A Smoking Gun Appears

A article appeared in the WSJ of January 29, 2010 that had an innocuous title: "Slowdown in Warming Tied to Less Water Vapor". Anyone without a scientific interest or interest in global warming might have skipped it. The article itself makes excuses for why the hugely expensive climate models failed to forecast the fact the recent cooling. "Climatologists have puzzled over why global average temperatures have stayed roughly flat in the past decade, despite a long-term warming trend. New research suggests that lower levels of water vapor in the stratosphere may partly explain the anomaly."

"The study, appearing in the journal Science, points out that the concentration of water vapor in the stratosphere has dropped about 10% in the past decade, triggered by unexplained cooler temperatures at certain high altitudes above the tropics. The study concludes that in the last decade the decline in water vapor slowed the rate of rising temperatures by about 25% ..."

Here's a well-hidden fact: water vapor - not carbon dioxide, is the dominant "greenhouse gas". Water vapor accounts for about 30 times the warming of carbon dioxide. Surprised ?

The climate modelers ASSUME that water vapor has no independent changes and is in permanent equilibrium. That means they can mostly ignore it in their calculations and simply treat it as being perturbed a bit by other "forces" like carbon dioxide.

Here's a metaphor: The elephant and its tail. Watching the elephant's tail can tell you where the elephant is going and one could build elaborate "models' to forecast the movement of the tail, perhaps based on the number of flies landing on the elephant's back. And it might work for awhile. BUT when that elephant turns, that model would collapse and be completely wrong.

Water vapor is the elephant and carbon dioxide is the tail. Remember, water vapor produces 30x more greenhouse warming than does carbon dioxide.

What else does the facts of the article prove ? That water vapor is NOT in permanent equilibrium. That means a core assumption of the climate models is WRONG. The entire house of claims that humans cause global warming is built on sand. Unless a model independently and correctly forecast amounts water vapor in the atmosphere at all levels, it will simply be wrong when used to make claims of warming in the distant future.

How can a model that is wrong for the most recent decade be used in any rational sense to make forecasts about future trends ? It simply is nonsense to use it for such. Anyone doing do is a mountebank and charlatan, selling solid gold watches for $1. Willing buyers are chumps.

Another analogy: Imagine a stock market model that missed the tech stock crash of 2000 and the Panic of 2008. Who would use it for forecast stock price levels now ? No one.

Don't expect the scientists to trumpet this. They want their grant money to continue in the huge amounts they've gotten for years.

Book of the Week

"New England's Riotous Revolution" by Robert Ellis Cahill. This is a superb little book, fun to read and provides insight on the initial years of the American revolution at the street level. The book is quite short at 67 pages and is cheap (I paid $4.95), but reading it is like finding a small purse full of gold coins. ISBN 0-916787-12-5.

To quote the author: "This little book was prepared not only to give you an insight into the true character of the heroes and villains active in the early stages of the American Revolution, but to introduce you to some of the characters who got little or no publicity then or now, yet played a vital part in the rebellion - and to provide information on some of the hilarity and hardships experiences by the average Yankee as he struggled for freedom in enemy-controlled New England."

Find it, buy it and read it. You'll love this book.

Market

Good rally. I'm waiting now. Speculative longs are FCX, BHP, MT, all green now.

Word of the Day

"Surd" - noun & adjective [$10]
Surd means (adjective) 1. (Math) (of a number) irrational; 2. (Phonetic) (of a sound) uttered with the teeth and not the voice (e. g. f, k. p. s. t); (noun) 1. (Math) a surd number, esp. the root of an integer; 2. (Phonetics) a surd sound.
Sentence: (from Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann, page 186 of 1997 paperback edition) "Coercion is the surd in almost all social theory, except the Machiavellian. The temptation to ignore it, because it is absurd, inexpressible and unmanageable becomes overwhelming in any man who is trying to rationalize human life."