… leading climatologists and meteorologists met in New York at the Energy Business Watch Climate and Hurricane Forum. The theme of the forum strongly suggested that a period of global cooling is about emerge, though possible concerns for a political backlash kept it from being spelled out.
However, the message was loud and clear, a cyclical global warming trend may be coming to an end for a variety of reasons, and a new cooling cycle could impact the energy markets in a big way.
Words like “highly possible,” “likely” or “reasonably convincing” about what may soon occur were used frequently. Then there were other words like “mass pattern shift” and “wholesale change in anomalies” and “changes in global circulation.”
Noted presenters, such as William Gray, Harry van Loon, Rol Madden and Dave Melita, signaled in the strongest terms that huge climate changes are afoot. Each weather guru, from a different angle, suggested that global warming is part of a cycle that is nearing an end. All agreed the earth is in a warm cycle right now, and has been for a while, but that is about to change significantly.
Is the chameleon starting to change his colours? The fruit fly at peninsulanewsreview.com
So… I want to know… all of the things they’ve made us do to stop global warming… will that have make global cooling worse?
Our Sun has not regained it’s spots – way, way overdue !
Ice Ages are no fun 🙁
[Western Europe experienced a general cooling of the climate between the years 1150 and 1460 and a very cold climate between 1560 and 1850 that brought dire consequences to its peoples. The colder weather impacted agriculture, health, economics, social strife, emigration, and even art and literature.]Scott A. Mandia
Even A&L ?! Heaven forbid.
[The cooler climate during the LIA had a huge impact on the health of Europeans. As mentioned earlier, dearth and famine killed millions and poor nutrition decreased the stature of the Vikings in Greenland and Iceland.]SAM
Smaller stature !? – May be hope for Big Al yet.
[In addition to increasing grain prices and lower wine production, there were many examples of economic impact by the dramatic cooling of the climate. Due to famine, storms, and growth of glaciers ,many farmsteads were destroyed, which resulted in less tax revenues collected due to decreased value of the properties (Lamb, 1995.)]SAM
Less tax collected !? Dion! Mon Dieu !!!
[One group in particular suffered from the poor conditions – people thought to be witches (Behringer, 1999.) Weather-making was thought to be among the traditional abilities of witches and during the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries many saw a great witch conspiracy. Extensive witch hunts took place during the most severe years of the LIA, as people looked for scapegoats to blame for their suffering.]SAM
Suzuki’s ‘jail them’ cry is nothing new !
[On July 13, just at harvest time, a severe hailstorm (which typically occurs when there is very cold air aloft) destroyed what little crops were left. From that bad harvest of 1788 came the bread riots of 1789 which led to Marie Antoinette’s alleged remark “Let them eat cake,” and the storming of the Bastille.]SAM
Good ole’ times. Today, the Warmongers want us to give up everything !
[.” Percy Shelley also referred to a glacier in his poem “Mont Blanc” when he wrote “…and wall impregnable of beaming ice. The race of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling vanish…” ]SAM
Fire or Ice – both tools of the Fearmongers.
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/little_ice_age.html
Just great. Now that oil is $145/b, it’s going to get colder. 🙂
We will all start getting exited anout what we can do to warm things up.
Thank god its getting colder again. These 2 month long Canadian summers are killing me.
It will be interesting if we see the Al Gores and the David Suzuki’s of the world start to call on everyone to increase their CO2 production to reset the global thermostat. Somehow I don’t think so.
Just you wait. The global cooling trend will soon be blamed on global warming.
There is a reason ‘Global Warming’ became ‘Climate Change’. I have to give it to the Al Gore/David Suzuki crowd, they certainly can adapt their scare mongering to every season.
So the greening of our tax gouge will be more of a weather tax than a climate tax. It’s all such horse shit.
I don’t know about other countries, but it’s pretty clear that all this climate tax is about wealth transfer from the productive to the unproductive members of the great Canadian socialist, multicultural, peace keeping, bilingual, metric systemed, politically correct, better than American, feminized, holier than thou, Trudeaupean, emotionally disturbed, low self-esteemed, out of control fragile egoed, excuse for a free, capitalistic democracy.
Che and Fidel, Mou and Stalin, and the CBC, will all be proud of us.
I am absolutely ashamed of this county, but unfortunately there is not where left to run. It seem that all Western countries have this same disease, but at different stages.
No matter how much you rub the Left’s noses in their own pee on the rug, they will never let go of this opportunity to destroy what we have built in the name of fairness. If they get what they think they are after, boy, will they regret it.
I see the truth has finally come out: The CO2 emissions from my truck killing off the sunspots and making the Earth colder while global warming is still sinking Tuvalu.
We will freeze and cook both at the same time, simultaneously even, and all because of The Phantom’s truck. And cow farts. And George Bush.
But Miss Stephanie Dion in her lovely Pink Shift will save us all from the eeeeevile Phantom’s truck. We will all be struck with poverty of course, but every cent we have is a small price to pay!
I have been farming in Manitoba for a while, and in the last few years I have seen some unusual cold weather phenomena. Things such as a hard frost in mid August, frequent spring frosts in late May, and now this year a significantly cooler growing season average temperature (that extends deep into the US) where we are 10 or so days behind normal development in most of our crops, and worried about frost before a finish.
I know how much a cooling trend will cost, and I am worried. We all should be.
Ah, but more enlightened mortals know that global cooling is explained by global warming models.
From the linked story:- “We’re learning that internal climate variability is important and can mask the effects of human-induced global change,” said the paper’s lead author, Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany. “In the end this gives more confidence in the long-term projections.”
Later:-“Other researchers, including NASA scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., reported separately on April 21 that a slowly fluctuating oscillation in Pacific Ocean temperatures had shifted into its cool phase, a condition that is also thought to exert an overall temporary cooling of the climate.
These natural variations can also amplify warming, and that is likely to happen in future decades on and off as well, experts say.”
Gee….that explains it all!
And the NY Times could never be wrong about such an important topic.(sarc off)
Article at
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/01/science/earth/01climate.html?ref=science
Does this mean Al Gore has to give back his Oscar and Nobel Peace Prize?
Global cooling has the potential to be much more impactful than supposed global warming. A drop of a half a degree Celsius could bring on another Ice Age. Tree ring studies of flora caught in the last Ice Age indicate a very rapid transformation to icier conditions, about seven years.
An impending Ice Age, wow, that ought to have the GW transfer of wealth weasels back at the drawing board looking for a contingency plan. How would Tony Soprano play this possible development? Geez, the weather isn’t working, got it, let’s try water, those that have it versus those that don’t. Or, maybe potato eaters versus rice eaters.
When you can extort money off of nature, the possibilites are endless.
When the Ice Age hits though, good luck extorting protection money from south of the Equator coffers.
Woodporter
I read a history of the Hudsons Bay Company where the fur traders talked about Lake Winnipeg being covered with ice all summer. I wonder what crops you can grow in those conditions?
Well you know that the “error bars” in the model outputs are wide enough to accept a re-glaciation of the Canadian Shield.
The psudo- scientists can’t re-cant fast enough being as obtuse as possible. Thoughts of global money flow dying, has inspired A new production. That now has to be recast into a drama with a Twist, for the next round of green dreams of a money machine.
If the West goes into an iceage, who will produce food? Hey, guess where all us Westerners will go? We’ll head South with all our crazy ideas about how government is bad and people can be responsible for themselves.
The first clear sign of an iceage and I’m getting some land in the South. Just for insurance for my kids. They can laugh at all the scientific-fundamentalists who thought the world was overheating.
This reminds me of a hypothesis put forward by Dr Fairbridge a few years ago. For any who would like to see what he said you can go to the following link. You may find it informative.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=bfeddc8e-90d7-4f54-9ca7-1f56fadc7c2b
From the findings of the New York seminar it appears the good the good Doctor may have been right.
Yuk!! I was hoping that my research was all wrong that that it was going to get warmer. Warmer is a time of prosperity, colder is a time of great hardship. If the farmers are nervous, so am I..although my many, many year wood pile is a comfort.
Pat
The kooks have been kookin the books for a long time, and when they need to kook up a fresh batch of lies, it wont be any problem cause the dirt bag journalists will do as the mad scientists tell em.
Retirement property in Texas …. looking better all the time!
None of this will change the minds of the committed. Posting over at realclimate is getting to be kind of a Alice in Wonderland experience. Just try and suggest that a change in the climate “signal” can be detected at the start of this century. You’ll get the answer that the definition of climate change is something that can only be confirmed after 30 years of “trend” (allegedly this is the “official” definition of climate change by the WMO) and you’ll also get the usual “sit down and shut up, this issue has already been decided” response (although not from the website monitors).
Following that logic through to it’s end, it means that some will still be believing the earth is the victim of man-made warming 25 or so years from now, no matter what the empirical data say.
For those of you that think Texas is Southern enough for a reglaciation period, I would categorize it as “high desert” at best.
Hello Costa Rica!
Love those tropical mountain rain forests.
I just hope the overdue magnetic “polar flip” doesn’t decide to crash the party. I’ve only got so much ski wax.
I’ve got carbon credits right here for Al Gore to buy when he needs to heat his mansion.
I think Canada is well positioned to sell road salt, salters and sanders to the Southern States. And training programs too – they don’t have a clue how to handle winter on their roads. One good snow/ice storm can make it impossible to move for several days down there.
Wonder which platform we should use? GM? Ford? Dodge? Here’s a thought – choose the one that kicks the CAW out first….
Note how they call the weather patterns that are confusing to them, “wholesale change in anomalies”.
Weather is one big anomaly, if the scientist would not mind. It is unpredictable for nary a few day ahead or out time.
They, the scientists may say that two days from now it will be such and such weather. They, the scientists know that they don’t know, though to save the day, they, the scientists will say that there was an unpredictable anomaly.
So much for the predictability of the weather, the climate, the near future of the planet. Don’t really need to be a scientist to predict that in the long term there are going to be cataclysms that will change the landscape, the oceans, the mountains, the river flows, will kill and exterminate animals, possibly people too.
In the longest term the planet will look unrecognizable to today.
So much for the scientists and their predictions.
Not that there is anything wrong with their scientizm.
Note, ‘scientizm’, you read it here first, sometime a person can’t help himself.
Sorry about this ‘few day ahead or out time.’ Of course it should have read few days ahead or our time. As mentioned before, sometimes a person can’t help himself.
[QUOTE]Does this mean Al Gore has to give back his Oscar and Nobel Peace Prize?
Global cooling has the potential to be much more impactful than supposed global warming. A drop of a half a degree Celsius could bring on another Ice Age. Tree ring studies of flora caught in the last Ice Age indicate a very rapid transformation to icier conditions, about seven years.
Posted by: Earl the Pearl [/QUOTE]
An ice age is caused by the increase in the elipse of the orbit of the earth around the sun resulting in a 3 degree reduction in the amount of heat reaching the earth. A reduction in solar activity causes global cooling that is survivable (like the cool period known as the “little ice age”) but it can also cause massive grain crop failures in the temperate zones, so famine might once again visit the developed world. As well as plagues, revolutions, and all the other detritus of global cooling.
Longer season crops generally yield more than short season crops. Longer season varieties within any crop also yield better. As a consequence, it pays to seek the longest season crop that can still make it, to push the envelope. In a cooling period, even if minor, it will be very expensive to relearn what crops and varieties are viable. In an era of tight world food supplies, it can also mean that many go hungry.
Please everyone let’s not do the AGW thing of projecting present into future by using too short a time line. The earth warms and the earth cools. Will it cool enough to bring on an ice age? It has in the past. Will it warm enough for palm trees to grow in the artic? It has in the past. Both could be right or both could be wrong. The only sure thing we know is that yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery. Therefore let us live in love as God would have us, today.
As a fellow Manitoba farmer I share Woodporter’s concern over the crop situation. Low overnight July temps do not bode well for August. I’m predicting a killer frost for 15 Aug. I certainly hope that I’m wrong.
The Earth is warming, while simultaneously cooling. This is a quantum problem that’s going to take gobs and gobs of money to solve.
We need to take whatever money is being spent on Global Warming research today and double it to create a parallel dept. of Global Cooling. Then, we are going to need to create a bureaucracy on top of both of these to coordinate their efforts.
Wow, very interesting. Considering this last winter was a killer and this summer so far has been a dud.
All this means is that humanity’s contributions are at the margin at best, and natural cycles tend to wash away any Anthroprogenic contribution.
We still need to understand it all, if only to know that we are headed into a warm or cold period.
I wouldnt panic yet on either account. Energy effeciency is a “good thing” in a generic sense. Enrgy diversity, as in sources of, is also a generic “good thing” How much of either at any given time is an unknown.
You may not ever be able to have too much of a good thing, but there is “enough” for any specific moment in time.
Absolutely nothing wrong with driving the car manufacturers and the jet engine manufacturers to ever increasing amounts of effeciency. Just be careful of the pace, dont overstretch the engineering.
Wind isnt a salvation but it is an interesting addition to the grid. Solar is getting better, it is effectively an engineering problem now…it will increase its contribution, once again an interesting addition. Both solar and wind require a massive leap in battery technology to store the perishable and uncertain good. If there was anything that makes sense for government to fund it is the basic research, and I am talking core core science, core physics, core chemistry, behind batteries.
Not required, just saying if governments find the need to fund then this makes more sense than the umpteenth study on the mating habits aphids.
“However, the message was loud and clear, a cyclical global warming trend may be coming to an end for a variety of reasons, and a new cooling cycle could impact the energy markets in a big way.”
Global cooling certainly will have a big impact on energy…it will reduce demand in the United States and some parts of Canada. The US, Ontario and Quebec are all what are known as “summer-peaking” regimes for electricity, because of demand for air-conditioning. (There are exceptions in the US, like Maine and Alaska). Cooler summers will mean less AC is required, while colder winters will increase demand for natural gas for home heating. This would be a net benefit as gas used at “the burner tip” (i.e. in your furnace, your stove or your dryer) is the most efficient way to burn gas. The most efficient combined-cycle NG generators convert gas to electricity at about 42% efficiency. For home use, the efficiency rates rise above 90%.
But, of course, that would spoil a good scare story…so never mind.
Stephen, I hate to burst your bubble, but there are no miracle battery technologies waiting to be discovered. All of the electromotive series have been identified long ago and tested. They are listed here: http://www.diracdelta.co.uk/science/source/e/l/electromotive%20series/source.html
or here:
http://www.sargentwelch.com/product.asp_Q_pn_E_WLS18792_EA_A_Electromotive+Series+Table_E_
Solar may be getting better, but it’s strictly at the margins. Its main limitations are the energy source, the atmosphere, and the earth’s magnetic field, none of which human engineering can affect. Given the manufacturing cost, solar may still be a negative energy source. As for wind, its instability limits it to a marginal source of electricity.
cgh,
No bibble to burst. I dont get all misty over any of these, just as I dont get all misty over oil and natural gas.
They all have a role, and none of those roles is as a “saviour or messiah”. But diversity of sources is just a good things.
My comments on batteries are just indicating that this is the big constraining factor on solar and wind and even Hydro. Governments shouldnt throw money at Batteries per se but at some of the more core research that might lead to improvements.
Are batteries that well understood that there is nothing new under the sun…..dont know if I buy that. History has been that humanity continually finds new ways to improve things like this, sometimes in remarkable ways. Patterns are that the issues lay initially at fundamental levels rather than the applied levels….but that is purely a hunch.
Once again, really should be up to industry but government funding at a basic level is something they do all the time anyway.
Nonetheless, I agree with your sentiment that there are no apparent silver bullets. As Rumsfeld used to say, solutions are a function of time and effort against the problem.
Issue is to not have to rely so much on unstable parts of the world for sources of energy. Nothing would make me happier than there being a shift away from getting resources from that crazy part of the world, or Chavez, or Nigeria etc etc.
Anyway, necessity is the mother of invention.
Stephen:
“Are batteries that well understood that there is nothing new under the sun…..dont know if I buy that.”
In a word, yes, if you check the links I noted. All of the electromotive series in the periodic table of elements have been identified. The problem with many of the combinations is that they are not stable.
A better area of research lies in superconductors, but that’s been going nowhere for the past 20 years trying to find a material that’s reliable and has some mechanical strength at the temperature of liquid nitrogen, let alone room temperature. In general, these are all materials science problems, and almost without exception improvements come slowly and incrementally.
What it adds up to for me is that there will not be any significant improvement in these areas by the time we have to make decisions about energy supply.
An ice age is caused by the increase in the elipse of the orbit of the earth around the sun resulting in a 3 degree reduction in the amount of heat reaching the earth.
Wow, you should publish that! I say that because nobody yet knows what causes ice ages, though orbital forcings are high on the list, for millions of years there were all kinds of orbital forcings, and yet no ice ages, and the orbital patterns you speak of have many permutations and do not repeat. For instance, the Moon affects obliquity and is receding from the Earth meaning that obliquity is always changing. In a billion years or so, Jacksonville Florida will occasionally be in the tropics, and the Arctic Circle will dip into Scotland. (OK, not 100% sure of the Scotland thing, but I think it is right)