Heliogenic Climate Change

“The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is bad — no one would dispute it. But just how bad?  …

[T]he Deepwater Horizon blowout is not unprecedented, nor is it yet among the worst oil accidents in history. And its ultimate impact will depend on a long list of interlinked variables, including the weather, ocean currents, the properties of the oil involved and the success or failure of the frantic efforts to stanch the flow and remediate its effects.  …

The ruptured well, currently pouring an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil a day into the gulf, could flow for years and still not begin to approach the 36 billion gallons of oil spilled by retreating Iraqi forces when they left Kuwait in 1991. It is not yet close to the magnitude of the Ixtoc I blowout in the Bay of Campeche in Mexico in 1979, which spilled an estimated 140 million gallons of crude before the gusher could be stopped.

And it will have to get much worse before it approaches the impact of the Exxon Valdez accident of 1989, which contaminated 1,300 miles of largely untouched shoreline and killed tens of thousands of seabirds, otters and seals along with 250 eagles and 22 killer whales.  …

Engineers said the type of oil pouring out is lighter than the heavy crude spilled by the Exxon Valdez, evaporates more quickly and is easier to burn. It also appears to respond to the use of dispersants, which break up globs of oil and help them sink.  …

The winds are dying down and the seas are calming, allowing for renewed skimming operations and possible new controlled burns of oil on the surface. BP technicians are trying to inject dispersants deep below the surface, which could reduce the impact on aquatic life. Winds and currents could move the globs of emulsified oil away from coastal shellfish breeding grounds.  …

Thousands of gallons of oil flow into the gulf from natural undersea well seeps every day, engineers say …

After the Ixtoc spill 31 years ago, the second-largest oil release in history, the gulf rebounded. Within three years, there was little visible trace of the spill off the Mexican coast …”  “Gulf oil spill is bad, but how bad?“

“In my articles to date I have been unwilling to claim anything as grand as the creation of a new model of climate because until now I was unable to propose any solar mechanism that could result directly in global albedo changes without some other forcing agent or that could account for a direct solar cause of discontinuities in the temperature profile along the horizontal line of the oceanic thermohaline circulation.  I have now realised that the global albedo changes necessary and the changes in solar energy input to the oceans can be explained by the latitudinal shifts (beyond normal seasonal variation) of all the air circulation systems and in particular the net latitudinal positions of the three main cloud bands namely the two generated by the mid latitude jet streams plus the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ).

The secret lies in the declining angle of incidence of solar energy input from equator to poles.

It is apparent that the same size and density of cloud mass moved, say, 1000 miles nearer to the equator will have the following effects:

i) It will receive more intense irradiation from the sun and so will reflect more energy to space.

ii) It will reduce the amount of energy reaching the surface compared to what it would have let in if situated more poleward.

iii) In the northern hemisphere due to the current land/sea distribution the more equatorward the cloud moves the more ocean surface it will cover thus reducing total solar input to the oceans and reducing the rate of accretion to ocean energy content.

iv) It will produce cooling rains over a larger area of ocean surface.

As a rule the ITCZ is usually situated north of the equator because most ocean is in the southern hemisphere and it is ocean temperatures that dictate it’s position by governing the rate of energy transfer from oceans to air. Thus if the two mid latitude jets move equatorward at the same time as the ITCZ moves closer to the equator the combined effect on global albedo and the amount of solar energy able to penetrate the oceans will be substantial and would dwarf the other proposed effects on albedo from changes in cosmic ray intensity generating changes in cloud totals as per Svensmark and from suggested changes caused in upper cloud quantities by changes in atmospheric chemistry involving ozone which various other climate sceptics propose.

Thus the following NCM will incorporate my above described positional cause of changes in albedo and rates of energy input to the oceans rather than any of the other proposals. That then leads to a rather neat solution to the other theories’ problems with the timing of the various cycles as becomes clear below.”

Read more here:  “A new and effective climate model“

“New NASA measurements of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, part of the global ocean conveyor belt that helps regulate climate around the North Atlantic, show no significant slowing over the past 15 years. The data suggest the circulation may have even sped up slightly in the recent past.

The findings are the result of a new monitoring technique, developed by oceanographer Josh Willis of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., using measurements from ocean-observing satellites and profiling floats. The findings are reported in the March 25 issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

The Atlantic overturning circulation is a system of currents, including the Gulf Stream, that bring warm surface waters from the tropics northward into the North Atlantic. There, in the seas surrounding Greenland, the water cools, sinks to great depths and changes direction. What was once warm surface water heading north turns into cold deep water going south. This overturning is one part of the vast conveyor belt of ocean currents that move heat around the globe.  …

Willis found evidence that the circulation had sped up about 20 percent from 1993 to 2009. This is the longest direct record of variability in the Atlantic overturning to date and the only one at high latitudes.

The latest climate models predict the overturning circulation will slow down as greenhouse gases warm the planet and melting ice adds freshwater to the ocean.”  “NASA Study Finds Atlantic ‘Conveyor Belt’ Not Slowing“

“Penn State researchers and their international collaborators have discovered a diversity of corals harboring unusual species of symbiotic algae in the warm waters of the Andaman Sea in the northeastern Indian Ocean. “The existence of so many novel coral symbioses thriving in a place that is too warm for most corals gives us hope that coral reefs and the ecosystems they support may persist — at least in some places — in the face of global warming,” said the team’s leader, Penn State Assistant Professor of Biology Todd LaJeunesse.  …

“A major increase in maximum ocean wave heights off the Pacific Northwest in recent decades has forced scientists to re-evaluate how high a “100-year event” might be, and the new findings raise special concerns for flooding, coastal erosion and structural damage.  …

In a study just published online in the journal Coastal Engineering, scientists from Oregon State University and the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries report that the cause of these dramatically higher waves is not completely certain, but “likely due to Earth’s changing climate.”  …

“Possible causes might be changes in storm tracks, higher winds, more intense winter storms, or other factors,” Ruggiero said. “These probably are related to global warming” …

This research was supported by the Sectoral Application Research Program, a part of the Climate Program Office at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.”  “Maximum Height of Extreme Waves Up Dramatically in Pacific Northwest“

“The authors write that “coccolithophores are unicellular pelagic algae that represent a large part of the world ocean’s nannophytoplankton and play a significant role in the carbon cycle as major producers of biogenic calcium carbonate,” stating that “the inorganic fossil remains of coccolithophores consist of <20µm calcareous plates called coccoliths,” the small size and large abundance of which “make it possible to sample marine sediment cores at mm to sub-mm intervals with ultra-high resolution.”  …

The three researchers report that “morphometric parameters measured on E. Huxleyi, G. muellerae and G. oceanica indicate increasing coccolithophore shell carbonate mass from ~1917 until 2004 concomitant with rising pCO2 and sea surface temperature in the region of the SBB.” More specifically, they say that “a >33% increase in mean coccolith weight was determined for the order Isochrysidales over 87 years from ~1917 until 2004.”

Grelaud et al. write that “the last century has witnessed an increasing net influx of atmospheric carbon dioxide into the world’s oceans, a rising of pCO2 of surface waters, and under-saturation with respect to aragonite, especially along the North American Pacific margin,” which was the site of their study. These conditions, as they describe it, have been predicted by climate alarmists “to result in reduced coccolithophore carbonate mass and a concomitant decrease in size and weight of coccoliths [italics added].” As indicated by Grelaud et al.’s study, however, just the opposite appears to be the case in the real world, even in places where the predicted calcification reductions are expected to be greatest, as has also been demonstrated to be the case by the work of Iglesias-Rodriguez et al. (2008), who observed — in the words of Grelaud et al. — “a 40% increase in average coccolith weight across the last 220 years, as recorded in a box core from the subpoloar North Atlantic,” and as has been further confirmed by the complimentary work of Halloran et al. (2008).”  “Calcifying Coccolithophores off the California Coast“

“We all know how hard it is to say “sorry” when we’ve got something seriously wrong. Much easier, instead, to come up with a formula which says that even though some fools might perceive us to have been in error we were in fact right all along. This is why, just as they did once before when they stopped talking about “global warming” and started talking about “climate change” , climate-fear-promoters like [Charles] Clover are starting to big up this deadly new threat called “acidification of the oceans.”

This is no more a genuine threat than is AGW as you’ll learn if you read here, here, here, [here,] or this article at Watts Up With That. But it has the huge advantage, from the climate-fear-promotion industry’s point of view, that it continues to finger CO2 as the real villain of the piece. And so long as they can do that, it means our governments will still have the excuse they need to continue with their insanely expensive directives on carbon emissions; and it means – while most of us are impoverished by our inflated utility bills – that the thieves and fat cats who are on top of the carbon trading scam will get stupendously richer and richer.” “The scariest article you will read this year“

“Ocean acidification could cause fish to become “fatally attracted” to their predators, according to scientists.

A team studying the effects of acidification – caused by dissolved CO2 – on ocean reefs found that it leaves fish unable to “smell danger”.

Young clownfish that were reared in the acidified water became attracted to rather than repelled by the chemical signals released by predatory fish.” “Acid oceans leave fish at more risk from predators“

“Melting of the Arctic sea ice due to global warming is diluting surface waters and this is endangering some species of shellfish which need minerals in the water to form their shells and skeletons, scientists have found.

In a paper published in Science, they warned that this has serious implications for ecosystems in the Arctic.

“Organisms that are likely to be affected are from the family of pteropods, also mussels and clams on the sea floor,” said Fiona McLaughlin, research scientist at Canada’s Institute of Ocean Sciences’s department of fisheries and oceans. …

“It puts the food chain at risk. These organisms are a food source for fish that are a food source for seals and bears. The food chain in the Arctic is quite a short one, so it’s quite vulnerable,” she told Reuters by telephone.” “Melting Sea Ice Dilutes Water, Endangers Sea Life“

“Global warming is happening faster than expected and at worst could raise sea levels by up to 2 meters (6-1/2 ft) by 2100, a group of scientists said on Tuesday in a warning to next month’s U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen.

In what they called a “Copenhagen Diagnosis,” updating findings in a broader 2007 U.N. climate report, 26 experts urged action to cap rising world greenhouse gas emissions by 2015 or 2020 to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

“Climate change is accelerating beyond expectations,” a joint statement said …” “Climate Change Quickens, Seas Feared Up 2 meters“

“Since the 1997 international accord to fight global warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated — beyond some of the grimmest of warnings made back then.

As the world has talked for a dozen years about what to do next, new ship passages opened through the once frozen summer sea ice of the Arctic. In Greenland and Antarctica, ice sheets have lost trillions of tons of ice. Mountain glaciers in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa are shrinking faster than before. …

Even the gloomiest climate models back in the 1990s didn’t forecast results quite this bad so fast.

“The latest science is telling us we are in more trouble than we thought,” Janos Pasztor, climate adviser to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.” “Warming’s Impacts Sped up, Worsened Since Kyoto“

“The effects of climate change have driven women in communities in coastal areas in poor countries like the Philippines into dangerous work, and sometimes even the flesh trade, a United Nations official said.

Suneeta Mukherjee, country representative of the United Nations Food Population Fund (UNFPA), said women in the Philippines are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change in the country.

“Climate change could reduce income from farming and fishing, possibly driving some women into sex work and thereby increase HIV infection,” Mukherjee said during the Wednesday launch of the UNFPA annual State of World Population Report in Pasay City.” “‘Climate change pushes poor women to prostitution, dangerous work’“
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“[T]he 2009 Atlantic hurricane season has been the quietest in more than a decade, offering a reprieve for residents in the danger zone and a chance for insurance firms to refill depleted coffers.

With the peak of the season — late August to mid-October — now behind, the Atlantic-Caribbean basin has seen just two hurricanes and a total of eight tropical storms. …

If the full season, which runs from June through November, ended today, it would be the lowest number of storms since 1997. The last time an Atlantic season produced only two hurricanes was 1982. …

“There was for all intents and purposes no hurricane damage in the United States this year,” Robert Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute, told Reuters.

“It’s something that will help the insurance industry create very favorable earnings comparisons in the third quarter compared to the third quarter of last year,” he said. …

Crawford also said sea temperatures in the tropical Atlantic are cooler, by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.12 degrees Celsius) on average …

Hurricanes draw energy from warm water, so cooler sea temperatures can mean fewer and less intense storms. …

Hartwig said the industry’s … profit [was] $5.7 billion in the second quarter. “In the third quarter that number will have increased, potentially substantially …” “Quiet Atlantic hurricane season a boon for insurers“

This alarmist article in the Telegraph got a lot of attention from the warmmongers: “Arctic Ocean acid ‘will dissolve shells of sea creatures within 10 years’“. Rebuttal from IceCap, October 4:

“Alan [Siddons] calls attention to the following chart (enlarged here):

Alan continues: “Cold water absorbs CO2, right? And warm water releases it. So, on the premise that CO2 forms an acid in water, cold water should generally be more acidic and warm water be more basic. But one observes precisely the opposite: polar waters are generally more basic and equatorial waters more acidic! I draw two conclusions from this alone.

1. That Tom Segalstad is correct about CO2 being a very weak acid against the near-infinite buffering capacity of sea water, and
2. That Dr Floor Anthoni is correct, for aquatic life seemingly creates acidic conditions, in which it thrives

The more acidic the water, the higher biological productivity becomes, and the denser the amount of life. In the sea this is borne out by the observed fact that highly productive upwelling areas are more acidic. In other words, acidic seas are a good thing.

Indeed, given what the chart indicates, it can’t be the relative dearth of CO2 in warm water that drives the pH down; it has to be something else. And it can’t be the abundance of CO2 in cold water that makes it more basic. Biology is the key factor here, not chemistry and Henry’s Law.

Anthoni again:

Nothing in the sea works as expected: its physics, chemistry, biochemistry, physiology, biology and ecology do not work as thought; truth is often opposite to intuition. The sea is weirder than we can possibly imagine. To learn about the sea, forget what you were taught at school, open your mind and begin from scratch. “

See also this SPPI and CO2Science story by the Idso’s on CO2, warming and the coral.

“… as with all phenomena involving living organisms, the introduction of life into the ocean acidification picture greatly complicates things. Considerations of a suite of interrelated biological phenomena, for example, also make it much more difficult to draw such sweeping negative conclusions as are currently being discussed. Indeed, as shown in the next section, they even suggest that the rising CO2 content of earth’s atmosphere may well be a positive phenomenon, enhancing the growth rates of coral reefs and helping them to better withstand the many environmental stresses that truly are inimical to their well-being.”

The IPCC and the world scientists whose research is biased to confirm preconceived ideas need to start from scratch.”

Let’s see, the planet’s been cooling for a decade, the oceans have been cooling in recent years, ice is accumulating in the antarctic, the arctic was warmer in the 1930s and 1940s than today, but recently ocean currents have shifted, as they periodically do, temporarily bringing warmer water northward, and somehow this must be a man made calamity:

“Scientists say it’s a natural process — in one period the cold waters will have the upper hand, and in the next it’s the other way round. But the rapidly increasing temperatures of the subtropical oceans suggest that the balance could be tilted beyond natural variability, [Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute scientist Ruth] Curry says.

“We’ve actually measured the waters at their source and have seen their temperature going up, up, up in a way that can’t be explained without taking into account human influences,” she says. …

Helge Drange, professor of oceanography at Norway’s University of Bergen [says] “This can only be understood as a combined effect of natural variability and manmade warming” …

To many scientists, however, the shifts in ocean currents are no cause for celebration. Even if there’s natural variability, there’s concern that global warming may make the fluctuations more extreme.

And while some species thrive in warmer water, others that live on the edge of the Arctic, such as polar bears and seals, find their habitat melting away.

“We’re heading off to a climate extreme and this is just going to snowball,” says Curry, reflecting on the state of the global climate on the Greenpeace icebreaker hosting the Woods Hole research team.

“I think that we’ve done it, really kicked Earth’s climate system. And that says a lot,” she says. “It’s a beast. It’s huge. And to have moved it in as short a period of time as a 100 years, basically, to have done that is enormous.”” “Warming ocean melts Greenland glaciers, alters marine ecosystems” h/t reader Larry

“Cumulative primary production from the start of the PeECE III experiment of Egge et al. (2009), adapted from the authors’ paper.“

“Background
Three oceanic CO2-enrichment experiments (I, II and III) were carried out in 2001, 2003 and 2005 at the Marine Biological Station of the University of Bergen at Espegrend, Norway, where nine marine ecosystems were maintained within two-meter-diameter polyethylene bags submerged to a depth of ten meters in an adjacent fjord, three of which mesocosms were maintained at ambient levels of CO2 (1xCO2), while three others were maintained at 2xCO2 and three more at 3xCO2 (via aeration of the water column and the overlying atmosphere with CO2-enriched air), all of which was done within the context of the Pelagic Ecosystem CO2 Enrichment (PeECE) program, which enabled the conducting of the PeECE I, PeECE II and PeECE III experiments.

What was done
After a one-time addition of nutrients that were intended to initiate a phytoplankton bloom on the day prior to the start of their 24-day study, Egge et al. measured primary production in the nine mesocosms at two-day intervals during the PeECE III experiment, along with oxygen production and consumption, the presence of transparent exopolymer particles, and the composition of the phytoplanktonic community

What was learned
The seven scientists report that “in the second half of the experiment there was a tendency of higher production at elevated CO2 levels,” which was “visible from ca. day 10 in the cumulative production, with a significant difference between 3x and 1x CO2 from day 20 onward,” as shown in the figure below.

What it means
Egge et al. say their results “demonstrate a small, but statistically significant effect of elevated CO2 on daily primary production” that is “consistent with the over-consumption of dissolved inorganic carbon at elevated CO2 reported by Riebesell et al. (2007) and Bellerby et al. (2008).” These observations once again suggest that the planet’s rising atmospheric CO2 concentration may well stimulate oceanic primary production and thereby enable the sustaining of a greater population of higher-trophic-level marine organisms, many of which could ultimately end up on our dinner tables.” “Primary Production in Future CO2-Enriched Ocean Water“

NOAA recently claimed that July sea surface temperatures (SST) were the warmest on record for July. Alarmist AP journo Seth Borenstein then dutifully wrote a breathless news article. Now Roy Spencer has examined the claim:

Update (August 31) from Roy Spencer: “[I]t does look like July 2009 might well have experienced a warmer SST anomaly than July 1998, as was originally claimed by NOAA. (Remember, TMI can not see all of the global oceans, just equatorward of about 40 deg. N and S latitude.)” “Spurious SST Warming Revisited“

Update (August 27) from Roy Spencer: “After crunching data this week from two of our satellite-based microwave sensors, and from NOAA’s official sea surface temperature (SST) product ERSST v3b, I think the evidence is pretty clear:

The ERSST v3b product has a spurious warming since 1998 of about 0.2 deg. C, most of which occurred as a jump in 2001. …

Finally, the 0.15 to 0.20 deg. C warm bias in the NOAA SST product makes it virtually certain that July 2009 was not, as NOAA reported, a record high for global sea surface temperatures.” “Spurious Warming in New NOAA Ocean Temperature Product: The Smoking Gun“

Original (August 26 from Roy Spencer: “So, since we have another satellite dataset with a longer record that would allow a direct comparison between 1998 and 2009, I decided to analyze the full record from the TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI). …

The results are shown in the following three panels. The first panel shows monthly SST anomalies since January 1998, and as can be seen July 2009 came in about 0.06 deg. C below July 1998. At face value, this suggests that July 2009 might not have been a record. And as you can see from the first 3 weeks of August data, it looks like this month will come in even cooler. …

The third and final panel in the above figure shows that a substantial fraction of the monthly SST variability from year to year is due to the Southern Oscillation (El Nino/La Nina), and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, PDO.” “TRMM Satellite Suggests July 2009 Not a Record for Sea Surface Temperatures“

“As physicists who are familiar with the science issues, and as current and past members of the American Physical Society, we the undersigned urge the Council to revise its current statement* on climate change as follows, so as to more accurately represent the current state of the science:

Greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, accompany human industrial and agricultural activity. While substantial concern has been expressed that emissions may cause significant climate change, measured or reconstructed temperature records indicate that 20th – 21st century changes are neither exceptional nor persistent, and the historical and geological records show many periods warmer than today. In addition, there is an extensive scientific literature that examines beneficial effects of increased levels of carbon dioxide for both plants and animals.

Studies of a variety of natural processes, including ocean cycles and solar variability, indicate that they can account for variations in the Earth’s climate on the time scale of decades and centuries. Current climate models appear insufficiently reliable to properly account for natural and anthropogenic contributions to past climate change, much less project future climate.

The APS supports an objective scientific effort to understand the effects of all processes – natural and human — on the Earth’s climate and the biosphere’s response to climate change, and promotes technological options for meeting challenges of future climate changes, regardless of cause.” “Regarding the National Policy Statement on Climate Change of the APS Council: An Open Letter to the Council of the American Physical Society” h/t IceCap today
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“Abstract: Climate feedbacks are estimated from fluctuations in the outgoing radiation budget from the latest version of Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) nonscanner data. It appears, for the entire tropics, the observed outgoing radiation fluxes increase with the increase in sea surface temperatures (SSTs). The observed behavior of radiation fluxes implies negative feedback processes associated with relatively low climate sensitivity. This is the opposite of the behavior of 11 atmospheric models forced by the same SSTs. Therefore, the models display much higher climate sensitivity than is inferred from ERBE, though it is difficult to pin down such high sensitivities with any precision. Results also show, the feedback in ERBE is mostly from shortwave radiation while the feedback in the models is mostly from longwave radiation. Although such a test does not distinguish the mechanisms, this is important since the inconsistency of climate feedbacks constitutes a very fundamental problem in climate prediction.” “On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data” h/t WUWT
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“Three Australasian researchers have shown that natural forces are the dominant influence on climate, in a study just published in the highly-regarded Journal of Geophysical Research. According to this study little or none of the late 20th century global warming and cooling can be attributed to human activity.

The research, by Chris de Freitas, a climate scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, John McLean (Melbourne) and Bob Carter (James Cook University), finds that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a key indicator of global atmospheric temperatures seven months later. As an additional influence, intermittent volcanic activity injects cooling aerosols into the atmosphere and produces significant cooling.

“The surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean that made warming El Niño conditions more likely than they were over the previous 30 years and cooling La Niña conditions less likely” says corresponding author de Freitas.

“We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 80% of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century. It may even be more if the period of influence of major volcanoes can be more clearly identified and the corresponding data excluded from the analysis.”

Climate researchers have long been aware that ENSO events influence global temperature, for example causing a high temperature spike in 1998 and a subsequent fall as conditions moved to La Niña. It is also well known that volcanic activity has a cooling influence, and as is well documented by the effects of the 1991 Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption.

The new paper draws these two strands of climate control together and shows, by demonstrating a strong relationship between the Southern Oscillation and lower-atmospheric temperature, that ENSO has been a major temperature influence since continuous measurement of lower-atmospheric temperature first began in 1958.

According to the three researchers, ENSO-related warming during El Niño conditions is caused by a stronger Hadley Cell circulation moving warm tropical air into the mid-latitudes. During La Niña conditions the Pacific Ocean is cooler and the Walker circulation, west to east in the upper atmosphere along the equator, dominates.

“When climate models failed to retrospectively produce the temperatures since 1950 the modellers added some estimated influences of carbon dioxide to make up the shortfall,” says McLean.

“The IPCC acknowledges in its 4th Assessment Report that ENSO conditions cannot be predicted more than about 12 months ahead, so the output of climate models that could not predict ENSO conditions were being compared to temperatures during a period that was dominated by those influences. It’s no wonder that model outputs have been so inaccurate, and it is clear that future modelling must incorporate the ENSO effect if it is to be meaningful.”

Bob Carter, one of four scientists who has recently questioned the justification for the proposed Australian emissions trading scheme, says that this paper has significant consequences for public climate policy.

“The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions. The available data indicate that future global temperatures will continue to change primarily in response to ENSO cycling, volcanic activity and solar changes.”

“Our paper confirms what many scientists already know: which is that no scientific justification exists for emissions regulation, and that, irrespective of the severity of the cuts proposed, ETS (emission trading scheme) will exert no measurable effect on future climate.”” “Peer-Reviewed Study Rocks Climate Debate! ‘Nature not man responsible for recent global warming…little or none of late 20th century warming and cooling can be attributed to humans’” Abstract of paper here. h/t Climate Depot

Prior posts here, here, here, here, here, and here
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The Great Oracle reveals the future:

“The Great Barrier Reef will be so degraded by warming waters that it will be unrecognisable within 20 years, an eminent marine scientist has said.

Charlie Veron, former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, told The Times: “There is no way out, no loopholes. The Great Barrier Reef will be over within 20 years or so.”

Once carbon dioxide had hit the levels predicted for between 2030 and 2060, all coral reefs were doomed to extinction, he said. “They would be the world’s first global ecosystem to collapse. I have the backing of every coral reef scientist, every research organisation. I’ve spoken to them all. This is critical. This is reality.”” “Great Barrier Reef will be gone in 20 years, says Charlie Veron” h/t Greenie Watch

Lisa Jackson says this with a straight face:

“The average American family would pay at most $1 a day more to fight climate change, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency told a Senate committee on Tuesday.

EPA head Lisa Jackson said carbon cutting legislation would, on average, amount to a 50 cent per day cost per household in 2020 and edge up for wealthier families, people who drive long distances and those living in states dependent on coal for electricity.

But even a doubling of the national average would only cost families $1 per day, Jackson said.

“Can anyone honestly say that the head of an American household would not spend a dollar a day to safeguard the well-being of his or her children?” Jackson asked the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.” “A Daily Dollar Could Prevent Climate Change: EPA“

Nude enviros protest power generation:

“ROME – Environmentalists broke into power stations across Italy and shed their clothes in downtown Rome on Wednesday as world leaders discussed a new deal to combat global warming.” “G-8 protesters scale smokestacks in Italy“

The gods gather in L’Aquila:

“L’AQUILA, Italy (Reuters) – The Group of Eight major economies has agreed to limit the rise in global temperatures to no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said on Wednesday.” “G8 agrees to limit temperature rise: Swedish PM“

“Under proposals from the Cquestrate project, they aim to reduce ocean acidity while increasingly absorbing CO2 by converting limestone into lime, thereby adding the lime to seawater.

The lime would react with CO2 dissolved in the water, converting it into bicarbonate ions, thus decreasing the acidity of the water, allowing the oceans to absorb more CO2 from the air and reduce global warming.” “Lime in oceans ‘would reduce CO2 levels’“

“[A] controversial new paper published in New Journal of Physics (co-owned by the Institute of Physics and the German Physical Society), ‘Secular variation of the Earth’s magnetic field: induced by the ocean flow?’, will deflect geophysicists’ attention from postulated motion of conducting fluids in the Earth’s core, the twentieth century’s answer to the mysteries of geomagnetism and magnetosphere.

Professor Gregory Ryskin from the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University in Illinois, US, has defied the long-standing convention by applying equations from magnetohydrodynamics to our oceans’ salt water (which conducts electricity) and found that the long-term changes (the secular variation) in the Earth’s main magnetic field are possibly induced by our oceans’ circulation.

With calculations thus confirming Ryskin’s suspicions, there were also time and space correlations – specific indications of the integral relationship between the oceans and our magnetospheric buffer. For example, researchers had recorded changes in the intensity of current circulation in the North Atlantic; Ryskin shows that these appear strongly correlated with sharp changes in the rate of geomagnetic secular variation (“geomagnetic jerks”).

Tim Smith, senior publisher of the New Journal of Physics, said, “This article is controversial and will no doubt cause vigorous debate, and possibly strong opposition, from some parts of the geomagnetism community. As the author acknowledges, the results by no means constitute a proof but they do suggest the need for further research into the possibility of a direct connection between ocean flow and the secular variation of the geomagnetic field.” …

In the early 1920s, Einstein highlighted the large challenge that understanding our Magnetosphere poses. It was later suggested that the Earth’s magnetic field could be a result of the flow of electrically-conducting fluid deep inside the Earth acting as a dynamo.

In the second half of the twentieth century, the dynamo theory, describing the process through which a rotating, convecting, and electrically conducting fluid acts to maintain a magnetic field, was used to explain how hot iron in the outer core of the Earth creates a magnetosphere. …

Familiar text book images that illustrate a flow of hot and highly electrically-conducting fluid at the core of the Earth are based on conjecture and could now be rendered invalid. As the flow of fluids at the Earth’s core cannot be measured or observed, theories about changes in the magnetosphere have been used, inversely, to infer the existence of such flow at the core of the Earth.

While Ryskin’s research looks only at long-term changes in the Earth’s magnetic field, he points out that, “If secular variation is caused by the ocean flow, the entire concept of the dynamo operating in the Earth’s core is called into question: there exists no other evidence of hydrodynamic flow in the core.” …

Dr Raymond Shaw, professor of atmospheric physics at Michigan Technological University, said, “It should be kept in mind that the idea Professor Ryskin is proposing in his paper, if valid, has the potential to deem irrelevant the ruling paradigm of geomagnetism, so it will be no surprise to find individuals who are strongly opposed or critical.”" “The Earth’s magnetic field remains a charged mystery“