BBC’s Paul Hudson On A New Maunder Minimum
October 29, 2013
By Paul Homewood
As you may have read, BBC meteorologist, Paul Hudson, was on TV last night, discussing the prospects of a new Maunder Minimum and whether it will lead to much colder winters in the UK and NW Europe.
Paul makes the point towards the end that, as a country, we are hopelessly unprepared if that were to happen. This is hardly surprising since public policy has been skewed towards a warmer climate for many years now.
As a result our transport and other infrastructure is vulnerable, and overreliance on wind power could be disastrous.
Paul’s piece is at the start, about 11 minutes long and definitely worth a watch.
The BBC I Player link is below.
7 Comments
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
This cannot be repeated often enough.
Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere is the very stuff of life.
But it is as if many western politicians, much of the scientific establishment, and all Green Global Warming advocates have all collectively and conveniently forgotten all their elementary school biology about photosynthesis and the carbon cycle.
As a result, the Western world has been forced into a massive guilt trip with endless predictions of impending global catastrophes from the over production of CO2 by mankind.
But in reality added CO2 is the essential food for plants and its increase has already contributed to the fertility of the planet, for example already in the greening of the Sahel.
Mankind’s use of fossil fuels simply releases the very diffuse and intermittent energy from sunlight converted by plants over many millions of years, that has been concentrated and stored by earlier geologic processes.
And its release back into the biosphere now is to the benefit of all plant life and the wellbeing of the biosphere.
So it is possible using IPCC data to some simple calculation on the future impact of added man-made CO2 emissions.
The major proportion (~95%) of the 33°C greenhouse effect is caused by water vapour and clouds in the atmosphere. Atmospheric Carbon dioxide is indeed also a greenhouse gas only contributing marginally (less than ~5%) to the warming effect. However at the current level of ~400ppmv CO2’s ~93% of its available effectiveness is already used up, as according to IPCC publications, its effectiveness diminishes logarithmically as its concentration increases.
So additional CO2 emissions can now only ever add a maximum of ~7% addition of its limited warming effect in future. So very roughly the maximum additional temperature effect of continuing to emit CO2 is 7% * 5% * 33°C = ~0.11°C. Of which if EU(27) were to eliminate half its ~11% of world CO2 emissions would amount to ~0.006°C and the concomitant effect of halving UK CO2 emissions would be ~0.0007°C.
Global Warming Advocates only ever emphasize the catastrophe that awaits the world in the future as a result of Man-made Global warming. They should note that more adverse weather (like the St Jude Storm) is more likely to be a symptom of a cooling world as the energy differential between the tropics and the poles will increase.
The obverse is likely to be true. Increased levels of CO2 and a rather warmer climate within natural limits can bring real benefits to mankind.
The world could well survive having additional areas available for viable, well fertilized, agriculture.
Instead it is likely that any current global warming is a almost entirely a natural process, is within normal limits and is probably beneficial to Mankind even up to a level of about an additional +2.0°C. Sadly warming may be not now even be occurring at all in the coming century.
The probability is that any current global warming is not man-made and in any case it could be not be influenced by any remedial action, however drastic, taken by a minority of nations.
That prospect should be greeted with unmitigated joy.
If it is so:
* all concern over CO2 as a man-made pollutant can be entirely discounted.
* the cost to the European economy alone is considered to be ~ £175 billion per annum in Europe alone till the end of the century, not including the diversion of employment and industries to elsewhere. These vast resources should be spent for much more worthwhile endeavours, because its far from clear that those activities will be in any way effective
* if warming were happening it would lead to a more benign and healthy climate for mankind.
* any extra CO2 has already increased the fertility of all plant life on the planet.
* if warming is occurring at all, a warmer climate within natural variation would provide a future of greater opportunity and prosperity for human development, especially so for the third world.
As global temperatures are already showing cooling over at least the last seventeen years or more, the world should fear the real and detrimental effects of global cooling rather than being hysterical about limited mainly natural or now non-existent warming.
It remains absolutely clear that our planet is vastly damaged by many human activities such as:
* toxic environmental pollution. (Whatever is asserted CO2 is neither toxic nor a pollutant).
* over fishing.
* rain forest clearance, especially for the production of biofuels.
* biosphere destructive industrial farming at all levels.
* wild habitat destruction throughout the biosphere.
* many green and renewable energy activities actually detrimental to the environment.
The world and the Greenest Government Ever should indeed be strenuously finding ways to improve these situations.
But the unwarranted concentration on reducing CO2 emissions has deflected even well-meaning green activists from these more immediate and more worthwhile objectives.
This cannot be repeated often enough.
An excellent post! Everything you say makes perfect sense.
So, the new scare is CNGC (Catastrophic Natural Global Cooling)? Anything that sells and gets the attention, keeps people busy I guess.
See it first before I buy it.
Whilst agreeing with edmh generally could I just point out that the greenhouse effect is a consequence of matter within a gravitational field being irradiated from an external source.
The surface temperature has to become warmer to provide both enough energy to hold the weight of the atmosphere off the surface whilst at the same time matching energy out with energy in.
On Earth that happens to be 33K and it is nothing to do with GHGs.
Mike Lockwood has been banging on about this for years and his work is well worth reading up. he has upped his expectation of another Maunder Minimum from 85% to 25 -30% but how soon? The Great Frost of 1708 – 9 caused 600,000 deaths from starvation alone in France, pack ice obstructed the seaways, the War was postponed for 3 months, sentries froze to death at their posts.
As Lockwood says we are ill-prepared for such and event and our increased dependence on windmills could make things even worse.
Cold of this order is much more to be feared than global warming.
BTW I could find this item only on one region.
I now have a full transcript of the programme here:
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20131028_io
The video is not accessible outside the UK.