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

Does Scientific Data Show Humans, CO2, And Fossil Fuels Cause Global Warming?

by J. Heller, Aug 10, 2021 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Another day, another dire warning about global warming.

The press and its taskmasters could essentially Xerox a copy of what they printed for the public in the Washington Post in 1922, or a UN report in 1989, or a UN report in 2019 for this report here:

U.N. climate report likely to deliver stark warnings on global warming

As always, journalists just print and repeat these never-ending reports to scare the public into submission with no questions asked.

For decades, journalists, educators, scientists, bureaucrats, and other Democrats have colluded to spread these dire warnings, (misinformation) without scientific evidence, to scare and control the public.

We are repeatedly have been told that we only have a few years left to solve the problem.

The end date always evolves. No matter how wrong these dire predictions are they just repeat them and say the science is settled to cut off debate. Why are people who are always so wrong considered experts?

Many CEOs, Republicans, and others repeat the same claims without evidence because it is so much more pleasant to go along instead of being called anti-science, or worse still, “deniers.”

In D.C., and throughout the country, politicians are using these dire forecasts to pass policies to destroy thousands of industries and millions of jobs.

Joe Biden and his administration have been in office for seven months and are working as fast as they can to remake and destroy America.

He has signed executive orders to stop a pipeline, stop drilling and force people to buy vehicles powered by the poisonous, very combustible pollutant Lithium. These anti-oil policies greatly harm the poor, middle class, and small businesses with higher prices.

The Biden administration has rejoined the Paris climate accord where politicians and bureaucrats from around the world pretend they can control temperatures, sea levels, and storm activity if thousands of industries are destroyed and we hand them trillions of our hard-earned dollars.

Does anyone really believe that Iran, Russia, and other major oil-producing countries will give up oil? Isn’t it important that Biden let a pipeline proceed from Russia to Germany while stopping the pipeline from Canada to the United States?

Does anyone believe that China cares about its carbon footprint as it continues to build a large number of coal power plants? Here’s what’s going on in China:

Despite Pledges to Cut Emissions, China Goes on a Coal Spree

As the Biden administration works so hard to destroy industries, I have not seen one journalist as Biden, Harris, Kerry, Psaki, or anyone else in the administration who has been asked for evidence to support the claimed science that can justify what Biden is doing.

In a free society with independent journalists, we should see the reporters asking questions and doing research to see if what they are told is correct before they repeat talking points to the public.

Sadly, in the United States, we have seen, for decades, almost all journalists have essentially become campaign workers to elect Democrats and lobbyists to sell the radical leftist policies to the public.

Media outlets, especially the social media giants, work very hard to stifle debate and silence anyone who disagrees by repeating the talking points that we are anti-science and climate change deniers who should not be listened to.

It is an outright lie to call people who tell the truth that the climate has always changed cyclically and natural climate-change deniers. I have never seen anyone deny that the climate changes.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Inside The Acceleration Factory

by W. Eschenbach, Aug 11, 2021 in WUWT

Nerem and Fasullo have a new paper called OBSERVATIONS OF THE RATE AND ACCELERATION OF GLOBAL MEAN SEA LEVEL CHANGE, available here. In it, we find the following statement:

Both tide gauge sea level reconstructions and satellite altimetry show that the current rate of global mean sea level change is about 3 mm yr–1, and both show that this rate is accelerating.

So the claim is that tide gauges show acceleration. Let’s start with a look at the Church and White (hereinafter C&W) estimate of sea level from tide gauges around the world, which is the one used in the Nerem and Fasullo paper. The C&W paper is here.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch With Reality

by R. Pielke Jr & J. Ritchie, Aug, 4, 2021 in CO2Coalition

A failure of self-correction in science has compromised climate science’s ability to provide plausible views of our collective future.

The integrity of science depends on its capacity to provide an ever more reliable picture of how the world works. Over the past decade or so, serious threats to this integrity have come to light. The expectation that science is inherently self-correcting, and that it moves cumulatively and progressively away from false beliefs and toward truth, has been challenged in numerous fields—including cancer research, neuroscience, hydrology, cosmology, and economics—as observers discover that many published findings are of poor quality, subject to systemic biases, or irreproducible.

In a particularly troubling example from the biomedical sciences, a 2015 literature review found that almost 900 peer-reviewed publications reporting studies of a supposed breast cancer cell line were in fact based on a misidentified skin cancer line. Worse still, nearly 250 of these studies were published even after the mistaken cell line was conclusively identified in 2007. Our cursory search of Google Scholar indicates that researchers are still using the skin cancer cell line in breast cancer studies published in 2021. All of these erroneous studies remain in the literature and will continue to be a source of misinformation for scientists working on breast cancer.

In 2021, climate research finds itself in a situation similar to breast cancer research in 2007. Our research (and that of several colleagues) indicates that the scenarios of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through the end of the twenty-first century are grounded in outdated portrayals of the recent past. Because climate models depend on these scenarios to project the future behavior of the climate, the outdated scenarios provide a misleading basis both for developing a scientific evidence base and for informing climate policy discussions. The continuing misuse of scenarios in climate research has become pervasive and consequential—so much so that we view it as one of the most significant failures of scientific integrity in the twenty-first century thus far. We need a course correction.

In calling for this change, we emphasize explicitly and unequivocally that human-caused climate change is real, that it poses significant risks to society and the environment, and that various policy responses in the form of mitigation and adaptation are necessary and make good sense. However, the reality and importance of climate change does not provide a rationale or excuse for avoiding questions of research integrity any more than does the reality and importance of breast cancer. To the contrary, urgency makes attention to integrity that much more important.

Scenarios and baselines

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Pielke Jr. on AR6

by Pielke Jr. , Aug 9, 2021 in WUWT

IPCC AR6 WG1
Some initial comments
Think of these as working notes
Comments welcomed
Let’s go . . .

Let’s start with scenarios

This is rather huge
“In general, no likelihood is attached to the scenarios assessed in this Report”

So that means that users of the scenarios have to independently assess likelihoods

That said: “the likelihood of high emission scenarios such as RCP8.5 or SSP5-8.5 is considered low”

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climate-debate

Is The Earth Actually Getting Hotter?

by V. Jayaraj, Aug 2, 2021 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Every year, climate-change enthusiasts tell us the earth is getting hotter. Phys.org warned the world, “New ‘hottest year on record’ likely to occur in the next five years.”

C2ES informed readers, “It’s certain: The Earth is getting warmer, and human activity is largely to blame.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ headline read, “Broken record: The planet is getting hotter. And hotter. And hotter.”

But are we really observing record hot years consecutively?

While global warming is real and has been happening since the end of the Little Ice Age in the 18th century, the claims surrounding unprecedented temperatures are, at best, highly dubious.

Reality and some climate change claims differ as much as day and night. Here are two examples.

Strange Things: Readjusted Data Points

A few official agencies across the globe are widely considered “leaders” or “authoritative” in disseminating climate data.

Among them is the Met Office in the UK and top U.S. state agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

However, these agencies have used their near-invincible status to adjust climate data points as they please, often resulting in an exaggerated warming trend.

NASA has been found to have adjusted past temperature data downward to make the present temperature levels look comparatively warmer.

In July 2021, geologist Roger Higgs demonstrated how NASA lowered the 2016 data point for annual global mean temperature.

NASA carried out the supposed downward shifting of data points so that the temperature levels for 2020 (which were about the same as 2016) would now appear more extreme. Higgs revealed the downward shifting on Researchgate.

Why did NASA adjust the 2016 data point to make it appear that 2020 beat it by a larger margin than originally appeared? You decide.

Growth of Glaciers: Greenland Registers Historic Increase in Surface Mass Balance for July 2021

Greenland ice has been a topic of discussion ever since climate change became a headline item in news circles. The reduction of ice mass is often projected as proof of global warming.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

In The 1970s Climate Modification Proposals Included Purposely Melting Arctic Sea Ice With Black Soot

by K. Richard, Aug 2, 2021 in NoTricksZone

In his 1975 book The Genesis Strategy, the late climate scientist Dr. Stephen Schneider reviewed contemporary climate modification proposals to reduce the severe 1960s and 1970s droughts, floods, and extreme weather…which were at that time associated with the ongoing global cooling. One proposal was to eliminate the Arctic’s sea ice by having aircraft dump black soot on the ice pack.

In 1974, Schneider reported that the Earth had warmed 0.6°C from 1880 to 1940, then cooled -0.3°C from 1940 to 1970. He suggested the warming could not have been due to human activity, but possibly the ongoing cooling might have been.

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climate-debate

Are Climate Feedbacks Strongly Non-Linear?

by Bob Irvine, Aug 3, 2021 in WUWT

Is it possible that the Earth’s system is strongly buffered with strong positive ice and dust feedbacks prevailing at colder temperatures, and strong negative convection/evaporation feedbacks prevailing in warmer times?

Feedback Factor (FF) is defined as the total temperature change at equilibrium for a given forcing divided by the calculated “no feedback” temperature from that forcing.

The term CO2 will be used here to represent all the non-compressing GHGs. (CO2, MH4, N2O, CFCs, HCFs etc.)

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climate-debate

China, India And 85 Nations Snub U.N. Deadline To Update CO2-Reduction Targets

by Dr. B. Peiser, Aug  2, 2021 in GWPF/ClimateChangeDispatch

In a warning shot across the bows of Joe Biden and Boris Johnson, China, India, and 85 other nations have decided to ignore a UN deadline to submit its pledges for cutting CO2 emissions in time for the UN climate summit in Glasgow later this year.

To underscore their opposition to Joe Biden’s and Boris Johnson’s Net Zero agenda, India has snubbed the UK’s climate meeting last week while China is rolling back its climate policies in an attempt to prop up its economy.

Meanwhile, South Africa has demanded that developed countries should set a target of $750 billion a year to help poorer nations transition to renewable energy.

The latest demands and developments look increasingly like a farcical repeat of the fiasco of the Copenhagen climate summit (COP15) in 2009.

As seasoned COP observers remember, after two weeks of deadlocked negotiations in Denmark’s capital, the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (the so-called BRICS nations) took charge of the climate summit which was on the brink of disaster and drafted the final communique behind closed doors.

A humiliated US President Obama had to gatecrash the meeting while the entire EU was excluded from the meeting and the final statement.

In many ways, Copenhagen’s diplomatic and political fiasco was a historical watershed that marked the turning point when 500 years of Western dominance was symbolically terminated by China and India.

If Boris and Biden are not very careful, they may face a very similar situation in Glasgow. If push comes to shove there is a pretty good chance that China and India (together with a number of emerging nations) could take over a deadlocked COP yet again and draft an agreement that suits them and humiliates the US, UK, and the EU.

There is, of course, one shrewd game plan to avoid a Copenhagen-type fiasco: Boris Johnson could simply pull the plug on current summit plans, turn COP26 into a virtual conference, and blame Covid for the failure to achieve a breakthrough.

After all, Boris has developed a habit of kicking irreconcilable issues into the long grass … just saying.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

The New Pause lengthens again

by C. Monckton of Brenchley, Aug 3 2021 in WUWT

The New Pause has lengthened by another two months. Even though the brief la Niña that began in late 2020 has now ended, on the UAH dataset there has been no global warming for 6 years 6 months till July 2021. As always, the Pause is calculated as the longest period ending in the present that shows no warming trend, taken as the least-squares linear-regression trend on the UAH satellite monthly global mean surface temperature anomalies for the lower troposphere:

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biology+acidification, climate-debate

Record Coral Cover Of Great Barrier Reef Shames Climate Alarmists, Media

by P. Ridd, July 23, 2021 in WUWT

The annual data on coral cover for the Great Barrier Reef, produced by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, was released on Monday showing the amount of coral on the reef is at record high levels.

Record high, despite all the doom stories by our reef science and management institutions.

Like all other data on the reef, this shows it is in robust health. For example, coral growth rates have, if anything, increased over the past 100 years, and measurements of farm pesticides reaching the reef show levels so low that they cannot be detected with the most ultra-sensitive equipment.

This data is good news. It could hardly be better. But somehow, our science organizations have convinced the world that the reef is on its last legs. How has this happened?

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climate-debate

“SNOWSTORM IN AFRICA!” — SOUTH AFRICA SMASHES *AN ADDITIONAL* 19 ALL-TIME LOW TEMPERATURE RECORDS OVER THE PAST 24 HOURS

by Cap Allon, July 24, 2021 in Electroverse

Following on from the record-smashing cold that infected Southern Africa on Thursday, the SA Weather Service (SAWS) has confirmed that a further 19 low temperature records were broken in the past 24 hours alone.

The service had warned that the country to brace for the coldest night of the year; however, it turned out to be the coldest night in recorded history for many locales, with records set 20, 40 and even 60+ years ago falling by the wayside.

Below I’ve compiled a few of the fallen records:

Kroonstad logged a bone-chilling -8C (17.6F), toppling the city’s previous record of -7.7C (18.1F) set in 1990.

Warden’s all-time low from 1989 was beaten by 0.4C, and now stands at -6.7C (19.9F).

In Kimberly, a historic -9.9C (14.2F) was recorded.

Warmbad Towoomba’s –5.6C (21.9F) busted the previous low of -5.5C (22.1F) from 1964 (solar minimum of cycle 19).

While in Johannesburg, a reading of -7C (19.4F) smashed the old record of -6.3C (20.7F) set in 1995 (solar minimum of cycle 23).

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climate-debate

New Study On Heavy Rainfall: “General Long-Term Trend For Whole Germany Consistently Not Evident”

by P. Gosselin, July 25, 2021 in NoTricksZone

We hear the message all the time from the German mainstream media and climate alarmists: Weather extremes are becoming more and more frequent, as the recent flood shows.

But a recent paper titled “Frequency Trend Analysis of Heavy Rainfall Days for Germany” by Deumer et al (2020) tells a very different story.

Hat-tip: Axel Bojanowski.

The two scientists from the renowned Leibnitz research network analyzed data and found no significant trends for the whole of Germany in terms of heavy rainfall.

The abstract:

Climate change is expected to affect the occurrence of heavy rainfall. We analyzed trends of heavy rainfall days for the last decades in Germany. For all available stations with daily data, days exceeding daily thresholds (10, 20, 30 mm) were counted annually. The Mann–Kendall trend test was applied to overlapping periods of 30 years (1951–2019). This period was extended to 1901 for 111 stations. The stations were aggregated by natural regions to assess regional patterns. Impacts of data inconsistencies on the calculated trends were evaluated with the metadata and recent hourly data. Although the trend variability depended on the chosen exceedance threshold, a general long-term trend for the whole of Germany was consistently not evident. After 1951, stable positive trends occurred in the mountainous south and partly in the northern coastal region, while parts of Central Germany experienced negative trends. The frequent location shifts and the recent change in the time interval for daily rainfall could affect individual trends but were statistically insignificant for regional analyses. A case study supported that heavy rains became more erosive during the last 20 years. The results showed the merit of historical data for a better understanding of recent changes in heavy rainfall.”

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Criminal Negligence? Authorities Failed To Heed Flood Warnings…”Let People Drown”…”Monumental System Failure”

by P. Gosselin, July 17, 2021 in WUWT/NTZ

Harsh criticism of German authorities failing to act is mounting in the aftermath of the recent deadly floods.

Germany’s New Orleans

Many of the over one hundred people died in the recent flood disaster in Central Western Germany could have been prevented – had the responsible institutions heeded the warnings that had been already issued days in advance by the weather services. Authorities had been warned days early, yet they did nothing to prepare to evacuate and mobilize resources. The media did nothing to warn.

Veteran meteorologist: “much could have been prevented”

Swiss meteorologist Jörg Kachelmann told in a PULS 24 interview that “much of it could have been prevented” and that “people could have been warned”.

“The rainfall could not have been prevented” but the authorities and the “media could have warned the population.” The veteran Swiss meteorologist is surprised by the “surprise of the authorities” and says “people could have been evacuated or at least items moved to higher floors”.

“Let people drown” as “they broadcast shit”

Kachelman also commented to Germany’s leading national daily, Bild: “It hurts when the very people who would have the resources to accompany such a weather situation 24/7 do nothing to save lives. But they broadcast shit and let people drown.”

Unpreparedness becoming a German habit

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Just 25 ‘mega-cities’ produce 52 per cent of the world’s urban greenhouse gas emissions — and 23 of them are in China

by I. Randall, July 12, 2021 in DailyMail

  • Researchers from Sun Yat-sen University recorded the emissions of 167 cities

  • The largest carbon emitters were found to be Asian megacities like Shanghai

  • Cities in Europe and the US emit more than those in most developing countries

  • Of 42 cities with data spanning 2012–2016, 30 showed emissions reductions

  • Yet the team warned we are not on track to meet global climate change targets

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THE WORST EMITTERS

In their study, Dr Chen and colleagues looked at greenhouse gas emissions from 167 cities across 53 countries.

The worst 75 cities for total emissions were as follows (with figures in megatonnes of CO₂ equivalent):

  1. Handan, China (199.71)
  2. Shanghai, China (187.93)
  3. Suzhou, China (151.79)
  4. Dalian, China (142.51)
  5. Beijing, China (132.58)
  6. Tianjin, China (125.89)
  7. Moscow, Russia (112.53)
  8. Wuhan, China (110.86)
  9. Qingdao, China (93.56)
  10. Chongqing, China (80.58)
  11. Wuxi, China (76.88)
  12. Urumqi, China (75.32)
  13. Guangzhou, China (71.03)
  14. Huizhou, China (68.74)
  15. Shijiazhuang, China (67.80)
  16. Zhengzhou, China (66.16)
  17. Tokyo, Japan (66.08)
  18. Shengyang, China (64.10)
  19. Kaohsiung, China (63.64)
  20. Kunming, China (62.96)
  21. Shenzhen, China (62.91)
  22. Hangzhou, China (61.41)
  23. Hong Kong, China (55.90)
  24. Yinchuan, China (55.49)
  25. Chengdu , China (54.49)
  26. New York City, US (51.31)
  27. Manilla, Philippines (49.47)
  28. Bangkok, Thailand (49.22)
  29. Dubai, UAE (48.26)
  30. Seoul, Korea (48.06)
  31. Nanjing, China (47.94)
  32. Istanbul, Turkey (47.53)
  33. Frankfurt, Germany (45.73)
  34. Jakarta, Indonesia (43.86)
  35. Changchun, China (42.62)
  36. Guiyang, China (42.09)
  37. Saint Petersburg, Russia (42.07)
  38. Singapore, Singapore (40.38)
  39. Jinan, China (38.49)
  40. Perth, Australia (36.33)
  41. San Diego, USA (35.02)
  42. Jiaxing, China (33.94)
  43. London, United Kingdom (33.58)
  44. Houston, USA (33.41)
  45. Stuttgart, Germany (32.82)
  46. Caracas, Venezuela (31.77)
  47. Chicago, USA (31.48)
  48. Harbin, China (30.81)
  49. Mexico City, Mexico (30.69)
  50. Lanzhou, China (29.87)
  51. Lagos, Nigeria (29.33)
  52. Xi’an, China (28.15)
  53. Berlin, Germany (27.48)
  54. Taiyuan, China (26.73)
  55. Los Angeles, USA (26.55)
  56. Tshwane, South Africa (26.14)
  57. Nanchang, China (25.17)
  58. Sao Paulo, Brazil (24.95)
  59. Johannesburg, South Africa (24.72)
  60. Changsha, China (24.64)
  61. Hohhot, China (23.47)
  62. Durban, South Africa (22.68)
  63. Mumbai, India (22.57)
  64. Hanoi, Vietnam (22.42)
  65. Torino, Italy (21.86)
  66. Cape Town, South Africa (21.53)
  67. Yokohama, Japan (20.96)
  68. Nanning, China (20.90)
  69. Santiago, Chile (20.03)
  70. Osaka, Japan (19.76)
  71. Hamburg, Germany (19.45)
  72. Chennai, India (19.32)
  73. Hefei, China (18.81)
  74. Toronto, Canada (18.08)
  75. Rotterdam, Netherlands (17.54)
climate-debate

Greenland’s 2021 spring: more snow, less melt

by C. Rotter, July 14, 2021 in WUWTfromNSIDC

Surface melt and total melt-day area for the Greenland Ice Sheet at the end of the 2021 spring season was below the 1981 to 2010 average. Snowfall and rain (minus runoff) added mass to the ice sheet. As of June 20, total mass gain for the ice sheet since September 2020 was slightly above average. The spike from June 25 to June 27 will be discussed in later a post.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

ANTARCTIC SEA ICE EXTENT LARGEST SINCE 2015, AND GROWING

by Cap Allon, July 14, 2021 in Electrroverse

According to the June, 2021 report recently released by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), it is revealed that the ice locked at Earth’s poles is actually GROWING.

The opening paragraph of the report reads: “Sea ice in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica was well above the 1981 to 2010 average extent in June, rising above the ninetieth percentile near the end of the month”.

But that’s as far as the NSIDC go…

They have plenty to say on the Arctic –which is experiencing its sixth lowest extent on record (big whoop)– but when it comes to Antarctica, I hear nothing but “crickets” — clearly, the icy continent GROWING in mass, and so offsetting the comparatively small losses registered by its northern cousin, is seen as a dampener to the AGW party.

Or perhaps the NSIDC are just letting the data speak for itself:

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… it is revealed that Antarctic sea ice extent, as of June 12 (or day 193), is at an impressive 15.808 million square kilometres (6.104 million square miles) — this is the largest extent at this time of year since 2015, and also sees it tracking well-above the 1979-1990 average.

This news, if you’re an alarmist, is surely something to be celebrated.

The icy continent holds 90% of Earth’s freshwater — so, if you’re one of the gullible that have been conditioned to lose sleep over ‘sea level rise’ then this latest datapoint should quell those fears.

Unfortunately though, alarmists selectively ignore ‘good news’ and instead accumulate only bad news–the news that supports their fears, which, thanks to the likes of the IPCC and their MSM lapdogs, is rammed down our collective throats on a daily basis — it is impossible to ignore.

It’s a type of cognitive dissonance, I guess — people are rejecting new information that conflicts with their existing beliefs, even when the new information is positive: this isn’t how science is supposed to work.

Oh, and the NSIDC has more.

Looking at their historical chart which runs back to 1979, an overall trend of growth is shown here, too.

According to the data, ice around the southern pole has been increasing at ≈1 percent per decade:

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climate-debate

Curry: The State of Climate Science in 5 Minutes

by Kip Hansen, July 14, 2021 in WUWT

Dr. Judith Curry has treated the world to a marvelous 5-minute synopsis of climate science on her blog Climate Etc. It is absolutely brilliant and makes a great bit to share with friends, family, neighbors and colleagues who would benefit from a more pragmatic view of the Climate Science field.

With her permission, I share it here — just the synopsis without her introduction.

“Let me start with a quick summary of what is referred to as the ‘climate crisis:’

Its warming.  The warming is caused by us.  Warming is dangerous.  We need to urgently transition to renewable energy to stop the warming.  Once we do that, sea level rise will stop and the weather won’t be so extreme.

So what’s wrong with this narrative?  In a nutshell, we’ve vastly oversimplified both the problem and its solutions.  The complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity of the existing knowledge about climate change is being kept away from the policy and public debate. The solutions that have been proposed are technologically and politically infeasible on a global scale.

Specifically with regards to climate science. The sensitivity of the climate to a doubling of carbon dioxide has a factor of three uncertainty.  Climate model predictions of alarming impacts for the 21st century are driven by an emissions scenario, RCP8.5, that is highly implausible. Climate model predictions neglect scenarios of natural climate variability, which dominate regional climate variability on interannual to multidecadal time scales.  And finally, emissions reductions will do little to improve the climate of the 21st century; if you believe the climate models, most of the impacts of emissions reductions will be felt in the 22nd century and beyond.

Whether or not warming is ‘dangerous‘ is an issue of values, about which science has nothing to say.  According to the IPCC, there is not yet evidence of changes in the global frequency or intensity of hurricanes, droughts, floods or wildfires.  In the U.S., the states with by far the largest population growth are Florida and Texas, which are warm, southern states.  Property along the coast is skyrocketing in value.  Personal preference and market value do not yet regard global warming as ‘dangerous.’

Climate change is a grand narrative in which manmade climate change has become the dominant cause of societal problems. Everything that goes wrong reinforces the conviction that that there is only one thing we can do prevent societal problems – stop burning fossil fuels. This grand narrative misleads us to think that if we solve the problem of manmade climate change, then these other problems would also be solved. This belief leads us away from a deeper investigation of the true causes of these problems. The end result is narrowing of the viewpoints and policy options that we are willing to consider in dealing with complex issues such as public health, water resources, weather disasters and national security.

Does all this mean we should do nothing about climate change?  No. We should work to minimize our impact on the planet, which isn’t simple for a planet with 7 billion inhabitants.  We should work to minimize air and water pollution.  From time immemorial, humans have adapted to climate change.  Whether or not we manage to drastically curtail our carbon dioxide emissions in the coming decades, we need to reduce our vulnerability to extreme weather and climate events.

With regards to energy.  All other things being equal, everyone would prefer clean over dirty energy.  However, all other things are not equal. We need secure, reliable, and economic energy systems for all countries in the world. This includes Africa, which is currently lacking grid electricity in many countries. We need a 21st century infrastructure for our electricity and transportation systems, to support continued and growing prosperity. The urgency of rushing to implement 20th century renewable technologies risks wastingresources on an inadequate energy infrastructure and increasing our vulnerability to weather and climate extremes.

How the climate of the 21st century will play out is a topic of deep uncertainty. Once natural climate variability is accounted for, it may turn out to be relatively benign.  Or we may be faced with unanticipated surprises.  We need to increase our resiliency to whatever the future climate presents us with.  We are shooting ourselves in the foot if we sacrifice economic prosperity and overall societal resilience on the altar of urgently transitioning to 20th century renewable energy technologies.

We need to remind ourselves that addressing climate change isn’t an end in itself, and that climate change is not the only problem that the world is facing.  The objective should be to improve human well being in the 21st century, while protecting the environment as much as we can.”

I couldn’t agree more. I might adjust a few details but would share this with anyone who wanted a straight shooting from the hip version of the climate situation.

Thank you, Dr. Curry.

climate-debate

The Truth About Heat Waves

by Jime Steele, July 12, 2021 in WUWT

For those who truly want to be guided by science, put aside the climate crisis hysteria. We can explain the natural dynamics of all heat waves by simply knowing 1) how heat is transported along the earth’s surface; 2) how heat is transported vertically; 3) how solar heating changes; and 4) how the greenhouse effect varies.

Below is a map of global temperature anomalies for the year 2014 that illustrates natural climate dynamics. There is no uniform warming that might be expected from a global blanket of greenhouse gases. Across the globe, surface temperatures alternate between regions of above average warmth (red) with regions of below average (blue). (Gray regions lack sufficient data). Indeed, the observed cooler eastern USA is dubbed a “warming hole” by climate scientists because its cooling trend contradicts global warming theory. It requires a natural climate dynamic explanation.

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The temperature pattern is associated with regions where warmer air from the south more frequently intruded northward, while simultaneously, cold air from the north intruded southward. This pattern is due to a naturally wavy jet stream and associated pressure systems. The warm red regions indicate regions where high‑pressure systems dominate. In the northern hemisphere, high pressure systems cause clockwise atmospheric circulation that pulls warm air northward on its western side, and cold air southward on its eastern side.  Low pressure systems circulate counter-clockwise, conversely pulling cold air southward on its western side. These combined circulation patterns partly explain both the extreme cold that dropped Texas temperatures as much as 50° F below average in February 2021, as well as extreme heating that raised USA’s northwest temperatures 30°- 40° F above normal the following June. Similarly in 2019, northward transport of heated air from the Sahara desert caused heat waves over Europe and Greenland. Such natural heat transport can also cause coastal Alaska to be warmer than Florida.

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climate-debate

USA Heatwave reality check: Global temps below 30-year avg & ‘75% of the states recorded their hottest temperature prior to 1955’ – Worst U.S. heat waves happened in 1930s

by M. Morano, July 8, 2021 in CO2Coalition

Here we go again! Climate change: US-Canada heatwave ‘virtually impossible’ without warming according to climate model simulations

Model Based Study: Northwest heat wave impossible without climate change: “They logged observations of what happened and fed them into 21 computer models and ran numerous simulations. They then simulated a world without greenhouse gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. The difference between the two scenarios is the climate change portion.”

Climate Depot’s Marc Morano & author of Green Fraud:

“Here we go again. Any heatwave, hurricane, tornado outbreak, etc. are always used by the media and other climate activists as some kind of ‘proof” of a climate emergency.  At least these claims are more plausible than claims that building collapses or illegal immigration are caused by “climate change.”

But currently, the global satellite temperature for June 2021 is below the 30-year average. And despite the U.S. heatwave, there are plenty of record cold outbreaks happening around the globe, (See: Unusually strong cold weather outbreak spreads from Antarctica into central South America, bringing early winter temperature records and first snowfall after decades)

The media gaslights anyone who mocks ‘global warming’ on a record cold or snowy day but has no problem doing the exact same thing whenever it’s hot. As University of Alabama climate scientist John Christy’s research has found: “About 75% of the states recorded their hottest temperature prior to 1955, and over 50 percent of the states experienced their record cold temperatures after 1940.”

In addition, the EPA’s own data has shown that the 1930s U.S. heatwaves were far more severe than current temperatures. (2021 Update: EPA puts inconvenient data on 1930s drought and heat wave down the memory hole)

In short, it is unscientific and nothing short of political lobbying to jump on a heatwave to claim ‘proof’ of man-made global warming. Climate activists’ new motto should be: Never let an opportunity go to waste to blame a heatwave or a flood or hurricane or building collapse or immigration — on ‘climate change.’

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climate-debate

New Study: A ‘Profound’ ~1°C Cooling Trend Across East Antarctica Since 1979 Is ‘Likely To Accelerate’

by K. Richard, July 12, 2021 in NoTricksZone

Except for a few pockets of warming along the West Antarctic coast, surface air temperatures have cooled profoundly across East Antarctica – most of the continent, as well as the surrounding Southern Ocean – in the last 40 years (1979-2018). About 30% of the cooling can be explained by Madden-Julian Oscillation forcing.

Atmospheric CO2 concentrations rose from 337 ppm in 1979 to 408 ppm in 2018.

But according to graphical illustrations of surface air temperature (SAT) trends from satellite observations documented in a new study (Hsu et al., 2021), nearly the entire continent of Antarctica and much of the surrounding Southern Ocean have undergone about -0.02°C/year (-0.2°C per decade) SAT cooling during this period.

East Antarctica’s temperatures have fallen by about 1°C in the last 40 years, with approximately -0.4°C cooling from 1999-2018 relative to 1979-1998.

Per the authors, one-third of this 40-year cooling trend can be attributed to Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) forcing. The MJO influence is “likely to accelerate” the long-term cooling trend for East Antarctica in the coming decades.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

New Study Defies Alarmists, Finds “No Notable Changes” Between Present And Future Cyclone Energy

by P. Gosselin, July 10, 2021 in NoTricksZone

Good news: a warmer, likely tamer climate, is in the future recent science shows. A new study projects no  future increase in tropical storm energy.

Lots of government-funded climate scientists like claiming tropical cyclones are getting worse and that in the future we need to expect one supercharged storm after another – due to man heating the climate with carbon dioxide emissions.

But as we noted yesterday here, Zoe Phin found that hurricanes have not gone along with this dubious doomsday science over the past 25 years. Now a new study confirms things will continue that way.

Today German site Die kalte Sonne (DkS) presents its 49th video on climate and energy, featuring tropical storm energy.

Present vs future scenario

In the segment, DkS cites a new study appearing in the Geophysical Research Letters, where a team of scientists led by Philip Kreussler used three different global climate models to investigate tropical cyclone integrated kinetic energy which is closely associated with their damage potential.

No notable changes

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unclassified

Global Warming Stalls Again – Back To Levels Seen 20 Years Ago

by P. Gosselin & Kirye, July 6, 2021 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Before we begin, Dr. Roy Spencer just published that Version 6 of the University of Alabama-Huntsville satellite-based global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for June 2021 was -0.01 deg. C, down from the May 2021 value of +0.08 deg. C.

As Dr. Spencer’s chart above shows, temperatures are back within the range seen 20 years ago. The hiatus in global temperature rise appears to have resumed.

June cooling in Tokyo

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Source: JMA

Read more at No Tricks Zone

energy and fields

Leaked diplomatic cables show ‘limited progress’ in Energy Charter Treaty reform talks

by K. Taylor, July 6, 2021 in Euractiv

Little progress has been made to modernise a controversial agreement on energy investments that activists warn could derail decarbonisation efforts in Europe and across the globe, according to leaked documents.

The fifth round of negotiations on reforming the Energy Charter Treaty – an international agreement that allows energy companies to sue governments for decisions impacting their investments – took place in early June.

But attempts by the European Commission to bring the treaty in line with international climate goals have so far fallen flat, according to two leaked diplomatic cables.

“The atmosphere was constructive, but progress was limited, especially on energy issues,” reads one of the leaked diplomatic cables, which was written after a meeting the EU Council’s Working Party on Energy, where the European Commission recently gave EU countries an overview of progress made in the negotiations.

“No substantial progress was made on the definition of economic activity in the energy sector,” the cable says, referring to a section listing which types of energy infrastructure are protected under the treaty.

At the moment, that definition includes almost all energy sources, from coal to renewables. The European Commission, which negotiates on behalf of the 27 EU member states, has proposed gradually reducing protection for fossil fuel investments but has seen little support from other treaty signatories.

Unanimity is required to modify the treaty, whose 54 members include countries like Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, which are heavily reliant on fossil fuel export revenues and have little incentive to reform.

A sixth round of negotiations to reform the Energy Charter Treaty is opening on Tuesday (6 July) by which point the European Commission hopes to have rallied more support from non-EU states, like the UK and Balkan countries.

However, support for the EU’s reform plan was close to non-existent in the last negotiation round, where only six signatories even expressed views on the Commission’s proposal.

Kazakhstan was the only country to express an official position on the EU proposal and it “openly rejected” it, the documents show.

“After two hours of negotiations, it was clear that the EU proposal did not have enough support. None of the larger contracting parties was prepared to support the EU proposal in its current form. It would be necessary to examine where the EU’s flexibility could lie,” one of the leaked cables says.

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climate-debate

Climate Sensitivity to CO2, what do we know? Part 2.

by A. May, July 8, 2021 in WUWT

In Part 1, we introduced the concepts of climate sensitivity to CO2, often called ECS or TCR. The IPCC prefers a TCR of about 1.8°C/2xCO2 (IPCC, 2013, p. 818). TCR is the short-term, century scale, response of surface temperature to a doubling of CO2, we abbreviate the units as “°C/2xCO2.” In these posts we review lower estimates of climate sensitivity, estimates below 1°C/2xCO2. In parallel, we also review estimates of the surface air temperature sensitivity (SATS) to radiative forcing (RF, the units are °C per W/m2 or Watts per square meter). The IPCC estimates this value to be ~0.49°C per W/m2.

The previous post discussed two modern climate sensitivity estimates, by Richard Lindzen and Willie Soon, that range below 1°C/2xCO2. Next, we review climate sensitivity estimates by Sherwood Idso, Reginald Newell and their colleagues.

Many comments to part 1 tried to discredit the “ECS” or “TCR” estimates made by Lindzen and Soon, completely missing their point and my point. ECS and TCR are artificial climate model constructs, with little meaning outside the confines of computer modeling. TCR is a little more realistic since we might be able to observe or measure something close to it over the next century. But ECS, or the “Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity” is a totally abstract and unworldly number that could never be measured. It means if CO2 doubled suddenly, and nothing else changed for several hundred years while the oceans came into equilibrium with the new surface air temperature, what would the final surface temperature be? Air temperature would never be close to equilibrium for several hundred years, even 70 to 100 years (TCR) is a stretch.

Climate models are not the real world and the numbers that come out of them, like ECS or TCR, can be useful for showing the likely direction of temperature movement in response to changes in parameters or different model scenarios, but the numbers themselves are meaningless unless the models have previously been validated against the real world. With the possible exception of the Russian INM-CM4 model, no other IPCC model has successfully predicted future global surface temperatures. Ron Clutz discusses INM-CM4 here.

Model calculations are not observations. ECS and TCR are not real numbers, real numbers are based on observations. Thus, the model extracted values of ECS and TCR are not information, they can be used to detect the direction of change in climate forcing, if the climate model is an accurate reflection of that portion of the real world. The direction of movement of ECS and TCR, when model parameters or data tables change, is the information, not the computed value. I’m often amazed, as a former petrophysical modeler of 42 years, how often otherwise intelligent people confuse unvalidated model calculations with observations.

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