NEW STUDY: "SOLAR ACTIVITY IS PRIMARY DRIVING FORCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE"

(Now in print at Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, Volume 230, 17 January 2006, Pages 155-164)

Temperature responses to quasi-100-yr solar variability during the past 6000 years based on ?18O of peat cellulose in Hongyuan, eastern Qinghai-Tibet plateau, China

By Hai Xu et al.

Abstract

During the past 6000 years, the temperature variation trend inferred from d18O of peat cellulose in a peat core from Hongyuan (eastern Qinghai-Tibet plateau, southwestern China) is similar to the atmospheric 14C concentration trend and the modeled solar output trend. The general trend of Hongyuan d18O during the past millennium also coincides well with the atmospheric 14C concentration trend, the 10Be concentration trend in an ice core from the South Pole, the reconstructed total solar irradiance trend, as well as the modeled solar output trend. In addition, temperature events also correspond well to solar perturbations during the past 6000 years. Therefore, the driving force of Holocene temperature variations should be properly ascribed to solar activity. The spectrum analysis further illustrates that quasi-100-yr fluctuation of solar activity was probably responsible for temperature variations in northeast Qinghai-Tibet plateau during the past 6000 years.

The above article was previously covered here on 29th August when it went "In press"




IGNORANT GREENIES STILL BEATING THE SAME OLD POPULATION DRUM

Paul Ehrlich was at it in the 60's -- to say nothing of Malthus in the 19th century. They never learn from the abject wrongness of their predictions

Topping today’s Science/Nature section at BBC News, “Population size ‘green priority’”, by Richard Black. The article focuses on the thoughts of Professor Chris Rapley, Director of the British Antarctic Survey, who contends that the “current global population of six billion is unsustainably high.” This is to say nothing of the growth rate and future generations.

Based on a column Rapley wrote for a new BBC feature, The Green Room, the article presents the view that “humankind is consuming the Earth’s resources at an unsustainably fast rate,” based on “a number of studies.”

The basis for Rapley’s concern, as you might expect, is carbon emissions, but he writes, “Although reducing human emissions to the atmosphere is undoubtedly of critical importance, as are any and all measures to reduce the human environmental ‘footprint’, the truth is that the contribution of each individual cannot be reduced to zero.”

He concludes, “Only the lack of the individual can bring it down to nothing.”

Rapley laments that there is a paucity of opportunities to discuss population growth, since it is not often discussed at global environmental summits. “Rare indeed are the opportunities for religious leaders, philosophers, moralists, policymakers, politicians and indeed the ”global public“ to debate the trajectory of the world’s human population in the context of its stress on the Earth system, and to decide what might be done,” he writes.

Rapley does seem to overlook the UN’s World Population Day, which is little more than a campaign for population controls. And the myth of humanity as a plague species has been fodder for London’s “The Human Zoo,” as well as happening to be the view of Agent Smith in the Matrix movies.

As we saw in a recent commentary by Acton research fellow Jay Richards, Rapley is certainly not alone in his concern. A letter to Richards about his book on intelligent design from a prominent scientist read in part: “Still, adding over seventy million new humans to the planet each year, the future looks pretty bleak to me. Surely, the Black Death was one of the best things that ever happened to Europe: elevating the worth of human labor, reducing environmental degradation, and, rather promptly, producing the Renaissance. From where I sit, Planet Earth could use another major human pandemic, and pronto!”

Perhaps some individuals have imbibed such a view, as birth rates in the developed world are not growing. A 2004 UN report showed that “because of its low and declining rate of population growth, the population of developed countries as a whole is expected to remain virtually unchanged between 2005 and 2050.” Most of the countries in the developed world which will account for the decline in birth rates belong to the EU. The US, on the other hand, is one of the eight nations that will ”account for half of the world’s projected population increase."

But part of the reason that Rapley’s concerns aren’t getting much attention beyond pop culture phenomena and some macabre colleagues is that the population explosion myth has been rather thoroughly debunked. The case of carbon emissions is simply the latest hook for population control advocates. For more on population and the environment, check out Acton’s policy section, which links to a number of helpful resources.

Source





Ice cores show warming 'natural'

Hundreds of thousands of years worth of climate records in ice cores show there is nothing unusual in a global warming trend over the past 25 years. Marine geophysicist Bob Carter, a professor at Queensland's James Cook University and leading climate change sceptic, said the effects of human activity would barely register in the long-term history of climate change. He told The Weekend Australian that ice cores from Antarctica "tell us clearly that in the context of the meteorological records of 100 years, it is not unusual to have a period of warming like the one we are in at the moment".

Dr Carter disputed the theory that human activity was making a current - natural - warm period hotter: "Atmospheric CO2 is not a primary forcing agent for temperature change." He argues that "any cumulative human signal is so far undetectable at a global level and, if present, is buried deeply in the noise of natural variation".

Fellow sceptic William Kininmonth, a former director of the Bureau of Meteorology's National Climate Centre, agreed. He wrote in a 2004 book, Climate Change: A Natural Hazard that there was "every reason to believe that the variabilities in global temperature and other climate characteristics experienced over the past century are part of the natural variability of the climate system and are not a consequence of recent anthropogenic activities".

But other leading scientists, who blame human activity for climate change, say the "denialists" are a one-to-99 minority. Will Steffen, director of the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies at the Australian National University, said: "There is no debate. The debate is over." The evidence that human activity had increased emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, adding to natural warming, was "overwhelming", he said...

More here






Technology, not Kyoto, seen as key

Reductions in greenhouse gas emissions three times greater than those in the Kyoto Protocol could result from next week's climate change talks, a federal minister has predicted. The Minister for Industry, Ian Macfarlane, said the six countries at the talks will be asked to expedite technologies that will allow them to continue using large amounts of energy while cutting greenhouse gas emissions. "While Kyoto puddles on, to put it nicely, the real reductions will come from technology," Mr Macfarlane said. "This is not a diplomatic love-in. It's a hard-edged business plan with targets and reporting duties." By cleaning up aluminium, coal and other energy-intensive industries, emissions could be cut globally by up to 3 per cent over the next five years, he said.

Under Kyoto, reductions are expected to be about 1 per cent in the same period. Ten companies have been invited to join the talks along with ministers from Australia, the US, Japan, India, China and South Korea, which have formed the Asia-Pacific Clean Development and Climate Partnership.

Mr Macfarlane suggested that non-binding targets could be used to measure how the use of new technologies was contributing to reducing emissions. But he shied away from saying that a specific timetable for the reductions - one of Australia's main problems with the Kyoto Protocol - would be used. "This meeting won't produce all the solutions but it will be a meaningful step," he said.

More here

***************************************

Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

*****************************************