Europe wildfires: Are they linked to climate change?–NO!!!

by P. Homewood, Aug 15, 2022 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat


The BBC would like you to think so, with statements like these:

So far this year, the amount of land burnt by fires across the European Union is more than three times greater than what you would expect by the middle of July.

Almost 346,000 hectares (1,370 sq miles) of land have been recorded as burnt (as of 16 July), according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).

Much of Western Europe has been hit by a record-breaking heatwave, which substantially increases the risk of fires….

“Heatwaves and droughts are exacerbated by climate change and are absolutely the defining factor in years with massive wildfire outbreaks, like the present one,” Dr Jones says….

“But we definitely see trends in fire weather risk because of climate change.

“The risk is higher in the Mediterranean region than the rest of Europe.”

Studies show increasing fire risk for central and southern regions of Europe over the past couple of decades.

Yet tucked away in the same article is this graph which proves all of these have no basis in fact:

Activist Scientists Have Now Officially Changed A -0.5°C Global Cooling Trend Into A Warming Trend

by K. Richard, Aug 15, 2022 in NotricksZone


Back in the days when data manipulation was still strictly forbidden, scientists reported the globe cooled significantly for decades even as CO₂ concentrations increased.

The global cooling amplitude was -0.5°C from 1960-1965, and 1976 was reported to be the coldest year of any year measured since 1958 (Angell and Korshover, 1978).

Today these recorded 1960-1965 and 1958-1963 cooling trends have been fully erased and replaced with a slight warming or pause.

ENSO Impact on the Declining CO2 Sink Rate

by Roy Spencer, Aug 15, 2022 in WUWT


From Dr. Roy Spencer’s Global Warming Blog

Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

SUMMARY: A simple time-dependent CO2 budget model shows that yearly anthropogenic emissions compared to Mauna Loa CO2 measurements gives a declining CO2 sink rate, which if continued would increase atmospheric CO2 concentrations and presumably anthropogenic climate change. But accounting for ENSO (El Nino/La Nina) activity during 1959-2021 removes the decline. This is contrary to multiple previous studies that claimed to account for ENSO. A preprint of my paper (not yet peer reviewed) describing the details is at ENSO Impact on the Declining CO2 Sink Rate | Earth and Space Science Open Archive (essoar.org).

UPDATE: The CO2 model, with inputs and outputs, is in an Excel spreadsheet here: CO2-budget-model-with-EIA-growth-cases.

I decided that the CO2 model I developed a few years ago, and recently reported on here, was worthy of publication, so I started going through the published literature on the subject. This is a necessary first step if you want to publish a paper and not be embarrassed by reinventing the wheel or claiming something others have already “disproved”.

The first thing I found was that my idea that Nature each year removes a set fraction of the difference between the observed CO2 concentration and some baseline value is not new. That idea was first published in 2013 (see my preprint link above for details), and it’s called the “CO2 sink rate”.

The second thing I found was that the sink rate has (reportedly) been declining, by as much as 0.54% (relative) per year, even after accounting for ENSO activity. But I only get -0.33% per year (1959-2021) before accounting for ENSO activity, and — importantly — 0.0% per year after accounting for ENSO.

This last finding will surely be controversial, because it could mean CO2 in the atmosphere will not rise as much as global carbon cycle modelers say it will. So, I am posting the model and the datasets used along with the paper preprint at ENSO Impact on the Declining CO2 Sink Rate | Earth and Space Science Open Archive (essoar.org). The analysis is quite simple and I believe defensible. The 2019 paper that got -0.54% per year decline in the sink rate uses complex statistical gymnastics, with a professional statistician as a primary author. My analysis is much simpler, easier to understand, and (I believe) at least as defensible.

The paper will be submitted to Geophysical Research Letters for peer review in the next couple days. In the meantime, I will be inviting the researchers who live and breathe this stuff to poke holes in my analysis.