What is Insulation, And what Does it Do? People (well, the climate alarmists) don’t seem to understand what “insulation” is. They think that it means that it makes heat “pile up” inside the source of heat, or in the medium between the insulation and source of heat, so that the source of heat and/or the medium will get hotter than the source of heat and power input. 

There is no such thing as “heat pile up”. This is a non-existent concept. You can think of it, like you can think of a unicorn, but it doesn’t exist.  Heat does not pile up, it readily and freely flows into whatever is around it.

Insulation is something that only works in a gaseous environment – it is all about a gaseous environment. Insulation, a blanket, a greenhouse, all work the same way, and that way is preventing convective cooling and air circulation.  Insulation in the form of a blanket, a sweater, a greenhouse enclosure, home insulation, etc., is about reducing and eliminating convective cooling, i.e. the loss of warm air.  A blanket, or insulation, etc., is about doing the opposite of what the atmosphere does!

In your house, insulation helps prevent the furnace-heated air from escaping your house and being replaced with cold air from outside. It doesn’t make the furnace burn hotter.  In your water heater, it helps the water retain its temperature after it has been heated.  It doesn’t make the water hotter than the heater.

You can wrap a heat source with as much insulation as you want.  All that will happen is that the insulation will reach the temperature of the heat source, and the heat source will not rise in temperature.  Insulation is just matter, just material like anything else.  When exposed to heat, it will warm, and will conduct that heat outward via diffusion.

The proverb that “they can’t see the forest for the trees” means, they are so consumed with detail, they don’t understand the larger situation. This is true of society in general and climatology in particular.  One book that at least addresses part of the problem as it relates to climate, is Essex and McKitrick’s Taken By Storm, in the chapter titled, “Climate Theory Versus Models and Metaphors”. 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has exacerbated, amplified and exploited the problem because they are about politics, not science.

Shortly after appointment to Chair of the newly formed Assiniboine River Management Advisory Board (ARMAB), I called a meeting at the Fort Garry Hotel in Winnipeg. I invited people from Federal, Provincial and Municipal governments involved with as many aspects of the river basin as possible. It was amazing, in a Province of 1.2 million people, how few knew or communicated with each other. I knew communication between different levels of governments is bad, but was shocked to find, it was as bad within the same level of government. Worse, many didn’t know their part in affecting the interaction between the natural dynamics of the river basin and human activities.

People introduced themselves and explained why they were present. Some didn’t know. The Department of Highways representative said his department had nothing to do with water. I asked him if he knew that, a) they built and maintained drainage ditches on each side of a road, b) that some ditches are larger in flow capacity than many rivers and streams in the basin and, c) a majority cut across the natural drainage slope of the region? Of course, none knew the climate history of the basin. Some knew I had done climate studies, but nobody had ever consulted me or looked at the material.

New peer-reviewed study casts doubt on the validity of Max Planck’s famous theory of radiation. It is shown that Planck misrepresented Kirchhoff’s Law such that the behavior of nature is not properly accounted for.

Below is an excerpt from the new study titled, ‘‘The Theory of Heat Radiation” Revisited: A Commentary on the Validity of Kirchhoff’s Law of Thermal Emission and Max Planck’s Claim of Universality’

The latest news, as per the Canada Journal: Oceans are warming so fast that readings are now off the chart, Report. There you have it: from now on it’s gonna be fried or steamed fish only.

To make the point, the article has a convincing graph, see right: 

That ought to get your attention: 15×10^22 Joules or more of additional ocean heat energy, all in the last 30 years or so. The fish must just about be jumping out of the water and into the (presumably cooler) frying pan.

Perhaps though, some sobering thoughts may be appropriate. Let’s start with small freshwater lakes. The kind you have all over the Ontario, Quebec, and some States in the U.S., a vast area of rather impermeable granite. Snow melt and rain water there collects in every dimple. If those dimples are large and deep enough not to have their contents evaporate in the summer’s heat, they are called LAKES.

Freshwater Lakes

A good part of the year these lakes are covered by a layer of ice, one meter (approx. 3 ft.) deep. In the spring, when it finally gets warmer, that ice slowly starts to melt. Only 100 miles north of the metropolis Toronto (Ontario), that time arrives between mid-April and mid-May. However, even when the ice is gone, it’s not time to go frolicking in the water. For that, you have to wait another month or two, or three, like to the end of July. Then the surface water temperature gets to be pleasant, like 20-25 °C (70+ °F); however that’s very close to the surface only.

An ancient solar system similar to our own has been discovered by scientists. Scientists at the University of Birmingham described the solar system as a “miniature version” of our own. 

Studying data from the Kepler telescope, the team, led by the University of Birmingham, found a star orbited by five planets similar in size to Earth.

The system, 117 light years away, is the oldest known of its kind, formed 11.2 billion years ago.

Dr Tiago Campante said it could provide a clue to “the existence of ancient life in the galaxy”.

“By the time the Earth formed, the planets in this system were already older than our planet is today,” he said.

“This discovery may now help to pinpoint the beginning of what we might call the era of planet formation.”

Researchers said the star, named Kepler-444, and its planets were two and a half times older than earth and dated back to the “dawn of the galaxy”.

Link found between infrasound emitted by wind turbines and complaints of “unbearable sensations” by residents.  In a groundbreaking study at Pacific Hydro’s Cape Bridgewater windfarm in the state of Victoria, Australia’s leading acoustical engineer Steven Cooper found that a unique infrasound pattern, which he had labelled “Wind Turbine Signature” in previous studies, correlates (through a “trend line”) with the occurrence and severity of symptoms of residents who had complained of often-unbearable “sensations”.

These include sleep disturbance, headaches, heart racing, pressure in the head, ears or chest, etc. as described by the residents (symptoms generally known as Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS), or the euphemism “noise annoyance” – ed). (1)

The acoustician also identified “discrete low frequency amplitude modulated signals” emitted by wind turbines, and found the windfarm victims were also reacting to those.

The Wind Turbine Signature cannot be detected using traditional measuring indexes such as dB(A) or dB(C) and 1/3 Octave bands, concludes his study. Narrowband analysis must be used instead, with results expressed in dB(WTS).

He suggests medical studies be conducted using infrasound measurements in dB(WTS) in order to determine the threshold of what is unacceptable in terms of sound pressure level.

The findings are consistent with the official Kelley studies published in the US more than 30 years ago, which showed that infrasound emitted by early, downwind turbines caused sleep disturbance and other WTS symptoms (2). These studies were shelved, upwind turbines were designed, and the regulatory authorities simply trusted the wind industry’s assertion that the new models did not emit dangerous infrasound. The Cooper study now proves they were wrong.

Space scientist Shrinivas Aundhkar, director of India’s Mahatma Gandhi Mission at the Centre for Astronomy and Space Technology, says declining sunspot numbers in the last two solar cycles could mean a “mini ice age-like situation” is around the corner, says this article in theDaily Caller. (Also in the Times of India.) 

“The sunspots that can be seen on the sun have comparatively less temperature compared to other surfaces on it,” Aundhkar announced at a lecture entitled “Get Ready for Little Ice Age.” The recently concluded solar cycle “was the longest and quietest minimum phase in the past 100 years.”

For years now, more and more scientists have been warning that fewer observed sunspots could mean the Earth is heading for a cooling period.

At the end of 2013, for example, German scientists* predicted a century of global cooling based on declining solar activity and ocean oscillation cycles.

Earlier that year, Professor Mike Lockwood of Reading University told BBC News that declining solar activity has set the stage for global cooling.

Solar activity falling more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years

“By looking back at certain isotopes in ice cores, [Lockwood] has been able to determine how active the sun has been over thousands of years,”the BBC reported. “Following analysis of the data, Professor Lockwood believes solar activity is now falling more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years.”

Aundhkar’s explanation for harsh winters runs counter to the explanation given by White House science czar John Holdren, who said that global warming was driving freezing and snowy winters.

Current scenario almost the same

But Aundhkar disagrees. He argues that Earth is heading for another mini-ice age period similar to the 17th century, when sunspots on the Sun were absent. This led to a drop in northern hemisphere temperature by 2-3 degrees. “The current scenario is almost same. Such climatic conditions might affect the agricultural pattern and health and trigger disasters in the worst scenario,” he added.

So the results are in. No significant warming, since at least 2005. The main US global-temperature scorekeepers – NASA and the NOAA – say that last year was definitely the hottest year on record.  But they’ve been contradicted by a highly authoritative scientific team, one actually set up to try an establish objective facts in this area.

On the face of it, there’s no dispute. The NASA and NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) statement says:

The year 2014 ranks as Earth’s warmest since 1880, according to two separate analyses by NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists.

Open and shut, right?

But in fact, detecting a global average temperature rise – of less than a degree since the 1880s, as all sides agree – among thousands upon thousands of thermometer readings from all over the world and spanning more than a century is no simple matter. The temperature at any given location is surging up and down by many degrees each day and even more wildly across a year. It can be done, across a timescale of decades, but trying to say that one year is hotter or colder than the next is to push the limits of statistics and the available data. This sort of thing is why the battle over global temperatures tends to be so hotly debated.

Most everyone knowledgeable on this subject has heard of the “K&T Energy Budget” (diagram right). So how did Kiehl and Trenberth help debunk climate alarm? 

Manmade climate disaster proponents know the Saul Alinksy community agitator playbook by heart. In a fight, almost anything goes. Never admit error; just change your terminology and attack again. Expand your base, by giving potential allies financial and political reasons to join your cause. Pick “enemy” targets, freeze them, personalize them, polarize them and vilify them. 

The “crisis” was global cooling, until Earth stopped cooling around 1976. It was global warming, until our planet stopped warming around 1995. The alarmist mantra then became “climate change” or “climate disruption” or “extreme weather.” Always manmade. Since Earth’s climate often fluctuates, and there are always weather extremes, such claims can never be disproven, certainly not to the alarmists’ satisfaction.

Alarmists say modern civilization’s “greenhouse gas” emissions are causing profound climate change – by replacing the powerful, interconnected solar and other natural forces that have driven climate and weather patterns and events since Earth and human history began. They insist that these alleged human-induced changes are already happening and are already disastrous. Pope Francis says we are already witnessing a “great cataclysm” for our planet, people and environment.

However, there is no cataclysm – now or imminent – even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have gone well past the alleged 350 parts-per-million “tipping point,” and now hover near 400 ppm (0.04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}). There has been no warming since 1995, and recent winters have been among the coldest in centuries in the United Kingdom and continental Europe, despite steadily rising levels of plant-fertilizing CO2.

Three centuries ago, the world ran on green power. Wood was used for heating and cooking, charcoal for smelting and smithing, wind or water-power for pumps mills and ships, and whale oil or tallow for lamps. People and soldiers walked or rode horses, and millions of horses and oxen pulled ploughs, wagons, coaches and artillery.

But smoke from open fires choked cities, forests were stripped of trees, most of the crops went to feed draft animals, and streets were littered with horse manure. For many people, life was “nasty, brutish and short”.Then the steam engine was developed, and later the internal combustion engine, electricity and refrigeration came along.

Green power was replaced by coal and oil. Carbon energy powered factories, mills, pumps, ships, trains, and smelters; and cars, trucks and tractors replaced the work-horses. The result was a green revolution – forests began to regrow and vast areas of crop-land used for horse feed were released to produce food for humans. Poverty declined and population soared.

But new environmental problems emerged. Smoke pollution from burning cheap dirty coal in millions of open fires, old boilers and smelters produced massive smog problems in cities like London and Pittsburgh.The solution was improved technology, sensible pollution-control laws and the supply of coal gas and coal-powered electricity to the cities.

After more than eight years analysing all aspects of climate alarm, from the initial scare that man’s emissions of carbon dioxide caused global warming to a name-change to man-made climate change – when the globe stopped warming despite ever increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide – to a further name-change to climate disruption – then it was realised that climate changes all the time – it is time to face the music and ask: “Where is the evidence regarding man-made climate change?” 

Let me to point you in the direction of some recent reports and studies that use the scientific method to analyse and appraise the current situation of blaming carbon dioxide emissions, especially those coming from human activity.

1. There has never ever, as yet, been presented any empirical evidence that can be interpreted as proof that the totality of atmospheric carbon dioxide has any influence upon the climate; quite the reverse: climate influences the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The man-made proportion of the total amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide is in any case only around 3{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}, that’s three percent and is the figure detailed in several UN IPCC reports.

2. For an extensive report on many popular climate alarm scenarios, please refer to Marc Morano’s summary.

3. Here is proof, one of many, that there is no magical greenhouse effect, making or keeping earth warmer that it should be and being enhanced by the increase in carbon dioxide.

4. The scientific truth about atmospheric carbon dioxide is that is causes atmospheric cooling and no global warming at all is even possible; quite the opposite of what you have been told thus far!

In Orlando, Florida is a lone climate researcher who, for almost eight years, has been putting the U.S. government’s best scientists and science agencies to shame, when it comes to accurately making major climate predictions. This is especially true when compared to Al Gore-style global warming politicians, government funded university Ph.D. climate scientists and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN-IPCC).

The UN-IPCC is the UN’s climate research arm that historians may someday remember best for unreliable climate models and associated wildly exaggerated, and erroneous temperature and sea level rise predictions. The “climategate’ scandal at the UN will likewise be prominent for the disclosure that its supposed ‘best climate scientists” falsified or manipulated climate data to fit the politically motivated manmade global warming storyline.

In March 2013, while I was the Florida Editor for the online conservative journal Watchdogwire.com, I had the chance to review the track record of this maverick in the field of climatology. When I was done I put my name on a column naming him “America’s best climate prediction expert.” I added to it in April 2014 updating his list of predictions he had made. He is Mr. John L. Casey, a former White House and NASA space program consultant, Space Shuttle engineer, and high tech start-up company executive.

In a detailed new mathematical study the actual atmospheric effect of infrared-active gases are examined for climatic impact. Principia Scientific International (PSI) researcher, Jef Reynen explores the so-called ‘stack model’ of earth’s climate and finds that it is possible to more accurately model climate without factoring in any ‘greenhouse gas effect.’  

His new paper, Lessons from a chicken wire stack on the Moon, re-examines a concept first addressed at PSI three years ago. Back then Reynen considered a finite difference one-stream-heat-flow formulation. More recently, he has employed the more transparent finite element method (FEM).

Due to the recurrent failures of computer simulations to model climate, Reynen’s more pragmatic approach employs the concept of a stack of chicken wire in a vacuum environment (that is, where convection is not possible) e.g. on the Moon. In a vacuum, the stack has a temperature and heat flux completely defined by the process of radiation, without convection. Conventional computer climate modeling disavows itself of the dominance of convection (e.g. wind impacts) and applies a far more radiation-obsessed approach; whereas in the reality of planet Earth, it is nearly the other way around. This, says Reynen, has been climate science’s great error.

It’s unfortunate that Pope Francis now also joined the church of climatology [1]. However, many of his followers in the Catholic realm will doubt that this is a command by St. Peter. 

A few weeks ago I returned home from attending the 2014 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP-20, at Lima, Peru. This mega-event gave me the impression of a clerical synod by a world-encompassing religious community. There were many nice people from all corners of the world whom I had cordial conversations with. They all meant the best for planet Earth.

However, the main problem of this event was that 99.9{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the attendees viewed the most important nutrient for all life on earth (carbon dioxide, CO2) as a hazardous substance. That view was shared even by the attending farmers who should profit from better harvests [2] due to improved CO2 fertilization.

I asked approximately 50 people from 25 countries several questions and talked to many more. Only 5 people (10{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of those I asked) knew even the order of magnitude of CO2 in the atmosphere (0.04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}). The others answered “I really should know that but cannot answer the question.” None knew that the mean global temperature has remained constant over the last 10 years and has not been increasing for 18 years (in contrast to predictions from models by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC). Among those I asked, some claimed that the temperature had risen anywhere between 0.1 and 10.0 (!!) degrees – that’s not a lie. None knew that the global sea-ice extent recently reached the same values as have been observed at the beginning of the 1980s (the extent has increased in the Antarctic and slightly decreased in the Arctic).