November 15th, 2007, 09:29 AM
The difference in solar radiative forcing between Maunder Minimum levels and current solar activity is estimated between 0.17 W/m2 to 0.23 W/m2 .
The radiative forcing of CO2 since pre-industrial times of anthropogenic emissions is 1.66 W/m2 , far outstripping solar influence
Quote:
Oh my. The actual consensus statement said that the next cycle was impossible to predict accurately. What it actually said was this:
Some scientist feel they have developed sufficient understanding to predict the intensity of future sunspot cycles. A Solar Cycle 24 Prediction Panel was hosted on 25 April 2007 with officials from NOAA, NASA, ISES and other agencies. They issued a consensus statement which came to the conclusion that the next solar cycle could be severe, peaking at around 140 International Sunspot Numbers (Ri) or moderate, at around 90 Ri. But a few scientist disagree. A number of well regarded solar physicists are predicting the next solar cycle will be far weaker than the last one.
Quote:
Then they talk of the Maunder Minimum. Theres no conclusive evidence to suggest that that is where we are heading, but even if we do experience a similar period, the forcing events will only reduce the net positive forcing that currently exists.
The Solar Cycle 24 Prediction Panel anticipates the solar minimum marking the onset of Cycle 24 will occur in March, 2008 (±6 months). The panel reached this conclusion due to the absence of expected signatures of minimum-like conditions on the Sun at the time of the panel meeting in March, 2007: there have been no high-latitude sunspots observed with the expected Cycle 24 polarity; the configuration of the large scale white-light corona has not yet relaxed to a simple dipole; the heliospheric current sheet has not yet flattened; and activity measures, such as cosmic ray flux, radio flux, and sunspot number, have not yet reached typical solar minimum values.
In light of the expected long interval until the onset of Cycle 24, the Prediction Panel has been unable to resolve a sufficient number of questions to reach a single, consensus prediction for the amplitude of the cycle. The deliberations of the panel supported two possible peak amplitudes for the smoothed International Sunspot Number (Ri): Ri = 140 ±20 and Ri = 90 ±10. Important questions to be resolved in the year following solar minimum will lead to a consensus decision by the panel.
The panel agrees solar maximum will occur near October, 2011 for the large cycle (Ri=140) case and August, 2012 for the small cycle (Ri=90) prediction.
In light of the expected long interval until the onset of Cycle 24, the Prediction Panel has been unable to resolve a sufficient number of questions to reach a single, consensus prediction for the amplitude of the cycle. The deliberations of the panel supported two possible peak amplitudes for the smoothed International Sunspot Number (Ri): Ri = 140 ±20 and Ri = 90 ±10. Important questions to be resolved in the year following solar minimum will lead to a consensus decision by the panel.
The panel agrees solar maximum will occur near October, 2011 for the large cycle (Ri=140) case and August, 2012 for the small cycle (Ri=90) prediction.
The difference in solar radiative forcing between Maunder Minimum levels and current solar activity is estimated between 0.17 W/m2 to 0.23 W/m2 .
The radiative forcing of CO2 since pre-industrial times of anthropogenic emissions is 1.66 W/m2 , far outstripping solar influence
Council Member
Posts: 1,788 
January 4th, 2008, 07:54 AM
A cold spell soon to replace global warming
13:54|03/ 01/ 2008
MOSCOW. (Oleg Sorokhtin for RIA Novosti) – Stock up on fur coats and felt boots! This is my paradoxical advice to the warm world.
Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells. It started in the 17th century when there was no industrial influence on the climate to speak of and no such thing as the hothouse effect. The current warming is evidently a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases.
The real reasons for climate changes are uneven solar radiation, terrestrial precession (that is, axis gyration), instability of oceanic currents, regular salinity fluctuations of the Arctic Ocean surface waters, etc. There is another, principal reason—solar activity and luminosity. The greater they are the warmer is our climate.
Astrophysics knows two solar activity cycles, of 11 and 200 years. Both are caused by changes in the radius and area of the irradiating solar surface. The latest data, obtained by Habibullah Abdusamatov, head of the Pulkovo Observatory space research laboratory, say that Earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012. Real cold will come when solar activity reaches its minimum, by 2041, and will last for 50-60 years or even longer.
This is my point, which environmentalists hotly dispute as they cling to the hothouse theory. As we know, hothouse gases, in particular, nitrogen peroxide, warm up the atmosphere by keeping heat close to the ground. Advanced in the late 19th century by Svante A. Arrhenius, a Swedish physical chemist and Nobel Prize winner, this theory is taken for granted to this day and has not undergone any serious check.
It determines decisions and instruments of major international organizations—in particular, the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Signed by 150 countries, it exemplifies the impact of scientific delusion on big politics and economics. The authors and enthusiasts of the Kyoto Protocol based their assumptions on an erroneous idea. As a result, developed countries waste huge amounts of money to fight industrial pollution of the atmosphere. What if it is a Don Quixote’s duel with the windmill?
Hothouse gases may not be to blame for global warming. At any rate, there is no scientific evidence to their guilt. The classic hothouse effect scenario is too simple to be true. As things really are, much more sophisticated processes are on in the atmosphere, especially in its dense layer. For instance, heat is not so much radiated in space as carried by air currents—an entirely different mechanism, which cannot cause global warming.
The temperature of the troposphere, the lowest and densest portion of the atmosphere, does not depend on the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions—a point proved theoretically and empirically. True, probes of Antarctic ice shield, taken with bore specimens in the vicinity of the Russian research station Vostok, show that there are close links between atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and temperature changes. Here, however, we cannot be quite sure which is the cause and which the effect.
Temperature fluctuations always run somewhat ahead of carbon dioxide concentration changes. This means that warming is primary. The ocean is the greatest carbon dioxide depository, with concentrations 60-90 times larger than in the atmosphere. When the ocean’s surface warms up, it produces the “champagne effect.” Compare a foamy spurt out of a warm bottle with wine pouring smoothly when served properly cold.
Likewise, warm ocean water exudes greater amounts of carbonic acid, which evaporates to add to industrial pollution—a factor we cannot deny. However, man-caused pollution is negligible here. If industrial pollution with carbon dioxide keeps at its present-day 5-7 billion metric tons a year, it will not change global temperatures up to the year 2100. The change will be too small for humans to feel even if the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions doubles.
Carbon dioxide cannot be bad for the climate. On the contrary, it is food for plants, and so is beneficial to life on Earth. Bearing out this point was the Green Revolution—the phenomenal global increase in farm yields in the mid-20th century. Numerous experiments also prove a direct proportion between harvest and carbon dioxide concentration in the air.
Carbon dioxide has quite a different pernicious influence—not on the climate but on synoptic activity. It absorbs infrared radiation. When tropospheric air is warm enough for complete absorption, radiation energy passes into gas fluctuations. Gas expands and dissolves to send warm air up to the stratosphere, where it clashes with cold currents coming down. With no noticeable temperature changes, synoptic activity skyrockets to whip up cyclones and anticyclones. Hence we get hurricanes, storms, tornados and other natural disasters, whose intensity largely depends on carbon dioxide concentration. In this sense, reducing its concentration in the air will have a positive effect.
Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change. Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind. Man’s influence on nature is a drop in the ocean.
Earth is unlikely to ever face a temperature disaster. Of all the planets in the solar system, only Earth has an atmosphere beneficial to life. There are many factors that account for development of life on Earth: Sun is a calm star, Earth is located an optimum distance from it, it has the Moon as a massive satellite, and many others. Earth owes its friendly climate also to dynamic feedback between biotic and atmospheric evolution.
The principal among those diverse links is Earth’s reflective power, which regulates its temperature. A warm period, as the present, increases oceanic evaporation to produce a great amount of clouds, which filter solar radiation and so bring heat down. Things take the contrary turn in a cold period.
What can’t be cured must be endured. It is wise to accept the natural course of things. We have no reason to panic about allegations that ice in the Arctic Ocean is thawing rapidly and will soon vanish altogether. As it really is, scientists say the Arctic and Antarctic ice shields are growing. Physical and mathematical calculations predict a new Ice Age. It will come in 100,000 years, at the earliest, and will be much worse than the previous. Europe will be ice-bound, with glaciers reaching south of Moscow.
Meanwhile, Europeans can rest assured. The Gulf Stream will change its course only if some evil magic robs it of power to reach the north—but Mother Nature is unlikely to do that.
Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, is staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute.
A cold spell soon to replace global warming
13:54|03/ 01/ 2008
MOSCOW. (Oleg Sorokhtin for RIA Novosti) – Stock up on fur coats and felt boots! This is my paradoxical advice to the warm world.
Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells. It started in the 17th century when there was no industrial influence on the climate to speak of and no such thing as the hothouse effect. The current warming is evidently a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases.
The real reasons for climate changes are uneven solar radiation, terrestrial precession (that is, axis gyration), instability of oceanic currents, regular salinity fluctuations of the Arctic Ocean surface waters, etc. There is another, principal reason—solar activity and luminosity. The greater they are the warmer is our climate.
Astrophysics knows two solar activity cycles, of 11 and 200 years. Both are caused by changes in the radius and area of the irradiating solar surface. The latest data, obtained by Habibullah Abdusamatov, head of the Pulkovo Observatory space research laboratory, say that Earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012. Real cold will come when solar activity reaches its minimum, by 2041, and will last for 50-60 years or even longer.
This is my point, which environmentalists hotly dispute as they cling to the hothouse theory. As we know, hothouse gases, in particular, nitrogen peroxide, warm up the atmosphere by keeping heat close to the ground. Advanced in the late 19th century by Svante A. Arrhenius, a Swedish physical chemist and Nobel Prize winner, this theory is taken for granted to this day and has not undergone any serious check.
It determines decisions and instruments of major international organizations—in particular, the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Signed by 150 countries, it exemplifies the impact of scientific delusion on big politics and economics. The authors and enthusiasts of the Kyoto Protocol based their assumptions on an erroneous idea. As a result, developed countries waste huge amounts of money to fight industrial pollution of the atmosphere. What if it is a Don Quixote’s duel with the windmill?
Hothouse gases may not be to blame for global warming. At any rate, there is no scientific evidence to their guilt. The classic hothouse effect scenario is too simple to be true. As things really are, much more sophisticated processes are on in the atmosphere, especially in its dense layer. For instance, heat is not so much radiated in space as carried by air currents—an entirely different mechanism, which cannot cause global warming.
The temperature of the troposphere, the lowest and densest portion of the atmosphere, does not depend on the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions—a point proved theoretically and empirically. True, probes of Antarctic ice shield, taken with bore specimens in the vicinity of the Russian research station Vostok, show that there are close links between atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and temperature changes. Here, however, we cannot be quite sure which is the cause and which the effect.
Temperature fluctuations always run somewhat ahead of carbon dioxide concentration changes. This means that warming is primary. The ocean is the greatest carbon dioxide depository, with concentrations 60-90 times larger than in the atmosphere. When the ocean’s surface warms up, it produces the “champagne effect.” Compare a foamy spurt out of a warm bottle with wine pouring smoothly when served properly cold.
Likewise, warm ocean water exudes greater amounts of carbonic acid, which evaporates to add to industrial pollution—a factor we cannot deny. However, man-caused pollution is negligible here. If industrial pollution with carbon dioxide keeps at its present-day 5-7 billion metric tons a year, it will not change global temperatures up to the year 2100. The change will be too small for humans to feel even if the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions doubles.
Carbon dioxide cannot be bad for the climate. On the contrary, it is food for plants, and so is beneficial to life on Earth. Bearing out this point was the Green Revolution—the phenomenal global increase in farm yields in the mid-20th century. Numerous experiments also prove a direct proportion between harvest and carbon dioxide concentration in the air.
Carbon dioxide has quite a different pernicious influence—not on the climate but on synoptic activity. It absorbs infrared radiation. When tropospheric air is warm enough for complete absorption, radiation energy passes into gas fluctuations. Gas expands and dissolves to send warm air up to the stratosphere, where it clashes with cold currents coming down. With no noticeable temperature changes, synoptic activity skyrockets to whip up cyclones and anticyclones. Hence we get hurricanes, storms, tornados and other natural disasters, whose intensity largely depends on carbon dioxide concentration. In this sense, reducing its concentration in the air will have a positive effect.
Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change. Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind. Man’s influence on nature is a drop in the ocean.
Earth is unlikely to ever face a temperature disaster. Of all the planets in the solar system, only Earth has an atmosphere beneficial to life. There are many factors that account for development of life on Earth: Sun is a calm star, Earth is located an optimum distance from it, it has the Moon as a massive satellite, and many others. Earth owes its friendly climate also to dynamic feedback between biotic and atmospheric evolution.
The principal among those diverse links is Earth’s reflective power, which regulates its temperature. A warm period, as the present, increases oceanic evaporation to produce a great amount of clouds, which filter solar radiation and so bring heat down. Things take the contrary turn in a cold period.
What can’t be cured must be endured. It is wise to accept the natural course of things. We have no reason to panic about allegations that ice in the Arctic Ocean is thawing rapidly and will soon vanish altogether. As it really is, scientists say the Arctic and Antarctic ice shields are growing. Physical and mathematical calculations predict a new Ice Age. It will come in 100,000 years, at the earliest, and will be much worse than the previous. Europe will be ice-bound, with glaciers reaching south of Moscow.
Meanwhile, Europeans can rest assured. The Gulf Stream will change its course only if some evil magic robs it of power to reach the north—but Mother Nature is unlikely to do that.
Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, is staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute.
Steven Hawking's Tutor
Posts: 4,612
January 4th, 2008, 08:38 AM
I'm a convert Walt! I just read an article that says the glaciers are reforming as we speak!
Ocean levels will drop dramatically as the water is reclaimed by freezers atop the worlds highest peaks. Our problem won't be flooding but the challenge of paving roads across the sea bottom. Luckily we have the Athabaska tar sands to help!
Man I sure am glad I read that article and can now jump on board with Walt the gatekeeper of moral values!
I'm a convert Walt! I just read an article that says the glaciers are reforming as we speak!
Ocean levels will drop dramatically as the water is reclaimed by freezers atop the worlds highest peaks. Our problem won't be flooding but the challenge of paving roads across the sea bottom. Luckily we have the Athabaska tar sands to help!
Man I sure am glad I read that article and can now jump on board with Walt the gatekeeper of moral values!
Council Member
Posts: 1,788
January 4th, 2008, 12:39 PM
Excerpted from: http://dan.hersam.com/opinions/exclamation.html
Quoting MikeyDB
The saying, "Less is more" rings true in the case of exclamation marks. One will suffice for almost any occasion, and forming a small army of exclamation marks to attack your reader with excruciating force is entirely unnecessary. Another appropriate analogy would be the boy who cried exclamation mark. If you use it all the time then people will begin to realize that you really don't have anything to exclaim. They will probably assume you have become addicted to their use and can't stop. One of the worst cases I have ever seen of exclamation excess was in the greeting from a personal ad. Every single sentence ended with an exclamation mark. One would think that generally, people want to make a good impression, but shouldn't that be even more true in a personal ad? What kind of person has so much exuberance bubbling from them that everything they say is an exclamation?
I'm a convert Walt! I just read an article that says the glaciers are reforming as we speak!
Ocean levels will drop dramatically as the water is reclaimed by freezers atop the worlds highest peaks. Our problem won't be flooding but the challenge of paving roads across the sea bottom. Luckily we have the Athabaska tar sands to help!
Man I sure am glad I read that article and can now jump on board with Walt the gatekeeper of moral values!
Ocean levels will drop dramatically as the water is reclaimed by freezers atop the worlds highest peaks. Our problem won't be flooding but the challenge of paving roads across the sea bottom. Luckily we have the Athabaska tar sands to help!
Man I sure am glad I read that article and can now jump on board with Walt the gatekeeper of moral values!
Excerpted from: http://dan.hersam.com/opinions/exclamation.html
Council Member
Posts: 1,788
January 8th, 2008, 12:26 PM
A cold spell soon to replace global warming
13:54|03/ 01/ 2008
MOSCOW. (Oleg Sorokhtin for RIA Novosti) – Stock up on fur coats and felt boots! This is my paradoxical advice to the warm world.
Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells. It started in the 17th century when there was no industrial influence on the climate to speak of and no such thing as the hothouse effect. The current warming is evidently a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases.
The real reasons for climate changes are uneven solar radiation, terrestrial precession (that is, axis gyration), instability of oceanic currents, regular salinity fluctuations of the Arctic Ocean surface waters, etc. There is another, principal reason—solar activity and luminosity. The greater they are the warmer is our climate.
Astrophysics knows two solar activity cycles, of 11 and 200 years. Both are caused by changes in the radius and area of the irradiating solar surface. The latest data, obtained by Habibullah Abdusamatov, head of the Pulkovo Observatory space research laboratory, say that Earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012. Real cold will come when solar activity reaches its minimum, by 2041, and will last for 50-60 years or even longer.
A cold spell soon to replace global warming
13:54|03/ 01/ 2008
MOSCOW. (Oleg Sorokhtin for RIA Novosti) – Stock up on fur coats and felt boots! This is my paradoxical advice to the warm world.
Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells. It started in the 17th century when there was no industrial influence on the climate to speak of and no such thing as the hothouse effect. The current warming is evidently a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases.
The real reasons for climate changes are uneven solar radiation, terrestrial precession (that is, axis gyration), instability of oceanic currents, regular salinity fluctuations of the Arctic Ocean surface waters, etc. There is another, principal reason—solar activity and luminosity. The greater they are the warmer is our climate.
Astrophysics knows two solar activity cycles, of 11 and 200 years. Both are caused by changes in the radius and area of the irradiating solar surface. The latest data, obtained by Habibullah Abdusamatov, head of the Pulkovo Observatory space research laboratory, say that Earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012. Real cold will come when solar activity reaches its minimum, by 2041, and will last for 50-60 years or even longer.
No party affiliation
Posts: 1,947
Location: Oshawa
Location: Oshawa
January 11th, 2008, 08:25 AM
Quoting YoungJoonKim
He dosen't know, so don't ask.
So..what's that graph suggesting specifically?
Anomaly of the ice in the South pole?
Anomaly of the ice in the South pole?
No party affiliation
Posts: 1,947
Location: Oshawa
Location: Oshawa
January 11th, 2008, 08:38 AM
At the time, 1998 was a record high year in both the CRU and the NASA GISS analyses. In fact, it blew away the previous record by .2 degrees C. (That previous record went all the way back to 1997, by the way!)
According to NASA, it was elevated far above the trend line because 1998 was the year of the strongest El Nino of the century. Choosing that year as a starting point is a classic cherry pick and demonstrates why it is necessary to remove chaotic year-to year-variability (aka: weather) by smoothing out the data. Looking at CRU's graph below, you can see the result of that smoothing in black.
Clearly 1998 is an anomaly and the trend has not reversed. (Even the apparent leveling at the end is not the real smoothing. The smoothed trend in 2005 depends on all of its surrounding years, including a few years still in the future.) By the way, choosing the CRU analysis is also a cherry pick -- NASA has 2005 breaking the 1998 record, though by very little.
Now, this is an excusable mistake for average folks who do not need the rigors of statistical analysis in their day jobs. But any scientist in pretty much any field knows that you cannot extract meaningful information about trends in noisy data from single-year end points. It's hard to hear a scientist make this argument and still believe they speak with integrity in this debate -- seems more like an abuse of the trust placed in them as scientists. Bob Carter is just such a voice, and was the first to trot out this argument in an article in the Daily Telegraph. Since then it has echoed far and wide and been used by Richard Lindzen as well as a host of skeptic websites.
Interestingly, Bob Carter seems to know what he is doing. He tries to pre-empt objections in his article by insinuating that any choice of starting point (say, 197
will just be a cherry pick with the opposite motive! But cherry picking is about choosing data for the sole purpose of supporting a pre-conceived conclusion. It is not the simple act of choosing at all. One must choose some starting point. In the case of his example year, 1978, it's often chosen simply because it is the first year that satellite records of tropospheric temperatures were available.
So what choices are there? What are the reasons for those choices? What conclusions we can draw from them?
That about covers any period of time relevant to today's society. "It has stopped warming" is only supported by selecting a single year out of context and using a seven-year window to look at multi-decadal trends in climate. That's a classic cherry pick.
Secondly.....
Ball and the oil industry
Ball is listed as a "consultant" of a Calgary-based global warming skeptic organization called the "Friends of Science" (FOS). In a January 28, 2007 article in the Toronto Star, the President of the FOS admitted that about one-third of the funding for the FOS is provided by the oil industry. In an August, '06 Globe and Mail feature, the FOS was exposed as being funded in part by the oil and gas sector and hiding the fact that they were. According to the Globe and Mail, the oil industry money was funnelled through the Calgary Foundation charity, to the University of Calgary and then put into an education trust for the FOS.
Ball inflates credentials
Ball and organizations he is affiliated with have repeatedly made the claim that he is the "first Canadian PhD in climatology." Even further, Ball once claimed he was "one of the first climatology PhD's in the world." As many people have pointed out, there have been many PhD's in the field prior to Ball.
Ball and the NRSP
Ball is listed as an "Executive" for a Canadian group called the "Natural Resource Stewardship Project," (NRSP) a lobby organization that refuses to disclose it's funding sources. The NRSP is led by executive director Tom Harris and Dr. Tim Ball. An Oct. 16, 2006 CanWest Global news article on who funds the NRSP, it states that "a confidentiality agreement doesn't allow him [Tom Harris] to say whether energy companies are funding his group."
DeSmog recently uncovered information that two of the three Directors on the board of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project are senior executives of the High Park Advocacy Group, a Toronto based lobby firm that specializes in “energy, environment and ethics.”
Ball's research history
Ball retired from the University of Winnipeg in 1996 and a search of 22,000 academic journals shows that, over the course of his career, Ball has published 4 pieces of original research in a peer-reviewed journal on the subject of climate change Ball has not published any new research in the last 11 years.
Ball sues researcher and Calgary Herald newspaper
On Sept. 1, Ball, launched a libel suit against Dr. Dan Johnson, a current Professor of Environmental Science at the University of Lethbridge and a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Grassland Ecosystems. Here are the original Statements of Claim and Defence.
......should be a interesting case and will further expose how Ball is just a hired hand for the energy sector.
Pwnd
Quoting Walter
Firstly..... Prepare for Cooling, not Warming
By Dr. Tim Ball Friday, October 5, 2007
By Dr. Tim Ball and Tom Harris
The world is cooling. Global temperatures have declined since 1998 and a growing number of climate experts expect this trend to continue until at least 2030. This, happening while carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions continue to rise, is in complete contradiction to the theory of human-induced (anthropogenic) global warming (AGW). The CBC and other die-hard AGW proponents respond by publicizing selected glacial melts and the impact of dramatic but improbable sea level rises, the only warming issues that seem to grab public attention.
“Climate change campaigners are frightened that, if the lid is lifted off the Pandora’s Box of modern day climate science, the vast uncertainties and contradictions in the field will become apparent and public support for multi-billion dollar climate change schemes will quickly die.”Canadian politicians simply follow along, parroting scientifically unjustified AGW rhetoric while lamenting that “climate change is real!” They either don’t know, or hope the public don’t know, that climate changes all the time no matter what we do.
For most of the world’s plants and animals, humanity included, cooling is a far greater threat than warming. This is especially true for Canada where energy usage, and consequently pollution levels, will rise as temperatures drop. More importantly, if we prepare for warming and it cools, Canada’s food supply is seriously at risk since we are already at the northern limit to agriculture.
Even a small amount of cooling would necessitate increased genetic engineering of crops and animals to sustain ourselves and further cooling still would end much of today’s farming in Canada.
Yet, if we prepare for cooling and it warms, we simply adopt farming practices used to the south of us. It is the case in most parts of the world that adaptation to warming is far easier than adapting to cooling. Canada’s situation is just that much worse due to our latitude.
Despite this very real threat of continued cooling, our leaders still press for developed nations to dramatically curb CO2 emissions to counter possible warming. That the forces driving this backwards policy have little to do with protecting the environment was revealed last week at the UN high level climate summit in New York City. Developed nations were chastised for their emissions record in the opening speech by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon while he had no criticism for developing countries that are responsible for most of the recent growth in worldwide emissions. What is now needed, Ban Ki-moon recommended, is “enhanced leadership by the industrialized countries on emission reductions.” Developing nations are merely to be given “incentives… to act, but without sacrificing economic growth”, he said. China’s foreign minister clearly agreed and advised the forum, “Developed countries should meet their emission reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol,...and continue to take the lead in reducing emissions after 2012.”
But Canada and other developed nations accepted severe targets in 1997 with the understanding that developing countries would follow after the protocol expires in 2012. Now, this is highly unlikely. The next round of UN negotiations starting in December in Bali, Indonesia will undoubtedly formalize new emission restrictions only for the one fifth of the world’s population who live in the developed world. Is it any wonder Osama Bin Laden promotes a UN climate process that threatens to cripple the West, but no one else?
The UN’s approach to climate hasn’t really been about science or ‘saving the planet’ since their Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988. Its goals were firmly positioned in the political and emotional arena at the Rio Conference in 1992. Canadian politicians assume the public overwhelming accepts the IPCC’s AGW claims even though polls show this is increasingly not the case. For example, a March 2006 Ipsos Reid poll revealed that 39% of Canadians believe recent climate change to be natural.
Nevertheless, global warming remains a massive, taxpayer-funded ‘industry’ in Canada. Most of the money goes to institutes, policy centers and government departments that effectively block proper scientific investigation. Scientists who study the impact of hypothetical warming are given significant support even though their research is based on the faulty assumption that AGW is proven. In a frightening circular argument their research is then listed as ‘proof’ of the hypothesis. Dissenting science is also excluded from government hearings, the most recent being the Commons committee hearings into the Kyoto Implementation Bill and the Clean Air Act where only AGW-supporting scientists were permitted to testify.
In the late 1980s, the Mulroney government ignored scientists’ advice that fishing quotas should be drastically cut and so implemented policies that led to the depletion of the cod stock with the resultant loss of 40,000 jobs in Newfoundland’s fishing industry. Will today’s Conservative government ignore scientists again and implement unfounded policies that lead to the destruction of Canadian agriculture?
In 2006, sixty-one climate experts asked Prime Minister Harper to order open, unbiased climate science hearings, something that has never happened in Canada. Like Jean Chretien and Paul Martin, Harper ignored their request. He must no longer. It is time to finally lift the lid off the Pandora’s Box of modern day climate science and let the public hear what scientists are really concluding about this complex and immature discipline. With billions of taxpayer dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs at stake, not to mention the future of our food supply, there is no other ethical choice.
By Dr. Tim Ball Friday, October 5, 2007
By Dr. Tim Ball and Tom Harris
The world is cooling. Global temperatures have declined since 1998 and a growing number of climate experts expect this trend to continue until at least 2030. This, happening while carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions continue to rise, is in complete contradiction to the theory of human-induced (anthropogenic) global warming (AGW). The CBC and other die-hard AGW proponents respond by publicizing selected glacial melts and the impact of dramatic but improbable sea level rises, the only warming issues that seem to grab public attention.
“Climate change campaigners are frightened that, if the lid is lifted off the Pandora’s Box of modern day climate science, the vast uncertainties and contradictions in the field will become apparent and public support for multi-billion dollar climate change schemes will quickly die.”Canadian politicians simply follow along, parroting scientifically unjustified AGW rhetoric while lamenting that “climate change is real!” They either don’t know, or hope the public don’t know, that climate changes all the time no matter what we do.
For most of the world’s plants and animals, humanity included, cooling is a far greater threat than warming. This is especially true for Canada where energy usage, and consequently pollution levels, will rise as temperatures drop. More importantly, if we prepare for warming and it cools, Canada’s food supply is seriously at risk since we are already at the northern limit to agriculture.
Even a small amount of cooling would necessitate increased genetic engineering of crops and animals to sustain ourselves and further cooling still would end much of today’s farming in Canada.
Yet, if we prepare for cooling and it warms, we simply adopt farming practices used to the south of us. It is the case in most parts of the world that adaptation to warming is far easier than adapting to cooling. Canada’s situation is just that much worse due to our latitude.
Despite this very real threat of continued cooling, our leaders still press for developed nations to dramatically curb CO2 emissions to counter possible warming. That the forces driving this backwards policy have little to do with protecting the environment was revealed last week at the UN high level climate summit in New York City. Developed nations were chastised for their emissions record in the opening speech by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon while he had no criticism for developing countries that are responsible for most of the recent growth in worldwide emissions. What is now needed, Ban Ki-moon recommended, is “enhanced leadership by the industrialized countries on emission reductions.” Developing nations are merely to be given “incentives… to act, but without sacrificing economic growth”, he said. China’s foreign minister clearly agreed and advised the forum, “Developed countries should meet their emission reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol,...and continue to take the lead in reducing emissions after 2012.”
But Canada and other developed nations accepted severe targets in 1997 with the understanding that developing countries would follow after the protocol expires in 2012. Now, this is highly unlikely. The next round of UN negotiations starting in December in Bali, Indonesia will undoubtedly formalize new emission restrictions only for the one fifth of the world’s population who live in the developed world. Is it any wonder Osama Bin Laden promotes a UN climate process that threatens to cripple the West, but no one else?
The UN’s approach to climate hasn’t really been about science or ‘saving the planet’ since their Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988. Its goals were firmly positioned in the political and emotional arena at the Rio Conference in 1992. Canadian politicians assume the public overwhelming accepts the IPCC’s AGW claims even though polls show this is increasingly not the case. For example, a March 2006 Ipsos Reid poll revealed that 39% of Canadians believe recent climate change to be natural.
Nevertheless, global warming remains a massive, taxpayer-funded ‘industry’ in Canada. Most of the money goes to institutes, policy centers and government departments that effectively block proper scientific investigation. Scientists who study the impact of hypothetical warming are given significant support even though their research is based on the faulty assumption that AGW is proven. In a frightening circular argument their research is then listed as ‘proof’ of the hypothesis. Dissenting science is also excluded from government hearings, the most recent being the Commons committee hearings into the Kyoto Implementation Bill and the Clean Air Act where only AGW-supporting scientists were permitted to testify.
In the late 1980s, the Mulroney government ignored scientists’ advice that fishing quotas should be drastically cut and so implemented policies that led to the depletion of the cod stock with the resultant loss of 40,000 jobs in Newfoundland’s fishing industry. Will today’s Conservative government ignore scientists again and implement unfounded policies that lead to the destruction of Canadian agriculture?
In 2006, sixty-one climate experts asked Prime Minister Harper to order open, unbiased climate science hearings, something that has never happened in Canada. Like Jean Chretien and Paul Martin, Harper ignored their request. He must no longer. It is time to finally lift the lid off the Pandora’s Box of modern day climate science and let the public hear what scientists are really concluding about this complex and immature discipline. With billions of taxpayer dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs at stake, not to mention the future of our food supply, there is no other ethical choice.
At the time, 1998 was a record high year in both the CRU and the NASA GISS analyses. In fact, it blew away the previous record by .2 degrees C. (That previous record went all the way back to 1997, by the way!)
According to NASA, it was elevated far above the trend line because 1998 was the year of the strongest El Nino of the century. Choosing that year as a starting point is a classic cherry pick and demonstrates why it is necessary to remove chaotic year-to year-variability (aka: weather) by smoothing out the data. Looking at CRU's graph below, you can see the result of that smoothing in black.
Clearly 1998 is an anomaly and the trend has not reversed. (Even the apparent leveling at the end is not the real smoothing. The smoothed trend in 2005 depends on all of its surrounding years, including a few years still in the future.) By the way, choosing the CRU analysis is also a cherry pick -- NASA has 2005 breaking the 1998 record, though by very little.
Now, this is an excusable mistake for average folks who do not need the rigors of statistical analysis in their day jobs. But any scientist in pretty much any field knows that you cannot extract meaningful information about trends in noisy data from single-year end points. It's hard to hear a scientist make this argument and still believe they speak with integrity in this debate -- seems more like an abuse of the trust placed in them as scientists. Bob Carter is just such a voice, and was the first to trot out this argument in an article in the Daily Telegraph. Since then it has echoed far and wide and been used by Richard Lindzen as well as a host of skeptic websites.
Interestingly, Bob Carter seems to know what he is doing. He tries to pre-empt objections in his article by insinuating that any choice of starting point (say, 197
will just be a cherry pick with the opposite motive! But cherry picking is about choosing data for the sole purpose of supporting a pre-conceived conclusion. It is not the simple act of choosing at all. One must choose some starting point. In the case of his example year, 1978, it's often chosen simply because it is the first year that satellite records of tropospheric temperatures were available.So what choices are there? What are the reasons for those choices? What conclusions we can draw from them?
- As mentioned above, you could choose to examine the last 30 years -- that is when both surface and tropospheric readings have been available. We have experienced warming of approximately .2 degrees C/decade during this time. It would take a couple of decades trending down before we could say the recent warming ended in 1998.
- You could choose 1970 in the NASA GISS analysis -- the start of the late 20th century warming, and as such a significant feature of the temperature record. The surface temperature over this period shows .6 degrees C warming.
- You could choose 1965 in the CRU analysis -- when the recent warming started in their record. It shows around .5 degrees C warming of the smoothed trend line.
- You could choose 1880 in the NASA record -- it shows .8 degrees C warming.
- You could choose 1855 in the CRU record -- it shows .8 degrees C warming. As with the trend above, we can not say it is over without many decades more data indicating cooling.
- You could choose to look at the last 500 years in the bore hole record analysis -- that is its entire length. It puts today about 1 degree C above the first three centuries of that record. In that kind of analysis, today's record will be hidden from view for many decades.
- You could choose to look at the last 1,000 years, because that is as far back as the dendrochronology studies reliably go. Then the conclusion is:
Although each of the temperature reconstructions are different (due to differing calibration methods and data used), they all show some similar patterns of temperature change over the last several centuries. Most striking is the fact that each record reveals that the 20th century is the warmest of the entire record, and that warming was most dramatic after 1920.
- You could choose to look at the entire period of time since the end of the last ice age, around 10,000 years ago. Then the conclusion is that GHG warming has reversed a long and stable period of slight downward trend, and we are now at a global temperature not experienced in the history of human civilization -- the entire Holocene. It will be many centuries until such a long view of today's climate is available. The situation is a bit more urgent than that!
That about covers any period of time relevant to today's society. "It has stopped warming" is only supported by selecting a single year out of context and using a seven-year window to look at multi-decadal trends in climate. That's a classic cherry pick.
Secondly.....
Ball and the oil industry
Ball is listed as a "consultant" of a Calgary-based global warming skeptic organization called the "Friends of Science" (FOS). In a January 28, 2007 article in the Toronto Star, the President of the FOS admitted that about one-third of the funding for the FOS is provided by the oil industry. In an August, '06 Globe and Mail feature, the FOS was exposed as being funded in part by the oil and gas sector and hiding the fact that they were. According to the Globe and Mail, the oil industry money was funnelled through the Calgary Foundation charity, to the University of Calgary and then put into an education trust for the FOS.
Ball inflates credentials
Ball and organizations he is affiliated with have repeatedly made the claim that he is the "first Canadian PhD in climatology." Even further, Ball once claimed he was "one of the first climatology PhD's in the world." As many people have pointed out, there have been many PhD's in the field prior to Ball.
Ball and the NRSP
Ball is listed as an "Executive" for a Canadian group called the "Natural Resource Stewardship Project," (NRSP) a lobby organization that refuses to disclose it's funding sources. The NRSP is led by executive director Tom Harris and Dr. Tim Ball. An Oct. 16, 2006 CanWest Global news article on who funds the NRSP, it states that "a confidentiality agreement doesn't allow him [Tom Harris] to say whether energy companies are funding his group."
DeSmog recently uncovered information that two of the three Directors on the board of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project are senior executives of the High Park Advocacy Group, a Toronto based lobby firm that specializes in “energy, environment and ethics.”
Ball's research history
Ball retired from the University of Winnipeg in 1996 and a search of 22,000 academic journals shows that, over the course of his career, Ball has published 4 pieces of original research in a peer-reviewed journal on the subject of climate change Ball has not published any new research in the last 11 years.
Ball sues researcher and Calgary Herald newspaper
On Sept. 1, Ball, launched a libel suit against Dr. Dan Johnson, a current Professor of Environmental Science at the University of Lethbridge and a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Grassland Ecosystems. Here are the original Statements of Claim and Defence.
......should be a interesting case and will further expose how Ball is just a hired hand for the energy sector.
Pwnd
Council Member
Posts: 1,788
January 11th, 2008, 12:27 PM
Quoting YoungJoonKim
The graph shows there is much more ice than is usual in the southern hemishpere.
So..what's that graph suggesting specifically?
Anomaly of the ice in the South pole?
Anomaly of the ice in the South pole?
Council Member
Posts: 1,788
January 11th, 2008, 12:28 PM
Quoting jimshort19
Canadian agriculture would benefit from higher temperatures.
Walter, "Will today’s Conservative government ignore scientists again and implement unfounded policies that lead to the destruction of Canadian agriculture?"
Hawkings former plumber
Posts: 10,165
Videos: 3
Location: RR1 Distopia 666 Discordia Drive Apt 911
Videos: 3
Location: RR1 Distopia 666 Discordia Drive Apt 911
January 11th, 2008, 12:37 PM
Won't we need a pipeline to Antartica for water Walter because we'll need more to take advantage of the warmer weather.
Won't we need a pipeline to Antartica for water Walter because we'll need more to take advantage of the warmer weather.
Council Member
Posts: 1,788
January 11th, 2008, 01:55 PM
Quoting darkbeaver
We have lots of water.
Won't we need a pipeline to Antartica for water Walter because we'll need more to take advantage of the warmer weather.
