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Another Chink in the Global Warming Edifice

NIWA has just released the temperatures statistics for August in New Zealand. The average national temperatures was 0.2 degrees cooler. However, this average "disguises" some quite extreme cold recordings in some parts of the country. The South Island was particularly cold, with temperatures ranging from one to two degrees below average. Several South Island locations recorded near record low temperatures; in the North Island, Dannevirk recorded its coldest August day ever, since records began in 1951.

Record snow levels have been recorded at the Turoa skifield on the Western side of Mt Ruapehu. The snow pack on Mt Ruapehu is the deepest since records began in 1992.

Meanwhile, The Australian is reporting that Sydney recorded its coldest August in over sixty years. One would have to go back to August 1944 to experience a colder August.

Naturally, these inconvenient truths are not hitting the headlines here. They cast doubt upon the man-made global warming hypothesis. When faced with embarrassing data, it is best to be quiet.

Meanwhile it is possible that we are about to embark on a long term cold period. There is an extensive body of data implying a strong connection between sunspot activity and global temperatures. No-one is yet sure of why this might be the case. The mere co-incidence of the two (low sun spots, cooler temperatures) does not in itself establish a causal relationship. Nevertheless the correlation goes back centuries. High sun-spot cycle activity is followed several years later by relatively high temperatures. Low sun-spot cycle activity is followed by colder than average temperatures.

An average sun cycle lasts eleven years: some are longer or shorter. Cycles can have intense solar sun spot activity or less intense. We will not be sure of the causal effect of sunspot activity upon global temperatures until some one discovers a physical causal connection and convincingly explains why the one causes the other.

The famous Maunder Minimum (1645--1715), which produced a mini-ice age in Europe, when the Thames froze over repeatedly, was accompanied by a sixty year period with very low sunspot activity. No-one knows why the sun suddenly stopped producing sun spots. But there was an apparent effect on global weather with sustained seriously cold weather conditions.

The sun had been strongly active in the last twenty-five years of the previous century. However, the next sun cycle (Cycle 24) is taking a long time starting. We have now seen over 400 "spotless days" which is starting to get us into the realms of an unusually long lapse of solar activity. The last 40 consecutive days have been spotless, and one needs to go back to 1913 to find a similar reading. You can track solar activity at this site. For some recent commentary, read here.

If the current Cycle 24 we to be delayed much longer, and if it were to be a weak cycle with low sun spot activity, and if the historical correlation were to hold, we would expect that the next twenty-five years of global weather will be well below global temperature averages. In fact, it may turn out to be incredibly cold. This is a worry insofar as cold temperatures are more difficult, and must more devastating, to humans than warmer temperatures.

Certainly, global temperatures have stopped rising, and have actually declined over the past ten years. We continue to hold the view that the anthropogenic global warming theory is incorrect. It is a classic blunder of the fallacy of false cause. Man-made carbon dioxide emissions are highly unlikely to cause the rise in temperatures recorded in the last quartile of the previous century. There were other, far more influential factors at play. This is the prima facie, sensible, and reasonable position because there is irrefutable evidence that in the past there were periods when global temperatures were far warmer than they were during the last quartile of the previous century. Clearly anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions were not a factor back then. And if not then, why now? The only responsible position to adopt with respect to the anthropogenic theory is deep, professional scepticism.

New Zealand, however, has thrown all such professional and responsible scepticism to the wind. It is on the cusp of passing into law a universal carbon emissions trading scheme in a stupid attempt to combat this supposed man-caused global warming. It is ironic that it is doing so at the very time climate science is under increasingly sceptical and critical scrutiny. Actually, it is worse than that. New Zealand's emissions of carbon dioxide on a global scale are miniscule. It will make no difference on a global scale whatsoever, although its damage to New Zealand will be considerable. The carbon trading scheme has all been about global political theatre, and the hubris of wanting to claim to be leading the world.

We predict that the current crop of politicians who support emissions trading schemes and other vain government interventions, taxes, and wasteful spending to combat what will eventually be acknowledged as a non-existent problem, will be judged by history to have been simple minded, credulous and superstitious fools.

When the tide of global temperature goes out, we will find those who has been swimming naked. It will not be a pretty sight.