Antarctic sea water shows 'no sign' of warming

SEA water under an East Antarctic ice shelf showed no sign of higher temperatures despite fears of a thaw linked to global warming that could bring higher world ocean levels, first tests showed yesterday. Sensors lowered through three holes drilled in the Fimbul Ice Shelf showed the sea water is still around freezing and not at higher temperatures widely blamed for the break-up of 10 shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula, the most northerly part of the frozen continent in West Antarctica.

"The water under the ice shelf is very close to the freezing point," Ole Anders Noest of the Norwegian Polar Institute wrote after drilling through the Fimbul, which is between 250m and 400m thick. "This situation seems to be stable, suggesting that the melting under the ice shelf does not increase," he wrote of the first drilling cores.

Antarctica holds enough water to raise world sea levels by 57m if it ever all melted, so even tiny changes are a risk for low-lying coasts or cities from Beijing to New York.

The Institute said the water under the Fimbul was about -2.05C. Salty water freezes at a slightly lower temperature than fresh water. And it was slightly icier than estimates in a regional model for Antarctica, head of the Norwegian Polar Institute's Center for Ice, Climate and Ecosystems, Nalan Koc, said. "The important thing is that we are now in a position to monitor the water beneath the ice shelf. "If there is a warming in future we can tell."

She said data collected could go into a new report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, due in 2013-14. The last IPCC report, in 2007, did not include computer models for sea temperature around the Fimbul Ice Shelf.

Experts have generally raised estimates for sea level rise - the United Nations spoke in late 2009 of a maximum 2m rise by 2100, up from 18-59cm estimated by the IPCC in 2007 that excluded any possible acceleration from Antarctica.

The break-up of ice shelves does not in itself contribute to raising sea levels since the ice is already floating. The risk is that pent-up glaciers on land will flow faster towards the ocean if the shelves are removed.

SOURCE






Could we be in for 30 years of global COOLING?

Britain's big freeze is the start of a worldwide trend towards colder weather that seriously challenges global warming theories, eminent scientists claimed yesterday. The world has entered a 'cold mode' which is likely to bring a global dip in temperatures which will last for 20 to 30 years, they say.

Summers and winters will all be cooler than in recent years, and the changes will mean that global warming will be 'paused' or even reversed, it was claimed. The predictions are based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. They are the work of respected climate scientists and not those routinely dismissed by environmentalists as 'global warming deniers'. Some experts believe these cycles - and not human pollution - can explain all the major changes in world temperatures in the 20th century. If true, the research challenges the science behind climate change theories, and calls into question the political measures to halt global warming.

According to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, the warming of the Earth since 1900 is due to natural oceanic cycles, and not man-made greenhouse gases. It occurred because the world was in a 'warm mode', and would have happened regardless of mankind's rising carbon dioxide production. And now oceanic cycles have switched to a 'cold mode', where data shows that the amount of Arctic summer sea ice has increased by more than a quarter since 2007.

The research has been carried out by eminent climate scientists, including Professor Mojib Latif. He is a leading member of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He and his colleagues predicted the cooling trend in a 2008 paper, and warned of it again at an IPCC conference in Geneva in September. Working at the prestigious Leibniz Institute in Kiel University in Germany, he has developed methods for measuring ocean temperatures 3,000ft under the surface, where the cooling and warming cycles start.

For Europe, the crucial factor is the temperature in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. He said such ocean cycles - known as multi-decadal oscillations or MDOs - could account for up to half of the rise in global warming in recent years. Professor Latif said: 'A significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th century was due to these cycles - as much as 50 per cent. 'They have now gone into reverse, so winters like this one will become much more likely. All this may well last two decades or longer. 'The extreme retreats that we have seen in glaciers and sea ice will come to a halt. For the time being, global warming has paused, and there may well be some cooling.'



Many meteorologists have blamed the current freeze on 'Arctic oscillation' - a weather pattern in which areas of high pressure have pushed the warming jetstream away from Britain. They have insisted this temporary change will have no effect on long-term warming patterns.

But another expert, Professor Anastasios Tsonis, head of the University of Wisconsin Atmospheric Sciences Group, said MDOs will continue to determine global temperatures. He said: 'They amount to massive rearrangements in the dominant patterns of the weather, and their shifts explain all the major changes in world temperatures during the 20th and 21st centuries. We have such a change now.'

SOURCE. A more comprehensive version of the above article here





Russian prediction: Earth on the Brink of an Ice Age

The earth is now on the brink of entering another Ice Age, according to a large and compelling body of evidence from within the field of climate science. Many sources of data which provide our knowledge base of long-term climate change indicate that the warm, twelve thousand year-long Holocene period will rather soon be coming to an end, and then the earth will return to Ice Age conditions for the next 100,000 years.

Ice cores, ocean sediment cores, the geologic record, and studies of ancient plant and animal populations all demonstrate a regular cyclic pattern of Ice Age glacial maximums which each last about 100,000 years, separated by intervening warm interglacials, each lasting about 12,000 years.

Most of the long-term climate data collected from various sources also shows a strong correlation with the three astronomical cycles which are together known as the Milankovich cycles. The three Milankovich cycles include the tilt of the earth, which varies over a 41,000 year period; the shape of the earth’s orbit, which changes over a period of 100,000 years; and the Precession of the Equinoxes, also known as the earth’s ‘wobble’, which gradually rotates the direction of the earth’s axis over a period of 26,000 years. According to the Milankovich theory of Ice Age causation, these three astronomical cycles, each of which effects the amount of solar radiation which reaches the earth, act together to produce the cycle of cold Ice Age maximums and warm interglacials.

Elements of the astronomical theory of Ice Age causation were first presented by the French mathematician Joseph Adhemar in 1842, it was developed further by the English prodigy Joseph Croll in 1875, and the theory was established in its present form by the Serbian mathematician Milutin Milankovich in the 1920s and 30s. In 1976 the prestigious journal “Science” published a landmark paper by John Imbrie, James Hays, and Nicholas Shackleton entitled “Variations in the Earth's orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages,” which described the correlation which the trio of scientist/authors had found between the climate data obtained from ocean sediment cores and the patterns of the astronomical Milankovich cycles. Since the late 1970s, the Milankovich theory has remained the predominant theory to account for Ice Age causation among climate scientists, and hence the Milankovich theory is always described in textbooks of climatology and in encyclopaedia articles about the Ice Ages.

In their 1976 paper Imbrie, Hays, and Shackleton wrote that their own climate forecasts, which were based on sea-sediment cores and the Milankovich cycles, "… must be qualified in two ways. First, they apply only to the natural component of future climatic trends - and not to anthropogenic effects such as those due to the burning of fossil fuels. Second, they describe only the long-term trends, because they are linked to orbital variations with periods of 20,000 years and longer. Climatic oscillations at higher frequencies are not predicted... the results indicate that the long-term trend over the next 20,000 years is towards extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation and cooler climate."

During the 1970s the famous American astronomer Carl Sagan and other scientists began promoting the theory that ‘greenhouse gasses’ such as carbon dioxide, or CO2, produced by human industries could lead to catastrophic global warming. Since the 1970s the theory of ‘anthropogenic global warming’ (AGW) has gradually become accepted as fact by most of the academic establishment, and their acceptance of AGW has inspired a global movement to encourage governments to make pivotal changes to prevent the worsening of AGW.

The central piece of evidence that is cited in support of the AGW theory is the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph which was presented by Al Gore in his 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth.” The ‘hockey stick’ graph shows an acute upward spike in global temperatures which began during the 1970s and continued through the winter of 2006/07. However, this warming trend was interrupted when the winter of 2007/8 delivered the deepest snow cover to the Northern Hemisphere since 1966 and the coldest temperatures since 2001. It now appears that the current Northern Hemisphere winter of 2008/09 will probably equal or surpass the winter of 2007/08 for both snow depth and cold temperatures.

The main flaw in the AGW theory is that its proponents focus on evidence from only the past one thousand years at most, while ignoring the evidence from the past million years -- evidence which is essential for a true understanding of climatology. The data from paleoclimatology provides us with an alternative and more credible explanation for the recent global temperature spike, based on the natural cycle of Ice Age maximums and interglacials.

In 1999 the British journal “Nature” published the results of data derived from glacial ice cores collected at the Russia’s Vostok station in Antarctica during the 1990s. The Vostok ice core data includes a record of global atmospheric temperatures, atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases, and airborne particulates starting from 420,000 years ago and continuing through history up to our present time.

The graph of the Vostok ice core data shows that the Ice Age maximums and the warm interglacials occur within a regular cyclic pattern, the graph-line of which is similar to the rhythm of a heartbeat on an electrocardiogram tracing. The Vostok data graph also shows that changes in global CO2 levels lag behind global temperature changes by about eight hundred years. What that indicates is that global temperatures precede or cause global CO2 changes, and not the reverse. In other words, increasing atmospheric CO2 is not causing global temperature to rise; instead the natural cyclic increase in global temperature is causing global CO2 to rise.

The reason that global CO2 levels rise and fall in response to the global temperature is because cold water is capable of retaining more CO2 than warm water. That is why carbonated beverages loose their carbonation, or CO2, when stored in a warm environment. We store our carbonated soft drinks, wine, and beer in a cool place to prevent them from loosing their ‘fizz’, which is a feature of their carbonation, or CO2 content. The earth is currently warming as a result of the natural Ice Age cycle, and as the oceans get warmer, they release increasing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Because the release of CO2 by the warming oceans lags behind the changes in the earth’s temperature, we should expect to see global CO2 levels continue to rise for another eight hundred years after the end of the earth’s current Interglacial warm period. We should already be eight hundred years into the coming Ice Age before global CO2 levels begin to drop in response to the increased chilling of the world’s oceans.

The Vostok ice core data graph reveals that global CO2 levels regularly rose and fell in a direct response to the natural cycle of Ice Age minimums and maximums during the past four hundred and twenty thousand years. Within that natural cycle, about every 110,000 years global temperatures, followed by global CO2 levels, have peaked at approximately the same levels which they are at today.

Today we are again at the peak, and near to the end, of a warm interglacial, and the earth is now due to enter the next Ice Age. If we are lucky, we may have a few years to prepare for it. The Ice Age will return, as it always has, in its regular and natural cycle, with or without any influence from the effects of AGW.

The AGW theory is based on data that is drawn from a ridiculously narrow span of time and it demonstrates a wanton disregard for the ‘big picture’ of long-term climate change. The data from paleoclimatology, including ice cores, sea sediments, geology, paleobotany and zoology, indicate that we are on the verge of entering another Ice Age, and the data also shows that severe and lasting climate change can occur within only a few years. While concern over the dubious threat of Anthropogenic Global Warming continues to distract the attention of people throughout the world, the very real threat of the approaching and inevitable Ice Age, which will render large parts of the Northern Hemisphere uninhabitable, is being foolishly ignored.

SOURCE





Rock-solid British bias: Climategate investigated by the 'National Domestic Extremism' team

Likening climate whistleblowing to Muslim terrorism. The Leftist British government is very protective of Muslim extremists so can we climate skeptics expect similar indulgence? Perhaps not. The fact that this blog is blocked on official British computer services is surely a straw in the wind

Finally the Norfolk rozzers are on the case of Climategate. Are they investigating fraudulent misuse of grant funds? Misleading manipulation of data by a taxpayer-funded research institute? Conspiracy to encourage the squandering of trillions of dollars on a non-existent problem?

Not according to the researches of the estimable blogger Bishop Hill. This morning he contacted the Norfolk Constabulary to ask them how the case was going: had they yet ascertained whether it was a leak or a hack. His response has just arrived:

Norfolk Constabulary continues its investigations into criminal offences in relation to a data breach at the University of East Anglia. During the enquiry officers have been working in liaison with the Office of the Information Commissioner and with officers from the National Domestic Extremism Team. The UEA continues to co-operate with the enquiry however major investigations of this nature are of necessity very detailed and as a consequence can take time to reach a conclusion. It would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage.

The National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit (NETCU) is a British police organization funded by, and reporting to, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) that coordinates police action against groups in the United Kingdom it describes as extremist. As of April 2007, it was headed by Superintendent Steve Pearl.[1] Because the ACPO is not a public body but rather a private limited company, NETCU is exempt from freedom of information laws and other kinds of public accountability, even though they are funded by the Home Office and deploy police officers from regional forces.[2]

AND GUESS WHAT? Because it is a ‘Private’ Company it is free form FOI REQUESTS!

SOURCE





GREENIE ROUNDUP FROM AUSTRALIA

Four current articles below

Whales not worth risking Japanese relations for, says Abbott

If Australia continues its antagonism to Japan and support for terrorists, Japan could cut off all imports of Australian farm products in response -- which would cause great woe in Australia -- possibly enough woe to unseat Rudd. There have been great battles to get access to the Japanese primary-products market so a Japanese cutoff of that would be an obvious response to continued hostility from Australia's Green/Left government

OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott has declared Australia's relationship with Japan is too important to risk over whaling. Mr Abbott yesterday said it was not Coalition policy to take Japan to the International Court to stop its annual whale hunt in the Southern Ocean, according to a report in the Courier-Mail.

"We don't like whaling. We would like the Japanese to stop," he told Macquarie Radio yesterday. "On the other hand, we don't want to needlessly antagonise our most important trading partner, a fellow democracy, an ally."

Relations with Japan have reportedly been strained in the wake of last week's dramatic clash between whalers and protesters. The Government yesterday said there had been robust discussions between the two countries but the issue had not harmed the relationship with Tokyo

The Opposition also has accused the Rudd Government of failing to follow through on numerous pre-election promises to end whaling in the Southern Ocean. Acting Environment Minister Penny Wong said if the Government could not resolve the matter diplomatically, it would take legal action.

SOURCE. There is a good commentary on the terrorist mentality and tactics involved here

Record heat -- just like a century ago

A very bad fit to the Warmist narrative

Melbourne has notched its equal hottest-ever night, with a sweltering minimum matching the city's other warmest evening, recorded more than 100 years ago. The overnight temperature did not drop below 30.6 degrees, and this dip was only reached at 8.49am, the Bureau of Meteorology said this morning.

This was warm enough to equal Melbourne's highest recorded daily minimum temperature, set on February 1, 1902, Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Terry Ryan said. ‘‘The overnight minimum temperature was 30.6 and that was recorded at 8.49am,’’ Mr Ryan said. ‘‘The previous record for the warmest night was also 30.6 degrees recorded on February 1, 1902, and we equalled that this morning," he said.

Mr Ryan said at 8am, the overnight heat was so intense it seemed the 1902 mark would be smashed. ‘‘It was going up to 34 degrees at 8am but then a weak cool change moved through the city and temperatures started falling again,’’ he said. The change threatened to cost the record, but 30.6 was as cool as it got.

Duty forecaster Stuart Coombs said a cool change this morning made a lasting impact to temperatures. ‘‘It appears we’ve dodged a bit of a bullet ... that cool air was deep enough to stop the temperature from rising further,’’ he said. By 12.45pm, the temperature had dropped to 30 degrees celsius, with isolated showers and cooler weather predicted for the evening.

SOURCE

Conservative leader defends Aboriginal rights against Green/Left laws

OPPOSITION leader Tony Abbott has come out swinging in his campaign against the Bligh government's controversial Wild Rivers legislation, labelling Bligh's regime as "outrageous" and the Rudd government "cowardly" for not stepping in.

In Cairns this morning, Mr Abbott formally announced his intention to introduce a Private Member’s Bill to override the Wild Rivers legislation on Cape York, after his move was revealed by The Australian today.

Mr Abbott, flanked by Cape York traditional owners, said the Wild Rivers legislation - which declared the Archer, Lockhart and Stewart river systems on Cape York as wild rivers - was an "attack on the rights of Aboriginal people". "(It will) suffocate at birth all proposals for economic development on Cape York," Mr Abbott said.

He said he will introduce the Private Member’s Bill when parliament resumes in February, but without the support of the Rudd government, it would die. Mr Abbott said he would be appealing to Mr Rudd and Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin to step in and let the bill live.

SOURCE. More commentary on the Leftist hypocrisy involved here

Ecology and compulsion: The Divine Right of Environmentalists

The problem facing the Commonwealth government in Peter Spencer’s case is that on the one hand it’s embarrassing to have him dying of starvation up a pole because they denied him justice after forcibly taking billions of dollars worth of property in violation of the Constitution; and embarrassing to be caught out ignoring him, and lying to the population that it was all the States’ fault. But on the other hand, the Commonwealth has stolen too much property to be able to pay for it; and is too greedy to give it back. It is no defence of this injustice to say that other environmental and planning laws also restrict people’s private property use-rights. That only begs the question whether they also represent unjust acquisitions.

It does not answer to assert that government acts in the national interest. That is precisely what is in issue. If it’s in the national interest for the government to take people’s property without their consent in breach of the law by threatening them with force, then presumably armed robbery and extortion might be in the national interest too.

It is no answer to say that the laws are to protect native vegetation. Native vegetation is not an ecological category: it is an historical and aesthetic category. It means species that were here before 1788, that is all. The issue is not native vegetation itself: it is whether some people should be able to indulge their fancy of having a ‘pre-1788’ botanical museum imposed on other people’s property, paid for by the subject property-holders, or by the productive portion of the population under compulsion.

No doubt many environmentalists are genuinely well-intentioned, and shocked to be considered abusive and unjust, and will say that was not their intention. However the abusiveness and injustice of these laws does not come from the laws’ intent, but from their effect.

Nor is it any answer to say that the native vegetation acts were done to protect biodiversity. The mere fact that biodiversity is a value does not automatically justify the violation of property rights. It may be said that biodiversity is the necessary basis of life on earth, and therefore the need to conserve it is a precondition to any discussion of subsequent human utility. However it is hyperbole to suggest that we’re all going to die unless the environmentalists can steal other people’s land, which is what the argument amounts to.

Even assuming that ecological viability itself were in issue, it is still entirely unjustified and unjustifiable to jump to a conclusion that government is able to centrally plan the ecology and the economy, by bureaucratic command-and-control. This destructive belief, or rather delusion, has no basis in reason. Those wishing to run that argument must first refute Ludwig von Mises’ arguments which definitively prove that public ownership of the means of production is not only impossible in practice, but is not even possible in theory.

As to ecological sustainability, this attractive-sounding catch-phrase is meaningless. Ecology is the distribution and abundance of species. Species are made up of their individual members. The distribution and abundance of these are permanently and constantly changing forever, every second of every day, always have been, always will be. The ideal of sustainability is a dream of stasis; a utopian fantasy of paradise in which the economic problems of natural scarcity have been solved forever by the omnipotence, omniscience and benevolence of big government.

And if ecological sustainability is not meaningless, then how could or would a power to achieve it ever be limited, even only conceptually? Since all human action affects the environment, a power to manage the environment must necessarily be able to control any and every human action, and therefore it must be an unlimited power. In other words, the well-intentioned advocates of such a system are incapable of saying how they could prevent, or even identify, abuses of arbitrary power, as Spencer’s case is proving. It is completely incompatible with constitutional government.

It is said that the native vegetation laws were desirable because of the problem of land clearing. But just because something is desirable does not mean we are justified in using force to obtain satisfaction of our desire. The desire for money does not, of itself, justify robbery; the desire for sex does not, of itself, justify rape; and the desire to use land to grow native vegetation does not, of itself, justify confiscating other people’s property.

Either biodiversity is a higher social value than food or other produce, or it’s not. If it’s not, then there is no justification for using force to pay for it. But if it is, then there is no need for compulsion to pay for it. If society - people in general - really do attach a higher value to biodiversity as the environmentalists assert, then those same people are perfectly capable of representing their own values and protecting biodiversity directly by buying the land on which to grow native vegetation. Many people do it voluntarily. But so far as the rest don’t do it voluntarily, this proves that it is not a higher social value as the environmentalists claim.

Therefore environmentalists have not got to square one in establishing a justification for the native vegetation laws. If they genuinely believe the issue is ecology, this shows their confusion. For the issue is not ecology – it is power.

In truth, all that the advocates of the native vegetation laws have established is that they should have to buy the land that they would like to use to grow native vegetation; an idea they receive with shock and indignation. Yet why not? There are many who agree, the cost of contributions would be divided between millions of people, and in the end would amount to a monthly payment by each to finance it. But they don’t want to do that. Why not? Because they know that in order to do it, they would have to sacrifice other values they consider more important – like consuming internet bandwidth.

Why would they have to sacrifice such other values if they were to buy the land? To pay the price of the land. And what gives rise to the price of land? It comes from the values of all those in the market who buy and sell, or abstain from buying or selling the land and what it can produce.

In other words, the reason the environmentalists don’t want to have to pay for the land is because of the height of the price of land, and the reason the price of farm land is what it is, and the reason farmers were clearing land, is because six billion people, through the price mechanism, are telling farmers that they want that land used to produce food.

How disgraceful, and how disgusting, that rich Australians are forcibly shutting down food production on a massive scale at a time when millions of the poorest people are facing food shortages. The ecologists have morphed into social Darwinians, advocating the stronger using force and threats to arbitrarily violate and steal from the weaker. They think it goes without saying that they should not suffer the shortage they are imposing on others.

Of course the ordinary peasants must pay if they want land to be used to satisfy their want for food, but the intellectuals shouldn’t have to pay if they want land to be used to satisfy their own less urgent want for ‘biodiversity’, for which they refuse to pay voluntarily. So Peter Spencer, and thousands of Aussie farmers, have been expropriated of their livelihoods, in breach of the Constitution, to stop their land from producing food, causing people in the poorest countries to sacrifice their lives so Australia’s spoilt environmentalists will not have to sacrifice the slightest luxury!

All of a sudden all their protestations about equality and social justice go out the window, and we are back to the age of feudal privilege, and a pampered and self-absorbed elite of parasites feeding on the productive class, with a political philosophy dangerously close to divine right of kings.

SOURCE

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

For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here

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