Ultraviolet light shone on cold winter conundrum

As is to be expected, the BBC story below is larded with reassurances about global warming. The reassurances don't however flow from the raw data. What the data show is a big upset to the "consensus", a revelation of uncertainty and a concession that the SUN is a big factor in climate change. There are in fact below BIG admissions of solar influence. The raw (SIM) data are sufficiently threatening to the orthodoxy for doubt to be cast on their accuracy. All in all, rather a good haul of facts and admissions for skeptics.

Recent cold winters that brought chaos to the UK and other places in northern Europe may have their roots in the Sun's varying ultraviolet emissions.

The latest satellite data shows the UV output is far more changeable than scientists had previously thought.

A UK scientific team now shows [via "models"] in Nature Geoscience journal how these changes lead to warmer winters in some places and colder winters in others. The researchers emphasise there is no impact on global warming.

The Sun has recently been in a quiet phase of its regular 11-year cycle, which co-incided with three years in which the UK, along with other places in northern Europe and parts of the US, experienced cold conditions unusual in the recent record.

But unusually warm weather was felt both further south, around the Mediterranean Sea, and further north in Canada and Greenland.

"The key point is that this effect is a change in the circulation, moving air from one place to another, which is why some places get cold and others get warm," said Adam Scaife, one of the researchers on the paper, who heads the UK Met Office's Seasonal to Decadal Prediction team.

"It's a jigsaw puzzle, and when you average it up over the globe, there is no effect on global temperatures," he told BBC News.

The recent revelations on the Sun's ultraviolet variability come from a Nasa satellite called the SOlar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE), launched in 2003.

Among its instruments is the Spectral Irradiance Monitor (SIM), which analyses the Sun's output at frequencies in the infrared, visible and ultraviolet parts of the spectrum.

SIM is giving scientists a detailed picture of how the Sun's ultraviolet emissions vary over its regular 11-year cycle of waxing and waning energy; and it suggests the UV variation is about five times larger than had been inferred from previous observations.

Meanwhile, scientists including the Met Office team have been publishing papers demonstrating that winter temperatures over Europe and North America do vary with the solar cycle - but without being able to show the mechanism.

The new research involved plugging SIM's ultraviolet measurements into the Met Office Hadley Centre computer model of the world's climate. The results of the modelling re-inforce the idea that the UV variations affect winter weather across the region; and they indicate how it may happen.

Arctic roots of our 'upside-down' weather

UV is absorbed in the stratosphere, the upper atmosphere, by ozone. So in the quiet bit of the solar cycle, when there is less UV to absorb, the stratosphere is relatively cooler.

The Hadley Centre model shows that the effects of this percolate down through the atmosphere, changing wind speeds, including the jet stream that circles the globe above Europe, North America and Russia.

The net change is a reduced air flow from west to east, which brings colder air to the UK and northern Europe and re-distributes temperatures across the region.

Dr Scaife emphasises that ultraviolet emissions are not the sole reason why winter temperatures vary. But understanding the UV link may improve meteorologists' capacity to predict winter weather accurately.

"Assuming these new satellite data are correct... then as the 11-year solar cycle is predictable, it's going to contribute some predictability for European and indeed UK weather," he said.

"You'll never be able to predict the precise temperature of the third week in January or whatever, but you might be able to say 'this winter is more likely to be warm' or 'more likely to be cold' with more accuracy."

The one big caveat is whether SIM's data is accurate. Scientists in the field appear to believe it is - but as the UV changes it sees are so large compared with previous methods, they would prefer confirmation.

Commenting in Nature Geoscience, Katja Matthes from the Helmholtz Centre in Potsdam, Germany, describes the results as "intriguing, albeit somewhat provisional". "The trends seen in the SIM observations are still under discussion and remain to be confirmed," she writes.

She also points out that SIM measures only a proportion of the ultraviolet region of the spectrum.

If the ultraviolet theory is correct, the UK is less likely to see cold winters in the next few years as the 11-year solar cycle gains strength.

As well as the 11-year cycle, the Sun's output also varies on longer timescales.

Its intensity has increased since the 1600s when the period known as the Maunder Minimum began, with astronomers documenting a dearth of sunspots over many decades.

The Maunder Minimum co-incided with part of a period that has come to be known as the Little Ice Age, when winter weather overall grew colder in parts of Europe.

Mike Lockwood of the UK's Reading University, who also studies possible associations between solar changes and climate, suggested that if the Sun's ultraviolet output varies as much on long timescales as its does across the solar cycle, that could provide the connection between the Maunder Minimum and the temperature changes.

"The Little Ice Age wasn't really an ice age of any kind - the idea that Europe had a relentless sequence of cold winters is frankly barking, but there was a larger proportion of cold winters," he told BBC News.

"We now have a viable explanation of why that happened - nothing to do with global warming, but in terms of temperature re-distribution around the north Atlantic."

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Recent 9 Months U.S. Temperature trend/decade – 7.8 F COOLER in 100 years

And the cooling continues. Sorry - I mean that Global Warming is an imminent treat to humankind.

As a complement to my previous post September U.S. Temperature trend/decade - It is getting cooler and cooler, I thought it also would be interesting to look at the recent 9 months (year to date, January-September) US temperature from a "historic" perspective. To see how the decade trends have evolved during the last 111 years.

Especially to see how the decade trends have evolved during the last 41 years. The period that according to the Global Warming Hysterics and computer models they worship should show a steady and accelerated increase in temperature.

I don't know about you, but I consider a 9 month consecutive month trend 111 years long to be a "quit good" indicator.

And as I always point out:

Remember, these are the official figures. With the poor placement of stations (91 % of the stations are CRN 3 to 5 = bad to very poor); where they have purposely taken away the urban heat island effect, use huge smoothing radius, the historical "adjustment and tweaking" to cool the past etc.

Not to mention the great slaughter of GHCN stations 1990-1993 - roughly 63 % of all stations were "dropped". Oddly enough many of them in cold places - Hmmm? Now the number of GHCN stations is back at the same numbers as in 1890.

Also remember that the US stations are now nearly a third of the all GHCN world stations.

So here are the trends:

US temperature recent 9 months (Jan-Sep) 1900-2011

The trend for 1900 to 2011 is 0.13 F / Decade

US temperature recent 9 months (Jan- Sep) 1970-2011

The trend for 1970 to 2011 is 0.48 F / Decade

US temperature recent 9 months (Jan- Sep) 1980-2011

The trend for 1980 to 2011 is 0.36 F / Decade

US temperature recent 9 months (Jan- Sep) 1990-2011

The trend for 1990 to 2011 is 0.17 F / Decade

US temperature recent 9 months (Jan- Sep) 2000-2011

The trend for 2000 to 2011 is - 0.78 F / Decade

And as I said in the beginning - always remember that these figures are based on the official data that has been tweaked, "adjusted" and manipulated to fit their agenda (cool the past, ignore UHI and land use change factors, huge smoothing radius - 1200km etc.)..

Do you notice the "accelerated warming" trend from 1970-2011 to 2000-2011??

So the "warming trend" 2000-2011 is exactly - 0.78 F degrees COOLER a decade. That is a whopping - 7.8 F COOLER in 100 years. The freezer next!

And this is also the decade that the Global Warming Hysterics have been screaming at the top of their lungs, trying to scare us to death, about the catastrophic treat that the "extreme increase" in temperature is to mankind and earth.

This is a perfect example of what I have been saying all along, it has always been a political agenda - anti human, anti freedom, anti development and anti capitalism. And this Global Warming Hysteria is part of that agenda. It has nothing to do with science, facts or saving the environment or the Earth.

All of this, as always, paid by us, the common people, in the form of taxes, high energy costs and reducing our living standard back to the Stone Age.

And all of this to "save" the Earth from a "catastrophic warming" when it is actually cooling.

And the most absurd thing is that all the things that the "intelligent" politicians and the so called "scientists", with the willing help of mainstream media, have forced through at EXTREME cost to us, are actually helping to accelerate the cooling.

Talking about an eminent treat to humankind!

According to the computer models that the Global Warming Hysterics love so much, worship and blindly follows (especially our intelligent politicians), it should be EXACTLY the opposite.

And we are supposed to be very worried about a predicted rise of 3-4 F?

But not this ACTUAL trend?

And for this predicted trend the politicians want to take our societies back to the Stone Age. But, as usual, they DO NOTHING about the actual trend.

So to summarize this evidence of this "accelerated warming" trend:

The recent 9 months trend 1970-2011 is exactly 0.48 F degrees a decade.

The recent 9 months trend 1980-2011 is exactly 0.36 F degrees a decade.

The recent 9 months trend 1990-2011 is exactly 0.17 F degrees a decade.

The recent 9 months trend 2000-2011 is exactly - 0.78 F degrees a decade.

So the "warming" trend is really accelerating wouldn't you say.

Some more "rapid warming" like this and the freezer looks really warm.

Another brilliant and glorious example of RAPID WARMING and an eminent treat to humankind! Especially during the last 41 years.

That is truly "Global Warming" US style.

An interesting "science" wouldn't you say.

This is the "stuff" that "Global Warming" is made of.

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Will Warmists Face Justice for their Deceptions?

By Alan Caruba

When you murder someone the case is never closed. The same holds when you murder the truth. No matter how long it takes, truth is defended despite all the calumnies heaped on those who stand firm against the lies and the propaganda intended to persuade those who have been deceived.

Ultimately, truth is its own defense. There never was a shred of truth in the claim that humans were causing the Earth's climate to heat up by using so-called "fossil fuels" and engaging in manufacturing and other activities. There was no dramatic "global warming" in the 1980s until the present.

The Earth's climate has warmed very slightly since the end of the Little Ice Age, dated to around 1850. Five hundred years of extremely cold weather had gripped the northern hemisphere starting around 1300. The much heralded "climate change" is, unlike the weather, measured in terms of centuries, not days, weeks or years. It is used by politicians that do not know what they are talking about. It is also used by charlatans, but I repeat myself.

Under the direction of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) a massive fraud was engineered. The object was to turn carbon dioxide (CO2), a common though minor atmospheric gas, into a commodity that could be traded in exchanges around the world that would issue "carbon credits" to utilities, industrial facilities, and others who would be required to pay for permission to produce energy and products. It was an audacious scheme.

It began with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, otherwise known as the Kyoto Protocol. It set binding targets for the reduction of CO2 by 37 industrialized nations and the European community and was adopted on December 11, 1997 and entered into force on February 16, 2005. The U.S. never signed the Protocols. They were rejected by a unanimous vote in the Senate.

It was a complete lie without any basis in science. C02 plays no role in climate change and reducing whatever amount industry and other human activities might produce would be meaningless.

Surely the people behind the scheme knew this. The IPCC charged a small clique of climate scientists to come up with "proof" that global warming was happening. In England they were located at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit and, in America, they were led by Dr. Michael Mann working first at the University of Virginia and later at Penn State University.

Dr. Michael Mann's "Hockey Stick" Graph
Mann's research, assisted by co-authors Bradley and Hughes, was published in 1998. "Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations" became famous for a graph dubbed the "hockey stick". Its sudden upward curve, intended to demonstrate a dramatic increase was based on tree ring reconstruction of climate over a thousand years.

To say it attracted attention is an understatement. It and other studies produced by the IPCC clique became the cornerstone of the "global warming" hoax. The problem for Dr. Mann was that Steve McIntyre, a Canadian mathematician in Toronto, along with Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph concluded it was bogus science and published a paper in 2004 criticizing it.

In science, when a theory or hypothesis is put forward, the data supporting it is as well. Years went by before McIntyre could get access to it. The tree ring data had been provided by Keith Briffa of the Hadley UK Climate Research Unit. Neither Dr. Mann, nor Briffa made it available, but McIntyre was able to secure it from another source. When he plotted all the tree ring data, not just the parts cherry-picked by Mann, the "hockey stick" disappeared.

In November 2009, thousands of leaked emails between Dr. Mann and other "warmists"---scientists responsible for the global warming hoax, revealed nothing less than a massive fraud.

Flash forward to a freedom of information (FOI) request by Chris Horner on behalf of American Tradition Institute's Environmental Law Center. Despite stonewalling for years, Dr. Mann's former employer, the University of Virginia complied in May 2011, agreeing to release Dr. Mann's computer files containing the data he had kept hidden for more than a decade.

Serendipitously, a similar FOI issued to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has revealed the level of financial gain received by another key player in the global warming hoax, Dr. James Hansen, a longtime NASA employee and the man credited with generating the hoax with testimony before a congressional committee in 1988. He has been the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies since 1981

It turns out that in 2010 alone he received "between 236,000 and $1,232.500 in outside income"! When you add in all the awards and speech fees Dr. Hansen has received over the years it is a tidy sum while he exploited his taxpayer-funded position. The agency had resisted disclosing this information for years, but as a federal employee Dr. Hansen waives privacy interests as a condition of employment.

A former government employee, Vice President Al Gore, became the face and voice of the hoax, earning millions in the process.

What has the global warming cost Americans? Joanne Nova of the Science and Public Policy Institute has estimated that the U.S. government spent more than $32.5 billion on climate studies between 1989 and 2009, nor does that include about $79 billion more spent for related climate change technology research, foreign aid, and tax breaks for "green energy" (solar and wind).

For deception on that scale, one might think they will be punished at some point, but it will likely be years more before those responsible for the global warming fraud will stand before the bar of justice, if ever.

SOURCE




Green jobs boondoggle

Green jobs, green jobs, green jobs

For almost three years, that has been the incessant mantra from the Obama administration - from the president to his Labor secretary to his minions around the nation, the hope of a green jobs recovery has been the lynchpin of this president's economic policy.

Toward promoting this agenda, the Labor Department is scheduled to spend $500 million of taxpayer money on training workers for this green economy.

Now the Department's Inspector General has pulled the green jobs training program from behind the poorly lit halls of the Frances Perkins Building and put it out in the open, revealing what had been whispered for almost a year around D.C. among those who follow the Labor Department - the program is a bust.

The scathing report by the Inspector General flatly states that "there is no evidence that grantees will effectively use the funds and deliver targeted employment outcomes by the end of the grant periods."

And in a rebuke of the program, the IG recommends "that the Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training evaluate the Green Jobs program; and in so doing, obtain an estimate of funds each grantee will realistically spend given the current demand for green job-related skills and the job market for green jobs. Any of the remaining $327.3 million of funds determined not to be needed should be recouped as soon as practicable and to the extent permitted by law so they can be available for other purposes."

Quite simply, the Labor Department's green jobs training program is just one more example of the Obama administration spending taxpayer money in pursuit of its green ideological agenda, rather than pursuing real, sustainable job growth.

Doubters are not surprised by the colossal failure of the entire Obama green agenda, and its disastrous impact on the 14 million unemployed. Unfortunately, after three years of selling economic quackery, there is no evidence that Team Obama is even considering a change in direction.

Now that the presidential election is in full swing, expect the Obama medicine show to bus into your town and try selling the same elixir. The only question is whether the American public will fall for the same con job twice.

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Flagship UK carbon capture project 'close to collapse'

Scottish Power expected to pull out of government-promoted scheme to build a œ1bn prototype CCS plant at Longannet

A œ1bn flagship government project for fighting climate change - the construction of a prototype carbon capture and storage (CCS) project at Longannet in Scotland - is on the verge of collapse, it emerged on Thursday.

Talks between the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) and Scottish Power have run into deep trouble and the electricity supplier is expected to pull the plug on the government-promoted scheme, which hoped to bury carbon emissions from the coal power station in the North Sea.

The potential demise of the scheme comes amid growing fears among renewable power enthusiasts that David Cameron and George Osborne want to scale back the "green" agenda on the grounds that low-carbon energy schemes such as CCS and offshore wind cost too much at a time of austerity. Osborne told the Conservative party conference in Manchester that if he had his way the UK would cut "carbon emissions no slower but also no faster than our fellow countries in Europe".

Scottish Power, and its partners Shell and the National Grid, have just completed a detailed study of the CCS scheme and have deep concerns about its commercial viability without heavier public backing.

Decc had promised œ1bn of public money but the developers are understood to be arguing that they cannot proceed without more money to trial the scheme, close to the Firth of Forth.

Both sides insist "talks are ongoing" but well-placed industry and political sources say the process is "pretty much over" and a statement to that effect could be expected shortly.

Jeff Chapman, the chief executive of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, said the collapse of the Longannet scheme would be a "severe disappointment" for the wider hopes of the sector.

"Everybody knows the negotiations have been very difficult, so to that extent it's quite possible [the talks] don't come to a conclusion - although there are other projects coming through the system hopefully."

A senior Conservative backbencher with deep knowledge of the energy sector told the Guardian he expected the CCS deal to collapse within weeks. He said the underlying blame lay with the Labour government, which had dithered for so long in awarding the CCS demo contract that bidders dropped out until only one was left, leaving the government in an impossible negotiating position.

A Decc spokesman said Longannet was only one CCS project and the government still planned to choose by the end of the year another three that could be eligible for European Union funding.

In May, the department submitted seven UK CCS projects for European funding - including Longannet - but the Fife scheme was by far the most advanced and spearheaded the drive to develop this new technology in Britain.

Ministers have repeatedly stressed the importance of CCS as a way of keeping coal and potentially other fossil-fuel burning power stations in operation without undermining moves to cut CO2.

But they have already seen E.ON back out of plans to construct a new coal-fired power station with prototype CCS technology on the site of an existing plant at Kingsnorth in Kent.

Longannet is the third largest coal-fired power station in Europe at 2,400MW and was once highlighted as Scotland's biggest single polluter.

In 2009 at the launch of a small-scale pilot study, Ignacio Gal n, chairman of Scottish Power and its parent group Iberdrola of Spain, highlighted the importance of the Fife scheme.

"We believe that the UK can lead the world with CCS technology, creating new skills, jobs and opportunities for growth. There is the potential to create an industry on the same scale as North Sea Oil, and we will invest in Scotland and the UK to help realise this potential. Iberdrola will set up its global Centre of Excellence for CCS in the UK to help accelerate the deployment of full-scale CCS," he said.

No CCS projects have yet been successfully built at a large scale.

Charles Hendry, the energy minister said in May that Longannet and other CCS schemes in Britain showed the UK was "at the cutting edge of the low-carbon agenda."

But an industrialist embedded in his department told the Guardian that ministers were now internally questioning renewable power and other schemes that involved substantial public subsidies. Ministers have come under sustained lobbying from traditional power companies and energy-intensive manufacturers to concentrate on lower price but higher carbon alternatives such as gas.

SOURCE




How climate change zealots are wrecking every last industry Britain possesses

Rather overshadowed by events at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester last week was a line in George Osborne's speech which could mark the start of a long overdue political transformation in Britain.

The Chancellor acknowledged that a decade of environmental laws had been piling unnecessary costs on households and companies, adding that Britain was not going to save the planet by putting ourselves out of business.

He was referring in particular to the Climate Change Act, famously passed by the House of Commons in October 2008 by 463 votes to three, even as the snow was falling outside. By the Government's own estimate, it would cost œ404?billion to implement - œ760 per household every year for four decades.

The Act included a voluntary commitment to reduce Britain's carbon dioxide emissions to 80?per cent of their 1990 level by 2050 - a target generally acknowledged to be achievable only by shutting down most of the economy - in an effort to demonstrate 'global leadership'.

The lunacy of this commitment can be demonstrated by the fact that neither China nor the US - who together produce 40?per cent of global emissions compared with our two per cent - are committed to such draconian reductions.

Instead Mr Osborne suggested last week that we follow the EU, whose members agreed in March 2007 - as one of Tony Blair's final acts of hubris - to a 20 per cent emissions reduction by 2020. The European Commission is still discussing a 'road map' for its 2050 target, putting the UK at a huge competitive disadvantage.

But while Europe is taking a relaxed view of climate change, Britain seems to have excelled in devising more and more bizarre ways of bankrupting the nation.

In December 2008 the Government's Committee on Climate Change, chaired by Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, recommended that we should switch from eating beef and lamb to 'less carbon-intensive types of meat'.

Within 11 years, the committee said, it wanted to see 40?per cent of all the cars on Britain's roads powered by electricity. That very week it was reported that in the first ten months of 2008 just 156 were bought, fewer than half the 374 in the same period of 2007. That made a grand total of 1,100 on the road in Britain.

It also insisted no more coal-fired power stations should be built unless they could be fitted with 'carbon capture', funded by a levy on energy bills which would raise œ3?billion from hard-pressed consumers.

The overall effect of the unproven and probably unworkable technology to effectively bury carbon dioxide underground would be to double the price of electricity and make us even more dependent on Russian and other imported energy, which already supplies 70?per cent of our needs.

Nevertheless, a mad and ruinously expensive scheme was launched on the European stage. Industries should pay for using fossil fuels, through a 'tax' paid on each ton of carbon dioxide produced. Each company would have to buy certificates, known as 'European allowances' or 'carbon credits' - each representing a ton of carbon dioxide - with surpluses traded as a commodity.

Each year, the total would be reduced and commercial firms, hospitals and even Government offices would have to compete on the open market for enough certificates to enable them to operate.

The theory was that competition for a dwindling supply would force energy users to be more efficient. Instead, commercial users passed on the costs to their customers, with electricity prices rising for the average consumer by as much as œ300.

Tens of thousands have been pushed into fuel poverty. Firms that could not pass on their costs moved abroad. Huge tranches of the aluminium industry have disappeared, one major firm having moved to the Emirates in October 2009 - taking 300 workers from Anglesey who had to follow to keep their jobs.

The madness didn't stop there. In February 2010, Gordon Brown's cash-strapped Government spent œ60??million on 'carbon credits' for Whitehall and other Government offices in the UK, as well as British Nato bases in Europe.

Thus while troops were going short of kit in Afghanistan, the defence budget was being raided to buy carbon certificates.

When he became Prime Minister, David Cameron carried on the theme, promptly declaring that he wanted the Coalition to be 'the greenest Government ever'.

His new Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne added that he wanted to go 'further and faster than ever before'. Then it was announced that Britain, uniquely, should set a minimum price for carbon credits, instead of allowing the market to decide.

Known as the 'carbon floor price' the idea was that firms such as
electricity generators would pay œ16 per ton of carbon dioxide produced - compared to a market rate of œ9 - with the price rising to œ70 by 2030.

Announced by Mr Osborne in June's budget, the Institute for Public Policy Research immediately warned that the policy would cost British industry at least œ1?billion and drive manufacturers offshore, while pushing down the price of European permits, giving our EU competitors a generous gift.

And last week, even as Mr Osborne was standing up to deliver his speech in Manchester, Davin Bates, a management accountant at one of Stoke-on-Trent's remaining successful potteries, was preparing to tell the world how spiralling energy costs - artificially inflated by 'green' levies and taxes - were driving energy-intensive companies like his out of the UK.

Particularly affected is the chemical industry, which contributes œ30 million a day to the British economy. Major chemical multinationals are now looking to move production to places such as South Africa, India and China. There, under a global carbon credit scheme, we actually subsidise them by giving them credits - which they then sell back to our industries, making huge profits.

I haven't even mentioned the madness of the wind machines. Subsidies, paid for by consumers, make wind power three times more costly than the normal tariff electricity. But as the pull of the subsidies draws investment away from new conventional plants, the spectre of power cuts looms large.

Caught in this vice of increasing 'green' costs and subsidised competition, the manufacturing industries which Osborne hopes will lead the UK recovery simply cannot survive.

Small wonder, therefore, that he bowed to the inevitable and pulled back from the green abyss.

Many believe that Osborne's conversion is too little too late, but it is some small comfort at least, that we no longer have a Chancellor - or even a Prime Minister - keen to parade his 'green' credentials. Perhaps they are beginning to understand that, when the lights go out, all colours look the same: black.

If Britain is to pull itself out of economic crisis, Mr Osborne is going to have to go much further. At the very least, he has to lift this senseless raft of green taxes from industry and the electricity generators.

SOURCE

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