Showing posts with label Piers Corbyn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Piers Corbyn. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

PAGASA Bureaucracy 2: Deregulate Weather Forecasting, Privatize PAGASA

Last July 23, 2010, I wrote this:

(This is my article for "People's Brigada News" weekend tabloid, http://peoplesbrigadanews.com/wpress/index.php)

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) is the monopoly weather forecasting body in this country. Among its catastrophic forecasts were those of super-typhoons “Ondoy” (international name “Ketsana”) and “Pepeng” (“Parma”) last year, and typhoon “Basyang” (“Conson”) middle of this month.

In other cases though, PAGASA would exaggerate its forecast, forcing the public and the local governments to make over-cautious preparations, like suspending inter-island shipping and plane flights, only to see mild rains and wind.

When I got married several years ago in Iloilo, my siblings and cousins from Negros Occidental were not able to attend. The Coast Guard did not allow inter-island travel between Bacolod and Iloilo (just one hour by boat) because PAGASA said storm signal no. 2 was up in that region, even when it was sunny and the wind has pacified.

Weather forecasting need not be an exclusive function of the government. The scientific and technical know-how to gather data and interpret them can be done by private enterprises. Private corporations now have capacities to send their own satellites into space to provide telecommunications and other services to the public.

Government weather forecasting bodies like PAGASA do not get penalized for their catastrophic failures in doing their job. No one was fired in PAGASA, its budget was never cut, and each failure in weather forecasting is even used as additional excuse to demand more tax money to further “improve” the agency.

Private weather forecasting enterprises though, will get heavy penalty if they make bad forecasts consistently. There is no tax money to put them up, no tax money to bail them out if they are constantly inefficient. They are under pressure to provide the most accurate, the most updated, hour by hour monitoring, of severe weather disturbances, for their clients.

Weather forecasting in the country should be deregulated and private companies should be allowed and encouraged to enter the market. PAGASA can either be privatized, or be subjected to certain penalties like firing its key officials and shrinking its budget the next year, if it remains a lousy agency. Persistent lousiness and persistent reduction of its budget should ultimately result in its abolition or privatization.

A friend wrote a good post in his blog, “Privatize PAGASA or open weather forecasting to competition”, http://prudentinvestornewsletters.blogspot.com/2010/07/privatize-pag-asa-or-open-weather.html
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Saturday, October 03, 2009

Warming Hysteria: Galactic Cosmic Rays, UN FCCC

Global cooling – not warming – seems to be accelerating this year. Without going through scientific papers with their graphs, charts and greek equations, even without checking temperature data from surface stations (say PAGASA data for the Philippines) or from satellite data (say from UAH, RSS, Hadley). We just look around, look up the sky, especially, and recollect the weather since January up to September this year. It was cold in January to February, of course. Yet it was still cold in March up to Holy Week in early April. There were two typhoons in April, another two typhoons in May. March to May are officially “summer” months but it was mostly cloudy and rainy. One of my friends whose business is manufacturing and selling umbrellas and raincoats, told me that she’s been making money as early as April.

We now go to more objective and more scientific way of observing climate. In my article on September 10, Solar minimum and Copenhagen, I showed there a graph that compares global temperature from satellite data (UAH and RSS) and carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration from 1979 to August 2009 (30 years period). The graph showed cooling of around 0.24 Celsius from 2002 to August 2009, whereas CO2 concentration keeps on rising, up to around 390 parts per million (ppm), from only around 285 ppm during the Industrial Revolution.

I argued that it was the weak Sun in the current deep solar minimum that allowed the entry of huge number of cosmic rays (coming from exploding stars) into the Earth’s atmosphere, the rays catalyze the formation of aerosols that form the nuclei for cloud formation. So weak Sun, plenty of cosmic rays, lots of cloud, sunlight is blocked from reaching the Earth’s surface, lots of rainfall, global cooling.

We will notice also that even if there are no typhoons, the sky is often dark as there are lots of clouds in the lower atmosphere (the troposphere). So when typhoon “Ondoy” (international name “Ketsana”) hit Metro Manila and neighboring provinces, the typhoon dumped huge volume of rains that inundated a wide area of the Philippines. As of this writing, nearly 300 people have been confirmed and counted as dead. There are many more missing, so the headcount should rise in the coming days.

After the typhoon, facebook and other social networking was also flooded with “blame global warming and climate change” posting by a number of people. I challenged almost all of my friends who posted such and argued that this is one proof that we are in a period of global cooling, not warming. And the weak Sun, not lots of CO2 in the air, is mainly responsible for this cooling or what the warmers would euphemistically call “global warming” as “climate change”.

Two days ago, a scientist at NASA, Dr. Tony Phillips, wrote a paper, "Cosmic rays hit space age high", where he noted that cosmic rays are +19 percent plentier or stronger this year than last year. The graph he showed just confirms the inverse relationship between solar activity and cosmic rays level. Cosmic rays have been steadily rising from 2001 up to 2009.

So now, one question that will crop up is, more cosmic rays this year, that's why there are lots of clouds in the sky? Partly Yes, but one Australian scientist that I have read, Dr. David Archibald (www.davidarchibald info) says that there is a lag of one year from the Sun's level of activity or inactivity, to the effect on cloud formation and volume.

So if we think that it is always cloudy these days and months, wait for next year. While solar minimum was also observed last year, the Sun is even weaker this year than last year. So the implication is, we will hardly see the Sun next year! Clouds will rule the sky, even during "summer" months of March-April-May, again!

On another note, a British astrophysicist, one of the scientists that I have heard during the 2nd International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC) in NYC last March, has practically predicted the wrath of typhoon “Ondoy”, about 3 weeks before Ondoy pummeled Metro Manila and the surrounding provinces.

In its Weather Action (WA) news no. 66 dated September 27, 2009, owner of independent weather forecasting firm WA, Dr. Piers Corbyn, reported that as solar cycle 24 (a solar cycle would last for 11 years on average) is starting from an extended solar cycle 23 (it lasted for more than 13 years), a lot of Sun-triggered extreme events would happen, including the last typhoon Ondoy. See
http://www.weatheraction.com/displayarticle.asp?a=88&c=1.

Dr. Corbyn and his team do not rely on meteorological computer models. Instead, they watchthe Sun: sunspots, solar flares, solar magnetic field, the level of cosmic rays, etc. and predict the kind of weather disturbances that are likely to occur, where and when!

One may wonder, then why wouldn't the UN, UK, US, Philippine and other governments get his services to prepare themselves for big catastrophes? The quick answer that I can think of is this: the UN and all those governments believe in CO2-climate theory (actually just a hypothesis), they all hate the Sun-climate theory which Dr. Corbyn and many other astrophysicists and geologists explain. Those governments want only one thing: ecological central planning dream. They cannot regulate the Sun and cosmic rays from the outer universe, so they cannot implement their deep desire for more environmental regulations and ecological central planning.

Dr. Corbyn's services are for a fee, of course. He receives zero tax funding or subsidy for his scientific work and climate prediction services.

Today, the 16th typhoon of the year, “Pepeng” (international name “Parma”) is entering Cagayan province in the north. The typhoon was far from Metro Manila. Dark clouds did not seem to go away even after typhoon “Ondoy” left the country last September 27.

The thick volume of cosmic rays in the Earth’s atmosphere is causing lots of rainclouds, which later become heavy rainfall, which causes heavy flooding, and results in heavy human misery.

But certain sectors of society keep blaming global warming in the face of obvious cooling. The desire for more environmental regulations and taxation is way deep in the hearts and mind of these people. Lie if they must, fool if they must, corrupt science if they must, so long as they can have the power for more ecological central planning.


Major Actors in Ecological Central Planning

The UN FCCC meeting still ongoing in Bangkok, up to October 9. 
One of my friends posted this in her facebook account about an hour ago.
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/24648/activists-answer-call-of-climate-talks?awesm=fbshare.me_35O.

The figures in that report showed, among others: About 3,000 climate bureaucrats from 190+ countries and about 1,500 climate activists in Bangkok! And both want ecological central planning, it's just that the former want a "milder" carbon emission cut, while the latter want as deep cut as possible. Can't we all go back to riding horses and bicycles? That seems to be at the back of the mind of many of the climate activists. 

I think far from the limelight, but applauding those central planning moves, are the climate bankers and traders. These are the likes of Goldman Sachs, etc. which made big money in carbon trading, which was about $128 billion in 2008 alone, from private corporations in EU, Japan, other rich countries.

It is an ugly alliance of big government + big activist NGOs + big rent-seeking banks and traders. They all say one thing: Over-regulate and overtax carbon, the Sun is dead as a climate driver, more climate bureaucracies, and approximate the Stone age lifestyle.

Anyway, I made this comment on her wall:

"Current 'deep solar minimum' for the century showed weak solar magnetic field, few sunspots, weak solar wind, so more galactic cosmic rays enter the Earth's atmosphere, which help catalyze the formation of low-lying clouds. More clouds, less sunlight that reach the Earth's surface more rainfall, global cooling.

Cooling started in solar cycle 23 (up to early this year), the Sun has very similar behavior with solar cycle 4. Dalton Minimum occured in solar cycles 5 and 6. So the projection is that solar cycles 24 (current cycle) and 25, corresponding to 2 1/2 decades, period of cooling. 

How many climate bureaucrats and activists understand that?"

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Little Ice Age for the Next 300 Years?

Sometimes I am following some literatures by some astrophysicists and geologists who are watching solar activity in relation to global climate.

Last March and April, I was reading some of them predicting global cooling for the next 30 years, starting this year. Then last month I read Piers Corbyn, a British astrophysicist and owner of climateaction.com, saying that his prediction is cooling for the next 100 years. Then today I encountered this article from a Finnish astrophysicist predicting a ooling for the next 300 years!

The Maundeer Minimum 3 centuries ago lasted for 70 years. They've had a "year without summer" where they still have snow even during summer months. Then the next long period of ooling was the Dalton minimum that occured 2 centuries ago. This Finnish physiist is now saying that current indicators (very low solar irradiance, very low solar magnetic field, very few sunspot numbers, etc.) point to a cooling worse than the Dalton Minimum!

To see details of this physicist's analysis, see the entire article in this link. Below I only copy-pasted the less technial conclusions.

The science of "global warming" is falling like a deck of cards but the politics behind it is rising like the world's tallest buildings in Dubai, Taiwan and China.
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http://www.examiner.com/x-13886-New-Haven-County-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2009m7d6-Solar-Physicist-Predicts-Ice-Age-What-happened-to-global-warming

Solar Physicist Predicts Ice Age. What happened to global warming?
July 6, 10:19 PM

Kirtland Griffin
New Haven County Environmental Policy Examiner

Timo Niroma, a physicist from Finland, publishes a Solar Report each month. He has given his permission to use it and distribute it to all so here it is. It will be a regular feature here and I hope you look forward to it as much as I do. The report is not written in the usual user-friendly way, but is rather intended for scientists that are familiar with the information contained in it. I will attempt to simplify and explain the details of the report and how it could impact you and, of course, Al Gore and company. As the predictions come true, as I assume they will, the green lobby will go on unemployment compensation. Let's start at the beginning and take it piece by piece.

"JUNE BREAKING NEWS: THE CYCLE GOES AT THE MOMENT BELOW DALTON LEVEL" gives away the punch line but let's see how he gets there....

Remember Dalton means, "Coooooold, Brrrr! Then we have this:

"The yearly sunspot numbers of 1795-1798 were 21, 16, 6.4 and 4.1, the
corresponding values for 2005-2008 were 30, 15, 7.6 and 2.8. The first full
Dalton year or 1799, had a SSN value of 6.8. The SSN of the first 6 months of
2009 is 1.7".

The progressions illustrate that there is a similarity between the years prior to the Dalton, and the minimum leading up to the cycle #24 but lower than those leading up to the Dalton.

Next is an interesting list of Climatic periods in our past on Earth, all of which correlate with solar parameters at the time. Folks back then recorded a tremendous amount of information about the Sun and there were also proxy measurements available.

"Well, there was the 300-year Roman Optimum in 100 BC to AD 200, the 200-year
oscillation 200-900 (200 cold, 300 warm, 400 cold, 600-900 cold), the 300-year
Medieval Optimum 900-1200 (with some colder spells plus warm aftermaths), the
300-year Little Ice Age 1400-1700, the 300-year "Global Warming" 1700-2005 (with
some drawbacks especially in the 1800's). A NEW LIA WITH SPĂ–RER AND MAUNDER IN
2005-2300???"

That's 300 years of cold, in case you missed it! The Maunder minimum was the bottom of the Little Ice Age from which all IPCC temperature charts begin. That is because it was coldest then and makes the warming look worse. Had they started their charts during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) we would be wondering why it is still so cool. Like when are we going to get to the good stuff.

And then we get the punch line:

"THE CYCLE 24 HAS NOW GONE CLEARLY BELOW DALTON LEVEL."

This is pretty strong evidence. Had you been reading these reports for a few years you would have seen that Timo has been very conservative in his predictions. His earlier predictions were much less severe but trust me, you would be a lot happier with global warming than you will be with a Maunder type solar event. You can take that to the bank. The only thing that makes me grin about this is that it will end the man made global warming scam once and for all. Unless they can convince politicians that we did that too.
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Update:
After I posted "Little ice age in the next 300 years?" below where I mentioned Dr. Piers Corbyn, I got an email from him correcting the website address that I mentioned. I wrote climateaction.org, when it should have been climateaction.com. I have already corrected it.

I saw Piers' presentation during the 2nd International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC) in NYC last March, sponsored by the Heartland Institute. I was a bit amused by his looks -- he looked a bit like Albert Einstein, long, curly and uncombed hair, and presenting a lot of Greek equations.

In one of my talks here in Manila on global cooling vs. global warming politics, I used some charts from Piers' powerpoint presentation in that conference.

Piers gave me some links to his latest long-term climate forecasts. Other materials can be downloaded at their website, www.climateaction.com.