New paper finds remarkable correlation between SOLAR activity and the longest temperature record, spanning 350 years

A recent paper presented by Dr. Ka-Kit Tung, professor of applied mathematics, University of Washington, finds a remarkable correlation between solar activity [TSI or total solar irradiance] and the longest continuous series of instrumental temperature measurements in the world, the Central England Temperature [CET] record spanning 350 years since 1659. Dr. Tung also finds there has been no acceleration of alleged "anthropogenic" warming over the past 100 years, despite an exponential increase in CO2 emissions, and that the rate of alleged "anthropogenic" warming is "less than half of the accepted values." Dr. Tung finds much of the global and Northern Hemisphere temperature variability of the past 350 years can be explained by the natural Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation [AMO].

Evidence for a Multi-decadal Oscillation in Global Temperature and Its Impact on the Deduced Anthropogenic Warming Trend: A Review

Prof. Ka-Kit Tung

Our work was inspired by the paper of Wu et al. [2011] , who showed, using the novel method of Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (Wu and Huang [2009 ]; Huang et al. [1998] ), that there exists, in the 150-year global mean surface temperature record, a multi-decal oscillation. With an estimated period of 65 years, 2.5 cycles of such an oscillation was found in that global record. They further argued that it is related to the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) and, if this oscillation is separated out, a monotonic trend emerges in the global mean temperature, with little acceleration of warming. Given the importance of this last implication on the recent anthropogenic global warming, it is quite natural that the scientific community is demanding more evidence that this oscillation is real, recurrent and natural, and in particular evidence that it is not a response to time varying anthropogenic forcing that happens to look like an oscillation.

More HERE  (See the original for links, graphics etc.)




Leading Russian scientist predicts global cooling

Paper from Habibullo I. Abdussamatov, Pulkovo Observatory, St. Petersburg,  Russia below

Grand Minimum of the Total Solar Irradiance Leads to the Little Ice Age

Abstract

Quasibicentennial variation of the energy solar radiation absorbed by the Earth remains uncompensated by the energy emission to space over the interval of time that is determined by the thermal inertia. That is why the debit and credit parts of the average annual energy budget of the terrestrial globe with its air and water envelope are always in an unbalanced state, which is the basic state of the climatic system. The average annual balance of the thermal budget of the system Earth-atmosphere during long time periods will reliably determine the course and value of both the energy excess accumulated by the Earth or the energy deficit in the thermal budget, which, with account for the data of the forecasted variations of the Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) in the future, can define and predict well in advance the direction and amplitude of the forthcoming climate changes with high accuracy. Since the early 90 has been observed a decrease in both the TSI and the portion of energy absorbed by the Earth. The Earth as a planet will also have a negative balance in the energy budget in the future, because the Sun has entered the decline phase of the quasibicentennial cycle of the TSI variations. This will lead to a drop in the temperature and to the beginning of the epoch of the Little Ice Age approximately since the year 2014. The increase in the Bond (global) albedo and the decrease in the greenhouse gases concentration in the atmosphere will lead to an additional reduction of the absorbed solar energy and reduce the greenhouse effect. The influence of the consecutive chain of feedback effects will lead to additional drop of temperature, which can surpass the influence of the effect of the TSI decrease. The start of Grand Maunder-type Minimum of the TSI of the quasibicentennial cycle is to be anticipated around the year 2043 ± 11 and the beginning of the phase of deep cooling of the 19th Little Ice Age in the past 7,500 years in the year 2060 ± 11. Long-term cyclic variations of the TSI are the main fundamental cause of the corresponding climate variations.

Journal of Geology & Geosciences, 2013, 2:2




Shock News from 1952: Polar Icecaps Melting At An Astonishing Rate – Earth To Drown



SOURCE





The inconvenient truth about GM

Genetic modification has so far mainly been confined to developing crops that tolerate herbicides and resist pests. It has done little to increase yields

Some 10,000 years ago, somewhere in the Middle East’s fertile crescent, happenstance sowed the seeds of much of modern agriculture. Pollen from a wild goat grass landed on primitive wheat, creating a natural – but stronger and more productive – hybrid. Alert early farmers saved its seeds for growing their next harvests, starting a long process of development that has led to all the modern varieties of wheat that feed a third of the world’s people.

Now scientists at Britain’s National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) have deliberately duplicated that ancient accident, with a different goat grass, in an attempt to restart – and enormously accelerate – the process with new genes. Early indications are that this could increase wheat yields by a dramatic 30 per cent.

The National Farmers’ Union president, Peter Kendall, describes the potential as “just enormous”. And it is indeed the sort of breakthrough we desperately need, since – in little more than 35 years – the world will have to increase food production by a challenging 70 per cent if it is to feed its growing population. In the next half century, adds the NIAB, we will have to grow as much wheat as has been harvested since that original hybridisation occurred at the dawn of agriculture.

Hunger is rapidly rising up the agenda. David Cameron missed this week’s crucial vote on the Europe referendum because he was in New York to co-chair a UN panel setting new targets for tackling it, and will host a special hunger summit next month. And two important new books outlining solutions will feature at a session on “feeding the world” at the Telegraph Hay Festival, opening next week.

One is by Prof Sir Gordon Conway, formerly both President of the Rockefeller Foundation and Chief Scientific Adviser to the Department for International Development, who is one of the most thoughtful supporters of genetic modification. But what emerges from his book, One Billion Hungry, from this week’s breakthrough, and from a host of other evidence, is how little – so far, at least – GM technology is contributing to beating hunger.

It was not involved in the NIAB’s quantum leap, which was due to conventional breeding techniques. Nor was it involved, to give an example from Prof Conway’s book, in developing new varieties of African rice, called Nerica, which are up to four times as productive as traditional varieties, contain more protein, need a much shorter growing season, resist pests and diseases, thrive on poor soils and withstand drought.

The same is true of another of his superstars, Scuba Rice, which beats flooding by surviving 17 days underwater and still achieving enhanced yields – and, within three years, had been taken up by 3.5 million Asian farmers.

CGIAR – the international consortium of research centres that developed this miracle rice (and kicked off the Green Revolution more than half a century ago) – has also used non-GM techniques to produce more than 30 varieties of drought-tolerant maize, which have increased farmers’ yields by 20 to 30 per cent across 13 African countries; climbing beans that have trebled production in Central Africa; and wheats that thrive on salty soils. A host of other successes include blight-resistant potatoes and crops enriched with vitamin A, iron and other essential nutrients.

Genetic modification, by contrast, has so far mainly been confined to developing crops that tolerate herbicides (often manufactured by the same company, thus encouraging their use) and resist pests. They have done little to increase yields per se – though they have helped by controlling weeds and insects – while varieties designed to withstand drought and floods, and improve nutrition, are only now beginning to emerge.

GM may be able to do jobs that more conventional techniques cannot manage: conferring heat resistance to cope with global warming is one candidate. But the impression often given by its proponents that it is the main source of new crops, and thus essential to feed the world, could hardly be further from the truth.

Nor is biotechnology all GM. The Nerica rices, for example, owe their existence to cell tissue culture. Scuba rice was produced through the technique of marker-assisted selection, which identifies and enables the use of a whole sequence of genes.

But in the end new crops can only do so much. Most of the hungry, in a bitter irony, are themselves farmers who cannot produce, or afford, enough of it – and the new seeds are often beyond their reach. Prof Conway stresses the importance of helping such small, subsistence farmers grow more but it is the second book The Last Hunger Season – whose author, Roger Thurow, will be at Hay – that goes into detail on how to get them the help they need. Just as 10,000 years ago, the future rests on them.

SOURCE



German newsmagazine trashes climate "consensus"

German flagship news magazine Spiegel Online today has an article authored by Axel Bojanowski which takes a close look at the recent John Cook survey. German alarmists like the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research hailed it as proof that climate science was settled and done.

But Spiegel draws a different a totally conclusion.

First Bojanowski describes how a large number of Americans have serious doubts when it comes to man-made climate change, and so surveys get conducted with the aim of trying to sway public opinion. The latest was carried out by John Cook of the University of Queensland in Australia, and the results were published in the journal of Environmental Research Letters: 97% of thousands of papers surveyed agree that climate change is man-made, it asserted.

But Bojanowski trashes the findings:

    "There’s an obvious discrepancy between the public perception and reality. The authors speak about ‘consensus on man-made climate change’ – and thus this threatens to further increase confusion within the public. The survey confirms only a banality: Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that man is responsible for at least a part of the climate warming. The important question of how big is man’s part in climate change remains hotly disputed.

    In the draft of the next UN report that will summarize climate science knowledge in September, it is stated: ‘It is extremely likely that human activity is responsible for more than half of the warming since the 1950s.’ The estimations from scientists on the exact extent vary vastly – here the consensus ends.”

Bojanowski then gives Spiegel readers the results produced by Cook: “About two thirds took no position on the subject – they remained on the sidelines. 97% of the rest supported man-made impact.

Also in an additional step, 35% of the authors who took no position were left out of the survey results altogether.

A new German survey produces similar results: no consensus!

Bojanowski then reports on another still unpublished German survey conducted by the University of Mainz in Germany. Senja Post told SPIEGEL ONLINE that “123 of 292 climate scientists asked participated in the study“. The result (warmists may want to sit down before reading):

    "Only 5% of those responding believed natural factors played the main role in the warming. However, Post then asked about the extent of the man-made warming. The result looked very different. Only 59% of the scientists said the ‘climate development of the last 50 years was mostly influenced by man’s activity. One quarter of those surveyed said that human and natural factors played an equal role’.”

Only 10% of German scientists say computer models are sufficiently accurate

Bojanowski then writes that skepticism is even far more widespread when it comes to the reliability of computer models. ”Only 10% said climate models are ‘sufficiently accurate’ and only 15% said that ‘climatic processes are understood enough’ to allow climate to be calculated.”

Bojanowski sums up: “There’s plenty of fodder there to continue the ideologically influenced debate about climate – no matter what is said about consensus.”

SOURCE




Letter published in WSJ: 'The climate-change field has been dominated by poor science feeding a reinforcing political process for much too long'

Letters to the Editor published today in the print edition of the Wall Street Journal regarding the op-ed "In defense of carbon dioxide"

Kudos to Drs. Schmitt and Happer for their illuminating exposition on the role of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the plant world, thereby setting us straight on this much maligned molecule. It effectively counters attempts to brand CO2 as a "pollutant," the propaganda photos showing chimneys belching smoke (never mind that CO2 is odorless and colorless) and the bizarre government-created carbon markets that benefit a few rent seekers and speculators while costing much in economic growth and jobs.

Moreover, the beneficial effects of CO2 cited by the authors are much more than theory. Continuing satellite observations show that increasing atmospheric CO2 has been literally greening the planet. Measurements over the past 30 years record a major increase in vegetation across the world's land area, including equatorial regions such as the Amazon rain forest. A quantity called the "Normalized Difference Vegetation Index" is used to monitor plant growth, vegetation cover and biomass production. It shows a considerable net "greening" of the Earth, due largely to increased atmospheric CO2.

The climate-change field has been dominated by poor science feeding a reinforcing political process for much too long. The world has stopped warming for close to two decades now, forcing alarmists to scurry around for explanations and excuses. There are no trends in extreme weather events, despite the astrology that now feeds the attempts to make everything that happens fit the dogma.

We should bear these realities in mind when politicians, rent-seeking corporations and grant-seeking academics try to tell us otherwise.

Roger W. Cohen, Ph.D.
Washington Crossing, Pa.

SOURCE

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