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Letter to Editors - Some Cold Hard Truth About Our Local Glaciers

11/24/2013

18 Comments

 
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WE Editors, science-types, are constantly amazed at the sheer volume of panicky and convoluted narrative about climate and water that passes for "news" in the local press. WE are not alone. For the cold, hard truth about our local climate and glaciers, read on.

Letter to Editors@WhatcomExcavator.org
November 24, 2013

     On Wednesday, Nov. 20, Michelle Koppes gave a talk to the Bellingham City Club, which was featured in the Bellingham Herald (“Bellingham audience told glaciers, oysters show climate change impacts”) and on the city’s TV program. Koppes claimed that

(1)    The climate is warming and “it’s not just happening here, it’s happening all over the world.”   Human emissions of CO2 are causing global warming and warming is “expected to get worse as average temperatures keep trend up in the decades ahead. And the uptrend is expected to accelerate in the 21st century.”
(2)    “here and almost everywhere else in the  world, the mountain snow accumulations that feed the glaciers are dwindling.”
(3)    “The amount of water stored in mountain snow is down 45 to 60 percent since 1950.”
(4)    “shrinkage of Cascade glaciers seems to be accelerating”….”glaciers on Mt. Baker…..have lost 20 percent of their volume since 1990.“

     Are these assertions by Koppes valid and supported by credible data? What supporting evidence did she present as proof of her contentions? Let’s look at each of her claims.

     (1)  What evidence did Koppes cite that the climate is warming here and all over the world?  The answer is simple—none at all.  She simply states that the climate is warming, despite indisputable data to the contrary.  But there is abundant data concerning this issue. As shown by temperature measurements from both land stations and satellites, NO global warming has occurred for the past 17 years! Figure 1 shows that global cooling has actually occurred during the last decade.
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Figure 1. Global temperature for the past decade has cooled, not warmed.

Even the chairman of the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has publicly admitted that there has been no global warming for the past 17 years. So why did Koppes tell the City Club that the global climate and the climate here is warming at an accelerating rate? Can she really be unaware of the uncontested fact that data shows no global warming in the past 17 years when virtually all other scientists know about it.?

That’s the global situation—what about the U.S.? NOAA data shows that from 1998 to 2013, 46 of the 48 mainland states cooled at an average rate -14.7°F per century and winter temperatures have cooled at rates of 1-8.7°F per decade (Fig. 2), i.e, the climate isn’t warming, it’s cooling!
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Figure 2. Winter temperatures in the north central have cooled by more than 8°F per decade and the rest of the US has cooled at rates of 1.3 to 5.8 °F.
     What about local temperature trends? NOAA data show that Washington winters have cooled at a rate of -13°F per century, spring temperatures have cooled at a rate of -7.8°F per century, and summers have cooled at a rate of 0.5°F per century.

What about local temperatures here? Figure 3 shows that average annual temperatures for the western Cascades over the past 15 years have cooled by more than a degree and a half!
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Figure 3. Average annual temperatures for the western Cascades for the past 15 years show cooling of more than a degree and a half.
So where did Koppes get the idea that the climate is warming at an accelerating rate?  Apparently she is still quoting obsolete IPCC computer model temperatures that have been proven to be wrong (too warm) by a full degree F and are totally worthless.  Even the IPCC admits that their computer modeled temperatures were badly wrong. The bottom line here is that the ‘accelerated warming’ cited by Koppes is NOT happening and she ignores the actual measured temperature record that is accepted by even the IPCC!
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Figure 4. Reality check—theoretical (computer modeled) temperature relative to actual, measured temperature (from UAH and RSS satellites). Computer models of the temperature in 2012 were wrong by one full degree (F), (which is as much as the total amount of warming during the past century), showing that the IPCC computer model temperatures are a hopeless failure.


     (2)  Koppes claims that “here and almost everywhere else in the world, the mountain snow accumulations that feed the glaciers are dwindling.” Data is available (Fig. 5) and it shows that five of the six snowiest years in the Northern Hemisphere have occurred since 2003 (NOAA).
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Figure 5. Snow extent in the Northern Hemisphere.
     (3)  Koppes claims that “The amount of water stored in mountain snow is down 45 to 60 percent since 1950.” The snowpack in Washington goes up and down from year to year, but the snow-water equivalent in Washington in the past 25 years has been growing, not declining as claimed by Koppes (Fig. 6). How she could claim a 45 to 60 percent decrease in snow-water equivalent is amazing.
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Figure 6. Mean snow water equivalent in the Cascades since 1975.
     (4)  “...shrinkage of Cascade glaciers seems to be accelerating”… Glaciers advance and retreat as climate warms and cools.  Koppes seems to be unaware of many published papers showing that Mt. Baker glaciers advanced almost to their Little Ice Age (1300 to 1915 AD) positions during the 1880 to 1915 cold period, then retreated strongly upvalley during the 1915 to 1945 warm period (WITHOUT ANY SIGNIFICANT INCREASE IN CO2!). This is important because it shows that Mt. Baker glaciers retreated upvalley well before CO2 began to increase significantly from 1945 on, i.e., CO2 cannot be the cause of this glacier retreat.  The climate turned cooler again from 1945 to 1977 and the glaciers readvanced about twice as far downvalley as they had retreated during the 1915 to 1945 recession, all during the time of maximum CO2 emissions (after 1945)!  This is even more important, because it shows that for ~30 years (~1945-1977) during the sharpest increase in human CO2 emissions, glaciers on Mt. Baker advanced strongly, just the opposite of what they should have done if CO2 causes warming. In 1978, the climate warmed again and the glaciers have again retreated upvalley. Thus, Koppe’s contentions that Cascade glaciers are retreating at an accelerating rate totally ignores the strong glacier advance from 1945 to 1980 when CO2 was soaring. 

     Koppes claims that "glaciers on Mt. Baker…..have lost 20 percent of their volume since 1990."  This one is mind-boggling!  Fig. 7 shows the amount of retreat of the Coleman glacier terminus from 1993 to 2011 and the total length of the glacier. Keeping in mind that glaciers thicken rapidly upvalley from their terminus, the total amount of ice loss since 1990 can’t be more than a few percent. Other glaciers show the same relationship. How any competent glaciologist could come to such a conclusion is hard to imagine.
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Figure 7. Diminished length of the Coleman glacier from 1993 to 2011(red enclosed area). Looking at Figure 7, it is hard to imagine how any competent glaciologists could conclude that.
CONCLUSIONS

Considering all of these easily confirmed facts that Koppes omitted, her conclusions are badly flawed (some are outright falsehoods) and her contentions are not scientifically defensible.


                                                           Dr. Don Easterbrook, PhD
18 Comments

The Scheme behind the Obamacare Fraud

11/23/2013

1 Comment

 
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As you know, WE consider ourselves a local concern, but the Affordable Care Act is something that can cause big problems locally. ObamaCare has been promoted as a way to make health care affordable to everyone, but the true objective might be quite different. This article by Andrew C. McCarthy at National Review Online caught our eye. 

November 23, 2013

Fraud can be so brazen it takes people’s breath away. But for a prosecutor tasked with proving a swindle — or what federal law describes as a “scheme to defraud” — the crucial thing is not so much the fraud. It is the scheme.

To be sure, it is the fraud — the individual false statements, sneaky omissions, and deceptive practices — that grabs our attention. As I’ve recounted in this space, President Obama repeatedly and emphatically vowed, “If you like your health-insurance plan, you can keep your health-insurance plan, period.” The incontrovertible record — disclosures by the Obama administration in the Federal Register, representations by the Obama Justice Department in federal court — proves that Obama’s promises were systematically deceitful. The president’s audacity is bracing, and not just because he lies so casually while looking us in the eye. Obama also insults our intelligence. It is one thing to tuck evidence of falsehood into a few paragraphs on page 34,552 of a dusty governmental journal no one may ever look at. It is quite something else to announce it in a legal brief publicly filed in a case of intense interest to millions of Americans aggrieved by Obamacare’s religious-liberty violations. To be so bold is to say, in effect, “The public is too ignorant and disengaged to catch me, and the press is too deep in my pocket to raise alarms.”
(Continue reading at National Review Online ...)
1 Comment

Voter Alienation, Anyone?

11/2/2013

9 Comments

 
WE see that the Whatcom Tea Party took exception to the mean spirited Democrat party mailers that have been going out to voters in the past few days. You may be one of the unlucky recipients of one or more of these spit bombs.

The mild mannered law-abiding "We The People" crowd responded politely to the gross misrepresentations by posting a piece entitled What's Wrong With This Picture? where they wrote,

The Whatcom Tea Party objects to being used to smear honorable candidates. The candidates being smeared here have not been running as Tea Party candidates. We wish the Democrats would have left us out of this. We are a non-partisan organization. Non-partisan does not mean unprincipled, but we deliberately do not endorse or disparage any candidates.
Here's the distorted picture of the Tea Party fabricated by the Whatcom Democrats:
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The article patiently explained how government can and should work for us, and that they object when it works against us. WE tend to agree.

But wait! There's more! In a second article, What's Wrong With This Other Picture?, they repeated the same preamble, but over a blood red slaughterhouse picture. Here they caught on that perhaps these mailers meant (in a vicious way) to intimidate voters; that the Democrats may want to so disgust the "undecideds" about local politics and the process that they won't vote at all.  This material is so ugly it just may alienate some from wanting to exercise their rights.

Here's the factually-absurd slaughterhouse mailing, for the morbidly curious:
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On the Whatcom Tea Party facebook page, they suggested that if you find candidates' campaigns disgusting, send back a strong message by way of your ballot.

WE love it!  That's exactly what elections are for.  The public has got to reject this bloodstained bomb-throwing tactic.  It's too low for a civil society to accept.

Rewarding partisan ugliness with with positions of power would be oh so wrong. Is that the Whatcom County you want to live in?
9 Comments
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