Despite what the idiots like Jo Nova, Ian Plimer, Lord Monckton of Brenchley and other stupid denialists claim, global warming is happening at a rate of knots...

We are lucky though... Previous scientific estimates concluded that we should have been headed for an ice age — once we exclude the effect of our EXTRA CO2 in the atmosphere...

Meanwhile the sun is awakening... Though the peak of solar activity is predicted for 2015 by Gus and will be below average in intensity as per NASA's predictions. NASA's prediction in 2009 was for a 2013 peak while according to Gus and new analysis by scientists, the quiet sun curveball lasted a bit longer and the sun only awoken about six months ago... The next slowdown in solar activity though would fall in around 2019... with a minimum by 2025...

One of the major obstacle to our acceptance of global warming is that until we fry, the denialists will harp on "global warming not happening". I will repeat: Alan Jones is an ignorant idiot. Tony Abbott is a cunning idiot...

Beware.

It is not unlikely that the next decade could warm up by one degree Celsius in accordance with the proportional rise and existence of EXTRA anthropomorphic CO2. This would only mean a small average increase of 0.1 degree Celsius per annum, which by all means is utterly possible and still can not be "felt" by our senses, but the effect of such increase would dump heaps of hefty meteorological crap upon us... 

Lucky, the major mitigating factors are the ice melting and the warming of the oceans. We know that water is a "slow warmer" say compared to steel or even rocks... This was why the "value of a calorie" was defined by the energy needed for the warming of water... But clear water vapour behaves differently. In the atmosphere it will transfer heat (or cold) more readily than straight warm air... As more heat comes along, more evaporation is induced (cooling effect), then more chance of cloud cover follows, reducing the heat reaching the surface in a complex loop, in which inversion layers play an important role, all of which seems to reduce the warming but, in fact, still contains the surface heat... Should the conditions be "cool" enough, suddenly the heavens open up and rain fall in buckets till the sun relaunch the increasing warming process...

It is thus even conceivable that the increase of warming globally be around 0.3 degree Celsius per annum in the next three years... We still would not "feel" it using our senses... The difference between 24 degrees Celsius and 24.3 cannot be felt by pointing a finger in the air and depending on ambient humidity our senses can be bamboozled by "apparent" comfort... Not even if the temperature goes to 24.6... 

As El Nino comes back in October, 0.3 degree Celsius extra is thus not out of the question... By 2020, according to the proportion of CO2 present in the atmosphere, we could thus hit a rise of 2 degree Celsius from now, even with mitigating circumstances... while the next cooling of the sun could bring a plateau of levelled temperature for the following few years after that... Then the process will increase again and by 2050 temperature, according to proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere, temperature could hit 4 degrees Celsius extra... with a few large ups and small downs... My earlier calculations were for a full 9 degree Celsius increase by 2100, in accordance with the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere. We can only pray for mitigating circumstances to be mitigating enough... Including our own will to drastically reduce our CO2 emissions...

Be warned. Be prepared...

Note: "It turns out that none of our models were totally correct," says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA's lead representative on the panel. "The sun is behaving in an unexpected and very interesting way."

Researchers have known about the solar cycle since the mid-1800s. Graphs of sunspot numbers resemble a roller coaster, going up and down with an approximately 11-year period. At first glance, it looks like a regular pattern, but predicting the peaks and valleys has proven troublesome. Cycles vary in length from about 9 to 14 years. Some peaks are high, others low. The valleys are usually brief, lasting only a couple of years, but sometimes they stretch out much longer. In the 17th century the sun plunged into a 70-year period of spotlessness known as the Maunder Minimum that still baffles scientists.

The 1859 storm--known as the "Carrington Event" after astronomer Richard Carrington who witnessed the instigating solar flare--electrified transmission cables, set fires in telegraph offices, and produced Northern Lights so bright that people could read newspapers by their red and green glow. A recent report by the National Academy of Sciences found that if a similar storm occurred today, it could cause $1 to 2 trillion in damages to society's high-tech infrastructure and require four to ten years for complete recovery. For comparison, Hurricane Katrina caused "only" $80 to 125 billion in damage.

From Mungo MacCallum

So that was week one of the carbon price, and a pretty grim week it was.

Another Australian soldier killed in Afghanistan, more bombings in Iraq, more carnage in Syria, floods in Russia, a purge at Barclay's following the interest fixing scam, GlaxoSmithKline fined $3 billion and, back home, the State of Origin tragedy.

But the only real disaster Tony Abbott could pin on Julia Gillard's grey pig newt axe, as he calls it, was Craig Emerson's karaoke performance at Whyalla, and even that had its bright side: if the long-suffering city can survive that, it can survive anything.

So in general the week lived up to all the more rational predictions: nothing much changed, just as Gillard insisted would be the case. And paradoxically, that is the bad news for the Government.

The trouble is that the public has become so used to hysterical screams about the end of the world from one side and bland reassurances that it will all be all right from the other that most punters seem to have forgotten what it's really all about: ameliorating the worst effects of climate change.

Occasionally Climate Change Minister Greg Combet, or Ross Garnaut (remember him? He was the one who got the whole thing rolling in the first place) make a valiant effort to remind them, but they have been pretty much drowned out in the clamour. If any message from the Government has been heard, it is not that this is the far-reaching and enduring reform promised by Gillard or a response to the greatest economic, political and moral challenge of our times, as identified by Kevin Rudd; it is rather that actually you'll hardly notice it.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4118434.html?WT.svl=theDrum

Read the comment above...

Australian consumers can expect to pay more for bread, potato chips, cereals and many other foods as a searing heatwave across the US midwest sends global crop prices soaring.

‘‘There has been a significant rally, up around 30 per cent, with these gains led by corn, wheat and soybeans,’’ Luke Mathews, a commodities strategist at Commonwealth Bank, said.

Corn prices climbed to more than $US7.10 a bushel, the highest price in nine months as the world’s biggest exporter, the United States, curbed production. (One tonne is equal to almost 37 bushels.) The US-dollar price of corn has jumped about 41 per cent since June 15.

Soybean and wheat prices are also rising as the drought devastates farmland throughout the midwest.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/us-heatwave-to-send-australian-food-prices-higher-20120709-21r3w.html#ixzz2073FEf26

There are some strange things happening with the weather on both sides of the Atlantic.

Consider events such as huge wildfires and record-breaking heatwave across the United States, to unprecedented rainfall for many parts of the UK, not to mention the devastating storms that have hit the Black Sea coasts of both Russia and Turkey.

Despite the vast distances between these regions, there is a common link – the jet stream.

The jet stream is the band of wind, blowing at up to 400 kilometres per hour that lies high up in the atmosphere. It marks the boundary between warm air to the south and colder air to the north, and it tends to move northwards in the summer and southwards in the winter.

It doesn't move in a straight line, though. Because of the rotation of the Earth beneath it, it tends to meander much like a river.

In a typical summer, the jet stream lies across North America and heads out across the Atlantic, going well to the north of the UK.

This summer, however, the pattern is very different.

It has been far further to the north across North America. This has pushed warm air across the south and east and the consequences are clear – huge wildfires in the Midwest and day after day of 40 degree celsius temperatures in the east.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the jet stream has dipped well to the south of the UK and Western Europe, driving cold air and wet weather with it.

Everything from the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations, to tennis at Wimbledon and the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, have been hit by exceptionally wet weather. In fact, this is the wettest start to a British summer in more than 100 years.

But that's not the end of our story. The jet steam has turned sharply and brought about heatwave conditions across much of Eastern Europe.

Those high temperatures have been the catalyst for some massive thunder clouds, known as supercells. These have brought serious flooding and deaths to the Black Sea coastal regions of both Turkey and southern Russia.

Will the pattern change? Are we stuck with extreme weather for the rest of the summer?

If past experience is anything to go by, we usually see these patterns change over a period of weeks, and the heatwave over the US looks to be on its way out.

Whether or not a change will come in time to save the Olympic Games in London, only time will tell.

http://blogs.aljazeera.com/blog/americas/strange-scenes-inside-jet-stream

Jet streams behaviour is climate (change) dependent... Some changes in jet streams are indications of climate change...