The message has been loud and clear for many years—a community of scientists insisting that human activity is warming our planet, taking humanity to the edge of a precipice.  But now, as science begins to understand earth’s place in the electric solar system, the meaning of the present warming plateau becomes clearer. 

The Earth-Sun connection, together with the Sun’s galactic environment, can help to explain climate extremes of every kind. Today, new voices and new perspectives are bridging the theoretical gaps, and independent investigations have reached some startling conclusions. No one can know the future, but some of the electrical changes in our solar system could point to catastrophic change on the horizon.

Closing remarks

Climate extremes of every kind and having surveyed just about every argument in this climate change arena I am left to put my money on those climate extremes, back and forth, faster and faster and to greater extremes first and foremost. But to put me on the spot, force me choose between one of the extremes as the more likely future that we are going to see here on earth in the near term the evidence suggests it is going to be the cold.

Whether it’s a late frost that destroys states worth of crops or whether they’re forced to wait months to plant something.

If we go into that grand [solar] minimum and that pattern begins, it is unlikely to change for decades. Perhaps our current temperature focus requires calibration; perhaps something is amiss in science and that notion that something is amiss in science is like second nature to a far larger portion of your professors and publishers than you might imagine. 

The Basics

It seems that a major source of confusion stems around this equation for radiative transfer of heat energy:

Q = σT24 – σT14

The term ‘Q’ is not the incoming solar energy nor does it represent a source of energy at all. From that incorrect interpretation of the equation arises all sorts of further misinterpretations and bad physics.  It’s where the whole incorrect idea of backradiation heating arises and all of the various arguments about cold helping to make something warmer hotter still.  I address that misinterpretation of the equation many times on this blog, but here I do it up front:

http://climateofsophistry.com/2013/12/08/revisiting-the-steel-greenhouse/

‘Q’ is the heat flow between the Sun and Earth and so is not the solar energy.  The solar energy flux would be a term on the right hand side, σT24 say, but factored for distance. How this is done is demonstrated in the link above.  ‘Q’ is actually zero if we consider the Earth to be in energy equilibrium with the solar input, which it should be within a small margin.

It is also discussed here:

http://climateofsophistry.com/2013/05/27/the-fraud-of-the-aghe-part-12-how-to-lie-with-math/

So to repeat, ‘Q’ can not be the solar heat input, when T1 and T2 are supposed to be the temperatures of the atmosphere and surface. That’s not what that equation is about at all.

NCAR’s Dr. Kevin Trenberth was a lead author of the IPCC’s 2nd, 3rd and 4th Assessment Reports.  Near to the publication of the IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report 7 years ago,  Dr. Trenberth penned a blog post at Nature.com Predictions of climate—a blog post that exposed many critical weaknesses in the climate models used by the IPCC for divining the future of climate on Earth.  The post was filled with extraordinary quotes, including:

• …none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate.
• In particular, the state of the oceans, sea ice, and soil moisture has no relationship to the observed state at any recent time in any of the IPCC models.
• Moreover, the starting climate state in several of the models may depart significantly from the real climate owing to model errors.
• … if the current state is one of drought then it is unlikely to get drier, but unrealistic model states and model biases can easily violate such constraints and project drier conditions.
• However, the science is not done because we do not have reliable or regional predictions of climate.
• So the science is just beginning.
• We will adapt to climate change. The question is whether it will be planned or not?

Those are powerful statements.  Please read Trenberth’s blog post in its entirety.  You’ll find those quotes were reinforced by much of the remaining text.   Occasionally, Trenberth interjected what could be considered global warming dogma to temper the critical aspects of the remainder.

With nasty cold fronts thrusting an icy and early winter across the continental U.S. — along with last winter described by USA Today as “one of the snowiest, coldest, most miserable on record” — climatologist John L. Casey thinks the weather pattern is here to stay for decades to come.

In fact, Casey, a former space shuttle engineer and NASA consultant, is out with the  provocative book “Dark Winter: How the Sun Is Causing a 30-Year Cold Spell,” which warns that a radical shift in global climate is underway, and that Al Gore and other environmentalists have it completely wrong.The earth, he says, is cooling, and cooling fast. And unless the scientific community and political leaders act soon, cold, dark days are ahead. 

The Christian Science Monitor (CSM) reports that “In recent years, environmental scientists have warily watched as the ice sheet on the coast of West Antarctica has begun melting at unprecedented rates. In May, NASA glaciologists declared that the catastrophic melt of the ice sheet to be ‘unstoppable.”

The news is dire indeed – unless you consider the actual facts.

The Antarctica is the earth’s southernmost land mass and is commonly termed its 7th continent. Its area comprises 14.0 million square km (5.4 million square miles) which actually makes it the fifth-largest continent on our planet. In comparison Australia is only one half the size of Antarctica. Despite its size, the continent does not have any permanent residents. There is a reason for that.

As the continent is centered on the earth’s South Pole it receives very little sunlight. A large part of the year there is nearly total darkness while we enjoy summer in the northern hemisphere. Most of Antarctica’s land mass is covered with an ice sheet one mile thick. That covers most of the continent except for a range of high mountain tops (up to 4.5 km or 2.5 miles in height) that rise above the continental ice sheet.

Like glaciers in Greenland and other parts of the world, the Antarctic ice sheet also continuously but slowly flows downhill into the ocean. At the water’s edge parts of the ice break off, a process termed calving, and result in free-floating icebergs that are a great danger to marine vessels. The Titanic was one of many ships lost that way.  The western Antarctic (land) ice sheet extends far into the sea. That part, of course, is particularly prone to dissolution by the water and to breaking off from the ice mass on land. According to the definition of “sea-ice” by Merriam Webster it ought to be termed that rather than land ice.

In any event, the loss of such sea-ice (formerly land ice) from the western Antarctica is well compensated for by an increasing land ice mass on the eastern part of the continent.

Boundary Condition Thought Envelope

The following diagram and math is what is taught at ivy-league universities in climate science and general physics programs.  In the many discussions I’ve had with advocates of climate alarm and its version of a greenhouse effect in the open atmosphere, it is always claimed to be a “toy model which nevertheless tells us important things about basic features of the atmosphere and climate“.

I hope people can understand that if the basic features which are believed in are incorrect, then it follows that the rest of the science done based upon the context of those false features will likewise be incorrect.  The problem would propagate.  The supposed ‘basic features’ one interprets or believes in establishes the paradigm, or the boundary condition envelope, within which subsequent interpretation and analysis will take place and be directed by.  Case in point is the Ptolemaic, Earth-centred conception of the system of planets, moon, and Sun: if you think that the Earth is the centre of the universe, are you subsequently going to have realistic ideas about the Earth and universe?

 Math of the Boundary Condition

The reasoning of the greenhouse effect diagram from above goes quite simply, as follows:

The temperature on the surface of the Earth is proportional to the energy received from sunlight plus the energy received from the atmosphere.

The energy received from the Sun is the Fs(1-A)/4 term, where Fs is the energy flux density from Sunlight, and A is the reflectivity of the Earth surface and so (1-A) is the portion of sunlight which gets absorbed and thus contributes to surface heating.

Typo alert:  The energy received from the atmosphere is the σT14 term; in the diagram, there should not be an ‘f’ in front of that term.  The typo is not mine, this diagram comes from Harvard University.  The temperature of the atmosphere, T1, is due to a fraction of the energy from the surface being absorbed into the atmosphere on that radiation’s way out to space.

And the energy at the surface, which is a result of the addition of the two above fluxes, is σT04.

As it is the surface temperature which is sought-after in this thought envelope, then the first two terms are added together so that:

1]                                   _σTo4 = Fs(1-A)/4 + σT14

Again, what this says is that the temperature on the Earth’s surface, T0, is proportional to the sum of the energy from sunlight, and from the atmosphere.

Physics of the Boundary Condition

The first problem with the paradigm being established here is that it treats the atmosphere as a source of energy.  Is it?  The sun and its sunlight is surely a source of energy, but is the atmosphere an actual source of energy, or is it actually just a store-house of energy in as much as something that has a temperature holds internal thermal energy?

It is the latter.  The atmosphere is not a source of energy.  It has no chemical or nuclear or other processes going on inside it which produces heat, and it simply passively holds a temperature…a cooler temperature, typically, than the ground surface.

A second problem is that if sunlight is averaged over the surface of the Earth, then the power density of sunlight is this Fs(1-A)/4 term which has a temperature forcing value of -18°C.

Does that make sense to you?  If you think of sunlight, in your paradigm, as only being so strong so as to heat things up to -18 then how are you going to melt ice into water, create clouds and water vapor, get a sunburn, or scald your feet on hot sand at the beach?  Isn’t sunlight responsible for all those things?  It is.   But if your paradigm treats the strength of sunlight as only -18°C, then you need to invent something else to make up the deficit, and that is why the atmosphere is conjectured to be an additional source of energy.

In an article published in The Guardian on November 7th, the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) is quoted saying that since 1980, across 25 European countries, house sparrow numbers have declined by 147 million, a 62{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} drop to 90 million.  According to the same report, starlings have fallen by 45 million, down to 40 million. As for Skylarks, their population went down by 37 million, to 43 million today. Says the author of the article, “It’s principally agricultural intensification that is behind the crisis.” (1)

Populations ranging from 40 to 90 million birds, for the most common of passerine species, are surprisingly small, spread as they are over 25 countries. Thus, if the researchers quoted by the RSPB are correct in their estimates, we are entitled to conclude that wind turbines and their power lines will have a significant impact on the number of all passerines flying our skies, eating our insects etc. Indeed, we know for instance that, in Spain alone, wind turbines kill 6 to 18 million birds and bats a year (2). Supposing that Europe has about 5 times as many wind turbines as Spain, the death toll for Europe would be 30 to 90 million birds and bats per annum – i.e. roughly 10 to 30 million birds a year, given that bats are attracted to wind turbines and killed about twice as often as birds. Comparing the numbers, and all things being equal, it is obvious that bird populations will erode further on account of wind farms, much faster than previously thought.

But no mention is made of this in the article. It’s not surprising, as both the RSPB and The Guardian are promoting the installation of ever more wind farms across Europe.

If I drive my car to my local Supermarket and back, a distance of 5 miles, the engine gets hot. Why is that? Because of work done.  To be more specific the engine has got hot by reason of compression, combustion and friction all of which are forms of work that produce an increase of temperature. This illustrates very simply the First Law of Thermodynamics.

If you were to put your hand on that hot engine – well, please don’t – it would also illustrate what is meant by thermal contact. Your hand would be scorched. As it is the air surrounding the engine is warmed.

If I leave my car to stand say overnight in my driveway, what will happen? The engine will cool down, without any work. I do not have to cool my engine because everything under the Sun will cool down naturally and inevitably by the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics. Even red-hot lava will cool to black basalt.

If I make a hot cup of coffee with boiling water at 100ºC the coffee will also cool by itself. If I wish to keep the coffee hot I can put it in a thermos flask. This will delay heat loss, but after 24 hours the coffee will be tepid. The coffee may be trapped, but heat is never trapped.

The Sun does not send heat through space but Solar Radiation. This radiation produces heat on contact with the surfaces of this planet, and the atmosphere is warmed from the bottom up – which explains why there is snow on the tops of mountains. The atmosphere cools by 2ºC for every 1,000 feet of altitude.

Clouds and Water Vapour, Carbon Dioxide and Methane all conspire to keep the Planet cool during the day, and also warmer during the night, by delaying (not trapping) heat. Thick cloud, fog and mist clearly intercept the Sun’s rays in the daytime. Only when the Sun breaks through is there a sudden rise in temperature.

Carbon Dioxide is a clear colourless gas, whose bubbles one can see in every carbonated drink – not to be confused with smoke. Carbon Dioxide is a food for plants – it is their breakfast, lunch and dinner. More Carbon Dioxide will lead to a greener world and increased food production. Plants not only feed off Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere but all produce Oxygen for us humans and all the animal kingdom to breathe. 

On the morning of March 2, 2005, a 14-year-old Japanese girl woke up scared. At first she thought someone was outside the house watching her, but then she decided the stranger must be inside. She wandered restlessly and, despite the cold weather, threw open all the windows. Later, over a meal, she declared, “The salad is poisoned.” Two days later, she said she wanted to kill herself.

This teenager with no history of mental illness was diagnosed with delirium. The night before the hallucinations started, she began taking an anti-influenza drug called Tamiflu (generic name: oseltamivir), which governments around the world have spent billions stockpiling for the next major flu outbreak.

But evidence released earlier this year by  Cochrane Collaboration, a London-based nonprofit, shows that a significant amount of negative data from the drug’s clinical trials were hidden from the public. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) knew about it, but the medical community did not; the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which doesn’t have the same access to unpublished data as regulators, had recommended the drug without being able to see the full picture. When results from those unpublished trials finally did emerge, they cast doubt over whether Tamiflu is as effective as the manufacturer says.

The revelation of hidden data bolstered a growing movement against what’s referred to within the research community as “publication bias,” in which scientists squirrel away mostly negative or inconclusive findings and broadcast only their positive ones.

Cold, hard empirical evidence accumulating in recent years proves that there are serious flaws in the climate change scenario predicated by alarmists. The theory of greenhouse gas warming tells us that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes more warming. But, if anything, satellites and ground-based thermometers show the reverse. So what do we do with the ‘theory?’

On 22 September, the winter maximum ice sheet extent across the Antarctic reached its greatest area since satellite measurement of the ice extent began in 1979. [1]

This is consistent with satellite lower tropospheric temperature data for the South Polar Region at Dr Roy Spencer’s Web site [2] which reveals a slight but not statistically significant rate of cooling for the region for the 36 years of satellite measurement. Coinciding with this, measurements of the atmospheric CO2 have been collected by NOAA at the South Pole and the data is available on the World Meteorological Organisation Web site [3] . It shows that the CO2 concentration has increased by 17.7{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} in the same period. Confirmation of this disparity is available on the WMO Web site where measurements by CSIRO are provided for the CO2 concentration at the Antarctic stations of Casey [4] and Mawson [5].

Comparison of the CO2 concentration with the station’s Average temperature data, available at the Bureau of Meteorology Web site [6], showed that both stations have experienced slight, -0.78 deg C per century at Casey and -1.43 deg C per century at Mawson, but not statistically significant cooling over the terms of the measurement. However the CO2 concentration has increased at Casey by 9{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} in 16.5 years and at Mawson 11.4{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} in 23 years.

These results are clear evidence that the IPCC proposition that increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration causes warming of the Earth’s surface is invalid. As the rate of increase of atmospheric CO2 has been much the same across the whole of the globe, the above puts paid to the CO2 – global warming fraud.

As Antarctic ice sheets grow, warmists claim it’s due to global warming! Recent news stories about the modern-day record extent of Antarctic ice came with the usual caveats from warmists claiming it was all because of global warming. Really? Well, there are some inconvenient facts that fly in the face of this warmist claim. 

While the record hiatus of global warming continues unabated toward the two-decade mark, warmists who cling to their discredited theories propping up claims of human-caused-global-warming are grasping at every opportunity to invoke their “chicken-little” claims of catastrophic global warming.

A recent news story documenting the modern-day record extent of Antarctic ice sheets came with a caveat from the warmist deniers of real climate. Essentially, warmists are claiming that, despite the growing ice sheets over oceans surrounding the continent of Antarctica, the snow cover on the continent is diminishing, and it is all because of human-caused-global-warming, despite nearly two decades of no global warming of any kind, human or otherwise!

There are volcanoes we know about and volcanoes we don’t know about. Both types can influence changes in ship transportation. There are active volcanoes that spew fumes into the atmosphere and release red-hot molten lava across the East Indies. The volcanoes of Hawaii spew molten, red-hot lava that flows toward the sea where it solidifies and adds to the coastline. Other volcanoes are active on the West Coast of South America.

Only in recent years – and courtesy of undersea cameras capable of operating at great depths and under extreme external pressure – has it become possible to view active undersea volcanoes that release red-hot lava near the sea floor of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, including as far north as Greenland and Scandinavia. And it was even more recently that some researchers suggested a possible undersea volcano releasing lava in Antarctic and contributing to melting sea ice in that region.

The pain remains, but at least not the crime. In a case watched by scientists around the world, six Italian seismologists who had been found guilty of manslaughter for failing to predict the L’Aquila earthquake have had their convictions overturned by an appeals court. 

They had been sentenced to six years in jail and a fine of €9 million for underestimating the risks ahead of an earthquake which struck the town in 2009. The town of L’Aquila, in the mountains of Abruzza, was devastated by the quake, which left 309 people dead.

The seismologists were members of a Major Risks Committee which met on March 31 of 2009, six days before a 6.3 magnitude earthquake, and the prosecution had accused them of underestimating the risk that several earlier tremors (a seismic storm) were the lead-up to a major ‘quake.

The Civil Protection Agency had based the prosecution on the contention that their assessment meant people stayed in L’Aquila who otherwise would have left.

Nature, which had earlier called the conviction “perverse” because it would chill scientists’ willingness to give honest opinions, reports the acquittal here. It says the appeals court decided that the seismologists and one other government official had ended up in front of court as the consequence of “botched communications in a highly stressed environment”.

Last week new NASA photographs proved methane lakes exist on Saturn’s moon, Titan, showing that such hydrocarbons (or so-called ‘fossil fuels’) are seemingly plentiful in our solar system.  This startling discovery turns on its head the long-held western belief that petroleum is a limited resource, because it is primarily derived (we had been told) from the fossilized remains of dead dinosaurs and rotted carbon-based vegetation.

But with that notion now exploded in the article ‘NASA Finds Lakes of Hydrocarbons on Saturn’s Moon, Titan‘ thanks to NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, energy scientists are now compelled to admit that petroleum oil is, in fact, substantially mineral in origin and occuring all through the galaxies.

Two Years ago it was reported that the Max Planck Institute, Germany have discovered that the Horse Head Nebula galaxy in the Orion constellation contains a vast field of hydrocarbon (see ‘Top German Scientists Discover ‘Fossil Fuel’ in the Stars‘). 

As such, long-held fears about Earth’s shrinking ‘fossil fuel’ reserves may be bogus. These important new cosmological discoveries come coincidentally at a time when huge succeses in American oil drilling technology (‘frakking‘) are bringing a glut of oil onto the energy markets, causing a slide in global oil prices. Fresh oil reserves are being struck all over – some miles beneath the oceans, where Dino the dinosaur never roamed.

As we reported (November 08, 2014) NASA’s new evidence supports previously controversial Russian claims that ‘fossil’ fuel theory is junk science.  No wonder skepticism of the wide-ranging Green Agenda grows and serious doubts are rising as to whether humans need to divest themselves of the supposedly fast-diminishing energy source after all.

New images from NASA have captured the beautiful golden [liquid methane] reflection of the sun on the polar sea of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. It is the latest image from a collaborative four year mission studying the Saturnine system. [Editor’s note: Fossil fuel theory busted?]

Flying by Titan in August, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft snapped the photo, which shows sunlight reflecting off Titan’s swirling surface. In the past, the spacecraft has captured separate images of the polar seas and the sun shining against them, but this is the first time both have been see together in one view, the agency stated.

The mirror-like reflection, known as the specular point, is in the south of Titan’s largest sea, Kraken Mare – just north of an island archipelago separating two separate parts of the sea. To the human eye, this would appear as a haze but through Cassini’s Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS), “real color information” is provided in wavelengths that correspond to atmospheric windows, making the moon’s surface visible.

“The highest resolution data from this flyby — the area seen immediately to the right of the sunlight — cover the labyrinth of channels that connect Kraken Mare to another large sea, Ligeia Mare. Ligeia Mare itself is partially covered in its northern reaches by a bright, arrow-shaped complex of clouds. The clouds are made of liquid methane droplets, and could be actively refilling the lakes with rainfall,” stated NASA.

Back when Wisconsin and western Russia once shared an address south of the equator, a violent collision in the asteroid belt blasted Earth with meteorites.

The space rock smashup showered Earth with up to 100 times more meteorites than today’s rate (a rock the size of a football field hits the planet about every 10,000 years). Yet, only a dozen or so impact craters have been found from the ancient bombardment 470 million years ago, during the Ordovician Period. Most are in North America, Sweden and western Russia. There are only about 185 known impact craters on Earth of any age, while the moon has more than 100,000.

But the number of Ordovician craters may soon take off. That’s because it’s easier and cheaper than ever to hunt down evidence that confirms an impact. The clinchers include shocked minerals, deformed rocks and structural features that match other craters. [Crash! 10 Biggest Impact Craters on Earth]

“Google Earth images are not good enough to identify an impact structure,” noted planetary geologist Christian Köeberl on Oct. 22, at the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia. During the Vancouver meeting, researchers presented new clues that bring suspected craters in Wisconsin, Kentucky and Tennessee closer to official listings as Ordovician impact craters.