Archives de catégorie : climate-debate

climate-debate

A method has been developed to study extreme space weather events

by SKOLKOVO INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (SKOLTECH), August 15, 2020 in WUWT/Rotter

Scientists at Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech), together with colleagues from the Karl-Franzens University of Graz & the Kanzelhöhe Observatory (Austria), Jet Propulsion Laboratory of California Institute of Technology (USA), Helioresearch (USA) and Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Russia) developed a method to study fast Coronal Mass Ejections, powerful ejections of magnetized matter from the outer atmosphere of the Sun. The results can help to better understand and predict the most extreme space weather events and their potential to cause strong geomagnetic storms that directly affect the operation of engineering systems in space and on Earth. The results of the study are published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Coronal Mass Ejections are among the most energetic eruptive phenomena in our solar system and the main source of major space weather events. Huge clouds of plasma and magnetic flux are ejected from the atmosphere of the Sun into the surrounding space with speeds ranging from 100 to 3500 km/s. These gigantic solar plasma clouds and the accompanying powerful shock waves can reach our planet in less than a day, causing severe geomagnetic storms posing hazards to astronauts and technology in space and on Earth.

One of the strongest Space Weather events occurred in 1859 when the induced geomagnetic storm collapsed the whole telegraph system in North America and Europe, the main means of communication for business and personal contacts in those days.

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climate-debate

“Low-Fact Propaganda”: Spiegel’s Alarmism Exposed (Again), Greenland Ice Not “Doomed”

by P. Gosselin, August 16, 2020 in NoTricksZone

German skeptic site Die Kalte Sonne here debunks a recent alarmist article appearing in Spiegel aimed at shocking its readers. The reality, it turns out, is not shocking at all.

Greenland ice doomed?

According to Spiegel, the Greenland ice sheet is already doomed (that is unless we skip the usual democratic process and just act immediately).

Spiegel claims Greenland “glaciers are continuously losing huge masses of ice” and that the system there is “dramatically off balance”. The leftist Hamburg-based weekly reported:

The melting of the glaciers on Greenland has apparently passed the point of no return. Even if the global rise in temperature were to stop immediately, the ice sheet would continue to retreat, report researchers led by Michalea King of Ohio State University report in the journal “Communications Earth and Environment“.

Read more at Spiegel

4°C warmer 11,000 years ago

But Die kalte Sonne wondered if this were really so, and needed only 2 mouse clicks to find a recent temperature reconstruction for Greenland’s past (Lecavalier et al. 2017, pdf here). The paper’s Figure 4a  shows the temperatures, with the temperature of 1950 at the far right which in paleo-climatology is always meant as “present”.

Thus, 11,000 years ago, it was up to 4°C warmer than in 1950 over long periods of thousands of years, and today the warming has been about 1°C since then. Since we can see an ice sheet of 2,850,000 km³ (that is roughly Gt) today, the “point of no return” cannot have been exceeded 10,000 years ago. How does the heading then come about? We take a look at the associated work by King et al. 2020:

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better to know...?, climate-debate

[VIDEO] NEW SOUTH WALES KANGAROOS GO TOE-TO-TOE IN THE SNOW DURING RECORD-BREAKING ANTARCTIC BLAST

by Cap Allon, August 12, 2020 in Electroverse

An Antarctic blast has brought record-breaking low temperatures and blizzard conditions across much of Australia this August, according to the Bureau of Meteorology — and even the kangas appear to have had their fill of it.

he heavy snowfall in New South Wales over recent days led to one lucky local capturing a pair of kangaroos going toe-to-toe in the driving snow:

see video

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climate-debate

Extensively-Referenced Study Of Past Scientists’ Global Temperature Estimates Suggests ‘No Change’ In 100 Years

by K. Richard, August 13, 2020 in NoTricksZone

In the early 1900s, the globally-averaged distribution of calculated surface temperature estimates ranged between 14 and 15°C. For 1991-2018, HadCRUT, Berkeley, and NASA GISS also estimate today’s global temperature is about 14.5°C.

Scientists estimating Earth’s surface temperature has been an ongoing pursuit since the early 19th century.

A new study (Kramm et al., 2020) suggests the generally agreed-upon global temperature from 1877 to 1913 from dozens of calculated results was about 14.4°C.

Problematically, HadCRUT, Berkley, and NASA GISS also indicate the 1991-2018 had a global surface temperature of about 14.5°C.

This would suggest there has been “no change in the globally averaged near-surface temperature over the past 100 years”.

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climate-debate

Claim: Past evidence supports complete loss of Arctic sea-ice by 2035

by BRITISH ANTARCTIC SURVEY, August 3, 2020 in WUWT/Ch. Rotter

A new study, published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change, supports predictions that the Arctic could be free of sea ice by 2035.

BRITISH ANTARCTIC SURVEY

A new study, published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change, supports predictions that the Arctic could be free of sea ice by 2035.

High temperatures in the Arctic during the last interglacial – the warm period around 127,000 years ago – have puzzled scientists for decades. Now the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre climate model has enabled an international team of researchers to compare Arctic sea ice conditions during the last interglacial with present day. Their findings are important for improving predictions of future sea ice change.

During spring and early summer, shallow pools of water form on the surface of Arctic sea-ice. These ‘melt ponds’ are important for how much sunlight is absorbed by the ice and how much is reflected back into space. The new Hadley Centre model is the UK’s most advanced physical representation of the Earth’s climate and a critical tool for climate research and incorporates sea-ice and melt ponds.

Using the model to look at Arctic sea ice during the last interglacial, the team concludes that the impact of intense springtime sunshine created many melt ponds, which played a crucial role in sea-ice melt. A simulation of the future using the same model indicates that the Arctic may become sea ice-free by 2035.

Joint lead author Dr Maria Vittoria Guarino, Earth System Modeller at British Antarctic Survey (BAS), says:

“High temperatures in the Arctic have puzzled scientists for decades. …

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climate-debate

The Tyranny Of Global Warmists Is Worse Than You Think

by D. Solway, August 11, 2020 in ClimateChangeDispatch

“The more one has paid for a forgery, the more one defends it in the face of all the evidence to the contrary,” writes John Le Carré in his novel about espionage and deception, Smiley’s People.

This certainly seems to be the case with the four major weather-tracking agencies: the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, the Remote Sensing Systems Inc. in California, and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York (NASA GISS).

In a previous article for The Pipeline, I examined the malfeasance of the influential Hadley Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, where two major email dumps (aka “Climategate”) showed the outfit’s determined efforts to fudge the data, suppress unfavorable results and eliminate dissenting voices.

This should have put the “global warming” farce to bed once and for all, but the deception shows no sign of abating.

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climate-debate

Le 20ème siècle a été anormalement chaud mais le 21ème siècle revient à la normale (1/2)

by Jean Van Vliet, 14 août 2020, in ScienceClimatEnergie

Introduction

Suite à la prise de conscience à la fin du 20ème siècle d’une hausse inhabituelle des températures terrestres, des chercheurs américains ont développé une théorie du réchauffement global basé sur l’effet de serre dû au CO2 [1], en soulignant la responsabilité possible de l’homme dans le réchauffement observé: la poursuite des émissions de CO2 conduirait à une éventuelle catastrophe planétaire. Ces  chercheurs ont présenté leur théorie au Congrès américain [2] et aux médias. Le monde politique international a réagi rapidement à cet alarmisme [3] en permettant à Assemblée Générale de l’ONU de décembre 1988 d’approuver la mise en place du GIEC [4].

Depuis plus de trente ans et malgré le manque persistant de preuve formelle, la peur du réchauffement global anthropique causé par le CO2 est propagée sans relâche par l’ONU et ses satellites PNUE, GIEC et OMM relayés par les ONG environnementales et les médias, suivis plus récemment par une fraction du monde académique occidental. Une puissante industrie des énergies renouvelables a été créée via des subsides et des certificats verts quitte à doubler ou tripler le prix de l’électricité. Cette industrie est prête à exploiter les nouvelles aubaines financières annoncées par l’Accord de Paris et le Green Deal de l’UE. Dans un tel contexte, le but avoué est que l’humanité change radicalement son comportement, fût-ce au prix d’une dictature environnementale: l’alarmisme médiatique est maximal, et même les enfants sont embrigadés dans le débat pour soi-disant “sauver la planète”.

Cette tentative rampante de prise du pouvoir a cependant buté contre un obstacle imprévu depuis le début de 2020, à savoir la pandémie du Coronavirus: le lockdown sanitaire a montré que la société pouvait changer son comportement de manière spectaculaire, mais au prix de conséquences économiques et sociales majeures. A la première attaque de la pandémie succède aujourd’hui une deuxième vague et il semble impossible de prévoir quand nous serons délivrés du virus.

Les ressources des Etats n’étant pas infinies, la question brûlante se pose aujourd’hui  de l’affectation des moyens humains et financiers disponibles en fonction nos priorités: devons-nous avoir davantage peur d’une pandémie et de ses conséquences sociales et économiques incontestables ou devons-nous supputer une explosion incontrôlable de la crise climatique amorcée au 20ème siècle et modifiant de manière drastique et irréversible notre environnement ?

Le but du présent article est d’apporter des éléments de réponse à cette question en examinant, dans une perspective scientifique large et basée sur les observations plutôt que sur les modèles, la “crise climatique” démarrée durant la seconde moitié du 20ème siècle en essayant de tirer des conclusions applicables au 21èmesiècle.

1/ La crise ‘climatique du 20ème siècle

Il existe de nombreuses sources fournissant des historiques de température, mais il existe peu de séries chronologiques comparables à celle de l’Observatoire d’Armagh en Irlande du Nord pour la période 1796-2002 [5]; cette série est disponible sur le site web du Met Office britannique pour la période allant de 2002 à aujourd’hui [6].

Figure 1 : Evolution des températures moyennes annuelles de 1796 à 2019 (courbe bleue) ainsi qu’une courbe lissée correspondant à la moyenne glissante rétrospective sur une période de 11 ans (courbe rouge).

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climate-debate

Media Blame Isaias On Climate Change – As Hurricane Numbers Decline

by H.S. Burnett, August 10, 2020 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Hurricane Isaias hadn’t even made landfall in the United States before the media began proclaiming Isaias was the result of human-caused climate change.

Not only is there no evidence for such a claim, but hurricane numbers have been declining as global temperatures modestly warm.

Also, even the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) disputes any connection between global warming and hurricanes.

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climate-debate

Large Increase In Number Of Sunshine Hours Likely Behind Warming, Glacier Retreat In Alps Since 1980

by P. Gosselin, August 9, 2020 in NoTricksZone

Today global warming alarmists insist blaming climate change on man-made CO2 emissions. Yet, everywhere we look it’s difficult to find any correlation between CO2 and warming. Pre-industrial history shows that changes in CO2 in fact followed temperature changes.

Today we look at some climate charts of the European upper Ostalpen to look for hints what may be behind the warming since the late 20th century. We know glaciers there have been receding over the recent decades.

First is a mean temperature chart of the region for the May to September period going back 133 years:

 

Chart cropped from video “Die Alpengletscher im Klimawandel: Status quo“, by Günther Aigner

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climate-debate

New Study: A Southern Ocean Site Has Just Cooled To Ice Age-Era Temperatures – 2°C Colder Than 20,000 Years Ago

by K. Richard, August 10, 2020 in NoTricksZone

A new temperature reconstruction indicates today’s sea surface temperatures are colder than all but a few millennia out of the last 156,000 years.

A Southern Ocean site analyzed in a new study (Ghadi et al., 2020) has averaged 1-2°C during glacials and 4°C during interglacials. Today, with a 410 ppm CO2 concentration, this location has again plummeted to glacial/ice age levels (2°C).

The site was 2°C warmer than now when CO2 concentrations were 180 ppm about 20,000 years ago, or during the peak of the last ice age. During the Early Holocene (10,000 to 8,000 years ago), summer sea surface temperatures were also 2°C warmer than today.

There is no indication that CO2 concentration changes are in any way correlated with temperature changes throughout this entire 156,000-year epoch.

climate-debate

by Cap Allon, August 7, 2020 in Electroverse

According to official government data from the National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC), 2020’s Antarctic Sea Ice Extent is tracking the 1979-1990 average.

Climate alarmists take note, the ice locked within Antarctica is far more important to your hokey climate theories than that contained in its northern cousin the Arctic.

The Antarctic contains 90% of our planet’s ice, and, therefore, if Antarctica isn’t melting then any potential sea-level rise will be severely limited.

And Antarctica isn’t melting.

According to the latest NSIDC data, sea ice extent around the southern pole has been tracking the 1979-1990 average ALL YEAR:

[nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph]

In addition, August 2020’s extent is currently greater than it was in the 1980s:

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climate-debate

First Time In 70 Years No Pacific Typhoon Forms In July… Alarmists Alarmed Typhoon Trend Falling!

by P. Gosselin, Ausgust 1, 2020 in NoTricksZone

This year is the first time since 1951 the Pacific sees no typhoons in the month of July. Typhoons have seen downward trend since 1951. 

Global warming alarmists like to claim that tropical storms will intensify and become more frequent unless people stop using fossil fuels.

And recently these alarmists have had our attention steered to the Atlantic basin, where tropical storms this year have seen quite an active season thus far.

Another reason the focus has been on the Atlantic is because very little has been happening in terms of Pacific typhoons, and the alarmists don’t want to talk about that.

In fact this July is the first July to have seen no typhoons formed in the Pacific at all since statistics on this began in 1951, according to the data from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA).

Data source: JMA, here and here. 

Normally between 3 to 4 typhoons form in the Pacific in July. Up to 8 have formed in the past, e.g. on 2017 and 1971. But this year July failed to see a single typhoon form – the first time this has occurred since 1951.

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climate and geology, climate-debate

Satellite survey shows California’s sinking coastal hotspots

by Arizona State University, August 2, 2020 in WUWT

A majority of the world population lives on low lying lands near the sea, some of which are predicted to submerge by the end of the 21st century due to rising sea levels.

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The most relevant quantity for assessing the impacts of sea-level change on these communities is the relative sea-level rise – the elevation change between the Earth’s surface height and sea surface height. For an observer standing on the coastland, relative sea-level rise is the net change in the sea level, which also includes the rise and fall of the land beneath observer’s feet.

Now, using precise measurements from state-of-the-art satellite-based interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) that can detect the land surface rise and fall with millimeter accuracy, an Arizona State University research team has, for the first time, tracked the entire California coast’s vertical land motion.

They’ve identified local hotspots of the sinking coast, in the cities of San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Cruz and San Francisco, with a combined population of 4 to 8 million people exposed to rapid land subsidence, who will be at a higher flooding risk during the decades ahead of projected sea-level rise.

“We have ushered in a new era of coastal mapping at greater than 1,000 fold higher detail and resolution than ever before,” said Manoochehr Shirzaei, who is the principal investigator of the NASA-funded project. “The unprecedented detail and submillimeter accuracy resolved in our vertical land motion dataset can transform the understanding of natural and anthropogenic changes in relative sea-level and associated hazards.”

The results were published in this week’s issue of Science Advances (DOI link here).

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climate-debate

NASA “CLIMATE PROPHET” JAMES HANSEN SAID THE ARCTIC WOULD BE “FREE OF SUMMER ICE” BY 2018

by Cap Allon, August 2, 2020 in Electroverse

Bolstered by the sycophantic-praise he received following his 1988 Congressional testimony on man-made global warming, NASA climate scientist/activist James Edward Hansen continued his prophesies well into the 2000s–despite his ever-growing list of climate fails.

“The greenhouse effect is here,” pronounced doomsayer Hansen back on June 23, 1988.

“We’re [still] toast,” he repeated with a straight face 20 years later, in 2008.

in preparation for his 1988 Congressional testimony, scientists/activist Hansen produced three potential scenarios regarding the future trend for global average temperatures:

A) “Business As Usual” — if human’s did nothing regarding rising CO2 levels.

B) If we “moderately” reduced CO2 emissions.

C) If atmospheric carbon dioxide was reduced to year 2000 levels.

 

Real-world observations reveal Hansen’s projections were way off. Scenarios A and Bsignificantly over-predict the warming trend. And digging into the data, A overstates CO2 and other greenhouse gas growth and rejects against the observations; Scenario B slightly understates CO2 growth, overstates methane and CFCs and zeroes-out other greenhouse gas growth, and it too significantly overstates the warming.

The scenario that best-matches the observations is C — the one where Hansen has CO2 topping-out at 368 ppm in 2000 but then sees it fixed at that level thereafter–something that obviously didn’t happen. It’s this drastic “halt the industrial revolution” scenario that ended up with a warming trend most like the real-world observations.

Here is one thought, proposed by climate scientist John Christy:

Suppose Hansen had offered a Scenario D, in which greenhouse gases continue to rise, but after the 1990s they have very little effect on the climate. That would play out similarly in his modeled Scenario C, and it would match the data — this hypothetical Scenario D is the reality we’re living today.

James Edward Hansen is still considered a “climate prophet” by many, but his 1988 scenarios simply DO NOT FIT THE DATA–speaking of which, let’s look at his Arctic sea ice predictions.

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climate-debate

A snapshot of melting Arctic sea ice during the summer of 2018

by C. Rotter, July 30, 2020 in WUWT

 

IMAGE: THIS FIGURE SHOWS THE SEA ICE CONCENTRATION AND THICKNESS IN THE ARCTIC ON SEPTEMBER 23RD 2018. view more CREDIT: JUHI YADAV

As sea ice in the Arctic retreats further and melts faster every decade, scientists are racing to understand the vulnerabilities of one of the world’s most remote and unforgiving places. A study appearing July 29 in the journal Heliyon details the changes that occurred in the Arctic in September of 2018, a year when nearly 10 million kilometers of sea ice were lost over the course of the summer. Their findings give an overview at different timescales of how sea ice has receded over the 40 years of the satellite era and show how the summer’s extensive decline is linked to global atmospheric processes as far south as the tropics.

At the peak of its melting season, in July 2018, the Arctic was losing sea ice at a rate of 105,500 square kilometers per day–an area bigger than Iceland or the state of Kentucky. “On the ground, I am sure it would have looked like an excellent summer month in the Arctic, in general, but over the past four decades, September sea-ice loss has accelerated to a rate of 12.8% per decade and 82,300 square kilometers per year,” says co-author Avinash Kumar, a senior scientist at the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research (NCPOR) in India.

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climate-debate

EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE HAS NO “WALLS” OR “LID” — GREENHOUSE GAS THEORY IS BOTH MATHEMATICALLY AND PHYSICALLY WRONG

by Cap Allon, July 30, 2020 in Electroverse

“The CO2 greenhouse effect of the Earth’s atmosphere is a pure fiction of people who like to use large computers, without physical bases.” — Gerhard Gerlich ph.D.

Over the years, scientific paper after scientific paper has contended the entire foundation of the man-made global-warming theory is wrong. However, those in control of the agenda selectively choose which papers/theories the public can hear about, and, in turn, which get swept under the rug.

One such paper the ill-informed street-sheep have likely never heard of is that published in the journal “Environment Pollution and Climate Change” back in 2017–the “door-opener to a new paradigm,” former IPCC reviewer Nils-Axel Mörner is quoted as calling it (Mörner left the UN after realizing it was not truly interested in science).

“New Insights on the Physical Nature of the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect Deduced from an Empirical Planetary Temperature Model” argues that concentrations of CO2 and other supposed “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere have virtually no effect on the earth’s temperature — it concludes the entire greenhouse gas theory is incorrect.

As reported by wnd.com, the prevailing theory on the earth’s temperature is that heat from the Sun enters the atmosphere, and then greenhouse gases such as CO2, methane, and water vapor trap part of that energy by preventing it from escaping back into space.

That theory, which underpins the anthropogenic global-warming hypothesis and the climate models used by the United Nations, was first proposed and developed in the 19th century.

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climate-debate

New evidence that an extraterrestrial collision 12,800 years ago triggered an abrupt climate change for Earth

by C. Rotter, July 27, 2020 in WUWT

Christopher R. Moore, University of South Carolina

What kicked off the Earth’s rapid cooling 12,800 years ago?

In the space of just a couple of years, average temperatures abruptly dropped, resulting in temperatures as much as 14 degrees Fahrenheit cooler in some regions of the Northern Hemisphere. If a drop like that happened today, it would mean the average temperature of Miami Beach would quickly change to that of current Montreal, Canada. Layers of ice in Greenland show that this cool period in the Northern Hemisphere lasted about 1,400 years.

This climate event, called the Younger Dryas by scientists, marked the beginning of a decline in ice-age megafauna, such as mammoth and mastodon, eventually leading to extinction of more than 35 genera of animals across North America. Although disputed, some research suggests that Younger Dryas environmental changes led to a population decline among the Native Americans known for their distinctive Clovis spear points.

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A collision from space would leave its mark on Earth. Vadim Sadovski/Shutterstock.com

What would an Earth impact leave behind?

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Peter Ridd loses, we all lose

by J. Marohasy, July 23, 2020 in TheSpectator

On 2 May 2018, Professor Peter Ridd was sacked by James Cook University for serious misconduct. It all started when he called-out his colleague Terry Hughes for falsely claiming healthy inshore coral reefs were dead from climate change and deteriorating water quality.

Ignoring the first censure in April 2016, Professor Ridd went on television in August 2017 and explained in an interview with Alan Jones and Peta Credlin why so much said and written about the Great Barrier Reef, including by scientists at the Australian Institution of Marine Science, is ‘untrustworthy’.

The interview was to promote a book that I edited, Climate Change: The Facts 2017. The book, published by the Institute of Public Affairs, begins with a chapter about the Great Barrier Reef in which the orthodoxy on Great Barrier Reef science is challenged, in particular reporting on coral calcification rates. In that interview – that contributed directly to Peter Ridd’s sacking – the main argument was, and continues to be, for better quality assurance of coral reef science.

It is a fact that the Australian Institute of Marine Science refuses to release 15 years of coral growth data – because it contradicts the claims of high-profile activists that coral growth rates are in decline. They are not. But the false claims are central to their fundraising strategy. Never mind the truth.

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Also: from GWPF, July 27 2020

Climate Hysteria Has Killed Academic Freedom

Censorship Universities May Not Receive Bail Out Funding
better to know...?, climate-debate

Greenpeace Cofounder: ‘There Is No Climate Catastrophe – It’s A Lie’

by 21Wire, July 24, 2020 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Power Hour host Alex Epstein  discusses the alleged ‘climate catastrophe’ with Dr. Patrick Moore, ecologist and co-founder of Greenpeace. 

Incredibly, Moore completely eviscerates the concept of “climate catastrophism,” and dismantles the claim that man-made CO2 levels are warming the planet beyond a tipping point of human survival.

Moore makes a number of strong arguments that debunk the IPCC’s increasingly problematic pseudo-scientific and anti-human narrative which is being parroted by climate change activists and the likes of Greta Thunberg.

He explains:

  • Why Moore left Greenpeace.

  • The beginnings of the climate catastrophe movement.

  • Why Moore believes human beings would not only survive but survive better at far higher average temperatures (which would be concentrated toward the poles).

  • Why Moore believes that contrary to being in a Sixth Extinction, we are actually at an unprecedented time of biodiversity with no end in sight.

  • Why Moore believes “ocean acidification” claims are totally meritless.

  • The commonality among the opposition to plastics, GMOs, nuclear energy, and fossil fuels.

  • Moore’s unrefuted theory that human beings actually saved life on Earth from a terminal decline in CO2 levels.

Watch this highly informative interview:

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climate-debate

Modern Ancient Temperatures

by W. Eschenbach, July 24, 2020 in WUWT

OK, no need to torture me, I confess it—I’m a data junkie.

And when I see a new (to me at least) high-resolution dataset, my knees get weak. Case in point? The temperature dataset of the Colle Gnifetti ice core. It has a two-year resolution thanks to some new techniques. Better, it stretches clear back to the year 800. And best, it extends up to near the present, 2006. This lets us compare it to modern datasets. The analysis of the ice core dataset is described in Temperature and mineral dust variability recorded in two low-accumulation Alpine ice cores over the last millennium by Pascal Bohleber et al.

Let me start with where Colle Gnifetti is located. Unusual among ice core records, it’s from Europe, specifically in the Alps on the border of Switzerland and Italy.

Figure 1. Location of the ice cores in the study.

This is good because some of the longest thermometer-based temperature records are in Europe.

One interesting thing about the site is that usually, ice core drilling occurs at the literal ends of the earth, in Antarctica and Greenland and the like. But this site is not far from the foot of the Margherita Hut, which is at over 4500 metres elevation.

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Further Reading: It’s instructive to compare the listed temperatures with the data in A Chronological Listing of Early Weather Events.

climate-debate

Persistent warm Mediterranean surface waters during the Roman period

by Margaritelli G. et al., June20, 2020 in Nature OPEN ACESS

Abstract

Reconstruction of last millennia Sea Surface Temperature (SST) evolution is challenging due to the difficulty retrieving good resolution marine records and to the several uncertainties in the available proxy tools. In this regard, the Roman Period (1 CE to 500 CE) was particularly relevant in the socio-cultural development of the Mediterranean region while its climatic characteristics remain uncertain. Here we present a new SST reconstruction from the Sicily Channel based in Mg/Ca ratios measured on the planktonic foraminifer Globigerinoides ruber. This new record is framed in the context of other previously published Mediterranean SST records from the Alboran Sea, Minorca Basin and Aegean Sea and also compared to a north Hemisphere temperature reconstruction. The most solid image that emerges of this trans-Mediterranean comparison is the persistent regional occurrence of a distinct warm phase during the Roman Period. This record comparison consistently shows the Roman as the warmest period of the last 2 kyr, about 2 °C warmer than average values for the late centuries for the Sicily and Western Mediterranean regions. After the Roman Period a general cooling trend developed in the region with several minor oscillations. We hypothesis the potential link between this Roman Climatic Optimum and the expansion and subsequent decline of the Roman Empire.

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See also  Roman Warm Period Was 3.6°F Warmer Than Today, New Study Shows

 See also here (GWPF)
climate-debate

Latest Polar Bear Scare Shredded By Susan Crockford

by P. Homewood, July 22, 2020 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

Apparently, a prediction that polar bears could be nearly extinct by 2100 (which was first suggested back in 2007) is news today because there is a new model. As for all previous models, this prediction of future polar bear devastation depends on using the so-called ‘business as usual’ RCP8.5 climate scenario, which has been roundly criticized in recent years as totally implausible, which even the BBC has mentioned. This new model, published today as a pay-walled paper in Nature Climate Change, also did something I warned against in my last post: it uses polar bear data collected up to 2009 only from Western Hudson Bay – which is an outlier in many respects – to predict the response of bears worldwide. The lead author, Peter Molnar, is a former student of vocal polar bear catastrophist Andrew Derocher – who himself learned his trade from the king of polar bear calamity forecasts, Ian Stirling. Steven Amstrup, another co-author of this paper, provided the ‘expert opinion’ for the failed USGS polar bear extinction model featured in my book, The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened.

Well, these authors and their supporters got the headlines they crave, including coverage by outlets like the BBC and New York Times (see below) but I have to say that the combination of using out-of-date Western Hudson Bay information on when polar bears come ashore in summer and leave for the ice in fall (only to 2009) to make vague projections (‘possible’, ‘likely’, ‘very likely’) about all other subpopulations in addition to depending on the most extreme and now discredited RCP8.5 climate scenario (Hausfather and Peters 2020) for this newest polar bear survival model is all that’s needed to dismiss it as exaggerated-fear-mongering-by-proxy. Why would anyone believe that the output of this new model describes a plausible future for polar bears?

Meanwhile, polar bear populations worldwide continue to thrive despite declines in sea ice. And as I have pointed out on numerous occasions, the ice free period for WH has not continued to decline since 1998 but rather has remained stable (with yearly variation) at about 3 weeks longer than it was in the 1980s (Castro de la Guardia et al 2017). Moreover, for the last five years at least, including this one, the ice-free season for WH bears has been better (only 1-2 weeks longer than the 1980s), although no official data on this phenomenon has yet been published. Oddly, this more recent data for Hudson Bay was not used for the Molnar model.

 

Susan’s full account is here.

better to know...?, climate-debate, energy and fields, renewable energy

The Dutch have decided: Burning biomass is not sustainable

by D. Janssen, July 21, 2020 in Euractiv

The Netherlands should phase out the use of biomass for generating electricity as soon as possible, the advisory board of the Dutch government said in a report presented earlier this month.

Biomass is an “indispensable” resource for the circular economy, but burning it is wasteful.

That is the main message of the report issued on 8 July by the Socio-Economic Council (SER), an independent advisory board of the Dutch government consisting of entrepreneurs, employees and independent experts.

In the chemical industry, the building sector and agriculture, biological materials are crucial for the transition to a circular economy, the council writes. But sustainably produced biomass is too scarce to keep using it for the production of heat or electricity, for which other low-carbon and renewable alternatives exist, the report states.

Accordingly, the billions worth of subsidies that were intended for biomass combustion plants should be phased out as well, the advisors say, calling however for measures to preserve “investment security” when designing a phase-out plan.

This means compensation should be handed out to companies who stand to lose out from the abrupt end of bioenergy subsidies.

EU member states are increasingly turning their coal plants into biomass plants in an effort to cut carbon emissions. [Mizzou CAFNR / Flickr]

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