Alan Lammey, Texas Energy Analyst, Houston
Four scientists, four scenarios, four more or less similar conclusions without actually saying it outright — the global warming trend is done, and a cooling trend is about to kick in. The implication: Future energy price response is likely to be significant.
Late last month, some leading climatologists and meteorologists met in New York at the Energy Business Watch Climate and Hurricane Forum. The theme of the forum strongly suggested that a period of global cooling is about emerge, though possible concerns for a political backlash kept it from being spelled out.
However, the message was loud and clear, a cyclical global warming trend may be coming to an end for a variety of reasons, and a new cooling cycle could impact the energy markets in a big way.
Words like “highly possible,” “likely” or “reasonably convincing” about what may soon occur were used frequently. Then there were other words like “mass pattern shift” and “wholesale change in anomalies” and “changes in global circulation.”
Noted presenters, such as William Gray, Harry van Loon, Rol Madden and Dave Melita, signaled in the strongest terms that huge climate changes are afoot. Each weather guru, from a different angle, suggested that global warming is part of a cycle that is nearing an end. All agreed the earth is in a warm cycle right now, and has been for a while, but that is about to change significantly.
However, amid all of the highly suggestive rhetoric, none of the weather and climate pundits said outright that a global cooling trend is about to replace the global warming trend in a shift that could begin as early as next year.
Van Loon spoke about his theories of solar storms and how, combined with, or because of these storms, the Earth has been on a relative roller coaster of climate cycles. For the past 250 years, he said, global climate highs and lows have followed the broad pattern of low and high solar activity. And shorter 11-year sunspot cycles are even more easily correlated to global temperatures.
It was cooler from 1883 to 1928 when there was low solar activity, he said, and it has been warmer since 1947 with increased solar activity.
“We are on our way out of the latest (warming) cycle, and are headed for a new cycle of low (solar) activity,” van Loon said. “There is a change coming. We may see 180-degree changes in anomalies during high and low sunspot periods. There were three global climate changes in the last century, there is a change coming now.”
Meanwhile, Madden noted that while temperature forecasts longer than one to two weeks out has improved, “what has really gotten much better is climate forecasting … predicting the change in the mean,” he said.
And the drivers impacting climate suggest a shift to cooler sea surface temperatures, he said.
Perhaps the best known speaker was Colorado State University’s Gray, founder of the school’s famed hurricane research team. Gray spoke about multi-decade periods of warming and cooling and how global climate flux has been the norm for as long as there have been records.
Gray has taken quite a bit of political heat for insistence that global warming is not a man-made condition. Man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) is negligible, he said, compared to the amount of CO2 Mother Nature makes and disposes of each day or century.
“We’ve reached the top of the heat cycle,” he said. “The next 10 years will be hardly any warmer than the last 10 years.”
Finally, climate scientist Melita spoke of a new phase in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
“I’m looking at a new, cold-negative phase, though it won’t effect this summer, fall or winter ’08,” he said.
Conference host, analyst and forecaster Andy Weissman closed the conference by addressing how natural gas prices and policy debates would be impacted by a possible climate shift that could leave the market short gas.
This would be especially problematic if gas use for power generation were substantially increased at the expense of better alternatives.
“If we’re about to shift into another natural climate cycle, we can’t do it without coal-fired generation. So the policy debate has to change,” he said. “Coal has to be back on the table if we’re ever going to meet our energy needs.”
As for natural gas: “Next year, may see a bit of price softening,” Weissman said. “After that, fogetaboutit!”.
It will take a MIRACLE for us to not destroy ourselves by then.
We’ll still be there. Even if it’s a grim scenario (which I doubt). Two hundred years ago no one expected we would survive till now. Yet here we sit, bigger and badder than ever.
But seriously, the US has got to quit making enemies or one day they WILL have their revenge and it won’t take a nuke.
There are always risks. But we will continue to keep three or two steps ahead of them unless certain peabrains in Congress prevent it.
While I thank you for the kind words, I beg you to consider the mores of the US as compared with any other world power.
Take the Scandinavians. They’re are all sweetness and niceness . . . NOW. But the last time they had a bit of power and half a chance, what did they do with it? Pillage, rape, burn, and plunder, that’s what. Despoil everything they came in contact with like some filthy disease.
How did the beastly Sovs behave when THEY were a world power? Like the soul-killing, mass murdering monstrosities they were, that’s how. What did Europe do for Africa? Inspire The Heart of Darkness, mainly. (They certainly didn’t do the Africans a lot of good.)
Even the British Empire (no worse than most and better than some) had the Opium War. Make that TWO Opium Wars.
The US, OTOH, has spread wealth, health, and freedom all over the world. We have fed, aided, liberated, and inspired. We never asked for any thanks, either, and that may yet prove a weakness–the hand that feeds is covered with tooth-marks.
America-as-imperialist? Where’s our dang empire, then? Is there any part of this country (including our few overseas “possessions”) that would vote to leave the US? Heck, even the Philippines voted 80% to 20% to stay in the US in 1936, but we (ungraciously) decided to throw them the hell out anyway–much to their detriment. (Bet they didn’t teach you THAT in school!)
And revenge? What the hell for? Yet another one of those “no good deed goes unpunished”-type “revenges”? I’m sick to death of having My Country accused of cultural genocide every time it tries (and sacrifices) to prevent physical genocide.
As one foreigner recently put it when some ignoramus started yammering about how America has “ceded the moral high ground”:
“So America has ceded the moral high ground–to whom, precisely?”
Warming worse than I thought…
“The temperature in Chicago passed 90 again. St. Paul sweltered at 109, Cedar Rapids, Ia., at 112, Lafayette, Ind., at 110, Kewanee, Ill., at 112. There were all-time record temperatures of 108 degrees in Davenport, Ia., 106 in Grand Rapids, Mich., 102 in Duluth, Minn.,” reported the Edwardsville Intelligencer on July 13, 1936.
From American Thinker, July 13, 2008
I think you misunderstood me here, I was referring to the theory put forward in my past regarding the the different effects of GHG
Oh!
Well, since none of them really stack up to much on their own and none of then are causing positive feedback, I don’t think there’s much to worry about.
The brown cloud is nasty, but it is not going to be there in a few decades because even as India/China burn more fossil fuels, they will will become more affluent and will do the (non-CO2) cleanup, same as the west did and for the same reasons. (But don’t expect it so long as poverty is killing more than the smoke.)
You may be right about wind power. It has proven a disappointment, so far.
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So, are we supposed accept as Ultimate Truth scientific theories of over a hundred years ago, or just those that were printed in Junior science textbooks?
to
I understand brevity is the soul of wit, but dang.
Evan,
You have a good heart and much of what you say is true. BUT, the US currency is the world’s reserve currency. This means we can pretty much print money and buy nice stuff from the rest of the world with it. That seems to be one privilege of our “empire”.
But hey, we have two oceans, and at least one friendly neighbor and all the nukes we need. Why can’t we just chill? They don’t hate us cause we’re free. They hate us cause we are there and I don’t blame them.
As for revenge, if the US air force kills my family by ACCIDENT I don’t know that I could find it in my Christian much less Muslim heart to forgive them.
You make the case for “American exceptionalism”. I think we are exceptional even though we conveniently have been able to write the history books! (So far, that is). But I also think we are becoming less exceptional.
But some say the US will be forced by economics to abandon its “empire”. I would love for us to just be a strongly defended example for the rest of the world.
As for revenge, if the US air force kills my family by ACCIDENT I don’t know that I could find it in my Christian much less Muslim heart to forgive them.
On D-Day, 6/6/44, around 1000 combat troops died.
And around 5000 French civilians died, almost exclusively as a result of Allied bombardment. If the NY Times of today were doing the reporting, they’d no doubt editorialize that D-Day was “about” killing innocent French women and children.
We spent trillions of dollars making our weapons “smart” and less powerful with the sole objective of minimizing civilian and friendly casualties. No other nation in the world did that. The most significant factor regarding current US operations is the historically minuscule number of “friendly fire” casualties we inflict. We take three times the casualties we have to because our rules of engagement are so strict in order to avoid killing noncombatants–even “enemy” noncombatants.
That makes me very, very proud of my country. You should share in that pride.
You make the case for “American exceptionalism”.
It’s easy. We are exceptional.
That nice Mr Evan Jones said:
“Even the British Empire (no worse than most and better than some) had the Opium War. Make that TWO Opium Wars.”
We might have had opium wars but we also exported cricket. The equation is heavily balanced in favour of the latter.
Incidentally, cricket gives rise to one of the great scientific mysteries, namely, why does a cricket ball sometimes swing through the air and sometimes go in a straight line?
Everyone who has played a lot of cricket at a decent level (such as your humble and modest FatBigot) knows that a cricket ball will swing more readily in humid conditions than in dry air. Lots of jolly clever chaps in white coats and laboratories have conducted exhaustive tests and, as I recall, have concluded that humidity has nothing to do with it. THE science is clear, they tell us, it is all about the construction of the particular ball, the concentration of deer fat used in tanning the leather, the type of dye used to colour the ball red and the bowling action of the particular bowler, there is a clear consensus among the experts.
But it cannot be THE science because the conclusion does not accord with what actually happens. It is certainly science but it is not THE exhaustive, definitive, final, correct science because its conclusion is demonstrably wrong.
Such an absolute dismissal of the science applied by the consensus of experts is not borne of ignorant arrogance, quite the opposite, it is borne of the fact that in 35 years of playing the game I have been able to swing a ball consistently in humid conditions but only rarely when the air is dry. Generations of bowlers have attested to the same. We are not wrong because we are not scientists, we are right because we actually experience it.
It is a fine lesson to bear in mind whenever scientists tell us they have established something (indeed, anything) as a fact.
Perhaps this helps to explain my scepticism about AGW. The grandiose theories of imminent disaster simply do not accord with what I observe (or, to be more precise, with how my idea of common sense interprets what I observe). Some of you were kind enough to take a look at my rambling thoughts about Chicken Licken in the context of AGW. All I was expressing was my reluctance, as a layman, to accept a scientific theory which accords with the Chicken Licken fable.
You need no specialist knowledge or training to know that a computer model that predicts a rise in global temperature when there is actually a fall is likely to have a fault in it somewhere. And you don’t need to know anything about computer models to have the right to point out the apparent problem.
You need no specialist knowledge or training to know that someone defending such a computer model is likely to be barking up the wrong tree.
You need no specialist knowledge or training to know that if you feed inaccurate data into a model you will get an inaccurate conclusion.
You can’t make a pork sausage by feeding minced lamb into a sausage machine. And if the sausage machine is set-up to produce thin sausages it won’t produce fat ones.
Wow. I give the Post of the Thread Award to Allan MR MacRae (13:41:41). Not that it’s mine to give or anything, but let’s see the gorons refute that one!
And IMHO, counters doesn’t count. Why not?
Because he tries to turn the Scientific Method on its head:
The CO2/AGW/runaway global warming hypothesis, which has been proposed by James Hansen, Al Gore, the UN/IPCC and counters, posits global climate catastrophe due to human emissions of CO2.
The obvious problem with this highly questionable claim is the fact that, according to the Scientific Method, those proposing a new hypothesis have the “burden of proof” on their shoulders. counters obviously hopes he can get away with changing the rules by putting the burden of proof on skeptics. Nice try, and better luck next time. But it is up to the AGW true believers to show that their new [and repeatedly falsified] CO2 conjecture is true. Good luck with that.
counters continues: “I’ll respect Mr. Watts wishes and not refer to these people as “denialists” when I’m on this blog. Elsewhere, however…” But in that same post, he repeatedly refers to skeptics as “deniers.” And…
“As for the denialist/skeptic rhetoric going on here, let’s be clear: just because ‘denialist’ is a loaded term doesn’t mean it is always being used in a perjorative manner.”
Oh, yes it does.
By that specious ‘reasoning,’ I could call a black man anything at all, and claim that it “doesn’t mean it is always being used in a perjorative manner.”
Sure.
In the summer, I hate global warming. In the winter, I hate global cooling. Al Gore would be more successful if he changed his position this often.
De nile is a river in Egypt
I would love for us to just be a strongly defended example for the rest of the world.
Better to defeat the barbarians away from the gates.
They hate us cause we are there and I don’t blame them.
They hates us because they hate. They want the power that we have. We give up some of it, they’ll want more. We leave “over there” they’ll come after us here. It’s an increasingly small world, after all, and I don’t think we can easily shrink away from the rest of it to hide out.
Warfare is the history of the human race.
swampie,
you should have mentioned that Arrhenius was discredited back then and several times since!! Here is a modern revisit:
http://members.lycos.nl/ErrenWijlens/co2/arrhrev.htm
http://members.lycos.nl/ErrenWijlens/co2/arrhenius.html
FB: Well, I did say you-all were better than some. I’ll throw in that you were the first (and only) to give up a world empire voluntarily when you could have held onto it militarily.
But then again, Britain, while no longer a superpower, is an unqualified force for good in the modern world.
Interesting article. I enjoy reading it. Plus I don’t like heat, so I trully hope global warming comes to an end 😉
Keep up the good work!
Paul (15:30:33) :
I quote from the paper “Temperatures are plotted as anomalies (relative to 1979–2001)” but the HadCRUT anomalies are measured relative to the 1961-90 mean so it is necessary to rebase the Hadcrut anomalies to match the graph. This isn’t fiddling with the data only bringing the anomalies to the same baseline
yah it’s a serious problem for the all hume beings in the earth we must take actions on that.we should fallow the rules said by u.
FYI
http://www.springerlink.com/content/3l48w183p0443061/
CO2 absorption by alkaline soils and its implication to the global carbon cycle
Jingxia Xie, Yan Li, Cuixia Zhai, Chenhua Li, and Zhongdong Lan
The basic premise of the Greenhouse Effect was established by Svante Arrhenius over a hundred years ago, a fact which I remember from my Junior year of High School, where we were taught this little tidbit in Chemistry. Nice try, counters. Perhaps you should have taken a course in logic. Talk about strawmen. You whip out the greenhouse effect as if that is proof of AGW, and imply that I, or anyone else here denies there is a greenhouse effect. That is pathetic. You want to play semantics? Fine. Since you don’t like the word “drives” I will restate the AGW hypothesis as: the increase in atmospheric C02 caused by mankind increases the greenhouse effect, significantly raising global temperatures, having disasterous consequences. Or do you have some other description of what the AGW hypothesis is? If so, let’s hear it, and along with it your mathematical proof. Since it has never been done, this could be your chance at fame and fortune, perhaps even a Nobel Prize. We’ll wait.
FatBigot (20:40:36) :”We might have had opium wars but we also exported cricket. The equation is heavily balanced in favour of the latter.”
I dunno. I played cricket once (sort of) and never really understood the rules. Are you sure you don’t want to stick with the Opium Wars? 🙂
This is hardly the place to discuss this but that was interesting about the relation between swinging and humidity. Would have thought it was an aerodynamic effect (which decreases with decreasing air density). Humid air is less dense than dry air. I suppose I should look up this paper: Binnie, A.M. (1976). The effect of humidity on the swing of cricket balls. International Journal of Mechanical Science, 18, 497-499.
Oldjim (01:38:58) :
Paul (15:30:33) :
I quote from the paper “Temperatures are plotted as anomalies (relative to 1979–2001)” but the HadCRUT anomalies are measured relative to the 1961-90 mean so it is necessary to rebase the Hadcrut anomalies to match the graph. This isn’t fiddling with the data only bringing the anomalies to the same baseline
Fair enough. It was just to settle my curiosity as a lay person. Many thanks.
DAV (05:00:04) :
FatBigot (20:40:36) :”We might have had opium wars but we also exported cricket. The equation is heavily balanced in favour of the latter.”
I dunno. I played cricket once (sort of) and never really understood the rules. Are you sure you don’t want to stick with the Opium Wars?
This is hardly the place to discuss this but that was interesting about the relation between swinging and humidity. Would have thought it was an aerodynamic effect (which decreases with decreasing air density). Humid air is less dense than dry air. I suppose I should look up this paper: Binnie, A.M. (1976). The effect of humidity on the swing of cricket balls. International Journal of Mechanical Science, 18, 497-499.
There is an element of aerodynamics involved in the swing of the ball. A typical cricket ball has a polished side and a rough side. Air will always run much more freely on the polished side than the rough side. It is this drag effect on the rough side that causes the swing. The more moisture in the air, the more dense the air, the more drag coefficiant on the rough side of the ball generating greater swing. As an Englishman, I like to watch the odd cricket match and this is a key element in the tactics of play!