Turning cool to global warming hype

Continuing with the theme of skepticism about catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, a few additional posts:

This article reveals that solar winds are at a 50-year low. Some climate scientists believe that the subsidence of such winds increases the volume of cosmic rays that strike Earth, which then causes increased cloud cover and cooling. The change in solar winds (and sunspots) has coincided with a drop in Earth’s temperature over the last several years. Fear is that this will continue and lead to prolonged global cooling.

This article reviews the geopolitics of global warming and considers the economic lunacy at the core of Western governments’ environmentalist-driven policies (if those governments actually plan to live up to those commitments, something the Europeans failed to do regarding their obligations under the Kyoto Accords).

“Now for the other planet, the one the rest of us live on. Here all the accepted measures of global temperatures show that their trend has been downwards since 2002, declining at a rate that averages to about 0.25 degree per decade. Yet such a fall was predicted by none of those 25 computer models on which the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the rest of the Great and the Good rely for their theory of runaway global warming. Their computers are programmed to assume that as CO2 goes up, temperatures inevitably follow. But the graph below, where the variation of global temperatures from a 30-year mean is plotted against CO2 levels, shows the two lines clearly diverging, contrary to the theory. In this century, temperatures have fallen as CO2 has risen.

“Furthermore, the Arctic ice has failed to disappear, as can be seen from the Crysophere Today website: it is now not far off its 30-year mean. Al Gore’s polar bears have failed to drown. The ice in the Antarctic is actually way above its 30-year average.”

Hmm.

This article by a leading Australian climate scientist challenges the claim that increased atmospheric carbon leads to a greenhouse effect and causes global warming. He once believed that, but changed his mind when no scientific evidence for that hypothesis was discovered.

“But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming.”

Hmm.

This article examines the lack of evidence between global warming and hurricane frequency or intensity. Indeed, there is some suggestion that warming would reduce storm intensity, though the evidence is inconclusive. In addition to the studies cited in the link, it actually makes sense that warming, which is most likely to occur in temperate latitudes and at higher atmospheric levels (as well as during the night and in winter, i.e., a general tempering of extremes) will reduce temperature differentials between regions and within air masses that help produce violent storms.

This article demonstrates the link between sunspot activity and climate on Earth. The recent unusual warming period of the 1990s coincided with sunspot activity that was at a 1000-year high. Since then, sunspots have diminished (and sometimes disappeared) and the Earth has cooled.

“The last time the sun was this quiet for an extended period was between 1645 and 1715, a period astronomers call the “Maunder Minimum”. During those 70 years, the face of the Sun was nearly blank of sunspots, or solar storms, and broke away from its normal 11-year cycle. At the same time, Europe was dealing with extreme cold and the Thames River in London froze solid. They even held winter fairs on the ice. Glaciers also advanced in the Alps and the northern sea ice expanded. By the early 19th Century, for reasons no one understands, the sun returned to its familiar 11-year sunspot cycle and things began to slowly warm up on the planet.”

At least some scientists are concerned that this marks the beginning of a longer cold cycle for the sun, though others see this as just part of the regular 11-year solar cycle.

This article presents similar observations about sunspots and climate from a Harvard astrophysicist. Even if sunspot activity returns and global temperatures increase from their current lows, this should tell us that the .1% variations in solar energy output have far more effect on Earth’s climate than soccer moms driving SUVs. A rational thinker would understand that, especially if he or she has some understanding of the limits of human influence. But the global warming boosters have this unbounded hubris that it is humans who control nature, and that human activity can terminally despoil the planet as well as cause its salvation. Conservatives tend to be more skeptical of such claims.