Tous les articles par Alain Préat

Full-time professor at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium apreat@gmail.com apreat@ulb.ac.be • Department of Earth Sciences and Environment Res. Grp. - Biogeochemistry & Modeling of the Earth System Sedimentology & Basin Analysis • Alumnus, Collège des Alumni, Académie Royale de Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux Arts de Belgique (mars 2013). http://www.academieroyale.be/cgi?usr=2a8crwkksq&lg=fr&pag=858&rec=0&frm=0&par=aybabtu&id=4471&flux=8365323 • Prof. Invited, Université de Mons-Hainaut (2010-present-day) • Prof. Coordinator and invited to the Royal Academy of Sciences of Belgium (Belgian College) (2009- present day) • Prof. partim to the DEA (third cycle) led by the University of Lille (9 universities from 1999 to 2004) - Prof. partim at the University of Paris-Sud/Orsay, European-Socrates Agreement (1995-1998) • Prof. partim at the University of Louvain, Convention ULB-UCL (1993-2000) • Since 2015 : Member of Comité éditorial de la Revue Géologie de la France http://geolfrance.brgm.fr • Since 2014 : Regular author of texts for ‘la Revue Science et Pseudosciences’ http://www.pseudo-sciences.org/ • Many field works (several weeks to 2 months) (Meso- and Paleozoic carbonates, Paleo- to Neoproterozoic carbonates) in Europe, USA (Nevada), Papouasia (Holocene), North Africa (Algeria, Morrocco, Tunisia), West Africa (Gabon, DRC, Congo-Brazzaville, South Africa, Angola), Iraq... Recently : field works (3 to 5 weeks) Congo- Brazzaville 2012, 2015, 2016 (carbonate Neoproterozoic). Degree in geological sciences at the Free University of Brussels (ULB) in 1974, I went to Algeria for two years teaching mining geology at the University of Constantine. Back in Belgium I worked for two years as an expert for the EEC (European Commission), first on the prospecting of Pb and Zn in carbonate environments, then the uranium exploration in Belgium. Then Assistant at ULB, Department of Geology I got the degree of Doctor of Sciences (Geology) in 1985. My thesis, devoted to the study of the Devonian carbonate sedimentology of northern France and southern Belgium, comprised a significant portion of field work whose interpretation and synthesis conducted to the establishment of model of carbonate platforms and ramps with reefal constructions. I then worked for Petrofina SA and shared a little more than two years in Angola as Director of the Research Laboratory of this oil company. The lab included 22 people (micropaleontology, sedimentology, petrophysics). My main activity was to interpret facies reservoirs from drillings in the Cretaceous, sometimes in the Tertiary. I carried out many studies for oil companies operating in this country. I returned to the ULB in 1988 as First Assistant and was appointed Professor in 1990. I carried out various missions for mining companies in Belgium and oil companies abroad and continued research, particularly through projects of the Scientific Research National Funds (FNRS). My research still concerns sedimentology, geochemistry and diagenesis of carbonate rocks which leads me to travel many countries in Europe or outside Europe, North Africa, Papua New Guinea and the USA, to conduct field missions. Since the late 90's, I expanded my field of research in addressing the problem of mass extinctions of organisms from the Upper Devonian series across Euramerica (from North America to Poland) and I also specialized in microbiological and geochemical analyses of ancient carbonate series developing a sustained collaboration with biologists of my university. We are at the origin of a paleoecological model based on the presence of iron-bacterial microfossils, which led me to travel many countries in Europe and North Africa. This model accounts for the red pigmentation of many marble and ornamental stones used in the world. This research also has implications on the emergence of Life from the earliest stages of formation of Earth, as well as in the field of exobiology or extraterrestrial life ... More recently I invested in the study from the Precambrian series of Gabon and Congo. These works with colleagues from BRGM (Orléans) are as much about the academic side (consequences of the appearance of oxygen in the Paleoproterozoic and study of Neoproterozoic glaciations) that the potential applications in reservoir rocks and source rocks of oil (in collaboration with oil companies). Finally I recently established a close collaboration with the Royal Institute of Natural Sciences of Belgium to study the susceptibility magnetic signal from various European Paleozoic series. All these works allowed me to gain a thorough understanding of carbonate rocks (petrology, micropaleontology, geobiology, geochemistry, sequence stratigraphy, diagenesis) as well in Precambrian (2.2 Ga and 0.6 Ga), Paleozoic (from Silurian to Carboniferous) and Mesozoic (Jurassic and Cretaceous) rocks. Recently (2010) I have established a collaboration with Iraqi Kurdistan as part of a government program to boost scientific research in this country. My research led me to publish about 180 papers in international and national journals and presented more than 170 conference papers. I am a holder of eight courses at the ULB (5 mandatory and 3 optional), excursions and field stages, I taught at the third cycle in several French universities and led or co-managed a score of 20 Doctoral (PhD) and Post-doctoral theses and has been the promotor of more than 50 Masters theses.
climate-debate

The Great Famine of the 21st Century

by D. Siegel,  Nov 29, 202 in Shortfall

…

…

The true tragedy

The problem isn’t the future. The problem is what we’re doing right now. Today, humans spend more than $1 trillion every year on decarbonization, which will most likely have no measurable effect on our future climate. But it does raise the price of energy, and the current virtue-signaling environment prevents people in the developing world from reaching the standard of living we take for granted.

Today, life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa is 60 years — the same as it was in the United States in 1935. Today, about 60 percent of sub-Saharan people are farmers — the same as in the US in 1860. About 500 million people in Africa live in extreme poverty. According to the World Bank, half the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have poverty rates higher than 35%.

And yet, that same World Bank won’t lend them money to build a reliable energy grid. The United Nations and the World Economic Forum are forcing Africans to install solar and wind projects that can’t help them cook dinner, so they continue to burn trees, charcoal, and dung, destroying forests and dying of lung diseases. They are — right now — being forced to live lives we lived in 1850.

Yes, you say, but prices of solar panels are coming down! Imagine you have a car that drives really well whenever the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. No batteries, nothing, it just works. It’s not even that expensive, and it is magically zero emission. Now, can you get rid of your regular car? Or do you need to have your own back-up car for whenever the sun isn’t shining or wind isn’t blowing? You might think you could just rent or use an Uber then, but that’s exactly when everyone else needs a car, too, so you actually have to maintain your existing car, pay the insurance, make sure it’s always available, for those times when your renewable car isn’t possible and the Uber is taken. That’s twice as many cars, no matter who owns them. That’s not “sustainability.”

…

…

Summary

As you have just learned, we live in the safest century to be alive. We are more protected against natural disasters than ever. And we are being lied to about CO2 and climate.

This isn’t easy for a lot of people to hear. It has become a matter of tribal and political identity. I know. In 1991, I wrote a book about how CO2 was changing the climate. But then I dug deeper and realized not everything was as it seemed. When I started to tell others the science wasn’t settled, I lost quite a few friends. If you have read this far, thank you for being brave. I invite you to take the next step at Climatecurious.com.

Resources

Wikipedia article on the Great Famine of 1876

A partial explanation of the ocean oscillations that caused the Great Famine of 1876

Climate and the Global Famine of 1876–78

Climate Curious — a resource for all to learn more about CO2 and climate.

How the British Empire exacerbated a rare climate event.

How the event was covered up (warning: very graphic images) …

…

better to know...?, climate-debate

The Top FIVE Climate Change LIES

by L. Fox, Nov 28, 2022 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Laurence Fox breaks apart the lies repeatedly fed to the public and details the manipulation by the billionaire-funded lobby groups and activists.

If you’re skeptical about climate change or the impact of the environment on our planet, this video is for you.

Climate Lie Number One: Wind Power Is NINE Times CHEAPER Than Gas

Climate Lie Number Two: Island Countries Are SINKING Into The Sea

Climate Lie Number Three: Net Zero WILL Make YOUR Bills Cheaper

Climate Lie Number Four: Storms Are Getting MORE Frequent And MORE Intense

Climate Lie Number Five: Climate Change Is KILLING People

WATCH:

…

better to know...?, climate-debate

“There’s No Emergency” – Dissident Climatologist Dr Judith Curry on Climate Change

by J. Curry, Nov 26, 2022 in WUWT

SEE VIDEO 

There are particular fields in which those that stray from the official narrative are instantly shunned as dissidents. Climate change is one of these. Dr Judith Curry, Professor Emeritus and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has become known as one of the outspoken scientists who doubt the “scientific consensus” on climate change. As a result, she was “academically, pretty much finished off” and “essentially unhirable”. However, this didn’t slow down the bold climatologist.

BizNews spoke to Curry about her views on climate change and the impact that human beings have had on the planet. A delightfully fascinating discussion ensued in which Curry explained her objection to the “manufactured consensus of scientists at the request of policy makers” and how far reality really is from the grim picture painted by environmental activists. Curry made sense of recent extreme weather events and indicated that “Earth has survived far bigger insults than what human beings are doing”. An eye-opening interview.

Australia, climate and geology

An Inconvenient Tree: Is Climate Change Driving Worse Floods

by E. Worrall, Nov 27, 2022 in WUWT

Does evidence of past extreme floods invalidate claims that climate change is making floods worse?

…

…

 

Could volcanic activity be a contributor to major floods in Australia? Australia is on the South Western edge of the Ring of Fire. While the Australian mainland is not very volcanically active, there have been some spectacular eruptions in our neighbourhood, such as the infamous Krakatoa eruption in 1883, or the 1815 Tambora Eruption, which is blamed for causing famine in the United States in 1816, “The Year Without a Summer”.

A notable volcanic eruption occurred at the start of 2022 – The Hunga Tonga eruption. JoNova published an intriguing comparison between the volcanic ash distribution from the Hunga Tonga eruption in January 2022, and 2022 rainfall anomalies across Australia. Hunga Tonga was light on sulphates, but the blast threw unprecedented amounts of water into the stratosphere. Where I live, on the Southern edge of the volcanic debris distribution, we’ve had some spectacular sunsets over the last year.

The apparent overlap between rainfall anomalies and volcanic debris could be a coincidence – but the comparison is visually intriguing.

…

better to know...?, climate-debate

Study Finds The CO2 Greenhouse Effect Is Real…But Dangerous Global Warming From Rising CO2 Is Not

by K. Richard, Nov 24, 2022 in NoTricksZone

German physicists claim to have experimentally demonstrated the greenhouse effect from greenhouse gases like CO2 and CH4 is a real phenomenon, but assess the climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 with feedbacks is “only ECS = 0.7°C … 5.4x lower than the mean value of CMIP6 with ECS = 3.78°C.”

“The derived forcing for CO2 is in quite good agreement with some theoretical studies in the literature, which to some degree is the result of calibrating the set-up to the spectral calculations, but independently it determines and also reproduces the whole progression as a function of the gas concentration. From this we deduce a basic equilibrium climate sensitivity (without feedbacks) of ECSB = 1.05°C. When additionally assuming a reduced wing absorption of the spectral lines due to a finite collision time of the molecules this further reduces the ECSB by 10% and, thus, is 20% smaller than recommended by CMIP6 with 1.22°C.”
“Detailed own investigations also show that in contrast to the assumptions of the IPCC water vapor only contributes to a marginal positive feedback and evaporation at the earth’s surface even leads to a significant further reduction of the climate sensitivity to only ECS = 0.7°C (Harde 2017 [15]). This is less than a quarter of the IPCC’s last specification with 3°C (see AR6 [1]) and even 5.4x lower than the mean value of CMIP6 with ECS = 3.78°C.”

…

unclassified

Adelies Are Doing Fine, Despite What The BBC Say

by P. Homewood, Nov 24, 2022  in NotalotofPeopleKnowThat

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-australia-63700487

According to the BBC, scientists have revealed a 43% decline in a large Adélie penguin population off the east Antarctic coast over the past decade.

It’s believed several years of extensive ice near the penguin colony was the trigger – despite an overall reduction of ice around Antarctica.

They report that scientists are unsure if the population will be able to recover.

 

WOW!! No more Adelies. That is scary.

But being the BBC, they conveniently did not tell you the whole story, which the Guardian did:

…

…

climate-debate

COP-27 Financiers And Merchants Of Death – OpEd

by P. Driessen, Nov 22, 2022 in Eurasiareview

Africa resists policies that demand primitive farming and energy, and making muffins out of flies

As Americans give thanks this week for our many blessings, let us recall the Pilgrims’ and Native Americans’ primitive agricultural knowledge and technologies, the hunger and disease that were constants in their lives – and how so many around the world are not much better off today.

Much of Africa still lives on the edge, with well over 600 million people not even having electricity. Many parts of India, Asia and Latin America also face serious energy and food deprivation.

Incredibly, so does Europe. “German industry stares into the Net Zero abyss,” “Europe’s energy crisis may get even worse next year,” “Even Germany’s wind industry is sliding into crisis,” “Millions face poverty and destitution in Green Britain, as Brits pay highest electricity bills in world,” headlines warn.

Banning Russian gas imports amid Putin’s war on Ukraine plays a role and is frequently scapegoated. But the primary cause is Europe’s love affair with intermittent wind and solar, and hate-fest for fossil fuels and nuclear, amid frigid winter realities that have caused Germany to obliterate ancient villages and recent-vintage wind farms to mine lignite coal beneath them.

Closer to home, New England and New York also face a cold, dark winter, because they too have voted against drilling, fracking, pipelines, coal and nuclear power – and now demand more oil and gas from the same companies that they and President Biden want to drive into oblivion.

However, the greatest hypocrisy of all was on full-throated display at the COP-27 climate circus in Egypt November 6-18 – where attendees kept asking whether Africa should be allowed to exploit its oil, natural gas and coal reserves to improve living standards, feed families and save lives!

…

better to know...?, climate-debate

Climategate: Never Forget (12th anniversary)

by Master Source, Nov 22, 2022 in WUWT

 

“The growth of the technical skeptical blogosphere (pioneered by Steve McIntyre) has challenged traditional notions of expertise, i.e. credentials and sanctity of journal publications, through Climate Audit’s blogospheric deconstruction of many publications, particularly related to paleo proxies. “–Judith Curry.

By Robert Bradley Jr. — November 22, 2022

“There is no doubt that these emails are embarrassing and a public-relations disaster for science.” – Andrew Dessler, “Climate E-Mails Cloud the Debate,” December 10, 2009.

It has been 12 years since the intellectual scandal erupted called Climategate. Each anniversary inspires recollections and regurgitation of salient quotations. These quotations speak for themselves; attempts of climate alarmists to parse the words and meaning distracts from what was said in real-time private conversations.

And the scandal got worse after the fact when, according to Paul Stephens, “virtually the entire climate science community tried to pretend that nothing was wrong.” Whitewash exonerations by the educational institutions involved and scientific organizations– was a blow to scholarship and standards as well. The standard of fair, objective, transparent research was sacrificed to a politically correct narrative about the qualitative connection between CO2 forcing and temperature (see Wiki).

Fred Pearce’s The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth About Global Warming (2010) was a rare mainstream-of-sorts look at the scandal. Michael Mann is the bad actor, despite his I-am-the-victim take in his account, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars (2012). [1]

Background:

On November 19, 2009, a whistle-blower or hacker downloaded more than 1,000 documents and e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University (United Kingdom). Posted on a Russian server, these documents were soon accessed by websites around the world to trigger the exposé.

These e-mails were part of confidential communications between top climate scientists in the UK, the United States, and other nations over a 15-year period. The scientists involved had developed surface temperature data sets and promoted the “Hockey Stick” global temperature curve, as well as having wrtten/edited the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) physical-science assessment reports.

Branded “Climategate” by British columnist James Delingpole, the emails provided insight into practices that range from bad professionalism to fraudulent science. Bias, data manipulation, dodging freedom of information requests, and efforts to subvert the peer-review process were uncovered.

Some of the more salient quotations follow.

Man-Made Warming Controversy

…

better to know...?, climate-debate

Willie Soon speaks at the University of Chicago

by Andy May, Nov 20, 2022 in WUWT

Dr. Willie Soon gave a great presentation at the Federalist Society Chapter at the University of Chicago Law School on November 18, 2022. The title of his talk is:

“The Corruption of Environmental Rulemakings at the US EPA: Climate Change, Mercury Emissions, and Air Quality”

Willie Soon, 2022

Dr. Soon’s slide deck is excellent reading and he has kindly sent it to me, you can download it here. If you prefer to watch his presentation, you can do so on YouTube here. Soon’s presentation starts about 22:46 minutes into the video.

Soon’s key points:

  • Given the daily, seasonal, and annual range of temperatures around the Earth, the warming of the past 125 years is trivial.
  • Except for ENSO variations, the global average surface temperature has hardly changed in over 20 years.
  • Willie humorously dismantles the article on him in Wikipedia and Gavin Schmidt’s criticisms, these slides are worth the download!
  • Willie plugs the article he wrote with 23 co-authors entitled: “How much has the Sun influenced Northern Hemisphere Temperature trends? An ongoing debate.” Seriously, this is probably the best climate change article written in the last thirty years in my humble opinion, I refer to it all the time. The bibliography alone is worth it. If you never read another climate article in your life, you should read this one. Download it here.
  • He destroys the Mercury pollution nonsense that is permeating the media. Possible spoiler, don’t drink Coca Cola!
  • Is it air pollution or weather?

Finally, President Dwight Eisenhower’s warning about “public policy [becoming] the captive of a scientific-technological elite” was correct:

“It is time to face a hard truth: the seventy-year experiment to federalize the sciences has been a failure. The task now is to prevent the Big Science cartel from further dehumanizing society and delegitimizing science. There is a second hard truth: the necessary reforms will not come from within. Rather, it will be the people and their representatives that will have to impose them. To restore science to its rightful and valuable place, break up the Big Science cartel.”

(J. Scott Turner, Professor of Biology (emeritus), SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, December 10, 2021)

I wish I had said that.

 

climate-debate

COP27 Is A Downpayment On Disaster

by P. Homewood, Nov 20, 2022 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

As usual the BBC paints the latest COP as a “historic deal”!

Dust settling on the detail

After hours and hours of intense negotiations we finally have some outcomes from this years COP27.

The dust is still settling, but here is what we know so far.

  • Delegates who’ve been working through the night at the UN climate summit in Egypt have approved a major deal on helping poorer countries
  • They have agreed to set up a fund to pay for some of the loss and damage being inflicted by global warming
  • Many of the most controversial decisions on the fund have been kicked into next year when a “transitional committee” is expected to make recommendations for countries to then adopt at the COP28 next
    November
  • Those recommendations would cover “identifying and expanding sources of funding” – referring to the problematic question of which countries should pay into the new fund
  • The overarching agreement from the summit – called the “cover text” – does not raise ambition on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from what was agreed at the COP26 summit in Glasgow last year

…

 

Although a fund has been agreed in principle, there is no agreement about how much is put in, or who pays. Crucially there is no agreement that countries like China, India and Russia will pay a penny. The agreement to set up the fund is meaningless without answers to these questions.

And there is also no agreement to reduce emissions beyond COP26 pledges. In particular developing countries are under no obligation whatsoever to reduce emissions, as a condition for receiving this money.

As WWF put it, the loss and damage fund will be a downpayment on disaster!

…

…

climate-debate

An Extreme(ly Nice) Summer

by P. Homewood, Nov 18, 2022 in Not aLotofPeopleKnowThat

I see the BBC/Met Office are up to their extreme weather scam again! (Timed to coincide with COP27 of course):

 

…

…

 

To pretend that winter storms are an example of Britain’s weather becoming more extreme is utterly dishonest, as the Met Office’s State of the Climate 2021 clearly showed that wind storms have grown less frequent and intense over the years since peaking in the 1990s.

image

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/about/state-of-climate

…

Australia, climate-debate

New Study Finds Australian Sea Temperatures Multiple Degrees Warmer Than Today During The Last Glacial

by K. Richard, Nov 17, 2022 in NoTricksZone

Sea temperatures in regions near Australia have failed to cooperate with a CO2-driven climate narrative.

Glacial conditions and ~200 ppm CO2 levels were thought to have prevailed throughout most of the last 60,000 years across the Earth.

But a new study finds sea temperatures near Australia were “3 to 5°C warmer than the modern average temperature” during several millennia of this period.

Proxy evidence suggests average subsurface water temperatures in the Southern Ocean/Australia region may have been “>7°C warmer than modern” during the last 10,000 years (the Holocene).

The eastern and western core graphical record indicates the amplitude of sea surface temperature swings reached 5 to 7°C from 30,000 to 60,000 years ago – a time when CO2 levels were thought to be stable and low (near 200 ppm).

These records once again affirm sea surface and subsurface temperature changes do not align with the narrative suggesting Earth’s climate changes are driven by fluctuations in CO2 concentrations.

unclassified

COP27: Who Voted For Wealth Redistribution To Save The Planet?

by A.L. Urban, Nov 17, 2022 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Politicians of all stripes and in all Western countries have been obediently parroting the official IPCC line that Climate Change science knows best and that we must prepare for the worst.

But as COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh (I refer to it as Sham in Chief) comes to an end (November 18), it’s worth noting that it was a cloaking device for the real agenda. [emphasis, links added]

…

…

I believe that politicians are feeble and incompetent rather than so massively corrupt (dishonest) as to hoist this agenda on an innocently ignorant voting public who never signed up for it.

But time’s up and political advisors should begin devising new advice based on the known facts, so voters are not misled so egregiously.

‘Save the planet – vote for wealth distribution.’

‘Vote to be poor so the world’s poor can get richer.’

Of course, it is not only Australian politicians (of all parties) but the politicians of the whole Western world who have been sucked into this sham.

The special irony for Australia, though, is that if it is fossil fuel emissions that are the danger, ours is the least relevant, at around 1 percent.

So even if you were convinced that carbon dioxide (emitted when making energy) is a pollutant and warms the planet, with just a few years left of life on Earth … you can’t seriously believe that our drastic economy-destroying policies can be justified?

The total carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 0.04 percent. Man-made carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is about 0.0012 percent; Australia’s contribution to that is 0.000012 percent.

You don’t have to be a mathematician or a scientist to realize that our coal has nothing to do with the climate changing.

While 30,000 ‘Climate Change’ activist industry delegates swarmed to Sharm el Sheikh, blinded by faith and hope for change, elsewhere, the real world was hunkering down to cope with energy shortages and inflation, and the coming northern winter.

The false assumption about fossil fuel emissions as the driver of warming has been sold with spectacular if fateful success. And a large dose of dishonesty.

climate and geology

Earth can regulate its own temperature over millennia, new study finds

by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nov16, 2022 in ScienceDaily

The Earth’s climate has undergone some big changes, from global volcanism to planet-cooling ice ages and dramatic shifts in solar radiation. And yet life, for the last 3.7 billion years, has kept on beating.

Now, a study by MIT researchers in Science Advances confirms that the planet harbors a “stabilizing feedback” mechanism that acts over hundreds of thousands of years to pull the climate back from the brink, keeping global temperatures within a steady, habitable range.

Just how does it accomplish this? A likely mechanism is “silicate weathering” — a geological process by which the slow and steady weathering of silicate rocks involves chemical reactions that ultimately draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and into ocean sediments, trapping the gas in rocks.

Scientists have long suspected that silicate weathering plays a major role in regulating the Earth’s carbon cycle. The mechanism of silicate weathering could provide a geologically constant force in keeping carbon dioxide — and global temperatures — in check. But there’s never been direct evidence for the continual operation of such a feedback, until now.

The new findings are based on a study of paleoclimate data that record changes in average global temperatures over the last 66 million years. The MIT team applied a mathematical analysis to see whether the data revealed any patterns characteristic of stabilizing phenomena that reined in global temperatures on a geologic timescale.

…

…

Journal Reference:

  1. Constantin W. Arnscheidt, Daniel H. Rothman. Presence or absence of stabilizing Earth system feedbacks on different time scales. Science Advances, 2022; 8 (46) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adc9241
climate-debate

Nationwide Cold Wave Continues with Numerous Low Temperature Records Likely to Be Set…Intense Great Lakes Snow Event on The Way

by P. Dorian, Nov 16, 2022 in WUWT

Overview

Temperatures across the nation on Wednesday morning averaged out to an impressive reading of nearly 12 degrees (F) below-normal for mid-November and no state in the Lower 48 escaped the colder-than-normal chill.  The first widespread snow event of the season took place late Tuesday across the interior, higher elevation locations of the Mid-Atlantic/Northeast US with half of foot of snow recorded in many spots.  The next few days will feature a “Great Lakes snow-making machine” that will be turned on in full force and the result may be several feet of snow in some downstream locations such as Buffalo and Watertown in western New York State.  The nationwide cold wave will continue right through the upcoming weekend.

…

energy and fields

China Climate Advisers Say More Coal Needed for Energy Security

by A. Cang, Nov 15, 2022 in Bloomberg

China’s plans to add to its world-leading fleet of coal power plants are a short-term Band-Aid to address energy security concerns and don’t represent a shift in emissions policies, according to members of the team representing the nation at the COP27 summit.

New plants are being planned to address a spate of high-profile electricity shortages in recent years while providing a buffer to global energy markets that have become more volatile following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to interviews with three of China’s delegates at the climate meeting in Egypt.

In the long run, electricity market reforms and massive investments in renewable power and energy storage will eventually curb and curtail coal use, allowing the country to hit its targets of peaking emissions by 2030 and zeroing them out by 2060, they said.

…

biology+acidification

A world map of plant diversity

by University of Göttingen, Nov 15, 2022 in ScienceDaily

Why are there more plant species in some places than in others? Why is diversity highest in the tropics? What is the connection between biodiversity and environmental conditions? To help answer these questions, an international team led by researchers at the University of Göttingen has reconstructed the distribution of plant diversity around the world and made high-resolution predictions of where and how many plant species there are. This will support conservation efforts, help to protect plant diversity and assess changes in the light of the ongoing biodiversity and climate crises. Their research was published in New Phytologist.

Based on a unique global dataset of 830 regional floras and the distribution of 300,000 plant species compiled at the University of Göttingen over ten years, researchers modelled the relationship between plant diversity and environmental conditions using modern machine learning techniques. By incorporating the relatedness of the species to each other, they were able to take into account the evolutionary history of plants occurring in each geographic region. The models were then used to predict plant diversity continuously around the world considering past and present geographic and climatic conditions.

…

better to know...?, energy and fields

Germany’s Compounding Energy Woes: Even Wind Power Industry Is “Sliding Into Crisis”

by P. Gosselin, Nov 15, 2022 in NoTricksZone

Germany’s Blackout News here reports that not only is Germany’s energy supply faltering profoundly, but so is its wind industry as well, reporting  that it is “sliding into a crisis”.

Gloomy outlook also for Germany’s wind energy industry. Photo by P. Gosselin

Wind energy is supposed to step in and play a key role in supplying Germany with energy as other sources get cut off. But that too is not going to plan.

“Nordex is closing its plant in Rostock, Siemens Gamesa is sliding deep into the red and at Vestas the workforce is on strike,” reports Blackout News.

…

climate-debate

Climate models fail to capture strengthening wintertime North Atlantic jet and impacts on Europe

by Blackport P. & Fyfe, J.C., Nov 11, 2022 in ScienceAdvances

Abstract

Projections of wintertime surface climate over Europe depend on reliable simulations of the North Atlantic atmospheric circulation from climate models. However, it is unclear whether these models capture the long-term observed trends in the North Atlantic circulation. Here, we show that over the period from 1951 to 2020, the wintertime North Atlantic jet has strengthened, while model trends are, on average, only very weakly positive. The observed strengthening is greater than in any one of the 303 simulations from 44 climate models considered in our study. This divergence between models and observations is now much more apparent because of a very strong jet observed over the past decade. The models similarly have difficulty capturing the observed precipitation trends over Europe. Our results suggest that projections of winter atmospheric circulation and associated precipitation over Europe may be unreliable because they fail to capture the response to human emissions or underestimate the magnitude of multidecadal-to-centennial time scale internal variability.
…
climate-debate

ORIGIN OF THE RECENT CO2 INCREASE IN THE ATMOSPHERE

by F. Engelbeen, Nov 2022

In climate skeptics circles, there is rather much confusion about historical/present CO2 measurements. This is in part based on the fact that rather accurate historical direct measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere by chemical methods show much higher values in certain periods of time (especially around 1942), than the around 280 ppmv which is measured in Antarctic ice cores. 
280 +/- 10 ppmv is assumed to be the pre-industrial amount of CO2 in the atmosphere during the current interglacial (the Holocene) by the scientific community. This is quite important, as if there were (much) higher levels of CO2 in the recent past, that may indicate that current CO2 levels are not from the use of fossil fuels, but a natural fluctuation and hence its influence on temperature is subject to (huge) natural fluctuations too and the current warmer climate is not caused by the use of fossil fuels.

To be sure about my skepticism: I like to see and examine the arguments of both sides of the fence, and I make up my own mind, based on these arguments. I am pretty sure that current climate models underestimate the role of the sun and other natural variations like ocean oscillations on climate and overestimate the role of greenhouse gases and aerosols. But I am as sure that the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution is mainly from the use of fossil fuels.

There are several reasons why the hypothesis of large non-human CO2 variations in recent history is wrong (see my comment on the late Ernst Beck’s compilation of historical measurements) and that most of the recent increase in CO2 in the atmosphere indeed is mainly man-made, but that needs a step-by-step explanation. Follow the steps: 

  1. Evidence of human influence on the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.

    1. The mass balance
    2. The process characteristics
    3. The 13C/12C ratio
    4. The 14C/12C ratio
    5. The oxygen use
    6. The Ocean’s pH and pCO2
    7. The processes involved

  2. Conclusion

  3. Extra: how much human CO2 is in the atmosphere?

  4. Reference

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

Russian Temperature Records Are Not Cooperating With The CO2-Driven Climate Narrative

by K. Richard, Nov 14, 2022 in NoTricksZone

Two new studies indicate there has been no modern warming in the last centuries in western (Urals) and eastern (Kolyma) Russian mountain ranges.

A new 27,000-year temperature reconstruction assesses it was ~2.5 to 4.8°C warmer than today from 8.9-5.2 ka BP in the Ural Mountains, or when CO2 is said to have hovered in the 265 ppm range.

Summer temperatures were also warmer during the Medieval Warm Period, or from 1.2-0.7 ka BP. After a post-Medieval cool-down fostering in the Little Ice Age, the reconstructed record suggests there has been no warming since 0.5 cal ka BP, or for the last several centuries.

The smoothed temperature record shown in the study indicates there was only one brief period in the last 10,000 years that was not warmer than today.

“The reconstructed TJuly [8.9-5.2 cal ka BP] are the highest recorded, reaching up to 4.8 °C higher than today’s air temperature. … Present day T July have persisted since 0.5 cal ka BP.”

…

climate-debate

Imperialism Of The Apocalypse

by M. Schellenberger,  Nov 11, 2022

Few appear to care about climate change more than global celebrities. In 2019, Leonardo DiCaprio told the U.N., “Climate Change is our single greatest security threat.” Late last year, DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence starred in the Hollywood climate disaster movie, “Don’t Look Up.” Said Lawrence, “You’re watching these hurricanes now and it’s hard, especially while promoting this movie, not to feel Mother Nature’s rage or wrath.” In a United Nations speech earlier this year, Prince Harry said “Climate change is wreaking havoc on our planet, with the most vulnerable suffering most of all.” All have urged individuals and nations to radically reduce their carbon emissions.

And yet global celebrities are, along with global political leaders, the planet’s biggest climate hypocrites. DiCaprio, Lawrence, Harry, and Meghan have been flying on private jets, partying on gas-guzzling yachts, and riding jet skis for years. Already 400 private jets, which are five to 14 times more polluting than commercial flights, have arrived in Egypt for United Nations annual climate talks. Last year, 40,000 people flew to Scotland, many on private jets, for climate talks, generating an estimated 102,000 tons of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of burning 237,000 barrels of oil. After they arrived, they were treated to a video of a talking CGI dinosaur, voiced over by Jack Black, urging African nations to not use fossil fuels.

…

climate and geology, climate-debate

Nature Unbound I: The Glacial Cycle

by Javier, Oct 24, 2016 in ClimateEtc.

Insights into the debate on whether the Holocene will be long or short.

Summary: Milankovitch Theory on the effects of Earth’s orbital variations on insolation remains the most popular explanation for the glacial cycle since the early 1970’s. According to its defenders, the main determinant of a glacial period termination is high 65° N summer insolation, and a 100 kyr cycle in eccentricity induces a non-linear response that determines the pacing of interglacials. Based on this theory some authors propose that the current interglacial is going to be a very long one due to a favorable evolution of 65° N summer insolation. Available evidence, however, supports that the pacing of interglacials is determined by obliquity, that the 100 kyr spacing of interglacials is not real, and that the orbital configuration and thermal evolution of the Holocene does not significantly depart from the average interglacial of the past 800,000 years, so there is no orbital support for a long Holocene.

…

…