Story submitted by Eric Worrall
“WHAT if David Archibald’s book The Twilight of Abundance: Why Life in the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short turns out to be right? What if the past 50 years of peace, cheap energy, abundant food, global economic growth and population explosion have been due to a temporary climate phenomenon?”
This is the first paragraph of Maurice Newman’s latest attack on the world’s infatuation with global warming.
Maurice Newman is the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s most senior economic advisor – one of the first acts of the newly elected Abbott government was to appoint Maurice Newman to the chair of the government Business Advisory Council.
According to the article written by Newman;
“If the world does indeed move into a cooling period, its citizens are ill-prepared. After the 2008 financial crisis, most economies are still struggling to recover. Cheap electricity in a colder climate will be critical, yet distorted price signals caused by renewable energy policies are driving out reliable baseload generators. Attracting fresh investment will be difficult, expensive and slow.
Only time will tell, but it is fanciful to believe that it will be business as usual in a colder global climate. ”
If Newman is right, governments have been preparing for the wrong crisis, squandering resources which could have been used to prepare us for the coming cold. At the depths of the Little Ice Age, grain production in Northern latitudes, regions which are currently regarded as the breadbaskets of the Western World, was severely curtailed, due to shorter growing seasons and greater weather instability. And there is always the risk that a little ice age could become something worse – if the historical record is any guide, we are nearing the end of the current interglacial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
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People probably have no sense of how devastating the LIA was. Historian Geoffrey Parker understands, he wrote “Global Crisis: war, climate change and catastrophe in the seventeenth century.”
“Revolutions, droughts, famines, invasions, wars, regicides – the calamities of the mid-seventeenth century were not only unprecedented, they were agonisingly widespread. A global crisis extended from England to Japan, and from the Russian Empire to sub-Saharan Africa. North and South America, too, suffered turbulence. The distinguished historian Geoffrey Parker examines first-hand accounts of men and women throughout the world describing what they saw and suffered during a sequence of political, economic and social crises that stretched from 1618 to the 1680s. Parker also deploys scientific evidence concerning climate conditions of the period, and his use of ‘natural’ as well as ‘human’ archives transforms our understanding of the World Crisis. Changes in the prevailing weather patterns during the 1640s and 1650s – longer and harsher winters, and cooler and wetter summers – disrupted growing seasons, causing dearth, malnutrition, and disease, along with more deaths and fewer births. Some contemporaries estimated that one-third of the world died, and much of the surviving historical evidence supports their pessimism.”
http://www.amazon.com/Global-Crisis-Climate-Catastrophe-Seventeenth/dp/0300153236
Heating or cooling, both require cheap electricity for civilization as we know it to go on. And this is where the AGW hoaxsters have done much to harm mankind.
William Astley says:
August 14, 2014 at 4:39 am
The sun was at its highest activity level in 3000 years during the last 50 years. Solar cycle 24 is the fastest decline in solar magnetic activity in the entire record.
No, William, as we have discussed at length before, none of this is true.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/08/14/75-of-the-us-below-normal-temperature-over-the-past-11-months/
bernie1815 says:
August 14, 2014 at 6:03 am
“All this reminds me that it is time to go out and find a few newly fallen trees and start cutting wood for this winter and next winter. The question is how many cords?”
Bernie here on the 45th parallel in Michigan we burned 17.5 face cord last winter, an increase over previous years by 5 cord. I also will be restocking our woodshed this month.
“Leif Svalgaard says:
August 14, 2014 at 7:09 am
William Astley says:
August 14, 2014 at 4:39 am
The sun was at its highest activity level in 3000 years during the last 50 years. Solar cycle 24 is the fastest decline in solar magnetic activity in the entire record.
No, William, as we have discussed at length before, none of this is true.”
So what *IS* true?
The earth has been warming for 350 years, more or less. The earth has been in a cooling trend for 7,000 years, more or less.
A return to the long-term trend would be a return to the cooling trend, which would not be pleasant. For that to happen, natural forces would have to dominate greenhouse gas warming, which is what has been happening for the last decade and a half, or more.
There are three possible scenarios for climate change.
Scenario 1: If the warmist are correct the earth’s climate will become more like it was in the Cretaceous. This will cause a lot of coastal flooding with a sea level rise of around 60 feet/ 20 meters. However the Arctic, Anarchic, Greenland and Siberia will all become far more habitable with crops growing near both poles.
Scenario 2: The climate remains the same as it has been during the Holocene with cycles or ware periods (Roman, Medieval and Modern) and cool periods called Bond Events also called the Migration period or Dark Ages and Little Ice Age.
Scenario 3: The earth enters another Plelstocene Glacial cycle. The glaciers move south and lower covering Great Britain, Northern Europe, Russia, Canada and the northern part of the US reaching as far south as Tennessee. The coastal shoreline extends out about 200 miles from the current shoreline.
In none of these scenarios do we need to reduce CO2 levels. And in scenario 3 it is a absolute disaster to do so.
Many people must die at a traffic intersection before the “rulers” install a traffic light. I would suspect that many millions will need to die due to crop failures, out-right freezing, and cold induced storms before any thing changes…
Note: The Arctic could stay completely frozen over in Summer, and there would be no changes except for new publications. The new would say “We don’t know what is happening, but the Arctic is getting colder due to Global Warming”.
bernie1815 says:
August 14, 2014 at 6:03 am
All this reminds me that it is time to go out and find a few newly fallen trees and start cutting wood for this winter and next winter. The question is how many cords?
********************************************************************************************
bernie1815 says:
August 14, 2014 at 6:03 am
All this reminds me that it is time to go out and find a few newly fallen trees and start cutting wood for this winter and next SUMMER. The question is how many cords? There, fixed it for you 🙂
SteveT
“SteveT says:
August 14, 2014 at 7:59 am”
Cords? An illegal measure in New Zealand and Australia. Try 3 cubic metres.
Colder temperatures are obviously worse for humanity and most of the biosphere in general. The notion that a bit of warming is a terrible thing is so moronic, I still can’t figure out how it ever got any traction at all, much less a global meme that gives little children nightmares.
But let’s look on the bright side. Humanity is far more adaptable to any change today than we were at the time of the Little Ice Age. Will crops suffer if it gets colder? Will times get harder? Certainly, yet there is no way we will suffer the agricultural disasters and resulting famines of the LIA. If we just stop burning our food for fuel and start developing and installing some 21st Century nuclear power facilities, we can pretty much mitigate most of the negatives of a LIA-like cool down.
The end of the Holocene is another story. The next ice age will require a huge adaptation from humanity. We have the technology to survive, but do we have the wisdom?
Archibald’s work is hampered by issues related to the sunspot record he used in his publications. The sunspot number historical records (yes plural) were spliced together even though different ways of counting were used at different times in the data set. Several attempts were made to reconcile these various ways. The most recent one, based on a thorough examination of all the various counting algorithms used in the past (e.g. weighting factors) combined with a thorough examination of other solar related measurements that time with the solar cycle’s activity level, belongs to a group of solar scientists brought together in large part by Leif Svalgaard. A substantial paper has been released by the group which explains the work done to reconcile the data sets and provides the results, a new reconciled reconstruction. I have linked to his webpage below. It is instructive to know that most if not all well-regarded authors of previous reconstructions are now on board with the new one. It is also good to know that previous papers related to previous reconstructions will not be retracted. These papers simply reflect the understandings and research findings that were known then. It would behoove us armchair amateurs to keep up with the literature so as not to make the mistake of basing our understanding of climate on previous research that has since been discarded.
http://www.leif.org/research/
Cooling is clearly harmful, therefore, according to the Precautionary principle, no climate action should be taken until it is proven beyond doubt that CO2 reduction could not possibly lead to cooling. On the other hand, if CO2 reduction does not have a cooling effect, there is no point in promoting such policies. It is worse than we thought, we are caught in an anthropogenic logical trap.
The link for David Archibald’s book seems to be broken.
Carbon-based beings need water, carbon and energy.
Anti-life, save-the-planet, types don’t?
If human kind is seen as a cancer on planet Earth, the rest follows.
John Leggett says:
August 14, 2014 at 7:48 am
Only the zaniest of alarmists, IMO, predict a return to Cretaceous conditions, without ice on East Antarctica. Some do forecast the melting at least of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet & Southern Dome of the Greenland Ice Sheet, however.
The Cretaceous is actually a big problem for CACA modelers. It was far warmer & more equable (shallow temperature gradient from equator to poles) than can be produced in their GIGO GCMs without an improbably high ECS, ie at least six degrees per doubling from 280 ppm. Cretaceous oceans were astonishingly hot, hence ideal habitat for marine reptiles. Clearly, something other than CO2 was responsible for Cretaceous heat. Indeed CO2 levels were elevated because of the warmth.
A paper that explained Cretaceous climate based on lack of clouds from lack of biological CCNs arising from the hot tub-temperature oceans was, needless to say, not greeted warmly by the Warmunistas. Some of the oceanic heat came from active undersea volcanism as Pangaea continued splitting up, with the continents moving into their present positions.
Nobody has cracked the climate code so far and I see little evidence that Archibald has it right, either. However, the premise that global cooling is dangerous is a good one.
What can we do about changing the climate? Very little. The best preparation is for prosperity as economically strong nations are better able to adapt. One other thing is drop this green as all costs mentality. We’re aren’t cooking the planet with CO2 emissions and we aren’t on the verge of burning up our fossil fuels. There are no compelling scientific or economic reasons for this headlong rush to alternative energy. Less politics and less passion and more facts are needed.
Well, he’s not the most senior advisor, he’s the chairman of the PM Business Advisory Council. It’s high enough though. And the points are, of course, well made, a sign he’s well read on the issue. Two corrections to his article: First, “the year without a summer” resulted from the combination of Dalton minimum and Tambora eruption. The latter probably contributed more. It was the largest volcanic eruption in perhaps 1635 years with VEI index of 7, the previous one of this magnitude would be Lake Taupo in 180CE. Second, if the climate indeed cools, the AGW *theory* will inevitably end up on the ash heap of history and the world’s huge coal reserves, including the ones in the US and in Europe, will be unlocked. There’s enough there for hundreds of years. By the time they’re exhausted, humanity will have the alternative of fusion energy well in hand. So, nations will not have to “desperately compete for available energy.” They may still compete for food, of course, but barring a volcanic eruption comparable to that of Tambora, the disruption should not be catastrophic. Even during “the year without a summer,” large parts of the world, for example eastern Europe, Asia Minor, and Russia, were unaffected.
Separating science from policy: I am not skeptical of climate change. I am skeptical that we can predict what that change will be.
The policy should be to increase energy efficiency (voluntarily, with encouragement, but not by government edict). I always wanted to build a house that could be cooled with an ice cube, warmed by a candle. Use 2x6s in the exterior walls, heavily insulted, instead of the standard 2x4s. Seal and insulate everything. To avoid the air becoming stale or toxic, have a system that does a complete air exchange with the outside (filtered) when the outdoor temp was between 68-72 degrees F (realize that could be any day the low was at or below that temp, and the high at or above. Here, that would be almost every day in summer, and many in winter). Too old to do it now, but I suspect someone is doing it somewhere, and will be the norm in the future.
Brrrrrr. its cold outside. I think this must have been the coldest summer on record. Clearly we need to burn much more fossil fuels.
Pamela The 10 Be record is the most useful for relating solar ” activity” to climate see Fig 5 at
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1004/1004.2675.pdf
Leif admits that we don’t understand the processes involved – but the correlation between high 10be
flux and cooler temperatures is vey clear going back for hundreds of of years see eg Fig 10 CD at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/
Lief Svalgaard is a great scientist and it is a great privilege that he posts regularly on WUWT. He is also testy and does not suffer fools gladly. Sounds to me like a man to admire in all ways.
I left off “and respect” after admire.
joelobryan says:
August 14, 2014 at 12:12 am
The old paradigm: “CO2 leads to catastrphic warming” points the way to the new paradigm: CO2 is good. It mitigates the cold and feeds the plants.
——————–
Except it has been proven that the effect isn’t linear and only occurs in a “doping” situation.
milodonharlani, where you say “Only the zaniest of alarmists, IMO, predict a return to Cretaceous conditions, without ice on East Antarctica. Some do forecast the melting at least of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet & Southern Dome of the Greenland Ice Sheet, however.” I agree, that is why I chose it as a scenario of the very worst case for warming.
Again you say “ It was far warmer & more equable (shallow temperature gradient from equator to poles) than can be produced in their GIGO GCMs without an improbably high ECS, ie at least six degrees per doubling from 280 ppm. Cretaceous oceans were astonishingly hot, hence ideal habitat for marine reptiles. Clearly, something other than CO2 was responsible for Cretaceous heat. Indeed CO2 levels were elevated because of the warmth.” When we compare this to the last glacial maximum with permafrost down to Chattanooga Tenn. and 3,000 feet of ice over New York and London on 22,000 years ago it does not seem all that bad.
When Northern Canada and Siberia become the earths bread basket and Greenland is more like Hawaii even though there will be costal flooding will not be all that bad for life on Earth. On the other hand if glacial conditions return. What do you think is more likely that all of northern Eurasia and Northern North America will freeze to death or, do you think its likely that the Canadians and the US are likely to move south into our southern neighbors, all of northern Europe into North Africa and Russia south into the Middle East when the glaciers take over all or most of their countries.