In our 060811 Amicus brief to the D.C. Court attached, on pages 39 -56, we dealt with this matter and ended the section with the following statement:
In fact, there is reason to believe that the sun may now move into another “minimum” state, like the Maunder or Dalton Minimums (page 28). After all, three out of the 20 years with the highest spotless days since 1849 occurred in 2007, 2008, and 2009. How nuts is the action by the SC to not take the EF!!! ?
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Solar Activity Drops To 100-Year Low, Puzzling Scientists
A leading British climate scientist claims the current rate of decline in solar activity is such that there is now a real risk of a ‘Little Ice Age’. The severe cold went hand in hand with an exceptionally inactive sun, and was called the Maunder solar minimum. Now a leading scientist from Reading University has told me that the current rate of decline in solar activity is such that there’s a real risk of seeing a return of such conditions. Following analysis of the data, Professor Lockwood believes solar activity is now falling more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years. Based on his findings he’s raised the risk of a new Maunder minimum from less than 10% just a few years ago to 25-30%. Paul Hudson, BBC Weather, 28 October 2013
The sun is ‘quietening’ really rapidly. We think it is actually quietening more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years. So this is a major change. We think lower solar activity does seem to tie up with more cold winters in central Europe and the UK. Professor Michael Lockwood, BBC TV 28 October 2013
Britain faces a new mini-Ice Age with decades of severe Siberian winters and washout summers, an expert has warned. Professor Mike Lockwood, of Reading University, said erratic and extreme weather patterns could be the norm in 20 years. He said the risk of harsh winters and wet miserable summers has gone up to 25 to 30 per cent compared with 10 per cent a few years ago. Weakening sunspot activity is to blame for a “major change” in the UK’s weather he told BBC TV. Climatologist Dr Dennis Wheeler from Sunderland University, said: “When we have had periods where the sun has been quieter than usual we tend to get these much harsher winters.” Nathan Rao, Daily Express, 28 October 2013
The previous lengthy period of low solar activity was the so-called Maunder Minimum that occurred between about 1640 and 1710. This was coincident with a cold climatic spell called the Little Ice Age. This was once thought to be confined to North West Europe, then the Northern Hemisphere. However recent research is showing this cold spell to be a global phenomenon. It would be fair to say that no one knows why the Little Ice Age took place… It may be no coincidence that estimates of the turn-around in solar activity from grand maximum to decline might have occurred between 1985 - 95, and that global annual average surface temperatures have been flat since 1997. David Whitehouse, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 30 October 2013
Predictions that 2013 would see an upsurge in solar activity and geomagnetic storms disrupting power grids and communications systems have proved to be a false alarm. Instead, the current peak in the solar cycle is the weakest for a century. Subdued solar activity has prompted controversial comparisons with the Maunder Minimum, which occurred between 1645 and 1715, when a prolonged absence of sunspots and other indicators of solar activity coincided with the coldest period in the last millennium. The comparisons have sparked a furious exchange of views between observers who believe the planet could be on the brink of another period of cooling, and scientists who insist there is no evidence that temperatures are about to fall. In all fairness, Russian scientists have warned over a decade ago that the Earth will enter a mini ice age period. MINA News, 19 September 2013
The sun is acting bizarrely and scientists have no idea why. Solar activity is in gradual decline, a change from the norm which in the past triggered a 300-year-long mini ice age. The fall-off in sunspot activity still has the potential to affect our weather for the worse, Dr Elliott said. Research by Prof Mike Lockwood at the University of Reading showed how low solar activity could alter the position of the jet stream over the north Atlantic, causing severe cold during winter months. This was likely the cause of the very cold and snowy winters during 2009 and 2010, Dr Elliott said. “It all points to perhaps another little ice age,” he said. “It seems likely we are going to enter a period of very low solar activity and could mean we are in for very cold winters.” Dick Ahlstrom, The Irish Times, 12 July 2013
The Little Ice Age appears to have affected the climate powerfully. IPCC-leaning scientists, however, say that the Little Ice Age couldn’t have been caused by solar variability - not even solar variability combined with sky-darkening volcanic eruptions as the effects would have been too weak. A Swiss team of researchers now say that in fact the Little Ice Age most certainly could have been triggered by variations in the Sun. Lewis Page, The Register, 1 October 2013
No More Lies Blog
We have been brainwashed about carbon dioxide
Some scientists were handsomely paid for decades to vilify this useful gas. Many others, directly or indirectly dependent from governments, supported the official line so as not to harm their careers.
This way, over-endebted governments would be able to launch a (crippling) new tax, the “carbon tax”, while crony-capitalists, which contribute in a big way to election campaign funds left and right, could stuff their bank accounts with huge subsidies for installing thousands of essentially useless wind turbines.
But finally, the truth has come out, confirming what the Carbon Sense Coalition had been saying all along:
Carbon Dioxide Enhances Food Production
Indeed, a new study reveals with scientific precision what climate skeptics knew all along: CO2 is a good guy, not Public Enemy #
Here is the new study by Craig D. Idso, Ph.D., Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change – 18 October 2013
The Positive Externalities of Carbon Dioxide:
Estimating the Monetary Benefits of Rising Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations on Global Food Production
ABSTRACT:
:Advancements in technology and scientific expertise that accompanied the Industrial Revolution initiated a great transformation within the global enterprise of agriculture. More efficient machinery and improved plant cultivars, for example, paved the way toward higher crop yields and increased global food production. And with the ever-burgeoning population of the planet, the increase in food production was a welcomed societal benefit. But what remained largely unknown to society at that time, was the birth of an ancillary aid to agriculture that would confer great benefits upon future inhabitants of the globe in the decades and centuries to come. The source of that aid: atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2).
“Several analyses have been conducted to estimate potential monetary damages of the rising atmospheric CO2 concentration. Few, however, have attempted to investigate its monetary benefits. Chief among such positive externalities is the economic value added to global crop production by several growth-enhancing properties of atmospheric CO2 enrichment.
“As literally thousands of laboratory and field studies have demonstrated, elevated levels of atmospheric CO2 have been conclusively shown to stimulate plant productivity and growth, as well as to foster certain water-conserving and stress-alleviating benefits. For a 300-ppm increase in the air’s CO2 content, for example, herbaceous plant biomass is typically enhanced by 25 to 55%, representing an important positive externality that is absent from today’s state-of-the-art social cost of carbon (SCC) calculations.
“The present study addresses this deficiency by providing a quantitative estimate of the direct monetary benefits conferred by atmospheric CO2 enrichment on both historic and future global crop production. The results indicate that the annual total monetary value of this benefit grew from about $20 billion in 1961 to over $160 billion by 2011, amounting to a total sum of $3.5 trillion over the 50-year period 1961-2011. Projecting the monetary value of this positive externality forward in time reveals it will likely bestow an additional $11.6 trillion on crop production between now and 2050.
“The incorporation of these findings into future SCC studies will help to ensure a more realistic assessment of the total net economic impact of rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations due to both negative and positive externalities. Furthermore, the observationally-deduced benefits of atmospheric CO2 enrichment on crop production should be given premier weighting over the speculative negative externalities that are projected to occur as a result of computer model computations of CO2-induced global warming. Until this is done, little if any weight should be placed on current SCC calculations.”
Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change © 2013 http://www.co2science.org
By Tom Harris & Dr. Jay Lehr
There’s an old saying that when presenting a legal case, if the facts are on your side, “pound the facts,” but if the facts are against you, “pound the table.” The report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released on September 27th is an obvious example of pounding the table.
The facts, which the IPCC’s report admits to, albeit with obvious reluctance and a good deal of obfuscation, show that humanity’s impact on global climate is too small to justify concern and is certainly no reason for the costly programs governments are imposing. Yet the IPCC persists in asserting the opposite. They state that they are more convinced than ever that global warming is caused mainly by our greenhouse gas emissions and that the world face catastrophe if we don’t radically change our ways. Even though the IPCC’s past forecasts have been spectacularly wrong,
the UN panel claims even higher confidence today 95% that they’ve finally got it right.
They haven’t. The IPCC’s theatrics are clearly an attempt to misdirect public, media, and government attention away from the scientific fact that climate change is overwhelmingly due to natural forces. People are emitting more carbon dioxide (CO2) than ever, from power plants, automobiles, and industrial activity, but the earth has not warmed for at least the past 15 years.
None of the computer models the IPCC references predicted this. The world was warmer in the 13th century than now, yet CO2 levels then were far lower than today. Global ice cover a big concern of alarmists predicting rapid sea level rise hasn’t changed significantly since satellite measurements began in 1979, and Antarctic ice, which is eight times greater than Arctic ice, is not receding. Sea level rise has remained at roughly the same gradual rate for the past few centuries, and is now only 1/10th that of 8,000 years ago when large quantities of ice were melting. Extreme weather across the world has generally declined. For example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that the U.S. is on pace for the fewest number of tornadoes in recorded history, while tropical cyclone activity (hurricanes in the North Atlantic) is near a thirty-year low.
Regardless, nobody, including the IPCC, knows what an ideal climate would be, or even whether there is such a thing. Attempting to stop climate change makes about as much sense as trying to halt the earth’s rotation: we can’t do it, and there’s no good reason to try.
IPCCs history of repeated and frequent mistakes
Given the IPCC’s history of repeated and frequent mistakes, it’s perfectly clear that they are a political organization, not a scientific one. Its primary purpose is to provide pseudo-scientific cover for a UN-led transfer of resources from people in wealthy countries to those in poor nations, while keeping poor nations from ever becoming rich. The IPCC should be disbanded and non-governmental scientists encouraged to publicize their conclusions without censor or intimidation from the UN, academia and other alarmists.
That’s not likely to happen soon, however. Too many people are profiting from global warming alarmism, as governments spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year attempting to overcome nature. Compliant scientists gain access to vast amounts of research funding if they characterize Western nations as the cause of every bad weather event. Instead of admitting that they made one of the biggest mistakes in history, governments continue to prop up the IPCC and pretend it’s findings are meaningful.
Global cooling or public apathy will eventually dry up IPCC funding and the organization will finally disband. For that to happen any time soon, however, will require that taxpayers in the nations that actually pay for the UN demand the end of the IPCC. And while they’re at it, voters would do well to call for an end to all the other costly, unnecessary government boondoggles adopted in the name of global warming, such as expensive and environmentally harmful renewable power mandates.
Toward that end, the public and the press clearly need a reliable source of climate science information, one not controlled by the UN or any government. Fortunately, there is one- the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). Several days before the IPCC report was released, the NIPCC issued its current report, Climate Change Reconsidered II (CCR-II), a book of more than a thousand pages citing nearly 5,000 peer-reviewed scientific references and written or reviewed by some 50 climate scientists. The scientists firmly conclude nature, not man, controls the climate. It’s available here .
With the release of the CCR-II report, we can only hope that the pounding you’ll soon be hearing are the nails going into the IPCC’s coffin.
Tom Harris is executive director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC). Dr. Jay Lehr is science director of the Chicago-based Heartland Institute and an advisor to ICSC.