by P. Gosselin, December 13, 2019 in NoTricksZone
Grand media deception
So typical of climate science. Everything in and around it gets wildly exaggerated in order to feed media consumption and deceive the public. Reports are emerging that the “500,000 people” crowd awaiting Greta in Madrid was in fact as low as 15,000, according to Spanish federal police.
That would make the 500,000 claimed figure a 3000% exaggeration!
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by Rafi Letzter, December 13, 2019 in LiveScience
A new mapping effort revealed critical new details of Antarctica’s hidden land.
A new map of the mountains, valleys and canyons hidden under Antarctica‘s ice has revealed the deepest land on Earth, and will help forecast future ice loss.
The frozen southern continent can look pretty flat and featureless from above. But beneath the ice pack that’s accumulated over the eons, there’s an ancient continent, as textured as any other. And that texture turns out to be very important for predicting how and when ice will flow and which regions of ice are most vulnerable in a warming world. The new NASA map, called BedMachine Antarctica, mixes ice movement measurements, seismic measurements, radar and other data points to create the most detailed picture yet of Antarctica’s hidden features.
Related: 50 Amazing Facts About Antarctica
“Using BedMachine to zoom into particular sectors of Antarctica, you find essential details, such as bumps and hollows beneath the ice that may accelerate, slow down or even stop the retreat of glaciers,” Mathieu Morlighem, an Earth system scientist at the University of California, Irvine and the lead author of a new paper about the map, said in a statement.
The new map, published Dec. 12 in the journal Nature Geoscience, reveals previously unknown topographical features that shape ice flow on the frozen continent.
The previously unknown features have “major implications for glacier response to climate change,” the authors wrote. “For example, glaciers flowing across the Transantarctic Mountains are protected by broad, stabilizing ridges.”
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by Judith Curry, December 14, 2019 in ClimateEtc.
“I genuinely have the fear that climate change is going to kill me and all my family, I’m not even kidding it’s all I have thought about for the last 9 months every second of the day. It’s making my sick to my stomach, I’m not eating or sleeping and I’m getting panic attacks daily. It’s currently 1 am and I can’t sleep as I’m petrified.” – Young adult in the UK
Letter from a worried young adult in the UK
I received this letter last nite, via email:
“I have no idea if this is an accurate email of your but I just found it and thought I’d take a chance. My name is XXX I’m 20 years old from the UK. I have been well the only word to describe it is suffering as I genuinely have the fear that climate change is going to kill me and all my family, I’m not even kidding it’s all I have thought about for the last 9 months every second of the day. It’s making my sick to my stomach, I’m not eating or sleeping and I’m getting panic attacks daily. It’s currently 1am and I can’t sleep as I’m petrified. I’ve tried to do my own research, I’ve tried everything. I’m not stupid, I’m a pretty rational thinker but at this point sometimes I literally wish I wasn’t born, I’m just so miserable and Petrified. I’ve recently made myself familiar with your work and would be so appreciative of any findings you can give me or hope or advice over email. I’m already vegetarian and I recycle everything so I’m really trying. Please help me. In anyway you can. I’m at my wits end here.”
JC’s response
We have been hearing increasingly shrill rhetoric from Extinction Rebellion and other activists about the ‘existential threat’ of the ‘climate crisis’, ‘runaway climate chaos’, etc. In a recent op-ed, Greta Thunberg stated: “Around 2030 we will be in a position to set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control that will lead to the end of our civilization as we know it.” From the Extinction Rebellion: “It is understood that we are facing an unprecedented global emergency. We are in a life or death situation of our own making.”
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by Anthony Watts, December 15, 2019 in WUWT
Failure In Madrid As COP25 Climate Summit Ends In Disarray
Negotiations at a U.N. climate summit in Madrid broke down today as the two-week meeting ended without a crucial agreement on the global carbon market rules of the Paris Agreement.
After extending the two-week summit for an additional two days, the world’s countries agreed a text with vague pledges to enhance their Paris emissions reductions targets. But the watered-down text reflects a failure to agree on the key outcomes that were needed at the summit: setting a rulebook for the Paris Agreement and designing a global carbon market.
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Donald Trump has filed paperwork to remove the United States from the Paris Agreement, signed by his predecessor Barack Obama, next November – the earliest date the U.S. can leave. The U.S. absence has left the EU alone in trying to bring developing countries like China and India on board.
“COP25 has been mired in the politics of low ambition that seek to serve individual agendas in a way that is totally out of step with the urgent need for collective action,” said Eliot Whittington, director of the European Corporate Leaders Group, a collection of climate-ambitious CEOs.
Full story here
by NASA, February 11, 2019
The world is literally a greener place than it was 20 years ago, and data from NASA satellites has revealed a counterintuitive source for much of this new foliage: China and India. A new study shows that the two emerging countries with the world’s biggest populations are leading the increase in greening on land. The effect stems mainly from ambitious tree planting programs in China and intensive agriculture in both countries.
The greening phenomenon was first detected using satellite data in the mid-1990s by Ranga Myneni of Boston University and colleagues, but they did not know whether human activity was one of its chief, direct causes. This new insight was made possible by a nearly 20-year-long data record from a NASA instrument orbiting the Earth on two satellites. It’s called the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, and its high-resolution data provides very accurate information, helping researchers work out details of what’s happening with Earth’s vegetation, down to the level of 500 meters, or about 1,600 feet, on the ground.
Taken all together, the greening of the planet over the last two decades represents an increase in leaf area on plants and trees equivalent to the area covered by all the Amazon rainforests. There are now more than two million square miles of extra green leaf area per year, compared to the early 2000s – a 5% increase.
“China and India account for one-third of the greening, but contain only 9% of the planet’s land area covered in vegetation – a surprising finding, considering the general notion of land degradation in populous countries from overexploitation,” said Chi Chen of the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University, in Massachusetts, and lead author of the study.
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