Breaking: In New Study Leading Warmist Scientists Determine Sun Plays Major Role – Warming Delayed by Decades!

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Climate scientists at Switzerland’s renowned ETH Zurich and the University of Bern have long warned of the risks of man-made global warming.

But in a brand new study their results now appear to have compelled them to postpone the expected global warming – by a few decades!

They now claim that a weaker sun (now expected over the coming decades) could reduce temperatures by half a degree Celsius.

Moreover the scientists clearly concede that the earth’s climate system is nowhere near as well understood as some scientists would like to have us believe and that the sun indeed plays a major role after all – enough so to override and postpone the effects of the often hyped greenhouse gases.

This will be a hugely disappointing news for the catastrophe-hopers and cheerleaders, who hold front row tickets to the announced climate catastrophe, which according to some should be happening already.

The Swiss scientists say that sun’s impact on climate change has now been quantified “for first time”. But here it needs to be noted that other scientists have already done this, but were ignored. The latest Swiss study merely confirms what dozens of other skeptic scientists have been saying over the past 10 years. Claims of being “the first” are fake.

The Swiss scientists say that their model calculations show a plausible way that fluctuations in solar activity could have a tangible impact on the climate. The Swiss National Science Foundation-funded studies now expect human-induced global warming to tail off slightly over the next few decades. A weaker sun could reduce temperatures by half a degree.

The sun a factor after all

There is human-induced climate change, and there are natural climate fluctuations, the scientists acknowledge, and say one important factor in the unchanging rise and fall of the Earth’s temperature and its different cycles is the sun. As its activity varies, so does the intensity of the sunlight that reaches the earth’s surface. Previously IPCC reports assumed that recent solar activity was insignificant for climate change, and that the same would apply to activity in the near future.

“Significant effect”

However, researchers from the Physical Meteorological Observatory Davos (PMOD), the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (EAWAG), ETH Zurich and the University of Bern are now qualifying this assumption. Their elaborate model calculations now provide a robust estimate of the contribution that the sun is expected to make to temperature change in the next 100 years and a significant effect is apparent.

They expect the Earth’s temperature to fall by half a degree when solar activity reaches its next minimum.

Project head Werner Schmutz, who is also Director of PMOD, says this reduction in temperature is significant and believes it could win valuable time if solar activity declines and slows the pace of global warming a little.

Strong fluctuations could explain past climate

At the end of March, the researchers working on the project will meet in Davos for a conference to discuss the final results. The project brought together various research institutions’ capabilities in terms of climate effect modelling. PMOD calculated what is known as “radiative forcing” taking account of particle as well as electromagnetic radiation, ETH Zurich worked out its further effects in the Earth’s atmosphere and the University of Bern investigated the interactions between the atmosphere and oceans.

Revamped the models

The Swiss researchers revamped the commonly used models, which were criticized for overstating CO2’s impact, and assumed a greater fluctuation in the radiation striking the Earth than previous models had done. According to their press release, Schmutz is convinced “this is the only way that we can understand the natural fluctuations in our climate over the last few millennia.” He says that other hypotheses, such as the effect of major volcanic eruptions, are less conclusive.

Uncertainty. Sun’s future behavior unknown

Exactly how the sun will behave over the next few years remains a matter of speculation, however, since appropriate data series have only been available for a few decades and they reveal no evidence of fluctuations during this time. “To that extent, our latest results are still a hypothesis,” says Schmutz, “and it remains difficult for solar physicists to predict the next cycle.”

Warnings of a little ice age?

But since we have been observing a consistently strong phase since 1950, it is highly likely that we will experience another low point in 50 to 100 years’ time. It could be every bit as intense as the Maunder Minimum, which brought particularly cold weather during the 17th century.

The research project also placed great importance on the historical perspective. The Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern compared data series on past solar activity with other specific climatic conditions. People have been recording the number of sunspots, which correlates well with solar activity levels, for some three centuries now.

However, it is much more difficult to quantify exactly how cold it was on Earth back then. “We know that the winters during the last minimum were very cold, at least in northern Europe,” says Schmutz.

Science in its infancy

The researchers still have a fair amount of work to do before they have a detailed understanding of the relationship between solar activity and the global climate both in the past and in the future.

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March 30, 2017 at 09:37PM

South Africa Gives Green Light For Shale Gas Fracking In The Karoo

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Cape Town – The government has given the go-ahead for shale gas development in the Karoo region, Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane said on Thursday.

He revealed this during a community engagement on shale gas development in Richmond, in the Northern Cape.

“Based on the balance of available scientific evidence, government took a decision to proceed with the development of shale gas in the Karoo formation of South Africa,” he said in a speech.

He said the regulatory framework would ensure that shale gas was “orderly and safely developed” through hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking.

“The finalisation of Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) amendments will also help to expedite the development of shale gas,” Zwane said.

The department estimated that up to 50 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of shale gas was recoverable in the Karoo Basin, especially in the Eastern, Northern, and Western Cape provinces.

He said it was in their interests to ensure all South Africans benefited socially and economically from the mineral wealth.

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March 30, 2017 at 09:32PM

Like Trump, Vladimir Putin Says Climate Change Not Man-Made

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Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Thursday said climate change was not caused by human activity, as the White House announced that President Donald Trump would decide by May on continued US participation in the landmark Paris Agreement limiting global carbon emissions.

One day after visiting the Franz Josef Land archipelago in the Arctic, Putin claimed that icebergs had been melting for decades and suggested that global warming was not mankind’s fault.

“The warming, it had already started by the 1930s,” Putin said in comments broadcast from an Arctic forum held in the northern Russian city of Arkhangelsk. “That’s when there were no such anthropological factors, such emissions, and the warming had already started.”

The Kremlin strongman added: “The issue is not stopping it… because that’s impossible, since it could be tied to some global cycles on Earth or even of planetary significance. The issue is to somehow adapt to it.”

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March 30, 2017 at 09:02PM

Experts Call For Creation Of ‘Red Teams’ To Challenge UN Climate Science Panel

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Prominent scientists operating outside the scientific consensus on climate change urged Congress on Wednesday to fund “red teams” to investigate “natural” causes of global warming and challenge the findings of the United Nations’ climate science panel.

The suggestion for a counter-investigative science force – or red team approach – was presented in prepared testimony by scientists known for questioning the influence of human activity on global warming. It comes at a time when President Donald Trump and other members of the administration have expressed doubt about the accepted science of climate change, and are considering drastic cuts to federal funding for scientific research.

A main mission of red teams would be to challenge the scientific consensus on climate change, including the work of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose reports are widely considered the authority on climate science.

“One way to aid Congress in understanding more of the climate issue than what is produced by biased ‘official’ panels of the climate establishment is to organize and fund credible ‘red teams’ that look at issues such as natural variability, the failure of climate models and the huge benefits to society from affordable energy, carbon-based and otherwise,” said witness John Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, in his prepared testimony. “I would expect such a team would offer to Congress some very different conclusions regarding the human impacts on climate.”

Wednesday’s hearing, which focused on “the scientific method and process as it relates to climate change” is the latest in a series of recent House science committee hearings to challenge the existence or seriousness of climate change. In their prepared testimonies Wednesday, witnesses called by the committee’s Republican majority suggested that organizations such as the IPCC present a biased view of climate change, and do not represent the views of the entire scientific community.

They argued that policymakers would benefit from assembling groups of experts to conduct assessments that challenge the accepted climate narrative.

“A scientist’s job is to continually challenge his/her own biases and ask ‘How could I be wrong?’” Judith Curry, professor emeritus at Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and president of the Climate Forecast Applications Network, said in her own testimony. “Playing ‘devil’s advocate’ helps a scientist examine how their conclusions might be misguided and how they might be wrong. Overcoming one’s own biases is difficult; an external devil’s advocate can play a useful role in questioning and criticizing the logic of the argument.”

Curry also suggested that red teams or similar panels presenting diverse opinions on climate change could take on this role.

Red teams are special groups designed to improve an organization’s performance by assuming the role of a rival, challenger or devil’s advocate. They have sometimes been used by agencies such as the CIA and the Defense Department to help test out security operations or military tactics by assuming the role of enemies, hackers or foreign governments.

But using them to challenge accepted climate science is “a completely ridiculous proposition,” said Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The National Academy of Sciences already provides independent scientific advice to the government, he said, and it has consistently supported the scientific consensus that climate change is largely driven by human activity.

“The scientific community, in its various forms and in professional journals, has a very well-established, time-tested and by-and-large quite effective process for evaluating alternative hypotheses about any body of science – and that’s called independent peer review,” he told The Washington Post.

“The notion that we would need to create an entirely different new approach, in particular for the specific question around global warming is unfounded and ridiculous and simply intended to promote the notion of a lack of consensus about the core findings, which in fact is a false notion.”

Indeed, studies have consistently found that the vast majority of scientists agree that the burning of fossil fuels is the main driver of climate change.

However, Curry and Christy question the extent of human activity’s influence on the changing climate (although both acknowledge that it does play a role).

Christy points to his own research which suggests that the projections of certain climate models fail to match with observed temperature data (although other analyses have shown climate models agreeing well with observational data). Curry has also questioned certain aspects of mainstream climate science, such as the relative influence of human activity versus natural climate variations. The third majority witness, University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke, Jr. has generally acknowledged the human influence on climate change, but has been known to question the severity of global warming’s impact on events like hurricanes or flooding.

Although research suggests that such viewpoints are outliers within the general scientific community, Christy suggests that the idea of a consensus is a “political notion.” And therefore, he argues, policy should be informed by a more diverse set of viewpoints than the conclusions presented by bodies such as the IPCC – hence the red team idea, which he says he’s proposed at other congressional hearings in the past as well.

“What’s happened in the IPCC is they’ve just stopped selecting people who disagree with the consensus,” Christy told The Washington Post. “So you have a consensus of those who agree with the consensus.”

Curry, in her testimony, said the IPCC’s authority “marginalizes skeptical perspectives and is operating to the substantial detriment of climate science, as well as biasing policies that are informed by climate science.”

But climate scientist Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, called as a witness at Wednesday’s hearing by the committee’s Democratic minority, said such bias claims are “hogwash.” Policymakers who suggest a need for alternative views on climate change are cherry-picking the science they choose to trust, Mann said.

“These folks start out with their ideology and then work backwards to decide which science they like and which they don’t,” he said in an emailed comment to The Washington Post. “But that’s not how scientific research works. It’s not a buffet where you get to selectively pick and choose what to believe. It’s not about belief. It’s about evidence.”

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March 30, 2017 at 09:02PM