Snow in October, Now gales predicted...

John- I will wrap up this feature on Weather Action and Piers Corbyn by commenting on recent and current forecasts. Piers predicted snow and a cold snap towards the end of October and "Major damaging storm" in the West. We got both in the UK (snow in London- first for 74 years). Freak hailstorms on the south west and fell runner race stopped by bad weather and
flooding. Neither was forecast by the Met office. I will add more detail to this post later (via editing). However, I would like to present the next forecast for the rest of November:-


Nov 08: Dramatic changes. Cold wintry spells
separated by heavy rain floods and storms.
Severe Weather Warnings: Gale damage with North
sea storm surge risks (70% likely) OR/& sleet /
snow risk around 12-14 Nov & 25-28 Nov.


Well, as I write, it is 11th November. We shall see, again these events were not predicted by the Met office at the start of November.

http://www.weatheraction.com/

In conclusion I am keeping an open mind on this one. My gut feeling is that Piers just could be on to something significant and remarkable. However, his knowledge and indeed the current state of the art in the area of solar interaction with the climate and even individual weather events is not sufficiently complete for really accurate forecasts. In fact the whole idea is dismissed by many as mere fantasy. This is not surprising as the whole idea of the sun influencing climate is controversial because it goes against and could potentially undermine the "consensus" idea of climate and weather driven by human produced CO2. Therefore little research has been done in this promising area, and I fear it will not be while "climate change" hysteria grips press, politicians and climate scientists alike.

Mad Scientist or Visionary??

John- I'm now going to focus on some of the "characters" in the global warming debate- none seems more characterful and eccentric that Piers Corbyn, the "mad professor" look-a-like solar physicist who runs his own company "Weather Action". The company makes long range weather forecasts and sells them mainly to farmers. Piers has written to politicians many times warning them of the dangers of their incorrect views on global warming. He was featured in the national press after making a lot of money at the bookies betting his forecasts against The Met Office. In the late 1960's he was student union leader and a campaigner for squatters rights. A colourful character if ever there was one.


















Piers claims to have a revolutionary system of forecasting the weather using his "solar magnetic method" which he refuses to divulge. Well, fair enough- its his invention and he's making his living out of it though his Weather Action company. William Hill bookies have banned him from placing bets on the weather against the Met Office forecasts- so he must be on to something. Wikipedia has a somewhat biased entry, but then it does on anyone or anything which questions man made global warming or any other subject Wikki is baised about. Piers has also appeared on the film "The Great Global Warming Swindle".




















As for Piers, he's also an outspoken critic of the man-made global warming theory, this criticism is based on his knowledge of the sun and how changes on the sun affect weather and climate. Fair enough, I can understand the connection between sun and climate according to the various theories of climate change over decades or hundreds or throusands of years, but Piers claims to have a method of accurate weather forecasting- he correctly predicted the path and intensity of hurricane 'Gustav', for instance. If this is indeed the case, then Piers and Weather Action could be onto something remarkable, using readily observable changes in the sun and its magnetic field and solar particle emmissions to give accurate weather forecasts. If Piers is right then his method is nothing less than a breakthrough in climate and weather forecasting and the whole world deserves to take note.

Currently this statement has been on the front page of the weather action site for some time:-
"OCTOBER 2008 .

Unusually Cold with sleet and snow at times on frequent Northerly winds. Often foggy. Milder later ... a major damaging storm .""Detailed 30d ahead Forecast OCTOBER 08 SWT24f (Lbs1) Issued 29 Sept

29 - 31 Oct /1st Nov 2008. A (85%).
Stormy and becoming very
mild. Heavy rain, local
floods, severe damaging
gales esp in Ireland and
West / South/West. 2 inches
of rain likely in places.
A deep ‘dartboard’ low drives
into British Isles from West."

Sounds quite dramatic! Although I'm not looking forward to the storm, I'd love such a dramatic prediction to come true based on "solar magnetic" methods, and predicted by a global warming "sceptic" (we prefer the term "realist" here on the Climate Change Realist blog). We will also be monitoring forthcoming predictions from Weather Action and see how they match up to weather events.
Good Luck Piers!

http://www.weatheraction.com/
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.02/weather.html
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000053C3.htm
http://www.1968andallthat.net/node/87
http://www.felixonline.co.uk/articles/2568/My_uncle_the_global_warming_sceptic

The Lonely Carbon Dioxide Molecule

My human has expressed his views on the carbon dioxide molecule in the atmosphere to me and I encouraged him to write his views in my blog.- love Mimi

John- After having my mind changed on global warming by the solar scientist (who's name escapes me {Sam Solanki???}) on Sky At Night, I started to ponder at great length on the lonely CO2 molecule floating around in the atmosphere, thinking about the molecule and visualising how the "greenhouse effect" might work. I knew from my chemistry studies that gas molecules fly around in random directions bouncing off other gas molecules as they do so (like Brownian motion).

The lonely CO2 molecule can indeed absorb a photon of infra red radiation and then spit it out. It does this by C=O bond stretches. The infra red photon hits the CO2, the C=O bond stretches, then spits the IR photon out again. However, as the molecule is tumbling in Brownian motion style and, In addition the photon of infra red can be spat out in any randomised direction according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle then the photon of infra red is just as likely to be spat out into space as back to the earths surface to warm it. Therefore, the "greenhouse gas" acts as a sort of short term insulation- the IR "heat photon" does find its way back out into space after a while. This, I believe has the effect of keeping the Earths temperature relatively constant from day to night and being a relatively short term effect and as the heat is not actually "trapped" in the atmosphere, then a runaway greenhouse as predicted by the doom mongers is simply not possible. Without this effect of our atmosphere regulating temperature then the day to night temperature of the Earth would vary as much as it does on the surface of the Moon.

CO2 does not act as a "greenhouse" in the atmosphere in this sense, for this would impy there is a thin layer high in the atmosphere trapping heat in, much like the glass in a horticultural greenhouse and this is not the case CO2 is distributed through the atmosphere. Therefore as the atmosphere has a limit, then the amount of "greenhouse warming" also has a limit. I thought of this idea some years ago (2005) and this year I was delighted to discover a Hungarian atmospheric physicist called Ferenc M. Miskolczi came to the same conclusion and proved it mathematically. He discovered a mistake in the original "greenhouse" equations calculated in the 1920's- an assumption was made of an infinite atmosphere, and when he recalculated the equations he found that a runaway was not possible without an infinite atmosphere. You can read about his work in more detail here, about the saturated greenhouse effect that our planet exists in and included is a link to the original paper.

So, there we have it. Intuitive thinking agrees with the mathematical proof that the "greenhouse effect", while keeping the planet comfortable for life (and cats of course!) cannot runaway and cause a global catastrophe as the radical environmentalists predict. The doom and gloom theory is comprehensively broken. When are the IPCC and Al Gore going to admit "sorry chaps, we made a mistake".

A Cat's view on Global Warming

Hello, my name is Mimi and I have strong views on many things. However, I only express these views to my human, who we shall call "John". I asked him to set up a blog for me and to translate into English and post for me on my very own blog on this thing humans read on their funny boxes with screens called "the internet". Here is a picture of an "internet" so you know how to recognise one if you ever come across it. I have been told it is safe!

A word on Global warming. There are cats like me (not quite as beautiful and intelligent as Siamese cats like me, but fellow cats nonetheless) all around the globe and we have very strong views on warm and cold. It is about time one of our number spoke out on this very important issue. Warm is good, cold is bad, given the chance I sit on the radiator when it is on full, I would not sit in the fridge. I believe a warmer world is a good thing not bad, a cold world such as during an ice age is obviously very very bad for cat comfort. Humans can control the temperature to some extent within their buildings but outside, I do not believe this is possible. I know that at one time, my human, who we shall call "John" was very worried about global warming. John is a scientist by profession and understands these things and in the 1980's, before I was born -John had heard of global warming, that it could do bad things (how is warm bad??- no sense there to a cat). John had heard that global warming was caused by humans just by heating their houses and driving their cars giving off CO2. This did not seem likely to me, and anyway, we cats like the warmth. However, John was worried by this until one day.......

One day he was watching an astronomy programme on the television called "The Sky at Night". It was very interesting. Patrick Moore, the shows presenter was interviewing a solar scientist (possibly Sam Solanki) about the sun. John was surprised to hear this scientist say that he did not believe in global warming was caused by humans and their CO2 and that he believed the sun was the cause. This makes sense to me as a cat. I have lain outside under the sun many times and when it is out from hiding behind the clouds, it warms my fur and is very very nice. However, CO2 has never warmed me up, humans only warm me if I sit on their lap or lie in bed under the covers with a big warm human, their CO2 does not heat me up. So humans, please stop being silly, you are not big and clever enough to heat the world up by your CO2, it is the sun, the clouds, the universe and nature doing this heating and cooling of the earth. I have noticed the sun is less warm this year than it has been, the earth is cooling now and will continue to do so regardless of human CO2. Enjoy the warmth while you can get it! It will not last!