Posts Tagged ‘climate change’
March 15, 2013
Piers Corbyn is not the most popular figure in “scientific” circles and is probably detested among “main-stream” weather pundits. He just seems to get his forecasts right more often than conventional weather-men do, but he does not reveal his methods and this causes many to dismiss him as a lucky charlatan. They prefer to consider him an astrologer rather than a colourful but serious astrophysicist who might actually be considering the correct parameters. That he might also be making some money from his commercial weather forecasts is even more galling to some.
Weather Action: Our forecasts, which have independently proven peer-reviewed significant skill – unlike all others in the field – are based on our revolutionary Solar-Lunar-Action-Technique (SLAT) which is increasing in scope and skill as our researches advance.
But I like that he gives due importance to solar effects. And his track record in forecasting cannot be denied and I am inclined to take him rather seriously in spite of his use of horribly garish colours in his presentations. His results if not his methods are getting some attention in Parliament.
Climate Realists have his article claiming that the Mini Ice Age is already here (pdf).
The new Mini Ice Age is upon us!
“MIA fingerprint now overwhelming” – astrophysicist
“March 10th 1947** was the day of the thaw ending the late snowy cold winter of 1947 in Britain & Europe and there was a giant sunspot group at the centre of the solar disc. This year, three magnetic (22yr) solar cycles later, solar activity has been generally very low and this day marked deep cold” – heralding more snow, on 12th , when snow-blizzards hit S/E England (Pic Folkstone) as WeatherAction forecasted in detail 25 days ahead (see map). “This is further evidence of the inevitable plunge – from now – into the new Mini-Ice Age we warned of some years ago”, said Piers Corbyn, astrophysicist of WeatherAction.com, March 10th. “The CO2 story is over. It has been pointing the world in the wrong direction for too long. The serious implications of the developing MIA to agriculture and the world economy through the next 25 to 35 years must be addressed.”
(** Piers’ birthday!)
● The CO2 story is over
● World cooling is now ‘locked-in’
● Average solar activity way down
● Jet stream often way south
●Jet Stream develops wild waves giving very extreme weather events – hail, thunder, floods etc
Tags:climate change, global cooling, Little Ice Age, Piers Corbyn, Solar variation, weather
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Weather | Comments Off on Piers Corbyn: Mini Ice Age is upon us and the CO2 story is over
March 14, 2013
Peter Ziegler: image The Geological Society
Prof. Peter Ziegler (b. 1928) is a Swiss geologist and Titular Professor of Global Geology at the Geological-Paleontological Institute, University of Basel. He is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and the Academia Europaea. His presentation on the “Mechanisms of Climate Change” from February this year is pretty self-contained and self explanatory and my comments would only be superfluous.
Climate Change Ziegler 2013 (pdf)
I reproduce his conclusions slide below:
- Climate change during industrial times can be fully explained by natural processes
- During the last 550 Million years major natural climate changes involved large fluctuations in temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentrations
- Apart from orbital forcing and the distribution of continents and oceans, variations in solar activity and the galactic cosmic ray flux controlled climate changes during the geological past and probably still do so
- Despite rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations we may experience during the coming decades a serious temperature decline akin to the Maunder Minimum due to decreasing solar activity
- There is overwhelming evidence that Temperature forces the Carbon Cycle and not vice-versa, as postulated by IPCC
- IPCC underestimates the effects of direct and indirect solar climate forcing but overestimates CO2 forcing by assuming unrealistic positive temperature feedbacks from a concomitant water vapor and cloud increase
- The IPCC consensus on anthropogenic CO2 emissions causing Global Warming cannot be reconciled with basic data and is therefore challenged
Tags:carbon dioxide, climate change, global warming, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, Maunder Minimum, Peter Ziegler, solar effects
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Science, Solar science | 1 Comment »
January 21, 2013
P. Gosselin at No Tricks Zone is quite right in pointing out the enormous political problems in now admitting that the global warming hypothesis which has been accepted dogma for 3 decades may not be correct after all.
The big question now circulating through the stunned European media, governments and activist organisations is how could the warming stop have happened? Moreover, how do we now explain it to the public?
His recent posts got me to making the parallels between the AGW climate “scientists” and Lance Armstrong.
Both
- have posed as heroes “saving” the world / sport
- have promoted dogma based on lies for many years,
- have made fortunes in the process,
- have lied and cheated to maintain the initial fraud,
- have attacked and tried to destroy those who would disclose their fraud,
- have – on the side – led to some good work along the way (in cancer research and in many disciplines connected to climate), and
- will come out of the cesspit smelling of roses
I wonder if the Nobel Peace Committee could revoke their decision and if Al Gore and the IPCC could be stripped of their Nobel prize? They can both afford to give the money back.
Major German Daily Carries Front-Page Headline: “Global Warming Keeps Us Waiting!…CO2 Over-Estimated?”
Warmist Spiegel/Euro-Media Concede Global Warming Has Ended…Models Were Wrong…Scientists Are Baffled!
Lance Armstrong, Livestrong And Climate Research
Weather Service Warns of “Shock Cooling” Coming To Europe…4th Bitter Cold Euro-Winter In 5 Years Shaping Up!
Tags:climate change, climate models, doped models, global warming fraud, Lance Armstrong
Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Climate, Politics | Comments Off on Are climate scientists like Lance Armstrong? When will they admit their models are doped?
January 20, 2013
It is cold that kills not warmth. It is global cooling that will provide the greater challenge for humans – not global warming. But whether cooling or warming or both, humans will be better served by figuring out the best ways to adapt and not waste time and energy on trying to control the climate based on fanciful theories and religious beliefs about what causes climate change.
It’s the Sun, stupid!
Yesterday we had about -20°C, which is pretty cold but not unusual for this time of year. A friend in Australia was sweltering in +44°C -pretty hot but also not unusual. Another friend in Alberta had a normal winter day at about -25°C. Yesterday across the world humans were living and managing over temperatures ranging from about -50°C to about +49°C. Coping – quite successfully – with a temperature range caused by local weather of almost 100°C .
Snowpocalypse Russia
On Friday, Moscow was on a verge of traffic collapse as more than 10 inches of snow fell on the city, which is more than half of January’s average. Thousands of passengers were stranded overnight in the capital’s major airports, as several dozen flights were delayed. Muscovites woke up and found their cars, driveways and houses buried under a thick layer of snow, with city workers unable to get to smaller streets.
Moscow (Reuters / Sergei Karpukhin)
While the snowstorms have caused inconvenience for large population centers in western Russia, they have been life-threatening further east in the country. The polar circle city of Norilsk has been buried under 10 feet of snow – entire apartment blocks, markets, stores and offices were buried under snow overnight.
Banks of snow were as high as two people put together, reaching the second-story windows of some apartment buildings. Cars, stores, garages were blocked. Norilsk metropolitan workers were forced to dig passageways through the snow banks to create access between the outside world and the barricaded city. Meanwhile, icicles up to three feet in length have formed off the ledges of buildings, breaking at random and causing a lethal hazard for pedestrians below.
Norilsk (Photo from bigpicture.ru)
Tags:climate change, Moscow, Norilsk, Russia, Snow, wintwr
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Russia, Weather, Winter | Comments Off on Just another Russian winter — or is it global warming?
January 11, 2013
Swedish Radio is one of the more rabid and unthinking supporters of global warming orthodoxy (as are all the main stream media in Sweden). So I was rather surprised to see them giving prominence today to Per Krussel, Professor of Economics at Stockholm University. Normally Swedish Radio is so biased and bigoted on this subject that they would have made no mention of this if Krussel had not been a Swedish Professor. Of course – for balance – they then also interviewed a Professor on Environmental Economy who just happens to be a member of the IPCC and clearly backed the alarmist line — what else? He was less than impressive. For representing the IPCC they might just as well have interviewed someone from Greenpeace!
Krussel skewers the Stern Report on fundamental methodology but this itself is nothing new. The Stern Report from 2006 is another one where the content has been massaged to come to a pre-determined conclusion and is almost embarrassingly bad. In my view any document today which cites the Stern Report as support is itself discredited.
Swedish Radio: (free translation from the Swedish)
Many researchers believe that the threat from climate change is the critical issue of our time. But Per Krusell, professor of economics at Stockholm University, and leading a major international effort to calculate the economic costs of climate change, believes that the threat is not that critical in financial terms
“Climate change is a threat, it’s pretty big, but it’s not that huge when translated into dollars and cents” says Per Krusell.
Per Krusell leads an international research project to develop an economic model, which the world’s countries can use to figure out their future costs of climate change. The model should be finished in about a year and will be the world’s most advanced tools in this context, according to Per Krusell. So far, they have concluded that GDP in the worst case will only drop by a few percent in most countries, such as Sweden. This differs from the widely publicized Stern Report in 2006 pointing to significantly higher costs.
…….. above all, Krusell is critical of Stern for putting together all anticipated costs, without discounting these costs properly in the way economists usually do for future costs. …
(The Stern report used a discounting factor of 0.1% – but it is normal to use a discount rate of 1%, which therefore lowers the cost of future generations substantially.) …. Economist Per Krusell agrees that climate change is a big problem, but thinks it’s more important to focus on the economic development of the poor countries rather than combating climate change.
“When we consider the effects of climate change, we expect also that there will be a cost especially in poor countries, but it sums up to no great critical issue for the world. It is more important to get the poor countries to develop. I’m a little worried that “environmental thinking” leads to more important issues being ignored.”
Tags:climate change, climate change costs, Per Krusell, Stern Review, Stockholm University, Sweden
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Economics, Sweden | Comments Off on Climate change costs are not that critical compared to economic development of poor countries – Prof. Per Krussel
January 10, 2013
Not much comment needed.
The Jerusalem Light Rail on a snow covered Jaffa Road on Wednesday (photo credit: Miriam Alster/Flash90 – The Times of Israel)
Jerusalem Post:
Greatest snowfall since 1992 sees Jerusalem municipality announce closure of schools, kindergartens; police shut Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway as snow predicted to persist until afternoon.
.. Elisha Peleg, an official in charge of emergencies with the Jerusalem Municipality, urged the city’s residents to remain at home and stay off the streets, telling Army Radio the area had overnight seen its greatest snowfall since 1992. He said 10 to 15 centimetres (4 to 6 inches) of snow had piled up in the city center and more than that in outlying areas. “The downtown area is bathed in white,” Peleg said.
“The elders of Jerusalem don’t remember such a snowstorm in years,” Peleg also said.
Tags:climate change, global warming, Israel, Jerusalem, Snow
Posted in Climate, Israel, Weather, Winter | 1 Comment »
January 9, 2013
UPDATE! The important point of this story is not whether global warming has stopped or is continuing or if the world is cooling. Climate will go the way it will. The real significance of this story is that climate models are not just far from perfect – they are plain wrong. And what is worse is that when a model is not borne out by reality, the “politically correct” but false assumptions (such as that man-made CO2 causes significant warming or that solar effects are minor) are not even reviewed.
This has been doing the rounds for a few days now but the BBC – which tends to be one of the pillars of the Global Warming religion – has finally come round to reporting that the British Met Office has predicted that global temperatures could decrease somewhat over the next decade. Of course it is good to see that a climate model is being revised in the face of reality. Unfortunately most climate models just retain their assumptions and add fudge factors every time reality fails to meet their forecasts where – instead – they ought to be questioning the very assumptions their models are built on. But that loss of face would be too expensive in terms of the funding already flowing into continuing with discredited models and would be too much to take in one go. But the fundamental requirement of good science is that when models don’t fit it is time to question the assumptions in the model – not to find fudge factors.
BBC: Climate model forecast is revised
The UK Met Office has revised one of its forecasts for how much the world may warm in the next few years. …. If the forecast is accurate, the result would be that the global average temperature would have remained relatively static for about two decades.
…. Climate scientists at the Met Office and other centres are involved in intense research to try to understand what is happening over the most recent period.
The most obvious explanation is natural variability – the cycles of changes in solar activity and the movements and temperatures of the oceans.
Infographic (Met Office): The forecasts are based on a comparison with the average global temperature over the period 1971-2000
Of course the BBC report then goes on to proclaim that this not a global cooling and that global warming will continue.
But of course neither this or any of the other exaggerated models will remove the assumed global warming – man-made carbon dioxide link for which there is no direct evidence whatever.
Tallbloke reported on the story here a few days ago.
Tags:carbon dioxide, climate change, Climate model, global warming, Met Office, Temperature record
Posted in Alarmism, Climate | 1 Comment »
January 5, 2013
Wildlife gallery from Greenland: Photo: Uri Golman
A stunning gallery of wildlife pictures from Greenland.
In the ever-changing world of the web and personal computing, a reminder of the MS wrist-watch and other 10 EPIC CES fails.
Science Fraud – Another web-site silenced by legal threats and the University of Regensburg has rescinded the doctorate of a dentist who had submitted a dissertation that was essentially that of her husband’s.
A new open-access paper in Earth System Dynamics showing that recent global warming is not statistically significantly related to anthropogenic forcing. Matt Ridley has 2 interesting pieces on how fossil fuels have actually greened the planet and how Europeans seem intent on making their future as bad as they can.
A new kidney transplantation racket revealed in India where the price of a kidney varies between Rs. 70,000 and 300,000 ($1,400 to $6,000). Indian Supreme Court reacts to over 2,200 deaths in clinical trials carried out by international pharmaceutical companies in India.
Some modern humans who live natural lifestyles in the forests of Earth still climb more or less like a chimpanzee and ‘Lucy’ could climb like chimps. Jumping genes and horizontal gene transfer leads to the conclusion that cows are more closely related to snakes than to elephants!
Wallace’s letter to Darwin in 1864 doubting the assertion that the aristocracy are more beautiful than the middle-classes. Lead concentration in Greenland ice shows that when Rome fell there was a real reduction of industrial activity which lasted almost a millenium. It could be that climate change is not the great destroyer but is the great enabler and that many of the evolutionary developments of modern humans have been driven by natural – and rapid – climate change. Archaeological sleuthing sheds more light on the strange goings-on during the mutiny on the VOC Retourschip Batavia, in 1629.
Tags:climate change, Earth, environment, Greenland, India, Miscellaneous, Rome, University of Regensburg
Posted in Miscellaneous, Noted in Passing | Comments Off on Noted in passing 5th January 2013
January 5, 2013
The January 2013 NASA forecast for the development of Solar Cycle 24 is out.
SC 24 prediction Jan 2013 – Hathaway -NASA
The current prediction for Sunspot Cycle 24 gives a smoothed sunspot number maximum of about 69 in the Fall of 2013. The smoothed sunspot number has already reached 67 (in February 2012)due to the strong peak in late 2011 so the official maximum will be at least this high and this late. We are currently over four years into Cycle 24. The current predicted and observed size makes this the smallest sunspot cycle since Cycle 14 which had a maximum of 64.2 in February of 1906.
With sunspot activity at this low level the planet will cool. It remains to be seen whether this is the start of something like a Dalton Minimum (SC5 and 6) or even a Maunder Minimum. This cooling has begun and global temperatures peaked about 16 years ago and are now declining slightly while carbon dioxide concentration continues to increase. It is only a matter of time before the belief that carbon dioxide concentration (whether man-made or not) causes global warming will have to be completely discarded. But there is so much money now riding on this belief (and even though there is only conjecture and no direct evidence for this belief), that we will likely see a decade or more of rationalisation of reality before the belief is abandoned.
SC24 compared to SC5 in 2011 is shown below:
SC24 compared to SC5
Tags:climate change, Dalton minimum, global cooling, Maunder Minimum, SC 24, SC14, SC5, Solar cycles
Posted in Climate, Solar science | 1 Comment »
January 5, 2013
Alarmism and fostering a fear of future events where the actual risk is well below the perceived risk is the stock-in-trade of insurance companies. A simple case of boosting revenues (premiums from perceived risks) for any given cost (actual risk). It is inevitable that while statistics of past events from insurance companies are detailed and accurate any forecast from an insurance company will (must) exaggerate risks. There is no business if perception of risk is low.
When it comes to weather and global warming fears Munich Re is among the more strident of the alarmists. A fear of coming catastrophes by drought or too much rain or floods or rising sea levels are all actively promoted as new insurance products are touted.
Munich Re has just issued a press release about the statistics of natural and weather related catstrophes showing that costs for 2012 were below average and lives lost were well below average. Needless to say the headline is spun to help sell more insurance:
Overall, losses were significantly lower in 2012 than in the previous year, …..
Some 9,500 people lost their lives in natural catastrophes last year compared with the ten-year average of 106,000. The relatively small number of fatalities was due to the fact that, in 2012, few severe natural catastrophes occurred in emerging and developing countries, where natural catastrophes tend to have far more devastating consequences in terms of human lives.
Prof. Peter Höppe, Head of Munich Re’s Geo Risks Research then adds his spin to try and ensure Munich Re’s business for the future:
“It is not possible, of course, to attribute individual events to climate change, each theoretically being possible in isolation. However, numerous studies assume a rise in summer drought periods in North America in the future and an increasing probability of severe cyclones relatively far north along the US East Coast in the long term. The rise in sea level caused by climate change will further increase the risk of storm surge. And, with no apparent prospect of progress in international climate negotiations like those held recently in Doha, adaptation to such hazards using suitable protective measures is absolutely essential.”
Tags:Alarmism, climate change, global warming, Insurance, Insurance and alarmism, Munich Re
Posted in Alarmism, Business | Comments Off on Munich Re: Natural catastrophe and weather related deaths in 2012 were less than one-tenth of the 10-year average
The k2p blog 