Solar quiet spell like the one now looming cooled climate in the past

Also of note, an abrupt cooling in Europe was associated with an increase in humidity, the opposite of what climate models assume, but in accordance with observations.

Solar quiet spell like the one now looming cooled climate in the past

Vast fireball as big as a million Earths does affect us

By Lewis Page

Posted in Energy, 8th May 2012 15:58 GMT

German researchers say they have found solid evidence that a past "solar minimum" period of prolonged low solar activity – of the sort which some hefty physicists believe will commence within a few years – significantly cooled the climate. The research flies counter to theories offered by carbon-alarmist climate scientists, who contend that a solar minimum this century would have little effect.
According to a statement announcing the research, issued by the German GeoForschungsZentrums (GFZ) at Potsdam:

An abrupt cooling in Europe together with an increase in humidity and particularly in windiness coincided with a sustained reduction in solar activity 2800 years ago. Scientists from the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ in collaboration with Swedish and Dutch colleagues provide evidence for a direct solar-climate linkage ...

Professor Doktor Achim Brauer of the GFZ and his colleagues measured the temperatures of the remote past by analysis lake sediments desposited in those times in Lake Meerfelder Maar in the Eifel region in Germany. These sediments "allow a precise dating even of short-term climate changes", according to Brauer and his colleagues. They show a definite 200-year-long cool period which corresponds with the onset of the "Homeric Minimum", a quiet spell of low solar activity which occurred at roughly the time the great poet of the ancient world was producing his epic tales of Troy and the Odyssey.

"The Homeric Minimum caused a distinct climatic change in less than a decade in Western Europe," assert the GFZ boffins.

Solar physicists from several major US sun-watching labs announced [1] last year that they believe – based on decades-long trends of declining sunspot activity and other indicators – that the current sunspot cycle may be the last one for a long time, and that a "Maunder Minimum" like that seen in the 17th and 18th centuries is on the cards. The sunspot-less Maunder Minimum was accompanied by a so-called "Little Ice Age" of cold winters and ice-skating on the Thames.

However the idea that variations in the Sun have any serious effect on the climate is a controversial one. In particular the idea that the planet can expect a lengthy cool period until 2100 or beyond would tend to undermine the War On Carbon, and any suggestion [2] that solar variability is as big a factor in climate as carbon emissions leads to intense hostility [3] from many career climate scientists and large sections of the media (as we know well here at the Reg).

The solar-physics announcements had long been expected, and climate scientists had previously hastened to assure the world in blog posts [4], published papers and press releases [5] that any 21st-century solar minimum "would hardly slow global warming", because "the effect of low solar activity on the climate is very small" (this according to Georg Feulner and Stefan Rahmstorf, among the professional climate scientists who write at the Real Climate blog).

Brauer and his colleagues beg to differ, however. They say that they have come up with a mechanism that can explain the relation between a weak sun and climate change. They write:

We conclude that changes in atmospheric circulation amplified the solar signal and caused abrupt climate change about 2,800 years ago, coincident with a grand solar minimum.

"The change and strengthening of the tropospheric wind systems likely is related to stratospheric processes which in turn are affected by the ultraviolet radiation," says Brauer. "This complex chain of processes thus acts as a positive feedback mechanism that could explain why [comparatively] small variations in solar activity have caused regional climate changes."

According to Brauer and Co, what's needed now is more research into the climatic consequences of changes in different wavelengths of the solar spectrum, which will give a better picture than we now have of what can be expected during a future solar minimum combined with human-caused pressures on the climate.

Their paper is published [6] in Nature Geoscience. ®

Links

1. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/14/ice_age/
2. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/07/solar_as_big_as_people/
3. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/12/graun_robbins_counterblast/
4. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/06/what-if-the-sun-went-into-a-new-grand-minimum/
5. http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/archive/2010/weakening-sun-would-hardly-slow-global-warming
6. http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1460.html

New paper finds extreme floods and droughts occurred in China when CO2 was "safe"

A paper published today in The Holocene finds "extraordinary droughts and floods were parts of the [entirely natural] climate variability" in Northwest China between 3200 and 3000 years ago during the mid-Holocene Climatic Optimum. The paper examines sedimentary records to document flooding 4.5 to 5 times the size of the largest measured flood since 1934. The paper adds to thousands of others documenting natural 'climate change' and extraordinary 'extreme weather' prior to any possible effect of man-made CO2. 

The Minoan Warming Period [mid-Holocene Climatic Optimum] occurred about 3000 years ago. Image from  Only 9.098 of the last 10,500 years were warmer than 2010.

Sedimentary records of extraordinary floods at the ending of the mid-Holocene climatic optimum along the Upper Weihe River, China

1. Chun Chang Huang
2. Jiangli Pang
3. Xiaochun Zha
4. Yali Zhou
5. Hongxia Su
6. Honglian Wan
7. Benwei Ge

1. Shaanxi Normal University, P.R. China

1. Chun Chang Huang, Department of Geography, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an, Shaanxi 710062, P.R. China. Email: cchuang@snnu.edu.cn

Abstract

Sedimentary records of the Holocene extraordinary floods were investigated in the upper reaches of the Weihe River, a major tributary in the middle Yellow River basin. Palaeoflood slackwater deposits (SWD) were identified at several sites on the riverbanks. These clayey silt beds are inserted into the Holocene aeolian loess-soil profiles and slope clastic deposits. They have recorded the extraordinary palaeoflood events which occurred between 3200 and 3000 yr BP [before the present] as dated by OSL method and checked by the archaeological remains of the Neolithic and Bronze Age retrieved from the profile. The minimum flood peak discharges were estimated at between 22 560 and 25 960 m³/s by using palaeohydrological methods. It is 4.5–5.0 times the largest gauged flood (5030 m³/s) that has ever occurred since 1934. The palaeoflood slackwater deposits were found inserted into the pedostratigraphic boundary between the late-Holocene loess (L₀) and the mid-Holocene Luvisol (S₀) in the riverbank profile. This indicates that the extraordinary flood events were synchronous with the pedogenic regression at the end of the mid-Holocene climatic optimum. The climatic proxies from the studied profile and the correlative profiles in the river valley and the Loess Plateau show that the pedogenic regression was forced by climatic aridity and intensified dust storms and dust falls in connection with monsoonal shift over the Yellow River basin at about 3100 yr BP. The extraordinary flood events were documented not only on the Weihe River, but also on the mainstream and other tributaries of the Yellow River. These suggest that both extraordinary floods and droughts were parts of the climatic variability during the monsoonal shift. These findings are of great importance in understanding the interactions between hydrological system and climatic change in the semi-arid and subhumid regions of the world.

EPA planning $104.5 billion hit to the economy

Can't Get No Respect

Even the White House isn't green enough for its green regulators.

WSJ.COM 5/8/12

President Obama's regulatory agenda rarely inspires sympathy, but it does have its lighter moments when you have to feel sorry for the guy: No matter how much running room he gives to his crowd at the Environmental Protection Agency, they can never be happy. Read on for the story of the $1 billion rules, the leaked emails and the green bureaucrats who can't keep the White House on message.

It all started in August 2010, when Speaker John Boehner sent Mr. Obama a letter noting that "major rules" are usually defined as costing the private economy more than $100 million annually—but the Administration had been cooking up regulations that cost 10 times more. Maybe he could get a list of the $1 billion-plus rules on the drawing board?

It took another year, and another request from Mr. Boehner, for the White House to respond with a pro forma, 19-sentence letter: "I agree that it is extremely important to minimize regulatory burdens and to avoid unjustified regulatory costs . . ."

We'll spare you the rest of the boilerplate, though an appendix did list seven rules breaking the $1 billion barrier, four of them from EPA. The total cost for EPA hit $104.5 billion, versus $5 billion for the entire rest of the government.

Acknowledging this reality in print was apparently too much for the EPA, which prefers to hide its damage in the arcana of the Federal Register. According to emails obtained by an outfit called the Center for Progressive Reform, the White House hadn't given the agency a "heads up on this letter." Red alert!

Dan Kanninen, then the EPA's White House liaison, called up to complain. "First," as he later described his dressing-down, "we've spent a great deal of time and energy framing these rules with the public health and environmental benefits, and when and how they are driven by statutory, scientific and legal obligations, which this letter and appendix do not."

In other words, the White House forgot to include the EPA's political agitprop when answering a simple query from Congress. Come to think of it, that is a fairly significant oversight for the Chicago crew.

Related: the suppressed internal EPA document showing no endangerment risk from man-made CO2

New paper says 2010 North Pacific Hurricane Season was one of the least active on record

In another blow to the warmist fallacy that man-made CO2 increases hurricanes or extreme weather, a paper published today in the journal Monthly Weather Review finds, "The 2010 eastern North Pacific hurricane season was one of the least active seasons on record. Only seven named storms developed, which is the lowest number observed at least since routine satellite coverage of that basin began in 1966. Furthermore, only three of those storms reached hurricane status, which is also the lowest number of hurricanes ever observed in the satellite era season."

Monthly Weather Review 2012 ; e-View

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/MWR-D-11-00152.1

Eastern North Pacific Hurricane Season of 2010

Stacy R. Stewart¹ and John P. Cangialosi

NOAA/NWS/NCEP National Hurricane Center, Miami, FL

Abstract

The 2010 eastern North Pacific hurricane season was one of the least active seasons on record. Only seven named storms developed, which is the lowest number observed at least since routine satellite coverage of that basin began in 1966. Furthermore, only three of those storms reached hurricane status, which is also the lowest number of hurricanes ever observed in the satellite era season. However, two tropical storms made landfall – Agatha in Guatemala and Georgette in Mexico, with Agatha directly causing 190 deaths and moderate to severe property damage as a result of rain-induced floods and mud slides. On average, the National Hurricane Center track forecasts in the eastern North Pacific for 2010 were quite skillful.

Climate scientists discover The Scientific Method: Admit 'Open science is necessary'

An "Opinion and Comment" featured in the May 2012 edition of Nature Climate Change admits and urges that "open science" "allowing others to scrutinize the analyses" is "necessary" and that "only open and transparent research using the best mathematical and computational methods can provide the intellectual foundation for significant policies that address climate change."
Related: The fundamentals of The Scientific Method established in the early 19th century.

 

Warmists admit they sound sanctimonious & hypocritical for flying to international conferences

An editorial titled "Guilt Trip" published in the May 2012 edition of Nature Climate Change admits the extensive practice of climate scientists taking unnecessary, fossil-fueled flights to international conferences "is a fraught area where it is difficult not to sound sanctimonious or even open to the charge of hypocrisy." The piece notes, "many have started to seriously question whether the extent of travel to international conferences is defensible." Furthermore, the editorial admits that trying to ausauge warmist guilt by buying carbon offsets "does not in itself stop or necessarily even reduce global emissions in the longer term." No mention is made of the digital age, which offers the 'guilt-free' alternative of international conferences and communication via the internet.

 

 

full alarmist article:

 

Wind power mandates are raising the cost of electricity by 32%

Gouged by the Wind

Renewable fuel mandates are raising electricity prices in the states.

WSJ.COM 5/5/12

Politicians keep promising to reduce energy prices, but they keep ignoring one easy step: repeal renewal energy standards. Twenty-nine states have these rules requiring local utilities to purchase between 20% and 33% of their electric power from renewable sources. They were enacted over the past decade when lawmakers bought into the fad about cheap "clean energy." Their real effect has been to force utilities to pay above-market prices for electricity, which means higher electric bills for consumers.

No state has learned that lesson the hard way more than Minnesota. In 2007 the legislature mandated that utilities ramp up their renewables to 12% this year and 25% by 2025.

The Minnesota Rural Electric Association, which represents about 50 small utilities serving about 650,000 rural residents, reports that its members lost more than $70 million in 2011 because of the high cost of wind power. "Right now we're paying for wind power we don't need, we can't use and can't sell," says association executive director Mark Glaess.

Utilities absorb some of the cost, but Mr. Glaess estimates that annual residential utility bills are between $50 and $100 higher per household due to the renewable mandate. That may be nothing to a $10,000 donor to the Sierra Club, but tell that to family of four living on $25,000 a year in Fergus Falls.

The costs will rise as the mandates tighten. An analysis by the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota found that Green River Energy utility had $22 million in losses in 2010, $35 million in 2011, and this year it is projecting another $35 million loss. A 2011 study by the Beacon Hill Institute, a think tank focusing on state polices, found that from 2016-25 the Minnesota mandate will raise electric costs for businesses and households by $15 billion. By 2025 the average family will pay $265 a year in higher utility bills.

And what are consumers getting in return? The environmental benefit is almost zero since no state can do much to alter the global volume of carbon emissions. The renewable mandate was also sold as a way to gain "green jobs" and, as the Environmental Protection Agency puts it, "stimulate market and technology development" in states. But the mandate fails that test too, because Minnesota imports much of its wind power from North Dakota.

A 2012 study by the Manhattan Institute compares states with renewable mandates to those that allow utilities to purchase the cheapest electricity available. The states with mandates paid 31.9% more for electricity than states without them. Residents of North Dakota, a state without a mandate, pay $7.63 per kilowatt hour for electricity. Neighboring Minnesota pays $10.76.

Minnesota's politicians could bring relief to rural residents, because the 2007 law stipulates that the rules can be eased if economic conditions aren't favorable. But no one wants to take on the not-so-jolly giant green lobby. The state's Division of Natural Resources is in denial, arguing that "compliance is generally cost effective for the utilities" subject to the mandate.

With natural gas prices not far from $2 per million BTU, the competitiveness of wind power is highly suspect. If Congress allows a tax subsidy for renewables to expire this year, as it should for the sake of taxpayers, even the wind lobby in Washington admits that many turbine farms will be bankrupt.

The renewable mandate "is a regressive tax," concludes Mr. Glaess. "It's one reason our customers are having a hard time paying their electric bills." And to think this policy is supported by people who claim to want a fairer tax system.

Natural gas pioneer speaks out on fracking, climate change, and Keystone pipeline

Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy and a pioneer of the natural gas revolution, speaks about fracking, climate change, and the consequences of the Keystone pipeline rejected by President Obama:


The Politically Incorrect CEO   WSJ.COM


Excerpt:

Not that he fears a temporary ban [on fracking natural gas wells] in any case. "You want to go ban fracking for a year? Knock yourself out. It would be marvelous for our share price," because the limit on supply would send gas prices soaring. "Essentially every well in the U.S. is fracked," he continues, and therefore a ban on gas production would eliminate the energy on which utilities and their customers rely. "You'll kill tens of thousands of people, freeze them out. You'll starve them out. It's completely unthinkable."

Mr. McClendon promotes natural gas as a carbon-light fuel, but that doesn't mean he's convinced that man is really changing the climate. "There have been times in the past on this planet where it's been hotter but CO2 levels have been lower. And there have been times when CO2 levels have been higher and the climate's been cooler. . . . Would people cheat on climate science? Sure. Because all it is is a model into which there are 2,000 variables and if I want this outcome I nudge that one up a little and down a little bit and there you go."

These days the CEO saves his particular scorn for the occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Asked about President Obama's decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline that would carry crude oil from Canada and the Western U.S. to the Gulf Coast, he says: "I'm not surprised that this president made that decision. I'm surprised that a president made that decision. But knowing what I know about the sway that environmentalists have . . ."

He doesn't complete the sentence. But he's not done talking about the president and "the environmentalist groups that he hangs out with."

Says Mr. McClendon, "I get mad at the New York-based environmentalists because if you were truly environmentalists you wouldn't have a storm surge system and a sanitary system hooked together here that requires you to close your beaches 10 times a year. You'd hire an army of people to pick up plastic bottles off the street and newspapers off the street and it wouldn't all go into the rivers. But you know, these are people who have a great deal of influence with the president and I think he had lost some of their confidence and he needed to do something to deliver a victory for environmentalists."

The CEO has been thinking about the message the president should have delivered in January when he rejected the pipeline. "What he should have said is: 'OK, so we're not going to build Keystone and you the American people, I just want you to know that this will result in higher gasoline and diesel prices for you for the rest of your lives because I just woke Canada up from a 50-year slumber and I slapped them in the face and they will now build a pipeline to Vancouver. And the Chinese today are celebrating. And as a consequence prices for oil in the U.S. will be higher.'"

New paper confirms wind controls Arctic sea ice extent

A paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters finds that Arctic sea ice extent is controlled by low-level winds which regulate the flow of ice through the Fram Strait. The findings confirm those of other recent papers showing that Arctic sea ice extent is a significant function of wind and currents, not just temperature.

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 39, L09704, 6 PP., 2012
doi:10.1029/2012GL051330

The role of summer surface wind anomalies in the summer Arctic sea ice extent in 2010 and 2011

Key Points

• Arctic sea ice in 2010 and 2011 was controlled by summer surface wind forcing
• Summer atmospheric conditions determine the amount of summer Arctic sea ice
• Anticyclonic wind anomalies play an important role in the retreat of sea ice

Masayo Ogi

Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokohama, Japan

John M. Wallace

Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

Strong summertime anticyclonic wind anomalies over the Arctic Ocean, with anomalous flow toward the Fram Strait, during summer months of 2007 contributed to the record-low the Arctic sea-ice extent observed in September of that year. Had the summer winds over the Arctic during the summers of 2010 and 2011 been the same as those in 2007, September sea ice extent would have reached new record lows in those years as well. By regulating the flow of ice toward and through the Fram Strait, variations in low-level winds over the Arctic have contributed to the month-to-month, year-to-year, and decade-to-decade variability of sea ice extent.

Widespread rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet!

...started 8,600 years ago and over the next thousand years resulted in a rapid retreat of the ice sheet margin to become mainly land-based, according to a paper published last week in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. Around 800-1200 years ago during the Medieval Warming Period, the Vikings settled and farmed Greenland, but perished during the Little Ice Age, their farms still covered by permafrost today.

Early Holocene large-scale meltwater discharge from Greenland documented by foraminifera and sediment parameters

• Marit-Solveig Seidenkrantz^a, , , 
• Hanne Ebbesen^b, 
• Steffen Aagaard-Sørensen^a, 1, 
• Matthias Moros^c,
• Jeremy M. Lloyd^d, 
• Jesper Olsen^e, 
• Mads Faurschou Knudsen^a, 
• Antoon Kuijpers^b

• ^a Centre for Past Climate Studies, Department of Geoscience, Aarhus University, Denmark
• ^b Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), Denmark
• ^c Institute for Baltic Sea Research, Warnemünde, Germany and Uni Bjerknes Centre, Bergen, Norway
• ^d Department of Geography, University of Durham, UK
• ^e Centre for Climate, the Environment & Chronology (14CHRONO), Queen's University Belfast, UK

• Received 22 December 2010. Revised 16 December 2011. Accepted 8 April 2012. Available online 18 April 2012.

• http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2012.04.006, How to Cite or Link Using DOI

• 
  
  Abstract

Records of foraminiferal assemblages combined with lithological properties (grain size, magnetic parameters and XRF data) of marine sediment cores from West Greenland coastal waters and the adjacent Labrador Sea document widespread early Holocene meltwater discharge. This discharge is concluded to originate from large-scale melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) having started prior to 8,600 calendar years BP [before the present] and ended at about 7,700-7,500 calendar years BP, when the Greenland Ice Sheet margin had withdrawn from the fjords and become mainly land-based. The benthic foraminiferal record from one of the coastal sites mainly reflects West Greenland Current (WGC) subsurface water properties and to a minor degree surface productivity. The most significant feature in this record is an abrupt shift to a higher-productivity regime around ~ 7,700 cal. yr BP. We suggest that the cessation of a widespread GIS meltwater discharge at that time favoured an increased influence of (sub)surface water of Atlantic origin and initiation of modern subpolar gyre circulation enabling Labrador Sea deep convection. Further offshore, a record of planktonic foraminiferal assemblages shows an oceanographic change at ca. 9,500 cal. yr BP, while a gradual but marked change in the planktonic foraminiferal assemblage between 8,800-7,000 cal. yr BP may be related to a narrowing of the WGC low-salinity surface water belt. The oceanic regime off West Greenland prior to ~ 7,800 cal. yr BP was thus characterised by the presence of a permanent and widespread meltwater surface layer, presumably preventing deep convection in this region. Apart from indications of a slight decrease in meltwater discharge by the benthic foraminiferal fauna data, neither of the records shows any clear signal of a regionally important 8.2 ka event.

Highlights

► Large-scale melt water plumes from Greenland Ice Sheet in Early Holocene ► Rapid glacial retreat of West Greenland ice sheet in early Holocene ► A strong West Greenland Current existed already in early Holocene ► Modern oceanographic conditions established ~ 7,700-7,500 cal yrs BP ► No or very little indication of 8.2 ka event off West Greenland

NOAA data shows extreme weather was as common a century ago

The latest agitprop from AGW alarmists is that the weather has become more extreme. However, the NOAA US Climate Extremes Index shows over the 50 years 1910-1960 there were 22 years with weather extremes that exceeded the mean, compared to 20 years that exceeded the mean over the following 50 years 1960-2010. The 9 year  smoothed data was higher in 1911 than 2010, back when CO2 was "safe." Reporting of weather events has greatly improved since the early 1900's and therefore the index may underestimate the number of extreme events before the modern age.