Archives de catégorie : climate-debate

Impact of Changing Climate on Andean Glaciers in Sync with Polar Ice

by University of Florida, Jul 14, 2022 in WUWT


Peer-Reviewed Publication

Glaciers in tropical mountain ranges are experiencing similar impact from the drivers of climate change as those in the polar regions of Antarctica and the Northern Hemisphere, according to a study published today in Nature.

The paper by a team of international scientists, including Robert Hatfield, an assistant professor in the University of Florida Department of Geological Sciences, is the first to show that the effects of greenhouse gases and other drivers of the Earth’s temperature are impacting glaciers in the Southern Hemisphere at the same pacing as ice sheets in the north.  To derive their findings, researchers used sedimentary deposits from Lake Junín, high in the Peruvian Andes, to create a record of glacial changes stretching back 700,000 years.

Hatfield explained that much of what scientists knew about past glacial changes came from records of ice growth and decay that occurred in the Northern Hemisphere.

“As we try to understand how climate works across the globe, we need more than just records that are influenced by and biased toward the Northern Hemisphere,” Hatfield said.

The land-based lake record collected by Hatfield and his colleagues matches the duration of ice core records from Antarctica and spans the longest time frame ever collected from the Southern Hemisphere.

“What makes our findings unique is that we were able to get a continuous and independently dated record of tropical Alpine glaciation for the first time,” he said. “The key takeaway was that the tropics follow the same beat and same rhythm to what’s going on in the Northern Hemisphere.”

Despite variations in solar radiation between the two hemispheres, the study showed glacier changes in both regions occurred at the same time. This suggests that the rise in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations associated with changes in the volume of the ice sheets of the north is influencing the entire planet simultaneously.

Arctic Sea Ice Still Quite Abundant for Early Summer

by S. Crockford, Jul 15, 2022 in WUWT/PolarbearScience


Despite rhetoric to the contrary, there is still plenty of sea ice over Arctic regions this summer, supplying feeding platforms for polar bears, ice-dependent seals, and walrus cows nursing their young calves. Forget about whether the numbers are below or above some short-term average, there is no catastrophe in the making for marine mammals in the Arctic at this time.

Remember, by early summer, young seals have left the surface of the ice and are in the water feeding; predator-savvy adults and subadults are hauled out on broken chunks of ice moulting their hair-coat. They may look like sitting ducks but polar bears have a hard time catching them because the seals are vigilant and have many escape routes available (due to all the open water). Most polar bears in Hudson Bay are still on the ice (you’ll see why below): the live cams near Churchill set up to watch polar bears are presently showing images of ravens with sea ice in the background, not bears.

This post is predominantly sea ice charts for mid-July, what we in the science field call observational evidence, aka ‘facts’. Keep in mind that satellites used to produce these images have an especially hard time distinguishing ice topped with melt water from open water, which means much more ice useful to these marine mammals is almost certainly present than is shown in the charts (as much as 20% more in some regions).

Arctic-wide levels, NSIDC Masie

 

Lennart Bengtsson: Global climate change and its relevance for a global energy policy.

by H. von Storch, March 12, 2013 in DieKlimazwiebel


The relation between temperature and greenhouse gases in its very simplistic form has been known since the second half of the 19thcentury. The effect of the greenhouse gases can be seen as a warm overcoat preventing the surface in radiating away the heat to space. However, the warming is a complex process incorporating the dynamics of atmospheric and ocean flows and interactions of the many components of what is now called the Earth’s system. This includes in addition to the atmosphere, the oceans, the land surfaces and the land ices. Its study requires advanced computer models and other tools for its analysis and understanding.  It also requires accurate observations for validation and monitoring as well as special measurements for the development of many crucial aspects of the models. It is in fact an immensely complex undertaking that is virtually impossible to explain to the public in a readily understandable way. This has lead to a tendency towards oversimplification that has contributed more to confusion than to a thorough understanding. However, because of the strong public interest we are now facing a dilemma as the public and the political community have become too much involved in the climate change debate influencing the actual science and this not necessarily in a positive way as it implies an arbitrary selection of priorities and preferential issues.

 

Natural processes drive climate and practically all kinds of extreme weather have always been part of the climate and are practically unrelated to the modest warming we so far have had. The effect of increasing greenhouse gases is a slow but relentless process that will have to be dealt with but will require more time and better insight in key processes.Some events are seen as very dramatic as the reduced Arctic summer ice, others, even more puzzling, such as the surprising lack of warming in the tropical troposphere is hardly discussed.

The problem is that the global warming is mainly caused by the emission of carbon dioxide and thus directly related to energy production by fossil fuels that has dominated and still dominates the energy production by more than 80%. To significantly reduce or eliminate fossil fuel is not feasible on a time-scale shorter than several decades, as it requires fundamental technical breakthrough in energy generation or alternatively a major change in our life stile. As the second alternative is hardly possible to achieve in a world with mostly open societies, it is obvious that the world community is facing a gigantic challenge. Additionally many parts of the world are suffering because of a lack of suitable energy and the need is further underpinned by the fact that the world’s population will increase by another two billion humans in the next three decades.

Some comments on the present situation

Mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet 1992–2016: reconciling results from GRACE gravimetry with ICESat, ERS1/2 and Envisat altimetry

by J. Zwally et al., 2021, March 29, in J.of.Glaciology


Abstract

GRACE and ICESat Antarctic mass-balance differences are resolved utilizing their dependencies on corrections for changes in mass and volume of the same underlying mantle material forced by ice-loading changes. Modeled gravimetry corrections are 5.22 times altimetry corrections over East Antarctica (EA) and 4.51 times over West Antarctica (WA), with inferred mantle densities 4.75 and 4.11 g cm−3. Derived sensitivities (Sg, Sa) to bedrock motion enable calculation of motion (δB0) needed to equalize GRACE and ICESat mass changes during 2003–08. For EA, δB0 is −2.2 mm a−1 subsidence with mass matching at 150 Gt a−1, inland WA is −3.5 mm a−1 at 66 Gt a−1, and coastal WA is only −0.35 mm a−1 at −95 Gt a−1. WA subsidence is attributed to low mantle viscosity with faster responses to post-LGM deglaciation and to ice growth during Holocene grounding-line readvance. EA subsidence is attributed to Holocene dynamic thickening. With Antarctic Peninsula loss of −26 Gt a−1, the Antarctic total gain is 95 ± 25 Gt a−1 during 2003–08, compared to 144 ± 61 Gt a−1 from ERS1/2 during 1992–2001. Beginning in 2009, large increases in coastal WA dynamic losses overcame long-term EA and inland WA gains bringing Antarctica close to balance at −12 ± 64 Gt a−1 by 2012–16.

Global Man-Made CO2 emissions 1965 – 2021: BP Data

by BP, Jul 10, 2022 in WUWT


Introduction

Every summer BP publish their statistical review of world energy.

https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy/co2-emissions.html

One element of their comprehensive set of spreadsheets is a table of CO2 emissions country by country since 1965.  For the purposes of this post, the CO2 emissions data provided by BP here is assumed to be valid.  This post reviews the 2022 update to the BP data.

The 2022 dataset accounts for the 2020 effect of the Covid-19 epidemic, the CO2 emissions resulting in the aftermath of the epidemic, its impact on Global economic activity and the outcome for the recovery of Man-made CO2 emissions in 2021.

For an earlier post reporting the status of Man-made CO2 emissions as of 2020, see:

ALL-TIME COLD RECORDS FALL IN AUSTRALIA; + SOLAR ACTIVITY CONTROLS THE CLIMATE

by Cap Allon, Jul 5, 2022 in Electroverse


ALL-TIME COLD RECORDS FALL IN AUSTRALIA

Following its best start to a ski season ever, conditions have anomalously cold and snowy across swathes of Australia.

June 2022 finished with a temperature anomaly of -0.1C below the multidecadal average, according to data supplied by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology–whatever that’s worth.

The unusual chill has extended into July, too, and hundreds of monthly low temperature records have fallen over the past two days alone–particularly across the northeastern state of Queensland, where even a number of all-time benchmarks have been toppled.

 

Senior meteorologist Harry Clark said the combination of rain and cold temperatures was “extremely unusual” for July.

“Both in terms of the amount of rainfall and the extent of it, for what is one of our driest months of the year, but also for the extremely low maximum temperatures we’ve seen,” said Clarke. “Temperatures are looking more into what you might expect in Melbourne, or some of those southern capital cities where it’s the typical winter weather.”

Clarke confirmed that “many” cold weather records were broken across Queensland this week, with the standouts for him being Rockhampton peaking at only 12.5C (54.5F) yesterday, and Toowoomba struggling to just 7.6C (45.7F).

Other locales registered equally impressive readings: The Gold Coast Seaway set its coldest day of any month ever yesterday with 14C (57.2F); while further north, in Townsville, residents there suffered their coldest July day ever with a high of 15C (59F).

And most recently, Brisbane, the capital of Queensland –which had already registered its coldest start to a winter since 1904— has, today (July 5), gone and logged its coldest daily high in 22 years, reaching only 12.4C (54.3F).

For reference, Brisbane’s lowest-ever maximum remains the 12C (53.6F) set in July 2000; with the city’s third-coldest July maximum actually being yesterday’s 14.2C (57.6F) … but ‘catastrophic global warming’, you know … ?

SOLAR ACTIVITY CONTROLS THE CLIMATE

The global temperature record since 1880 is highly correlated to solar activity, and solar activity is highly correlated to the harmonics of planetary motion.

The below chart is NASA’s Historical Total Solar Irradiance Reconstruction, Time Series.

And looking ahead, Australia’s Antarctic blast isn’t forecast to abate anytime soon — quite the opposite, in fact:

 

LinkedIn Bans Scientist for Presenting Inconvenient Truths About CO2

by C. Rotter, Jul 9, 2022 in WUWT


“The big-tech censors are at it again: the CO2 Coalition’s Executive Director Gregory Wrightstone has been permanently banned from LinkedIn. What did Wrightstone do to earn the banishment? His ‘crime’ consisted of posting charts from peer reviewed research supported by official sources demonstrating that current global average CO2 levels are well within the natural range of concentrations throughout the Earth’s history. LinkedIn’s moderators sent Wrightstone an email informing him that his violations have been so numerous and/or so severe that they couldn’t allow him to continue to use the platform.”

Originally published here at Climate Realism on 6 July 2022.

Since 2000 The Arctic’s Hudson Bay Has Cooled -0.35°C With 10 Of 15 Sites Gaining Sea Ice

by Gupta et al.,  July 7, 2022 in NoTricksZone


A new study (Gupta et al., 2022) indicates that from 2000-2019 73% of the 15 sites considered have been cooling and 67% have experienced a lengthening of sea ice duration.

Canada’s Hudson Bay extends into the Arctic Ocean and its coasts are teeming with polar bears.

Scientists report 11 of 15 Hudson Bay sites have been cooling since 2000. The average cooling for these 11 sites is -0.34°C per decade.

…IPCC Summary Report, Part 2…

by D. Dears, July 2022 in PowerForUsa


Conclusion

The politicians changed the report written by the scientists so that it would be consistent with the SPM written by the politicians.

The report now reads:

“The body of statistical evidence in chapter 8 … now points towards a discernible human influence on global climate.”

Whereas it originally read:

“No study to date has positively attributed all or part (of the climate warming observed) to (manmade) causes.”

As a result, the pubic was told there is a discernible human influence on global climate when the scientists said none had been positively identified.

A legitimate scientific organization wouldn’t allow politicians to overrule scientists.

Why would our country rely on such an organization?

Link to Amicus Curiae https://bit.ly/3QSuyCn

Use this link in an email to let others know about this article https://bit.ly/3AqFm53 

The Truth About Cold- And Heat-Related Deaths

by H.S. Sterling, Jul 6, 2022 in ClimateChangeDispatch


In a refreshingly honest article in the Logan Daily News, author Bud Simpson cites data from research showing deaths from non-optimal temperatures are declining amid climate change.

Simpson is right and he and the Logan Daily News are to be congratulated for discussing this important truth about climate change. [bold, links added]

In a Logan Daily News article, titled “My last global warming column?”, Simpson describes how after examining the facts over time, he went from being a firm believer that human activities were causing dangerous climate change to realizing no climate catastrophe is in the offing.

Carbon dioxide was, and is, bandied about as if it were the biggest demon on the face of the earth,” writes Simpson. “In truth, it is one of the most valuable of gases and contributes hugely to a better life for us earthlings. … Proponents of this group even tried to get carbon dioxide labeled as a toxic gas! If that were true, we’d all be dead by now. And without any warming.”

Among the research Simpson discovered that convinced him climate change was not, in fact, threatening human survival was a study published in the prominent peer-reviewed journal, The Lancet, which firmly established:

“…that worldwide, cold kills about 17 times more people than heat does. A group of 22 scientists studied over 74 million deaths in the U.S., China, Brazil, and ten other countries. The findings showed that cold caused 7.29 percent of the deaths while heat caused 0.42 percent.”

New Study: Greenland ‘Must Have Been At Least 3°C Warmer’ Than Today During The Early Holocene

by K. Richard, Jul 4, 2022 in NoTricksZone


These much warmer Greenland temperatures imply that the elevation of the ice sheet was 400 meters lower than it is today from about 6,000 to 10,000 years ago.

Scientists (Westhoff et al., 2022) report that the two largest Greenland melt events in the last few hundred years occurred in 2012 and in 1889 CE – when atmospheric CO2 levels were still under 300 ppm.

The “melt events around the Holocene Climate Optimum were more intense and more frequent” than has been observed during the modern period. And the most prominent melt events of the last 10,000 years centered around the Medieval Warm Period, 986 CE.

Overall, the elevation of the Greenland ice sheet has grown by 0.4 km since the Early Holocene, as “summer temperatures must have been at least 3 ± 0.6°C warmer during the Early Holocene compared to today.”

“We Live In The Coldest Period Of The Last 10.000 Years”

by P. Homewood, Jul 5, 2022 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat


Jørgen Peder Steffensen is an Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen and one of the world’s leading experts on ice cores. Using ice cores from sites in Greenland, he has been able to reconstruct temperatures there for the last 10000 years. So what are his conclusions?

  • Temperatures in Greenland were about 1.5 C warmer 1000 years ago than now.

  • It was perhaps 2.5 C warmer 4000 years ago.

  • The period around 1875, at the lowest point of the Little Ice Age, marked the coldest point in the last 10,000 years.

  • Other evidence from elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere confirms this picture.

Climate Change Weekly #439: Hurricanes Not Increasing, Despite Warming

by H.S. Burnett, Jul 1, 2022 in WUWT


Pielke notes five points of fact about hurricanes:

  1. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finds “no consensus” on the relative role of human influences on Atlantic hurricane activity, quoting the IPCC as follows: “there is still no consensus on the relative magnitude of human and natural influences on past changes in Atlantic hurricane activity, … and it remains uncertain whether past changes in Atlantic TC activity are outside the range of natural variability.”
  2. “The IPCC has concluded that since 1900 there is ‘no trend in the frequency of USA landfall events.’ This goes for all hurricanes and also for the strongest hurricanes, called major hurricanes.”
  3. “Since at least 1980, there are no clear trends in overall global hurricane and major hurricane activity.”
  4. “There are many characteristics of tropical cyclones that are under study and hypothesized to be potentially affected by human influences, … but at present there is not a unified community consensus on these hypotheses, as summarized by the World Meteorological Organization,” as to whether any of the factors are affected by human greenhouse gas emissions.
  5. “Hurricanes are common, incredibly destructive and will always be with us. Even so, we have learned a lot about how to prepare and recover.”

Pielke points out that some of the costliest hurricanes occurred in the early part of the twentieth century when average global temperatures were cooler than at present.

G7 Abandons Climate Agenda, Will Turn To Fossil Fuels Amid Energy Crisis

by J. MCEVOY, Jul 1, 202 in CimateChangeDispatch


World leaders at the G7 summit in Germany signaled they will turn back to fossil fuels despite their commitments to a green energy transition thanks to the ongoing energy crisis.

The war in Ukraine is heavily restricting fuel imports, with Russia cutting off European access to the Nord Stream pipeline and the US imposing a fuel embargo on Putin. [bold, links added]

As a result, the U.S. and European countries are abandoning their climate agenda to return to fossil fuels.

Amid skyrocketing fuel prices, the Biden administration has been forced to abandon certain planks of its climate agenda.

Biden called for a temporary increase in domestic fuel production two weeks ago and also asked Congress to suspend the federal per-gallon gas tax for three months last week.

“The G7 leaders are pretending that nothing has happened to the green agenda,” Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Forum, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “In reality, if you look at individual member states… it’s quite obvious that the green agenda will be sunk.

The New Pause Lengthens to 7 Years 10 Months

by C. Monckton of Brenchley, July 2, 2022 in WUWT


The New Pause paused last month because I was ill. Many apologies for the interruption. Now, however, it resumes – and it has lengthened from 7 years 7 months to the end of April 2022. To the end of June 2022, the New Pause is now 7 years 10 months in length:

 

This Pause, like its predecessor, which was an impressive 18 years 8 months (UAH), or 18 years 9 months (HadCRUT4), is, as always, not cherry-picked. It is derived from the UAH monthly global mean lower-troposphere temperature anomalies as the period from the earliest month starting with which the least-squares linear-regression trend to the most recent month for which data are available does not exceed zero. Whatever the data show, I show. Or, in the immortal words of Dr Roy Spencer, speaking of his dataset, “It is what it is”. In that splendid dictum speaks all true science.

The least-squares trend, which Professor Jones at the University of East Anglia used to recommend as the simplest and most robust method of deriving global-temperature trends, takes due account of all monthly values, not merely of the starting and ending values.

 

See also here

The NOT melting glacier

by T. Ciccone & J. Lehr, May 31, 2022 in CFact

beautiful white icy hill with cave in antarctic

 

Could Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier’ meet its doom within 3 years?

Time is melting away for one of Antarctica’s biggest glaciers, and its rapid deterioration could end with the ice shelf’s complete collapse in just a few years,” alarmist researchers warned at a virtual press briefing on Dec. 13, 2021 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU)–a once outstanding professional society, but now a shill for the left.

Above is the first sentence of the article titled Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier’ could meet its doom within 3 years,not what we would expect to see from a once reputable source, the AGU. It warns us that in a few years, the world’s largest glacier, about the size of Florida, will melt and raise ocean levels by up to 3 meters (about 10 ft). It then tells us that the glacier is melting from below because the surrounding ocean waters have been warmed thanks to human-induced climate change.Finally, it tells us that a team of more than 100 scientists from the USA and the UK have been studying the Thwaites glacier and sharing their findings with scientists worldwide.

The article then explains that the Thwaites is not melting from above, but the melting is coming from below,from the warmed-up oceans that have been warmed by human-made CO2 and the greenhouse effect. The bulk of the article then proceeds to detail the forecasted consequences around the world:

This team may not have even been communicating with each other. Almost a decade earlier, geologists were seeing evidence of volcanoes in a known active tectonic plate boundary, buried under the glacier and the oceans. Before 2017, at least 47 volcanoes were found in western Antarctica and around the area of the Thwaites glacier. In 2017 the Guardian reported that an additional 91 volcanoes had been found along the western shores of Antarctica, with some sitting under the Twaites glacier itself. See the article Scientists discover 91 volcanoes below Antarctic ice sheet.

New Study Affirms Temperatures Determine Greenhouse Gas Forcing Trends, Not The Other Way Around

by Singh H  & Polvani L, Jun 30, 2022 in NoTricksZone


CO2 and water vapor greenhouse effect impacts are not independent climate forcings . A new study affirms the “variance in the radiance in these channels is primarily controlled by…temperature” and “atmospheric absorption is strongly saturated in these [CO2, water vapor] channels”.

It has previously been established that greenhouse gas (water vapor, CO2) forcing “cannot be considered an independent component of the surface energy budget” because “anomalies in the downward longwave flux at the surface primarily arise as a consequence of surface temperature anomalies, rather than being the cause of those anomalies” (Singh and Polvani, 2020, Zeppetello et al., 2019).

Image Source: Singh and Polvani, 2020, Zeppetello et al., 2019

Feldman et al. (2015) admit they had to “construct” model-based spectra to simulate a CO2 signal in their seminal paper purporting to show CO2 changes cause temperature changes. This is because the temperature and water vapor levels primarily determine the overall longwave forcing (clear-sky) trends.

Code Red For Sanity – The Credibility Crisis At The IPCC

by R. Barmby, Jun23, 2022 in ClimateChangeDispatch


When speaking about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report Climate Change 2021: The Physical Sciences Basis, UN Secretary-General António Guterres declared it a “code red for humanity.”

He further stressed, “The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable.” [bold, links added]

But a person who reads the report dispassionately and thoroughly will recognize that there is no code red for humanity and that the evidence is indeed refutable. It would be more accurate to say the report is a code red for sanity.

Classical science observes what is; that’s the evidence. A political agenda persuades what should be done; that’s the alarm bells.

Let’s turn off the alarm the IPCC pulled by examining Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis (referred to from this point as “the report”).

You’ll discover that while the report contains some scientific evidence, much of it is hidden, manipulated, or contradicted.

Because of this, we’ll refute the so-called evidence in the report by explaining how the science has been misrepresented.

Let’s bring sanity back to science.

The report has four major themes where the political agenda has overrun classical science.

Theme 1: Climate history was altered.

The IPCC would like you to believe that the Earth’s temperature has been constant for thousands of years and that the approximate 1°C of warming is unprecedented.

The report offers this figure to support that view:

Study: Tropical Cyclone Frequency Decreasing As Earth Mildly Warms

by S. Chand et al., Jun 28, 2022 in ClimateChangeDispatch


Assessing the role of anthropogenic warming from temporally inhomogeneous historical data in the presence of large natural variability is difficult and has caused conflicting conclusions on the detection and attribution of tropical cyclone (TC) trends. [bold, links added]

Here, using a reconstructed long-term proxy of annual TC numbers together with high-resolution climate model experiments, we show robust declining trends in the annual number of TCs at global and regional scales during the twentieth century.

The Twentieth Century Reanalysis (20CR) dataset is used for reconstruction because, compared with other reanalyses, it assimilates only sea-level pressure fields rather than utilizing all available observations in the troposphere, making it less sensitive to temporal inhomogeneities in the observations.

It can also capture TC signatures from the pre-satellite era reasonably well.

The declining trends found are consistent with the twentieth-century weakening of the Hadley and Walker circulations, which make conditions for TC formation less favorable.

Human activities are estimated to have caused ~1.0 °C of global warming above pre-industrial levels, with most of the warming occurring since the mid-twentieth century1.

‘A Significant And Robust Cooling Trend’ In The Southern Ocean From 1982–2020 Defies Climate Models

by K. Richard, June 27, 2022 in NoTricksZone


A new study reports there has been a -0.3°C cooling in the Southern Ocean since 1982 per multiple observational data sets. The authors detail the “failure of CMIP5 models in simulating the observed SST cooling in the Southern Ocean.”

The Southern Ocean is today about 1-2°C colder than it has been for nearly all of the last 10,000 years (Shuttleworth et al., 2021, Civel-Mazens et al., 2021, Ghadi et al., 2020).

Image Source: Shuttleworth et al., 2021

ON SATURDAY, GREENLAND’S SURFACE MASS BALANCE GAINED A RECORD-SMASHING 7 GIGATONS…

by Cap Allon, June 20, 2022 in Electroverse


If you want proof of mainstream media manipulation and agenda driving drivel, you need look no further than the “official” reporting of the Greenland ice sheet–the poster child for anthropogenic global warming. If today’s intensifying energy crisis wasn’t rooted in said obfuscations, all of this would be laughable.

Impressive surface mass balance (SMB) readings –a calculation to determine the ‘health’ of a glacier– have been posted across the Greenland ice sheet all season. But the cherry, at least for me, is taken by Saturday’s record-smashing 7 Gigaton GAIN–particularly when you consider the glacier should be losing mass at this time of year.

The MSM appears to love dumb, decontextualized headlines to advance their AGW narrative. So here’s one for them:

Greenland’s Recent SMB Gains Enough To Bury Central Park, New York City Under 7,833 Feet Of Ice… (it’s true, do the math).

Cheers! ‘Climate backtracking’: Germany Pushes for G-7 Reversal on Fossil Fuels in Climate Blow – ‘U-turn in global efforts to fight climate change’

by Bloomberg, June 25, 2022 in Climate Depot


Germany is pushing for Group of Seven nations to walk back a commitment that would halt the financing of overseas fossil fuel projects by the end of the year, according to people familiar with the matter. That would be a major reversal on tackling climate change as Russia’s war in Ukraine upends access to energy supplies.

A draft text shared with Bloomberg would see the G-7 “acknowledge that publicly supported investment in the gas sector is necessary as a temporary response to the current energy crisis.”

The caveat in the proposal is that such funding is done “in a manner consistent with our climate objectives and without creating lock-in effects.”

The text remains under debate and could change before G-7 leaders hold their summit in the Bavarian Alps starting Sunday hosted by Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The UK opposes the proposal, two of the people said. A German government spokesman declined to comment.

EU Leaders Brace for Hard Winter as Russia Tightens Gas Grip

A person familiar with the discussions said Italy wasn’t actively opposing the German proposal. Italy, like Germany, is highly dependent on Russian gas. On Friday, speaking during a press conference in Brussels, Prime Minister Mario Draghi said Italy has managed to reduce Russian gas imports from 40% last year to 25% at the moment. This has been possible also by signing new gas deals in countries including Congo, Algeria and Angola.

Germany has responded to the cuts by reviving coal plants and providing financing to secure gas supplies, while continuing with plans to phase out nuclear energy. The World Nuclear Association, an industry lobby group, is urging the G-7 to boost access to nuclear technologies.

What the media won’t tell you about U.S. heat waves

by R. Pielke Jr, June 16, 2022 in TheHonestBroker


It’s hot. Real hot. Heat waves in the United States surely must be the most visible and impactful sign of human caused climate change, right? Well, actually no. Let’s take a look at what the U.S. National Climate Assessment and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say about heat waves in the United States. What they say may surprise you.

Before proceeding, let me emphasize that human-caused climate change is real and significant. Aggressive policies focused on both adaptation and mitigation make very good sense. So too does being accurate about current scientific understandings. The importance of climate change does not mean that we can ignore scientific integrity — actually the opposite, it makes it all the more important. So let’s take a close look at recent assessment reports and what they say about U.S. heat waves.

The figure below comes out of the most recent U.S. National Climate Assessment(NCA). It shows the frequency (top) and intensity (bottom) of heat waves in the U.S. since 1900. The bottom figure is actually based on a paper that I co-authored in 1999, which serves as the basis for an official indicator of climate change used by the Environmental Protection Agency.

..