Earth Island Mysticism Plays Out Again in Ireland

About a thousand years ago, the people of Earth Island went to the trouble of building large monolith structures in the hope that they could satisfy their gods and perhaps improve weather and crop conditions on the island. 

Last year in Inishowen, County Donegal, a huge wind farm was built. The developers promised in their planning documents that it would help combat "climate change". The area has a long history of bad flooding and bad weather. Would it work ? Could wind farms prevent extreme weather by allegedly reducing carbon emissions ?

Well, last week we found out. Another flood has occurred, this time as bad, if not worse than ever.

One of the worst areas hit was the Inishowen Peninsula along the border with Co Derry where villages and towns including Burnfoot, Burt, Bridgend and Buncrana were badly hit - IT.

Extreme bad weather and floods are nature's way of reclaiming the landscape altered by humans. There always has been and always will be extreme weather events. When humans eventually die out, every single structure built by us will be taken down bit by bit, without any help from carbon emissions. We are constantly in a struggle with nature to maintain our infrastructure whether it's from earthquakes, sinkholes, coastal erosion or floods.

We need to lose the mysticism about it and instead focus on smarter planning. Building a wind farm in your region actually contributes to greater flooding because natural drainage areas that have existed for thousands of years have now being filled with concrete and steel. 

The Migrant Crisis, Robots, Global Warming and the Inconsistency of the Media

Reading and believing the Mainstream media these days requires you to believe several different and conflicting positions / theories at the same time. It seems they have lost all sense of consistency in their urge to be politically correct.  

This video looks at some recent discussions in the media :

Why are Politicians Obsessed with Climate Change ?

by Owen Martin

The Irish government has recently had to endure scandal after scandal in just about every department - justice, health, finance, housing etc. But there is still only one issue in town - climate change.

Fifty years on and there has been a clearing-out of another generation, this time by the running, shorts-wearing avocado smashers. To what will they bring their focus, energy and vigour? One thing they have promised is to take climate change seriously. On election as Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar said he wanted to see a new ambition on climate change. But he and his colleagues should do more than that; they should define it as the most important challenge to be faced; they are, after all, in Andrew O’Hagan’s phrase, the “globally warmed generation” - Diarmaid Ferriter, Irish Times

This week, yet another National Mitigation Plan was announced by the government to loud fanfare. 

David Whitehead, a geologist and paleoclimatologist from Galway, lays out quite simply the futility of the Paris Agreement and such climate mitigation plans as they relate to Ireland :

A peer-reviewed paper in the Global Policy journal has modelled the impact of the CO2 emission reduction promises, called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), made ahead of the Paris climate summit. The climate impact of all Paris INDCs, if every nation fulfilled them by 2030, which is most unlikely, and if the climate models used to assess the temperature effect of CO2 emissions are accurate, which is perhaps even more unlikely, the temperature reduction would be 0.048°C by 2100. If the INDC’s were extended for another 70 years and every nation fulfilled them by 2030, and continued to fulfill them until the end of the century, and there was no ‘CO₂ leakage’ to non-committed nations, the entirety of the Paris INDCs would reduce modelled global temperature rises by just 0.17°C by 2100.  The Irish Times cannot have it both ways; if the models are correct the impact of the Paris agreement is negligible and if they are incorrect the rationale for the Paris Accord is unfounded. Paris is just symbolic virtue signaling by western governments and less developed countries signed up because it promised them large cash transfers. Now Turkey states that unless it receives the money it will not ratify Paris. Other countries will follow. Ireland is the second most carbon efficient economy in the world in terms of CO2 emissions in relation to GDP, and would probably be first if our GDP figures were correct, which we all know they are not.  Ireland is also the most carbon efficient economy in the EU and so for us to be pay huge  fines  levied by the EU for a failure to meet the  2020 and 2030 CO2 emissions targets, agreed to by Eamonn Ryan on ideological grounds, would be  economically  very damaging and  an act of political lunacy -  David Whitehead. BA(Mod. Nat.Sc.)TCD, FIMMM, C.Eng.

These facts are not secret nor are they in any way over complicated for policy makers and the media to understand. If climate change is a serious threat to the world, Ireland can play no role in combating it and in any case we are at present a very carbon efficient economy. So our politicians should be fully focused on the other big issues they urgently need to deal with. 

Ireland has a serious debt problem, the worst in the EU relative to our GDP. We have out of control public sector spending. Our public sector workers enjoy far higher salaries and pension entitlements than those in the private sector. Our social welfare spending is much higher than the EU average.  A housing bubble is manifesting itself once again in Dublin city. Despite spending more on health than anyone else in the EU, apart from Iceland, we still have a dysfunctional health system. Elements of trusted organisations like the police force, care and charity organisations have revealed themselves to be corrupt. Pension funds are repeatedly raided by our cash hungry government. The idea of retiring in your 60's on a state pension seems less and less likely by the day.  Socialist dogma coming from the media and government opposition benches prevents even a debate on most of these important issues, let alone solutions to be put forward. 

If nobody in the House of Lords has never heard of the economic theory "comparative advantage", then you could safely bet a lot of money that nobody in either two parliaments in Dublin have heard of it.  

One more anniversary. 200 years ago, 1817, saw the publication of David Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy, which contains the first exposition of the principle of comparative advantage, a thoroughly counterintuitive idea that was once described by Paul Samuelson as the only proposition in the whole of social science that is both true and surprising.Comparative advantage takes Adam Smith’s division of labour one step further and explains why free trade benefits everybody, even countries that are the worst at making things, even countries that are the best at making things. But it also, in my view, explains prosperity – what it is and why it happens to us and not to rabbits or rocks - Matt Ridley, the case for Free Market Anti-Capitalism

The fact is that it is not our energy or climate policy that is unsustainable. It is our massive debt, welfare and government spending that is unsustainable. It is the raiding of pension pots and rainy day funds that is unsustainable. It is our high income taxation policy that is unsustainable. It is the PSO levy that is funding renewable energy projects that is unsustainable. The government must know this and they know, because of our education system, that there will never be a free market anti capitalism system as Matt Ridley describes that might help address these problems. Although perhaps its too late for that now anyway.

So the government must propagate the idea that the end of the world is nigh anyway. They must call attention to a problem much bigger than all these issues and then use all the instruments of the State to help fight it.  They must choose an issue that most people do not understand. And this is where climate change comes in. No longer do the politicians have to deal with the real issues. They can continually make themselves look good to a gullible public by pretending to combat a fake and larger enemy until the house of cards does finally crumble. 

Climate Change in Ireland - The Inconvenient Facts

I've started a new You Tube channel today titled "Coming Up For Air", and the first video is a neat summary of the various points made about climate change on this blog over the years :

Freak Out! - How "Science" Caused Mass Hysteria in the Past

 “To capture the public imagination . . . we have to . . . make simplified dramatic statements, and little mention of any doubts one might have. . . . Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest.” - Stephen H. Schneider, 1989, in an interview in Discover.

To people who believe in climate change, science is something truly unique in human history - infallible and incorruptible. The reality is that science has got things wrong in the past or perhaps a more accurate statement is that doubts in scientific theories have been suppressed
producing a false or incomplete picture to an unsuspecting public. The people doing the suppressing of selective information are not usually scientists but eco-loons, politicians and the media. Most scientists will likely agree that doubt is a good thing.

The more physicists discover about distant galaxies (e.g. accelerating away from us) the more they find out that current physics models, as good as they are, are incomplete. They have no choice but to invent new theories such as dark matter to fit new information. The doubts remain and are acknowledged by physicists. The media and other propagandists have found no reason yet for reporting that as a result of accelerating galaxies and dark matter our planet is in grave danger.

The mass hysteria that accompanied the Acid Rain theory in the 1980s is a good example of where suppression of scientific doubts lead to rash and costly policy changes.

Acid Rain Mass Hysteria by Pat Swords

While one should not generalise, one also has to acknowledge that there are cultures in organisations and countries, which strongly influence behaviour.

Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you've got. • Peter Drucker - Austrian-born American management consultant, educator, and author 

For instance, Irish people have a near pathological obsession with being seen ‘to be nice’ and wanting to be liked, such that when something goes wrong, they are often unable to challenge and confront it; often for fear ‘that they might upset somebody’. The former US Ambassador to Ireland, Jean Kennedy Smith put her finger on it, with her famous statement about the ‘Irish lacking a proper sense of outrage’. On the other hand if one takes the Israeli culture, which is brash and somewhat confrontational, when Irish people come up against such behaviour, it ends up ‘freaking out’ many of them. Germans on the other hand have always suffered from a collective ‘Angst’, in which doom and dread is predominant. They just can't help being gloomy. Instead of sitting back and accepting simply that what will be, will be, not to mention getting on and enjoying it, they agonise. As a result there is a collective fear of the unknown. Mad cow disease, swine fever, bird flu, nuclear plants, global warming - who on the planet is most alarmed? That’s an easy question to answer isn’t it? Neither do Germans learn well from history; they started one world war with devastating results and did the same again by starting another world war less than twenty one years later.  

• Die Geschichte wiederholt sich – history repeats itself

Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it. • Edmund Burke - Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher

Understanding history and culture is very important; it does and will influence us. 

'Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results.' • Machiavelli

The late 1970s and 1980s in Germany was characterised by growing public concern over damage to forests, the so called ‘Waldsterben’ or dying forests, a circumstance which was referred to as ‘acid rain’ in the English speaking world. In hindsight we can learn a lot from this issue, such as is documented by the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). The hype and ‘frightening scenarios’ got out of hand, it was the central ‘dogma’ in Germany that an unprecedented decline in all tree species in central European forests was occurring, as a result of a complex disease of forest ecosystems triggered by air pollution. However, the results of a decade of research are not compatible with the central dogma of the Waldsterben concept. As the FAO concluded in relation to this research, it “rather confirmed the occurrence of non-synchronous fluctuations of forest conditions and recurrent episodes of clarified as well as unsettled species specific declines”. In other words impacts related to natural variations and plant diseases. 

As to the main lesson to be learnt: 

• Waldsterben may be understood as a problem of awareness: forest conditions that were believed to be "normal" in earlier times suddenly became a symbol of the growing fear of the destructive potential of human activities on the environment. However, holistic concepts such as the Waldsterben hypothesis are of little help in solving problems. Rather they raise emotions and lead to premature conclusions. To gain a real understanding of the multitude of decline phenomena in our forests, we must continue to analyse symptom by symptom, species by species and site by site, according to the classical principles of phytopathology and forest science in general. 

You could substitute the ‘weather’ for ‘forests’ in the above and it would become very much ‘up to date’. However, the political fall-out from the above was that draconian legislation was introduced in West-Germany in 1983, which meant that 70 large coal fired power stations were in a short period of time retrofitted with emissions controls for sulphur dioxide, amounting to some 14.3 billion DM in investment (€1 = 1.96 DM). However, this was rushed, equipment suppliers were overloaded, etc. such that it was later the opinion of one analyst, that if this investment had been done later, as was the case in other Member States, it could have been done a third cheaper. While the political impetrative for completing it, namely the ‘Waldsterben’ was false, fortunately it did lead to a benefit in terms of human health, which is why such pollution control is now essentially standard for new coal plants globally. 

Many people think that Germany is very rational. As a German speaker and as somebody who has worked there regularly, there is no doubt that individually their technical people are highly rational, but collectively the country is anything but, in particular when ‘Angst’ gets a grip. There is also the undisputable fact that ‘Made in Germany’ is a big brand and there is a cultural tendency in Germany to be ‘technology forcing’, such that it is foreseen that their industry will then become the resulting ‘technology providers’ elsewhere. They also use this ‘perceived benefit’ to regularly dismiss the ‘inconvenient truths’ associated with some of the policies they have adopted. 

This is important, Germany is not only the economic driver of the EU, but has been also driving EU policies, particularly in the area of environment and energy. If these are being driven by ‘Angst’ and not what is rationally evaluated as beneficial for the EU-28 as a whole, then ‘Houston we have a problem’. 

Currently, these problems are increasingly glaring. The German ‘Angst’ over nuclear energy and the resulting mad rush into renewables (Energiewende) was justified that Germany would be the manufacturing power house for wind turbines and solar panels, for which there would be a huge market place, as other countries followed suit. It didn’t happen that way, cheap Chinese solar panels and turbines flooded the highly subsidised German market, while on a global basis the demand for such technology collapsed. Other countries did not follow the German ‘Energiewende’ – expectations that ‘they think like us’, when clearly they don’t and never had, is a very dangerous premise, but often repeated as people do not learn from the past and different cultures. 

Ireland is of course in the back seat of EU energy policy, but if you are in a motor car speeding along with the doors shut, you really should understand the behaviour of the driver and as to where he or she is taking you.  

2016 the Hottest Year Ever ?

http://www.met.ie/climate/monthly-data.asp?Num=2275

In Ireland, 2016 was not the hottest year ever. Not by a long shot. As readers of this blog will know by now, Valentia is a very reliable record as it's among the oldest there is and is not tainted by the urban heat effect. Even Phoenix Park in Dublin City, which does suffer from the urban heat bias, doesn't show any record breaking heat. 

Evolution Vs Climate Change

Does science tend to confirm or refute our innate biases ?

by Owen Martin

Darwin's theory of Evolution was not accepted at first mainly because it ran counter to our intuition. People thought that man simply could not have descended from apes because of religious reasons but also because there were no apes evolving into men in the present day. It was generally assumed that humans always existed since the beginning of time. Relative to people's everyday experiences, the theory simply sounded absurd. The theory of Evolution itself helps explain why. We evolved to survive over relatively small timescales - 40 to 80 years - so this made a theory which operated (for the most part) over much longer timescales harder to grasp and harder for our intuition to accept. 

Relativity, as Einstein pointed out, means that we really don't know where we are on the spatial map. If you are watching a train pass by how do you know that it's not you that's moving instead of the train ? What if it costs 1,000 lira to buy a cup of coffee ? Is this expensive or is this cheap ? We have no way of knowing unless we can compare the price relative to something else. It's the same with evolution, we don't see the incremental evolutionary changes because we live for too short a time relative to the timescales it operates over (we cannot see the bigger picture). Perhaps Methuselah who lived for 969 years might have had a better chance. Science helps us see past our natural biases and understand how nature operates over long timescales.

So what has this got to do with climate change ? Well, how do we know what is the correct temperature ? In the 1970's, we thought it was becoming too cold. Today, we think it is becoming too hot. But too hot or too cold relative to what exactly ? What we do know for sure is that we are living in an interglacial period. The timescales over which major climate events occur are over many thousands of years (like evolution). So once again, as humans, we don't notice these changes, each generation simply adapts or dies. However, there are smaller temperature changes and cycles that can occur over a person's lifetime. Take the Atlantic temperature cycle (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation) for example, which has a 30-40 year hot and cold cycle :

This cycle has a nice fit with both observed land and satellite temperatures - see here and here. 

Humans tend to think that the period they happen to live in is the norm. There are good evolutionary reasons for this. We need to adapt to the present climate to survive. Whatever happened before is irrelevant for survival. Whoever survives reproduces and passes on their survival genes to the next generation.  So if you grew up in the 1970s, you probably think that the climate being a bit on the cooler side is normal. Now that things have warmed up a bit, your intuition tells you there is something wrong - let's call this climate exceptionalism. However, if you knew that the climate got warmer during the 1940s, then cooler, then warmer again, it may not seem all that alarming. If you knew that the Little Ice Age only occurred a few hundred years ago and lasted over many generations, you might become less alarmed. 

So again, science should help us see past our innate biases. On a purely scientific objective basis, we are enormously lucky to have been born either side of a major or minor ice age period. We can't see this without the help of science. Without the aid of science, we would think that this is how the climate has always been and always will be (just like the innate idea that man has always existed). We can adapt so well to the present climate we find ourselves in, that we are not conscious of the possibility of a different climate as it would be surplus to evolutionary requirements. In any event, it's only very recently that man has learned to figure out what the climate of the past looked like by examining ice cores. Thanks to science. 

Despite all this, mainstream science has been unable to see past human's innate bias in the case of climate change.  Instead science has reinforced the unscientific public's natural bias that the climate they presently inhabit is the norm and that any sudden change in this climate (towards hot or cold) is therefore unprecedented and alarming. The media, who are mostly an unscientific bunch, then pick up on this and run with it. Many people ask why would scientists do this ? Perhaps unlike with evolution, they have been unable to overcome their own innate biases, or perhaps they've found that funding dries up when they don't reinforce the public's natural biases. After all, politicians who are successful are the ones who know how to play to the voters biases and it's the politicians who control climate funding and research.  This differs from evolutionary research which is incapable of being politicized. Nobody is ever going to become elected because they could explain so wonderfully the theory of evolution, although you might become elected in religious countries or states if you deny evolution much like if you make the case for climate exceptionalism and the dangers of a changing climate. 

The climate skeptics are then labelled deniers. We are faced with swimming up the intellectual current that is in the main driven by innate human biases.

Darwin faced the same biases - how dare he question the obvious fact that humans are exceptional and not part of the animal kingdom (Of course it can be argued that evolution was the mechanism by which God created us but that's a different story not relevant here). Likewise, how dare climate skeptics question the obvious fact that our climate is now exceptional. While older members of the public will tell you that the weather was different back in their day, the scientists have being working hard fitting their models and data into the theory. 

So what can we learn from this ? Innate biases are good for us - most of us have a drive to succeed in life, nobody will willingly put their hand in a fire, incest is innately bad for good biological reasons, likewise hunger is good for us. Innate biases made us succeed where other homo species didn't. But when we try to understand more complex things that science often throws up our innate biases can often work against us (confirmation bias also has a role to play).  Going back to relativity, the world looks flat from our perspective. Indeed humans can flourish and have flourished with the perception that the world is flat. Thinking that the world is not flat won't help you win a battle nor will it allow you to become a better hunter. Our innate bias still tells us the world we experience is flat (most of us would call a sheet of glass or a floor surface flat). Scientists had to overcome this bias when they explained that the world was most likely round. Think of the public bias that Copernicus had to overcome (in fact he was afraid of challenging it) when he came to the conclusion that the Sun was at the centre of the universe. 

If the theory of man made climate change is correct, it would be unusual in that it confirms our innate bias that the climate is naturally constant and any change is therefore man-made and alarming. The history of science, like climate history, tells us that our innate bias about climate exceptionalism today is probably wrong. This doesn't mean it will turn out to be wrong, but the odds are against it as a viable theory.

Irish Temperature Records - Running Hot or Cold ?

According to NASA, temperatures at Valentia increased in 2015 : 

GISS Data

However, the actual data from Valentia shows temperatures dropping in 2015 :

Met Eireann Data (Irish Met Office)

Met Eireann Data (Irish Met Office)

Trinity College Lecture on Climate Change by Professor Tim Palmer

by OWEN MARTIN

So tonight there was a presentation in Trinity College by Tim Palmer of Oxford University. First, the good parts - he tried to show both sides of view and addressed some of the claims made by climate "skeptics".  On the bad side, as usual with these events, there was very little time for questions at the end.  Here is just some bullet points and notes I made on the lecture :

•  He gave a counter argument to some of the claims made by Matt Ridley in his October lecture to GWPF. However, no mention of greening i.e the increased plant growth observed around the planet. This to me was Ridley's ace card so I was surprised that he didn't take that on (or maybe not surprised).

•  He explained quite well how using data over short timescales can be misleading. I agree with this however his own temperature graph (from NASA) started in the late 1800s. This is an extremely short time range to be basing any theory on. We didn't have weather stations before 1850 but we know (thanks to geologists) about the Little Ice Age. The Little Ice Age ended around 1850 when CO2 emissions were a tiny fraction of what they are now. We started coming out of the LIA around 1720. This data should be factored in to put climate change in perspective. 

• He explained how the climate system is complex, again I agree, and that it is a chaotic system. When you introduce man made CO2, the system tends to become less chaotic and you end up with warming.  So if you start with this theory, which looks plausible, then you need to fit the facts into this theory. This happens with NASA graphs which are based on adjusted data. You need to take the cooling in the 70s out and you need to reduce the warming in the 40s. You also need to ignore the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (and PDO) which has a well established positive / negative cycle. This question was posed at the end but I cant even remember the answer. Again, these issues need to be addressed but were not considered as the original "greenhouse gas" theory was infallible.

• Palmer explained the clouds issue really well - we don't know whether they lead to cooling or warming.

• No mention was made of solar irradiance. Again, there was a question on this but an all too brief answer.

• If global warming is dangerous to humans today then in a period of natural cooling, global warming would be advantageous to humans (as it would reduce cooling).  Like greening, the upsides were not considered.

• A question was asked at the end asking for evidence that CO2 remains in the atmosphere for 50 years or more. Palmer didn't have any evidence for that claim yet the claim was made as if it were fact. 

CO2 Is Not A Pollutant

Back in 1922, CO2 was not considered a pollutant, but beneficial for crops :

The End of the Traditional Media ?

                                            Humans are 90% irrational - Scott Adams

It's been an extraordinary year in politics as event after event proved the "experts" and the media wrong. The above article appeared in an Irish newspaper back in August. The article below about climate change appeared in the same newspaper a week later. Both pieces suffer from a distinct lack of critical analysis and instead focus mostly on emotion and even hysteria. This approach does sell newspapers as Scott Adams says humans are mostly irrational. Once the irrational idea that Trump could not win the election took hold, this then evolved into a mass hysteria where even the bookmakers became hoodwinked. Not alone did they lose big on the Trump victory, they paid out on a Trump defeat before the actual result came in ! Rational and clear analysis becomes almost impossible in such an environment and even intelligent people succumb.

In such environments (mostly created by the media), the media will seek to reinforce how we feel about the issue by saying "Relax" or in the case of the climate "Worry". At this stage, we have moved from being 90% irrational to 100% irrational. All doubt has been removed. Only the sudden shock of reality can make us see sense.

Back in 1968, an English man had the crazy idea about transferring news and information across wires and into TV screens and even on to computers. It turned out to be very prescient.   

.

The internet means you can get different opinions and analysis and make up your own mind. If you prefer the emotive stuff, you can still find that online. If you prefer critical analysis and debate then you can find that too which before was not as accessible. Articles can be instantly fact-checked and updated to give the most accurate assessment at that time.  

President Elect Trump had a significant online presence, much bigger than that of his opponent. Turns out that was not something to "Relax" about. The old print media is now looking increasingly irrelevant.  We may be seeing it going extinct in the near future. Something they will certainly be "worried" about.

Little Evidence for Wetter Winters

The researchers believe there is plenty of data to show we will also have a much stormier future. “We have seen the trends and they agree with the models,” Dr Murphy says. “All we have to do is look at the extremes – for example, the flooding from last year. It could be anything from 10 per cent to 40 per cent wetter in winter [Irish Times].”

 Scientific theories should always be based on long term evidence and data.  Stating that the flooding was bad last year is not science. In fact, it's the exact opposite of science. Yes, last winter was exceptionally wet. But only three of the past eight winters had above average rainfall i.e 37%. The conventional narrative is that winters are getting progressively wetter but in fact it's the opposite.   Almost two in three winters now in Ireland are drier than the long term average. This can all be checked on Met Eireann website  (although I notice that it's harder to find the archived reports than it used to be). 

So the great delusion goes on. We are all expected to join in and pay up. Dissenters are ostracized.  We have to spend millions to satisfy how some people feel because last winter was a bad winter. Just like 1930 was a bad winter. The difference is in the 1930s the authorities looked at dredging the rivers as the solution :

•    Winters in Ireland 2009-2015

•    Winter 2016

Valentia Observatory Records Record Rainfall

On October 4th, Valentia Observatory recorded it's highest level of rainfall in a single day since the station opened 150 years ago. There was 105.5mm of rain in 24 hours. The same station also recorded it's wettest September in 10 years and December 2015 was the wettest December on record.  However, May 2016 was a remarkably dry month, well below average.

  
To get the bigger picture to see what is going on, I've taken a look at mean air temperature records. 

Previous very wet years were 1924, 1930, 1946, 1947, 2002, 2008 and 2009. Is there a trend of floods and heavy rainfall occurring directly after years of warming ?

The past five years were cooler than the warming peak of the 2000's. We will have to see how 2016 plays out. So far, 2016 is over half a degree warmer than 2015 (up to September). This makes 2016 warmer than any of the last five years but still cooler than the 2000s. 

The sea surface temperature maps still show a large body of cool water out in the Atlantic :

Compare with 2006 and 2007 :

A colder Atlantic would normally mean a colder winter in Ireland. 

The Northwest Passage Opens Up

NASA recently posted an image of a nearly ice free North West Passage :

 In mid-August 2016, the southern route through the Passage was nearly ice-free. For most of the year, the Northwest Passage is frozen and impassible. But during the summer months, the ice melts and breaks up to varying degrees. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite captured the top image of the Northwest Passage on August 9, 2016. A path of open water can be traced along most of the distance from the Amundsen Gulf to Baffin Bay.

Compared with 2013, there is a lot less ice. You can view a comparison here.  I was interested to find out if this had happened before in recent history. NASA state that an ice strengthened ship could get through the southern route without too much trouble. Well, it turns out that a ship did just that in 1903 and 1905.

Captain Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer, wrote about their voyage in Colliers Weekly (behind a paywall)

The ship did not face too much ice trouble on the Southern Route :

The passage they took was the exact same passage a ship today could take and at the same time of the year - August and September. They stayed on Gjoa Haven over the winter and the following year living and hunting with Eskimos. Then in August 1905, they sailed through a narrow rocky and icy passage to Amundsen Gulf. 

I have shown the route they took overlaid on the recent August 2016 NASA image. It's precisely the same route that a ship could take today. This means there is little sign of warming in the Arctic since early 1900's and now.





With the Northwest Passage conquered, Amundsen sailed to the nearest telegraph station - he had heard from whalers that Norway and Sweden had become independent.

Global Warming Update: Ireland Gets Colder

Met Eireann have reported that Spring in Ireland is getting colder. Funny enough, I didn't hear much about this on RTE News or in the media. 

This means that Spring 2016 was colder than the average for 1981-2010 (LTA). This was the period which scientists warned us that the Earth was warming up like never before. So now Ireland is bucking the trend. 

What's more, three out of the last four Spring's had lower than average temperatures than that of the recent warm period. 

Spring 2013

Spring 2015

This doesn't fit the climate change narrative of course, so don't expect to hear about it elsewhere in the media.

Head in the Clouds

• Our planet’s pre-industrial climate may have been cloudier than presently thought, shows CERN’s CLOUD experiment in two papers published in Nature.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/05/25/cerns-cloud-experiment-results-suggests-industrial-revolution-reduced-cloud-cover-cosmic-rays-have-an-impact-too/

Thanks to the diary of John Kevan of Kilkenny, we know that January 1682 was a cloudy month indeed (cloudie = cloudy):

In fact, the weather of January 1682 was not much different to January 2016 :

Coldest April in 30 Years

April 2016 was the coldest April in 30 years in some places. All stations showed colder than long term average temperatures (1981-2010 period) :

April 2016 temperature changes

Dublin Airport and Sligo had temperature changes of minus 2 degrees. As far as I know, no disasters happened in these places despite such a huge swing in temperature. 

This is the third consecutive month to have temperatures below the average in Ireland. The cold blob is still there in the Atlantic and the Pacific looks like going the same way :

 



Yet on the 4th May, most of our elected politicians, with the notable exception of Danny Healy Rae, were telling us that Ireland is warming at an alarming rate :

A Brief History of Climate Change in Ireland

by Owen Martin

Scientists generally have little historical sense; Thus it happens that many ideas at different times are repeatedly conceived anew, without the initiator knowing that these subjects had been considered already before. According to their natural mentality, some researchers live so much in the present that they are inclined to think of every idea that occurs to them, or their group, as new - Albert Einstein, 1954

Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation with historic climate events

During the past two centuries or so, Ireland has had a cyclical temperature record with periods of both warming and cooling. Before that, there was the Little Ice Age and before that the Medieval Warming Period that allowed monks live on Skellig Michael Island.

Ireland's folklore is full of references to extreme snow and frost events.  In the 7th Century, it was believed that the sea between Ireland and Scotland froze over and people from both countries paid each other visits across the ice. If it did occur, it did so during the beginning of the Medieval warming period. More recently, during the Little Ice Age in 1784, there were reports of snow around Belfast 15 to 20 feet deep. In 1814, snow lay in Dublin streets 5 feet thick. In 1837, the village of Lewes in South East England was destroyed by a snow avalanche. Severe snowstorms hit Dublin in both 1845 and 1850 with the River Liffey reportedly freezing over in the former year. These two cold periods would have occurred during the Irish Famine which was caused by the spread of the potato disease blight. Severe frost would have exacerbated the destruction of the potato.

These events (since 1784) occurred during what became known as "The Little Ice Age". Temperature records from Armagh go as far back as 1800 and seem to support these events. So what of the long term trends ? Well, as we shall see things remained very cold in Ireland until the end of the 19th century.

If we look at two of the oldest temperature records from Ireland - Phoenix Park in Dublin and Valentia in Kerry - we see two similar but slightly different trends :

We can see that Phoenix Park (Dublin) has an upward heating trend overall. Possibly, and most likely, this is due to the urban heating effect as the city increased in size. By contrast, Valentia had no overall warming trend. There was warming until 1900, then cooling till 1920, then warming till 1950, then cooling till 1985 and warming again thereafter. At present, we've arrived back at 1940's temperatures whilst the 1980's had colder temperatures than anytime previous in the record. Valentia gives more accurate readings than Phoenix Park because of the simple fact that it lies way out on the South Western Coast away from urban areas.

Valentia records begin in the cold 1870s and 80s. In 1879, the Thames froze over three feet thick in some places. People freezing to death was not uncommon throughout Northern Europe. 1881 was a very cold year by all accounts, with rivers freezing over in Ireland :

1881

Then in the 1890's, things began to warm up. By 1899, people had recognized the unusual warm climate that was occurring :

1899

In July and August 1900, average temperatures ranged between 21 and 23 degrees Celsius - higher than the previous two summers of 2014 and 2015. "Brilliant bursts of sunshine alternated with drenching downpours of rain" it was reported at the time. This weather created very favourable conditions for potato blight and almost all areas of the country were affected by the fungus. 

Then, things started to cool once again, peaking in 1918 or 1919. In 1908, the Thames froze over (as recalled by George Orwell in Coming Up For Air).

1908

1917 was remembered as the year of the snow with snowfalls in January and a severe snowstorm on April fools day, the worst for 50 years with snow depths reported of 18 inches deep. Valentia records indeed record 1917 as the worst on record at that stage but three years post 1960 were just as cold.

1919 was described as a sunless year. July, normally the hottest month of the year, was remarkably cold :

1919

Man made CO2 emissions during this period were increasing as the Industrial Revolution progressed. However, in the timeframe we have looked at so far, we have had a period of warming (up to 1900) and then a period of cooling (up to 1919). So there must be natural forces at work. What part CO2 emissions had to play is therefore very hard to say but it would appear the answer is very little, if at all. 

Man made CO2 emissions begin to rise to levels higher than before post - 1919 with drops in 1929 when the worldwide recession kicks in and in 1940 during World War 2. Temperatures start to rise once again in this period, peaking around 1949 with temperatures that would not occur again until 1997 (an El Nino year). The interesting thing is that the most intensive CO2 activity, coal production, reduced drastically in the UK and America during the war years 1939 - 1945. 

But temperatures continued rising and peaked just after coal production sky rocketed after the war. 

In 1945, there are reports of Russian farmers working in the Arctic Circle as the ice begins to melt. Droughts occur in Ireland in the latter part of the 1940s. Because most of the electricity in Ireland was powered by hydro, electricity rationing is commonplace. A good reminder of what electricity is like when it is powered by mostly renewables and is at the mercy of the elements. An interesting cold blip occurred during January to March in 1947 which was the most severe cold spell of the century so far. Remarkably, temperatures did not rise above 5C during this period. Valentia records show this cold spell between two very large spikes. However, the general temperature trend was continued warming. In 1949, temperatures peaked and the country was hit by a heatwave. Temperatures hit 85 F in Tipperary on June 23rd - or 29 degrees Celsius. The highest temperature at the same station during the 2006 European heat wave was also 29 degrees. 

1949

  

 In the same year, we find the first mention of something strange happening to the climate in the media. Reports about glaciers melting everywhere are what we are used to hearing today.  Geoffrey Hattersley Smith, the famous glaciologist is mentioned. Geoffrey died in 2012 and in his obituary he was described as been "careful about committing himself on paper" about global warming. This is probably not a surprise as he saw global warming happening before and the subsequent cooling.

1949

So were we living in the last phase of the Ice Age ? Well as we shall see, the answer is no. Temperatures began to drop in 1950. In 1953 and 54, climate scientists and researchers were still talking about the global warming. In 1953, we find the first mention of "climate change". Mr E.V. Lane was a lecturer in Trinity College at the time and appeared on Radio to explain what had been happening to the climate. The resulting Irish Times article deserves a full blog article in its own right but suffice to say its interesting because both the advantages (increased farmland and harvest) and disadvantages (rising seas) of a warming world are given.  Mr Lane mentions Iceland as a country benefiting from warming with increased barley harvest but this was only to last for another few years as  "Frost having frequently damaged hayfields in many parts of Iceland, especially during the cold period in the 1960s-80s, reducing the potential hay production by 20-30% when it happened."   One can see here how Iceland has since benefited from increasing temperatures once again.

In 1954, we get the very first reference to greenhouse gases and man made climate change in an article written by Dr Gerald Wendt (click on pics to expand) : 

                                     

                                 

                           

One of the most interesting claims that Dr. Wendt makes is that CO2 emissions had risen by 10% since 1900 and that this was sufficient to account for the 1 degree increase in global temperature. But CO2 emissions have risen exponentially since then so do we see a corresponding rise in temperatures ? Well, we now know that there is not a linear relationship between CO2 and temperature and that in fact there is a saturation point after which increasing levels of CO2 has but negligible impact on temperature. So we should begin to see a further rise in temperature in the second half of the 20th century, but progressively less so (if his theory is right). Also of note, is his final paragraph where he illustrates the advantages of a warmer world - higher farm yields and the large areas of land that will be available for food production.

However, Dr Wendt would have lost money in the bookies. Nature does not play by man's rules. By the early 1950s, the temperature began to drop, not just in Ireland, but everywhere. By the middle of the 1970s, it was as cold as the pre-1920s and got even colder towards the end of the decade. January and February of 1963 saw the coldest spell on record in Ireland and in England since 1740. The Beatles famously toured in a van up and down England that winter, lying on top of each other to keep warm.

From Met Eireann

The demise of grouse was partly blamed on climate change :

1975 Article

A drought occurred in Ireland during October 1974 to August 1976, the worst in some places for 150 years (1976 was the hottest (bucking the trend) and driest summer around Europe for many years). However, a few years later, the highest ever rainfall over a two day period was recorded at Valentia, in November 1980. According to Met Eireann, severe storms were not uncommon. All proving that extreme climatic events do not just occur during warm periods.

By 1978, the idea of global cooling was accepted nearly everywhere. I've written previously about this here. Irish observatories were showing very cold conditions :

1978

ESB could not cope with the increased electricity demand and power cuts were commonplace during 1978 as demand for electric heaters went up. The harsh winter of 1978/9 claimed 88 lives around Europe (full article at end). Out of a sample of 28, 82% of climate scientists agreed that the world was getting colder :

1977

The same article claims that the Northern hemisphere cooled by 3F since the mid 1940s, roughly equivalent to a drop of 1.5C. 

The Valentia temperature record backs up the idea that the world was cooling at the time. It would be interesting to find out what impact this had on culture at the time but I dont have enough space to do that here. But here is a taster. The music scene in Manchester in early 1980 sounded like this :

Joy Division sounded like Manchester: cold, sparse and at times bleak - Bernard Sumner, musician in Joy Division

One could argue that CO2 emissions decreased during the two oil crises of the 1970s. The problem is that all graphs for historical CO2 emissions show continued rising of CO2 emissions during this period and the second half of the 20th century, as coal use (especially in China) goes through the roof. So what was causing the cooling that everyone experienced ? 

What happens after this is that once again, the climate experts were proved wrong. Ireland (and the world) begins to warm up (again) in about 1986 till the present day, with a huge dip in 2010. It is during this period that the "Global Warming" and then post 2010 "Climate Change" movement takes hold on man's natural tendency towards hysteria. That is not to say that CO2 does not have an impact on climate, but when one examines climate history, it becomes harder and harder to claim that it is the main driver.  I believe it is thermal dynamics in ocean currents that is the main driver, which may well be driven by a number of different factors such as changes in solar activity. Compare the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) with the Valentia temperature record. A high correlation can be seen :

Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation 1880 - 2010

Conclusion 

Contemporary scientists claimed that there was warming of 1C between 1850 -1950, then cooling of 1.5C between 1950-1977. As you can see from above, Valentia pretty much backs this up. Then warming again of over 1C, bringing us back to 1950 levels. The temperature data that is released today to back up global warming claims steady and gradual warming during the same period and no cooling (or in some cases just reduced warming). So were their contemporary climate scientist colleagues wrong ?  Well, the Valentia record backs them up.

Based on the above past records, the most likely direction for temperature now is towards cooling, rather than warming.  Recent Sea Surface Temperatures in the Atlantic support this:

The cycle continues. So would you rather live in a warmer or colder world ? Which poses the greatest threat ? Personally, I would have to agree with the climate scientists of the 1970s :

1977

1979