There’s an extraordinary admission about solar activity and cold winters in the UK from the Met Office in an article in FT Magazine.
It is as if the blinders have been removed.
The relevant passage is below from the much larger article.
“We now believe that [the solar cycle] accounts for 50 per cent of the variability from year to year,” says Scaife. With solar physicists predicting a long-term reduction in the intensity of the solar cycle – and possibly its complete disappearance for a few decades, as happened during the so-called Maunder Minimum from 1645 to 1715 – this could be an ominous signal for icy winters ahead, despite global warming.
Read the article – http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/35145bee-9d38-11e0-997d-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1RacNghPj
h/t to WUWT reader “Lord Beaverbrook”
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It’s likely a politically motivated “admission”. Again, this is “The Long March” period for warmists. With undeniable facts emerging, the battle is moving to the “Yes, but even though winters in some areas may be cooler, we’re still in danger and have real consequences. Obtw, when the Sun flips back again we’re really gonna be toast and end human civilization….” stage.
Whereas Climategate was a huge stumble and scramble for the warmists, this one will be obscured with even greater attacks. Just too much money and power.
Got to crowbar in the global warming meme. So now we’re (in the UK) paying massive taxes on all fuels, domestic, industrial and transport to mitigate the warming that would have happened if it weren’t bloody freezing! Marvelous.
Nice old fashioned reporting by Cookson: even, neutral point of view, informative, without the slightest hint of hysteria.
Note the quote from the actual – FT article
A “ground-breaking” new model predicts the formation and eventual disintegration of blocking highs much better, Scaife says, “because it has a better representation of the Gulf Stream. It is too expensive [in computer resources] to use routinely now, but we hope to put it into operation in a year or two.”
I’ll translate that…we want a new computer costing giggle-millions of pounds giving us mangle-flops more power to try that out, showing our hopes of better forecasts are blwoing in the wind..
Ha ha ha! That is the most carefully crafted weasel statement I’ve read in a while…. Despite an admission of decreased solar activity in coming years signaling “an ominous signal for icy winters ahead” – solar activity somehow accounts for 50% of the variability. Seems to me that you can’t have it both ways – solar activity is going to drive lower temperatures and swamp the warming from CO2 – but only account for 50% of the variability? Maybe I don’t understand….
I wonder how they factor the decline of sunspots into their climate models given that no one knows how or even if they caused the Maunder Minimum.
I presume that the MET, as in the Netherlands the KNMI, is funded by the government and therefore a political organisation . In this vieuw it’s quite an earthquake that they now agree with 50% influence of solar activity on climate. Now we are waiting for the next 50% which will take a few years more.
“Despite global warming…” Right, well if this lull goes on for three+ generations like the Maunder did, we’ll see if that kind of talk doesn’t get great-grandpa wheeled right back over to the nursing home and put back on his meds.
“as happened during the so-called Maunder Minimum from 1645 to 1715 – this could be an ominous signal for icy winters ahead, despite global warming.”
Which by its actions and efforts has left the UK supremely ill equipped to deal with the effects of a solar minimum. The UKMO played a huge part in the CAGW fraud, the UK political class relied hugely on UKMO ‘science’ and ‘research’ and ‘evidence’ in its preparations to follow the CAGW fraud to its conclusion. The insane and utterly useless ‘anti carbon jihad’ was given a fabricated legitimacy by the UKMO and has greatly helped to bring the UK to its knees.
WOW!
Besides finally noticing that the earth orbits around a large thing called the “sun”, there’s another major admission here:
“poor representation of blocking highs”. That’s like admitting you’ve been modeling the performance of automobiles with code that leaves out the body and frame.
So now they’re fully accounting for the body and frame, and 50% accounting for the engine. Getting there, boys, getting there! If you could just eliminate the 50% of the driving force that comes from giant dragons, you’ll be completely in touch with reality!
I guess the summers are going to be really hot. 🙂
And where where did they learn about Solar influence & blocking highs from ?
Piers Corbyn using his laptop.
I bought his forecast for December, which was right on the money.
“despite global warming”. The AGW crowd will not give up until the advancing glaciers crush them. And even then, they will be screaming, “According to the models, this is not supposed to happen.”
Regarding the Wiki image, it is funny how they invert the accepted colors for hot/cold. One can be sure if it had anything to do with CO2, they would have used the reverse of what is shown.
Stonyground says:
July 9, 2011 at 12:36 am
Shouldn’t that read “icy winters ahead rather than global warming”? As it stands it doesn’t make sense, it’s going to get colder despite getting hotter.
That’s how they justify stating these big snow storms the past several years are a product of “Global Warming”–they infer you can have both going on at the same time, like an ice cube floating unaffected in a hot cup of joe. It boggles the mind, but stellar logic was never their strong suit.
Rather extraordinary. Still, I expect the Met will be incapable of fully retracting all of their lies and obfuscation of the past 15 years or so, and will continue to bitterly cling to their AGW faith — just not as openly for a while as they wait with baited breath to see if the solar guys are correct. Funny to note how quickly they have backed off when some real scientists have entered the fray.
They’ll be blaming the Chinese next…
Maybe chief Ewen McCallum doesn’t trust new fangled things , so he is really just using his Commodore ’64 in his forecasts.
I would not conclude from this article that the “blinders are off”. Later in the article appears this paragraph:
——————
However, some of the recent antagonism is linked to the Met Office’s deserved reputation as a champion of research into climate change – and its scientists’ unrepentant calls for urgent action against man-made global warming. Some climate-change sceptics seem to attack Met Office weather forecasts as a way of undermining its climate predictions. Still senior staff insist that, judging from their personal experiences of talking to non-meteorologists and from its surveys of public trust, the reputation of the Met Office is higher than ever. “Our trust scores are about 82 per cent, which is phenomenal for any organisation,” says Varley. “I find it heart-warming that, when it comes to the crunch, people trust the Met Office.”
[Verbatim from referenced article]
——————–
As with any interview article, it is very hard to tell whether you’re hearing the opinions of the interviewee or the interviewer. You’ll notice in the above the initial two sentences are a conclusion of the article author. The last two sentences are direct quotes from Mr. Varley of the Met Office. The middle sentence is a bridge which links those quotes into a claim that climate skeptics’ criticism of of the Met is unjustified. We have no way of knowing whether when Mr. Varley made those remarks it was in a context of replying to climate skeptics — we are certainly lead to assume this is the case from the flow of the paragraph, but that is entirely under the control of the author.
In any case, I don’t see any “road to Damascus” moment here.
Here is a prediction: It will not be long before fossil fuels are blamed for the coming global cooling.
GPlant
What? Winters to be harsher? But global warming meant warming in the winter in the UK, with snowfalls being just a thing of the past. The Scottish ski industry was supposed to be doomed. The Sun is not supposed to have much effect.
Met Office = abject failure regardless of how much they life their blinkers
I “get their idea that it will really be all CAGW all the time once the sun turns on again in 70 years with all that pent up CO2 warming to come at once. Still, the math seems a bit off. If solar is now 50%, why is it still over coming CO2 driven warming – which is , by the way, still the primary driver if AGW is still there? No science here. Just sloppy CYA in recognition that the science really isn’t settled after all.
So 50% due to solar activity.
Some unknown, smaller percent due to all other natural variations.
Some unknown, much smaller percent of that due to the greenhouse effect.
Some unknown, small percent of the greenhouse effect due to CO2.
Some unknown, much smaller percent of that due to human produced CO2.
Time to spend our science dollars more wisely. I say let’s get robots on Europa and have a peek under the ice.
This is a major shift the fact that they are even conceding this. There getting ready for the inevitable.