Archives de catégorie : climate-debate

better to know...?, climate-debate

The Political Origins Of The Climate Change Swindle

by L. Balzer, A, Aug 15, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

A Canadian oil magnate and friend of David Rockefeller, Maurice Strong [pictured] set up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1992.

Strong had been chairman of the 1972 Earth Day UN Conference, at which he advocated population reduction and the lowering of living standards in the interest of “saving the environment.” [emphasis, links added]

Strong asked, “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”

He also boldly claimed, “Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.”

Strong had helped found the Club of Rome in 1968, which incorrectly believed that Earth’s population was out of control and using up resources too fast.

Their beliefs stemmed from the mistaken idea advanced by Thomas Malthus in his 1798 essay that the world’s population would outgrow the food supply.

In his 1968 book, “The Population Bomb“, Paul Ehrlich revived Malthus’ idea.

Ehrlich predicted,

“The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer.”

Although Ehrlich’s forecasts proved incorrect, many people, some of them billionaires, still believe the world’s population should be as low as one billion – not the current 7.5 billion. (Bill Gates stated this explicitly in a Ted Talk!)

They’re afraid that if Third World people get the energy they need to raise their living standards, the Earth’s population will rise further.

This couldn’t be more untrue. History has shown in every instance that when a population’s living standards increase, the birth rate decreases. This principle is known as the Demographic Transition.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

No, July Wasn’t The Warmest Month In Human History

by Dr M. Wielicki, Aug 14, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

What’s going on?

During the last month, we were bombarded with headlines such as:

This month is the planet’s hottest on record by far – and hottest in around 120,000 years, scientists say —CNN, July 27, 2023

July 2023 ‘Virtually Certain’ To Be Hottest Month In Human History —Forbes, July 27, 2023

So is there any validity to these claims… Was July the hottest month in human history? [emphasis, links added]

…snip…

Our civilization’s trajectory, from its humble beginnings in the wild to its current digital sophistication, serves as a testament to humanity’s relentless drive for advancement and ability to adapt.

The African Humid Period (AHP) and the rise of the Egyptian civilization…

The African Humid Period (AHP) is a climatic phase during the Holocene epoch characterized by much wetter conditions in large parts of Africa, especially the Sahara region, compared to the present day.

This significant shift in precipitation patterns had profound impacts on both the environment and early human societies of the continent.

The AHP roughly spanned from about 15,000 to 5,000 years ago, though exact timings can vary based on specific regions within Africa. It began at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum when ice sheets started retreating in the Northern Hemisphere.

One of the most dramatic manifestations of the AHP was the transformation of the Sahara desert. Today’s vast desert expanse was once a mosaic of grasslands, lakes, and rivers.

This “Green Sahara” supported a variety of wildlife, from large mammals like elephants and giraffes to a variety of fish in its waterways.

The wet conditions of the AHP supported a much denser human population in regions that are now desert. Archaeological evidence shows that these ancient Saharan communities engaged in fishing, hunting, cattle herding, and even agriculture.

The abundance of water and food allowed for relatively settled lifestyles compared to the more nomadic existences necessitated by the arid conditions that followed.

The primary driver behind the AHP is believed to be warmer summer temperatures and changes in the monsoon systems, which brought more rain to the African continent.

As these parameters shifted over millennia, the monsoons weakened, leading to the aridification of vast regions.

The African Humid Period serves as a reminder of the profound climatic variability our planet has experienced throughout relatively recent geological history at preindustrial levels of CO2, and the relative insensitivity of surface temperature and/or humidity and the concentration of GHG in the atmosphere.

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climate-debate

Those who don’t study weather history are condemned to repeat it as ‘climate alarmism’

by A. Watts, Aug 14, 2023 in WUWT

Our friend Steve Hayward over at Powerline Blog gave me permission to reprint this. It’s weather deja vu all over again. These familiar headlines could just as well be happening today, excpet back then it was reported as weather, not climate. – Anthony

WHITHER THE WEATHER?

The scenes out of Lahaina on Maui are horrific, but naturally the climate cult is rushing to say the inferno that engulfed the town is yet more proof of climate change, and hand over your car keys and gas stoves now. “Yes, I Blame the Climate Crisis for the Horrors on Maui,” says a writer in that premier science journal Esquire. Never mind that Hawaiian officials have been warning for years that overgrowth of non-native grasses on the dry side of Maui and other Hawaiian islands was creating a severe wildfire risk. (For an antidote to the madness, see “Stop claiming that fires in Canada, Greece, and now Maui are due to climate change.”)

Much of the summer’s news has been about heat waves, which are also said to be proof of climate change, even though very few record high temperatures were broken this summer. Heat waves have always been big news for the media, but decades ago no one thought to blame them on human sin.

It is worth following a fellow named Don Penim on Twitter. Mr. Penim appears to have sufficient leisure time on his hands to scour old newspaper archives for articles on heat waves and extreme weather events, and he also turned up headlines from a few decades ago to remind us that wildfires are not unusual for Hawaii:

Let’s note a few others from Mr. Penim’s archive while we’re here—note the dates of most of these stories:

 

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climate-debate

Nobel Prize winner Dr. John F. Clauser signs the Clintel World Climate Declaration

by Clintel, Aug 2023

John F. Clauser, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum mechanics, has decided to sign the World Climate Declaration of Clintel with its central message “there is no climate emergency”. Clauser is the second Nobel Laureate to sign the  declaration, Dr. Ivar Giaever was the first. The number of scientists and experts signing the World Climate Declaration is growing rapidly and now approaching 1600 people.

Clauser has publicly distanced himself from climate alarmism and this year he also joined the Board of Directors of the CO­2Coalition. In the announcement by the CO2 Coalition, Clauser was quoted in the following way:

“The popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people. Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience. In turn, the pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other unrelated ills. It has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists. In my opinion, there is no real climate crisis. There is, however, a very real problem with providing a decent standard of living to the world’s large population and an associated energy crisis. The latter is being unnecessarily exacerbated by what, in my opinion, is incorrect climate science.”

IPCC is spreading dangerous misinformation
In July Clauser gave a talk at the event Quantum Korea 2023. He warned the audience about the growing amount of pseudoscience and misinformation.

“Now I am not alone in observing the dangerous proliferation of pseudoscience. Recently, The Nobel Foundation has formed a new panel to address the issue called the International Panel on Information Environment. They plan to model it after the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC.
I think personally that they are making a big mistake in that effort because in my opinion the IPCC is one of the worst sources of dangerous misinformation. What I’m about to recommend is in furtherance of that, of the aims of that panel. […]

I have a second elephant in the room that I have recently discovered regarding climate change. I believe that climate change is not a crisis. […]

Beware. If you’re doing good science, it may lead you into politically incorrect areas. If you’re a good scientist, you will follow them. I have several I won’t have time to discuss, but I can confidently say there is no real climate crisis and that climate change does not cause extreme weather events.”

As Clintel demonstrated in its recent book The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC, the IPCC indeed made serious errors in its latest report. Shortly after his talk in Korea the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cancelled a scheduled talk by Clauser about climate models. In an interview with the Epoch Times, Clauser said with respect to climate science: “We are totally awash in pseudoscience”.

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climate-debate

21st Century Global Disasters

by P. Homewood, Aug 13, 2023 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

A new peer-reviewed paper out this week by Alimonti and Mariani asks whether global disasters have increased. Their answer is that they have not (and if the name sounds familiar, it is the same Alimonti whose paper is being improperly retracted — more fresh info on that in the coming days).

As I read their paper today I noticed that the time series they reported from the EM-DAT databaselooked a bit different than that I had last explored and presented here at THB late last year. So today I downloaded the most recent data from EM-DAT, and indeed there has been some changes to the most recent three years, presumably due to late entries into the database (however I will enquire as all post-hoc dataset updates should be documented). EM-DAT has been funded since the late 1990s by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Below is the updated time series of global hydrological, climatological and meteorological disasters in the EM-DAT database, along with the linear trend, over the period 2000 to 2022.

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climate-debate

Hawaiian Fires: Fueled by Invasive Grasses, a Wet Spring and Human Ignition Sources

by J. Steele, Aug 11, 2023 in CO2Coalition

The Maui fire would have devastated Lahaina in a colder or warmer climate. It would have devastated Lahaina in high or low CO2 concentrations. The key is managing the dead grasses that become flammable in just hours. Climate change was irrelevant. Declaring a climate emergency to reduce fossil fuels is a useless remedy that only misdirects funds that will be needed to better manage a fire-prone landscape.

The massive destruction and loss of life in Lahaina, Hawaii due to the recent wildfire has evoked tremendous compassion and concern from around the world for the people of Lahaina. I can’t comprehend the intense pain now being felt by the people who have lost loved ones, lost homes, and lost all their belongings. So how can such a tragedy be prevented from ever happening again?

First, according to meteorologist Cliff Mass, Hawaii is one of the most fire-prone states in the U.S. (see Figure 1 for some historical fires).

Lightning is rare on Maui. Fewer than thirty thunderstorms rattle across the Hawaiian Islands each year, and most occur during January and February. Accordingly, there have been no reports of an August lightning strike, so it seems doubtful this tragic fire was started naturally.

According to Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, 98% of all Hawaiian fires are started by people, of which 75% are due to carelessness.  Thus, a Smokey-the-Bear type campaign that “only you can prevent forest fires” would help raise people’s consciousness, especially newcomers.  As retirees flock to Hawaii seeking the health benefits of a warmer climate, the population has tripled since 1980, which only increases the probability of a careless fire being started.

If started by an electrical spark, efforts to secure a vulnerable electrical grid is required. Sadly, the remaining fires have been suspiciously ignited by arsonists, and arson is nearly impossible to prevent.

However, there are other precautions that Hawaiians can take to prevent the rapid spread of fire that caught so many people in Lahaina by surprise.  Dr. Clay Trauernicht, a professor of natural resources and environmental management at the University of Hawaii, notes wildfires have quadrupled in Hawaii in recent decades.  We agree with his assessment that unmanaged, nonnative grasslands that have flourished in Hawaii after decades of declining agriculture have provided the fuel for more rapidly spreading and extensive wildfires.

As Maui’s pineapple and sugar cane plantations were abandoned, they became dominated by invasive annual grasses that flourish in disturbed soils. Fire experts categorize such small diameter grasses as 1-hour lag fuels, meaning that within half a day of dry weather, these grasses become highly flammable, allowing fires to rapidly spread in even moderate winds. Annual grasses typically die during the dry seasons. Maui’s rainless period typically lasts from about May 25 to July 15.

Furthermore, Lahaina is situated on the leeward side of Maui’s mountains. These highlands wring out the moisture carried by the trade winds, with only 15” of rain falling in Lahaina compared to 300” on the mountains to the east. Thus, Lahaina’s surrounding grassland vegetation is primed each summer to rapidly burn once ignited.

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See also: Of the Many Factors Behind the Maui Wildfires, Climate Change Was Not One, Experts Say

and  The Origin of the Hawaii Fires/Preventing a Similar Tragedy in the Future

and Hawaii wildfires: how did the deadly Maui fire start and what caused it?

climate-debate

Oceans Retain Methane: New ‘Nature’ Study Finds Very Little Danger Of Methane Reaching Surface

by P. Gosselin, Aug 11,2023 in WUWT

Global warming alarmists have often used the scenario of increased methane in the atmosphere accelerating warming and climatic change.

But a recent study appearing in Nature, Negligible atmospheric release of methane from decomposing hydrates in mid-latitude oceans, dumps a lot cold water on this scenario. This is good news, which unfortunately the media refused to report.

At the bottom of the sea, there are large deposits of naturally occurring methane hydrate. There’s a fear that these ice-like deposits could melt and be released into the atmosphere if the oceans warmed. Methane is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. The researchers looked at the concentration and natural radiocarbon content of methane dissolved in the water column from the seafloor to the sea surface at seep fields along the US Atlantic and Pacific margins.

No methane reached the surface

Their measurements revealed no evidence of seep CH4 reaching surface waters when the water-column depth is greater than 430 ± 90 m. “Gas hydrates exist only at water depths greater than ~550 m in this region, suggesting that the source of methane escaping to the atmosphere is not from hydrate decomposition,” the authors add.

Dissolves in the ocean

In 2016, a paper published in the Reviews of Geophysics concluded that the annual emissions of methane to the ocean from degrading gas hydrates are far smaller than greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere from human activities and that most of the methane released by gas hydrates never even reaches the atmosphere. The methane often remains in the undersea sediments, dissolves in the ocean, or is converted to carbon dioxide by microbes.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

The Climate Crisis Frenzy Is a Mass Hysteria Movement

by W. Kovacs, Aug 11, 2023 in WUWT

Climate fear-mongering, eco-anxiety counseling and a rocky road to Third World status

 

Ever since the Biden administration promised to eliminate fossil fuels, climate activists have combined their quest to use the government to control society with creating a collective group possessed by illusions and excessive fears that climate change is destroying Planet Earth. This Climatism Collective believes that dismantling society will enable government to prevent the end of the world.

Researchers refer to such collective fears as mass hysteria. They consider it a psychogenic illness, “a condition that begins in the mind rather than the body.” It involves people feeling anxious, sick or crazed, notwithstanding the absence of any physical reason for their condition.

A recent Lancet study of 10,000 young people, ages 16–25, found that 59% were extremely worried about climate change, and 84% were at least moderately worried. The respondents suffered from sadness, anxiety and anger and felt powerless, helpless and guilty.

The authors concluded that climate anxiety is so great that these young people believe humanity is doomed, everything they value is being destroyed, and they should refrain from having children. They also believe government could protect them if it would listen to their feelings, validate and respect their beliefs and demands, and implement policies that eliminate fossil fuel use and “unsustainable” lifestyles.

Mass hysteria episodes have been recorded since the Middle Ages. There have been witch trials, screaming trances and even a “dancing plague” in 1518, with stressed-out participants dancing for weeks, sometimes until they were so tired they died.

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climate-debate

Failed Prediction Timeline

by WUWT, Aug 11, 2023

Year: 2023
Last update: 2023-07-18

06/28/2023Just over six years to act in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees

Prediction:

“Today with His Majesty King Charles III we launched the Climate Clock—a visual reminder of the urgency of the climate crisis,” said Nick Henry, CEO and Founder of Climate Action.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/editorial/2023/06/30/climate-change-london-cop28-global-warming/

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Is this the week that Net Zero died?

by R. Schoellhammer, Aug 3, 2023 in UnHerd

A wave of climate realism is sweeping through Europe

NetZero is turning into a pipe dream. Credit: Getty

It has been a tough week for climate activists. First, the new head of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jim Skea, said we should not overstate the 1.5 degrees celsius warning, and that humanity will not end if we miss it. At the same time, wind projects are hitting new obstacles, with Vattenfall cancelling a new offshore project in the North Sea due to high costs, while also having a project in Sweden rejected because Stockholm sees potential “negative effects on the environment” from offshore wind installations.

Elsewhere in the world of renewables, a new report has shown that the production of solar panels is causing more emissions than previously thought, and the once much celebrated solar-powered mini-grids in India are falling apart. But it does not end there: the British Government has decided to cut costs of polluting and approve hundreds of new North Sea oil and gas licenses. This announcement may have upset Just Stop Oil activists, but the reality is that the world is using more oil than ever and Britain needs to be prepared.

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Also here

climate-debate, COP25

China Abandons Paris Agreement, Making U.S. Efforts Painful and Pointless

by D. Furchgott-Roth, Jul 26, 2023 in TheHeritageFondation

It was a bad week for anyone who thought China would cooperate on emissions reduction. President Xi Jinping reiterated that his country would set its own path on the issue and not be influenced by outside factors, according to the Washington Post and Bloomberg. This contradicts Xi’s 2015 Paris Agreement pledges to reduce its carbon emissions at the latest after 2030.

Xi’s remarks came while climate envoy and former secretary of state John Kerry was visiting Beijing to reopen a dialogue. This was shortly after Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived, and just before former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, the architect of opening China to the West 50 years ago, came for a visit.

The clear signals from China are a deliberate slap in the face to America and provide a rationale for a bill sponsored by Representative Chip Roy (R., Texas) to defund Kerry’s climate-change office at the State Department. The bill is cosponsored by over two dozen other House Republicans.

This should not be news, because Xi gave the same message last fall. In October 2022, he said that China would not abandon coal-fired power plants before renewables could substitute for the lost fossil fuel. But this substitution will not occur because fossil fuels generate substantially more energy than renewables.

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climate-debate

Untold Story of Climate’s Holocene Gift to Humanity

by V. Jayaraj, Jul 14, 2023 in CO2Coalition

News reports of summer heatwaves often perversely misrepresent a modern climate favorable to human flourishing in order to fearmonger the false narrative of catastrophic global warming.

The geological epoch of the Holocene, which roughly corresponds to the last 11,700 years, is a time of warmth that has been vital in fostering the diversity and adaptability of life on our planet – not a curse as popularly portrayed. The relevance of the Holocene interglacial period to humanity’s survival cannot be overstated.

The development and maintenance of life on Earth have been greatly aided by the Holocene – sometimes called the age of man.

Nearly 12 millennia back, the Holocene ended glacial stages known as the Wisconsin in North America and Weichselian in Europe, which had begun between 75,000 and 100,00 years ago. As previously ice-covered regions became accessible for colonization, plant and animal species expanded their geographical range and the Earth’s overall biodiversity.

This period saw the rise of ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley and China, each of which made contributions to the advancement of human culture and numbers. There were a mere 170 million people on earth at the end of the first century, about half the population of the U.S. in 2023. Today the world has more than 8 billion people.

 

Continuer la lecture de Untold Story of Climate’s Holocene Gift to Humanity →

climate-debate, Cooling

Climate Self-Regulation: Is The Earth Cooling Itself?

by E. Gardey, Jul 14, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Climate change activists are dogmatic. Greenhouse gases released by human activity are warming the Earth by trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Thus, doom and gloom and civilizational collapse await us if we don’t decrease the number of cows, gas-guzzling cars, and factories.

But is it really that straightforward? [emphasis, links added]

In a Wall Street Journal column published Sunday, Andy Kessler proposes that Earth’s atmosphere is actually able to regulate itself such that temperatures remain relatively constant despite changes in greenhouse gases or the radiation of the sun.

The mechanism for doing so, Kessler believes, is a negative feedback loop. This is a natural process by which the negative effects of a reaction cause that reaction to slow down or stop.

The hypothesis on climate self-regulation, which is termed the Iris Effect, was first proposed by atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen in 2001. It postulates that cirrus clouds in the tropics dissipate in reaction to rising temperatures. 

Additional radiation can then escape from Earth’s atmosphere, causing a cooling effect. Kessler calls this a “safety valve.”

In an interview with Kessler, Lindzen, a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said, “This more than offsets the effect of greenhouse gases.”

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climate-debate

A heatwave isn’t the end of the world

by T. Fazi, July 18, 2023 in UnHerd

As I write this, in my favourite local café in Rome, the temperature outside is close to 40°C. So yes, it’s hot. Yet, thanks to a relatively old invention — air conditioning — I’m able to work in comfort. The 10-minute bike ride back home will be tougher than usual, but it won’t kill me. Like most people here, I consider these temperatures to be a nuisance — but that’s about it.

According to the news, however, I should be terribly concerned — terrified, in fact. Everyone’s running headline stories about the “extreme”, “record-breaking” and “deadly” hot weather sweeping across Asia, the US and, most notably, Europe. Here, the heatwave was unofficially named Cerberus, the multi-headed dog that guards the gates of Hades, before being replaced by Charon, the man who ferries the dead there. Rome is being called the “infernal city”. To be honest, I can think of several much more hellish places around the world at the moment — cities plagued by poverty, terrorism and war. And yet we are told that the current heat waves are a taste of the “hell” that awaits us as a result of climate change.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Record Temperature In China Not All It Seems

by P. Homewood, Jul 18, 2023 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

BEIJING, July 17 (Reuters) – A remote township in China’s arid northwest endured temperatures of more than 52 Celsius (126 Fahrenheit) on Sunday, state media reported, setting a record for a country that was battling minus 50C weather just six months ago.

Temperatures at Sanbao township in Xinjiang’s Turpan Depression soared as high as 52.2C on Sunday, state-run Xinjiang Daily reported on Monday, with the record heat expected to persist at least another five days.

The Sunday temperature broke a previous record of 50.3C, measured in 2015 near Ayding in the depression, a vast basin of sand dunes and dried-up lakes more than 150 m (492 ft) below sea level.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-logs-522-celsius-extreme-weather-rewrites-records-2023-07-17/

I can’t see the heatwave in Beijing particularly affecting that family crossing the road! Looks like they’re having a nice day out.

But back to Sanbao, which sits in the Turpan Depression that is as much as 150m below sea level. According to Wikipedia, the Turpan has a harsh desert climate, and is counted as one of the Furnaces of China. It is believed to be the second or third deepest depression on Earth. it is also the hottest and driest area in China during the summer.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Is The Dry Getting Drier?

by W. Eschenbach, Jul 16 , 2023 in WUWT

So I was wandering through the marvelous KNMI website, and I came across data for the Palmer Self-Correcting Drought Severity Index. This is an index that measures the drought conditions in some given area. The source website says:

The scPDSI (self-correcting Palmer Drought Severity Index) is a variant on the original PDSI of Palmer (1965), with the aim to make results from different climate regimes more comparable. As with the PDSI, the scPDSI is calculated from time series of precipitation and temperature, together with fixed parameters related to the soil/surface characteristics at each location.

Now, the KNMI site only offers linear trends of data. But if you look at the bottom of the KNMI page linked above, or other pages at that level of inquiry, you’ll find that there is an option to download the NetCDF version of the data. As in this case, this NetCDF data is often gridded.

And using that NetCDF gridded file lets me make a graphic showing the average scPDSI for the globe.

Figure 1. Yes, indeed, Australia is a dry country

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Nobel Winner Says Climate Science Now A ‘Massive Shock-Journalistic Pseudoscience’

by T. Andy, July 13; 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Dr. John F. Clauser, a joint recipient of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, has criticized the climate emergency narrative calling it “a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people.”

Along with two others, Dr. Clauser, an experimental and theoretical physicist, was the 2022 recipient of the Nobel Prize for work done in the 1970s that showed “quantum entanglement” allowed particles such as photons to effectively interact at great distances, seemingly to require communication exceeding the speed of light. [emphasis, links added]

He has criticized the awarding of the 2021 Nobel Prize for work in the development of computer models predicting global warming, according to a coalition of scientists and commentators who argue that an informed discussion about CO2 would recognize its importance in sustaining plant life.

In a statement issued by the CO2 coalition, “Nobel Laureate John Clauser Elected to the CO2 Coalition Board of Directors”, CO2 Coalition Dr. Clauser said that “there is no climate crisis and that increasing CO2concentrations will benefit the world.”

He criticized the prevalent climate models as being unreliable and not accounting for the dramatic temperature-stabilizing feedback of clouds, which he says is more than fifty times as powerful as the radiative forcing effect of CO2.

Dr. Clauser notes that bright white clouds are clearly the most conspicuous feature in satellite photos of the Earth.

These clouds are mostly produced by the evaporation of seawater by sunlight. They variably cover one-third to two-thirds of the Earth’s surface.

Most of the energy incident on the earth is in the form of visible sunlight. Clouds reflect sunlight energy back into space before it can reach the Earth’s surface to heat it.

 

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climate-debate, sciences-general

Understanding the role of the sun in climate change

by N. Scafetta, July 6, 2023 in Andy May Blog

Although the sun provides nearly all the energy needed to warm the planet, its contribution to climate change remains widely questioned. Many empirically based studies claim that it has a significant effect on climate, while others (often based on computer global climate simulations) claim that it has a small effect.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) supports the latter view and estimates that almost 100% of the observed warming of the Earth’s surface from 1850–1900 to 2020 was caused by man-made emissions (AR6 WG1, pages 63, 425, and 962). This is known as the anthropogenic global warming (AGWT) theory.

I addressed this important paradox in a new study published in Geoscience Frontiers. The conundrum appears to arise from two sets of uncertainties: (i) the historical decades and long-term variations in solar activity are unknown; (ii) the sun may affect Earth’s climate through various physical mechanisms many of which are not fully understood and are not incorporated into the global climate models (GCMs).

It is important to notice that the AGWT is based solely on computer global climate model simulations that use total solar irradiance (TSI) records with very low multidecadal and long-term variability. The models also assume that the sun affects the climate system only through radiative forcing, although there is evidence that other solar processes related to solar magnetic activity (solar wind, cosmic rays, interplanetary dust, etc.) also affect the climate.

The total solar irradiance (TSI) records

 

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

Where Does Ocean Heat Come From?

by Dr M. Wielicki, May 24, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

First, do we really know the temperature and thus heat content of the ocean?

The ocean is vast and covers ~70% of the Earth’s surface, making it the largest system on the planet. Despite its size, only a small portion of the ocean has been explored and mapped in detail.

It is estimated that <20% of the world’s oceans have been mapped and explored to date. [emphasis, links added]

This is largely due to the difficulties and challenges associated with ocean exploration, such as the high pressure and extreme environments found in the deep ocean, as well as the high cost of research vessels, equipment, and technology.

Most of the ocean that has been explored in detail is located near the coasts or in shallow waters, where it is more accessible to research vessels and equipment, but usually far away from the heat sources of mid-ocean ridges.

The deep ocean, which makes up the majority of the ocean’s volume, remains largely unexplored, with less than 5% of the ocean floor having been mapped in high resolution.

Advances in technology, such as underwater drones and submersibles, are helping to improve our understanding of the ocean and its ecosystems, and it is likely that our knowledge of the ocean will continue to expand in the coming decades.

Temperature measurements in the ocean are typically taken using a variety of instruments. These instruments can be deployed from research vessels or from moored or drifting buoys, and they collect temperature data at different depths throughout the ocean.

The amount of the ocean that is measured for temperature varies depending on the method of measurement and the specific objectives of the research.

However, it is estimated that significantly less than 10% of the world’s oceans have been sampled for temperatures at depths greater than 2,000 meters.

Despite the relatively limited coverage of temperature measurements in the deep ocean, there are ongoing efforts to improve our understanding of the ocean’s temperature structure and variability.

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climate-debate

Solar Activity: Cycle 25 Surpasses Cycle 24

by J. Vinos, Jul 6, 2023 in WUWT

Over the past two decades, solar activity has been characterized by an extended solar minimum spanning two solar cycles, known as the Clilverd Minimum. This phenomenon is currently affecting the climate, but before we can understand its impact, we must address the significant discrepancy between the solar effects observed in paleoclimate proxy records and modern observations. The relationship between solar signals and climate response is complex and not fully understood. However, there is substantial evidence from models and reanalyses that the relationship exists. A recent hypothesis is that the solar signal modulates heat and moisture transport to the Arctic, which explains its relatively small effect during a single solar cycle. However, when an anomaly in solar activity persists over several cycles, as it did during the 70-year modern solar maximum, its effect accumulates and has a large impact on the planet’s energy budget. Understanding this mechanism is critical to understanding the overall impact of solar activity on our climate.

Current Solar Activity

The monthly sunspot number for June 2023 reached 163.4. While this figure may be revised slightly, it’s likely to stand as the highest number seen in over two decades, since September 2002. Solar Cycle 25 is relatively young, only three and a half years old, which means there are ample opportunities over the next three years to surpass this month’s 20-year record. Based on recent data, it seems very likely that Solar Cycle 25 will surpass Solar Cycle 24 in terms of activity.

Figure 1. Daily and monthly sunspot numbers over the past 13 years, as provided by SILSO.
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climate-debate

Contradicting Data, Media Claim Canadian Wildfires And Heat Waves Made Worse By Climate Change

by H.S. Sterling, Jul 5, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

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Thus, it can’t be proof of climate change. And, as noted in Climate at a Glance: U.S. Heat Waves:

  • In recent decades in the United States, heat waves have been far less frequent and severe than they were in the 1930s.
  • The all-time high-temperature records set in most states occurred in the first half of the twentieth century.
  • The most accurate nationwide temperature station network, implemented in 2005, shows no sustained increase in daily high temperatures in the United States since at least 2005.

That’s right, neither heat waves nor wildfires, whether in Canada or elsewhere are getting worse.

The fear and actual damage generated by wildfires each year are bad enough without the bought-and-paid-for mainstream media making it worse by encouraging the misdirection of resources from taking actions that address the true causes of wildfires to the battle against climate change.

There is no evidence climate change has or will cause more heatwaves, droughts, or resulting wildfires

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climate-debate

Climate Computer Games

by M. Kile, May 28, 2023 in WUWT

Complexity and perplexity go together like a horse and carriage, or in this case, like the climate and a modeller. When probability claims masquerade as genuine predictions about reality, and international agencies and governments promote alarmism at every opportunity, when confirmation bias distorts the search for truth, the outcome is the “climate change” hyperbole and “saving-the-planet” activism that is now disrupting every aspect of our lives.

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climate-debate

The Holocene CO2 Dilemma

by R. Hannon, June 2023, in WUWT

This post evaluates the relationship of global CO2 with regional temperature trends during the Holocene interglacial period. Ice core records show that CO2 is strongly coupled with local Antarctic temperature and slightly lags temperature over the past 800,000 years (Luthi, 2008). Whereas the emphasis has been on CO2 and temperature lags/leads, this study focuses on Holocene millennium trends in different latitude-bounded regions.

The Contrarian Antarctic

The Holocene is fortunate to have hundreds of proxy records analyzed by Marcott, 2013, and more recently Kaufman, 2020, to establish regional and global temperature trends. The Holocene interglacial occurs approximately during the past 11,000 years. In general, global temperature trends from proxy data show a Holocene Climatic Optimum (HCO) around 6000 to 8000 years ago and a subsequent cooling trend, the Neoglacial period, culminating in the Little Ice Age (LIA). The global mean temperature is comprised of regional trends that tend to have a concave down appearance during the Holocene shown in Figure 1a.

The exception is the Antarctic shown in red which has a concave up shape. The Antarctic reached an early Holocene Climatic Optimum between 9000 to 11000 years ago. While global and most regional temperatures were warming, Antarctic cooled to a minimum around 8000 years ago. While global and other regions show progressive cooling during the Neoglacial, the Antarctic was flat and erratic. This contrary Antarctic temperature behavior during the Holocene has also been noted by Andy May here.

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Observations

Climate change is routinely claimed to be largely controlled by greenhouse gases, especially CO2. This was concluded, in part, by the strong relationship between CO2 from Antarctic ice core bubbles and local Antarctic temperature trends. While CO2 mimics Antarctic temperatures very well, ninety percent of Earth’s surface temperature trends do not demonstrate a positive correlation to CO2 during the Holocene. Arctic and Northern Hemisphere temperatures become cooler during increasing CO2 levels. Tropical proxy temperatures don’t seem to be influenced by CO2.

Model simulated temperatures which are strongly influenced by CO2 do not accurately history match Holocene global proxy temperatures and tend to largely reflect Antarctic trends. The fact that CO2 correlates well to Holocene temperatures for only the Antarctic, or <10% of our planet’s surface, yet CO2 is considered as the dominant influence on climate change is a scientific dilemma.

Download the bibliography here.