Guest essay by Eric Worrall
John Holdren, President Obama’s Science Advisor, once tried to reframe the climate debate in terms of his prediction of “global climate disruption”. Holdren stated at the time, that the term “global warming” is “a dangerous misnomer”.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/16/the-morphology-of-global-warming/
The question – does John Holdren believe that “global climate disruption” might actually lead to global cooling? Is this why Holdren is unhappy with the term “global warming”? Is this the advice Holdren is giving to President Obama?
Because there is some very circumstantial evidence that America, and other governments, may already be planning ahead, for the possibility that the world will cool.
Over the last few years, a number of major Australian newspapers have posted stories about the rising issue of large scale foreign buyouts of Australian farmland.
For example:-
The big question is – why? Why would opaque Chinese and American companies, some of are believed to be government backed, be so interested in large scale ownership of Australian farmland, land which the IPCC and Australian CSIRO predict will shortly become worthless desert?
The reason of course is the land will not shortly become worthless. The land may shortly become very valuable indeed.
Back in 2006, the Russian Academy of Science predicted imminent severe global cooling, beginning in 2012-2015, peaking at around 2055.
http://en.ria.ru/russia/20060825/53143686.html
Their prediction is based on the historic correlation between solar cycles and global climate.
Humans have been aware of the 11 year climate cycle since the dawn of history – several good years followed by several bad years is a fact of life. But there are also other, longer, more powerful cycles, which have an even larger impact on global climate.
One of them is the 200 year cycle. Every 200 years or so, solar activity falls to a sustained low. These long periods of low activity, known by the names of the scientists who discovered them – Maunder, Dalton, etc. – coincided historically with periods of extreme cold – plummeting global temperatures, crashing food production, and drastically shorter and less reliable growing seasons in the Northern Hemisphere.
At the peak of the cold periods, history records widespread famines and other disasters, such as the Year Without a Summer in 1816, a food production catastrophe triggered by low solar activity during the Dalton Minimum, combining with an unusually severe series of major volcanic eruptions. In the Year without a Summer, over vast areas, crops in the Northern hemisphere were destroyed by snow and frost in mid Summer, which created global famine and social unrest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer
If the Russian Academy of Science is correct, the world is on the brink of a new cold period, which will start to bite in the next few years.
We could even see another year without a summer – there are several large volcanoes which are overdue for major eruptions, such as Katla in Iceland and Merapi in Indonesia. When they erupt, they shall add to downward pressure on global temperatures.
Given the risk, what could a nation whose grain belt is vulnerable to global cooling do, to protect its future food supply?
The obviously solution is to buy up farmland in another country.
A country which is warm enough, so that even if global temperatures fall significantly, the land they purchased would remain highly productive. A country with a strong tradition of respect for the rule of law. A country which would continue to respect the rule of law, even in the face of a global catastrophe.
A country like Australia.
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Note: They key word in the title is “very speculative”, but I thought it was an interesting question. It may also simply be part of China’s economic expansion, which we have also witnessed in the USA with them buying up properties. – Anthony
lsvalgaard says:
You are being deceptive with the truth… It’s been fun as always mate!
Guys, as Anthony says, this is a *very* speculative theory.
The one thing we do know for sure is that some people with a lot of money are discounting IPCC and CSIRO predictions that Australian farmland will drop in value – you don’t spend billions of dollars buying something you think will shortly become worthless.
The inference between this and secret “preparations” for global cooling is very weak, and very circumstantial – as Anthony says, it could simply be economic expansionism, parking commercial profits in land acquisitions. This theory could just be my overactive imagination. If I had any firm evidence that there were actual secret preparations for global warming, I would have presented it.
But I hope you find this speculative solution to the conundrum of why Aussie farms are being purchased by foreign companies in such volume to be an intriguing possibility – entertainment value if nothing else :-).
OK, Hi Anthony. At risk of being a ‘one-trick-Pony’ (ya, I am, though, born in Year of Horse ;-)), here’s something for the crew, and you. Caught it via the S0’s (Ben DavidSon’s S0’s) http://www.suspicious0bservers.org/ and http://www.youtube.com/user/Suspicious0bservers
and as a Meteorologist you’ll catch the implications immediately, if you’re not already WAY ahead of me. All EU stuff, of course.
Dr. Kongpop U-Yen’s vid from the 2014 EU Conference in Albuquerque NM posted about 7 hours ago. Check it out: – (Ben Davidson’s will show ‘in its’ time’)
Since I’m on a roll: – (and with the qualification that I absolutely DO NOT wish to ‘cross-swords’ with Dr Leif S….(I’ll leave that to people with the ‘heads’ for the physics and math involved)…here’s Dr Pierre-Marie Robitaille’s talk at the 2014 EU. Apparently: –
Kirchhoff’s law of thermal emission (formulated in 1860) is presented and demonstrated to be invalid. This law is crucial to our understanding of radiation within arbitrary cavities. Kirchhoff’s law rests at the heart of condensed matter physics and astrophysics. Its collapse can be directly associated with 1) the loss of universality in Planck’s law (Planck’s constant and Boltzmann’s constant are no longer universal in nature), 2) the collapse of the gaseous Sun as described in Standard Solar Models, and 3) the inability of the Big Bang to act as the source of the microwave background. (cont.)
http://www.youtube.com/user/ThunderboltsProject
Which, by extension, pretty well blows open the doors as to what, exactly, Our Sun, IS.
I’d throw in my two cents but I’ve no wish to stir up the atheists, secularists, and ‘anti-“Demon-Haunted World” fine folk who post here. (Agnostics, welcome though).
Can’t help but suggest, though – speaking if-only-electrically (?)…given the (jury still out) Grand Solar Minimum (of Maunder Intensity) approaching (perhaps)…..Prayer? I’m trying to ‘walk-the-talk’, for what it’s worth out there (here?).
Nice to see Leif back, also rbg.
I think I’ll take Leif’s advice:
“perhaps try to keep a lower profile…”
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Not.
Thanks, rgb. I’m looking at upgrades right now and will check out new furnaces early. Great comment, as always.
Come big freeze or sunshine, here’s Booker: on IPCC’s alarmism BS : http://eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=84850
It would be nice if we didn’t push the climate hoax it in the opposite direction.
By the way, did you know the Russians signed a Disneyland franchise today?
So the Russians take the Criimea, and Mickey Mouse takes a chunk of land in Moscow.
Some people maintain we’re cooling while Leif says we’re not.
I guess the coolers might be impressed by the ultracold winter in USA; but don’t forget we here in Europe had a very balmy winter – no snow at all in Germany. The extremes of the out of wack jetstream. It balances out. For the moment Leif is right when he says we are not cooling. RSS and UAH also show this.
DirkH
Do you really want me to go to the trouble of showing you photographic evidence of brutal winters and extreme record winter cold? It’s okay if you think this winter was mild in Europe, It wasn’t.
From the Wikipedia article on “The Little Ice Age”:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
Hubert Lamb said that in many years, “snowfall was much heavier than recorded before or since, and the snow lay on the ground for many months longer than it does today.”[24] Many springs and summers were cold and wet, but with great variability between years and groups of years. Crop practices throughout Europe had to be altered to adapt to the shortened, less reliable growing season, and there were many years of dearth and famine (such as the Great Famine of 1315–1317, although this may have been before the LIA proper).[25] According to Elizabeth Ewan and Janay Nugent, “Famines in France 1693–94, Norway 1695–96 and Sweden 1696–97 claimed roughly 10% of the population of each country. In Estonia and Finland in 1696–97, losses have been estimated at a fifth and a third of the national populations, respectively.”[26] Viticulture disappeared from some northern regions. Violent storms caused serious flooding and loss of life. Some of these resulted in permanent loss of large areas of land from the Danish, German and Dutch coasts.[24]
The thing to bear in mind was the LIA was not uniformly cold – there were warm years, even warm decades, followed by freezing cold years, all mixed together at random. There were also unusually violent storms which brought widespread flooding. Nasty if you are a farmer trying to decide what, if anything, to try to grow.
Dr. Brown states, “The world benefits from not burning through irreplaceable fossil fuels that would be worth far more as chemical feedstock in 100 years than they are now as fuel.”
Bingo!
HenryP says:
April 5, 2014 at 12:36 pm
“@LSVALGAARD
I was talking about what is measured at sea level?
do we have some measurement of UV measured at sealevel?”
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Henry,
you are asking entirely the right questions.
UV in its various frequencies does vary far more between solar cycles than the 0.1% of the stamped flat TSI record. UV-E by as much as 30% and UV-A by as much as 1%.
Sea level UV is the right question, or rather below sea level. Our oceans are heated primarily by shorter frequencies penetrating to depth. UV-A still has a power of 10 w/m2 at a depth of 50m.
Solar variation between solar cycles could be driving 1 w/m2 or more of ocean heating. It is important to remember that this can accumulate over time as our oceans store heat like a giant solar pond. Climastrologists ignore the frequency variation between solar cycles and use only the 0.1% TSI figure because their failed calculations treat the oceans as a “blackbody” absorbing radiation only at a non-existant matt black superconducting surface.
Our oceans are actually a “selective coating” covering 71% of the planet. UV variation matters.
@rgbatduke
wonderful post – I’m bookmarking this thread in my Electric Sun Links folio, to find it again. I may have something to add of interest soon, Bz”H, that might ‘change the equation’, practically – down here ‘on this Plane’. (4-6 months). TY
Like you say….”Just Wait”….
rgbatduke says:
April 5, 2014 at 10:31 am
The thing is, the climate is a highly nonlinear system with self-organized internal metastructure driven by the balance between incoming energy and outgoing energy. …
I think the problem is in the concept of “the climate” itself. Talking about the climate and the globe on any temporal scale of less than millennia is too short, and possibly even that is too short. The ice ages are the minimum cyclic climate changes that can be discerned without torturing data into unrecognizability. Even they may very well be cyclic patterns in a Lorentzian chaotic system.
Tiburon,
Very interesting video, I enjoyed it, did you produce it yourself ?
lsvalgaard says:
April 5, 2014 at 9:55 am
Only an alarmist speculation? Really? Because of the person speculating? I’m asking on what basis the prediction was made and in particular whether the bicentennial component needs to be tightly tied to the 11-year cycle as shown. If there is a bicentennial component, then doesn’t that have its own basis in the solar record? Why should we believe anyone is so familiar with it they can honestly claim it must be so precisely tied to the 11 year cycle as shown? Obviously, we don’t have enough centuries of data to be able to say such a thing. Your so-called answer is merely dismissive and an insult to this audience. I would expect more from someone with your stature. Of course, I have also seen you take severe abuse here, and I applaud your ability to withstand it, and your willingness to continue to share your knowledge in this forum.
Hoser
Check the following link on Wikipedia, solar miminum:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_minimum
Homeric minimum [9] 950BC 800BC
Oort minimum (see Medieval Warm Period) 1040 1080
Medieval maximum (see Medieval Warm Period) 1100 1250
Wolf minimum 1280 1350
Spörer Minimum 1450 1550
Maunder Minimum 1645 1715
Dalton Minimum 1790 1820
Modern Maximum 1900 present
Notice the Wolf, Spörer, Maunder and Dalton minima are spaced (very) roughly 200 years apart.
The Maunder and Dalton minima at least were associated with unusual cold.
The sun currently appears to be entering a new quiet period. The Russian Academy of Science is not the only group to speculate about the possibility of a new solar grand minimum, for example, this report from the BBC:- http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-25743806
Opinions vary on what impact the new minimum, if it manifests as expected, will have on global climate.
Hoser says:
April 5, 2014 at 8:37 pm
If there is a bicentennial component, then doesn’t that have its own basis in the solar record?
The amplitude, duration, and cause of any ‘bicentennial component’ are controversial or at least poorly known. Abdusamatov simply fitted the component to a TSI, which was wrongly calibrated to begin with, and then extrapolated based on only a few years and without statistical analysis [other than curve fitting by eye]. This is a very dubious practice and it has already been proven wrong by the actual development of both TSI and the temperature record. To still hawk this anyway can only be seen as alarmist speculation by the poster of the article under discussion.
Now, it is very likely that a new Grand Minimum is coming, but it is highly unlikely that the temperature will drop as much as postulated.
My point was that Abdusamatov’s prediction has already been falsified. Of course, if you are a true believer you can also say that ‘eventually’ temps might drop, but without proper analysis that would also just be speculation.
Eric Worrall says:
April 5, 2014 at 8:51 pm
Modern Maximum 1900 present
It is very likely that there there has not been a Modern Maximum any larger than solar activity in the 18th and 19th centuries, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Activity-Past-Present-and-Future.pdf
‘Modern Maximum’ and ‘Not a Modern Maximum’
These alternative statements seem to cycle thru WUWT about every 11 days, plus or minus a week and a half.
John F. Hultquist says:
April 5, 2014 at 9:55 pm
‘Modern Maximum’ and ‘Not a Modern Maximum’
These alternative statements seem to cycle thru WUWT about every 11 days, plus or minus a week and a half.
Regardless, the SSN-Workshop’s preliminary assessment of the variation of the number of sunspot groups looks like this: http://www.leif.org/research/Composite-Group-Series.png
There was a maximum in each of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, but none that qualifies as a Grand Maximum.
lsvalgaard
It is very likely that there there has not been a Modern Maximum any larger than solar activity in the 18th and 19th centuries
According to Solanki 2004, the 20th century saw the highest level of solar activity in 8000 years. I would call that a substantial “grand maximum”.
(link to the Solanki reference on the NOAA site)
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/solanki2004/solanki2004.html
Eric Worrall says:
April 5, 2014 at 10:39 pm
According to Solanki 2004, the 20th century saw the highest level of solar activity in 8000 years. I would call that a substantial “grand maximum”.
Except that Solanki [and others] are wrong about this. I have provided links to how we know this. Read them.
Konrad says
Sea level UV is the right question, or rather below sea level. Our oceans are heated primarily by shorter frequencies penetrating to depth. UV-A still has a power of 10 w/m2 at a depth of 50m.
Henry says
Konrad,thanks for that comment. There are not too many of us who actually figured it all out.
Clearly, Leif does not get any UV on his skin, perhaps he is dark skinned? Perhaps he should come here in the SH? Anyway, I learned it is rather pointless talking to him.
From my own analysis of maximum temperatures – which I see as an excellent proxy to assess the amount of incoming energy- I was able to figure out the chain events that will lead to more global cooling in the future, on average, when compared to before the new millennium.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/02/21/henrys-pool-tables-on-global-warmingcooling/
(first table bottom, 4 results for the 4 periods)
There were some here on WUWT who suggested to cut up the 4 periods in different periods, e.g. into the exact lengths of Schwabe solar cycles, if somebody can give me here those exact 4 periods for the past 40 years?
Low clouds in the Western Hemisphere.
http://oiswww.eumetsat.org/IPPS/html/MSG/PRODUCTS/CLA/LCDC/IMAGESDisplay/VYxlg5U4ZLjmj