From Sunday.

There are obvious problems inherant in looking at a short period of time out of context and thinking you can base any concrete future projections on it (in the same way as an insect born and dying on one rainy summer day might think all days are the same), so lets look at the recent global temperatures within the longer term perspective. Did man contribute to global warming from the year 200 until the years 850AD – 900AD, which were the hottest over the last 2000 years? Significantly hotter than now in fact, ending in the medieval warm period. Did we contribute to the following temperature decline after that over the next 800 years which ended in the Little ice age?  How about the runup starting in 1700?

No. Temperature fluctuations are completely normal.

How many ‘Hockey sticks’ can you see, both up and down? Can you with any degree of certainty make any conclusions about what the temperature might be in 500 years from this chart below? How about 100 years? If you think you know, did you take into account orbital eccentricity, obliquity, and precession of Earth’s movements? How about the Sun? How about the thousands of other factors we know about? How about the almost infinite number of unseen or unknown variables, the things you (and yes, even scientists) dont know? How did you weigh the importance of each of these things?

More below the fold:

Crazed CNBC guy, interrupting all the time.

Milankovitch Theory describes the collective effects of changes in the Earth’s movements upon its climate, named after Serbian civil engineer and mathematician Milutin Milanković. Milanković mathematically theorised that variations in eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth’s orbit determined climatic patterns on Earth, resulting in 100,000-year ice age cycles of the Quaternary glaciation over the last few million years. The Earth’s axis completes one full cycle of precession approximately every 26,000 years. At the same time, the elliptical orbit rotates, more slowly, leading to a 23,000-year cycle between the seasons and the orbit. In addition, the angle between Earth’s rotational axis and the normal to the plane of its orbit moves from 22.1 degrees to 24.5 degrees and back again on a 41,000-year cycle. Currently, this angle is 23.44 degrees and is decreasing.

As the Earth spins around its axis and orbits around the Sun, several quasi-periodic variations occur. Milankovitch studied changes in the orbital eccentricity, obliquity, and precession of Earth’s movements. Such changes in movement and orientation change the amount and location of solar radiation reaching the Earth. This is known as solar forcing. Changes near the north polar area are considered important due to the large amount of land, which reacts to such changes more quickly than the oceans do.

Orbital forcing is the effect on climate of slow changes in the tilt of the Earth’s axis and shape of the orbit. These orbital changes change the total amount of sunlight reaching the Earth by up to 25% at mid-latitudes. In this context, the term “forcing” signifies a physical process that affects the Earth’s climate.

This mechanism is believed to be responsible for the timing of the ice age cycles.

Today, northern hemisphere summer is 4.66 days longer than winter and spring is 2.9 days longer than autumn. As axial precession changes the place in the Earth’s orbit where the solstices and equinoxes occur, Northern hemisphere winters will get longer and summers will get shorter, eventually creating conditions believed to be favorable for triggering the next glacial period.

Precession is the change in the direction of the Earth’s axis of rotation relative to the fixed stars, with a period of roughly 26,000 years. This gyroscopic motion is due to the tidal forces exerted by the sun and the moon on the solid Earth, associated with the fact that the Earth is an oblate spheroid shape and not a perfect sphere.

The arrangements of land masses on the Earth’s surface are believed to reinforce the orbital forcing effects. Comparisons of plate tectonic continent reconstructions and paleoclimatic studies show that the Milankovitch cycles have the greatest effect during geologic eras when landmasses have been concentrated in polar regions, as is the case today. Greenland, Antarctica, and the northern portions of Europe, Asia, and North America are situated such that a minor change in solar energy will tip the balance between year-round snow/ice preservation and complete summer melting.

This book is really superb. Taleb uses the Black Swan idea to explain the existence and occurrence of high-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations.  He writes about the impact of the highly improbable, which have a much greater impact on things than the probable (and usually misunderstood) and our tendency to simplify and therefore not see the whole picture.

Taleb regards almost all major scientific discoveries, historical events, and artistic accomplishments as “black swans”—undirected and unpredicted,  although AFTER the fact, the event is rationalized by hindsight, as if it had been expected.

Some nights it is so brilliant, I find myself reluctantly putting the book down as my eyelids droop and then not being able to sleep because it sets me off thinking for hours. Occasionally on other nights it gets a little boring and sends me to sleep pretty quickly which is not a bad thing either! Anyway, here are some of the standout sections so far. I really cant recommend it highly enough:

Lies. Lies and more lies. The truth is out. What struck me this week, was that almost all of the defining issues of this very recent age, have now (in the last week) been clearly and empirically exposed as being based on Lies in order to accomplish agendas. I wont go very far into the implications, evidence, and reasons for the lies, but they are now all there for the world to see (if you so wish). To be honest, they were there and obvious before to those skeptical enough to question what they were being fed.

Firstly: Global warming.
Clearly manipulated historical data emerged this week and an agenda which has been followed by a select group of highly funded scientists in order for the governments to collect more taxes and maintain competitive advantage over developing nations. (See previous post)

Secondly: The Iraq war.
Many different reasons were presented for going to war, which were one after the other changed as the previous reason was shown to be a lie. Tony Blair inquiry shows the extent of this as seen this week. (the war also exposes the seriousness of the issue of energy security)

Thirdly: A strong dollar policy (The decline of the dollar)
I believe deeply that it’s very important for the U.S. and the economic health of the U.S. that we maintain a strong dollar – Tim Geithner.
This is clearly a blatant lie, printing money out of thin air certainly never strengthened any Fiat currency. The US debt level is so high, even the interest payments are reaching unpayable levels. The only available options are default or devalue. See several posts down for the dollar index chart.

So, I ask myself, how are these people getting away with it? These are not theories, the empirical evidence is there! How can anyone believe a word those in power say? These are not some minor issues, they are THE issues. These people should be thrown in jail, or as my French friend says, Guillotined in order to be made examples of. It sounds harsh, but hundreds of thousands have died as a result of these lies. Nothing less will be enough to make the point that people are sick and tired of being lied to and manipulated.

Of course we cant see the negative effects which might have happened as a result of those in power telling the truth, but that is a discussion for  another day.

Part of me just thinks ‘whatever’ to this. What can you really do? But these are not inconsequential lies being told. I would rather be aware of them than not, but I am also starting to agree more and more with the Epicurean view of things and how to deal with them.

So I have been harping on about this for almost as long as I have had a blog, but now it has been exposed that there has been clear manipulation of the Data presented to support the man made global warming climate change argument.

Climate change is (obviously!!) as natural to this planet as day and night. The period we are in is even called an interglacial period for goodness sake. The earth gets very cold and enters an ice age, and then warms up again, and then gets cold again, and then gets warm again, etc. etc. Nothing strange here, it has been happening for eons. Recent times included, such as the medieval warming period which was followed by the Little Ice Age in around 1650. I posted it before a couple of years ago, but in light of this scandal it bears re-posting for some perspective:

To think that we can control the temperature of this enormous planet is incredibly arrogant. There are much larger forces at work here, such as the Milankovitch cycles, precession of the equinoxes, axial tilt and Precession, sun spot cycles and most likely a load of other forces we know nothing about as we all fly through space as the Sun orbits around the galaxy. Will taxing people change any of that??? Of course it wont!

“I believe deeply that it’s very important for the U.S. and the economic health of the U.S. that we maintain a strong dollar. We bear special responsibility for trying to make sure that we are implementing policy in the U.S. that will sustain confidence not just among American investors and savers but investors around the world that the U.S. will fix its budgetary problems as its economy improves.” – Tim Geithner

Uh, huh. He is either lying his teeth off or stupid as hell, I would put my money on the first. No conspiracy, no theory, the empirical evidence is there for all to see, clear as day. This is not only bad news for anyone holding dollars who is getting poorer by the day, but also for all of the countries who export to America.

Sometimes you really can believe your eyes. That’s what NASA’s STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) spacecraft are telling researchers about a controversial phenomenon on the sun known as the “solar tsunami.”

Years ago, when solar physicists first witnessed a towering wave of hot plasma racing along the sun’s surface, they doubted their senses. The scale of the thing was staggering. It rose up higher than Earth itself and rippled out from a central point in a circular pattern millions of kilometers in circumference. Skeptical observers suggested it might be a shadow of some kind—a trick of the eye—but surely not a real wave.

“Now we know,” says Joe Gurman of the Solar Physics Lab at the Goddard Space Flight Center. “Solar tsunamis are real.”

Continued on the NASA website here….

Found this great picture below too from NASA picture of the day.

A solar wind stream is buffeting Earth’s magnetic field and causing geomagnetic storms around the Arctic Circle. Last night in Lofoten, Norway, geoscientist Rob Stammes says the needle on his magnetograph spent the whole evening swinging wildly and he could see auroras beaming through the clouds. Not far away in Kvaløya, the sky was filled with green:

“The Northern Lights were everywhere–north, south, east and west,” says photographer Fredrik Broms. “It was a magical sight.”

Polar sky watchers should remain alert for auroras tonight as the solar wind continues to blow.

From spaceweather.com…

“The day was a long time in coming. For many months now, world oil production has remained essentially flat and world oil exports have fallen while world oil prices just climbed and climbed. Poor country after poor country was priced out of the market and world oil stockpiles started to melt. Yet as the world lurched towards the mother of all economic crises, the major media of the country led by Wall Street’s own Journal remained strangely silent.

From time to time they would report some good news such as “billions of barrels found 25,000 ft under the Gulf” or “steaming out sticky oil will save us.” However, they never got around to asking what is involved in extracting oil from deepwater wells or just where all that tar melting steam was coming from. Anyone who questioned that oil production could keep on growing for the foreseeable future was castigated as lunatic fringe.

This make believe world finally came crashing down on Monday when the Wall Street Journal published a front page story admitting there was a big, big problem with oil production just ahead. Now the flagship of economic journalism does not come to such a decision lightly. To admit that you have been dead wrong in ignoring the most important economic issue the world is likely to face in the next century certainly strains your journalistic credibility”.

Continue reading…

While Oil imports are down 10.4% this year from 2008, imports during the most recent 4 week period are down 19.3% when compared to the same 4 week period from last year.

My good friend Tibor started his own blog.

We were heading up to the Dachstein Glacier which has a big park and not much else, but on the way we spotted the Reiteralm lift working. Since neither Benjamin nor I had been there before we figured we might as well stop to check it out. There were just about enough pistes to keep us busy for an afternoon. The sun was shining almost unbelievably brightly and the snow was like spring snow. Perfect for a lazy Sunday.

The more I use this Lib Tech T-Rice board the better I realize it is. The board has mad pop! The flex is so smooth too and you can get away with so much on it. It took me a while to get into it, but I have to say I am now fully converted, especially after trying a normal board again for a run. Benny in Beige, me in Green.

Big Thanks to Lamborghini and Giorgio Sanna for the test…PJ