Paul

Yes, secondary beer fridges in North American and Australian homes have a significant impact on domestic greenhouse gas emissions. So says a ‘study’ by Denise Young from the University of Alberta, Canada.

Joanna Yarrow, director of ‘Beyond Green,’ a ‘sustainable development’ consultancy in the UK. “Clearly the environmental implications of having a frivolous luxury like a beer fridge are not hitting home. This research helps inform people – let’s hope it has an effect.”

It certainly had an effect on me. My secondary fridge will need re-stocking with lager tomorrow.

Reported in New Scientist Environment: ‘Beer fridges’ present a gassy problem

I’ve mentioned before that the flawed ‘hockey stick’ temperature reconstruction is used to reduce the role of the sun in climate change. Little pre-industrial temperature variability would help support the claim that 20th century warming is mainly anthropogenic in origin. Scafetta and West have recently published a continuation of their phenomenological approach to estimating the role of total solar irradiance (TSI) in climate change, which compares TSI reconstructions with temperature reconstructions.

Interestingly, Scafetta and West conclude that: “if we assume that the latest temperature and TSI secular reconstructions, WANG2005 and MOBERG05, are accurate, we are forced to conclude that solar changes significantly alter climate, and that the climate system responds relatively slowly to such changes with a time constant between 6 and 12 years. This would suggest that the large-scale computer models of climate could be significantly improved by adding additional Sun-climate coupling mechanisms.”

I should point out that solar irradiance is only one potential solar effect on climate and the IPCC rate the ‘level of scientific understanding’ (LOSU) of ‘solar irradiance’ as ‘low.’ Even the contrived Lockwood and Frohlich (2007) paper pointed to the possibility of an unknown ‘solar amplifier’ and the expected fall in future solar activity. Furthermore, it is possible that equivalent solar forcing is ‘different’ to greenhouse gas forcing.

Anyway, the JGR paper entitled: ‘Phenomenological reconstructions of the solar signature in the Northern Hemisphere surface temperature records since 1600’ by N. Scafetta and B. J. West can be found here. It’s a good read, so enjoy!

“IT HAS been billed as the summit that could help save the planet, but the latest United Nations climate change conference on the paradise island of Bali has itself become a major contributor to global warming.

Calculations suggest flying the 15,000 politicians, civil servants, green campaigners and television crews into Indonesia will generate the equivalent of 100,000 tonnes of extra CO2. That is similar to the entire annual emissions of the African state of Chad.”

Climate scientists such as Leo Di Caprio, Arnie Schwarzenegger, and Al Gore could be there. WWF, formerley known as the ‘World Wildlife Fund,’ are said to be sending at least 32 staff. Unfortunately Biggsy has a real and potentially useful job, in order to earn a living, so won’t be able to attend. However, UK taxpayers will be funding the £330 per night suites for the British delegation. UK Environment minister Hilary Benn (he’s a bloke) seems well qualified with a degree in Russian and East European Studies. Rumour has it that the next UN climate conference will take place on the moon, so that the delegates can observe the effects of humanity on the Earth. Be there, or be square.

Read the article in The Sunday Times: ‘UN climate circus rolls in on CO2 cloud’

“Amid all the talk of cutting carbon emissions, we never hear about the simple solutions that can make a vast difference to temperatures.”

The Guardian: ‘Paint it white’

Roy Spencer has taken Craig Loehle’s 2000 year temperature reconstruction to 1995 and added the HadCRUT3 to 2007. Obviously, the proxy temperature reconstructions during the Medieval Warm Period would have larger error bars than the current (instrumental) temperatures, so one shouldn’t put too much emphasis on small differences between the current peak and the MWP peaks.

Roy Spencer also looked at what the HadCRUT3 trace would look like if temperatures now remained constant for another 15 years (until 2022)…in that case, the temperature trace almost reaches the +0.6 deg C line (just barely
exceeding the warmest MWP peak).

We can clearly see that the coldest part of the Little Ice Age was unprecedented in the past 2000 years, and the subsequent recovery to the Modern Warm Period.