Month: May 2024

By Lee Gerhard

Climate scientists would be less likely to issue dire warnings about our planet's demise if they gave more credence to the geologic history of the past million years. Instead, they rely on computer models influenced by the biases of their manipulators and unable to account for the myriad factors that influence global temperatures.

A tiny recent warming, whatever the cause, is of no significance given the long record of data from Antarctic ice cores stretching back 800,000 years. The bottom line is that the Earth is almost 3 degrees Celsius colder than it was 3,000 years ago and is currently entering its longest cold period in the last 10,000 years. Bright headlines about the record heat waves of the last 100 years are meaningless, hysterical babble.

A deeper look into geological history – based in part on millions of years of records stored in deep-sea sediments – shows that today's carbon dioxide concentrations of 420 parts per million are only a fraction of previous levels, which reached 5,000 parts per million and above. Carbon dioxide levels are near their lowest levels since plant life began so many millions of years ago and well below the optimal level for the health of most plants.

In fact, the mid-19th century concentration of 280 ppm is disturbingly close to the point at which plant life dies – below 150 ppm. Given that all life depends on sufficient quantities of this gas, proposals to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide are downright reckless.

Any global increase in carbon dioxide will be beneficial and will have almost no impact on future temperatures. In contrast, in the “bible” of human history and climate change compiled by the late Professor Hubert Lamb of the University of East Anglia, cold kills.

During the Little Ice Age in parts of England, “the annual number of burials exceeded births from 1660 to about 1730,” he reported.

So why do so many demonize fossil fuels? The wealth made possible by coal, oil and natural gas has given many researchers the leisure – and funding – to focus on climate change rather than fighting for survival. Global society is absolutely dependent on cheap and plentiful energy for its survival. Why would some demand that civilization withdraw from useful energy sources in order to bring back mass starvation, poverty and horse-drawn carriages?

Dreaming of a utopian world may be admirable, but causing society suffering through ignorance of science is deplorable.

Humanity is being deprived of valuable knowledge when so many choose the ideology and scaremongering of climate alarmists over the meticulous research of eminent physicists such as Richard Alley, a professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, who pioneered the study of ice cores, and Richard Lindzen, a professor Meteorologist Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who explored the incredible complexity of atmospheric physics.

We could easily name dozens of others with similar qualifications who are largely unknown outside the scientific community.

The public is “protected” from empirical data by old censors and social media censors who eagerly promote the supposed need to limit global warming to 1.5 or 2.0 degrees Celsius – artificial constructs with no scientific basis.

We therefore suffer the consequences of unjustified regulatory interventions in daily life, be it restrictions on heating, air conditioning, dishwashers and stoves or the increased price and reduced availability of electricity. The effects range from annoying to life-threatening.

There is no global climate emergency. However, there is a widespread knowledge crisis.

This commentary was first published in The Washington Times on May 1, 2024.

Lee Gerhard is senior scientist emeritus at the University of Kansas, former director of the Kansas Geological Survey, member of the CO2 Coalition, retired Getty Professor of Geological Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, and co-author of “Geological Perspectives of Global Climate Change.” He has a doctorate in geology.

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Last November, NASA's Lucy mission conducted a flyby of asteroid Dinkinish, one of the main-belt asteroids it will study on its way to Jupiter. The spacecraft discovered a small moon orbiting the larger asteroid, now called Selam (also known as “Lucy’s Baby”). The moon's name, an Ethiopian name meaning “peace,” pays homage to ancient human remains called “Lucy” (or Dinkinish) that were unearthed in Ethiopia in 1974. Using novel statistical calculations based on how the two bodies orbit each other, a Cornell-led research team estimates that the moon is only 2 to 3 million years old.

The research was led by Colby Merrill, a graduate student in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University. He was joined by Alexia Kubas, a researcher from the Department of Astronomy at Cornell; Alex J. Meyer, Ph.D. student at UC Boulder College of Engineering & Applied Science; and Sabina D. Raducan, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bern. Their article “Age of (152830) Dinkinesh-Selam Constrained by Secular Tidal-BYORP Theory” recently appeared in Astronomy & Astrophysics on April 19th.

Merrill was also part of NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, which collided with the lunar moon Dimorphos on September 26, 2022. As part of the Lucy mission, Merrill was surprised to find that Dinkinesh was also a binary asteroid when the spacecraft flew past it on November 1, 2023. They were also intrigued to learn that the small moon was a “contact binary star” made up of two lobes that were piles of debris stuck together long ago.

Artist's impression of NASA's Lucy mission, which will study asteroids in the main belt and Jupiter's Trojan population. Photo credit: Southwest Research Institute

While astronomers have observed contact binaries before – a good example is the KBO Arrokoth, which the New Horizons spacecraft flew by on January 1, 2019 – this is the first time one has been observed orbiting a larger asteroid. Together with Kubas, the two began modeling the system to determine the age of the moon as part of their studies at Cornell University. Their results were consistent with those of the Lucy mission, which were based on an analysis of surface craters, the more traditional method of estimating the age of asteroids. As Merrill said in a recent Cornell Chronicle publication:

“It's important to determine the age of asteroids to understand them, and this one is remarkably young compared to the age of the solar system, meaning it was formed relatively recently.” To determine the age of this one body , can help us understand the population as a whole.”

Binary asteroids are a fascinating subject for astronomers because of the complex dynamics involved in their formation. On the one hand, it is the gravitational forces acting on them that cause them to bulge and lose energy. At the same time, binary star systems will also experience the so-called binary Yarkovsky-O'Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack effect (BYORP), in which the action of solar radiation changes the rotation speed of the bodies. Ultimately, these forces will balance out and reach a state of equilibrium for the system.

For their study, Merril and his team assumed that Selam formed from material expelled from Dinkinesh before the BYORP effect slowed its rotation. They also assumed that the system had now reached a state of equilibrium and that the density of both objects was comparable. They then integrated the asteroid data obtained from the Lucy mission to calculate how long it would take Selam to reach its current state. After running about a million calculations using different parameters, they came up with a median age estimate of 3 million years, with 2 million being the most likely result.

Artist's impression of the DART mission hitting the moon Dimorphos. Photo credit: ESA

This new method complements the Lucy mission's previous age estimates and has several advantages. As their work shows, this method can provide age estimates based on asteroid dynamics alone and does not require close-up images taken by spacecraft. It could also be more accurate where asteroid surfaces have recently changed and can be applied to the lunar moons of other known binary star systems, which make up 15% of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs). These include Didymos and Dimorphos, who are even younger.

The researchers hope to apply their new method to this and other binary systems whose dynamics are well characterized even without close flybys. Kubas said:

“In conjunction with crater counting, this method could help to better estimate the age of a system. If we use two methods and they agree with each other, we can be more confident that we are getting a meaningful age that describes the current state of the system.”

Further reading: Cornell Chronicle

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By CFACT

By David Wojick

The Biden administration has recently unleashed a wave of plans and regulatory actions aimed at building massive amounts of destructive offshore wind energy. An environmental impact assessment is not included.

The timescales range from tomorrow to 2050. Here's a quick look at some of them, starting with the Grand Plan.

“Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Offshore Wind” is the grandiose title of the Energy Department’s version of Biden’s vision. Their basic idea is that offshore wind energy is ready to go once the unexpected cost crisis has been successfully overcome.

They point out that the booming market remained unchanged, although costs rose quickly by an average of 65%. Coastal states are eager to introduce major offshore wind targets and laws. In short, it's a seller's market. Costs don't matter.

They note that government targets and targets already exceed the Biden goal of 100,000 MW by 2050. But why stop there? They say Net Zero requires a staggering 250,000 MW of offshore wind energy. At 15 MW per turbine, that's almost 17,000 monster towers.

The word “environment” appears frequently throughout this 62-page grand vision, but it is always about environmental justice. The accumulating, destructive environmental impacts of lining our coastline with towers and cables are seemingly ignored. Nor the costs.

Next comes transmission, where we have “AN ACTION PLAN FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF OFFSHORE WIND TRANSMISSION IN THE ATLANTIC REGION OF THE UNITED STATES.” While the Pathways plan covers the US, this is only about the Atlantic, because that's where the big action is now taking place.

This 110-pager comes from the Department of Energy and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, who are actually building the offshore wind monster.

The basic idea is simple. Instead of bringing the juice from each giant wind turbine to land one at a time, we will build a massive high-voltage grid in the ocean. This allows us to transport energy along the coast from where it is generated to where it is needed.

In the plan there are actually three basic networks: North, Central and South, but we need not be concerned with this detail. Of course, there is a huge network of feeder lines connecting the backbones to the numerous individual giant power plants.

Given the incredibly large generation numbers in the Liftoff plan, it is actually a very large network. Since it is a DC grid, I suspect that the juice is converted to AC on land, where it is then connected to the appropriately boosted land grid. The increase is another big, unknown cost.

There are many problems with this great draft, including legal and political, and many of them are mentioned. An interesting example is the connection of this deep sea network with state supply law.

Environmental impacts are treated only as a research topic and not as a potential problem, with the exception of floating wind, where some major problems are mentioned in passing. The feel-good idea of ​​minimizing impacts comes up frequently, but what those impacts might be is left unsaid.

As is typical for BOEM, there is a lot of talk about surveillance. Their approach to the environmental impact is to build it up and see what happens, as if the extinction of the North Atlantic right whale was reversible. The concept of cumulative impacts is not addressed.

Cost distribution is an important economic issue, but there is no information at all about what this underwater monstrosity might cost.

Back to today: several things happened. First, BOEM has announced many new lease sales for the next five years (the Biden II years?). These operate fixed and floating from Maine to Oregon, five of which are planned for this year alone.

Some are in new locations, while others are in already crowded areas like the New York Bight. As always, there is no cumulative environmental impact analysis. It's like BOEM has never heard of this even though the law clearly requires it when accumulating projects.

Even more threatening is that there are new regulations for the approval of offshore wind projects. The developers love these new rules, which shows us that they are not designed to protect the environment. This is from the BOEM press release:

“”The final modernization rule will streamline the permitting process and reduce regulatory hurdles for developers. It will also lead to greater collaboration among federal, state and local stakeholders and ensure that offshore wind projects are developed in a sustainable and responsible manner,” said Anne Reynolds, American Clean Power Association vice president for offshore wind.

The main “regulatory obstacle” is the analysis of environmental impacts. The new rules require authorities to rush through them, which means glossing over them without giving time for serious analysis.

Today's actions may seem small, but given the long-term plans, they are anything but small. It's all part of a huge rush to do something hugely expensive and environmentally destructive for which there is no need at all.

This offshore bulldozer must be stopped before it is too late.

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