2008 - the year the myth of global warming died?

Christmas vacation is over and it's time to go back to work, and to resume blogging.

I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday and to those who were able to spend the holiday in the bosom of their extended family - you have my deepest sympathy.

I won't have time to put anything other than this up today due to some end-of-year work issues, but I couldn't let this go by without sharing it. This is from the Telegraph and is by Christopher Booker:

Looking back over my columns of the past 12 months, one of their major themes was neatly encapsulated by two recent items from The Daily Telegraph.

The first, on May 21, headed "Climate change threat to Alpine ski resorts" , reported that the entire Alpine "winter sports industry" could soon "grind to a halt for lack of snow". The second, on December 19, headed "The Alps have best snow conditions in a generation" , reported that this winter's Alpine snowfalls "look set to beat all records by New Year's Day".

Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.

Ever shriller and more frantic has become the insistence of the warmists, cheered on by their army of media groupies such as the BBC, that the last 10 years have been the "hottest in history" and that the North Pole would soon be ice-free – as the poles remain defiantly icebound and those polar bears fail to drown. All those hysterical predictions that we are seeing more droughts and hurricanes than ever before have infuriatingly failed to materialise.

Even the more cautious scientific acolytes of the official orthodoxy now admit that, thanks to "natural factors" such as ocean currents, temperatures have failed to rise as predicted (although they plaintively assure us that this cooling effect is merely "masking the underlying warming trend", and that the temperature rise will resume worse than ever by the middle of the next decade).

Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month's Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and "environmentalists" gathered to plan next year's "son of Kyoto" treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for "combating climate change" with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.

Suddenly it has become rather less appealing that we should divert trillions of dollars, pounds and euros into the fantasy that we could reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 80 per cent. All those grandiose projects for "emissions trading", "carbon capture", building tens of thousands more useless wind turbines, switching vast areas of farmland from producing food to "biofuels", are being exposed as no more than enormously damaging and futile gestures, costing astronomic sums we no longer possess.

As 2009 dawns, it is time we in Britain faced up to the genuine crisis now fast approaching from the fact that – unless we get on very soon with building enough proper power stations to fill our looming "energy gap" - within a few years our lights will go out and what remains of our economy will judder to a halt. After years of infantile displacement activity, it is high time our politicians – along with those of the EU and President Obama's US – were brought back with a mighty jolt into contact with the real world.

I have said before that global warming is the most effective hobgoblin that the left has ever invented to terrorize the masses into surrendering their wealth and liberty. I have gone on to say that it will not be abandoned, no matter what the actual science says, until a new hobgoblin is contrived.

It is possible that our politicians will see the current global recession as just that hobgoblin and we will soon see the increasingly fragile global warming house of cards collapse once and for all.

This would be a very good thing since the earth is probably entering a protracted cooling period which will see shorter growing seasons and a reduction in arable land. This will result in food shortages and increasing prices for agricultural products and sharp increases in the demand for energy as people try to keep warm.

The measures which were/are being proposed to combat the fantasy of global warming would dramatically increase the cost of energy while just as dramatically decreasing its supply. This would be a recipe for disaster on a global scale. Famine weakens the population's resistance to disease and creates a fertile ground for pandemics (Black Plague got a foothold in Europe only after lower temperatures reduced the food supply and led to widespread hunger).

A few moments thought will reveal what a dangerous mix this is even for the advanced nations of the West. How hard will it be for the Unites States to control its southern border when Mexicans see the US as not a good job or a welfare check but as the only refuge from starvation and plague?

How will Europe, which is already being overrun by Muslim immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East, cope with even greater numbers of even more destitute - and radical - and possibly diseased - refugees? Will the EU be able to refuse them entrance when so many European nations are already infested with so many of their brethren who have already demonstrated a propensity for violent rioting when denied any whim?

It would be a marvelous example of the providence of God if the current financial troubles hit us at exactly the right time to derail the global warming juggernaut before it could send the world into another dark age.

Truth, from an unlikely source

CNN, of all things, tells the truth about global warming:

Unprecedented snow in Las Vegas has some scratching their heads – how can there be global warming with this unusual cold and snowy weather?

CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers had never bought into the notion that man can alter the climate and the Vegas snowstorm didn’t impact his opinion. Myers, an American Meteorological Society certified meteorologist, explained on CNN’s Dec. 18 “Lou Dobbs Tonight” that the whole idea is arrogant and mankind was in danger of dying from other natural events more so than global warming.

“You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant,” Myers said. “Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big – I think we’re going to die from a lack of fresh water or we’re going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure.

Myers is the second CNN meteorologist to challenge the global warming conventions common in the media. He also said trying to determine patterns occurring in the climate would be difficult based on such a short span.

“But this is like, you know you said – in your career – my career has been 22 years long,” Myers said. “That’s a good career in TV, but talking about climate – it’s like having a car for three days and saying, ‘This is a great car.’ Well, yeah – it was for three days, but maybe in days five, six and seven it won’t be so good. And that’s what we’re doing here.”

“We have 100 years worth of data, not millions of years that the world’s been around,” Myers continued.

Dr. Jay Lehr, an expert on environmental policy, told “Lou Dobbs Tonight” viewers you can detect subtle patterns over recorded history, but that dates back to the 13^th Century.

“If we go back really, in recorded human history, in the 13^th Century, we were probably 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than we are now and it was a very prosperous time for mankind,” Lehr said. “If go back to the Revolutionary War 300 years ago, it was very, very cold. We’ve been warming out of that cold spell from the Revolutionary War period and now we’re back into a cooling cycle.”

Lehr suggested the earth is presently entering a cooling cycle – a result of nature, not man.

“The last 10 years have been quite cool,” Lehr continued. “And right now, I think we’re going into cooling rather than warming and that should be a much greater concern for humankind. But, all we can do is adapt. It is the sun that does it, not man.”

Lehr is a senior fellow and science director of The Heartland Institute, an organization that will be holding the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change in New York March 8-10.

Like I said, off all the places to hear the truth about the official religion of the modern politically correct left - CNN!

But it is the truth. The Earth is entering into a cooling period and that it going to have a far more profound impact on the climate than any imaginary global warming.

It was a cooling period like the one we are entering now which caused a famine in the Meideval period and that famine weakened the population enough that the Black Plague could gain a foothold.

The end result was about a third of the population of Europe dead.

Modern science and technology won't allow things to be that bad this time around, at least in the developed world, but it can still be very bad.

And consider this. Just as the world is entering a cooling period which will shorten growing seasons and lower the world food supply while placing environmental stresses on populations already weakened by poor diet and lack of access to modern medicine the world enters a global economic downturn.

And just as the world enters this global economic downturn the United States, the world's primary economic engine, is taken over by socialists whose ideas for how to fix the economy and bring about a return of prosperity are guaranteed to do the exact opposite.

Just as FDR's "New Deal" lengthened and deepened a serious recession into a Great Depression Obama's plans, if enacted, have the potential to send the US, and the world with it, into a steep downward spiral. All this at the exact time that Mother Nature is conspiring to send us food shortages and global pandemics.

It would seem that we may be standing in the path of a perfect storm of natural, political and economic factors not seen since the fall of Rome. Especially if you add in the possible responses of rogue states with nuclear arms like North Korea and (soon) Iran.

It would seem that we've been cursed by an ancient Chinaman.

Bad news on the climate

DUBLIN, N.H. — The Old Farmer's Almanac is going further out on a limb than usual this year, not only forecasting a cooler winter, but looking ahead decades to suggest we are in for global cooling, not warming.

Based on the same time-honored, complex calculations it uses to predict weather, the Almanac hits the newsstands on Tuesday saying a study of solar activity and corresponding records on ocean temperatures and climate point to a cooler, not warmer, climate, for perhaps the next half century.

"We at the Almanac are among those who believe that sunspot cycles and their effects on oceans correlate with climate changes," writes meteorologist and climatologist Joseph D'Aleo. "Studying these and other factor suggests that cold, not warm, climate may be our future."

It remains to be seen, said Editor-in-Chief Jud Hale, whether the human impact on global temperatures will cancel out or override any cooling trend.

"We say that if human beings were not contributing to global warming, it would become real cold in the next 50 years," Hale said.

This is bad news for two groups of people. The first are the worshipers in the First Church of Global Warming. Global warming has been the best hobgoblin the left has ever manufactured as a means of terrorizing the masses into surrendering their wealth and liberty. If it finally becomes untenable they simply don't have a replacement hobgoblin warming up in the bullpen to replace it.

You see the big global chill which is coming upon us is caused by changes in solar output. It is completely beyond the ability of Man to alter it in any way whatsoever. Therefore global cooling cannot be used as an excuse for raising taxes or increasing regulation.

Worse for the left the increasing cost of heating our homes will cause the pressure to drill for our own oil reserves to intensify.

The other group which will be harmed by global cooling is everyone else in the world. Contrary to the hysteria of the left-wing global warming wackjobs a warmer earth would be a good thing. Historians call the climate of around 6000 years ago (the time when human civilization arose) the "climate optimum". It was eight degrees warmer then than it is now.

Global cooling, on the other hand, will decrease the growing season in the world's most fertile farming areas. It will cause sharp reductions in the global food supply and sharp increases in food prices. This will lead to famine in poorer areas and leave the populations of most of the nations of Central America, South America, Asia and Africa vulnerable to outbreaks of pandemic disease.

If you doubt me consider that it was the stress on the population of Europe caused by the food shortages brought about by the "Little Ice Age" of the Middle Ages which opened the door to the bubonic plague which killed anywhere from 30-60% of the population.

The greatest threat we face is that Western governments are so invested in global warming alamrism (because of the opportunities for growing government power) that they will be unable, or unwilling, to shift gears and engage in the kind of planning and preparation which would mitigate the consequences of the coming cool down.

John Ringo's latest novel The Last Centurion deals with global cooling a worldwide influenza pandemic and a government (headed by a president known as "the Bitch") which remains committed to the religion of global warming even as the nation freezes.

June 12, Carbon Belch Day

Conservative grassroots group Grassfire.org wants people to waste as much energy as possible on June 12 by "hosting a barbecue, going for a drive, watching television, leaving a few lights on, or even smoking a few cigars."

The point: the group wants to "help Americans break free from the 'carbon footprint guilt' being imposed by Climate Alarmists."

Grassfire.org says it's skeptical over claims that man-made sources of carbon dioxide emissions -- from automobile exhausts to manufacturing plants -- are raising the Earth's temperature at a dangerous rate. Theories about global warming were highlighted by former Vice President Al Gore's 2006 film, An Inconvenient Truth.

Grassfire.org president Steve Elliott, in a statement, said such theories are off the mark. "It's time for Americans to purge ourselves of the false guilt that Al Gore and the Climate Alarmists have placed on us," Elliott said.

Grassfire.org said it chose June 12 as the day it wants Americans to rev up their SUVs because it coincides with expected debate in Congress over a $1.2 billion carbon tax rebate program. "Carbon Belch Day will have at least as much impact on the so-called 'planetary emergency' of man-made global warming as the goofy save the earth mandates telling us to turn our lights off for an hour," said Elliott.

Cities around the world went dark for an hour on March 31 to mark "Earth Hour," an event created by the World Wide Fund for Nature to inspire people to find ways to use less energy.

Grassfire.org is the latest group to question whether global warming is a real phenomenon, or whether it's as severe as portrayed in Gore's film. London's Daily Telegraph this week called environmentalism "the new secular faith."

The paper said the United Kingdom's carbon credits program for industry is "just like the medieval trade in indulgences, where remission for sins was granted by the Church once the sinner confessed and received absolution."

Noted physicist Frederick Seitz, a former president of the National Academy of Sciences, has also questioned the accuracy of global warming theories, as have a number of other academics.

This is a wonderful idea!

Here is how I intend to spend Carbon Belch Day:

Rise early and leave the house with my air conditioner, computer and television still running, at at lest one incandescent bulb still burning. Take my least fuel efficient vehicle to a shooting range in the next county and burn up at least 300 rounds. Then take a nice long drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway. While on that drive I will smoke a Hoyo de Monterrey and drink carbonated beverages, releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere. On the way home I will pick up a bag of charcoal and some Hebrew National all beef franks (take that Hamas) and have myself a nice little cookout in my back yard. That evening I will watch a DVD while drinking more carbonated beverages and smoking a Romeo y Julieta Vintage. I will then go to bed after leaving the porch light (an incandescent bulb) on to burn through the night.

H/T: Shooting the Messenger

Solar activity indicates we are in for a cooling period

From the International Climate Science Coalition:

Dr. Kenneth Tapping is worried about the sun. Solar activity comes in regular cycles, but the latest one is refusing to start. Sunspots have all but vanished, and activity is suspiciously quiet. The last time this happened was 400 years ago -- and it signaled a solar event known as a "Maunder Minimum," along with the start of what we now call the "Little Ice Age."Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, says it may be happening again. Overseeing a giant radio telescope he calls a "stethoscope for the sun," Tapping says, if the pattern doesn't change quickly, the earth is in for some very chilly weather.

During the Little Ice Age, global temperatures dropped sharply. New York Harbor froze hard enough to allow people to walk from Manhattan to Staten Island, and in Britain, people reported sighting Eskimos paddling canoes off the coast. Glaciers in Norway grew up to 100 meters a year, destroying farms and villages.

But will it happen again?In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov predicted the sun would soon peak, triggering a rapid decline in world temperatures. Only last month, the view was echoed by Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. who advised the world to "stock up on fur coats." Sorokhtin, who calls man's contribution to climate change "a drop in the bucket," predicts the solar minimum to occur by the year 2040, with icy weather lasting till 2100 or beyond.

Observational data seems to support the claims -- or doesn't contradict it, at least. According to data from Britain's Met Office, the earth has cooled very slightly since 1998. The Met Office says global warming "will pick up again shortly."

Others aren't so sure. Researcher Dr. Timothy Patterson, director of the Geoscience Center at Carleton University, shares the concern. Patterson is finding "excellent correlations" between solar fluctuations, a relationship that historically, he says doesn't exist between CO2 and past climate changes. According to Patterson, we shouldn't be surprised by a solar link. "The sun [is] the ultimate source of energy on this planet," he says.

Such research dates back to 1991, when the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study showing that world temperatures over the past several centuries correlated very closely with solar cycles. A 2004 study by the Max Planck Institute found a similar correlation, but concluded the timing was only coincidental, as the solar variance seemed too small to explain temperature changes.

However, researchers at DMI continued to work, eventually discovering what they believe to be the link. The key factor isn't changes in solar output, but rather changes in the sun's magnetosphere A stronger field shields the earth more from cosmic rays, which act as "seeds" for cloud formation. The result is less cloud cover, and a warming planet. When the field weakens, clouds increase, reflecting more light back to space, and the earth cools off.

Recently, lead researcher Henrik Svensmark was able to experimentally verify the link between cosmic rays and cloud formation, in a cloud chamber experiment called "SKY" at the Danish National Space Center. CERN plans a similar experiment this year. A few years ago, Stanford University's Hoover Institution also reported finding a correlation between the sun and climate.

Even NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies -- long the nation's most ardent champion of anthropogenic global warming -- is getting in on the act. Drew Shindell, a researcher at GISS, says there are some "interesting relationships we don't fully understand" between solar activity and climate.

If global warming were actually occurring in the way that the climate alarmists want us to believe it would not be a problem. During the time that the great Mesopotamian civilizations arose the earth's average temperature was eight degrees higher than it is now and archaeologists call that the "climate optimum". We know that in Russia that temperate zone forests once grew all the way up to the northern coastline, which is inside the arctic circle.

The earth has been warmer in the past than it is now and the plant and animal species, including humans, were better off. The evidence even suggests that the polar bears would cope with the loss of the ice cap by turning brown again and re-adapting themselves to forest dwelling. This would result in an increase in their numbers because food is more easily obtained in a warm forest than on the barren ice.

However global cooling is a horse of a different color. The last time the earth cooled off to the degree which we are likely to experience over the next few decades the results were catastrophic, at least for humans.

During the Little Ice Age the growing season shortened and land that had once been productive became marginal and land that was marginal became non-arable. Societies which had been prosperous were reduced to starvation and the stress caused by the lack of food and the cold weather weakened the population and prepared them for the Black Plague.

It took the population of Europe hundreds of years to recover to their pre-cooling numbers.

In developed societies like North America and Europe the prospects of starvation and plague are remote, however that cannot be said about the undeveloped parts of the world, which happens to be most of the world.

As the acreage which can be farmed practically shrinks food prices will rise and the nations which currently produce an agricultural surplus will need to keep more of that food for their own populations. As the amount of food aid to the Third World decreases populations will be stressed and nature's methods of population control will begin to assert themselves.

Nature's methods of population control where humans are concerned are warfare and disease.

Much could be done now to lessen or even eliminate the harm that global cooling will cause. Mexico has large amounts or arable land which will remain productive even in a cooler world. If that land were farmed with the technology and efficiency of US farms Mexico would become a breadbasket. The same can be said of Africa.

The advanced nations need to assume that the coming cooling period will be as bad as the Little Ice Age and take a hard look at what this will do to agricultural productivity and start pouring their resources into those parts of the world which will remain productive.

The first step in this process is going to have to be an aggressive policy of electrification using clean coal and nuclear power. Modern agricultural methods depend upon a technological infrastructure which cannot exist without electric power. If this means that power plants in Africa have to be guarded by NATO troops to keep the warring tribesmen from shooting up the containment building and causing a meltdown then so be it.

A side effect of this will be to spread the benefits of civilization and modern technological society to places which have never known either.