I got this by way of Jerry Pournelle’s web site and it reports that the recent global temperature decline is essentially of the wall when compared to all past experience. We have been confronted by several apparently contradictory phenomena relating to recent temperatures and the confusion out there is now palpable.
For the past decade for sure and probably the preceding decade we have witnessed a measurable and obvious increase of the heat content of the atmosphere of the Northern Hemisphere. This was sufficient to erode a substantial amount of the perennial Arctic Sea Ice.
This past summer we had a run away reduction in that same ice sped along by a major change in the wind system.
We must now accept the likelihood that this wind shift actually drew off most of the surplus heat in the lower latitudes and shifted it into the Arctic were it melted a huge amount of the sea ice. With the heat now fully removed, we are now been reintroduced to a more familiar winter, and a bad one too.
This describes an efficient global heat balancing mechanism, that has nothing whatsoever to do with anthropogenic global warming per se, except to demonstrate that if we ever do have an effect on the climate, the Earth is more than ready to clean our clock.
We may now experience a heat pump cycle that will operate on an orderly basis until such time as volcanism drops the temperature severely.
To this point, everyone has been nicely confounded by two extraordinary and unprecedented events that no model even starts to predict. This makes it clear that the real anomaly is the wind shift rather than the results that moved all that heat into the Arctic.
This also suggests that for it to happen again, the heat buildup may have to accumulate for another forty years and it is very likely related to the forty year hurricane cycle. Again, this summer’s behavior will be important to monitor.
Global Cooling
Dr. Phil Chapman was born in Australia and was a South Polar Explorer before coming to the the United States and becoming a US citizen and astronaut. He was one of the original members of the Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy which formed in 1980 to write the Space and Defense policy papers for the incoming Reagan Administration Transition Team (Jerry Pournelle, PhD, Chairman)
Jerry:
As straws in the wind, note that it snowed in Baghdad in January, for the first time in a century. There is still snow in the Australian Alps at midsummer, never before seen. The extent of the Antarctic sea-ice last austral winter exceeded all records. These are of course mere anecdotal evidence, not to be taken seriously.
However, the four major organizations that track the global average temperature have now released their results for 2007. They are the Hadley Centre in the UK (Hadley), the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), Remote Sensing Systems, Inc., in Santa Rosa, CA, (RSS) and the Christy group at the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH). The first three have been alarmed about GW for years, while the UAH group (which uses satellite MSU measurements) has tended to be skeptical.
All four of these studies report an astonishing drop in global temperature during 2007, between 0.59 and 0.75 degrees C. You can see graphs of their data at
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/january-2008-4-sources-say-globally-cooler-in-the-past-12-months/ .
This is by far the fastest change in global temperature on record. It is probably just a blip – but if the climate stabilizes at this level, it will have wiped out all the increase since 1920, and the whole GW thing will have gone away. Moreover, if 2008 shows another decrease of this magnitude, we will have to consider seriously the possibility that the 20-year transition to the next Ice Age has begun.
To paraphrase Eugene O'Neill, The Ice Age Cometh?
If this is true, the consequences are appalling. Most of North America and all of Europe north of the Alps will be under a mile of ice by 2030. This means that most of the advanced countries except Australia will cease to exist. There can be
Nice try, but this is not even slightly possible. The atmospheric moisture simply does not exist even it the land temperature went to a polar regime.
little doubt that the need to survive will trump any international norms of behavior: I would expect that Europe would invade Africa and the US would invade Mexico, accepting genocide of the indigenous populations as an unfortunate necessity, given the absolute need for lebensraum.
Perhaps we could delay or stop the transition by using nuclear explosions to release floods of methane (a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2) from the hydrate deposits under the Arctic permafrost and on the continental shelves, and/or by mounting a major effort to reduce the albedo by shoveling dirt over northern snowfields. Unfortunately, the reputations and income of far too many influential people now depend on the existence of the GW threat, and they will resist recognizing the truth as long as possible. In any case, I don't expect politicians to have the chutzpah to act before it is too late.
Until we find out whether the present cold is transient or getting worse, the Precautionary Principle demands that we all do our duty by guzzling as much gasoline and emitting as much CO2 and CH4 as possible. Flatulence is now a patriotic duty.
This is of course probably just a nightmare – but I will be watching the global temperature data this year with considerable interest.
Phil
PS. Get well, old friend. We need you
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Global Warming, if real, threatens longer growing seasons in the North Temperate Zones, at a cost of some rise in sea level. A new ice age is a disaster without precedent. Core borings in lakes in England and Belgium show that the area near the English Channel went from deciduous trees to under many feet of ice in fewer than 100 years at the last Ice Age onset.
There are ways to counter warming and cooling, but they are not cheap; and first there have to be actual scientists, as opposed to the grant gatherers, trained seals, and headline grabbers who now pose as climate scientists. The Peer Review process has systematically excluded publication of any contrary opinions.
And yet it is now as it has been: the modelers see man-made global warming. The observers have never seen it, and now when honest admit they see cooling.
Political correctness demands that science submit to correct opinion. It is Voodoo Science in the real sciences, not just the social sciences.
We sow the wind.
Of course this year may be a blip; but it doesn't look that way. Discussion in mail.
JEP 0300 Sleepless in Studio City
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