By Steven Goddard on WattsUpWithThat
Consider the conflicted UK, where the government is dominated by people who claim to be concerned above all else about CO2 emissions, and where the power industry warns that the country’s electricity and natural gas capacity may soon be inadequate to meet basic needs. Russia is currently threatening to cut off natural gas supplies to Europe. Climate vandals are welcomed to 10 Downing Street where they embarrass the Prime Minister, and formerly great newspapers like The Guardian demonize environmental activists for trying to protect the country’s scenic heritage from unsightly windmills. Dr. Hansen was recently welcomed as an expert witness for the defence of power plant damagers, and children block airport runways to stop vacationers from using airplanes - in the name of protecting of the climate.
Climate Activist Glues Himself to the Smiling Prime Minister at #10
The UK is currently in the grip of what the papers describe as a “Siberian Cold Front.” Solar insolation is close to zero this time of year at that latitude, so solar power is out of the question as a significant winter energy source. The light winds and freezing conditions make wind generated power minimally useful and unreliable. Coal, nuclear and natural gas are the only practical options to stay warm, yet the government appears too paralyzed by climate fears to move forward with the needed additions to the energy grid.
Britain is experiencing a seemingly irresolvable conflict in it’s collective belief system. Brits want to save the planet from global warming, and yet are faced with power shortages which may affect their livelihoods and ability to stay warm in a cold climate. The Church of England is wagering huge sums of cash on Al Gore’s understanding of the world. And as the New Year rings in with bitter cold, the Met Office warns of yet another hot year. The last “hot” day in London was July 27, 2006 when temperatures reached 30C (86F.) That was 889 days ago.
Can the great country which survived the Nazi Blitz overcome it’s own internal conflicts in 2009? I predict that England will pull herself together like she always has, but who will be the next Churchill to lead England out of it’s most clueless hour? Britain’s leadership hasn’t been this confused since Neville Chamberlain handed Czechoslovakia over to Hitler seventy years ago. Ironically, it may be current Czech President Vaclav Klaus who rescues Europe from themselves. Klaus wrote that “it was futile to fight against phenomena like higher solar activity or the change of ocean currents”. Klaus assumed the EU Presidency today.
Happy New Year to all. See post here.
By Alexandre Aguiar, MetSul Weather Center Communications Director and the Weatherman for Ulbra TV in Porto Alegre, Brazil
Icecap Note: The is a reprise of the story from October 2007 posted by Alexandre during the first year of what has become a three year La Nina. With a La Nina in 2005, and a three year string in 1998/99, 1999/2000 and 2000/01, this makes 7 La Nina years in the last 11 years. It was in 1997 that Al Gore and other scientists at an important summit in California suggested that because of global warming we would be entering a period with frequent perhaps even permanent strong El Ninos (and thus no more La Ninas). Ironically, the UK Met Office is blaming the La Ninas for the failure of their perennial warmest year forecasts and the interruption in global warming. What they do not admit is that the PDO flip to negative means La Ninas and not El Ninos will be more frequent for the next few decades meaning more cool years than warm. And of course there is no mention of the warm PDO from 1977 to 1998 that led to the two decade warming thanks to a predominance of El Ninos.
The guest in the El Nino Community Preparedness Summit in Santa Monica, California, was the Vice President of the United States Al Gore. It was another opportunity to him to propagate the scary vision of a warmed globe. The main point was the super El Nino event of that year. Gore took advantage of the scene to forecast a future without La Nina events. El Nino events, according to him and his fellow scientists, would become permanent. “For those who argue that global warming is already changing the world’s climate, this year’s El Nino weather front is more than enough evidence”, the audience was told by Gore. In the next day, a report by the San Francisco Chronicle said: “Gore links El Nino to Global Warming”. The Vice President stated at the summit that growing frequency of El Nino episodes could be connected to the gradual heating of the atmosphere caused by emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
October 14th 2007. Gore is the most celebrated name worldwide. He got an Oscar, then an Emmy and just two days ago a Nobel Peace Prize. There are no more awards to win. He got all. But there is an inconvenient truth to Mr. Gore exactly ten years after that conference in Santa Monica. An ironic truth. The same Pacific that makes Santa Monica one of the most attractive places in California is answering to the claims it would be permanently warm in a global warming era. Gore’s theory bankrupted exactly ten years after its release. The largest ocean in Earth is much colder than average and global climate starts to feel the impacts of a moderate La Nina event that may reach the strong threshold.
NOAA’s Multivariate ENSO Index for September reached its lowest value for that month of the year since 1988. It was the second largest one-month drop on record for this time of year. The -1.1 value was last seen in late 1999 and early 1989. According to the RSS MSU satellite data, September 2007 was the 7th coldest month among 81 months since January 2001. It has made it to the 9% of the coolest months of the 21st century so far, ICECAP reported. The Southern hemisphere was 0.015 Celsius degrees cooler than the long-term average, fifth coldest month since January 2001. Brazil’s MetSul Weather Center chief-meteorologist says this is clear evidence that Joe D’Aleo and other scientists claim that the higher frequency of El Nino events promoted global warming and not the contrary is correct. “Al Gore declared ten years ago that El Nino episodes were a consequence of global warming while historic data prior and after that claim shows El Nino is in fact a cause of warming since the Great Pacific Shift in the 70’s”, said meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart. MetSul Meteorologia expert also stated there is no coincidence that this La Nina of 2007 is taking place right during the 11-year solar minimum cycle. “Major La Nina events were recorded around the solar minima in the last decades”, said Eugenio Hackbart. It will take some more years to “Mother Nature” to dismiss some or all of Gore forecasts, but earlier predictions made by him are already proving to be an inconvenient mistake. See The story at METSUL here.
Note the La Nina returning for second/third year here.
Sammy Wilson in the Belfast Telegraph
Spending billions on trying to reduce carbon emissions is one giant con that is depriving third world countries of vital funds to tackle famine, HIV and other diseases, Sammy Wilson said. The DUP minister has been heavily criticised by environmentalists for claiming that ongoing climatic shifts are down to nature and not mankind. But while acknowledging his views on global warming may not be popular, the East Antrim MP said he was not prepared to be bullied by eco fundamentalists. “I’ll not be stopped saying what I believe needs to be said about climate change,” he said. Most of the people who shout about climate change have not read one article about it. “I think in 20 years’ time we will look back at this whole climate change debate and ask ourselves how on earth were we ever conned into spending the billions of pounds which are going into this without any kind of rigorous examination of the background, the science, the implications of it all.
Because there is now a degree of hysteria about it, fairly unformed hysteria I’ve got to say as well. “I mean I get it in the Assembly all the time and most of the people who shout about climate change have not read one article about climate change, not read one book about climate change, if you asked them to explain how they believe there’s a connection between CO2 emission and the effects which they claim there’s going to be, if you ask them to explain the thought process or the modelling that is required and the assumptions behind that and how tenuous all the connections are, they wouldn’t have a clue. “They simply get letters about it from all these lobby groups, it’s popular and therefore they go along with the flow - and that would be ok if there were no implications for it, but the implications are immense.”
He said while people in the western world were facing spiralling fuel bills as a result of efforts to cut CO2, the implications in poorer countries were graver. “What are the problems that face us either locally and internationally. Are those not the things we should be concentrating on?” he asked. “HIV, lack of clean water, which kills millions of people in third world countries, lack of education. A fraction of the money we are currently spending on climate change could actually eradicate those three problems alone, a fraction of it.
“I think as a society we sometimes need to get some of these things in perspective and when I listen to some of the rubbish that is spoken by some of my colleagues in the Assembly it amuses me at times and other times it angers me.” Despite his views on CO2, Mr Wilson said he does not intend to backtrack on commitments made by his predecessor at the Department of the Environment, Arlene Foster, to make the Stormont estate carbon neutral. He said while he wasn’t worried about reducing CO2 output, he said the policy would help to cut fuels bills. “I don’t couch those actions in terms of reducing CO2 emissions,” he said.
“I don’t care about CO2 emissions to be quite truthful because I don’t think it’s all that important but what I do believe is, and perhaps this is where there can be some convergence, as far as using fuel more efficiently that is good for our economy; that makes us more competitive. If we can save in schools hundreds of thousands on fuel that’s more money being put for books or classroom assistants. “So yes there are things we can do. If you want to express it terms of carbon neutral, I just express it terms of making the place more efficient, less wasteful and hopefully that will release money to do the proper things that we should be doing.” Read more here.