The start of a mini ice age?

Interesting post by David Rose in the Daily Mail:

The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists.

Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in summer by 2013.
According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.

Note to all the warmists: it's time to re-think that global warming thing.

Update: this video via Captain Ed illustrates the costs of a cooler climate far outweigh those of a hotter one.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The true price of the warmists' folly

Christopher Booker in the Telegraph:

Impeccable was the timing of that announcement that directors of the Met Office were last year given pay rises of up to 33 per cent, putting its £200,000-a-year chief executive into a higher pay bracket than the Prime Minister. As Britain shivered through Arctic cold and its heaviest snowfalls for decades, our global-warming-obsessed Government machine was caught out in all directions.

For a start, we saw Met Office spokesmen trying to explain why it had got its seasonal forecasts hopelessly wrong for three cold winters and three cool summers in a row. The current cold snap, we were told with the aid of the BBC – itself facing an inquiry into its relentless obsession with “global warming” – was just a “regional” phenomenon, due to “natural” factors. No attempt was made to explain why the same freezing weather is affecting much of the northern hemisphere (with 1,200 places in the US alone last week reporting record snow and low temperatures). And this is the body on which, through its Hadley Centre for Climate Change and the discredited Climatic Research Unit, the world’s politicians rely for weather forecasting 100 years ahead.

Related.

Record cold

While much of the planet has been engulfed in record cold weather, one must wonder how the warmists will "hide the decline" this winter. There's been lots and lots of coverage of these record lows from China and Korea to India, Russia, Europe, the UK, Canada and the US. Even normally sunny warm Florida was not immune, where frozen iguanas are dropping from trees.

More bad news for snowbirds looking to escape the harsh winter conditions:

(CNN) -- Key West, Florida, the southernmost point in the continental United States, hit a 131-year low of 47 degrees Thursday and the forecast promised more of the same as icy cold swept across the Southeast.

Temperatures on Sunday and Monday at the tip of the Sunshine State are expected to be in the low-to-mid-40s.

The fast-moving cold that gave Florida the chills also combined with moisture from the Gulf of Mexico to dump a dangerous mix of ice and snow throughout the Southeast, coating roadways with a slick glaze.

Numerous school systems throughout the region closed.

At least nine deaths around the country have been blamed on the round of winter weather this week.

The fact of the matter is extreme cold is more hazardous that the combined effects of tornadoes, storms, lightning, floods, hurricanes and heat waves. Oh yeah, and it won't be good for the price of orange juice either.

BBC host fries head of the Met Office

For your amusement. Enjoy.


I don't watch the BBC so I don't know who Andrew Neil is, but we need more journalists willing to ask questions like he does.

h/t The Daily Bayonet.

IBD: Five Decades Of Cooling Ahead

Global warming? A Canadian scientist gives us good reason to question the "CO2 causes global warming" mantra. My favourite line is the quote from Groucho Marx: "Who are you going to believe, me or your own lying eyes?"

A peer-reviewed study by a respected Canadian physicist blames the interplay of cosmic rays and chlorofluorocarbons for 20th-century warming. The CFCs are now gone, and so is warming — perhaps for the next 50 years.

[...]

Qing Bin-Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy at Canada's University of Waterloo, is a believer in the value of drawing conclusions from observable data and not from selective data fed into computer models that are based on false assumptions and include "fudge factors."

In a peer-reviewed paper published in the prestigious online journal Physics Reports, Lu, who holds a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Newcastle, reports that CFCs, the compounds once widely used as refrigerants, and cosmic rays, which are energy particles originating in outer space, are mostly to blame for climate change, rather than carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Global cooling marches on

Global cooling is chilling the summer of 2009 says Deroy Murdock at National Review Online. Let the cold times roll.

As cap-and-trade advocates tie their knickers in knots over so-called “global warming,” Mother Nature refuses to cooperate. Earth’s temperatures continue a chilling trend that began eleven years ago. As global cooling accelerates, global-warmists kick, scream, and push their pet theory — just like little kids who cover their ears and stomp their feet when older children tell them not to bother waiting up for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.

Consider how the globe cooled last month:

June in Manhattan averaged 67.5 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.7 degrees below normal — the coldest average since 1958. The National Weather Service stated on July 1: “The last time that Central Park hit 85 in May . . . but not in June was back in 1903.”

In Phoenix, June’s high temperatures were below 100 degrees for 15 days straight, the first such June since 1913. In California’s desert, Yucca Valley’s June average was 83.5, 8.5 degrees below normal. Not far away, downtown Los Angeles averaged 74.5 degrees, five below normal.

There's more at the link above.

But of course, you wouldn't know this from the main stream media who, despite the evidence in front of our faces, would like us to believe the earth is heating up at an unprecedented rate and the only solution is more big government interference in the form of a "Cap & Tax" on carbon emissions.

Chicago: June's chill is one for the records

Via the WGN Weather Center Blog

The cloudy, chilly and rainy open to June here has been the talk of the town. So far this June is running more than 12 degrees cooler than last year, and the clouds, rain and chilly lake winds have been persistent. The average temperature at O'Hare International Airport through Friday has been only 59.5 degrees: nearly 7 degrees below normal and the coldest since records there began 50 years ago.

More bad weather is on the way Saturday with a cold rain expected to linger through the bulk of the morning. Rainfall could be heavy -- especially north of the city, which would be a reversal of Thursday's deluge that targeted the southern suburbs.

Canada frosts the most widespread in recent memory

More evidence of global cooling via Reuters, Tue Jun 9, 2009 1:54pm EDT:

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - The multiple frosts that have blanketed Western Canada in the last week are the most widespread in the top canola-growing province of Saskatchewan in at least five years, the Canola Council of Canada said on Tuesday.

and...

In Manitoba, the frost is the worst in memory for its frequency and area covered, said Derwyn Hammond, the province's senior agronomy specialist for the Canola Council.

Despite what you might hear from the global warming alarmists, 2009 is shaping up to be one of the coolest years in quite a while. More from Joe Bastardi's European blog. Note that Bastardi's previous forecast has now been "updated" at Accuweather but has been preserved for posterity by Anthony Watt.

According to Long Range Expert Joe Bastardi, areas from the northern Plains into the Northeast will have a “year without a summer.” The jet stream, which is suppressed abnormally south this spring, is also suppressing the number of thunderstorms that can form.

Yikes indeed!

The wonders of carbon

Beyond all this alarmism about global warming or ocean acidification, we need to see that on a deeper level it is a debate about carbon, and when we dig into that level of the debate we will finally see that behind the demonization of carbon and CO2, it is all about an attack on humanity itself.

Global warming alarmism is not a science, but a religio/political movement. This paper will show why it is a dangerous totalitarian ideology and a more serious threat to human freedom than Communism or Nazism. It is also like a bad joke, because carbon just happens to be the most wonderful of all the elements in the periodic table because of its ability to make so many organic compounds that are fundamental to the formation of life.

Read The Vindication of Carbon by Robert D. Brinsmead.

DeWeese on radical environmental policy

Tom Deweese the publisher/editor of The DeWeese Report and is the President of the American Policy Center, a grassroots, activist think tank headquartered in Warrenton, Virginia. These are excerpts from a speech he delivered in Kalispell, Montana and Spokane, Washington to County Republican Lincoln Day dinners in late March. It's called The Wrenching Transformation of America and was reported by Canada Free Press.

I believe the American people, and their every action, are being ruled, regulated, restricted, licensed, registered, directed, checked, inspected, measured, numbered, counted, rated, stamped, censured, authorized, admonished, refused, prevented, drilled, indoctrinated, monopolized, extorted, robbed, hoaxed, fined, harassed, disarmed, dishonored, fleeced, exploited, assessed, and taxed to the point of suffocation and desperation.

America is drowning in a sea of rules and regulations, particularly under the guise of “saving the environment.”

(...)

Tonight, I’m going to try to give you at least a peek at the all-encompassing, gut wrenching national transformation that we face—and, hopefully, help to lift the veil of confusion.

To put things in perspective, here are some questions every American should ask their elected officials – especially those supporting “climate change” legislation.

If it is proven that climate change is not man-made, but natural, will you be relieved and excited to know that man is off the hook?

We’ve been terrorized into accepting that human society was on the brink of extinction because of man-made global warming. We’ve been warned that, unless we take drastic action to reverse it – then islands will disappear, whole cities will be destroyed and polar bears will drown.

So, if it’s not true, will you now help to remove all of the draconian regulations passed during the global warming hysteria? Will you help to restore our Republic with common sense and sound economics?

Their answers to these questions should be very illuminating as to the true agenda they seek to impose.

I will let you read the rest at Canada Free Press.

Goldenberg: AGW = Al Gore Warming

NOAA Meteorologist Claims 'Gross, Blatant Censorship' for Speaking Out Against Climate Change Alarmism

Stanley Goldenberg of NOAA's Hurricane Research Division tells ICCC audience global warming has no measurable impact on hurricane activity.

By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
3/9/2009 8:06:09 PM

You often hear scientists who promote the theory of man-made global warming allege they are victims of censorship. But when it is the other way around – that scientists who dispute that claim are victims of the same thing, you never hear a peep.

That’s what Stanley Goldenberg, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) Hurricane Research Division, told an audience at the The Heartland Institute’s 2009 International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC) in New York on March 9. Voices that counter global warming alarmism are often subject to censorship, he said.

“The debate, as you also know, is masked by media censorship, bias and distortion,” Goldenberg said. “I’m interviewed quite bit on many, many levels and thankfully most of our interviews are benign. They’re trying to get out to the public.”



Goldenberg explained that as a skeptic of the anthropogenic global warming theory, he had firsthand experience, and he challenged the media to give a positive spin to the ICCC event.

“[I]’ve seen gross, gross blatant censorship,” Goldenberg said. “If you’re here from the media I’d be glad to argue with you from firsthand experience. I challenge anybody from a mainstream media source to take or print a positive report on this conference. They won’t get it past the editor. If they do, miracles do happen.”

Goldenberg is known for his research on how hurricane activity variability can be influenced on anything from intraseasonal to multi-decadal time scales. He disputes the theory hurricanes are significantly impacted by global warming. And he claimed his colleagues at other hurricane research institutions dispute it as well.

“Not a single, to my knowledge – not a single scientist at the National Hurricane Center, the Hurricane Research Division, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center – I’m trying to find out about the Central Pacific Hurricane Center – believe that hurricanes – numbers, activity – that there’s any measurable impact from any so-called global warming.”

Goldenberg explained there were differences between the terms anthropogenic global warming (AGW), referred to as “Al Gore warming” and global warming or climate change when used. He also alluded to the media’s willingness to use natural catastrophe to propagate this alarmism.

“Just because climate change has happened doesn’t mean AGW,” Goldenberg said. “Just because weather disasters happen doesn’t mean AGW. And an inconvenient truth that most of the media are speaking of, CAGW – that’s very important. They’re not just talking about AGW, but catastrophic [anthropogenic global warming]. If we just have a little bit of warming from manmade causes, nobody really cares, but they’re talking about it’s going to be catastrophic.”

A recent Business & Media Institute analysis discovered global warming alarmists often link weather phenomena like tornadoes, hurricanes, ice melt, droughts and wildfires with global warming and the media embrace the stories. However, when wintry weather hits places that aren’t accustomed to it – like recent snows in Las Vegas and New Orleans – the news coverage isn’t as quick to point their finger at the possibility of global cooling.

More links to news stories about the ICCC.

Maine cold breaks 84 year record

Just because you won't see this in the main stream media:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Geological Survey and Maine State Climate Office announced today that a minus-50 reading in northwestern Maine held up to scientific scrutiny.

That beats Maine's old record of 48 below zero set in 1925 in Van Buren, and ties the record for coldest temperature recorded in New England. That reading was made in 1933 in Bloomfield, Vt.

The record on New Hampshire's Mount Washington is minus-47.

Maine's minus-50 reading was made on Jan. 16 at a remote site along the Big Black River near the Quebec border as the region was in the grip of a blast of arctic air.

Ball: On Pravda’s New Ice Age Story

Dr. Tim Ball's latest post On Pravda’s New Ice Age Story starts off by taking aim at the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the premise of human induced (anthropogenic) global warming from the emissions of carbon dioxide:

I have said the IPCC focus on CO2 is akin to saying my car is not running well and I am going to determine the cause by ignoring the engine (sun), the transmission (water vapor), and most other mechanical parts and focus on one nut (CO2) on the right rear wheel. Worse, they only look at one thread of the nut, the human portion of CO2. The ease with which they have achieved this degree of focus is frightening, but understandable because it was premeditated.

But that's just the prelude. The main focus of Dr. Ball's post is a recent article in the Russian newspaper Pravda titled Earth on the Brink of an Ice Age which states:

“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.”

To put this into perspective and avoid confusion with the recent short term period of global cooling, Dr. Ball offers this explanation over a much larger time frame:

This is the fact that the Earth over the last 10,000 years has emerged from one segment of the most recent Ice Age (Pleistocene). We are currently in an interglacial (Holocene) and scientists anticipate it will end as we slide into another Ice Age. A diagram of global temperatures over the last 400,000 years derived from Antarctic ice cores shows the pattern during the Pleistocene.

The blue line shows the temperature with current temperatures on the right. Notice there are four previous interglacials, two of them with higher temperatures than today. The intervening periods are the ice ages when massive glaciers formed on the land. Also note how the temperature declines after the interglacial peak; that is the cooling the Pravda article is discussing.

It is generally agreed that changes in the sun/earth relationship are the major mechanism driving long-term climate patterns. These are collectively known as the Milankovitch Effect and include; changes in the Earth’s orbit caused primarily by the gravitational pull of Jupiter with a 100,000-year cycle; changes in the tilt of the Earth of undetermined cause, with a 40,000- year cycle; and a shift in the date of equinox with a 19,000-year cycle. Although Milankovitch’s work was initially accepted it lost favor when his results conflicted with some radiocarbon data. I recall conferences in the 1980s when reference to Milankovitch brought vigorous protest. However, by the 1990s he was back in favor.

Another important point about the Pravda article is the observation that supporters of the human caused global warming (AGW) only consider a short time frame. “ The main flaw in the AGW theory is that its proponents focus on evidence from only the past 1,000 years at most, while ignoring the evidence from the past million years--evidence which is essential for a true understanding of climatology.” It is true that the now discredited “hockey stick” examined climate of the last thousand years, but this was only to try and eliminate the Medieval Warm Period. In fact, the focus is at most the temperature of the last 140 years.

Read the full story at FCPP Publications. (h/t)

Related: The IPCC under the Microscope. (h/t)

They don't even have a word for it...

in the United Arab Emirates:

RAS AL KHAIMAH // Snow covered the Jebel Jais area for only the second time in recorded history yesterday.

So rare was the event that one lifelong resident said the local dialect had no word for it.

More here.

It's hard to make data where none exist

Unless of course, you are trying to convince the world that Antarctica is warming.

Washington, DC: A new study on Antarctic temperatures – which is contrary to the findings of multiple previous studies - claims "that since 1957, the annual temperature for the entire continent of Antarctica has warmed by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, but still is 50 degrees below zero.”

Despite the fact that the study was immediately viewed with major skepticism by scientists who are not skeptical of anthropogenic global warming claims, many in the media pounced on the study as a chance to attack those skeptical of man-made climate doom. According to the release of the study, “The researchers devised a statistical technique that uses data from satellites and from Antarctic weather stations to make a new estimate of temperature trends. […]

The scientists found temperature measurements from weather stations corresponded closely with satellite data for overlapping time periods. That allowed them to use the satellite data as a guide to deduce temperatures in areas of the continent without weather stations.” (emphasis added)

Few media outlets noted that in 2007 Antarctic “sea ice coverage has grown to record levels since satellite monitoring began in the 1979, according to peer-reviewed studies and scientists who study the area.” [See also other factors impacting Antarctica: “Volcano, Not Global Warming Effects, May be Melting an Antarctic Glacier & The Antarctic deep sea gets COLDER – April 21, 2008 & A January 12, 2008, peer-reviewed paper in AGU (American Geophysical Union) found “A doubling in snow accumulation in the western Antarctic Peninsula since 1850.” Map of Volcanoes - See comprehensive data round up below]

The new Antarctic study was published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature and the lead author of the study was Eric Steig, a University of Washington professor of Earth and Space Sciences. Other co-authors include: David Schneider of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, a former student of Steig's; Scott Rutherford of Roger Williams University in Bristol, RI; and Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University.

UN IPCC lead author, Dr. Kevin Trenberth, who is not in any way a climate change skeptic, said of the study, "I remain somewhat skeptical… It is hard to make data where none exist.” Echoing Trenberth’s analysis were several other scientists.

Be sure to read the rest of this post by Marc Morano at Senator Jim Inhofe's EPW Press Blog.

Here's another review from Roger Pielke Sr.

And at the Heliogenic Climate Change blog they're a little more blunt about this in a couple of related posts: Scientist adjusts data -- presto, Antarctic cooling disappears and Rewriting History.

Carter: Facts Debunk Global Warming Alarmism

Bob Carter is an adjunct professor of geology at James Cook University. He writes:

THE National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that October in the US was marked by 63 record snowfalls and 115 lowest-ever temperatures.

Over the past few years, similar signs of colder than usual weather have been recorded all over the world, causing many people to question the still fashionable, but now long outdated, global warming alarmism. Yet individual weather events or spells, whether warmings or coolings, tell us nothing necessarily about true climate change.

Nonetheless, by coincidence, growing recognition of a threat of climatic cooling is correct, because since the turn of the 21st century all real world, long-term climate indicators have turned downwards. Global atmospheric temperature reached a peak in 1998, has not warmed since 1995 and, has been cooling since 2002. Some people, still under the thrall of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change's disproved projections of warming, seem surprised by this cooling trend, even to the point of denying it. But why?

Can you say computer models?

Progress

Looks like there's no consensus amongst ordinary folk either. American Voters Losing Faith in Theory of Global Warming:

The poll asked 1,000 likely voters whether global warming was “caused primarily by human activity or by long term planetary trends.” Only 41 percent said it was human activity, while 44 percent said it was long-term planetary trends. Seven percent said it was “some other reason,” and nine percent said they were not sure.

This is a significant shift from a poll conducted last April in which 47 percent said human activity caused global warming and only 34 percent said long term planetary trends caused it.

Another sign that maybe, just maybe 2008 was the year that man-made global warming was disproved for the majority of us.

If global warming is real then why is it cold?

Heh.

Consensus in Freefall

Senator James Inhofe explains how a carbon tax would punish the poor, how Al Gore is getting rich selling his global warming "whopper", the failed Lieberman-Warner climate change bill and how the IPCC's so-called scientific consensus on global warming is now in full freefall.

Pravda: Global cooling

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.