Mike Bromley writes in: BBC has the explanation for the European LIA… it wasn’t really an ice age at all. See this strange quote.
“The Little Ice Age wasn’t really an ice age of any kind – the idea that Europe had a relentless sequence of cold winters is frankly barking” – Dr Mike Lockwood Reading University
No real discussion of the mechanisms that I could understand, referenced some papers your front line team would profitably have a go with. The BBC has solved the whole riddle. this has nothing to do with Global warming and it’s all local variability.
Full story here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15199065
“The researchers emphasise there is no impact on global warming.”
Keeping the religion alive AND assuring continuing funding!!!
This is just SICK.
Hal
It all makes sense really. How could the LIA be associated with global warming? Tosspots.
How many = “relentless”?
The first time I read it on the BBC site yesterday I thought Lockwood’s ‘strange’ quote referred to the fact that not all the winters during the LIA were cold.
The bigger issue raised in the BBC article is whether the recent SORCE UV measurements are accurate: perhaps one of the WUWT solar experts could weigh in on that.
I’ve read the paper and the BBC hews to its meaning. The paper does not concern an effect of AGW or the LIA at all, but rather, the effect of solar cycles over the scale of individual decades.
Peiser really blew it. He really needs to apologize for sounding a false alarm.
Now that is remarkable.
The merchants of London must have been able to float their entire “frost fair” markets 18″ above the middle of the Thames with no visible means of support and without getting wet!!!
Furthermore, medieval technologists must have been able to freely skate above the water on the Thames with amazing efficiency.
Such technology must have made it to the New World, for we have reports of skating on the Hudson River. and on the Brandywine.
How can we recover this amazing technological expertise?
I think I get it — the Sun was responsible for significant climate variations in the 17th century, but has no effect on the climate in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Yup, that’s Warmista science all right.
So the LIA wasn’t an ice age of any kind, and the MWP didn’t exist (according to the Hockey Team), or was only regional. Sounds about the right time to quote/paraphrase some Orwell:
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future’
Hmm. Interesting.
So if there wasn’t a LIA, the Hudson River couldn’t have frozen in 1775 / 1776.
If this is the case, how did Colonel Knox get the cannons to Dorchester Heights?
In other words, American History requires a LIA, in much the same way as the history of Rome requires Caesar to cross the Rubicon.
Freezing your ass off doesn’t impact global warming. I’m speechless.
Bradley.
Benny Peiser on the GWPF website merely linked to the Sunday Times story. The Little Ice Age was their idea, not the GWPF. When the GWPF came to comment themselves they showed themselves to be far more accurate than the news websites.
For example.
Just compare David Whitehouse’ story
http://www.thegwpf.org/the-observatory/4063-the-sun-and-the-winter-of-2011.html
to Richard Black’s version.
Whitehouse is a real journalist, unlike Black.
Funny, I thought the Sun shone on the whole globe………..
Another Black from Black. The BBC has to make cuts so why not take the opportunity Beeb pen pushers to push? I am sure the WWF/GreenPees/Friends of the Earth/Plane Stupids could offer Mr Black a job……..
Yep…and no GCR/cloud connection needed. Imagine that!
Anthony, unless there is a second Mike Bromley on here, I didn’t post the LIA story. I submitted a blurb about Scientific American.
Anybody notice how Richard Black doesn’t allow comments on his BS anymore and if comments are allowed, they are closed before any debaye actually happens or sceptc comments are given negative reviews and yet the voiceds of true believers are not heard?
“The latest satellite data shows the UV output is far more changeable than scientists had previously thought.”
OK then … does this new fact not change their view that the ‘science is setted’ ???? The famous models did not include this but they are somehow above reproach.
There is just NO consistency to this narratve other than the preconcieved conclusion that we cause bad planetary behavior and must be punished.
.
The University of Reading is of comparable stature to the University of East Anglia. Don’t expect any Nobel Prize winning science from these folks. Lot’s of touchy, feely “Non-Science”.
It has been almost 200 years since the Thames froze over thanks to a warming climate and the Urban Heat Island effect.
I do not see the point of this BBC article unless it is an opening shot in a campaign to explain to the AGW faithful why you have colder winters in many parts of the globe, while there is ‘global warming’.
In other words, this is just another way of trying to explain away observations and data which do not agree with the IPCC’s and others’ climate models.
Now combine the UV stuff from that with the UV stuff from this:
” That means the plankton may react to UV rays quickly enough to impact their own weather.”
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/0702_planktoncloud.html
The Black article is the usual tosh but is it just me but doesn’t Richard Black look an awful ( and I mean AWFUL) lot like both Michael HockeySchtick Mann and Gavin RealClimate Schmidt? Same Mum? Same Dad? Clones?? TRIPLETS???
Maybe these blokes are all in some weird offshoot of Opus Dei and have weird plastic surgery to all look like…. hobbits? Orc-Hobbits?
Opus Gaia?
Just too weird to take seriously now but won’t this all make an amazing movie / mini series some time in the ( not too distant ) future. Imagine the Mann-Schmidt – Black teleconference scene or meeting over coffee at Copenhagen. Danny de Vito could play them all! Anyone want to work on the script?
So the incredible expansion of Andean, Alaskan, Canadian glaciers did not happen? The death of a million Chinese and the abandonment of Siberia and Greenland was a “denier’s’ lie?
Are these people insane?
Okay, so reading the GWPF report, this was NOT observed data, it was merely the result of feeding a reduction of uv levels into climate models. Do these people ever do real research based on measuring things??
Although the BBC has it wrong about UV being the likely solar variable responsible for for the LIA, they do correctly state that it was not an ice age.
I would recommend reading some of Shaviv’s works on the mechanisms in play during full blown ice ages. The LIA might have some similarities, say perhaps high GCR flux, but the temperature drop for an ice age is 10-15C as opposed to a couple of degrees for the LIA.
Seriously though, it good to see some credibility and actual quantification to the UV-stratosphere connection. This is an important step and displays a solar-climate connection that has nothing to do with the whole GCR issue…
Richard Black is the worst sort of cut-and-paste journalist that the BBC employs. He has no scientific background and will quote any “climate scientist” who is an ardent warmist. He has never been known to ask any serious questions; he just accepts unthinkingly what he has been told provided it is on-message with the BBC brand of extreme alarmism.
Nice snide, R. Gates. Continue.
I was struck by two statements in the GWPF article that J Huntly linked to.
1. A statement from the UK Met Office in 2010
“Although the probability of severely cold winters in the UK is gradually declining, there is currently no evidence to suggest similar changes in extremes of snow, winds and storms in the UK.” In other words, the frequencies of snow and of cold winters are not related.
2. The author of the article said “I don’t believe that this latest research increases the probability of a severe UK winter this year.”. This implies that the type of weather is influenced by the type of research carried out on it. After all, I’m sure there is a strong correlation between the numbers of papers published on global warming and the global temperature estimate.
I’m amused by their, ‘when its colder in europe, the warmth goes elsewhere’ thinking. Don’t GISS assume the opposite near the Arctic when they invent data for it from the closest stations 1000km away?
It’s all just damage limitation and no consistency.
Dr Mike Lockwood should read the whole of:-
‘A Chronological Listing of Early
Weather Events
James A. Marusek
During the winter of 1779-80 New York Harbor in the United States froze solid for five weeks. Troops
and people walked across the ice from New York to Jersey City and Staten Island with all sorts of goods
including heavy cannons.33
In the United States in December 1779, a correspondent of the National Intelligencer, a resident of
Virginia, said Colonel Baylor’s regiment of horse crossed the Potomac River at Georgetown
(Washington, D.C.), upon the ice, on their march to the Carolinas.38
In the United States on 14 January 1780, the cold was very intense that the mercury sunk into the bulb of
the thermometer. The ice upon the James River in Virginia was 38 inches (1 meter) thick; and the
Chesapeake Bay was so completely bridged with ice that many persons crossed over upon it from
Annapolis to Kent Island in Maryland. Loaded wagons passed over the Chesapeake Bay.38
In the United States an old revolutionary officer stated that on 7 March 1780, he rode from Falmouth to
Fredericksburg, Virginia upon the ice of the Rappahannock River, in company with his regiment, which
was returning to Virginia, from the north. The cold weather continued without intermission from 10
December 1779 to March 1780.38
In the United States during the winter of 1779-80, the ice was driven out of the mouth of the Mississippi
River into the Mexican gulf.42
http://www.breadandbutterscience.com (free 580 page download pdf, many refs.)
and meantime in Europe, the Seine river had seven feet thick ice at its mouth, nothing to see there, move on, move on./sarc
It does seem from reading the accounts that extreme winters alternated with either very wet or hot summers which exacerbated food supply problems. Averages hide reality, they do not explain it.
Doug-that is why it is refered to as a “little” ice age 🙂
LIARS
Guess I should explain.
Little Ice Age Revisionists = LIARS.
That article had one purpose – propaganda. Richard I know you will read this post, so you should be ashamed of your stance, its political not scientific.
They are worried that it is going to happen, and need to have an explanation for it that fits their ideology.
“The latest satellite data shows the UV output is far more changeable than scientists had previously thought.”
but wait there’s more folks-
“It’s a jigsaw puzzle, and when you average it up over the globe, there is no effect on global temperatures,”
now what to do with all those funny jigsaw pieces?
‘The new research involved plugging SIM’s ultraviolet measurements into the Met Office Hadley Centre computer model of the world’s climate.’
aside from the puzzling pieces are there any missing jigsaw pieces here folks-
‘Dr Scaife emphasises that ultraviolet emissions are not the sole reason why winter temperatures vary.’
what the Hell let’s assume we’ve got all the jigsaw pieces anyway-
“Assuming these new satellite data are correct… then as the 11-year solar cycle is predictable, it’s going to contribute some predictability for European and indeed UK weather,”
abracadabra , eye of newt, leg of toad, hocus pocus allakazaam!
“We now have a viable explanation of why that[LIA] happened – nothing to do with global warming, but in terms of temperature re-distribution around the north Atlantic.”
And you deniers and skeptics thought they were making this stuff up as they went along?
Black – as opaque to critical thought as his name suggests. That’s why he fits in as a Leftie Beeboid Grandee so easily, it’s in his job description.
Two months ago Richard Black was pushing a report from some AGW scientists that Coal fire electric plants in China were the cause of the recent cooling.
Its now very clear that some reporters are telling the public blatant lies, saying that freezing temperatures globally has basically “nothing to do with Global warming and it’s all local variability.” which I agree that they are trying to push this as some half-assed explanation that backs their previously wrong conclusions of Anthropogenic climate change or various pseudo-scientific steaming pile Bull that we’ve been subjected to over the past two decades, Enough!
It is mind numbingly obvious that during the recent slump into low solar activity a normal part of the suns various cycles, the result of which caused a global phenomena of a period of cooling, which has be extensively covered by news reports globally over the past 4 years, in three months time that will be half a decade of going into and out of the lower part of a solar cycle of low activity. If the sun causes the Cooling of the planet through reduced activity, why is it so hard to accept that when the sun goes through a period of higher solar activity that this is the cause of any warming?, If anyone else is under any misplaced illusion that winters have no impact on ‘Man Made Global warming’ and it’s all local” here are a fue reports of record winters globally that took me 5 minutes to find and they negate all the artificially hyped ‘Man Made Global warming’.
Unfortunately Freezing winters wold-wide continue to kill.
UK
Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years, experts predict
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/6921281/Britain-facing-one-of-the-coldest-winters-in-100-years-experts-predict.html
Sweden in ‘coldest December in 100 years’
“Power outages, traffic accidents as well as train and flight delays”
http://www.thelocal.se/30914/20101217/
New Zealand
Southland region of New Zealand (NZ) has in the past week been hit by “the worst spring storm in living memory”
http://www.meattradenewsdaily.co.uk/news/051010/nz___snow_hits_farmers_big_time_.aspx
Ireland
It’s official, coldest winter in 130 years in Ireland
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Its-official-coldest-winter-in-130-years-in-Ireland–112421244.html
Japan
Tokyo experiences coldest mid-April day in nearly 50 years.
“At midday, the temperature in Tokyo was 7 degrees. In Miyazaki, the mercury got no higher than 9.5 degrees, the coldest mid-April temperature in 100 years.”
http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/tokyo-experiences-coldest-mid-april-day-in-nearly-50-years
South America
At least 175 people have died in the coldest winter in South America in recent years
http://en.trend.az/regions/world/ocountries/1723309.html
North America (US)
October 2009 3rd Coldest for US in 115 Years, What about the Upcoming Winter?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/07/october-2009-3rd-coldest-for-us-in-115-years-what-about-the-upcoming-winter/
Germany
One of the coldest winter in 100 years
http://translate.google.com.au/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sz-online.de%2Fnachrichten%2Fartikel.asp%3Fid%3D2042096&sl=de&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Russia
“…in Siberia it was perhaps the record breaking coldest ever,’ said Dr Alexander Frolov, head of state meteorological service Rosgidromet”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1260132/Russian-weatherman-strikes-blow-climate-change-lobby-announcing-winter-Siberia-coldest-record.html
China
China battles “coldest winter in 100 years”
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2008/02/04/idUKPEK161570._CH_.242020080204
Australia
Australians shiver through coldest winter morning in 30 years
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/7863227/Australians-shiver-through-coldest-winter-morning-in-30-years.html
Canada
Coldest winter in years, Environment Canada warns
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/CTVNewsAt11/20071130/cold_winter_071130/
South Africa
Coldest Recorded September Night in Durban, South Africa
http://climateresearchnews.com/2008/09/coldest-recorded-september-night-in-durban-south-africa/
Buenos Aires
Polar Cold Wave – Coldest Winter in decades
http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g312741-i979-k4606125-Polar_Cold_Wave_Coldest_Winter_in_decades-Buenos_Aires_Capital_Federal_District.html
Antarctica
Figures show that there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than is usual for the time of year.
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/35266/Global-warming-It-s-the-coldest-winter-in-decades
Northern Hemisphere
“The northern hemisphere in particular has experienced record cold, record snow and a rebuilding of the Arctic sea ice extent.”
http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/189
Southern Hemisphere
Coldest winter in a half century in the Southern Hemisphere
http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/weather/weather_experts/coldest-winter-in-a-half-century-in-the-southern-hemisphere
The wheels are coming off the AGW bus one by one. Take the decade-plus stasis in mean global temperature. For a long while, consensus scientists denied it was happening. Then they claimed it was due to internal variability when it could be denied no longer. Recently, it’s been put down to transport of heat to the ocean depths, a process they had said was insignificant.
Likewise, the LIA had been obliterated by Mann et al. Now it’s permissible to recognise it, and to attribute it (and the recent run of undeniably cold winters in places people actually live) to solar variations, which had previously been reckoned insignificant.
Sure, the mantra that none of the above casts doubt on AGW is tacked onto each of these new “discoveries”. But sooner or later that will be quietly dropped from one of these papers – in the absence of real-world warming that might rekindle the theory.
Ok, this is what was on CNN last night as I mentioned in a different post, but they did not say anything about whether it was connected or not connected to global warming. What they did say was that this is the reason why the planet has warmed in recent decades – unless I am mistaken, this is a big admission!
The Little Ice Age or LIA, is a just an accepted nickname for a short period of cooling after the Medieval warm period and just before this period of Natural warming in the modern era…. So now the Warmists are going to pretend that “Denialist” skeptics are so stupid that they don’t even know what real Ice Ages are.(spare me pu-leese)…and somehow this UV finding proves it….’eh? Say what?.
….Well, that’s the BBC in full propagandist mode for you. Pure British childishness and blatant nastiness….. Mostly it’s way to mollify themselves I think. An inkish pacifier, so to speak… 🙂
A kind of literary way of sucking their thumbs to feel good about it all… It’s pretty hard for them really….. Even the science is turning on them now….All they have left is their ability to twist words.;-)
It’s Funny how local Freezing winters span the Entire Globe.
UK
Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years, experts predict
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/6921281/Britain-facing-one-of-the-coldest-winters-in-100-years-experts-predict.html
Sweden in ‘coldest December in 100 years’
“Power outages, traffic accidents as well as train and flight delays”
http://www.thelocal.se/30914/20101217/
New Zealand
Southland region of New Zealand (NZ) has in the past week been hit by “the worst spring storm in living memory”
http://www.meattradenewsdaily.co.uk/news/051010/nz___snow_hits_farmers_big_time_.aspx
Ireland
It’s official, coldest winter in 130 years in Ireland
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Its-official-coldest-winter-in-130-years-in-Ireland–112421244.html
Japan
Tokyo experiences coldest mid-April day in nearly 50 years.
“At midday, the temperature in Tokyo was 7 degrees. In Miyazaki, the mercury got no higher than 9.5 degrees, the coldest mid-April temperature in 100 years.”
http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/tokyo-experiences-coldest-mid-april-day-in-nearly-50-years
South America
At least 175 people have died in the coldest winter in South America in recent years
http://en.trend.az/regions/world/ocountries/1723309.html
North America (US)
October 2009 3rd Coldest for US in 115 Years, What about the Upcoming Winter?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/07/october-2009-3rd-coldest-for-us-in-115-years-what-about-the-upcoming-winter/
Germany
One of the coldest winter in 100 years
http://translate.google.com.au/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sz-online.de%2Fnachrichten%2Fartikel.asp%3Fid%3D2042096&sl=de&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Russia
“…in Siberia it was perhaps the record breaking coldest ever,’ said Dr Alexander Frolov, head of state meteorological service Rosgidromet”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1260132/Russian-weatherman-strikes-blow-climate-change-lobby-announcing-winter-Siberia-coldest-record.html
China
China battles “coldest winter in 100 years”
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2008/02/04/idUKPEK161570._CH_.242020080204
Australia
Australians shiver through coldest winter morning in 30 years
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/7863227/Australians-shiver-through-coldest-winter-morning-in-30-years.html
Canada
Coldest winter in years, Environment Canada warns
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/CTVNewsAt11/20071130/cold_winter_071130/
South Africa
Coldest Recorded September Night in Durban, South Africa
http://climateresearchnews.com/2008/09/coldest-recorded-september-night-in-durban-south-africa/
Buenos Aires
Polar Cold Wave – Coldest Winter in decades
http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g312741-i979-k4606125-Polar_Cold_Wave_Coldest_Winter_in_decades-Buenos_Aires_Capital_Federal_District.html
Antarctica
Figures show that there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than is usual for the time of year.
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/35266/Global-warming-It-s-the-coldest-winter-in-decades
Northern Hemisphere
“The northern hemisphere in particular has experienced record cold, record snow and a rebuilding of the Arctic sea ice extent.”
http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/189
Southern Hemisphere
Coldest winter in a half century in the Southern Hemisphere
http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/weather/weather_experts/coldest-winter-in-a-half-century-in-the-southern-hemisphere
J Huntly. says:
October 10, 2011 at 10:19 pm
“Whitehouse is a real journalist, unlike Black.”
Dr Whitehouse writes about the science whilst fearing for its respectability. Comrade Black toes the party line whilst fearing about his pension.
It is nice to debate the finer details of what happened and why, but is not the big picture as far as the public are concerned that in order to facilitate a reduction of global temperature of a few 10ths of a degree in 100 years time we, in the UK and even across the NH, are expected to potentially sacrifice thousands if not millions of people in the immediate future.
It’s all well and good suggesting that there is a future potential threat to populations in hot and arrid countries but who has got our back now?
I don’t even presume to state that the effect of a little ice age now, will have the same devastaing effect as it did on a population without modern conveniences, but where is the risk assessment, where are the predictions on food production due to a decreased growing season and available land in the NH, where is the advice to policy makers on fuel poverty and care of the vulnerable? Have the risk assessments been done, but not publicised, or not even thought of?
All we see is billions of pounds/dollars going in completely the wrong direction, and to add insult to injury it’s our money financing this research.
We in the UK will lead the world by example on carbon mitigation………. by committing national genocide.
Seriously, it’s time for a change in direction, it’s time for science to actually prove that it can be used to influence pollicy without being influenced by it, for the good of society. Whether it be to the IPCC or another body, governments have to be now asking the question what happens to societies outside of the equatorial regions in the event of an extended solar minimum. Risk assessment has to cover all probabilities not just the politically usefull ones.
Doug,
Perhaps the name of the little ice age gives it away that this wasn’t a full blown ice age?
Mango,
The lack of comments isn’t s bad thing given how Blacks threads were almost singularly inhabited by true believers anyway.
Finally, what we all have to understand is that the BBC is nothing more than a Msnn Made Global Warming ™ advocate, justices the BBC advocates multiple-culturalism, the EU, gay tights, Islam, anti-war groups, etc. Basically if it’s anti-western civilisation you can be guaranteed the BBC’s grubby little hands will be involved!
Mailman
>>Peter Miller says: October 10, 2011 at 10:44 pm
>>I do not see the point of this BBC article unless it is an opening shot
>>in a campaign to explain to the AGW faithful why you have colder winters
>>in many parts of the globe, while there is ‘global warming’.
Spot on, Peter.
You have to keep the faithful ‘on message’. So when the predicted day of tribulation and armageddon does not arrive, you need an explanation for it. The message is, that Global Warming is REAL, but your flight from LHR is cancelled due three feet of snow merely because there has been a small change in UV this year. And these small changes in UV only affect weather, and never climate.
So keep the faith, keep taking the pills, keep drinking the Kool-Aid, and keep those Green taxes and Green grants buzzing. Pipe-dream utopia here we come, busted economy and all…..
.
Have any of the commenters here actually asked the scientists that did the research?
The reason the BBC has stated what it has stated is because that is what their research states!
Is the BBC supposed to mis-report the research?
Imperial College press release:
http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_10-10-2011-10-51-13
“Sarah Ineson, who performed the experiments, said: “What we’re seeing is UV levels affecting the distribution of air masses around the Atlantic basin. This causes a redistribution of heat – so while Europe and the US may be cooler, Canada and the Mediterranean will be warmer, and there is little direct impact on global temperatures.””
eg. the effects of CO2 are the same, that is warming. This research just shows the energy is re-distributed.
I’m reposting from the Peiser thread, because I think the Met Office and BBC “turnarounds” celebrating solar powers are simply c-y-a events.
I think the Met Office have devised a failsafe formula.
If it’s warm, they can say AGW! AGW! we told ya so! and if it’s cold they can say Freezing! Freezing! we told ya so! They may even have sent an anonymous caller to pay Piers Corbyn to have a peek at his forecasts which they can incorporate into their own so as to have a better chance of saying Told ya so!
Certainly, making noises about the Sun is moving in the direction of the real source of temperature change longterm (Landscheidt, Daly, Sharp, SSB etc is no doubt still a bridge too far) which means……….. (drum roll) ………… that they will even at this eleventh hour turnabout retain their credibility, power to demand homage, and ability to say Told ya so! which after all is their sole raison d’etre. People have short memories and will forget AGW before remembering how ruthlessly the Met Office supported it and crushed dissent… until it saw fit to quietly appropriate the dissenting views as its own.
/cynic
Hi
I cannot post an assessment of Dr Mike Lockwood, of Reading University as I have no personal knowledge of his competency.
However I have known Reading University since 1972 when it used to be “Reading Technical College”, a vocation school, mainly offering excellent City and Guides and National Certificate courses A few years ago all the UK tech colleges got grandiose ideas and became “Universities” . ( More money from the government).
If you want an idea of the level of intelligence displayed by one of the lecturers at the “University” I would recommend you read the many articles about Kevin “Captain Cyborg” Warwick, another lecturer at the seat of wisdom! Let Google be your friend, but here are some tasters. The third article will make you want to throw up, although it was published in April, perhaps a late April fools joke, but I fear it was correct! :-
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/07/04/home_truths_bionic_man_takes/
http://www.badscience.net/2004/04/the-return-of-captain-cyborg/
http://stochasticblog.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/captain-cyborg-kevin-warwick/
This saga has been going on until the present day, it has just got more and more absurd.
At no time did the University authorities reign in this saga, which must go to show the level of scrutiny by the university administration. It also shows the complete and utter failure of commonsense by many in the academic world
cheers
Patrick (grumpy retired engineer)
UV heats the stratosphere because it is absorbed by O3 and N2.
That alters the span of the Hadley convection cells that arise at the equator changing the convergence zone where the convection cell air descends.
That alters the weather zones at higher latitudes so that temperatures rise within the Arctic circle, but fall in the 50-60deg region.
The warmth, and cold are redistributed from their conventional regions, not that there is a big change in global heat content.
This is confirmed by the abscence of any significant change in sea level during the LIA becuase there was little thermal contraction of the oceans.
The LACK of an effect on global temperatures is made obvious by the recent satellite measurements. For thge best part of a year there has been a VERY quiet Sun comparable to the Maunder minimum in the LIA with very low UV levels. Winters in the Northern higher latitudes have been almost as cold as they were 50years ago before AGW had much effect.
But global temperatures have not fallen back to 1960s levels, at Roy Spencers site the September global temperature is one of the highest in the instrumental record.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
Latest Global Temp. Anomaly (Sept. ’11: +0.29 deg. C)
Not much sign of this cooling phase of the ‘natural cycles’ that some people claim is happening!
So it’s the Sun? I thought that had been ruled out? Only sceptics say that.
Dr Mike Lockwood is a obviously denier of the Little Ice Age!
BBC again trying to justify their stance on CAGW.
We already knew about the variance of UV it is the changing magnetic field that does it which the BBC do not mention.
Sparks says: October 11, 2011 at 12:00 am
Brilliant collection of evidence there Sparks.
Usual rubbish from the warmist camp so I do not know why we are wasting time commenting upon it.
Variability lasting more than a century!!! Is that not a trend with significant felt impact?
Local variability affecting the majority of the populated area of the Northern Hemisphere!! Given that the majoriy of the land mass and hence populated area is in the Northern Hemisphere, even if this was not a global phenomen it is of utmost importance to mankind in general.
Is there any evidence to suggest that the Southern Hemisphere was warmer whilst the Northern Hemisphere was cool during the LIA? Without such evidence, the claim that there is no global effect is conjecture.
.
However, to some extent the reasoning supports my long hefd view, namely that there is no such thing as Global warming; changes in climate have a local/regional effect. The IPCC does not wish to mention this since it wants to promote some solution to an alleged global problem. For many countries, ‘global’ warming would be hugely beneficial. The UK for one would greatly benefit by a few extra degrees, so too Canada. If countries performed their own evaluations of the effect on themselves many of the richest countries would see ‘global’ warming as a god send and this would make it more difficult to politically influence the population of those countries supporting efforts to curb a feared problem in some distant country. ,
If we now start getting more and more frequent cold winters over the next 10 or 20 years, it will kill the public support of the CAGW scam. In fact, the penny is beginning to drop. In the last few days, the Daily Mail has carried articles on the crippling effect of green taxes/subsidies on industry and its competitive and how jobs have been relocated abroad and a story about how the UK is investing £15 billion laying cables to France so that we can use their nuclear electricity since the government fears blackout due to the UK’s present energy policy. Sheer madness to force the UK to be dependent upon another country who will have huge demands on its surplus power from other large countries such as Germany. The UK would be better to spend the £15billion building new power plants (not wind) to meet its own needs. Of course, that is too sensible for politicians.
I would have thought that everyone here had realised by now that when the temperature goes up it’s caused by catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. When the temperature goes down it’s caused by natural variability.
Well, that’s good news! So it wont be -23 degrees C, but only -22,9.
AGW saves the day.
Dr. Lockwood is correct. The LIA was not “an ice age of any kind.” The current geologic ice age began ~30 MYA and won’t end anytime in the near future. The LIA wasn’t even an ice age in the popular sense (a glacial stage).
The LIA was the interglacial equivalent of a glacial stadial. It was also the coldest Holocene stadial since the 8.2 KYA Cooling Event… But the LIA definitely was not a discrete ice age of any kind.
While the LIA was very cold by Holocene standards, it wasn’t a “relentless sequence of cold winters.” It was colder on average than the previous 7500 years; but there were plenty of brutally hot summers and mild winters during the LIA.
What I don’t understand in the way the AGW crowd describe this as a “regional” cooling that apparently has no effect on “global” warming.
Erm, but is not the “global” climate the sum of all “regional” climates? And surely if one region, such as the whole northern hemisphere, gets cooler surely that would mean that the globe gets cooler.
In order for this not to be the case then while the northern hemisphere is getting cooler the southern hemisphere must get warmer by a similar magnitude. Is there any evidence that this is not the case?
Just arskin…
‘The latest xyz in climate is far more changeable than we-runaway-anthropogenic-global-warming-CO2-is-a-toxic scientists had previously thought’, the new refrain in the old song.
The only consensus coming out of all their studies is the climate is far more changeable than they had previously thought.
Maybe one day it will sink in.
Hmm, toxic scientists..
I listened to a spokeswoman for the Met Office on the BBC yesterday she said the northern hemisphere might get colder but the southern half would not and so there would be no change in the increase in global warming and she also threw in that the Arctic was getting warmer as well..where do they get these people?
Mike Bromley the Kurd says:
October 10, 2011 at 10:36 pm
Anthony, unless there is a second Mike Bromley on here, I didn’t post the LIA story. I submitted a blurb about Scientific American.
Whilst I have no desire to calim to be the originator of this, I did post it on the recent Green Rock/Geologist psot yesterday as soon as the Beeb published it! Not being techy computer wise & all that I posted it in there!
Anyway the important thing is as many have said, they are readying themselves for any eventuality so that they have a ready excuse for why their previous prediction went wrong!!! 🙂
AtB
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/10/rare-earths-rock-green-tech-and-geopolitics/
Sorry, I meant this one! Have been working away the past few weeks & am in the middle of catching up on all sorts so have been a tad tardy on some things. Apologies to one & all! 😉
Back when I was but a snot-nosed PhD student, a few of the rudiments and theory of practical scientific philosophy were hammered into my head, so that I didn’t make a prat of myself in public. One of these fundamentals is this: always state your assumptions before arguing a point.
The current debate on human-induced global warming has very rarely done this, and has never overtly stated their main assumption: “Assuming energy and other input into the Earth to be constant…”.
This is what they are assuming with all arguments, and as we can see from historical records, the solar input is most definitely not constant, and indeed due to variations in the magnetosphere and solar wind, the cosmic ray input to the earth is also not constant. Given that the assumption of constancy is incorrect, the first task is therefore to determine how great an effect these inconstancies exert on the earth’s climatic system, and once this has been accomplished to use this to normalise the historical temperarure records so as to exclude these inputs.
The Climate Change evangelists have never done this explicitly, therefore their arguments should be regarded as suspect until they do this.
David L. Hagen says:
October 10, 2011 at 9:52 pm
Now that is remarkable…..
Such technology must have made it to the New World, for we have reports of skating on the Hudson River. and on the Brandywine.
How can we recover this amazing technological expertise?
___________________________________________
Too bad we can not ask my Father. He used to skate up the Bronx River to see my Mother. The Bronx River parallels the Hudson River heading into NYC before emptying into the Atlantic
Patrick said:
“However I have known Reading University since 1972 when it used to be “Reading Technical College”, a vocation school, mainly offering excellent City and Guides and National Certificate courses A few years ago all the UK tech colleges got grandiose ideas and became “Universities” .”
Errrr, it has been a University since 1926!
http://www.reading.ac.uk/about/about-timeline.aspx
Quote from the article.
“The new research involved plugging SIM’s ultraviolet measurements into the Met Office Hadley Centre computer model of the world’s climate. The results of the modelling re-inforce the idea that the UV variations affect winter weather across the region; and they indicate how it may happen.
UV is absorbed in the stratosphere, the upper atmosphere, by ozone. So in the quiet bit of the solar cycle, when there is less UV to absorb, the stratosphere is relatively cooler.
The Hadley Centre model shows that the effects of this percolate down through the atmosphere, changing wind speeds, including the jet stream that circles the globe above Europe, North America and Russia”.
Surely the article should have been headed “Met Office now admit that there was a Little Ice Age”? Thanks to cooperation with Imperial College and Reading University (which closed its physics department some years ago), Hadley Centre has now been able to tweak its model to show that there was a Little Ice Age (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) after all The Centre is still working to find an explanation as to why the LIA also extended into the Southern Hemisphere that does not conflict with AGW. When it has found a solution it will adjust its model again to show that the LIA was global”.
Bloke Down Pub said:
“I would have thought that everyone here had realised by now that when the temperature goes up it’s caused by catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. When the temperature goes down it’s caused by natural variability.”
You almost got the science correct.
More precisely, the research says UV variability modulates the warming Northern hemisphere climate. It’s a bit like having a DC signal gradually increasing in amplitude with an AC signal added to it. The troughs of the AC signal will subtract from the DC signal, making it ‘colder’ than would be the case if the AC signal were not there.
Soloman Green said:
“Surely the article should have been headed “Met Office now admit that there was a Little Ice Age”?”
If you do a simple search on the Met Office web site, you’ll find plenty of material referring to ‘Little Ice Age’. Will Soloman Green admit he needs to look harder?
Sadly much of what the BBC decides to report is doctored to ensure that it is consistent with its own particular brand of permanent bias. This factor is now well known here in the UK and as such much of what one reads from that organisation has to be taken with a pinch of salt (treated with the utmost caution).
The LIA was NOT an Ice age. Ice ages last for a few hundred thousand years. However it was a global even which meant that the earth was significantly colder than the few hundred years prior to it.
I guess that is why the researchers who have discovered and confirmed it called it the LITTLE ice age.
The BBC slant on it reeks of desperation though. They are trying to show that in spite of the vast amount of evidence to the contrary, the little ice age never happened. That in spite of the evidence of a large solar effect on the climate, that the sun has no bearing on “global warming”
It is the height of dishonest spin to suggest that the large changes we have seen are directly related to solar fluctuation, but yet this has no impact on global warming.
Mike Lockwood’s quote that there wasn’t a Little Ice Age at all during the Maunder Minimum, after he says that low UV radiation for many decades could cause cooling, is completely wrong.
He’s apparently not looked at the evidence, which in a way makes sense, since he studies solar issues. The first line of evidence is that borehole reconstructions from many places in six continents show a substantial cooling of about 1 degree C about 400 years ago.
That isn’t local, Prof. Lockwood. That is a Little Ice Age, correlating with low UV in all likelihood, since we know from current experience that a weak sun, with few sunspots, have substantially lower UV radiation.
Yes, the LIA was just local variability, which just happened to be cold almost everywhere on the globe at the same time, for centuries.
Neil says:
October 10, 2011 at 10:17 pm
Hmm. Interesting.
So if there wasn’t a LIA, the Hudson River couldn’t have frozen in 1775 / 1776.
That comment is backed up by a Wikipedia article about Lake Champlain, which is adjacent to and linked to, the Hudson River.
“On February 19, 1932, boats were able to sail on Lake Champlain. No living person could remember the lake being free of ice during the winter up until then.[14]” Link broken.
However, the lake once again freezes in winter.
“Ferry
North of Ticonderoga, New York, the lake widens appreciably; ferry service is operated by the Lake Champlain Transportation Company at:
Charlotte, Vermont to Essex, New York (may not travel when the lake is frozen)
Burlington, Vermont to Port Kent, New York (seasonal)
Grand Isle, Vermont to Cumberland Head, part of Plattsburgh, New York (year-round icebreaking service)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Champlain#Ferry
The Delaware crossing was no picnic either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Washington_Crossing_the_Delaware_by_Emanuel_Leutze,_MMA-NYC,_1851.jpg
Patrick,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/10/bbc-the-little-ice-age-was-all-about-solar-uv-variability-wasnt-an-ice-age-at-all/#comment-764806
I’m personally no fan of Mike Lockwood nor Reading University (even though I’m very familar with Reading itself) but 30 seconds of Googling showed me that you are a bit wide of the mark.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Reading
Regards
KevinUK
Dear Ville (age) Troll,
Let’s cut to the chase. All your inane comments are predicated in your belief that someone did some kind of scientific experiment and we are all too stupid to understand it. Hence your quote in your first post, ““Sarah Ineson, who performed the experiments…”.
If you would carefully read the David Whitehouse article you will find that no experiments were performed. Different values were plugged into computer models. Sorry friend. That is not science no matter what institute of higher learning is funding the program. It is the scientific equivalent of moving the joystick in your favorite video game. Careful inputs produce desired outcomes. And of course, if the desired out come is not achieved with the careful input, change the program until you have a winner. It is what passes for science in far too many cases.
Do they mean this Dr Michael Lockwood of Reading University, http://www.reading.ac.uk/education/about/staff/m-j-lockwood.aspx.
Lectures on modules in English in Education and organiser of the Raymond Wilson Children’s Poetry Competition.
“[…] with little direct change in globally averaged temperature.”
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1282.html
They should understand that due to north-south ocean-continent reflection asymmetry and west-east ocean-continent rotation asymmetry (translation asymmetry in cylindrical coordinates) this is NOT possible.
While it appears (from their attention to the westerlies) that they are starting to understand the seminal paper referenced here [ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/23/confirmation-of-solar-forcing-of-the-semi-annual-variation-of-length-of-day/ ], it’s clear they have NOT yet realized the simple implications for natural multiscale aliasing & aggregation.
If anyone in the academic mainstream needs help: Please just ask.
Sincerely.
Lord Beaverbrook says:
October 11, 2011 at 1:10 am
….It’s all well and good suggesting that there is a future potential threat to populations in hot and arrid countries but who has got our back now?
I don’t even presume to state that the effect of a little ice age now, will have the same devastaing effect as it did on a population without modern conveniences, but where is the risk assessment, where are the predictions on food production due to a decreased growing season and available land in the NH, where is the advice to policy makers on fuel poverty and care of the vulnerable? Have the risk assessments been done, but not publicised, or not even thought of?….
_______________________________________
Oh the risk assessments have been done and the movers and shakers see it as a really good opportunity to grab more power and make money. That is why George Soros, Lord Rothschild, and other investors are buying land and good old Al Gore is busy shoving Africans off their land in a move reminiscent the Highland Clearances” (Only 10% of Africans hold legal title to their land making them a perfect target.)
Investors are not interested at buying at market value or waiting for land to come on the market.
So that was what the World Trade Organization Agreement on Agriculture (WTO-AoA. 1995) was all about. That is what all the jockeying and maneuvering to force independent farmers off the land during the last couple of decades was all about. Making good farm land available cheap. Simple once you understand the real goal.
All you have to do is read the WTO/UN Guides to Good Farming Practices that is now being made into regulations across the world AND consider that in the USA over 90% of the farmers ALREADY have an outside job because farming will not pay a living wage. Actually according to the latest USDA Ag Census it costs a farmer $15,000 a year to keep farming. Therefore they can not afford the “Improvements” mandated by “Good Farming Practices” Add in a 22% unemployment rate, the housing market slump and we find farmers are between a rock and a hard place, since raising farm prices is not an option. http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2000/00july-aug/lilliston.html“>Since 1984, the real price of a USDA market basket of food has increased 2.8 percent while the farm value of that food has fallen by 35.7 percent.
This is not only happening in the USA. I ……more than 160,000 farmers have committed suicide in India since 1997 (Note the date) The press is trying to say CAGW was the cause, but Inda’s farmers do not agree. That is why a bunch of farmers recently beat the living daylights out of a Monsanto rep.
DR. VANDANA SHIVA said in an interview, “… globalization as it’s shaped right now under the coercive rules of trade under the World Trade Organization, of the World Bank and IMF structure adjustment, basically doesn’t create wealth.
It takes the wealth of the poor and puts them in the hands of global corporations, leaving insecurity behind. In addition, decisions that we made as national systems, whether it was decisions about how we run our intellectual property rights systems. What do we do with our water? How do we do our agriculture? What seeds we plant? What price our crops will sell at?
All those are decisions taken out of the country, put into the hands of the World Trade Organization or put into the hands of global corporations.”
The International Ag Cartel
Professor Connor of Purdue University found that since 1997 some 85% of all fines for price fixing have been imposed on food and agriculture cartels. http://www.agecon.purdue.edu/staff/connor/papers/index.asp
This recent piece on the egg cartel shows how the new Food “Safety?” Modernization Act of 2010 can be used to drive up prices: http://blogs.laweekly.com/squidink/2011/01/price_fixing_lawsuit_egg_cartel_not_giving_consumers_a_break.php
Part of the “plan” was the 1996 farm bill by the same author as the WTO-AoA. It was originally called the Freedom to Farm Act but later became known as the Freedom to Fail Act. href=”http://books.google.com/books?id=N7byI1yLTJgC&pg=PA3712&lpg=PA3712&dq=%22freedom+to+fail%22+farm+prices+percent&source=bl&ots=c67iu3Y2jC&sig=hBp48SYeYeehy6mR9-nP1wu-m5g&hl=en&ei=-SyUTqycJ8-Etget84yJBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22freedom%20to%20fail%22%20farm%20prices%20percent&f=false”>The Congressional Record, V. 146, Pt. 3, March 21, 2000 to April 4, 2000 states the prices paid to farmers fell 38% “…In the past decade and a half, an explosion of mergers, acquisitions and anti-competitive practices has raised concentration in American Agriculture to record levels…. The top four beef packers have expanded their market share from 32 percent to 80 percent the top four millers have expanded their market share from 40 percent to 82 percent the market share for the top four soybean crushers has expanded from 54 percent to 80 percent ….” <a
Food is being "groomed" as the next big economic "bubble" and if we do go into another Little Ice Age the "Investors" are going to be sitting in a position where they can make lots and lots of money out of human misery.
REFERENCES: GOOD FARMING PRACTICES
“What are Good Agricultural Practices?
A multiplicity of Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) codes, standards and regulations have been developed in recent years by the food industry and producers organizations but also governments and NGOs, aiming to codify agricultural practices at farm level for a range of commodities….” http://www.fao.org/prods/gap/ [has links]
Livestock
http://www.oie.int/fileadmin/Home/eng/Food_Safety/docs/pdf/GGFP.pdf
http://www.oie.int/doc/ged/D7201.PDF
Short Report :
OIE WORKING GROUP ON ANIMAL PRODUCTION FOOD SAFETY Report to the 77th General Session of the OIE International Committee – Paris, 24–29 May 2009 http://www.oie.int/fileadmin/Home/eng/Specific_Issues/docs/pdf/Presentation_77SG_En.pdf
The Ville,
I will take my tongue out of my cheek for a moment. I have looked harder. On the Met Office website there are a couple of references to the Little Ice Age in Britain. Two passing and disparaging references in papers by Betts et al and Gray et al both published in 2009 and two links to other websites where the LIA is mentioned. One of these refers to a pre-Copenhagen talk by Prof. Juliet Sligo in which she refers to the LIA as the Middle Ice Age.
I am sorry that The Ville did not appreciate my attempt at humour but the point that I was trying to make was serious. I believe that the Met Office is still trying to propagate the notion that, in so far as there was such a period as the Little Ice Age, it was confined to Britain and to part of Northern Europe and certainly did not extend to the Southern Hemisphere.
J Huntly:
Benny Peiser on the GWPF website merely linked to the Sunday Times story. The Little Ice Age was their idea, not the GWPF.
I see now what you mean — Peiser is summarizing what the article said. My apologies to Peiser, and a heap of crow for me. I
I’ll need to drink more coffee before reading next time.
Patrick,
Further to my previous comment it will also be worth your while reading the following link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_brick_university
Reading University although strictly speaking is not a ‘red brick’ university is largely regarded as one and so has a well established reputation for long standing academic research. However as you’ll see from my previous link it no longer has a open to undergraduates Physics Department thanks to a decision taken back in October 2006 to close its physics department to undergraduate applications. It appears that it no longer has a Physics department but does have a world renowned Meteorology department with close links to the UK Met Office.
Mike Lockwood is a Professor within this department (http://www.met.reading.ac.uk/users/users/1353) along with Brian Hoskins (http://www.met.reading.ac.uk/users/users/128) of Imperial College Grantham Institute and UK Committe on Climate Change (CCC) fame (http://www.theccc.org.uk/about-the-ccc/the-committee).
It (Reading University) therefore forms an academic triumvirate along with UEA and Imperial which continues to maintain the global warming policy advocacy consensus within the UK. As a ‘skeptic’ I’m personally taking this latest Nature Geosciences report with the large pinch of salt that it deserves and I recommend that others here do likewise.
IMO this is just the ‘warming’ establishment’s latest desperate attempt to cover their backsides should the imminent UK winter prove to be yet another harsh one. I’m now praying that the UK Met. Office’s Gore like effect applies and that it turns out to be wet and mild.
After their adject failure with teh MWP and given that they are now also trying to claim that the LIA was also only ‘regional’ and largely restricted to the North Atlantic perhaps it’s time for the Sherwood’s at CO2 Science to do a LIA Project to go along with their very successful MWP Project (http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php)?
Regards
KevinUK
Paul Hull, suggesting my comments are inane is offensive.
Surely accuracy is important?
Don’t you agree?
Have I stated something that was inaccurate?
If you don’t agree that the ‘experiments’ with the computer model are not science, do you completely disregard the results??
Surely that would be a logical thing to do? In which case you should be removing UV radiation as an input effecting climate in your theories. What are you going to do?
There are a huge number of people out there that are saying this proves that global warming isn’t happening, so are you going to tell them that this research is of no use?
Sooo, local variability…
That means that somehow, the sun shone more, or less, ultraviolet radiation on one part of the planet than it did on another. How exactly was that pulled off?
So:
“Sarah Ineson, who performed the experiments, said: “What we’re seeing is UV levels affecting the distribution of air masses around the Atlantic basin. This causes a redistribution of heat – so while Europe and the US may be cooler, Canada and the Mediterranean will be warmer, and there is little direct impact on global temperatures.””
But:
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Vancouver+Western+Canada+facing+record+cold+temperatures+this+winter/5528542/story.html
izen says:
October 11, 2011 at 2:04 am
……Not much sign of this cooling phase of the ‘natural cycles’ that some people claim is happening!
___________________________
You forgot the oceans which are one huge heat sink so changes are not going to be instantaneous. The amount of energy dumped into the oceans is dependent not only on the sun but also the cloud cover (albedo). The oceans absorb visible and UV radiation not IR.
You also forgot the following:
SUN
Sami Solanki, Professor at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich Switzerland, says the Sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60 years than over the previous 1090 years. http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Home/Archive/Sunspot_activity_hits_1,000-year_high.html?cid=3990930
(The magnetic activity of the sun effects the Cosmic Rays and Henrik Svensmark have argued this will effect cloud cover)
“” Geophysicists in Finland and Germany have calculated that the Sun is more magnetically active now than it has been for over a 1000 years. Ilya Usoskin and colleagues at the University of Oulu and the Max-Planck Institute for Aeronomy say that their technique – which relies on a radioactive dating technique – is the first direct quantitative reconstruction of solar activity based on physical, rather than statistical, models… (I G Usoskin et al. 2003 Phys. Rev. Lett. 91 211101) http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/18692
(similar to the article under discussion.)
…All stars are variable at some level, and the sun is no exception. We want to compare the sun’s brightness now to its brightness during previous minima and ask: is the sun getting brighter or dimmer?”
The answer seems to be dimmer. Measurements by a variety of spacecraft indicate a 12-year lessening of the sun’s “irradiance” by about 0.02% at visible wavelengths and 6% at EUV wavelengths. These results, which compare the solar minimum of 2008-09 to the previous minimum of 1996, are still very preliminary…http://nasa-information.blogspot.com/2010/01/eve-measuring-suns-hidden-variability.html
Clouds/Albedo
Inter-annual variations in Earth’s reflectance 1999-2007.
“Abstract.
…. Albedo data are also available from the recently released ISCCP FD product. Earthshine and FD analyses show contemporaneous and climatologically significant increases in the Earth’s reflectance from the outset of our earthshine measurements beginning in late 1998 roughly until mid- 2000. After that and to-date, all three show a roughly constant terrestrial albedo, except for the FD data in the most recent years. Using satellite cloud data and Earth reflectance models, we also show that the decadal scale changes in Earth’s reflectance measured by earthshine are reliable, and caused by changes in the properties of clouds rather than any spurious signal, such as changes in the Sun-Earth-Moon geometry.
…They showed from that proxy that the Earth’s albedo decreased by about 6
W/m2 from 1985 to 2000, while direct earthshine observations from 1999-2003 revealed
that the decline had stopped and even reversed to an increasing trend in reflectance….. http://bbso.njit.edu/Research/EarthShine/literature/Palle_etal_2008_JGR.pdf
I used to read the BBC science web pages every day until I realised that the biased propaganda put out by Black was giving me high blood pressure. Any story that even hints that global warming may be questionable is either not reported at all, or laced with comments that the earth is still warming at an alarming rate and nothing in the story can change that.
His output is biased and has done much to promote the common knowledge that the BBC has an AGW alarmist agenda. People in the UK object to the compulsary licence fee that funds the BBC, Black’s salary and his relentless propaganda.
When they were blaming CFCs for ozone depletion they assumed UV levels were constant. Now it is convenient to acknowledge UV varies considerably, but that won’t lead to a revision of the entire “ozone hole” false science.
-0.1C / 2.5 years at an average Flux of 100 units. Note: Flux is a great proxy for UV.
Solar minimum 2005: 6 years [2011] ~ -0.2C Earth average. Check it out using the Warmist’s own data.
Heat waves are global, cold snaps are local.
Floods are global, normal rains are local.
Sea-level rise is global, sea-level decline is local.
Droughts are global, normal rains are local.
Hurricanes & tornadoes are global, calm is local.
Bad weather is global, agreeable weather is local.
Get it?
KevinUK says:
October 11, 2011 at 7:04 am
You’ll find an entry for Mike Lockwood on this page:
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/about/work/boards/council/biographies.asp
…. £
dtbronzich says:
October 10, 2011 at 10:19 pm
Funny, I thought the Sun shone on the whole globe………..
There you go again, confusing Solar induced Weather with Solar induced Climate.
The Sun shines on the whole globe only once every 30 years, or so.
I find myself in agreement with you, once again. UV changes in solar outputs has been largely ignored by climate conformists. But then you have to spoil it all by writing:
Since albedo is the largest factor directly connected to climate and cloud cover is a large component of albedo, then GCR’s link to climate drivers are important. How important or significant it is – we are all waiting to find out. Your dismissive attitude only reflects your ideological frustrated desires. Stay on the same page please. GK
No Little Ice Age? Someone forgot to tell the glaciers of the world!! Moraines far downvalley from their present termini occur on virtually all glaciers of the world. In most places, these glaciers advanced over forests that grew in the same place during the predeeding Medieval Warm Period.
Someone also forgot to tell about 2,000 authors of scientific papers demonstrating the extent of the Little Ice Age.
Gail Coombs “Father. He used to skate up the Bronx River to see my Mother.”
Surely Lockwood’s “idea that Europe had a relentless sequence of cold winters is frankly barking”? would imply no increased severely cold weather with the Thames freezing.
Can eye witness evidence counter Lockwood’s authority?
Consider: The history of British winters, Written by D.Fauvell and I.Simpson “this page cover’s many winters from the 17th Century right up to the current day. It includes the ‘little ice age’ period which many people yearn to see again!”
etc. etc.
A bit of anecdotal evidence regarding the little ice age. My family has lived on the same farm on the Susquehanna Flats portion of the Chesapeake Bay since the late 1600’s. The current house was built in 1730. There was an ice house built near by, at about the same time period. The purpose of the ice house was to store the large blocks of ice sawn from the frozen bay during the winter, therefore providing a “refrigerator” during the warm months. A horse drawn sleigh was also used during the winter to go to Havre de Grace over the ice, which was a shorter route than by road. Records show the Susquehanna Flats and Susquehanna River were frequently frozen for long periods of time during the winter in the 1700’s and early 1800’s. So maybe the little ice age was local to northeast Maryland also.
Trust the BBC to wheel in an old faithful to spin it out of perspective, Prof. Mike Lockwood, the Data SORCErer.
” His research interests are in the phenomena that cross the mesopause (a high-level region of the Earth’s atmosphere) and how solar variability has masked the full impact of man’s contribution to climate change.”
They have to deny the Little Ice Age, cause otherwise they have to accept the role of the Sun.
“The history of British winters”
http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=other;type=winthist;sess=
Not every winter but this sequence starts from 1616.
Dr. David Whitehouse on the GWPF website
http://thegwpf.org/the-observatory/4063-the-sun-and-the-winter-of-2011.html
“Fig 1. Click on image to enlarge.
Solar activity is back to what it was in 2004-5, and we didn’t experience severe winters in those years, see here, and here, and here.
So, if anything, the logic behind this particular piece of research points towards the Winter of 2011 being a mild one!”
_________________________
“So, on the one hand we have research that suggests that during the last solar minimum, 2008 – 10, low solar UV resulted in cold European winters. On the other hand we have research that suggests that during the same solar minimum enhanced UV may have actually provided a warming effect!”
G. Karst says: (to R. Gates)
“Since albedo is the largest factor directly connected to climate and cloud cover is a large component of albedo, then GCR’s link to climate drivers are important. How important or significant it is – we are all waiting to find out. Your dismissive attitude only reflects your ideological frustrated desires. Stay on the same page please.”
_____
I hardly have a dismissive attitude toward the GCR/Cloud relationship, but currently we don’t have any quantifiable data, i.e. such that we can input it into climate models like they did with the UV data. I would love to see some hard quantifiable GCR/Cloud data, and just about every reputable climate scientist would as well. The Solar UV/Stratosphere/Ozone connection is a big step in the right direction.
Local variability, Solar variability, a few months back it was dirty coal burning in China that was being blamed for a ‘masking’ any evidence of recent warming. Next they’ll be having to say that global cooling is only ‘masking’ mans contribution to climate change, that is before they start blaming CO2 for causing the cooling… How much crazier is it going to get ?
Neil McEvoy says:
October 11, 2011 at 12:05 am
“Likewise, the LIA had been obliterated by Mann et al.”
____
The ignorant statements continue. Despite my repeated posting of a study done a decade ago by Mann himself (along with Phil Jones, et. al.) that came to the conclusion that the LIA was solar related. I hardly think that saying something was solar related is obliterating it! Get your facts correct when accusing someone of something.
For those who don’t want to remain ignorant about what scientists like Mann do or don’t actually think about the LIA, see:
http://academic.evergreen.edu/z/zita/articles/solar/MaunderMin04Shindell.pdf
And of course this quote right from Mann and Jones 2001:
“These results provide evidence that relatively
small solar forcing may play a significant
role in century-scale NH winter climate
change. This suggests that colder winter temperatures
over the NH continents during portions
of the 15th through the 17th centuries
(sometimes called the Little Ice Age) and
warmer temperatures during the 12th through
14th centuries (the putative Medieval Warm
Period) may have been influenced by longterm
solar variations.”
Hardly sounds like any denial of the LIA.
Agreed! Thanks for the clarification. GK
Gates says:
“The ignorant statements continue… Mann admitted that the sun influenced the Little Ice Age and the MWP (putative or not, he admitted it was warm period)! … Hardly sounds like any denial of the LIA.” Maybe Mann isn’t disputing the existence of the LIA any more [how could he?], but it sounds like he’s still trying to deny the existence of the MWP. Mann writes:
The word “putative” changes the meaning of Mann’s statement entirely, to mean ‘the LIA and the supposedly warm MWP’. [putative = “supposed”].
Recall that thirteen years after MBH98, when Mann mendaciously attempted to erase the LIA and the MWP, he still stonewalls requests for his complete methodology, data, metadata and code. The scientific method absolutely requires transparency for replication, therefore Mann is being anti-science, as are the rest of the “Team”. They are pseudo-scientific climate charlatans in it for the money, for the prestige, for their fat expense accounts and endless travel to vacation venues, for their speaking fees, and in general for their own personal aggrandizement. The one thing they’re not interested in is scientific truth.
I’m just pointing out what they, and you, won’t.
R Gates
I do think Manns work is sometimes unjustiably criticised by those who have never read his work. The Mann et al 98 reconstruction to 1400 ad and MBH99 reconstruction to 1000AD which subsequently got included in the IPCC assessment of 2001, together with the paper you cite are all interesting pieces of work.
However, the number and type of proxies is extremely limited as is the geographic coverage they provide. In the 1998 reconstruction that was a total of 24 proxy indicators back to 1450 with 22 multi proxy to 1400. There are some 1100 temperature records from 1902 onwards with additional grid points shown in figure 1b back to 1854 (most appear to be SSTs)
This is an incredibly small number of proxies to purport to be a NH record and many of us need to be convinced that tree rings, coral sediment and ice cores can provide annual indications of temperatures accurate to fractions of a degree. SST’s are also not a scientific measurement of the historic ocean temperature prior to around 1960 or so.
So Mann is certainly guilty of overselling his research, which is not surprising as his reputation relies on others believing in his methods and results.
tonyb
As the warmists are finding out, any lies you tell eventually start to unravel. When this happens you have a choice, either tell the truth or tell more lies to try and cover up the original one. With reputations staked on emphatic statements of man’s impact on climate through CO2 emissions, and having ignored the mounting evidence that refutes their position, the hard-line warmists are now in a descending spiral of compound lying and sophistry. Things are going to get even more interesting as time passes. If you think the insults thrown at skeptics are harsh, wait until the ‘Team’ turn on each other.
I have previously posted criticism of Black on his blog comments. Recently when trying to post I would receive a message saying there was a problem but that they were trying to fix it. Generating a new ID from the same computer got around that little problem. My e-mail to the BBC asking for clarification as to what happened has yet to be answered 3 weeks later.
climatereason says:
October 11, 2011 at 2:41 pm
R Gates
I do think Manns work is sometimes unjustiably criticised by those who have never read his work. The Mann et al 98 reconstruction to 1400 ad and MBH99 reconstruction to 1000AD which subsequently got included in the IPCC assessment of 2001, together with the paper you cite are all interesting pieces of work.
_____
I simply wanted to point out the fact that Mann, Jones, etc. etc. etc. are all quite willing to admit the role of solar influences in the climate and have even done some excellent research into connections between the sun and events like the LIA. I gets annoying when extremist posters come here blathering on about Mann denying the existence of the LIA and nonsense such as that. It might, in fact, do them well to both study the research Mann has done on solar influences on climate, and then find out what might lead him and others to think that CO2 levels now play a bigger role in influencing the climate than solar cycles.
Finally, the net take away from the UV/Little Ice Age connection is that there is more than one way the sun can influence climate, and that every influence doesn’t necessarily have to mean dramatic changes in overall global temperatures. Though certainly the LIA saw some global effects worldwide, they were not all as dramatic as in Europe, and when averaged over the globe, were certainly not as dramatic. The Little Ice Age, is, as we all know, a misnomer, for it was primarily a period of cold for Europe because of shifts in atmospheric circulation due to UV influences on ozone, but it did not mean a dramatic decrease in the overall energy from the sun reaching earth.
Here is how the BBC reported that the Sun is guilty of causing warming in 1998. 🙂 Even a warning of a mini ice age risk.
Friday, February 13, 1998 Published at 19:25 GMT
Sci/Tech
Scientists blame sun for global warming
Climate changes such as global warming may be due to changes in the sun rather than to the release of greenhouse gases on Earth.
Climatologists and astronomers speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Philadelphia say the present warming may be unusual – but a mini ice age could soon follow.
The sun provides all the energy that drives our climate, but it is not the constant star it might seem.
Careful studies over the last 20 years show that its overall brightness and energy output increases slightly as sunspot activity rises to the peak of its 11-year cycle.
And individual cycles can be more or less active.
The sun is currently at its most active for 300 years.
That, say scientists in Philadelphia, could be a more significant cause of global warming than the emissions of greenhouse gases that are most often blamed.
The researchers point out that much of the half-a-degree rise in global temperature over the last 120 years occurred before 1940 – earlier than the biggest rise in greenhouse gas emissions.
Using ancient tree rings, they show that 17 out of 19 warm spells in the last 10,000 years coincided with peaks in solar activity.
They have also studied other sun-like stars and found that they spend significant periods without sunspots at all, so perhaps cool spells should be feared more than global warming.
The scientists do not pretend they can explain everything, nor do they say that attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions should be abandoned. But they do feel that understanding of our nearest star must be increased if the climate is to be understood.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/56456.stm
gallopingcamel says:
October 10, 2011 at 10:43 pm
It has been almost 200 years since the Thames froze over…
No it hasn’t. It froze in 1891. And again in 1895. nowhere near 200 years in either case
Wow. They are really hanging on by a thread.
Richard Black looks a lot like Michael Mann without the beard. Not only do they look alike they gush similar garbage. If Black can explain away the LIA he could also explain away the lack of a hotspot or the fact that the Maldives are not sinking.
Gates, dont forget the Climategate email where the Team discussed how to get rid of MWP.
Manns Hockeystick really got rid of the MWP for Kyoto, didnt it?
EUV levels even with the recent uptick in activity are around one third of the peak levels of SC23. The NH winter will still be affected by the modified jet streams and differing pressure patterns.
http://tinyurl.com/2dg9u22/?q=node/128
http://tinyurl.com/2dg9u22/?q=node/224#comment-598
The Ville says:
More precisely, the research says UV variability modulates the warming Northern hemisphere climate. It’s a bit like having a DC signal gradually increasing in amplitude with an AC signal added to it. The troughs of the AC signal will subtract from the DC signal, making it ‘colder’ than would be the case if the AC signal were not there.
But surely we don’t know that there are two and only two signals who add up to such a pattern. That is merely one out of thousands of possible interpretations.
Furthermore who cares? We’re not interested in the individual “signals” that add up, but only the result, the actual weather. If the overall result is cooling, the supposed danger of warming, assuming it is even dangerous, is not there.
” “The key point is that this effect is a change in the circulation, moving air from one place to another, which is why some places get cold and others get warm,” said Adam Scaife, one of the researchers on the paper, who heads the UK Met Office’s Seasonal to Decadal Prediction team.
“It’s a jigsaw puzzle, and when you average it up over the globe, there is no effect on global temperatures,” he told BBC News.”
Adam’s got the latter part wrong. Probably his statement is unconsciously conditioned on the wrong variable. More than one type of asymmetry GUARANTEES natural spatiotemporally-heterogeneous LEVERAGING of statistical summaries.
Adam, please feel welcome to contact me to discuss this further.
Best Regards.
Sometime during the LIA, the Swedes were returning from a military campaign down in Germany. Seeing that the sea between Sweden and Copenhaven, Denmark was frozen solid, the Swedes decided to have a go at the Danes. They invaded Denmark.
This is history. Naturally occuring climatic forces impinging on human history, not the other way round, as being banded about by the AGW snake-oil merchants.
In the CET record the main difference between the LIA and the recent modern warm period (excluding a little the last few years) was the English winter. There were frequent much cooler winters that occurred numerous in length over periods. The summers on the other hand especially during the warmer periods in the LIA were little different to today. Spring and autumn were not much different from recent periods either. Hence, the main difference between English yearly seasons from the LIA and the recent years, were just generally down to the winter season.
Therefore this recent model study by the Met Office claiming uv only affects winter weather, could also if found out in future to be correct, an explanation for the LIA English winters too. There is serious doubt that this recent finding is any different to this cooler LIA period, when winters were the only main difference in the climate. There is no current science reasoning that this can behave the same way, while global temperatures continue to increase. Note, these recent much cooler English winters have occurred during a period of no warming generally in global temperatures for a while. If anything this more likely signals a shift in the change of the climate with a cooling period ahead.
It’s funny to read the Ineson et al. 2011 paper and see how they are unable to propose a process that would control circulation in the lower troposphere. They use means, indexes that are themselves based on means but cannot come up with a synoptic process!
There are too many warmer UK winters around solar cycle minimum`s, and common occurrence of colder winters around solar cycle maximum`s for this to be correct, or any use as a forecast tool.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2011/10/met-office-finally-wakes-up-to.shtml
@TomRude (October 12, 2011 at 2:40 pm)
If/when you can, please share with us your speculation. Your perspective may add something of critical value for those with complementary backgrounds.
Geoff Sharp says:
October 11, 2011 at 11:28 pm
EUV levels http://tinyurl.com/2dg9u22/?q=node/128
There is no evidence [when error bars are taken into account] that EUV this past minimum was any different from any previous minima. See also Figure 1 of this JGR paper 2011JA016567