The precise timing of the origin of life on Earth and the changes in life during the past 4.5 billion years has been a subject of great controversy for the past century. The principal indicator of the amount of organic carbon produced by biological activity traditionally used is the ratio of the less abundant isotope of carbon, 13C, to the more abundant isotope, 12C. As plants preferentially incorporate 12C, during periods of high production of organic material the 13C/12C ratio of carbonate material becomes elevated. Using this principle, the history of organic material has been interpreted by geologists using the 13C/12C ratio of carbonates and organics, wherever these materials can be sampled and dated.

While this idea appears to be sound over the last 150 million years or so, prior to this time there are no open oceanic sediment records which record the 13C/12C ratio, and therefore, geologists are forced to use materials associated with carbonate platforms or epicontinental seas.

In order to test whether platform-associated sediments are related to the global carbon cycle, a paper by University of Miami Professor Dr. Peter K. Swart appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This paper examines changes over the past 10 million years at sites off the Bahamas (Atlantic Ocean), the Maldives (Indian Ocean), and Great Barrier Reef (Pacific Ocean). The variations in the 13C/12C ratio are synchronous at all of the sites studied, but are unrelated to the global change in the 13C/12C ratio.

It appears that records related to carbonate platforms which are often used throughout the early history of the Earth are not good recorders of the 13C/12C ratio in the open oceans. Hence, the work presented suggests that assumptions made previously about changes in the 13C/12C ratios of carbonate sediments in the geological record are incorrect.

“This study is a major step in terms of rethinking how geologists interpret variations in the 13C/12C ratio throughout Earth’s history. If the approach does not work over the past 10 million years, then why would it work during older time periods?” said Swart. “As a consequence of our findings, changes in 13C/12C records need to be reevaluated, conclusions regarding changes in the reservoirs of carbon will have to be reassessed, and some of the widely-held ideas regarding the elevation of CO2 during specific periods of the Earth’s geological history will have to be adjusted.” Read full story here.

Recalling that people such as Robert F. Kennedy have called climate skeptics “traitors”, David Suzuki calls for their jailing, the Grist website called for Nuremburg trials for them, NASA’s Dr. Jim Hansen calling for their trials for treason, along with the habitual insults from Al Gore, its been difficult for anyone to respectfully dissent. It’s been difficult to stick to the rules of hard science, by demanding evidence and replication, both of which require questioning but are often followed by insults and threats.

The world owes a lot to many climate sci entists who are closely studying and reviewing the claims of the global warming lobby. They are also attempting to replicate some of these findings without the traditional support of the originating authors. Ordinarily, in the world of hard nosed science, such scrutiny and replication has been historically welcomed. No longer. The well-known name calling, the dismissiveness, the ad hominem attacks, is regrettably now the standard level of discourse. Additionally, these include many laboratory directors, media editors, and Ph.D.s who for whatever reasons adopt the same low roads of discourse and the abandonment of science.

These are difficult times for traditional climate scientists who do practice good science, serious peer review, welcome scrutiny, replication, and the sharing of data. Thanks to the whole world of the global warm-mongers and indentured PhDs, the integrity of the entire world of science is being diminished, followed by a loss of trust and respect. Among the giants challenging the global warming dogma has been Christopher Monckton. He has been a strong international leader, spokesman, and expert in unraveling the complexities of the man-made warming hypothesis.

The greatest drivers behind the hypothesis have not been the actual evidence, but computer models. Relative to the largely unknown climate complexities, these are still known to be primitive and incapable of replicating climate data as measured from observations. If a hypothesis can’t explain actual evidence and climate observations, it is wrong, and needs to be modified or abandoned.

IPCC models in the 2007 report are already falsified. See larger image here.

Hansen’s model versus reality. Also being falsified. See larger image here.

In a recent exchange with an expert modeler and believer of global warming, Monckton responded in incredible detail by identifying many of the problems found with the computer models themselves. Monckton is impressively expert in the minutiae of computer modeling, a skill which applies directly to the analyses of the computer climate models. Monckton has performed a detailed analysis of the IPCC’s hypothesis of global warming and identified a long list of failings. They deserved much wider distribution, with an understanding of the serious implications. They and literature references can be found here .

Monckton is not alone in his concerns with computer modeling. Tens of thousands of scientists and engineers who have taken basic mathematics know of the problems and complexities with modeling even simple situations. This author has met a fellow scientist (a bit nerdy admittedly) who carried a long multi-variable multi-term equation on a paper kept in his wallet, which was the equation of the outline of his wife’s face. The modeling problem is delightfully defined by atmospheric physicist Dr. James Peden, who recently said Climate Modeling is not science, it is computerized Tinkertoys, with which one can construct any outcome he chooses.  And for my nerdy modeler above, it’s easy to change his wallet equation if he gets a new wife! Read much more here.

Letter by David Watt of Brentwood in Essex to the Belfast telegraph (Mr. Watt is not connected with the Armagh Observatory)

After all the hype over catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) doom, it may come as a shock to many readers that scientists do not understand the Earth’s climate very well. Forget Al Gore, forget James Hansen, forget Michael Mann. Pay attention to what the sun is telling us, by its quietness. The observatory [Armagh] notes that solar cycles 21 and 22, which were characterized by being short and intense in their activity, led to the natural global warming observed in the 80’s and 90’s.

“Cycle 23, which hasn’t finished yet, looks like it will be long (at least 12 to 13 years) and cycle 24, which has still to start, looks like it will be exceptionally weak,” writes one observatory scientist.

“Based on the past Armagh measurements, this suggests that over the next two decades, global temperatures may fall by about 2 degrees C - that is, to a level lower than any we have seen in the last 100 years. “Temperatures have already fallen by about 0.5 degrees C over the past 12 months and, if this is only the start of it, it would be a serious concern,” concludes David Watt.  See PrisonPlanet_via_Tom Nelson.

Natural climate variation is driven by multiple overlapping solar cycles, by the ocean multidecadal oscillations, by volcanic activity, by chaotic biological cycles on land and in the sea, all influencing and being influenced by ice and snow cover. None of these factors are well understood. Yet the wholly warmer climate orthodoxy claims to be able to simplify climate to one parameter: anthropogenic greenhouse gases! These high priests of the orthodoxy exhibit a sad combination of laziness and arrogance.

They are like the lazy and incompetent physician who jumps at the first diagnosis that enters his mind, and refuses to consider any other factors. But having jumped onto the political and media bandwagon of climate doom, these alarmist orthodoxers have set their course, regardless of how the reality may develop. See blog here.

There is a new GRL paper in press by Elsner and Jagger entitled: ‘United States and Caribbean tropical cyclone activity related to the solar cycle.’

The Abstract states:

The authors report on a finding that annual U.S hurricane counts are significantly related to solar activity. The relationship results from fewer intense tropical cyclones over the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico when sunspot numbers are high. The finding is in accord with the heat-engine theory of hurricanes that predicts a reduction in the maximum potential intensity with a warming in the layer near the top of the hurricane. An active sun warms the lower stratosphere and upper troposphere through ozone absorption of additional ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Since the dissipation of the hurricane’s energy occurs through ocean mixing and atmospheric transport, tropical cyclones can act to amplify the effect of relatively small changes in the sun’s output thereby appreciably altering the climate. Results have implications for life and property throughout the Caribbean, Mexico, and portions of the United States.

Hurricane Ike. See larger image here

Icecap Note: This same factor could well be a contributing factor in last winter’s record snows and the unusual number of thunderstorm and tornadoes and the heavy rains of the spring. A cooling upper atmosphere makes the atmosphere more unstable and aids convection. Also interestingly, Hurricane Ike is occurring 108 years after the great Galveston Hurricane at the start of the last quiet solar period associated with the ~106 year cycle. 1901 had two zero sunspot months. August by some observatories was a zero sunspot month. Maybe just coincidence but then again.

Last week Environment Minister Sammy WIlson caused anger among some environmentalists by questioning whether global warming was caused by man. The Green Party has already hit back - now NIGEL CALDER, former editor of the New Scientist defends Mr Wilson’s position.

There are warnings of gales in Shannon, Rockall, Malin. When shipping forecasts like that occur repeatedly in summertime, you have to wonder if the global cooling feared by the best-informed climate experts has already begun to bite. The UK’s rotten summer weather of 2007 and 2008 is a good reason to reopen the debate about global warming, as Northern Ireland’s Environment Minister Sammy Wilson proposes.

Unseasonable storms plagued the Spanish Armada too. After the fights in the English Channel, it escaped homeward around Scotland and Ireland. But high winds, in the late summer of 1588, wrecked two dozen ships on the north and west coasts of Ireland. As Queen Elizabeth’s Armada medal put it ‘God blew and they were scattered’.

Why is that 420-year-old weather bulletin relevant today? Because a worldwide cooling event, the Little Ice Age, was just then becoming serious. A local symptom was summer storms tracking across the British Isles, rather than passing to the north as in warmer medieval times. The gloomy and wet weather brought misery to farmers, and between 1550 and 1600 the price of wheat in England went up by 200 per cent. With occasional intermissions, and a maximum chill around 1700, the Little Ice Age continued until about 1850.

A lazy sun explains it. The solar magnetic shield was weak, and the Earth suffered a larger influx of swift atomic particles coming from exploded stars.
Those cosmic rays helped to make more low clouds, which cooled the world during the Little Ice Age. But in the 20th century the sun doubled its magnetic strength and cut the influx of cosmic rays. That meant fewer clouds and a warmer world.

This is no crackpot theory. A string of discoveries by the physicist Henrik Svensmark at the Danish National Space Institute backs it up. He and his small team have even traced the chemical action of cosmic rays involved in cloud-making. Evidence for the cosmic-ray theory is now far stronger than for the politically fashionable notion that carbon dioxide drives global warming. Dr Svensmark and I explain it all in plain language in our book The Chilling Stars, published by Icon Books in 2007.

So what’s the problem? Precisely the lack of debate that Mr Wilson complains about. A group of scientists who make fanciful computer models of the climate for the United Nations have allied themselves with politicians in many Western countries, with environmental lobbyists, and with journalists who have forgotten to take official pronouncements with plenty of salt. The science of man-made global warming is settled, they chorus, and there’s nothing to discuss except how to avoid the climatic apocalypse. Read more here.

See also this Anthony Watts story on the SIDC debacle on the August sunspot number.