Archives de catégorie : climate-debate

Evidence of the Medieval Warm Period in Australia, New Zealand and Oceania

by S. Lüning, January 9, 2018 in WUWT


The climate of the pre-industrial past is of greatest importance to the ongoing climate discussion. Current climate can only be understood when interpreting it in the paleoclimatological context of the past few thousand years. Until not too long ago it was thought that the pre-industrial climate was monotonous and constant. This idea was e.g. promoted by Mann et al. whose famous hockey stick curve featured prominently in the IPCC report of 2001. Over the last 15 years, however, a large number of studies changed this view by providing robust evidence for the existence of significant natural climate variability. Of particular interest are the past 1000 years which commenced with the generally warm ‘Medieval Climate Anomaly’ (MCA, aka ‘Medieval Warm Period’, MWP), that eventually passed into the ‘Little Ice Age’ (LIA), before returning to the warm climate of the current ‘Modern Warm Period’ of the 20th and early 21st centuries.

There have been controversial debates about the existence of the MWP, …

Le réchauffement climatique pour les deux cultures

by Richard Lindzen, 21 octobre 2018, Conférence GWPF, in Skyfall


Traduction par Volauvent.

Il y a plus d’un demi-siècle, C.P. Snow (romancier et physicien anglais qui a également occupé plusieurs postes importants dans la fonction publique britannique et brièvement au sein du gouvernement britannique) a examiné de manière célèbre les implications de « deux cultures » :

Bien des fois, j’ai assisté à des rassemblements de personnes qui, selon les normes de la culture traditionnelle, sont considérées comme très éduquées et qui ont exprimé leur incrédulité face à l’analphabétisme des scientifiques. Une ou deux fois, j’ai été provoqué et j’ai demandé à la compagnie combien d’entre eux pourraient décrire la deuxième loi de la thermodynamique. Ils répondaient froidement : c’était aussi toujours négatif. Pourtant, je demandais quelque chose qui était l’équivalent scientifique de : avez-vous lu un ouvrage de Shakespeare ?

Je crois maintenant que si j’avais posé une question encore plus simple – telle que : que voulez-vous dire par masse ou accélération, qui est l’équivalent scientifique de : pouvez-vous lire ? – pas plus d’un diplômé sur dix aurait eu l’impression que je parlais la même langue que lui. Ainsi, le grand édifice de la physique moderne se construit, et la majorité des personnes les plus intelligentes du monde occidental en ont à peu près le même aperçu que leurs ancêtres néolithiques en auraient eu.

Je crains que peu de choses n’aient changé depuis l’évaluation de Snow, il y a 60 ans. Certains pourraient soutenir que l’ignorance de la physique n’a pas d’incidence sur la capacité politique, mais elle a très certainement une incidence sur la capacité des politiciens non scientifiques à traiter des problèmes théoriquement fondés sur la science. Le manque de compréhension est également une invitation à l’exploitation malveillante. Compte tenu de la nécessité démocratique pour les non-scientifiques de prendre position sur des problèmes scientifiques, la croyance et la foi remplacent inévitablement la compréhension, même si des récits simplifiés à outrance de façon triviale rassurent les non-scientifiques sur le fait qu’ils ne sont pas totalement dénués de « compréhension scientifique ». Le sujet du « réchauffement global » offre de nombreux exemples de tout cela.

Je voudrais commencer cette conférence par une tentative visant à forcer les scientifiques du public à se familiariser avec la nature réelle du système climatique et à aider les non-scientifiques motivés de ce public susceptibles de faire partie du groupe « Un sur dix » de Snow à aller au-delà des simplifications excessivement triviales.

New Science: Arctic AND Antarctic Sea Ice More Extensive Today Than Nearly All Of The Last 10,000 Years

by K. Richard, October 18, 2018 in NoTricksZone


It is often claimed that modern day sea ice changes are “unprecedented”, alarming, and well outside the range of natural variability.  Yet scientists are increasingly finding that biomarker proxies used to reconstruct both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice conditions since the Early Holocene reveal that today’s sea ice changes are not only not unusual, there is more extensive Arctic and Antarctic sea ice during recent decades than there has been for nearly all of the last 10,000 years.

Trump s’interroge sur les causes du changement climatique

by Tom Harris & Jay Lehr, 20 octobre 2018 in Contrepoints


Le 14 octobre dernier, durant une interview sur la chaine de télévision CBS, le président américain a exprimé à juste titre son scepticisme concernant le rôle de l’homme sur le changement climatique.

Contrairement à l’affirmation d’Al Gore daté du 12 octobre selon laquelle seuls « quelques rares marginaux » dans la communauté scientifique ne partageraient pas l’avis du GIEC, de nombreux chercheurs sont en désaccord avec les conclusions faites par l’agence internationale.

En effet, c’était un euphémisme pour le président américain de déclarer durant l’interview « qu’il y a des scientifiques qui réfutent cela », en parlant d’un lien entre la fonte de glace au Groenlandet du changement climatique anthropique.

Le 8 octobre dernier, durant sa conférence devant la Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) située à Londres, le professeur Richard Lindzen a mentionné « la découverte faite conjointement par la NOAA (la National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) et l’Institut Météorologique Danois, à savoir que la masse de glace du Groenland a effectivement augmenté ».

CNN: “Climate change endangers dozens of World Heritage sites”… Unmitigated horst schist

by David Middleton, October 19, 2018 in WUWT


Holocene Sea Level

I didn’t take the time to look up the dates of these World Heritage sites… But I’m going to guess they’re OLD.  Many of them probably date back to the Early to Mid-Holocene.  [My bad… That was a bad guess.  The Late Holocene (Meghalayan Age) begins in 4200 BP (2250 BC)]  Here’s a Holocene sea level reconstruction for the Arabian Gulf, with a recent reconstruction of global sea level since 1800 (Jevrejeva et al., 2014) and the satellite sea level trend from CU…

September 2018 Global Surface (Land+Ocean) and Lower Troposphere Temperature Anomaly Update

by Bob Tisdale, October 18, 2018 in WUWT


This post provides updates of the values for the three primary suppliers of global land+ocean surface temperature reconstructions—GISS through September 2018 and HADCRUT4 and NOAA NCEI (formerly NOAA NCDC) through August 2018—and of the two suppliers of satellite-based lower troposphere temperature composites (RSS and UAH) through September 2018. It also includes a few model-data comparisons.

This is simply an update, but it includes a good amount of background information for those new to the datasets. Because it is an update, there is no overview or summary for this post. There are, however, simple monthly summaries for the individual datasets. So for those familiar with the datasets, simply fast-forward to the graphs and read the summaries under the headings of “Update”.

THE UN’S DOOMSDAY CLIMATE CLOCK

by GWPF, October 18, 2018 TheWallStreetJournal


In case you hadn’t heard we’re all doomed, yet the world mostly yawned. This is less complacency than creeping scientific and political realism.

The U.N. panel says the apocalypse is nigh—literally. According to its calculations, global carbon emissions must fall 45% by 2030—twice as much as its earlier forecasts—and the world must wean itself entirely off fossil fuels over three decades to prevent a climate catastrophe that will include underwater coastlines and widespread drought and disease.

These reductions are “possible within the laws of chemistry and physics,” said the report’s co-author Jim Skea, and that’s a relief. But he added: “Doing so would require unprecedented changes,” and the report said some methods “are at different stages of development and some are more conceptual than others, as they have not been tested at scale.”

Le catastrophisme climatique des années 60 à 80 à l’épreuve des faits

by Cédric Moro, 15 octobre 2018 in MythesMancies&Mathématiques


Les discours alarmistes sur le climat ne datent pas d’hier. Grâce à la numérisation des archives audio-visuelles et à leur mise en ligne sur internet, il est possible aujourd’hui de démentir les prévisions climato-catastrophistes assénées de manière très officielle dans la deuxième moitié du siècle dernier. Beaucoup des déformations de nos discours sur la réalité tendent à puiser leurs racines dans nos représentations mentales du monde. Nous verrons donc que ces représentations alarmistes naissent dans un contexte idéologique nouveau : mutation de l’eugénisme, collapsologisme et décroissance.

IPCC achieves net zero credibility

by Barry Brill, October 14, 2018 in WUWT


The recently released IPCC SR15 reports (at A1) that global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2032 and 2050 and (at B) will probably bring species extinction, weather extremes and risks to food supply, health and economic growth. If we are to avoid this, net CO2 emissions will need to decline by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching net zero by 2050 (C1), followed by extensive removals (C5). The required energy investment alone will be $2.4 trillion per year.

Is this possible?

As at 2015, which was not materially different from 2010, more than half the planet’s total CO2 emissions (36Gt) were sourced from just three countries:

….

Reliable? CRU, NASA, BEST, NOAA Land Temp Data Conflict By Up To 90% (0.8°C), Spawning ‘Large Uncertainty’

by K. Richard, October 8, 2018 in NoTricksZone


A new paper documents “remarkably different” land temperatures from one instrumental data set to another. In some regions there is as much as an 0.8°C conflict in recorded temperature anomalies for CRU, NASA, BEST, and NOAA. The relative temperature trend differences can reach 90% when comparing instrumental records. Consequently, the uncertainty in instrumental temperature trends — “0.097–0.305°C per decade for recent decades (i.e., 1981–2017)” —  is as large or larger than the alleged overall warming trend itself for this period.

Reconstruction of Prehistoric Landfall Frequencies of Catastrophic Hurricanes in Northwestern Florida from Lake Sediment Records

by Kam-biu Liu & Miriam L. Fearn, September 2000,  in QuaternaryResearch


Sediment cores from Western Lake provide a 7000-yr record of coastal environmental changes and catastrophic hurricane landfalls along the Gulf Coast of the Florida Panhandle. Using Hurricane Opal as a modern analog, we infer that overwash sand layers occurring near the center of the lake were caused by catastrophic hurricanes of category 4 or 5 intensity. Few catastrophic hurricanes struck the Western Lake area during two quiescent periods 3400–5000 and 0–1000 14C yr B.P. The landfall probabilities increased dramatically to ca. 0.5% per yr during an “hyperactive” period from 1000–3400 14C yr B.P., especially in the first millennium A.D. The millennial-scale variability in catastrophic hurricane landfalls along the Gulf Coast is probably controlled by shifts in the position of the jet stream and the Bermuda High.

Ocean Temperatures Have Been Rising Since 19thC

by P. Homewood, October 12, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat


https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120401135345.htm

 

The significance of course is that the warming of the oceans began long before any impact from CO2 emissions.

HH Lamb has written extensively about how sea temperatures in the Atlantic fell radically during the LIA. Is the warming trend since then merely a return to earlier conditions?

McIntyre: ‘a reductio ad absurdum of tree ring chronologies as useful temperature proxies’

by A. Watts, October 11, 2018 in WUWT


Steve McIntyre has a look at the “revised” PAGES2K temperature proxy dataset that includes tree rings and river sediments. He finds the usual ridiculous problems from the past, such as upside down data and river sediment accumulations that have more to do with building a dam than climate.

See also here

Richard Lindzen Lecture at GWPF: ‘Global Warming for the Two Cultures’

by R. Lindzen, Ocotber2, 2018 in A. Watts, WUWT


The climate system

The following description of the climate system contains nothing that is in the least controversial, and I expect that anyone with a scientific background will readily follow the description. I will also try, despite Snow’s observations, to make the description intelligible to the non-scientist.

Conclusion

So there you have it. An implausible conjecture backed by false evidence and repeated incessantly has become politically correct ‘knowledge,’ and is used to promote the overturn of industrial civilization. What we will be leaving our grandchildren is not a planet damaged by industrial progress, but a record of unfathomable silliness as well as a landscape degraded by rusting wind farms and decaying solar panel arrays. False claims about 97% agreement will not spare us, but the willingness of scientists to keep mum is likely to much reduce trust in and support for science. Perhaps this won’t be such a bad thing after all – certainly as concerns ‘official’ science.

There is at least one positive aspect to the present situation. None of the proposed policies will have much impact on greenhouse gases. Thus we will continue to benefit from the one thing that can be clearly attributed to elevated carbon dioxide: namely, its effective role as a plant fertilizer, and reducer of the drought vulnerability of plants. Meanwhile, the IPCC is claiming that we need to prevent another 0.5◦C of warming, although the 1◦C that has occurred so far has been accompanied by the greatest increase in human welfare in history. As we used to say in my childhood home of the Bronx: ‘Go figure’.

Most US newspapers failed to even mention the new IPCC climate change report

by Meteor Blades, October 11, 2018 in RedGreen&Blue


Media Matters scrutinized the top 50 U.S. newspapers between 9 AM and noon ET on Monday and found most did not mention on their website homepages the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sunday release of its report on the devastating impacts of a global temperature increase of 1.5-degree Celsius (2.7-degree Fahrenheit) above the temperature of the pre-industrial era.

UN’s IPCC Ignores Astronomical Costs Of Cutting CO2 Versus Doing Nothing

by Bjorn Lomborg, October 10, 2018 in ClimateChangeDispatch


The IPCC report significantly underestimates the costs of getting to zero emissions. Fossil fuels provide cheap, efficient power, whereas green energy remains mostly uncompetitive.

Switching to more expensive, less efficient technology slows development. In poor nations that means fewer people lifted out of poverty.

In rich ones, it means the most vulnerable are hit by higher energy bills.

The IPCC says carbon emissions need to peak right now and fall rapidly to avert catastrophe.

Models actually reveal that to achieve the 2.7-degree goal the world must stop all fossil fuel use in less than four years.

Yet the International Energy Agency estimates that in 2040 fossil fuels will still meet three-quarters of world energy needs, even if the Paris agreement is fully implemented.

Evolutions récentes du CO2 atmosphérique (2/3)

by JC Maurin, 4 octobre 2018 in Science,Climat,Energie


  • Pour les derniers millénaires, les proxies archives glaciaires montrent une corrélation entre rapport isotopique (« température ») et taux de COsubsistant dans les microbulles. Toutefois les valeurs numériques de taux de CO2 doivent être prises avec précaution: l’enregistrement comporte à minima un biais « passe bas » qui efface les extremums. Si la corrélation est bien réelle, en revanche des affirmations telles que « les taux de CO2 des derniers millénaires sont toujours inférieurs aux taux après 1958 », ou bien « une variation de 1°C entraîne une variation de 12 ppm » ne sont pas démontrées.

  • Le COne précède jamais l’augmentation de la température, et cela depuis au moins le Pléistocène (240 000 ans) où la démonstration a bien été établie (cf. Fig. 8). Le COn’est donc pas le ‘bouton’ contrôlant l’évolution de la température.

  • Les concentrations anciennes de COatmosphérique sont sous-estimées et les données de Vostok non seulement donnent un ‘ background’ plus faible que les données fournies par l’analyse des stomates (Fig.10,) mais ne voient pas les pics de concentrations plus élevés de CO2. Ainsi affirmer que les teneurs actuelles en CO2n’ont jamais été aussi élevées, même à une échelle géologique très restreinte (telle que Quaternaire) est trompeur.

  • Pour les dernières décennies, les mesures contemporaines montrent une corrélation entre température de surface des océans sous les tropiques et variation annuelle du taux de CO2. La variation annuelle c’est aussi la différence entre entrées et sorties. Les mesures contemporaines montrent également une corrélation entre température des océans sous les tropiques et variation annuelle du δ13C. Ces 2 corrélations sont nettes lors des forts épisodes El Niño de 1998 et 2016.

  • Nous exploiterons ces corrélations dans la troisième partie qui montrera que le modèle anthropique du GIEC n’est pas en accord  avec les mesures du δ13C  et ne peut rendre compte des évolutions récentes du CO2 .

IPCC Now Claims All Warming Since End Of Little Ice Age Is Man-Made

by B. Peiser, October 10, 2018 in ClimateChangeDispatch


So the very first sentence of the SR15 Summary for Policy Makers, after the Introduction, consists of a statement which is not well supported by the totality of the available scientific literature and which is at odds with the IPCC’s own findings in the AR5 Working Group 1 Report of just 5 years ago! Not a good start. —Climate Scepticism, 9 October 2018

 

Yes, the Ocean Has Warmed; No, It’s Not ‘Global Warming’

by P. Homewood, October 10, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat


Contrary to recent press reports that the oceans hold the still-undetected global atmospheric warming predicted by climate models, ocean warming occurs in 100-year cycles, independent of both radiative and human influences.

At a press conference in Washington, D.C., on March 24, 2000, Dr. James Baker, Administrator of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), announced that since the late 1940s, there “has been warming to a depth of nearly 10,000 feet in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.” “In each ocean basin, substantial temperature changes are occurring at much deeper depths than we previously thought,” Dr. Baker said, as indicated by research conducted at NOAA’s Ocean Climate Laboratory. He was referring to a paper published in Science magazine that day, prepared by Sydney Levitus, John Antonov, Timothy Boyer, and Cathy Stephens, of the NOAA Center.

For 15 years, modellers have tried to explain their lack of success in predicting global warming. The climate models had predicted a global temperature increase of 1.5°C by the year 2000, six times more than that which has taken place. Not discouraged, the modellers argue that the heat generated by their claimed “greenhouse warming effect” is being stored in the deep oceans, and that it will eventually come back to haunt us. They’ve needed such a boost to prop up the man-induced greenhouse warming theory, but have had no observational evidence to support it. The Levitus, et al. article is now cited as the needed support.

#DataGate! First ever audit of global temperature data finds freezing tropical islands, boiling towns, boats on land

by Mc Lean in JoNova, October 8, 2018 in JoNOva


What were they thinking?

The fate of the planet is at stake, but the key temperature data set used by climate models contains more than 70 different sorts of problems.  Trillions of dollars have been spent because of predictions based on this data – yet even the most baby-basic quality control checks have not been done.

Thanks to Dr John McLean, we see how The IPCC demands for cash rest on freak data, empty fields, Fahrenheit temps recorded as Celsius, mistakes in longitude and latitude, brutal adjustments and even spelling errors.

Why. Why. Why wasn’t this done years ago?

So much for that facade. How can people who care about the climate be so sloppy and amateur with the data?