Archives de catégorie : climate-debate

climate-debate

PETITION OF THE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF CARBON DIOXIDE AND GLOBAL CHANGE …

by EPA, March 9, 2020 in CO2Science

Table of Contents .pdf (138p.)

I. Introduction  4

II. Scientific observations reveal rising greenhouse gases present no imminent threat to human health and welfare . 5

A. There is nothing unusual or unnatural about Earth’s current warmth or rate of warming. Historic and modern records of atmospheric CO2 and temperature violate established principles of causation. Model-based temperature projections since 1979 artificially inflate warming (compered to observations) by a factor of three, invalidating the models and all their ancillary claims associated with greenhouse gas-induced warming5

B. Observations reveal key adverse effects of greenhouse gas-induced warming are not occurring despite EPA predictions they should be worsening16

  1. How to Properly Test for a CO2-induced Influence on Extreme Weather 17
  2. Extreme Weather Observations and Trends 24 (i)Hurricanes 24 (ii)
  3. Storms29 (iii) Floods34 (iv) Drought 37 (v) Fires. 40
  4. Temperature-induced Mortality 45
  5. Sea Level Rise 50

III. CO2 emissions and fossil energy use initiated, and continue to sustain, the industrial revolution and the many human and environmental benefits that have emerged therefrom, which benefits have enhanced human health and welfare 56

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Despite Mild Winter, Europe February Mean Temperatures Show No Warming Over Three Decades

by P. Gosselin, March 13, 2020 in NoTricksZone

By Kirye
and Pierre Gosselin

It’s been a particularly mild winter in Europe this year. But that hasn’t changed the long-term trend over the past 30 years.

Now that the February 2020 data have been coming in, we plot the mean February temperatures for some countries in Europe.

Sweden

Three of 5 stations show February mean temperature in Greta Thunberg’s Sweden have had a cooling trend since 1988! The real data will probably make the climate alarmists upset.

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climate-debate

More On Earth’s Meaningless Global Temperature, Now And Before

by J. Moseley, March 9, 2020 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Is planet Earth warming, cooling, or staying the same? I often challenge advocates for climate alarmism: what is the temperature of the planet today?

Or we can use any specific day in recent years for which data are available. We cannot know the temperature of the planet thousands or millions of years ago if we cannot even measure it today.

Yes, the question is one single temperature of the entire planet. Not the temperature in Nome, Alaska, or Dallas, Texas, or Sydney, Australia, or in your hometown.

One single temperature reading for the entire globe. To put it that way immediately sounds strange.

But if we don’t have a single temperature reading for the entire planet for today, how can we say if the planet is getting warmer or cooler or not changing at all?

We cannot talk about the temperature in, say, Geneva or London or New York City only. The question is whether the entire planet is getting warmer, not isolated cities.

Some of us have forgotten basic statistics. Some avoided it in school. But most of us are vaguely familiar with the random sampling process used in public opinion surveys.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Met Office Does Not Know What “Extreme Weather” Is.

by P. Homewood, March 9, 2020 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/press-office/news/weather-and-climate/2019/weather-overview-2019

According to the Met Office, 2019 was a year of weather extremes in the UK. There is actually very little evidence to back this claim up, but this does not stop them ludicrously claiming one mild day in February as “extreme”!

To most people, extreme weather would be the sort of stuff our ancestors experienced in this very week in 1891:

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better to know...?, climate-debate

‘HO! FOR THE POLE!’ — DID DUTCH SHIPS REACH THE 89TH LATITUDE IN 1665 AND 1675?

by H. Hardrada, March 8, 2020 in Electroverse

I [Harry Hardrada] recently unearthed an intriguing piece of literature from a 19th century periodical named ‘Ho! For the Pole!’ in Littell’s Living Age, Volume 66 (1860).

The paper highlights various voyages to the North Pole throughout the 17th-18th centuries with meticulous detail. It appears, according to the article, that many wooden ships penetrated as far north as the 89th latitude in ‘open iceless seas’ during this time — as in 1665 and 1675.

A bit far-fetched?

Perhaps, on the face of it… but there is some good evidence out there which may suggest otherwise.

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climate-debate

NASA satellite offers urban carbon dioxide insights

by University of Utah, March 8, 2020 in WUWT

CO2 measurements from OCO-2 in parts per million over Las Vegas on Feb. 8, 2018. Credit: Dien Wu/University of Utah

A new NASA/university study of carbon dioxide emissions for 20 major cities around the world provides the first direct, satellite-based evidence that as a city’s population density increases, the carbon dioxide it emits per person declines, with some notable exceptions. The study also demonstrates how satellite measurements of this powerful greenhouse gas can give fast-growing cities new tools to track carbon dioxide emissions and assess the impact of policy changes and infrastructure improvements on their energy efficiency.

Cities account for more than 70% of global carbon dioxide emissions associated with energy production, and rapid, ongoing urbanization is increasing their number and size. But some densely populated cities emit more carbon dioxide per capita than others.

To better understand why, atmospheric scientists Dien Wu and John Lin of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City teamed with colleagues at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. They calculated per capita carbon dioxide emissions for 20 urban areas on several continents using recently available carbon dioxide estimates from NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite, managed by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Cities spanning a range of population densities were selected based on the quality and quantity of OCO-2 data available for them. Cities with minimal vegetation were preferred because plants can absorb and emit carbon dioxide, complicating the interpretation of the measurements. Two U.S. cities were included–Las Vegas and Phoenix.

Continuer la lecture de NASA satellite offers urban carbon dioxide insights →

better to know...?, climate-debate

Arctic Meltdown Latest

by P. Homewood, March 3, 2020 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

Arctic sea ice extent continues to run well ahead of the last few years, as it has done for most of this year so far, and continues to grow at a time of year when it normally begins to stabilise and recede.

Average extent in February was the highest since 2013, and stands greater than 2005 and 2006:

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover_30y.uk.php

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climate-debate

Sorry Greta, Climate ‘Experts’ Are 0-41 With Wrong Predictions

by Mark Simone, March 5, 2020 in ClimateChangeDispatch

For more than 50 years, climate alarmists in the scientific community and environmental movement have not gotten even one prediction correct, but they do have a perfect record of getting 41 predictions wrong.

List Of Doomsday Predictions That Climate Alarmist Got Wrong:

Here is the source for numbers 1-27. As you will see, the individual sources are not crackpots, but scientific studies and media reports on “expert” predictions.

The sources for numbers 28 to 41 are linked individually.

  1. 1967: Dire Famine Forecast By 1975
  2. 1969: Everyone Will Disappear In a Cloud Of Blue Steam By 1989 (1969)
  3. 1970: Ice Age By 2000
  4. 1970: America Subject to Water Rationing By 1974 and Food Rationing By 1980
  5. 1971: New Ice Age Coming By 2020 or 2030
  6. 1972: New Ice Age By 2070
  7. 1974: Space Satellites Show New Ice Age Coming Fast
  8. 1974: Another Ice Age?
  9. 1974: Ozone Depletion a ‘Great Peril to Life
  10. 1976: Scientific Consensus Planet Cooling, Famines imminent
  11. 1980: Acid Rain Kills Life In Lakes
  12. 1978: No End in Sight to 30-Year Cooling Trend
  13. 1988: Regional Droughts (that never happened) in the 1990s
  14. 1988: Temperatures in DC Will Hit Record Highs
  15. 1988: The Maldive Islands will Be Underwater by 2018 (they’re not)
  16. 1989: Rising Sea Levels will Obliterate Nations if Nothing Done by 2000
  17. 1989: New York City’s West Side Highway Underwater by 2019 (it’s not)
  18. 2000: Children Won’t Know What Snow Is
  19. 2002: Famine In 10 Years If We Don’t Give Up Eating Fish, Meat, and Dairy
  20. 2004: Britain will Be Siberia by 2024
  21. 2008: The Arctic will Be Ice Free by 2018
  22. 2008: Climate Genius Al Gore Predicts Ice-Free Arctic by 2013
  23. 2009: Climate Genius Prince Charles Says we Have 96 Months to Save World
  24. 2009: UK Prime Minister Says 50 Days to ‘Save The Planet From Catastrophe’
  25. 2009: Climate Genius Al Gore Moves 2013 Prediction of Ice-Free Arctic to 2014
  26. 2013: Arctic Ice-Free by 2015
  27. 2014: Only 500 Days Before ‘Climate Chaos’
  28. 1968: Overpopulation Will Spread Worldwide
  29. 1970: World Will Use Up All its Natural Resources
  30. 1966: Oil Gone in Ten Years
  31. 1970: Urban Citizens Will Require Gas Masks by 1985
  32. 1970: Nitrogen buildup Will Make All Land Unusable
  33. 1970: Decaying Pollution Will Kill all the Fish
  34. 1970s: Killer Bees!
  35. 1972: Oil Depleted in 20 Years
  36. 1977: Department of Energy Says Oil will Peak in the 90s
  37. 1980: Peak Oil In 2000
  38. 1996: Peak Oil in 2020
  39. 2002: Peak Oil in 2010
  40. 2005: Manhattan Underwater by 2015
  41. 2006: Super Hurricanes!

Sorry, Experts… Sorry, Scientific Consensus… Only a fool comes running for the 42nd cry of wolf.

climate-debate

La neige n’est pas prête de disparaître…

by SCE-info, 6 mars 2020 in ScienceClimatEnergie

Depuis le début des mesures satellitaires en 1967, la couverture neigeuse de l’hémisphère nord a augmentée en automne et en hiver. Ce phénomène incontestable a par exemple été illustré en graphiques par un laboratoire spécialisé dans les chutes de neige à la Rutgers University aux Etats Unis, le Global Snow Lab, mais également par l’Organisation Météorologique Mondiale.

Pour l’automne, on est ainsi passé de 18,4 106 km2 de neige en 1967 à environ 20,2 106 km2pour 2019 (Figure 1). Pour l’hiver, la situation est plutôt stable ou en légère augmentation : on est ainsi passé de 45,3 à 46,0 106 km2 de neige dans l’hémisphère nord (Figure 2). Par contre, pour le printemps on constate une diminution de 31,5 à 28,7  106 km2, une chute d’environ 9% (Figure 3).

Les données de l’Institut météorologique finlandais (FMI), présentées sur le site internet d’un organe de l’Organisation Météorologique Mondiale (Global Cryosphere Watch), révèlent également que la masse totale de neige pour l’hémisphère Nord a été constamment supérieure à la moyenne de 30 ans pendant la majeure partie de la saison 2020 et que son taux de croissance est en augmentation (Figure 4).

Conclusion : dire que la neige disparait en automne ou en hiver à cause du réchauffement global est donc une contre-vérité. Cela peut être vrai au niveau local, mais pas pour l’ensemble de l’hémisphère nord. Concernant cet hémisphère, une diminution n’est visible que pour le printemps.

Pour un rappel des épisodes neigeux remarquables en Belgique cliquez ici

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Figure 4. Masse de neige totale (gigatonnes) pour l’hémisphère nord (montagnes exclues) entre octobre 2019 et mars 2020 (points rouges). La moyenne sur 30 ans est indiquée par le trait pointillé noir (± 1 écart-type). Source : ici.
climate-debate

NORTHERN HEMISPHERE TOTAL SNOW MASS CURRENTLY RUNNING 300 GIGATONS ABOVE THE 1982-2012 AVERAGE

by Cap Allon, March 4, 2020 in Electroverse

Data from the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) reveals that the Total Snow Mass for the Northern Hemisphere has been consistently above the 30 year average for the majority of the season, and is now actually increasing its rate of growth.

Feel free to shovel this chart down the throats of those still insisting the world is burning up and that snowfall is a thing of the past.

Looking at the chart, the light blue indicates the 30-year average (1982 to 2012):

FMI — globalcryospherewatch.org/

It’s clear for all to see, and for all climate alarmists to ignore, Total Snow Mass for the Northern Hemisphere is currently running well-above the 30-year norm, according to the latest observation point; plotted March 02, 2020 — by some 300 gigatons at that!

 

Continuer la lecture de NORTHERN HEMISPHERE TOTAL SNOW MASS CURRENTLY RUNNING 300 GIGATONS ABOVE THE 1982-2012 AVERAGE →

climate-debate

Calculating Temperatures Without Thermometers

by Tony Heller, March 5, 2020 in RealClimateScience

Over the past 30 years, NOAA has been rapidly losing US thermometers. In 1989, 1,205 stations reported some daily temperatures, but last year only 871 stations reported some daily temperatures.

Thirty-five percent (424) of the stations in 2019 were zombie stations, meaning that NOAA estimated data for all twelve months. This is done even for some of the thermometers which reported at least a little data in 2019.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

New Study Asserts Cloud Cover Changes Drove The Post-1980s Solar Radiation Increase Important To Recent Warming

by K. Richard, March 2, 2020 in NoTricksZone

Using NASA’s MERRA-2 radiation data, scientists find shortwave radiation (SW) has been rising since the 1980s. The SW increase has been larger and faster than longwave radiation (LW) changes during this same timespan. Cloud variability has been the “main driver” of these trends.

In a new Nature journal paper (Delgado-Bonal et al, 2020) published in Scientific Reports, scientists use radiation records from NASA to conclude shortwave (SW) changes are “mainly determined” by cloud modulation.

Clouds are “showing a declining trend” from 1984-2014. Fewer clouds means less SW radiation is reflected to space and more is absorbed by the Earth’s surface.

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climate-debate

A Skeptic’s Guide To Global Temperatures

by Clive Best, August 30, 2019 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Climate change may well turn out to be a benign problem rather than the severe problem or “emergency” it is claimed to be.

This will eventually depend on just how much the Earth’s climate is warming due to our transient but relatively large increase in atmospheric CO2 levels.

This is why it is so important to accurately and impartially measure the Earth’s average temperature rise since 1850. It turns out that such a measurement is neither straightforward, independent, nor easy.

For some climate scientists, there sometimes appears to be a slight temptation to exaggerate recent warming,  perhaps because their careers and status improve the higher temperatures rise.

They are human like the rest of us. Similarly, the green energy lobby welcomes each scarier temperature increase to push ever more funding for their unproven solutions, without ever really explaining how they could possibly work better than a rapid expansion in nuclear energy instead.

Despite over 30 years of strident warnings and the fairly successful efforts of G7 countries to actually reduce emissions, CO2 levels in the atmosphere are still stubbornly accelerating upwards.

This is because simultaneously the developing world has strived to raise the wellbeing and living standards of their large populations through the use of ever more coal and oil, exactly as we did.

This is our current dilemma. Should they somehow be stopped from burning fossil fuels, or maybe compensated financially to ‘transition’ to so-called renewable energy instead?

All this again depends on the speed of climate change, which simply translates to the slope of the temperature record.

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climate-debate

There’s No Such Thing As The Earth’s Ideal Temperature

By Jerry Powlas, March 2, 2020 in ClimateChangeDispatch

“The temperature of the Earth” is an ambiguous term that cannot mean anything.

At any given time, it is possible to measure the temperature of some very small part of the Earth, such as, perhaps, a shot glass of water.

At that same moment, other temperatures of the Earth that could be measured will show a variation from the temperature of molten rock (1,300 to 2,200°F) to polar ice (32 to -76°F).

Daily variation of the same place on Earth can be 50 to 60°F. Seasonal variation can be well over 100°F in high latitudes.

Conceptually, we could imagine, but not actually measure, every possible place and thing, at every possible time through all the seasons, and then average these data.

To detect “global warming,” we would have to modify these data to include the specific heat of everything measured, as well as the latent heat of all the things that change phase such as water, which appears as a liquid, vapor, and ice.

Conceptually, yes; actually, no. Not possible.

Atmospheric science is presumably the scientific study of the atmosphere. (I am proudly not an atmospheric scientist.) If you use the scientific method to study something, you might presume to call yourself a scientist.

Calling yourself a scientist does not give you the privilege of using bad data to reach fuzzy conclusions and then scare people with the latter.

These folks are looking for about a 1°C change in “the temperature of the Earth” over the course of 100 years.

 

 

Continuer la lecture de There’s No Such Thing As The Earth’s Ideal Temperature →

better to know...?, climate-debate

ANTARCTIC BLAST DELIVERS RARE SUMMER SNOW AND FREEZING TEMPERATURES TO PARTS OF AUSTRALIA

by Cap Allon, March 2, 2020 in Electroverse

Australia’s “Grand Solar Minimum” summer –which brought record cold/heat, drought/floods, fires, and dust storms– had one final sting in the tail: another flurry of rare summer snow.

While summer down-under officially ended on Saturday, Feb 29, another blast of heavy, unexpected snow began burying parts of Tasmania on Wednesday, Feb 26.

Mountainous areas of the isolated island state reported large accumulations to close out the week, with local meteorologists warning yet more snow could settle above 1,000 m (3,280 ft) –including at Mount Field and Wellington– over the coming days.

 

 

climate-debate

NOAA Relies on ‘Russian Collusion’ to Claim January Was Hottest Month on Record

by Anthony Watts, February 29, 2020 in WUWT

In a report generating substantial media attention this month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) claimed January 2020 was the hottest January on record. In reality, the claim relies on substantial speculation, dubious reporting methods, and a large, very suspicious, extremely warm reported heat patch covering most of Russia.

The January 2020 Climate Assessment Report, released by NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Information (NCEI), was accompanied by a map showing a giant red menace of extraordinary asserted warmth extending from the Russian border with Poland well into Siberia. Yet, the asserted hot spot appears nowhere else.

 

Figure 1: Map of temperature departure provided by NOAA/NCEII. Note the huge red spot over Russia.

Continuer la lecture de NOAA Relies on ‘Russian Collusion’ to Claim January Was Hottest Month on Record →

climate-debate, unclassified

Tendency, Convenient Mistakes, and the Importance of Physical Reasoning.

by Pat Frank, March 1, 2020 in WUWT

Last February 7, statistician Richard Booth, Ph.D. (hereinafter, Rich) posted a very long critique titled, What do you mean by “mean”: an essay on black boxes, emulators, and uncertainty” which is very critical of the GCM air temperature projection emulator in my paper. He was also very critical of the notion of predictive uncertainty itself.

This post critically assesses his criticism.

An aside before the main topic. In his critique, Rich made many of the same mistakes in physical error analysis as do climate modelers. I have described the incompetence of that guild at WUWT here and here.

Rich and climate modelers both describe the probability distribution of the output of a model of unknown physical competence and accuracy, as being identical to physical error and predictive reliability.

Their view is wrong.

Unknown physical competence and accuracy describes the current state of climate models (at least until recently. See also Anagnostopoulos, et al. (2010), Lindzen & Choi (2011), Zanchettin, et al., (2017), and Loehle, (2018)).

GCM climate hindcasts are not tests of accuracy, because GCMs are tuned to reproduce hindcast targets. For example, here, here, and here. Tests of GCMs against a past climate that they were tuned to reproduce is no indication of physical competence.

When a model is of unknown competence in physical accuracy, the statistical dispersion of its projective output cannot be a measure of physical error or of predictive reliability.

Ignorance of this problem entails the very basic scientific mistake that climate modelers evidently strongly embrace and that appears repeatedly in Rich’s essay. It reduces both contemporary climate modeling and Rich’s essay to scientific vacancy.

The correspondence of Rich’s work with that of climate modelers reiterates something I realized after much immersion in published climatology literature — that climate modeling is an exercise in statistical speculation. Papers on climate modeling are almost entirely statistical conjectures. Climate modeling plays with physical parameters but is not a branch of physics.

I believe this circumstance refutes the American Statistical Society’s statement that more statisticians should enter climatology. Climatology doesn’t need more statisticians because it already has far too many: the climate modelers who pretend at science. Consensus climatologists play at scienceness and can’t discern the difference between that and the real thing.

Climatology needs more scientists. Evidence suggests many of the good ones previously resident have been caused to flee.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Why are polar bears going extinct? (Spoiler: They’re not)

by S. Crockford, February 24, 2020 in WUWT

Google says many people ask this question so here is the correct answer: polar bears are not going extinct. If you have been told that, you have misunderstood or have been misinformed. Polar bears are well-distributed across their available habitat and population numbers are high (officially 22,000-31,000 at 2015 but likely closer to 26,000-58,000 at 2018): these are features of a healthy, thriving species. ‘Why are polar bears going extinct?’ contains a false premise – there is no need to ask ‘why’ when the ‘polar bears [are] going extinct’ part is not true.1

mother-with-cubs-russia_shutterstock_71694292_web-size-e1582489285608

It is true that in 2007, it was predicted that polar bear numbers would plummet when summer sea ice declined to 42% of 1979 levels for 8 out of 10 years (anticipated to occur by 2050) and extinct or nearly so by 2100 (Amstrup et al. 2007). However, summer sea ice has been at ‘mid-century-like’ levels since 2007 (with year to year variation, see NOAA ice chart below) yet polar bear numbers have increased since 2005. The anticipated disaster did not occur but many people still believe it did because the media and some researchers still give that impression.

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climate-debate

Ancient methane might not pose a major climate risk

by Nature, February 21, 2020

Bubbles in Antarctic ice suggest that warming will not result in massive release of long-buried methane.

Runaway global warming driven by the release of methane from the Arctic seems less likely than some scientists have feared.

Methane and its components can be locked up for millennia in permafrost — a frozen mixture of soil and ice — and in deposits of crystal-like structures called methane hydrates. Methane released by modern organic materials contains a form of carbon that methane from ancient sources does not, allowing scientists to distinguish between the two types.

Michael Dyonisius at the University of Rochester in New York and his colleagues analysed Antarctic ice cores to determine the origins of methane released during a warming period that ended the last ice age. The warming raised global temperature by roughly 4ºC — slightly more than the rise projected to occur by 2100 in most scenarios of human-induced climate change.

The team’s results suggest that methane emissions during that big thaw were dominated by emissions from wetlands, not by the release of ancient methane from melting permafrost and methane hydrates. The authors conclude that modern climate change is unlikely to trigger a massive release of ancient methane.

climate-debate

Study: Computer Models Overestimate Observed Arctic Warming

by Craig Idso, February 26, 2020 in ClimateChageDispatch

Paper Reviewed:
Huang, J., Ou, T., Chen, D., Lun, Y. and Zhao, Z. 2019. The amplified Arctic warming in recent decades may have been overestimated by CMIP5 models. Geophysical Research Letters 46: 13,338-12,345.

Policies aimed at protecting humanity and the environment from the potential effects of CO2-induced global warming rely almost entirely upon models predicting large future temperature increases.

But what if those predictions are wrong? What if a comparison between model projections and observations revealed the models are overestimating the amount of warming?

Would climate alarmists admit as much and back away from promoting extreme policies of CO2 emission reductions?

Probably not — at least based upon the recent rhetoric of each of the candidates seeking the Democrat Party’s nomination for President of the United States, all of whom continue to call for the complete elimination of all CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use within the next three decades, or less.

But for non-ideologues who are willing to examine and accept the facts as they are, the recent work of Huang et al. (2019) provides reason enough to pause the crazy CO2 emission-reduction train.

In their study, the five researchers set out to examine how well model projections of Arctic temperatures (poleward of 60°N) compared with good old-fashioned observations.

More specifically, they used a statistical procedure suitable for nonlinear analysis (ensemble empirical mode decomposition) to examine secular Arctic warming over the period 1880-2017.

Observational data utilized in the study were obtained from the HadCRUT4.6 temperature database, whereas model-based temperature projections were derived from simulations from 36 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) global climate models (GCMs).

Figure 1. Observed and model-predicted rates of nonlinear, secular warming in the Arctic (60-90°N) over the period 1880-2017. The black and red dashed lines indicate the 10th and 90th percentiles for temperature means. Adapted from Huang et al. (2019).

As indicated there, the model-estimated rate of secular warming (the solid red line) increased quite sharply across the 138 year period, rising from a value of around 0°C per decade at the beginning of the record to a value of 0.35°C per decade in the end.

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climate-debate

Studies Show Glaciers Worldwide Were Smaller Than Today

by Die Kalte Sonne & P. Gosselin, February 26, 2020 in ClimateChangeDispatch

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19th century glacier retreat in the Alps preceded the emergence of industrial black carbon deposition on high-alpine glaciers

Light absorbing aerosols in the atmosphere and cryosphere play an important role in the climate system. Their presence in ambient air and snow changes the radiative properties of these systems, thus contributing to increased atmospheric warming and snowmelt. High Spatio-temporal variability of aerosol concentrations and a shortage of long-term observations contribute to large uncertainties in properly assigning the climate effects of aerosols through time.

Starting around AD 1860, many glaciers in the European Alps began to retreat from their maximum mid-19th century terminus positions, thereby visualizing the end of the Little Ice Age in Europe. Radiative forcing by increasing deposition of industrial black carbon to snow has been suggested as the main driver of the abrupt glacier retreats in the Alps. The basis for this hypothesis was model simulations using elemental carbon concentrations at low temporal resolution from two ice cores in the Alps.

Here we present sub-annually resolved concentration records of refractory black carbon (rBC; using soot photometry) as well as distinctive tracers for mineral dust, biomass burning and industrial pollution from the Colle Gnifetti ice core in the Alps from AD 1741 to 2015. These records allow precise assessment of a potential relation between the timing of observed acceleration of glacier melt in the mid-19th century with an increase of rBC deposition on the glacier caused by the industrialization of Western Europe. Our study reveals that in AD 1875, the time when rBC ice-core concentrations started to significantly increase, the majority of Alpine glaciers had already experienced more than 80 % of their total 19th-century length reduction, casting doubt on a leading role for soot in terminating of the Little Ice Age. Attribution of glacial retreat requires expansion of the spatial network and sampling density of high alpine ice cores to balance potential biasing effects arising from transport, deposition, and snow conservation in individual ice-core records.”

Also, a glacier history of the Alps since the end of the last ice age was published in 2009 by Susan Ivy-Ochs and colleagues.

Between 10,500-3300 years before today, glaciers were mostly smaller than today and ended 200 meters above modern levels. The Alpine glaciers expanded during the cold period of migration and the Little Ice Age.

Want to know more about glacier history? Here’s the abstract:

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better to know...?, climate-debate

The Death Of Science Is The Real Climate Emergency

by M. Phillips, February 25, 2020 in ClimateChangeDispatch

A few commentators have begun to stumble towards the fact that the policy of becoming “carbon neutral” by 2050, as adopted by the UK and the EU, would undo modernity itself.

On Unherd, Peter Franklin observes that, if carried through, the policy will have a far greater effect than Brexit or anything else; it will transform society altogether.

“It will continue to transform the power industry, and much else besides: every mode of transport; how we build, warm and cool our homes; food, agriculture and land use; trade, industry, every part of the economy”.

Franklin is correct. Even so, he seems not to grasp the full implications of the disaster he intuits – because he thinks there’s some kind of middle way through which the imminent eco-apocalypse can be prevented without returning Britain to the Middle Ages.

In a similar vein, he quotes Rachel Wolf, a co-author of the 2019 Conservative manifesto, who is prone to the same kind of magical thinking. She wrote:

“Government has committed to ‘net zero’ greenhouse gas emissions because it does not want the side effects of the energy sources we have used for centuries to destroy the planet. At the same time, we do not want to return to an era where children (and their mothers) regularly died, and where the majority of people lived in what would now in the UK be considered wholly unacceptable poverty. This is a staggering challenge.”

This is what we might call an understatement. What is truly staggering is, first, that any sentient person thinks this can be done and, second, that it should be done.

 

Continuer la lecture de The Death Of Science Is The Real Climate Emergency →

climate-debate

Débattre du climat : quel contenu ?

by M. de Rougemont, 25 février 2020 in EuropeanScientist

Dès lors que la moindre critique est faite à propos de la doxa climatique son auteur se verra systématiquement désigné comme négationniste. Si, par-dessus le marché, ladite critique est pleine de bon sens, alors des caciques de ce système s’empressent de publier une tribune publique afin de mettre l’intru au pilori, évitant bien d’entrer en matière et de traiter des questions posées. Il s’agit de bien rappeler qui a droit à la parole et de rappeler aux non-sachants que le débat est clos car la cause est entendue. Un bizarre syndicat international de presse dictant la bien-pensance climatique a d’ailleurs décidé que laisser s’exprimer des voix critiques serait leur faire une part trop belle. La célérité et le ton de ces répliques témoignent pourtant d’une grande inquiétude car faire taire l’intrus n’a jamais été une manifestation de force et de tranquillité. Cela laisse même à penser que s’il y avait complot, ce serait plutôt celui destiné à éviter à tout prix la nécessaire dispute autour d’un sujet si important.

Nonobstant la clôture bien prématurée de ce débat jamais initié, il faut en décrire les chapitres qui devraient le composer.  Ce drame climatique se déroule sur trois scènes : scientifique, stratégique et politique.

SCIENCE ET PSEUDO-SCIENCE

Les données issues de moins de deux siècles d’observations directes, dont moins de cinquante ans par satellite, et de la paléoclimatologie nous enseignent les variations passées et certaines corrélations ou manques de corrélation. Ces données ne font pas l’objet de réfutations majeures et fondées. Un réchauffement est donc bien constaté depuis la fin du petit âge glaciaire coïncidant avec le début de l’ère industrielle ; il est de l’ordre de 0.8 à 1 °C avec des fluctuations dont certaines restent encore inexpliquées.

Continuer la lecture de Débattre du climat : quel contenu ? →