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
Norman, your use of data sets and eye ball correlations have been discussed before. At the very least update your solar information and I suggest refraining from using ice core 10Be data until the discrepant instrument measurements and ice core data are reconciled. Further to this discussion, the recent temperature rise in the global temperature series is of interest in that it is being said to be solar related. Your thesis is focused on 100 and 1000 year scales. Are you saying that this short 30 year rise called “Anthropogenic Global Warming” is on your scale? How so? You actually should consider this to be just a natural variation blip within your scales, yes?
John Leggett says:
August 14, 2014 at 10:16 am
I have to agree that even the staggering heat of the Cretaceous would be preferable as human habitat to the frigid Last Glacial Maximum. But not even 1000 ppm CO2 could get us back to that climate, without also a lot more undersea ridge volcanism & some tectonic rearrangement.
The zaniest of CACAlarmists, like Hansen, go even the Cretaceous one (or several) better & claim we’re on the Venus Express.
I should add however that northern Canada & Siberia generally lack the loess deposits needed optimally to grow grain & bean crops. After the permafrost melted, the soil would not be suitable for most farming, but could I suppose support grazing & browsing livestock.
My thesis is very simple really I am saying that the temperature peak in the first decade of the 21st century is a more or less synchronous peak in the obvious quasi millennial and 60 year cycles seen in Figs 5,6,7,8,and 9 and 15 and 16 at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2014/07/climate-forecasting-methods-and-cooling.html
The same link lo0k at Figs 9 and 10 C,D together and the Webber paper I linked above show the very clear relationship between the 10 Be data and climate. See e g the very obvious Dalton and LIA cooling as seen in the 10Be data.
As to the mechanisms I say
“NOTE!! The connection between solar “activity” and climate is poorly understood and highly controversial. Solar “activity” encompasses changes in solar magnetic field strength, IMF, CRF, TSI, EUV, solar wind density and velocity, CMEs, proton events etc. The idea of using the neutron count and the 10Be record as the most useful proxy for changing solar activity and temperature forecasting is agnostic as to the physical mechanisms involved.
Having said that, however, it is reasonable to suggest that the three main solar activity related climate drivers are:
a) the changing GCR flux – via the changes in cloud cover and natural aerosols (optical depth)
b) the changing EUV radiation – top down effects via the Ozone layer
c) the changing TSI – especially on millennial and centennial scales.
The effect on climate of the combination of these solar drivers will vary non-linearly depending on the particular phases of the eccentricity, obliquity and precession orbital cycles at any particular time.
Of particular interest is whether the perihelion of the precession falls in the northern or southern summer at times of higher or lower obliquity.”
It is perfectly reasonable as the most obvious working hypothesis to project the 60 and 960 year cycles forward. What’s not to like?
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
Interesting speculation that, if we’re heading toward a period of global cooling, the various efforts to combat anthropogenic global warming have positioned us badly to deal with it. While we should be skeptical of any claims predicting this or that crisis, I do think a cooling scenario more likely than catastrophic warming. If it comes about, then the Warmists will have done much more harm than good.
Seems to me what is important here, is that a senior government advisor is finally speaking at all.
So many of these gutless wonders, those leaders of the polling booth, have either refused to ask for evidence or have leapt on board the climate hysteria as a route to power.
Finally the worm turns in Australia and Canada, mostly because the cost has finally started to bite the taxpayer.
In the small world of people actively sceptical of the science and ethics of Climatology, often we forget those with other interests.
The nonparticipants are busy minding their own affairs, however as electricity prices,fuel prices and tax takes have all accelerated wherever climate hysteria has held sway, these people are coming to the discussion.
Now the real discussion begins.
Normal, using updated data (reconciled SSN and instrument measured 10Be) what is your hind cast? And how far back have you gone to make the hind cast? If this indeed is a weather pattern oscillation model, you need to hind cast beyond your tuning data time period.
sorry…Norman, not Normal
What Nick Stokes is missing in pointing out Newman,s careless prediction is that this is just the prediction of one man who is not a scientist. How then does Nick justify the obviously missed predictions/projections/forecasts/whatever from the supposed top climate scientists that the world has ever seen, who have at their fingertips the most sophisticated tools man has seen to date? All of those registered government approved climate scientists support these invalidated predictions. Yet they have managed to entice major governments worldwide to make policy on these failed predictions.
Patrick said:
“Beware a politician who speaks.”
11:00 pm quiz – How do you know a politician is lying?
Pamela
You’re approaching every thing backwards with a mind -set just like the modelers . . You can’t hind-cast 60-70 years of data to make any sense of millennial cycles or even centennial cycles. That’s is one of the reasons why the entire IPCC modeling output is a farce. You must first look at the 1000 year cycles in the temperature data to see where the present fits in -as I said above – look at the quasi -millenial cycles in
Figs 5,6,7,8,and 9
at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2014/07/climate-forecasting-methods-and-cooling.html
Even the 60 year cycle simply zeroes out through time. For meaningful prediction at human time scales of interest you first have to establish where we are relative to the quasi- millennial cycle,
The individual solar cycles are really just noisy froth on top of the waves.
The biggest uncertainties in my forecasts are the exact timing of the quasi- millennial peak. The Oulu neutron count and the Ap index data (Figs 13.14) suggest that the peak might have been about 1991 and the sharp drop on the down slope began 2005/6 .Because of the varying and regionally different lag times between the driver peak and the climate outcome I’m estimating that that drop should show up in the SST.s about 2017/18 and in the OHCs about 2025/6.
goldminor says: August 14, 2014 at 1:47 pm
“What Nick Stokes is missing in pointing out Newman,s careless prediction is that this is just the prediction of one man who is not a scientist.”
It’s where Aussie PM Abbott’s most senior advisor is getting his information.
Nick Stokes says:
August 14, 2014 at 3:27 pm
He should instead get it from Jim “Venus Express” Hansen, as in the USA?
Good grief.
Don’t forget – Environmentalism is a religion.
And liberalism is a mental disorder.
From Bernial’s link:
“Berry mentions that research has also shown that certain types of people are drawn to political activism, including people with or prone to mental health problems,”
After witnessing the Occupy ridiculousness, I believe it.
The alarmists like to use the precautionary principle to justify all the resource usage on “global warming”. Try this for size.
Since climate is always changing, it is either getting warmer or colder. Getting warmer means a more comfortable living environment and expanding productive agricultural areas. No mitigation action required. Getting colder means more energy is required for heating, a reduction in productive agricultural areas and reduced agricultural production in the remaining areas. These are things that need to be mitigated. Two choices. One requires preparation and one does not. So what should be putting resources into?
Throughout history, people in colder climates stored food for winter. People in tropical climates never had to. Which scenario should we be making preparations for?
It is simple for the rational …
The Sydney Morning Herald already a rebuttal online which includes this:
“All the evidence indicates that the world is warming far faster than previously expected, the major cause almost certainly being human carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion. Warming has not paused for the last 18 years. The oceans, where the bulk of the energy entering the Earth’s system is stored, have continued warming at an accelerating rate. That is the view of the vast majority of informed climate scientists, virtually all competent scientific institutions such as the British Royal Society, the US National Academy of Sciences, the Australian Academy of Science and supranational bodies such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, International Energy Agency, as well as the United Nations itself, through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has conducted probably the most extensive scientific investigation ever undertaken.”
The author, “Ian Dunlop was formerly an international oil, gas and coal industry executive, chairman of the Australian Coal Association and chief executive of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He is a member of the Club of Rome.”
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/we-shouldnt-go-cold-on-the-science-around-global-warming-20140814-1041a3.html
“What Nick Stokes is missing in pointing out Newman,s careless prediction is that this is just the prediction of one man who is not a scientist.”
But, but, but….it wasn’t Newman’s prediction. Not then, not now. It was Archibald’s prediction which, as far as I can tell, Newman hasn’t repeated.
If one of those evil deniers makes a failed cooling prediction then that proves that all cooling predictions from that time on are by default wrong also. SOP for the brethren.
cnxtim says:
August 14, 2014 at 12:43 am
Makes me proud to be an Aussie…Now if the Wallabies can put it together on the weekend : ) 🙂
==================================================
And if they can’t?
You won’t be proud to be an Aussie?
Go the All Blacks!
A minor point, but it’s the Diaoyu Islands, not the Daioyu Islands.
Ian M
Mr Green Genes says:
August 14, 2014 at 1:45 am
If all of those were penalised, NZ would scarcely have won a match in the last 10 years 😉
Phil Kearns, is that you?
Thank you Eric, I mentioned it on another thread yesterday. I wrote to Barnaby Joyce our rep in Federal parliament, the New England electorate, and mentioned the solar farm due to be built in Moree. He is handling it with the environment Minister. We heard about this years ago during a lecture by Prof.Bob Carter. It was going to cost so much like multi-millions that it wouldn’t be worth it for the number of households it could supply.
The thing that happened during the last full ice age, was besides glaciers advance of course, that surface water didn’t evaporate as quickly, but the rain was reduced. But when the 2007 election was held, the ALP minister for the environment, Penny Wong, mentioned when asked if the cancellation of the ETS caused their low numbers. She replied, ‘No – there is some evidence the planet is cooling’ You won’t find that anywhere on the web or in the papers. She said this when interviewed in the tally room during the count. I was watching it live.
Gud one Eric.
He’s made a point, and a gud one. All Blacks will win, LOL. But seriously, what can Australia do to combat cooling trends in agricultural areas. And how do we cope with electricity charges. It’s the precipitation we have to worry about, as we do anyway.
Phineas Fahrquar says:
August 14, 2014 at 11:50 am
(trimmed) “While we should be skeptical of any claims predicting this or that crisis, I do think a cooling scenario more likely than catastrophic warming. If it comes about, then the Warmists will have done much more harm than good.”
—
Not from their perspective, their motives are to impair the health of the civilization they blame for … for who knows what? No matter the outcome of WEATHER cycles for the next decade or three they will individually and collectively adjust their rhetoric, remodel their shop front, hold a few very concerned conferences (the topic is completely irrelevant) to rehash their political double-think apparatus, in order to maximize a new agenda of damage and impairment to civilization and economic functioning, whilst seeking to open and accentuate schisms in social fabrics to undermine the networks of free-thinkers and undermine use of observational evidences that may examine and expose their warp’ospheric claims (the topic can be anything).
It’s quite incidental whether they were right or wrong about CO2, or cAGW, when baked-in deception was root-‘n-branch of their whole argument, since at least the early 1990s.
The global warp’osphere isn’t concerned with rights and wrongs, those are just transient variables. It’s only concerned with entraining perception of right and wrong in order to maximize policy impairment and economic derailment while systematically vandalizing the mechanisms of systemic self-correction, plus smearing, attacking and using media to disempower any person or any groups, or any ideas or tests which could potentially counter and reverse their harm-making agenda.
Maximizing conflict, to create dysfunction, and a secondary inability to effectively act to repair the damage, quickly enough. Classic ‘white-anting’. White ant = termite, i.e. hollow it out unseen, while doing the popular ‘right thing’, so a light breeze can then blow the house down.
That’s the strategic long-game.
Naughty CO2 is just a major tactical short-game.
bushbunny says:
August 14, 2014 at 10:00 pm
“It’s the precipitation we have to worry about, as we do anyway.”
—
There are all those never commissioned multi-billion dollar desalination plants laying around depreciating (I bet no one’s spending money maintaining those), and the dams that were cancelled. There are also some large dams that can be further substantially expended in capacity. That could ameliorate things and buy time for cultural and structural adjustment to cold and dry. Hopefully we can stave off Las Vegas type situations (i.e. no options). I’m more concerned about the soil health issues, which stem from extended low-precipitation periods. the interior in the 1990s and early 2000’s droughts was an ugly place. What came next was the healthiest and wettest Europeans have ever seen the landscape, so the capacity for ‘weathering’ the worst and springing back very fast, is clearly baked into the ecology.
Remember this, the Emus trooping through Longreach last year?
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/emus-stop-traffic-in-longreach-20131118-2xqfh.html
That happened due to the best conditions on the land in generations, leading to an epic population bloom of all wildlife, which finally spilled into streets of country towns.
Of course the rude-health of the land was then completely ignored and the Emus (note the healthy Emu chicks in the photo of family grouping) were depicted as sadly dieing of hunger and entering towns in a desperate search for food. It was BS, the outback was lousy with emus and roos and everything else, making hay while the sun shined.
We’ve learned so much in the past 25 years about how this works and what techniques work (which even the old bushies didn’t have but still did OK without). Chipmunks build a larder for winter as soon as spring arrives. We have to prepare for the next drought long before the next rain falls. The animals and trees fatten and grow fast, store what they need, then wait out the dry. Since when is the landscape withering not a part of this?
So no more alleged special-experts (Tim Flannery’s) talking total replete cr@p to us and wasting our time while misdirecting, distracting and picking our pocket, we already know what to expect and what to do. Mostly to stop pretending the environment doesn’t continually go through massive cycles of boom and bust, with large migrations, dislocations and diebacks – all implicit. whoopie
Build damns, build lots of big and deep damns, and the environment will love us right back. No more mischievous enervating obstructions. Everyone who actually lives on the land knows that keeping water on the land and slowly releasing into rivers is and always will be the only true answer to getting the environment and communities and animals through the worst of droughts.
I hope people like Barnaby will push Abbott to get on with this and I’m guessing Abbott and his Chief Economic Advisor will be up for it, and will do far more ecological good than the hyper-greenery has ever even contemplated, for the flora, fauna and soil of the country … and of course assorted bushies.