GWPF takes up Sir Paul Nurse’s suggestion – Offers to host climate debate

Popcorn futures explode. But joking apart, I think (hope) this will be productive. Tim Palmer is realistic about model uncertainty (apart from being clueless about the magnitude of uncertainty around solar caused climate variation). Brian Hoskins is candid (though behind the curve on the latest findings).

GWPF INVITES ROYAL SOCIETY FELLOWS FOR CLIMATE CHANGE DISCUSSION

London, 22 May: In response to a suggestion by Sir Paul Nurse, the President of the Royal Society, the Global Warming Policy Foundation has invited five climate scientists and Fellows of the Royal Society to discuss the current state of climate science and its wider implications. 

In a letter to Lord Lawson, the GWPF chairman, Sir Paul stated that the Royal Society “would be happy to put the GWPF in touch with people who can offer the Foundation informed scientific advice.”

Sir Paul suggested that the GWPF should contact five of their Fellows: Sir Brian Hoskins; Prof John Mitchell; Prof Tim Palmer; Prof John Shepherd and Prof Eric Wolff.

The GWPF has now invited the five climate scientists to a meeting with a team of members of the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council and independent scientists and has proposed a two-part agenda:

Nenana Ice Classic 2013

FAIRBANKS – The ice went out at 3:41 p.m. in Nenana on Monday and there was only one winning ticket holder in what was the latest breakup on record in the 97-year-old Nenana Ice Classic.

The official winning time was 2:41 p.m. Alaska Standard Time because the contest uses standard, not daylight, time to determine the winner(s).

– KTVA

The date and time was 2013, May, 20th, 2:41 PM AST, day 139.612 day 140.362  [correction]

The existing record 1964, May 20th, 11:21 AM AST, day 140.487   140.104  [correction], 1964 was a leap year.

This is a repost of an existing article with updates.

CERN’s Jasper Kirkby: The Newest Unpublished Results Of CLOUD “Are Very Interesting”

Repost from Pierre Gosselin’s No Tricks Zone

CERN’s Jasper Kirkby On The Newest Unpublished Results Of CLOUD: “The Results Are Very Interesting”
By P Gosselin on 19. Mai 2013

The Latest On The CLOUD Experiment at CERN
By Sebastian Lüning and Fritz Vahrenholt

On May 10, 2013, at the online Austrian ORF, there was a rare interview with the CLOUD Experiment director of the European European Organization for Nuclear Research, Jasper Kirkby. Within the scope of the CLOUD project, it is being investigated to what extent solar activity has on cloud formation via the mechanism of cosmic radiation and the impact this could have on the Earth’s climate (see Chapter 6 of our book “Die kalte Sonne“). Here’s an excerpt of the worthwhile interview:

ORF: What is the relationship between solar activity and cosmic radiation?

Kirkby: Cosmic radiation consists of high energy, charged particles. When they reach our solar system, they are deflected away by the magnetic field of the sun. Foremost by the magnetic field of the solar plasma. When the sun is active, less cosmic radiation reaches the Earth. The relationship to the solar cycle: When there are many sunspots, the Earth receives 10 – 30% less cosmic radiation.

Suspect GRL Letter on claimed polar shift, a hockey stick again

Figure from preprint

From

Chen, J.L., C.R. Wilson, J.C. Ries, B.D. Tapley, Rapid ice melting drives Earth’s pole to the east, Geophys. Res. Lett., DOI: 10.1029/2013GL056164, 2013
GRL Letters site

A Letter in GRL makes a fuss about about earth polar shift, where of course some new toy is involved, GRACE in this case. Unfortunately for the authors they also deal in a dataset where I know far more than most, polar wobble.

UK Domestic energy prices skyrocket at five times the rate of the RPI since year 2000

A shocking statistic, when you consider wage increases for many low income families have been below inflation for most of this time. The Government report on fuel poverty needs to be read with this graph in mind. H/T the Carbon Brief.

Nutty New EU Plant Law Threatens Seed Supply for Gardeners and Restricts Farmers Crops

The European Union intends to claim mother natures bounty as its own property and patent everything that grows. Time to get out of this lunacy in my opinion. Screw the EU, I’ll be continuing to save and propagate whatever seed I decide is right for my purposes. Up yours Rompuy.

This from realseeds.co.uk

On Monday May 6th a draconian new law was put before the European Commission, which creates new powers to classify and regulate all plant life anywhere in Europe.

The “Plant Reproductive Material Law” regulates all plants. It contains immediate restrictions on vegetables and woodland trees, while creating powers to restrict all other plants of any other species at a later date.

Under the new law, it will immediately be illegal to grow, reproduce or trade any vegetable seed or tree that has not been tested and approved by a new “EU Plant Variety Agency, who will make a list of approved plants. Moreover, an annual fee must also be paid to the Agency to keep them on the list, and if not paid, they cannot be grown.

Nicola Scafetta: Major new sea level study – finds C21st rise likely to be less than a foot.

Congratulations to Nicola Scafetta, who has successfully published a new paper on sea level rise Multi-scale dynamical analysis (MSDA) of sea level recordsversus PDO, AMO, and NAO indexes in the  journal Climate Dynamics. This is a major paper, which undertakes a comprehensive review of recent studies, which diverge widely in their findings. He finds that the main reason for divergence is the length of records used in studies, and shows that the quasi-cyclic oscillations of the major ocean basins largely account for the differences in those studies conclusions. Developing a powerful analysis technique with strong visualisation, it is shown that the periodicity of the major oscillations, being 60 to 70 years, require a minimum record length of around 110 years in order to prevent polynomial fitting of long term secular trends being contaminated with shorter term quasi-cyclic variation. Using tide gauge records going back as far as 1700, Nicola compares the trends in sea level rise acceleration at widely spread geographical locations once the quasi-cyclic components are removed and finds the long term global average to be very small – around 0.01mm/yr. Very little difference is found between acceleration rates between the pre and post industrial eras. It is suggested the acceleration is a natural variation due to the recovery from the little ice age as part of a quasi millennial cycle which may continue until the mid C21st. In conclusion the study suggests that sea level rise during the C21st will be around 277+/-7mm, or about 9 inches.

Fig. 10 a Global sea level record (Jevrejeva et al. 2008) (left) and its
MSAA colored diagram (right).

Chilbolton Observatory unofficial dataset, numeric and plots

Example data. Lidar is useful in identifying cloud layers, clear sky, it cannot though see multiple layers, where radar images if available are more useful. Click to open full size.

[UPDATE 2013/05/05,  archive release with corrections] An unofficial high resolution dataset has been derived from web published graphs running from 16th February 2013 to 20th April 2013 (less 23rd Feb), just over 60 days of data at about 2.3 minutes resolution for about 23 hours a day. The data includes atmospheric water parameters and thermal radiation parameters, all measured from surface level. Archive period includes the exceptionally cold March 2013. The weather hereabouts was cold but unlike most of the rest of the UK there was little snow, nor was the temperature very low.

Met Office: flapping on winter 2012/13, but mention SSW

The UK Met Office write “Why was the start to spring 2013 so cold?

March 2013 was the second coldest March in the UK record since 1910, and was associated with a negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation. A number of potential drivers may predispose the climate system to a state which accounts for these conditions.”

“Potential”, “may predispose”? Does it or doesn’t it, don’t they know?

IMO the only good part of their web item is labelled (2) where the explanation may lie. The rest is flapping and jumping around over nothing. The Met Office are not very good with sequence, cause and effect.

“2. the Stratosphere – There is now a substantial body of evidence to show that during winter and early spring, sudden stratospheric warming events in the upper stratosphere over the North Pole can influence surface weather conditions over the UK some 2-3 weeks later.”

That is wrong in part, “during winter and early spring,”, it actually is any time, eg. the notorious Blogdale 2003 where I expect to have some revelations to make including the mess.

Letter to Sir Mark Walport putting a question to the Government’s Sci-Tech Committee

On Twitter this morning, I was delighted to see the government’s new chief advisor, Sir Mark Walport, asking the public for questions to put to the Science and Technology Committee. This is a refreshing change from the imperious attitude adopted by the previous incumbent, Sir John Beddington.

UPDATE 18-4-2013
I don’t know whether my missive had any impact or not, but Sir Mark is making noises which are music to my ears:

#Walport on #WatO: Climate change undeniable but affordable energy “essential”. Less bullish on clean energy than #Beddington.

— roger harrabin (@RHarrabin) April 18, 2013

=================================================================================

Dear Sir Mark,

Thank you for making yourself accessible to the public and for inviting questions to be put to the Science and Technology Committee.

I am one of the UK’s more prominent ‘sceptical’ climate bloggers (No.2 for site traffic not far behind Andrew Montford’s ‘Bishop Hill’).
My degree is in History and Philosophy of science, and I’m also a qualified mechanical engineer.

My question for the S&T committee is this: