There are some letters which are written not expecting to get a reply – but merely to ensure that it is a matter of public record that the government have been informed. This is one of those letters:
{address}
18/2/2016
To the First Minister of Scotland,
Dear Nicola, as the temporary guardian of the Scottish interest, I am writing to you to make you and your successors aware of the current evidence for a potentially serious and historic risk, similar or perhaps far worse in scale, to the original famine that led to the loss of Scottish independence.
Having spent the last decade almost exclusively involved in understanding and commenting on the issue of “global warming” and the late 20th century warming’s supposed link with CO2, I have learnt that of all the nations on the planet, those in the north of Europe and particularly us in Scotland, have most to fear from climatic change.
And with 3 out of the 4 famine periods in these islands occurring in colder periods, I would particularly draw your attention to the effect of 1690s event euphemistically called “the ills years” – an event which occurred in an exceptionally cold decade which led directly to the loss of independence in Scotland – because (citing the book of the same name) it appears that up to 1/4 of Scotland’s population died from the effects of cold and cold induced famine.
Fortunately (and largely based on the hard work of great Scottish engineers who built our modern fossil fuel economy) we don’t have the same concerns over climate today as in the 1690s. But none the less, it is important to note that since James Hansen (the eco-activist employed by NASA to create the global temperature record) first appeared at a congressional hearing to announce the global warming scare, some 1million extra winter deaths have been recorded in the UK alone, with a disproportionate number in Scotland due to our colder climate. And furthermore research reported in the Lancet recorded 15x the number of deaths globally from cold than from heat. So, it is undoubtedly true that global cooling would be a significant public health problem globally, but because in our colder climate and poor quality housing, even modest global cooling would be a significant issue for us in Scotland.
Having examined the proxy records of temperature for the last few million years during which we have seen many ice-ages, it is clear that whilst global warming in an inter-glacial period such as we are in now has not occurred, that there are many instances of short-term precipitous cooling. This evidence shows that large-scale warming as proposed by “global warming” groups does not occur in an interglacial, whereas large scale cooling is a frequently occurring event (Note: I am not referring to the longer scale cooling going into a glacial period).
One particular “event” with around 6C cooling for around 1000 years appears to occur frequently around 10,000 years after the start of the interglacial. In other words – as the press would put it – “we are due for such an event”, although what that means is that if it were to occur it could be any time over the next few thousand years. But it does seem such events can be “triggered” by other factors such as the regular Milankovitch solar orbital cycles or other cooling stimuli.
So any cooling “event” could potentially trigger a much larger scale and prolonged cooling. It is for this reason that I am interested with the proposed connection between solar activity and global temperature, particularly as government scientists and advisers have been “otherwise occupied” and would not be aware of the issue.
From a tentative start this research appears to be making significant progress and whilst I remain sceptical that we will ever really understand completely what drives our climate, from the now available research (and the failure of climate models to predict the “pause”) Solar activity does appear to be far more significant than CO2.
(Note: it is only because certain self-interested groups propose massive additional positive feedback effects that the relatively small scale and largely beneficial effect of CO2 & warming has been of any concern. But if these feedbacks were present we would undoubtedly have seen similar events within the proxy climate record – such warming has not occurred).
Below is a link giving a summary of the many different papers supporting the solar “hypothesis”. These I think now sufficiently robustly link solar activity to our climate that we have reached a stage where any reasonable government must take it seriously.
It is therefore in the hope that you are this reasonable government, that I am writing to you to make you aware of the possible risk of massive cooling. I estimate the probability of this risk as perhaps a once in 2000 year event. This is small when viewed over the period of a government in office, but when seen over the period of our children’s lives, could present a 1 in 20 chance of a life-changing climatic event in Scotland with huge loss of life and massive tangible impacts to the economy.
I urge you to take this issue seriously – without undue alarm.
Mike Haseler BSc. MBA
Link to list of research papers:
http://notrickszone.com/250-skeptic-papers-from-2015/#sthash.ukq4tPzX.CZpIHirS.dpbs
As you say, it would not be wise to expect a reply, but you have logged the point, and it’s worth doing.
Nicola may start to take notice when the lights go out and the natives grow restless, however….