Met Office releases new
figures which show no warming in 15 years
By David Rose (Mail on
Sunday, UK)
Last
updated at 5:38 AM on 29th January 2012
The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new
temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.
The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year
temperature drop that saw frost
fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.
Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the
Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It
confirms that the rising
trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.
A painting, dated 1684, by Abraham Hondius depicts one of many
frost fairs on the River Thames during the mini ice age
Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on
Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th
Century, the sun is now heading
towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a
shortening of the season available for growing food.
Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of
sunspots seen at their peak.
We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call ‘Cycle 24’ – which is why last
week’s solar storm resulted in sightings of the aurora borealis further south
than usual. But sunspot
numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle
peaks in the 20th Century.
Thames freeze in Oxford, 1890
Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona –
derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun’s
surface – suggest that Cycle
25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still.
According to a paper issued last week by the Met Office, there is
a 92 per cent chance that both Cycle 25 and those taking place in the
following decades will be as weak
as, or weaker than, the ‘Dalton minimum’ of 1790 to 1830. In
this period, named after the meteorologist John Dalton, average temperatures in
parts of Europe fell by 2C.
However, it is also possible that the new solar energy slump could be as deep as the ‘Maunder minimum’ (after
astronomer Edward Maunder), between 1645 and 1715 in the coldest part of the ‘Little Ice Age’ when,
as well as the Thames frost fairs, the canals of Holland froze solid.
Yet, in its paper, the Met Office claimed that the consequences
now would be negligible – because the impact of the sun on climate is far less
than man-made carbon dioxide. Although the sun’s output is likely to decrease until 2100, ‘This
would only cause a reduction in global temperatures of 0.08C.’ Peter Stott, one
of the authors, said: ‘Our findings suggest a reduction of solar activity to levels not seen in hundreds of
years would be insufficient to offset the dominant influence of
greenhouse gases.’
Frost frolic at Bank Side, Thames, 1920s
Thames freeze in London, 1855
These findings are fiercely
disputed by other solar experts.
‘World temperatures
may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more,’
said Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at
Denmark’s National Space Institute. ‘It
will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is
important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its
own, without the need for their help.’
He pointed out that, in claiming the effect of the solar minimum
would be small, the Met Office was relying on the same computer models that are
being undermined by the current pause in global-warming.
CO2 levels have continued to rise without interruption and, in
2007, the Met Office claimed that
global warming was about to ‘come roaring back’. It
said that between 2004 and
2014 there would be an overall increase of 0.3C. In
2009, it predicted that at least three of the years 2009 to 2014 would break
the previous temperature record set in 1998.
So far there is no sign of any of this happening. But yesterday a Met Office spokesman insisted
that its models were still valid.
Frost Fair Mug, glass with engraved
silver mount, made in London, perhaps Southwark, (museum no. C.156-1997).
Victorian & Albert Museum, 1684. A
miraculous survival, this tiny glass mug is a souvenir of the Frost Fair,
bought from a stall erected upon the Thames ice when the river froze during the
winter of 1683-4.
‘The ten-year projection remains groundbreaking science. The period
for the original projection is not over yet,’ he said.
Dr Nicola Scafetta, of Duke University in
North Carolina, is the author of several
papers that argue the Met
Office climate models show there should
have been ‘steady warming from 2000 until now’.
‘If temperatures continue
to stay flat or start to cool again, the divergence between the models and recorded data will
eventually become so great that the whole
scientific community will question the current theories,’ he
said.
Artist’s rendering of
future Frost Fair conditions
He believes that as the
Met Office model attaches much greater significance to CO2 than to the sun, it
was bound to conclude that there would not be cooling. ‘The real issue is whether the model itself is
accurate,’ Dr Scafetta said. Meanwhile, one of America’s most eminent
climate experts, Professor Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of
Technology, said she found the Met Office’s confident prediction of a ‘negligible’ impact difficult to understand.
‘The responsible thing to do would be to accept the fact that the
models may have severe shortcomings when it comes to the influence of the sun,’ said Professor
Curry. As for the warming pause, she
said that many scientists are not surprised.’
She argued it is becoming
evident that factors other
than CO2 play an important role in rising or falling warmth, such
as the 60-year water temperature cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
‘They have insufficiently
been appreciated in terms of global climate,’ said Prof Curry. When both oceans
were cold in the past, such as from 1940 to 1970, the climate cooled. The Pacific cycle ‘flipped’ back from warm to cold
mode in 2008 and the Atlantic
is also thought likely to flip in the next few years .
Pal Brekke, senior adviser
at the Norwegian Space Centre, said some
scientists found the importance of water cycles difficult to accept,
because doing so means admitting
that the oceans – not CO2 – caused much of the global warming
between 1970 and 1997.
A regular feature of Frost Fairs was a printing press
where, as a souvenir, the visitor could have his name set in type and printed
on a leaflet bearing a picture of the fair and some doggerel verse. These souvenirs are now extremely rare and
this one had been bought by William Hogarth when he visited the Frost Fair on 16
February, 1740 and instead of his own name he had the name of his dog “Trump”
printed on it. Copyright © The Peter
Jackson Collection
The same goes for the impact of the sun – which was highly active for much of the 20th Century.
‘Nature is about to carry
out a very interesting experiment,’ he said. ‘Ten or 15 years from now, we will be able to determine much better
whether the warming of the late 20th Century really was caused by man-made CO2, or by natural
variability.’
Meanwhile, since the end of last year, world temperatures
have fallen by more than half a degree, as the cold ‘La Nina’
effect has re-emerged in the South Pacific.
‘We’re now well into the
second decade of the pause,’ said Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming
Policy Foundation. ‘If we
don’t see convincing evidence of global warming by 2015, it will start to
become clear whether the models are bunk. And, if they are, the
implications for some scientists could be very serious.’
NOTE:
Not entirely
unexpected, I’m
thinking.
I’m neither a climatologist nor even
particularly science-minded, but I’m generally distrustful of shotgun conclusions regarding long-term (and especially multi-millennial)
problems and science
that is intimately tied to politics, government-funding and “public-private partnerships” (à la Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). Also, when a yutz like Al Gore assumes lectern position and
starts in with the damn laser-pointer about anything other than where to find superior
grits, biscuits and gravy (a subject on which I would not question his
authority and judgement), I become skeptical.
I reprinted this article from the Sunday Mail
(UK) because I am a believer in the scientific method and
the patient, systematic search for truth over time, and it’s refreshing to note the careful, calm, qualified and considered speech
of the scientists quoted in the
article.
The story, which has been widely reported, also
allowed me to research these atmospheric
Thames Frost Fair and other chilly London illustrations. (The final Frost Fair was held in 1814, but two of the pictures here – one above showing Tower Bridge
and one below showing the Houses of Parliament -- clearly reflect a vision that
a revival might be imminent.) The story
about William Hogarth’s Frost
Fair gift for his dog Trump is
really charming and gives us another way
to reach back and connect with this great artist.
My own suspicion, for which I’ve been called a soft-head (and worse) many times, is that global warming/climate change alarm
is an indisputable example of cyclical
millenarian apocalypse obsession,
fueled largely by our
fear of mortality and reluctance to accept our relative insignificance in the universe. We cannot believe the world can or would dare to go on without us, so we’ve drawn a line in the sand stating as law, headline, broadside and symposium
title, that it cannot. Then, into
this fear vacuum sweep large cohorts of Elmer Gantrys (like Al Gore, who really fits the bill in most respects,
except for being really good looking like Burt Lancaster) ready to charge a buck, steal a buck, loot, pillage, lecture, demean the polis and its citizens, and degrade the language with neologisms.
All of this of this was on full display during the ridiculous and heavily ridiculed 2009 Copenhagen global warming summit held under United Nations auspices, which predictably accomplished absolutely nothing, apart from allowing the enormous U.S. delegation of senior legislators and their lackeys the opportunity conspicuously (like a bonfire) to burn vast amounts of fossil fuel in round-trip unnecessary international travel, expel hot air on the ground and run up astronomical limousine, hotel, restaurant and bar bills at taxpayer expense.
At the time, I was doing some consulting work for a start-up "virtue venture," a nascent media company planning to film a documentary about the conference, focusing on an art project called the Carbon Cube, which was a site-specific sculpture created by the architect Christophe Cornubert, seated in St. Jorgens Lake, near Copenhagen's Tycho Brahe Planetarium. The Carbon Cube represented the amount of space one metric ton of carbon dioxide would occupy if stored at standard atmospheric pressure -- specifically, a space that is the equivalent of 27 feet cubed, or 19,683 cubic feet.
My company was being engaged to film the art project
in order to educate
and edify students all
over the world.
I’m genuinely happy to report that the United
Nations people we met with were all terrific – civilized, articulate, bearing exceptional expense accounts and good taste in wine and restaurants. So were the sculptor’s San Francisco-based
representatives.
But the sculpture itself was boring
and leaden -- a
clear example of the limits
of political art conceived as argument by another means, rather than an affair of the head, heart and
Heaven.
Like the conference, it was a
damp squib,
earthbound, not celestial (or even airborne), a complete waste of space.
A Frost Fair?
Sounds nice. Especially with an Ice Palace.
Grays Inn Mask
by Pyewackett
Final Frost Fair, 1814
Future Frost Fair site?
