Russ Steele
With the arrival of Hurricane Sandy the press and members of the environmental movement are attempting to blame Sandy on global warming, or if you prefer climate change. The press is seeking out the promoters of anthropogenic global warming and splashing their wild claims and scary quotes across magazine covers, newspaper headlines, and cable channel data crawls. They are ignoring the credible scientists that can demonstrate there is no connection between Sandy and global warming.
Major News organizations like NBC are making claims in news reports that human caused global is creating more powerful storms, more rain, stronger hurricane and more tornados regardless of the contrary truth. They are not interested in the truth, only in keeping the environmentalist liberals and progressive off their backs by slanting the news toward the AGW agenda. In some cases the reporters themselves are strong believers in that agenda. HERE is a link to some facts.
Al Gore is launching another 24 hour marathon “dirty energy = dirty weather ” which promises to raise the fear of climate change to a higher level in the public’s mind. Leaks tell us that the soon to be released UN IPCC Assessment Report 5 (AR5) will be the “scariest report ever.”
Our children are being indoctrinated in our schools, making climate change and anthropogenic warming part of the daily academic discussion. Our children are being taught to fear global warming and the emissions of greenhouse gases, blaming their parents for destroying the planet by refusing to reduce CO2 emissions.
All of this promotional effort by environmentalist is to prompt political action, forcing the reduction of CO2 emissions, cajoling taxpayers into investing in alternative energy and to cap the use of fossil fuels, while taxing those that do use those traditional fuels. Environmentalists claim that these actions are necessary to reduce carbon emissions, which in turn will reduce global warming.
Nations following this course of action will become more vulnerable to extended cold winters, should the global warming projected by computer models fail to appear as forecast. Alternative energy sources like wind and solar often do not preform well when the energy is needed the most during extended cold spells. During the night solar energy is not available and wind farms often stand mute on long cold nights under the stars with no cloud cover to lock in the warmth.
Alternative energy costs more and poor families will have to struggle to pay the power and light bills, while the rich only complain about the rising costs. Higher energy costs will have an impact on job creation and economic sustainability. Companies will seek lower cost regions with dependable power sources to keep their business competitive in global markets. These energy sources may be out side of the US. These companies will often leave behind employees that cannot find replacement jobs with a salary high enough to feed their families and pay rising energy bills. That has been true in the UK, and Germany is now concerned that rising alternative energy prices are driving manufacturing out of the country.
All of these scare tactics, legislation and regulations to reduce CO2 emissions are focused on a forecast warming world, one where the enemy is heat, not bone chilling cold. What if the world is really more likely to be colder rather than warmer? What if our schools, government agencies and political leaders are preparing citizen for a warming world, and it turns colder, with long snowy cold winters and shorter growing seasons. Actions that have crippled our energy infrastructures is it is not capable of providing the energy resources need to keep the nations citizens warm. What if the global warming computer models are wrong? The evidence had demonstrated they have no skill to predict the future climate, based on CO2 emissions.
The signs are all around us that we live in cyclical world of warm and cold cycles as shown in the ice core samples from Greenland and Antarctica. We are currently completing a warm cycle and the paleoclimate history tells us that we are on the cusp of then next cooling cycle. We have a diminished sunspot cycle (Cycle 24), which may have peaked a year early, and is forecast to have a long slide back toward solar minimum, before it can start of the next cycle, which will be Solar Cycle 25.
According to some scientist the longer the slide back to solar cycle minimum and the start of the next cycle, the colder temperatures will be here on earth.
Not all scientists agree that fewer sunspots result in colder temperatures, however most do agree that something is happening on the sun that we have never seen before.
Here is one example of the unseen events from Livingston and Penn who are researchers at the Kitt Observatory, 40 miles south west of Tucson, Arizona, where the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope dominates the view from the mountaintop.
Author in front of Solar Telescope
In a 2010 paper Penn and Livingston presented data and a linear projection indicating between 2016 and 2020 sunspots will not be visible. A time that is not that far way. This paper included over 13,000 observations, which refined the declining sunspot data, broadening the window of probability for fewer if any sunspots.
How did Livingston and Penn determine the spots are going to disappear? They used the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope that is equipped with a powerful spectrometer. Using these tools they made some long-term observations of sunspots starting in 1990, focusing on three areas.
- Spectroscopic changes in temperature sensitive molecular lines,
- Changes in the strength of the magnetic fields surrounding the sunspots,
- Changes in the sunspot umbrae, the darkest regions of a sunspot are fading.
All three measurements showed consistent trends in which the darkest parts of the sunspot umbra become warmer by about 45 degrees Kelvin per year, the strength of molecular absorption lines decreased, and the magnetic field strengths decreased by 77 Gauss per year.
These changes were determined to be independent of the normal 11-year sunspot cycle. Using the data collected from 1990 to 2005 Livingston and Penn constructed a linear extrapolation of the three trends. The linear plots suggested that some time after about 2017 very few sunspots would be visible on the sun.
The question is for how long will they disappear? Some scientist have suggested that this could be an early indicator that a Maunder Minimum is our future, when the spots disappeared for over 70 years and our ancestors lived through multiple periods of very cold and stormy weather on planet Earth.
The solar science, supported by history, is pointed to a cooler earth, rather than a warming one. For the past sixteen years the global warming has come to a stand still, even though CO2 gasses continue to accumulate in the atmosphere. If history is correct, as Solar Cycle 24 slides toward an extended minimum, we can expect global temperatures to decline. If Solar Cycle 25 is as low as some scientist forecast the cooling would continue for another 30 to 40 years. If those scientists that believe we are on the cusp of another Maunder Minimum are right, then the cooling could last for 70 to 100 years.
Our political leaders are focused on global warming, pushed by Al Gore and his AGW Cult followers to prepare for warming, when climate history and the solar scientists tells us that we are more likely to have global cooling. This cooling will have major has an impact on our ability to feed the nation. Shorter growing seasons will limit where wheat, corn and soybeans can be grown, and in some areas still able to plant and harvest productivity will be reduced. Vineyards will produce less and poorer quality wine, as grapes are very sensitive to climate variations. (More on grape sensitivity in future post).
President Obama recently was elected to a second term and he is planning to bypass Congress and implement new regulations to curb global warming and purge the air of industrial aerosols. Some of those regulations include:
- Tier Three Gas Regulations: Raising the price of gas at the pumps by 9 cents.
- Water Guidance Regulation: Federal government controls any navigable waterway, but the new regulation would remove the word ‘navigable’ and put any standing water under federal government control. This means any standing rainwater; irrigation ponds and runoff on farmlands would come under government control.
- Farm Dust Regulation: Would regulate the amount of dust allowed from a farm field during plowing, tilling or even between growing seasons.
- Spill Prevention and Control Counter Measure
- Boiler MACT: Controls emissions from manufacturing boilers. New regulations will establish standards that are below what many companies can achieve and financially remain in business. This could potentially cost up to 800,000 jobs.
- Greenhouse Gas Regulations: Annual cost of $400 to $500 billion.
- Hydraulic Fracturing: Would place all hydraulic fracturing under federal control.
None of these actions bode well for citizens facing a cooling world. The cost of energy will soar, food production will be limited and traditional foods like corn and soybeans will be turned into fuel rather than food, at a time when food production will be diminished by shorter growing seasons.
Our political leaders are preparing the nation for global warming when global cooling is a greater probability. We are preparing from the wrong climate change and the consequences could be life threatening for millions.
The Next Grand Minimum 