Climate Changes

Patrick Quanten

Does it? Climate is the description of the long-term pattern of weather in a particular area. Hence, different areas have different weather patterns and therefore also different climates. And a pattern is a particular way in which something is done, is organized, or happens. The seasons form a yearly recurrent pattern in terms of general weather conditions. These conditions may be different in different places on earth but each place has got a yearly weather pattern.

What isn’t defined is ‘long-term’. So the yearly weather pattern in one particular place becomes the climate of that place over a long period of time. How long? We talk about the Mediterranean climate, the tropical climate, the Scandinavian climate, each declaring a specific weather pattern in a specific area over a longer period of time. The climate is the weather pattern and any extremes are simply regarded as a normal part of what makes up ‘the average’ weather for the region. The actual weather itself is at no moment ‘average’. When ‘we’ talk about the climate in these places, we basically consider what humans have been observing and experiencing in living memory. But the earth itself is much older than the living memory of human beings. So, has the climate in all those places ever been different from what we know it to be right now?

Indeed, it has. There have been at least five major ice ages in earth's history (the Huronian, Cryogenian, Andean-Saharan, late Paleozoic, and the latest Quaternary Ice Age). An ice age is a period of colder global temperatures and recurring glacial expansion capable of lasting hundred thousand years. This means that in a lot of places on earth, over a very long period of time, the temperature drops considerably. Outside these ages, earth seems to have been ice-free even in high latitudes; such periods are known as greenhouse periods. The last glacial period began about 100,000 years ago and lasted until 25,000 years ago, a time when humans were around too. I am sure they were burning log fires but they weren’t driving motor vehicles. Will they have contributed significantly to the ice age? Or maybe they managed to warm the earth up again and rescued it from self-destruction?

Bullet points to remember:

• The climate in various places on earth has changed dramatically back and forth over a very long period of time. This happened without any human help.
• Taking ‘an average’ of temperature, wind speed, rainfall and so on, of various places on earth teaches you nothing about the climate in any of those places.
• The weather is constantly changing in a cyclic fashion, which changes the climate in various places, which may make the earth as a whole cool down or warm up. The weather is caused by energetic changes to the earth’s field.
• The sun’s activity is constantly changing in a cyclic fashion, which will change the energetic input into the earth’s system, which may make the earth cool down or warm up. It is a major factor in energetic changes occurring within the earth’s field.
• Short term weather predictions are not statements of facts. They do have a failure rating.
• Long term weather predictions are completely unreliable as the accuracy of the prediction drops off at an alarming rate.

When people talk about ‘the earth’s climate’ it confuses me a bit. There does not exist a climate outside the earth’s atmosphere, so why specify it’s the earth’s climate you talk about? Also, climate is always linked to a particular area, meaning an area on earth. However, scientists do consider the very long time period changes resulting in ice ages and in between the global warmer periods. They also have identified the reasons for these massive swings in overall temperatures. The earth's climate system adjusts to maintain a balance between solar energy that reaches the planetary surface and that which is reflected back to space: a concept known to science as the "radiation budget”. The energy entering, reflected, absorbed, and emitted by the earth system are the components of the earth's radiation budget. Based on the physics principle of conservation of energy, this radiation budget represents the accounting of the balance between incoming radiation, which is almost entirely solar radiation, and outgoing radiation, which is partly reflected solar radiation and partly radiation emitted from the earth system, including the atmosphere. An energy budget that is constantly changing causes the temperature of the atmosphere to increase or decrease and eventually affect the climate in most places on earth. The effect is the result of the energetic interaction between the earth and its environment.

This is in line with the scientific knowledge that says that every effect we observe is the result of an interaction between the outer and the inner, between the environment and the subject. Effects we are seeing on the earth are the result of the earth’s energetic environment, which is mainly influenced by the sun’s activity, and the energetic state of the earth itself. The sun changes by itself in a cyclic movement and the earth has its own inner energy movement cycle. These two constantly interact and create changing circumstances within the earth’s atmosphere and on its surface. One such result is a cyclic cooling and warming of the earth’s surface, and the main influencing factor is the radiation from sun, the solar activity cycle.

Bullet points to remember:

• The weather is constantly changing in a cyclic fashion, which changes the climate in various places, which may make the earth as a whole cool down or warm up. The weather is caused by energetic changes to the earth’s field.
• The sun’s activity is constantly changing in a cyclic fashion, which will change the energetic input into the earth’s system, which may make the earth cool down or warm up. It is a major factor in energetic changes occurring within the earth’s field.

Question: How is mankind going to stop the climate from changing?

Follow-up question: If they succeed, how is that contributing to the balance of the earth’s ecosystem which, like everything else in nature, evolves constantly?

The warmer periods in between the ice ages are called the greenhouse periods. I am so glad to be living in one of these periods! But over the past three decades the greenhouse period we are currently in has become a big problem to some people. They have decided that it is too warm and they predict, based on computer models, that it is going to get even hotter. Soon!

The weather forecast that we are all addicted to is able to predict to a fair degree of certainty, not completely certain, the weather for the coming days. The models used for the prediction provide the foundation of the weather forecast. The models use an analysis of the current weather as a starting point and then project the state of the atmosphere in the future. Okay, here is how it works.

“Each day, the Met Office receives around half a million observations of temperature; pressure; wind speed and direction; humidity, and many other atmospheric variables. However, there are large areas of ocean, inaccessible regions on land and remote levels in the atmosphere where we have very few, or no, observations. To fill in the 'gaps' we can combine what observations we do have with forecasts of what we expect the conditions in between to be. This is a process called data assimilation and is the first step for the supercomputer.”

Currently, well over 10,000 manned and automatic surface weather stations, 1,000 upper-air stations, 7,000 ships, 100 moored and 1,000 drifting buoys, hundreds of weather radars and 3,000 specially equipped commercial aircraft measure key parameters of the atmosphere, land and ocean surface every day. All these do not cover the entire surface of the earth. The gaps, places where no information can be obtained from, will be filled in by what ‘they’ believe to be happening right there. This is your starting point! This is what goes into the computer as being the ‘correct’ state of the weather right now.

“The next step is to calculate how the current atmosphere will change over time. To do this, the supercomputer uses a number of complex equations which are repeated many times. Each time the forecast is stepped a few minutes further into the future, and this enables us to produce forecasts from just a few hours ahead, to a climate prediction for the coming 100 years.”

The input data contains measured data plus likely probability suggestions. Science tells us that there does not exist something like ‘objective’ data as all measurements are also influenced by how the measurement is taken. Hence, the data from their observation stations isn’t as clean as they make it out to be. Then they add ‘observations’ they had a guess at. With this as their baseline they are going to calculate what is going to happen to that data. The way they calculate this, the way they have setup the computer programme, determines the kind of result it is going to give you. The process is already filled with a large number of variables and selective choices humans have made and we haven’t even started.

The calculated results are now presented as what the weather is going to do in the future. The calculation process is being repeated in order to turn a one day forecast into a two day forecast, a week’s forecast, a year’s forecast. Any small error in the input data will through replication, through multiplication, become very large very quickly. How accurate is the weather forecast?

“The Short Answer: A seven-day forecast can accurately predict the weather about 80 percent of the time and a five-day forecast can accurately predict the weather approximately 90 percent of the time. However, a 10-day—or longer—forecast is only right about half the time.”

The accuracy of the weather forecast, by their own admission, drops in five days by almost by half! From 90% to 50%. And yet, they also have said that by repeating the calculation cycle they can predict the climate 100 years ahead. Which one of those two statements is definitely false? Either they can tell us exactly what the climate is going to be in a hundred years from now by repeating the calculation cycle over and over again, or the reduction in accuracy between a five and a ten day forecast is 0,00001% and not nearly 50%. It can’t be both! When you keep using the same formula to calculate the next few days’ weather, any mistakes will be taken further down the line, which will increase the inaccuracy rapidly. Admitting that your 10 day forecast is only 50% of the time correct and then the statement that your 100 year forecast is also 50% correct must be an outright lie. Your computer is only half right in its projection of the weather model in ten days’ time. It is completely unreliable to predict the weather in ten years’ time.

My guess is that if the drop between a five and a ten day forecast was negligible they would boost about it. You and I would have been notified of their tremendous success. I will go with the second option, which is that there is no way of predicting what the climate will do over the next one hundred years, over the next ten years, or even over the next year. It is pure speculation hidden behind a computer programme and presented in the media as a certainty. And when you start observing this daily process of predicting the weather you will notice the sleight of hand tricks that are being used. Remember the seven day prediction on a Monday and compare this with the prediction made on the following Saturday for the next day. Compare what they said the weather on Sunday would be with what they say on Saturday the weather on Sunday will be. Also, take note of the details of the weather prediction for the next two days, notice how different it turns out to be and how as-a-matter-of-fact it is brushed over the following day when they talk about what the weather has been. It almost sounds as if that was they had predicted.

Bullet points to remember:

• Short term weather predictions are not statements of facts. They do have a failure rating.
• Long term weather predictions are completely unreliable as the accuracy of the prediction drops off at an alarming rate.

But none of the above seems to have any relevancy as far as our climate activists are concerned. They are on a mission, a mission to save the planet, as the poor thing doesn’t know how to do that itself. They have decided it is all the fault of the human race. We are emitting gases into the atmosphere that are responsible for the heating up of the entire globe.

“The earth's greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere and warm the planet. The main gases responsible for the greenhouse effect include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and water vapour. In addition to these natural compounds, synthetic fluorinated gases also function as greenhouse gases.”

Why do we do this? Especially if it causes so much damage and even endangers our own survival. How stupid can we be! Let’s take a look at what the various sources are of these gases.

Carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere through burning fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and oil), solid waste, trees and other biological materials, and also as a result of certain chemical reactions (e.g., cement production). Cows, pigs and other farm livestock in Europe are producing more greenhouse gases every year than all of the bloc’s cars and vans put together, when the impact of their feed is taken into account, according to a new analysis by Greenpeace. It turns out that CO₂ is a waste gas emitted by almost all living creatures. It, therefore, must be seen as part of a natural cycle. In nature nothing gets wasted. Everything has a purpose. Carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere (or "sequestered") when it is absorbed by plants as part of the biological carbon cycle. Green leaf plants absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen in the process. Adding large quantities of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is used in commercial greenhouses to enhance plant growth and crop yield. The greater the CO₂ atmospheric content the more and stronger plant growth will become, resulting in an increased oxygen production. In short, the more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere the more oxygen the atmosphere will contain. But I suppose that is not such a good idea, is it?

Methane is emitted during the production and transport of coal, natural gas, and oil. Methane emissions also result from livestock and other agricultural practices, land use, and by the decay of organic waste. Methane is naturally destroyed by both chemical and biological processes, including reaction with atmospheric hydroxyl [OH] and chlorine, and by methane-consuming bacteria (methanotrophs) in soil and water. The primary natural sink for methane is the atmosphere itself, as methane reacts readily with the hydroxyl radical (OH⁻) within the troposphere to form CO₂ and water vapour (H₂O). When methane (CH₄) reaches the stratosphere, it is destroyed. Another natural sink is soil, where methane is oxidized by bacteria. Methane increases the amount of ozone in the troposphere and the stratosphere. Wouldn’t that be a solution for the problem that fifty years ago was going to destroy life on earth: big holes in the ozone layer?

Nitrous oxide is emitted during agricultural, land use, and industrial activities; combustion of fossil fuels and solid waste, as well as during treatment of wastewater. Of course, nitrogen fertilisers have been recommended by governments and agricultural authorities to increase crop yields over many decades. More than two-thirds of the nitrous oxide emissions arise from bacterial and fungal denitrification and nitrification processes in soils, largely as a result of the application of nitrogenous fertilizers. Now one of the greatest contributor to the nitrous oxide gases in the atmosphere is the agricultural soil. So it’s the farmer’s fault! Nitrogen dilutes oxygen and prevents rapid or instantaneous burning at the earth's surface, as oxygen gas is a necessary reactant of the combustion process. Nitrogen is also needed and used by living things to make proteins. The first important step of the fixation of nitrogen in various forms that can be used by plants happens in the atmosphere. The enormous energy of lightning breaks nitrogen molecules and enables their atoms to combine with oxygen in the air forming nitrogen oxides. These dissolve in rain, forming nitrates, that are carried to the earth, where it stimulates plant growth.

Water vapour is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, both by weight and by volume. Water vapour is also an effective greenhouse gas, as it does absorb longwave radiation and radiates it back to the surface, thus contributing to warming. The addition of water vapour to the atmosphere, for the most part, cannot be directly attributed to human generated activities. Increased water vapour content in the atmosphere is referred to as a feedback process. Warmer air is able to hold more moisture. As the climate warms, air temperatures rise, more evaporation from water sources and land occurs, thus increasing the atmospheric moisture content. In other words, the earth must already be warming up and then the changes within the atmosphere itself will enhance that process. Excess water vapour is the result of more evaporation of moisture into the atmosphere. It is not the cause of it.

And then there are the synthetic fluorinated gases. Hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, sulphur hexafluoride, and nitrogen trifluoride are synthetic, powerful greenhouse gases that are emitted from a variety of household, commercial, and industrial applications and processes. Fluorinated greenhouse gases (F-gases) are man-made gases used in industry and they have a high global warming potential, often several thousand times stronger than CO₂. Fluorinated gases are used inside of products like refrigerators, air-conditioners, foams and aerosol cans. Emissions from these products are caused by gas leakage during the manufacturing process as well as throughout the product's life. Fluorinated gases are also used for the production of metals and semiconductors. For a long time now human activities have been creating fluorinated gas emissions much more rapidly than the earth can remove them, increasing global levels. Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are the largest source of fluorinated gas emissions. They are also the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions. I make this the fault of the industry, not mine!

It looks as if all the greenhouse gases, except the manmade fluorinated gases, are part of a natural phenomenon. They have always existed. The fact that mankind is now adding to some of these natural substances, bearing in mind that this addition is miniscule in comparison to the combined natural sources, only encourages the recycling of these elements to speed up a bit. In the case of carbon dioxide it delivers more oxygen. In the case of methane it delivers more water and more carbon dioxide, which will give us more oxygen. In the case of nitrous oxide it delivers more nitrates to the bacteria and plants, so more proteins can be built. In the case of water vapour it might be a good idea to be glad that the atmosphere is holding that extra water when on the surface of the earth it has become a bit too warm for the moment. At least the water has not been lost and we will get it back sooner or later.

So what’s the real problem?

The real problem is pollution. An increase in natural products results in a response from nature to remove the excess and bring it all back to its easy balance point. The real problem is the industry. It produces greenhouses gases that are not part of a natural recycling process and that are difficult for nature to break down. It has produced and encouraged nitrogen as a fertiliser, destroying the natural balance of the soil. Lured by a short term gain of more yield and more profit from the same land, the farmers and the rest of us (happy with the reduce cost of agricultural food items) are now reaping benefits like poor quality agricultural land, toxification of soil and groundwater and, so we are told, global warming. The industry keeps producing gases the atmosphere has no effective natural pathway to breakdown and recycle. These gases then interfere with normal natural processes and they disrupt the natural balance of the system.

The earth is rapidly heating up, ice caps are melting at a rate never seen before and the water level of the seas are rising alarmingly quickly. So they keep telling me! However, it is not so easy to maintain the narrative amidst news that early in the winter Madrid is covered in snow for over a week, totally disrupting city life. That is not very warm for Spain, is it? It is difficult to maintain the narrative when at the end of the winter in 2023 the canals in Venice are dry. Or did the sea level rise somewhere else and not in Venice? It is difficult to maintain the narrative when the Maldives are consistently gaining land as a result of the sea retreating. Since 2000, the Maldives have added 37.50 km² of land area, while 16.57 km² of new islands have appeared within the South China Seas Spratly and Paracel chains. Augh, not good!

Let’s change the mantra from ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’. When it is warm, as happens in the summer, we can still bang on about global warming. But the added advantage of the climate change mantra is that we can name any extreme event, be it the weather, volcanic eruptions, forest fires, floods, drought, and so on, as a result of the climate becoming more extreme. The climate is changing! And then I read study and research papers from eminent professors and researchers saying that there are globally now less forest fires than twenty years ago and that a smaller area is burned each year. I keep asking climate activists to tell me how much CO₂ is being released every year by forest fires and volcanic eruptions compared to what my car has produced in that year. I am still waiting. Other papers clearly state that the ocean’s water levels haven’t risen by any amount that is worth mentioning (millimetres in years!). I am also still waiting for an explanation for those planes that, high up in the sky, produce a checkerboard pattern of persisting clouds, which don’t dissolve. They spread out and block the sunlight. What does that white stuff consists off? And if, as the authorities say, these are ordinary line flights why has nobody ever bothered, in response to persistent questioning, to publish the relevant flight plans?

Climate changes, that is a certainty. It is a natural phenomenon. Whether or not it has been speeding up a bit over the last thirty years, who can tell? You can’t measure these things. Playing with molecules is not scientific proof of anything. Using computer models to project life into the future may work well for human projects but it certainly is a waste of time for nature. In order to have a pretty good idea about the future, one needs to know the process very well. The truth is that we don’t know nature. And I think that ‘they’ don’t want you to learn more about nature as it would quickly reveal how manipulative their information control really is.

Nature has warm summers and it has cool summers. For nature to turn all summers consistently into much warmer summers it takes a thousand years. Look at how long ice ages lasted. It did not change from warm to freezing cold in fifty years. There is no linear progression within nature. There is movement between low tide and high tide, and if the water level is rising it will also do this in a movement between a higher level and a lower level, gradually over many centuries raising the level. Nature takes its time. It’s not in a hurry. It moves in a balanced way.

Human beings are time short-sighted.

Human beings are prisoners of their past.

Human beings are projectionists of an illusionary future.

Human beings like to be scared. It is the one emotion they are freely allowed to have, to talk about, to display. Well, let’s do that then, shall we? Ignorance leads to fear. And we embrace our ignorance. We don’t want to know more. We want others to shut up so we don’t need to hear the reasons why climate change is not a major emergency.

And ‘they’ need you to be scared. ‘They’ need you to be ignorant. ‘They’ don’t want you to see that industry is a major emergency, destroying life rapidly. So ‘they’ make you scared of life itself. And you kiss their feet, put money in their collection boxes and attend their ceremonies.

August 2023