Our Cold Climate Transition: Implications for Society’s Energy Systems

By Rex J. Fleming

Dr. Rex J. Fleming received his B.S. degree from Creighton University with a major in mathematics. He later obtained a M.S. and Ph.D. from the U. of Michigan in the field of Atmospheric Science. He has over 50 years of experience in weather and climate research. His Ph.D. thesis involved the study of energy interactions within the atmosphere and a stochastic dynamic method of improving our understanding of those atmospheric interactions in light of uncertain initial conditions.

The world is in chaos now due to the deliberate false theory that our climate is being warmed by the use of fossil fuel. Many countries are deeply concerned with energy issues -- will there be enough energy resources available to keep people warm through the coming winter periods? There have been many previous exaggerated claims that climate change warming was bad for mankind. The opposite is true --- warmer periods have been very beneficial for humankind. The latest claim from the United Nations (UN) is that the world will burn up with a 5-alarm fire unless the world stops using fossil fuel by a critical date is almost comical -- but one cannot laugh as this false theory has now reached a very serious point - there are no efficient alternatives to fossil fuels and a cold regime is coming!

Not every year in a cold regime is severe, but in the coldest periods deaths may result if energy is not sufficiently available. Weather and the climate are chaotic! There is rarely a sharp line between the end of a warm period and the start of a cool period. There can be a discernable transition -- between the end of a warm period and the beginning of a cold period, hence the title of this book! A three-year transition was seen at the end of the Medieval Warming Period (900 AD - 1300 AD) and the beginning of the Little Ice Age (1303 -1850) during which millions died of starvation from famines. This current cold climate transition is described in this book. Will there be a 4th year of transition or the actual start of the Modern Cooling (2023 --?).

While there is considerable information contained in this book, perhaps the single most relevant point is formulated in Chapter 10, page 90. Here we have the summary of the important physical evidence, the appropriate statistical data, and the effects of chaos rolled into a single statement about the next severe cold period likely occurring in 2030 +- 4 years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 26, 2024
• ISBN: 9798887635439

Book preview

Preface

The past climate regimes for Earth have alternated from warm to cold and back again for the past four billion years. The cold periods have been quite harsh for civilization. This book will delve more deeply into these climate regimes with the formation of Earth’s atmosphere until the present time. It will cover all aspects of weather and climate changes—perhaps in more detail than in past publications.

The world is in chaos right now due to the deliberate false theory that our climate is being warmed by fossil fuel use. Many countries are deeply concerned with energy issues: will there be enough energy resources available keeping people warm through the coming winter period? The United Nations has falsely demanded that fossil fuel be eliminated to avoid the Earth from burning up! The UN has been striving to close coal mines and the use of coal. However, many smaller countries must use coal. Japan, India, and China are expanding these plans for more coal.

There have been previous exaggerated claims that climate change warming was bad for mankind. This latest claim from the UN that the world will burn up unless the world stops using fossil fuel by a critical date is comical, but one cannot laugh—as this false theory has now reached a very serious point—there are no efficient alternatives to fossil fuels and a cold regime is coming!

There is rarely a sharp line between the warm and cold events. However, there is often a discernable transition between the end of a warm period and the beginning of a cold period. A transition was seen at the end of the Medieval Warming Period (AD 900–AD 1300) and the beginning of the infamous (LIA) Little Ice Age (1303–1850) where millions of people died due to starvation from famines.

There are never exact reproductions in climate regimes. For example consecutive warm regimes have been different. Weather and climate are chaotic in nature (chaos is reviewed in chapter 4). In fact, there is rarely a clear change over line between the warm and cold events.

Our 170-year Modern Warming (1850–2020) was not as warm as the Medieval Warming but has also been followed by a three-year cold transition period (2020–2022). This transition is illustrated by the weather/climate events listed in chapter 11 of this book.

Examples of simultaneous records of extreme record cold/snow events in the winter northern hemisphere and in the simultaneous cooler events in the summer hemisphere are provided. After six months, the hemispheres reverse this order, and the record cold/snow events in the winter of the southern hemisphere occur concurrent with the cooler events in the summer of the northern hemisphere. Examples of these simultaneous events are illustrated in both hemispheres over the three years 2020–2022.

The title of this book, Our Cold Climate Transition: Energy Implications for the Coming Cold Climate, is based upon these facts. The key question is, what happens next after these past three years? Will there be another year of transition or will the following year be the start of our Modern Cooling (2023–)?

The true causes of the most serious of Earth’s climate changes are revealed in this document with a further elaboration in appendix C. Predicting precise timing of these changes has not been possible because chaos exists in our physical world, especially within the physical processes of weather and climate. A complete illustration of chaos is provided for all to understand.

It is a perverse action that climate has become a political tool! It is one of the intentions of this book to help stop this perversion and save humanity from a terrible blunder: abandoning fossil fuels due to fabricated lies about the cause of climate change. Not only is this proposal financially insane, it would also lead to an enormous cost of human lives in the wake of coming famines. These will be rare, but a few will occur! Not every year in a cold regime is severe, but in the coldest periods, our energy systems must not fail or many deaths will needlessly result.

*****

Carbon dioxide (CO2) has never caused warming or cooling of Earth’s climate! CO2 is odorless, colorless, and tasteless. Plants absorb CO2 and emit oxygen to our advantage. Humans and animals breathe oxygen and emit CO2 as a waste product. CO2 is a nutrient, not a pollutant, and all life—plants and animals—will benefit from more of it. All life on Earth is carbon based, and CO2 is an essential ingredient. When plant-growers whose livelihood consists of owning greenhouses for profit want to stimulate plant growth, they do it by introducing more CO2.

The book covers areas of special concern that soon will be of interest to all of us: how climate changes over the past eleven thousand years, the details of the Modern Warming, how the global warming hysteria began, and why it is still here. There are a few other important topics.

Political goals have actually replaced scientific integrity in important matters: the truth of cause and effect, of exaggerated dangers, and phony deadlines for disasters that do not happen. The most important and vital piece of information contained herein is why the climate does change! This is covered in great detail!

A complete analysis of the world’s expected energy systems is required with a discussion of fossil fuel systems, renewable energy systems, and future energy systems coming in the relatively near future. The climate alarmists currently have the upper hand and are demanding that fossil fuel be eliminated from use in order to reduce carbon by 50 percent by year 2050. The estimated cost of doing this ranges from forty-five trillion to one hundred trillion dollars. Carbon dioxide is not the cause of the climate warming. None of this money must be spent!

This book has been produced for the general public—for young adults and old. Though it contains an enormous amount of information about weather and climate, it is not a textbook.

Hopefully, this book will both entertain and enlighten people of all ages: students, engineers, men, and women of all social backgrounds like caregivers, nonscientists, scientists, and policy makers.

My qualifications for producing this book are relevant—fifty years of academic training and research in mathematics and physics and fifty years of a love for tracking energy in various forms. My PhD thesis was concerned with energy transfer within the Earth’s atmosphere and the growth of uncertainty due to inaccurate initial conditions in the data and from less than perfect parameterization of physical processes, both of which led to uncertain energy.

*****

My original earlier book with the title The Rise and Fall of the Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change sent to a European publisher was peer reviewed by at least two people in July 2019 and peer reviewed again before the published hardcover version was printed. That book provided three proofs of the CO2 fraud and gave the complete history of the climate debate. In the first few weeks, the sales were brisk and Amazon had my book as number one in its category. There were seven of seven great reviews—all with five stars on Amazon. My publisher then surprised me some few weeks later.

The publisher put my book on temporary hold, saying another peer review would be conducted. The reason, My subject was against the ‘consensus’ view that CO2 caused climate change. Germany had made a huge error in closing down fossil fuel production in favor of renewables. The alarmist in Germany pushing the false CO2 theory had much to lose with my book.

My book contract said any disputes were to be conducted in Switzerland. I wanted to sue, but my lawyer said costs there would be enormous. The publisher had done nothing for two months; no new peer review was ever provided. Therefore, I then canceled the book contract with suggested terms agreeable on both sides. I retained my full rights to publish elsewhere and did so in the USA. This book came out on March 22, 2020. Unfortunately, this new publisher made three errors on the back cover without my approval. I purchased immediately from Amazon the publisher’s second attempt and found two new errors—one with the page number at the bottom but no text on the page. This was the last straw, and I have refused to work with this worthless publisher.

The bottom line is that not enough readers have seen that book and considerably important material has been removed from it and merged with all the new text here to provide a more coherent review of the subject matter. This book is far better! There are far fewer equations. It is an easy read!

Acknowledgments

There are many excellent scientists who believe that climate is not caused by carbon dioxide. This book is dedicated to those who have patiently put up with the misguided statements and actions from that other segment of our society, including much of the media. One cannot acknowledge all, or even a significant portion, of those individuals here. However, there are two people that have directly contributed to this author’s will to get the truth out.

The most important influence was the chairman of the Atmospheric Science Department at the University of Michigan, Prof. Aksel Wiin-Nielsen. Aksel, who has since passed away, knew the physics of the atmosphere as well as anyone. His very successful career was shortened but not diminished by disagreeing with the alarmist view of climate change.

Another important person, the hero of this book, is Prof. Richard Lindzen who was one of the first to challenge the science and the catastrophic views of the alarmist side of the climate change argument. The successful effort to provide the registered letter to the United Nations, stating that there was no climate emergency, was an important international event. Those who provided the initiative for the effort deserve applause.

It has been a challenge to keep going with so much opposition from the mainstream media, but the constant support by my lovely wife Kathy for the past fifty years has sustained and encouraged me to complete the task.

There is also an unusual event that affected both of us described at the end of appendix F.

List of Figures

Figure 2.1. Star types according to size. The G-type is the size of our Sun. 7

Figure 3.1. Estimates of the CO2 concentration and the Earth’s surface temperature over time. 13

Figure 4.1. Lorenz trajectory X(1) – X(2) plane 20

Figure 4.2. Lorenz trajectory X(1) – X(3) plane 20

Figure 4.3 Possible attractors produced from the coupled twin oscillator equations. 21

Figure 4.4. Large-scale atmospheric waves due to baroclinic instability. 22

Figure 4.5 Explosive baroclinic instability: vacillation on the left, chaos on the right. 24

Figure 6.1. Computer predictions versus actual data (the heavy black line) 37

Figure 6.2. Temperature trend lines from various models and data sets. 38

Figure 7.1. Be-10 values from Beer, et al.—sunspots from Hoyt & Schatten. 49

Figure 7.2. C-14 values (strong/weak) when cosmic rays are strong/weak. 50

Figure 8.1. CO2 record from Mauna Loa in Hawaii. 56

Figure 8.2. Near-surface temperature change in the twentieth century. 57

Figure 8.3. Gleissberg record of LSC. 59

Figure 10.1. The solar interior. 75

Figure 10.2. A few sunspots. 77

Figure 10.3. Close-up of sunspots and background of granules. 77

Figure 10.4. Field of the Sun’s supergranules. 78

Figure 10.5. Coronal hole. 79

Figure 10.6. Sunspots form and move as if on a conveyor belt. 81

Figure 10.7. Production of a strong toroidal field. 81

Figure 10.8. Magnetic buoyancy of a flux tube. 82

Figure 10.9. Cartoon explaining how the solar dynamo works. 84

Figure 10.10. Sunspot movement from higher to lower latitudes. 85

Figure 10.11. Motion of the Sun about the SSB with positions indicated by years. 87

Figure 10.12. Solar activity from Sharp. 89

Figure 10.13. Typical planetary positions for all Type A and B events. 89

Figure 10.14. Milky Way spiral arms. 91

Figure 11.1. Historical record of the thermosphere climate index. 99

Figure 11.2. The Kp index is a good global aurora activity indicator. 100

Figure 11.3. Ap index 1967 to 2020. 101

Figure 11.4. Alpha particle to proton ratio in the solar wind. 102

Figure 11.5. Temperature of the solar wind plasma. 102

Figure 11.6. January to December temperature anomalies 2015–2019. 104

Figure 11.7. Summer average maximum temperature (1910–2017). 105

Figure 11.8. Record of global average temperature (2014–2021). 105

Figure 11.9. Snowfall in Australia on December 1, 2019, twenty days before start of summer. 107

Figure 11.10. Major snowstorm on tip of South America on August 1, 2020. 108

Figure 11.11. Greenland, very cold temperatures and heavy snows in July–September 2020. 108

Figure 11.12. New record for snow in Norway in July (July 10, 2020, photo). 109

Figure 11.13. Rare summer snow in China (August 21, 2020)—one full month early. 110

Figure 11.14. Mt. Kilimanjaro located 205 miles from the Equator in Tanzania. 110

Figure 11.15. Sydney, Australia, recorded its coldest November 5 temperature in history. 111

Figure 11.16. Delphi, India, suffered coldest November in seventy-one years (1949). 111

Figure 11.17. November 2020 saw 80 percent of Russia buried in snow. 112

Figure 11.18. On November 24 to 25, 2020, blizzards hit Labrador with three feet of snow. 112

Figure 11.19. Snow returned to New Zealand on December 10, 2020. 113

Figure 11.20. Japan has seven feet of snow in seventy-two hours (December 17, 2020). 114

Figure 11.21. Twenty stations in China equal or break the lowest temperature records. 114

Figure 11.22. Chaos in Madrid, Spain, with a rare heavy snow of eighteen inches January 9, 2021. 115

Figure 11.23. Siberian temperatures fall to –58.3 °C on January 19, 2021. 116

Figure 11.24. Map of summer maximum temperatures across Australia. 117

Figure 11.25. Early season snow in April of 2021 in Australia. 118

Figure 11.26. Snow on Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa volcanoes (Hawaii, April 2021). 119

Figure 11.27. French winegrowers countering the effects of severe frosts. 120

Figure 11.28. Largest ice increase during May in the Arctic, the most since 2013. 121

Figure 12.1. Satellite view of how atmospheric CO2 is greening the Earth. 129

Figure 13.1. Illustration of various types of oil and gas wells. 137

Figure 14.1. Relatively small solar farm in California. Wind turbines in background. 146

Figure 14.2. Wind turbine parts about to be buried—quite a problem! 150

Figure 14.3. Comparison of a fracking site and a lithium mining site. 153

Figure 16.1. Polymer electrolyte membrane electrolyze. 164

Figure 16.2. Simplified tokamak machine. 170

Figure 18.1. PDO warm phase on left and cold phase on the right. 191

Figure 18.2 Salmon catches in Alaskan waters. 192

Figure B1. Atom with electrons circling. 229

Figure B2. Electrons in shells N. 229

Figure B3. Periodic Table. 230

Figure B4. The water molecule H2O. 233

Figure B5. The carbon dioxide molecule illustrated. 234

Figure D1. Absorption spectrum for H2O and CO2. 247

Figure D2. Radiative power intensity expressed by Planck’s equation 248

Figure F1. Large-scale atmospheric waves—zonal flow with superimposed eddies 269

List of Tables

Table 3.1 Ice Ages and Intermediate Warm Periods from 850 to 65 million years ago 15

Table 5.1 Density of water in various forms as a function of temperature 29

Table 5.2 World Water Supply Volume (all numbers are in thousands of units) 32

Table 5.3. Precipitation and various water runoff processes. 33

Table 7.1 List of significant periods of warm and cold (BP means years before present) 45

Table 10.1. Solar system visits through the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy. 94

Table 16.1. Electricity production load factor from wind and solar. 167

Table A1. A chronology of important events after the Big Bang 216

Table D.1. CO2 absorption coefficients from PNNL. 250

Table D.2. Absorption coefficients for water vapor and carbon dioxide. 251

Table D.3 Complete Solution 2 / with Solution 1 for lines 7.98 to 17.98. 256

1

Introduction

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.

—Charles Dickens

The above words are the exact words of the opening paragraph in the book of Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities. The story line takes place in London and Paris during the French Revolution, where between September 1793 and July 1794, there were greater than forty thousand French men and women killed—approximately ten thousand of which lost their heads via the guillotine. That book is not important here, except that the frustration expressed in those words mirror the feelings of many individuals in the world today where the world has been turned upside down with the global pandemic owing to Covid-19, uncertainty in the vaccine process, and new virus variants that have been identified since the first three vaccines were developed.

The mood in America is further frustrated by the apparent election fraud, the subsequent action by the current government to allow millions of illegal immigrants to enter America with no checking for their virus condition, and their subsequent transport to various undisclosed locations within the country, adding to further health issues and deaths of legal immigrants and American citizens. The mood in Europe and the world is somber with the Russian invasion of Ukraine!

Adding to the bizarre situation is the liberal push to socialism in the USA and elsewhere. The new USA administration has virtually every new spending program tied to climate with the fear of an overheated planet due to the continued use of fossil fuel. It is this last very controversial fear that will be examined in great detail! This mistake in judgment is perhaps the greatest error in mankind’s history—that carbon dioxide (CO2) from humankind’s use of fossil fuel is the cause of climate change! This administration appears dedicated to making that mistake!

CO2 does not warm nor cool the climate, as demonstrated here by nature, by verbal logic, by scientific calculations, and by the recent onset of Earth’s current cooling despite CO2 continuing to rise. The impact of energy use in the world by the promotion of the notion that fossil fuel use must be curtailed to offset further carbon impact on our climate is dangerous and insane!

This book will review the Earth’s climate from its beginning, to today, and into the future. It will review the essence of the role of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere. The logic of CO2 involvement in changing the climate will be investigated from every perspective: reviewing the historical data record, examining in further detail the twentieth-century data record, and evaluating the radiation role of CO2 in the atmosphere—calculating and integrating the Schwarzschild radiation equation with a full complement of CO2 absorption coefficients.

The reasons the climate of Earth does change are provided in chapter 10. The latest information from both hemispheres that reveal the coming cool period is exemplified in chapter 11. Efficient energy systems are crucial to humankind over the next possible 175 years of cooling and chapters 13 through 16 provide the status of these current and future energy systems. The final chapters discuss the need for further research and suggested planning activities for society.

2

The Universe When Earth Was Formed

The universe provides a wonderful vision to behold. How and when it was formed has been questioned by mankind through the centuries. A short summary of various opinions follows. A well-known scientist once gave a public lecture on astronomy where he described how the Earth orbits the Sun and the Sun orbits around a vast collection of stars within our Milky Way galaxy.

At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room stood up and said, What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.

The scientist gave a superior smile before responding, What is the tortoise standing on?

You’re very clever, young man, very clever, said the old lady. But its turtles all the way down.¹ This was presented by Stephen Hawking at one of his lectures.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle proved the Earth was round in 340 BC based upon the fact that the Earth’s shadow on the moon was always round during eclipses of the moon when it came between the Sun and the moon. He also thought that the Earth was stationary with the Sun, moon, planets, and the stars all moving in circular orbits about the Earth. Reasonable guess at that time.

Nicolaus Copernicus, a priest, felt that it was the Sun that was stationary and published this theory anonymously in 1514. This theory also stated that the Earth, planets, etc., also had circular orbits about the Sun. These concepts were not taken too seriously until 1609 when Galileo, after the invention of the telescope, observed moons around the planet Jupiter. At the same time, Kepler determined that the orbits were not circular but ellipses, which made the predictions of the planets’ motions match the observed data of planetary motions.

In 1929, Edwin Hubble observed that all the galaxies were moving away from each other—the universe was expanding. Tollman had the view that the expansion suggested a very high initial temperature and subsequent cooling. George Gamow claimed in 1946 that the initial temperature of the universe must have been extremely high to produce the nuclear fusion (discussed shortly in the internal dynamics of stars) creating the production of protons and neutrons required to produce the amount of hydrogen and helium observed in the atmosphere.²

Many of the mysteries of the universe were uncovered in April 1992 with the announcement of the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite results that firmly established that the universe began with the big bang—an explosion that created matter, energy, space, and time from an extremely small volume. The Plank Satellite program of the European Space Agency was driven by those first COBE results, and later COBE results, that European program was a tremendous success.³ The announcement of results in 2015 were nearly as sensational as those of 1992 but perhaps even more important in confirming some loose ends in the theory of the astronomical world. Several key questions were finally answered, including the age of the universe.

The age of the universe was estimated to be 13.8 billion years old—plus or minus twenty-one million years. The composition of the universe was estimated to be 69% dark energy, 26% dark matter, and 5% ordinary matter (e.g., molecules, planets, and stars that we observe); and the expansion of the universe was confirmed to be accelerating. Dark energy is the force that causes our universe to expand.

The growth of galaxies began about fifty-six thousand years after the big bang. As the universe cools from its very high temperature, more matter is being created by the high-energy radiation. Through this expansion, matter loses less energy than does the radiation.

Eventually, the energy density of matter (mostly in newly formed nuclei) becomes larger than the energy density of radiation (mostly massless particles like photons). Matter then dominates how the universe expands.

The density of initially high-density regions of dark matter has been increasing since matter dominated the universe. Dark matter clumps first from the large-scale structure seen in the universe. Then at later times, normal matter is drawn by gravity into regions of higher density. Eventually, galaxies form and then galaxy clusters; this explains why dark matter is found near and surrounding the visible galaxies. Not all galaxies are optimal for supporting life. The spiral galaxies, like our own Milky Way galaxy, are best for this purpose.⁴

It is estimated that there are 10¹¹ (that is one hundred billion) galaxies within the universe; it is further estimated that there are approximately one hundred billion stars within each galaxy. That means that there are ~10²² stars within the universe.

There are many fascinating things one could discuss about the universe, but it is the stars and galaxies that are most relevant to our subject matter of what causes climate change (this is discussed in chapter 10). Our interest is also in cosmic rays which come from exploding stars. One must delve more deeply into stars, their lives and their deaths.

From that period after the approximately fifty-six thousand years since the big bang, the normal matter of hydrogen atoms and gas are squeezed in with the dark matter within the forming galaxies and the first stars are formed. A timetable of important events in the universe is found in appendix A.

Radiation has cooled and decoupled from the matter; almost all the electrons are bound up in the lightest atoms formed within the young stars. The gravitational forces, already very important in forming the high-density regions within the early universe, become even more important in the formation of the elements via