Archives de catégorie : better to know…?

better to know...?, climate-debate

Eastern Alps may have been ice-free in the time of Ötzi the Iceman

by C. Rotter, Dec 21, 2020 in WUWT

From The New Scientist

Glaciers in the Ötztal Alps in Austria are currently melting and may be lost within two decades, but this might not be the first time humans have seen this kind of change. A new analysis reveals that glaciers in this region formed just before or perhaps even within the lifetime of Ötzi the Iceman, a mummified body found just 12 kilometres away in 1991.

Pascal Bohleber at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and his colleagues drilled 11 metres into the Weißseespitze summit glacier, down to the bedrock, at 3500 metres altitude and collected two ice cores. They then used radiocarbon dating to  analyse microscopic bits of organic material extracted from the ice cores and found that the glacier is 5200 to 6600 years old. Ötzi is thought to have lived between 5100 and 5300 years ago, and his body was found preserved in ice.

The glacier’s age means it formed during a time called the mid-Holocene warm period, when Earth’s climate was warmer than it is now. It is also dome-shaped, which Bohleber says is rare in the Alps and means that the ice has seen very little movement over time, meaning we can use it to study the climate when it formed.

Read more: Ötzi the Iceman’s last journey revealed by moss found in his stomach

“More information on the mid-Holocene warm period, when the glaciers were smaller than today, is direly needed so that we can better predict how the glaciers will respond to the anticipated future climate over the next 50 years,” says Bethan Davies at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Comparing ice cores from different sites tells us quite a bit about the past climate in that region, says Bohleber, but that gets harder as the glaciers thaw. Meltwater makes it more difficult to drill for ice cores and causes the glaciers to slide downhill, exposing the ancient ice to modern contaminants.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2263399-eastern-alps-may-have-been-ice-free-in-the-time-of-otzi-the-iceman/#ixzz6hDkuLfkW

See also  in GWPF

better to know...?, climate-debate

Polar bears again attracted to Russian town by dead walrus Attenborough blames on no sea ice

by Polar Bear Science, Dec 20, 2020

In the news again: Cape Schmidt (on the Chukchi Sea) made famous by Sir David Attenborough’s false claim that walrus fell to their deaths because of lack of sea ice due to climate change when a clever polar bear hunting strategy was actually to blame.

Last year in December (above), some bears were feeding at Ryrkaypiy’s garbage dump and wandering around town after being displaced from feeding on walrus carcasses by bigger, stronger bears on the nearby point.

This year, the town has managed to keep the bears out of town, so while the residents are having no real problems, more than 30 bears have been spotted near town, almost certainly feeding on natural-death carcasses of walrus along the shore (see photo below from 2017 where Ryrkaypiy can be seen in the background).

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Today’s Iceland Colder, Icier Than In Last 8,000 Years (Except the 1800s)

by K. Richard, Dec 15, 2020 in ClimateChange Dispatch

A wealth of new research in glacier and sea ice extent shows modern Iceland is 2-4°C colder than all of the last 8,000 years except for a slightly colder late 19th century.

Even the 1700s were warmer with less ice than today in and around Iceland.

A new study (Geirsdóttir et al., 2020) now affirms peak Holocene warmth at least “∼3–4 °C above modern in Iceland” prevailed throughout much of the last 8,000 years.

Data from tree growth, glacier-induced soil erosion, algae productivity, sea ice biomarker proxies (IP25), and other climate indices affirm these conclusions.

Harning et al., 2020 report an overall 7°C Holocene cooling trend In Iceland’s surrounding sea surface temperatures (SST).

“In terms of foraminifera-reconstructed SST, there is an overall trend of cooling throughout the last 8 ka from ~10 °C to ~3 °C.”

 

It is only in the last few centuries of the modern era that temperatures sharply plummeted to their lowest values of the last 10,000 years (Geirsdóttir et al., 2020).

“The coolest climate of the last 10 ka occurred in the late 1800s CE.”

Consequent to the peak cooling, glaciers and sea ice reached their maximum extents of the Holocene just 150 years ago.

While Iceland’s glaciers and North Shelf sea ice extent did partially recover in the first half of the 20th century, the ice extents are still beyond what they were in the 1700s and earlier.

There is nothing to indicate modern warmth or ice recession in and around Iceland is unprecedented or even unusual.

Read more at No Tricks Zone

better to know...?, climate-debate

New sunspot cycle could be one of the strongest on record, new research predicts

by National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Dec 7, 2020 in ScienceDaily

In direct contradiction to the official forecast, a team of scientists led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is predicting that the Sunspot Cycle that started this fall could be one of the strongest since record-keeping began.

In a new article published in Solar Physics, the research team predicts that Sunspot Cycle 25 will peak with a maximum sunspot number somewhere between approximately 210 and 260, which would put the new cycle in the company of the top few ever observed.

The cycle that just ended, Sunspot Cycle 24, peaked with a sunspot number of 116, and the consensus forecast from a panel of experts convened by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is predicting that Sunspot Cycle 25 will be similarly weak. The panel predicts a peak sunspot number of 115.

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better to know...?, climate and geology

Newly discovered Greenland plume drives thermal activities in the Arctic

by Tohoku University, Dec 7, 2020 in ScienceDaily

A team of researchers understands more about the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. They discovered a flow of hot rocks, known as a mantle plume, rising from the core-mantle boundary beneath central Greenland that melts the ice from below.

The results of their two-part study were published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

“Knowledge about the Greenland plume will bolster our understanding of volcanic activities in these regions and the problematic issue of global sea-level rising caused by the melting of the Greenland ice sheet,” said Dr. Genti Toyokuni, co-author of the studies.

The North Atlantic region is awash with geothermal activity. Iceland and Jan Mayen contain active volcanoes with their own distinct mantle plumes, whilst Svalbard — a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean — is a geothermal area. However, the origin of these activities and their interconnectedness has largely been unexplored

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better to know...?

The Guardian: Children Won’t Know what Snow Is – AGAIN

by E. Worall, Dec 8, 2020 in WUWT

h/t James Delingpole / Breitbart; One of the most widely mocked alarmist predictions ever :- In the year 2000, Dr. David Viner beclowned himself by announcing that thanks to Global Warming, “children just aren’t going to know what snow is” (see the web archive – the original was deleted). Now Dr Lizzie Kendon of the UK MET office has followed Viner’s footsteps, by suggesting “much of the snow will have disappeared entirely” by the end of the century.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

CAGW failed ‘Predictions’

by R. Istvan, Dec 4, 2020 in WUWT

My last ruminating climate guest post compared ‘big’ climate science issues to ‘weeds’. This is a follow on big picture post, from a different perspective, albeit partly overlapping the first. (First perspective was basic science claims, this is resulting predictions.) I am tired of whack-a-mole minutia, and think that detailed rebuttals to garbage climate alarm papers no longer matter in our politicized ‘GND’ environment.

This post incorporates by reference (not by links [lazy me], just by key WUWT search words or other occasional generic mentions) many previous WUWT guest posts plus other writings that relative newbies can review for your selves. All the previous referenced posts and other writings have many linked reference footnotes for your personal follow up. Trolls, beware.

Since the Charney and Hanson 1988 climate alarm proceedings, there have been many dire climate prognostications. NONE have come true.  Lets review some of the most salient. (We skip trivial stuff like Dr. Viner’s since disappeared 1990 prediction that ‘UK children will not know snow’—since they soon did.)

  1. Temperatures have recently suddenly risen. This was the essence of MBH’s 1999 hockey stick, and later 2013’s Marcott’s equivalent. Both ‘observations’ have been fully discredited. (I personally proved Marcott’s academic misconduct in essay ‘High Stick Foul’ in ebook Blowing Smoke in late 2014.)  True, temperatures have risen since the last Thames Ice Fair in 1814, as the world warmed out of the Little Ice Age (LIA). Climate changes… How much, we dunno for three reasons:
    • In the US, early data is sparse, and later data is contaminated by multiple surface station siting issues. The latter issue proven here at WUWT by 2009.
    • Outside the US and Europe, land temp data is worse than just sparse, it often does not exist at all, or only recently.
    • Over oceans comprising 71% of the Earth surface, data is worse than just sparse. It is mostly non-existent (SH). Where it does exist (until ARGO) it is contaminated by trade routes and ladings.
  2. Temperatures will increase unsustainably. This is based on the IPCC nominal ECS of about 3, recently goosed up by forthcoming CMIP6. Except, temps have NOT. As just one example of predictive model falsification, the CMIP4/5 models predicted tropical troposphere hotspot simply does NOT exist. There are several reasons why these models have abjectly failed, explained in several previous posts.
  3. Sea level rise accelerates. Except it hasn’t. And the most accurate SLR dGPS corrected tide gauges not only show no acceleration, they show it with ~closure (thermosteric rise plus ice sheet melt). And, the present rise rate is no different from the peak of the previous interglacial, the Eemian. (Details are in previous WUWT posts and in essay PseudoPrecision in eBook Blowing Smoke)
  4. Polar bears will go extinct from lack of summer sea ice. Except as Dr. Crockford has amply explained, this is an alarmist misconception at two levels. First, polar bears do not depend on summer sea ice. They depend on spring ice during the seal welping season, their main feeding cycle. No one suggests that is diminishing. Second, Arctic sea ice is cyclical, and the notion that it is spiraling ever down (Wadham’s alarm) is just factually wrong. (Essay Northwest Passage in ebook Blowing Smoke covers the Arctic Ice cycle issue in historical detail.)
  5. Extreme weather increases. Except per IPCC SRES (2012) it has NOT, anywhere, in any form. (Climate is rigorously defined as the envelope of weather [like temp, rainfall] over at least 30 years.) All the annual recent climate ‘extremes’ in the press are just weather (like this year’s accurately predicted overactive Atlantic hurricane season). As an example, landfalling US hurricane ACE over 30 years has NOT increased as a recent paper claimed—by falsely including hurricanes that touched land but then went back out to sea and re-intensified.

There are also a lot of unworkable ‘Green New Deal solutions’ to this non-problem. The most prominent are ‘renewable electric generation’ and EV’s.

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better to know...?, climate and geology

New Paleoclimatology Finding Shows Earth’s Climate Was Typically Warmer than Today

by H.S. Sterling, Dec2, 2020 in WUWT

Archaeologists have published a new paper in The Holocene, DOI: 10.1177/0959683620972775 that confirms what previous research has shown: numerous periods during recent history have been as warm as or warmer than the present.

The press release was covered in The New Scientist, “Climate change has revealed a huge haul of ancient arrows in Norway,”  and discusses the findings of researchers from the Universities of Cambridge, Oslo, and Bergen. The researchers discovered a “treasure trove” of arrows, arrowheads, clothing, and other artifacts, recently uncovered by a receding ice in a mountainous region of southern Norway. The oldest arrows and artifacts date from around 4100 BC. The youngest artifacts date from approximately AD 1300, at the end of the Medieval Warm Period. Because present temperatures are only now exposing some of the artifacts were deposited when no ice covered the ground, temperatures were clearly warmer during the many periods when artifacts were deposited.

Along with the arrows and other artifacts, the researchers found nearly 300 specimens of reindeer antler and bone exposed by receding ice. Because reindeer presently frequent the area, the archaeologists say they are confident the area has served as an important hunting ground, off and on, for millennia.

The fact that artifacts were found from several different periods separated by hundreds and thousands of years in time indicates the ice and snow in the region has expanded and receded several times over the current interglacial period.

Elsewhere in Norway, scientists also recently uncovered what they have labeled a “Viking highway,” a route the ancient peoples inhabiting the region used to travel regularly. The route had for approximately 2,000 years been covered by snow and ice that expanded as the region’s climate shifted from a relatively warm period, comparable to present temperatures, to a colder period during which “permanent” thick snow and ice cover formed. This erected the equivalent of a “highway closed” sign.

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better to know...?, energy and fields

Are governments able to deliver the energy transition?

by S. Furfari, Nov 16, 2020 in EuropeanScientist

On 4 December 2019, in her first Brussels press conference the newly appointed president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said she will lead a ‘geopolitical Commission’. One year later, we are still waiting for some ‘geopolitical’ results. Indeed, it is rather a ‘green Commission’, as even the Covid crisis – though its cause is totally unrelated to energy – is used to reinforce the ‘energy transition’, wanted by the German Chancellor. In September 1999, arriving as president of the European Commission Mr Romano Prodi has been convinced that energy was not so important and that it did not deserve to be managed by an energy general directorate. It merged it with the transport energy directorate. What a difference twenty later: energy is now the centre of all interest, not for its own merits, but because it is at the centre of the climate change debate. But are politicians able to drive the vast, complex and multi-dependent energy system? Is their willingness’s able to master it effective?

Not surprisingly, this concept of ‘energy transition’ was invented in Germany in the early 1980s. In a book entitled ‘Energie-Wende, Wachstum und Wohlstand ohne Erdöl und Uran’ published in 1980, researchers from a German environmentalist organisation, the Öko-Institut, proposed to stop using oil and uranium. The simplified term ‘EnergieWende’ was quickly coined to refer to the fight against climate change and the abandonment of nuclear energy. Germany has firmly followed this track since the beginning of the 21st century, aiming at a radical change in its energy policy. The German population has also adhered to this concept because, after 40 years of green nuclear bashing, it has become widely opposed tonuclear energy.

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Figure 1Correlation of electricity price for dwellings with intermittent renewable electricity production
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better to know...?, climate-debate

Covid-19 et émissions de CO2

by Prof. Jean N., Dec. 1, 2020 in ScienceClimatEnergie

Début avril 2020, sans que personne ne s’en rende compte, une expérience scientifique très intéressante a été menée, et ce de manière involontaire. En effet, 3,9 milliards de personnes dans le monde ont été placées en confinement suite à l’expansion du virus Covid-19. Il en a résulté une très forte diminution du trafic aérien et automobile accompagné d’une fermeture temporaire de nombreuses industries dans le monde entier. Cette expérience a évidemment provoqué une chute drastique des émissions de CO2 anthropique. Mais pendant l’expérience, les détecteurs mesurant le taux de CO2 atmosphérique ont continué à tourner. Nous disposons maintenant des résultats. Cette diminution abrupte des émissions a-t-elle eu un impact sur le taux de CO2 atmosphérique, ou sur la température globale? C’est ce dont nous allons discuter dans le présent article.

1. Bref rappel concernant la mesure du taux de CO2 atmosphérique.

L’observatoire de Mauna Loa à Hawaii est l’un des plus célèbres sites mesurant en continu le taux de CO2 atmosphérique. Ce taux est mesuré avec précision depuis 1959 par une méthode de spectrométrie infra-rouges, et depuis 2019 par la méthode CRDS (Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy). La courbe obtenue est croissante avec des oscillations régulières (Figure 1). De ± 320 ppm en 1959 on arrive à ± 410 ppm en 2020. SCE a d’ailleurs publié une suite d’articles sur ce sujet[1].

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Figure 3. Taux de CO2 mesuré à Mauna Loa depuis 2017. Source : Koutsoyiannis & Kundzewicz (2020) Sci 2020, 2, 72

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better to know...?, climate-debate

In The Climate Debate, It’s Either Fake News, Biased News, Or No News

by Ed Walbroehl, Nov 27, 2020 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Take your pick. The Mainstream Media (MSM) are using all three to stifle debate on climate change just like the current presidential election. What has happened to the American news media in this country?

I can remember a time when the MSM would do a story and would give you both sides of the issue and let the viewer decide what to think.

It’s amazing to see a business so willing to undermine its own credibility to push a certain narrative thinking everybody is stupid and will buy whatever they say.

In the case of the climate change issue, they even went as far as announcing no more so-called climate skeptics would be invited on their shows to give other opinions as is the case with NBC’s Meet the Press for example.

So much for a fair and balanced debate. Oh! I forgot. According to them, the science is settled. By who? That phrase the science is settled is the first clue that tells you a scientist is probably not a real scientist.

Real scientists know that new methods, learning, tools, ideas, and experiments will come about that will change our current knowledge and understanding of many scientific issues.

The MSM are even willing to lose viewers by lying to them. Look how foolish they looked when all this Russian collusion with the president turned out. Many viewers left after they found out they were being lied to.

Look what’s happening now as people start checking the facts on their own about climate change. They’re seeing that they are being lied to once again.

It’s probably why in many polls, the American people rank climate change near the bottom of what worries us, and why trust in the media is so low.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

SKEPTICISM RISING – 150+ scientists including 60 Nobel Prize winners doubt that ‘climate change is caused by humans.

by J.G. Matkin, Nov 28, 2020 in AcademiaEdu

Surveys of public opinion show that a significant minority of the population are sceptical about climate change, and many suggest that doubt is increasing. The Internet, in particular the blogosphere, provides a vast and relatively untapped resource of data on the thinking of climate sceptics. This  paper focuses on one particular example where over 150 climate sceptics  provide information on their background, opinion on climate change and reasons for their scepticism. Although this data cannot be regarded as representative of the general public, it provides a useful insight into the reasoning of those who publicly question climate science on the web. Points of note include the high level of educational background, the significant numbers who appear to have been converted from a position of climate concern to one of scepticism, and the influence of blogs on both sides of the climate debate.
 
https://www.academia.edu/12247717/Why_are_people_sceptical_about_climate_change 
 The main concern of this group of sceptics is with the quality of the science, focusing on issues such as statistics, data handling and reliance on models, with the hockey stick picture acting as the icon for the dispute.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/… It is behind a paywall but there is a preprint version here: https://ipccreport.files.wordpre… The paper is based on comments that 150 skeptics wrote on a blog thread asking them about their background. Reasons include:
 
Hyped, exaggerated claims in the media
 Previous experience of scare stories that have failed to materialize
Political activism
Climategate
Shoddy science Full detail of survey results below :
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better to know...?, climate-debate

Carbon dioxide levels continue at record levels, despite COVID-19 lockdown

by WMO, Nov 23, 20°20

 

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2020 Trends

The Global Carbon Project estimated that during the most intense period of the shutdown, daily CO2 emissions may have been reduced by up to 17% globally due to the confinement of the population. As the duration and severity of confinement measures remain unclear, the prediction of the total annual emission reduction over 2020 is very uncertain.

 

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better to know...?, climate-debate

“We do not deny climate change”: Rupert Murdoch Responds to Accusations

by E. Worall, Nov 20, 2020 in WUWT

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Tolerating diversity of opinion, in the form of providing wildly popular Murdoch Media personalities like Andrew Bolt a platform, does not mean Murdoch agrees with everything those personalities say.

But I guess old fashioned ideas like news managers giving their best journalists editorial freedom are no longer encouraged, at least when it comes to climate change.

Greens can be unforgiving of minor deviations from their dogma, even from people who helped found their movement.

Retired NASA scientist James Hansen, whose 1988 testimony pretty much kick started the climate movement, was accused of being a “denier” in 2015, because he does not think renewables alone will be enough to curb global CO2 emissions.

It is difficult to imagine someone being more alarmist than James Hansen; Hansen thinks the oceans will literally begin to boil if we don’t rapidly curb CO2 emissions. But Hansen still faced accusations of being a “denier”, because he thinks nuclear power should be an important part of the solution to climate change.

better to know...?

Atmospheric rivers help create massive holes in Antarctic sea ice

by Rutgers University, Nov 15, 2020 in WUWT

Warm, moist rivers of air in Antarctica play a key role in creating massive holes in sea ice in the Weddell Sea and may influence ocean conditions around the vast continent as well as climate change, according to Rutgers co-authored research.

Scientists studied the role of long, intense plumes of warm, moist air – known as atmospheric rivers – in creating enormous openings in sea ice. They focused on the Weddell Sea region of the Southern Ocean near Antarctica, where these sea ice holes (called polynyas) infrequently develop during the winter. A large hole in this area was first observed in 1973 and a hole developed again in the late winter and early spring of 2017.

IMAGE: A BAND OF CLOUDS IN AN ATMOSPHERIC RIVER EXTENDING FROM SOUTH AMERICA TO THE ANTARCTIC SEA ICE ZONE ON SEPT. 16, 2017. view more CREDIT: NASA

In the first study of its kind, published in the journal Science Advances, scientists found that repeated strong atmospheric rivers during late August through mid-September 2017 played a crucial role in forming the sea ice hole. These rivers brought warm, moist air from the coast of South America to the polar environment, warming the sea ice surface and making it vulnerable to melting.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Possible 1,000-kilometer-long river running deep below Greenland’s ice sheet

by  Hokkaido University, Nov 12, 2020 in EurekaAlert

Computational models suggest that melting water originating in the deep interior of Greenland could flow the entire length of a subglacial valley and exit at Petermann Fjord, along the northern coast of the island. Updating ice sheet models with this open valley could provide additional insight for future climate change predictions.

IMAGE: THE SUGGESTED VALLEY AND POSSIBLE RIVER FLOWING FROM THE DEEP INTERIOR OF GREENLAND TO PETERMANN FJORD DEEP BELOW GREENLAND’S ICE SHEET (500 METERS BELOW SEA LEVEL). (CHRISTOPHER CHAMBERS ET AL,… view more 

CREDIT: CHRISTOPHER CHAMBERS ET AL, THE CRYOSPHERE, NOVEMBER 12, 2020.

Radar surveys have previously mapped Greenland’s bedrock buried beneath two to three thousand meters of ice. Mathematical models were used to fill in the gaps in survey data and infer bedrock depths. The surveys revealed the long valley, but suggested it was segmented, preventing water from flowing freely through it. However, the peaks breaking the valley into segments only show up in areas where the mathematical modelling was used to fill in missing data, so could not be real.

Christopher Chambers and Ralf Greve, scientists at Hokkaido University’s Institute of Low Temperature Science, wanted to explore what might happen if the valley is open and melting increases at an area deep in Greenland’s interior known for melting. Collaborating with researchers at the University of Oslo, they ran numerous simulations to compare water dynamics in northern Greenland with and without valley segmentation.

The results, recently published in The Cryosphere, show a dramatic change in how water melting at the base of the ice sheet would flow, if the valley is indeed open. A distinct subglacial watercourse runs all the way from the melting site to Petermann Fjord, which is located more than 1,000 kilometers away on the northern coast of Greenland. The watercourse only appears when valley segmentation is removed; there are no other major changes to the landscape or water dynamics.

“The results are consistent with a long subglacial river,” Chambers says, “but considerable uncertainty remains. For example, we don’t know how much water, if any, is available to flow along the valley, and if it does indeed exit at Petermann Fjord or is refrozen, or escapes the valley, along the way.”

If water is flowing, the model suggests it could traverse the whole length of the valley because the valley is relatively flat, similar to a riverbed. This suggests no parts of the ice sheet form a physical blockade. The simulations also suggested that there was more water flow towards the fjord with a level valley base set at 500 meters below sea level than when set at 100 meters below. In addition, when melting is increased only in the deep interior at a known region of basal melting, the simulated discharge is increased down the entire length of the valley only when the valley is unblocked. This suggests that a quite finely tuned relationship between the valley form and overlying ice can allow a very long down-valley water pathway to develop.

“Additional radar surveys are needed to confirm the simulations are accurate,” says Greve, who has been developing the model used in the study, called Simulation Code for Polythermal Ice Sheets (SICOPOLIS). “This could introduce a fundamentally different hydrological system for the Greenland ice sheet. The correct simulation of such a long subglacial hydrological system could be important for accurate future ice sheet simulations under a changing climate.”

better to know...?, climate-debate

Uncertain Certainty: Germany’s Potsdam Climate Institute Humiliated After One-Year El Nino Forecast Model Flops

by P. Gosselin, Nov 15, 2020 in WUWT

Last year Germany’s Potsdam Institute (PIK) boasted that it had a superior El Niño one-year forecasting model, claiming 80% certainty. Today, a year later, its forecast emerges totally wrong and the prestigious institute is left humiliated. 

Hat-tip: Snowfan

In 2019, Germany’s Potsdam Climate Institute (PIK) boasted that it had a superior El Niño forecasting model, claiming one year in advance and with 80% certainty, there would be an El Niño event late in 2020 (upper curve is just an El Niño illustration). But the PIK model forecast flopped totally. The opposite has in fact emerged. Chart source: BOM (with additions).

One year ago, together with researchers of the Justus Liebig University Giessen (JLU), and Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan in Israel, Germany’s alarmist yet highly regarded Potsdam Institute for Climate Research (PIK) boldly declared in a press release there would “probably be another ‘El Niño’ by the end of 2020.”

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better to know...?, only geology

East African Rift System is slowly breaking away, with Madagascar splitting into pieces

by Virginia Tech, Nov 13, 2020 in ScienceDaily

The African continent is slowly separating into several large and small tectonic blocks along the diverging East African Rift System, continuing to Madagascar — the long island just off the coast of Southeast Africa — that itself will also break apart into smaller islands.

These developments will redefine Africa and the Indian Ocean. The finding comes in a new study by D. Sarah Stamps of the Department of Geosciences for the journal Geology. The breakup is a continuation of the shattering of the supercontinent Pangea some 200 million years ago.

Rest assured, though, this isn’t happening anytime soon.

“The rate of present-day break-up is millimeters per year, so it will be millions of years before new oceans start to form,” said Stamps, an assistant professor in the Virginia Tech College of Science. “The rate of extension is fastest in the north, so we’ll see new oceans forming there first.”

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better to know...?

Visualizing All of Earth’s Satellites: Who Owns Our Orbit?

by T. Wood, Oct 20, 2020 in VisualCapitalist

Visualizing All of Earth’s Satellites

For centuries, humans have looked to space and the stars for answers. The fascination is more than philosophical—it’s coupled with the need to solve problems here on Earth.

Today, there are seemingly countless benefits and applications of space technology. Satellites, for instance, are becoming critical for everything from internet connectivity and precision agriculture, to border security and archaeological study.

Space is Open for Business

Right now, there are nearly 6,000 satellites circling our tiny planet. About 60% of those are defunct satellites—space junk—and roughly 40% are operational.

As highlighted in the chart above, The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), determined that 2,666 operational satellites circled the globe in April of 2020.

Over the coming decade, it’s estimated by Euroconsult that 990 satellites will be launched every year. This means that by 2028, there could be 15,000 satellites in orbit.

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better to know...?, sciences-general

Tree rings may hold clues to impacts of distant supernovas on Earth

by University of Colorado at Boulder, Nov 11, 2020 in ScienceDaily

Massive explosions of energy happening thousands of light-years from Earth may have left traces in our planet’s biology and geology, according to new research by University of Colorado Boulder geoscientist Robert Brakenridge.

The study, published this month in the International Journal of Astrobiology, probes the impacts of supernovas, some of the most violent events in the known universe. In the span of just a few months, a single one of these eruptions can release as much energy as the sun will during its entire lifetime. They’re also bright — really bright.

“We see supernovas in other galaxies all the time,” said Brakenridge, a senior research associate at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at CU Boulder. “Through a telescope, a galaxy is a little misty spot. Then, all of a sudden, a star appears and may be as bright as the rest of the galaxy.”

A very nearby supernova could be capable of wiping human civilization off the face of the Earth. But even from farther away, these explosions may still take a toll, Brakenridge said, bathing our planet in dangerous radiation and damaging its protective ozone layer.

To study those possible impacts, Brakenridge searched through the planet’s tree ring records for the fingerprints of these distant, cosmic explosions. His findings suggest that relatively close supernovas could theoretically have triggered at least four disruptions to Earth’s climate over the last 40,000 years.

The results are far from conclusive, but they offer tantalizing hints that, when it comes to the stability of life on Earth, what happens in space doesn’t always stay in space.

“These are extreme events, and their potential effects seem to match tree ring records,” Brakenridge said.

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Tree rings (stock image).
Credit: © CrispyMedia / stock.adobe.com
better to know...?, climate-debate

MULTIPLE COLD RECORDS FELL IN CALIFORNIA MONDAY

by Cap Allon, Nov 10, 2020 in Electroverse

After months of EOTW articles regarding California’s summer heat and largely self-inflicted wildfires, record COLD has now swept The Golden State — and the MSM has fallen eerily quiet…

Before Monday rewrote the record books in western California, back-to-back weekend storms on Friday and Sunday brought frigid temperatures and heavy snow to much of the state, reports ktvu.com.

A whopping 18 inches of snow blanketed the Sierra-at-Tahoe ski resort and a healthy 10 inches accumulated at Sugar Bowl over the weekend, prompting a travel advisory throughout the Sierra Nevada.

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Weekend Snowfall Totals [ktvu.com].

Forwarding to Monday, a number of low temperature records were broken.

It dropped to 38F (3.3C) at the Oakland Airport Monday morning, a reading that smashed the old record of 41F set in 2009 (solar minimum of cycle 23).

Gilroy, located in Santa Clara County, also set new low Monday — the city’s official reading of 31F (-0.6C) in the early hours of Nov 9 busted the old record of 34F (1.1C) set back in 1986 (solar minimum of cycle 21).

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Fake Invisible Catastrophes & Threats of Doom

by P. Moore, Sept 24, 2020 in Gofundme

I am a co-founder Of Greenpeace in 1971-1986. I left because they became a fundraising racket using sensationalism, misinformation and fear. I became a sensible environmentalist and have spent 36 years promoting the balance of environmental, social and economic priorities. I am writing a new book based on the fact that most of the scare stories today are based on things that are invisible or remote or both. Therefore the public must rely on activists, media, politicians, and scientists, all who have a huge financial and/or political stake in the “narrative” they are pushing. This includes climate, tree, coral reefs, polar bears, GMOs, extinction, etc.
The book is based on this essay:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/u9dd56qo16naqcy/Fake%20Invisible%20Catastrophes%20and%20Threats%20of%20Doom%20%28Essay%29.docx?dl=0

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better to know...?, climate-debate, unclassified

The Guardian: Joe Biden’s $1.7 Trillion Investment Could Reduce Global Warming by 0.1C

by E. Worall, Nov 8, 2020 in WUWT

The Guardian has inadvertently revealed the utter futility of throwing trillions of dollars of borrowed government money into the bottomless renewable energy pit.

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Hey I can play this game too – if I get $1700 of that cash, I promise to cut back on eating Chilli beef. Paying a billion people to eat less chilli beef would likely have a comparable impact on global warming to spending the money on renewables. The EPA estimates CH4 accounts for 10% of observed global warming. The study I linked estimates human activity like raising beef cattle and eating chilli beans is responsible for up to 40% of detected CH4 emissions.

Alternatively the cash could be used to give all the cattle in the world that special seaweed supplement the CSIRO discovered, which is supposed to cut back on intestinal methane production.

To put this level of expenditure into perspective, the cost of launching a 0.03C manned mission to Proxima Centauri using technology developed in the 1950s has been estimated at around $2 trillion. I’m not saying that building a starship is a reasonable use of $2 trillion of taxpayer’s money, but the first step in mankind’s expansion throughout the galaxy would surely be a lot more fun than spending all that money on reducing global temperature by an amount which cannot even be directly measured.

And of course, the obvious point – if it costs $1.7 trillion to reduce global warming by 0.1C, we now have a Guardian provided method of estimating the cost of eliminating our alleged impact on the global climate, reducing global warming by 1.0C: 1.7 x 1.0C / 0.1C = $17 trillion.

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better to know...?

After nearly a decade away, La Niña weather system is back…

by C. Rotter, nov 1, 2020 in WUWT

Many will be familiar with El Niño – the ocean-warming phenomenon that affects global weather patterns – but how about La Niña, which is linked to cooler sea temperatures?

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), La Niña is back in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, after nearly a decade’s absence.

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UNDP/Joe HitchcockThe low-lying island Pacific Ocean nation, Tuvalu, is particularly susceptible to a rise in sea levels caused by climate change.    29 October 2020Climate Change

This is expected to result in sea surface temperatures between two and three degrees Celsius cooler than average, said Dr. Maxx Dilley, Deputy Director in charge of Climate Services Department at WMO.

“These coolings of these large ocean areas have a significant effect on the circulation of the atmosphere that’s flowing over them. And the changes in the atmosphere in turn affect precipitation patterns around the world.”

Uneven effects

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better to know...?, climate and geology, climate-debate

3 More New Studies Show Modern Arctic Sea Ice Extent Is Greater Than Nearly Any Time In The Last 10,000 Years

by K. Richard, Oct 29, 2029 in NoTricksZone

For years scientists have been using biomarker evidence (IP25, PIP25) to reconstruct the Arctic’s sea ice history. The evidence shows modern (20th-21st century) Arctic sea ice is at its greatest extent since the Holocene began.

Scientists (Wu et al., 2020) have determined that from about 14,000 to 8,000 years ago, when CO2 lingered near 250 ppm, the Beaufort Sea (Arctic) was “nearly ice free throughout the year” (<0.2 PIP25) and ~4°C warmer than today in winter.

With CO2 at ~400 ppm, this region is 70-100% ice-covered (>0.8 PIP25) for all but 1-2 summer months in the modern (1988-2007) era.

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