global warming

Our anemic Sun–and its possible impact on future climate.

December 20, 2010

By most indicators, the Sun is not behaving as expected at this point in the solar cycle – and it hasn’t been for quite a while. The most visible indicator of solar activity – the number of sunspots – is far lower than normal. Over the last few days, the Sun’s surface facing Earth has been spotless.

We are currently in Solar Cycle 24.

The figure on the right, above, is a composite of historical monthly sunspot numbers as of early December from NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center superimposed over the same figure from March 2007. The red lines represent the 2007 predicted maximum and minimum monthly sunspot counts. The current average monthly count, which should be ramping up to the cycle’s maximum, is far below what was anticipated.

picture

In a paper published March 2006, David Archibald predicted that Solar Cycles 24 and 25 would be very much like Solar Cycle 5 and 6 – the Dalton Minimum. Nearly two years into Cycle 24, the pattern he predicted appears to be developing.

So what was the Dalton Minimum and what might a similar period mean for the modern world?

Bottom line – it’s going to get colder.

The Dalton Minimum was a period of low solar activity that lasted from about 1790 to 1830 in which global temperatures were also lower than average. If we are entering into a similar “modern” minimum and the correlation of colder global temperatures hold true, global “warming” may stop and global temperatures may drop through the end of the minimum.

By many indicators, global temperatures appear to have been relatively stable for nearly a decade – or more – already, except for perturbations caused by climate features such as the Arctic Oscillation, El Nino, and La Nina.

Some scientists believe that the recent warming that has been seen is simply a natural recovery from the cold period of the Little Ice Age, which may have resulted from several low solar activity periods. If that is the case, even if temperature were to drop over the next couple of decades, the overall trend, since the end of the Little Ice Age, may be maintained, temperatures may drop for the next 20 to 30 years.

Previous related posts:

The Sun Has Lost Its Spots, January 31, 2009
It’s going to get frosty, March 19, 2009
The Sun Has Lost Its Spots – Part 2, April 6, 2009
The Sun has found some spots – May 1, 2009
The Sun has lost its spots – part 3 – June 28, 2009
700 blank days and counting – August 27, 2009
The Sun has lost its spots – part 4. – September 17, 1010

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More than 400 public servants with little to do

May 6, 2010

In Australia, climate change initiatives have been delayed until at least 2013. Despite that, the Federal Climate Change Department is not considering any cutbacks or layoffs.

TAXPAYERS will fork out $90 million a year to keep more than 400 public servants employed within the Federal Climate Change Department – despite most of them now having nothing to do until 2013.

More than 60 of them are classified as senior executive staff on salaries between $168,000 and $298,000 a year. Their salary bill alone will cost an estimated $12 million every year.

A further $8 million will also be paid in rent for plush offices at Canberra’s Constitution Place until 2012, where it is believed 500 new computers will be delivered this week.

It can be revealed that despite Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s decision on Tuesday to suspend the failed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme until at least 2013, the department has ruled out plans to cut back staff.

Read the full Herald Sun article – Kevin Rudd’s Department of Hot Air costing taxpayers $90m

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A lot of hot air on the ice of glaciers

January 21, 2010

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is getting a lot of heat these days on the claim that the Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2035.

While the information used by the IPCC is supposed to be peer-reviewed and well vetted, it turns out that this gem is derived from a magazine article in New Science several years ago that was based on a single phone call to an Indian scientist.

An IBD Editorial says:

The scientists who said that Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2035 have admitted the claim has as much credibility as sightings of the mythical Yeti. It’s their fraudulent claims that are melting away.

We hesitate to call it Glacier-gate, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.N. body tasked with scaring us to death about global warming, has admitted that the claim in its 2007 report about the Himalayan glaciers disappearing was not based on any scientific study or research. It was instead based on one scientist’s speculation in a telephone interview with a reporter.

This issue has been hitting a number of other media sites over the last week or so.

Read the rest of the IBD Editorial at Investors.com.

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Interesting Quotes:

December 14, 2009

Telegraph.uk.co, December 14, 2009, quoting Tony Blair

Following the ‘climategate scandal’, Mr Blair said the science may not be “as certain as its proponents allege”.

But he said the world should act as a precaution against floods, droughts and mass extinction caused by climate change, in fact it would be “grossly irresponsible” not to.

BBC News, December 14, 2009

Negotiations at the UN climate summit have been suspended after developing countries withdrew their co-operation.

Delegations were angry at what they saw as moves by the Danish host government to sideline talks on more emission cuts under the Kyoto Protocol.

GlobalWarming.org, December 14, 2009

Today’s dominant mindset that any climate change at all is bad is puzzling. It implicitly assumes that today’s climate is the best of all possible climates. Maybe that’s true. But maybe it isn’t. The trouble is that few climate activists seem to have had that thought. The idea of change is so scary that nobody has the presence of mind to ask if that’s a problem or not.

Reuters.com, December 14, 2009

The head of the Asian Development Bank said on Sunday that rich countries’ offers of funds to developing countries for measures to mitigate or adapt to climate change remain insufficient a week into U.N. talks.

ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda also told Reuters in an interview that if governments were to fail to reach a climate deal in Copenhagen, it could lead to a collapse of the carbon market which would hit efforts to deal with climate change.

GlobalWarming.org, December 14, 2009

It has always been hard to persuade the public that invisible gases could somehow warm the planet, and that they had to make sacrifices to prevent that from happening. It seemed, on the verge of Copenhagen, as if that might be about to be achieved.

“But he says all that ended on Nov. 20. ‘The e-mails represented a seminal moment in the climate debate of the last five years, and it was a moment that broke decisively against us. I think the CRU leak is nothing less than catastrophic.’”

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Moving on

December 14, 2009

While I’m moving on – or back – to other things, climate issues will continue to be an interest. With 5 of my last 6 posts being on the subject, it’s time to look at other things. I’ll try to figure out a way to continue to share some of what I learn, though, without this becoming a climate change blog.

I’m still happy with Windows 7. My computer at work uses XP, though, and moving back and forth between Windows 7 and XP makes getting used to Windows 7 a little harder, I think.

Yes, I am still working. A contract extension has been approved and, assuming the VP signs the funding paperwork, I will be there until about the middle of March. After that, I plan not to work for at least the rest of 2010.

Regular visitors to Exit 78 may recognize that my theme has changed once again. I have moved to the Thesis theme, which allows a lot more control over the appearance. I’ve got the basic structure down pretty good now, but I’ll be tweaking on it, so there may be subtle changes day to day.

I still have a little bit of material to post from our September trip, photo galleries to develop and publish and images from the great depression to share.

Moving on.

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DOE Litigation Hold Notice

December 14, 2009

DOE Litigation Hold Notice

DOE-SR has received a “Litigation Hold Notice” from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) General Council and the DOE Office of Inspector General regarding the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England. Accordingly, they are requesting that SRNS, SRR and other Site contractors locate and preserve all documents, records, data, correspondence, notes, and other materials, whether official or unofficial, original or duplicative, drafts or final versions, partial or complete that may relate to the global warming, including, but not limited to, the contract files, any related correspondence files, and any records, including emails or other correspondence, notes, documents, or other material related to this contract, regardless of its location or medium on which it is stored. In other words, please preserve any and all documents relevant to “global warming, the Climate Research Unit at he University of East Anglia In England, and/or climate change science.”

As a reminder, this Litigation Hold preservation obligation supersedes any existing statutory or regulatory document retention period or destructive schedule. The determination of what information may be potentially relevant is based upon content and substance and generally does not depend on the type of medium on which the information exists. The information requested may exist in various forms, including paper records, hand-written notes, telephone log entries, email, and other electronic communication (including voicemail), word processing documents (including drafts, spreadsheets, databases, and calendars), telephone logs, electronic address books, PDAs (like Palm Pilots and Blackberries), internet usage files, systems manuals, and network access information in their original format. All ESI should be preserved in its originally-created, or “native” format, along with related metadata. Relevant backup tapes and all indexes for those tapes should also be preserved. Further, information that is reasonably accessible must nonetheless be preserved, because such sources will, at the very least, need to be identified and, under compelling circumstances, may need to be produced.

If you have any doubts as to whether specific information is responsive, err on the side of preserving that information.

Any employee who has information covered by this Litigation Hold is requested to contact Madeline Screven, Paralegal, SRNS Office of General Council, 5-4634, for additional instructions.

(From Watts Up With That)

Michael L. Wamsted
Associate General Council”

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