Archives mensuelles : novembre 2020

climate-debate

NASA’S JAMES HANSEN, 1989: “NEW YORK CITY’S WEST SIDE HIGHWAY WILL BE UNDERWATER BY 2009”

by Cap Allon, Nov 5, 2020 in Electroverse

NASA climate scientist James Edward Hansen is where all this nonsense started–or at least he’s the one responsible for devising the hokey theory politicians, activists, and political-activists would go on to fall-for/exploit for decades to come.

“The greenhouse effect is here,” pronounced Hansen back on June 23, 1988 during his Congressional testimony on man-made global warming — an announcement that “shook the political establishment,” reported grist.org. George H. W. Bush, in the middle of a heated presidential campaign, vowed to use the “White House effect” to battle the “greenhouse effect.”

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Hansen had told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee there is only a “1 percent chance” that he is wrong in blaming rising temperatures around the world on the buildup of man-made gases in the atmosphere.

A 1 percent chance that he is wrong?

In a field as complex and unknown as Earth’s climate?

When many of his peers and even colleagues at the time were already casting doubt on his assumptions and “leaps”?

Something was off from the very start.

And so to highlight what a soothsayer James Edward Hansen is not, I’ve compiled a few of the man’s ludicrous -and in many cases laughable- predictions below–oh, and I’ve assumed Hansen applied a 99 percent probability to all of his prophesies, because, well, why wouldn’t he of… the man presents all the confidence of one in contact with a divine being.

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HANSEN, 1989: “NEW YORK CITY’S WEST SIDE HIGHWAY UNDERWATER BY 2009”

better to know...?, climate-debate

Fake Invisible Catastrophes & Threats of Doom

by P. Moore, Sept 24, 2020 in Gofundme

I am a co-founder Of Greenpeace in 1971-1986. I left because they became a fundraising racket using sensationalism, misinformation and fear. I became a sensible environmentalist and have spent 36 years promoting the balance of environmental, social and economic priorities. I am writing a new book based on the fact that most of the scare stories today are based on things that are invisible or remote or both. Therefore the public must rely on activists, media, politicians, and scientists, all who have a huge financial and/or political stake in the “narrative” they are pushing. This includes climate, tree, coral reefs, polar bears, GMOs, extinction, etc.
The book is based on this essay:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/u9dd56qo16naqcy/Fake%20Invisible%20Catastrophes%20and%20Threats%20of%20Doom%20%28Essay%29.docx?dl=0

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better to know...?, climate-debate, unclassified

The Guardian: Joe Biden’s $1.7 Trillion Investment Could Reduce Global Warming by 0.1C

by E. Worall, Nov 8, 2020 in WUWT

The Guardian has inadvertently revealed the utter futility of throwing trillions of dollars of borrowed government money into the bottomless renewable energy pit.

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Hey I can play this game too – if I get $1700 of that cash, I promise to cut back on eating Chilli beef. Paying a billion people to eat less chilli beef would likely have a comparable impact on global warming to spending the money on renewables. The EPA estimates CH4 accounts for 10% of observed global warming. The study I linked estimates human activity like raising beef cattle and eating chilli beans is responsible for up to 40% of detected CH4 emissions.

Alternatively the cash could be used to give all the cattle in the world that special seaweed supplement the CSIRO discovered, which is supposed to cut back on intestinal methane production.

To put this level of expenditure into perspective, the cost of launching a 0.03C manned mission to Proxima Centauri using technology developed in the 1950s has been estimated at around $2 trillion. I’m not saying that building a starship is a reasonable use of $2 trillion of taxpayer’s money, but the first step in mankind’s expansion throughout the galaxy would surely be a lot more fun than spending all that money on reducing global temperature by an amount which cannot even be directly measured.

And of course, the obvious point – if it costs $1.7 trillion to reduce global warming by 0.1C, we now have a Guardian provided method of estimating the cost of eliminating our alleged impact on the global climate, reducing global warming by 1.0C: 1.7 x 1.0C / 0.1C = $17 trillion.

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climate-debate

Perhaps the dumbest article title ever: “The Arctic hasn’t been this warm for 3 million years”… AEUHHH???

by D. Middleton, Nov 6, 2020 in WUWT

The sad thing is that this was apparently written by two geoscience professors.

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Figure 1. “The oxygen isotopes in the ice imply that climate was stable during the last interglacial period, with temperatures 5 °C warmer than today.” North Greenland Ice Core Project members, 2004

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climate-debate

How to Scare and Deceive without Lying: JPL Cries Wolf about Polar Glacial Melt

by C. Beisner, Nov 6, 2020 in WUWT

Yesterday NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory published “The Anatomy of Glacial Ice Loss.” For the most part it’s an interesting, though not particularly revolutionary, discussion of the various forces that add to and subtract from glacial ice. Nothing wrong with that.

But its authors took the opportunity to insert a poison pill, a little bit of fearmongering, in a video caption:

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Did you catch that little trick? “Combined, the two regions also contain enough ice, that if it were to melt all at once, would raise sea levels by nearly 215 feet ….”

Well, yes, but at what rate is the ice from the two regions melting, and at what rate can we, with any confidence, predict they’ll continue to melt, and over what period of time?

There is absolutely no chance of their melting “all at once”—barring, I suppose, Earth’s collision with some enormous asteroid that sends Earth careening into the Sun!

So, how fast is the ice melting?

For Greenland, about 0.1% of its ice mass per decade—1 percent per century.

For Antarctica, about 0.0045% per decade—1% in 2,200 years.

Combined, those contribute to sea-level rise of about 1 mm per year, i.e., 3.94 inches per century.

(See “Lying with Statistics: The National Climate Assessment Falsely Hypes Ice Loss in Greenland and Antarctica.”)

So, if the actual rate is about 3.94 inches (0.3283 foot) per century, how long would it take to raise sea level by 215 feet? The answer: 215 ft. / 0.3283 ft. per century = 654.889 centuries, or 65,488.9 years.

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climate-debate

New Study Effectively Eliminates Confidence In Human Attribution For Modern Global Warming

by K. Richard, Nov 5, 2020 in NoTricksZone

The forcing uncertainties and lack of observational measurements in the top-to-bottom global ocean preclude an assessment that modern warmth is due to anthropogenic activities.

Key points from a new paper (Gebbie, 2021):

• 93% of the changes to the Earth’s energy budget, manifested as warming of the Earth system, are expressed in the global ocean. Just 1% of global warming is atmospheric.

• Even with the advent of “quasi-global” temperature sampling of the ocean since 2005 (ARGO), these floats “do not measure below 2,000-m depth.” This means that temperature changes in “approximately half the ocean’s volume” are still not being measured today.

• To detect the effects of anthropogenic forcing, it would require energy budget imbalance measurement precision of 0.1 W/m² at the top of the atmosphere (TOA). Uncertainty in the forcing changes affecting climate are ±4 W/m², meaning that uncertainty is about 80 times greater than an anthropogenic signal detection.

• Past changes in global ocean heat content, such as the last deglaciation, have been 20 times larger than modern changes.

• Ocean heat storage during the Medieval Warm Period (Medieval Climate Anomaly, or MCA) was much greater than modern. Modern global ocean heat uptake is “just one-third” of what is required to reach the levels attained during Medieval times.

climate-debate

Sea level rise and Antarctica

by Jim Steele, Nov 4, 2020 in WUWT

California’s and other American coastal towns are engaged in divisive arguments regards rising sea levels. Although observed sea levels rose less than 8 inches (0.08 inches per year) since 1900, some modelers forecast much bleaker futures. They predict a 2.4-foot rise for every 1°F rise above preindustrial temperatures, then accelerating to nearly 4.5 feet for every 1°F additional increase. Why a dramatic acceleration in sea level? It’s based primarily on dire models, typically presented to coastal planning commissions as ‘best science’, suggesting increasing ice instability and Antarctica ice sheet collapse. “Antarctica has the potential to contribute more than 3.3 feet of sea-level rise by 2100 and more than 49 feet by 2500.”

Those models have prompted some citizens to argue we must abandon the coasts via managed retreat. Others argue we should build better sea walls. But how high? Others rightfully ask, “how trustworthy are those models?” Model predictions of a collapsing Antarctica ice sheet are not based on observations.  Models of Antarctica’s catastrophic ice collapse are attempts to explain ancient sea levels such as the 30-foot higher levels 120,000 years ago.

There are good reasons toquestion catastrophic models. For one, away from the coast Antarctica’s surface temperatures average −70 °F. Antarctica’s extremely cold surfacesrequire global warming to increase many, many times more before surface glaciers could ever melt. For another, although greenhouse theory predicts increasing CO2  concentrations will raise temperatures, greenhouse theory also predicts added CO2  has a cooling effect on Antarctica (Wijngaarden & Happer 2020, Schmithüsen 2015).

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climate and geology

The cement for coral reefs

by University of Erlangen-Nuremberg  Nov 2020, in ScienceDaily

Coral reefs are hotspots of biodiversity. As they can withstand heavy storms, they offer many species a safe home, and at the same time, they protect densely populated coastal regions as they level out storm-driven waves. However, how can these reefs that are made up of often very fragile coral be so stable? A team of researchers from Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and the University of Bayreuth have now discovered that a very specific type of ‘cement’ is responsible for this — by forming a hard calcareous skeleton, coralline red algae stabilise the reefs, and have been doing so for at least 150 million years.

The wide variety of life they support is immediately apparent on images of tropical coral reefs. Their three-dimensional scaffolding provides a habitat for a large number of species. However, the skeletons of the coral are often so fragile that they would not be able to withstand heavy storms by themselves. Even if scientists have long suspected that coralline red algae provide support to reefs with their calcareous skeletons, this is the first time that this link has been proven.

Coralline red algae have been supporting coral reefs for at least 150 million years

The researchers from FAU and the University of Bayreuth were able to prove this supporting function by analysing more than 700 fossilised reefs from 150 million years of the Earth’s history. ‘The coralline red algae form a calcareous skeleton and cement the coral reefs together,’ explains Dr. Sebastian Teichert from the Chair of Palaeoenvironmental Research at FAU. ‘However, several crises over the course of millions of years have limited their capacity to do so.’

Successful adaptive strategies against plant grazers

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better to know...?

After nearly a decade away, La Niña weather system is back…

by C. Rotter, nov 1, 2020 in WUWT

Many will be familiar with El Niño – the ocean-warming phenomenon that affects global weather patterns – but how about La Niña, which is linked to cooler sea temperatures?

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), La Niña is back in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, after nearly a decade’s absence.

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UNDP/Joe HitchcockThe low-lying island Pacific Ocean nation, Tuvalu, is particularly susceptible to a rise in sea levels caused by climate change.    29 October 2020Climate Change

This is expected to result in sea surface temperatures between two and three degrees Celsius cooler than average, said Dr. Maxx Dilley, Deputy Director in charge of Climate Services Department at WMO.

“These coolings of these large ocean areas have a significant effect on the circulation of the atmosphere that’s flowing over them. And the changes in the atmosphere in turn affect precipitation patterns around the world.”

Uneven effects

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climate-debate

Study suggests no more CO2 warming

by C. Rotter, Oct 26, 2020 in WUWT

By David Wojick |October 26th, 2020|Climate

Precision research by physicists William Happer and William van Wijngaarden has determined that the present levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and water vapor are almost completely saturated. In radiation physics the technical term “saturated” implies that adding more molecules will not cause more warming.

In plain language this means that from now on our emissions from burning fossil fuels could have little or no further impact on global warming. There would be no climate emergency.  No threat at all. We could emit as much CO2 as we like; with no effect.

This astounding finding resolves a huge uncertainty that has plagued climate science for over a century. How should saturation be measured and what is its extent with regard to the primary greenhouse gases?

In radiation physics the term “saturation” is nothing like the simple thing we call saturation in ordinary language, just as the greenhouse effect is nothing like how greenhouses work. Your paper towel is saturated when it won’t pick up any more spilled milk. In contrast greenhouse gases are saturated when there is no more milk left to pick up, as it were, but it is far more complex than this simple analogy suggests.

Happer is probably best known to our readers as a leading skeptical scientist. He co-founded the prestigious CO2 Coalition and recently served on the staff of the National Security Council, advising President Trump. But his career has been as a world class radiation physicist at Princeton. His numerous peer reviewed journal articles have collectively garnered over 12,000 citations by other researchers.

In this study Professors Happer and van Wijngaarden (H&W) have worked through the saturation physics in painstaking detail. Their preprint is titled “Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases“. They have gone far beyond the work done to date on this complex problem.

To begin with, while the standard studies treat the absorption of radiation by greenhouse molecules using crude absorption bands of radiation energy, H&W analyze the millions of distinct energies, called spectral lines, which make up these bands. This line by line approach has been an emerging field of analysis, often giving dramatically new results.

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Clearly this is work that the climate science community needs to carefully consider. This may not be easy given that three major physics journals have refused to publish it. The reviews have been defensive and antagonistic, neither thoughtful nor helpful. Alarmism is in control of the journals, censoring contrary findings, hence the preprint version.

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better to know...?, climate and geology, climate-debate

3 More New Studies Show Modern Arctic Sea Ice Extent Is Greater Than Nearly Any Time In The Last 10,000 Years

by K. Richard, Oct 29, 2029 in NoTricksZone

For years scientists have been using biomarker evidence (IP25, PIP25) to reconstruct the Arctic’s sea ice history. The evidence shows modern (20th-21st century) Arctic sea ice is at its greatest extent since the Holocene began.

Scientists (Wu et al., 2020) have determined that from about 14,000 to 8,000 years ago, when CO2 lingered near 250 ppm, the Beaufort Sea (Arctic) was “nearly ice free throughout the year” (<0.2 PIP25) and ~4°C warmer than today in winter.

With CO2 at ~400 ppm, this region is 70-100% ice-covered (>0.8 PIP25) for all but 1-2 summer months in the modern (1988-2007) era.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Roger Revelle – the backstory of the father of Atmospheric CO2 monitoring

by A. May, Oct 321, 2020 in WUWT

Roger Revelle was an outstanding and famous oceanographer. He met Al Gore, in the late 1960s, when Gore was a student in one of his classes at Harvard University. Revelle was unsure about the eventual impact of human carbon dioxide emissions on climate, but he did show that all carbon dioxide emitted by man would not be absorbed by the oceans. For an interesting discussion of Revelle’s work in this area see this post on “The Discovery of Global Warming,” by Spencer Weart (Weart, 2007). The original paper, on CO2 absorption by the oceans, published in 1957 by Roger Revelle and Hans Suess, is entitled: “Carbon Dioxide Exchange Between Atmosphere and Ocean and the Question of an Increase of Atmospheric CO2, during the Past Decades” (Revelle & Suess, 1957). This meant that human emissions of carbon dioxide would accumulate in the atmosphere and that the CO2 atmospheric concentration would increase, probably causing Earth’s surface to warm at some unknown rate. This is not an alarming conclusion, as Revelle well knew, but Al Gore turned it into one.

One of Revelle’s good friends was Dr. S. Fred Singer. Singer was a professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia and both Revelle and Singer had been science advisors in the U.S. Department of the Interior. They first met in 1957 and were more than professional colleagues, they were personal friends (Singer, 2003). Unfortunately, Revelle passed away in July 1991 and Singer passed away in April 2020, so we will refer to them and their friendship in the past tense. Both were leading Earth scientists and at the top of their fields, it was natural they would become friends. They also shared an interest in climate change and chose to write an article together near the end of Revelle’s life.

 

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Indeed, ten years later, CO2 emissions were still increasing, but the world had started to cool as shown in Figure 1. This casts considerable doubt on the idea that human emissions somehow control global warming, since some other factor, presumably natural, is strong enough to reverse the overall warming trend for ten years. Revelle was correct to encourage the government to wait for ten more years. Just a year before their paper was published the IPCC reported that warming to date fell within the range of “natural variability” and that the detection of a human influence on climate was “not likely for a decade or more.” (IPCC, 1990, p. XII).

Figure 1. In 1990 and 1991, respectively, the IPCC and Roger Revelle and colleagues said it was too early to do anything about possible man-made climate change, they thought we would know more in 10 years. The plot is smoothed with a 5-year running average to reduce the effect of El Nino and La Nina events. This makes the longer term trends easier to see.

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