Archives par mot-clé : Fun?/Discussion

better to know...?, climate-debate

From the non-sense of carbon neutrality

by Jeanne Marcq, March 5, 2021 in ScienceClimatEnergie

Carbon neutrality aiming to limit the rise in global temperature is a lure from the economic points of view and humanity. It is also the weakness of environmentalists, vegans and the “green” provided people of the northern hemisphere advocating worldly decay.

However, the food and energy resources exist in sufficiency  on earth but are poorly dispatched (see FAO data). Developing countries cannot be selfishly prevented from using fossil fuels to build their own economies instead of being plundered by new colonizers. No political regime has ever managed to erase socio-economic inequalities in society. With a world population currently growing until 2050 (FAO), any limitation of food production and economic development would be damaging to humanity.

 

Continuer la lecture de From the non-sense of carbon neutrality →

climate-debate

Study: Medieval Climate Change Existed in Africa

by A. Watts, Feb 24, 2018 in WUWT

Mapping Medieval Climate Change in Africa:

Continental warming, coastal cooling and shifting rainbelts 1000 years ago

Global climate is currently undergoing major change. Experts agree that this change is driven by a combination of man-made and natural factors. However, full quantification of the anthropogenic and natural components is still a matter of debate. In order to better understand the contribution of natural climate variability and distinguish this from man-made influence, researchers worldwide have gone out to the field to study Earth’s pre-industrial climate history. Of particular interest are the past thousand years, which in Europe and North America have seen the transition from a rather warm medieval period to major cooling of the Little Ice Age, followed by the temperature rebound of the Current Warm Period which was further intensified by human greenhouse gas emissions. Our understanding of medieval climate outside this well-studied North Atlantic region is unfortunately still poor.

An international team led by geoscientist Sebastian Lüning wants to change this. Lüning is a professional resources geologist who in his sparetime works on paleoclimatological studies with the Switzerland-based Institute for Hydrography, Geoecology and Climate Sciences. Together with colleagues from Poland, Nigeria, Turkey and Germany they embarked on a journey through the scientific literature to shed light on the so-called ‘Medieval Climate Anomaly’, a period comprising of the years 1000-1200 AD. The initial focus region of their study was Africa. Lüning and his team crawled through hundreds of publications and mosaiced together a fascinating picture of African medieval climate change that tracks ancient heat waves, local cooling, drought and phases of amplified rainfall. Using modern database and visualization technology, the team managed to synthesize astonishing trends from the large amount of filtered data. Lüning explains the challenge:

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climate-debate

STATE OF THE POLAR BEAR REPORT 2020

by S. J. Crocfkord, Report 2020 in GWPF

 

.pdf (58 pages)

Report 40, The Global Warming Policy Foundation

Preface v Executive summary vi

ISBN 978-1-9160700-7-3
© Copyright 2020, The Global Warming Policy Foundation

  1. Introduction 1
  2. Conservation status 1
  3. Population size 2
  4. Population trends 10
  5. Habitat status 11
  6. Prey base 15
  7. Health and survival 17
  8. Evidence of flexibility 22
  9. Human/bear interactions 23
  10. Discussion 28

Bibliography 30 About the Global Warming Policy Foundation

climate-debate

The risks of communicating extreme climate forecasts

by COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY, Feb 24, 2021 in EurekaAlert!/AAAS

For decades, climate change researchers and activists have used dramatic forecasts to attempt to influence public perception of the problem and as a call to action on climate change. These forecasts have frequently been for events that might be called “apocalyptic,” because they predict cataclysmic events resulting from climate change.

In a new paper published in the International Journal of Global Warming, Carnegie Mellon University’s David Rode and Paul Fischbeck argue that making such forecasts can be counterproductive. “Truly apocalyptic forecasts can only ever be observed in their failure–that is the world did not end as predicted,” says Rode, adjunct research faculty with the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center, “and observing a string of repeated apocalyptic forecast failures can undermine the public’s trust in the underlying science.”

Rode and Fischbeck, professor of Social & Decision Sciences and Engineering & Public Policy, collected 79 predictions of climate-caused apocalypse going back to the first Earth Day in 1970. With the passage of time, many of these forecasts have since expired; the dates have come and gone uneventfully. In fact, 48 (61%) of the predictions have already expired as of the end of 2020.

Fischbeck noted, “from a forecasting perspective, the ‘problem’ is not only that all of the expired forecasts were wrong, but also that so many of them never admitted to any uncertainty about the date. About 43% of the forecasts in our dataset made no mention of uncertainty.”

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Not a myth: State of the Polar Bear Report shows 2020 was another good year for polar bears

by C. Rotter Feb 27, 2021 in WUWT

The ‘State of the Polar Bear Report 2020’ is now available. Forget hand-wringing about what might happen fifty years from now – celebrate the fabulous news that polar bears had yet another good year.

Press release from the Global Warming Policy Forum

 

Cite as:

Crockford, S.J. 2021. The State of the Polar Bear Report 2020. Global Warming Policy Foundation Report 48, London.

London, 27 February: A prominent Canadian zoologist says that Facebook’s information is gravely out of date and 2020 was another good year for polar bears.

In the State of the Polar Bear Report 2020, published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) on International Polar Bear Day, zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford explains that while the climate change narrative insists that polar bear populations are declining due to reduced sea ice, the scientific literature doesn’t support such a conclusion.

Crockford clarifies that the IUCN’s 2015 Red List assessment for polar bears, which Facebook uses as an authority for ‘fact checking’, is seriously out of date. New and compelling evidence shows bears that in regions with profound summer ice loss are doing well.

Included in that evidence are survey results for 8 of the 19 polar bear subpopulations, only two of which showed insignificant declines after very modest ice loss. The rest were either stable or increasing, and some despite major reductions in sea ice. As a result, the global population size is now almost 30,000 – up from about 26,000 in 2015.

Dr. Crockford points out that in 2020, even though summer sea ice declined to the second lowest levels since 1979, there were no reports of widespread starvation of bears, acts of cannibalism, or drowning deaths that might suggest bears were having trouble surviving the ice-free season.

better to know...?, climate-debate

UN Security Council hears of climate threat, does nothing

by K. Mathiesen, Feb 23 2021 in Politico

When it comes to climate change, bombs don’t work, so the United Nations Security Council prefers words to action.

Tuesday saw the highest profile discussion of climate change in the U.N.’s central body for promoting global peace. But Russia, which holds a veto as a permanent member of the Council, warned against any move to recognize warming as a threat to global security.

Moscow’s stance left the Security Council’s U.K. presidency stabbing at a broken panic button.

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better to know...?, energy and fields

Total CEO sees ‘little sense’ in shareholder divestment from oil majors over climate concerns

by A. Fawthrop,  Feb 23, 2021 in NSEnergy

Divesting from major oil and gas producers on grounds of climate change makes “little sense”, says Total chief executive Patrick Pouyanné, because other companies will simply pick up the excess production.

The boss of the French energy firm urged investors and shareholders to support “big players with large balance sheets and financial capacity” because without them the low-carbon energy transition will not “become a reality”.

Stakeholder pressure on the world’s top oil companies is increasing amid heightened concerns over their contribution to climate change and demands for decisive action to reduce emissions across the energy industry.

Many oil and gas firms, including Total, have outlined recent ambitions to gradually pivot away from fossil energy in favour of electrification and alternative fuels.

But public scrutiny remains strong, with warnings of divesting if shareholders do not feel these plans are going far or fast enough, or the business risks associated with climate change are not being adequately addressed.

 

Oil and gas demand won’t disappear soon, and divesting would leave production for others to take up

Speaking at the IP Week conference today (23 February), Pouyanné called for patience from investors while making a pitch for the role companies like Total have to play in the low-carbon energy transition.

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climate-debate

Munging The Sea Level Data

by W. Eschenbach, Feb 21, 2021 in WUWT

For more than a decade now, I’ve been wondering about a couple of questions.

First, why does the satellite-based sea-level data show that the sea level is rising so much faster than the rise measured at tidal stations on the coastlines around the world? Records from tidal stations show a rise on the order of a couple of mm per year, a rate which is little changed over the century or so for which we have adequate records. But the satellite record (Figure 1) shows a rise of 3.3 mm/year. Why the large difference?

Second, why does the satellite-based sea-level show such significant acceleration? As mentioned above, the sea-level records from tidal stations, which are much longer, show little or no acceleration. But the satellite record claims that the rate of sea-level rise is increasing by about a tenth of an mm per year. That amount of acceleration would double the rate of sea-level rise in about thirty years. Again, why the large difference?

To start with, here’s what the satellite data says, according to the University of Colorado Sea Level Research Group.

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climate-debate

NOAA’s Climate Disaster Claims Are A Sham

by C. Rotter, Feb 20, 2021 in WUWT

When a hurricane hits a populated stretch of coast, which is almost invariably, it is inevitable losses will be big. But while last year was a busy year for hurricanes, we do know that the frequency of US hurricanes has not been unusual in the last decade, and if anything the long term trend is down. (Though it is worth noting that the 1980s and 90s were below average, making the choice of 1980 as a start date statistically inappropriate):

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Climate Facts or Leaps of Faith? Governments Can’t Tell the Difference

by Donna Laframboise, Feb 17, 2021 in BigPicturesNews

We have no hard evidence of a crisis. Only expert opinion and best estimates.

Governments are currently fighting climate change to the tune of billions. For this to make sense, each idea in the following chain of reasoning needs to be bulletproof:

#1 – scientists know there’s a climate crisis
#2 – scientists know it’s humanity’s fault
#3 – scientists know we can alleviate the crisis by changing our behaviour

But each of these amounts to a leap of faith. Let’s start with the conviction that something unusual is going on. This planet is more than 4 billion years old. The climate was marching to its own drummer long before humans appeared. It has changed numerous times – sometimes gradually, sometimes violently. Twenty thousand years ago, much of North America was covered by ice.

Because humans weren’t recording and analyzing those billions of years of climatic history, today’s scientists have no way of knowing if anything unusual is going on now.

They can surmise. They can speculate. They can extrapolate. But they have no smoking gun. I’ve written two books about the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). That organization says it’s “extremely likely that more than half” of the global warming between 1951 and 2010 was caused by human activity. It talks about its “best estimate.”

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Southeast Greenland Sea Surface Temperature 1° – 2°C Warmer In 1940 Than Today, New Study Shows

by P. Gosselin, Feb 14, 2021 in NoTricksZone

A team of Danish scientists led by David Wangner published a paper a year ago about the results of a Greenland sediment core from Skjoldungen Fjord, near the Thrym Glacier, which allowed sea surface temperatures to be reconstructed.

The core covers the past 200 years (1796–2013). The scientists find that the SST record compares well with other alkenone‐based reconstructions from SE‐Greenland and thus features regional shelf water variability.

Today some scientists like claiming the present is warmer than at any time in the past 1000 years and suggest the Greenland ice sheets are rapidly melting. But the results of the core reconstruction show that it was warmer in the past, some 80 years ago

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Biden’s climate ‘fix’ is fantastically expensive and perfectly useless

by B. Lomborg, Feb 9, 2021 in NewYorkPost

Across the world, politicians are going out of their way to promise fantastically expensive climate policies. President Biden has promised to spend $500 billion each year on climate — about 13 percent of the entire federal revenue. The European Union will spend 25 percent of its budget on climate.

Most rich countries now promise to go carbon-neutral by mid-century. Shockingly, only one country has made a serious, independent estimate of the cost: New Zealand found it would optimistically cost 16 percent of its GDP by then, equivalent to the entire current New Zealand budget.

The equivalent cost for the US and the EU would be more than $5 trillion. Each and every year. That is more than the entire US federal budget, or more than the EU governments spend across all budgets for education, recreation, housing, environment, economic affairs, police, courts, defense and health.

Tellingly, the European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans recently admitted that climate policies would be so costly, it would be a “matter of survival for our industry” without huge, protective border taxes.

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climate and geology

Antarctica’s Larsen Ice Shelf Break-Up Driven by Geological Heat Flow Not Climate Change

by J.E. Kamis, Jan 19, 2017 in PlateClimatology

 

Figure 1  North tip of Antarctic Continent including Larsen Ice Shelf Outline (black line), very active
West Antarctica Rift / Fault System (red lines), and currently erupting or semi-active volcanoes (red dots).

Progressive bottom melting and break-up of West Antarctica’s seafloor hugging Larsen Ice Shelf is fueled by heat and heated fluid flow from numerous very active geological features, and not climate change.

This ice shelf break-up process has been the focus of an absolute worldwide media frenzy contending man-made atmospheric global warming is at work in the northwest peninsula of Antarctica. As evidence, media articles typically include tightly edited close-up photos of cracks forming on the surface of the Larsen Ice Shelf (Figure 2) accompanied by text laced with global warming alarmist catch phrases. This “advertising / marketing” approach does in fact produce beautiful looking and expertly written articles. However, they lack subsidence, specifically a distinct absence of actual scientific data and observations supporting the purported strong connection to manmade atmospheric global warming.

Working level scientists familiar with, or actually performing research on, the Larsen Ice Shelf utilize an entirely different approach when speaking about or writing about what is fueling this glacial ice break-up. They ascribe the break-up to poorly understood undefined natural forces (see quote below). Unfortunately, comments by these scientists are often buried deep in media articles and never seem to match the alarmist tone of the article’s headline.

“Scientists have been monitoring the rift on the ice shelf for decades. Researchers told NBC News that the calving event was “part of the natural evolution of the ice shelf,” but added there could be a link to changing climate, though they had no direct evidence of it.” (see here)

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unclassified

Delingpole: Study Disputes That Earth Is in a ‘Climate Emergency’

by P. Homewood, Feb 9, 2021 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

There is no “climate emergency”, according to a study for the Global Warming Policy Foundation by independent scientist Dr Indur Goklany.

Goklany concludes:

While climate may have changed for the warmer:

• Most extreme weather phenomena have not become more extreme, more deadly, or more destructive

• Empirical evidence directly contradicts claims that increased carbon dioxide has reduced human wellbeing. In fact, human wellbeing has never been higher

• Whatever detrimental effects warming and higher carbon dioxide may have had on terrestrial species and ecosystems, they have been swamped by the contribution of fossil fuels to increased biological productivity. This has halted, and turned around, reductions in habitat loss

The report will make hugely depressing reading for all the prominent environmental activists — from the Pope and Doom Goblin Greta Thunberg to the Great Reset’s Klaus Schwab — who have been pushing the “climate emergency” narrative. It is an article of faith for the globalist elite and their useful idiots in the media, in politics, in business, and the entertainment that the world is on course for climate disaster which only radical and costly international action can prevent.

Continue reading “Delingpole: Study Disputes That Earth Is in a ‘Climate Emergency’”

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climate-debate

Journal Nature Refutes PIK’s Fantasy-Rich Science That A Warmer Arctic Causes Extreme Cold Snaps

by P. Gosselin, Feb 9, 2021 in NoTricksZone

The polar vortex theory takes a beating: The claim a warm Arctic is behind the brutally cold winter conditions at the mid latitudes is shown by a Nature study to be scientifically baseless.

Now that Europe and North America are getting blasted by unusually severe winter weather, which climate alarmists predicted 20 years ago would be a thing of the past, the alarmists are desperate to find an explanation to escape embarrassment.

PIK science suggests warmth begets cold

They’ve come up with the polar vortex explanation: the bitter cold we are now experiencing at the middle latitudes is in fact due to the warmer Arctic, they say. And this wreaks havoc on the jet stream which in turn results in cold Arctic blasts dipping deep into the middle latitudes. Yes, cold winters are in fact exactly what we should expect in a rapidly warming world!

Levermann and Rahmstorf

For example the two media front men Anders Levermann and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Climate Institute (PIK) have been telling this to the ever gullible German media outlets, like Bild and Spiegel. Yet, many suspect it’s scientific fraud designed to fool the public and to hide the fact that their global warming predictions are in reality glaring failures.

Journal Nature refutes fantasy-rich PIK explanation

For example a recent paper appearing in Nature titled “Weakened evidence for mid-latitude impacts of Arctic warming“, authored by Blackport et al, refutes this highly fantasy-rich hypothesis pitched by the two PIK scientists.

 

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better to know...?

“Climate Adaptation Summit” turns out to be a fundraising event

by D. Wojick, Fab 6, 2021 in CFACT/CLINTEL

The recent Climate Adaptation Summit 2021 was not about helping nations against the effects of climate change. It was all about finding huge amounts of money. Even worse, it was about planning on finding money, not actually finding it. Even more embarrassing, in some cases it was just about thinking about planning. In fact its primary product was an Agenda. Climate Summits are like that. However, world leaders call it ‘thinking big’.

Climate adaptation is proactive and that is its big strength. It is proactive to the combination of gradual changes (think of the gradually increasing sea level) and excessive events (think of all types of extreme weather). Using Darwin, if mankind does not adapt to these changes in his environment, extinction will be his fate as happened so often to other species in the past.

Climate is a long term statistic, typically 30 years, or more. In this case it is mostly the long term frequency of various extreme weather events, the usual litany of floods, droughts, heat waves, etc., plus there is the usual sea level rise.

The real thing is that adaptation is not about preventing these extreme events, but it is about adapting to those events. For instance, don’t build houses in flood planes or build dikes to keep them dry. Keep in mind that with any form of climate adaptation, the cause of climate change is of no importance.

What does matter, in a very bad way, is that humans are being blamed for all bad weather. This supports the nonsensical thing called mitigation, where human well being is sacrificed in a foolish attempt to end bad weather.

Our friends at the Climate Intelligence Foundation (CLINTEL) have made it a central policy that adaptation is the way to go. In commenting on CAS 2021 they point out that adaptation is actually very profitable, increasing the prosperity and safety of nations.

Here is what they say: “The world should focus much more on climate adaptation and much less on mitigation. This is the conclusion of the global CLINTEL following the international climate summit that took place in the Netherlands over the past two days. Adaptation has already amply proven its value, while mitigation turns out to be inefficient and expensive.

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climate-debate

Climate Researcher’s New E-Book: IPCC Significantly Overstates CO2, “The Sorry State Of Climate Science”

by P. Gosselin, Feb 5, 2021 in NoTricksZone

This is an outstanding reference. Using the table of contents the reader can conveniently look up the topic that’s of interest. The ebook has been downloaded over 10,000 times so far.

The 449-page book contains 120 figures and 177 equations and concludes that climate change is mostly about politically-fanned fear, and based very little on hard science.

Predictions of gloom haven’t come true

According to Poyet, a geologist, the worse climate predictions have been made for 50 years and none of them has ever become true. For example, despite the unsupported claims that the Maldives islands would be submerged by 2050, 97% of them have grown so far, for various reasons having nothing to do with “climate change”.

Also 50 years ago, the first Earth Day promoted ice age fears, and environmentalist Nigel Calder (later a prominent AGW skeptic) warned: “The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind.”

IPCC ignores vast majority of the science

While IPCC-affiliated scientists claim man to been behind the climate change of the past decades, Poyet’s book shows that this can only be concluded if one ignores all other factors. Fig 12, of his book, for example, depicts the natural fluctuations witnessed during the Holocene.

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climate-debate

Solving the mystery of why atmospheric carbon dioxide was lower during ice ages

by M. Floyd, June 13, 2019 in PhysOrg

Since scientists first determined that atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) was significantly lower during ice age periods than warm phases, they have sought to discover why, theorizing that it may be a function of ocean circulation, sea ice, iron-laden dust or temperature.

Yet no based on existing evidence has been able to explain why CO2 levels were as much as one-third lower when an ice age settled in.

A new study published this week in Science Advances provides compelling evidence for a solution—the combination of sea water variation and iron from dust off Southern Hemisphere continents.

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climate-debate

Interview: Climate Change – A Different Perspective with Judith Curry

by J. Curry, Jan 30, 2021 in WUWT

My recent interview on the Strong and Free podcast.

I recently did an interview with Christopher Balkaran on his Strong and Free podcast [link]

While I wasn’t previously aware of Balkaran or his podcast, you can see why I agreed to this interview, from these excerpts from the ‘About’ page:

“I created the Strong and Free Podcast to explore news topics by gathering multiple perspectives together and allowing people and organizations to discuss their opinions with detail. This allows for a nuanced conversation. It also means putting aside my own bias to explore these to the fullest. It means making all guests feel welcomed to share their opinions safely, without fear that the host will paint them into a corner, or make them sound incoherent. I want this place to be truly safe. I believe everyone, even those I disagree with, deserve to be treated with respect and to be on the Podcast to share their perspective. It also means having a concrete discussion on issues and determining the best way forward.  As long as we restore thoughtful approaches to the biggest issues of our time our conversations will have deep, valuable meaning. And, we enrich our own opinion.”

We covered a lot of topics that I think will provide good fodder for discussion and debate here.

Here is a transcript of the interview (quicker to read than to listen to the hour long podcast).  I edited the transcript eliminate thousands of ‘like’, ‘you know’, ‘okay’ (I am really a much better writer than speaker).  I also edited to increase overall coherency of what was said.

Transcript:

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better to know...?, climate-debate

The Rational Climate e-Book, By Patrice Poyet

P. Homewood, Jan 27, 2021 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

I am delighted to give a plug to Patrice Poyet’s new e-Book, The Rational Climate e-Book.

It can be downloaded for free on the link below:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347150306_The_Rational_Climate_e-Book/link/5fe21ddb92851c13feb1763d/download

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Patrice is a geologist, a geochemist and an applied computer scientist with an interest in various domains like Earth and Planetary Sciences, Astronomy, Finance and Trading, Integration in Manufacturing and Design, Simulation and Defense Systems, etc The development of computer systems has given him the chance to take part in a wide variety of projects in very different areas of expertise. Patrice published 37 articles mostly in peer-reviewed scientific journals, 6 books jointly-reviewed with colleagues, 6 peer-reviewed chapters in books, 64 papers in peer-reviewed conferences, one D.Sc. thesis (1986), and 32 scientific and technical reports for demanding public and private clients (e.g. French Navy, EC-funded R&D projects, CIEH, etc.) and acted as an expert reviewer for several EC R&D projects. He is now using his initial training as a geochemist and his passion for Earth and Space sciences to completely revisit the subject of climate and paleo-climates. The result is this free 431 pages e-Book that addresses all aspects of the subject.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Failing Computer Models

by P. Homewood ,Jan 21, 2021 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

If anybody tries to tell you that the computer models are accurately predicting global warming, show them this:

http://www.remss.com/research/climate/#:~:text=The%20RSS%20merged%20lower%20stratospheric%20temperature%20data%20product,in%20well-mixed%20greenhouse%20gases%20causes%20by%20human%20activity.

It comes from RSS, who monitor atmospheric temperatures via satellite observation. They are ardent warmists, and here us what they have to say:

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better to know...?, climate-debate

ANTARCTICA SUFFERING COLDEST JANUARY SINCE 1978 + GLOBAL SEA ICE GROWING EXPONENTIALLY

by Cap Allon, Jan 20, 2021 in Electroverse

The start of 2021 in Antarctica has been an unusually chilly one. In fact, the first half of January has been the coldest since 1978, according to data compiled by @LpdlcRamirez and @peikko763 on Twitter.

As of Jan. 19, the month-to-date temperature anomaly across Antarctic is approx. -0.5C, making this the continents coldest first 3-or-so-weeks of Jan. since 1978 (solar minimum of cycle 20), according to research conducted by @peikko163 on Twitter, who also notes that the Southern Hemisphere as a whole is suffering anomalous January chills not seen since 2012.

But this chill of solar minimum isn’t just confined to the Southern Hemisphere either, the mercury ACROSS the planet is tumbling. In one month global temperatures dropped by a whopping 0.26C: from 0.53C above the 1981-2010 avg. in Nov. 2020 to just 0.27C above the avg. in Dec. 2020 (UAH). This drop was in spite of a warming Arctic–a region expected to “heat” during times of otherwise “global” cooling (more on that below).

The Sun appears to be sliding into its next Grand Solar Minimum cycle–a multidecadal spell of reduced solar output where the solar disc can be devoid of sunspots for months or even years at a time. The result on Earth’s climate will be one of violent swings between extremes due to a weakening of the jet streams: intense bursts of heat will linger in one area, while a teeth-chattering chill will dominate nearby, and then the regions will “switch” — it is this unpredictable chopping and changing that will hasten the failure of our modern food production systems: crops will fail, on a large scale, and famine could quickly ensue.

Overall, Earth’s temperature trends colder during a Grand Solar Minimum, as the Sun’s output sinks lower and lower (increased cloud nucleation being one likely forcing). However, not ALL regions experience the chill: as with the previous GSM (the Maunder Minimum 1645-1715), areas such as the Arctic, Alaska, and S. Greenland/N. Atlantic actually warmed while the rest of the planet cooled — NASA reveals the phenomenon in their Maunder Minimum temperature reconstruction map:

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unclassified

The Natural Warming Of The Global Oceans-Bob Tisdale

by P. Homewood, Jan 18, 3021 in NotaLotofPeopleknowThat

https://youtu.be/lmjaNO5DD_Q

Many of you will be familiar with the work of Bob Tisdale over the years, concerning the mechanism of ENSO (ie El Ninos and La Ninas) and its effects on climate.

His seminal series of videos, recorded in 2012 is still on YouTube, and is still highly relevant.

Above is Part 1, which is worth sticking with all the way through, but otherwise the first 8 minutes is definitely worth a watch. Nothing has effectively changed since 2012, and Bob’s conclusions are still relevant and valid.

As well as explaining what exactly drives El Ninos and La Ninas, he makes some significant points:

  1. Worldwide sea surface temperature trends since 1980 show no correlation with GHGs (see chart below)

  2. Instead they exhibit a series of step changes up, which follow the major El Nino events of 1982/83, 1987/88 and 1997/98

  3. Contrary to popular belief, global SSTs do not drop during La Nina episodes. This is because El Ninos transfer a vast amount of warm, subsurface water to the surface, where it remains during La Nina.

  4. Some of this warm water in the East Pacific finds its way into the West Pacific and Indian Oceans. But through a process called teleconnection, SSTs is the Atlantic, where there is no direct connection, also rise and exhibit the same step changes.

  5. Between major El Nino events, SSTs outside the East Pacific do not rise.

  6. In the East Pacific, there has been no trend increase in SST at all since 1980.

     

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climate-debate

The IR absorptive characteristics of “greenhouse” gases–David Coe

by P. Homewood, Jan 17, 2021 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

SUMMARY

Using well documented data on the infra-red absorption spectra of atmospheric gases it is a straight-forward process to infer the overall atmospheric IR absorption and from that the effective global average temperature. The simplest of atmospheric models has been used: the atmosphere is considered to be a uniform thin absorbing layer of gas. The results demonstrate clearly that the warming effect of the atmosphere is almost entirely due to the spectral absorption characteristics of CO2 and H2O. They are both exceptionally strong absorbers of infra-red radiation. It is however this strength which determines the characteristics of the earth’s temperature, and in particular its stability.

70% of the energy radiated from the earth is removed by a mixture of 0.1% H2O and 200ppm of CO2. This alone is sufficient to raise global temperatures from the chilly 255K of the estimated zero atmosphere condition to 284.3K, less than 4deg below current average temperatures. An estimation of the current atmospheric mixture of gases is calculated to deliver a global mean temperature of 286.8K close to the best estimate of 288K for that temperature. Further increases in both H2O and CO2 have relatively small impacts on temperatures. This is due simply to the fact that at current concentrations the spectra of both H2O and CO2 have effectively extracted most of the energy at wavebands corresponding to their molecular absorption spectra. There is little further energy to be extracted by adding more H2O and CO2. This results in climate sensitivity values of less than 0.5degC, in comparison to the 1.5 to 5 degC range quoted by the IPCC.

CO2 levels of 3000ppm will only raise temperatures by a further 1.5K. These temperature increases are in fact well within natural variations seen in the past, including the medieval warm period and the little ice age of some 300 years ago.

The possibility of positive feedback from water vapour is discounted by the simple fact that the H2O spectrum is incapable of absorbing significant further amounts of radiated energy and the modest increase in temperature due to increasing CO2 levels is unable to deliver any significant increase in H2O concentration due to the specific relationship of H2O saturation vapour pressure and temperature. It would take an increase in temperature of 10degC to double the mean H2O atmospheric concentration, and that doubling would only result in a temperature increase of 2degC.

The impact of other known “greenhouse’ gases, CH4 and N2O are also calculated from known IR spectra data. Their absorption spectra are swamped by H2O and CO2. The combined warming caused by current atmospheric concentrations will elevate temperature by only 0.2K and increasing concentrations by a factor of 10 will only result in a further temperature increase of 0.5K.

The “greenhouse effect” is dominated by the absorption spectrum of H2O with a little help from CO2. At current concentrations of both gases it is inconceivable that further increases in concentrations will lead to any significant warming. Increasing CO2 concentration to 3000ppm and doubling the mean H2O level to 2% would result in a global temperature increase of 3.4K.

In short, there is no climate emergency, at least due to “greenhouse gases”.

 The full paper can be read here:

co2-the-miracle-molecule-22637

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See this Addendum

climate-debate

Committed warming and the pattern effect

by Nic Lewis, Jan 19, 2021 in ClilmateEtc.

Key points

  • The pattern effect is the dependence of outgoing radiation to space on the spatial pattern of surface warming.
  • A pattern effect, relative to that in equilibrium, can be caused both by evolution over time in the climate system’s response to forcing and by its internal variability.
  • The paper fails to distinguish between a historical period pattern effect that is forced, which will unwind very slowly, and one that is caused by internal variability, which can quickly unwind, causing rapid warming.
  • The forced pattern effect is very small in CAM5.3
  • The pattern effect found in the paper is greatly affected by being estimated during the hiatus.
  • The estimated post-hiatus unforced historical pattern effect is non-negligible in CAM5.3 when using the AMIP2 sea surface temperature dataset, as in the paper, but negligible when using the UK Met Office HadISST1 dataset.
  • The historical pattern effect is not robust; it varies hugely between models and SST datasets.
  • The paper’s claims about greater committed warming directly reflect its estimate of the size of the historical pattern effect.

Introduction

A new paper “Greater committed warming after accounting for the pattern effect” led by Chen Zhou  (Zhou et al.[1]) has recently been published in Nature Climate Change. Here is the accompanying press release.

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