Thongchai Thailand

THIS POST IS A CRITIAL REVIEW OF THE PROPOSITION THAT THE OCEANS ARE DYING BECAUSE OF THE HUMANS

PART-1: WHAT THE VIDEO SAYS

BRIAN WRIGHT: INTRO TO “THE DISASTER THAT IS HAPPENING IN THE OCEANS”.

PAUL BECKWITH: THERE WAS A PAPER RECENTLY THAT WAS TALKING ABOUT TIPPING POINTS IN THE OCEAN. AND BASICALLY IT WAS TALKING ABOUT THREE MAIN POINTS. THE FIRST ONE IS THE EXTENT OF THE OCEAN WARMING. IT’S NOT JUST THE WARMING AT THE SURFACE. THE SURFACE TEMPERATURE HAS BEEN RISING QUITE RAPIDLY AND OF COURSE WHEN THE SURFACE TEMPERATURE IS ABOVE 26.5C DOWN IN THE TROPICAL REGIONS THEN ANY SMALL DISTURBANCE THAT PROPAGATES INTO A TROPICAL STORM BECOMES AMPLIFIED THAT MUCH MORE BY WATER TEMPERATURES ABOVE 26.5C BECAUSE THERE IS A LOT OF EVAPORATION BECAUSE THERE IS A LOT OF WARM WATER AT THE SURFACE AND A LOT OF EVAPORATION INTO THE AIR WHICH THEN RISES UP AND CONDENSES INTO DROPLETS AND CLOUDS AND RELEASES A TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF ENERGY WHICH BUILDS UP THE INTENSITY OF THE HURRICANES OR CYCLONES CALL THEM WHAT YOU WANT. SO WE HAD A LARGE ONE VERY EARLY IN THE YEAR THAT HIT THE PHILLIPPINES AND UH THESE STORMS ARE GOING FROM TROPICAL DISTURBANCES TO THE FULL CATEGORY-5 IN RECORD SHORT TIME AND UH THEY’RE VERY VERY LARE STORMS AND OFTEN THEY DON’T MOVE AS QUICKLY ACROSS THE SURFACE AND SO WHEN THEY DO HIT AN ISLAND OR A CONTINENT THEY TEND TO LINGER AND BE THERE FOR A LONG PERIOD OF TIME AS FOR EXAMPLE HURRICANE HARVEY in 2017. WHEN HURRICANE HARVEY CAME ASHORE AND HIT TEXAS IT WAS ONLY MOVING AT A FEW MILES AN HOUR A FEW KILOMETERS AN HOUR SO IT WAS UH IT AFFECTED TEXAS UH IT WAS LIKE CONNECTING A FIRE HOSE FROM THE OCEAN TO THE LAND. SO THE WARMING OF THE OCEAN IS A BIG HUGE DEAL. AND SO THE WARMTH OF COURSE PROPAGATES DOWN THROUGH THE DEPTHS INTO THE OCEAN SO THE UPPER LAYERS ARE WARMING MUCH FASTER THAN THE LOWER LAYERS AND UH WARM WATER HAS UH IS LIGHTER SO WHEN THE SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURES ARE VERY WARM IT IS ALMOST LIKE A LAYER OR A LAMINATION OF THE OCEAN THE HEAT AND UH YOU GET LESS VERTICAL MIXING WHICH IS UH VERTICAL MIXING IS NEEDED TO BRING OXYGEN TO LOWER DEPTHS TO BRING CARBON TO LOWER DEPTHS AND WHEN YOU HAVE LESS VERTICAL MIXING YOU GET STRATIFICATION OF THE OCEAN AND UH UH YOU KNOW THAT’S A PROBLEM. THE THERMOHALINE CIRCULATION. SO THERMAL HEAT, SALINE YOU KNOW THE SALTINESS AND UH {?TRIPPING APPLE FROM THE GULF STREAM?} COMING UP THE UH THE EASTERN COAST OF THE US UH AS IT MOVES NORTH UH EAST IT CARRIES TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF HEAT OVER TO EUROPE THEN THE GULF STREAM HAS BEEN SLOWING DOWN AND IT IS OVERRUNNING THE CONTINENTAL SHELF OF THE US MORE SO WE’RE GETTING RECORD WARM TEMPERATURES DOWN TO DEPTH OVER THE CONTINENTAL SHELF OFF THE EASTERN US SO MOST NOTICEABLY UHMM SCUBA DIVERS IN MAINE FOR EXAMPLE THEY GO DOWN YOU KNOW 50 METERS AND THE WATER TEMPERATURES ARE UNBELIEVABLY WARM. OF COURSE THE WARM SURFACE WATERS ARE HAVING HUGE IMPACTS ON THE UH NEGATIVE IMPACTS ON THE CORAL REEF AND ON THE UH ON THE PACIFIC SIDE IT’S THE KUROSHIO CURRENT WHICH IS THEIR EQUIVALENT OF THE GULF STREAM AND THAT’S ALSO BEEN EXHIBITING SLOWING, YEAH, SO THE WHOLE HEAT TRANSFER ON THE PLANET IS BEING DISRUPTED. GENERALLY YOU KNOW OF COURSE THE EQUATORS ARE WARMED POLES ARE MUCH COLDER SO HEAT HAS TO MOVE FROM THE EQUATOR TO THE POLES AND IT DOES SO BY THE UH IN THE ATMOSPHERE IN THE ATMOSPHERIC WIND CURRENT WHICH SETS UP THE JET STREAM AND ALSO IN THE OCEAN. ABOUT 2/3 OF THE TRANSPORT OF HEAT IS IN THE ATMOSPHERE AND ABOUT 1/3 IN THE OCEAN. SO THE OCEAN WARMING ALSO MEANS THAT THE UH THE WARMER WATER IS LESS ABLE TO UMM DISSOLVE UMM GASES AS MUCH SO THAT MEANS THAT THERE UH THE OXYGEN THE DE-OXYGENATION OF THE OCEAN IS BECOMING AN ACCUTE PROBLEM. NOT JUST DEAD ZONES FROM PHYTOPLANKTON BLOOMS IN COASTAL REGIONS BUT WE’RE GETTING DEAD ZONES IN THE OCEAN WHERE THERE IS NOT ENOUGH OXYGEN FOR MARINE LIFE TO THRIVE – TO SURVIVE EVEN AND OF COURSE THE OCEAN ACIDIFICATION IS YOU KNOW IS A HUGE MAJOR FACTOR UMM THE OCEANS ARE ACIDIFYING UMM RAPIDLY AND UHH THE PH OF THE OPEN OCEAN HAS DECREASED UMM SO THE OCEANS ARE BECOMING MORE ACIDIC ABOUT A 30% TO 40% INCREASE UMM OF ACIDITY UMM OVER WHAT WE HAD AT PRE-INDUSTRIAL AND THAT UH YOU KNOW THE OCEAN ACIDITY HAS REMAINED STABLE FOR FOR MANY MANY TENS OF MILLIONS OF YEARS 30 UH 40 MILLLION YEARS AND NOW IT’S DROPPING VERY SHARPLY THE PH MEANING YOU KNOW THAT IT’S STARTING TO AFFECT SHELLFISH AND FORMING THEIR EXOSKELETONS AND ALSO PHYTOPLANKTON

{Note: Hurricane Harvey was a devastating Category 4 hurricane that made landfall on Texas and Louisiana in August 2017, causing catastrophic flooding and more than 100 deaths. It is tied with 2005’s Hurricane Katrina as the costliest tropical cyclone on record,[nb 1] inflicting $125 billion (2017 USD) in damage, primarily from catastrophic rainfall-triggered flooding in the Houston metropolitan area and Southeast Texas}.

CRITICAL COMMENTARY

(1): That rising SST is making tropical cyclones more devastating cannot be estabilshed by citing a few hurricans in the North Atlantic Basin and one typhoon in the West Pacific Basin. For that kind of analysis one must present the data for all cyclones in all six cyclone basins over a long study period of more than 30 years. See Knutson etal 2010. LINK to related post: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/01/30/list-of-posts-on-tropical-cyclones/

(2): Sources of heat and carbon in the ocean exceed that on land and in the atmosphere by many orders of magnitude and the ocean is larger than the atmosphere by many orders of magnitude.The atmosphere and ocean taken together weighs 1.36E18 tonnes of which the ocean is 99.62% and the atmosphere 0.38% That observed changes in ocean temperature and acidity can be explained in terms of atmospheric phenomena is a case of an extreme form of the atmosphere bias of climate science and of humans in general. We are land creatures and our experience is mostly atmospheric and moreover what we know about the ocean is somewhere close to zero.

LINK#1: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/04/22/climate-science-101-4-22-2021/

LINK#2: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/08/14/ocean-volcanism/

(3): It is claimed that the total mass of ocean biota is decreasing but no data for that decrease is provided. The truth is he doesn’t have the data because we don’t really know the ocean. We are now just beginning to study it at depth. There is no empirical evidence that oceanic biota is decreasing because we don’t have the data. What is presented here is best undrstood as imaginations of a tortured mind convinced of a catastrophe of some kind and driven by the the superstitious nature of the humans.

LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/01/26/ocean-heat-content-alarm-of-2021/

IT IS AN EXTREME FORM OF THE ATMOSPHERE BIAS OF HUMANS TO ASSUME THAT ALL TEMPERATURE CHANGES IN THE OCEAN EVEN IN THE ABYSSAL OCEAN, CAN BE UNDERSTOOD IN TERMS OF ATMOSPHERIC PHENOMENA AND HUMAN ACTIVITY. THIS KIND OF ATMOSPHERE BIAS IS FOUND IN CLIMATE SCIENCE. AS FOR EXAMPLE THE BLOB IS EXPLORED IN A RELATED POST ON THIS SITE: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/03/14/atmosphere-bias/

(4): THAT THE OCEAN CONTAINS SIGNIFICANTLY LARGER SOURCES OF HEAT IN THE FORM OF SUBMARINE VOLCANISM, MANTLE PLUMES, AND HYDROTHERMAL VENTS IS DESCRIBED IN A RELATED POST ON THIS SITE: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/01/20/offshore-hydrocarbon-seeps/ AND DISPLAYED IN THE YOUTUBE VIDEO BELOW. THE EXISTENCE OF THESE HEAT SOURCES MAKES IT NECESSARY THAT THE ATTRIBUTION OF OCEAN WARMING TO THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT OF ATMOSPHERIC CO2 MUST PROVIDE SIGNIFICANT EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THE ATTRIBUTION. IT CANNOT BE ASSUMED THAT ALL TEMPERATURE CHANGES IN THE OCEAN CAN BE UNDERSTOOD IN TERMS OF ATMOSPHERIC PHENOMENA.

(5): THE THEORY OF ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE (AGW) IS ABOUT A SURFACE PHENOMENON THAT EXPLAINS A LONG TERM RISE IN GLOBAL MEAN SURFACE TEMPERATURE (GMST) IN TERMS OF THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT OF ATMOSPHERIC CO2. IT IS FURTHER CLAIMED THAT THE STRENGTH OF THE THEORY OF AGW DERIVES FROM THE MATCH IN TERMS OF EQUILIBRIUM CLIMATE SENSITIVITY BETWEEN THE OBSERVED LONG TERM TRENDS IN MEAN OCEAN SURFACE TEMPERATURE AND THE THEORETICAL GREENHOUSE EFFECT AND AN AIRBORNE FRACTION OF 50% OF THE CO2 IN FOSSIL FUEL EMISSIONS. THE ASSUMED AVAILABILITY OF SUCH LARGE AMOUNTS OF EXTRA HEAT IN THIS EQUATION, ENOUGH TO HEAT LARGE SEGMENTS OF THE DEEP OCEAN IS INCONSISTENT WITH THIS THEORY.

(6): NOAA DATA ON OCEAN HEAT CONTENT ARE PRESENTED IN A RELATED POST ON THIS SITE: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/10/06/ohc/ . THE DATA SHOW THAT: {As expected, the annual data at the 700M depth shows greater volatility and uncertainty than the smoothed Pentadal data for the 2000M depth. An additional difference seen in the case of the Pacific is that the steady and sustained upward trend in OHC at 2000M is not found in the 700M data where no trend is evident until the 1990’s. This distinction is seen more clearly in the trend profiles where we find that in the smoothed data for 2000M, the moving decadal trends are all positive whereas in the data for 700 meters we see violent and unsynchronized swings of cooling and warming periods with North cooling while the South warms and vice versa. This disconnect between North and South is not seen in the smoothed data for 2000M. The smoothed full span data for 2000M indicate steadily rising Ocean Heat Content (OHC) for both the Northern and Southern segments in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. A very different pattern is seen in the Indian Ocean where the whole of the gain in OHC at either depth derives from warming in the South with no trend seen in the OHC of the North. The trend pattern seen for the annual 700M data in the Atlantic and Pacific where the upward trend in OHC begins in the 1990s is seen in the Indian Ocean data at both depths and at both annual and pentadal time scales. THESE PATTERNS IN OCEAN HEAT CONTENT ARE NOT CONSISTENT WITH A UNIFORM ATMOSPHERIC SOURCE OF HEAT.

(7): MARINE HEAT WAVES: THE CREATION OF THE MARINE HEAT WAVE PHENOMENON CAN PERHAPS BE UNDERSTOOD IN TERMS RISING GMST. HOWEVER, THE MUCH GREATER HEAT ENERGY NEEDED FOR DEEP OCEAN TEMPERATURE CHANGES OF A LARGE MASS OF WATER REQUIRES A PRESENTATION OF THE HEAT BALANCE THAT EXPLAINS BOTH RISING GMST AND OCEAN HEAT CONTENT. WITHOUT THAT HEAT BALANCE THE ATTRIBUTION OF ALL OBSERVED OCEAN TEMPERTURE CHANGES TO ATMOSPHERIC PHENOMENA IS NOT CREDIBLE FOR TWO REASONS. THEY ARE (1) THE AMOUNT OF ENERGY INVOLVED IN OCEAN WARMING, AND (2) THE KNOWN EXTENSIVE HEAT SOURCES IN THE OCEAN ITSELF.

THE ATMOSPHERE AND THE OCEAN TOGETHER WEIGH 1.36E18 METRIC TONNES OF WHICH THE OCEAN IS 99.62% AND THE ATMOSPHERE 0.38%. THE ATMOSPHERE BIAS OF CLIMATE SCIENCE CREATES VIEWS OF THE WORLD THAT ARE INCONSISTENT WITH THE ENORMOUS SIZE OF THE OCEAN AND WITH OUT RELATIVE IGNORANCE OF IT.

HUMAN CAUSE: THE REAL ISSUE HERE IS HUMAN CAUSE BECAUSE WITHOUT EVIDENCE OF HUMAN CAUSE OF THE WARMING TREND, WHATEVER IMPACTS THE WARMING MAY HAVE ARE ALL NATURAL.

LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/11/09/the-issue-is-human-cause/

THIS POST IS A LIST OF SIGNIFICANT WILDFIRES OF THE PAST

THE PESHTIGO FIRE

On October 8, 1871, the most devastating forest fire in American history swept through northeast Wisconsin, claiming 1200 lives. The Area Research Center, the state historical society’s depository for records for 11 counties in Northeast Wisconsin, has papers and manuscripts that document the Peshtigo Fire. The story of the Peshtigo Fire is that railroad workers clearing land for tracks started a brush fire which, somehow, became an inferno. It had been an unusually dry summer, and the fire moved fast. The sudden, convulsive speed of the flames consumed available oxygen. Some trying to flee burst into flames. It scorched 1.2 million acres, although it skipped over the waters of Green Bay to burn parts of Door and Kewaunee counties. The damage estimate was at $169 million. The fire also burned 16 other towns, but the damage in Peshtigo was the worst. The city of Peshtigo was gone in an hour. In Peshtigo alone, 800 lives were lost. What most researchers find so fascinating is the effect of the Peshtigo Fire on people’s lives. Some people thought it was the end of the world. The fire produced countless stories of heroics and tragedy now stored in the Peshtigo Fire Museum in downtown Peshtigo. There’s the story of a man carrying a woman to safety he thought was his wife but it wasn’t. The Peshtigo River was the only haven from the fire, and one 13 year-old said she held onto the horn of a cow all night in the river to survive. The Peshtigo Fire Museum, located in a former church building, is located at the corner of Oconto Street and Ellis Avenue in Peshtigo.

WILDFIRE#2 THE GREAT MICHIGAN FIRE

---

---

It was Sunday, October 8, that fires near Peshtigo, Wisconsin, and Chicago came to life. No one is certain how they started. The Chicago fire’s popular lore tells that a cow, owned by Mrs. O’Leary, purportedly knocked over a lantern in her barn that set off the blaze. While in Wisconsin, a sudden fire mysteriously starts outside of Peshtigo. A few hours later, across Lake Michigan, fires erupt in Holland and Manistee. Later in the day, the fire rips across Michigan only to be stopped by Lake Huron’s shores north of Port Huron at the lake’s southern end. Historians and meteorologists point to a cyclone like a system of winds parked over the eastern plains in early October that fanned and fueled the fires.

1871 Chicago Fire Was Famous But The Peshtigo Fire Was Horrific

---

The fire in Chicago burns about three square miles of the city, consuming more than 17,000 buildings and 300 lives.

The fire reached Peshtigo, Wisconsin Sunday evening, October 8th. Residents flee. Some survivors jumped into rivers to escape the flames and witness firestorms or “tornadoes of fire,” which devastated enormous areas. Some who went into the Peshtigo River during the fire boiled alive in the 2000 degree firestorm.

By the time the fire ended, it had consumed 1.5 million acres and an estimated 1,200-2,400 lives, including approximately 800 in Peshtigo. Only one building in Peshtigo survived the fire. Pleas for assistance from the area go unheeded as there was no telegraph service. The Peshtigo fire goes down in history as the worst fire disaster in the US of all time.

THE TOKYO-YOKOHAMA FIRE OF 1923 CAUSED BY EARTHQUAKES. 143,000 FATALITIES

THE TOKYO FIRE OF 1857 CAUSED BY EARTHQUAKES, 107,000 FATALITIES

THE MIRAMICHI FIRE OF 1825, 300,000 ACRES {CANADA}

THE GREAT OREGON FIRE OF 1845: 1.5 MILLION ACRES

THE OREGON FIRE OF 1853, 180,000 ACRES

THE SILVERTON FIRE OF 1865. 1 MILLION ACRES

THE HINCKLEY FIRE OF 1894, 160,000 ACRES

THE YACOLT FIRE OF 1902, 1 MILLION ACRES

THE BIG BURN OF 1910: WASHINGTON, MONTANA, IDAHO, 3 MILLION ACRES

THE CLOQUET FIRE OF 1918 IN MINNESOTA: 1.2 MILLION ACRES

THE TILLAMOOK BURN OF 1933/1951: 355,000 ACRES

THE GREAT FIRES OF 1947: 200,000 ACRES IN MAINE

LINK TO HIGH COUNTRY NEWS: https://www.hcn.org/issues/251/13986

EXTRACT

Investigating the … arid lands, I passed through South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho by train. Among the valleys, with mountains on every side, during all that trip a mountain was never seen. This was because the fires in the mountains created such a smoke that the whole country was enveloped by it … ” This squinty-eyed report came from Major John Wesley Powell back in 1889. The fires that year were so widespread and fierce, they greatly impressed Powell, who had already faced the rigors of Civil War combat and Grand Canyon rapids. But pioneer-era fires like those Powell saw are seldom mentioned today amid all the sensational stories about the recent wildfires, which are said to be unnaturally large. That’s probably because they put the lie to the “unnaturally” part. “Fire in an ordinary year passes over the ground and burns the leaves and cones, etc., only,” Powell, the director of the U.S. Geological Survey at that time, reported to Congress. “But there come critical years … of great drought … and the fire starts and sweeps everything away.” The 1889 fires burned even more land than the famous 3-million-acre Big Blowup of 1910. Other huge fire years in the Northern Rockies and Northwest include 1869, 1846, 1823, 1802, 1784, 1778 and 1756, says a leading fire ecologist, Steve Arno. In the Central Rockies and Southwest, huge fire years include 1879, 1851, 1847, 1785, and 1748. In fact, fire ecologists say that far more land burned each year during the 1800s and earlier, than in recent years. In the preindustrial era, from 1500 to 1800, an average of 145 million acres burned every year nationwide — about 10 times more than the nation’s recent annual burns. In the West, Arno estimates that 18 to 25 million acres burned each year, as recently as the 1800s. Lightning strikes ignited some fires, while others were started by accident. Indians and settlers set many fires deliberately, to drive game, make room for their homes, stimulate their crops, or fight enemy tribes. Many of the burns were in grass or sagebrush. The total burned acreage dropped after the federal government launched the war on wildfires, and after much of the burnable land was converted to farms and settlements. There is disagreement about the impacts and severity of the fires in the old days, but there is “strong consensus,” Arno says, that smoky skies were more of a fact of life back then — and that we’re heading that direction again

THE BOTTOM LINE

SHIT HAPPENS.

WE ARE NOT IN HEAVEN YET.

THE KNEEJERK ATTRIBUTION OF THE SHIT THAT HAPPENS TO YOUR WORRY OF CHOICE IS NOT UNBIASED AND OBJECTIVE SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY. IT IS SUPERSTITION. HUMANS ARE SUPERSTITIOUS CREATURES.

RELATED POST ON SUPERSTITION: https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/08/03/confirmationbias/

THE EVERYDAY MAGIC OF SUPERSTITION: LINK: https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-29/november-2016/everyday-magic-superstition

EXTRACT:

There is something beguiling, folkloric and fantastical about our supersitious beliefs. They seem to whisper of pagan rites in ‘Merrye Olde Englande’, to speak of a time we rarely hear about in everyday, metropolitan Britain. Yet they steadfastly remain in our culture. English poet John Clare saw superstition as a long-standing tradition, left behind by ancient civilisations. In 1825 he wrote that these beliefs were ‘as old as England’, and that despite being difficult to trace historically, superstitions remain ‘as common to every memory as the seasons, and as familiar to children even as the rain and spring flowers’. He continued his sentimental appraisal thus: Superstition lives longer than books; it is engrafted on the human mind till it becomes a part of its existence; and is carried from generation to generation on the stream of eternity, with the proudest of fames, untroubled with the insect encroachments of oblivion which books are infested with.

RELATED POST ON SUPERSTITION: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/08/03/confirmationbias/

DEMAND: DON’T BURN OUR FUTURE

RESPONSE: DON’T WORRY, YOU DON’T HAVE A FUTURE

HOLOCENE HEAT WAVES OF THE PAST

THE KILLER 1911 HEAT WAVE IN THE NORTHEAST

On July 4, 1911, record temperatures are set in the northeastern United States as a deadly heat wave hits the area that would go on to kill 380 people. In Nashua, New Hampshire, the mercury peaked at 106 degrees Fahrenheit. Other high-temperature records were set all over New England during an 11-day period.

The area from Pennsylvania northeast to Maine was most affected by the stifling heat. New York City was particularly hard hit. In fact, the New York City Health Department put out one of its very first heat advisories during July 1911. Mayor William Gaynor tried to make sure that the city’s ice dealers could keep up their deliveries; in the time before refrigeration, ice was critical in keeping the food supply from spoiling.

By July 13, New York had reported 211 people dead from the excessive heat. One man, apparently disoriented from heat exhaustion, overdosed on strychnine. In Philadelphia, 159 people died from the heat. The types of deaths ascribed to the heat could vary quite a bit in 1911, with some authorities including in the count those who drowned while attempting to cool off by swimming. Heat also sometimes bent rail lines, causing train derailments; deaths in any resulting accidents might also be attributed to the heat. Heat stroke, however, is the typical cause of heat-related deaths. Extremely hot or humid weather or vigorous activity in the sun can lead the body’s temperature-regulation mechanisms to fail, causing body heat to rise to dangerous levels. Symptoms of heat stroke include a headache, dizziness, confusion and hot, dry, flushed skin, as well as a rapid heartbeat and hallucinations.

SOURCE: HISTORY.COM LINK TO SOURCE: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/heat-wave-strikes-northeast

THE 1936 HEAT WAVE IN NORTH AMERICA

Throughout the summer of 1936, the United States experienced one of the most devastating heatwaves in the nation’s history. For eight consecutive days in 1936, from July 7 to 14, the thermometer at Midway Airport in Chicago climbed above 100 degrees. About 200 deaths were attributed to the heatwave in the city, but Chicago was just one of many places where extremely hot weather caused havoc that summer. Across America, the heatwave was blamed for more than 5,000 deaths and the failure of crops in the nation’s breadbasket. Several Midwestern and Plains states experienced record high average temperatures for the summer. Severe drought accompanied the heat, which caused sharp increases in the price of staple foods during the Great Depression. A man from central Wisconsin described the situation in his area to the Milwaukee Journal on July 8: “We had 103 yesterday and no breeze and there’s no let-up. Last week we had a little rain–just a trifle, just enough to settle the dust.”

THE 1540 EUROPEAN HEAT WAVE AND DROUGHT

The heat waves of 2003 in Western Europe and 2010 in Russia, commonly labelled as rare climatic anomalies outside of previous experience, are often taken as harbingers of more frequent extremes in the global warming-influenced future. However, a recent reconstruction of spring–summer temperatures for WE resulted in the likelihood of significantly higher temperatures in 1540. In order to check the plausibility of this result we investigated the severity of the 1540 drought by putting forward the argument of the known soil desiccation-temperature feedback. Based on more than 300 first-hand documentary weather report sources originating from an area of 2 to 3 million km², we show that Europe was affected by an unprecedented 11-month-long Megadrought. The estimated number of precipitation days and precipitation amount for Central and Western Europe in 1540 is significantly lower than the 100-year minima of the instrumental measurement period for spring, summer and autumn. This result is supported by independent documentary evidence about extremely low river flows and Europe-wide wild-, forest- and settlement fires. We found that an event of this severity cannot be simulated by state-of-the-art climate models.

FROM Wetter etal 2015: link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-014-1184-2

THE 1757 EURPOEAN HEAT WAVE AND DROUGHT

Europe’s hottest summer for 500 years: Europe this year experienced its hottest summer for at least 500 years, providing further evidence of man-made global warming. During the crushing heat wave between June and August this year, which triggered several thousand more deaths than usual, average temperatures eclipsed the previous record set in 1757. The average temperature in Europe was 19.5 degrees Celsius (67 degrees Fahrenheit), two degrees higher than the average summer temperatures recorded on the continent between 1901 and 1995. Central Europe and the Alps region were the worst affected by the heat wave, with temperatures up to five degrees higher than average. It is very likely that human activity and greenhouse gases caused this rise in temperature. Much of this data comes from the writings of monks. Monks used to write accurately and regularly about the weather, with indications about grape harvests or flower blossom.

SOURCE: https://www.theage.com.au/world/europes-hottest-summer-for-500-years-20030924-gdwecn.html

THE 1896 HEAT WAVE IN NORTH AMERICA

NPR: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129127924

During the summer of 1896, a 10-day heat wave killed nearly 1,500 people, many of them tenement-dwellers, across New York City. Many thousands of people were crammed into tenements on the Lower East Side, with no air conditioning, little circulating air and no running water. Families were packed together — with five to six people sharing a single room. Extra space on the floor was rented out to single men many of whom worked six days a week doing manual labor out in the sun. This was 10 days [with temperatures reaching] 90 degrees at street level and 90 percent humidity, with temperatures not even dropping at night. No wind. At night there was absolutely no relief whatsoever.”At the time, there was a citywide ban on sleeping in New York City’s public parks. Kohn says one of the simplest things the city could have done was lift the ban — giving people a place to sleep away from their squalid tenements, which might have prevented many of the deaths. They took to the rooftops, and they took to the fire escapes, trying to catch a breath of fresh air,” he says. “Inevitably, somebody would fall asleep or get drunk, roll off the top of a five-story tenement, crash into the courtyard below and be killed. You’d have children who would go to sleep on fire escapes and fall off and break their legs or be killed. People [tried] to go down to the piers on the East River and sleep there, out in the open — and would roll into the river and drown.”Until the very last days of the crisis, the city government did very little to help its poorest residents survive the heat wave. The mayor didn’t call an emergency meeting of his department heads until the very last day — and even then, it was a little-known police commissioner named Theodore Roosevelt who championed the efforts to help New Yorkers survive the heat. Roosevelt is the one who champions the idea of the city giving away free ice to the poorest people living on the Lower East Side and he personally supervises the distribution of ice. And after the ice was distributed, Roosevelt took it upon himself to tour the back alleys of some of the worst tenement districts in the United States to see how people were using the ice. So Roosevelt witnessed firsthand how immigrant fathers would chip off ice and give it to their children to suck on … I can’t think how many American presidents have had such intimate contact with the urban poor. The heat wave helped shape Roosevelt’s progressive thinking and his future life in political office — first as the governor of New York and later as the president of the United States. On August 15, 1896, while preparing to depart for a three-week vacation out west, Theodore Roosevelt wrote about the heated term, “The heated term was the worst and most fatal we have ever known. The death-rate trebled until it approached the ratio of a cholera epidemic; the horses died by the hundreds, so that it was impossible to remove their carcasses, and they added a genuine flavor of pestilence, and we had to distribute hundred of tons of ice from the station-houses to the people of the poorer precincts.” The “heated term” was an unprecedented heat wave that hit New York over ten days in August 1896. Temperatures in the 90s were accompanied by high humidity. For the duration, even at night thermometers never dropped below 70 degrees, and over the course of a week and a half the heat wave wore New Yorkers down. The eventual death-toll numbered nearly 1300 victims. Yet the 1896 New York heat wave remains one of the most forgotten natural disasters in American history. It is in the nature of heat waves to kill slowly, with no physical manifestation, no property damage, and no single catastrophic event that marks them as a disaster. For that reason the heat wave is only infrequently remembered, even though it claimed more victims than the 1863 New York City draft riots or the 1871 Great Chicago Fire. Our collective failure to remember this disaster may also have something to do with the identities of the victims. While the very young and very old were the most vulnerable, the heat wave also took a terrible toll on the working poor, the death lists containing the names of hundreds of surprisingly young men who were literally worked to death.

THE 1930S HEAT WAVES OF NORTH AMERICA

LINK TO SOURCE: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016EGUGA..1815380C/abstract

1930s mega-heat waves across central United States

The unprecedented hot and dry conditions that plagued contiguous United States during the 1930s caused widespread devastation for many local communities and severely dented the emerging economy. The heat extremes experienced during the aptly named Dust Bowl decade were not isolated incidences, but part of a tendency towards warm summers over the central United States in the early 1930s, and peaked in the boreal summer 1936. Using high-quality daily maximum and minimum temperature observations from more than 880 Global Historical Climate Network stations across the United States and southern Canada, we assess the record breaking heat waves in the 1930s Dust Bowl decade. A comparison is made to more recent heat waves that have occurred during the latter half of the 20th century (i.e., in a warming world), both averaged over selected years and across decades. We further test the ability of coupled climate models to simulate mega-heat waves (i.e. most extreme events) across the United States in a pre-industrial climate without the impact of any long-term anthropogenic warming. Well-established heat wave metrics based on the temperature percentile threshold exceedances over three or more consecutive days are used to describe variations in the frequency, duration, amplitude and timing of the events. Casual factors such as drought severity/soil moisture deficits in the lead up to the heat waves (interannual), as well as the concurrent synoptic conditions (interdiurnal) and variability in Pacific and Atlantic sea surface temperatures (decadal) are also investigated. Results suggest that while each heat wave summer in the 1930s exhibited quite unique characteristics in terms of their timing, duration, amplitude, and regional clustering, a common factor in the Dust Bowl decade was the high number of consecutive dry seasons, as measured by drought indicators such as the Palmer Drought Severity and Standardised Precipitation indices, that preceded the mega-heat waves. This suggests that land surface feedbacks, resulting from anomalously dry soil prior to summer, amplified the heat extremes triggering the mega-heat waves. Using the model experiments, we assess whether the combined warm phases of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation provide a necessary condition to trigger decade-long droughts that spawn mega-heat waves to cluster across consecutive summers.

THE 1921 HEAT WAVES

1921 – Hottest July on record across Eastern Canada and parts of the Northeastern US, part of a very warm year in those places. Parts of the United Kingdom also saw recording breaking heat, also part of a very warm year. … Every year from 1952 to 1955 featured major heat waves across North America. The Central England Temperature for July was 18.5 °C (65.3 °F), which was the 8th warmest since records began in 1659, and the warmest since 1852. The year of 1921 was the warmest on record at the time, but has since been eclipsed by 15 other years.

PARTIAL WIKIPEDIA LIST

July 1757 heatwave – Europe, hottest summer in 500 years before 2003.
1896 Eastern North America heat wave – killed 1,500 people in August 1896.
1900 – historical heatwave of the center of Argentina between the first eight days of February 1900 known as “the week of fire” affected the city of Buenos Aires and Rosario with temperatures of up to 37 °C (99 °F) but with a very high index of humidity that elevated the sensation of heat to 49 °C (120 °F) severely affecting the health of people causing at least more than 478 fatalities.
20th century
1901 – 1901 eastern United States heat wave killed 9,500 in the Eastern United States.
1906 – during the 1906 United Kingdom heat wave which began in August and lasted into September broke numerous records. On the 2nd temperatures reached 35.6 °C (96.1 °F) which still holds the September record however some places beat their local record during September 1911 and September 2016.
1911 – 1911 Eastern North America heat wave killed between 380 and 2,000 people.
1911 – 1911 United Kingdom heat wave was one of the most severe periods of heat to hit the country with temperatures around 36 °C (97 °F). The heat began in early July and didn’t let up until mid September where even in September temperatures were still up to 33 °C (91 °F). It took 79 years for temperature higher to be recorded in the United Kingdom during 1990 United Kingdom heat wave.
1913 – in July, the hottest heat wave ever struck California. During this heat wave, Death Valley recorded a record high temperature of 57 °C (134 °F) at Furnace Creek, which still remains the highest ambient air temperature recorded on Earth.[1][2]
1921 – Hottest July on record across Eastern Canada and parts of the Northeastern US, part of a very warm year in those places. Parts of the United Kingdom also saw recording breaking heat, also part of a very warm year. The Central England Temperature for July was 18.5 °C (65.3 °F), which was the 8th warmest since records began in 1659, and the warmest since 1852. The year of 1921 was the warmest on record at the time, but has since been eclipsed by 15 other years.[3]
1923–1924 – during a period of 160 such days from 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924, the Western Australian town of Marble Bar reached 38 °C (100 °F).[4]
1930s – Almost every year from 1930 to 1938 featured historic heat waves and droughts somewhere in North America, part of the Dust Bowl years.
1936 – 1936 North American heat wave during the Dust Bowl, followed one of the coldest winters on record—the 1936 North American cold wave. Massive heat waves across North America were persistent in the 1930s, many mid-Atlantic/Ohio valley states recorded their highest temperatures during July 1934. The longest continuous string of 38 °C (100 °F) or higher temperatures was reached for 101 days in Yuma, Arizona during 1937 and the highest temperatures ever reached in Canada were recorded in two locations in Saskatchewan in July 1937.

FULL LIST HERE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heat_waves

THERE IS A CLAIM IN SOCIAL MEDIA THAT THE CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES WERE SET ON PURPOSE BY THE GOVT. THE MEDIA HAS BEEN QUICK TO REFUTE THE CHARGE AS A RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY. HERE IS AN EXAMPLE MEDIA REPORT.

Reuters: Social media users have been sharing content online that claims the wildfires in California are caused by powerful lasers. The claims include four photographs of explosions and fires from unrelated events

HERE WE NOTE THAT THE GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSIBILITY IN THE FIRES DOES NOT REQUIRE A CONSPIRACY TO WILFULLY SET THE FIRES BUT ONLY THE FAILURE OR PERHAPS THE REFUSAL TO CARRY OUR THE NEEDED CONTROL BURNS THAT ARE KNOWN TO PREVENT WILDFIRES. IT SHOULD BE NOTED IN THIS REGARD THAT THE CLIMATE SCIENCE POSITION ON CONTROL BURNS IS THAT THEIR CARBON EMISSIONS MAKE CONTROL BURNS A BAD THING IN THE CLIMATE CHANGE ERA.

THIS FOREST MANAGEMENT ISSUE IS PRESENTED IN A RELATED POST WITH DATA FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/09/15/privately-owned-forests-in-california/

40% OF CALIFORNIA’S FORESTLAND IS OWNED BY FAMILIES, NATIVE AMERICAN TRIBES, AND THE TIMBER BUSINESS. TIMBER COMPANIES OWN 5 MILLION ACRES OF FOREST IN CALIFORNIA. FAMILIES AND INDIVIDUALS OWN ABOUT 9 MILLION ACRES. THAT COMPARES WITH 19 MILLION ACRES OF FORESTS MANAGED BY THE GOVERNMENT. THUS, ROUGHLY SPEAKING, 60% OF THE FORESTS IN CALIFORNIA ARE STATE MANAGED AND 40% ARE OWNED AND MANAGED BY CORPORATIONS OR FAMILIES. THESE DATA ARE PROVIDED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AGRICULTURE AND NATURAL RESOURCES. THEY CAN BE REACHED AT UCANR.EDU

IN THE WILDFIRE DEVASTATION OF 2020 IN CALIFORNIA, 3.5 MILLION ACRES WERE BURNED REPRESENTING ABOUT 10% OF ALL FOREST LANDS AND 18% OF GOVERNMENT MANAGED FOREST LANDS. ALL OF THESE FIRES OCCURRED ON GOVERNMENT MANAGED FORESTS. THUS, IN SUMMARY, IN THE 2020 FOREST FIRE DEVASTATION IN CALIFORNIA THAT HAS BEEN ATTRIBUTED TO CLIMATE CHANGE, 18% OF GOVERNMENT MANAGED FORESTS WERE BURNED AND EXACTLY ZERO PERCENT OF PRIVATELY OWNED FORESTS WERE BURNED.

THESE DATA DO NOT IMPLY THAT THE FIRES WERE A NATURAL DISASTER AND A CREATION OF CLIMATE CHANGE BUT THAT THEY WERE A MAN MADE DISASTER AND A CREATION OF EITHER THE FAILURE OR THE REFUSAL TO CARRY OUT CONTROL BURNS AND THE FOREST MANAGEMENT NEEDED TO PREVENT FOREST FIRES.

THIS MEANS THAT THE GOVERNMENT IS TO BLAME WHETHER OR NOT THEY LIT THE FIRES WITH LASERS. THE COMPLICITY OF CLIMATE SCIENCE IN THEIR OPPOSITION TO THE CO2 EMISSIONS OF CONTROL BURNS MUST ALSO BE ACKNOWLEDGED.

LINK TO SOURCE: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/27/climate/climate-Native-Americans.html

HOW THE WHITE MAN USES THE DARKIES TO SELL HIS CLIMATE AGENDA

LIST OF RELATED POSTS ON CLIMATE CHANGE RACISM

LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/03/19/climate-change-racism/

AND THE HEARTACHE OF CLIMATE MIGRATION

LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/04/03/divine-climate-activism/

THIS IS NOT OUR FIRST GLOBAL WARMING CLIMATE CHANGE

WE’VE DONE THIS MANY TIMES BEFORE

AND WE HUMANS ARE STILL HERE

AND THE PLANET IS STILL HERE

MODERN HUMANS (HOMO SAPIENS) EVOLVED FROM HOMO ERECTUS 200,000 YEARS AGO

AND SINCE GLACIATION CYCLES OF THE QUATERNARY ERA ARE 100,000 YEARS, WE MODERN HUMANS HAVE BEEN THROUGH TWO GLACIATION CYCLES AND TWO INTERGLACIALS. THIS INTERGLACIAL, THE HOLOCENE, IS OUR SECOND INTERGLACIAL AND IT WAS CREATED AFTER OUR SECOND GLACIATION HAD ENDED.

OUR FIRST GLACIATION WAS THE PRIOR GLACIATION CYCLE THAT HAD ENDED IN THE EEMIAN INTERGLACIAL ABOUT 120,000 YEARS AGO.

THE LAST TWO GLACIATION CYCLES ARE VISUALLY DEPICTED IN THE VIDEO BELOW.

OF PARTICULAR NOTE IN THE VIDEO IS THAT GLACIATION IS NOT A LINEAR AND PREDICTABLE TREND OF COOLING AND ICE FORMATION AND DEGLACIATION IS NOT A LINEAR AND PREDICTABLE TREND OF WARMING AND ICE MELT BUT BOTH LEGS OF THE GLACIATION CYCLE ARE VIOLENT AND CHAOTIC PROCESSES OF BOTH ICE FORMATION AND ICE MELT AT CENTENNIAL AND MILLENNIAL TIME SCALES. THE ONLY DIFFRFENCE BETWEEN GLACIATION AND DEGLACIATION IS THAT THERE IS A SLIGHT EDGE FOR ICE FORMATION IN THE GLACIATION PHASE OF THE CYCLE AND A SLIGHT EDGE FOR ICE MELT IN THE DEGLACIATION PHASE OF THE CYCLE.

THIS SAME CHAOTIC PATTERN IS ALSO SEEN IN INTERGLACIALS.

INTERGLACIALS ARE NOT A STATIC STATE OF A WARM LOW ICE CONDITION BUT A SERIES OF CHAOTIC CYCLES OF WARMING AND COOLING ALSO AT MILLENNIAL AND CENTENNIAL TIME SCALES.

IN OUR FIRST GLACIATION CYCLE WE WERE PALEOLITHIC HUMANS –

ESSENTIALLY WE WERE ANIMALS BUT WITH A MORE DEVELOPED BRAIN THAN THE OTHER ANIMALS THAT GAVE US BETTER GRUNT COMMUNICATION AND BETTER TOOLS OF STICKS AND STONES FOR HUNTING. BUT WE WERE ESSENTIALLY TWO LEGGED ANIMALS LIVING ISOLATED LIVES IN CAVES WITH IMMEDIATE FAMILY AND HUNTING AND EATING OTHER ANIMALS INCLUDING OTHER HUMANS. WE WERE CANNIBALS.

THE AMAZING THING IS THAT AS MUCH AS WE ARE AFRAID OF OUR SPECIES BEING KILLED OFF BY THE CURRENT WARMING CYCLE OF THE CURRENT INTERGLACIAL CALLED THE HOLOCENE, OUR PALEOLITHIC ANCESTORS SURVIVED TWO VIOLENT AND CHAOTIC GLACIATIONS, TWO VIOLENT AND CHAOTIC DEGLACIATIONS, AND THE PREVIOUS INTERGLACIAL, CALLED THE EEMIAN THAT WAS A STRONGER AND MORE VIOLENT INTERGLACIAL THAN THE HOLOCENE WITH HOTTER WARMING CYCLES THAN WHAT WE HAVE TODAY. THE EEMIAN INTERGLACIAL IS DESCRIBED IN A RELATED POST: https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/12/21/eemian/

SUMMARY OF THE EEMIAN INTERGLACIAL POST LINKED ABOVE:

The Eemian interglacial started 130,000 years ago and ended about 115,000 years ago when the Last Glacial Period got started. Despite the usual claim that the intensity of “post industrial anthropogenic global warming” is unprecedented, it is generally agreed that the Eemian, at times, was warmer than the the present by as much as 5ºC. In general, the Eemian is described as hotter than today with January temperatures 3ºC to 5ºC higher and July temperatures 2ºC to 4ºC higher but with large fluctuations in temperature between conditions hotter than today and colder than today. The Eemian is characterized by rapid fluctuations between warm and cold periods in multi-decadal time scales. Fluctuations in winter temperatures correlate with rise and fall of sea level. The changes are described as abrupt climate change over decades with great regional variability. It is generally agreed that Eemian climate was more unstable than the Holocene. A significant feature of the Eemian is sea level rise and fluctuations in sea level caused by fluctuations in temperature. Sea level rise of 3 to 6 meters are reported by some authors and 5 to 9 meters by others and is attributed to a complete disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Some authors cite sudden warming of 5ºC to 10ºC and “massive surges of icebergs into the North Atlantic” as a perturbation of ocean circulation that was responsible for abrupt climate change in the Eemian. The obsession of climate science with ice sheet collapse and devastating sea level rise due to a collapse of the WAIS seen in the current warm cycle of the Holocene can be related to events in the Eemian but not to the post LIA period of the Holocene. WE CONCLUDE THAT OUR PALEOLITHIC ANCESTORS EXPERIENCED AND SURVIVED A MORE VIOLENT INTERGLACIAL WARMING THAN WHAT WE HAVE TODAY IN OUR CURRENT WARMING CYCLE OF THE HOLOCENE.

THE NEXT GLACIATION:

FOLLOWING IN THE HEELS OF THE EEMIAN INTERGLACIAL, OUR PALEOLITHIC ANCESTORS SURVIVED THE NEXT GLACIATION AND ITS VIOLENT DEGLACATION INTO THE HOLOCENE INTERGLACIAL DESCRIBED IN A RELATED POST LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/06/11/chaoticholocene/ .

THESE EVENTS TOOK US TO THE FIRST OF MANY GLOBAL WARMING CYCLES OF THE HOLOCENE:

EARLY IN THE HOLOCENE INTERGLACIAL OUR PALEOLITHIC ANIMAL ANCESTORS FOUND THEMSELVES IN A STRONG 4,000-YEAR GLOBAL WARMING CYCLE OF THE HOLOCENE CALLED THE “HOLOCENE CLIMATE OPTIMUM (HCO)”. THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT THEY SURVIVED THE GLOBAL WARMING AND THE PLANET SURVIVED THE GLOBAL WARMING. AND WE THEIR DESCENDENTS ARE STILL HERE AND ALIVE AND WELL. AND THE PLANET IS STILL HERE AND LIFE ON EARTH IS STILL HERE. GLOBAL WARMING DID NOT DESTROY THE PLANET NOR LIFE ON EARTH, NOR THE HUMANS. THE HCO WAS JUST AS HOT IF NOT HOTTER THAN THE GLOBAL WARMING WE ARE IN NOW WHICH WE HAVE BEEN TAUGHT TO FEAR.

AS IT TURNS OUT, OUR MODERN HUMAN ANCESTORS DID MORE THAN JUST SURVIVE THE HCO GLOBAL WARMING PERIOD OF THE HOLOCENE:

THE HCO GLOBAL WARMING CYCLE OF THE HOLOCENE GAVE US THE RIGHT KIND OF A WARM CLIMATE FOR OUR PALEOLITHIC ANCESTORS TO COME OUT OF THEIR CAVES, TO CLEAR THE FORESTS, TO BEGIN FARMING, AND TO BUILD HOMES AND TO CREATE COMMUNITIES OF HUMANS. THIS EVENT WAS A GIANT STEP IN THE ADVANCE OF THE HUMAN SPECIES FROM OUR PALEOLITHIC STATE TO WHAT IS CALLED OUR NEOLITHIC STATE, FROM THE OLD STONE AGE TO THE NEW STONE AGE, AND EVENTUALLY FROM HUMAN ANIMALS TO HUMAN CIVILIZATION. HUMAN CIVILIZATION IS A CREATION OF THE HCO GLOBAL WARMING OF THE HOLOCENE., THE SAME INTERGLACIAL WHOSE WARMING CYCLES WE HAVE BEEN TAUGHT TO FEAR..

SINCE THE NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION:

THE MODERN HUMANS THAT WE ARE TODAY AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION OF THE HUMANS THAT WE HAVE NOW LEARNED TO FEAR BUT THAT GAVE US THE THE VERY HIGH STANDARD OF LIVING WE ENJOY TODAY, ARE ULTIMATELY THE CREATION OF GLOBAL WARMING OF THE NEOLOTHIC REVOLUTION THAT CREATED HUMAN CIVILIZATION OUT OF THE CAVE ANIMALS THAT WE WERE. THE HCO GLOBAL WARMING BROUGHT US OUT OF THE CAVES AND BROUGHT US TOGETHER AS A COMMUNITY TO BUILD HOMES AND TO FARM AND TO CREATE COMMUNITIES OF HUMANS.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION THAT WE HAVE BEEN TAUGHT TO HATE AND FEAR IS THE THE MOST RECENT STEP IN THIS ADVANCE OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION WHERE THE INTELLIGENCE, THE INGENUITY, AND THE CREATIVITY OF HUMANS GAVE US THE HIGH STANDARD OF LIVING AND THE RAPID ADVANCE IN TECHNOLOGY THAT WE ENJOY TODAY. YET IT IS SOMETHING THAT WE HAVE ALSO BEEN TAUGHT TO FEAR AS A DRIVER OF GLOBAL WARMING WITH GLOBAL WARMING ALSO SOMETHING THAT WE MUST FEAR AS A DRIVER OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE HUMAN CIVILIZATION THAT WAS CREATED BY GLOBAL WARMING.

CONCLUSION:

THE HUMAN ADVANCE FROM THE ANIMALS OF THE PALEOLITHIC ERA TO THE FARMERS OF THE NEOLITHIC ERA TO THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION OF THE MODERN ERA AND THE RAPID ADVANCE IN HUMAN TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN POPULATION HAVE CREATED (1) THE IDEA THAT WE ARE OR OUGHT TO BE IN CONTROL OF NATURE, AND (2) THE INNER FEAR THAT WE ARE NOT IN CONTROL WITH A FEAR OF THE FUTURE IN THE SENSE OF ADVANCING INTO AN ERA OF THE UNKNOWN.

THIS ODDITY IS PERHAPS THE CREATION OF THE RELATIVE BREVITY OF OUR CIVILIZED STATE. OF THE 200,000 YEAR HISTORY OF US HOMO SAPIEN MODERN HUMANS, WE WERE CANNIABALISTIC PALEOLITHIC ANIMALS FOR THE FIRST 192000 YEARS (96% OF OUR EXISTENCE AS HOMO SAPIEN MODERN HUMANS) WITH HUMAN CIVILIZATION AND OUR CIVILIZED STATUS A VERY RECENT INNOVATION IN THE LAST 8,000 YEARS (4% OF OUR EXISTENCE AS HOMO SAPIEN MODERN HUMANS).

IT WILL TAKE US SOME TIME TO FULLY GRASP AND MANAGE OUR NEW STATE OF EXISTENCE AND OUR CIVILIZATION. IN THE MEANTIME WE ARE STILL IN AWE OF OUR CIVILIZATION AND NOT SURE WHAT TO MAKE OF IT SUCH THAT OUR IMAGINATION RUNS WILD AND CREATES THINGS LIKE THE ANTHROPOCENE AND GENESIS WITH THE HUMANS IN CHARGE OF NATURE, IN CHARGE OF THE OCEAN, IN CHARGE OF THE PLANET, AND IN CHARGE OF THE CLIMATE. AS OUR CIVILIZED STATE MATURES WE WILL UNDERSTAND IT BETTER AND PERHAPS WE WILL BE ABLE TO SEE THINGS DIFFERENTLY.

IN THE MEANTIME WE WILL STILL WORRY ABOUT OUR PLANETARY RELEVANCE AND HUMAN ACTIVITY AS A THREAT TO THE PLANET. THE IRRATIONAL WORRYWARTISM OF THE HUMANS IS SEEN IN THE CHRISTIANITY CULTURE OF THE GLOBAL NORTH THAT CONTAINS THE GENESIS ASSUMPTION WHERE HUMANS HAVE DOMINION OVER NATURE AND THIS DOMINION ASSUMPTION TAKES US TO OUR ASSUMED ROLE NOT AS PART OF NATURE BUT AS THE MASTERS AND MANAGERS OF NATURE AND BY EXTENSION, AS THE MANAGERS OF THE PLANET ITSELF AS EXPLAINED IN A RELATED POST: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/03/30/the-humans-must-save-the-planet/

IN THE RELATED POST LINKED ABOVE, WE NOTE AS FOLLOWS:

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PLANETARY ENVIRONMENTALISM: 

Here we argue that the concept of the Anthropocene and of human caused planetary catastrophe by way of things like the industrial economy running on fossil fuels are inconsistent with the relative insignificance of humans on a planetary scale. Consider for example, that even as humans are worried about things like carbon pollution and the population bomb in terms of the planet being overwhelmed by the sheer number of humans on earth, humans, like all life on earth, are carbon life forms created from the carbon that came from the mantle of the planet but a rather insignificant portion of it. In terms of total weight, humans constitute 0.05212% of the total mass of life on earth. Yet we imagine that our numbers are so huge that the planet will be overwhelmed by our population bomb. All the life on earth taken together is 0.000002875065% of the crust of the planet by weight. The crust of the planet we see in the pictures from space and where we live and where we have things like land, ocean, atmosphere, climate, and carbon life forms, is 0.3203% of the planet by weight. The other 99.6797% of the planet, the mantle and core, is a place where we have never been and will never be and on which we have no impact whatsoever. In terms of the much feared element carbon that is said to cause planetary devastation by way of climate change and ocean acidification, a mass balance shows that the crust of the planet where we live contains 0.201% of the planet’s carbon with the other 99.8% of the carbon inventory of the planet  being in the mantle and core. 

(THE CONCLUSION WE DRAW FROM THIS MASS BALANCE ANALYSIS IS THAT:  

1. The crust of the planet where we live is an insignificant portion of the planet.
2. Life on earth is an insignificant portion of the crust of the planet. 
3. Humans are an insignificant portion of life on earth. 

Although it is true that humans must take care of their environment, we propose that the environment should have a more rational definition because the mass balance above does not show that humans are a significant force on a planetary scale or that they are in a position to either save it or to destroy it even with the much feared power of their fossil fueled industrial economy. And that implies that it is not possible that there is such a thing as an Anthropocene in which humans are the dominant geological force of the planet.

Like ants and bees, humans are social creatures that live in communities of humans so that when they look around all they see are humans. This is the likely source of our human oriented view of the world. Paul Ehrlich’s overpopulation theory is derived from his first visit to India which he described as “people people people people people!” It is this biased view of the planet that makes it possible for us to extrapolate Calcutta to the planet and come up with the fearful image described by Jeff Gibbs as “Have you every wondered what would happen if a single species took over an entire planet?”

QUESTION: If Australia had net zero carbon emissions, how much would that help decrease the rising temperature of global warming?

ANSWER: Australia’s fossil fuel emissions are 1.4% of global emissions and if the NET implies it will still have some residual fossil fuel emissions then perhaps global fossil fuel emissions will go down by 1%. The climate impact of this change is not likely to be measurable since a 7% decline during the covid did not yield a measurable change in the rate of rise in atmospheric CO2 or the rate of warming.

THE CLIMATE GAME JUST GOES ON AND ON WHETHER OR NOT IT MAKES ANY SENSE

EXCERPT FROM THE HANSEN 1988 CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY 

CLAIM: Number one, the earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements that goes back 100 years. RESPONSE-1: Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is a theory about long term trends in global mean temperature. A one-year temperature event has no interpretation in this context. RESPONSE-2: In your paper Hansen 1988 and also in the official position of your NASA GISS organization you state that that AGW started in 1950 because from then the relationship between CO2 and temperature we see in the climate models closely matches the observational data. If AGW started in 1950, then what is the relevance of the 100-year instrumental record reference period for the temperature record in 1988?

CLAIM: Causal association requires first that the warming be larger than natural climate variability and, second that the magnitude and nature of the warming be consistent with the greenhouse mechanism. RESPONSE: Neither that the warming is larger than natural climate variability nor that the magnitude of the warming is consistent with the greenhouse mechanism proves causation. For that it must be shown that a statistically significant detrended correlation exists between the logarithm of atmospheric CO2 concentration and mean global surface temperature over a sufficiently long time span. The choice of 30 years as the time span for this evaluation is not supported by the literature where we find that longer time spans are required, preferably longer than 60 years.

CLAIM: The warming is more than 0.4 degrees Centigrade for the period 1958-1988. The probability of a chance warming of that magnitude is about 1 percent. So with 99 percent confidence we can state that the warming during this time period is a real warming trend. RESPONSE: The probability is more likely to be 100% that it is a REAL warming trend but none of this serves as evidence that the warming was caused by the greenhouse effect of atmospheric CO2 concentration attributed to fossil fuel emissions.

CLAIM: The data suggest somewhat more warming over land and sea ice regions than over open ocean, more warming at high latitudes than at low latitudes, and more warming in the winter than in the summer. In all of these cases, the signal is at best just beginning to emerge, and we need more data. RESPONSE: If the signal is just beginning to emerge and you need more data to figure it out then you don’t really know and your claim to 99% confidence has no basis.

CLAIM: Some of these details, such as the northern hemisphere high latitude temperature trends, do not look exactly like the greenhouse effect, but that is expected. There are certainly other climate factors involved in addition to the greenhouse effect. RESPONSE: Lip service to internal climate variability { LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/07/16/the-internal-variability-issue/ } is paid but the issue is completely ignored in the invocation and assessment of the greenhouse effect of CO2 and its alleged dangerous consequences such as extreme weather that places an enormous cost burden on all of humanity to overhaul their energy infrastructure.

CLAIM: Altogether the evidence that the earth is warming by an amount which is too large to be a chance fluctuation and the similarity of the warming to that expected from the greenhouse effect represents a very strong case. In my opinion, that the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now. RESPONSE: “too large to be chance fluctuation” and “similarity of the warming to that expected from the greenhouse effect” do not constitute ” strong case”. Such suspicions may be sufficient to construct a hypothesis to be tested with data in a hypothesis test in which what is suspected is the alternate hypothesis and its absence is the null hypothesis. No such empirical evidence is presented possibly because none exists.

CLAIM: we have used the temperature changes computed in our global climate model to estimate the impact of the greenhouse effect on the frequency of hot summers in Washington, D.C. and Omaha, Nebraska. A hot summer is defined as the hottest one-third of the summers in the 1950 to 1980 period, which is the period the Weather Bureau uses for defining climatology. So, in that period the probability of having a hot summer was 33 percent, but by the 1990s, you can see that the greenhouse effect has increased the probability of a hot summer to somewhere between 55 percent and 70 percent in Washington according to our climate model simulations. RESPONSE#1: The weather bureau does not define the period 1950 to 1980 to define climatology. It simply specifies that the distinction between weather and climate is that weather is short term but climate can only be assessed over periods longer than 30 years. The period 1950 to 1980 has been arbitrarily selected by NASA and by Hansen because, in their own words, “Hansen: because in the 30-year period 1950-1980 there is a strong measurable warming rate with 99% probability for human cause” , “NASA: We start in 1950 because from then the relationship between CO2 and temperature we see in the climate models closely matches the observational data“. This kind of bias in the selection of the time span when the theory being tested is the warming “since pre-industrial” caused by the industrial economy is a form of circular reasoning and confirmation bias. It is not science. RESPONSE#2: AGW is a theory about long term trends in global mean temperature. It is not possible to relate that warming trend to the extreme form of geographical localization implied in the claim about heat waves in specific cities of the USA as in “frequency of hot summers in Washington, D.C. and Omaha, Nebraska“. Internal climate variability dominates in geographical localization of this kind. Internal Climate Variability is described in a related post. LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/07/16/the-internal-variability-issue/ where we find that “Internal variability in the climate system confounds assessment of human-induced climate change and imposes irreducible limits on the accuracy of climate change projections, especially at regional and decadal scales“. It is noted that these internal climate variability studies find that 30-years is too short a time span for the study of AGW climate change and state that the time span must be longer than 30 years preferably 60 years.

CLAIM: A study of the temperature in July, for several different years between 1986 and 2029 is computed with our global climate model for the intermediate trace gas scenario B. The results show that there are areas that are warmer than what the greenhouse model predicts and areas that are colder than what the greenhouse model predicts. This is because in the 1980s the greenhouse warming is smaller than the natural variability of the local temperature. This appears to be anomalous with the greenhouse effect but the data for a few decades later in the 19902 show show warmer temperatures across the board. RESPONSE: The NASA and the Hansen position on AGW to this day (September 2020) holds that “Hansen: AGW started in 1950 because in the 30-year period 1950-1980 there is a strong measurable warming rate with 99% probability for human cause”, NASA: “AGW started in 1950 because from then the relationship between CO2 and temperature we see in the climate models closely matches the observational data”. But the analysis presented by Hansen appears to be AGW went missing in the 1980s only to return in the 1990s. However this analysis by Hansen is flawed because AGW is not a theory that about temperature at any given time or place or any given decade or place. It is a theory only about long term trends in global mean temperature at time scales longer than 30 years preferably 60 years or more.

CLAIM: in the late 1980s and in the 1990s our model yields greater than average warming in the Southeast United States and the Midwest. This anomalous result can be explained if the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the United States warms more slowly than the land. This leads to high pressure along the east coast and circulation of warm air north into the Midwest or southeast but there is evidence that the greenhouse effect increases the likelihood of heat wave drought situations in the Southeast and Midwest United States even though we cannot blame a specific drought on the greenhouse effect. Therefore, I believe that it is not a good idea to use the period 1950 to 1980 for the study of AGW climatology. We should see better evidence of the greenhouse effect in the next 10 to 15 years than they were in the period 1950 to 1980. RESPONSE: “That he believes that it is not a good idea to use the period 1950-1980 to study climatology is inconsistent with NASA position and that AGW started in 1950 because from then the relationship between CO2 and temperature we see in the climate models closely matches the observational data.

CLAIM: There is a need for improving these global climate models, and there is a need for global observations if we’re going to obtain a full understanding of these phenomena. RESPONSE: This statement is an admission that the assessment of the AGW presented above as an impact of fossil fuel emissions that has dangerous consequences and that therefore we must stop using fossil fuels to fight climate change was made without the information or the scientific data and arguments needed to make that assessment.

LINK TO THE FULL TEXT OF THE TESTIMONY: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/05/09/hansen88/

FAILED FORECASTS OF CLIMATE SCIENCE

FAILED FORECAST#1: CLIMATE CHANGE WILL INTENSIFY ENSO:

LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/11/29/agw-el-nino/

FAILED FORECAST#2: REPEATED FORECASTS OF AN ICE FREE ARCTIC

LINK#1: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/11/18/the-ice-free-arctic-obsession-of-agw/

LINK#2: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/01/15/icefreearcticinsanity/

LINK#3: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/12/01/arctic-sea-ice-its-all-quite-devastating/

FAILED FORECAST#3: REPEATED FORECASTS OF POLAR ICE MELT AND METERS OF SEA LEVEL RISE.

LINK#1: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/11/07/climate-change-threatens-polar-ice/

LINK#2: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/09/24/a-failed-polar-ice-melt-obsession/

LINK#3: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/09/03/polar-ice-melt-fears-of-september-2020/

LINK#4: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/10/11/antarctica-ice-melt-sea-level-rise-2020/

FAILED FORECAST#4: THE ARCTIC HEAT WAVES OF GLOBAL WARMING ARE THE EVIDENCE THAT THE END IS NEAR.

LINK#1: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/07/19/agw-heat-wave-in-siberia/

LINK#2: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/07/27/arctic2019fires/

LINK#3: https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/09/30/arcticwarming/

LINK#4: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/10/28/arctic-warming-alarm-of-october-2020/