Monday, December 27, 2010

Another nail in the coffin for globular worming?


The Mayor of London, England, points to a British forecaster who's beaten the Meteorological Office and everyone else in correctly forecasting the events of the winter thus far.

Allow me to introduce readers to Piers Corbyn, meteorologist and brother of my old chum, bearded leftie MP Jeremy. Piers Corbyn works in an undistinguished office in Borough High Street. He has no telescope or supercomputer. Armed only with a laptop, huge quantities of publicly available data and a first-class degree in astrophysics, he gets it right again and again.

Back in November, when the Met Office was still doing its "mild winter" schtick, Corbyn said it would be the coldest for 100 years. Indeed, it was back in May that he first predicted a snowy December, and he put his own money on a white Christmas about a month before the Met Office made any such forecast. He said that the Met Office would be wrong about last year's mythical "barbecue summer", and he was vindicated. He was closer to the truth about last winter, too.

He seems to get it right about 85 per cent of the time and serious business people – notably in farming – are starting to invest in his forecasts. In the eyes of many punters, he puts the taxpayer-funded Met Office to shame. How on earth does he do it? He studies the Sun.

He looks at the flow of particles from the Sun, and how they interact with the upper atmosphere, especially air currents such as the jet stream, and he looks at how the Moon and other factors influence those streaming particles.

He takes a snapshot of what the Sun is doing at any given moment, and then he looks back at the record to see when it last did something similar. Then he checks what the weather was like on Earth at the time – and he makes a prophecy.

I have not a clue whether his methods are sound or not. But when so many of his forecasts seem to come true, and when he seems to be so consistently ahead of the Met Office, I feel I want to know more. Piers Corbyn believes that the last three winters could be the harbinger of a mini ice age that could be upon us by 2035, and that it could start to be colder than at any time in the last 200 years. He goes on to speculate that a genuine ice age might then settle in, since an ice age is now cyclically overdue.

Is he barmy? Of course he may be just a fluke-artist. It may be just luck that he has apparently predicted recent weather patterns more accurately than government-sponsored scientists. Nothing he says, to my mind, disproves the view of the overwhelming majority of scientists, that our species is putting so much extra CO2 into the atmosphere that we must expect global warming.

The question is whether anthropogenic global warming is the exclusive or dominant fact that determines our climate, or whether Corbyn is also right to insist on the role of the Sun. Is it possible that everything we do is dwarfed by the moods of the star that gives life to the world? The Sun is incomparably vaster and more powerful than any work of man. We are forged from a few clods of solar dust. The Sun powers every plant and form of life, and one day the Sun will turn into a red giant and engulf us all. Then it will burn out. Then it will get very nippy indeed.


There's more at the link. Here's an interview with Mr. Corbyn from Fox News.







Mr. Corbyn's Web site provides more details of his prognostications. It makes for interesting reading . . . and so far, he's been right on the money. If he continues to be proved correct, of course, then the proponents of anthropogenic global warming will be proved wrong, comprehensively and completely - which is why they don't seem to like him very much! More power to him, say I. Accuracy speaks far more loudly than propaganda, in the long run.

Peter

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very interesting.

It occurs to me that, if he's right about the coming of a mini ice age, we're in for serious trouble. Our current energy policy of systematically shutting down our ability to use currently available sources in favor of technology that is not robust enough to supply our needs may literally leave us out in the cold.

Broke and freezing. Quite a future.

Goatroper

Miz Minka said...

Hi Peter,

How about this bit of insanity from the globular worming folks:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26cohen.html?_r=1

Mr. Cohen thinks globular worming puts more moisture in the air, therefore it snows more, the snow reflects light away from the planet, and so it's getting colder. That's why we must stop global warming!!!

Makes perfect sense, doesn't it?! *headdesk*

As for me, I'm going to keep knitting lots and lots of wool socks, hats, and sweaters and learning all I can about winter gardening.

Anecdotal note: I left northern Germany 30 years ago. During the first nearly 20 years of my life there, we hardly ever had any snow during the winter; but for the last 15+ years, my folks have had a white Christmas almost without fail.

Global warming, my a$$.

Toastrider said...

85 percent accuracy rate? In meteorology? Holy shit.

Chip said...

These 2 guys published this article 5 years ago that pretty much explains whats going on, but nobody took notice because the media was so enthralled with Gore and the globular warming idiots.
S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, "The Physical Evidence of Earth's Unstoppable 1,500-Year Climate Cycle," National Center for Policy Analysis, Policy Report No. 279, September 29, 2005

Billll said...

There are a whole group of folks with a logical construct that runs along the lines of
1. We are not wrong!
2. The sun is rising.
3. The earth is warming.
4. Unless we get massive taxpayer funding, we're all gonna die.

Pointing out that if you wait a few hours, the sun will be setting is futile. See step 1, which is not negotiable.

This sort of reasoning is popular among economists too, but the presence of one on every virtual street corner differing only in the details of step 2 has reduced their value.

What is needed is a derisive and catchy descriptor that can be used at a moments notice like a bucket of cold water on a wicked witch. Chicken Little is good, but a lack of studies in classical literature has reduced its effectiveness. I blame the teachers unions.