By Oleg Nekhai

Global warming which has been the subject of so many discussions in recent years, may give way to global cooling. According to scientists from the Pulkovo Observatory in St.Petersburg, solar activity is waning, so the average yearly temperature will begin to decline as well. Scientists from Britain and the US chime in saying that forecasts for global cooling are far from groundless. Some experts warn that a change in the climate may affect the ambitious projects for the exploration of the Arctic that have been launched by many countries.

Just recently, experts said that the Arctic ice cover was becoming thinner while journalists warned that the oncoming global warming would make it possible to grow oranges in the north of Siberia. Now, they say a cold spell will set in. Apparently, this will not occur overnight, Yuri Nagovitsyn of the Pulkovo Observatory, says.

“Journalists say the entire process is very simple: once solar activity declines, the temperature drops. But besides solar activity, the climate is influenced by other factors, including the lithosphere, the atmosphere, the ocean, the glaciers. The share of solar activity in climate change is only 20%. This means that sun’s activity could trigger certain changes whereas the actual climate changing process takes place on the Earth.”

Solar activity follows different cycles, including an 11-year cycle, a 90-year cycle and a 200-year cycle. Yuri Nagovitsyn comments.

“Evidently, solar activity is on the decrease. The 11-year cycle doesn’t bring about considerable climate change – only 1-2%. The impact of the 200-year cycle is greater – up to 50%. In this respect, we could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250 years. The period of low solar activity could start in 2030-2040 but it won’t be as pervasive as in the late 17th century.”

Read the rest at The Voice of Russia.

By: By Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle

(Reuters) – Scientists are struggling to explain a slowdown in climate change that has exposed gaps in their understanding and defies a rise in global greenhouse gas emissions.

Often focused on century-long trends, most climate models failed to predict that the temperature rise would slow, starting around 2000. Scientists are now intent on figuring out the causes and determining whether the respite will be brief or a more lasting phenomenon.

Getting this right is essential for the short and long-term planning of governments and businesses ranging from energy to construction, from agriculture to insurance. Many scientists say they expect a revival of warming in coming years.

Theories for the pause include that deep oceans have taken up more heat with the result that the surface is cooler than expected, that industrial pollution in Asia or clouds are blocking the sun, or that greenhouse gases trap less heat than previously believed.

The change may be a result of an observed decline in heat-trapping water vapor in the high atmosphere, for unknown reasons. It could be a combination of factors or some as yet unknown natural variations, scientists say.

Read the rest at: Reuters

By: Larry Bell

President Obama has put salvation from dreaded climate catastrophes on his action agenda hot list. During his inaugural address he said: “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.” He went on to shame anyone who disagrees with this assessment, saying, “Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and powerful storms.”

This sort of scary presidential prognostication isn’t new. He previously emphasized at the Democratic National Convention that global warming was “not a hoax”, referred to recent droughts and floods as “a threat to our children’s future”, and pledged to make the climate a second-term priority.

As much as I hate to nit-pick his doomsday scenarios, it might be appropriate to correct a few general misconceptions before getting back to that “overwhelming judgment of science” stuff.

Read the rest at: Forbes

Monckton to UN: ‘In the 16 years we have been coming to these conferences, there has been no global warming’

Calls to ‘deport Monckton’ from UN conference in Qatar

Posted by Marc Morano at Climate Depot with Excerpts from Jean Chemnick at E&E Greenwire

After the news conference, and as diplomats gathered for the climate conference president’s assessment of how close countries are to agreement, Monckton quietly slipped into the seat reserved for the delegation of Myanmar and clicked the button to speak.

“In the 16 years we have been coming to these conferences, there has been no global warming,” Monckton said as confused murmurs filled the hall and then turned into a chorus of boos.

The stunt infuriated negotiators and activists here who gather every year to address what they believe is one of the world’s top threats, the steady rise of man-made global warming.

Read the rest at Climate Depot.

By P. Gosselin

One of the main features at this year’s Swiss Climate and Energy Summit (Bern Switzerland, 12-14 September) was a debate between IPCC leading climate scientist Prof. Thomas Stocker and renewable energy expert and chemist Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt.

Needless to say the atmosphere was electrified, with an audience of almost 400. Unfortunately there still is no video of this debate, but the online Berner Zeitung daily (BZ) of Bern wrote up a report, and yes, they too had to concede that skeptic Vahrenholt won the debate.

The BZ called Vahrenholt “rhetorically tough” and wrote he needed “only 10 seconds to warm up his argumentation machinery”.

Read the rest at No Tricks Zone.

Green Drivel Exposed

By Lorrie Goldstein

Two months ago, James Lovelock, the godfather of global warming, gave a startling interview to msnbc.com in which he acknowledged he had been unduly “alarmist” about climate change.

The implications were extraordinary.

Lovelock is a world-renowned scientist and environmentalist whose Gaia theory — that the Earth operates as a single, living organism — has had a profound impact on the development of global warming theory.

Unlike many “environmentalists,” who have degrees in political science, Lovelock, until his recent retirement at age 92, was a much-honoured working scientist and academic.

His inventions have been used by NASA, among many other scientific organizations.

Lovelock’s invention of the electron capture detector in 1957 first enabled scientists to measure CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and other pollutants in the atmosphere, leading, in many ways, to the birth of the modern environmental movement.

Having observed that global temperatures since the turn of the millennium have not gone up in the way computer-based climate models predicted, Lovelock acknowledged, “the problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago.” Now, Lovelock has given a follow-up interview to the UK’s Guardian newspaper in which he delivers more bombshells sure to anger the global green movement, which for years worshiped his Gaia theory and apocalyptic predictions that billions would die from man-made climate change by the end of this century.

Read the rest at the Toronto Sun.

Hat-tip to Climate Depot.

A couple interesting articles popped up today about tampering with the historical temperature data at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). It seems that the real, unfudged data shows a steady cooling trend from 1930 to 1999.

Have a look a these articles from the Real Science Blog:

Why (James) Hansen had to corrupt the Temperature Record

Uncorrupted Temperature Data Showed Cooling from 1930-1999

GISS Blocking Access to Archived Data

Marc Morano of Climate Depot — a proud cosponsor of our Seventh International Conference on Climate Change in Chicago May 21- 23 — shared with us today his observations on the mainstream media’s double standard for tolerating provocative communication strategies when it comes to the climate.

Marc’s views are his own — and, as always with him, an invigorating read. Those who are subject to easily getting the vapors over such things should probably not heed the advice “click to continue” below. For the rest, here is the full-and-raw Marc Morano, who called out — and answered — some egregious examples of global warming alarmists using “provocative communications” about skeptics that the MSM seems to have missed:

“This is so silly. Every day now, skeptics are compared to Holocaust deniers and the media yawns. But Heartland does an edgy billboard accurately reflecting the views of those featured in it and the media acts as though they are offended?

“Here are a very few examples of this week’s Holocaust denier comparisons and other nasty stuff by warmists – just this week!  Please show some balance!”

Warmist Holocaust survivor Prof. Tomkiewicz: ‘I am using the term ‘denier’ to make a point…Hitler was clear about what he wanted to do in Mein Kampf –why did people not pay attention?’

Tomkiewicz: ‘These [Hitler] ‘deniers’ might as well have been called skeptics in their day…I could not and would not ‘cheapen’ a genocide that killed most of my family and deprived me of my childhood’

Read the rest at Somewhat Reasonable (Heartland blog)

A reaction from Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute to New York Times reporter Justin Gillis’s attempts to discredit scientists who are skeptical of the theory of manmade global warming

By NewsBusters Staff

By Ian Johnston

James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too.

Lovelock, 92, is writing a new book in which he will say climate change is still happening, but not as quickly as he once feared.

He previously painted some of the direst visions of the effects of climate change. In 2006, in an article in the U.K.’s Independent newspaper, he wrote that “before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”

However, the professor admitted in a telephone interview with msnbc.com that he now thinks he had been “extrapolating too far.”

Read the rest at MSNBC.com

By Paul Bedard

In an unprecedented slap at NASA’s endorsement of global warming science, nearly 50 former astronauts and scientists–including the ex-boss of the Johnson Space Center–claim the agency is on the wrong side of science and must change course or ruin the reputation of the world’s top space agency.

Challenging statements from NASA that man is causing climate change, the former NASA executives demanded in a letter to Administrator Charles Bolden that he and the agency “refrain from including unproven remarks” supporting global warming in the media.

“We feel that NASA’s advocacy of an extreme position, prior to a thorough study of the possible overwhelming impact of natural climate drivers is inappropriate,” they wrote. “At risk is damage to the exemplary reputation of NASA, NASA’s current or former scientists and employees, and even the reputation of science itself.”

Read the rest at the Washigton Examiner.

See the press release, full text of the letter and all signers at CFACT.

• Evidence was found in a rare mineral that records global temperatures
• Warming was global and NOT limited to Europe
• Throws doubt on orthodoxies around ‘global warming’

By Ted Thornhill

Current theories of the causes and impact of global warming have been thrown into question by a new study which shows that during medieval times the whole of the planet heated up.

It then cooled down naturally and there was even a ‘mini ice age’.

A team of scientists led by geochemist Zunli Lu from Syracuse University in New York state, has found that contrary to the ‘consensus’, the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ approximately 500 to 1,000 years ago wasn’t just confined to Europe.

In fact, it extended all the way down to Antarctica – which means that the Earth has already experienced global warming without the aid of human CO2 emissions.

Read the rest at the UK Daily Mail.

“THE CO2 LIES … pure fear-mongering … should we blindly trust the experts?”

By P. Gosselin

That’s what Germany’s leading daily Bild (see photo) wrote in its print and online editions today, on the very day that renowned publisher Hoffmann & Campe officially released a skeptic book – one written by a prominent socialist and environmental figure.

This is huge. More than I ever could have possibly imagined. And more is coming in the days ahead! The Bild piece was just the first of a series.

Mark this as the date that Germany’s global warming movement took a massive body blow.

Today, not one, but two of Germany’s most widely read news media published comprehensive skeptical climate science articles in their print and online editions, coinciding with the release of a major climate skeptical book, Die kalte Sonne (The Cold Sun).

Read the rest at No Tricks Zone – Climate News from Germany in English

Meltwater from Asia’s peaks is much less than previously estimated, but lead scientist says the loss of ice caps and glaciers around the world remains a serious concern

By Damian Carrington

The world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.

The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.

The study is the first to survey all the world’s icecaps and glaciers and was made possible by the use of satellite data. Overall, the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest caps – Greenland and Antarctica – is much less than previously estimated, with the lack of ice loss in the Himalayas and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the discrepancy.

Read the rest at the UK’s Guardian.

By David Rose

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Read the rest at UK’s Daily Mail.