holding ponds, aquaducts, pipes, and pumping systems (ref. California’s Water System).

Reuse and recycling technologies deliver additional raindancing enablers of water abundance. The potential of water reuse and recycling technologies is only beginning to be tapped, and the proliferation of these technologies is only beginning. Closely tied with these advances is the phenomenon of miniaturization and decentralization, whereby water harvesting, storage, reuse and recycling technologies can be implemented to create a water-positive usage profile at the building scale, at the scale of a community, or at the scale of a mega-city. Water, like energy, has the potential to be realized in an autarkic mode, and hence can make any building, community, or city able to elect to live off-grid or on-grid.

Last but not least are the raindancers of the market, where a well-regulated water grid, of sorts, operates like an energy grid, with spot prices and as much fungibility as can be cost-effectively facilitated. Water shortages need never occur if there is a well-established market-oriented grid for water supply and delivery among a pluralistic assortment of water suppliers and consumers, using the entire array of new raindancing technologies. A grid of exchange and delivery, where for each ton of Alfalfa or Rice not grown, for example, residential users purchase the water instead at a fair price, and within the arbitrage of such transactions are extracted revenues to finance increasingly advanced water infrastructure.

The essense of the Malthusian fallacy is the notion that human innovation cannot create abundance, cannot alleviate all needs. As long as the spark of individual creativity is not squelched by the vested interests of those who only benefit from extrapolations of the status-quo, abundance in all things is our destiny.