I predict that, if the Sun remains quiet, the Earth will cool slightly. 2100 will be cooler than 2020, by up to 1 degree Centigrade. If the Sun resumes the high activity of the late 20th Century, the Earth will warm by less than 1 deg C by 2100. (By “high activity”, I mean high emission of charged particles and strong magnetic field.)
Predictions of warming over 2 deg C are complete nonsense. We now have the best measurements of global temperatures for the month of June 2021. They were low, lower than the average temperatures from 1979 to now. The previous few months were also low. Does this mean that global cooling has begun?
Not necessarily. It could be just a statistical fluctuation of no long-term significance. It might be just a consequence of La Nina, part of a natural oscillation in the Pacific Ocean that brings warming and cooling. The best measurements of global temperatures come from the satellites, which have been operating since 1979. (Land-based thermometers are notoriously unreliable. They cover little of the Earth’s surface; they are susceptible to false readings because of heating from urban surroundings; and they are often tampered with to get desired results.) To see the global temperatures I mention above, please go to Roy Spencer, PhD (drroyspencer.com). Spencer is an ex-Nasa scientist who collates satellite temperatures from the University of Alabama Huntsville, which works closely with Nasa.
Civilisation began about ten thousand years ago, soon after the ending of the last ice age. During this period global temperatures have risen and fallen slightly in natural cycles, with a downward trend over the last three thousand years. It was warmer than now in 100 BC, when Julius Caesar was born. The “Little Ice Age”, from about 1300 AD to 1850 AD, had the coldest weather of the last ten thousand years. The present warming, less than previous natural warmings, has been a welcome rescue from these awful cold times, when there was more extreme weather than now. At present we are enjoying benign and healthy weather.
Carbon dioxide is a rare gas but essential for life. Expressed in “parts per million” (ppm), CO2 comprises now about 430 ppm of the Earth’s atmosphere, or 0.043%. It is a weak greenhouse gas, and its only significant absorption band is already saturated at its peak. Above 150 ppm, its warming effect is negligible. We are way above that now, so adding more CO2 will have little if any effect on global temperatures and the climate. During previous warming periods, CO2 was lower than now. During the last half a billion years, CO2 has averaged about 2,000 ppm. It dropped to terrifying lows in the last five million years or so. It was at about 280 ppm in the 19th Century, but mankind by burning fossil fuels has pushed it up to about 430 ppm, doing the planet a wonderful favour (by accident).
In the last fifty years there has been no increase in extreme weather events, including unusual heat (quite dangerous) and unusual cold (much more dangerous). There is now a freak heat wave over north west USA, producing record high local temperatures. This has happened at a time when global temperatures have dropped. Meteorologists tell us it was caused by a high-pressure ridge (“heat dome”) over the north west. There is nothing about it to suggest it was part of a general warming trend. In the 1930s, the USA experienced warmer climates than now, and the north west was drier. The Earth’s climate system is “chaotic” (meaning fundamentally unpredictable) and so you never know when and where freak local weather events will happen. But you do know that they will happen, as they have happened in every age.
As the evidence for manmade global warming disappears, the hysteria of the multi-billion-dollar climate alarm industry mounts. Desperate with the failure of their apocalyptic predictions, horrified at the pleasant weather, dismayed by bountiful food crops and improving human welfare, the alarmists who control most of the media and politicians are resorting to ever madder prophecies of doom and ever madder curses against “denialists”. In the USA, President Trump, who knows nothing about climate science, had an instinct for nonsense and so pulled out of the ridiculous Paris Climate Accord. Now President Biden, who also knows nothing about climate science but believes the nonsense, has rejoined the Accord, and is proposing ruinous “Green New Deal” policies that will wreck the environment, cripple the economy, end reliable electricity and punish the poor – all in the cause of a crisis that doesn’t exist.
In the real world, I fear a certain amount of cooling might be coming. We shall be able to cope with it of course. We coped with the dreadful cold of the Little Ice Age, although with horrible casualties. With incomparably better technology now, we can cope with it without the casualties by using our abundant energy sources – if our green masters will allow us to do so.
[Photo: Annie Spratt for unsplash]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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