Inportant Chaos Theory Result on Climate Change

I am particularly pleased with this particular item. As I have posted, the data that we could look at was giving exactly this result but over a more recent range and obviously with less reliability.

Now the synchronized chaos theory net has been thrown over a full century and has been found to nicely match the record. This is fantastic news. We now have a predictive tool for predicting general climate direction for years at a time. Just as we can predict sunspot behavior within narrow parameters, we can now predict climate shifts as well. This will also allow us to refine the conjectured linkage between solar variation and climate variation.

This obviously allows a complete reappraisal of the CO2 linkage theory. If it survives at all, it must be in a sharply reduced form since the magnitude of the forcing was measured against what appears to be a natural climate shift and that is now a provable distortion.

It will be nice to know for sure when long term droughts will occur, so that we can act accordingly to preserve soil moisture well ahead of the actual conditions. That is how important that this nifty bit of modeling is and how important it will become.

Once this is properly integrated into the debate on global warming, scientific support for IPCC dogma will trend to zero, since no scientists will face down a working theory that is nicely and flawlessly explaining the historical data.

UW-Milwaukee Study Could Realign Climate Change Theory
Scientists Claim Earth Is Undergoing Natural Climate Shift

POSTED: 3:18 pm CDT March 15, 2009
UPDATED: 10:37 pm CDT March 15, 2009

http://www.wisn.com/weather/18935841/detail.html

MILWAUKEE -- The bitter cold and record snowfalls from two wicked winters are causing people to ask if the global climate is truly changing.

The climate is known to be variable and, in recent years, more scientific thought and research has been focused on the global temperature and how humanity might be influencing it.

However, a new study by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee could turn the climate change world upside down.

Scientists at the university used a math application known as synchronized chaos and applied it to climate data taken over the past 100 years.

"Imagine that you have four synchronized swimmers and they are not holding hands and they do their program and everything is fine; now, if they begin to hold hands and hold hands tightly, most likely a slight error will destroy the synchronization. Well, we applied the same analogy to climate," researcher Dr. Anastasios Tsonis said.

Scientists said that the air and ocean systems of the earth are now showing signs of synchronizing with each other.

Eventually, the systems begin to couple and the synchronous state is destroyed, leading to a climate shift.

"In climate, when this happens, the climate state changes. You go from a cooling regime to a warming regime or a warming regime to a cooling regime. This way we were able to explain all the fluctuations in the global temperature trend in the past century," Tsonis said. "The research team has found the warming trend of the past 30 years has stopped and in fact global temperatures have leveled off since 2001."

The most recent climate shift probably occurred at about the year 2000.

Now the question is how has warming slowed and how much influence does human activity have?

"But if we don't understand what is natural, I don't think we can say much about what the humans are doing. So our interest is to understand -- first the natural variability of climate -- and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural," Tsonis said.

Tsonis said he thinks the current trend of steady or even cooling earth temps may last a couple of decades or until the next climate shift occurs.

Copyright 2009 by WISN.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed

Sea Ice Underestimated

I grabbed this out of Newsmax, and it is more a report on bad luck than anything else. I do not bother to track it that closely I had noticed that the reports made little sense in view of apparent conditions and just ignored them anyway. That just shows that my own confidence in the data is low and that I know it is all subject to correction. This is fine, because the important numbers are final seasonal calculations. This year we should have a substantial sea ice recovery over the past two years.

Our winter was clearly cold and long lasting. The new sea ice is maxed out and will take longer to destroy. I also suspect that spring is coming to the Arctic in its traditional time slot.

As I have been posting, this emphatically ends the 1990 – 2007 Northern Hemispheric warming cycle and returns us to weather comparable to the seventies and the eighties. The remaining open question is whether we are facing further cooling. History says we are, and the ongoing lack of sunspots is not a comfort, because that suggests that we may lose a little bit each year until it finally kicks back in.

In the meantime the global warming fanatics will have their work cut out for themselves as this so far modest cooling cycle asserts itself.

All we need now is a volcano to do its thing and give us a wrecked growing season. It has happened and it will happen again.

If we have learned anything though, it is that a number of factors are really impacting the final climatic output. They include sunspots (reflecting solar output), macroscopic decadal climate shifts, and small doses of little else that folks get excited about.

Those Macroscopic Decadal Shifts are very important because they are the mechanism by which surplus heat is shifted from the equator to the poles for final disposition. The size and duration of these events are such as to make efforts to fine tune the effect of CO2 if any as utterly meaningless.

The effect is reduced to the impact of a wind driven cross current on the tide.

The shifts that are apparent include the Pacific decadal Shift and the forty year hurricane cycle.

Arctic Sea Ice Underestimated Due to Sensor Glitch

www.newsmax.com

Climate change alarmists are quick to point to diminishing Arctic sea ice as an indicator of global warming. But a faulty sensor led scientists to underestimate the extent of the ice — by an area larger than California.

The error began in early January and persisted until mid-February, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado, which releases estimates of Arctic sea ice.

The problem was caused by the malfunction of a satellite sensor used for daily updates on the extent of Arctic sea ice.

The NSIDC explained on its Web site: “On February 16, 2009, as e-mails came in from puzzled readers, it became clear that there was a significant problem — sea-ice-covered regions were showing up as open ocean . . .

“Upon further investigation, we found that data quality had begun to degrade over the month preceding the catastrophic failure.

“As a result, our processes underestimated total sea ice extent for the affected period. Based on comparisons with sea ice extent derived from the NASA Earth Observing System Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer sensor, this underestimation grew from a negligible amount in early January to about 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles) by mid-February.”

The area of California is about 163,700 square miles.

The NSIDC uses Department of Defense satellites to obtain its Arctic sea ice data, rather than more accurate National Aeronautics and Space Administration equipment, Bloomberg.com reported.

The Arctic ice cap retreated to its smallest extent on record in 2007, then posted its second-lowest annual minimum at the end of last year’s melt season, and the NSIDC said the recent error does not change its view that the ice is retreating.

California Drought Breaks

You would think that by now, that our promoters of the sky is falling school of global warming debate would have learned to keep their heads down and to pack their enthusiasm with a surfeit of weasel words.

As my readers know, the twenty year warming system or climate trend that had plateaued for ten years, sharply reversed course last winter after blowing itself out in the Arctic during the summer of 2007. I know of no other way of describing the sequence of events.

Our northern climate is back to normal and possibly going below normal as we speak. What took twenty years of warming to establish disappeared in an eye blink. I am disappointed that I will not get to do a summer cruise through the Northwest Passage in a couple of years.

What bothers me is that the supporting evidence for sustained global warming disappeared eighteen months ago and the community has kept its mouth shut. Three years ago I pointed out that the sea ice decline was ready to accelerate. When it did I stated that the collapse would be largely complete by 2012 provided conditions remained the same. Yet when I saw a real temperature drop reported I retreated. That is how we are supposed to have the evidence interpreted.

Children, it has remained colder than normal and we can be sure that a major rebuild of the sea ice pack has taken place. Again we have silence and at best the rehashing of two year old news.

This all coincides with the retreat of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and that suggests that we have seen the last of global warming for this generation. If I were a climatologist with my reputation hung out to dry, I would be anticipating a return to colder wetter weather in most regions and a complete end of any indication of global warming anywhere while perhaps waiting for additional confirmation. I would not keep silent.

I will go further than that. The silence of the specialists has actually done the profession damage in terms of their credibility. You must move your interpretation to follow the data, unless your method is clearly proven to be faulty. Their silence now suggests that they are tongue tied.

I have been relying on simple principles of physics to come to grips with the data and it has not let me down by keeping me stuck holding a failed position. Perhaps our scientists have vacated their senses in favor of the magic black box of computer simulation. Perhaps they should take up computer science to clarify the limitations of their models.

The point that I am making today, is that like this article, more and more commentators are calling the bluff.

California Weather Exposes Fiction of Global Warming

Saturday, February 14, 2009 6:04 PM
By: Lowell Ponte

The Golden State could become a desert wasteland, with no more winter salad greens from its parched Central Valley or wines from its withered Napa-Sonoma vineyards, before this century ends unless America takes drastic steps to slow global warming, warned U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

“We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California,” Chu told The Los Angeles Times, adding, “I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going.”

Cities such as Los Angeles and San Diego could become sandstorm-blasted ghost towns, Chu seemed to be saying.

January had been unusually dry, the start of a third dry year in a row for California. But soon after Chu's interview, rain began falling. Rainstorm after rainstorm – an average of one every two days – rolled across and drenched much of the state. By Feb. 10, water-short San Diego had surged to 2 inches above its normal-to-date rainfall, and southland mountain ski lodges opened quickly.

This rain pattern continues, with huge storms expected to thicken the Northern Sierra snowpack that supplies much of California's water when it melts. The snowpack was only 61 percent of its usual thickness when Chu voiced concern about a drought.

The Chu Effect

“It's the Gore Effect,” says a laughing James Taylor, editor of the Heartland Institute think tank journal Environment & Climate News. “Almost every time global warming doomsayer Al Gore speaks or his movie is shown, unusual cold or blizzards happen. And now we have the Chu Effect. He warns of global warming-caused drought in California, and the heavens reply with almost nonstop rains. Maybe somebody up there is trying to tell us something.”

With little or no planetary warming since 1998, alarmists and climate opportunists point increasingly to brief regional droughts as second-hand evidence of global warming.

“It's amazing how many big-mouth global warming alarmists get media attention who were never trained as climatologists,” Patrick Michaels, a research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, tells Newsmax.

Chu is the latest example. He is a brilliant physicist who shared a 1997 Nobel Prize for his research into how to manipulate atoms with lasers. He has been director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor of physics and molecular and cellular biology at the University of California Berkeley. But like most global warming doomsayers, Chu has no degree in atmospheric sciences, meteorology, or climatology.

Politicizing Science

Like many scientists eager to influence national policy, Chu became an outspoken activist in fields far from his expertise. He joined the Copenhagen Climate Council, a private collaboration between science and business to promote a 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in the Danish capital — and, it acknowledges, to use “emotional storytelling” about global warming.

Giving emotion more credence than concrete evidence worries other officials.

“I am hopeful Secretary Chu will take note of the real-world data, new studies, and the growing chorus of international scientists that question his climate claims,” says Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee. “Computer model predictions of the year 2100 are simply not evidence of a looming climate catastrophe.”

Among Chu's fellow council members preaching politicized science are Thomas Lovejoy, president of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and Environment; doomsaying eccentric scientist and founder of Gaia theory James Lovelock; idealistic airline magnate and spaceflight privatizer Sir Richard Branson; and Copenhagen Climate Council President radical climate activist, author of “The Weather Changers;” and paleontologist Tim Flannery.

A few years ago, Chu was one of six Nobel laureate scientists (none climatologists) who posed sitting against a huge tree on the UC-Berkeley campus for a Vanity Fair photograph to show their concern about global warming.

To the consternation of some extreme leftists, Chu played a role in establishing the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) at UC-Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley Lab, and the University of Illinois — a far-ranging $500 million project researching alternative fuels funded by BP, formerly British Petroleum, a multinational corporation.

EBI investigates ways to use grasses instead of corn to make biofuel ethanol more efficiently with less environmental and economic impact.
Chu Dislikes Nuclear Power, Coal

Chu has been reluctant to embrace nuclear power, even though it emits no greenhouse gases, out of concerns with its waste and proliferation safety. He also finds problems with clean coal technologies, even though America's huge reserves make it “the Saudi Arabia of coal” and offer a clear path to energy independence.

“Coal is my worst nightmare,” says Chu, who describes the typical coal plant's radioactive fly-ash pollution as giving off 100 times more radiation than a nuclear plant.

As an adviser, Chu may have influenced candidate Barack Obama's Jan. 17, 2008, statement to the San Francisco Chronicle that he planned pollution taxes that would “bankrupt” anyone who tried to build a coal-powered plant.

And Chu is an early signatory to Project Steve, which advocates the teaching of Darwinian evolution. Its name may have been chosen to mock Bible-believing proponents of Intelligent Design and traditional marriage by evoking their slogan “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”

Will the West Run Dry?

“Is there more drought in America? Yes, but it has nothing to do with climate change,” University of Delaware and Delaware State Climatologist David Legates tells Newsmax.

“Averaged over wet and dry years, most places are getting roughly the same amount of precipitation they did in past decades,” Legates says. “Some recent regional dry spells appear to be caused by a Pacific Ocean cyclic phenomenon called La Niña. But because more people want and need water, we have demand-side 'drought.' ”

And Cato Institute environmental fellow Patrick Michaels tells Newsmax: “If anything, the 20th century was a bit wetter than average, and the Pacific Southwest continues to get slightly wetter.

“The latest research predicts that more global warming would make California drier in summer, when little or no rain falls anyway, but wetter in winter,” says Michaels, co-author of the 2009 book “Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know.”

“Surely humans could adapt to that, store increased winter precipitation, develop drought-resistant crops, import water from H2O-rich Canada, or desalinate sea water along California's 800 mile coastline on the Pacific Ocean,” he says.

“This doomsayer idea that Californians would be helpless and do nothing innovative to protect their cities and crops from drought is ridiculous and an insult to the human mind and spirit,” Michaels says.

“The Obama administration is top-loaded with global warming extremists,” Michaels tells Newsmax, “and we're all going to pay a price for that.”

Man-Made Water Shortage

California once supported only a few thousand Native Americans but today sustains more than

36 million people because people built dams to store and aqueducts to redistribute water.

San Diego, for example, gets 60 percent of its water from the Rocky Mountains, where this season's snowpack is heavier than average, via the Colorado River.

Los Angeles gets most of its water from Northern California. L.A.'s biggest threat of water shortage comes not from drought but from Federal District Court Judge Oliver Wanger.

On Sept. 1, 2007, this judge put strict limits on the pumping of water each December to June from the San Joaquin-Sacramento River delta to protect a 3-inch-long endangered fish, the Delta Smelt. This ruling costs Southern California up to 30 percent of what used to be its California Aqueduct water each year. (President George H.W. Bush appointed Wanger a federal judge in 1991.)

Therefore, the global warming alarmists are strangely correct. Man causes much of the water shortage in large areas of California — and that man is a federal judge.

Cold Snap

I cannot believe that anyone has failed to notice that winter is kicking our butts this year. The surprise is to learn that the Arctic cold snap in the northern reaches has exceeded anything in northern Saskatchewan since record keeping began 116 years ago. Mother Nature is now mocking the true believers in global warming.

Any who have read my earliest posts know that I have never thought that the linkage of global temperatures to rising CO2 was a safe research strategy because historical evidence indicated we were likely dealing with normal variation and that such a strategy would surely inflict a damaging reversal. This is a rout and the true believers are becoming very quiet.

This unfortunately does nothing to promote responsible management of CO2 emissions.

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has reversed and will likely be gone for decades while we wait for sunspots to pick up again. It was fun while it lasted.

The real surprise was just now fast this reversal was upon us. It took twenty years to modestly improve weather conditions in the north and a mere year or so for all that to blow away. We certainly have gained a far better understanding of the factors that affect our climate and know better what to watch. Just as we came to understand the impact of El Nino and La Nina, we surely now understand the impact of the PDO a lot better and can include it properly in our models.

If the variation of solar energy is sufficient enough to be a primary climate driver, then the Pacific Ocean is the natural transfer mechanism. It is not chaotic and it represents fifty percent of the world’s surface. It also absorbs energy very nicely. Thus it is reasonable in a simple minded way to imagine a surplus of heat expanding the warm surface waters of the Pacific into the northern edge of the Pacific basin which is certainly what happened.

Maybe our salmon fisheries will now vigorously rebound with a minimal support effort.

In the meantime, these folks are experiencing cold weather that is simply dangerous as these reports show. In this country there are times that car failure is a swift and potentially fatal disaster if you are not prepared.

Cold streak sets new record

City experiences 24 consecutive days of -25 C or lower

Rod Nickel, The StarPhoenix

Published: Tuesday, January 06, 2009

How's this for cold comfort? Saskatoon's deep freeze is likely the longest streak of low temperatures below -25 C that has numbed this city since record-keeping began in 1892.

The 24-day streak started cruelly Dec. 13 after relatively mild temperatures and continued at least through Monday, said David Phillips, Environment Canada's senior climatologist.

"That's the thing that's brutal," Phillips said from Toronto, where he was enjoying a temperature of -4.

"We can all handle a few (cold) days. It's the long haul that wears you down.

"It's really a shocker, the duration of the cold."

Phillips said he couldn't find a longer cold snap in Saskatoon's recorded weather history during a look through the records Monday. Even during the infamous January of 1950, when temperatures hit -46 and -45 (not counting any wind chill), the cold streak of -25 or lower lasted "only" 21 days.

The first two mild weeks of December kept the month from being Saskatoon's coldest ever. It still averaged -20.6, the sixth-coldest December on record and the most frigid since 1983.

Prince Albert was slightly colder in December, with an average temperature of -21.4, while Regina registered -18. Neither of those burgs have suffered a -25 streak approaching Saskatoon's, Phillips said.
The normal average temperature for Saskatoon in December is -14.3C.

The historic streak could end today. Environment Canada was forecasting a low of -23 for today, before another drop Wednesday.

There's no good news on the horizon.

January is expected to be colder than its normal mean temperature of -17, said Environment Canada meteorologist Bob Cormier. The three-month period of January through March is also expected to be colder than normal, he said.

The frigid temperatures and the bad timing of the New Year's Eve snowstorm has left city snow crews well behind schedule.

As of Monday, snowplows still hadn't touched almost one-third of the priority streets, which range from arteries such as Circle Drive and Eighth Street to bus routes and minor collector streets. The major arteries have been cleared once, but may need a second pass, said Gaston Gourdeau, manager of the city's public works branch.

Ninety per cent of bus routes are cleared, but many minor collector streets still haven't seen a snowplow.
"We're looking forward to warmer temperatures," Gourdeau said. "It's been tough for everybody."

The New Year's Eve storm was a double-whammy for snowplow operators.

Many city staff were on holidays. Hydraulic parts of heavy equipment respond more slowly, like everything else, in the cold, forcing crews to get less done than they normally would.

Gourdeau predicts snow crews will be in some neighbourhoods clearing out trouble spots by the end of the week.

He said he decided against implementing a street parking ban to speed up snow clearing for two reasons.
The city hasn't had the staff to guarantee cleanup within 72 hours until this week.

In frigid weather, it's also difficult to ask residents to move cars off the street to spots where plug-ins may be unavailable, he said.

rnickel@sp.canwest.com

Extreme Alaska cold grounds planes, disables cars

JUNEAU, Alaska – Ted Johnson planned on using a set of logs to a build a cabin in Alaska's interior. Instead he'll burn some of them to stay warm.

Extreme temperatures — in Johnson's case about 60 below zero — call for extreme measures in a statewide cold snap so frigid that temperatures have grounded planes, disabled cars, frozen water pipes and even canceled several championship cross country ski races.

Alaskans are accustomed to subzero temperatures but the prolonged conditions have folks wondering what's going on with winter less than a month old.

National Weather Service meteorologist Andy Brown said high pressure over much of central Alaska has been keeping other weather patterns from moving through. New conditions get pushed north or south while the affected area faces daily extremes.

"When it first started almost two weeks ago, it wasn't anything abnormal," Brown said. "About once or twice every year, we get a good cold snap. But, in this case, you can call this an extreme event. This is rare. It doesn't happen every year."

Temperatures sit well below zero in the state's various regions, often without a wisp of wind pushing down the mercury further.

Johnson lives in Stevens Village, where residents have endured close to two weeks of temperatures pushing 60 below zero.

The cold has kept planes grounded, Johnson said. Food and fuel aren't coming in and they're starting to run low in the village, about 90 miles northwest of Fairbanks.

Johnson, whose home has no heater or running water, said he ventures outside only to get more logs for burning and to fetch water from a community facility. He's been saving the wood to build a cabin as a second home, but that will have to wait a few years now because the heat takes precedence.

"I've never seen it this cold for this long," he said. "I remember it 70 below one time, but not for a week and a half."

In Anchorage, Alaska's largest city, residents are used to lows of about 10-degree temperatures in January — not 19 below zero, which is what folks awoke to Wednesday morning.

Temperatures finally settled to about 10 below at midday, but that was cold enough to cancel races in the U.S. Cross Country Ski Championships.

Skiers won't compete unless it's warmer than 4 below zero, but the numbers have ranged between 10 below and 15 below.

That has led to four days of canceled or postponed competition with organizers hoping to get a set of races under way on Thursday, the event's final day.

Meanwhile, in Juneau, the state's capital is enjoying balmy weather by comparison with lows in the single digits.

Harold Ambler on Global Warming

This is an excellent article that brings much of what is known out there up to date. New information is the breakdown of climate over the past two thousand years into five to six hundred periods of warm and cold climate. I do not know how real that breakdown is, but if accurate or truly justified in any way, then we surely have another four centuries of warm and pleasant weather. That is the good news. The bad news is that it will not last forever and we better use it to reforest the Sahara and other major deserts to restore Bronze Age conditions.

I do suspect however, that this apparent cyclical pattern is way too fuzzy and coincidental in reality. We simply do not have the comfort in our proxies yet, or to be more accurate, we have not spent enough on data gathering yet to be way more comfortable. Detailed wood ring analysis of every bog throughout Europe and pollen collection could provide an annual climate map for the past several thousands of years. That would be convincing. And how about the bogs in the boreal forests of Russia and Canada?

I do not think for a second that the true believers did anything more than impose their unwanted enthusiasm on a convenient apparent trend line. When I started this blog, I stated specifically that on balance the apparent trend line was within the expected range of variability and signified nothing else. I also stated that the CO2 problem was legitimate but for other reasons entirely.

For the last year, the trend line is in rapid decline and possible still has a way to go before it once again plateaus, although I am hoping we are already there. Perhaps it will not bottom until another politician cranks out the upcoming ice age enthusiasm. It can certainly get a lot colder and I would not be surprised if it did, but it cannot turn into an ice age. As I have pointed out in other posts, we are in the Holocene climate regime which has a variance of at most two degrees because the conditions for a northern ice age were altered permanently.

I am not going to reargue that in this post today, but the conforming data is extensive and ignored. It is possibly just too painful for folks to accept.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harold-ambler/mr-gore-apology-accepted_b_154982.html

Harold Ambler

Posted January 3, 2009 11:36 AM (EST)

Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted

Read More: Al Gore, Al Gore Global Warming, Alternative Energy, Barack Obama, Climate, Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Flat-Earthers, Global Temperature, Global Warming, Green News

You are probably wondering whether President-elect Obama owes the world an apology for his actions regarding global warming. The answer is, not yet. There is one person, however, who does. You have probably guessed his name: Al Gore.

Mr. Gore has stated, regarding climate change, that "the science is in." Well, he is absolutely right about that, except for one tiny thing. It is the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind.

What is wrong with the statement? A brief list:

1. First, the expression "climate change" itself is a redundancy, and contains a lie. Climate has always changed, and always will. There has been no stable period of climate during the Holocene, our own climatic era, which began with the end of the last ice age 12,000 years ago. During the Holocene there have been numerous sub-periods with dramatically varied climate, such as the warm Holocene Optimum (7,000 B.C. to 3,000 B.C., during which humanity began to flourish, and advance technologically), the warm Roman Optimum (200 B.C. to 400 A.D., a time of abundant crops that promoted the empire), the cold Dark Ages (400 A.D. to 900 A.D., during which the Nile River froze, major cities were abandoned, the Roman Empire fell apart, and pestilence and famine were widespread), the Medieval Warm Period (900 A.D. to 1300 A.D., during which agriculture flourished, wealth increased, and dozens of lavish examples of Gothic architecture were created), the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850, during much of which plague, crop failures, witch burnings, food riots -- and even revolutions, including the French Revolution -- were the rule of thumb), followed by our own time of relative warmth (1850 to present, during which population has increased, technology and medical advances have been astonishing, and agriculture has flourished).

So, no one needs to say the words "climate" and "change" in the same breath -- it is assumed, by anyone with any level of knowledge, that climate changes. That is the redundancy to which I alluded. The lie is the suggestion that climate has ever been stable. Mr. Gore has used a famously inaccurate graph, known as the "Mann Hockey Stick," created by the scientist Michael Mann, showing that the modern rise in temperatures is unprecedented, and that the dramatic changes in climate just described did not take place. They did. One last thought on the expression "climate change": It is a retreat from the earlier expression used by alarmists, "manmade global warming," which was more easily debunked. There are people in Mr. Gore's camp who now use instances of cold temperatures to prove the existence of "climate change," which is absurd, obscene, even.

2. Mr. Gore has gone so far to discourage debate on climate as to refer to those who question his simplistic view of the atmosphere as "flat-Earthers." This, too, is right on target, except for one tiny detail. It is exactly the opposite of the truth.Indeed, it is Mr. Gore and his brethren who are flat-Earthers. Mr. Gore states, ad nauseum, that carbon dioxide rules climate in frightening and unpredictable, and new, ways. When he shows the hockey stick graph of temperature and plots it against reconstructed C02 levels in An Inconvenient Truth, he says that the two clearly have an obvious correlation. "Their relationship is actually very complicated," he says, "but there is one relationship that is far more powerful than all the others, and it is this: When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer." The word "complicated" here is among the most significant Mr. Gore has uttered on the subject of climate and is, at best, a deliberate act of obfuscation. Why? Because it turns out that there is an 800-year lag between temperature and carbon dioxide, unlike the sense conveyed by Mr. Gore's graph. You are probably wondering by now -- and if you are not, you should be -- which rises first, carbon dioxide or temperature. The answer? Temperature. In every case, the ice-core data shows that temperature rises precede rises in carbon dioxide by, on average, 800 years. In fact, the relationship is not "complicated." When the ocean-atmosphere system warms, the oceans discharge vast quantities of carbon dioxide in a process known as de-gassing. For this reason, warm and cold years show up on the Mauna Loa C02 measurements even in the short term. For instance, the post-Pinatubo-eruption year of 1993 shows the lowest C02 increase since measurements have been kept. When did the highest C02 increase take place? During the super El Niño year of 1998.

3. What the alarmists now state is that past episodes of warming were not caused by C02 but amplified by it, which is debatable, for many reasons, but, more important, is a far cry from the version of events sold to the public by Mr. Gore.

Meanwhile, the theory that carbon dioxide "drives" climate in any meaningful way is simply wrong and, again, evidence of a "flat-Earth" mentality. Carbon dioxide cannot absorb an unlimited amount of infrared radiation. Why not? Because it only absorbs heat along limited bandwidths, and is already absorbing just about everything it can. That is why plotted on a graph, C02's ability to capture heat follows a logarithmic curve. We are already very near the maximum absorption level. Further, the IPCC Fourth Assessment, like all the ones before it, is based on computer models that presume a positive feedback of atmospheric warming via increased water vapor.

4. This mechanism has never been shown to exist. Indeed, increased temperature leads to increased evaporation of the oceans, which leads to increased cloud cover (one cooling effect) and increased precipitation (a bigger cooling effect). Within certain bounds, in other words, the ocean-atmosphere system has a very effective self-regulating tendency. By the way, water vapor is far more prevalent, and relevant, in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide -- a trace gas. Water vapor's absorption spectrum also overlays that of carbon dioxide. They cannot both absorb the same energy! The relative might of water vapor and relative weakness of carbon dioxide is exemplified by the extraordinary cooling experienced each night in desert regions, where water in the atmosphere is nearly non-existent.

If not carbon dioxide, what does "drive" climate? I am glad you are wondering about that. In the short term, it is ocean cycles, principally the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the "super cycle" of which cooling La Niñas and warming El Niños are parts. Having been in its warm phase, in which El Niños predominate, for the 30 years ending in late 2006, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation switched to its cool phase, in which La Niñas predominate. Since that time, already, a number of interesting things have taken place. One La Niña lowered temperatures around the globe for about half of the year just ended, and another La Niña shows evidence of beginning in the equatorial Pacific waters. During the last twelve months, many interesting cold-weather events happened to occur: record snow in the European Alps, China, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, the Rockies, the upper Midwest, Las Vegas, Houston, and New Orleans. There was also, for the first time in at least 100 years, snow in Baghdad.

Concurrent with the switchover of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation to its cool phase the Sun has entered a period of deep slumber. The number of sunspots for 2008 was the second lowest of any year since 1901. That matters less because of fluctuations in the amount of heat generated by the massive star in our near proximity (although there are some fluctuations that may have some measurable effect on global temperatures) and more because of a process best described by the Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark in his complex, but elegant, work The Chilling Stars. In the book, the modern Galileo, for he is nothing less, establishes that cosmic rays from deep space seed clouds over Earth's oceans. Regulating the number of cosmic rays reaching Earth's atmosphere is the solar wind; when it is strong, we get fewer cosmic rays.

When it is weak, we get more. As NASA has corroborated, the number of cosmic rays passing through our atmosphere is at the maximum level since measurements have been taken, and show no signs of diminishing. The result: the seeding of what some have taken to calling "Svensmark clouds," low dense clouds, principally over the oceans, that reflect sunlight back to space before it can have its warming effect on whatever is below.

Svensmark has proven, in the minds of most who have given his work a full hearing, that it is this very process that produced the episodes of cooling (and, inversely, warming) of our own era and past eras. The clearest instance of the process, by far, is that of the Maunder Minimum, which refers to a period from 1650 to 1700, during which the Sun had not a single spot on its face. Temperatures around the globe plummeted, with quite adverse effects: crop failures (remember the witch burnings in Europe and Massachusetts?), famine, and societal stress.

Many solar physicists anticipate that the slumbering Sun of early 2009 is likely to continue for at least two solar cycles, or about the next 25 years. Whether the Grand Solar Minimum, if it comes to pass, is as serious as the Maunder Minimum is not knowable, at present. Major solar minima (and maxima, such as the one during the second half of the 20th century) have also been shown to correlate with significant volcanic eruptions. These are likely the result of solar magnetic flux affecting geomagnetic flux, which affects the distribution of magma in Earth's molten iron core and under its thin mantle. So, let us say, just for the sake of argument, that such an eruption takes place over the course of the next two decades. Like all major eruptions, this one will have a temporary cooling effect on global temperatures, perhaps a large one. The larger the eruption, the greater the effect. History shows that periods of cold are far more stressful to humanity than periods of warm. Would the eruption and consequent cooling be a climate-modifier that exists outside of nature, somehow? Who is the "flat-Earther" now?

What about heat escaping from volcanic vents in the ocean floor? What about the destruction of warming, upper-atmosphere ozone by cosmic rays? I could go on, but space is short. Again, who is the "flat-Earther" here?

The ocean-atmosphere system is not a simple one that can be "ruled" by a trace atmospheric gas. It is a complex, chaotic system, largely modulated by solar effects (both direct and indirect), as shown by the Little Ice Age.

To be told, as I have been, by Mr. Gore, again and again, that carbon dioxide is a grave threat to humankind is not just annoying, by the way, although it is that! To re-tool our economies in an effort to suppress carbon dioxide and its imaginary effect on climate, when other, graver problems exist is, simply put, wrong. Particulate pollution, such as that causing the Asian brown cloud, is a real problem. Two billion people on Earth living without electricity, in darkened huts and hovels polluted by charcoal smoke, is a real problem.

So, let us indeed start a Manhattan Project-like mission to create alternative sources of energy. And, in the meantime, let us neither cripple our own economy by mislabeling carbon dioxide a pollutant nor discourage development in the Third World, where suffering continues unabated, day after day.

Again, Mr. Gore, I accept your apology.

And, Mr. Obama, though I voted for you for a thousand times a thousand reasons, I hope never to need one from you.

P.S. One of the last, desperate canards proposed by climate alarmists is that of the polar ice caps. Look at the "terrible," "unprecedented" melting in the Arctic in the summer of 2007, they say. Well, the ice in the Arctic basin has always melted and refrozen, and always will. Any researcher who wants to find a single molecule of ice that has been there longer than 30 years is going to have a hard job, because the ice has always been melted from above (by the midnight Sun of summer) and below (by relatively warm ocean currents, possibly amplified by volcanic venting) -- and on the sides, again by warm currents. Scientists in the alarmist camp have taken to referring to "old ice," but, again, this is a misrepresentation of what takes place in the Arctic.

More to the point, 2007 happened also to be the time of maximum historic sea ice in Antarctica. (There are many credible sources of this information, such as the following website maintained by the University of Illinois-Urbana: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg). Why, I ask, has Mr. Gore not chosen to mention the record growth of sea ice around Antarctica? If the record melting in the Arctic is significant, then the record sea ice growth around Antarctica is, too, I say. If one is insignificant, then the other one is, too.

For failing to mention the 2007 Antarctic maximum sea ice record a single time, I also accept your apology, Mr. Gore. By the way, your contention that the Arctic basin will be "ice free" in summer within five years (which you said last month in Germany), is one of the most demonstrably false comments you have dared to make. Thank you for that!

Classic Winter not News

I find it rather frustrating that overt media bias is preventing the major climate story to not get properly told. When last checked global temperatures had dropped 0.7 degrees and we can assume that we are experiencing an additional drop to be expressed in the next set of numbers.

This was calculated from the same sources that gave us rising temperatures for a decade and flat temperatures for the past decade. That total gain was perhaps the same size. So what is everyone waiting for? It takes two decades to warm the northern hemisphere 0.7 degrees and perhaps six months to reverse it totally. That is not a big story. Are they waiting for confirmation? Try looking outside your window.

What we know of climate change history has always said the same thing. The warming is slow and gradual while the chilling is abrupt. This looks like a chill out and it is likely good for another year or more. The next set of numbers should show even more decline.

The mechanism for all this is becoming a lot clearer. Incoming heat is unevenly distributed between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres through oscillations focused on the Pacific which is half the planet. When surplus heat is pumped into the north across the equator the PDO shifts it north and if necessary discharges the surplus into the Arctic as occurred in 2007. When that occurs the elastic band snaps back and we catch a surge of cold weather. Sound familiar?

The problem of course is that the effects of CO2 are impossible to separate out from this type of decadal cycle. We certainly do not have the centuries of accurate Arctic weather information to compare. Maybe we should be excited because we melted some sea ice this time around. Or more likely, we should be disappointed and get serious about planting trees in the Sahara.

I am trying to say that this snap back of global temperatures is a hell of a story and absolutely no one is picking up on it. What are they thinking? Their only evidence just strode out the door. Isn’t anyone brave enough to stand up and simply say that the party is over?

I want to see a credible climate scientist stand up and say this reversal is a temporary move and that the fundamentals are good for a swift return to global warming. I used to sell stock in gold mines too. Of course they are all hiding, depending on how bravely they supported the CO2 theory.

I suspect that the rest of the crowd, who are too lazy to keep a close eye on the data will keep talking global warming while we continue to have a good old fashioned multi blizzard winter well into March. How do you like it so far?

I know that this is just one winter and that last winter was the actual beginning of a cold cycle, but this really feels like we are back in the fifties for foul weather. I was just a kid then, but that sort of foul abated into the sixties and had almost disappeared running into the nineties and most recently. It was apt that they measured sea ice thickness in 1959 and likely caught the maxima. 2007 gave us a pretty good minimum.

Seth Borensen attracts Derision

This is only one of several articles pounding Seth Borenstein on his recent article drumming global warming. He obviously had not noticed that the winds are now blowing the other way, nor sensed that a number of science writers were obviously looking for an excuse to unload.

As far as new information is concerned, there is nothing here that has not been well covered before on this blog, if not over covered.

What is interesting is the newly found courage of the scientific community to yell rubbish when it has been so consistently dished out by the pro warming crowd.

It is now a full year since Mother Nature ended the very warm 2007 summer with a very cold winter in a complete reversal of the preceding pattern. That led me to immediately reevaluate assumptions and to focus on the movement of heat which presaged the sudden cooling.

It is very much as if the heat buildup caused by a decade of solar stimulation was simply discharged into the Arctic sending us right back to where we started. This winter is confirming this new trend and may see a further drop in global temperatures before solar stimulation begins again.

Because the northern ice age will never appear again, the climate is operating in the Holocene with a temperature variation spread of perhaps two degrees. Right now we are back to the middle of this range.

The question is what it takes to drop that extra degree. It may in fact be a protracted solar minimum as happened during the little ice age.

A major volcanic event can also do it for a year or so unless it is a very big event in the right position like Hekla in 1159 BCE.

Right now folks, the proponents of solar variation are winning the argument hands down, while the proponents of CO2 as a causative agent are looking foolish. You can be quite sure that during the time in which global temperatures stayed flat and then tumbled, that the human CO2 contribution to the atmosphere likely doubled (or so close that it does not matter). The fact is that Kyoto accomplished very little except to expose the honest guys to ridicule.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/12/15/scientists-denounce-ap-hysterical-global-warming-article

Scientists Denounce AP For Hysterical Global Warming Article

By Noel Sheppard

December 15, 2008 - 10:50 ET

Scientists from around the world are denouncing an Associated Press article hysterically claiming that global warming is "a ticking time bomb" about to explode, and that we're "running out of time" to do anything about it.

As reported by NewsBusters, Seth Borenstein, the AP's "national science writer," published a piece Sunday entitled "Obama Left With Little Time to Curb Global Warming."

Scientists from all over the world have responded to share their view of this alarmist propaganda:

How can this guy call himself a "science reporter?"

He is perhaps the worst propagandist in all the media, and that's stating something.

In his latest screed, he screams: "global warming is accelerating"

How then does he explain the fact that the mean global temperature (as measured by satellite) is the same as it was in 1980?

How can global warming be "accelerating" when the last two years have seen dramatic cooling? Is this guy totally removed from all reality?????

He completely ignores any evidence contrary to his personal beliefs, and twists everything to meet his preconceived notions.

How can anyone so ignorant be a reporter for AP? Seriously? -- David Deming, University of Oklahoma

“Since Clinton's inauguration, summer Arctic sea ice has lost the equivalent of Alaska, California and Texas. The 10 hottest years on record have occurred since Clinton's second inauguration. Global warming is accelerating.”

Rubbish! Global warming is not “accelerating”: global warming has stopped. There has been no statistically significant rise in (mean global temperature: MGT) since 1995 and MGT has fallen since 1998.

The Earth has been warming from the Little Ice Age (LIA) for 300 years so, of course, the warmest years happened recently. But that warming from the LIA peaked in the El Nino year of 1998. MGT has been near but below that peak for the last 10 years.

Arctic ice advances and recedes over decades. 2007 saw a minimum in Arctic ice cover in the short period that it has been monitored using satellites. But 2008 saw the most rapid growth in Arctic ice cover in that same period and Arctic ice cover is now back to the average it has had in the period. Also, 95% of polar ice is in the Antarctic and Antarctic ice is increasing.

Nobody can know if the recent halt to global warming is temporary, permanent or the start of a new warming or cooling phase. But it is certain that anybody who proclaims that “Global warming is accelerating” is a liar, a fool, or both. -- Richard S. Courtney, a UN IPCC expert reviewer and a UK-based climate and atmospheric science consultant.

The Great Global Warming Hoax appears to be a collaborative effort between the world’s [sic] incompetent scientists and the worlds [sic] scientifically illiterate journalists. Science Illiterates like Borenstein are the Chicken Littles of the 21st Century, spreading climate change poppycock like bread crumbs in the forest. The crumbs, hopefully, will lead them to a paycheck at the end of the week from their similarly science-illiterate employers. Well, the lower-I.Q. portion of the population has to eat, too....<> -- James A. Peden, atmospheric physicist formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh.

Borenstein, time is definitely running out – for you to save any possible credibility unless you find a new drama to act out on the public because your current one is going down the drain faster than a so-so sitcom in September.

The world hasn’t “warmed” in a dozen years and over the past year not even Jim Hansen and His Magic Bag of Tricks can make it appear we’re all getting “warmer”.

Once the Public gets wind of the true data that shows their intuition has been right all along – not even the tabloids will pick you up for an occasional column to entertain them. -- Chemical Scientist Dr. Brian G. Valentine of the U.S. Department of Energy and Professor at University of Maryland, has studied computational fluid dynamics and modeling of complex systems

"Hottest on record" means little for a 5 billion yr old planet, when the 'record" is only 100 years or less. Please avoid parsing the data, to support you [sic] indefensible conclusions and to ignored [sic] the data which don't support your conclusions. Selecting data for a desired outcome is as old as drying labbing [sic] chemistry labs. This seems to be SOP for today as environmental journalists and just as silly (and detectable---you are outta my chem. class). Your hypothesis is easily falsified, and has been falsified.

Lots of Temp stations show cooling for decades while CO2 rises, ergo falsified. Ergo there are more powerful unspecified climate forces involved. CO2 is likely uninvolved or if so a minor player. Next problem please. -- Michael R. Fox, Ph.D., is a retired nuclear scientist and university chemistry professor.

He is the science and energy writer/reporter for the HawaiiReport.com

One of the biggest problems in all this is that the major media are so busy bashing President Bush for any and every thing that they have lost sight of what he realized 5+ years ago: none of the CO2-related strategies will work unless China and India join the community. Bush's initiative to form an "Asia-Pacific" consortium of nations was the very first realistic step in the direction of a coherent approach to climate-change mitigation.

What is going on currently is that A) India has dismissed the whole thing, saying "we will never be higher in "per capita" energy use than the western countries; B) the Europeans have figured out that it will cost them big bucks and are fleeing from their Kyoto promises; C) the bandwagon in the USA is still going forward in high gear, and in about a year they'll realize they're way out in front with no followers. -- Dr. Thomas P. Sheahen, an MIT educated physicist, author of the book "An Introduction to High-Temperature Superconductivity," and writer of the popular newspaper column "Ask the Everyday Scientist"

One further critical aspect of global warming alarmists that is so fiercely debated by all is the "climate forcing" property of carbon dioxide. Allow me to state categorically that, despite any and all arguments to the contrary, including the most elaborately well-balanced mathematical formulae by the best mathematicians in the world, the climate forcing ability of carbon dioxide equals exactly zero. Not 4 degrees C, not 1 degree C, not even 0.0001 degree C. Just plain zero. Even the much heralded graphic indicating that the first 20ppmv of carbon dioxide makes a difference to the air temperature that is much greater than any subsequent increase in concentration is a useless bit of info based on laboratory tests that have absolutely no relation to the open atmosphere. There exists not one single laboratory test on climate that can be extrapolated to mimic the open atmosphere and that includes the most advanced computers that in any case treat the earth as a flat disc with a 24 hour haze of solar radiation - about as far removed from reality as is possible. -- Hans Schreuder, Ph.D. Mathematical Statistician, Rocky Mountain Research Station

In responce to what is happening to global temperatures. The key is using the right statistical technique to plot the "average" temperature. I do not have the qualifications to establish what the correct technique is. I just understand such things as non-linear least square regression analysis. There are five organizations which report global temperature anomalies on a monthly basis. If you use simple non-linear analysis, and include 2008 data, then all five data sets show that world temperatures seem to have passed through a shallow maximum. My guess is that when we can look back with 20/20 hindsight, we will be able to see that this maximum occurred around 2005. So it is understandable that recent years are amongst the warmest on record. This fact is no argument that temperatures are still rising. What counts is the slope of the average temperature/time graph at the present time. For a couple of years, this slope has been negative; global temperatures have been falling. We do not know, of course, if this will continue. But so far as I can see, none of the IPCC and other pro-AGW organizations predicted falling temperatures. However, before you attempt to use an argument like this, you need someone who really knows statistical analysis techniques. -- Physicist F. James Cripwell, a former scientist with UK’s Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge who worked under the leading expert in infra red spectroscopy -- Sir Gordon Sutherland – and worked with the Operations Research for the Canadian Defense Research Board

What does it take to ignore 10 years of global cooling, sharply declining temperatures the last couple of years, record setting lack of sun spots, flipping of the PDO into its cool mode, failure of computer models to predict real climate, predictable warming and cooling climates for the past 500 years, and ................
The answer is really quite simple--just follow the money! -- Don J. Easterbrook, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Geology, Western Washington University, U.S.

—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.

Early Onset of Winter Sea Ice

I am sure that few have noticed this but the Arctic sea ice has appeared a bit ahead of schedule. This conforms to the information that the globe itself dropped most of a degree this past year. A much thicker layer of first year ice fits and it may approach what is considered normal from historical records.

Right now the folks supporting the pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) model are making the global warming enthusiasts into purveyors of nonsense. Sorry al Gore.

Another tidbit that I picked up on recently was that the era of the Little Ice age was unprecedented during the Holocene. I presume this is meant in terms of its duration, since volcanic popped up and provided cool offs and equally swift recoveries. The little ice age was sustained over decades. I am not sure to believe that as a valid observation and will now try to get a handle on its’ validity. Help is welcome since an unprecedented event in the Holocene begs explanation.

We are now having our second cold year and this one is looking like it is heading toward the lower third of observed temperatures. IPCC and Jim Hansen is actually looking a little rattled over this one.

As I stated when I began this blog, I believed that monitoring changing climatic conditions is a worthy endeavor, and that involving ourselves in the effort to sequester CO2 was simply good husbandry. I also stated that the linkage between these two phenomena was suspect and quite likely within the band of data noise and thus indeterminate. I thought that attempting to support linkage as a truth was simply going to become untenable as soon as the weather decided to change. It appears that is what has now happened.

Unless something surprising comes along, the only interpretation that can now be supported is a recovery of perennial sea ice in the Arctic. We came very close to a warmer Arctic, but not close enough.

An ice free summer Arctic is still a worthy objective but must surely wait for a human led restoration of the Bronze Age Sahara. That would collect and retain the extra heat that is necessary.

Don Easterbrook on Global Cooling

This is an excellent article presenting the evidence for the onset of global cooling. That it is an extrapolation of past cycles over a claimed period of several hundred years is unconvincing since our data is very spotty after we go a hundred and fifty years back. I would even assert it is spotty up to the beginning of the satellite age.

We comfortably know a few things as we go back in time and very little outside of major centers. I am very conscious of how local weather is in the face of minimal communication between observers.

Therefore I get nervous as we attempt to link various proxies together.

In the meantime the arguments for global cooling are quite solid compared to the IPCC projections which have been just plain wrong. They did not even get lucky. I swear that I could give them three to one odds for flipping coins and still win. Ten years of flat temperature change is a pretty good endorsement for the failure of a model claiming an uptrend.

We now have had a major down draft in the apparent temperature regime that must mean something if it is not a herald of many cold winters. Also the Alaska glaciers were net gainers of snow this past season. Thus we can expect the glaciers to advance shortly.

I am going to miss seeing an ice free Arctic it seems.

I must remark that the evidence is certainly mounting that the deep freeze is in the process of returning to the Arctic. It really has not actually hit the sea ice yet but it should deliver a sharp increase in thickness this winter if it has actually gotten colder. Again all we can do is wait and see.



Global Cooling is Here
Evidence for Predicting Global Cooling for the Next Three Decades

by Prof. Don J. Easterbrook

Global Research, November 2, 2008

Department of Geology, Western Washington University

Global Research Editor's note

The following article represents an alternative view and analysis of global climate change, which challenges the dominant Global Warming Consensus.

Global Research does not necessarily endorse the proposition of "Global Cooling", nor does it accept at face value the Consensus on Global Warming. Our purpose is to encourage a more balanced debate on the topic of global climate change.

INTRODUCTION

Despite no global warming in 10 years and recording setting cold in 2007-2008, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change (IPCC) and computer modelers who believe that CO2 is the cause of global warming still predict the Earth is in store for catastrophic warming in this century. IPCC computer models have predicted global warming of 1° F per decade and 5-6° C (10-11° F) by 2100 (Fig. 1), which would cause global catastrophe with ramifications for human life, natural habitat, energy and water resources, and food production. All of this is predicated on the assumption that global warming is caused by increasing atmospheric CO2 and that CO2 will continue to rise rapidly.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articlePictures/glcool1.jpg
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articlePictures/globalcool2.jpg


Figure 1. A. IPCC prediction of global warming early in the 21st century. B. IPCC prediction of global warming to 2100. (Sources: IPCC website)

However, records of past climate changes suggest an altogether different scenario for the 21st century. Rather than drastic global warming at a rate of 0.5 ° C (1° F) per decade, historic records of past natural cycles suggest global cooling for the first several decades of the 21st century to about 2030, followed by global warming from about 2030 to about 2060, and renewed global cooling from 2060 to 2090 (Easterbrook, D.J., 2005, 2006a, b, 2007, 2008a, b); Easterbrook and Kovanen, 2000, 2001). Climatic fluctuations over the past several hundred years suggest ~30 year climatic cycles of global warming and cooling, on a general rising trend from the Little Ice Age.

PREDICTIONS BASED ON PAST CLIMATE PATTERNS

Global climate changes have been far more intense (12 to 20 times as intense in some cases) than the global warming of the past century, and they took place in as little as 20–100 years. Global warming of the past century (0.8° C) is virtually insignificant when compared to the magnitude of at least 10 global climate changes in the past 15,000 years. None of these sudden global climate changes could possibly have been caused by human CO2 input to the atmosphere because they all took place long before anthropogenic CO2 emissions began. The cause of the ten earlier ‘natural’ climate changes was most likely the same as the cause of global warming from 1977 to 1998.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articlePictures/globalcool3.jpg

Figure 2. Climate changes in the past 17,000 years from the GISP2 Greenland ice core. Red = warming, blue = cooling. (Modified from Cuffy and Clow, 1997)

Climatic fluctuations over the past several hundred years suggest ~30 year climatic cycles of global warming and cooling (Figure 3) on a generally rising trend from the Little Ice Age about 500 years ago.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articlePictures/globalcool4.jpg

Figure 3. Alternating warm and cool cycles since 1470 AD. Blue = cool, red = warm. Based on oxygen isotope ratios from the GISP2 Greenland ice core.

Relationships between glacial fluctuations, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and global climate change.

After several decades of studying alpine glacier fluctuations in the North Cascade Range, my research showed a distinct pattern of glacial advances and retreats (the Glacial Decadal Oscillation, GDO) that correlated well with climate records. In 1992, Mantua published the Pacific Decadal Oscillation curve showing warming and cooling of the Pacific Ocean that correlated remarkably well with glacial fluctuations. Both the GDA and the PDO matched global temperature records and were obviously related (Fig. 4). All but the latest 30 years of changes occurred prior to significant CO2 emissions so they were clearly unrelated to atmospheric CO2.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articlePictures/globalcool5.jpg

Figure 4. Correspondence of the GDO, PDO, and global temperature variations.

The significance of the correlation between the GDO, PDO, and global temperature is that once this connection has been made, climatic changes during the past century can be understood, and the pattern of glacial and climatic fluctuations over the past millennia can be reconstructed. These patterns can then be used to project climatic changes in the future. Using the pattern established for the past several hundred years, in 1998 I projected the temperature curve for the past century into the next century and came up with curve ‘A’ in Figure 5 as an approximation of what might be in store for the world if the pattern of past climate changes continued. Ironically, that prediction was made in the warmest year of the past three decades and at the acme of the 1977-1998 warm period. At that time, the projected curved indicated global cooling beginning about 2005 ± 3-5 years until about 2030, then renewed warming from about 2030 to about 2060 (unrelated to CO2—just continuation of the natural cycle), then another cool period from about 2060 to about 2090. This was admittedly an approximation, but it was radically different from the 1° F per decade warming called for by the IPCC. Because the prediction was so different from the IPCC prediction, time would obviously show which projection was ultimately correct.

Now a decade later, the global climate has not warmed 1° F as forecast by the IPCC but has cooled slightly until 2007-08 when global temperatures turned sharply downward. In 2008, NASA satellite imagery (Figure 6) confirmed that the Pacific Ocean had switched from the warm mode it had been in since 1977 to its cool mode, similar to that of the 1945-1977 global cooling period. The shift strongly suggests that the next several decades will be cooler, not warmer as predicted by the IPCC.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articlePictures/globalcool61.jp

Figure 5. Global temperature projection for the coming century, based on warming/cooling cycles of the past several centuries. ‘A’ projection based on assuming next cool phase will be similar to the 1945-1977 cool phase. ‘B’ projection based on assuming next cool phase will be similar to the 1880-1915 cool phase. The predicted warm cycle from 2030 to 2060 is based on projection of the 1977 to 1998 warm phase and the cooling phase from 2060 to 2090 is based on projection of the 1945 to 1977 cool cycle.

Implications of PDO, NAO, GDO, and sun spot cycles for global climate in coming decades

The IPCC prediction of global temperatures, 1° F warmer by 2011 and 2° F by 2038 (Fig. 1), stand little chance of being correct. NASA’s imagery showing that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has shifted to its cool phase is right on schedule as predicted by past climate and PDO changes (Easterbrook, 2001, 2006, 2007). The PDO typically lasts 25-30 years and assures North America of cool, wetter climates during its cool phases and warmer, drier climates during its warm phases. The establishment of the cool PDO, together with similar cooling of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), virtually assures several decades of global cooling and the end of the past 30-year warm phase. It also means that the IPCC predictions of catastrophic global warming this century were highly inaccurate.

The switch of PDO cool mode to warm mode in 1977 initiated several decades of global warming. The PDO has now switched from its warm mode (where it had been since 1977) into its cool mode. As shown on the graph above, each time this had happened in the past century, global temperature has followed. The upper map shows cool ocean temperatures in blue (note the North American west coast). The lower diagram shows how the PDO has switched back and forth from warm to cool modes in the past century, each time causing global temperature to follow. Comparisons of historic global climate warming and cooling over the past century with PDO and NAO oscillations, glacial fluctuations, and sun spot activity show strong correlations and provide a solid data base for future climate change projections.

The Pacific Ocean has a warm temperature mode and a cool temperature mode, and in the past century, has switched back forth between these two modes every 25-30 years (known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or PDO). In 1977 the Pacific abruptly shifted from its cool mode (where it had been since about 1945) into its warm mode, and this initiated global warming from 1977 to 1998. The correlation between the PDO and global climate is well established. The announcement by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) had shifted to its cool phase is right on schedule as predicted by past climate and PDO changes (Easterbrook, 2001, 2006, 2007). The PDO typically lasts 25-30 years and assures North America of cool, wetter climates during its cool phases and warmer, drier climates during its warm phases. The establishment of the cool PDO, together with similar cooling of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), virtually assures several decades of global cooling and the end of the past 30-year warm phase.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articlePictures/globalcool7.gif

Figure 6. Switch of PDO cool mode to warm mode in 1977 initiated several decades of global warming. The PDO has now switched from its warm mode (where it had been since 1977) into its cool mode. As shown on the graph above, each time this has happened in the past century, global temperature has followed. The upper map shows cool ocean temperatures in blue (note the North American west coast). The lower diagram shows how the PDO has switched back and forth from warm to cool modes in the past century, each time causing global temperature to follow. Projection of the past pattern (right end of graph) assures 30 yrs of global cooling

Comparisons of historic global climate warming and cooling over the past century with PDO and NAO oscillations, glacial fluctuations, and sun spot activity show strong correlations and provide a solid data base for future climate change projections. As shown by the historic pattern of GDOs and PDOs over the past century and by corresponding global warming and cooling, the pattern is part of ongoing warm/cool cycles that last 25-30 years. The global cooling phase from 1880 to 1910, characterized by advance of glaciers worldwide, was followed by a shift to the warm-phase PDO for 30 years, global warming and rapid glacier recession. The cool-phase PDO returned in ~1945 accompanied by global cooling and glacial advance for 30 years. Shift to the warm-phase PDO in 1977 initiated global warming and recession of glaciers that persisted until 1998. Recent establishment of the PDO cool phase appeared right on target and assuming that its effect will be similar to past history, global climates can be expected to cool over the next 25-30 years. The global warming of this century is exactly in phase with the normal climatic pattern of cyclic warming and cooling and we have now switched from a warm phase to a cool phase right at the predicted time (Fig. 5)

The ramifications of the global cooling cycle for the next 30 years are far reaching―e.g., failure of crops in critical agricultural areas (it’s already happening this year), increasing energy demands, transportation difficulties, and habitat change. All this during which global population will increase from six billion to about nine billion. The real danger in spending trillions of dollars trying to reduce atmospheric CO2 is that little will be left to deal with the very real problems engendered by global cooling.

CONCLUSIONS

Global warming (i.e, the warming since 1977) is over. The minute increase of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere (0.008%) was not the cause of the warming—it was a continuation of natural cycles that occurred over the past 500 years.

The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling, perhaps much deeper than the global cooling from about 1945 to 1977. Just how much cooler the global climate will be during this cool cycle is uncertain. Recent solar changes suggest that it could be fairly severe, perhaps more like the 1880 to 1915 cool cycle than the more moderate 1945-1977 cool cycle. A more drastic cooling, similar to that during the Dalton and Maunder minimums, could plunge the Earth into another Little Ice Age, but only time will tell if that is likely.

Don J. Easterbrook is Professor of Geology at Western Washington University. Bellingham, WA.

Roy Spencer on the Pacific Decadal Oscillation

This recently released paper is very compelling in that it is able to assign the observed temperature data to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). It should have always been a priority to establish the importance of this variable, simply because the Pacific represents a uniform surface covering half the globe. Anything happening there in the atmosphere must naturally be the most significant atmospheric effect and we have already had El Nino and La Nino to integrate into our models.

Suddenly, this work reveals that the Northern Hemispheric warming that we have experienced over the past two decades is linked directly to shifts in the Pacific that make convincing sense and could even be anticipated. This is the natural driver of normal climate variation which we certainly have not broken out of at all.

This paper is critical of the IPCC modeling and proves that it is rubbish through a well developed critique, including a challenge to show him wrong.

We are going from an unconvincing argument for CO2 forcing to a sound demonstration that its effect is minor. It is time for the enthusiasts to beat a retreat before Mother Nature shows up at the party and ruins it all. Of course we will then hear extensively from the sunspot crowd.

The evidence supported a decadal shifting of heat back and forth across the equator in one way or the other and that makes a great deal of sense because it gives the Earth a mechanism with which to keep the heat content of the globe in balance. Otherwise we need to rely on a centuries’ long cycle that readjusts the ocean currents. It is simply too slow.

I now feel that we are getting a real handle on the climatic levers and switches. Now if I could figure out which North Pacific volcano caused the Little Ice Age we would be almost home free.



Global Warming as a Natural Response to Cloud Changes Associated with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)

byRoy W. Spencer, PhD

Principal Research Scientist The University of Alabama in Huntsville (posted October 19, 2008; updated 10/20/08, 6:35 a.m.)

(what follows is a simplified version of a paper I am preparing for submission to Geophysical Research Letters)

Abstract

A simple climate model forced by satellite-observed changes in the Earth's radiative budget associated with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is shown to mimic the major features of global average temperature change during the 20th Century - including two-thirds of the warming trend. A mostly-natural source of global warming is also consistent with mounting observational evidence that the climate system is much less sensitive to carbon dioxide emissions than the IPCC's climate models simulate.

1. Introduction

For those who have followed my writings and publications in the last 18 months (e.g. Spencer et al., 2007), you know that we are finding satellite evidence that the climate system could be much less sensitive to greenhouse gas emissions than the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) climate models suggest.

To show that we are not the only researchers who have documented evidence contradicting the IPCC models, I made the following figure to contrast the IPCC-projected warming from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide with the warming that would result if the climate sensitivity is as low as implied by various kinds of observational evidence.

Fig. 1. Projected warming (assumed here to occur by 2100) from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from the IPCC climate models versus from various observational
indicators.

http://www.weatherquestions.com/PDO-and-20th-Century-warming-Fig01.jpg

The dashed line in Fig. 1 comes from our recent apples-to-apples comparison between satellite-based feedback estimates and IPCC model-diagnosed feedbacks, all computed from 5-year periods (Spencer and Braswell, 2008a). In that comparison, there were NO five year periods from ANY of the IPCC model simulations which produced a feedback parameter with as low a climate sensitivity as that found in the satellite data.

The discrepancy between the models and observations seen in Fig. 1 is stark. If the sensitivity of the climate system is as low as some of these observational results suggest, then the IPCC models are grossly in error, and we have little to fear from manmade global warming. [I am told that the 1.1 deg. C sensitivity of Schwartz (2007) has more recently been revised upward to 1.9 deg. C.]

But an insensitive climate system would ALSO mean that the warming we have seen in the last 100 years can not be explained by increasing CO2 alone. This is because the radiative forcing from the extra CO2 would simply be too weak to cause the ~0.7 deg. C warming between 1900 and 2000... there must be some natural warming process going on as well.

Here I present new evidence that most of the warming could actually be the result of a natural cycle in cloud cover forced by a well-known mode of natural climate variability: the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

2. A Simple Model of Natural Global Warming

As Joe D'Aleo and others have pointed out for years, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has experienced phase shifts that coincided with the major periods of warming and cooling in the 20th Century. As can be seen in the following figure, the pre-1940 warming coincided with the positive phase of the PDO; then, a slight cooling until the late 1970s coincided with a negative phase of the PDO; and finally, the warming since the 1970s has once again coincided with the positive phase of the PDO.


Fig. 2. Five-year running averages in (a) global-average surface temperature, and (b) the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) index during 1900-2000.

http://www.weatherquestions.com/PDO-and-20th-Century-warming-Fig02.jpg

Others have noted that the warming in the 1920s and 1930s led to media reports of decreasing sea ice cover, Arctic and Greenland temperatures just as warm as today, and the opening up of the Northwest Passage in 1939 and 1940.

Since this timing between the phase of the PDO and periods of warming and associated climate change seems like more than mere coincidence, I asked the rather obvious question: What if this known mode of natural climate variability (the PDO) caused a small fluctuation in global-average cloud cover?

Such a cloud change would cause the climate system to go through natural fluctuations in average temperature for extended periods of time. The IPCC simply assumes that this kind of natural cloud variability does not exist, and that the Earth stays in a perpetual state of radiative balance that has only been recently disrupted by mankind's greenhouse gas emissions. This is an assumption that many of us meteorologists find simplistic and dubious, at best.

I used a very simple energy balance climate model, previously suggested to us by Isaac Held and Piers Forster, to investigate this possibility. In this model I ran many thousands of combinations of assumed: (1) ocean depth (through which heat is mixed on multi-decadal to centennial time scales), (2) climate sensitivity, and (3) cloud cover variations directly proportional to the PDO index values.

In effect, I asked the model to show me what combinations of those model parameters yielded a temperature history approximately like that seen during 1900-2000. And here's an average of all of the simulations that came close to the observed temperature record:

Fig. 3. A simple energy balance model driven by cloud changes associated with the PDO can explain most of the major features of global-average temperature fluctuations during the 20th Century. The best model fits had assumed ocean mixing depths around 800 meters, and feedback parameters of around 3 Watts per square meter per degree C.

http://www.weatherquestions.com/PDO-and-20th-Century-warming-Fig03.jpg

The "PDO-only" (dashed) curve indeed mimics the main features of the behavior of global mean temperatures during the 20th Century -- including two-thirds of the warming trend. If I include transient CO2 forcing with the PDO-forced cloud changes (solid line labeled PDO+CO2), then the fit to observed temperatures is even closer. It is important to point out that, in this exercise, the PDO itself is not an index of temperature; it is an index of radiative forcing which drives the time rate of change of temperature. Now, the average PDO forcing that was required by the model for the two curves in Fig. 3 ranged from 1.7 to 2.0 Watts per square meter per PDO index value. In other words, for each unit of the PDO index, 1.7 to 2.0 Watts per square meter of extra heating was required during the positive phase of the PDO, and that much cooling during the negative phase of the PDO.

But what evidence do we have that any such cloud-induced changes in the Earth's radiative budget are actually associated with the PDO? I address that question in the next section

3. Satellite Evidence for Radiative Budget Changes Forced by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation

To see whether there is any observational evidence that the PDO has associated changes in global-average cloudiness, I used NASA Terra satellite measurements of reflected solar (shortwave, SW) and emitted infrared (longwave, LW) radiative fluxes over the global oceans from the CERES instrument during 2000-2005, and compared them to recent variations in the PDO index. The results can be seen in the following figure:

Fig. 4. Three-month running averages of (a) the PDO index during 2000-2005, and (b) corresponding CERES-measured anomalies in the global ocean average radiative budget, with and without the feedback component removed (see Fig. 5). The smooth curves are 2nd order polynomial fits to the data.

http://www.weatherquestions.com/PDO-and-20th-Century-warming-Fig04.jpg

But before a comparison to the PDO can be made, one must recognize that the total radiative flux measured by CERES is a combination of forcing AND feedback (e.g. Gregory et al., 2002; Forster and Gregory, 2006). So, we first must estimate and remove the feedback component to better isolate any radiative forcing potentially associated with the PDO.

As Spencer and Braswell (2008b) have shown with a simple model, the radiative feedback signature in globally-averaged radiative flux-versus-temperature data is always highly correlated, while the time-varying radiative forcing signature of internal climate fluctuations is uncorrelated because the forcing and temperature response are always 90 degrees out of phase. This allows some measure of identification and separation of the two signals.

The following figure shows what I call "feedback stripes" associated with intraseasonal fluctuations in the climate system. The corresponding feedback estimate (line slope) of 8.3 Watts per square meter per degree C was then used together with three-month anomalies in tropospheric temperature from AMSU channel 5 remove the estimated feedback signal from the radiative flux data to get the "forcing-only" curve in Fig. 4b.

Fig. 5. Three-month running averages of global oceanic CERES radiative flux changes versus tropospheric temperature changes (from AMSU channel 5, see Christy et al., 2003) for the time period in Fig. 4. The average feedback estimate (see sloped lines) was then used together with the AMSU5 data to estimate and remove the feedback component from the CERES radiative fluxes, leaving the radiative forcing shown in Fig. 4b.

http://www.weatherquestions.com/PDO-and-20th-Century-warming-Fig05.jpg

[NOTE: This feedback estimate is not claimed to necessarily represent long-term climate sensitivity (which in this case would be very low, 0.44 deg. C); it is instead the feedback occurring on intraseasonal and interannual time scales which is merely being removed to isolate the forcing signal. It should be remembered that, according to our current paradigm of climate variability, there can only be two sources of radiative variability: forcing and feedback. As shown by Spencer and Braswell (2008a, 2008b), the usual practice of fitting a regression line to all of the data in Fig. 5 would result in a regression slope biased toward zero (high sensitivity) because the presence of any time-varying internal radiative forcing -- which is always occurring -- would be mistakenly included as part of the feedback

When the feedback is removed, we see a good match in signal.] Fig. 4 between the low-frequency behavior of the PDO and the radiative forcing (which is presumably due to cloud fluctuations associated with the PDO). Second-order polynomials were fit to the time series in Fig. 4 and compared to each other to arrive at the PDO-scaling factor of 1.9 Watts per square meter per PDO index value.

It is significant that the observed scale factor (1.9) that converts the PDO index into units of heating or cooling is just what the model required (1.7 to 2.0) to best explain the temperature behavior during the 20th Century. Thus, these recent satellite measurements - even though they span less than 6 years -- support the Pacific Decadal Oscillation as a potential major player in global warming and climate change.

4. Discussion & Conclusions

The evidence continues to mount that the IPCC models are too sensitive, and therefore produce too much global warming. If climate sensitivity is indeed considerably less than the IPCC claims it to be, then increasing CO2 alone can not explain recent global warming. The evidence presented here suggests that most of that warming might well have been caused by cloud changes associated with a natural mode of climate variability: the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

The IPCC has simply assumed that mechanisms of climate change like that addressed here do not exist. But that assumption is quite arbitrary and, as shown here, very likely wrong. My use of only PDO-forced variations in the Earth's radiative energy budget to explain two-thirds of the global warming trend is no less biased than the IPCC's use of carbon dioxide to explain global warming without accounting for natural climate variability. If any IPCC scientists would like to dispute that claim, please e-mail me at roy.spencer (at) nsstc.uah.edu.

If the PDO has recently entered into a new, negative phase, then we can expect that global average temperatures, which haven't risen for at least seven years now, could actually start to fall in the coming years. The recovery of Arctic sea ice now underway might be an early sign that this is indeed happening.

I am posting this information in advance of publication because of its potential importance to pending EPA regulations or congressional legislation which assume that carbon dioxide is a major driver of climate change. Since the mainstream news media now refuse to report on peer-reviewed scientific articles which contradict the views of the IPCC, Al Gore, and James Hansen, I am forced to bypass them entirely.

We need to consider the very real possibility that carbon dioxide - which is necessary for life on Earth and of which there is precious little in the atmosphere - might well be like the innocent bystander who has been unjustly accused of a crime based upon little more than circumstantial evidence.

REFERENCESChristy, J. R., R. W. Spencer, W. B. Norris, W. D. Braswell, and D. E. Parker (2003), Error estimates of version 5.0 of MSU/AMSU bulk atmospheric temperatures, J. Atmos. Oceanic Technol., 20, 613- 629.

Douglass, D.H., and R. S. Knox, 2005. Climate forcing by volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo. Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, doi:10.1029/2004GL022119.

Forster, P. M., and J. M. Gregory (2006), The climate sensitivity and its components diagnosed from Earth Radiation Budget data, J. Climate, 19, 39-52.

Gregory, J.M., R.J. Stouffer, S.C.B. Raper, P.A. Stott, and N.A. Rayner (2002), An observationally based estimate of the climate sensitivity, J. Climate, 15, 3117-3121.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007), Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, report, 996 pp., Cambridge University Press, New York City.

Schwartz, S. E. (2007), Heat capacity, time constant, and sensitivity of the Earth's climate system. J. Geophys. Res., 112, doi:10.1029/2007JD008746.

Spencer, R.W., W. D. Braswell, J. R. Christy, and J. Hnilo (2007), Cloud and radiation budget changes associated with tropical intraseasonal oscillations, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L15707, doi:10.1029/2007GL029698.

Spencer, R.W., and W.D. Braswell (2008a), Satellite measurements reveal a climate system less sensitive than in models, Geophys. Res. Lett., submitted.

Spencer, R.W., and W.D. Braswell (2008b), Potential biases in cloud feedback diagnosis: A simple model demonstration, J. Climate, November 1.