Archives de catégorie : climate-debate

climate-debate

Arctic Report: primary productivity still high & sea ice flatline continues despite warmer temperatures

by Polar Bear Science, Dec 14, 2022

Posted on December 14, 2022 | Comments Offon Arctic Report: primary productivity still high & sea ice flatline continues despite warmer temperatures

NOAAs annual Arctic Report Card is, for the most part, a valiant effort to turn good and ambiguous news into harbingers of climate change disaster. Primary productivity is up across most of the region (good news for wildlife) and despite Arctic temperatures being “twice as high” as the rest of the world in recent years, the summer sea ice ‘death spiral’ has failed to materialize.

Oddly, there is no bad news about polar bears (last mention was 2014). However, the media were told that the few hundred sea birds that died this year in the enormous Bering/Chukchi Sea region over the four months of summer in 2022 is a portend of climate change catastrophe–even though the authors of the NOAA report admit they have no conclusive evidence to explain the phenomenon. However, here are also some honest figures that are quite illuminating.

Sea ice

The graph at the bottom of this graphic, spread out rather than bunched up to make changes seem more dramatic, makes it much easier to see the lack of a declining trend in sea ice extent since 2007, and that winter (March) coverage has changed hardly at all.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

New Study: Greenhouse Gases May Not Be Causing 21st-Century Warming

by D. Whitehouse, Dec 16, 2022 in ClimateChangeDispatch

A new study by a team of leading climate scientists suggests that the effect of carbon dioxide this century might be small if not undetectable when compared to natural climate variability.

Global surface temperature is and always has been the key climate parameter. Whatever is happening to the Earth’s climate balance, it must, sooner or later, be reflected in the global annual average temperature, and not just in regional variations. [emphasis, links added]

But therein lies what is to some an inconvenience as the changes in the global temperature this century are open to differing interpretations including the suggestion that increases in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are not needed to explain the changes we have seen in the last 20 years or so.

It’s a conclusion that many would dismiss as coming from climate “skeptics,” or downright deniers.

But what if it’s the view of scientists from two of the world’s leading institutes researching climate change; the University of Oxford and the US National Center for Atmospheric Research? Then it must be taken seriously and not dismissed offhand.

It is important research because it is the trend in the increase of global temperature caused by anthropogenic [human-caused] greenhouse gas emissions that is the most important variable for policymakers considering the scale and timescale of action in the coming decades.

However, this vital parameter is uncertain because recent decades have shown that we are living through a period of considerable natural climate variability.

Thus, a new study published in the Journal of Climate suggests the effect of carbon dioxide this century might be small if not undetectable when compared to natural climate variability.

The researchers contend that recent temperature trends might indicate that there is no detectable increase in global temperature due to greenhouse gas emissions.

While this suggestion is interesting it must be said that the researchers get themselves in a muddle when estimating temperature trends this century.

On the one hand, they acknowledge the existence of the global temperature hiatus between 2000 – 2014, but on the other hand, they do not properly distinguish the effects of the natural El Nino eventsthat have taken place in the past seven years.

This is why they conclude there might have been an acceleration in global temperature increase over this period.

They say that most of the increase is not due to greenhouse gases but to aerosol emission reductions.

The combustion of fossil fuels releases greenhouse gases but it also causes pollution that cools the Earth,offsetting any warming.

This is good news for public health as airborne particles kill several million people a year, but it also accelerates global warming.

They assess that aerosol emissions have contributed to an increase in the rate of anthropogenic warming since 2000 although they have large uncertainty.

When considering estimates of the amount of warming due to aerosol reduction along with natural climate variability, they find a solution with all the post-2000 temperature trends being due to natural variability alone.

They say (p 4283) it’s a credible hypothesis that global temperature changes since 2000 could be “arising largely from internal variability.”

Read more at NZW

Also here

better to know...?, climate-debate

Despite Alarmist Reports, Drought In The Horn Of Africa Not From Climate Change

by L. Lueken, Dec 13, 2022 in ClimateChangeDispatch

A recent article in Inside Climate News by writer Georgina Gustin leverages a tragic period of severe drought in the Horn of Africa in order to push an alarmist narrative on climate change.

Gustin claims that food security is threatened by climate change and that millions will starve as a result of it. This is false.

Data show that food security has improved over the past decades of warming. [emphasis, links added]

If there is to be a global food crisis, it won’t be climate change that causes it, but rather the heavy-handed and ultimately futile efforts at controlling the weather by regulating how people grow crops and livestock.

The piece, titled “Climate Change is Driving Millions to the Precipice of a ‘Raging Food Catastrophe’,” focuses primarily on the specific example of the severe ongoing drought in Kenya and neighboring Somalia and Ethiopia.

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climate-debate

Mountain glacier melting is linked to shifting westerlies and likely to accelerate

by University of Maine, Dec 13, 2022 in ScienceDaily 

The combination of global atmospheric warming and westerly winds shifting toward the poles will likely speed up the recession of mountain glaciers in both hemispheres, according to a UMaine study.

Mountain glaciers freeze and gain mass when the climate cools, and melt and lose mass when the climate warms. The extent to which the fluctuations in mountain glaciers are reflective of local, regional and even hemispheric climate variations, however, is less clear, which has made it more difficult for scientists to use glacial data to interpret past climate dynamics and make predictions for the future.

A team of researchers from the University of Maine conducted a National Science Foundation-funded study evaluating how atmospheric conditions are reflected in the mass fluctuations of mid-latitude glaciers on opposite sides of the Earth, comparing global temperature and wind changes with glacier snowline elevations (also called “equilibrium-line altitudes”) in the Southern Alps of New Zealand and in the European Alps observed over the course of nearly four decades. Glacier extent is dependent on the height of the snowline in the atmosphere, below which ice melts, which in turn is determined by the temperature of the atmosphere.

The data showed that the fluctuations in glacial snowlines reflected temperature changes over large regions of the atmosphere for the two mountain systems studied — even on hemispheric scales. Moreover, the latitudes of westerly wind belts were found to be important for regulating the proportion of cold versus warm air masses that influence glacier melting and freezing.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Ipsos: Climate Skepticism Rising Three Years in a Row

by E. Worrall, Dec 10, 2022 in WUWT

“… Unexpectedly, climate skepticism has consistently grown over the past 3 years (37%, +6 pts in 3 years), and is particularly striking in France this year (37%, +8 pts in one year) …”

Climate change: a growing skepticism 

ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT

Purchasing power is now the key priority on a global level. Despite the importance they attribute to the climate and extreme weather events, people are less inclined to become involved and are more dubious as to the human origins of the phenomenon.

8 December 2022

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Despite topping the list of environmental priorities, climate change is not generating greater concern and climate skepticism is growing

Climate change (46%, +2 points vs. 2021) and extreme climate events (43%, +2 points vs. 2021) have become the key reasons for environmental concern this year on a world level, although this is also due to the drop in concern about waste and plastic (41%, -5 points vs 2021) and air pollution (37%, -3 points vs 2021). Nevertheless, if the two items are combined, 66% of the world’s population still view the climate as a priority issue (60% in 2019).

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In France 16-24-year-olds are less worried than the population as a whole (45%), but they are either more indifferent (16% vs 7% overall), or on the contrary express greater demoralization (38% vs 27% overall).

Unexpectedly, climate skepticism has consistently grown over the past 3 years (37%, +6 pts in 3 years), and is particularly striking in France this year (37%, +8 pts in one year)2 whereas concern about the environment is particularly strong in that country. More specifically, the idea that has progressed the most is not a denial of change, but the notion that it is “mainly due to the kinds of natural phenomena that the Earth has experienced throughout its history”. …

Age does not appear to be a divisive criterion on this subject: …

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Read more: https://www.ipsos.com/en/obscop-2022

On one hand I’m encouraged that young people seem to be starting to break free from all the intense green brainwashing many of them experienced at school.

Having said that, the proportion of people who hold hardline alarmist views also seems to have edged up slightly – so a component of that increase in skepticism may represent an increase in polarisation.

I wish there was a way to somehow increase the rate of progress. It is sad watching people in Britain, Europe and parts of the USA suffering unnecessary hardship because political climate activism has driven up the price of energy, even if many of those people voted for the politicians who created this mess. I guess sometimes people have to learn the hard way.

g

climate-debate

New Study: Observational Data Affirm 95% Of Post-1970s Warming Is Not Linked To CO2 Increases

by K. Richard, Dec 8, 2022 in NoTricksZone

Of the warming trends in Poland and greater Europe, “only about 4–5% are explained by an increase in CO2 concentration.”  –  Marsz et al., 2022 

Internal changes to the thermal structure of the ocean transmit decadal-scale changes in the atmospheric circulation and consequent surface air temperature via its modulating impact on the variation in the amount and intensity of solar radiation (sunshine duration, or SD) reaching the Earth’s surface.

This is not only observed for Poland and/or Europe as detailed in a new study, but the causal structuring of cloud cover changes driving the variations in solar radiation reaching the surface and modulating climate can be applied throughout the globe ( Wang et al., 2002, Wielicki et al., 2002, Loeb et al., 2021, Herman et al., 2013, Poprovsky, 2019, Dübal and Vahrenholt, 2021, Swift, 2018, Stephens et al., 2022).

Therefore, “the main cause of the change in the state of the climate may be the action of the internal variability of the ocean–atmosphere system” (Marsz et al., 2022).

better to know...?, climate-debate

MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen Rejects ‘Climate Change’ As ‘A Quasi-Religious Movement Predicated on An Absurd ‘Scientific’ Narrative’

by R. Lindzen, Dec 5, 2022 in WUWT

Dr. Richard Lindzen’s new paper: An Assessment of the Conventional Global Warming Narrative – Published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation – September 22, 2022: Climate change is “a quasi-religious movement predicated on an absurd ‘scientific’ narrative. The policies invoked on behalf of this movement have led to the US hobbling its energy system.” – “The Earth’s climate has, indeed, undergone major variations, but these offer no evidence of a causal role for CO₂.”

“Unless we wake up to the absurdity of the motivating narrative, this is likely only to be the beginning of the disasters that will follow from the current irrational demonization of CO₂.”

By: Admin – Climate Depot

Click to access 2022-09-22-Lindzen-global-warming-narrative.pdf

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CO₂ is a particularly ridiculous choice for a ‘pollutant.’ Its primary role is as a fertiliser for plant life. Currently, almost all plants are starved of CO₂. Moreover, if we were to remove a bit more than 60% of current CO₂, the consequences would be dire: namely death by starvation for all animal life. It would not likely lead to a particularly cold world since such a reduction would only amount to a couple of percent change in the radiative budget. After all, a 30% reduction of solar radiation about 2.5 billion years ago did not lead to an Earth much colder than it is today, as we earlier noted in connection with the Early Faint Sun Paradox.

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The Earth’s climate has, indeed, undergone major variations, but these offer no evidence of a causal role for CO₂. For the glaciation cycles of the past 700 thousand years, the proxy data from the Vostok ice cores shows that cooling precedes decreases in CO₂ despite the very coarse temporal resolution (Jouzel et al.,1987, Gore, 2006). Higher temporal resolution is needed to show that warming preceded the increase in CO₂ as well (Caillon et al, 2003). For earlier variations, there is no suggestion of any correlation with carbon dioxide at all, as shown in Figure 9a, a commonly presented reconstruction of CO₂ levels and ‘temperature’ for the past 600 million years or so.

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climate-debate

Oimjakon, Siberia Sees “Extremely Low Temperatures” As Mercury Plummets To 65 Below!

by P. Gosselin, Dec4, 2022 in NoTricksZone

Unusual temperatures for early December…knocking at energy-deprived Europe’s door 

German meteorologist Dominik Jung of wetter.net says, after having reported yesterday of -50°C in Oimjakon, Siberia: “-54°C were measured there this morning.”

-54°C is 65 below Fahrenheit.

“For early December, these are extremely low temperatures there, which are normally expected only at the end of December or beginning of January,” says Jung.

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Moreover, Jung reports that all weather models are on an early winter course for Europe and that there is more winter than in the December months of the past 12 years.

“For the 3rd Advent, fresh snow is expected down to low altitudes. Winterly it goes on.”

There’s a real threat the extreme cold may spill over Europe, which is energy deprived. This could spell disaster. Let’s hope the model forecasts for more cold, like today’s GEM output of -16°C for Düsseldorf on December 14th, don’t turn into reality.

climate and geology, climate-debate

Keeling Curve CO2 Measurements Halted By Mauna Loa Eruption

by BigIslandVideoNews, Nov 29, 2022

(BIVN) – The collection of data for use in the decades-long record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, known famously as the Keeling Curve, was cut off on Monday night, as lava from the latest Mauna Loa eruption flows down the mountain.

The lava crossed the Mauna Loa Weather Observatory Road at approximately 8 p.m. in the evening, cutting off power to observatory facilities and equipment.

Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, which started collecting the Keeling Curve data at the site in 1958, say they “are exploring options regarding the relocation of measurement equipment.” From the Tuesday announcement:

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See also Mauna Loa eruption cuts access, power to Mauna Loa Observatory

climate-debate

The Great Famine of the 21st Century

by D. Siegel,  Nov 29, 202 in Shortfall

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The true tragedy

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

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

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

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

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Summary

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

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

Resources

Wikipedia article on the Great Famine of 1876

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

Climate and the Global Famine of 1876–78

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

How the British Empire exacerbated a rare climate event.

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

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better to know...?, climate-debate

The Top FIVE Climate Change LIES

by L. Fox, Nov 28, 2022 in ClimateChangeDispatch

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

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

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

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

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

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

Climate Lie Number Five: Climate Change Is KILLING People

WATCH:

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better to know...?, climate-debate

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

by J. Curry, Nov 26, 2022 in WUWT

SEE VIDEO 

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

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

better to know...?, climate-debate

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

by K. Richard, Nov 24, 2022 in NoTricksZone

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

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

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climate-debate

COP-27 Financiers And Merchants Of Death – OpEd

by P. Driessen, Nov 22, 2022 in Eurasiareview

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Climategate: Never Forget (12th anniversary)

by Master Source, Nov 22, 2022 in WUWT

 

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

By Robert Bradley Jr. — November 22, 2022

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

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

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

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

Background:

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

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

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

Some of the more salient quotations follow.

Man-Made Warming Controversy

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Willie Soon speaks at the University of Chicago

by Andy May, Nov 20, 2022 in WUWT

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

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

Willie Soon, 2022

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

Soon’s key points:

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

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

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

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

I wish I had said that.

 

climate-debate

COP27 Is A Downpayment On Disaster

by P. Homewood, Nov 20, 2022 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

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

Dust settling on the detail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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climate-debate

An Extreme(ly Nice) Summer

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

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

 

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

image

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

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Australia, climate-debate

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

by K. Richard, Nov 17, 2022 in NoTricksZone

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

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

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

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

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

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

climate-debate

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

by P. Dorian, Nov 16, 2022 in WUWT

Overview

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

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climate-debate

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

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

Abstract

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

ORIGIN OF THE RECENT CO2 INCREASE IN THE ATMOSPHERE

by F. Engelbeen, Nov 2022

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

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

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

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

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

  2. Conclusion

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

  4. Reference

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better to know...?, climate-debate

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

by K. Richard, Nov 14, 2022 in NoTricksZone

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

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

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

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

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

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climate-debate

Imperialism Of The Apocalypse

by M. Schellenberger,  Nov 11, 2022

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

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

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