Archives par mot-clé : Fun?/Discussion

climate-debate

La COP 25 annulée … catastrophe ou opportunité ?

by SCE-info, 1 novembre 2019 in ScienceClimatEnergie

Nous revoici plongé une fois de plus dans la énième COP censée répondre à l’Urgence Climatique. Pour rappel c’est lors du Sommet de la Terre, en juin 1992, à Rio de Janiero que cette urgence climatique, qui ne disait pas encore si haut son nom, a démarré. Depuis lors l’Urgence Climatique fait partie de notre quotidien avec ses prédictions apocalyptiques jamais avérées, sauf à établir un amalgame entre climat et catastrophes non liées au climat. Quelques amalgames parmi d’autres ? Les exagérations climatiques extrêmes, analysées à SCE et qui montrent comment les médias par un tour de passe-passe nous vendent du global à partir de ce qui est le plus souvent local, même démarche avec la forêt amazoniennedécrétée à tort ‘poumon de la planète’ ou encore les incendies de grande ampleur de 2017en Californie ‘simplement’ liés à une gestion idéologique des forêts par les pouvoirs publics. Que n’a-t-on pas entendu sur ces phénomènes et bien d’autres…

Oui les COP se succèdent, ne rectifient jamais le tir et n’ont toujours qu’un seul ennemi à combattre, le mal du siècle, le CO2, symbolisé par le ‘bouton CO2’ censé être à l’origine de tous les dérèglements rapportés. Force est de constater que dans cette hypothèse du CO2toutes ces COP se révèlent un échec cuisant, pour preuve l’augmentation de 1,7% de ce gaz en 2018 atteignant ainsi un nouveau record (ici et ici). Non seulement ces grands-messes onusiennes sont des échecs, mais elles entretiennent également une belle incohérence : outre que chaque sommet coûte très cher (130 millions de dollars pour plus de 30 000 participants (sic) au dernier sommet de Katowice en Pologne et environ 2 milliards de dollars depuis la première COP), ces réunions émettent plus de CO2 que 8200 familles américaines en un an, ou l’équivalent de 11700 voitures pendant un an, ou encore 728 camions pour la même période (ici).

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climate-debate

Is the Man-Made Climate Change Debate Really Over?

by Dom Armentano, Oct 30, 2019 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Climate change enthusiasts are convinced that man-made global warming poses a near-term environmental disaster. Yet gloom-and-doom forecasts about the fate of the Earth are hardly new, and few have proven accurate.

In 1798 the Rev. Thomas Malthus predicted that mass starvation would strike England in the 19th century because population growth would inevitably overwhelm food production. It didn’t happen.

Or recall the dire predictions by experts in the 1970s that the world was running out of oil and that prices would skyrocket and stay high for decades.

These views were supported by analyses from the CIA and a boatload of geologists who believed in the so-called “peak oil” theory.

But the experts were wrong. Adjusted for inflation, a barrel of crude oil today is cheaper than it was in 1980, which is arguably one of the most pro-consumer developments in recent economic history.

And now we are told that the world is on the brink of environmental disaster due to man-made global warming.

The conventional wisdom, repeated endlessly in the popular press, is that the Earth is heating dangerously because we burn fossil fuels and that this will generate devastating droughts, fires, floods, and rising ocean levels. (The oceans are currently rising by about one-eighth of an inch per year).

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climate-debate

Scientists: The Entirety Of The 1979-2017 Global Temperature Change Can Be Explained By Natural Forcing

by K. Richard, October 28, 2019 in NoTricksZone

The last 40 years of global temperature changes can be radiatively explained by a natural reduction in cloud cover.

From 1979 to 2011, satellite data provide documentation of a reduction in cloud cover and aerosol depth that allowed an additional 2.3 W/m² of positive shortwave energy to be absorbed by the Earth’s surface rather than reflected to space.

This change in absorbed solar radiation can account for the energy imbalance and warming during this period far better than the much smaller 0.2 W/m² forcing associated with a +22 ppm CO2 change over 10 years (representing just 10% of the overall trend in downwelling longwave).

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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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better to know...?, climate-debate

Who Are the “Experts” on Climate Change?

by John Droz, Jr October 22, 2019 in WUWT

We live in complicated times, immersed in a society of incessant, loud, conflicting voices. Nowhere is this more true than in the discussion of the impact of carbon dioxide on the planet, oceans, better known as “climate change.” When interested citizens try to get to the bottom of such a highly complex issue, the standard, and proper, rejoinder is: “Listen to the Experts.”

Although that sounds like common sense, such advice is not as simple as it’s made out to be. For millennia, it was safe to assume that mainstream scientists (as a matter of principle) faithfully adhered to high scientific standards (see below). In our lifetime that has dramatically (and disappointingly) changed.

Today there is an ever-increasing number of scientists driven by political agendas, peer pressure, job security, etc. rather than scientific mores. This change has extraordinarysocietal implications — and none of them are beneficial.

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Real Experts on a science-related subject have six distinguishing characteristics, which are really no more than the traditional scientific standards:

1 – They have a high degree of competence in the topic at hand.

[For example, out of 1000 people, they would know more than 999.]

2 – They have a comprehensive understanding of the topic.

[They are not one of the blind people examining just a part of the elephant.]

3 – They are objective in their conclusions and recommendations.

[They are not influenced by economic incentives, or undeclared political agendas.]

4 – They are genuinely open-minded regarding their positions.

[They encourage other parties to critique their analyses and conclusions.]

5 – Their research and data are transparent.

[No pertinent information is hidden behind such claims as “work product.”]

6 – Their research and data are based on empirical evidence.

[Real world data always takes priority over computer-generated information.]

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climate-debate

Human CO2 Emissions Have Little Effect On Atmospheric CO2

by Ed Berry, October 21, 2019 in PrincipiaScientificInternational

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agrees human CO2 is only 5 percent and natural CO2 is 95 percent of the CO2 inflow into the atmosphere. The ratio of human to natural CO2 in the atmosphere must equal the ratio of the inflows.

Yet IPCC claims human CO2 has caused all the rise in atmospheric CO2 above 280 ppm, which is now 130 ppm or 32 percent of today’s atmospheric CO2.

To cause the human 5 percent to become 32 percent in the atmosphere, the IPCC model treats human and natural CO2 differently, which is impossible because the molecules are identical. IPCC’s Bern model artificially traps human CO2 in the atmosphere while it lets natural CO2 flow freely out of the atmosphere.

By contrast, a simple Physics Model treats all CO2 molecules the same, as it should, and shows how CO2 flows through the atmosphere and produces a balance level where outflow equals inflow. Thereafter, if inflow is constant, level remains constant.

The Physics Model has only one hypothesis, that outflow is proportional to level. The Physics Model exactly replicates the 14C data from 1970 to 2014 with only two physical parameters: balance level and e-time. The 14C data trace how CO2 flows out of the atmosphere.

The Physics Model shows the 14CO2 e-time is a constant 16.5 years. Other data show e-time for 12CO2 is about 4 to 5 years. IPCC claims human CO2 reduces ocean buffer capacity. But that would increase e-time. The constant e-time proves IPCC’s claim is false.

IPCC argues that the human-caused reduction of 14C and 13C in the atmosphere prove human CO2 causes all the increase in atmospheric CO2. However, numbers show these isotope data support the Physics Model and reject the IPCC model.

The Physics Model shows how inflows of human and natural CO2 into the atmosphere set balance levels proportional to their inflows. Each balance level remains constant if its inflow remains constant. Continued constant CO2 emissions do not add more CO2 to the atmosphere. No CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere.

Present human CO2 inflow produces a balance level of about 18 ppm. Present natural CO2 inflow produces a balance level of about 392 ppm. Human CO2 is insignificant to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. Increased natural CO2 inflow has increased the level of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Keywords: carbon dioxide, CO2, climate change, anthropogenic

Table Of Contents

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climate-debate

Reforesting is a good idea, but it is necessary to know where and how

by Charles the moderator, October 20, 2019 in WUWT

An international group of ecologists contests an article published in Science, which among other cardinal errors proposed ‘reforestation’ of the Cerrado, Brazil’s savanna biome

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo

An article recently published in Science, entitled “The global tree restoration potential”, presents what it calls “the most effective solution at our disposal to mitigate climate change”. The lead author is Jean-François Bastin, an ecologist affiliated with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich).

The article attracted enormous media attention. It reports the results of a study in which Bastin and collaborators used remote sensing and modeling techniques to estimate that forest restoration in areas totaling 900 million hectares worldwide could store 205 gigatonnes of carbon.

The study was contested by a large international group of ecologists led by Joseph Veldman, a professor in Texas A&M University’s Department of Ecosystem Science and Management (USA). At the invitation of the editors of Science, the group formulated a reply, now featuring on the October 18th edition of Science under the title “Comment on ‘The global tree restoration potential’..

Its authors include William Bond, Emeritus Professor in the University of Cape Town’s Department of Biological Sciences (South Africa) and considered the world’s foremost expert on savanna ecology. Several Brazilian researchers also co-authored the reply, such as Giselda Durigan, affiliated with the São Paulo State Forestry Institute’s Ecology and Hydrology Laboratory.

“The plan proposed by Bastin et al. is based on flawed calculations and is actually a threat to the planet’s savannas, meadows and water resources,” Durigan said.

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climate-debate

The Real Climate Debate

by Charles the moderator, October 20, 2019 in WUWT

Reposted from the Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog

The real climate debate is not between “believers” and “deniers”.

And not between Republicans and Democrats.

The real debate is certainly not over whether global warming, spurred by increasing greenhouse gases, is a serious problem that must be addressed.  Both sides of the real climate debate agree on that.

feedback-2466829_960_720

The real rebate is between two groups:

1.   A confident, non-political group that believes technology, informed investments, rational decision making, and the use of the best scientific information will lead to a solution of the global warming issue. An optimistic group that sees global warming as a technical problem with technical solutions.  I will refer to these folks as the ACT group (Apolitical/Confident/Technical)

2.  A group, mainly on the political left, that is highly partisan, anxious and often despairing, self-righteous, big on blame and social justice, and willing to attack those that disagree with them. They often distort the truth when it serves their interests.  They also see social change as necessary for dealing with global warming, requiring the very reorganization of society.  I call these folks the ASP group (Anxious, Social-Justice, Partisan).

There is no better way to see the profound difference between these two groups than to watch a video of the testimony of young activists at the recent House Hearing on Climate Change, which included Greta Thunberg, Jamie Margolin, Vic Barrett, and Benji Backer.

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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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climate-debate

Deep Purple — future biological darkening of the Greenland Ice Sheet

by GFZ GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam, Helmholtz Centre, October 12, 2019  in WUWT

Purple algae are making the western Greenland Ice Sheet melt faster, as the algae darken the ice surface and make it absorb more sunlight.

 

The ERC (European Research Council) has awarded an €11 million Euro Synergy grant called DEEP PURPLE to Liane G. Benning at the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) Potsdam, Germany, Alexandre Anesio at Aarhus University, Denmark and Martyn Tranter at University of Bristol, UK. Their common goal is to examine over the next six years (2020-2026) the role of glacier algae in progressively darkening the Greenland Ice Sheet surface in a warming climate.

The three researchers have already changed our understanding of why the ice darkens during the melt season by identifying the purple-pigmented ice algal blooms in the ice surface. These glacier algae are pigmented deep purple to shield their vital elements from the intense UV radiation in sunlight. During the melt season there are so many of these deep purple algae that they look as black as the soot from tundra fires. They form a dark band that has been progressively growing down the western side of the Greenland Ice Sheet during the summer melt season for the last 20 years, causing increased melting of the darkening ice.

Just why these glacier algae grow so densely is not really known at the moment, and neither is whether they will grow in the new melt zones on the ice sheet surface, to the north and to the ice sheet interior, as the climate continues to warm.

Project DEEP PURPLE

Questions such as this need answering if future sea level rise is to be predicted accurately, since Greenland melt is a major driver of current sea level rise.

Project DEEP PURPLE aims to answer these questions over the next six years, combining curisoity driven science about how the glacier algae grow and interact with their icy habitat, and societally relevant research into the processes that lead to ice surface darkening that are needed by ice melt modellers.

The scientists will work around many different sites in Greenland, making measurements of surface darkening, glacier algae density, how much soot and dust the algae trap on the surface and the physical properties of the melting ice surface to finally understand, how biological darkening occurs, and to predict where and when it will occur in the future.

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unclassified

Le GIEC en est virtuellement certain…

by Prof. Dr. Jean N., 11 octobre 2019 in ScienceClimatEnergie

Le dernier rapport spécial du GIEC vient de sortir. Ce rapport, appelé SROCC (“Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate“), a été approuvé à la 51e session du GIEC tenue les 20 et 23 septembre 2019. Il a déjà fait beaucoup parler de lui dans les médias. Le résumé du rapport à l’intention des décideurs (SPM) a été présenté lors d’une conférence de presse le 25 septembre 2019. Pour ceux qui comprennent l’anglais, qui ont une formation scientifique et surtout qui ont le temps de lire 1170 pages, le fichier PDF de ce rapport est disponible sur le site du GIEC. Le présent article analyse le chapitre 4 de ce rapport, celui qui traite de la montée des océans. Rassurez-vous, nous n’allons pas critiquer la montée du niveau des océans qui est un phénomène bien réel. Nous allons plutôt montrer que les auteurs ont étrangement omis certaines explications qui relativisent la portée de leurs conclusions, notamment concernant la cause de la hausse du niveau marin.

1. Structure du chapitre 4

Ce chapitre 4 consiste en 168 pages et a pour titre “Élévation du niveau de la mer et conséquences pour les îles, les côtes et les communautés de faible altitude“. Les deux auteurs coordonnateurs de ce chapitre sont Michael Oppenheimer (USA) et Bruce Glavovic (Nouvelle Zélande). Les auteurs principaux sont au nombre de 13 et les auteurs contributeurs sont au nombre de 31. Au final, 46 scientifiques ont donc contribué à écrire ce chapitre. Rien que pour ce chapitre les auteurs citent un peu plus de 1500 références, essentiellement des articles scientifiques.

Qu’apprend-t-on dans le chapitre 4?

Pour faire simple, nous y apprenons : (1) Que le niveau moyen des océans monte toujours et que la vitesse s’accélère; (2) Que cette montée du niveau marin est essentiellement causée par l’homme; (3) Que l’on peut calculer ce qui va se passer dans le futur grâce aux modèles numériques; (4) Que l’on peut éventuellement se protéger de la hausse du niveau marin par toute une série de mesures.

Nous allons maintenant nous focaliser sur les points n°1 (montée du niveau) et n°2 (les causes).

2. La montée du niveau moyen des océans selon le SROCC

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climate-debate

Renowned German Geologist Shocks Audience: “Climate Change Totally Exaggerated”…”Warming Least Of Our Problems” By P Gosselin on 12. Oct

par P. Gosselin, October 12, 2019 in NoTricksZone

It’s unusual to see rationality over climate change in the German media, but sometimes it manages to get through.

In April this year I missed an important podcast interview with one of the world’s most prominent Sahara Desert researchers, geologist Dr. Stefan Kröpelin, by the Düsseldorf-based German daily, Rheinische Post.

Image: University of Cologne

The two RP hosts conducting the interview seemed to expect Dr. Kröpelin would tell the audience how dire the consequences of man-made global warming are on the Sahara Desert and planet overall.

They didn’t get what they bargained for.

Warming does not lead to desertification

Instead, in the interview, Dr. Kröpelin rejected in very clear terms man’s major climatic impact and that global warming is only negative.

Kröpelin told listeners that history is very clear: When the globe is cold, the deserts expand. And when the globe is warm, deserts become greener and far more fruitful.

Kröpelin is a leading expert

Kröpelin has been studying the Sahara for over 40 years, spending weeks and months each year on site gathering data a reconstructing past climates. Naturedescribed Kröpelin as “one of the most devoted Sahara explorers of our time.”

At about 9 minutes into the interview, he explains how the Sahara was massive in size during the last glacial period, and that about ten thousand years ago it greened up once temperatures shot up early in the Holocene.

When asked (10:15) if he worries that things in the Sahara “will get much worse” due to climate change, Kröpelin tells the host and audience: “First, that is a statement I 100% reject”, adding that localized desertification has more to do with the population growth at the edges of the desert and that the people who live there are cutting down trees and extracting water from the ground.

Rising precipitation, shrinking desert

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climate-debate

Has global warming stopped? The tap of incoming energy cannot be turned off

by Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, October 10, 2019 in WUWT

As a result of industrialization, the carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere has increased continuously over the past 100 years, which is considered as the main reason behind global warming. However, the observational global mean atmospheric temperature leveled off over the first decade of the 21st century, in contrast to the rapid warming during the late 20th century. This phenomenon, known as the “atmospheric warming slowdown” or “global warming hiatus”, has attracted great attention worldwide owing to its ostensible contradiction of the human-induced global warming theory.

The changes in ocean heat content might have a tight relationship with the atmospheric warming slowdown. Dr Changyu Li, Prof. Jianping Huang and their colleagues, a group of researchers from the Key Laboratory for Semi-Arid Climate Change of the Ministry of Education, College of Atmospheric Sciences, Lanzhou University, have had their findings published in Advances of Atmospheric Sciences.

In their paper, they explore the energy redistribution between the atmosphere and ocean at different latitudes and depths by using observational data as well as simulations of a coupled atmosphere-ocean box model.

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climate-debate

Serious Errors In IPCC Ocean Report Revealed

by B. Peiser, October 11, 2019 in GWPF

London, 11 October: The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has called on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to correct serious errors in its recent Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.

In a letter to the IPCC, Dr Benny Peiser, the GWPF’s director, has highlighted a number of errors and misinterpretations in the IPCC’s report which are based, to a significant degree, on a flawed study which was recently retracted.

In his letter, Dr Peiser points out that the IPCC’s overall conclusion on ocean heat uptake

“is based to a significant degree on a paper by Cheng et al. (2019) which itself relies on a flawed estimate by Resplandy et al. (2018). An authors’ correction of this paper and its ocean heat uptake estimate was under review for nearly a year, but in the end Nature requested that the paper be retracted (Retraction Note, 2019).”

“While the [IPCC’s] conclusion that the rate of ocean heat uptake has increased in recent years may probably be right, the evidence you cite for there being ‘high confidence’ and ‘high agreement’ is rather doubtful due to your inclusion of flawed evidence of the retracted paper by Resplandy et al. (2018).”

What is more, there is also doubt about the IPCC’s conclusion that ocean heat uptake has been accelerating in recent years. According to its own report the overall ocean heat uptake between 0-2000 m was nearly 10% higher over 1993-2017 than over the second half of that period, 2005-2017, suggesting that OHU may have been declining slightly rather than accelerating over the last 25 years.

In light of these flaws, the GWPF is calling on the IPCC to correct the evident errors and reduce its confidence rating accordingly.

Letter to the IPCC (pdf)
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2019/10/IPCC-letter-Oct2019.pdf?utm_source=CCNet+Newsletter&utm_campaign=67a9d80e1a-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_10_11_11_33_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fe4b2f45ef-67a9d80e1a-36415357&mc_cid=67a9d80e1a&mc_eid=b9fdc60fd9

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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better to know...?, climate-debate

It’s Time To Move Beyond The Toy Models that Guide Climate Policy

by Roger Pielke, October 7, 2019 in Forbes

Underlying discussion and debate of climate policies are computer models that bring together idealized representations of policies, economics and climate to estimate the impacts of future climate change and the benefits of mitigation. Such models, typically called integrated assessment models, are incredibly technical and complex. At the same time, they are also simplistic toys. Here I argue that while these models are valuable for exploring concepts and ideas, they have come to serve as a huge distraction when it comes to the development of actual policies that have a chance to accelerate rates of decarbonization in the real world.

Before proceeding, it is important to note that climate change poses real risks to our collective future, and aggressive mitigation and adaptation policies make good sense. However, the pace of progress, particularly on mitigation, has been frustratingly slow.

One way that integrated assessment models warp our discussion of climate policies is through the pervasive use of what are called “baseline scenarios.” These scenarios seek to represent where the world may be headed into the future in the absence of climate policies. Here is how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines such scenarios, and their role in evaluating futures with climate policy (called “mitigation scenarios”):

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Methodological debates are of course common in policy research. But in no area of policy that I have encountered over the past 30 years as a policy researcher have I come across a subject matter both as important as climate change and completely captured by one school of thought.

Scenario planning has an important role to play in the tool box of policy analysts. However, in the case of climate change, scenarios generated by integrated assessment models have overwhelmingly become the main tool of analysis in climate policy, to the exclusion of other valuable approaches. The result of this methodological myopia is that much of our collective intellectual attention has been spent on trying to figure out how to address climate change in models, and not in the real world.

better to know...?, climate-debate, press and newspapers

A Democratic professor explains what his party gets wrong about climate

by Caleb Rossiter, July 18, 2019 in WashingtonExaminer

As the Republican-called witness at a recent hearing, I was denounced by the Democrats for denying a fossil-fueled “climate crisis” that, as their witnesses testified, results in violence against women, asthma and obesity in children, and deadly storms. But few actually questioned me. After all, “the debate is over.”

So instead, the latest belle of my party’s ball, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, left the dais to urge protestors outside to drown me out. She’d previously written Google and Facebook, asking them to block me and the CO2 Coalition of 50 unalarmed scientists I direct from speaking at conferences they sponsor.

At the hearing, I presented data from the United Nations contradicting the accepted wisdom that extreme weather is destroying the planet and is traceable directly to a man-made climate crisis. There are no such trends in rates of sea-level rise, hurricanes, floods, or droughts. One Democrat who stuck around to actually question me simply asserted that our coalition is funded by energy companies. I wish! Another wanted to know, “Do you believe in climate change or not?” When I asked him to define it, he cut me off with: “That answers it all…That gives us a hint where you’re coming from.”

Indeed it does. Where I’m coming from is academia, where defining the scientific terms we discuss is elemental.

The whole affair shows just how much has changed. A decade ago I’d been the one pummeling a Republican-called witness, a little-known pollster named Kellyanne Conway, in my role as counsel to a Democratic committee chairman. And the last time I’d been a witness, as director of a foreign policy group in 1994, I’d been called in by Democrats who were backing our “no arms to dictators” bill. But now I am a heretic for using scientific facts to dispute exaggerated talking points.

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Where I’m coming from is academia, where defining the scientific terms we discuss is elemental. (Photo by Graeme Jennings/Washington Examiner)
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better to know...?, climate-debate

Solar activity drives CO2 levels

by R. Mac, August 10, 2014  in TheHockeySchtick

Hypothesis: Increasing accumulated solar activity [sunspot time-integral] since the Maunder Minimum 1645-1715 AD has warmed the oceans and land, warming of the oceans has increased ocean outgassing of CO2 [Henry’s Law] and has been the primary cause of increased atmospheric CO2 levels. Ocean temperatures driven by solar activity control atmospheric CO2 levels on short, intermediate, and long-term timescales.

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Also note if increased solar activity warms the oceans, the solubility of CO2 in the oceans decreases due to Henry’s Law, thus preventing “acidification” of the oceans. If the oceans are warming due to any cause, Henry’s Law says solubility of CO2 decreases and outgassing increases, preventing “acidification” from man-made and natural sources of CO2. Warnings about ocean acidification are misleading and overblown:

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climate-debate

Mann, Hayhoe Try To Erase To The Pesky Medieval Warm Period

by J. Taylor, October 3, 2019 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Climate alarmists Michael Mann and Katharine Hayhoe have been caught using dubious, revisionist temperature data in their attempt, as one Climategate email author put it,  to “deal a mortal blow” to the extensively documented Medieval Warm Period.

Before climate change became a political issue, it was scientifically well-established that a significant global warming event occurred between approximately 900 AD and 1200 AD.

For example, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) First Assessment Report presented a temperature history and visual graph documenting that the Medieval Warm Period existed and that it brought temperatures at least as warm as today (at pg. 7).

Multiple peer-reviewed studies provided additional confirmation of the Medieval Warm Period.

The warming climate of the Medieval Warm Period spurred abundant crop production, fewer extreme droughts and floods, a growing human population, and improving living standards.

The Little Ice Age terminated the Medieval Warm Period and brought devastating weather extremes, widespread crop failures, famines, plagues like the Black Death, and a contracting human population.

For a good summary of the extensive benefits of the Medieval Warm Period and the devastating harms of the Little Ice Age, see the excellent book, “In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Created.”

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unclassified

Record Antarctic Stratospheric Warming Causes Sept. 2019 Global Temperature Update Confusion

by Roy Spencer, October 4, 2019 in WUWT

While the vast majority of our monthly global temperature updates are pretty routine, September 2019 is proving to be a unique exception. The bottom line is that there is nothing wrong with the UAH temperatures we originally reported. But what I discovered about last month is pretty unusual.

It all started when our global lower tropospheric (LT) temperature came in at an unexpectedly high +0.61 deg. C above the 1981-2010 average. I say “unexpected” because, as WeatherBell’s Joe Bastardi has pointed out, the global average surface temperature from NOAA’s CFS model had been running about 0.3 C above normal, and our numbers are usually not that different from that model product.

[By way of review, the three basic layers we compute average temperatures from the satellites are, in increasing altitude, the mid-troposphere (MT), tropopause region (TP), and lower stratosphere (LS). From these three deep layer temperatures, we compute the lower tropospheric (LT) product using a linear combination of the three main channels, LT = 1.548MT – 0.538TP +0.01LS.]

Yesterday, John Christy noticed that the Southern Hemisphere was unusually warm in our lower stratosphere (LS) temperature product, while the Northern Hemisphere was unusually cool. This led me to look at the tropical results for our mid-troposphere (MT) and ‘tropopause’ (TP) products, which in the tropics usually track each other. A scatterplot of them revealed September 2019 to be a clear outlier, that is, the TP temperature anomaly was too cool for the MT temperature anomaly.

So, John put a notice on his monthly global temperature update report, and I added a notice to the top of my monthly blog post, that we suspected maybe one of the two satellites we are currently using (NOAA-19 and Metop-B) had problems.

As it turns out, there were no problems with the data. Just an unusual regional weather event that produced an unusual global response.

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climate-debate, energy and fields

Net-Zero Carbon Dioxide Emissions By 2050 Requires A New Nuclear Power Plant Every Day

by Roger Pielke, Sep. 30, 2019 in WUWT

I research and write about science, policy and politics.

More than a decade ago, Gwyn Prins and Steve Rayner characterized climate policy as an “auction of promises” in which politicians “vied to outbid each other with proposed emissions targets that were simply not achievable.” For instance, among Democrats competing for the presidency in 2020, several, including Joe Biden, have committed to achieving net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. Candidate Andrew Yang bid 2049, and Cory Booker topped that by offering 2045. Bernie Sanders has offered a 71% reduction by 2030.

One reason that we see this “auction of promises” is that the targets and timetables for emissions reductions are easy to state but difficult to comprehend. Here I’ll present what net-zero carbon dioxide emissions for 2050 actually means in terms of the rate of deployment of carbon-free energy and the coincident decommissioning of fossil fuel infrastructure.

To conduct this analysis I use the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, which presents data on global and national fossil fuel consumption in units called “million tons of oil equivalent” or mtoe. In 2018 the world consumed 11,743 mtoe in the form of coal, natural gas and petroleum. The combustion of these fossil fuels resulted in 33.7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. In order for those emissions to reach net-zero, we will have to replace about 12,000 mtoe of energy consumption expected for 2019. (I ignore so-called negative emissions technologies, which do not presently exist at scale.)

Another useful number to know is that there are 11,051 days left until January 1, 2050. To achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions globally by 2050 thus requires the deployment of >1 mtoe of carbon-free energy consumption (~12,000 mtoe/11,051 days) every day, starting tomorrow and continuing for the next 30+ years. Achieving net-zero also requires the corresponding equivalent decommissioning of more than 1 mtoe of energy consumption from fossil fuels every single day.

Another important number to consider is the expected increase in energy consumption in coming decades. The International Energy Agency currently projects that global energy consumption will increase by about 1.25% per year to 2040. That rate of increase in energy consumption would mean that the world will require another ~5,800 mtoe of energy consumption by 2050, or about another 0.5 of an mtoe per day to 2050. That brings the total needed deployment level to achieve net-zero emissions to about 1.6 mtoe per day to 2050.

 

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The scale of the challenge to achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions in 2050. Roger Pielke Jr., BP 2018

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Trois solutions (et demie) pour le climat

by Prof. Samuel Furfari, 3 octobre 2019 in L’Echo

“Après avoir travaillé pendant plus de 40 ans dans le domaine, mon expérience me pousse à plaider pour une analyse factuelle et objective de la situation, même si elle peut paraître iconoclaste dans le climat actuel…’

Les feux des projecteurs de l’Assemblée générale de l’ONU s’étant éteints, il est temps de voir plus sereinement la situation en matière de politique climatique — et donc énergétique – qui menace dangereusement notre démocratie. Après avoir travaillé pendant plus de 40 ans dans le domaine, mon expérience me pousse à plaider pour une analyse factuelle et objective de la situation, même si elle peut paraître iconoclaste dans le climat actuel.

Malgré l’opinion générale, et de certains scientifiques, la science du climat est très jeune. Affirmer que “tout est connu et qu’il n’y a plus qu’à agir” est donc prématuré. Le rapport du GIEC est rempli de conditionnels. Pas de certitudes, mais des hypothèses loin d’être irrécusables, puisque le système climatique possède “une signature chaotique“.

Lorsque durant la vague de chaleur de cet été, le climatologue français Jean Jouzel annonce que la température augmentera de “trois ou quatre” degrés, il omet d’ajouter que le GIEC assortit cette hypothèse d’une probabilité de 1% et que c’est pour un maximum de 3°C et non de 4°C ou de 7°C comme on l’entend parfois.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

‘There is no climate emergency,’ hundreds of scientists, engineers tell U.N.

by P. Homewood, October 2, 2019 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

Lost amid the coverage of Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg at last week’s U.N. Global Climate Summit were the 500 international scientists, engineers and other stakeholders sounding a very different message: “There is no climate emergency.”

The European Climate Declaration, spearheaded by the Amsterdam-based Climate Intelligence Foundation [CLINTEL], described the leading climate models as “unfit” and urged UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to pursue a climate policy based on “sound science.”

“Current climate policies pointlessly and grievously undermine the economic system, putting lives at risk in countries denied access to affordable, reliable electrical energy,” said the Sept. 23 letter signed by professionals from 23 countries.

Most of the signers hailed from Europe, but there were also scientists from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South America.

“We urge you to follow a climate policy based on sound science, realistic economics and genuine concern for those harmed by costly but unnecessary attempts at mitigation,” the letter said.

Full story here.

climate-debate

New Study: Modern Arctic Sea Ice Cover Is Present MONTHS Longer Than Nearly All Of The Last 8000 Years

by Caron et al., 2019, 30 Sep. 2019 in NoTricksZone

A new reconstruction of Arctic (NW Greenland) sea ice cover (Caron et al., 2019) reveals modern day sea ice is present multiple months longer than almost any time in the last 8000 years…and today’s summer sea surface temperatures s are among the coldest of the Holocene.
Yet another new study (Caron et al., 2019) shows today’s Arctic sea ice cover is still quite extensive when compared to the last several thousand years, when CO2 concentrations ranged between 260 and 270 ppm.

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Other new Arctic sea ice reconstructions from the north of Iceland (Harning et al., 2019) and Barents Sea (Berben et al., 2019) regions indicate a) modern sea ice extent has changed very little in the last several hundred years, or since the Little Ice Age, and b) the Early Holocene had millennial-scale periods of sea-ice-free and open water conditions, which is in stark contrast to “modern conditions” – the “highest value” or furthest extent of the sea ice record.

“[T]he PBIP25 values [proxy for sea ice presence] reach their highest value (0.87) of the record at ca. 0 cal yr BP. An increase in PBIP25 suggests a further extension in sea ice cover, reflecting Arctic Front conditions (Müller et al., 2011), most similar to modern conditions.” (Berben et al., 2019)

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