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

How A Scientific ‘Consensus’ Is Fabricated And Enforced

by L. Balzer, Oct 25, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

We are repeatedly told that 97% of scientists agree that Earth’s climate is experiencing dangerous warming caused by human activities.

John Kerry, Biden’s climate czar, stated, “97 percent of peer-reviewed climate studies confirm that climate change is happening and that human activity is largely responsible.”

Although the 97% figure, based on discredited studies, is exaggerated, the majority of climate scientists are perhaps on the human-caused climate change bandwagon. [emphasis, links added]

This is no accident.

In 2009, 1,079 emails between climate scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in the United Kingdom and others working with them were released by a whistleblower in an incident that came to be known as Climategate.

This small group of scientists has been the most influential in driving worldwide alarm over global warming.

The emails they exchanged revealed that they were doing everything they could to keep scientists whose findings disagreed with theirs out of the peer review system.

The ruthless methods these men used to silence any scientist who dared to question their conclusions were shocking.

They had pressured editors of scientific journals to block the publication of peer-reviewed studies contradicting their results.

A professional scientist’s career rests on his/her success in getting their studies published in peer-reviewed journals.

Phil Jones of CRU, writing to Michael Mann, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, about two papers that disagreed with their hypothesis, stated, “Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

Mann responded, “Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal?”

Jones assured him, “I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”

They demonstrated their hatred of skeptical scientists, rejoicing at the news that one of them had died.

One scientist, Ben Santer, told CRU, “The next time I see Pat Michaels [a dissenting scientist] at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat the crap out of him.”

Two years later in 2011, 5,000 more emails were leaked. These were even more startling and incriminatingthan the 1,079 released in 2009.

Myron Ebell commented, “If there were any doubts remaining after reading the first Climategate emails, the new batch of emails that appeared on the web today make it clear that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] is an organized conspiracy dedicated to tricking the world into believing that global warming is a crisis that requires a drastic response.”

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Do Human Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cause Significant Climate Change?

by F. Menton, Oct 25, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

It’s by far the most important scientific question of our age: Do human emissions of CO2 and other such “greenhouse gases” cause significant global warming, aka “climate change”?

Based on the belief that an affirmative answer to that question is a universally accepted truth, our government has embarked on a multi-trillion dollar campaign to transform our economy by, among other things, eliminating hydrocarbon fuels from electricity generation (without any demonstrated workable plan for the replacement), outlawing the kinds of vehicles we currently drive, suppressing fossil fuel extraction, banning pipeline construction, making all your appliances work less well, and much more. [emphasis, links added]

Express any doubt about the causal connection between human activities and climate change, and you could very well get labeled as a “climate denier,” fired from your academic job, demonetized by Google or Facebook, or even completely ostracized from polite society.

But is there actually any real proof of the proposition at issue? In fact, there is not.

I had two important posts on this subject back in 2021: one from January 2, titled: “Causation Of Climate Change, And The Scientific Method,” and the other from October 28, titled: “ ‘The Climate Is Changing And Human Activities Are The Cause’: How, Exactly, Do We Know That?”

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See also: To what extent are temperature levels changing due to greenhouse gas emissions?

climate-debate

The Latest On Global Warming Is … There Is No Global Warming

by Editorial Board, Oct 25, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

A new study out of Norway is exactly what was needed to shut down the climate alarmists. Its findings show that man has not set fire to his home planet.

Right from the top, in the abstract not 10 lines into the study, the authors get to the point. [emphasis, links added]

“Using theoretical arguments and statistical tests we find,” the researchers say, “that the effect of man-made CO2 emissions does not appear to be strong enough to cause systematic changes in the temperature fluctuations during the last 200 years.”

In other words, our words, the greenhouse effect is so weak that it should be sidelined as an argument.

From there, the bad news only gets worse for priests of the climate religion.

“​​Even if [recently] recorded temperature variations should turn out to deviate from previous variation patterns in a systematic way, it is still a difficult challenge to establishhow much of this change is due to increasing man-made emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases.”

The researchers, from Statistics Norway, the government’s official data agency, also address the apparent “high degree of consensus among many climate researchers that the temperature increase of the last decades is systematic (and partly man-made),” while noting that it “is certainly the impression conveyed by the mass media.”

Of course, the climate zealots won’t like the study.

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climate-debate

Climate Expert: ‘Decidedly Unscientific Justifications’ Used To Keep Worst-Case Scenario Alive

by R. Pielke Jr, Oct 23, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Physicist Richard Feynman once described a key difference between religion and science as follows: “Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.” Scientific reasoning and provisional truths that result are based on evidence, not simply belief.

As the debate has grown over the continued misuse of outdated climate scenarios in research and policy, I’ve noted a tendency for defenders of RCP8.5 to rely on decidedly unscientific justifications for its continued misuse. [emphasis, links added]

Among defenders of the indefensible are leading scientists and even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

For instance, the recent IPCC AR6 report acknowledged our recent work on scenario plausibility but reasserted the value of RCP8.5:

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climate-debate

Another Tipping Point Cancelled—Claims Of Runaway Greenland Ice Melt Overblown

by  Klimanachrichten, Oct 23,2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

We have carefully read the definition of a “tipping point” as conveyed by the Potsdam Institute (PIK):

“It’s like a pencil that you push further and further over the edge of a table with your finger. First nothing happens – then it falls.” That’s what the PIK website says.

Nothing can bring the pencil back to the table except a failure of gravity, which is not conceivable. [emphasis, links added]

Then PIK lists various “elements” that are supposed to exhibit such behavior. To the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS), one finds:

There are indications that the tipping point, which leads to an almost complete loss of ice in the long term (about 10,000 years), could probably be reached at a global warming of just under 1.5°C (possible from 0.8°C global warming, at the latest at 3°C).“

Now there’s a paper on the subject that has appeared in “Nature“, which paints a different picture. It finds that even after a possibly “critical warming threshold” has been crossed, “the pencil does not fall down”:

We find several stable intermediate ice-sheet configurations … that return to the present-day state if the climate returns to present-day conditions.”

In addition, models often determine the warming in Greenland (the root of the evil) using the mean global warming rate and then apply an “Arctic amplification” factor to each warming to determine the temperature swing in Greenland.

The paper states:

Recently, it has been shown that the Arctic warms four times faster than the global average and thus substantially exceeds previous estimates and projections from climate models.

Arctic amplification of this magnitude would reduce the safe space for the GrIS substantially. However, surface temperatures around Greenland might not increase that severely in the future.”

Observations since 2000 now show that during this period, the warming of the Arctic is far from uniform:

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climate-debate

“RUN AWAY MELTING” IS AN IPCC EMBARRASSMENT; -23C (-9.4F) IN SWEDEN; + NORWEGIAN STATISTICS BUREAU COUNTERS GLOBAL WARMING HYSTERIA

by Cap Allon, Oct 23, 2023 in Electroverse

“RUN AWAY MELTING” IS AN IPCC EMBARRASSMENT

It’s been over 15-years since the release of the IPCC’s AR4 report which called for “run away melting” of Arctic sea ice. This bold proclamation, devised from a baseless extrapolating of a few ‘bad’ years, will be the ruin of the agency.

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See also: Greenland’s Tipping Point Cancelled? Claims Of A Runaway Melt Are Overblown

minerals and ores

China Restricts Exports of Graphite, Key Mineral Used for Making EV Batteries

by M. Wilowski, Oct 20, 2023 in Investopedia

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • China’s Ministry of Commerce on Friday curbed exports of graphite, a critical mineral used in the production of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles (EVs).
  • The move could make a shortage of graphite more likely at a time when worldwide EV demand is soaring.
  • China last year accounted for close to two-thirds of global production of graphite and all but 2% of spherical graphite output, the final product used in anodes for lithium-ion batteries.
  • EV makers such as Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid Motors, as well as traditional automakers that have developed their own EVs in recent years, could be at risk of production shortages.
  • With potential shortages looming, U.S. government officials have sought to incentivize domestic production of graphite and other minerals used in clean energy technologies.
  • …
climate-debate

“[COP28 Preparation] Climate loss and damage talks end in failure”

by E. Worral, Oct 22, 2023 in WUWT

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Read more: https://www.thejakartapost.com/business/2023/10/21/climate-loss-and-damage-talks-end-in-failure.html

Going by the steady, unbroken rise of atmospheric CO2 measured by Mauna Loa observatory, none of the money spent on climate conferences or the trillions of dollars spent on CO2 reduction measures to date have had any noticeable impact on global CO2. There is zero chance the hundred billion dollars per year recipient nations want will have an impact.

Mauna Loa CO2 Levels
climate-debate

New paper submission: Urban heat island effects in U.S. summer temperatures, 1880-2015

by Dr. Roy Spencer, Oct 21, 2023 in WUWT

fter years of dabbling in this issue, John Christy and I have finally submitted a paper to Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology entitled, “Urban Heat Island Effects in U.S. Summer Surface Temperature Data, 1880-2015“.

I feel pretty good about what we’ve done using the GHCN data. We demonstrate that, not only do the homogenized (“adjusted”) dataset not correct for the effect of the urban heat island (UHI) on temperature trends, the adjusted data appear to have even stronger UHI signatures than in the raw (unadjusted) data. This is true of both trends at stations (where there are nearby rural and non-rural stations… you can’t blindly average all of the stations in the U.S.), and it’s true of the spatial differences between closely-space stations in the same months and years.

The bottom line is that an estimated 22% of the U.S. warming trend, 1895 to 2023, is due to localized UHI effects.

And the effect is much larger in urban locations. Out of 4 categories of urbanization based upon population density (0.1 to 10, 10-100, 100-1,000, and >1,000 persons per sq. km), the top 2 categories show the UHI temperature trend to be 57% of the reported homogenized GHCN temperature trend. So, as one might expect, a large part of urban (and even suburban) warming since 1895 is due to UHI effects. This impacts how we should be discussing recent “record hot” temperatures at cities. Some of those would likely not be records if UHI effects were taken into account.

Yet, those are the temperatures a majority of the population experiences. My point is, such increasing warmth cannot be wholly blamed on climate change.

One of the things I struggled with was how to deal with stations having sporadic records. I’ve always wondered if one could use year-over-year changes instead of the usual annual-cycle-an-anomaly calculations, and it turns out you can, and with extremely high accuracy. (John Christy says he did it many years ago for a sparse African temperature dataset). This greatly simplifies data processing, and you can use all stations that have at least 2 years of data.

Now to see if the peer review process deep-sixes the paper. I’m optimistic.

climate-debate

Origins of climate changes

by A. Préat, Oct 13, 2023 in Science,Climate,Energy

An obvious fact

No one denies that the Earth’s temperature has been rising slightly by around 0.9°C for almost 125 years (see Soon et al., 2023 for details). This recent increase is minimal (0.6°C between 1975 and 1998) and framed by periods of temperature decrease of similar amplitude (1880-1910 and 1940-1975).

Our media, including the IPCC and many scientists, claim that the sole culprit for the current temperature rise is atmospheric CO2 levels, which are linked to human activity. This is a hypothesis, since no link has yet been established between temperature and CO2 content – quite the contrary (Davison, 2023). The climate alarmism (Watts, 2023) that occupies the front pages of our newspapers is not justified, as we shall see.

 

Geological cycles

This increase over more than a century is by no means exceptional; it has occurred many times before with much greater amplitudes, up to 20 times the recent increase, and over equally short periods. For example, in the Pleistocene (2.58 million years or ‘Ma’ to 11,700 years), researchers have counted more than 25 cycles with abrupt increases of +8°C to +16°C in 50 years each time (= ‘Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles’, see Boers, 2018, SCE, 2020 and here). These abrupt increases are to be compared with the recent increase of 0.3°C in 50 years (average 1880-2008). See SCE and SCE. Such cycles also exist in older geological periods, for example in the Jurassic (CNRS ; Boulila et al., 2022).

Several high-level journals (including Nature) have shown that the increase in CO2 follows that of temperature, mainly because of CO2 degassing in the oceans (see references in SCE, 2021). Note also that the current atmospheric CO2 content (0.04% or 400 ppm – ‘parts per million’) is twice what it was during the Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles, which last between 1,500 and 4,500 years. It’s also worth noting that current atmospheric CO2 levels are the lowest since the Earth’s existence (4.65 billion years ago), apart from a short period of 100 Ma (in the Permian-Carboniferous transitional period) with the same levels as today. For almost 2% of its history, the level of CO2  in the Earth’s atmosphere has thus varied from several thousand ppm to several percent, i.e., from 3 to 25 times higher since the Cambrian, 541 Ma ago (geological scale here), when biodiversity exploded (with metazoans, here), and even much earlier during the Precambrian (Thomas, 2000 ; Préat, 2019 ; Lehmer et al., 2020). CO2 levels were sometimes higher than today’s during ice ages.  Examples of warmer and colder periods are the rule in geology; just think of the Arctic (Svarlbad) at the beginning of the Holocene, around 11,000 years ago, which was +7°C warmer than the present, when CO2 levels were half the current level (Richard, 2020). Continuer la lecture de Origins of climate changes →

climate-debate

Satellite Data Shows Antarctica Continues Adding Ice Mass, Lowering Sea Level

by Dr. M. Wielicki, Oct 19 2023 in Climate ChangeDispatch

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Antarctica presented a more complex picture. While the continent as a whole lost about 130 gigatons of ice each year during a similar timeframe, the loss was most pronounced in West Antarctica, especially around the Amundsen Sea sector.

This accelerated melting in West Antarctica is a matter of particular concern for researchers, as it is claimed to have the potential to destabilize larger sections of the Antarctic ice sheet, leading to more pronounced sea-level rise in the future.

Mass change of the Antarctic Ice Sheet from April 2002 to September 2020. Time series of mass change from the GRACE and GRACE-FO missions, M(t), for the entire Antarctic Ice Sheet (green) and its division into East Antarctica (blue), West Antarctica (red), and the Antarctic Peninsula (yellow). The vertical lines indicate the end of the GRACE and the beginning of the GRACE-FO monthly data availability (June 2017 and July 2018, respectively). Shadings represent 1-σuncertainties. Equivalent sea-level contribution (right axis) is approximated as 1 mm sea-level rise for 360 Gt of ice mass loss. Source

However, since early 2020, nearly 1,000 gigatons of ice have been added to Antarctica. This remarkable ice gain represents nearly one-third of the total ice loss since 2002.

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climate-debate

Physicists: CO2 Only Affects 10% Of IR In 3% Of The Troposphere

by K. Richard, Oct 19, 2023 in NoTricksZone

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There are many scientifically invalid assumptions in the “greenhouse gas hypothesis” that the editors of a journal, Earth System Dynamics (ESD), now insist they will never again allow to be subjected to critical analysis in future publications, as the editors of this journal are committed to only publishing studies agreeing with the “consensus.”

In a editorial comment published in the MDPI journal Entropy responding to an editorial written by the editors of ESD, two Portuguese scientists (Khmelinskii and Woodcock, 2023) identify at least 8 assumptions in the “greenhouse gas hypothesis” that lack scientific validation. Despite the lack of observational evidence supporting their viewpoints, proponents of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis prefer to dismiss and ignore challenges to what they believe is the “consensus” – the opposite of what the scientific method requires.

For brevity’s sake, only a few of the challenges are summarized below.

• CO2 can only absorb 10% of all radiation in the specific IR bands CO2 affects. CO2 “absorbs absolutely nothing at all other IR wavelengths.” Thus, CO2 has no effect on IR in 90% of absorption bands.

• CO2 can only absorb IR in the top 300 m, or 0.3 km, of the surface-troposphere, which is 10 km thick. Thus, CO2 can only affect 10% of the IR in 3% of the surface-troposphere, where climate change occurs.

• Because of its vanishingly small effects, doubling CO2 concentrations could only lead to a 0.015°C surface temperature change, at most. Understatedly, “this effect would not even be measurable.”

• Uncertainty in the Earth’s radiation balance is ±17 W/m². The estimated radiation imbalance is 0.6 W/m², which is “orders of magnitude” smaller than the uncertainty in its derivation. Thus, the “global balance of energy fluxes…cannot be derived from measured fluxes“… and this “profoundly affects our ability to understand how Earth’s climate responds to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases.”

The editors at ESD do not view observational uncertainty – or questions regarding the magnitude of CO2’s effects – as worthy of critical analysis.

 

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climate-debate

Hottest Evah September!!

by P. Homewood, Oct 6, 2023 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

The latest of many heat records broken this year is putting the world on course for its hottest year ever, and is a sign of what is to come in future, according to scientists.

Last month was not only the hottest September on record, new data has confirmed, but it was higher by a margin described by stunned scientists as “extraordinary”, “huge” and “whopping”.

https://news.sky.com/story/september-2023-was-worlds-hottest-september-on-record-by-extraordinary-margin-new-data-confirms-with-scientists-blaming-more-than-climate-change-12976750

I’ll ignore the ignorance of journalists who think that the world started in the 19thC, during the Little Ice Age. And the fact that a “global average temperature” is a meaningless construct, which assumes you can average completely different things.

According to satellite data, the temperature anomaly last month was 0.24C higher than the previous peak in 2016:

https://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/

The idea that GHGs can make such a difference in such a short period of time is utterly absurd. But the Sky report does give us a clue:

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Do The Met Office Know What Extreme Weather Really Looks Like?

by P. Homewood, Oct 5, 2023 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

I have a prediction!

At the end of the year, the Met Office’s State of the Climate report will declare 2023 as a “Year of Extremes”.

It will highlight September as a particularly extreme month, with a heatwave (which peaked at temperatures several degrees lower than in 1906 and 1911); a monthly temperature no higher than in September 2006; and Storm Agnes.

I doubt whether anybody with any experience would find anything extreme about the weather last month. On the contrary, they will all be able to recall genuinely extreme autumn weather in the past.

For example, let;s look back to the 1960s, courtesy of Weatherweb:

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climate-debate

Applying Scale and Context to 2023’s “Record” High Temperatures

by D. Middleton, Oct 3, 2023 in WUWT

2023 has been a hot year… We have the makings of a super-El Niño and an unprecedented injection of water vapor into the upper atmosphere stacked on top of a general warming trend since 1978, if not since the nadir of the Little Ice Age. So, it should come as no surprise that we have seen satellite-era record high temperatures, this summer and early fall.

As a geologist, I always have to apply scale and context to everything.

Scale

Temperature anomaly records are great tools. They are the only way to accurately describe how global temperatures are changing over time. However, they lack scale. They lack a frame of reference.

It is a common adage that when a geologist takes a photograph of a person, that person is simply there for scale. Other scale references include: camera lens covers (rendered obsolete by smart phones), quarters, rock hammers, spouses and action figures (on April Fools Day only). The key is to come up with a reference that is relatable. And what temperature reference is more relatable than a thermometer?

Figure 1. UAH 6.0 from WoodForTrees (l), UAH 6.0 at gas station thermometer scale.
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better to know...?, climate-debate

Climate Alarmists’ New Normal: Catastrophizing Every Weather Event

by Dr. M.  Wielicki, Oct 2, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Catastrophizing the weather…

“Catastrophizing” the weather refers to the exaggerated portrayal or emphasis on the severity, frequency, or implications of weather events beyond what scientific data and historical context might suggest.

In essence, it involves making a weather event seem more disastrous or exceptional than it truly is. [emphasis, links added]

Over time, consistent exaggeration can erode public trust in weather forecasts and warnings. If people believe that threats are frequently overblown, they may become complacent and fail to take necessary precautions during genuinely severe events.

If authorities act on exaggerated weather forecasts, it could lead to the unnecessary allocation of resources, diverting them from regions or times where they might be genuinely needed.

The constant exposure to exaggerated disaster threats can induce unnecessary fear and anxiety among the public, potentially affecting mental well-being.

If every weather event is portrayed as a catastrophe, it becomes challenging for the public to discern which events pose genuine threats. This can dilute the urgency of actual severe weather warnings.

In the context of climate change, while it’s important to communicate the real risks associated with a warming planet, it’s equally essential to avoid undue alarmism.

Balanced, accurate communication ensures that the public remains informed, however, that is not what we commonly see.

For example, the recent rains in NYC have been noted as evidence of significant climatic shifts.

Meet The Alarmists:

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better to know...?, climate-debate

How ‘Preapproved Narratives’ Have Corrupted Science

by A. Finley, Oct 2, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Scientists were aghast last month when Patrick Brown, climate director at the Breakthrough Institute in Berkeley, Calif., acknowledged that he’d censored one of his studies to increase his odds of getting published.

Credit to him for being honest about something his peers also do but are loath to admit. [emphasis, links added]

In an essay for the Free Press, Mr. Brown explained that he omitted “key aspects other than climate change” from a paper on California wildfires because such details would “dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell.”

Editors of scientific journals, he wrote, “have made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that they want climate papers that support certain preapproved narratives.”

Nature’s editor, Magdalena Skipper, denied that the journal has “a preferred narrative.” No doubt the editors at the New York Times and ProPublica would say the same of their own pages.

Mr. Brown’s criticisms aren’t new. In 2005 Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis wrote an essay titled “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.”

He contended that scientists “may be prejudiced purely because of their belief in a scientific theory or commitment to their own findings.”

“The greater the financial and other interests and prejudices in a scientific field, the less likely the research findings are to be true,” Dr. Ioannidis argued.

“Many otherwise seemingly independent, university-based studies may be conducted for no other reason than to give physicians and researchers qualifications for promotion or tenure.”

In addition, many scientists use the peer-review process to suppress findings that challenge their own beliefs, which perpetuates “false dogma.”

As Dr. Ioannidis explained, the more scientists there are in a field, the more competition there is to get published and the more likely they are to produce “impressive ‘positive’ results” and “extreme research claims.” …snip…

The peer-review process is supposed to flag problems in studies that get submitted to journals. But as Dr. Ioannidis explained in a Sept. 22 JAMA editorial, the process is failing:

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climate-debate

New Study: ‘Atmospheric CO2 Is Not The Cause Of Climate Change’ … The Next Glaciation Has Begun

by K. Richard, Sep 28, 2023 in NoTricksZone

New research published in the MDPI journal atmosphere by Dr. Stuart A. Harris asserts past and modern climate changes are natural and not driven by variations in atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

Some key points from the paper include:

• Past and modern climate change is driven by solar cycle (Milankovitch) variations and their affect on ocean circulation and heat transport.

• Throughout the last hundreds of thousands of years, temperature changes precede the lagging changes in CO2.

• The UN IPCC position that atmospheric CO2 is the cause of the warming since the onset of the Industrial Revolution is only an assumption that is “not consistent with studies involving changes in temperature in rural areas of the northern [NH] hemisphere.”

• The natural 23 thousand year (23 ka) Milankovitch cycle has begun to reduce insolation in the NH “starting in 2020,” and this “heralds the start of the next glaciation.”

• CO2 is essential for life on Earth (photosynthesis), and a reduction in CO2 would be harmful to the biosphere. On the other hand, there “seems to be no connection between carbon dioxide and the temperature of the Earth.”

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Critical Examination of Hurricane Intensification Predictions

by J. Steele, Oct 1, 2023 in WUWT

Why climate models not yet worth their salt!

As all hurricane researchers lament, model predictions of when and where hurricanes will intensify, have not improved much in the past 20 years. As recently as the early 2010s, weather model forecasts failed to predict 88 percent of rapidly intensifying tropical storms. Nonetheless National Public Radio (NPR) has ranted that hurricanes are “intensifying more quickly, turning from less-serious storms to very strong ones in hours or days. Superheated ocean waters hold a lot of extra energy, and a growing storm can draw from that enormous pool.” But such “superheated water” is not widespread as rising CO2 narratives suggest, but found only in very limited regions and usually associated with “barrier layers”.

Hurricanes intensify as they draw “superheated” subsurface waters  of 65.5°F or higher. However, when a hurricane’s suction pulls up cooler subsurface waters, the hurricane weakens. This negative feedback naturally limits the intensity of all hurricanes. In the upper panel of the attached graphic, Arnand (2023) illustrates where thin barrier layer exists, hurricane intensity hovers around Category 1. In contrast, where thick barrier layers form, cooler deep waters are prevented from reaching the surface, and instead allow superheated sub-surface waters to cause rapid intensification.

Denser fluids don’t naturally rise above less dense fluids! Barrier layer formation happens wherever freshwater overlays dense salty waters. Although solar heating would normally make subsurface waters less dense and rise to the surface, layers with higher saltiness makes the water more dense which inhibits warm convection. That traps and intensifies the subsurface heat, enabling hurricanes to intensify to Category 5.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

THE TRUTH ABOUT WEATHER EXTREMES What the Past Tells Us

by Alexander, Sep 2023 , in GWPF

Executive summary

This report refutes the popular but mistaken belief that today’s weather extremes are more common and more intense because of climate change, by examining the history of extreme weather events over the past century or so. Drawing on newspaper archives, the report presents multiple examples of past extremes that matched or exceeded anything experienced in the present-day world. That so many people are unaware of this shows that collective memories of extreme weather are short-lived.

Heatwaves of the last few decades pale in comparison to those of the 1930s – a period whose importance is frequently downplayed by the media and environmental activists. The evidence shows that the record heat of the 1930s was not confined to the US Dust Bowl, but extended throughout much of North America, as well as other countries such as France, India and Australia.

Major floods today are no more common nor deadly or disruptive than any of the thousands of floods in the past, despite heavier precipitation in a warming world (which has increased flash flooding). Many of the world’s countries regularly experience major floods, especially China, India and Pakistan.

Severe droughts have been a continuing feature of the earth’s climate for millennia, despite the brouhaha in the mainstream media over the extended drought in Europe during the summer of 2022. Not only was the European drought not unprecedented, but there have been numerous longer and drier droughts throughout history, including during the past century.

Hurricanes overall actually show a decreasing trend around the globe, and the frequency of landfalling hurricanes has not changed for at least 50 years. The deadliest US hurricane in record- ed history, which killed an estimated 8,000 to 12,000 people, struck Galveston, Texas over 100 years ago in 1900.

Likewise, there is no evidence that climate change is causing tornadoes to become more frequent and stronger. The annual number of strong (EF3 or greater) US tornadoes has in fact declined dramatically over the last 72 years, and there are ample examples of past tornadoes just as or more violent and deadly than today’s.

Wildfires are not increasing either. On the contrary, the area burned annually is diminishing in most countries. Although wildfires can be exacerbated by other weather extremes such as heatwaves and droughts, those extremes are not on the rise as stated above.

The perception that extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and severity is primarily a consequence of modern technology – the Internet and smart phones – which have revolutionised communication and made us much more aware of such disasters than we were 50 or 100 years ago. The misperception has only been amplified by the mainstream media, eager to promote the latest climate scare. And as psychologists know, constant repetition of a false belief can, over time, create the illusion of truth. But history tells a different story.

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climate-debate

New Paper: Objective Measurements Show CO2’s Effect On Warming Not As Large As Modeled

by Dr R. Spencer, Sep 29, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

A new research study from The University of Alabama in Huntsville, a part of the University of Alabama System, addresses a central question of climate change research: how much warming can be expected from adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere through fossil fuel burning and other activities as standards of living increase around the world? [emphasis, links added]

UAH Earth System Science Center Research Scientist Dr. Roy Spencer and UAH Earth System Science Center Director and Alabama State Climatologist Dr. John R. Christy have spent 10 years developing a one-dimensional climate model to answer this elusive question.

Their latest research study was published in the September 2023 issue of Theoretical and Applied Climatologyjournal titled: “Effective climate sensitivity distributions from a 1D model of global ocean and land temperature trends, 1970–2021.”

Spencer and Christy’s climate model, based upon objective measured data, found carbon dioxide does not have as big of an effect on the warming of the atmosphere when compared with other climate models.

“For over 30 years, dozens of highly sophisticated, computerized climate models based upon theory have been unable to agree on an answer. That’s why we developed our own one-dimensional climate model to provide an answer,” says. Dr. Spencer.

Current climate models range over a factor of three, from 1.8 to 5.6° Celsius, in the amount of warming produced in response to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2).

This warming response to doubled carbon dioxide is called “effective climate sensitivity.” Determining its magnitude has remained elusive for decades.

When compared to other current climate models, the research results from Spencer and Christy’s one-dimensional climate model approached the bottom end of the range, 1.9° Celsius.

The lower UAH value indicates that the climate impact of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations is much less [than] that based on other climate models.

“An important assumption of our model, as well as the more complex models used by others, is that all climate change is human-caused,” Spencer states. “If recent warming is partly natural, it would further reduce climate sensitivity.”

What distinguishes this model developed at UAH from others is that it is driven by actual observations of warming, rather than theoretical assumptions about how the climate system responds to increasing greenhouse gases.

The one-dimensional climate model uses a variety of observational datasets of warming between 1970 and 2021 of the deep ocean and land, along with associated uncertainty ranges.

These datasets produced a range of estimates of climate sensitivity based on basic concepts of energy conservation.

“The 52-year period since 1970 is key. It represents the period of most rapid warming, with the highest confidence in the observational data of deep ocean warming,” Spencer states.

The results of Spencer and Christy’s research also showed a period of the most rapid growth in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

This is due to their climate model accounting for heat storage in deeper layers of land, which other climate models ignore.

A critical advantage of their simple model is that it conserves energy.

“It should be a requirement that any physics-based model of global warming should meet,” Spencer says. “Current computerized climate models continue to have difficulty achieving this aspect.”

The model is simple enough that other scientists can easily adapt it to updated or improved global temperature measurements as they become available.

better to know...?, climate-debate

Climate Emergency Not Supported by Data, Leading Italian Scientists Say

by C. Morrison, Sep 15, 2022 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Four leading Italian scientists have undertaken a major review of historical climate trends and concluded that declaring a ‘climate emergency’ is not supported by the data.

Reviewing data from a wide range of weather phenomena, they say a ‘climate crisis’ of the kind people are becoming alarmed about “is not evident yet”. [bold, links added]

The scientists suggest that rather than burdening our children with anxiety about climate change, we should encourage them to think about issues like energy, food, and health and the challenges in each area, with a more “objective and constructive spirit” and not waste limited resources on “costly and ineffective solutions.”

During the course of their work, the scientists found that rainfall intensity and frequency are stationary in many parts of the world.

Tropical hurricanes and cyclones show little change over the long term, and the same is true of U.S. tornadoes. Other meteorological categories including natural disasters, floods, droughts, and ecosystem productivity show no “clear positive trend of extreme events.”

Regarding ecosystems, the scientists note a considerable “greening” of global plant biomass in recent decades caused by higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Satellite data show “greening” trends over most of the planet, increasing food yields and pushing back deserts.

The four scientists are all highly qualified and include physics adjunct professor Gianluca Alimonti, agro-meteorologist Luigi Mariani, and physics professors Franco Prodi and Renato Angelo Ricci. The last two are signatories to the rapidly growing ‘World Climate Declaration’.

This petition states that there is no climate emergency and calls for climate science to be more scientific. It also calls for the liberation from the “naïve belief in immature climate models.” In the future, it says, “climate research must give significantly more emphasis to empirical science.”

‘Extreme’ weather events attributed by climate models – somehow – to anthropogenic global warming are now the main staple of the climate alarmist industry.

As the Daily Sceptic reported on Monday, Sir David Attenborough used a U.K. Met Office model forecast in the first episode of Frozen Planet II to claim that summer Arctic sea ice could be gone within 12 years.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

17 years of near-zero trend in September sea ice demolishes claim that more CO2 means less sea ice

by Polar Bear Science, Sep  23, 2023

If the hottest year ever can’t precipitate ‘ice-free’ conditions in September, what’s it going to take? Arctic sea ice failed to nose-dive again this year, undoubtedly disappointing expects who have been anticipating a ‘death-spiral’ decline for ages. Arctic sea ice hit its seasonal low sometime around mid-September this year and although the precise value hasn’t been published, the average September ice coverage will likely be about 4.2 mkm2 once it gets announced in early October.

This means we have now had 17 years of a near-zero trend for September sea ice, extending the nearly-flat trend NSIDC sea ice experts acknowledged four years ago. This surely busts a huge hole in the prevailing concept that more atmospheric CO2 causes less summer sea ice. Note that CO2 levels measured in August 2023 were 419.7 parts per million (ppm), compared to 382.2 in August 2007, a rise of 37.5ppm with no corresponding decline in summer sea ice (and vs. 314.2 ppm in 1960). Measured in metric tons, CO2 emissions due to fossil fuels rose from 31.1 billion in 2007 to 37.1 billion in 2021 (last year of data), again with no corresponding decline in summer sea ice.

Background

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better to know...?, climate-debate

New Paper Claims Antarctica Had The ‘Most Intense Heat Wave Ever Recorded’. It Didn’t

by P. Gosselin, Sep 27, 2023 in ClimatChangeDispatch

On September 24th, 2023, Kasha Patel, a writer for The Washington Post (WaPo) created a story that is likely in the top 10 most false and egregious climate scare stories ever published.

Titled, “Scientists found the most intense heat wave ever recorded — in Antarctica,” the story isn’t just false, it is doubly so because the research paper it is based on is also seriously flawed. [emphasis, links added]

In this case, peer review at Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) failed to catch and correct the most basic abuse of the definition of a “heat wave.”

The leading paragraph of the WaPo story said:

In March 2022, temperatures near the eastern coast of Antarctica spiked 70 degrees Fahrenheit (39 degrees Celsius) above normal — making it the most intense recorded heat wave to occur anywhere on Earth, according to a recent study.

At the time, researchers on-site were wearing shorts and some even removed their shirts to bask in the (relative) warmth. Scientists elsewhere said such a high in that region of the world was unthinkable.

WaPo also provided a normal temperature, for reference with some “unbelievability” from the lead author of the paper.

Temperatures in March, marking a change into autumn on the continent, are typically around minus -54 degrees Celsius on the east coast near…Dome C. On March 18, 2022, temperatures peaked to minus -10 degrees Celsius. That’s warmer than even the hottest temperature recorded during the summer months in that region — “that in itself is pretty unbelievable,” said Blanchard-Wrigglesworth, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington.

First, it is important to point out that the so-called “heat wave” really wasn’t warm at all; the shorts and shirt removal were completely for show, rather than science.

Since most people in the United States use the Fahrenheit temperature scale, which isn’t mentioned at all in the WaPo article citing the actual high temperature recorded, it was easy for reporter Kasha Patel to sneak by the idea that it was actually warm at the time.

-10 Celsius is actually 14 degrees Fahrenheit – which isn’t warm, much less a “heat wave” by any definition. Patel can’t be forgiven for not mentioning this in the article because anyone can get the conversion simply by typing it into Google, like this example.

But that isn’t the worst journalistic violation Patel makes.

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