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 and geology

More Failed Predictions: May Was The Second Wettest Month In US History

by Chriss Street, June 28, 2019 in ClimateChangeDispatch

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported the month of May was the second wettest and temperatures were in the bottom-third for its 125-year US history.

The 2010 publication titled, ‘A Global Overview Of Drought and Heat-Induced Tree Mortality Reveals Emerging Climate Change Risks for Forests’, was accepted by the Obama administration as scientific evidence that climate change had made the Earth:

“…increasingly vulnerable to higher background tree mortality rates and die-off in response to future warming and drought, even in environments that are not normally considered water-limited.”

But NOAA just reported that May US precipitation totaled an average of 4.41 inches, 1.50 inches above average, and ranked second wettest in the 125-year period of record for May as well as second wettest for all months since January 1895.

The only wetter month in US history was May 2015 with 4.44 inches of precipitation.

The 37.68 inches of precipitation across the contiguous U.S. from June 2018 to May 2019 shattered the previous 1982-83 12-month period by 1.48 inches.

Near-record to record precipitation was observed from the West Coast through the central Plains and into the Great Lakes and parts of the Northeast.

As a result, severe May flooding was observed along the Arkansas, Missouri, and Mississippi rivers. Vicksburg, MS, reported ongoing flooding since mid-February.

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climate and geology

Truth(?) in testimony and convincing policy makers

by Judith Curry , June 28, 2019 in WUWT

Some reflections, stimulated by yesterday’s Congressional Hearing, on the different strategies of presenting Congressional testimony.

Yesterday’s Hearing provided an ‘interesting’ contrast in approaches to presenting testimony, when comparing my testimony with Michael Mann’s.

What are the purposes of expert testimony?

There is an interesting document entitled A Guide to Expert Testimony for Climate Scientists, funded by the US National Science Foundation.  Most of this is related to court room hearings, but some is relevant for Congressional Hearings.  Excerpts:

 

Experts may do one or more of the following:

  • Provide the decision-maker with factual information and background to provide the decision-maker with an adequate context for the decision.
  • Apply expert knowledge to the facts of a case and render an opinion about the facts, such as whether certain conditions actually caused an effect.
  • Explain scientific principles and theories to the decision-maker.
  • Extrapolate from the actual facts or hypothetical facts and rendering an opinion regarding the likelihood of an event or occurrence. Experts may speculate on events or occurrences because of their special knowledge or training.
  • Provide an opinion that contradicts or undermines the opinions or conclusions of an expert who testified for the opposing party.

If you are assigned to cross-examine an expert, you should prepare questions that test and challenge the witness on the following subjects :

  • Lack of thoroughness in investigating the facts or data;

  • Insufficient testing of the facts or data;

  • Lack of validity and reliability in testing of facts or data;

  • Existence of other causes or explanations for conclusions or outcomes;

  • Show differences of opinion among experts

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energy and fields

Weaning US power sector off fossil fuels would cost between $4.7tn and $10tn

by Reuters News Service, June 27, 2019 in CyprusMail

Eliminating fossil fuels from the U.S. power sector, a key goal of the “Green New Deal” backed by many Democratic presidential candidates, would cost $4.7 trillion and pose massive economic and social challenges, according to a report released on Thursday by energy research firm Wood Mackenzie.

That would amount to $35,000 per household, or nearly $2,000 a year for a 20-year plan, according to the study, which called the price tag for such a project “staggering.”

The report is one of the first independent cost estimates for what has become a key issue in the 2020 presidential election, with most Democrats proposing multi-trillion-dollar plans to eliminate U.S. carbon emissions economy-wide.

Front-runner Joe Biden’s plan to get to zero emissions, for example, carries a $1.7 trillion price tag, while Beto O’Rourke’s proposal comes in at $5 trillion. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the authors of the “Green New Deal,” a non-binding Congressional resolution, put the cost of a comprehensive climate solution at around $10 trillion.

Such ideas aim to tap into a growing sense of urgency about global warming on both sides of the political divide, but have been panned by President Donald Trump and many Republicans as being unfeasible, costly, and a threat to the economy.

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A power-generating wind turbine is seen in Saint-Laurent-Des-Eaux near Orleans, France

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better to know...?, climate-debate

More than 50 newly discovered lakes beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet

by Lancaster University, June 26, 2019 in ScienceDaily

Researchers have discovered 56 previously uncharted subglacial lakes beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet bringing the total known number of lakes to 60. Although these lakes are typically smaller than similar lakes in Antarctica, their discovery demonstrates that lakes beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet are much more common than previously thought.

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Dr Stephen J. Livingstone, Senior Lecturer in Physical Geography, University of Sheffield, said:

“The lakes we have identified tend to cluster in eastern Greenland where the bed is rough and can therefore readily trap and store meltwater and in northern Greenland, where we suggest the lakes indicate a patchwork of frozen and thawed bed conditions.

“These lakes could provide important targets for direct exploration to look for evidence of extreme life and to sample the sediments deposited in the lake that preserve a record of environmental change.”

climate and geology, climate-debate

How geologic forces are melting southern Greenland ice sheet

by J.E. Kamis, May 25, 2016 in ClimateChangeDispatch

The most plausible scenario for southern Greenland’s surface ice melt is related to geologically induced heat flow and not atmospheric warming for various, well-established reasons. Based on research by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (see here), the top surface of southern Greenland’s ice sheet is currently melting at a high rate and therefore greatly reducing surface ice volume. They attribute this geographically localized melting effect to an unusually persistent and man-made atmospheric high pressure system (a so-called “Omega Block“) that has remained stationary above southern Greenland during the spring of 2016.

This non-moving high-pressure system has trapped a cell of very warm air above southern Greenland resulting in higher-than-normal surface ice melting rates and volumes. NOAA and the mainstream media are portraying this above-average melting as undeniable proof man-made global warming damaging our planet.

This portrayal is vastly misleading.

That’s because southern Greenland’s surface ice melt is more likely caused by natural, geologically induced heat flow from one of Earth’s largest Deep Ocean crustal plate junctures, the 10,000 mile long Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR). The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is “an immensely long mountain chain extending for about 10,000 miles (16,000 km) in a curving path from the Arctic Ocean to near the southern tip of Africa. The ridge is equidistant between the continents on either side of it. The mountains forming the ridge reach a width of 1,000 miles.”

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climate-debate

Now 20 years with no trend in ice breakup dates for Western Hudson Bay polar bears

by Polar Bear Science, June  26, 2019

Straight from the horse’s mouth: all polar bear females tagged by researchers around Churchill in Western Hudson Bay last year were still on the ice as of 25 June. With plenty of ice still remaining over the bay, spring breakup will be no earlier this year than it has been since 1999. Contrary to predictions of ever-declining ice cover, the lack of a trend in sea ice breakup dates for Western Hudson Bay is now twenty years long (a hiatus, if you will) and yet these bears are repeatedly claimed to have been seriously harmed in recent years by a loss of sea ice.

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climate-debate, to keep an eye on...

Adjusted “Unadjusted” Data: NASA Uses The “Magic Wand Of Fudging”, Produces Warming Where There Never Was

by P. Gosselin, June 25, 2019 in NoTricksZone

By Kirye
and Pierre Gosselin

It’s been long known that NASA GISS has been going through its historical temperature data archives and erasing old temperature measurements and replacing them with new, made up figures without any real legitimate reason.

This practice has led to the formation of new datasets called “adjusted” data, with the old datasets being called “V3 unadjusted”. The problem for global warming activists, however, was that when anyone looks at the old “V3 unadjusted” – i.e. untampered data – they often found a downward linear temperature trend. Such negative trends of course are an embarrassment for global warming alarmists, who have been claiming the planet is warming up rapidly.

The adjusted “unadjusted” data

So what to do? Well, it seems that NASA has decided to adjust its “V3 unadjusted datasets” and rename them as “V4 unadjusted”. That’s right, the adjusted data has become the new V4 “unadjusted” data.

And what kind of trend does the new “V4 unadjusted” data show?

You guessed it. The new V4 unadjusted data are now yielding warmed up trends, even at places where a cooling trend once existed.

This is how NASA uses its magic wand of fudging to turn past cooling into (fake) warming.

6 examples of scandalous mischief by NASA

What follows are 6 examples, scattered across the globe and going back decades, which demonstrate this scandalous mischief taking place at NASA.

No. 1

Punta Arenas, Chile. Here we see how a clear cooling trend has been warmed up by NASA to produce a slight cooling trend:

 

giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/stdata_show_v3

giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/stdata_show_v4

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climate-debate

Greenland ice loss projections are clouded by clouds

by Brooks Hays, June 24, 2019 in UPI

June 24 (UPI) — Predicting where, how and how quickly Greenland’s ice will melt is difficult. Projections by the best models are cloudy, and new research suggests clouds are doing the clouding.

Currently, models of Greenland’s melting ice sheet put the greatest emphasis on the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions. But new research, published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change, suggests the microphysics of clouds are equally important.

…

 

Under high emission scenarios, the uncertainties of Greenland ice sheet models are caused almost entirely by the uncertainties of cloud dynamics.

Cloud cover dictates the ice sheet’s longwave radiation exposure. When clouds over Greenland are thicker, they operate like an insulating blanket, encouraging longwave radiation and surface-level melting.

better to know...?

Sky Abandon Facts In Favour Of Climate Propaganda

by P. Homewood, June 25, 2019 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

As far as climate change is concerned, Sky News have now abandoned all pretensions to factual accuracy, in favour of blatant propaganda.

They have a new 12-minute special report, to set off a week of special reports, but if this trailer is anything to go by it’s going to be the same old garbage the BBC have served up for years:

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The use of the word “storms” in the link title, along with the phrase “climate crisis” gives a good idea of the junk that is to follow.

Let’s go through the trailer’s claims and statements:

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energy and fields

Tensions autour du détroit d’Ormuz : allons-nous tous devoir rouler en vélo ?

by Samuele Furfari, 24 juin 2019 in ConnaissancedesEnergies

Les tensions dans le détroit d’Ormuz ne devraient pas nous surprendre. En 2000, François Lamoureux, Directeur général à l’énergie de la Commission européenne, disait avec son sens de la formule : « Si le détroit d’Ormuz est bloqué, le lendemain le monde entier ira en vélo ». Même si c’était exagéré, cela avait un sens à l’époque. Aujourd’hui, c’est faux. À la suite des événements des dernières semaines, le prix du pétrole brut a un peu augmenté mais le monde n’a pas « été » en vélo.

Pour répliquer aux pressions imposées par le président des États-Unis, l’Iran aux abois a-t-il placé les bombes sur deux pétroliers qui naviguaient dans le golfe Persique ? Washington accuse, Téhéran dément. Depuis son retrait de l’accord nucléaire iranien du 14 juillet 2015, Donald Trump a exercé une pression de plus en plus forte sur l’Iran.

Téhéran est en difficulté, malgré sa menace du 8 mai 2019 d’accorder un délai de 60 jours aux autres signataires de l’accord pour maintenir leurs engagements (principalement permettre à l’Iran de pouvoir vendre son pétrole dans le monde). Cette initiative du président iranien Hassan Rohani a poussé l’UE dans les cordes, elle qui a pourtant bien tenté de contourner les sanctions de Washington en créant Instex, une entité censée servir au paiement des transactions entre les entreprises européennes et l’Iran, afin de se passer de l’incontournable dollar américain dans les transactions internationales.

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climate-debate

Climate science’s ‘masking bias’ problem

by Judith Curry, June 22, 2019 in WUWT

How valid conclusions often lay hidden within research reports, masked by plausible but unjustified conclusions reached in those reports.  And how the IPCC institutionalizes such masking errors in climate science.

In the previous post, we discussed the motivated biases of individual climate researchers, stimulated by the paper by Lee Jussim, Joe Duarte and others entitled Interpretations and methods: Towards a more self-correcting social psychology

The Jussim et al. paper provides additional insights that are relevant to the motivated biases in climate change, which become particularly serious and problematic once these biases are institutionalized. Here are additional excerpts from Jussim et al. for the topic I would like to discuss in this post:

<begin quotes>

“In this paper, we consider how valid conclusions often lay hidden within research reports, masked by plausible but unjustified conclusions reached in those reports. These conclusions do not necessarily involve the use of questionable research practices. Invalid conclusions may be reached based, not on failing to report dropped conditions, failed studies, or nonsignificant analyses, but on selective interpretations of data that highlight researchers’ preferred conclusions while masking more valid ones.”

JC comment: This is basically the problem that I have with the IPCC assessment reports. Deep in the chapters, there is much good information that is reliable, although the reports relatively ignore some topics. The problem is with the conclusions that are reached (particularly in the Summary for Policy Makers), and inflated levels of confidence that are ascribed to these conclusions.

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better to know...?

Parts Of Canada Will Actually To See Up To 10 CM Of Snowfall By The First Day Of Summer

by Nicole Hul, June 20, 2019 in Narcity

Summer officially kicks off tomorrow – but that doesn’t mean that the nice, hot weather typically associated with summer is coming, at least not to some parts of Canada. Even though winter technically ended several months ago, wintery, snowy weather hasn’t stopped reigning down in a number of regions in the country. The Alberta weather forecast shows snowfall of up to 10 cm by the first day of summer. Is summer cancelled?

It’s already been snowing in several provinces in June. While spring snow was already unusual, summer snow is even more bizarre.

Yesterday on Wednesday, Environment Canada issued a snowfall warning for Jasper National Park in Alberta, forecasting up to 10 cm of snow. Now, they are extending their warning, and even adding a new region.

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Marc Bruxelle, Dreamstime.com
climate-debate

Current Solar Cycle Will Be First To Finish Below Normal In 80 Years, Weakest In Close To 200 Years

by F. Bosse & F. Vahrenbolt, June 22, 2019 in NoTricksZone

In May 2019 our sun was below-normal active again. The solar sunspot number (SSN) was 10.1, which is only 52% of the mean value in the evaluated cycle month no. 126 since the start of Cycle No. 24 began in December 2008.

It should be noted that the number of cycles that lasted this long is decreasing. In the previous month we reported on cycles 21, 18, 16, 15, 8 dropping out because they were shorter in total, and now SC 17 is getting added. Next month month SC 7 is will fall as well. The mean value thus becomes less meaningful as the end of the cycle approaches. But out of habit, we want to keep it nevertheless as comparison.

The activity in the past month was shifted very asymmetrically to the solar northern hemisphere, the southern hemisphere was spotless throughout the whole month. The solar north saw spots only on 15 days.

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Fig. 2: Sunspot activity of the individual cycles since the beginning of cycle 1 in the year 1755. The numbers are computed by adding up the monthly differences of the observed cycles to the mean value, up to the current cycle month no. 126.

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climate-debate

Sun spotless for 33 days straight – airline travelers getting dosed with up to 70 times more radiation

by A. Watts, June 21, 2019 in WUWT

Are we in a solar grand minimum? We’ve seen this before, but now predictions are for an extremely weak solar cycle ahead.

Today is the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere. The sun has been without a single observable sunspot now for over a month – 33 days according to NOAA and SIDC data.

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Daily observations of the number of sunspots since 1 January 1977 according to Solar Influences Data Analysis Center (SIDC). The thin blue line indicates the daily sunspot number, while the dark blue line indicates the running annual average. The recent low sunspot activity is clearly reflected in the recent low values for the total solar irradiance. Compare also with the geomagnetic Ap-index. Data source: WDC-SILSO, Royal Observatory of Belgium, Brussels. Last day shown: 31 May 2019. Last diagram update: 1 June 2019 . [Courtesy climate4you.com]

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climate-debate

CARTE BLANCHE : Faut-il céder à l’hystérie climatique?

by Yves Lahaye, 21 juin 2019 in ScienceClimatEnergie

En pleine effervescence sur la question climatique, je reste dubitatif en considérant quelques faits avérés qui ne me paraissent pas aller dans le sens proclamé par la doctrine officielle. Je m’interroge également sur des affirmations qui me paraissent relever davantage de l’idéologie que de la science.

Bien sûr, je ne suis pas scientifique. Pour beaucoup, c’est déjà suffisant pour m’interdire d’exprimer un avis sur le sujet ou, mieux, pour m’interdire de poser des questions. Car bien évidemment, tous les scientifiques, bien plus malins que moi, ne décrètent-ils que la fin du monde est proche ? Je n’aurais donc pas d’autre droit que celui de me conformer à la bonne parole sous peine d’être mis au ban de la société.

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climate-debate

Ice Melting In Greenland? That’s What It Does In Summer

by P. Homewood, June 20, 2019 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

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…

The first thing to point out is that this is nothing to do with Greenland’s ice sheet, despite the misleading inference to that effect in the first paragraph. It is in fact fjord ice, which freezes every winter and melts every summer.

This year it is beginning to melt slightly earlier than usual, because of warm air moving up from the south. This is called “weather”, and has nothing to do with “global warming”.

As is noted, such weather is not unprecedented. Indeed, the temperature peak of 17.3C is not even unusual for Qaanaaq, where the record is set at 20C.

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See also here

only geology, to keep an eye on...

Antarctic marine life recovery following the dinosaurs’ extinction

by British Antarctic Survey, June 19, 2019 in ScienceDaily

The K-Pg extinction wiped out around 60% of the marine species around Antarctica, and 75% of species around the world. Victims of the extinction included the dinosaurs and the ammonites. It was caused by the impact of a 10 km asteroid on the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, and occurred during a time period when the Earth was experiencing environmental instability from a major volcanic episode. Rapid climate change, global darkness, and the collapse of food chains affected life all over the globe.

The K-Pg extinction fundamentally changed the evolutionary history of life on Earth. Most groups of animals that dominate modern ecosystems today, such as mammals, can trace the roots of their current success back to the aftermath of this extinction event.

A team of scientists from British Antarctic Survey, the University of New Mexico and the Geological Survey of Denmark & Greenland show that in Antarctica, for over 320,000 years after the extinction, only burrowing clams and snails dominated the Antarctic sea floor environment. It then took up to one million years for the number of species to recover to pre-extinction levels.

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only geology

Plate tectonics may have driven ‘Cambrian Explosion’

by University of Exeter, June 19, 2019 in ScienceDaily/from Nature

A team of scientists have given a fresh insight into what may have driven the “Cambrian Explosion” — a period of rapid expansion of different forms of animal life that occurred over 500 million years ago.

While a number of theories have been put forward to explain this landmark period, the most credible is that it was fuelled by a significant rise in oxygen levels which allowed a wide variety of animals to thrive.

The new study suggests that such a rise in oxygen levels was the result of extraordinary changes in global plate tectonics.

During the formation of the supercontinent ‘Gondwana’, there was a major increase in continental arc volcanism — chains of volcanoes often thousands of miles long formed where continental and oceanic tectonic plates collided. This in turn led to increased ‘degassing’ of CO2 from ancient, subducted sedimentary rocks.

This, the team calculated, led to an increase in atmospheric CO2and warming of the planet, which in turn amplified the weathering of continental rocks, which supplied the nutrient phosphorus to the ocean to drive photosynthesis and oxygen production.

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climate-debate

If “Greenland is catastrophically melting”, how do alarmists explain NASA’s growing Greenland glacier?

by A. Watts, June19, 2019 in WUWT

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It turned out to be a weather event, unrelated to “climate change”. The next year, there was no “insta-melt“.

In fact. we’d not even know about the melting in Greenland before satellites came on the scene. So how many times in the history of the Earth has Greenland has a quick melt spike? I’m guessing hundreds of thousands of times.

Jakobshavn Glacier in western Greenland is notorious for being the world’s fastest-moving glacier. It is also one of the most active, discharging a tremendous amount of ice from the Greenland Ice Sheet into Ilulissat Icefjord and adjacent Disko Bay—with implications for sea level rise. The image above, acquired on June 6, 2019, by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, shows a natural-color view of the glacier.

Jakobshavn has spent decades in retreat—that is, until scientists observed an unexpected advance between 2016 and 2017. In addition to growing toward the ocean, the glacier was found to be slowing and thickening. New data collected in March 2019 confirm that the glacier has grown for the third year in a row, and scientists attribute the change to cool ocean waters.

June 6th, 2019 Jakobshavn Glacier in western Greenland . Image acquired on June 6, 2019, by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, shows a natural-color view of the glacier.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Consensus? 200+ New 2019 Papers Support A Skeptical Position On Climate Alarmism

by K. Richard, June17, 2019 in NoTricksZone

In the first 5½ months of 2019, over 200 scientific papers have been published that cast doubt on the position that anthropogenic CO2 emissions function as the climate’s fundamental control knob…or that otherwise serve to question the efficacy of climate models or the related “consensus” positions commonly endorsed by policymakers and ²²²²mainstream media sources.

 

These 200+ new papers affirm the position that there are significant limitations and uncertainties inherent in our understanding of climate and climate changes, emphasizing that climate science is not settled.

More specifically, the papers in this compilation support these four main skeptical positions — categorized here as N(1) – N(4) — which question climate alarm.

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climate-debate

Dry Hot North German Summers Were More Common 1000 Years Ago, Scientists Report

by P. Gosselin, June 19, 2019 in NoTricksZone

Dry Summers Like 2018 Were Common in the Middle Ages
Dry summers were not rare 1000 years ago. Researchers from the University of Greifswald’s research group ‘Landscape Ecology and Ecosystem Dynamics’ have been able to reconstruct 1000 years of the dry summer period in northern Germany.

 

Beech forest – photo: Dr. Tobias Scharnweber

The article ‘Removing the no-analogue bias in modern accelerated tree growth leads to stronger medieval drought’ was published in 2019’s February edition of the journal Scientific Reports.

As part of the current collaborative research project BaltRap (The Baltic Sea and its Southern Lowlands: Proxy-Environment interactions in times of rapid changes), the researchers investigated growth rings in nearly 2000 living beech trees – including some from the university’s own Elisenhain forest – and archaeological wood used for construction from around 1000 A.D. The growth rings found in this wood are a unique archive of previous environmental conditions. If the climatic conditions are good, growth rings are wide; in unfavourable years, like in dry 2018, there is little growth. Dendroclimatology uses this correlation to reconstruct past environmental conditions.

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climate-debate

THE FUTILITY OF WESTERN DE-CARBONISATION

by Ed. Hoskins, June 18, 2019  in GWPF

It is clear that CO2 emissions are continuing to grow incrementally in the Developing World.  This should be anticipated to continue indefinitely.

2018 Global CO2 emissions

The following calculations and graphics are based on information on worldwide CO2 emissions published by BP in June 2019 for the period from 1965 up until the end of 2018.

The pie diagram above shows the proportion of CO2 emissions as of the end of 2018.

The previous post for the end of 2017 is available here

The data showing the progress of CO2 emissions by 2018 in the Developed and Developing worlds can be summarised as follows:

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Earth system models underestimate carbon fixation by plants in the high latitudes

by From Nature Communications, June 18 in WUWT

Abstract

Most Earth system models agree that land will continue to store carbon due to the physiological effects of rising CO2 concentration and climatic changes favoring plant growth in temperature-limited regions. But they largely disagree on the amount of carbon uptake. The historical CO2 increase has resulted in enhanced photosynthetic carbon fixation (Gross Primary Production, GPP), as can be evidenced from atmospheric CO2 concentration and satellite leaf area index measurements. Here, we use leaf area sensitivity to ambient CO2 from the past 36 years of satellite measurements to obtain an Emergent Constraint (EC) estimate of GPP enhancement in the northern high latitudes at two-times the pre-industrial CO2 concentration (3.4 ± 0.2 Pg C yr−1). We derive three independent comparable estimates from CO2 measurements and atmospheric inversions. Our EC estimate is 60% larger than the conventionally used multi-model average (44% higher at the global scale). This suggests that most models largely underestimate photosynthetic carbon fixation and therefore likely overestimate future atmospheric CO2 abundance and ensuing climate change, though not proportionately.

climate-debate

CO2, GLOBAL WARMING, CLIMATE AND ENERGY

by Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., P.Eng., June 2019 in WUWT

ABSTRACT

Global warming alarmism, which falsely assumes that increasing atmospheric CO2 causes catastrophic global warming, is disproved – essentially, it assumes that the future is causing the past. In reality, atmospheric CO2 changes lag global temperature changes at all measured time scales.

Nino34 Area Sea Surface Temperature changes, then tropical humidity changes, then atmospheric temperature changes, then CO2 changes.

The velocity dCO2/dt changes ~contemporaneously with global temperature changes and CO2 changes occur ~9 months later (MacRae 2008).

The process that causes the ~9-month average lag of CO2 changes after temperature changes is hypothesized and supported by observations.

The ~9-month lag, +/- several months, averages 1/4 of the full-period duration of the variable global temperature cycle, which averages ~3 years.

Based on the above observations, global temperatures drive atmospheric CO2 concentrations much more than CO2 drives temperature.

Climate sensitivity to increasing atmospheric CO2 must be very low, less than ~1C/(2*CO2) and probably much less.

There will be no catastrophic warming and no significant increase in chaotic weather due to increasing CO2 concentrations.

Increasing atmospheric CO2 clearly causes significantly improved crop yields, and may cause minor, beneficial global warming.

Atmospheric CO2 is not alarmingly high, it is too low for optimal plant growth and alarmingly low for the survival of carbon-based terrestrial life.

Other factors such as fossil fuel combustion, deforestation, etc may also increase atmospheric CO2. The increase of CO2 is clearly beneficial.

“Green energy” schemes are not green and produce little useful (dispatchable) energy, primarily because of the fatal flaw of intermittency.

There is no widely-available, cost-effective means of solving the flaw of intermittency in grid-connected wind and solar power generation.

Electric grids have been destabilized, electricity costs have soared and Excess Winter Deaths have increased due to green energy schemes.

HYPOTHESIS AND CONCLUSIONS

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Fig.1a – The very close relationship of dCO2/dt (red) vs global temperature (blue) is clearly apparent. Major volcanoes disrupt the relationship.

better to know...?, energy and fields

Total a commencé à exploiter le supercalculateur Pangea III à Pau

by AFP, 18 juin 2019 in ConnaissanceDesEnergies

Total a annoncé mardi qu’il avait commencé à exploiter à Pau son supercalculateur Pangea III, le plus puissant ordinateur du monde dans l’industrie avec une puissance de calcul de 25 petaflops (millions de milliards d’opérations par seconde).

Pangea III est onzième au classement toute catégories des ordinateurs, derrière des machines installées dans de grands centres de recherche aux États-Unis, en Chine, au Japon ou en Europe. Le groupe pétrolier a investi “plusieurs dizaines de millions de dollars” dans ce troisième supercalculateur, a confirmé une source proche du dossier à l’AFP.

La machine porte la puissance de calcul totale du groupe à 31,7 petaflops (soit 170 000 ordinateurs portables). Elle triple sa capacité de stockage à 76 petaoctets (près de 50 millions de films en HD).

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