Archives par mot-clé : Wrong Prediction(s)?

climate-debate

Analysis of a carbon forecast gone wrong: the case of the IPCC FAR

by J. Curry, January 31, 2020 in WUWT-C. Rotter

The IPCC’s First Assessment Report (FAR) made forecasts or projections of future concentrations of carbon dioxide that turned out to be too high.

From 1990 to 2018, the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations was about 25% higher in FAR’s Business-as-usual forecast than in reality. More generally, FAR’s Business-as-usual scenario expected much more forcing from greenhouse gases than has actually occurred, because its forecast for the concentration of said gases was too high; this was a problem not only for CO2, but also for methane and for gases regulated by the Montreal Protocol. This was a key reason FAR’s projections of atmospheric warming and sea level rise likewise have been above observations.

Some researchers and commentators have argued that this means FAR’s mistaken projections of atmospheric warming and sea level rise do not stem from errors in physical science and climate modelling. After all, emissions are for climate models an input, not an output. Emissions depend largely on economic growth, and can also be affected by population growth, intentional emission reductions (such as those implemented by the aforementioned Montreal Protocol), and other factors that lie outside the field of physical science. Under this line of reasoning, it makes no sense to blame the IPCC for failing to predict the right amount of atmospheric warming and sea level rise, because that would be the same as blaming it for failing to predict emissions.

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Readers who have made it to this part of the article probably want a summary, so here it goes:

  • Hausfather estimates that FAR’s Business-as-usual scenario over-projected forcings for the 1990-2017 period by 55%. This would mean a difference of 0.59 w/m2 between FAR and reality.
  • Lower-than-expected concentrations of Montreal Protocol gases explain about 0.19 w/m2 of the difference. With the big caveat that Montreal Protocol accounting is a mess of CFCs, HCFCs, HFCs, stratospheric ozone, and perhaps other things I’m not even aware of.
  • FAR didn’t account for tropospheric ozone, and this ‘unexplains’ about 0.07 w/m2. So there’s still 0.45-0.5 w/m2 of forcing overshoot coming from something else, if Hausfather’s numbers are correct.
  • N2O is irrelevant in these numbers
  • CO2 concentration was significantly over-forecasted by the IPCC, and that of methane grossly so. It’s safe to assume that methane and CO2 account for most or all of the remaining difference between FAR’s projections and reality.

Again, this is a rough calculation. As mentioned before, an exact calculation has to take into account for many issues I didn’t consider here. I really hope Hausfather’s paper is the beginning of a trend in properly evaluating climate models of the past, and that means properly accounting for (and documenting) how expected forcings and actual forcings differed.

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climate-debate

CLINTEL Group Blasts Climate Doomsters; There Is No ‘Emergency’

by D. Wojick, Jan 29, 2020 in ClimateChangeDispatch

There is NO climate emergency. Preaching doom and gloom is a crime against the young generation. These are the key points of a new manifesto from the Climate Intelligence Group or CLINTEL.

CLINTEL is a rapidly growing international group, led by prominent scientists, that opposes the ill-founded attempts to scare people into hasty climate policy actions.

They also oppose the terrorizing of children as part of the false climate alarm. CLINTEL recently issued a World Climate Declaration denouncing scaremongering and this new manifesto provides detailed scientific backup for the WCD for a wide public.

The manifesto is authored by Professor Guus Berkhout, the President of CLINTEL.

The focus of the Berkhout manifesto is on climate-related modeling, which it says is “unfit for purpose.” The purpose, in this case, is predicting future climate change. Modeling dominates climate science.

It also provides the scary scenarios that drive hugely expensive and disruptive climate emergency action policies. That the models are faulty is a very important finding.

The manifesto says there are at least four strong reasons why today’s models are no good.

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climate-debate

Emissions – the ‘business as usual’ story is misleading

by Z. Hausfather & G. Peters, January 29, 2020 in Nature

Stop using the worst-case scenario for climate warming as the most likely outcome — more-realistic baselines make for better policy.

More than a decade ago, climate scientists and energy modellers made a choice about how to describe the effects of emissions on Earth’s future climate. That choice has had unintended consequences which today are hotly debated. With the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) moving into its final stages in 2020, there is now a rare opportunity to reboot.

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climate-debate

Doomsday Climate Predictions: Wrong Then, Wrong Now

by CFACT, January 20, 2020, in ClimateChangeDispatch

How many doomsday predictions about the Earth’s climate must fail before they finally get broadly ignored and dismissed out of hand?

Considering the track record of climate predictions that turned out to be false, we are well passed the moment of ridicule.

The latest climate prediction fiasco, about glaciers disappearing in Glacier National Park by 2020, is the latest reminder of the falsity of the man-made global warming movement.  It’s 2020; the glaciers remain.

Predictions of climate catastrophe drone on, and get more hysterical, including many from the same people whose credibility was destroyed long ago.

Yet, the climate alarmists remain undaunted and impervious to embarrassment.

Instead, they simply move the goalposts by predicting more planetary weather Armageddon in the future and proposing more insanely expensive solutions to “address” it (notice they rarely promise to reverse assumed man-made warming).

It is not just actors like Ted Danson or Jane Fonda who make absurd climate predictions, but scientists, government bureaucrats and especially politicians continue this longstanding racket.

In the years leading up to the first “Earth Day” in 1970, there were so many climate predictions that ended up being laughably wrong, it’s hard to pick favorites.

Stanford University biologist, Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, is perhaps the best-known alarmist of that period.

 

Continuer la lecture de Doomsday Climate Predictions: Wrong Then, Wrong Now →

climate-debate

2019 Science Refutes Climate Alarm On Every Front… Shrinking Deserts, Growing Islands, Crumbling Consensus, Weaker Storms, Cooler Arctic Etc. Etc. Etc.

by P. Gosselin, December 31, 2019 in NoTricksZone

2019 science: Absolutely no climate alarm 

No alarm on every aspect: stable polar ice, normal sea level rise, no consensus, growing snow cover, less tropical storms, tornadoes, shrinking deserts, global greening, predictions wrong, models flawed, climate driven by sun, ocean cycles, biodiversity, warmer 1000 years ago…etc…

 

2019 saw a great amount of new science emerge showing that there’s nothing alarming or catastrophic about our climate. 

Some 2019 scientific findings

Need to make a presentation showing there is no climate alarm? The following findings we reported on in 2019 will put many concerns to rest.

Hundreds of peer-reviewed papers ignored by media

What follows are some selected top science-based posts we published here at NoTricksZone in 2019. These new findings show there is absolutely no climate alarm.

Hundreds of new peer-reviewed papers, charts, findings, etc – which the IPCC, activists and media ignore and even conceal. No wonder they’ve gotten so shrill.

 

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climate-debate

False Alarm: Glacier National Park Changes ‘Gone By 2020’ Signs

by Chris White, January 9, 2020 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Officials who manage Glacier National Park are swapping out signs warning visitors that climate change would cause the park’s glaciers to disappear by 2020.

The U.S. Geological Survey told the park in 2017 that the complete melting off of the glaciers was no longer expected, park spokeswoman Gina Kurzmen told CNN.

Forecast models over the years show the glaciers were no longer at risk of disappearing by that date, she noted.

Placards at the St. Mary’s Visitor Center, located in Montana’s mountain ranges, were reportedly changed in 2019. The park is waiting for budget authorization to update the park’s full set of signs, Kurzman noted.

The signs will be changed to say: “When they will completely disappear depends on how and when we act. One thing is consistent: the glaciers in the park are shrinking.”

SEE ALSO: National Park Stealth Removes Warning That All Glaciers Will Be Gone By 2020

SEE ALSO: Himalayan Glacier Loss Caused By Many Factors, Not Just Warming

USGS noted in a report to the Daily Caller News Foundation in 2019 that recent harsh winters had significantly changed forecasts from years past.

“Glacier retreat in Glacier National Park speeds up and slows down with fluctuations in the local climate,” a representative with the USGS told the DCNF at the time. The agency is responsible for managing the park.

“Subsequently, larger than average snowfall over several winters slowed down that retreat rate and the 2020 date used in the NPS display does not apply anymore,” the representative said.

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Also : National Park Stealth Removes Warning That All Glaciers Will Be Gone By 2020

better to know...?, climate-debate

The Climate Decade that Was: Failed Predictions, Tour De Paris, and the Gretas

by  V. Jayaraj, January 8, 2020 in WUWT

As we step into a new decade, here’s a look at the climate drama that just ended.

The 2010s were dominated by the failure of doomsday prophecies, the adoption of a fantasy climate agreement, unexpected weather trends, and the beginning of the climate emergency cult movement that reminded many of the overpopulation hype of the 1970s and 1980s.
Al Gore Prophecies

Al Gore’s legacy of lies continued to spill into the second decade of this century. Contrary to his predictions in the famous climate documentary An Inconvenient Truth, polar bear populations increased, the Arctic and Antarctic remained relatively unaffected, and no major coastal economy was threatened by rising sea levels.

Gore would have had nightmares when the Canadian authorities in 2019 pondered culling polar bears because of their excess numbers caused trouble for residents in Nunavut.

 

Continuer la lecture de The Climate Decade that Was: Failed Predictions, Tour De Paris, and the Gretas →

better to know...?, climate-debate

2004 Climate Apocalypse Prediction Bites the Dust

by David Middleton, January 3, 2020 in WUWT

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Nolte: Department of Defense Predicted Climate Change Would Destroy Us by 2020

by JOHN NOLTE 3 Jan 2020

Back in 2004, the Department of Defense released a report assuring the world Climate Change would destroy all of us by the year 2020.

Well, welcome to the year 2020! And welcome to yet another fake doomsday prediction number 42 from our renowned climate experts!

Yep, our so-called “climate experts” are now 0-42 with their doomsday predictions, and this latest one is a doozy.

[…]

 

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climate-debate

Des observations satellitaires qui ne confirment pas les modèles climatiques

by Jean N., 3 janvier 2020 in ScienceClimatEnergie

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3. Conclusions

• Depuis plus de 40 ans que des mesures de température sont effectuées par satellite, la basse et la moyenne troposphère se réchauffent bel et bien. Mais sans aucune accélération visible, et ce à des vitesses de l’ordre de +0.13°C/décade et +0.09°C/décade. La vitesse de réchauffement décroit donc avec l’altitude.

• La zone correspondant à la tropopause (vers 10 km d’altitude) ne se réchauffe pas, contrairement à ce que les modèles informatiques prédisent (pour plus de détails voir les articles de J. Christy). Peut-on alors continuer à utiliser ces modèles pour prédire la température de certaines couches atmosphériques dans le futur? Notons ici que les observations satellitaires sont confirmées par des observations réalisées in situ avec des ballons-sondes.

• La basse stratosphère se refroidit actuellement à la vitesse d’environ –0.29°C par décade, et l’analyse de corrélation menée par Varotsos et Efstathiou nous suggère que le comportement de la stratosphère n’est pas simplement lié à celui de la troposphère, les choses étant plus complexes.

• Les modèles climatiques actuels, basés sur l’hypothèse d’un l’effet de serre radiatif causé essentiellement par du CO2 atmosphérique, sont donc à revoir. Le CO2 (naturel ou d’origine anthropique) pourrait donc n’avoir qu’un rôle mineur et imperceptible sur la température de la troposphère.

En conclusion générale, nous devons toujours garder à l’esprit que le système climatique est très complexe car il est composé de cinq sous-systèmes (atmosphère, cryosphère, hydrosphère, biosphère et lithosphère) et que ces 5 sous-systèmes interagissent les uns avec les autres dans l’espace et le temps avec des processus principalement non linéaires (Lovejoy et Varotsos, 2016) et se comportent de manière chaotique (voir ici). Par conséquent, la modification d’un seul paramètre dans l’un des sous-systèmes (par exemple, la température de la basse troposphère) ne permet pas de prévoir un changement climatique à long terme, car tous les autres paramètres de l’atmosphère mais aussi ceux des autres sous-systèmes (connus et mesurables, ou non) ne sont pas nécessairement connus et stables. En plus de tout cela plusieurs facteurs externes, imparfaitement connus, peuvent influencer chacun des sous-systèmes, comme les rayonnements cosmiques ou les variations du champ magnétique solaire.

climate-debate

Failed Serial Doomcasting

by Willis Eschenbach, December 27, 2019 in WUWT

People sometimes ask me why I don’t believe the endless climate/energy use predictions of impending doom and gloom for the year 2050 or 2100. The reason is, neither the climate models nor the energy use models are worth a bucket of warm spit for such predictions. Folks concentrate a lot on the obvious problems with the climate models. But the energy models are just as bad, and the climate models totally depend on the energy models for estimating future emissions. However, consider the following US Energy Information Agency (EIA) predictions of energy use from 2010, quoted from here (emphasis mine):

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The only thing that seems clear about all of those questions is that the answer is not “CO2”. Here’s another look at Greenland, this time with CO2 overlaid on the temperature:

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Does the Climate System Have a Preferred Average State? Chaos and the Forcing-Feedback Paradigm

by Roy Spencer, October 25, 2019 in GlobalWarming

The UN IPCC scientists who write the reports which guide international energy policy on fossil fuel use operate under the assumption that the climate system has a preferred, natural and constant average state which is only deviated from through the meddling of humans. They construct their climate models so that the models do not produce any warming or cooling unless they are forced to through increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases, aerosols, or volcanic eruptions.

This imposed behavior of their “control runs” is admittedly necessary because various physical processes in the models are not known well enough from observations and first principles, and so the models must be tinkered with until they produce what might be considered to be the “null hypothesis” behavior, which in their worldview means no long-term warming or cooling.

What I’d like to discuss here is NOT whether there are other ‘external’ forcing agents of climate change, such as the sun. That is a valuable discussion, but not what I’m going to address. I’d like to address the question of whether there really is an average state that the climate system is constantly re-adjusting itself toward, even if it is constantly nudged in different directions by the sun.

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1575 Winter Landscape with Snowfall near Antwerp by Lucas van Valckenborch.Städel Museum/Wikimedia Commons

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better to know...?, climate-debate

La science classique s’arrête où commence le chaos…

Prof. Igr. H. Masson, 25 octobre 2019 in ScienceClimatEnergie

1. Un nouveau paradigme : les systèmes chaotiques

« Depuis les premiers balbutiements de la Physique, le désordre apparent qui règne dans l’atmosphère, dans la mer turbulente, dans les fluctuations de populations biologiques, les oscillations du cœur et du cerveau ont été longtemps ignorées ».

 « Il a fallu attendre le début des années soixante-dix, pour que quelques scientifiques américains commencent à déchiffrer le désordre, il s’agissait surtout de mathématiciens, médecins, biologistes, physiciens, chimistes cherchant tous des connections entre diverses irrégularités observées. Le syndrome de la mort subite fut expliqué, les proliférations puis disparitions d’insectes furent comprises et modélisées, et de nouvelles méthodes d’analyse de cours boursiers virent le jour, après que les traders aient dû se rendre à l’évidence que les méthodes statistiques conventionnelles n’étaient pas adaptées. Ces découvertes furent ensuite transposées à l’étude du monde naturel : la forme des nuages, les trajectoires de la foudre, la constitution de galaxies. La science du chaos (« dynamical systems » pour les anglo-saxons) était née et allait connaître un développement considérable au fil des années ».

 

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Figure 4. L’effet papillon : analogie entre les ailes d’un papillon et l’attracteur étrange découvert par E. Lorenz.

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climate-debate

Controversy Swirls As Numbers Don’t Add Up… 1.3°C Missing Heat! – Earth Supposed To Be 16°C, But It’s Only 14.68°C

by P. Gosselin, October 19, 2019 in NoTricksZone

Even NASA says it:

Without the Earth’s greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere, the planet would be on average a frigid -18°C.

But because of the preindustrial 280 ppmv CO2 and other GHGs in our atmosphere, the average temperature of the Earth thankfully moves up by 33°C to +15°C (see chart below), based on the Stefan Boltzmann Law.

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And because CO2 has since risen to about 410 ppmv today, the global temperature supposedly should now be about another 1°C warmer (assuming positive feedbacks) bringing the average earth’s temperature to 16°C.

And once the preindustrial level of CO2 gets doubled to 560 ppm, later near the end of this century, global warming alarmists insist the Earth’s temperature will be near 18°C, see chart above.

So we are now supposed to be at 16°C today and warming rapidly. But what is the globe’s real average temperature today? 15.8C? 16.0C? 16.5°C?

Answer: astonishingly the official institutes tell us it is only 14.7°C!

For example, data from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) shows us the global absolute temperatures for the previous 5 years:

 

 

Image: www.klimamanifest.ch, data source: WMO in Geneva.

As the image above shows, the global absolute temperature last year was just 14.68°C.

This is 0.32°C COOLER than the 15°C we are supposed to have with 280 ppmv, and a whopping 1.32°C cooler than the 16°C it is supposed to be with the 410 ppmv CO2 we have in our atmosphere today.

So why are we missing over 1.3°C of heat? Why is there this huge discrepancy between scientists?

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Réchauffement des océans, Tchernobyl, cancer et pesticides, liste bio, QI mondial… une semaine de fake news scientifiques

by J.P. Oury, 11 octobre 2019 in EuropeanScientist

Si le sujet « vérité et connaissance scientifique » est un pilier de la philosophie classique et de l’épistémologie contemporaine, il se pourrait bien que, dans une ère de post-vérité, ce thème soit progressivement remplacé par celui de la chasse aux « fausses informations ». Pour le dire autrement, ce qui compte, ce n’est plus la quête d’un sens métaphysique ou une recherche de cohérence logique, mais qu’un énoncé tienne le plus longtemps possible à la Une de l’actualité avant d’être remis en cause.

En affirmant ceci notre objectif n’est pas de donner un blanc seing au relativisme ou d’abandonner la méthode scientifique, bien au contraire. Il s’agit de réfléchir sur la possibilité de redonner à celle-ci  sa superbe ; d’autant plus qu’elle n’est plus simplement une affaire de scientifiques : les médias, les politiques, les ONG et l’opinion s’emparent immédiatement de la moindre expérience rendue publique et se trouvent engagés de manière quasi instantanée dans le processus de « vérification » qui passe d’abord souvent par l’acceptation. Ce qui montre la nécessité d’éduquer l’opinion pour lui apprendre à détecter les différentes typologies d’erreurs scientifiques. Voici donc une petite grille de lecture que nous avons établie en classant cinq grandes typologies d’informations scientifiques qui se sont révélées fausses…

 

Rétractation d’un article sur le réchauffement des océans : l’erreur scientifique

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climate-debate

Canadian Govt. Scrapped 100 Years Of Inconvenient Data On Climate Change

by L.  Goldstein, Sep. 22, 2019 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Canadians already suspicious of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax will likely be even more suspicious given a report by Ottawa-based Blacklock’s Reporter that Environment Canada omitted a century’s worth of observed weather data in developing its computer models on the impacts of climate change.

The scrapping of all observed weather data from 1850 to 1949 was necessary, a spokesman for Environment Canada told Blacklock’s Reporter, after researchers concluded that historically, there weren’t enough weather stations to create a reliable data set for that 100-year period.

“The historical data is not observed historical data,” the spokesman said. “It is modeled historical data … 24 models from historical simulations spanning 1950 to 2005 were used.”

These computer simulations are part of the federal government’s ClimateData.ca website launched by Environment Minister Catherine McKenna on Aug. 15.

She described it as “an important next step in giving our decision-makers even greater access to important climate data for long-term planning. The more each of us uses this type of information, the more it will help.”

Blacklock’s Reporter, which describes itself as “the only reporter-owned and operated newsroom in Ottawa” focusing on intensive reporting of government documents, notes that in many cases the observed temperatures scrapped by Environment Canada in creating its computer models were higher in the past than today.

For example, Vancouver had a higher record temperature in 1910 (30.6C) [87.08F] than in 2017 (29.5C) [85.1F].

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climate-debate

Alarmist Rhetoric Based On Exaggerations And Lies”

by P. Gosselin, Sep. 18, 2019 in NoTricksZone

In a recent interview with the online Berliner Zeitung (BZ) here, economist Björn Lomborg said that 16-year old Greta Thunberg’s demands “will put people in danger”.

Greta, the Swedish teenage activist is calling for radical cuts in CO2 emissions – on a scale that would have profound impacts on the world’s market system. Moreover, Lomborg calls the demands immoral. Lomborg says it would be far wiser to invest money in bringing the world’s poor out of grinding poverty rather than to try to mitigate climate change.

Fear based on 30 years of lies and exaggerations

“Rich countries that tell poor countries not to use fossil energy for the benefit of the environment are acting immorally,” Lomborg told the BZ.

Lomborg also sharply criticized Thunberg, telling BILD news daily: “Greta Thunberg fears the end of the world due to climate change. This fear is the result of three decades of alarmist rhetoric based on exaggerations and lies.”

€43 billion for 0.00001°C of temperature reduction yearly

Lomborg also called Germany’s “Energiewende” – transition to green energies – “the best example of a failed climate policy” which has proven to be “incredibly costly and ineffective.”

“Global warming will be reduced by 0.001 degrees at most by 2100 for 43 billion euros a year,” he told the BZ. Lomborg blames the adults for panicking Ms Thunberg and using her “to push through an agenda that costs trillions but brings almost no benefits.”

Rather, for the trillions we will likely get us far graver problems. What a deal.

climate-debate

Doomsdays that didn’t happen: Think tank compiles decades’ worth of dire climate predictions

by P. Homewood, Sep. 19, 2019 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

Doomsdays that didn’t happen: Think tank compiles decades’ worth of dire climate predictions

by Paul Homewood

By Paul Homewood

 

 

From Fox:

 

image

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently suggested Miami would disappear in “a few years” due to climate change. The United Nations is convening a “Climate Action Summit” next week. And climate activist Greta Thunberg is on Capitol Hill this week telling lawmakers they must act soon.

But while data from NASA and other top research agencies confirms global temperatures are indeed rising, a newly compiled retrospective indicates the doomsday rhetoric is perhaps more overheated.

The conservative-leaning Competitive Enterprise Institute has put together a lengthy compilation of apocalyptic predictions dating back decades that did not come to pass, timed as Democratic presidential candidates and climate activists refocus attention on the issue.

The dire predictions, often repeated in the media, warned of a variety of impending disasters – famine, drought, an ice age, and even disappearing nations – if the world failed to act on climate change.

An Associated Press headline from 1989 read “Rising seas could obliterate nations: U.N. officials.” The article detailed a U.N. environmental official warning that entire nations would be eliminated if the world failed to reverse warming by 2000.

Then there were the fears that the world would experience a never-ending “cooling trend in the Northern Hemisphere.” That claim came from an “international team of specialists” cited by The New York Times in 1978.

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better to know...?, climate-debate, to keep an eye on...

German Climatologist Werner Kirstein Unloads: “IPCC Is To Deceive People”…Calls Michael Mann’s Chart “A Fake”

by P. Gosselin, Sep.17, 2019  in NoTricksZone

German climate scientist Professor Werner Kirstein was interviewed by alternative media outlet NuoViso,  and since the video was released early this month on Youtube, it has been viewed over 130,000, times.

Politics commissioning reports for money

In the interview Professor Kirstein tells moderator Robert Stein that CO2 emissions have no effect on the climate and that “politicians commission climate scientists to produce expert reports for money.”

“Public is being deceived”

Prof. Kirstein talks about the “conscious deception” of the public and how all research projects and publications by “climate scientists” only have the goal of confirming “man-made climate change” and that different scientific views are not welcome.

According to Kirstein, the public is being deceived with the false information and that the aim of politics is to find a way to collect further taxes and to collect levies.

“We currently see this with the climate tax, which is to be introduced soon,” Kirstein says.

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Ruan et al., 2019   

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Why CO2 is Not the Control Knob of Global Temperature and Observational Proof it is Not Causing Dangerous Warming

by Institute for the Human Environment,   August 2019

There is no debate as to whether or not atmospheric carbon dioxide, or CO2, is a so-called greenhouse gas. When present in the atmosphere, this one-carbon and two-oxygen molecule indeed has the capacity to absorb infrared radiation and warm the planet. There is also no debate as to whether or not the concentration of atmospheric CO2 is rising; over the past two centuries it has increased from a meager 0.028% of the atmosphere by volume to a still-meager 0.041% today. Furthermore, there is no argument that global temperatures are warmer today than they were 50, 100 or even 200 years ago. However, there is much debate on whether or not the modern increase in atmospheric CO2 has caused, or is presently causing, dangerous global warming, warming so severe that it is threatening life all across the planet.

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But how accurate is this narrative?

In answering this question, one need only examine the historic temperature and CO2 records illustrated in Figure 1 more critically. Certainly, these two variables experience a fairly high degree of correlation over the time period shown. However, it doesn’t take a Ph.D. scientist to recognize and understand the fact that correlation among two variables does not prove causation. Every textbook on statistics teaches as much, and they also teach that a hypothesis of causation among two variables can be rejected if there is no statistically significant correlation between them, or if the correlation fails to be maintained in a consistent and expected manner across time.

By applying such principles to the case being considered here, it can confidently be argued that if carbon dioxide is indeed the all-important control knob of temperature that climate alarmists claim it to be, then changes in atmospheric CO2 should always precede changes in temperature. And, because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, to prove causation those changes must always be such that a rise in CO2 induces a corresponding rise in temperature, whereas a decline in CO2 must always induce a corresponding drop in temperature. Consistent observations to the contrary, if present in the historic record, would therefore serve to invalidate a causation claim, as well as demonstrate that atmospheric CO2 is nothing more than a bit player among the many factors that drive climate change.

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Figure 1. 400,000 years of historic temperature and CO2 from the Vostok Ice Core, Antarctica. Source: Petit et al. (1999) Nature 399: 429-436.
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climate-debate

Anchorage “Record” Was Not Actually A Record!

by P. Homewood, July 14, 2019 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

The US state of Alaska, part of which lies inside the Arctic Circle, is sweltering under a heatwave, with record temperatures recorded in several areas, including its largest city.

Temperatures reached 90F (32C) in Anchorage on Thursday, shattering the city’s previous record of 85F.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48890556

The report clearly implied global warming as the cause, with several references to climate change links throughout the article.

As I pointed out at the time, the all-time record temperature for Alaska was set as long ago as 1915, when an incredible 100F was measured at Fort Yukon.

This story follows the usual BBC recipe for Arctic heatwaves:

  • Record temperatures = global warming
  • Hot weather is unprecedented in the Arctic. Most people would believe that temperatures of 90F simply never used to occur in the Arctic, it just sounds so unimaginable.

Unfortunately for the BBC, it turns out that the Anchorage temperature is not even a record!

I have now had time to check through the NOAA data files, and have discovered that back in June 1931, the temperature actually reached 92C at Anchorage:

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climate-debate

Polar Bears Are Thriving Despite Global Warming: Here’s Why

by Susan J. Crockford, July 11, 2019 in ClimateChangeDispatch

This essay explains in simple terms why so many people still believe that polar bears are in peril when nothing could be further from the truth; it is an essential lesson that shatters the basis of the shameful indoctrination of young school children and undermines the baseless claims of activist protestors.

It was written and translated into French for a special climate change feature issue (July) of the monthly French magazine Valeurs Actuelles (reviewed here) and reprinted by the French hunting magazine Chasses Internationales.

It has also been translated into German for a dedicated climate change issue (11 July) of the Swiss weekly magazine Die Weltwoche.

I have added a couple of figures to illustrate this English version of the essay.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

‘Woke’ Climate Scientists Reveal Deep, Hard-Core Biases In New Article

by Judith Curry, July 9, 2019 in ClimateChangeDispatch

It’s getting worse.

About 5 years ago, I wrote two blog posts on climate scientists’ pre-traumatic stress syndrome:

Mother Jones has a new article on the same topic: It’s the end of the world as they know it: The distinct burden of being a climate scientist.

The following scientists were interviewed: Kim Cobb, Priya Shukla, Peter Kalmus, Sarah Myhre, Jacquelyn Gill, Katharine Wilkinson, Eric Holthaus, David Grinspoon, Ken Caldeira.

Lots of ‘trauma,’ read the article to get a flavor. This sentence pretty much sums things up:

“There’s deep grief and anxiety for what’s being lost, followed by rage at continued political inaction, and finally hope that we can indeed solve this challenge. There are definitely tears and trembling voices.”

End of civilization?

The title of the article is: “It’s the end of the world as they know it.” Some selected quotes:

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climate-debate

Arctic Sea Ice Surprise Global Warming Experts By Remaining Stable This Decade

by P. Gosselin, June 28, 2019 in NoTricksZone

The Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) expects sea ice extent growth in June 2019:

The DMI plot for the development of Arctic sea ice area (extent) from June 1979 to the PROGNOSE for June, 2019. Since 2010, i.e. 9 years ago, the sea ice areas of the Arctic have been growing in trend. Reports about disappearing sea ice in the Arctic are fake news. See also: No ice melting in the Arctic in this decade. Source: DMI-Plots Ice Cover

May Arctic sea ice trend now stable 15 years

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climate and geology

More Failed Predictions: May Was The Second Wettest Month In US History

by Chriss Street, June 28, 2019 in ClimateChangeDispatch

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported the month of May was the second wettest and temperatures were in the bottom-third for its 125-year US history.

The 2010 publication titled, ‘A Global Overview Of Drought and Heat-Induced Tree Mortality Reveals Emerging Climate Change Risks for Forests’, was accepted by the Obama administration as scientific evidence that climate change had made the Earth:

“…increasingly vulnerable to higher background tree mortality rates and die-off in response to future warming and drought, even in environments that are not normally considered water-limited.”

But NOAA just reported that May US precipitation totaled an average of 4.41 inches, 1.50 inches above average, and ranked second wettest in the 125-year period of record for May as well as second wettest for all months since January 1895.

The only wetter month in US history was May 2015 with 4.44 inches of precipitation.

The 37.68 inches of precipitation across the contiguous U.S. from June 2018 to May 2019 shattered the previous 1982-83 12-month period by 1.48 inches.

Near-record to record precipitation was observed from the West Coast through the central Plains and into the Great Lakes and parts of the Northeast.

As a result, severe May flooding was observed along the Arkansas, Missouri, and Mississippi rivers. Vicksburg, MS, reported ongoing flooding since mid-February.

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La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse