In fact since gasoline prices have gotten so high where there’s little traffic on weekends, the contrast between workweek and weekend driving patterns have an unmistakable effect on weather patterns where climate seems to follow a weekly schedule. I know because I’ve been following the effects VOC’s from oxygenates added to gasoline for ten years. Ethanol affects regional climate in a clearly defined manner starts whenever it’s use in gasoline begins in any particular region or when ethanol refineries open. In fact the same can be said ethanol’s predecessor MTBE and also of oil refineries whenever they emit the same kinds of pollutants.
I mean with the way anhydrous ethanol made from corn and then added to gasoline causes such a drain on our economy with how it strains the grain market increasing the cost of food and causing great losses of mileage in our vehicles, far more then the government admits, which this all causes the dollar to weaken driving the cost of crude oil up while having a domino effect on the economy where the price of everything is climbing as employers are paying less or laying off employees, even going out of business, this is causing the people who have the hardest time paying their mortgages to go bankrupt and causing the whole financial system to crash in on itself. So it seems at least you could get some good science out of this after all the American people have invested in it.
I’ve charted many times how weather pattern come in weekly patterns here in Washington DC. Weather patterns clearly follow a workweek/weekend schedule except when offset by holidays or the disruption of ethanol supplies. After those brief interruptions, climate patterns always return to the same weekly schedule once our driving habits are back to normal. National weather patterns also move in the same fashion as the jet stream passes through the Midwest where most of the ethanol refineries in the nation are. This causes drought in some areas but more often extreme flooding and violently destructive storms. The way I follow this unnatural phenomenon is actually scientifically valid although this does me little good in making arguments that something needs to be done because I am not an accredited government scientist like you are.
What I’m saying is that if you put together a project that shows conclusively that a particular product or industry is directly affecting regional changes in climate, then there would be no mistaking the reporting on your findings. In fact I believe the next level of challenges for you to support your claims that short lived gases directly effect weather patterns would be to gather evidence outside a computer model. There might still be questions about exactly how this happens but the question of whether it does or not would be answered now rather than waiting until 2100 to find out if your computer knew what it was talking about. Approaching the problem from this direction would also likely lead to aiding greatly in clearing up any confusion about the earth’s atmosphere and the effect human beings have on it that your science still has.
I’m not only an amateur climatologist but also a reporter for a news service that has access to Google’s headline news search engine. So really I’m asking you a question about your science in the form of a suggestion about how to better proceed with your experiments so I can publish your response. I know going against ethanol in any way nowadays would be very provoking even though the Bush administration is adopting a new posture on climate as it reacts with short term gases. But perhaps you could be so bold as to confirm that if your theories are correct, it should be able to be shown by tracking how heavy amounts of VOC’s and Nox coming from industry and human activity affect regional weather patterns.
Could you answer me that – Do you believe your science could be monitored this way - or have you already done it? In reviewing you work, I believe at some level you gained confidence in the direction you’re heading by witnessing the effect of short lived gases first hand before setting out to prove how it happens. It’s just too simple to ignore. I’ve been watching it with no funding for many years sometimes by just witnessing how weather patterns change from week to week going up and down like a bouncing ball where each day of the week is distinct but the same as that day of the previous week. So I figure you must have a more complex way to observe the same phenomenon which helps you justify the millions of dollars you spend on your computer models, because you already know what the outcome of your work will be.
The problem is you’re not directing our attention to what’s going on as it happens but rather showing us what computers think will happen in the future. I admit your work is vital, absolutely without a doubt it is worthwhile in every respect. But it is not the first line of defense against climate change. And your first concerns shouldn’t be about protecting or prosecuting the perpetrators of climate change either. It’s like what the Food and Drug Administration is doing with Bisphenol A. They’re waiting for conclusive evidence that would result in the loss of lawsuits in federal courtrooms to reign the plastic food container industry rather than using obvious evidence already demonstrated by credible research to protect the American people from being poisoned.
There are alternatives to bisphenol A just like there are ways to use and refine ethanol that don’t produce high volumes of VOC’s. And there are others ways to present your science. Models are not the only way to show how anthropologic gases effect weather patterns, in fact they yield only hypothetical results when looking toward the future because we don’t know what the gaseous makeup of the atmosphere will look like many years from now nor what our understanding of climate change at the space in time will be.
Computer models are not even the most effective way to view potential climate change. They however can be used very effectively for showing how we can control climate to our benefit once we establish what causes climate change. I mean that is what you bring to the climate change debate that’s new isn’t it - that we aren’t stuck with one long term equation for a global warming but rather that weather patterns can be altered on short a term basis? So if you can prove how ethanol directly effects weather patterns, you can then use a computer model to aid in a design for how anthropogenic gases can be used to bring positive climate results in controlled experiments?
So how long do we have to wait for you to cut to the chase about the actual results of your work or is that a political decision? The way I read history, Einstein was quite the activist as were many of the scientists of his era. That’s why we’re not ruled by tyrants right now while we still have a Constitution and Bill of Rights between us and our leaders in Washington, because scientists used to have a collective moral conscience that prevented them from blindly following political leaders.
Have the current prodigies of science forgotten the lessons of their mentors? Do you really want to be remembered as having served at the pleasure of elected officials and our financial masters on Wall Street who can’t even balance their bank books anymore? Or would you rather earn your posterity being the representatives of truth and facts while supporting a positive future for mankind rather than bowing to a handful of men with questionable levels of intelligence and motives for what they do with the information you produce for them?
Let me give you a little background on the oxygenate program that was used to force ethanol on the American people in 2006. Ethanol replaced MTBE. In the Clean Air Act debate of 1990, the members of the scientific community weighting in on the legitimacy of oxygenates added to gasoline were reluctant to support it because of concerns for the effect MTBE and ethanol might have on the environment and atmosphere. So the first Bush president said he would appoint a task force to answer their questions and would later support a polymer additive to gasoline that these same scientists were in favor of if their suspicions about oxygenates were confirmed. So they agreed to support the Clean Air Act under those conditions.
But no investigation was ever done on the negative effects of MTBE while later nothing could done to stop it once a trillion dollar loan was taken out to build MTBE refineries, much like what they’ve done investing so much of the American peoples future in ethanol over the last couple years without first having an intelligent honest debate about it. So you already know not to trust Washington and especially Bush when presenting your scientific responsibly to the American people when it comes to this issue. In fact if it hadn’t been for old man Bush letting Saddam Hussein invade Kuwait, the American people would have known about the objections of the scientific community to oxygenates. But they never heard about it because the news media was focused elsewhere.
911 happened just as the story about MTBE effecting weather patterns was about to break, just before Enron came apart. As we invaded Iraq in March of 2003, congress was using its beginning as cover to try and pass a liability waiver for MTBE producers knowing the news media was busy elsewhere. The waiver appeared to be about groundwater MTBE polluted nationwide but also put the burden of damages caused by it effects on climate and human health on the American taxpayer.
Even the financial disaster we’re experiencing now started when the discontinued use of MTBE caused the trillion dollar loan, money that was stolen from the Soviet Union at the end of the cold war and deposited in Swiss banks, that financed MTBE’s evolution from an octane booster to an oxygenate went into default. The loan wasn’t actually used to directly finance MTBE refineries but to build a financial house of cards that MTBE supporters on Wall Street and in Washington had, and still have, easy access to being able to use as long as they supported and continue to support the governments policies that keep this scam from surfacing before the American people. MTBE profits laundered through Enron and then USBW were intended to keep this corrupt system propped up just like payments on low rated mortgages were expected to keep the US economy from failing.
I think you have something very serious to say to the American people and I think you believe you have already said it. I respect very much that you made it this far in publishing your work considering how corrupt Washington is right now. But you need to do more. You need to stand up for what you believe in to drown out James Hansen and Al Gore. All you’re doing is putting something in the record that’s not being paid the kind of attention it deserves where you can later say I told you so when what ethanol is doing to weather patterns melts enough methane hydrates to set off an atmospheric chain reaction that teaches the human race the hard way what long and short term gases can do to our climate, that is if there’s anyone left to say it to when the sky finally falls on all of us.
