by P. Gosselin, September 19, 2018 in ClimateChangeDispatch
The German ADAC association, the equivalent of America’s AAA, carried a CO2 comparison for a variety e-autos and combustion engine cars. The results were very surprising, says German magazine Autobild here.
Today’s electric cars are being pushed as a clean and environmentally friendly alternative, while diesel and gasoline burning engines are being villainized as polluters and climate killer …
by Jo Moreau, 20 septembre 2018, in Belgotopia
Les côtes de Flandre n’ont pas toujours été aussi paisibles qu’aujourd’hui, et je n’oublie pas le raz-de-marée du 31 janvier 1953 qui toucha les Pays-Bas et notre littoral, faisant plus de 1800 morts et des dégâts considérables. (photo : à Ostende).
Pêchés dans diverses chroniques et ouvrages (notamment “La Flandre mystérieuse” de Saint Hilaire), j’en ai fait une compilation qui n’a bien entendu aucune prétention scientifique ou historique, mais ces événements avaient laissé une trace dans la mémoire populaire, trace qui a hélas fortement tendance à s’effacer.
J’y ajoute quelques événements survenus en France et aux Pays-Bas, dont on peut raisonnablement penser au vu de leur localisation, qu’ils eurent des conséquences sur nos côtes
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by Andy May, September 19, 2018 in WUWT
The IPCC lowered their estimate of the impact of solar variability on the Earth’s climate from the already low value of 0.12 W/m2 (Watts per square-meter) given in their fourth report (AR4), to a still lower value of 0.05 W/m2 in the 2013 fifth report (AR5), the new value is illustrated in Figure 1. These are long term values, estimated for the 261-year period 1750-2011 and they apply to the “baseline” of the Schwabe ~11-year solar (or sunspot) cycle, which we will simply call the “solar cycle” in this post. The baseline of the solar cycle is the issue since the peaks are known to vary. The Sun’s output (total solar irradiance or “TSI”) is known to vary at all time scales (Kopp 2016), the question is by how much. The magnitude of short-term changes, less than 11 years, in solar output are known relatively accurately, to better than ±0.1 W/m2. But, the magnitude of solar variability over longer periods of time is poorly understood. Yet, small changes in solar output over long periods of time can affect the Earth’s climate in significant ways (Eddy 1976) and (Eddy 2009).
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by Anthony Watts, September 18, 2018 in WUWT
Godfrey Dack writes in with this:
Everyone will be familiar with the difficulty of listening to a conversation held with a friend in a crowded room with many other conversations going on at the same time. So it is with many fields of scientific investigation where it is difficult to tease a particular trend out from masses of data. In the first case, we could call the friend’s conversation ‘The Signal’, and the background conversations ‘The Noise’.
In looking at climate data, trends (the signal) can be graphically represented by a (generally) smooth curve, usually flanked by a range of experimentally predicted or actually measured values (the noise). Joining up every point on a graph of such data would give a jagged line which could be thought of as a combination of many alternating functions over a wide range of frequencies.
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by David Middleton, September 18, 2018 in WUWT
Even though coal’s lead has been cut from 17 to 2 States since 2007, it’s still in first place. Numbers in parentheses reflect the change since 2007.
Coal: 18 (-10)
Natural Gas: 16 (+5)
Nuclear: 9 (+3)
Hydroelectric: 6 (+2)
Petroleum: 1 (0)
Total: 50
What about wind and solar? Let’s ask Dean Wormer!
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by David Middleton, September 17, 2019 in WUWT
Yes… I know entropy falls under the Second Law of Thermodynamics… But I doubt the author of the Clean Technica article does. [Author’s note: By “falls under the Second Law of Thermodynamics, I don’t mean decreases; I mean it falls under the “jurisdiction” of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.]
Guest ridicule by David Middleton
Among today’s Real Clear Energy headlines, almost totally unrelated to energy: What Will Persuade Conservatives To Fight Climate Change?
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by Rémy Prud’homme, 16 septembre 2018, in Contrepoints
Michael Bloomberg est un milliardaire américain (pas un petit : l’une des vingt plus grosses fortunes mondiales), membre du parti démocrate, ancien maire de New York. C’est naturellement un farouche défenseur de l’environnement, ce qui lui a valu d’être nommé par le Secrétaire Général des Nations-Unies « envoyé spécial pour l’action climatique ». On ne peut pas le soupçonner de minorer le développement des énergies propres.
LES INVESTISSEMENTS DANS L’ÉNERGIE « PROPRE » SONT EN DÉCLIN
Le rapport1 que publie l’entreprise qu’il dirige (en fait une filiale consacrée aux énergies nouvelles) montre que les investissements dans « l’énergie propre », définie comme l’éolien et le photovoltaïque, ont diminué dans la plupart des pays du globe au cours des années 2010. Le point haut a été atteint en 2011. Depuis cette date, les investissements stagnent ou diminuent, à des taux divers selon les pays et les années.
La COP21, en 2015, devait sauver le monde grâce à des investissements massifs dans ces domaines. Elle n’a rien fait de tel. Au contraire, les années 2016, 2017 et 2018 sont marquées par une accélération de la baisse des investissements.
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by Anthony Watts, September 17, 2018 in WUWT
This article claim ships will “be able to sail right over the North Pole” by 2050 due to warming, but at the same time say ship tracks will make more clouds and cool the Arctic. Of course, anything is possible with the help of climate models.
More ships and more clouds mean cooling in the Arctic
With sea ice in the Arctic melting at an alarming rate, opportunities for trans-Arctic shipping are opening up, and by mid-century ships will be able to sail right over the North Pole – something not previously possible for humankind.
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by Ron Clutz, September 17, 2018 in ScienceMatters
One week ago on day 252 MASIE reported the lowest daily extent of the year at 4.43M km2. One week later the image above shows how the ice edges have refrozen and extended. Note also the significant snowfall both in Canada and Russia
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by J.C. Maurin, 16 septembre 2018, in Science,Climate,Energie
Dans les années 80, la découverte dans les archives glaciaires d’une corrélation entre température et taux de CO2 permit de soupçonner une influence anthropique sur le climat: les taux mesurés depuis 1958 étaient supérieurs aux taux des archives glaciaires.
L’IPPC (GIEC) fut créé en 1988 par 2 organismes: United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) et World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Le GIEC attribue l’intégralité de la hausse du taux de CO2 depuis un siècle à l’influence humaine. Pour les dernières décennies, nous examinerons ici les mesures disponibles, les corrélations CO2 / température, enfin le modèle anthropique GIEC sera confronté à un modèle concurrent.…
by Roy W. Spencer, September 15, 2018 in USAToday
Even before Hurricane Florence made landfall somewhere near the border of North and South Carolina, predicted damage from potentially catastrophic flooding from the storm was already being blamed on global warming.
Writing for NBC News, Kristina Dahl contended, “With each new storm, we are forced to question whether this is our new, climate change-fueled reality, and to ask ourselves what we can do to minimize the toll from supercharged storms.”
The theory is that tropical cyclones have slowed down in their speed by about 10 percent over the past 70 years due to a retreat of the jet stream farther north, depriving storms of steering currents and making them stall and keep raining in one location. This is what happened with Hurricane Harvey in Houston last year.
But like most claims regarding global warming, the real effect is small, probably temporary, and most likely due to natural weather patterns …
by Donald Rapp, September 8, 218 in Climate Etc.
On the terminations of Ice Ages.
Terminations occur on solar up-lobes
There is no doubt that there is merit in the widely accepted Milankovitch theory that Ice Ages and their terminations are controlled by solar input to the NH in mid-summer. It is also clear that relying on the solar input to the NH alone, does not adequately account for the occurrence of terminations of Ice Ages. The variation of solar input to high latitudes is modulated by precession, which produces continual up-lobes and down-lobes in solar input with a ~ 22,000-year period. While every termination is accompanied by the 5,500-year rising portion of an up-lobe in the solar input to high latitudes, many strong up-lobes do not produce a termination….
by Thomas H. Painter et al., September 17, 2018 in PNAS
The end of the Little Ice Age in the European Alps has long been a paradox to glaciology and climatology. Glaciers in the Alps began to retreat abruptly in the mid-19th century, but reconstructions of temperature and precipitation indicate that glaciers should have instead advanced into the 20th century. We observe that industrial black carbon in snow began to increase markedly in the mid-19th century and show with simulations that the associated increases in absorbed sunlight by black carbon in snow and snowmelt were of sufficient magnitude to cause this scale of glacier retreat. This hypothesis offers a physically based explanation for the glacier retreat that maintains consistency with the temperature and precipitation reconstructions.
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by University of Plymouth, September 14, 2018 in ScienceDaily
The British mainland was formed from the collision of not two, but three ancient continental land masses, according to new research.
Scientists have for centuries believed that England, Wales and Scotland were created by the merger of Avalonia and Laurentia more than 400 million years ago.
However, geologists based at the University of Plymouth now believe that a third land mass — Armorica — was also involved in the process.
The findings are published in Nature Communications and follow an extensive study of mineral properties at exposed rock features across Devon and Cornwall …
Credit: University of Plymouth
by Leland Park, September 13, 2018 in WUWT
Given the impending global warming crisis declared by scientists, it should be easy to unambiguously demonstrate the crisis from the instrumental record. Unfortunately, when looking at the high temperature record for the US, it does not show any warming.
Figure 1 illustrates the incremental changes in surface air temperatures based on year to year differences in station average Tmax. The data is from all active stations in the US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) from 1895 to 2014.
The classic heat equation defines changes in heat content as being proportional to changes in temperature (ΔQ = ƒ{ΔT} ).
Thus, Figure 1 amounts to a depiction of incremental changes in heat content, without scaling in energy units. The overall net temperature change is 0, which means the net change in heat content is also zero (ΔQ = ƒ{ΔT} = ƒ{0} = 0).
Figure 1 Year to Year Heat Changes (ΔT) for the USHCN
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by David Middleton, September 12, 2018 in WUWT
Statistical Review of World Energy
Global primary energy consumption grew strongly in 2017, led by natural gas and renewables, with coal’s share of the energy mix continuing to decline
Energy developments
- Primary energy consumption growth averaged 2.2% in 2017, up from 1.2 % last year and the fastest since 2013. This compares with the 10-year average of 1.7% per year.
- By fuel, natural gas accounted for the largest increment in energy consumption, followed by renewables and then oil.
- Energy consumption rose by 3.1% in China. China was the largest growth market for energy for the 17th consecutive year.
Carbon emissions
- Carbon emissions increased by 1.6%, after little or no growth for the three years from 2014 to 2016.
[…]
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by Nagoya University, September 11, 2018 in ScienceDaily
Black carbon refers to tiny carbon particles that form during incomplete combustion of carbon-based fuels. Black carbon particles absorb sunlight, so they are considered to contribute to global warming. However, the contribution of black carbon to the heating of the Earth’s atmosphere is currently uncertain. Models that can accurately assess the warming effect of black carbon on our atmosphere are needed so that we can understand the contribution of these tiny carbon particles to climate change. The mixing state of black carbon particles and their particle size strongly influence their ability to absorb sunlight, but current models have large uncertainties associated with both particle size and mixing state.
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by Anthony Watts, September 11, 2018 in WUWT
WUWT readers may recall that climate activists wanted the current epoch we live in to be named the “Anthropocene”, because they believe humans are the dominate force on the planet. The official organization that decides such things, The International Commission on Stratigraphy, would have none of it, and nixed the naming recently. Now, here’s a summary of the the Meghalayan.
Welcome to the new Meghalayan age – here’s how it fits with the rest of Earth’s geologic history
Associate Professor of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Jurassic, Pleistocene, Precambrian. The named times in Earth’s history might inspire mental images of dinosaurs, trilobites or other enigmatic animals unlike anything in our modern world.
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by Ronald Bailey, September 4, 2018 in Reason
Global tree canopy cover increased by 2.24 million square kilometers (865,000 square miles) between 1982 and 2016, reports a new study in Nature.
Researchers using satellite data tracked the changes in various land covers to find that gains in forest area in the temperate, subtropical, and boreal climatic zones are offsetting declines in the tropics. In addition, forest area is expanding even as areas of bare ground and short vegetation are shrinking. Furthermore, forests in montane regions are expanding as climate warming enables trees to grow higher up on mountain.
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by Tim Ball, September 9, 2018 in WUWT
The question is how does the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) determine that an increase in atmospheric CO2 causes an increase in global temperature? The answer is they assumed it was the case and confirmed it by increasing CO2 levels in their computer climate models and the temperature went up. Science must overlook the fact that they wrote the computer code that told the computer to increase temperature with a CO2 increase. Science must ask if that sequence is confirmed by empirical evidence? Some scientists did that and found the empirical evidence showed it was not true. Why isn’t this central to all debate about anthropogenic global warming?
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by K. Richard, September 10, 2018 in NoTricksZone
Even though CO2 concentrations hovered well below 300 ppm throughout most of the Holocene, newly published paleoclimate reconstructions affirm that today’s surface temperatures are only slightly warmer (if at all) than the coldest periods of the last 10,000 years. This contradicts the perspective that temperatures rise in concert with CO2 concentrations.
Bottom Graph Source: Rosenthal et al. (2013)
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by JoNova, September 8, 2018
Lets all bow to the IPCC — a modern God that shalt not be questioned. The Holy Sacred Climate Cow!
The IPCC is an unaudited and unaccountable foreign committee. Not only are no scientists paid to check its findings, now the publicly mandated BBC is making sure none of their journalists will check its findings either.
Carbonbrief has a copy of the BBC new internal guidance on how to report climate change.
In April, the UK regulator, Ofcom, found the BBC was guilty of not sufficiently challenging Lord Lawson, a skeptic. So in response the BBC now promises they will never sufficiently challenge the IPCC. That’s “false balance” for you.
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by P. Homewood, September 11, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat
Arctic sea ice has gone under the radar a bit this summer, with alarmists’ propaganda drawn to heatwaves elsewhere.
As sea ice extent draws close to its minimum, it looks like finishing well above the last three years.
Temperatures across the Arctic are now falling rapidly:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
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by Anthony Watts, September 10, 2018 in WUWT
August Temperatures (preliminary)
Global composite temp.: +0.19 C (+0.34 °F) above seasonal average
Northern Hemisphere.: +0.21 C (+0.38°F) above seasonal average
Southern Hemisphere.: +0.16 C (+0.29 °F) above seasonal average
Tropics.: +0.12 C (+0.22 °F) above seasonal average
July Temperatures (final)
Global composite temp.: +0.32 C (+0.58 °F) above seasonal average
Northern Hemisphere.: +0.42 C (+0.76°F) above seasonal average
Southern Hemisphere.: +0.21 C (+0.38 °F) above seasonal average
Tropics.: +0.29 C (+0.52 °F) above seasonal average
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by Ben Webster, September !, 2018 in TheSundayTimes
The BBC has told staff they no longer need to invite climate-change deniers on to its programmes, suggesting that allowing them to speak was like letting someone deny last week’s football scores.
It has also asked all editorial staff to take a course on how to report on climate change and said that its coverage of the topic “is wrong too often”.
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