From Climate Alarmism to Climate Realism

Here’s a copy the remarks made by Václav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, delivered at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change.

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen,

I would like first of all to thank the organizers of this important conference for making it possible and also for inviting one politically incorrect politician from Central Europe to come and speak here. This meeting will undoubtedly make a significant contribution to the moving away from the irrational climate alarmism to the much needed climate realism.

I know it is difficult to say anything interesting after two days of speeches and discussions here. If I am not wrong, I am the only speaker from a former communist country and I have to use this as a comparative — paradoxically — advantage. Each one of us has his or her experiences, prejudices and preferences. The ones that I have are — quite inevitably — connected with the fact that I have spent most of my life under the communist regime. A week ago, I gave a speech at an official gathering at the Prague Castle commemorating the 60th anniversary of the 1948 communist putsch in the former Czechoslovakia. One of the arguments of my speech there, quoted in all the leading newspapers in the country the next morning, went as follows: “Future dangers will not come from the same source. The ideology will be different. Its essence will, nevertheless, be identical — the attractive, pathetic, at first sight noble idea that transcends the individual in the name of the common good, and the enormous self-confidence on the side of its proponents about their right to sacrifice the man and his freedom in order to make this idea reality.” What I had in mind was, of course, environmentalism and its currently strongest version, climate alarmism.

This fear of mine is the driving force behind my active involvement in the Climate Change Debate and behind my being the only head of state who in September 2007 at the UN Climate Change Conference, only a few blocks away from here, openly and explicitly challenged the current global warming hysteria. My central argument was — in a condensed form — formulated in the subtitle of my recently published book devoted to this topic which asks: “What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?” My answer is clear and resolute: “it is our freedom.” I may also add “and our prosperity.”

What frustrates me is the feeling that everything has already been said and published, that all rational arguments have been used, yet it still does not help. Global warming alarmism is marching on. We have to therefore concentrate (here and elsewhere) not only on adding new arguments to the already existing ones, but also on the winning of additional supporters of our views. The insurmountable problem as I see it lies in the political populism of its exponents and in their unwillingness to listen to arguments. They — in spite of their public roles — maximize their own private utility function where utility is not any public good but their own private good — power, prestige, carrier, income, etc. It is difficult to motivate them differently. The only way out is to make the domain of their power over our lives much more limited. But this will be a different discussion.

We have to repeatedly deal with the simple questions that have been many times discussed here and elsewhere:

1) Is there a statistically significant global warming?

2) If so, is it man-made?

3) If we decide to stop it, is there anything a man can do about it?

4) Should an eventual moderate temperature increase bother us?

Read the complete speech at Heartland Institue.

One Response to From Climate Alarmism to Climate Realism

  1. matt vooro March 14, 2008 at 5:03 pm #

    SOLAR WIND – THE PRIME CAUSE OF GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE?

    INTRODUCTION
    Since the late 1970’s there has been a fluctuating change in global average annual temperatures. Since 2005 the temperature increase trend has leveled off and is actually declining and very dramatically since January 2007 due to the extended solar cycle from the previous cycle of 9.7 years to the current cycle of 12 years and still extending. The prime cause for this current climate change may not be greenhouse gases but rather the fluctuating and periodic increase in Stratospheric and atmospheric joule heating or electrical heating coming from the electricity generated by the solar wind.

    SOLAR WIND, THE PRIME CONTROLLER OF CLIMATE AND WEATHER ON EARTH
    “Sprites” and “jets” have been found to transfer electricity between the ionosphere and storm clouds. So electricity is known to be transferred 65 km directly to our atmosphere. This joule heating may extend all the way to our lower atmosphere and to the very surface of the planet. Here we define the increased solar wind intensity as increased number of days per year with high solar wind velocity of 500 km/sec or more. Quiet wind is closer to 275 -350 km/s. The following web page has solar wind records going back to 1994. http://umtof.umd.edu/pm. An excellent site for long term records of the solar wind which goes back as 1978 is maintained by MIT. http://web.mit.edu/space/www/. Their graph of solar wind speed shows a fluctuating pattern with increasing peaks from 450 km/s in 1978 to peaks of over 600km/s by 2003 .There are also fair pseudo indicators of past solar wind speed such as the AA, Ap and Kp indices. However only the solar wind ram pressure best correlates with the solar wind electrical energy that feeds joule heating of our planet.
    Solar wind dynamic pressure and the Joule heating are directly related. Solar dynamic pressure or pulse is directly proportional to the density of the wind times the wind velocity squared. Thus doubling the solar wind velocity [ which is what happens during these solar wind peaks of 500-1000 km/s and more] increases the dynamic pressure pulse four fold, increases the electrical field-aligned currents, which then increases ionospheric Joule heating which contribute to global warming. The magnitude of electric field in the atmosphere is proportional to the nearness of Magnetopause to the Earth. Extra electricity can also be transferred to earth during certain planetary alignments and close approaches of comets. [See the writings of James M. McCanney]
    The table below is my latest study showing how solar wind ram pressure spikes [or solar wind dynamic pressure] and global temperature anomalies are related. Notice that the largest temperature anomalies have a larger number of very high solar ram pressure spikes and the low temperature anomalies have the opposite. This is like your furnace burner if it had an adjustable flame. If it was on higher flame output longer it would produce more heat. In the case of the sun, it produces more solar magnetic fields and electricity which results in more solar wind induced joule heating of our atmosphere. Greenhouse gases have nothing to do with this.

    TABLE OF VARIOUS MONTHLY GLOBAL LAND TEMPERATURE ANOMLIES PER NOAA TOGETHER WITH ACTUAL CALCULATED SOLAR WIND RAM PRESSURE SPIKES SELECTED FOR A FULL RANGE OF TEMPERATURE ANOMALIES

    NOAA NUMBER NUMBER
    GLOBAL OF OF
    MONTH LARGER VERY HIGH
    LAND SOLAR SOLAR WIND
    TEMP RAM RAM
    MONTHH ANOMALY PRESSUR PRESS. PEAK GENERAL COMMENT
    DATE [C] SPIKES SPIKES SPIKE
    >10nPa nPa
    2007-1 1.841 16 5 20 LARGE CLUSTER SEE2006-12
    2002-2 1.654 10 5 15 CLUSTER ,HIGH SOLAR FLUX
    1999-2 1.5795 12 7 100 MANY CLUSTERS LA NINA
    2002-1 1.4529 11 4 20 LARGE CLUSTER HIGH SOLAR FLUX
    2005-11 1.336 9 5 15 SMALL CLUSTERS HIGH SOLAR FLUX
    2006-12 1.2575 14 5 30 LARGE CLUSTER EL NINO
    2005-10 1.0835 5 4 20 CLUSTERS
    2005-9 1.045 10 6 30 MAJOR CLUSTER
    1998-7 0.9886 11 6 20 MANY CLUSTERS LA NINA
    1998-8 0.9251 10 5 20 LARGE CLUSTER LA NINA
    2005-7 0.9263 13 7 20 LARGE CLUSTER

    2005-12 0.8723 8 3 15
    2007-12 0.8044 9 3 15 LA NINA
    1998-9 0.678 10 3 20 LA NINA
    2007-6 0.7075 12 3 10
    2005-8 0.6729 8 4 35
    2001-12 0.5446 9 7 15 MANY CLUSTERS
    2004-9 0.5024 8 3 17 EL NINO

    2004-5 0.4038 8 1 12
    2004-7 0.3536 8 4 ?
    2004-8 0.3744 10 3 15 EL NINO
    2001-2 0.372 8 2 13 LA NINA
    2006-1 0.2462 7 2 10
    1999-3 0.1346 11 3 ? LA NINA

    Solar wind ram pressure calculations come with the assistance of WIND MFI.
    http://lepmfi.gsfc.nasa.gov/mfi/plots.html
    Monthly global land temperature anomalies come from NCDC/NOAA.
    http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/anomalies/anomalies

    The table above can be summarized as follows:

    TEMPERTURE ANOMALIES
    1.8-0.9 [C] —–5+ very high [over 10nPa] solar wind ram pressure spikes [Plus many large clusters]
    0.9- 0.5 [C] ——3+ very high [over 10 nPa] solar wind ram pressures spikes
    0.2- 0.5 [C] —– 2+ very high [over 10 nPa] temperatures ram pressure spikes

    It is apparent from above that the various high and low temperature anomalies that we have seen in the past are all due to the variation in the solar wind ram pressures which cause various levels of joule heating of our atmosphere and thus variations in global warming

    The months of December 2006 and January 2007 both show high monthly global temperature [land] anomalies per NCDC/NOAA of 1.2575C and 1.841C, the highest on record. Yet what has been totally ignored by scientists is that both of these months also had very high solar wind and solar wind dynamic pressure spikes.
    December 2006 /January 2007[for 2 months]
    Number of high velocity solar wind days 29. The average is about 15 days
    Number of larger solar wind pressure spikes 30. The value for a low temperature anomaly month would be 0 -5
    Number of very high solar pressure spikes [over 10nPa] 10. The value for a low temperature anomaly month would be 0-3
    Peak solar wind pressure spike 30 nPa
    The high velocity solar wind days with high dynamic pressure spikes are analogous to the number of days in a year that our planet’s furnace and fan were on and set on HIGH. The global temperature anomaly is what your thermostat reads as the actual temperature The average number of high solar wind days per year for the three years [1995-1997] around the last solar minimum was 42. The average number of high solar wind days 10 years later at the current solar minimum for the three years [2005-2007] is 92, more than double .This may account for why temperature anomalies have also gone up from those around 0 .30 to 0.60 due to joule heating .IPCC has chosen to completely ignore this science. This is very strange as the science of solar produced electricity to heat our planet has been around at least since 2004.
    Some scientists have commented that there has been no change to the sun since the 1950’s. This may not be true as per the quote below taken from a 1999 UK technical paper. As the magnetic fields of the sun increase, so do the electrical fields and associated joule heating.
    Here we report that the measurements of the near-Earth interplanetary magnetic field reveal that the total magnetic field leaving the sun has risen by a factor 1.4 since 1964. Using surrogate interplanetary measurements, we find that the rise since 1901 is by a factor of 2.3. This change may be related to chaotic changes in the dynamo that generates the solar magnetic field. We do not yet know quantitatively how such changes will influence the global environment. http://www.ukssdc.ac.uk/wdcc1/papers/nature.html
    If the magnetic fields leaving the sun increased 40% during the period 1964 to 1999, then by 2008 the increase could be up by another 10%, assuming the same rate of change. As more magnetic fields are sent to earth, the electrical field of the planet is also increased resulting in more joule heating

    CURRENT WEATHER

    . Of the five major scientific agencies measuring worldwide temperatures NOAA, RSS, HADCRUT 3 ,GISS ,UAH, four indicate that the LINEAR temperature trend to be declining over the last six years. Only GISS shows the trend to be increasing. So there is another complication .Whose temperature data is correct? All indices show that the temperatures have been dropping since 2005.http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/. The same web page plots the temperature anomalies since 1998 and again the data shows that with exception of GISS, the others show that the temperatures have been declining or flat since 1998. Yes there have been short term peaks but the 10 year trend of temperatures excluding GISS shows no increase.

    GISS January 2008 monthly global temperature index [land + ocean x 0.01C] dropped to 12, a figure comparable to January 1987 and 1989 and comparable to the figures of almost 20 years ago. The comparable figure issued by NCDC/NOAA for January 2008 was O.1779 which was 31st in terms of January records. The comparable NCDC/NOAA for land was 63rd. So where is the global warming? IPCC has said that manmade greenhouse gases are the prime cause of global warming. Yet the CO2 LEVEL continues to rise but temperatures have been coming down, totally opposite of what IPCC said. http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/anomalies/anomalies.html#anomalies
    Some critics of this latest cooling say that this is just short term cooling and not an indicator of long term climate. The writer feels that this current cooling cycle is part of the extended solar cycle which is now nearly 12 years long and shows no sign of coming to an end. This solar cycle could continue into 2009. NASA’s attempts to predict an end to the cycle have failed twice already. No one really knows when it might end and a 12-13.5 year cycle is possible. Long solar cycles of 12 years and more tend to cool the global temperatures by 0.4-0.5 degrees C. This latest cooling cycle again illustrates that it is the sun that cools and heats our planet and is the prime forcing factor in long term climate. Manmade greenhouse gases have only a minor impact. Cycles of warming and cooling have always been part of the climate of this planet.

    CLIMATE CONTROL

    There may also be another source of global warming since about 1988, namely weather modification experiments and techniques as explained as per the following web page. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7561
    The unusual hot weather of 1998 could come from these weather modification sources as there were no unusual solar events or sudden rise in greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. An El Nino existed but past similar strong El Nino’s like 1972/1973 and again 1982/1983 showed no such temperature increases. The writer has no other evidence to confirm whether and when any weather modifications took place.
    I applaud and support all the efforts to reduce the use of fossil fuels and when this is not possible, the use of latest and cleanest fossil fuel technologies capture] to clean up the pollution associated with greenhouse gases. If we are panicked into shutting down fossil fuel and coal plants prematurely, we will have an energy shortage like we have never seen.

    CLOSING COMMENTS
    It is very odd and very noticeable that the issue of pollution as opposed to global warming is rarely now mentioned by all the scientific bodies engaged in the climate change debate. If everyone is focused on CO2 reductions only and climate change, cleaning up the pollution [SO2, NO2, VOX, SMOG, ETC] is conveniently forgotten.

    I merely wish to point out that manmade greenhouse gases may not be the prime cause behind global climate change. The facts of this will become more apparent in the near future. The sun and our planet are changing due to causes that are not all of man’s making but we can reduce the pollution that we are causing.

    Matt Vooro
    e-mail tartu950@cogeco.ca

A project of Minnesota Majority, hosted and maintained by Minnesotans for Global Warming.