You were warned







Here we go again:  June warmest EVER recorded globally

Random fluctuations of hundredths of a degree taken seriously again  -- even though the precision of measurement is much coarser than that

Earth dialed the heat up in June, smashing warm temperature records for both the month and the first half of the year.

Off-the-charts heat is 'getting to be a monthly thing,' said Jessica Blunden, a climate scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

'This is the third month this year that we've broken the monthly record.'

NOAA calculated that the world's average temperature in June hit 61.48 degrees Fahrenheit (16.33 Celsius), breaking the old record set last year by 0.22 degrees (.12 degrees Celsius). Usually temperature records are broken by one or two one-hundredths of a degree, not nearly a quarter of a degree, Blunden said.

And the picture is even more dramatic when the entire year is considered.

The first six months of 2015 were one-sixth of a degree warmer than the old record, set in 2010, averaging 57.83 degrees (14.35 Celsius).

The old record for the first half of the year was set in 2010, the last time there was an El Nino - a warming of the central Pacific Ocean that changes weather worldwide.

June was warm nearly all over the world, with exceptional heat in Spain, Austria, parts of Asia, Australia and South America.

Southern Pakistan had a June heat wave that killed more than 1,200 people - which according to an international database would be the eighth deadliest in the world since 1900.

In May, a heat wave in India claimed more than 2,000 lives and ranked as the fifth deadliest on record.

May and March also broke monthly heat records, which go back 136 years.

Earth has broken monthly heat records 24 times since the year 2000, but hasn't broken a monthly cold record since 1916.

'This is what anthropogenic global warming looks like, just hotter and hotter,' said Jonathan Overpeck, co-director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona.

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Arctic sea ice boosted by a THIRD during unusually cold summer of 2013, study reveals

What!?  Arctic ice growing.  All Greenies say it is shrinking

Arctic sea ice received a surprising boost in 2013 thanks to an unusually cool summer, a new study reveals.

The rapidly melting region increased its volume by a third, figures reveal, as temperatures dropped dramatically for the first time since the 1990s.

It meant there were 5 per cent fewer 'melting days' - warm days when the ice physically melts away.

The findings suggest the ice pack in the Northern hemisphere could be more susceptible to changes than previously thought - and efforts to stem climate change could be more effective than predicted.

The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, is the first analysis of the entire ice caps volume.

Researchers used 88 million measurements of sea ice thickness recorded by the European Space Agency's CryoSat-2 mission between 2010 and 2014.

The results showed that there was a 14 per cent reduction in the volume of summertime Arctic sea ice between 2010 and 2012 - but the volume of ice jumped by 41 per cent in 2013, relative to the previous year, when the summer was five per cent cooler than the previous year.

In 2014, the most essential indicators of Earth?s changing climate continued to reflect trends of a warming planet, with several  markers such as rising land and ocean temperature, sea levels and greenhouse gases - setting new records.  These key findings and others can be found in the State of the Climate in 2014 report released online today by the American Meteorological Society (AMS).

The report, compiled by NOAA?s Center for Weather and Climate at the National Centers for Environmental Information is based on contributions from 413 scientists from 58 countries around the world (highlight, full report). It provides a detailed update on global climate indicators, notable weather events, and other data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments located on land, water, ice, and in space.

Lead author Rachel Tilling, a PhD student from the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM) at University College London (UCL), hailed the results as key for future predictions about the region's prospects.

Tilling said: 'The summer of 2013 was much cooler than recent years with temperatures typical of those seen in the late 1990s.  'This allowed thick sea ice to persist northwest of Greenland because there were fewer days when it could melt.

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New paper shows N. Greenland was warmer during early 20th century (1920-1940) & during Medieval Warm Period

A new paper published in Climate of the Past Discussions reconstructs temperatures from 12 ice cores in Northern Greenland over the past 1100 years and demonstrates temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period beginning ~1065 years ago were warmer than at the end of the record in 2000. In addition, the data shows temperatures ~1450 AD (during the Little Ice Age) and from 1920-1940 were also considerably warmer than the latter 20th century, the opposite of expectations of anthropogenic warming theory:



d18O ice core temperature proxy shows Medieval Warm Period in red box labeled "MCA", Little Ice Age in blue box labelled "LIA" and Early Twentieth Century Warming (from 1920-1940) in red box labeled "ETCW". Temperatures of the early 20 century from 1920-1940 were considerably warmer than the latter 20th century, opposite the expectations of anthropogenic warming theory.
In addition, the paper shows a reconstruction of August Arctic sea ice extent over the past 1000 years (purple line in middle graph below) demonstrating that sea ice at the end of the record in the late 20th century was near the average of the past millenium and about the same as during the Medieval Warm Period:



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Senior cardinal breaks ranks by questioning the Pope’s authority to pronounce on climate change

A senior figure in the Vatican has questioned the Pope’s authority to pronounce on climate change. Cardinal George Pell, who was appointed by Pope Francis last year to manage the Vatican finances, said the Roman Catholic church had ‘no mandate’ to lay down doctrine on scientific matters.

His remarks indicated concern among some high-ranking Catholics at the direction and tone of Francis’ encyclical on climate change last month.

In the encyclical, which carries the full authority of church teaching, the Pope said that the world risked becoming ‘an immense pile of filth’ and that ‘doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain.’

Australian Cardinal Pell made his misgivings clear by telling an interviewer that Francis’ paper has ‘many, many interesting elements. There are parts of it which are beautiful.

‘But the church has no particular expertise in science. The church has got no mandate from the Lord to pronounce on scientific matters. We believe in the autonomy of science,’ he added.

The Cardinal said in the interview with the Financial Times that the encyclical, called ‘Laudato Si’, was ‘very well received’ and the Pope had ‘beautifully set out our obligations to future generations and our obligations to the environment.’

The Cardinal is the most senior Roman Catholic yet to sound a note of caution over the encyclical, which argues that the world must take precautions against climate change at the summit to be held in Paris in December. It said that climate change is doing most harm to the world’s poor.

Cardinal Pell, who took over the management of Vatican spending last February with a brief to tighten financial controls, has provoked anger among green campaigners in the past.

In 2006 he declared that ‘hysteric and extreme claims about global warming are also a symptom of pagan emptiness’ and a year later wrote that he was ‘sceptical about extravagant claims of impending man-made climatic catastrophes.’

His criticism of the Pope’s encyclical was carefully phrased – the Pope said in his own paper that ‘The church does not presume to settle scientific questions’ – but it reflects signs of dissent among other prominent Catholics.

A senior British Catholic layman, Labour peer Lord Donoughue, last week criticised Francis’ faith in renewable energy, saying that ‘wood and dung fires may be renewable energy sources but their disastrous impact on human health is undeniable.

‘We would have liked to have seen the encyclical address moral dilemmas like this head on. We would also have liked to have known Pope Francis’s view on the bans on development aid for fossil fuel plants that so many western governments have put in place.’

In the same paper published by the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, the Church of England Bishop of Chester, the Right Reverend Peter Forster, said: ‘Pope Francis should certainly be commended for his desire to deal with poverty in the developing world, but it is hard to see how he hopes to do so without economic growth and fossil fuels, both of which he thinks are unnecessary evils.’

The Bishop of Chester did not speak in the Church of England General Synod’s debate on climate change last week, during which at the prompting of the Archbishop of Canterbury it adopted a string of green policies, including a promise to teach ‘ecotheology’ and ‘eco-justice’ to its trainee priests, and a request to the faithful to fast in protest on the first day of every month.

There have been concerns in the CofE that many churchgoers have failed to be impressed by their leaders’ anxiety over climate change.

The CofE’s environmental adviser David Shreeve wrote earlier this month that the church had not been ‘successful in dragging environmental concern into its mainstream’.

He added: ‘The majority of those who do link their faith with environmental concern are still on the edges – members of special environmental groups rather than in the main body of the church.

'It still seems that amongst the pews and the pulpits the environment remains not so much a cause for worship, or a way of life, but somewhere to walk on a Sunday afternoon.’

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Global warming hysteria one huge ghastly mistake

By historian MARTIN HUTCHINSON

A Royal Astronomical Society study published in Science Daily on July 9 and presented at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno, Wales postulates that solar activity will decline by 60% in the 2030s, producing sunspot minima and a temperature decline similar to that of the “Maunder minimum” that began in 1645. During that period, the effects of this temperature decline may well far outweigh the modest effects of global warming, on which so much taxpayer money has been wasted in the last 20 years. Since moderate temperature declines are more damaging to agriculture and life in general than moderate increases, it will also cause far more economic damage and human misery than can possibly be attributed to global warming over the next century. The global warming hysteria has thus been a statist, hugely dishonest disgrace – but that’s not to say there are no steps that should be taken to mitigate this and other climate fluctuations.

The new study does not contradict the global warming hypothesis that increased carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming. Instead it looks at cycles of solar activity, and comes to the conclusion that in the decade 2030-40 there will be a short period of perhaps a decade during which solar activity is exceptionally low, as it was in the Maunder minimum of 1645-1715. Lower sunspot activity correlates with lower solar output, and the Maunder minimum coincided with a period of sharply lower temperatures known as the “little ice age.”

The question is: what effect this will have on the world’s climate? In this area, the ideological preconceptions of the majority of the world’s scientists have made modern estimates of past data very suspect indeed. One estimate of 2011 postulated that the 17th Century “Maunder Minimum” lowered average temperatures by only 0.1 degree Celsius. That is obviously fatuous, because of the effect the Maunder Minimum had on contemporary life. Harvests were notably smaller during its operation, and the Thames froze over several times, as it had not done before, to the extent of sufficient solidity for commerce, roast oxen etc. to take place in some winters. Contemporaries noticed both the poorer harvests (which were a major cause of working-class discontent during the English Civil War) and also the frozen Thames, which had not happened before.

John Evelyn, the diarist, recorded on 24 January 1684 “The frost continuing more and more severe, the Thames before London was still planted with booths in formal streetes, furnish’d and full of commodities, even to a printing presse, where the people and ladyes tooke a fancy to have their names printed, and the day and yeare set down when printed on the Thames; this humour tooke so universally, that ’twas estimated the printer gained £5 a day, for printing a line onely, at sixpence a name.” The enterprising printer could not have made £5 a day if the temperature decline had been only 0.1 degree Celsius!

More recently, weather scientists have suggested that volcanic activity triggered more of the temperature drop than the Maunder Minimum in sunspot activity. However only one major volcanic eruption was recorded during the period – Mount Etna in 1669 – and evidence suggests that this was much smaller than the Indonesian Tambora and Krakatoa eruptions of the nineteenth century. One thus remains skeptical.

To find a more accurate estimate of the temperature effect of the Maunder Minimum, we may need to go back 35-40 years, before global warming was a source of political activity and vast scientific funding, but well after Walter and Annie Maunder (1851-1928 and 1868-1947) had identified and studied the phenomenon. However one more recent source, from 2003 (when “global warming” was already a phenomenon but new Maunder Minima had not yet been postulated) by Willy Soon and Steven Yaskell, records the temperature drop in 1675-1700 to be around 4-5 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2.5-3 degrees Celsius. Given Evelyn’s surprise at the weather he experienced, that seems a reasonable estimate.

But if that figure is correct (and let’s put in all the caveats about projections and estimates, caveats which global warming scientists would do well to include) then the temperature drop in 2030-40 will not only exceed the effect of global warming by then, it will be close to double the highest plausible estimate of global warming’s effect by 2100. Needless to say, we have done nothing whatever to prepare for this.

A Maunder Minimum on this scale would be far more damaging than a moderate global warming, because of its size, our lack of preparedness, and the reality that cooling is far more damaging to agriculture than moderate warming. Professor J.E. Kutzbach of the University of Wisconsin calculated in a 2010 paper that a 3 degrees Celsius drop in average temperature would reduce global food production by 25%. That’s far more damaging than any agricultural effect of global warming, where greater warmth up to about 5 degrees Celsius results in increased agricultural production.

This suggests that a Maunder Minimum in 2030-40 would be truly catastrophic. With the global population at 7 billion, we are already fairly close to the maximum that can be fed with current land usage and technology. Any technological improvements before 2030 will only be matched by the increase in population by then – on U.N. figures it is expected to pass 8 billion in 2024 and 9 billion in 2040. Thus a 25% decline in agricultural output in the 2030s is likely to result in starvation of something less than 25% of the world population at that time – maybe 15%, or 1.3 billion people.

To summarize, we are subject to both natural and man-made climate fluctuations, but the natural fluctuations may well be both larger and more immediate than the gradual effects of what humanity has caused so far (we are of course capable of producing a “nuclear winter:” that would be as fast as a natural fluctuation and possibly larger. Let’s not try this!) It now appears likely that the first such fluctuation, considerably larger and more immediate than the effect of global warming, will be a cooling beginning in only 15 years.

There are a number of conclusions to be drawn from this. First, the hugely expensive steps we have taken to combat global warming – all the ethanol production, wind farms, electric car subsidies to Elon Musk, etc. – have been money wasted. Yes, global warming may be a problem after 2050, to a limited extent, but it’s not going to be a problem before then, and some of our actions taken to combat it are highly damaging to the fight against the Maunder Minimum of the 2030s and 2040s. The ethanol program, for example, subsidizes non-food production from The United States’ most productive farmland; if it is continued in the 2030s it may well be directly responsible for killing several hundred million people.

Second, we must do what we can to enable humanity to survive the Maunder Minimum, without a major wipe-out of population. There are no programs equivalent to solar panels and wind farms we can adopt to do this; even if a mass re-conversion to coal burning power stations were possible, it would not increase the temperature sufficiently to conquer Maunder (and the sulfates from coal burning might well increase the cooling – there is a strong possibility that global warming began only when we started to clean up all the nice sulfates from coal usage, about 1970.)

Finally, it is essential that intellectual integrity be restored to the scientific profession. Too much money has been devoted to funding global warming scientists, who have depended for their livelihood on a high level of public and political anxiety about global warming, and have hence tended to suppress the evidence against the popular hysteria. The South Sea Bubble of 1720 would have done far more damage if the press and the scientific community had been ordered to magnify the potential profitability of the South Sea enterprise. Like that Bubble, global warming, possessing about as much reality as the plans of the South Sea Company, is an “Extraordinary Popular Delusion” inflated by the “Madness of Crowds” in the immortal title of Charles Mackay’s 1841 masterpiece. Enlightenment standards of scientific integrity have been subverted by government cash and media hysteria. For the sake of all our futures this must never be allowed to happen again.

Meanwhile, 2030 is not all that far away. Maybe it’s time to stock up on overcoats or move to Florida, according to taste. Coats and relocation are at least private choices, not forced upon us by the political process.

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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