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

On Behalf Of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare

by M. Shellenberg, June 28, 2020 in Forbes

On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.

I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30.

But as an energy expert asked by Congress to provide objective expert testimony, and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as Expert Reviewer of its next Assessment Report, I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.

Here are some facts few people know:

  • Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”

  • The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”

  • Climate change is not making natural disasters worse

  • Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003

  • The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska

  • The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California

  • Carbon emissions have been declining in rich nations for decades and peaked in Britain, Germany and France in the mid-seventies

  • Adapting to life below sea level made the Netherlands rich not poor

  • We produce 25% more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter

  • Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to species than climate change

  • Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels

  • Preventing future pandemics requires more not less “industrial” agriculture

I know that the above facts will sound like “climate denialism” to many people. But that just shows the power of climate alarmism.

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 See also Green Activist, Michael Schellenberger, Apologises For Climate Scare
climate-debate

IPCC and Sceptics Agree: Climate Change Is Not Causing Extreme Weather

by H.S. Sterling Burnett, June 25, 2020 in GWPF

A new Global Warming Policy Foundation report from retired Oxford physicist Ralph Alexander supports the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s conclusion there is limited scientific evidence linking human caused climate change to increases in extreme weather.

Alexander’s conclusions are also confirmed by recent documents produced by Heartland Senior Fellow Anthony Watts on the website “Climate at a Glance.”

Alexander’s paper begins by remarking, “[t]he purported link between extreme weather and global warming has captured the public imagination and attention of the mainstream media far more than any of the other claims made by the narrative of human-caused climate change.”

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better to know...?, biology+acidification

CO2 Not A Threat To Oceans

by Dr. J. Lehr, June 26, 2020 in ClimateChangDispatch

For the past three decades, the public has been taught by the news media and the folks who make a living composing mathematical equations they claim to simulate how our planet’s climate operates, that our oceans are in jeopardy.

They have all told you one of the biggest falsehoods in human history.

They say that carbon dioxide, the only reason man can inhabit Earth, is causing the planet to heat up to a dangerous level and the oceans will become unlivable for marine life.

There is no proof of these lies whatever. Civilization has generally been most prosperous under warmer than colder conditions.

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The Ocean “acidification” from carbon dioxide emissions preached by the scaremongers would require an impossible ten-fold decrease in the alkalinity of surface waters.

Even if atmospheric CO2 concentrations triple from today’s four percent of one percent, which would take about 600 years, today’s surface pH of 8.2 would plateau at 7.8, still well above neutral 7.

Ocean health has improved as a result of greater CO2, as it feeds phytoplankton that stimulates the ocean’s food chain.

CO2 allows phytoplankton such as algae, bacteria, and seaweed to feed the rest of the open ocean food chain. As carbon dioxide moves through this food web, much of it sinks or is transported away from the surface.

A high surface pH allows the ocean to store 50 times more CO2 than the atmosphere. Digestion of carbon at lower depths allows for storage there for centuries.

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climate-debate

CMIP6 Climate Models Show 50% More Warming Than Observations Since 1979

by Roy W. Spencer, June 26, 2020 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Those who defend climate model predictions often produce plots of observed surface temperature compared to the models which show very good agreement.

Setting aside the debate over the continuing adjustments to the surface temperature record which produce ever-increasing warming trends, let’s look at how the most recent (CMIP6) models are doing compared to the latest version of the observations (however good those are).

First, I’d like to explain how some authors get such good agreement between the models and observations. Here are the two “techniques” they use that most annoy me.

  1. They look at long periods of time, say the last 100+ years. This improves the apparent agreement because most of that period was before there was substantial forcing of the climate system by increasing CO2.
  2. They plot anomalies about a common reference period but do not show trend lines. Or, if they show trend lines, they do not start them at the same point at the beginning of the record. When you do this, the discrepancy between models and observations is split in half, with the discrepancy in the latter half of the record having the opposite sign of the discrepancy in the early part of the record. They say, “See? The observed temperatures in the last few decades nearly match the models!”

In the following plot (which will be included in a report I am doing for the Global Warming Policy Foundation) I avoid both of those problems.

During the period of strongest greenhouse gas forcing (since 1979), the latest CMIP6 models reveal 50% more net surface warming from 1979 up to April 2020 (+1.08 deg. C) than do the observations (+0.72 deg. C).

 

Continuer la lecture de CMIP6 Climate Models Show 50% More Warming Than Observations Since 1979 →

unclassified

Siberian Heatwave–Climate Or Weather?

by P. Homewood, June 27, 2020 in NotaLotofPeoppleKnowThat

The Conversation has now got involved in the Arctic heatwave scare, with this article by Jonathan Bamber, Professor of Physical Geography, University of Bristol :

On the eve of the summer solstice, something very worrying happened in the Arctic Circle. For the first time in recorded history, temperatures reached 38°C (101°F) in a remote Siberian town – 18°C warmer than the maximum daily average for June in this part of the world, and the all-time temperature record for the region.

New records are being set every year, and not just for maximum temperatures, but for melting ice and wildfires too. That’s because air temperatures across the Arctic have been increasing at a rate that is about twice the global average.

All that heat has consequences. Siberia’s recent heatwave, and high summer temperatures in previous years, have been accelerating the melting of Arctic permafrost. This is the permanently frozen ground which has a thin surface layer that melts and refreezes each year. As temperatures rise, the surface layer gets deeper and structures embedded in it start to fail as the ground beneath them expands and contracts. This is what is partly to blame for the catastrophic oil spill that occurred in Siberia in June 2020, when a fuel reservoir collapsed and released more than 21,000 tonnes of fuel – the largest ever spill in the Arctic.

So what is wrong with the Arctic, and why does climate change here seem so much more severe compared to the rest of the world?

https://theconversation.com/siberia-heatwave-why-the-arctic-is-warming-so-much-faster-than-the-rest-of-the-world-141455

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unclassified

Scientists Panic, Because Arctic Is 0.4F Warmer Than In 1915!

by P. Homewood, June 21, 2020 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

The Arctic is thought to have recorded its hottest ever temperature of 100.4F (38C) in Siberia, an astonishing 32F (18C) above the normal level for this time of year.

The mercury shot up to the unprecedented level in Verkhoyansk, 3,000 miles east of Moscow, as the region endures a summer heatwave.

Scientists had predicted the Arctic wouldn’t reach these levels until 2100, meaning it is warming 80 years faster than previously thought.

If the record is confirmed it will represent a new high. The current record for hottest temperature in the Arctic is held by Prospect Creek, Alaska, which recorded 100F (38C) in 1915.

Weatherman for CBS, Jeff Beradelli, said on Twitter yesterday: ‘Likely the hottest temperature ever recorded in the Arctic happened today.

‘What’s happening in Siberia this year is nothing short of remarkable. For perspective, Miami has only reached 100F (38C) once on record.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8444319/Arctic-records-hottest-temperature-mercury-hits-100F-town-Verkhoyansk-Siberia.html?login#readerCommentsCommand-message-field

 

Even the babies who write for the Mail could surely spot the fly in the ointment – that this new record is only 0.4F higher than the previous one set in 1915! Hardly the apocalypse they are trying to present.

As for Verkhoyansk itself, temperatures there reached 37.3C (99.1F) in 1988 during a succession of 30C+ days, so again there is nothing remarkable about the latest weather at all :

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climate-debate

A HISTORY OF THE ADVANCE AND RETREAT OF ALPINE GLACIERS

by Cap Allon, June 23, 2020 in Electroverse

It should be obvious after watching that glacial advances and retreats have always occurred and that they must therefore be the result of natural forcings.

On the back of decades of historically high solar activity, modern human’s witnessed a gradual glacial melt. But now, the Sun is once again shutting down, and the evidence for a return to glacial advance is ever-building:

The Greenland Ice Sheet continues to gain record amounts of snow & ice:

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climate-debate

What Happened To Greenland’s Tipping Point?

by P. Homewood, June 22, 2020 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

Ten years ago, the Guardian warned us that Greenland would have passed a tipping point by now, with the whole ice sheet due to disappear by the end of the century:

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How did that work out then?

The article was written in 2010, which was the warmest on record. Since then, however, Greenland’s temperatures have returned to normal, and are no higher than they were in the 1930s.

Far from being the start of a new trend, 2010 was simply an outlier:

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climate-debate

MIT’s Dr. Lindzen Pokes Fun At The ‘Naïve’, Well-Funded ‘Scientific Reasoning’ That 1 Factor – CO2 – Controls Climate

by Prof. Dr.  Lindzen, June 15, 2020 in NoTricksZone_K. Richard

In a new paper, atmospheric physicist Dr. Richard Lindzen summarizes the “implausible” claims today’s proponents of dangerous anthropogenic global warming espouse.

Dr. Richard Lindzen retired several years ago, and yet his immense contribution to the atmospheric sciences lives on. His research is still cited about 600 times per year.

Lindzen recently published another scientific paper (Lindzen, 2020) in The European Physical Journal criticizing the current alarmism in climate science.  Here are a few of the highlights.

1. Doubling the atmospheric CO2 concentration from 280 ppm to 560 ppm results in just a 1-2% perturbation to the Earth’s 240 W/m² energy budget. This doubled-CO2 effect has less than 1/5th of the impact that the net cloud effect has. And yet we are asked to accept the “implausible” claim that change in one variable, CO2, is predominatly responsible for altering global temperatures.

2. A causal role for CO2 “cannot be claimed” for the glacial-to-interglacial warming events because CO2 variations follow rather than lead the temperature changes in paleoclimate records and the 100 ppm total increase over thousands of years produce “about 1 W/m²” of total radiative impact.

3. Climate science didn’t used to be alarmist prior to the late 1980s. Scientists were instead sufficiently skeptical about claims of climatically-induced planetary doom. That changed during the years 1988-1994, when climate research centered on CO2 and global warming received a 15-fold increase in funding in the US alone. Suddenly there was a great financial incentive to propel alarming global warming scenarios.

4. Concepts like “polar amplification” are “imaginary”.

“The change in equator-to-pole temperature difference was attributed to some imaginary ‘polar amplification,’ whereby the equator-pole temperature automatically followed the mean temperature. Although the analogy is hardly exact, this is not so different from assuming that flow in a pipe depends on the mean pressure rather than the pressure gradient.”

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climate-debate

New Studies Suggests Sea Levels Are Lower Today Than They Were Even During The Little Ice Age

by K. Richard, June 18, 2020 in NoTricksZone

Coastal history analyses increasingly suggest sea levels are lower today than at any time in the last 7000 years – even lower than the 1600s to 1800s.

Recently we compared cartology from the 17th to 19th centuries to direct aerial images of coastal positions today. Rather surprisingly, there seemed to be more land area below sea level a few hundred years ago.

For example, an 1802 nautical map of New York City and Long Island shows there may have been more open waters in this region during the Little Ice Age than in 2019.

 

Image Source: Amazon.com

Shoreline analysis from India also suggests the coasts were further inland during the 1600s than they are today (Mörner, 2017).

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better to know...?

Feux californiens : le climat innocenté

by Benoît Rittaud, 19 juin 2020

Dans un silence remarquable, on vient d’apprendre que les incendies qui ont ravagé la Californie en 2018 ont été causés par des défauts de maintenance dans le réseau électrique et ne devaient rien au réchauffement climatique, rapporte Benoît Rittaud, mathématicien et président de l’Association des climato-réalistes. Tribune.

Calomniez, calomniez, il en restera toujours quelque chose, dit-on. Dans notre monde où l’écologisme est un réflexe pavlovien, ce slogan s’est fait encore plus simple : dès que se produit un drame, toute explication fondée sur le « dérèglement climatique » est présumée correcte. Cette vérité immédiate a alors de bonnes chances de devenir vérité tout court, car qui ira perdre son temps à rétablir les faits après coup, tandis qu’entre-temps tant d’autres drames auront à leur tour « démontré une fois de plus la réalité de la crise ».

 

Continuer la lecture de Feux californiens : le climat innocenté →

climate and geology, sciences-general

Mass spectrometry and climate science. Part I: Determining past climates

by Judith Curry, June 16, 2020 in ChRotter_WUWT

Mass spectrometry is essential for research in climate science.

Understanding climate requires having sufficient knowledge about past climate and about the important factors that are influencing climate today, so that reliable models can be developed to predict future climate.

Analytical chemistry enables measurement of the chemical composition of materials, from the amounts of elements and their isotopes in a sample to the identity and concentrations of substances in the most complex biological organisms.

This two-part series covers the application of a powerful analytical chemistry technology — mass spectrometry — to two important areas in climate science:

  • Obtaining reliable information about past climate
  • Understanding composition and behavior of aerosols, which have a large impact on climate

The examples that are included for each topic were selected out of many published papers on the study of climate using mass spectrometry, partly because they feature a very wide range of types of these instruments. The authors were very helpful in providing me with information on their work.[1]

The technology described in this essay may at times be quite complicated! However, I hope that the results of each study will be understandable.

Part 1: Determining past climate

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Figure 1: Age of samples taken at indicated depth below surface of ice core

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climate-debate

Natural Variability Behind West Antarctic Warming—Media Silent

by D. Whitehouse, June 19,2020 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Ten days ago the journal Science issued an embargoed press release about a forthcoming paper that suggested the warming observed in West Antarctica was due to natural climatic variability.

West Antarctica has always been looked on by alarmists as being the southern example of polar temperature amplification – a phenomenon predicted by most climate change models.

The Arctic temperature amplification is very apparent so there must be an Antarctic equivalent, and there it is.

But while scientists have been well aware that Antarctica is warming asymmetrically, with West Antarctica experiencing more than East Antarctica and frequently attributed to climate change, the underlying causes of this phenomenon have been poorly understood, and the suggestion that West Antarctica may be experiencing natural warming has been suggested before though not taken up very enthusiastically, if at all.

This new paper, “The internal origin of the west-east asymmetry of Antarctic climate change”, expresses the dilemma well.

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climate-debate

Flashback: What Michael Crichton Taught Us About Scientific Fraud

by A. Stewart, June17, 2020 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Michael Crichton’s books earned global plaudits.

He invented the genre we now call the techno-thriller whereby it is hard to discern whether it is fact or fiction you were reading.

The reason for that was because he wove his plots around well-researched facts.

One of the best examples is State of Fear.

If you are a student of the climate change furor, it is a must-read, chock full of intelligent insight into the twisted pseudoscience driving the environmental movement.

Below is a key short extract in which Crichton deftly summarizes the reality of nature and man through the character, Kenner. (emphasis added)

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The graph above demonstrates we are getting better every day in understanding our environment, working with it, and adapting to its harsher realities.

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climate-debate

MIT’s Dr. Lindzen Pokes Fun At The ‘Naïve’, Well-Funded ‘Scientific Reasoning’ That 1 Factor – CO2 – Controls Climate

by K. Richard, June 15, 2020 in NoTricksZone

In a new paper, atmospheric physicist Dr. Richard Lindzen summarizes the “implausible” claims today’s proponents of dangerous anthropogenic global warming espouse.

Dr. Richard Lindzen retired several years ago, and yet his immense contribution to the atmospheric sciences lives on. His research is still cited about 600 times per year.

Lindzen recently published another scientific paper (Lindzen, 2020) in The European Physical Journal criticizing the current alarmism in climate science.  Here are a few of the highlights.

1. Doubling the atmospheric CO2 concentration from 280 ppm to 560 ppm results in just a 1-2% perturbation to the Earth’s 240 W/m² energy budget. This doubled-CO2 effect has less than 1/5th of the impact that the net cloud effect has. And yet we are asked to accept the “implausible” claim that change in one variable, CO2, is predominatly responsible for altering global temperatures.

2. A causal role for CO2 “cannot be claimed” for the glacial-to-interglacial warming events because CO2 variations follow rather than lead the temperature changes in paleoclimate records and the 100 ppm total increase over thousands of years produce “about 1 W/m²” of total radiative impact.

3. Climate science didn’t used to be alarmist prior to the late 1980s. Scientists were instead sufficiently skeptical about claims of climatically-induced planetary doom. That changed during the years 1988-1994, when climate research centered on CO2 and global warming received a 15-fold increase in funding in the US alone. Suddenly there was a great financial incentive to propel alarming global warming scenarios.

4. Concepts like “polar amplification” are “imaginary”.

“The change in equator-to-pole temperature difference was attributed to some imaginary ‘polar amplification,’ whereby the equator-pole temperature automatically followed the mean temperature. Although the analogy is hardly exact, this is not so different from assuming that flow in a pipe depends on the mean pressure rather than the pressure gradient.”
climate-debate, renewable energy

Folly: Germany Plans To Convert Coal Power Plant To Burn 100-Year Old Trees In Minutes!

by Die kalte Sonne, June 16, 2020 in NoTricksZone

German Coal Power Plants To Be Converted: To Burn Trees

 

On May 2, 2020, we reported on the movie Burned. In the USA, the focus is on biomass.

However, they do not ferment fast-growing plants into gas as is the case in Europe, rather they cut down trees and burn them in power plants – often together with other things like car tires or soaked railway ties.

The issue is controversial because it is about pure ideology. Climate organisations such as 350.org, which in the USA is like Fridays For Future (FFF) in Europe, have given their blessing to this type of power generation.

The film Planet of the Humans by Michael Moore also denounces this.

Converting CO2 sinks instantly into atmospheric CO2

And so the USA is losing valuable carbon sinks and biotopes, destroying its environment and lying to itself about sustainability and the climate. A tree that takes 50 – 100 years to become big and stately, but then is burned up in a few minutes, can never have a favorable climate balance, no matter how you calculate it. Trees are the new coal, it seems.

But anyone who thinks that this is only done in the USA, where huge forests and thus carbon sinks are destroyed, is mistaken.

“Madness”: German coal plant to be converted to burn trees

The online daily Weserkurier reports on a coal-fired power station in Wilhelmshaven (North Germany) that is to be converted to burn wood. This made Germany’s most famous forester, Peter Wohlleben (book “The Secret Life of Trees“) flash with anger on Twitter.

climate-debate

British Columbia Breaks Cold And Snow Records

by Cap Allon, June 15, 2020 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Record cold and late-spring snow helped drive-home the Grand Solar Minimum message across the BC Interior over the weekend.

According to KelownaNow Meteorologist Wesla English, the Interior –one of the three main regions of the Canadian province of British Columbia– broke a slew of cold records on Saturday.

Kelowna, Kamloops, Clearwater, Penticton, Salmon Arm, and Vernon were among the areas to set new all-time record low-max temperatures for June 13.

“A cool upper low over Southern BC produced chilly temperatures on Saturday, breaking record low daytime highs in several areas,” wrote English.

Below is a breakdown of the records (data courtesy of Environment and Climate Change Canada, and originally reported by kelownanow.com):

  • Kelowna set a new daily record min-high of 12.8C on Saturday, a reading comfortably topping the previous record of 13.3C set in 1981.
  • Kamloops saw its all-time record low smashed, from 1923’s 15C to this weekend’s 13.4C.
  • But it was Salmon Arm that actually saw the biggest change — Saturday’s low-max of 12.4Ccrushed the old record of 14.4C from 1971.
  • Clearwater’s12.8C busted the 13.3C from 1966.
  • While the 13.9C set at Penticton pipped the previous record — 1981’s 14C.

In addition to the cold, this weekend delivered rare late-spring snow to BC, adding to Ontario’s record June snowfall last weekend that brought power outages to parts of the province.

Wet snow accumulated near the summit of the Okanagan Connector between Merritt and Kelowna on Sunday,

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See also BOTH KELOWNA AND SUMMERLAND BUST 108-YEAR-OLD COLD RECORDS

climate-debate

Tree Rings & Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick

by P. Homewood, June 14, 2020 in NotalotofPeopleKnowThat

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Somehow what starts as a perfectly sensible review morphs into Michael Mann and his discredited hockey stick!

But, as the review itself admits, tree rings tell you more about rainfall than temperature, Indeed, in a much better review in Newsweek, we read how the book reveals in detail the effect that a long period of drought had on the declining Roman Empire in the 4thC.

In fact Mann’s Hockey Stick was hopelessly flawed in many ways. (I would recommend Andrew Montford’s book, “The Hockey Stick Illusion”, for anyone interested.

For a start, the Hockey Stick was based on shonky statistics, which were guaranteed to produce a hockey stick curve regardless of the data fed into it. This was because of the way Mann used Principal Component analysis. In simple terms, Mann’s statistics blew out of all proportion any data which showed a hockey stick effect and ignored all other data.

Secondly, as far as tree rings were concerned, it was heavily dependent on bristlecone pines. It has long been known that the marked increase in bristlecone growth in the 19th and 20thC is due to CO2 fertilization, not temperature. When bristlecones are taken out of Mann’s analysis. the hockey stick disappears.

Thirdly, when tree ring and other proxy data diverged from rising temperature data in the late 20thC, Mann ignored the proxies and spliced the temperature data onto his graph.

There are also a whole host of other major flaws in the Hockey Stick, not related to tree rings.

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climate and geology, climate-debate

Climate Scientists Step Up the Climate Emergency Narrative

by E. Worrall, June 13, 2020 in WUWT

 

MIP6 Climate Sensitivities. Source Carbon Brief

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Even worse than we thought ™. Despite a recent sanity test study which demonstrated that high end climate models hindcast impossible Eocene temperatures, climate scientists are pushing ahead anyway with their new, even more extreme climate projections.

 

Continuer la lecture de Climate Scientists Step Up the Climate Emergency Narrative →

biology+acidification, climate-debate

Study: As Sea Levels Rise, Island ‘Drowning’ Is Not Inevitable

by A. Williams, June12, 2020 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Coral reef islands across the world could naturally adapt to survive the impact of rising sea levels, according to new research.

The increased flooding caused by the changing global climate has been predicted to render such communities – where sandy or gravel islands sit on top of coral reef platforms – uninhabitable within decades.

However, an international study led by the University of Plymouth (UK) suggests that perceived fate is far from a foregone conclusion.

The research, published in Science Advances, for the first time uses numerical modeling of island morphology alongside physical model experiments to simulate how reef islands – which provide the only habitable land in atoll nations – can respond when sea levels rise.

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climate-debate

THE CHANGING JET STREAM AND GLOBAL COOLING

by Cap Allon, June12, 2020 in Electroverse

Studying the JET STREAM has long been an indicator of the weather to come. And to study the jet stream attention must turn to the SUN.

When solar activity is HIGH the jet stream is tight, stable, and follows somewhat of a straight path. But when solar activity is LOW that meandering band of air flowing some 6 miles above our heads becomes weak and wavy, it effectively buckles, which has the effect of diverting frigid Polar air to atypically low latitudes and replaces it with warmer tropical air masses.

The jet stream reverts from a Zonal Flow to a Meridional Flow — and, depending on which side of the jet stream you’re on, you’re either in for a spell of unseasonably cold or hot weather, and/or a period of unusually dry or wet conditions.

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climate-debate

Observations historiques d’inondations jusqu’à la fin du 19ème siècle (première partie)

by IRM, 2020

Nos observations historiques d’inondations font l’objet de trois articles. Voici le premier qui traite des inondations jusqu’à la fin du 19ème siècle.

En août 2019, nous avons introduit la possibilité d’envoyer vos propres observations via notre application météo. Cette nouvelle fonctionnalité semble avoir plu aux utilisateurs de notre app, puisque nous avons reçu près de 600.000 observations jusqu’à présent ! Etant donné ce succès, nous avons décidé en avril 2020 d’y ajouter deux nouveaux types d’observations à rapporter : les inondations et les phénomènes optiques. Ces phénomènes ont été observés de tous temps, c’est pourquoi nous avons décidé de nous plonger dans plus d’un millénaire d’anciennes observations de halos et d’arcs-en-ciel. Dans ce nouvel article, vous trouverez quelques observations d’inondations telles qu’elles ont été perçues et décrites dans d’anciens manuscrits, livres et journaux publiés en Europe de l’Ouest jusqu’au 19ème siècle.

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Caricature représentant l’actuelle place Saint-Géry, lors de l’inondation de janvier 1820, Collection iconographique (ref. K-573), Archives de la Ville de Bruxelles.

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See also Observations historiques d’inondations (deuxième partie)

and Observations historiques d’inondations (troisième partie)

biology+acidification

Podcast: Why the Oceans Really Aren’t “Acidifying” but the Term Is Being Abused by Science and Media

by A. Watts, June 11, 2020 in WUWT

Science and media outlets claim ocean acidification is happening due to increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But objective data show the ocean is far from acidic according to Dr. Caleb Rossiter, executive director of the CO2 Coalition and a statistician who has studied climate change closely.

Host Anthony Watts and Rossiter talk about how a pH of 7 is considered neutral, with anything below 7 considered acidic. Ocean pH averages 8.1, which is alkaline rather than acidic. Although climate models suggest the ocean’s surface pH may have dropped from pH 8.2 to 8.1 since 1750, that change was never actually measured.

The pH drop from 1850 is merely a modeled conjecture. The concept of pH was first introduced by in 1909, and agriculturalists first developed field instruments to measure pH in the 1930s.

climate-debate

ASTONISHING, RECORD-BREAKING GAINS CONTINUE ACROSS THE GREENLAND ICE SHEET — MSM SILENT

by Cap Allon, June 11, 2020 in Electroverse

The month of June is breaking records across the Greenland ice sheet, and not records for warmth and melt –as the mainstream media have trained you to expect– but new benchmarks for COLD and GAINS.

The SMB gains occurring right now across Greenland are truly astonishing.

Data-driven FACTS reveal vast regions to the south have been GAINING RECORD/NEAR-RECORD LEVELS of snow & ice all month.

Never before in June has the Greenland ice sheet grown by more than 4 Gigatons in a single day (since 1981 when DMI records began), but now the past week has gone and delivered two such days — June 3, and now yesterday, June 10.

In fact, yesterday’s gains actually neared 5 Gts — you can see from the chart below how anomalous that gain is for the time of year:

 

Blue line (Gt/day): total daily contribution to the SMB from the entire ice sheet. Grey line: mean value from 1981-2010 (DMI).

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climate-debate

DWD Reverses: Admits Data From Germany’s Infamous Ultra-Hot Lingen Weather Station Need To Be Rechecked

by P. Gosselin, June10, 2020 in NoTricksZone

Recently I wrote here how Germany’s now infamous record-setting weather station in Lingen was producing readings that were 2-3°C hotter than surrounding stations, yet the German DWD weather service refused to acknowledge the station was likely producing bad data. Today they admit the station has problems and that they will be moving it to a better location.

Last year’s all-time record high is now in question.

Lingen’s heated readings

Last summer the Lingen station, located in northwest Germany near the Dutch border, smashed the country’s all-time record high when the ‘mercury’ rose to a scorching 42.6°C during a late July heat wave. The previous all-time high for Germany was a comparatively cool 40.3°C.

 

Lingen’s readings of late July 2019 compared to other stations in the surrounding region (July 23 – July 27).

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