Archives de catégorie : better to know…?

Pielke Jr. on IPCC AR6 WG2 Release

by Pielke Jr., Feb28, 2022 in WUWT


An initial thread on the IPCC AR6 WG2 report released today

Whereas WG1 received a mixed review in my areas of expertise (specifically: poor on scenarios, solid on extremes), my initial reaction to the WG2 report is that it is an exceedingly poor assessment

The first observation is that the report is more heavily weighted to implausible scenarios than any previous IPCC assessment report

In particular, RCP8.5 represents ~57% of scenario mentions

This alone accounts for the apocalyptic tone and conclusions throughout the report.

IPCC WGII AR6, More Insanity: Small Islands

by K. Hansen, March 1, 2022 in WUWT


A Shocking Lack of Evidence for Shocking Claims

The IPCC has rushed out a new portion of the IPCC WGII Sixth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.  The report itself and all of its summaries and chapters are available from the IPCC web site.  I say rushed out because when I downloaded Chapter 15: Small Islandsat 5:00 pm EST on February 28th, the copy I received was still marked “Accepted Version Subject to Final Edits” and “Do Not Cite, Quote or Distribute”.

They are quite right to mark it “Do Not Cite, Quote or Distribute”  —  I would have suggested expanding that to “Do Not Cite, Quote, Distribute, or Read”.   But, that would be a personal opinion.  I am afraid I failed to follow my own best advice and have made the mistake of reading Chapter 15:  Small Islands.  So, having failed to “not read” I will follow up by failing to not cite, quote or distribute potions in this Opinion essay.

How The Green Movement Empowered Putin’s Invasion Of Ukraine

by C. Feldman , Feb 2, 2022 in ClimateChageDispatch


Whatever you think our obligations to defend Ukraine at the moment, you must concede that the green movement in Western Europe and the United States made his actions possible. [bold, links added]

They also made any non-military reaction toothless and unpersuasive. It has been the equivalent of a poker player discarding a royal straight flush and then trying to bluff his opponents with the pair of deuces remaining in his hand.

Only with dumb opponents is he likely to take the pot. And Russian President Putin is definitely not dumb.

Indeed, the weak sanctions proposed by the West to induce the Russians to pull back were so unimpressive the Russian stock market, which has been collapsing, rose 6.5 percent after President Biden announced them.

Mr. Biden did follow Germany in not certifying Nord Stream 2, but that’s just a temporary, paper contract issue. It’s not a long-term or permanent shutdown. He basically hit a couple of banks tied to the Donbas region.

The GDP for the whole of Ukraine is about $160 billion, maybe. The GDP of Donbas is less than $6 billion and the GDP of Lugansk is $1 billion, also maybe. Delaware’s GDP, just to pick a random comparison, is $76 billion. So, to call Mr. Biden’s sanctions small beer is understating it.

And the reason he cannot actually do much more short of war is that he and the leaders of western Europe—bamboozled by the prospect of “climate change”—have made themselves poorer and weaker by eviscerating conventional fuel production.

While they without ample reason were discarding a very good hand, Russian president Putin was improving his by exploiting and selling to us and Europe his nations’ fossil fuels.

….

How we have mischaracterized climate risk

by J. Curry, Feb 19, 2022 in ClimateEtc.


“The current thinking and approaches guiding this conceptualization and description have been shown to lack scientific rigour, the consequence being that climate change risk and uncertainties are poorly presented. The climate change field needs to strengthen its risk science basis, to improve the current situation.” – Norwegian risk scientist Terje Aven

For decision-makers, climate change is a problem in risk assessment and management.  Climate change is a risk because it may affect prosperity and security in a negative way, and because its consequences are uncertain.

Global climate change policy has been dominated by a specific strategy of risk management – the Precautionary Principle as a justification for setting specific targets for the elimination of manmade emissions of carbon dioxide.  In the early 1980s, the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) became bullish on the idea that fossil fuels would produce dangerous climate change. The prospect of eliminating fossil fuels was congruent with UNEP’s broader interests in environmental quality and world governance. At Villach in 1985 at the beginning of the climate treaty movement, the policy movement to eliminate fossil fuels became detached from any moorings in the science – the rhetoric of precaution argued that we should act anyway to eliminate fossil fuels, just in case. This perspective became codified by the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Treaty in 1992, the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.

Instead of framing the IPCC assessments around risk assessment, the IPCC reports narrowly framed its assessments to support the UNFCCC policies, focusing on dangerous climate change associated with fossil fuel emissions.  The torquing of climate science and the manufacture of a consensus around dangerous human-caused climate change not only oversimplified the scientific and social challenges, but led to the adoption of a “predict then act” strategy to manage and control, supporting decisions about elimination of fossil fuel emissions that were begun in the 1980’s.  The congruence of the IPCC assessments and UNFCCC policies enforces the belief that climate change is a simple or tame problem, with science trumping all practical questions and conflicting values and purposes.

Evaluation of the Homogenization Adjustments Applied to European Temperature Records in the Global Historical Climatology Network Dataset

by P. O’Neill et al., Feb 24, 2022 in MPDI


The widely used Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) monthly temperature dataset is available in two formats—non-homogenized and homogenized. Since 2011, this homogenized dataset has been updated almost daily by applying the “Pairwise Homogenization Algorithm” (PHA) to the non-homogenized datasets. Previous studies found that the PHA can perform well at correcting synthetic time series when certain artificial biases are introduced. However, its performance with real world data has been less well studied. Therefore, the homogenized GHCN datasets (Version 3 and 4) were downloaded almost daily over a 10-year period (2011–2021) yielding 3689 different updates to the datasets. The different breakpoints identified were analyzed for a set of stations from 24 European countries for which station history metadata were available. A remarkable inconsistency in the identified breakpoints (and hence adjustments applied) was revealed. Of the adjustments applied for GHCN Version 4, 64% (61% for Version 3) were identified on less than 25% of runs, while only 16% of the adjustments (21% for Version 3) were identified consistently for more than 75% of the runs. The consistency of PHA adjustments improved when the breakpoints corresponded to documented station history metadata events. However, only 19% of the breakpoints (18% for Version 3) were associated with a documented event within 1 year, and 67% (69% for Version 3) were not associated with any documented event. Therefore, while the PHA remains a useful tool in the community’s homogenization toolbox, many of the PHA adjustments applied to the homogenized GHCN dataset may have been spurious. Using station metadata to assess the reliability of PHA adjustments might potentially help to identify some of these spurious adjustments. View Full-Text
SEE ALSO HERE : WUWT
SEE ALSO HERE : CERES

Hundreds More Papers Published In 2021 Support A Skeptical Position On Climate Alarm

by K. Richard, Feb 14, 2022 in NoTricksZone


In 2021, several hundred more scientific papers were published that cast doubt on the position that anthropogenic CO2 emissions function as the climate’s fundamental control knob…or that otherwise serve to question the efficacy of climate models or the related “consensus” positions commonly endorsed by policymakers and mainstream media sources.

These scientific papers affirm the position that there are significant limitations and uncertainties inherent in our understanding of climate and climate changes…emphasizing that climate science is not settled.

More specifically, the papers in this compilation support these four main skeptical positions — categorized here as N(1) – N(4) — which question the climate alarm popularized in today’s headlines.

N(1) Natural mechanisms play well more than a negligible role (as claimed by the IPCC) in the net changes in the climate system, which includes temperature variations, precipitation patterns, weather events, etc., and the influence of increased CO2 concentrations on climatic changes are less pronounced than currently imagined.

N(2) The warming/sea levels/glacier and sea ice retreat/precipitation extremes…experienced during the modern era are neither unprecedented or remarkable, nor do they fall outside the range of natural variability.

N(3) The computer climate models are neither reliable or consistently accurate; the uncertainty and error ranges are irreducible; and projections of future climate states (i.e., an intensification of the hydrological cycle) are not supported by observations and/or are little more than speculation.

N(4) Current emissions-mitigation policies, especially related to the advocacy for renewables, are often ineffective and even harmful to the environment, whereas elevated CO2 and a warmer climate provide unheralded benefits to the biosphere (i.e., a greener planet and enhanced crop yields, lower mortality with warming).

In sharp contrast to the above, the corresponding “consensus” positions that these papers do not support are:

A(1) Close to or over 100% (110%) of the warming since 1950 has been caused by increases in anthropogenic CO2 emissions, leaving natural attribution at something close to 0%.

Are electric cars the new ‘diesel scandal’ waiting to happen? They generate polluting particles just like petrol vehicles, are not even that cost-effective and, as one expert finds, will not save the planet

by B. Lomborg, Feb 6, 2022 in Daily Mail


  • While diesel cars tend to be more fuel-efficient with lower emissions, they also emit greater quantities of other pollutants that damage air quality and health 

  • Now, electric cars could be the future for many as BJORN LOMBORG explains

Do you remember Britain’s ‘dash for diesel’? It began more than 20 years ago when the then Chancellor, Gordon Brown, announced a new car tax system favouring vehicles with lower emissions of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.

Diesel cars tend to be more fuel-efficient with lower emissions, and Mr Brown hailed them as the greener and cheaper option. Over a decade and a half, the number of such vehicles on British roads quadrupled.

What didn’t emerge until much later — although it was no secret in the motor industry or among government officials — was that diesel cars also emitted greater quantities of other pollutants, nitrogen oxides and particulates that damage air quality and human health.

 

105 More Non-Global Warming/Non-Hockey Stick Temperature Records Added To The Database In 2021

by K. Richard, Jan 31, 2022 in NoTricksZone


Since 2019,there have been over 350 peer-reviewed scientific papers published showing no warming in the modern era and/or much warmer temperatures than today when CO2 levels ranged from 180 to 280 ppm (Holocene, Pleistocene).

Below is the link to the updated (now including 2021) database of non-hockey temperature records from locations across the world.

These hundreds of papers suggest a) Earth was multiple degrees warmer than today throughout much of the last 11,700 years (Holocene), and b) there has been nothing unusual about temperature changes in the modern era.

The first 8 papers on the 2021 list are shown below as samples.

Over 350 Non-Hockey Sticks (2019-2021)

Zhou et al., 2021  South China Sea ~4°C warmer SST during the Middle Holocene…1994-2004 coldest temperatures of the last 6000 years.

Using A Reference Period Outdated 30 Years, Germany’s DWD Weather Service Turns Cooling Into Warming

by Prof. F. Vahrenholt, Jan 8, 2022 in NoTricksZone


Globally, the deviation of the global mean temperature of the satellite-based measurements from the mean of period 1991-2020 rose slightly in December to 0.21 degrees Celsius. The mean temperature increase since satellite measurements began was 0.14 degrees Celsius per decade. The year 2021 was an average year compared to 2010 to 2020, with 0.134 degrees deviation from the thirty-year average. Six years since 2010 were warmer and 5 years were colder.

This is also true for Germany. But the German weather service gives a different impression

How the German DWD Weather Service turned cooling into warming in 2021  

In its press release on Germany’s weather in 2021, the German Weather Service writes: “The mean temperature [Germany] in 2021 was 9.1 degrees Celsius (°C), 0.9 degrees above the value of the internationally valid reference period 1961 to 1990. 2021 was thus the eleventh year in a row that was too warm.”

Why does the DWD use the internationally no longer valid 1961-1990 reference period? It writes itself elsewhere: “To record the climate and its changes, mean values are formed over a period of 30 years…With the end of the year 2020, the reference period for current climatological assessments was replaced by the 1991 to 2020 period.”

Fudging with the reference period

The DWD thus followed the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)recommendation. But in the press release, the DWD still prefers to use the old, outdated period. The 1991 to 202 0reference period differs from the one of 1961 to 1990 by 1.1 degrees. So the DWD should have written : “2021 was 9.1 degrees, 1.3 degrees cooler than 2020 and even -0.2 degrees Celsius below the average from 1991 to 2020. Since 1991 there have only been 9 years colder than 2021.”

But 0.9 degrees more and the eleventh year in a row that is too warm (compared to the colder period of 1961-1990) of course fits much better with the zeitgeist.

Read original in German at Die kalte Sonne

Where Is The Top Of The Atmosphere?

by W. Essenbach, Jan 7, 2022 in WUWT


In my last post, entitled Advection, I was discussing the online MODTRAN Infrared Light In The Atmosphere model. A commenter pointed out that in the past I’d wondered about why the MODTRAN results showed that a doubling of CO2 caused a clear-sky top-of-atmosphere (TOA) decrease in upwelling longwave (LW) radiation of less than the canonical value of 3.7 watts per square meter (W/m2) per doubling of CO2. Here’s that data.

46 STATEMENTS By IPCC Experts Against The IPCC

by Jamie Spry, Dec 2019, in Climatism


THANKFULLY we usually always get to hear the inconvenient and raw truth about taxpayer funded, unelected, bloated government bureaucracies when members eventually leave and are not subject to bullying and financial repercussions. Definitely no exception here…

46 enlightening statements by IPCC experts against the IPCC:

  1. Dr Robert Balling: The IPCC notes that “No significant acceleration in the rate of sea level rise during the 20th century has been detected.” This did not appear in the IPCC Summary for Policymakers.
  2. Dr Lucka Bogataj: “Rising levels of airborne carbon dioxide don’t cause global temperatures to rise…. temperature changed first and some 700 years later a change in aerial content of carbon dioxide followed.”
  3. Dr John Christy: “Little known to the public is the fact that most of the scientists involved with the IPCC do not agree that global warming is occurring. Its findings have been consistently misrepresented and/or politicized with each succeeding report.”
  4. Dr Rosa Compagnucci: “Humans have only contributed a few tenths of a degree to warming on Earth. Solar activity is a key driver of climate.”
  5. Dr Richard Courtney: “The empirical evidence strongly indicates that the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is wrong.”
  6. Dr Judith Curry: “I’m not going to just spout off and endorse the IPCC because I don’t have confidence in the process.”
  7. Dr Robert Davis: “Global temperatures have not been changing as state of the art climate models predicted they would. Not a single mention of satellite temperature observations appears in the IPCC Summary for Policymakers.”
  8. Dr Willem de Lange: “In 1996 the IPCC listed me as one of approximately 3000 “scientists” who agreed that there was a discernible human influence on climate. I didn’t. There is no evidence to support the hypothesis that runaway catastrophic climate change is due to human activities.”
  9. Dr Chris de Freitas: “Government decision-makers should have heard by now that the basis for the long-standing claim that carbon dioxide is a major driver of global climate is being questioned; along with it the hitherto assumed need for costly measures to restrict carbon dioxide emissions. If they have not heard, it is because of the din of global warming hysteria that relies on the logical fallacy of ‘argument from ignorance’ and predictions of computer models.”
  10. Dr Oliver Frauenfeld: “Much more progress is necessary regarding our current understanding of climate and our abilities to model it.”
  11. Dr Peter Dietze: “Using a flawed eddy diffusion model, the IPCC has grossly underestimated the future oceanic carbon dioxide uptake.”
  12. Dr John Everett: “It is time for a reality check. The oceans and coastal zones have been far warmer and colder than is projected in the present scenarios of climate change. I have reviewed the IPCC and more recent scientific literature and believe that there is not a problem with increased acidification, even up to the unlikely levels in the most-used IPCC scenarios.”
  13. Dr Eigil Friis-Christensen: “The IPCC refused to consider the sun’s effect on the Earth’s climate as a topic worthy of investigation. The IPCC conceived its task only as investigating potential human causes of climate change.”
  14. Dr Lee Gerhard: “I never fully accepted or denied the anthropogenic global warming concept until the furore started after NASA’s James Hansen’s wild claims in the late 1980s. I went to the [scientific] literature to study the basis of the claim, starting with first principles. My studies then led me to believe that the claims were false.”
  15. Dr Indur Goklany: “Climate change is unlikely to be the world’s most important environmental problem of the 21st century. There is no signal in the mortality data to indicate increases in the overall frequencies or severities of extreme weather events, despite large increases in the population at risk.”
  16. Dr Vincent Gray: “The [IPCC] climate change statement is an orchestrated litany of lies.”
  17. Dr Mike Hulme: “Claims such as ‘2500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’ are disingenuous … The actual number of scientists who backed that claim was only a few dozen.”
  18. Dr Kiminori Itoh: “There are many factors which cause climate change. Considering only greenhouse gases is nonsense and harmful.”
  19. Dr Yuri Izrael: “There is no proven link between human activity and global warming. I think the panic over global warming is totally unjustified. There is no serious threat to the climate.”
  20. Dr Steven Japar: “Temperature measurements show that the climate model-predicted mid-troposphere hot zone is non-existent. This is more than sufficient to invalidate global climate models and projections made with them.”
  21. Dr Georg Kaser: “This number [of receding glaciers reported by the IPCC] is not just a little bit wrong, it is far out by any order of magnitude … It is so wrong that it is not even worth discussing.”
  22. Dr Aynsley Kellow: “I’m not holding my breath for criticism to be taken on board, which underscores a fault in the whole peer review process for the IPCC: there is no chance of a chapter [of the IPCC report] ever being rejected for publication, no matter how flawed it might be.”
  23. Dr Madhav Khandekar: “I have carefully analysed adverse impacts of climate change as projected by the IPCC and have discounted these claims as exaggerated and lacking any supporting evidence.”
  24. Dr Hans Labohm: “The alarmist passages in the IPCC Summary for Policymakers have been skewed through an elaborate and sophisticated process of spin-doctoring.”
  25. Dr Andrew Lacis: “There is no scientific merit to be found in the Executive Summary. The presentation sounds like something put together by Greenpeace activists and their legal department.”
  26. Dr Chris Landsea: “I cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound.”
  27. Dr Richard Lindzen: “The IPCC process is driven by politics rather than science. It uses summaries to misrepresent what scientists say and exploits public ignorance.”
  28. Dr Harry Lins: “Surface temperature changes over the past century have been episodic and modest and there has been no net global warming for over a decade now. The case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated.”
  29. Dr Philip Lloyd: “I am doing a detailed assessment of the IPCC reports and the Summaries for Policy Makers, identifying the way in which the Summaries have distorted the science. I have found examples of a summary saying precisely the opposite of what the scientists said.”
  30. Dr Martin Manning: “Some government delegates influencing the IPCC Summary for Policymakers misrepresent or contradict the lead authors.”
  31. Steven McIntyre: “The many references in the popular media to a ‘consensus of thousands of scientists’ are both a great exaggeration and also misleading.”
  32. Dr Patrick Michaels: “The rates of warming, on multiple time scales, have now invalidated the suite of IPCC climate models. No, the science is not settled.”
  33. Dr Nils-Axel Morner: “If you go around the globe, you find no sea level rise anywhere.”
  34. Dr Johannes Oerlemans: “The IPCC has become too political. Many scientists have not been able to resist the siren call of fame, research funding and meetings in exotic places that awaits them if they are willing to compromise scientific principles and integrity in support of the man-made global-warming doctrine.”
  35. Dr Roger Pielke: “All of my comments were ignored without even a rebuttal. At that point, I concluded that the IPCC Reports were actually intended to be advocacy documents designed to produce particular policy actions, but not a true and honest assessment of the understanding of the climate system.”
  36. Dr Paul Reiter: “As far as the science being ‘settled,’ I think that is an obscenity. The fact is the science is being distorted by people who are not scientists.”
  37. Dr Murry Salby: “I have an involuntary gag reflex whenever someone says the science is settled. Anyone who thinks the science is settled on this topic is in fantasia.”
  38. Dr Tom Segalstad: “The IPCC global warming model is not supported by the scientific data.”
  39. Dr Fred Singer: “Isn’t it remarkable that the Policymakers Summary of the IPCC report avoids mentioning the satellite data altogether, or even the existence of satellites — probably because the data show a slight cooling over the last 18 years, in direct contradiction of the calculations from climate models?”
  40. Dr Hajo Smit: “There is clear cut solar-climate coupling and a very strong natural variability of climate on all historical time scales. Currently I hardly believe anymore that there is any relevant relationship between human CO2 emissions and climate change.”
  41. Dr Richard Tol: “The IPCC attracted more people with political rather than academic motives. In AR4, green activists held key positions in the IPCC and they succeeded in excluding or neutralising opposite voices.”
  42. Dr Tom Tripp: “There is so much of a natural variability in weather it makes it difficult to come to a scientifically valid conclusion that global warming is man made.”
  43. Dr Gerd-Rainer Weber: “Most of the extremist views about climate change have little or no scientific basis.”
  44. Dr David Wojick: “The public is not well served by this constant drumbeat of alarms fed by computer models manipulated by advocates.”
  45. Dr Miklos Zagoni: “I am positively convinced that the anthropogenic global warming theory is wrong.”
  46. Dr Eduardo Zorita: “Editors, reviewers and authors of alternative studies, analysis, interpretations, even based on the same data we have at our disposal, have been bullied and subtly blackmailed.”

Via : 46 statements by IPCC experts against the IPCC | grumpydenier

*

BIOGRAPHIES of IPCC SCIENTISTS 


  1. Dr Robert C Balling, Jr.  Dr Robert Ballingis a professor of geography at Arizona State University, and the former director of its Office of Climatology. His research interests include climatology, global climate change, and geographic information systems. Balling has declared himself one of the scientists who oppose the consensus on global warming, arguing in a 2009 book that anthropogenic global warming “is indeed real, but relatively modest”, and maintaining that there is a publication bias in the scientific literature.


  2. Dr Lucka Bogataj (Kajfež Bogataj Lučka) The joint recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, she is one of Slovenia’s pioneers in researching the impact of climate change, and she regularly informs the general public of her findings.She is a full professor and teaches at the Biotechnical Faculty, while also lecturing at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics and at the Faculty of Architecture. More…

    …..

….

Deep freeze in Arctic Europe sends power prices soaring

by T. Nilsen, Nov 28, 2021 in The BarentsObserver


On the Finnmark plateau, between Kautokeino and Karasjok, temperatures dropped down to -35°C on Sunday. The forecast for the coming week shows a temperature anomaly for the last days of November of 10°C below the reference period 1961-1990, the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute informs.

Coldest out is Nikkaluokta near Gällivare in Norrbotten with -36°C.

In times of climate change, the current freeze comes in sharp contrast to last fall, when meteorologists reported about the hottest October and early November ever measured, with an average of 6,7°C above normal across the Arctic.

Cold weather even sweeps the coast of northernmost Norway where the Arctic waters are kept ice-free by the warm Gulf Stream. In Kirkenes, on the border to Russia, the thermometer read -25°C on Saturday outside the Barents Observer’s office.

On the Kola Peninsula, Sunday November 28 came with temperatures from -18°C to -30°C the news online Severpost reported.

Further east in the Russian Arctic, quickly accumulating sea-ice on the Northern Sea Route has created a critical situation as a number of ships have been trapped in thick sea-ice for several weeks.

Inari, northern Finland. Photo: Thomas Nilsen

NASA Data On Global Sea Ice Area Shows A Growth Equal To The Size Of Belgium Since 1982!

by P. Gosselin,  Nov 30, 2021 in NoTricksZone


Data sources like the National Snow and Ice Data Center show global sea ice has been” drastically decreasing for a long time” and so we need to panic and overhaul the entire carbon economy. We hear this daily in the media.

Surprising global sea ice area findings

But Zoe has analyzed what she characterizes as a “very legitimate source” of data from NASA, (here, or here). And according to her findings, the data from these sources suggest global sea ice loss is not as dramatic as some institutes would like us to believe it is. In fact there ‘s been a gain!

Zoe plotted the data going back 40 years, from 1982 to 2021, the “Global Sea Ice Area Fraction”, which “is a proportion of the entire Earth’s surface that is ice over water.”

“As you can see, about 3.6% (on average) of our planet’s area is covered in ice over water,” reports Zoe. “In the last 40 years, ice over water has INCREASED, and not decreased, as popularly claimed.”

According to Zoe, the observed increase is equivalent to ~30,600 km², or “roughly the size of Belgium”.

Climate Fail: Arctic Sea Ice Growing, Nearing Highest Extent In Two Decades

by T. Lison, Nov 24, 2021 in ClimateChangeDispatch


 

t’s so cold in the Arctic that:

Two icebreakers are on the way to rescue ice-locked ships on Northern Sea Route (snip)

District authorities in the Russian Far East have decided to commission two icebreakers to aid the vessels currently ice-locked in the East Siberian Sea. (snip)

The commissioning of the powerful icebreaking vessels comes as severe sea-ice conditions have taken shippers by surprise. There are now about 20 vessels that either are stuck or struggling to make it across the icy waters.

But what about the Antarctic ice cap?

That’s not about to melt either:

[T]he South Pole also just witnessed a historically cold winter. As reported last month: “Between the months of April and September, the South Pole averaged a temperature of -61.1C (-78F). Simply put, this was the region’s coldest 6-month spell ever recorded, and it comfortably usurped the previous coldest ‘coreless winter‘ on record: the -60.6C (-77F) from 1976 (solar minimum of weak cycle 20).”

In  fact, it turns out that, according to a study released a week ago:

PALEOCLIMATE DATA INDICATE THERE WAS LESS ARCTIC SEA ICE DURING THE PRE-INDUSTRIAL PERIOD THAN IN MODERN TIMES, OR WHEN CO2 CONCENTRATIONS WERE 100 PPM LOWER THAN TODAY (280 VS. 380 PPM).

Scientists (Diamond et al., 2021) assert that during the 18th and 19th centuries Arctic sea ice extent minimum (September) values averaged 5.54 million km².

Physicists: Climate Model Error Overestimates CO2 Impact On Global Temps By Factor Of 5

by K. Richard, Nov 22, 2021 in NoTricksZone


A new study suggests CO2 molecules have little consequential impact affecting outgoing radiation, and that climate models attribute global temperature effects to CO2 that are fundamentally erroneous.

Russian physicists (Smirnov and Zhilyaev, 2021) have published a peer-reviewed paper in the Advances in Fundamental Physics Special Issue for the journal Foundations.

They assesses the role of CO2 molecules in the standard atmosphere and assert “we have a contradiction with the results of climatological models in the analysis of the Earth’s greenhouse effect.”

Key points from the paper include the following:

1. Climate model calculations of CO2’s impact on global temperatures are in error by a factor of 5 as a result of “ignoring, in climatological models, the Kirchhoff law” which says radiators are “simultaneously the absorbers.”

2. Change in the concentration of an optically active atmospheric component (like CO2) “would not lead to change in the outgoing radiative flux.”

3. CO2 molecules “are not the main radiator of the atmosphere.” Water vapor molecules are, and thus they “may be responsible for the observed heating of the Earth.”

Emission Reductions From Pandemic Had Unexpected Effects on Atmosphere

by J. Lee & J. O’Neill, Nov 9, 2021 in JetPropulsionLaboratory


Earth’s atmosphere reacted in surprising ways to the lowering of emissions during the pandemic, showing how closely climate warming and air pollution are linked.

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting limitations on travel and other economic sectors by countries around the globe drastically decreased air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions within just a few weeks. That sudden change gave scientists an unprecedented view of results that would take regulations years to achieve.

A comprehensive new survey of the effects of the pandemic on the atmosphere, using satellite data from NASA and other international space agencies, reveals some unexpected findings. The study also offers insights into addressing the dual threats of climate warming and air pollution. “We’re past the point where we can think of these as two separate problems,” said Joshua Laughner, lead author of the new study and a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech in Pasadena, California. “To understand what is driving changes to the atmosphere, we must consider how air quality and climate influence each other.”

Published Nov. 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the paper grew from a workshop sponsored by Caltech’s W.M. Keck Institute for Space Studies, led by scientists at that institution and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which is managed by Caltech. Participants from about 20 U.S. and international universities, federal and state agencies, and laboratories pinpointed four atmospheric components for in-depth study: the two most important greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane; and two air pollutants, nitrogen oxides and microscopic nitrate particles.

Carbon Dioxide

The most surprising result, the authors noted, is that while carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 5.4% in 2020, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere continued to grow at about the same rate as in preceding years. “During previous socioeconomic disruptions, like the 1973 oil shortage, you could immediately see a change in the growth rate of CO2,” said David Schimel, head of JPL’s carbon group and a co-author of the study. “We all expected to see it this time, too.”

Using data from NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 satellite launched in 2014 and the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System atmospheric model, the researchers identified several reasons for this result. First, while the 5.4% drop in emissions was significant, the growth in atmospheric concentrations was within the normal range of year-to-year variation caused by natural processes. Also, the ocean didn’t absorb as much CO2 from the atmosphere as it has in recent years – probably in an unexpectedly rapid response to the reduced pressure of CO2 in the air at the ocean’s surface.

17 More Studies Show No Unusual Warming Trend In Recent Centuries…And A Warmer Holocene

by K. Richard, Nov 11, 2021 in NoTricksZone


Cruz et al., 2021 (Argentina)

Argentina’s (Tixi Cave) present annual temperature is 13.8°C. It was 3.5°C (17.3°C), 1.7°C (15.5°C), 3°C (16.8°C), and 4.5°C (18.3°C) warmer than today 3496, 1656, 656, and 160 years before present, respectively. So ~1860 was 4.5°C warmer.

 

 

 

A Potted History of Glaciers

by P. Homewood, Nov 10, 2021 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat


A friend recently suggested that “melting glaciers” must surely prove “global warming is true”.

It is a common belief. After all, glaciers are a visible phenomenon and it all sounds logical.

As you know, I have written extensively about glaciers, (see the “glaciers” tab on the sidebar). But it is worth posting this potted history of them:

Summary

The modern day retreat of glaciers is part of a much longer natural cycle. Indeed, we find evidence of that cycle going back long before the Middle Ages.

Lamb, for instance, claims that glaciers in the Alps and Norway were advancing between 800 and 400BC, reaching an extent almost as great as during the Little Ice Age. They advanced again around AD600 to a similar position as before.

In between times, of course, the same glaciers also retreated, both during the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warming Period.

Whether man-made warming has played any part in modern glacial retreat, we know that:

  • Most of the retreat since the 18thC occurred before any possible impact from humans.
  • Glaciers were smaller than now in the Middle Ages
  • There is nothing unprecedented or alarming about the current state of the world’s glaciers

All of this is common knowledge amongst glaciologists. But for some reason the world of climate science does not want the public to know.

China’s Climate Goals Hinge on a $440 Billion Nuclear Buildout

by D. Murtaugh & K. Chia, Nov 2, 2021 in BloombergGreen


China is planning at least 150 new reactors in the next 15 years, more than the rest of the world has built in the past 35.

Nuclear power once seemed like the world’s best hope for a carbon-neutral future. After decades of cost-overruns, public protests and disasters elsewhere, China has emerged as the world’s last great believer, with plans to generate an eye-popping amount of nuclear energy, quickly and at relatively low cost.

China has over the course of the year revealed the extensive scope of its plans for nuclear, an ambition with new resonance given the global energy crisis and the calls for action coming out of the COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow. The world’s biggest emitter, China’s planning at least 150 new reactors in the next 15 years, more than the rest of the world has built in the past 35. The effort could cost as much as $440 billion; as early as the middle of this decade, the country will surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest generator of nuclear power.

Presidents Xi and Putin (and the Hedge Funds!) are laughing at us

by P. Homewood, Nov 8, 2021 in NotaLotofPeople KnowThat


The gap between rhetoric and fact is a perennial feature of politics. But seldom can the chasm between claim and reality have been as wide as that displayed by Alok Sharma at the Cop26 conference in Glasgow. The British president of the latest intergovernmental climate change gathering told the delegates (and the world’s media) that “the end of coal is in sight”, as a result of the agreement he had negotiated.


That was the rhetoric. Now the fact. Not only was the declaration to phase out coal by the 2040s not signed by the world’s top three consumers (China, India and America, which account for more than 70 per cent of the global CO2 emissions from burning the stuff); the pledge itself was neutered by the addition of the get-out “or as soon as possible thereafter”.

Climate change is no catastrophe

by M. Shellenberger, Nov 3, 2021 in Unherd


No global problem has ever been more exaggerated than climate change. As it has gone from being an obscure scientific question to a theme in popular culture, we’ve lost all sense of perspective.

Here are the facts: in Europe, emissions in 2020 were 26% below 1990 levels. In the United States, emissions in 2020 were 22% below 2005 levels. Emissions are likely to start declining, too, in developing nations, including China and India, within the next decade. Most nations’ emissions will be bigger this year than last, due to post-Covid economic growth. But global emissions are still likely to peak within the next decade.

And the result will be a much smaller increase in global average temperatures than almost anyone predicted just five years ago. The best science now predicts that temperatures are likely to rise just 2.5-3°Cabove pre-industrial levels. It’s not ideal, but it’s a far cry from the hysterical and apocalyptic predictions of 6°C, made just a decade ago. A 3°C increase is hardly an existential threat to humanity.

Not that you’d know it, if you had half an eye on the headlines this summer. The floods, fires and heatwaves that plagued the world were, for many observers, proof that the impacts of climate change have already become catastrophic. In Europe, more than 150 people died in flooding. In the United States, wildfire season started earlier and lasted longer, razing hundreds of thousands of acres. Around the world, hundreds died from heatwaves.

But again, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the facts: there has been a 92% decline in the per decade death toll from natural disasters since its peak in the 1920s. In that decade, 5.4 million people died from natural disasters. In the 2010s, just 0.4 million did. Globally, the five-year period ending in 2020 had the fewest natural disaster deaths of any five-year period since 1900. And this decline occurred during a period when the global population nearly quadrupled — and temperatures rose more than 1°C degree centigrade above pre-industrial levels.

A Theory of the Hack

by S. McIntyre, Nov 1, 2021 in ClimateAudit


Two major new BBC programs, The Trick and the Hack That Changed The World, re-visit 2009 Climategate events on the eve of UK hosting the most recent international climate get-together. I was interviewed by The Hack and mentioned in The Trick as a villain.

In today’s article, I’m going to propose a theory of the Climategate hack that is very different from the grandiose conspiracy of Russian intel services and US fossil fuel corporations that is the prevalent fantasy of the climate “community” and chattering classes. Subsequent to my interview with the Hack That Changed, I’ve re-examined and cross-checked documents and noticed some interesting new connections. I don’t know the identity of the Climategate hacker, but do believe that deductions about his profile (e.g. motivated individual vs paid institutional hacker) can be made more intelligently by carefully examining details of what was exfiltrated and when – as I shall do here.

 

‘Guess the climate rules don’t apply to them’

by P. Homewood, Nov 2, 2021 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat


Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos were slammed as hypocrites for lecturing the world on the need to combat climate change by reducing carbon footprint while at the same time reportedly vacationing on superyachts off the coast of Turkey.

Multi-billionaire and Microsoft founder Gates celebrated his 66th birthday in Turkey in the company of fellow tycoon and Amazon founder Bezos on Friday.

Bezos was among the 50 guests invited to Gates’ private party beside the Mediterranean. It’s not clear whether any of Gates’ family helped him celebrate at his exclusive bash.

Gates – once the richest man on earth who has dropped to fourth on the Forbes Rich List ranking with $124 billion – transported his guests by helicopter from his $2million-a-week rental yacht ‘Lana’ to the Sea Me Beach club in Fethiye.

The jet fuel used to power helicopters emits 21.095 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon burned, and helicopters travel approximately 10.75 miles per gallon.

According to reports, Bezos also travelled to Gates’ superyacht by helicopter.

The Blue Origin founder is said to have made the 120-mile round trip journey by chopper from Govoka to the resort town of Fethiye.

Based on the same estimations, Bezos’ helicopter emitted some 215 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Both Bezos and Gates are reportedly staying on superyachts – each of which emits 7,020 tons of carbon dioxide per year, or 19 tons per day.