An Inconvenient Fact

After 16 years without temperature increase, it might be time to discount "Climate Change Models."  During those 16 years, CO2 continued to increase, but that did not result in the projected temperature increase. When observations do not support predictions, the predictions are wrong--not the inverse.

Global Warming--Much To Do About Not Much

Here is a historical temperature representation from a Greenland ice core. Note the rising squiggle on the far right, coming out of the Little Ice Age. That's Global Warming--or much to do about not much--but keep those research grants coming.

During the Medieval Warming, grapes were grown in Britain, but as the weather cooled, the grapes were frozen out and replaced by grains that go into beer and whiskey. This was still several hundred years before corn and potatoes were imported from the New World.

Also, during the Medieval Warming, the Vikings colonized and named Greenland. During the warmth, their diets consisted of 80% from land sources and 20% from ocean. As the cold infested the island, the winters lengthened and their grazing animals became so weak in winter shelter, they had to be manually carried out to be put on pasture. The Viking diet shifted to 20% land sources and 80% ocean. When the cod moved south because of cooling, the Vikings left, froze or starved. In the end, the island was left to the "ugly, little people," as the Vikings called the Inuit. 

The grapes have yet to return to Britain, and the Vikings to Greenland. When Scandinavians revisited Greenland, they found no Viking descendants, so Christianized the Inuit--then left.  The warmth has yet to return, and whether it will or not before the advent of the next ice age is at best questionable.

Geothermal Fumble

Development of California's geothermal potential began in the 1960s, and today produces 4.5% of California's power. After fifty years, might one reasonably expect more since the energy source is free for the taking and plentiful in extent?

There is no shortage of energy in the world; only a shortage of  imagination and leadership in turning it into power.

Time for the Cold?

A lot of scary noise has recently been generated about CO2 being high, with accompanying statements that we could warm to conditions not experienced since before the ice ages began 3-million years ago. Crap!

Attached is the previous interglacial warm period, the Eemian, 130,000 years ago. Please, note that CO2 rose 800 to 1300 years after the temperature, then continued for 4000-years after temperature deteriorated back into glacial cold.

The logical conclusions one can draw are that 1) CO2 did NOT cause temperature to rise, and 2) did NOT prevent it from falling. It most probably won't again.

The previous interglacial warmth was about 12,000-years long; this one has lasted 10,500 years, unless one counts the Younger Dryas as part of this one--in which case, this one has run 13,000 years, and the cold is overdue.

Speculations on the Demise of the Neanderthals

At one time, the Neanderthals occupied all of Europe or at least all of Europe not covered by the ice and tundra of the ice age. The ice itself was as far south as the English-Scottish border, but what are the rich farmlands of France today, were tundra without forest to break the cold winds constantly blowing off the glaciers toward the south. Winter was ten months each year, with only two months of warmth that might have grown grasses for migrating herds of caribou. The northern extent of even the Neanderthal was the coniferred valleys in the mountains of southern France. Here, the Neanderthals could prey on the migrating herds as the crossed streams and passed through valleys, killing enough to keep them supplied through the long winters. Refrigeration was free.

Neanderthal was built like a short version of WWE wrestler or NFL lineman. They could bench press 350 to 500 lbs, and hunted with a spear. Brain capacity was larger than homo sapiens, but language and other capabilities are unknown. Since many have healed bone breakage, it appears they killed up close and personally rather than having standoff killing capabilities.

Their range at one time extended over the entire southern tier of Europe, extending into the Sinai connection between Africa and Asia. One author (Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn) speculates that homo sapiens left Africa 50,000 years ago, crossing the twenty-miles wide southern narrows of the Red Sea because Neanderthals inhabited the Sinai. It does appear that homo sapiens moved east for thousands of years, even sailing to Australia, before moving north and west into Europe.


Instead of Neanderthals being an impediment, it may have been just too damned cold. This was 30,000 years before the ice age began to thaw, and about the time the ice age became harsher yet. Homo sapiens were coming out of Africa, a much warmer climate, and when given a choice between north or east, picked east as the logical choice. Instead of population pressure from homo sapiens, Neanderthals may have been overly challenged by the increasing harshness of the ice and may have already been diminished by a second factor that had almost eliminated homo sapiens, even in relatively warm Africa.

Based on variations in human or homo sapien mitochondrial DNA, the breeding population of females was reduced to around 2000, but no more than 10,000, between 70,000 and 80,000 years before present. This small remaining population was located in Africa. The only known event that could have had this effect occurring during that period was the explosion of Toba, 74,000 years ago. Toba is one of ten or so super-volcanoes on earth, the explosion left a lake 30 by 60 miles in the mountains of the island of Sumatra.  This was many thousands of times more detrimental than Mount St. Helens, and dropped the temperature during the ice age by as much as 5-degrees Centigrade. Compare this to today's most dire warnings of possible global warming of 2-degrees Centigrade.

Considering such a drastic impact on homo sapiens in Africa, could if not have an equally severe impact on Neanderthals in Europe and Homo Erectus in Asia? I think it could not fail to reduce their population and also their range. When, 25,000 years later, homo sapiens went to leave Africa, there may have no longer been Neanderthals in the Sinai.

Later during the ice age, the temperatures recovered a couple of degrees, then fell even further about 30,000 years ago. At that time, there were still Neanderthals in Europe, but, by 25,000 years ago, they had been reduced to a few cave dwellers on Gibraltar.  By 20,000 years ago, when the world began to warm and the glaciers retreat, the Neanderthal and Homo Erectus were gone. Homo sapiens began their move en mass into Europe and more northern Asia, then into North America.

Homo sapiens had at least two advantages over Neanderthals: First the atlatl gave a higher velocity, longer range spear throwing capacity--or a stand-off kill capability. That eventually evolved into the bow and arrow. Second was the sewing needle, which gave tailored clothes to better protect the person from the cold. Neanderthals did not have these, although they did have equal or superior flint knapping ability.

In spite the favorite hypothesis being that homo sapiens killed off the Neanderthals as they would later supposedly kill off the mega-mammals, a cold nine-degrees lower than the current average after the detrimental impact of Toba seems a more likely explanation.

Note to Shara Jo

Shara Jo, let an old person assure you the world was worse in the past, and is getting better. Don't let the news coverage convince you otherwise, which it tries mightily to do so it can increase its ratings.

In August of 1914, 100 years ago, next year, World War I started. The British alone lost 3000 men per week, when nothing was happening. They called it "wastage." When something was happening like the Battle of the Somme, they lost 60,000 men before breakfast and 400,000 in the next few months.

In total, an estimated 11-million were lost in the four years of World War I. In 1918, the Spanish flu broke out and killed an estimated 50- to 100-million in the next year. In the US, 625,000 were lost, exceeding the number killed in our Civil War over four years. The average age of death in the US fell to 37.

In the decades of World War II, an estimated 57-million died worldwide. Since the nuclear bombing of Japan in 1945, only a million have died worldwide per year on average because of the horrific constraint of nuclear war. More people are lost to malaria each year than war.

Because of hyper-conventional war, war appears to have been reduced to small incidents. In ten years of Iraq and Afghanistan, we have lost less than 10,000 killed. Compare this to the 58,000 lost in Vietnam over ten years, or the 52,000 lost in Korea over three years.

In spite of the news, crimes are actually going down each year, and have been for years. Two out of three gun deaths in the US are suicide, not homicide. Most gun homicides occur in cities that have the most stringent laws against being armed, and happen in big cities. I suspect most happen in gang warfare, and involve fighting over drugs and turf. They are easily avoided by staying out of big cities, especially the impoverished parts.

But the news would lead you to believe otherwise simply because of their unofficial motto: "If it bleeds, it leads." Tonight, with the Boston coverage, we will get 24 hour coverage of 2.4 minutes of news. Don't let it depress you, because that is the intent. It increases ratings and, in spite of one channel's BS, they are NOT looking out for you. All TVs come with an OFF switch. Don't be afraid to use it.

Stormy Times Return

During the 1950s, "beach cottages" along the Gulf Coast in Florida were uninsulated shacks furnished with stuff a second-hand, consignment furniture store wouldn't take. The reason was simple. Hurricanes were common, hitting each year, so the uninsurable "cottage" was sure to be destroyed sooner or later.

Hurricanes went into a thirty-year hiatus and special interests (read: realtors, banksters, and government entities profiting from property taxes) got the federal government to insure property along the coast and in flood plains for a fraction of the eventual cost. You might remember that $9 billion of the $61-billion Sandy relief funding was to replenish the exhausted insurance fund. Attempts to regulate building in these areas was ruled by the Supreme Court as "a taking" so had to be compensated by the regulating authority. The gold rush was on.

Seems the storm hiatus is over and storms are back. In the 1993 flood of the Mississippi flood plain,  the insuring authority paid for the homes destroyed, but said they would not insure any replacement housing built in the same location, unless elevated. One town moved its entire population to higher ground. These folks were rural middle-class citizens, so the insuring authority has greater leverage. On the coasts, the recipients are more often rich and influential, so the insuring authority less often dictates.

Of course, the reason often heard for new restrictions is that the ocean level is rising because of global warming. The ocean is rising, but the rate is 2.5 millimeters per year, probably from warming coming out of the Little Ice Age.. However, there seems no shortage of stories that speculate "if the oceans rise 3 feet..."