Could this be why climate models do rainfall with all the competence of tea-leaf-reading? Tiwari et al report that as much as 47% of the recharge rates of ground water in China are controlled by the sun. Apparently climate models miss the minor factor of the major cycles.
Try this radical idea on: imagine a world where climate models worked. Not only could the BoM warn people that there would be a drought coming, they could name the region, and the years.
Tiwari et al:
Here for the purpose of comparison of long term ground water recharge rates with long term solar activity, we used the 10-year average sunspot time series, for the period 1300 to 1905 AD, published by Solanki et al., [2004]. Also the additional average annual sunspot number time series (1700 to 2000 AD) is used from data source Solar Influences Data Analysis Centre. In addition to decadal data annual sunspot number data from 1700 to 2000 AD downloaded from Solar Influences Data Analysis Centre is used in the present study. The cross-correlation coefficient (+0.63) between the groundwater recharge rate time series and decadal sunspot number [Solanki et al., 2004] shows that there is statistically significant solar forcing on ground water recharge. Fig.3 shows the comparison of long-term averaged ground water recharge rates data with long term sunspot cycles.
Figure 3: Comparison of Sunspot cycles and Dry and Wet season of the area.
Abstract
Multiple spectral and statistical analyses of a 700-year long temporal record of groundwater recharge from the dry lands, Badain Jaran Desert (Inner Mongolia) of North West China reveal a stationary harmonic cycle at ~200± 20 year. Interestingly, the underlying periodicity in groundwater recharge fluctuations is similar to those of solar induced climate cycle “Suess wiggles” and appears to be coherent with phases of the climate fluctuations and solar cycles. Matching periodicity of groundwater recharge rates and solar and climate cycles renders a strong impression that solar induced climate signals may act as a critical amplifier for driving the underlying hydrographic cycle through the common coupling of long-term Sun-climate groundwater linkages.
Tawari et al use 10 year smoothed TSI and talk about long term peaks (the ones that occur every couple of hundred years). Obviously the mechanism is unclear and open to speculation:
One can apparently see, however, that the wet seasons are well correlated with the high sunspot number periods, which establish reduced total solar irradiance from the Sun. It indicates that the ground water recharge rates are some way or other linked to the long term solar activity. The decrease in the solar illumination by means of sunspot reduces the Total Solar Irradiance (TSI), where as the reversal phase of sunspot increases the TSI through Facular excess emission [Frohlich, 2000]. Increase in the temperature cause changes in timing and intensity of precipitation, which might affect the ground water recharge rates. It may be suggested that probable mechanism through which the Sunspot number may affect the ground water recharge perhaps could be via increase in the temperature at times of solar minimum, which would in turn enhance the evaporation of the water from the surface resources leading to reducing infiltration and thereby would significantly trim-down/modify the long term ground water recharge. Our analysis demonstrates a ~200 ± 20 year stationary and statistically significant periodicity in which dry period phases appears to synchronize with the solar minima’s. The study also indicates that the 47.5% of the groundwater recharge possibly modified by the solar-climate induced activities. The coupling process of groundwater variability with solar activity and climate on long time scales may be useful for constraining the model and criteria for future prediction and monitoring ground water recharge fluctuations with underlying time constant.
h/t to the HockeySchtick
REFERENCE
R.K. Tiwari1,* and Rekapalli Rajesh2 (2014) Imprint of long-term solar signal in groundwater recharge fluctuation rates from North West China. Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1002/2014GL060204
Well that would mean that science rather than politics dictated the construct of the GCMs. That in turn means that politicians concern themselves with reality rather than power.
Hmmmm … not in this lifetime …
231
I have used and quoted this and other SA studies of their river flows from right through the 20th century that have shown similar data and results
From the University of Pretoria [ 2006 ]
Water Resource and flood studies;
Causal linkages between solar activity and climatic responses
Abstract
Statistically significant 21-year periodicity is present concurrently in South African annual rainfall, river flow, flood peak maxima, groundwater levels, lake levels and the Southern Oscillation Index.
This is directly related to the double sunspot cycle.
The first years of the periodic sequences are characterised by sudden, regular and therefore predictable, reversals from sequences of well below average rainfall and river flow (droughts) that are suddenly broken by sequences of well above average events (floods).
These reversals are directly related to corresponding six-fold increases in sunspot activity at this time.
The two sunspot cycles that comprise the double sunspot cycle also have fundamentally different effects on the hydrometeorological responses.
Postulated climate changes resulting from human activity, if present, are undetectable against the background of natural variability.
These observations are solidly based and will require a re-assessment of the claims in the climate change literature that variations in solar activity have minimal influence on the principal climatic processes.
[end ]
240
ROM
Check this 10 year prediction from Inigo Jones using his Birkeland/Bruckner modified magnetic and sunspot cycle methods.
Queensland Country Life Thursday 20 July 1950
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/97132477
I checked out a couple of them he made for 1954
“heavy rains in January on the Darling downs”
and also
“In February the rains are general with heavy falls in the coastal regions north of the tropic and the Gulf and south west and southern parts of the Darling downs.”
How did that coast north of the tropic bit go?
http://www.abc.net.au/local/videos/2014/02/21/3949139.htm
How did that southern Darling downs bit go?
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/47574367
As agent 86 would say…”Missed by that much”
50
I never knew a paper had been published on the wet/dry cycles of South African weather.
In 1981, I conducted a study of the Highveldt rainfall area around Johannesburg and Pretoria and noticed the almost biblical cycle of 10/11 good years, followed by 10/11 bad years. It was clear a ‘bad’ cycle was about to begin, but would it start in the summer of 1982/83 or 1983/84? We decided to take a gamble on it being1982/83, which turned out to be one of the worst droughts since records began. The gamble was in setting up a water drilling company, which quickly grew to be the second largest multi-purpose drilling company in the country.
Lucky or smart? I don’t know, but I think it demonstrates that climate predictions may be best when a common sense interpretation is used, as opposed to a slavish dependency on biased computer models with results pre-determined on the whims of left wing politicians.
130
Peter Miller. Smart with a dash of luck.
From Inigo Jones book “My Nephelo Coccygia”.
“From a study of Birkeland’s experiment I formed the hypothesis that the sunspots must be the result of an external charge of an electro-magnetic nature acting on the sun’s internal state, and that the planet Jupiter must in some way through it’s magnetic field, be the determining factor. I then reduced all the material to conform with this idea, and behold all the all the main droughts of our country fell into line”
Interestingly many of the people following comet Ison for a long time noticed that the solar flares seemed to aim at it more than chance.
From Space.com
“The Jovian magnetosphere is enormous. It has a diameter 200 times that of Jupiter itself and is the largest cohesive structure in the solar system. Despite Jupiter’s great distance from us, “If you could ‘see’ the magnetosphere of Jupiter from Earth, it would be about the size of the full Moon,” said Ralph McNutt, a senior scientist at John Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory and a lead author on one of the studies.”
“http://www.space.com/4446-spacecraft-surfs-jupiter-magnetic-tail.html”
40
Can someone kindly point me towards any long term paleoclimate series for continental Australia.
30
Richard Hill @ 3
Richard, n I don’t know where you are from but Australia is a darn big area with a whole range of different climate regimes within it’s boundaries so it is very hard to find a paleo series that would be representative of all of Australia over the last few tens or hundreds of of thousands of years.
A couple of sites that have a number of references to Australian continental paleo based papers.
The first deals with the Centralian paleo flood record.
PALEOFLOOD GEOMORPHOLOGY IN CENTRAL AUSTRALIA
The Centralian Finke River is often claimed to be one of the oldest rivers in the world, a claim based on the meanders of it’s course through the MacDonnell Ranges.
Meanders can only occur on flat food plains so the Finke River’s current course through the ranges must have already existed some 300 to 400 million years ago before the MacDonnell ranges were pushed up.
The second site is a Wiki entry also with a number of references on the paleo records of tropical storms and cuyclones including in the references papers on some 5000 years of data on the Great Barrier reef cyclones .
“Paleotempestology is the study of past tropical cyclone activity by means of geological proxies as well as historical documentary records.”
Not what you are looking for but the best I can find in the short term.
70
Richard, and me too… I’ve been looking for them and the paucity of long term paleo studies of Australia is a topic of it’s own. We don’t have the right type of trees (or cold climate) for paleo studies of tree rings, and no handy glaciers either, but I don’t think we have any shortages of coral, stalagmites, ocean mud, or clam shells. It begs the question…
130
Maybe a study of floodplains?
But they can probably change a bit too quickly.
Considering that we probably have one of the oldest geographies in the world, one would think there must be something that would give us some hints.
40
Perhaps there are some fairly deep canyons with strata that could be measured and sampled for comparison of data over the eons. If there are rivers that flood on a regular basis, the layers could give up a lot of data.
Dave T
Sacramento, CA
20
Jo,
A current method is to take Northern Hemisphere data and try to hide its origins in a blend of data. Stupid. Of course they will be called to account.
60
There was some work done at the Woma Cave system in South Australia regarding the use of Stalactites and Stalagmites to determine rainfall patterns. I heard a summary of the study a couple of years ago on the radio but I have not been able to find any references to it on the web. One of the interesting findings was that “droughts” in SA have been as long as 300 years in the past apparently.
There is also this study…
http://www.ecosmagazine.com/?paper=EC146p33
50
Jo, there is a glacial lake near the top of Hartz Mountain in Tasmania (http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/indeX.aspX?base=3396). I think there is evidence of glaciers on the Tasmanian snow field at Ben Lomond.
Not far from Ilford visible from the road from Ilford to Kandos NSW there is a land form which very much looks like the path of a glacier (similar to remnants of glaciers in NZ north of Queenstown towards Mt Cook. I am sure I have read of other glacier remnants along the western side of the Dividing Range in NSW.
60
Lots of glacier evidence, here is one http://www.visitnarrabri.com.au/index.cfm?page_id=1054&page_name=Rocky%20Creek%20Glacial%20Area Plenty of glacier evidence in the Snowy Mts eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Lake_%28New_South_Wales%29
40
Jo, you sparked my interest about glaciers (I have seen quite a few and have walked under one in Switzerland) I did a quick search and came across an article “Advances in Quaternary Studies” by Colhoun et al ( here http://books.google.com.au/books?id=aB7CuWxEP7QC&pg=PA165&lpg=PA165&dq=Glaciers+NSW&source=bl&ots=CgS-b98aSe&sig=TDAxg9MFXnr63h71BjJOUjvATxg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YD5eU7zUN4OfkwW11IGQDA&ved=0CEsQ6AEwCjgU#v=onepage&q=Glaciers%20NSW&f=false) It states that in Tasmania deglaciation occurred rapidly after 18ka (BP) and was complete by 14ka (which was about the time Bass straight was flooded and Tasmania became separated from the main land. Surely, a record of climate change and rapid warming but I do not think the aborigines can be blamed.
60
Jo, there are Huon pines aged up to 4,000 years old at Mt Read Tasmania.
40
And a hippy chained to every single one of them.
20
Unfortunately not!
10
There is no set of adequately reliable or relevant past temperature data against which Huon Pines can be calibrated.
Sad, but true.
Many Tasmanian records are a mess. Try making some sense of the Launceston region. Even if you could, its climate is not an adequate match to the Huon Pines regions.
Belatedly, a station was commenced at Mt Read a few yers ago. It might have relevance in 50 years from now.
I’ve spent time in some parts of Tasmania, including the unpopulated area south of Macquarie Harbour. This is the coastal area whose hinterland to the East is some of the Huon Pine country. It would be a brave scientist who tried to equate climate at the Huon region with any of those areas nearby, such as the Macquarie Harbour area, or the Launceston area.
Yet this is precisely what has been attempted by the famed Ed Cook and others. To my way of thinking, this is invalid science. Or put more kindly, even a person with a high reputation is obligated to add caveats about evident deficiencies in the data.
A lack of such caveats has led to questionable work like this being included in Smaller Hemisphere compilations like the Karoly/Gergis etc Pages compendium,which in turn contributes to global pictures of past climate by proxy.
If you trace it all back, the original inputs like the Huon Pine have science as weak as wee wee water. Yet it has moves into the IPCC biblical reliability sources.
The process is corrupt.
40
Some one from the ANU did a study on mud sediments under Lake George on the highway between Canberra and Goulburn. I think he was a Phd student who could not afford too much to hire a mud puncher drilling rig ,still he did some interesting work on ancient pollen in a location where sediments have been contained in a small basin created by the Lake George fault. This work was published in a volume titled “A History of Australian Vegetation”,or something like that.
30
Some of my favourite sites are blocked. Thank goodness you are not but take care. I dont want to sign up to any dodgy sites to try and find them. Love Helen
20
this is still active http://climatehistory.com.au/palaeoclimate/
20
In reference to the request for paleo data by Richard @ #3 I decided to have another overdue look at Google search for ; “Australia’s volcanic provinces” which i have done some reading on quite some time ago.
Australia’s volcanic provinces which are far more extensive than most ever realise run right across southern Victoria from SA’s Mt Gambier region, into Gippsland And there is another large volcanic province in southern Queensland and northern NSW that is about 3000 years overdue for an eruption and are just a couple of cases in point.
You can learn a lot about “Australia’s volcanic provinces” by googling the same but in the meantime this site below gives quite a lot of information about a number of paleio related reading items on the Australian continent’s past
Australia: The Land Where Time Began
10
Wasn’t Big Ben our most recent eruption?
10
Heard Is is not a part of continental Australia.
10
I know. So ROM did not say continental but I answered with political. We’ll done for getting it.
10
I remember a documentary on TV years ago talking about a particular coral off Western Australia which is the oldest coral reef in the world. It’s also a particularly slow growing type. I can’t find the name of the coral, but there are pictures here:
http://www.westernaustralia.com/en/Destination/Shark_Bay/9113619
I remember the TV documentary talking about core samples of the coral polyps.
Hopefuly this jogs somebody’s memory.
10
Wiggle matching. The wiggles match, sort of, until they…don’t. Noisy signals, both of which have been smoothed. I’m not particularly impressed.
30
Thanks for the post and reference Jo. WUWT has banned posts and comments about cycles related to the sun’s and planetary influences. Your blog richly deserves the Lifetime Achievement Award. Silencing of debate is a tactic of believers who have something to lose if the truth becomes known.
150
Thanks indeed. I’m not very technical minded on this kind of thing,but I do try to learn what I can.
70
That is all any of us can do.
Look at the edges of what you think you know. Then recognise that there is something that you don’t know. Investigate that, and find out something about it. Then see if what you have just found out, changes what you thought you knew already. Repeat the process.
Scientific method – it starts by admitting that you don’t know, what you don’t know.
The above it not aimed at you per se, but it might make any passing troll stop and scratch its head, or something.
120
…before or after punching the red button? Reflexes may be difficult to contain.
30
hey cementafriend,
Loved these two links you supplied @warwickhughes
Worth sharing here:
The secret of flight
Claes Johnson on Mathematics and Science
TOWARDS UNDERSTANDING BY CRITICAL CONSTRUCTIVE INQUIRY
Thanks for those links.
50
I gave up on WUWT a long time ago. The only message allowed is the (pseudo-scientific) Gospel According to Anthony.
28
The German minister put in charge of fixing the solar and wind energy mess calls it utter madness and says the rest of EU thinks we’re cazy.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/27/germanys-co2-and-energy-policy-about-to-falter/#more-108285
I just wish they’d tell us something we don’t know for a change. Informed sceptics have been banging on about this for years. This giant ponzi scheme is a corrupt fraud and con because it can’t work and the numbers don’t add up.
191
Shock, horror it looks like polar bears are in trouble because there is too much ice. After decades of garbage by liars and extremists about too little ice it now seems it was just the opposite and PBs moved away from areas that had too much spring ice.
The seals couldn’t survive there and left and so the bears just followed them. Will these dingbats ever wake up?
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/alaskan-polar-bears-threatened-too-much-spring-ice-0
110
Whichever way you care to look at it, it’s due to climate change.
As an OT aside, my heart sank when I listened to an academic prattling on the BBC World Service this morning about a project seeking to develop the science around sustainable interstellar habitats (Star Ships). It is porposed that these self-sustaining biospheres (gigantic tubes inhabited and farmed on the inside) will take thousands to another planet. So far so good.
Why did my heart sink?
The primary motivation is not one of exploration, advancement, adventure, or to ‘boldly go’. No, it is considerably more apposite. It is instead one born of fear, presumably a requisite orientation for funding.
said Steve Fuller, the team’s sociologist, based at the University of Warwick.
“Rachel Armstrong, a senior architecture and design lecturer at the University of Greenwich leads the project, which includes 13 designers, six of whom are based in the UK where researchers are working with colleagues from the US, Italy and the Netherlands on Project Persephone developing an interstellar Noah’s Ark – a self-sustaining spaceship that can carry humans on a one-way mission to find a new world to inhabit in the event of a global catastrophe.” (my edit – link to article at Steve Fuller)
Possibly the ultimate challenge of sustainability may not arise from the ‘mechanics’ of the project, but instead from the human dimension. Ensuring a psychologically robust and healthy group of functionally diverse individuals, of a number of generations into the future would appear to be the real ‘sustainability’ challenge. T
The success would be measured by the arrival of a thriving group sanus intacto at Alpha whatever, without appearing to the casual observer that ‘the nuts have bolted’.
40
Steve Fuller wrote some books under the pseudonym Douglas Adams, I think.
10
Manfred
‘the nuts have bolted’.
You got a green thumb from me for that one! 🙂
10
Even getting to Alpha Whatever; one then has to slow down the ship “ark”, disembark, form a new settlement, start growing food, and survive the elements.
Great as a thought experiment, but not to be taken seriously; it assumes too much.
00
developing countries thrown under the bus…again:
21 April: Livemint: Neha Sethi: Developing nations criticize IPCC report
IPCC report could force some developing nations, including India, to adhere to binding pollution reductions targets
New Delhi: A group of developing countries has criticized the recently released report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for grouping nations according to their income, a move that may force some developing countries, including India, to adhere to binding pollution reduction targets.
The report—Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change—released on 15 April, has categorized countries as low-level income, middle-level income and high-level income countries.
Countries including Bolivia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, Egypt, Venezuela, the Maldives, Bahamas, Syria and Jordan, which are part of like-minded developing countries, have said the income-based grouping of countries is not consistent with the longstanding practice of IPCC.
IPCC has previously grouped countries based on the United Nations Framework on Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC), or as developed and developing countries. Industrialized countries including the US, most of the members of European Union, Australia and Japan, who have been held historically responsible for pollution, have to take on binding commitments to reduce pollution. Developing countries, including India and China, do not have to adhere to binding emissions reduction under UNFCCC…
India’s environment ministry had objected to the classification, additional secretary Susheel Kumar said. “UNFCCC talks about developing countries and developed countries, or Annex 1 and non-Annex 1 countries. Annex 1 countries are historical polluters and once that classification was diluted, it would have been difficult for developing countries to negotiate during global climate change talks,” Kumar said over the phone.
This classification was removed from the summary of policymakers (SPM), a document that was released on 13 April, ahead of the full report, the ministry official said. SPM is the document used for international negotiations and all countries approve the document’s text.
“The classification was opposed by like-minded developing countries as a group and mentions of removing it were made during discussions and also during the plenary,” Kumar said…
The report was a dishonest attempt to divert attention from the current high level of emissions from rich countries, according to Shreekant Gupta, an associate professor in the department of economics at Delhi School of Economics and lead author of a chapter on risk and assessment of climate change policies.
***“IPCC is a pseudo-scientific body and its only purpose to include income-based classification is to bring attention to emerging economies like Brazil, China, India and South Africa, which are trying to lift their people out of energy poverty,” Gupta said. “It wrongly focuses on growth in emissions and not the absolute high levels of emissions or per capita emissions. SPM is totally silent on per capita emissions.”
This was an attempt to pressurize developing countries to take on targets, he said. This was “specially unfortunate as it is coming under the garb of IPCC, which is supposed to be an objective, scientific body, but in reality it has been hijacked by northern researchers to push the agenda of their countries”…
The Delhi-based not-for-profit Centre for Science and Environment has raised reservations on two issues in the report, said its deputy director general Chandra Bhushan. “There is an attempt to negate historical responsibility for causing climate change and, therefore, the Working Group III report has not taken into account adequately the emissions before 1970,” Bhushan said. “Therefore, the report is giving undue emphasis on emissions from developing countries and negating the huge contribution of developed countries in causing climate change.”
http://www.livemint.com/Politics/9FkqOoUn2WhyxHgdl9sHQP/Developing-nations-criticize-IPCC-report.html
ABC/Fairfax et al need to explain how come they publish/broadcast CAGW rubbish by the minute, yet never inform the public on matters such as the above, nor on IPCC fracking/nuclear endorsements, nor on the real costs of wind/solar, nor on wind & solar not being able to provide base-load power, nor on the many frauds involving carbon (dioxide emissions) trading, etc.
why bother doing polls on whether or not people agree with CAGW or a carbon tax, or whatever, if you have never informed the public in the first place?
60
Just for clarification:
The UNFCCC has no enforcement capabilities. Individual countries have to elect to self destruct. If India decides not to play along, that will be the end of it.
Of course, Patchy would come out of it looking a bit silly, and what a shame, that would be.
The same applies to other countries. They would have to agree to be bound to any commitments, and even then, they can do so under terms that give them several exit criteria.
What this article actually says (at least to my eye), is that the UNFCCC is going all-in on one last ditch bet.
If I am correct, it represents the beginning of the end, for the IPCC.
80
The Copenhagen draft treaty contained provisions for “consequences,” to be applied to transgressors, as well as empowering the UN to create a sort of Warmmacht to enforce their ukases.
00
Australia has make huge inroads in reducing pollution.
Leaves many other countries for shame.
But CO2 is NOT a pollutant !!
ps.
ONLY economic security gives a country the wherewithal to properly control REAL pollution.
And the carbon tax, mining tax and all the green impositions help DESTROY that economic security.
121
24 April 2014:
Svensmark’s Cosmic Theory and Cloud Cover Depictions in Little Ice Age Art.
Correlation between sunspot numbers and global temperature was known for decades, but with no proven mechanism it was correctly set aside.
That changed when Henrik Svensmark proposed his Cosmic Ray hypothesis.
The Cosmic effect is now established through rigorous attempts to disprove it, the proper scientific method.
Via Dr Tim Ball
40
There still hasn’t been much study into the variable penetration of different frequencies of UV into sea-water (70% of Earth’s surface), and the different frequencies of UV emitted by the sun in high sunspot periods.
I suspect there is more to find out in that area.
Also a lot of work needs doing in the solar magnetic field area.
The science IS NOT settled by a long, long way.
60
ps . if you look at Figure 1.1 of this paper, you will see the large differences in penetration in the 300-350nm range.
And we know that high sun spot counts show increases in UVB.
Further reading shows the changes of absorption by marine flora.
Is the a story there?
30
Thanks TG.
This bit maks me want to digest that whole thing slowly. Am wondering about cyclic %UV’s ability to modulate the wider spectrum absorbtion?
“In the visible region, phytoplankton absorption coefficient variability has been well de-
scribed and related to changes in the pigment composition, which in turn is a function of com-
munity composition,…”
Ah to many interests and too little time.
30
Forget TSI, its not likely to wander about too much.
Look at the composition and the effects this has on things.
We already see Svensmark’s theory of changing cosmic ray effects is proving rather difficult to disprove.
Changes in penetration into 70% of the surface, and its effect on life within that zone, seems another area where much more works is needed.
I suspect that the Sun has far more effect on Earth’s general climate than just the TSI effects that the IPCC likes to ignore.
The series of very strong solar peaks in the latter part of last century could quite easily have caused all the slight warming that appears may have occurred (discounting data manipulation etc..).
30
Griss @ # 9.1
Lots of arguments going on about how the missing heat gets into those deep oceans plus lots and lots of numbers and formula’s being thrown around with gay abandon suposedly showing how parts of the solar spectrum can penetrate or can’t penetrate or can only penetrate so far into the top surface waters of the oceans.
Most of it loses me completely.
So for those who claim that solar spectrum doesn’t penetrate more than a few centimetres into the surface of ocean waters how come the solar ponds that can develop 80 C in the saline water at the bottom of a properly designed pond while maintaining the upper levels of fresh water in the pond that overlays and traps the heat in the saline water at the bottom, stays at the usual 20 C or less than 30 C while heat accumulates in the deep saline layer?
And I don’t swallow the deep ocean missing heat claim at all as it was dream’pt up by Trenberth to try and beat the increasingly embarrassing very long and getting longer “pause” in temperature increases problem. So from the alarmists came the solution to “where in the heck did all that “missing” heat go to” because it has to be there somewhere because our climate models tell us it is.
Yeh! Right !
00
Re the quoted paper, I’m reserving an opinion until it is shown that the energetics balance. I still have uncertainty over causation from a change in sunspot counts. A lot of energy is needed to shift rainwater around. So there is a possibily that a feedback mechanism like clouds might givr, will need to be invoked.
Yes, the penetration of sunlight into the sea is understudied or under reported at various w’avelengths. I am not proposing this as a mechanism, but there is a possibility even of bio feeedback through blooms or even jellyfish explosions. Settled science???
30
How about the correllating variable force of the solar wind altering the atmosphere into an atmofootball at an angle dependant on alternating magnetic polarity of the sun combined with all other cyclic position changes?
10
How about the wobbly bit of 5000deg;C jelly with a big-magnetic ball bearing in the middle?
Antarctic was thought to be fairly warm until it separated from South America completely (still had forests until the Drake Passage formed) and water could circulate around it. Nothing alarming like this has happened recently but neither has the temperature change been alarming.
There would still be correlation with sunspot activity but not causation. In such a case, both would be caused by something that was periodic.
20
“How about the wobbly bit of 5000deg;C jelly with a big-magnetic ball bearing in the middle?”
One day I was oxy-welding some sheet steel held in place by an ex hardrive supermagnet. As the metal around the small weld began to warm the magnet fell off. It has no magnetism left at all. Erased!
So I wonder how something ten times that hot can retain a magnetic field at all! I suspect the daily rotation of our conductive ocean covered planet vs the sun better explains our field via Flemmings rules.
How hot can you get a “big-magnetic ball bearing” to retain magnetism?
I know that if I oxy heat that ex-magnet again and allow it to cool with a coil around it connected to a solar panel I will have my magnet back.
Do you remember what Einstein got the 1921/22 Nobel for? Well it rotates with us as do the ionospheric to surface leakage current dischage,the schummann resonance, our charged clouds, the aurora’s, incoming cosmic particles, lightning, Birkeland currents and the outgoing sprites etc.
00
Good point. I thought that the reason it was considered solid was because it kept its magnetism. Highschool stuff from the 80s probably. New school thoughts.
Still, there are reasons why planetary motions could change the heat transfer from the mantle to the deep oceans where the crust is thin. Not a significant amount overall but an uneven amount that affects ocean currents.
Einstein won it for the photoelectric effect so I don’t think that the ionosphere is the reason for Earths magnetism. I still haven’t read what he had proposed was the reason for the magnetic field.
00
Vic “Einstein won it for the photoelectric effect ”
Which will occur on the sunny side of the planet more than the dark side but our planet is rotating. So it comes off in the light and returns in the dark thus flowing around. It would be very very minor compared to the simple rotation of all electrons in the sea, gas and solids.
Have a look at this and a think about all those other electric flows i mentioned above …ROTATING with the planet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NeF7u_9_Sw
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm-U3v6K1Sk
For text instead of video you could search Farraday, Lenz, and Flemming all together.
00
From the description of the Dynamo theory
00
Vic as mentioned above Jupiter has the largest magnetic field and is a gas planet.
Also our magnetic field has been getting weaker not stronger with warming so there is even more missing energy to find unless an external reason is found.
00
I don’t want to argue which idea has more merit because neither would be old Occy’s first choice. I’ll keep exploring how likely it is that planetary movements could affect the ocean currents and coincidentally correlate with sun spot numbers and then, as the CAGW trolls keep saying, the Nobel prize will be all mine.
00
“how likely it is that planetary movements could affect the ocean currents ”
Inigo Jones seemed to think the planetary movements cause the sunspots and solar cycles. I think that satellites of the sun affecting it is about as likely as the moon affecting the tides. Oh …hmmm.
00
Also note Mercury and Mars have weak magnetic fields and no oceans.
00
Insider exposees of politics dominating in the IPCC:
Newspaper account:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2614097/Top-climate-experts-sensational-claim-government-meddling-crucial-UN-report.html
Whistleblower’s own words:
http://www.robertstavinsblog.org/2014/04/25/is-the-ipcc-government-approval-process-broken-2/
20
Geoff @ 10
At the moment I am supposed to be doing some research for our local western Vic farmer driven research group,[ the Birchip Cropping Group otherwise known as the” BCG” across most of the Australian grain belt ] into using bacteria [ information below ] to try and prevent or at least reduce the sometimes quite severe frost damage on grain crops that are close to maturity as happened this last season.
A late severe frost did some very serious damage to a whole swath of crops across western Victoria with a consequent severe reduction in yields and heavy financial losses to farmers involved and that just when the crop was only a couple of weeks off maturity and harvest.
However I got tied up with doing some engineering modification work for our local mobile library vehicle so haven’t got around to that frost prevention project just yet.
My son tells me I have to live to 117 to get through all my projects which horrifies my daughters and my first wife, G_____ , still my first wife after 53 years.
This is a relevant part of a post with a few corrections and extra commentary that deals with Geoff’s comment @ 10 that I posted on Judith Curry’s “Climate etc” back in early February.
[ seems that Judith according to whole bunch of climate warming, catastrophe advocating climate scientists is worth about 30 of those same scientists just to even the balance !!! Lots of hilarity on Climate etc ]
The Climate etc subject was the increase in the Antarctic sea and pack Ice.
_____________
In horticulture, agriculture, cloud research and snow making the role of the Ice nucleating bacteria “Pseudomonas syringae” is known to have a quite critical role in creating ice crystals at temperatures of about minus 4C whereas pure water in the super cooled form can still remain as a liquid down to minus 20C.
Minus 4C is also about the temperature where serious freezing damage from the formation of ice crystals to crops and plants begins.
“Ice minus Pseudomonas syringae” which through either natural or genetically modified means, they are not common in Nature but entirely natural colonies of the Ice minus P. syringae exist in the wild that have the ice nucleating proteins missing from the bacterial coat.
So genetically modified P.syringae that are Ice minus are not anything that has never existed
A USA company was set up in the late 1980’s to produce large quantities of “Ice Minus” Pseudomonas syringae but the usual green anti everything including the anti GMO’s crazies and green thugs of the environmental movement got in and ripped up their experimental research plots.
This after the company had gone through the whole couple of year’s long debacle to get permission to do the research on what could have been a very significant food crop benfitting bit of natural technology to reduce the losses in crops from frost and heavy freezing conditions, common in both Australia but more so in the USA, Canada, Europe, Russia and Ukraine, the bread basket of eastern Europe and in the major continental grain growing and food crop regions.
The Company subsequently was dragged through every available legal quagmire by the environmental crazies who seem to have limitless resources, most of it tax payer funded and acquired through some very dubious back door channels, until the company was virtually bankrupt.
The ice minus P. syringae bacteria species with, from the food production perspective, their very desirable qualities that would have helped materially in crop and food production are already well known to exist naturally in the wild and have been for as long as the ability to identify bacteria species has been known.
The “Ice plus” Pseudomonas syringae the version that can turn super cooled water into ice crystals at temperatures as high as minus 4C is used in snow making machines to help very materially in the so called artificial snow making process.
There are other species of possibly ice nucleating bacteria which are also likely to have an impact on the climate through their abilities to change the phase of water in certain circumstances and perhaps some other aspects of so far unresearched climate influences.
Some research has been done on the survival of colonies of various bacteria and other Sea ice life forms under the Antarctic ice shelves and ice pack but the research seems to have concentrated on the how and what of the survival of the different species during the Antarctic [ and Arctic ] seasonal changes.
I can’t find any information on the possibility and more likely, the probability of ocean dwelling, sea ice nucleating bacteria or viruses similar in effect to the Ice plus P.syringae which I suggest might have a quite significant role in the usual bottom up sea ice formation process.
Cycles of every type and length in every aspect of the oceans, atmosphere and even biological land based life are something I have become increasingly convinced are a major factor in the always changing global climate.
If the Southern Ocean as a part of a long cycle, now has increased up-welling of the cold nutrient rich bottom waters around the Antarctic continent then there may well be a significant increase in specific types of bacterial populations such as ice nucleating bacteria and viruses at the expense of other bacteria and other ocean dwelling life form populations in Antarctic waters.
Which could help at least part way in accounting for the increased production of Sea ice around Antarctica if such sea ice nucleating bacteria are a reality.
That then leads to the question as to why there are the plethora of both known, suspected and still unknown cycles in the oceans, the atmosphere and on the land mass and even biological that can lead to a such a possibility as a periodic ocean overturning .
___________
My two or was that ten cents worth!
50
I’m trying to imagine what a “jellyfish explosion” looks like…
10
Yuk.
10
I’m trying to imagine what a “jellyfish explosion” looks like…
Been there, done that. 🙂
When we were kids on Cronulla beach, and they still had cracker night. 🙂
Letter boxes weren’t to only target y’know.
00
I remember one of my maniac friends putting a tuppeny bunger under a washed-up jellyfish..
And only stood back a couple of paces.
Quite hilarious. ! 🙂
00
I did the same when I was a kid, the only difference was it was a thunder and I set it off on a sand bank near the Como Bridge. Very messy.
00
I’ve been married to a man like that for 25 years. He drives me crazy sometimes but I wouldn’t change a single thing about him.
Current obsession: restoring a 1954 Austin A30. There is no end to the work that this charming little car needs.
20
ROM, Thanks for the fascinating intro to what is a new idea for me.
Dr Tim Ball has been barking about meridonial jet-stream patterns for a long time now. Deep meanders of frigid polar air towards the Equator only have to pass over Victoria on one night during autumn to do their damage. Widespread harvest failures can occur without significant cooling on the global scale if we have these erratic circum-polar jets.
Anything which can provide even one degree of frost protection needs investigation. I’m told that dawn misting with trace element rich water a couple of times in the cropping cycle also confers some frost resistance.
30
John Knowles @ # 12.3
John, if you want to see the way those meridonial jet streams meander around all over the place down here in the Southern Hemi then I suggest this animated jet stream site.
http://squall.sfsu.edu/scripts/shemjetstream_model.html
11
Thanks for that link
00
ROM, Sorry about the -ve thumb. Must not use iPhone when tired.
Those jet-stream maps are useful when trying to understand the BOM forecaste but I’d like to know why the N jet kicks southward when there is a blip in the 10.7 radio flux. Piers Corbyn seems to have a handle on it but tends to keep it to himself. Perhaps it is instrumental in his long-range forecasting technique.
00
I can’t see why a bacteria would want to produce proteins to nucleate ice crystals, naturally. It would be more likely to produce proteins to stop ice crystals from forming.
The Mpemba effect might be killing bugs that do.
00
Vic Gallus @ # 12.4
Microbial Showers…
The Rain-Making Bacteria
00
Next question: Did the bacteria evolve to have this protein to get back down or is it there for another purpose and coincidentally nucleates ice crystals?
And the there is still the question of whether the Mpemba Effect is the result of killing bugs that do the opposite (which was the reason for the first paragraph).
00
Nobody really knows but it is one of those puzzles that Nature throws up and may be just one of an innumerable number of influences and regulators of upper and lower level clouds.
And consequently of global temperatures from not only aerosol induced cloud droplets and therefore cloud cover both high and low altitude
None of the models from my knowledge have ever taken into account the now known but unqualified and unquantified bacterial and virus effects on the formation of cloud droplets ie biological activity none of which is even remotely accounted for in the climate models or in any climate research.
You wont find the alarmists posting any of this up because it has a good probability of being another factor other than CO2 that is having an influence, significant or not or otherwise we don’t know, on the global climate .
The Indians back in 2009 claimed to have obtained at least three previously unknown species of bacteria at altitudes of 40 kms in their high altitude research balloon flights.
Just ignore the sensationalist aspect of these “Extraterrestrial” bacteria.
Indian Space Researchers Claim Extraterrestrial Life Discovery
From Nature Jan 2013
High-flying bacteria spark interest in possible climate effects
Microbes found at extreme altitudes could influence precipitation and cloud density.
The more we think we know the more the smarter ones amongst us realise just how little we really do know about the world around us.
A case of the “Known knowns” about the world we live in which is not much
The “known unknowns” which we can identify a lot of
And the real bear in the trash can, the “Unknowns Unknowns” which can, do and have made a complete full blown publicly visible disaster out of every overblown ” the science is settled” theory and claim that has emanated from climate science
10
Vic Gallus @ # 12.4.1.1
Vic.
I had to look up the Mpenda effect [ for those who don’t know what the Mpenda effect is, it is asituation where hot water freezes faster than cold water [ Mpenda effect ] under the same temperature reducing conditions say a refrigerator / freezer ] and then vaguely remembered that I had come across reference to this some what doubtful effect some years ago somewhere.
What struck me was that the effect would only be valid scientifically IF EVERY SINGLE FACTOR in the warm water and the cold water and their containers and the distribution of heat or lack of in the freezier were absolutely identical except for the temperature of the water / substances at the start of the experiment
If you had bacteria or viruses or any contaminants that varied in the slightest between the two masses of water or substances being frozen then you can’t say or know if there was such an effect being demonstrated due to the other non equal factors which might affect the cooling rate of the water / substances.
Even the containers would have to be absolutely identical in every respect for a slight difference in even the containers or their composition might create a greater cooling rate in the warmer water / substance.
If such an effect operates in reverse, the cold water freezes sooner then of course obviously nobody would notice at all yet there might be such a reverse effect which might be unnmeasureable due to similar factors as is being claimed in the Mpenda efect
00
The Wikipedia entry is interesting. We might have missed out on a Royal society prize (if there is honour attached to such a prize anymore).
It is a difficult experiment to replicate so this was also interesting “For a liquid bath freezer, a temperature range of −3 °C (27 °F) to −8 °C (18 °F) was recommended”.
00
I’ve spent enough time in the outdoors (mountains as well as foothills, prairies and Arctic areas) to know that precipitation is very specific geographically even within what you would think of as a monotonous terrain. Recharge, however, is something that occurs over a larger area because freshwater aquifers are flatter and more spread out than the areas of dominant precipitation. If you were able to correlate specific recharge spots with sunspots, I’d expect an even higher correlation than found here.
10
Living in what would be semi desert at best without imported water, I haven’t a chance in this world of benefiting from ground water — sagebrush and jackrabbits were the owners before mankind arrived. Local wells used for water supply were capped off years ago because of contamination by everything from used motor oil to chemical fertilizers. And in any case they could not possibly meet the demand now, nor would additional wells help because the water table has been going down. We are in a drought and even if there had been “normal” precipitation and no contamination, ground water would be inadequate because of growing population.
We depend on snow melt from as far away as the Sierra Nevada and Rocky mountains. When the snow isn’t up to par in the spring we’re in very bad trouble, as we are this summer.
And the Delta Smelt (not even native to the delta) gets priority for a huge part of the water needed in the central valley to keep what was once a multi billion agriculture industry and everything that depended on it going. So much for the wisdom of federal judges.
So water is a very sore subject here. Tomorrow evening I’m going to a meeting hosted by the local water company to find out what they have to say. I suspect it will not be worth missing my favorite TV program. But I intend to ask some very pointed questions about water in California and see what answers I get. With any luck that may redeem the evening.
In the meantime, there seems to me to be an obvious connection between ground water and precipitation. I think we already know that the sun is the major driver of climate on Earth. But exactly how does the sun drive 200 year cycles?
30
Decadal predictors do not work!
A Sunspot Cycle is 11.028148 Years.
A ‘Dry’ Cycle is 6.75 Years (made up of 3×2.25 sub cycles.)
These Solar induced ‘Dry’ Cycles are Planetary and longitudinal in their scope, (30 degrees/month with the Westward orbit of the Earth’s Magnetic Field.)They affect the Arctic and Antarctic simultaneously.
The current ‘Dry’ Cycle started over China (circa 110 degrees East of Prime,)in mid February 2014. It has reached Johannesburg,(mid April 2014)and will last Five Years,consisting of a Three Year ‘Dry’ Cycle,a One Year ‘Wet’/Normal Period (affected by the Lunar Metonic Cycle,) and a One Year ‘Dry’ Cycle. This Five Year ‘Dry Period’will reach Australia in early January 2015.
These ‘Dry’ Cycles were identified and a method for their exact prediction provided by Alex S. Gaddes in his work ‘Tomorrow’s Weather’ (1990.)
A revised version of this work(including ‘Dry’Cycle forecasts to 2055,) is available as a free pdf from dongaddes93@gmail.com
10
“Try this radical idea on: imagine a world where climate models worked. Not only could the BoM warn people that there would be a drought coming, they could name the region, and the years.”
Heaven forbid! Then what would all the greens and environmental activists around the world would do if their predictions for an apocalyptic end of the world due to global warming proved to be exaggerated? Many of them would be out of a job & the news media could no longer hammer oil and gas companies.
00
Off Topic;
”
P.Gosselin on his german NoTricksZone blog this morning probably has the quote of the week “Hell Freezes Over”
Hell Freezes Over! Germany’s Ultra-Green ‘Die Zeit’ Concedes Climate Movement Has Been Too Alarmist
“Germany’s eco-evangelical, leftie weekly Die Zeit has a surprisingly sober online piece that almost got by me”.
____________
Sub headings quoted from “Die Zeit” by the NTZ post;
Climate alarmism headed for a dead-end
Damaged science.
Media have been too uncritical
UN conferences have failed
Bring on fracking!
Climate science has lost its relevance
__________________________
Place this latest confession that the climate alarmism cult is heading into a dead end almost literally, against another NTZ post of a couple of days ago and the whole German climate alarmism and the energy consequences let alone the probable quite discipline destroying consequences for climate science and the the probable career destruction of the most prominent of the zealot scientist promoters and advocates of the alarmist catastrophic climatic future and it is all starting to look like one of the most destructive periods in reputation and respect for the whole of western science that has appeared since Russian Science was destroyed for a couple of generations by Lysenkoism under Stalin.
The NTZ post of a couple of days ago;
Angela Merkel’s Vice Chancellor Stuns, Declares Germany’s ‘Energiewende’ To Be On ‘The Verge Of Failure’!
If Germany pulls the pin on it’s Energiewende,it’s transformation of it’s energy sources to renewable energy and it seems that now is almost inevitable as Germany’s economy shows signs of imploding due to unaffordable energy costs and increasingly severe energy supply shortages plus the no longer sustainable drain on the German government finances through the renewable enegy subsidy system drain then that effectively undermines every other renewable energy program across all of Europe.
And it literally kicks the propaganda props out from Obama’s EPA driven attempts to shut down America’s coal fired energy producers and force the use of renewable energy onto the American economy.
The Germans themselves are recognising and saying; If we Germans can’t make this work then others will know that they haven’t a hope in hell of making it work either and it will be all over bar the shouting
00
OT.
the 97% consensus
The science isn’t settled, but the political agenda sure is !!!
00
A letter to the Examiner today from a “concerned Tasmanian” stated that “our democratic systems are not up to dealing with the issue of climate change as it threatens our very existence.”
Who would have thought that in 2014, free Western citizens would be advocating a reduction in democracy to secure a dictate of their own lives.
Truth is so much stranger than fiction I swear HBO could just make a show called Game of Morons and just vox pop people in the street so we can all pee ourselves at the general ignorance.
http://youtu.be/l02E4cj4Vvo
10
Interesting observations from Judith Curry about the recent Cazenave et al SLR study.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/28/sea-level-rise-slows-while-satellite-temperature-pause-dominates-measurement-record/#more-108317
It seems that SLR during the last 100 years is primarily due to natural influences and not AGW. Take out ENSO and PDO etc and you’re left with zip. But where is all that thermal expansion from Trenberth’s missing heat I wonder?
00
Same as if you take out the 0.25C step from the 1998 Elnino from the temperatures after it, there is now basically no CO2 based warming in WHOLE of the RSS satellite data.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1997/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1997/trend/plot/rss/from:2001/offset:-.25/plot/rss/from:2001/trend/offset:-.25
Just a bit of warming, then a bit of cooling, that now pretty much balance each other out.
01
When it comes to water, climate models get everything wrong.
When will you all understand that the ocean surface does not absorb radiation in the same way it emits?
Radiation comes only from the very surface layer of molecules. In regard to absorption, you could consider a few more layers of molecules as representing the surface, but even if you consider the surface to be a whole centimetre in depth, it is still almost completely transparent to solar radiation, whilst back radiation does not even penetrate that far. You cannot use emissivity to determine what happens when it absorbs radiation.
So, if you estimate that at least 99% of solar radiation passes through the first centimetre and then on into the ocean thermocline below, then you should have reduced the intensity by at least 99%, as is blatantly obvious, but “overlooked” in all climate models. And of course if you do this then you have nowhere near enough solar radiation to warm the surface to the observed temperature, much like on Venus.
So, as I keep telling you, the surface temperature is maintained by conduction between all air molecules at the boundary with the surface layer of the troposphere. This is the supporting mechanism, and it can only exist because of the gravito-thermal effect and consequent downward diffusion and advection (up the temperature gradient) when thermodynamic equilibrium is disrupted by the absorption of new energy at higher altitudes.
Think about the ramifications.
20
CSIRO and Co spin the chocolate wheel of predictions and get it wrong as usual.
http://www.csiro.au/Organisation-Structure/Divisions/Marine–Atmospheric-Research/AustralianRainfallFuture.aspx <– 7 year old report which by now should have sufficient observational evidence to at least give an indication.
Well here it is
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/biggest-april-rain-in-several-years-soaking-sa-and-western-vic/49579
So we can expect a dryer, wetter, hotter, colder, warmer, cooler, snowy with no snow environment in the future. Great to see my soon to be increasing taxes being spent so well.
30
25 April: Reuters: UN’s carbon role questioned as $200 mln cash pile sits idle
By Susanna Twidale and Ben Garside
The U.N. body tasked with channelling hundreds of billions of dollars to cutting emissions is under growing scrutiny as its once booming investment programme dries up, leaving most of its funds unspent while other climate initiatives are short of cash…
From 2003, developers flocked to register projects such as destroying heat-trapping waste gases at Chinese chemical plants or installing hydroelectric power stations in Brazil, and made huge profits by selling the resulting carbon credits for up to 22 euros ($30.40) a tonne in 2008.
But interest has waned while countries wrangled over setting new emission goals under the United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), hammering credit prices down to unprofitable levels below 0.20 euros…
But with such a bleak outlook, some observers are calling on the CDM to drastically scale back its Bonn-based operations and want much of its near-$200 million of cash pile spent elsewhere.
“Having staff sit in Bonn and slowly draw down the surplus in salary is not a good use of these human and financial resources,” said Anne Arquit Niederberger, a consultant who has worked on CDM projects and was a Swiss negotiator at U.N. climate talks when the mechanism was drawn up in the 1990s…
***Its accounts show almost half of the current annual budget of $32.9 million is to pay staff, which still number around 150 despite a massive drop-off in new projects seeking registration…
U.N. data shows just 3 projects a month were registered on average this year, against 268 a month at the peak of activity in 2012. This means a staff of 10-20 people would be sufficient, said Axel Michaelowa, a University of Zurich climate policy academic and founding partner of consultancy Perspectives.
Michaelowa, who was seconded to the CDM during its busier periods, said surplus cash could be used to prop up the market by buying credits or develop new carbon market mechanisms earmarked to feature in a new climate deal
A CDM spokesman said the board had no current plans to cut employees but was conducting regular reviews of its operations.
The board is also trying to drum up demand for the credits by promoting them for uses other than meeting Kyoto targets…
While the CDM has enough money to see it through several years, a separate Kyoto Protocol programme, the Adaptation Fund, is struggling to fulfil its aims of helping the world’s poorest nations cope with the effects of climate change.
Governments agreed to help finance the fund with a 2 percent levy on CDM credits issued for projects such as building sea defences or developing drought resistant farming techniques.
But the plummeting value of the credits has hit the Fund’s coffers, with projects only getting the go-ahead last year after several west European nations donated 54 million euros…
Developed countries have agreed to mobilise $100 billion a year by 2020 to poorer nations, but the Green Climate Fund launched to help meet that goal had received donations of just $34 million by the end of 2013.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/04/25/un-carbon-idUKL6N0NH2FX20140425
00
29 April: Bloomberg: Eric Roston: They’re Not Sure What ‘Climate Finance’ Is But Say We Need a Ton of it
***The primitive state of climate finance — call it cli-fi (not to be confused with ‘climate fiction’)*** — is the focus of the very last chapter of the most recent 1,000-plus-page report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which came out this month…
The best estimate is that on average more than $360 billion a year qualifies as cli-fi, most of that going toward renewable power. It’s hard to say what the target number should be, or if we need one. Business-focused environmentalists are asking for a “clean trillion,” almost a tripling of the IPCC estimate.
Complicating assessments of how climate finance is doing is a lack of agreement about what it is. “Knowledge gaps are substantial” in research and “there are no agreed definitions for climate investment and climate finance,” the IPCC writes…
Huge potential lies in state and local bonds, which have financed public infrastructure for a century of roads, bridges and hospitals for a century, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution. “Green bonds” would extend public financing to renewable energy projects, which today “rely upon an old fashioned and anachronistic form of financing that is different than how other parts of the economy are financed,” Richard Kauffman, New York State’s top energy advisor, has written.
Climate scientists have spent a generation tracking the flow of carbon, water and the other necessities of life all through the biosphere. The IPCC’s authors — as a proxy for the research community — are just starting to “follow the money” as it sloshes around, too.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-28/they-re-not-sure-what-climate-finance-is-but-say-we-need-a-ton-of-it.html
29 April: Irish Examiner: Calls for carbon tax hike cash to help elderly
by Conor Ryan , Investigative Correspondent
Age Action Ireland has called on the Government to divert the extra money it will get from this Thursday’s hike in tax on solid fuels to protect vulnerable pensioners.
On May 1, the second phase of the solid fuel carbon tax will add €1.20 to the price of a bag of coal and 24c to a bale of briquettes.
Statistics show the increases will have a much greater impact on elderly people living alone in rural communities…
Mr Timmins said this had become a life and death issue because, each year, mortality rates among the elderly spiked by up to 2,000 fatalities during the winter months…
Last week, Finance Minister Michael Noonan ruled out deferring the tax in order to deal with concerns about the impact it would have on the trade in some sectors.
He said that, between May 1 and December 31 last year, the charge had raised €1.3m more than expected.
“It should be noted that the provisional yield returned for solid fuel carbon tax from 1st May 2013 to 31 December 2013 was €7.3m, ahead of the forecast yield for that period of €6m,” said Mr Noonan. “Accordingly, I do not intend to defer the further increase of €10 per tonne of CO2 emissions from 1 May 2014.” …
The Solid Trade Fuel Group, which represents distributors, raised concerns with politicians that the lack of similar tariffs in the North encouraged people to move their business across the border.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/calls-for-carbon-tax-hike-cash-to-help-elderly-266821.html
00
28 April: Bloomberg: Megan McArdle: Poor People Have Carbon Footprints, Too
Chris Hayes of MSNBC has penned a very provocative piece on global warming in the Nation…
The really provocative part, however, is where Hayes compares global warming to slavery — not morally, but economically…
Hayes: Proceeding from this fact, McKibben leads us inexorably to the staggering conclusion that the work of the climate movement is to find a way to force the powers that be, from the government of Saudi Arabia to the board and shareholders of ExxonMobil, to leave 80 percent of the carbon they have claims on in the ground….
The last time in American history that some powerful set of interests relinquished its claim on $10 trillion of wealth was in 1865 — and then only after four years and more than 600,000 lives lost in the bloodiest, most horrific war we’ve ever fought…
McArdle: For the next few pages, Hayes goes on to detail how slaves became so economically valuable, and, in a similar vein, just how much oil companies have invested in fossil fuel rights. To quiet global warming, he argues, we would have to essentially expropriate them to the tune of trillions.
As it happens, I quite agree with his conclusion: If we want to halt global warming, we are going to need to leave the stuff in the ground…
Curiously absent from Hayes’s article is any extended discussion of what fossil fuels actually do for people, other than make money…
We have a machine in the basement that uses an exothermic natural gas reaction to heat steam and circulate it through pipes all over the house…
This brings benefits that include the prevention of lung infections and hypothermia.
Like many Americans, we also like to eat. We don’t have room for a cornfield in our backyard, so we buy food that is grown elsewhere, then shipped to Washington using more fossil fuels…
We live in a city, so we don’t drive much… But I have to travel a lot by air for work — much like Chris Hayes, I imagine — and so every year, I emit far more carbon than a family in flyover country putting 10,000 miles on each of their boat-sized sport utility vehicles.
Other people in other countries emit much less. But most of those people are poor — not picturesquely poor, but inconveniently, coldly and tiredly and hungrily and boredly poor…
Perhaps someday, we will have renewables that can do many of these jobs, but we don’t yet, and there’s no guarantee that we will.
So when we say that we want to leave all that fossil fuel in the ground, what we are saying is that we want everyone on the planet to be much, much poorer…
Even if the rich West somehow girded itself for the truly unprecedented — a mass decision to impoverish its citizens — this wouldn’t really matter, because billions out there want to be rich and warm and fat like us. If we leave hydrocarbons in the ground, we are just leaving it there for someone else to burn. This may be an act of charity toward the world’s poor. But it is not an act of environmental responsibility…
So here are the questions that Hayes should have asked and didn’t: Should we invade China to prevent it from heating the planet? Should we send troops into Saudi Arabia to seize the oil fields? Should we recolonialize Africa to keep its nations from exploiting their energy assets? …
I’d say the answer is obviously not. But if we are not willing to do that, then we will need to find some way to persuade people to leave it in the ground — hopefully, by making it cheaper to get energy some other way. Or we will need to figure out some geoengineering solution that will let us take the carbon back out of the atmosphere faster than we put it in…
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-28/poor-people-have-carbon-footprints-too
00
28 April: NRDC: Peter Lehner’s Blog: Why Do We Need to Curb Climate Change? Watch This Video
What does climate change look like? Everyone has a different answer. To a Texas rancher, it’s the drought that’s starving his cattle. To a worried mother in New York City, it’s the stultifying heat wave that’s setting off her child’s asthma. To an Iowa farmer, it’s hundreds of acres of unplanted fields, either withered by drought or flooded by heavy rains. To a New Jersey homeowner, it’s the storm that has destroyed her seaside community.
VIDEO: THIS IS WHAT CLIMATE CHANGE LOOKS LIKE 3.0
Every year since 2010, NRDC has encapsulated the year’s climate change impacts into a 2-minute video. Every year, this task becomes more challenging, as more communities in America and worldwide feel the devastating impacts of climate change. This past year was no exception…
Speak out and demand strong limits on carbon pollution from power plants. (LINKS TO NRDC LETTER TO SEND TO EPA)
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/plehner/why_do_we_need_to_curb_climate.html
00
Cementafriend said
“cementafriend
April 28, 2014 at 2:29 pm · Reply
Thanks for the post and reference Jo. WUWT has banned posts and comments about cycles related to the sun’s and planetary influences. Your blog richly deserves the Lifetime Achievement Award. Silencing of debate is a tactic of believers who have something to lose if the truth becomes known.”
I tend to agree, WUWT seems to becoming narrower and narrower in their views and the moderators will often delete comments on one side of the issue and allow those from the other side. Perhaps most hurtful to a former reader is the growing trend of lashing out and belittling an honest comment of best wishes if it contains references to God or Jesus Christ. While atheists are most welcome. This does tend to censor comments, not based on what the comments say, but whether or not the comment is politically correct from the biases of contributors of moderators.
They have every right to censor opposing views and explode in response to well intended comments.
But, the readers likewise have every right to delete the URL for the WUWT site. Sad, it used to be the first site I liked to read every night. But times change and people change.
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this will be what destroys the CAGW myth:
29 April: Australian: Bjorn Lomberg: Renewables pave path to poverty
THE Australian government recently released an issues paper for the review of the renewable energy target. What everyone engaged in this debate should recognise is that policies such as the carbon tax and the RET have contributed to household electricity costs rising 110 per cent in the past five years, hitting the poor the hardest.
A Salvation Army report from last year found 58 per cent of low-income households were unable to pay their electricity bills on time. Lynne Chester of the University of Sydney estimated last year that 20 per cent of households are now energy poor: “Parents are going without food, families are sitting around the kitchen table using one light, putting extra clothes on and sleeping in one room to keep warm, and this is Australia 2013.”
What is true in Australia is true globally…
Solar and wind power was subsidised by $65 billion in 2012. And because the total climate benefit was a paltry $1.5bn, the subsidies essentially wasted $63.5bn. Biofuels were subsidised by another $20bn, with essentially no climate benefit. All of that money could have been spent on healthcare, education, better roads or lower taxes.
Forcing everyone to buy more expensive, less-reliable energy pushes up costs throughout the economy, leaving less for other public goods. The average of macroeconomic models indicates the total cost of the EU’s climate policy will be $US310bn a year from 2020 until the end of the century…
The burden of these policies falls overwhelmingly on the world’s poor, because the rich can easily pay more for their energy. In the US, well-meaning and well-off environmentalists often cavalierly suggest petrol prices should be doubled or electricity exclusively sourced from high-cost green sources.
That may be OK in affluent suburbs, where residents reportedly spend just 2 per cent of their income on petrol. But the poorest 30 per cent of the US population spends almost 17 per cent of its after-tax income on petrol…
The poor, no surprise, have reduced their consumption by much more than 10 per cent, whereas the rich have not reduced theirs at all.
Over the past five years, heating a home has become 63 per cent more expensive in Britain while real wages have declined. About 17 per cent of households are now energy-poor — they have to spend more than 10 per cent of their income on energy; and, because the elderly are typically poorer, about a quarter of their households are energy poor. Pensioners burn old books to keep warm because it is cheaper than coal; they ride on heated buses all day, and a third leave part of their homes cold…
In Germany, where green subsidies will cost $US35bn ($37.6bn) this year, household electricity prices have increased 80 per cent since 2000, causing 6.9 million households to live in energy poverty. Wealthy homeowners in Bavaria can feel good about their inefficient solar panels, receiving lavish subsidies essentially paid by poor tenants in the Ruhr who cannot afford solar panels, but still have to pay more for power.
In Greece, where tax hikes on oil have driven up heating costs 48 per cent, more and more Athenians are cutting down park trees, causing air pollution from wood burning to triple.
It is even worse in the developing world, where three billion lack access to cheap energy. They cook and keep warm by burning twigs and dung, producing indoor air pollution that causes 3.5 million deaths a year — by far the world’s biggest environmental problem…
Yet funding new coal-fired power plants in both countries (Pakistan & South Africa) has been widely opposed by well-meaning Westerners and governments…
In the next two years, Germany will build 10 coal-fired power plants…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/renewables-pave-path-to-poverty/story-fni1hfs5-1226898730123#
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OOPS – APOLOGIES…IT’S LOMBORG, NOT LOMBERG, OF COURSE.
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Last bit of volcanic puff and blow was down at Mt Gambier in the SA South east about 4000 or 5000 years ago. Seems like there were some aboriginal legends about it still around in the 1800’s.
William Buckley an english born convict who escaped and who went bush with the Pt Phillip aboriginals in about 1856. He later told of many aboriginal legends some of which were recorded by William Goodall.
One of those legends was of great white islands drifting past down at the southern coastal regions.
In short, Ice bergs during the final phase of the last Ice age about 12000 years ago, well within aboriginal times whose first populations made it into Australia across the indo / aust land bridges from 120 metre lower sea levels probably about 50 to 60,000 years ago.
Later groups of more advanced aboriginal peoples came across some 21,000 years ago and displaced the more primitive “first settlers” whose remnants finally were isolated in Tasmania as the ice age ended and the seas rose cutting the land bridges and short water crossings across what we now call Bass Strait.
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Der Dumbkoph!
My Post #29 was supposed to be at # 3.2.9.
Ah well nobody will miss it.
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If you feel like your up for 10 minutes of the most vacuous, alarmist drivel I have heard in some time. Then listen to Phillip Adams interviewing a guy who manages to mix in the fall of the roman empire, climate modelling and peak oil to arrive at the conclusion that Western society has about 12 months to run. Its a cross between comedy gold and just shameless cashing in behaviour, when you get to the end of the interview and PA touts this fools book. I use the word fool to counter the open insults to sceptics replete throughout the interview, I use it for “balance” and we all love a good bit of balance don’t we?
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/global-tipping-point/5415760
Sell your houses, put your kids out of their misery and drink yourself happy, because its all over folks, its all over.
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Phillip Adams was always bragging that he was a member of the Sceptics’ Society when i used to listen to him long before CAGW! makes you laugh.
on the other hand, the repeated exploitation of children in the name of CAGW makes me angry:
28 April: Moyers&Co: Simon Davis-Cohen: Young People Are Taking the Government to Court Over Its Failure to Address Climate Change
This post first appeared in The Nation.
In an unprecedented federal court case that has made it to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, young people from California are suing the Environmental Protection Agency and Departments of Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Energy and Defense under the historic “public trust doctrine” for failing to devise a climate change recovery plan. In their legal brief, they argue, “Failure to rapidly reduce CO2 emissions and protect and restore the balance of the atmosphere is a violation of Youth’s constitutionally protected rights and is redressable by the Courts.”…
The public trust doctrine has its roots in antiquity, deriving from the Roman “Code of Justinian.” Elizabeth Brown of Our Children’s Trust, the group coordinating the legal effort, explains that the doctrine represents a duty for all sovereigns to safeguard public resources that future generations will depend on for survival. It is an “attribute of sovereignty,” “implicit in our constitution,” she says…
In tandem with the federal lawsuit, similar efforts by American youth, also guided by Our Children’s Trust, are aimed at state agencies in Alaska, New Mexico, Oregon and Texas.
In an amicus brief in the federal case, a group of sympathetic law professors explained that a legislature cannot deprive “a future legislature of the natural resources necessary to provide for the well-being and survival of its citizens….
http://billmoyers.com/2014/04/28/young-people-are-taking-the-government-to-court-over-its-failure-to-address-climate-change/
Our Children’s Trust
Partner and Supporting Individuals:
Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Dr. Sivan Kartha, Dr. Pushker Kharecha, Dr. David Lobell, Dr. Arjun Makhijani, Dr. Jonathan Overpeck, Dr. Camille Parmesan, Dr. Stefan Rahmstorf, Dr. Steven Running, Dr. James Gustave Speth, Dr. Kevin Trenberth, Dr. Lise Van Susteren…etc etc etc etc…
http://ourchildrenstrust.org/our-partners
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Yes Pat its pretty rich as I have pointed out many times on this forum. When you have international authorities denying funding for coal power in developing countries, condemning people to continue burning dung for warmth and cooking.
Access to affordable electricity is the catalyst for all other aspects of societies development and denying it to the third world while advancing on its grace ourselves, is a sickening form of unconcealed eugenics and its happening right now, not by 2050 or 2100 but right now.
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I pointed out to Piers Corbyn that without a valid forecast method, his forecasts could not be correct. After some outrage over perceived defamation, and a demand for retraction, he asked for a copy of Alex S. Gaddes ‘Tomorrow’s Weather.'(1990) (see previous post.) Among other things, this work predicts the break up of the Jet Streams by Solar particles,(Svensmark?)
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Given Corbyn’s reputation for accuracy I would never have made such a statement. That he keeps his methodology mostly secret reflects his interest in protecting his business**, not any lack of valid forecast method.
But as always, success speaks for itself. It needs no justification or explanation from anyone.
** Probably also reflects a little laughter at those, such as the IPCC and various government weather fore-guessers, who can’t hit the target even if it’s an inch from their gun.
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Perhaps someone could point out an example of Corbyn’s ‘success’?
Good luck to him if he continues to extract money from the gullible and the insurance companies,(although the rest of us pay the higher premiums when he is wrong.)
Alex S. Gaddes provided a method that predicts the instigation and duration of ‘Dry’Cycles exactly. His forecasts are readily verifiable.
Anyone wanting to read the work ‘Tomorrow’s Weather'(including ‘Dry’ Cycle forecasts to 2055,) can obtain a free pdf copy from dongaddes93@gmail.com
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