Abandoning rational discussion on climate change

[Trifecta]

I met the author of this article on Saturday at a local debate on the freedom of expression. Claire Fox mentioned that Al Gore's an inconvenient truth was distributed to all schools in England, yet censors have attempted to censor Channel 4's The Great Global Warming Swindle and a campaign to discredited it carries on to this day. A bit one sided really.

Claire invited me and some others for a drink after the debate and we mused about the crime of being a global warming denier and abandoning the discussion on climate change, for us heretics!.

Abandoning rational discussion on climate change is worse than anything nature can do
Claire Fox


A LOT of green whingers have come out of the sustainable woodwork since the budget. Apparently Gordon wasn't green enough for them; his punitive taxes on 4x4s and "incentives" for carbon-neutral housing were decried as tokenistic. The headline budget items were tax cuts and more old-fashioned Labourite fiscal measures. But I, for one, was relieved. Briefly, it seemed, there was more to life than our new-found national obsession with carbon emissions.

Of course it can't last. It has become de rigeur for everyone in public life, not just politicians but bishops, princes, pop-stars, even multinational corporations, to grandstand on who is the most eco-friendly. It is an understandable posture for the political elite. After all, political careers can be salvaged by appending an eco-label. Take failed presidential candidate Al Gore, for example, currently making a film-star comeback as the planetary crusader with a powerpoint. It gives ailing politicians a new-found role, which may explain the extravagant rhetoric they use. Blair has compared global warming to the Cold War or the struggle against the Nazis; David Cameron says he will "open up a second front in the green revolution". And however modest his budgetary message, Brown declares that he wants a "new world order" to save the planet. Also, by flagging up a moral consensus on the environment, they can forget contentious issues such as the war on terror or a decrepit NHS.

Now that everyone seems to agree that green is the new black, and that "something must be done", there is little critical opposition to the introduction of a wide range of authoritarian and moralistic environmental policies. Local councils have carte blanche to use secret cameras to check on "recycling correctness" and to penalise citizens for putting the wrong rubbish in the wrong bin.


Meanwhile, politicians get uncharacteristically principled about reaching targets for zero carbon eco-homes. But obsessing with solar panels, wind turbines and insulated lofts lets them off the hook for the real scandal which is the zero amount of social housing being built and the plight of the homeless.

Politicians seem unperturbed about making a virtue of austerity and stigmatising the consumption of ordinary people. Policy wonks list endless ways that householders should cut back on emissions, whether it's "flushing less" or turning off the lights. Housing associations are insisting on smaller baths to prevent tenants from using too much water and power showers are decried as sinfully wasteful. Bathing and flushing are the most basic technological gains of prosperity once a sign of social advance and are better than the alternatives, as far as I'm concerned. But once we view things through the narrow prism of carbon-cutting and personal restraint, luxuriating in a brimming bath is tantamount to anti-social behaviour.

Dare any of us challenge this unhealthy reorganisation of politics around environmental priorities? In recent months debate about climate change has been turned into a taboo. Those of us who will not join the sanctimonious bandwagon can expect to face illiberal outrage and to be chased out of polite society. The response to the recent Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle which disputed that there was a conclusive link between carbon emissions and climate change has been a barrage of shrill abuse aimed at the film-maker and the participants. Many suggested it should never have been aired, while an orchestrated campaign urged viewers to flood the TV regulator Ofcom with complaints.

Admittedly, a reasonable criticism was that the programme's science was somewhat inaccurate, but that charge would ring less hollow if the same complainants were equally vigorous in challenging all the junk science that appears daily on our screens, from alternative medicine to organic food. However, the real vitriol behind the denunciations derived from the fact that the programme didn't preach the global warming orthodoxy. Such is the worryingly censorious climate in Britain today that instead of taking up the arguments, the critics pilloried the messenger.

In a recent speech, environment secretary David Miliband proclaimed that "those who deny climate change are the flat-earthers of the 21st century". This unambiguous smear of "climate change deniers" is increasingly being used to stifle debate by conflating environmental scepticism with the morally repugnant Holocaust denial. Firstly, real climate scientists (rather than the imaginary "scientific community") still have disagreements; after all, science advances precisely by questioning, probing and re-examining ideas. Butmoreimportantly,politiciansand campaigners are hiding behind science to pronounce the issue "case closed" in order to gain political legitimacy for their own agenda.

Whatever the true impact on the environment of burning fossil fuels, there seems to be a real risk of damaging scientific inquiry if we close down all discussion on it. Over-hyping the unanimity of "science" is the modern way of closing down "political" debate. When politicians parrot the clichéd refrain that "climate change is the biggest single problem facing humanity", we should argue back.The biggest single problem facing humanity? Really?

This, after all, is political opinion rather than scientific fact. In a world where warfare is a daily reality, where millions of children are dying of malnutrition, where poverty, disease and civil liberties abuses are commonplace, surely there ought to be room to challenge the prevailing notion that all this should be put on the back burner while we concentrate on cutting carbon bloody emissions.

We need to untangle science from politics in this debate. Geologists, climatologists and meteorologists may well be delighted that their academic work has finally been recognised but we, and they, should be wary when complex scientific issues are reduced to simplistic political messages.Since when did science become the bottom line arbiter of legislation and political decisions?Just because an environmentalist cites a scientific paper, are we all meant to forget that they have a political agenda? After all, they are not usually so keen on scientific facts informing policies when it comes to GM crops or nuclear power.

Let's be clear: green policies have little to do with scientific evidence. While science has important things to say about climate change, it does not and cannot provide answers to what such a problem means in society and how we should deal with it. That is a matter for politics and something we should always be able to contest. Science has no jurisdiction in deciding whether we cut energy consumption or ban incandescent light bulbs. No climate computer model should dictate an increase in air traffic duty to deter Ryanair fans like me from enjoying cut-price holidays. Nothing in science conclusively proves that the poorest people in the world should be deprived of dams providing energy and clean water just because these modern amenities are at odds with environmental priorities. Dragging scientists on to the political stage to justify proposals that will hold back development for the poorest people in the world is actually a betrayal of science.

Whatever side you take in the climate change dispute, the politicisation of science, political conformity and the undermining of debate should be a cause of concern for us all. And whatever the truth about our warming planet, free speech, open enquiry and rational discussion will be necessary tools in dealing with what faces us in the future. To abandon them would be a far greater catastrophe than anything nature can throw at us.

Claire Fox is director of the Institute of Ideas

http://tinyurl.com/2uqq8e

[Trifecta]

Carbon rationing: a valuable way of cutting carbon emissions?
Bangladesh: how to cope when the water rises?

Mayer Hillman and Claire Fox disagree

Dear Claire,

The time for denial is long over. The overwhelming scientific consensus is that the Earth’s atmosphere has a finite capacity to absorb greenhouse gases. In just a couple of centuries, human civilisation has burned reserves of the Sun’s energy, accumulated over millions of years in the form of gas, coal and oil. The result is already serious destabilisation of the climate.

We must now all share responsibility for preventing further ecological catastrophe and the ensuing loss in the planet’s habitability. A burgeoning world population and aspirations to ever higher standards of living make the search for an effective solution even more challenging.

It is wishful thinking to believe that the essential dramatic reduction in greenhouse gases can be achieved by voluntary changes in behaviour, by technological innovation, or by green taxation alone.

In the autumn of 1939, faced with the prospect of scarcity of a basic commodity, the government introduced food rationing. We are in an analogous situation now. The only realistic and fair way ahead is by adopting an international framework based on equal per capita shares of carbon emissions across the world’s population. At least in principle, do you have any objections?

Yours, Mayer

Dear Mayer,

While I commend your honesty, I disagree that climate change is an apocalyptic catastrophe that should lead to compulsory carbon rationing. No amount of hyperbole justifies such draconian austerity.

You talk of ‘overwhelming scientific consensus’. It is fashionable to hide behind science to push political messages. However, while science has important things to say about climate change, it does not and cannot provide answers to how we should deal with it in society. Scientific evidence has no jurisdiction in deciding whether we cut energy consumption or ban incandescent lightbulbs.

Our disagreement is political, not scientific. It centres on how we view human progress. You express Malthusian fatalism about ‘a burgeoning world population’. For me this means millions more minds to solve problems and create prosperity. You reduce the last ‘couple of centuries’ of ‘human civilization’ to the fact that it ‘has burned reserves of the Sun’s energy’.

I note that over the last two hundred years humanity has made enormous gains; from freeing millions from parochialism – hurrah for cars and cheap flights – to freeing women from drudgery – hurrah for white goods and microwaves. Don’t get me started on how reducing emissions will deny the gains of modernity to the under-developed world.

Yours, Claire

Dear Claire,

You highlight ‘the gains of modernity’ that have come in the wake of our use of fossil fuels over the last 200 years without acknowledging the adverse consequences.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations during this period have risen in line with this use to a level that the world has not experienced for over half a million years. Citing evidence such as this can hardly be described as ‘hyperbole’ or as a cover to a hidden political agenda.

What matters are the practical and moral implications for current policies. I wonder whether you would have a different perspective if you were personally affected?

You dismiss my reference to the burgeoning world population as ‘Malthusian fatalism’. Look at recent demographic changes before rejecting this consideration so lightly. And what is the source of your confidence in the ingenuity of ‘millions more human minds’ to come up with technologies that will assuredly result in reversing the process of climate change?

Do you accept that human activity is contributing to this change? If so, I ask again, do you have any objections to an equal per capita allocation of carbon emissions across the world’s population to deliver the necessary reduction? Or do you have a better solution to what you so glibly reject as ‘draconian austerity’?

Yours, Mayer

Dear Mayer,

I don’t deny that the huge social changes may have had some ‘adverse consequences’ on the planet, but overall the consequences of progress have been massively positive. Will you acknowledge the ‘adverse consequences’ on humanity of your paralysing obsession with reducing carbon emissions? You advocate giving up freedom at home and curtailing development in the Third World.

Historically, ‘human activity’ such as science and technology have allowed us to innovate precisely to deal with whatever nature throws at us. Ironically, where natural hazards do exist – like scorching temperatures and drought – people suffer not from the weather but for lack of the ‘gains of modernity’ such as air conditioning and mains water. Yet eco warriors have opposed building dams to provide energy and water in poorer parts of the world because they clash with environmental priorities.

As Bangladesh faces flooding, shouldn’t the urgent task be to build dams, roads and dykes – as countries such as Holland do – that would allow Bangladeshis to cope with rising sea levels? Will you join me in promoting the urgent industrialisation of countries like Bangladesh to make them equal with the West, rather than merely offering the trinket of ‘equal per capita carbon allocation’?

Yours, Claire

Dear Claire,

You propose that debt-ridden countries such as Bangladesh prioritise spending the proceeds from the industrialisation of their economies to provide protection from climate changes caused by our excessive carbon emissions.

But the costs of building dykes against inundation along extensive coastlines, air conditioning to keep temperatures down and drought limitation measures, would be prohibitively high. For the same reason, they could not be covered even by a substantial increase in overseas development aid set aside from our economic growth.

Moreover, you overlook the fact that a major source of the evolving catastrophe is the planet’s limited capacity to safely absorb the greenhouse gases from industrialisation and growth! And what if your approach fails: where do the hundreds of millions of displaced ecological refugees go?

The truth is that we are faced with the choice of either achieving a massive reduction in our use of fossil fuels, or presiding over our own demise. Sufficient people will not contribute to this reduction to a sufficient extent and within sufficient time voluntarily. It is being increasingly recognized that the only solution is a global cap on emissions and their allocation on an equal per capita basis – the Global Commons Institute blueprint, Contraction & Convergence. This must be adopted urgently.

Yours, Mayer

Dear Mayer,

Putting aside your disgraceful scaremongering about hordes of ‘ecological refugees’, your reply perfectly illustrates why carbon cutting orthodoxy is paralysing. You can only view the problems of the Third World through the narrow prism of global warming. However, it is not ‘our excessive carbon emissions’ that deprive one billion people of clean water or doom the Earth’s poorest to dependence on subsistence farming. Rather, it is your man-made green fatalism that dismisses any possibility of development because ‘costs… would be prohibitively high’.

Granted you are even-handed. You preach miserabilism at home as well as abroad. You started this spat comparing energy rationing today with the Second World War. At least then temporary sacrifices promised a more prosperous and free society after the war. You offer us permanent war economy: relentless personal restraint and never-ending constraints on freedom.

Whatever the scientific truth about the difficulties warming might pose to our planet, we definitely know that freedom, autonomy, reduced regulation and ambition will be necessary tools – for scientists and political activists – to deal with what faces us in the future. To abandon them – as you advocate – would be a far greater catastrophe than anything nature can throw at us.

Yours, Claire

Dr Mayer Hillman is Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Policy Studies Institute

Claire Fox is the Director of the Institute of Ideas
http://tinyurl.com/37p8c3

[slow_dazzle]

Energy supplies are probably peaking (I said probably as a pre-emptive strike against DE!) so one way of partly addressing the issue is to persuade the majority, namely us, to start making little savings in our energy consupmtion. At individual level it doesn't make much difference. Add up 100's of millions of people all obediently doing their bit and the saving is probably quite significant. That means there isn't a big effect at the level of the major corporations but demand is reduced.

An interesting piece of information that might support this hypothesis is the possible reason behind the UK liquid bomb hoax of 2006. And a hoax it certainly was as any teenage chemistry student can confirm. There is, of course, the possibility that it was part of the ongoing strategy of tension. Equally, there were major problems at the BP owned Prudhoe Bay transit pipeline just before the bomb "plot" was foiled. Apparently, the latter put a dent in air traffic use and might just, therefore, have taken pressure off the oil markets at a time when a big slice of US production was halted. I believe the two events took place in August 2006. Coincidence? Maybe. And it fits both hypotheses of stategy of tension and demand destruction so two birds with one stone and all that.

The counter argument to the timing of the two events is the lead-in time needed to set the alleged bombers loose. But these sort of false flag ops are probably developed ready and waiting in case they are needed at short notice.

As for the carbon trading it follows that those who can afford to pay have an advantage. Those who can't...well, it's not rocket science.

My guess is the GW "panic" is a backdoor means of addressing declining energy supplies without fessing up to the reality of the matter. I also believe it is a way of preventing the Third World developing to First World levels and thus competing for resources.

[Cosmic Cowbell]

It is wise to peek behind the curtain of those who adamantly oppose any hindrance to 'business as usual' re climate change. Let's look at the 'Institute of Ideas' for a moment shall we?

From Sourcewatch:

The Institute of Ideas

"The Institute of Ideas (IoI) is a successor project to Living Marxism and an intellectual home of the LM group. A flagwaver for the political network's libertarian agenda, the organization has been described by critics as "media-friendly Tory extremists."

Funding:

Saatchi & Saatchi

"Saatchi & Saatchi is a global advertising company which was formed in 1970 and now has offices in 83 countries."

No science there...I can only imagine their client list...:rollseyes:

Adam Smith Institute

"The Adam Smith Institute (ASI), based in London, has been a major force for the introduction of market-based policies in Britain. It operates as a UK think tank."

"The Adam Smith Institute - once the informal common room of Conservative Central Office - courted the new government in 1997 with seminars on "how to achieve Labour's goals". Now the government is the institute's biggest funder, paying more than £7m out of the overseas aid budget last year for advice on "public sector reform" in developing countries such as Afghanistan and Palestine..." None of this £7m actually found its way to the Adam Smith Institute." ~Rob Blackhurst in The New SStatesman

No science there...corruption maybe, but no science.

British Council

"The British Council was founded as an organ of international propaganda."

"The Council helped to ensure a cultural place for Britain in the modern world beyond that justified by its economic or political power: it has been a central organ of what the American scholar Joseph Nye Jr. has called ‘soft power.’ This said, however the Council has seldom attracted adequate resources or respect from policy makers, beside the occasional nod towards the Council being ‘good for trade’."

No science there...but hey, look's like they're "Good for Trade".

Relate

"The Relationship People"

Umm......

Novartis

"Swiss biotechnology, drug, and consumer products company. Formed in 1996 by the merger of Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz. Also owns Gerber."

Ah, the pharma giants weighs in on climate change...

Far Left or Far Right

Reading this op-ed piece by Monbiot, we find once again LM's support for Channel Four and it's anti-common sense programming.

"LM’s contributers do seem to have the most extraordinary contacts. Late last year, Channel 4 devoted its Sunday night peak slot to a three-hour series called Against Nature. By seeking to impose limits on progress, the series alleged, environmentalists are the true heirs of the Nazis.

The assistant producer of Against Nature, Eve Kaye, was one of the principal coordinators of the RCP/LM. The director, Martin Durkin, describes himself as a Marxist, denies any link with LM, but precisely follows its line in argument. The series starred Frank Furedi, previously known as Frank Richards, LM’s regular columnist and most influential thinker, and John Gillott, LM’s science correspondent, both billed as independent experts. Line by line, point by point, Against Nature followed the agenda laid down by LM: that greens are not radicals, but doom-mongering imperialists; that global warming is nothing to worry about; that “sustainable development” is a conspiracy against people; while germline gene therapy and human cloning will liberate humanity from nature. The Independent Television Commission, reviewing Against Nature in response to hundreds of complaints, handed down one of the most damning rulings it has ever made: the programme makers “distorted by selective editing” the views of the environmentalists they interviewed and “misled” them about the “content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take part.” Channel 4 was forced to make a humiliating prime time apology."

Much the same MO was deployed in Durkin's TGGWS.

Go fish...while you still can.

~C

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Total bs- "Oooh. Terror! The recycling police!"

Dare any of us challenge this unhealthy reorganisation of politics around environmental priorities?

BTW-
Fintan Dunne (the guy listing all the fake CIA websites?) over at BreakForNews.com says global warming is a hoax.
And most of the users on his discussion board do, too.

Ain't that somethin'? I posted there for a few days and a global warming activist pm'ed me to warn me "BFN is a disinfo website."

Fintan is also promoting Chris Brown's story that the Twin Towers were built with explosives in them. woo woo.

And he's promoting past lives, too. woo cubed.

http://breakfornews.com/

http://breakfornews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=106
(Latest on Global Warming Bunk)

[slow_dazzle]

It seems to be a real phenomenon. However, if GW is real it is not unreasonable to infer that the phenomenon is being used as a convenient way of addressing closely related policy issues. The policies that are germane here include declining energy supply (you should all reduce your consumption a little folks) and the possibility of Third World competition for the remaining energy supplies (carbon offsets that favour those who can pay).

The issue is whether anything we do can make much difference. If we can it is likely the solutions to a big problem require equally big responses. Rather than allow radical changes in patterns of consumption the elite steer people towards small changes to try offsetting some of the demand for resources but not at a level that hurts big business. Just enough to take pressure off the supplies.

So I accept that GW might be real. I suspect that addressing it, assuming we can, requires radical changes, hence Gore hijacking the debate and steering it towards "inconvenient" changes in behaviour. Neither of which rules out GW being used as a policy tool.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

It seems to be a real phenomenon. However, if GW is real it is not unreasonable to infer that the phenomenon is being used as a convenient way of addressing closely related policy issues.
.....
So I accept that GW might be real. I suspect that addressing it, assuming we can, requires radical changes, hence Gore hijacking the debate and steering it towards "inconvenient" changes in behaviour. Neither of which rules out GW being used as a policy tool.

Yup. I agree.

Though I would add that preventing 'the sixties' from happening again and maintaining social climate 'stability operations' is the first goal of the Al Gore 'ho-hum we broke the planet' campaign designed to prevent appropriate reaction: throw fascist elites in jail and change everything about how we live.

[wintler2]

Agree with prev two posts, wonder if its not in fact business as usual, what history teaches us to expect. There have always been false saviors and snakeoil salesman, we can expect a growing flood of them as times get harder, Al Gore is not even the worst imho: Geldorf & Bono have sold worse actions to sincere millions. But really they're selling the same assumptions, Respect Current Heirarchies and Do Your Little Bit.

[Joe Hillshoist]

The Great Global Warming Swindle ... a campaign to discredited it carries on to this day

I haven't seen Al Gore's film so I can't compare them, but The Great Global Warming Swindle was a piece of shit. It was an insult to my intelligence.

BTW I would also have to echo the last 3 comments.

BTW wasn't Live Aid for the planet great (or not), and probably less effective than the original.

[Trifecta]

Joe Hillshoist
[/quote] The Great Global Warming Swindle was a piece of shit. It was an insult to my intelligence. [/quote]

Fair enough, whats your IQ?




The Great Global Warming Swindle
March 19, 2007
S. Fred Singer

Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth has met its match: a devastating documentary recently shown on British television, which has now been viewed by millions of people on the Internet. Despite its flamboyant title, The Great Global Warming Swindle is based on sound science and interviews with real climate scientists, including me. An Inconvenient Truth, on the other hand, is mostly an emotional presentation from a single politician.

The scientific arguments presented in The Great Global Warming Swindle can be stated quite briefly:

1. There is no proof that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from human activity. Ice core records from the past 650,000 years show that temperature increases have preceded—not resulted from—increases in CO2 by hundreds of years, suggesting that the warming of the oceans is an important source of the rise in atmospheric CO2. As the dominant greenhouse gas, water vapor is far, far more important than CO2. Dire predictions of future warming are based almost entirely on computer climate models, yet these models do not accurately understand the role or water vapor—and, in any case, water vapor is not within our control. Plus, computer models cannot account for the observed cooling of much of the past century (1940–75), nor for the observed patterns of warming—what we call the “fingerprints.” For example, the Antarctic is cooling while models predict warming. And where the models call for the middle atmosphere to warm faster than the surface, the observations show the exact opposite.

The best evidence supporting natural causes of temperature fluctuations are the changes in cloudiness, which correspond strongly with regular variations in solar activity. The current warming is likely part of a natural cycle of climate warming and cooling that’s been traced back almost a million years. It accounts for the Medieval Warm Period around 1100 A.D., when the Vikings settled Greenland and grew crops, and the Little Ice Age, from about 1400 to 1850 A.D., which brought severe winters and cold summers to Europe, with failed harvests, starvation, disease, and general misery. Attempts have been made to claim that the current warming is “unusual” using spurious analysis of tree rings and other proxy data. Advocates have tried to deny the existence of these historic climate swings and claim that the current warming is "unusual" by using spurious analysis of tree rings and other proxy data, resulting in the famous “hockey–stick” temperature graph. The hockey-stick graph has now been thoroughly discredited.

2. If the cause of warming is mostly natural, then there is little we can do about it. We cannot control the inconstant sun, the likely origin of most climate variability. None of the schemes for greenhouse gas reduction currently bandied about will do any good; they are all irrelevant, useless, and wildly expensive:

* Control of CO2 emissions, whether by rationing or elaborate cap–and–trade schemes
* Uneconomic “alternative” energy, such as ethanol and the impractical “hydrogen economy”
* Massive installations of wind turbines and solar collectors
* Proposed projects for the sequestration of CO2 from smokestacks or even from the atmosphere

Ironically, even if CO2 were responsible for the observed warming trend, all these schemes would be ineffective—unless we could persuade every nation, including China, to cut fuel use by 80 percent!

3. Finally, no one can show that a warmer climate would produce negative impacts overall. The much–feared rise in sea levels does not seem to depend on short–term temperature changes, as the rate of sea–level increases has been steady since the last ice age, 10,000 years ago. In fact, many economists argue that the opposite is more likely—that warming produces a net benefit, that it increases incomes and standards of living. Why do we assume that the present climate is the optimum? Surely, the chance of this must be vanishingly small, and the economic history of past climate warmings bear this out.

But the main message of The Great Global Warming Swindle is much broader. Why should we devote our scarce resources to what is essentially a non–problem, and ignore the real problems the world faces: hunger, disease, denial of human rights—not to mention the threats of terrorism and nuclear wars? And are we really prepared to deal with natural disasters; pandemics that can wipe out most of the human race, or even the impact of an asteroid, such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs? Yet politicians and the elites throughout much of the world prefer to squander our limited resources to fashionable issues, rather than concentrate on real problems. Just consider the scary predictions emanating from supposedly responsible world figures: the chief scientist of Great Britain tells us that unless we insulate our houses and use more efficient light bulbs, the Antarctic will be the only habitable continent by 2100, with a few surviving breeding couples propagating the human race. Seriously!

I imagine that in the not–too–distant future all the hype will have died down, particularly if the climate should decide to cool—as it did during much of the past century; we should take note here that it has not warmed since 1998. Future generations will look back on the current madness and wonder what it was all about. They will have movies like An Inconvenient Truth and documentaries like The Great Global Warming Swindle to remind them.
S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist, is Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, and former founding Director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service. He is author of Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate (The Independent Institute, 1997).

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1945

[Trifecta]

The Sun has been more active in the last 70 years than it has for the previous 8000, according to an analysis of tree rings dating back 11,400 years. But researchers say its recent bout of hyperactivity does not account for the rapidly rising temperatures recorded on Earth over the last three decades.

Sunspots are surface concentrations of the star's magnetic field and the more there are, the more energy the Sun is emitting. The dark features have been observed and recorded regularly since 1610.

Scientists have tried to reconstruct previous sunspot activity using ice cores and tree rings. These contain isotopes, such as carbon-14 and beryllium-10, created when high-energy particles from deep space, called cosmic rays, slam into the atmosphere. Fewer cosmic rays reach the Earth when the Sun is very active, because the charged particles from the Sun deflect them.

Now, a team led by Sami Solanki of the Max-Planck-Institut fur Sonnensystemforschung in Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, has analysed records of trees preserved in riverbeds and bogs that date back 11,400 years to produce the most precise study yet of sunspot history.
Back in time

The team started by using sunspot records to calibrate models of how carbon-14 in tree rings correlate withsolar activity. The models "reproduce the observed record of sunspots extremely well, from almost no sunspots during the seventeenth century to the current high levels", writes Paula Reimer, a paleoclimate expert at Queen's University, Belfast, UK, in an article accompanying the research paper in Nature.

They then extrapolated the tree ring data backwards in time and discovered that no period in the last 8000 years has been as active as the last 70. About 75 sunspots have appeared every year in this period, compared to an annual average of about 30 over the last 11,400 years.

"We are living in extraordinary times as far as solar activity is concerned," says study co-author Manfred Schussler. "Extended periods of high activity seem to be much more rare than we previously thought."

Indeed, the data also showed that high activity periods only occurred for about 10% of the period studied, and tended to last for about three decades. "That's one of the interesting things - this latest cycle has already lasted longer than most do," says Reimer.
Inside the Sun

Models of the Sun can account for the well-known 11-year-long cycle of solar activity but the underlying reason for the 70-year high is unknown. "There is a consensus that the magnetic field underlying the solar activity is generated in the solar interior, but the details of this mechanism are still not understood," Schussler told New Scientist.

Furthermore, previous data from carbon-14 studies of tree rings suggest patterns change on scales of 200 years. "It seems like that periodicity should be driven by the Sun, but people argue back and forth on this all the time," Reimer told says. That is because the total energy emitted by the Sun actually changes by a relatively small amount as the number of sunspots varies.

The new research will allow scientists to see if past climate changes "are too large to be explained by the sunspot cycle alone", Reimer says.

She notes that the current upsurge in sunspots is not enough to account for the approximate 0.5°C rise from pre-industrial temperatures over the last 30 years.

Journal reference: Nature (vol 431, p 1047, p 1084)
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6591

[Joe Hillshoist]

If the suns activity is greater now compared to the past 8000 years that means that more than 8000 years ago it was higher than it is now, but wasn't that the period of the last ice age???

Well maybe not, but it seems that if the world hasn't had an ice age for about 10000 years and the intervening time has had lower solar activity than now where is the causal relationship? Shouldn't the ice ages have been more likely to occur in the period between now and the last ice age?

But more to the point what is the relationship between sunspot activity and the sun's ability to raise temperature on earth? Is there even one, or is the suns temperature raising effect due to something else?

Its extremely spurious to suggest that the anti GW crowd is responsible for keeping the developing world poor. I think its a bit sus given that the movie got funding from the corporate world and was made by one of their shills. If the people who funded that movie wanted to solve the developing worlds problems instead of sqeezing it dry they would have done so by now. That claim is a joke, and in fact if decentralised lower emission energy sources were made available to the developing world (as a way of limiting the damage when they develop) then wealth is less likely to funnel out of their local/national economies into the hands of rich selfich scumbags.

What effect has human activity on the temperature fluctuations of the past 1000 years?

Remeber nuclear winters?

The idea that masses of cloud cover would prevent the sun heating the earth?

Couldn't the same thing apply to the smoke produced as the population cut wood and built with and burnt it?

What about smoke in the air post ww2?

This may sound simple and stupid but what about it?

Not to mention the 1940 to 75 massive increase in sulphate particulates in the atmosphere (sulphates are very good at reflecting sunlight = lowering temperature). That stopped back then cos it had other nasty consequences - acid rain and all that.

Basically the film used poor misrepresentations of science and emotional manipulation to convey an idea that doesn't seem true to me. Fuck even the graphs that showed the warming of the middle ages to now cut out about 20 years ago, conveiniently ignoring the hottest period. Its one of those things - here the fuck to you start criticising it.

Another point - the massive deforestation f the last 500 years has removed something - green solar cells. removing trees and forests lowers the area of the planet pphotosynthesisng, turning the suns energy into sugar. While this isn't happening whats happening to the heat/energy that would create that sugar?

CO2 is one of many greenhouse gases, btw, and is not solely responsible for global warming, however natural variations (which no one says aren't happening) are usually balanced by feedback mechanisms in the biosphere. Excess CO2 in the atmosphere interferes with this. And is probably a symptom of some of the natural temperature regulation mechanisms failing.

BTW my iq is fairly high, but not massive. Just high enough to scrape into mensa by my fingernails if I really worked hard at it and maybe hgot a little lucky. Not that IQ means anything much really.

[BenDhyan]

[brainpanhandler]

[stickdog99]

I am intensely curious whether any of this information changes anyone's mind about our current "climate emergency."

My guess is that this issue has been far too politicized and emotionally and tribally manipulated for any rational discussion of data to have much effect on anyone's opinion.

I mean, I am routinely lambasted merely for daring to suggest that current scientific consensus about Gaia's supposed inability to withstand human activity is not wholly omniscient.