Swept away by global warming climate change hysteria, governments are not ready for crop failures and shorter growing seasons of global cooling, foreshadowed by low solar activity. Though NASA is currently reporting a massive sunspot, solar cycle 24, our current phase, has been half as active as previous cycles suggesting another imminent Little Ice Age that could devastate food production for decades.
Last week NASA released images of a massive, growing sunspot that is six times the size of earth. The Smithsonian Magazine reported on possible damaging impacts of a solar storm if directed at our planet. However, Friends of Science say this may foreshadow a problem North America is unprepared for – global cooling. Many solar researchers are convinced that the sun is entering into a long term period of very low activity.
“Our position is that the sun is the main driver of climate change. Scientists have identified that the sun has 11 year cycles of sunspot activity. Now the sun is near the peak of cycle 24. Yet this cycle is about half the intensity of the previous one,” says Ken Gregory, director of Friends of Science. “The current cycle is the weakest since the one that peaked in 1906 at the end of the Little Ice Age.”
21 February 2013 - Human influence on global climate contributed to the causes of the 2011 East Africa drought, according to new research by the Met Office.
Millions of people in the region required emergency food aid after the failure of two rainy seasons - the 'short rains' (typically October to December) of 2010 and 'long rains' (March to June) of 2011.
Researchers used cutting edge 'climate change attribution' techniques to quantify how the probability of these two unusually dry rainy seasons may have changed as a result of human influence on climate.
Dr. Fraser Lott, an Attribution Scientist at the Met Office and lead author on the paper, said: "We found that the particularly dry short rains in 2010 were most likely caused by natural variability. However, the chances of long rains as dry, or drier, as those of 2011 were found to have increased due to human influence."
The study used state of the art modelling techniques to see how likely the weather patterns that led to the drought were. They looked at both a world with mankind's influence on climate, as well as 'the world that might have been' without manmade greenhouse gas emissions.
12 February 2013 - A programme of world-class research on how to avoid dangerous climate change was hailed as a success today, as the project reaches completion.
AVOID was established by the UK Government in 2009 to provide scientific advice on a series of key questions on the impacts of dangerous climate change and how they can be avoided.
Led by the Met Office, the research included a multi-disciplinary network of scientists from the Walker Institute at the University of Reading, Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College and the Tyndall Centre through the University of East Anglia, along with other national and international collaborators.
The project was undertaken with Government stakeholders involved from the earliest stages to ensure research priorities and timescales remained aligned with policy needs.
Today around 100 people gathered in London for the final conference to discuss the key findings of the project, the impact of those findings, and potential for future research.
Key findings from the project which were highlighted at the event include:
8 January 2013 - There has been media coverage today about our experimental decadal global temperature prediction, which is routinely updated in December each year.
The latest decadal prediction suggests that global temperatures over the next five years are likely to be a little lower than predicted from the previous prediction issued in December 2011.
However, both versions are consistent in predicting that we will continue to see near-record levels of global temperatures in the next few years.
This means temperatures will remain well above the long-term average and we will continue to see temperatures like those which resulted in 2000-2009 being the warmest decade in the instrumental record dating back to 1850.
Decadal predictions are specifically designed to predict fluctuations in the climate system through knowledge of the current climate state and multi-year variability of the oceans.
Small year to year fluctuations such as those that we are seeing in the shorter term five year predictions are expected due natural variability in the climate system, and have no sustained impact on the long term warming.
Contact: Catherine Beswick, catherine.beswick@noc.ac.uk, National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (UK)
By comparing reconstructions of atmospheric CO2 concentrations and sea level over the past 40 million years, researchers based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton have found that greenhouse gas concentrations similar to the present (almost 400 parts per million) were systematically associated with sea levels at least nine metres above current levels.
The study determined the 'natural equilibrium' sea level for CO2 concentrations ranging between ice-age values of 180 parts per million and ice-free values of more than 1,000 parts per million.
It takes many centuries for such an equilibrium to be reached, therefore whilst the study does not predict any sea level value for the coming century, it does illustrate what sea level might be expected if climate were stabilized at a certain CO2 level for several centuries.
Lead author Dr Gavin Foster, from Ocean and Earth Science at the University of Southampton which is based at the centre, said, "A specific case of interest is one in which CO2 levels are kept at 400 to 450 parts per million, because that is the requirement for the often mentioned target of a maximum of two degrees global warming."
The researchers compiled more than two thousand pairs of CO2 and sea level data points, spanning critical periods within the last 40 million years. Some of these had climates warmer than present, some similar, and some colder. They also included periods during which global temperatures were increasing, as well as periods during which temperatures were decreasing.
20 December 2012 - 2013 is expected to be between 0.43 °C and 0.71 °C warmer than the long-term (1961-1990) global average of 14.0 °C, with a best estimate of around 0.57 °C, according to the Met Office annual global temperature forecast.
Taking into account the range of uncertainty in the forecast and observations, it is very likely that 2013 will be one of the warmest ten years in the record which goes back to 1850, and it is likely to be warmer than 2012.
The prediction follows provisional figures for the observed temperature in 2012, published by the Met Office and University of East Anglia last month. These showed that global average temperatures in 2012 were 0.45 °C above the long term average based on data from the three international global temperature datasets used by the World Meteorological Organization.
2012 is currently ranked the 9th warmest year on record. The global average temperature for 2012 falls well within the range predicted by the Met Office for 2012 of between 0.34 °C and 0.62 °C, with a most likely value of 0.48 °C above the long term average. This is consistent with the Met Office forecast statement that 2012 was expected to be warmer than 2011, but not as warm as the record year of 2010.
The Renewable Energy Foundation [1] today published a new study, The Performance of Wind Farms in the United Kingdom and Denmark,[2] showing that the economic life of onshore wind turbines is between 10 and 15 years, not the 20 to 25 years projected by the wind industry itself, and used for government projections.
The work has been conducted by one of the UK’s leading energy & environmental economists, Professor Gordon Hughes of the University of Edinburgh[3], and has been anonymously peer-reviewed. This groundbreaking study applies rigorous statistical analysis to years of actual wind farm performance data from wind farms in both the UK and in Denmark.
The results show that after allowing for variations in wind speed and site characteristics the average load factor of wind farms declines substantially as they get older, probably due to wear and tear. By 10 years of age the contribution of an average UK wind farm to meeting electricity demand has declined by a third.
This decline in performance means that it is rarely economic to operate wind farms for more than 12 to 15 years. After this period they must be replaced with new machines, a finding that has profound consequences for investors and government alike.
London, 17 December: Lord Lawson (Conservative), Lord Donoughue (Labour) and Baroness Nicholson (Liberal Democrat), three Trustees of the all-Party and non-Party Global Warming Policy Foundation, have called upon the BBC’s new Director-General Designate to convene a new high-level seminar in order to re-assess the BBC’s treatment of global warming and climate policy issues.
Over many years, the BBC’s treatment of climate change issues has been marked by bias, ignorance, credulity and – in the latest episode – unwarranted concealment. The behaviour of the Corporation throughout has failed to measure up to professional standards.
In their letter to Lord Hall, the GWPF Trustees have asked the Director-General Designate also to reconsider the implications of the controversial global warming seminar held in 2006 which has shaped BBC policy on climate-related issues ever since.
“We refer to the now notorious seminar on global warming held in 2006, involving 28 senior BBC staff and 28 outsiders. As the BBC Trust subsequently explained, ‘The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus [on climate change and climate change policies]‘. Ever since then, the BBC has fought tooth and nail, at considerable public expense, to keep secret the identity of ‘the best scientific experts’.
As you may be aware, it now emerges that, of the 28 present, there were only two (hand-picked) climate scientists; and the bulk of the rest were either green activists (including two from Greenpeace alone) or non-scientists with a vested interest in promoting renewable energy. So the BBC stands convicted not only of culpable imbalance, but also of rank dishonesty.
We hope that, once you have grappled with the more immediate challenges facing the BBC, you will revisit this important issue. We suggest that you might start by convening a new high-level seminar, this time a more balanced one, whose non-BBC participants would be qualified climate scientists, energy and environmental economists, and experienced policy-makers – whose names, incidentally, would be made known. The Global Warming Policy Foundation would be happy to be represented in any such seminar.”
Principia Scientific International Publishes Ground breaking Paper
Refuting the Greenhouse Gas Theory
(by John O'Sullivan, October 30, 2012)
Joseph E. Postma's new paper is the most coherent and complete analysis any of the 120+ members of Principia Scientific International has seen on the greenhouse gas theory (that includes one Nobel SCIENCE prize nominee!).
As a multi-disciplinary group of dedicated and trusted colleagues, we see there is so much original material here to establish a watershed. We do not make the claim lightly because we know our credibility will depend on this. Nonetheless, if these findings are widely confirmed then future climate researchers may well be discussing the science in terms of “pre-Postma” and “post-Postma” analysis.
Principia Scientific International, as a fledging science association, is pioneering a new kind of peer-review in open media (PROM). As such, we heartily welcome full and open public examination of Postma's work. It is in the interests of us all that Postma's claims are put under the spotlight and either accepted as compelling and valid or demonstrated to be flawed and inconsequential.
UKIP launches major energy policy statement; seeks lower energy prices,rejects wind power as expensive and inefficient.
On Friday Sept 21st, at the Party's annual Conference in Birmingham Town Hall in the UK, UKIP's Spokesman on Industry and Energy Roger Helmer MEP is launching a major Energy Policy Statement on behalf of the Party. It is entitled "Keeping the Lights On: How UKIP would prevent the impending electricity shortfall."
It argues that the theory of man-made climate change is unproven and implausible, and that even if the theory were valid, the costs of the Climate Change Act and other measures designed to reduce climate change will greatly exceed any foreseeable benefits.
UKIP believes that the UK's current energy policy, dictated by Brussels, with its heavy reliance on wind, is seriously undermining the UK economy and driving jobs, industry and investment off-shore. It is forcing millions of households and pensioners into fuel poverty. And over-dependence on renewables threatens security of supply, and raises the probability of electricity shortages by the end of the decade.
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12 February 2013 - A programme of world-class research on how to avoid dangerous climate change was hailed as a success today, as the project reaches completion.
8 January 2013 - There has been media coverage today about our experimental decadal global temperature prediction, which is routinely updated in December each year.
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