‘Experts’ need to cool it with climate claims

AUSTRALIA’S so-called scientific community of academics and scientists, who are mostly government employees, has performed so dismally in recent times.

Worldwide, tens of thousands of scientists say there’s no convincing scientific evidence human-released CO2 will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the earth’s atmosphere.

But there has been hardly a dissenting squeak from those Australian scientists. Why are they so scared?

Interestingly, Perth CMFEU official, Gary Wood, claimed in The West Australian, (July 19 2011): “With 97 per cent of the world’s climate scientists agreeing that the climate is changing and that human activity is largely responsible for this change – that’s convincing enough for me and it should be enough for all of us to start acting.”

So I emailed Mr Wood asking for his source that humans were “largely responsible”.

He pointed me to the Skepticalscience website, which reads: “97 per cent of climate experts agree humans are causing global warming.”

So “largely responsible” replaced “causing”? 

Why the change?

And how many of those alleged 97 per cent believe humanity’s impact is miniscule and not worth bothering about by taxing CO2? 

The global heating panic is driven by power-hungry politicians, dependent scientists, United Nations bureaucrats, London and Wall Street merchant bankers who’ll earn nice commissions trading in emissions certificates, plus gullible disciples.

Let’s therefore consider what a major European bank has published on the question of sustaining humanity in light of likely ‘climate cooling’ descending upon Earth.

In its latest Agri-Commodities Monthly, Dutch-based ABN AMRO Bank NV alerts clients of reports that there are signs global cooling may be imminent.

One segment titled, ‘In the Shade’ says: “The sun is going into hibernation; solar activity is about to slow down; a mini-ice age will soon be upon us. 

“Given that some parts of Europe are stuck in drought, the short answer from farmers might be – there’s too much of it.

“But sorting the wheat from the chaff reveals some moderately disturbing longer-term possibilities for the Earth’s general climate – which if they come to pass, could have significant negative long-term implications for crop productivity.”

ACM said that Frank Hill, associate director of the US National Solar Observatory’s Solar Synoptic Network, recently wrote: “If we are right, this could be the last solar maximum we’ll see for a few decades. 

“That would affect everything from space exploration to earth’s climate.”

Dr Hill being ‘right’ refers to evidence from three sources suggesting the sun may well be heading for what’s described as a ‘lengthy period of slowing activity’.

One doesn’t need to be Copernicus to realise such a temperature slump would have grave implications for agri-commodities, thus banking and economic well-being.

It says on two previous occasions: “The Northern Hemisphere experienced significant cooling and diminished harvests, while there is increasing evidence that the less intensively researched Southern Hemisphere also saw its climate severely disrupted for a prolonged period.”

Scientists attending June’s meeting of the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society were alerted to studies of the solar interior, the sun’s visible surface, and its corona, suggest the next solar sunspot cycle, due to begin in 2019 “will be greatly reduced or may not happen at all.”

ACM said skeptics naturally viewed this as further confirming their long-held stance, with some contending mankind should be more concerned about global cooling.

“It’s an uncomfortable truth that, as far as vegetation is concerned, a slightly warmer climate is generally to be welcomed; but a cooler planet would spell extremely difficult times for both farmers and food consumers,” ACM continued.

“Unless, that is, all that this lower solar activity (if it happens) does is to simply offset what warming may have otherwise happened.

“But that kind of neat balancing of the equation, a zero-sum cancelling out of anthropogenically induced warming (through the release of rising levels of greenhouse gases) by slowing solar activity is a remote possibility; far more likely, simply because we cannot control solar activity (and neither greenhouse gas emissions, it seems) is that we face the risk of an increasingly cooler climate emerging over the next two decades – at precisely the same time as the world’s population is due to start climbing fast.”

If what Dr Hill contended is correct, there are “some extremely profound implications for the future of farming and food production”.

ACM next presented a brief outline of what it called ‘The Maunder Minimum’, named after early astronomer, Edward Maunder, who’d studied sunspot changes.

“We owe our knowledge of the variability of the occurrence of sunspots largely to the American astronomer John Eddy, who in 1976 published his landmark paper in Science,” it said.

“The Maunder Minimum was used by Eddy to refer to a period during 1645-1715 when sunspots became extremely rare, as noted by solar observations at the time.

“As with a previous minimum, the Spörer Minimum (1460-1550), which occurred before sunspots could be directly observed (the telescope was invented only in 1610), these episodes of much reduced solar activity coincided – a direct causal link cannot be established, to the chagrin of climate-change debaters – with extremely cold periods on earth.

“What is notable is that the Maunder Minimum coincided with the middle, and coldest part of, the so-called Little Ice Age, during which Europe and North America experienced bitterly cold winters.”

Eddy published in 1980 another article, ‘Climate and the Role of the Sun’, in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, from which ACM quoted extensively.

He wrote: “To this one star [the sun] we also owe all our food – through the chain of life that begins in simple plants and aquatic forms – the replenishment of oxygen through photosynthesis, and the generation of nearly all of the energy that we have ever used.

“The sun is the engine that drives the atmosphere; even minor changes in its output could alter atmospheric composition, temperature, or circulation.

“These changes, if persistent, could influence the long-term average of weather – called climate – and through climatic change bend the path of human progress.

“Present mathematical models of global climate suggest that a decrease as small as 1 per cent in the total radiation output of the sun is adequate to bring about a little ice age, of the sort that gripped Europe and America throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.

“The same numerical simulations indicate that a change of only 0.1 per cent in solar flux, if continued long enough, could bring about climatic changes of significant social and economic impact. 

“And a change of 10 per cent, in a negative direction, would be globally disastrous, inducing major glaciation and perhaps an ice-covered earth which could only recover after a far greater and less likely increase of about 50 per cent.”

It’s easy for Canberra’s scientific ignoramuses, including their economic advisers and dependent scientists, to dismiss such ominous contentions.

ACM concludes by noting that: “With the global balance of staple grains and cereals already so tight, and likely to get tighter as the world’s population grows and the area of arable land shrinks, we all need to hope that the worst-case prognosis does not come to pass.”

Hopefully Mr Wood, will, like me, tightly cross his fingers that warming, not cooling, is coming.