By Paul
Thanks to Luke Walker for alerting me to this story:
WESTERN EUROPE’S HIGHEST SUMMIT GETS TALLER
CHARMONIX, France, Oct 13, 2007 (AFP) – Western Europe’s highest mountain Mont Blanc is taller than ever due to snow piled atop its summit, in what experts meeting in France Saturday described as a climate-change related phenomenon.
By Paul
From the Sunday Herald Sun:
THE award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and the UN’s top climate panel on Friday has prompted a fresh chorus of criticism from global warming sceptics — with one dubbing the award “a political gimmick”.
By Paul
You lucky Aussies have more potential for domestic solar energy than us poor Brits stuck in the rather dull UK. With global warming hysteria at fever pitch, and the apparent belief that we can contol the weather or climate by attempting to reduce the UK’s 2 per cent contribution to global man-made CO2 emissions, from 1 per cent of the world’s population, we are now required to provide an Energy Performance Certificate as part of a Home Information Pack when we sell our home. Currently this only applies to homes with 3 or more bedrooms (Biggs Towers has 4), but will eventually be extended to cover all homes. There are 8 measures that are needed to secure a rating of A or B, as a opposed to a poor rating of F or G. My home was only built in 2000, so has modern energy saving features such as cavity wall insulation, thick fibreglass loft insulation, double glazed UPVC windows, and polystyrene slab under the downstairs concrete floors. I’ve used compact fluorescent bulbs since they came on the market quite a few years ago, in some of our light fittings.
Today’s Times (13th October) has an article featuring a study by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors about the cost of installing energy saving measures and the time taken to recoup the investment. Apparently, installing solar panels for water heating costs around £5,000 and would save only £24 per year on average. This means it could take up to 208 years to recoup the investment. Installing all 8 measures could cost over £23,000 and take 48 years to recoup.
The Times article is entitled ‘Saving energy at home could take 200 years to repay its cost.’ Thanks to Woody for pointing it out.
By Paul
Australia’s leading climate alarmist was recently quoted in the Herald Tribune on the IPCC report due to be released in November:
Scientist: Global greenhouse gas emissions already beyond ‘worst-case’ scenario
SYDNEY, Australia: Strong worldwide economic growth has accelerated the level of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere to a dangerous threshold scientists had not expected for another decade, according to a leading Australian climate change expert.
Scientist Tim Flannery said a report by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change due to be released in November will contain new data showing that the level of climate-changing gases in the atmosphere has already reached critical levels.
RealCliimate disagrees slightly:
By Paul
The errors are listed in this article:
Judge attacks nine errors in Al Gore’s ‘alarmist’ climate change film
Another brief article here:
By Paul
A new paper predictably makes a big splash in this week’s Nature magazine:
Attribution of observed surface humidity changes to human influence
Katharine M. Willett1,2, Nathan P. Gillett1, Philip D. Jones1 & Peter W. Thorne2
Climatic Research Unit, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
Met Office Hadley Centre, FitzRoy Road, Exeter EX1 3PB, UK
Water vapour is the most important contributor to the natural greenhouse effect, and the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere is expected to increase under conditions of greenhouse-gas-induced warming, leading to a significant feedback on anthropogenic climate change. Theoretical and modelling studies predict that relative humidity will remain approximately constant at the global scale as the climate warms, leading to an increase in specific humidity. Although significant increases in surface specific humidity have been identified in several regions and on the global scale in non-homogenized data, it has not been shown whether these changes are due to natural or human influences on climate. Here we use a new quality-controlled and homogenized gridded observational data set of surface humidity, with output from a coupled climate model, to identify and explore the causes of changes in surface specific humidity over the late twentieth century. We identify a significant global-scale increase in surface specific humidity that is attributable mainly to human influence. Specific humidity is found to have increased in response to rising temperatures, with relative humidity remaining approximately constant. These changes may have important implications, because atmospheric humidity is a key variable in determining the geographical distribution and maximum intensity of precipitation, the potential maximum intensity of tropical cyclones, and human heat stress16, and has important effects on the biosphere and surface hydrology.
Also in Nature News:
Humans have made the skies more moist
Study models rises in atmospheric water vapour.
Human activity is behind the rising levels of water vapour in the lower atmosphere over the past few decades, climatologists have concluded. The rises in humidity could affect patterns of extreme storms, they warn.
Nature’s editor likes it too:
………using a new data set of surface specific humidity observations, along with output from a coupled climate model, Willett et al. identify a significant increase in global mean surface specific humidity during the late twentieth century that is mainly attributable to human influence.
Luke Walker thinks the paper is significant and sent a link to ABC’s predictable take:
Rising humidity fuels greenhouse effect
We also had this report from the BBC in November 2005:
Water builds the heat in Europe
“Water vapour rather than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the main reason why Europe’s climate is warming, according to a new study.”
The BBC are up to speed with the new Nature paper:
Warmth makes the world more humid
I wonder how evaporation equalling precipitation globally over the past 20 years fits into this?
The paper also tries to make a link with increased tropical cyclones, but the case for a link is weak.
Scant publicity by comaprison for the recent Spencer et al paper ‘Cloud and radiation budget changes associated with tropical intraseasonal oscillations’. Geophys. Res. Lett., Vol. 34, No. 15, 9 August 2007.
Read the article ‘Global Warming and Nature’s Thermostat’ by Roy W. Spencer:
August 9, 2007 RESEARCH UPDATE!: Our peer-reviewed paper showing the natural cooling behavior of tropical cirrus clouds in response to warming has been published today in Geophysical Research Letters. (The UAH news release is here.) This natural cooling mechanism constitiutes a strong “negative feedback” (reducing warming tendencies), while all leading climate models have cirrus clouds behaving in a positive feedback manner (amplifying warming tendencies). As is usually the case in this business, however, there is no way to know with any level of confidence whether this mechanism is operating in the context of manmade global warming………
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
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