Archives par mot-clé : Fun?/Discussion

NASA: We Can’t Model Clouds, So Climate Model Projections Are 100x Less Accurate

by K. Richard, August 30, 2019 in ClimateChangeDispatch


NASA has conceded that climate models lack the precision required to make climate projections due to the inability to accurately model clouds.

Clouds have the capacity to dramatically influence climate changes in both radiative longwave (the “greenhouse effect”) and shortwave.

Cloud cover domination in longwave radiation

In the longwave, clouds thoroughly dwarf the CO2 climate influence. According to Wong and Minnett (2018):

  • The signal in incoming longwave is 200 W/m² for clouds over the course of hours. The signal amounts to 3.7 W/m² for doubled CO2 (560 ppm) after hundreds of years.

  • At the ocean surface, clouds generate a radiative signal 8 times greater than tripled CO2 (1120 ppm).

  • The absorbed surface radiation for clouds is ~9 W/m². It’s only 0.5 W/m² for tripled CO2 (1120 ppm).

  • CO2 can only have an effect on the first 0.01 mm of the ocean. Cloud longwave forcing penetrates 9 times deeper, about 0.09 mm.

 

Climate Scientists Admit Their Models Are Wrong

by Bud Bromley, August 30, 2019 in PrincipiaScientificInternational


Climate scientists who support human-caused global warming, for example Ben Santer and Michael Mann, authored a peer reviewed paper which acknowledges that their climate models are wrong, although their admission is buried in weasel words and technical jargon:

In the scientific method it is not the obligation or responsibility of skeptics or “deniers” to falsify or disprove hypotheses and theories proposed by climate scientists.  It is the obligation and responsibility of climate scientists to present evidence and to defend their hypothesis.  Alarmist climate scientists have failed to do so despite the expense of billions of dollars of taxpayer money.

https://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2973.html

http://climatechangedispatch.com/the-pause-in-global-warming-is-real-admits-climategate-scientist/

Read more at budbromley.blog

La hausse du niveau de la mer accélère-t-elle l’érosion des côtes? (3/3)

by Prof. Y. Battiau, 30 août 2019 in ScienceClimat Energie


 

6. Conclusion

A la question initiale qui avait été posée – “la hausse du niveau de la mer accélère-t-elle l’érosion des côtes?”- on peut répondre qu’elle ne joue qu’un rôle mineur, comparé à celui des tempêtes. Dans l’état actuel des recherches, on peut dire aussi que le réchauffement climatique n’augmente pas la fréquence et l’intensité des tempêtes. Tout cela va à l’encontre de ce que l’on entend habituellement dans les médias, mais le scientifique a le devoir de rétablir la réalité des faits.

Pourtant, on ne peut nier que les risques littoraux s’aggravent dans beaucoup de régions et que leur gestion est de plus en plus coûteuse. Mais la plupart du temps, cette aggravation résulte de facteurs anthropiques. Alors que les hommes ont longtemps évité la proximité immédiate du littoral, ils ont depuis plus de 150 ans, entrepris d’installer habitations, infrastructures et complexes industriels le plus près possible de la côte. Face à cette vulnérabilité accrue, il a fallu ensuite “défendre contre la mer” tous ces biens, une stratégie qui n’a fait que renforcer ou déplacer l’érosion marine. La seule façon de prévenir efficacement les risques littoraux est de travailler avec les processus naturels et surtout de respecter la ressource sédimentaire du système côtier, en évitant d’entraver la mobilité naturelle du trait de côte. Mais ce serait là l’objet d’un autre article…

La forêt amazonienne n’est pas le poumon de la planète

by SCE-INFO, 30 août 2019 in ScienceClimatEnergie


La forêt amazonienne fait beaucoup parler d’elle en ce moment. Selon le journal Le Monde mais également selon de nombreux autres médias, la forêt amazonienne est ravagée par des incendies d’une ampleur inédite, et ce depuis plusieurs semaines. Sans nier les feux ni l’importance de cette forêt au niveau de sa biodiversité, nous tenons à dénoncer quelques contre-vérités qui ont circulé.

1/ La forêt amazonienne n’est pas le poumon de la planète

Scientifiquement, l’expression “poumon de la planète” pour désigner l’Amazonie est fausse et prétendre que l’Amazonie produit 20% de notre oxygène — une assertion du Président français Macron lors du récent sommet du G7 — est fausse. Tout d’abord un poumon ne produit pas d’oxygène mais en consomme… Mais passons ce détail. Ce qu’il faut retenir est ceci : le bilan entre photosynthèse et respiration pour cet écosystème est nul du point de vue de l’oxygène [1] . La forêt amazonienne ne produit donc quasi pas d’oxygène, tout comme les océans, lorsque l’on considère le bilan net (photosynthèse + respiration). Tout ceci est même rappelé sur page Wikipedia consacrée à la forêt amazonienne, ou encore sur le site web du National Geographic.

Pour ceux qui ont du mal à lire en anglais, vous pouvez également lire le site français du Huffington Post, cette page de Planet Terre écrite en juin 2000, ou cet article écrit dans Le Parisien.

Pour ceux qui se posent la question de l’origine de l’oxygène que nous respirons (21% dans l’atmosphère actuelle), voici la réponse : nous respirons essentiellement un O2 libéré par des végétaux anciens (par exemple datant du Carbonifère) devenus matière organique fossile (ce carbone n’est pas dégradé par les bactéries des sols et sédiments et donc ne consomme pas d’oxygène atmosphérique). La page de Planet Terre citée précédemment explique parfaitement ce phénomène.

Figure 1. Nombre de feux de forêt au Brésil entre 2004 et 2019.
Source : Libération.

Greenland Meltdown Hoax

by P. Homewood, August 29, 2019 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat


You will recall those ridiculous stories about Greenland heatwaves and ice sheet meltdown, which were circulating just a couple of weeks ago :

As I pointed out at the time, they were simply not true. And, now the actual data bears this out.

The Surface Mass Balance (SMB) of the ice sheet, while below average is still well above that of 2012, and also within the historical range.. Most of the shortfall this year is because of dry weather during the winter, hence lack of snow.

[The light grey band shows differences from year to year. For any calendar day, the band shows the range over the 30 years (in the period 1981-2010), however with the lowest and highest values for each day omitted. ]

http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/

Amazon Wildfires Are Horrifying, But They’re Not Destroying Earth’s Oxygen Supply

by Scott Denning, August 22, 2019 in LiveSci=nce


Fires in the Amazon rainforest have captured attention worldwide in recent days. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who took office in 2019, pledged in his campaign to reduce environmental protection and increase agricultural development in the Amazon, and he appears to have followed through on that promise.

The resurgence of forest clearing in the Amazon, which had decreased more than 80% following a peak in 2004, is alarming for many reasons. Tropical forests harbor many species of plants and animals found nowhere else. They are important refuges for indigenous people, and contain enormous stores of carbon as wood and other organic matter that would otherwise contribute to the climate crisis.

Some media accounts have suggested that fires in the Amazon also threaten the atmospheric oxygen that we breathe. French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted on Aug. 22 that “the Amazon rain forest — the lungs which produces 20% of our planet’s oxygen — is on fire.”

Don’t hold your breath

Even though plant photosynthesis is ultimately responsible for breathable oxygen, only a vanishingly tiny fraction of that plant growth actually adds to the store of oxygen in the air. Even if all organic matter on Earth were burned at once, less than 1% of the world’s oxygen would be consumed.

In sum, Brazil’s reversal on protecting the Amazon does not meaningfully threaten atmospheric oxygen. Even a huge increase in forest fires would produce changes in oxygen that are difficult to measure. There’s enough oxygen in the air to last for millions of years, and the amount is set by geology rather than land use. The fact that this upsurge in deforestation threatens some of the most biodiverse and carbon-rich landscapes on Earth is reason enough to oppose it.

Fake News and Fires in the Amazon

by Donna Laframboise, August 23, 2019 in BigPicturesNews


Politicians and government officials like to talk as though it’s possible to stamp out fake news. It isn’t.

Fake news is as old as humanity. After Aristotle incorrectly claimed women had fewer teeth than men, generations of highly educated people believed it.

Rajendra Pachauri was called “the UN’s top climate scientist” by the BBC – and a “Nobel laureate” by the New York Academy of Sciencesmagazine. Neither statement was true.

Pachauri’s doctorate wasn’t in climatology, but in industrial engineering and economics. And the fact that he accepted the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the UN organization he chaired doesn’t make him or any other person affiliated with that organization a Nobel laureate.

Published in 2008 and 2009, these inaccurate statements have never been corrected. In other words, we’re surrounded by fake news. And always will be. Humans are frequently mistaken. Organizations, as well as individuals, post things on the Internet before double-checking.

While media outlets are supposed to be more reliable than your brother-in-law, that seems less true every day. Over the past week, people have shared a CNN headline on Facebook that declares: “The Amazon rainforest is burning at a record rate” (see the screengrab from my own Facebook feed, at the top of this post).

If you click through to the CNN website, you’ll find a few extra words: “…research center says.” But the primary statement is misleading. Which means that millions have been alarmed unnecessarily – including a lovely, smart, young mother of my acquaintance.

Over at the website of National Geographic, a headline falsely declares: Brazil’s Amazon is burning at record rates – and deforestation is to blame. The second half of that assertion is vigorously disputed here.

Why Everything They Say About The Amazon, Including That It’s The ‘Lungs Of The World,’ Is Wrong

Amazon fires: how celebrities are spreading disinformation

The Amazon Is Not Earth’s Lungs: Humans could burn every living thing on the planet and still not dent its oxygen supply

Is Amazon Rainforest Burning At Record Rates? What Is The Way Forward?

Lies, Damn Lies, And Rainforest Fear-Mongering

Annual Amazon farmland burn sets records for international outrage

Amazon fires: What about Bolivia?

Stop Sharing Those Viral Photos of the Amazon Burning

The Three Most Viral Photos of the Amazon Fire Are Fake. Here Are Some Real Ones to Share.

What Satellite Imagery Tells Us About the Amazon Rain Forest Fires

The myth of ecocide: So many lies are being told about the Amazon fires

Why shouldn’t Brazilians burn down trees?

Sugar cane, Palm oil, and Biofuels in the Amazon

How the Media Help to Destroy Rational Climate Debate

by Dr Roy Spencer, August 25, 2019 in GlobalWarming


An old mantra of the news business is, “if it bleeds, it leads”. If someone was murdered, it is news. That virtually no one gets murdered is not news. That, by itself, should tell you that the mainstream media cannot be relied upon as an unbiased source of climate change information.

There are lots of self-proclaimed climate experts now. They don’t need a degree in physics or atmospheric science. For credentials, they only need to care and tell others they care. They believe the Earth is being murdered by humans and want the media to spread the word.

Most people do not have the time or educational background to understand the global warming debate, and so defer to the consensus of experts on the subject. The trouble is that no one ever says exactly what the experts agree upon.

When you dig into the details, what the experts agree upon in their official pronouncements is rather unremarkable. The Earth has warmed a little since the 1950s, a date chosen because before that humans had not produced enough CO2 to really matter. Not enough warming for most people to actually feel, but enough for thermometers to pick up the signal buried in the noise of natural weather swings of many tens of degrees and spurious warming from urbanization effects. The UN consensus is that most of that warming is probably due to increasing atmospheric CO2 from fossil fuel use (but we really don’t know for sure).

For now, I tend to agree with this consensus.

And still I am widely considered a climate denier.

Why? Because I am not willing to exaggerate and make claims that cannot be supported by data.

The widely reported Greenland surface melt event around 1 August 2019 (green oval) was then followed by a recovery to normal in the following weeks (purple oval), which was not reported by the media.

More fake five-alarm crises from the IPCC

by Paul Driessen, August 25, 2019


UN and other scientists recently sent out news releases claiming July 2019 was the “hottest month ever recorded on Earth” – nearly about 1.2 degrees C (2.2 degrees F) “above pre-industrial levels.” That era happens to coincide with the world’s emergence from the 500-year Little Ice Age. And “ever recorded” simply means measured; it does not include multiple earlier eras when Earth was much warmer than now.

Indeed, it is simply baseless to suppose that another few tenths of a degree (to 1.5 C above post-Little Ice Age levels) would somehow bring catastrophe to people, wildlife, agriculture and planet. It is equally ridiculous to assume all recent warming has been human-caused, with none of it natural or cyclical.

Moreover, as University of Alabama-Huntsville climate scientist Dr. Roy Spencer has noted, this past July was most likely not the warmest. The claim, he notes, is based on “a limited and error-prone array of thermometers which were never intended to measure global temperature trends.”

Michael Mann Refuses to Produce Data, Loses Case

by P. Homewood, August 26, 2019 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat


Some years ago, Dr. Tim Ball wrote that climate scientist Michael Mann “belongs in the state pen, not Penn State.” At issue was Mann’s famous “hockey stick” graph that purported to show a sudden and unprecedented 20th century warming trend. The hockey stick featured prominently in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (2001), but has since been shown to be wrong. The question, in my view, is whether it was an innocent mistake or deliberate fraud on Mann’s part. (Mann, I believe, continues to assert the accuracy of his debunked graph.) Mann sued Ball for libel in 2011. Principia Scientific now reports that the court in British Columbia has dismissed Mann’s lawsuit with prejudice, and assessed costs against him.

What happened was that Dr. Ball asserted a truth defense. He argued that the hockey stick was a deliberate fraud, something that could be proved if one had access to the data and calculations, in particular the R2 regression analysis, underlying it. Mann refused to produce these documents. He was ordered to produce them by the court and given a deadline. He still refused to produce them, so the court dismissed his case.

 

Amazon Rain Forest Fires: Here’s What’s Really Happening

by Alexandria Symonds, August 23, 2019 in TheNewYorkTimes


 

These fires were not caused by climate change. They were, by and large, set by humans. However, climate change can make fires worse. Fires can burn hotter and spread more quickly under warmer and drier conditions.

When it comes to the future of climate change, widespread fires contribute a dual negative effect. Trees are valuable because they can store carbon dioxide, and that storage capacity is lost when trees burn. Burning trees also pumps more carbon into the atmosphere.

Is Amazon Rainforest Burning At Record Rates? What Is The Way Forward?

by R. Walker, August 21, 2019 in Science20


Short summary: we have had wild fires for many years now in the Amazon, even in the tropical rainforest – mainly started by humans for forest clearing and ranching. It is not enough to impact significantly on the Paris agreement pledges yet, though it is important in the long term if this continues for decades. It does of course have major and immediate impacts on forest residents, nature services and the biodiversity in Brazil.

This image is being shared widely, for instance in National Geographic’s “The Amazon is burning at record rates – and deforestation is to blame”. Similarly, the BBC is reporting it as ‘Record number of fires’ in Brazilian rainforest.

Yet, NASA’s own description for this photo says that it is burning at close to the average for the last 15 years. So, what is going on here?

APOLOGIES – UPDATE FROM NASA FROM 19TH AUGUST – THEY NOW CONFIRM INPE INSTEAD OF SAYING IT IS BELOW AVERAGE

Previous version of this article was mistaken. I have made a copy on my website here (the comments on this article are based on that earlier version):

NASA Say Amazon Rainforest Burning At Close To Average Rates – Yet Many News Stories Say Record Rates – Which Is It?

It accurately summarized the article it linked to from NASA (Fires in Brazil) and that page showed as updated on 22nd August which lead me to believe it was up to date. But apparently it isn’t, that’s just the date for a minor update of the page.

Looking behind the scenes of the well-orchestrated climate hysteria

by Sanjeev Sabhlok, August 22, 2019 in TheTimesofIndia


We know there is simply no basis for climate alarm. All “scientific” predictions have failed, life has survived happily with much higher CO2 in the past, the medieval warming period a thousand years ago was much warmer than today, the small temperature variations of the 20th century are easily explained by natural causes, and the IPCC reports confirm that there is no increase in extreme weather events and no economic harm from CO2.

And yet the hysteria is increasing by the day. The “remedies” being suggested are becoming more extreme: it is no longer just about making energy so expensive that the poor can’t afford it, it is now about removing meat from their diet as well.

Amazon Fire History Since 2003

by Les Johnson, August 23, 2019 in WUWT


We are told that Amazon fires are at record levels right now. This is a blatant lie. The only “record” is that Amazonian fires have DECREASED over the “record”.

This (is) what the data actually looks like, to August 22. Yes, its updated daily.

This comes from a wonderful site, https://www.globalfiredata.org/forecast.html#elbeni

It uses NASA MODIS data, from the Terra and Aqua satellites, and is updated daily. By going to the website, you can look at individual regions in the Amazon, or as I have done, look at the totals for the Amazon. This site also has global data, but I am only looking at the Amazon region here.

The Interactive Graphs are very informative. Hovering the cursor over the graph will show the data at that point.

You can highlight individual years, by clicking on a year in the legend at the bottom of the graph. That year remains bright, while the rest are dimmed. Using Eyeball Mark 1 Trend Indicator (EBM1TI), 2019 is slightly high, but not at record levels. Not even close.

One thing I saw by looking at each year, was a rough pattern – one or two bad years, one or two years at much lower levels, then a bad year. This pattern is there until 2010. 2010 was the last “bad year”. Levels since 2010 have been 1/2 or less of the “bad years”. The old pattern has been broken.

 

 

See also here

Re-evaluating the manufacture of the climate consensus

by Judith Curry, August 21, 2019 in ClimateEtc.


A new book by Oppenheimer, Oreskes et al. entitled ‘Discerning Experts: The Practices of Scientific Assessment for Environmental Policy‘ makes a case against consensus seeking in climate science assessments.

I have long railed against the consensus-seeking process used by the IPCC (see my previous blog posts on this topic).  And particularly, my paper:

Oppenheimer has long voiced concerns about consensus (e.g. his 2007 paper).  However, Oreskes has been consensus enforcer in chief, originating the 97% thingy.

I haven’t read their new book, but authors Oreskes, Oppenheimer and Jamison have written an essay on their book in Scientific American, entitled Scientists have been underestimating the rate of climate change.

You can see where this is going from the title of this article; most of this is an attempt to justify alarmism. But they make some interesting points.  Excerpts:

Lets stop manufacturing consensus about climate change.  Lets open up the scientific debate on climate change and celebrate disagreement and use it to push the knowledge frontier of climate science.  The whole consensus thing has done little to reduce global CO2 emissions, which was the point of the whole exercise.  It’s time for new approaches to both science and policy.

Listen to the Trees!

by Jim Steele, August 22, 2019 in WUWT


What’s Natural?

Published in Pacifica. Tribune August 20,2019

This summer I taught a class on the Natural History of the Sierra Nevada for San Francisco State University’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus. The first day we taught students how to identify the trees. Once students know their trees, they can easily see how tree species vary with elevation, temperature, moisture, and snow pack. They can see which species colonize open sunny areas and which trees need shade before they can invade. Old time naturalists used trees to identify “life-zones” where different species of mammals, birds, insects and other plants can be found. Furthermore, when you listen to the trees, you can see change.

 

Tree rings indicate the warmest decades of the 20th century were the 1930s and 40s, and temperatures have yet to surpass those decades. This divergence between thermometers and trees is best explained by the fact that instrumental temperatures are biased upwards when taken at hot airports or in areas recently suffering from growing urban heat island effects. In contrast, trees measure temperatures in natural habitat.

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.

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.

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.

Media Ignore Vast Summer Cold Across Northern Hemisphere; Southern USA, Russia See “Record Lows” In July

by P. Gosselin, August 3, 2019 in NoTricksZone


While the headlines naturally focused on an intense heat wave over a region centered over France and Germany last week, the global warming ambulance chasers worked overtime avoiding and ignoring the real story: vast, continent-wide cold spreading across Russia.

Heat and cold zero-sum

First at the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), Klaus Öllerer reported how the Sahara heat ended up being a “zero-sum” event for the northern hemisphere region of Europe and Asia.

Öllerer wrote last week that despite the heat that took place in large parts of Europe, it was cooler than usual in other neighboring parts. Only a certain area in Central Europe (purple area) was particularly hot. Around it, it was less warm (yellow) and cooler than usual (blue):

Source: wetterzentrale.de

“Even large parts of the Sahara are cooler than usual (blue). This is no wonder, as the heat is now in Europe and cooler air flows into the Sahara,” Öllerer wrote.

“The above-average warm areas balance out with the above-average cold areas,” he concluded. “The current warming is a zero-sum game! Historically, such events have occurred again and again.”

“It is even the case that in cooler times – such as the Little Ice Age – warm summer extremes were more frequent than in the last one hundred years and more,” Öllerer added.

Severe cold across Russia

Northern Europe July Temperature Sees NO WARMING Over Past Decades. Global July Not A Record High!

by P. Gosselin, August 20, 2019 in NoTricksZone


Parts of Europe have seen a couple of brief but intense heat waves this summer, and so some of the public got brainwashed by the media into thinking the continent’s summer climate is rapidly getting hotter and that all this is the new normal.

Yet, when we examine the unaltered data from the Japan Meteorology Agency (JMA) for locations in northern Europe that have long-term datasets available, we see there has been no July warming trend over the past decades. Media reports suggesting otherwise are nonsense.

Ireland

Looking at 6 stations in Ireland, we have the following for July:

 

Data source: JMA.

Overall, Ireland’s mean July temperatures have been cooling off modestly over the past 3 decades and more, even though three stations are located at airports.

Sweden

The latest travesty in ‘consensus enforcement’

by Judith Curry, August 14, 2019 in ClimateEtc.


The latest travesty in consensus ‘enforcement’, published by Nature.
.
Abstract. We juxtapose 386 prominent contrarians with 386 expert scientists by tracking their digital footprints across 200,000 research publications and 100,000 English-language digital and print media articles on climate change. Projecting these individuals across the same backdrop facilitates quantifying disparities in media visibility and scientific authority, and identifying organization patterns within their association networks. Here we show via direct comparison that contrarians are featured in 49% more media articles than scientists. Yet when comparing visibility in mainstream media sources only, we observe just a 1% excess visibility, which objectively demonstrates the crowding out of professional mainstream sources by the proliferation of new media sources, many of which contribute to the production and consumption of climate change disinformation at scale. These results demonstrate why climate scientists should increasingly exert their authority in scientific and public discourse, and why professional journalists and editors should adjust the disproportionate attention given to contrarians.
.
This ranks as the worst paper I have ever seen published in a reputable journal.  The major methodological problems and dubious assumptions:
.
  • Category error to sort into contrarians and climate scientists, with contrarians including scientists, journalists and politicians.
  • Apart from the category error, the two groups are incorrectly specified, with some climate scientists incorrectly designated as contrarians.
  • Cherry picking the citation data of top 386 cited scientists to delete Curry, Pielke Jr, Tol, among others (p 12 of Supplemental Information)
  • Acceptance of the partisan, activist, non-scientist group DeSmog as a legitimate basis for categorizing scientists as ‘contrarian’
  • Assumption that scientific expertise on the causes of climate change relates directly to the number of scientific citations.
  • Assumption that it would be beneficial for the public debate on climate change  for the ‘unheard’ but highly cited climate scientists to enter into the media fray.
  • Assumption that scientists have special authority in policy debates on climate change
The real travesty is this press release issued by UC Merced:

The harm that this paper does to climate science is an attempt to de-legitimize climate scientists (both academic and non academic), with the ancillary effects of making it more difficult to get their papers published in journals (stay tuned for my latest engagement with the journal peer review process, coming later this month) and the censorship of Nir Shaviv by Forbes (hopefully coming later this week).

CRYING WOLF OVER THE GREAT BARRIER REEF

by Peter Ridd, August 12, 2019 in GWPF


The scare stories about the Great Barrier Reef started in the 1960’s when scientist first started work on the reef. They have been crying wolf ever since.

Scientists from James Cook University have just published a paper on the bleaching and death of corals on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) and were surprised that the death rate was less than they expected because of the adaptability of corals to changing temperatures. It appears as though they exaggerated their original claims and are quietly backtracking. To misquote Oscar Wilde, to exaggerate once is a misfortune, to do it twice looks like carelessness, but to do it repeatedly looks like unforgivable systemic unreliability by some of our major science organisations.

It is a well-known phenomenon that corals can adapt very rapidly to high temperatures and that if you heat corals in one year, they tend to be less susceptible in future years to overheating. It is the reason why corals are one of the least likely species to be affected by climate change, irrespective of whether you believe the climate is changing by natural fluctuations or from human influence.

Analysis: What’s Really Going On In Greenland

by C. Martz, August 12, 2019 in ClimateChangeDispatch


As I’m sure many of my readers are aware, Europe has been having an odd summer as far as temperatures are concerned. The continent has had two major heatwaves this summer; one was in June and the other was in July.

In addition, Greenland has also seen some exceptional “warmth” and lots of ice melt this summer as compared to more recent years.

So, what’s going on? Is climate change to blame? Or, is this a freak of nature?

As with most complicated things in science, the truth is somewhere in between and is not just one way or the other. I hate saying that as a “black and white” person, but it’s an unfortunate fact. One can not make a preconceived notion based on one weather event without looking at a.) the big picture, b.) mechanism, and c.) long-term trends.

The upper air pattern over Europe and Greenland is opposite of what’s been occurring in much of the United States. The U.S. has only had one major heatwave this year, and that in and of itself caused mass hysteria.

Why A ‘Super’ Grand Solar Minimum Is Upon Us

by Cap Allon, November 19, 2018 in PrincipiaScientificInternational


Professor Valentina Zharkova explains and confirms why a “Super” Grand Solar Minimum is upon us: “If the world was looking for an Epiphany moment, this should be it.”

Professor  Zharkova gave a presentation of her Climate and the Solar Magnetic Field hypothesis at the Global Warming Policy Foundation in October, 2018. Even if you believe the IPCC’s worst case scenario, Zharkova’s analysis blows any ‘warming’ out of the water.

Lee Wheelbarger sums it up: even if the IPCC’s worst case scenarios are seen, that’s only a 1.5 watts per square meter increase. Zharkova’s analysis shows a 8 watts per square meter decrease in TSI to the planet.

The information she unveiled should shake/wake you up. Zharkova was one of the few that correctly predicted solar cycle 24 would be weaker than cycle 23 – only 2 out of 150 models predicted this. Her models have run at a 93% accuracy and her findings suggest a SuperGrand Solar Minimum is on the cards beginning 2020 and running for 350-400 years.

Ten Causes of Warming: The Layperson’s Checklist

by Jim Steele, August 8, 2019 in WUWT


All temperatures are not created equally. Rising temperatures have many causes. Good science demands we explore alternative hypotheses before reaching any conclusions. Below is a list of common causes of warming trends and heat events that everyone should consider in addition to any possible increased greenhouse effect.

1. Heat trapping surfaces: Asphalt and cement not only heat up much faster than natural habitat during the day, those materials hold the heat longer, increasing temperatures at weather stations situated near buildings and near asphalt. More asphalt, more warming, more record temperatures.

2. Loss of Vegetation: During the summer the temperature of a dry dirt road can be 60°F higher at noon, than ground shaded by trees. That’s why our pets instinctively seek the shade. Plants also bring moisture from below the ground that cools the air by evaporative cooling. Increasing deforestation or lost vegetation due to landscape changes cause regional warming trends.

3. Transport of heat: Natural climate oscillations alter air and ocean circulation patterns that can drive more heat from the tropics towards the poles. Europe’s recent heat wave was largely caused by air heated over the baking Sahara Desert and then driven into Europe. Similarly, the latest research finds variations in Arctic sea ice has been dominated by transport of warm Atlantic water heated in the tropics and transported northward via the Gulf Stream.

4. Less cloud cover: Recent research suggests a trend of less cloud cover resulted in increased solar heating of land and oceans. The added solar energy normally reflected by clouds was 2 times greater than what’s believed to be added by increasing carbon dioxide. Two decades of declining cloud cover was similarly shown to cause Greenland’s rapid ice melt between 1995 and 2012.

5. Less Cooling: Windy conditions cool the oceans. The unusually warm ocean conditions that occurred in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, known as the Blob, were caused by decreased winds that reduced normal cooling.

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Malfeasant Omissions? German Flagship ARD Broadcasting One-Sided, Drama-Making Sea Level Reporting

by Dr. S. Lüning, August 9, 2019 in NoTricksZone


What follows is another example of the tricks the mainstream media use to produce fake drama and urgency concerning sea level rise and climate change – namely omissions – and how geologist Sebastian Lüning held their feet to the fire.

Dr. Sebastian Lüning wrote a complaint to German ARD public broadcasting concerning its December 2, 2018, one-sided reporting of the Indian island of Ghoramara and the sea level rise it is allegedly experiencing. The €6.9 billion euro publicly funded, 22,612-employee ARD is the German equivalent to the UK’s BBC.

What follows is the exchange between Lüning and the ARD editorial staff: