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Published Date: 07 January 2008
I understand that the Russian Academy of Science forecasts "global cooling", based on the history of real climate, taking into account terrestrial precession, instability of ocean currents, solar activity and luminosity etc.
Now we have further confirmation from the Space and Science Research Centre, in Orlando, US. Its investigations of sunspot activity over the past 6,000 years demonstrate the relationship between the number of sunspots and the climate, ie the lower the sunspot count the colder the climate.

A count of less than 50 means a period of intense cold. I am not talking about the next Ice Age, but equivalent to the Little Ice Age of the 16/17th century. It could start with solar cycle 24, which starts this spring, making things colder, by the next three years, and really hit a low with solar cycle 25. This will come about, regardless of the billions wasted trying to prevent global warming. The changes in the Sun are unstoppable.

ROBERT PATE
Old Edinburgh Road
Minnigaff, Wigtownshire



Page 1 of 1

  • Last Updated: 06 January 2008 8:16 PM
  • Source: The Scotsman
  • Location: Edinburgh
 
1

Unimpressed one,

07/01/2008 08:22:09
"This will come about, regardless of the billions wasted trying to prevent global warming. The changes in the Sun are unstoppable." An inconvenient truth for some. However until this becomes obvious even to our dim-witted elected representatives, it will not prevent the green loonies from attempting to force their control agendas on the rest of us.
2

Guthrie,

Edinburgh 07/01/2008 09:32:30
Umm, the predictions by NASA etc for solar cycle 24 are that there will be a slightly reduced number of sunspots; off the top of my head around 120 or such. This is not the same as a cessation of sunspot activity. Making such predictions as Robert Pate does is very dodgy, due to the lack of scientific observations of the last Maunder minimum.
3

fred bloggs,

Edinburgh 07/01/2008 10:06:37
Measurements of solar output since 1978 show a steady rise and fall over the 11-year sunspot cycle, but no upwards or downward trend .

Also, there is no trend in direct measurements of the Sun's ultraviolet output or in cosmic rays. So for the period for which we have direct, reliable records, the Earth has warmed dramatically even though there has been no corresponding rise in any kind of solar activity.
4

fred bloggs,

Edinburgh 07/01/2008 10:20:21
The above mentioned 'Space and Science Research Centre/Center' appears to be bogus. The very name gives it away: 'Space AND Science'? Is space somehow outwith science???
5

Unimpressed one,

07/01/2008 10:55:47
"Earth has warmed dramatically" Are you referring to the 0.6 degrees in a century or the Marvel comic statistics of Gore et al.?
6

Guthrie,

Edinburgh 07/01/2008 11:03:52
Fred- as far as I can see the origin is an observatory report from 2006. I cannot see any evidence that the report is based on decent scientific observations and modelling.

So it is doubly funny that denialists such as Pate seize upon it, when it is less well supported than the IPCC reports.
7

Neil,

Glasgow 07/01/2008 11:05:57
http://spaceandscience.net/
Links to the Space & Science Research Centre & if it does not exist the building is an extremely convincing facade. Since I could find this easily by googling I would be interested in Fred's evidence of its non-existence.

I suspect one of the reasons the media have been replacing the term "global warming" with the more amorphous "climate change" is that they will be able to continue deluging us with scare stories without having to admit that they lied to us about warming (or indeed lied in the 70s & early 80s with their ice age scare.
8

Slioch,

Scottish Highlands 07/01/2008 13:08:32
I think we will be learning quite a lot more about the Space & Science Research Centre in the near future.

As far as I can glean it is a one man operation, namely John L Casey, who has a BS degree in Physics and Mathematics and an MA degree in Management. The imposing looking building in Orlando, Florida that #7Neil mentions, and which the Space & Science Research Centre gives the impression belongs to it appears to house numerous other facilities: Googling the address gave me 2,310 responses. I scanned down the first fifty or so without finding any reference to Space & Science Research Centre and then found this:

http://people.tribe.net/cosmogenesis23122007/blog/17354614-0fa1-42a9-8b29-23dc94833a3a

which suggests others have their doubts as well! (This link also includes the Space & Science Research Centre press release that gave rise to Robert Pate's letter, also on their web-site).

As for the science behind this: a few preliminary thoughts.

1. The press release claims the Space & Science Research Centre (SSRC) confirms a Nasa announcement. This latter was in May 2006, predicting a lower Solar Cycle 25 peaking around 2022. The SSRC also claims a lower Solar Cycle 24 starting in about 3 years.

2. The SSRC press release claims Casey has found a "series of solar cycles ... so predictable that they can be used to roughly forecast the next series of climate changes many decades in advance. I have verified the accuracy of these cycles’ behavior over the last 1,100 years relative to temperatures on Earth, to well over 90%”, he says.

Just think about that remarkable claim for a minute. In order to claim that one series of measurements (solar activity) is meaningfully in agreement "to well over 90%" with another series of pre-existing measurements (average global temperatures) requires AT LEAST that the latter are actually known to that level of accuracy for the last 1100 years. I think anyone who is familiar with the "hockey stick" controversy would
9

Slioch,

Scottish Highlands 07/01/2008 13:10:08
contd.

Just think about that remarkable claim for a minute. In order to claim that one series of measurements (solar activity) is meaningfully in agreement "to well over 90%" with another series of pre-existing measurements (average global temperatures) requires AT LEAST that the latter are actually known to that level of accuracy for the last 1100 years. I think anyone who is familiar with the "hockey stick" controversy would acknowledge that that is not the case. This suggests the whole basis of Casey's proposition is shakey.

3. Solar cycles increased in amplitude between c.1940 and c.1960, during which time global temperatures were falling - the opposite to what Casey suggests should happen.

4. Whatever the truth or otherwise of Casey's proposition, it does not negate the effect of CO2 on global temperatures.

5. Should solar forcings cause a cooling in the near future a) it would be good news, in that it will give us more time to control CO2, and b) bad news because it will engender a false sense of security. Once the sun returns to normal (and nobody is suggesting it will not) the AGW effect would return with a vengeance.




10

fred bloggs,

Edinburgh 07/01/2008 14:29:16
7. Neil: Slioch's posts confirm my suspicion that SSRC is bogus.

The phrase 'climate change' was introduced by the climate sceptics (e.g. US and other governments; fossil fuel industries etc.) a while ago because it sounds less disturbing than 'global warming'.
11

Guthrie,

Edinburgh 07/01/2008 15:49:11
HHmm, one would say exactly the same thing about yourself and Gordon, Dave. A blind faith that global warming isn't happening, or, if it is, its not our fault, or, if it is and its our fault there's nothing we can do about it. Unfortunately, as your comments show, you have nothing to back up your faith.
12

Neil,

Glasgow 07/01/2008 16:36:55
"Met Office, 3 January 2008
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20080103.html

2008 is set to be cooler globally than recent years say Met Office and University of East Anglia climate scientists, but is still forecast to be one of the top-ten warmest years."

While the Met are obviously not spinning this as an end to warming it is hardly "blind faith" to say that if it is getting cooler this is not evidence that it is getting warmer.

Perhaps it is purely a coincidence that those, like the BBC, who are now using the term "climate change" instead of "global warming" do not thus look quite so ludicrous as it cools.
13

fred bloggs,

Edinburgh 07/01/2008 17:30:23
14:

Far from being the work of a cabal of scientists concerned that their predictions may on global warming may have to be reversed the recent pre-eminence of "climate change" can be credited to one Frank Luntz, a republican pollster and communications guru who in a 2002 memo advised President Bush to ditch the term "global warming" in favour of "climate change".

In the memo, which was leaked in 2004 and also advised the administration to step up its attempts to cast doubt on the science surrounding global warming, Luntz recommended that "climate change" would appear less threatening to voters than the more apocalyptic "global warming".

The advice was evidently acted on with the phrase "global warming" all but disappearing from President Bush's speeches between 2001 and 2002.

14

Neil,

Glasgow 07/01/2008 18:14:23
Which doesn't explain why the BBC & alarmists in the media are so keen to use it.

Reading between your lines Bush merely stopped using the GW term rather than being the first to use the CC term.
15

Slioch,

Scottish Highlands 07/01/2008 18:32:54
The MET office forecast for 2008 being cooler globally than recent years is based on the presence of a La Nina in the year ahead. This has the opposite effect on global temperatures than the El Nino (like the one that caused the spike in temperatures in 1998).
16

fred bloggs,

Edinburgh 07/01/2008 18:40:36
17. The US and other nations pressured the IPCC to use the insipid 'climate change' instead of the robust 'global warming' in their published assessments, and now it seems to have taken over in a kind of perverted political correctness. One might say that the sceptics have claimed a small victory in their propaganda war to cast doubt on the validity of the science by the use of precious language.
17

fred bloggs,

Edinburgh 07/01/2008 18:46:28
19 cont:

'The US appears to have led the way in attempting to weaken the IPCC report’s findings. According to the Washington Post, “US negotiators managed to eliminate language in one section that called for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, said Patricia Romero Lankao,” one of the lead authors of the report and a scientist from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

Changes to the report documented by the AP include first revising and then removing the qualification “very high confidence” from a statement affirming the impact of climate change on natural systems. A statement concluding that “hundreds of millions” will be affected by flooding was reduced to “many millions.” Also, a statement that 120 million people will be at risk of hunger because of global warming was removed entirely.

The pressure to water down the IPCC assessment parallels developments in the US with the Bush administration’s political interference in governmental climate research. There have been numerous reports of government scientists being pressured to remove references to climate change in their work, or tone down conclusions they had reached on the likelihood and effects of global warming.'

18

Guthrie,

Edinburgh 07/01/2008 19:03:45
Ahh, Gordon, you still havn't learnt. Firstly, the global cooling scare was based, if anything, upon the boring news that the world was likely to head back into a new ice age, in maybe 10,000 years time. That some media folks got excited and your school scarred you for life, does not in any way affect the simple facts of the case, which are that there was no scientific consnsus that we were heading back into an immediate ice age.
19

Unimpressed one,

07/01/2008 19:29:49
All you global warming/climate change/chaos believers are quite incredible. Last year the southern hemisphere had record low temperatures and STILL you believe the BBC/ Hadley/IPCC crap that 2007 was one of the warmest years on record! You need to be really into a belief system as opposed to rational thinkers to have swallowed this tripe. Still, you do love your theories as opposed to facts, and sadly for you warmists, it is facts that will win the day. No doubt when the climate doesn't turn out to be the 'catastrophe' as predicted you will have your theories ready to support your new belief system. Quite pathetic.
20

fred bloggs,

Edinburgh 07/01/2008 20:02:46
22.
Global warming is a conclusion based on observations of a great many global indicators. By far the most straightforward evidence is the actual surface temperature record.

The two most reputable globally and seasonally averaged temperature trend analyses are the NASA GISS direct surface temperature analysis, and the CRU direct surface temperature analysis.

Both trends are definitely and significantly up. In addition to direct measurements of surface temperature, there are many other measurements and indicators that support the general direction and magnitude of the change the earth is currently undergoing.

21

fred bloggs,

Edinburgh 07/01/2008 20:18:17
This summer, Texas was hit by exactly the kind of downpours and flooding expected in a greenhouse world, and Las Vegas and other cities broiled in record triple-digit temperatures. Just last week the most accurate study to date concluded that the length of heat waves in Europe has doubled, and their frequency nearly tripled, in the past century. The frequency of Atlantic hurricanes has already doubled in the last century. Snowpack whose water is crucial to both cities and farms is diminishing. It's enough to make you wish that climate change were a hoax, rather than the reality it is.'

- Newsweek, August 2007.
22

Guthrie,

Edinburgh 07/01/2008 23:04:04
Gordon, you'd say black was white if it was necessary to try and refute global warming.
23

Guthrie,

Edinburgh 14/01/2008 12:05:30
But yet you can't find any answer to the evidence we keep presenting showing that warming is happening and its mostly our fault. This continued lack of rational disputation shows you in a poor light.

 

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