Archives par mot-clé : IPCC

climate-debate

Reliable Physics Demand Revision of the IPCC Global Warming Potentials

by D. Lightfoot and G. Ratzer, Apr 15, 2024 in J.BasicAppliedSciences

Abstract

The Global Warming Potentials (GWP) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Table 2.14 of the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) show the increase in warming by methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) is 21 and 310 times respectively that of CO2. There has been wide acceptance of these values since publishing in 2007. Nevertheless, they are inaccurate. This study uses accurate methods to calculate the impacts of CO2, CH4, and N2O on the warming of the atmosphere. For example, this quantitative analysis from reliable physics shows the contribution of CO2 to warming at Amsterdam is 0.0083oC out of a difference of 26oC. The warming effect of CH4 on the Earth’s atmosphere is 0.408% of that of CO2, and the warming by N2O is 0.085% of that of CO2. Thus, the warming effects of CO2, CH4, and N2O are too small to measure. The invalidity of the methane and nitrous oxide values indicates the GWPs of the remaining approximately sixty chemicals in the Table 2.14 list are also invalid. A recommendation is that the IPCC consider revising or retracting the GWP values in Table 2.14.

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unclassified

Professor Valentina Zharkova and the Little Ice Age Which Has Already Started

by V. Zharkova, Apr 11, 2024 in FreedomResearch

Astrophysicist Professor Valentina Zharkova explains that instead of CO2, it is the Sun that drives the climate change and because of its decreasing activity we should be ready for a colder period.

“CO2 is not a bad gas,” says Valentina Zharkova, a professor at the Northumbria University in Newcastle, UK. On the contrary, she points out, every garden centre uses it in its greenhouses to make plants lush and green. “We actually have a CO2 deficit in the world, and it’s three to four times less than the plants would like,” she notes, adding that the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere has been at much higher levels throughout our planet’s history than it is now.

In fact, over the last 140 million years, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has been steadily decreasing and only now slightly starting to rise. It is currently around 420 parts per million (ppm), or 0.042%. 140 million years ago, it was estimated at 2,500 ppm (0.25%), or about six times higher. And it also meant a greener and more biodiverse world. If CO2 were to fall below 150 ppm (0.015%), it would already mean the extinction of vegetation and all other life. We came close to that during the last glacial maximum when it was at 182 ppm (0.018%).

Zharkova says that the fact that CO2 levels in the atmosphere are now increasing is a good thing. “We don’t need to remove CO2 because we would actually need more of it. It’s food for plants to produce oxygen for us. The people who say CO2 is bad are obviously not very well educated at university or wherever they studied. Only uneducated people can come up with such absurd talk that CO2 should be removed from the air,” says Zharkova.

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climate-debate

Climate of the Past, Present and Future. A scientific debate, 2nd ed.

by J. Vinos, Sep 2022 in ResearchGate

Abstract
This book is an unorthodox ground-breaking scientific study on natural climate change and its contribution to ongoing multi-centennial global warming. The book critically reviews the effect of the following on climate: – Milankovitch cycles – abrupt glacial (Dansgaard-Oeschger) events – Holocene climate variability – the 1500-year cycle – solar activity – volcanic eruptions – greenhouse gases – energy transport Applying the scientific method to available evidence reveals that some of these phenomena are profoundly misunderstood by most researchers. Milankovitch cycles are tied to orbital obliquity, not to orbital precessional summer insolation; glacial megatides might have triggered abrupt Dansgaard-Oeschger events; and tides are likely responsible for the related 1500-year climate cycle. Climate change affects volcanic eruptions more than the opposite; and secular variations in solar activity are more important to climate change during the Holocene than greenhouse gases. In this book, we see how important natural climate change has been on human societies of the past. It also produces new climate projections for the 21st century and when the next glaciation could happen. What emerges from this study of natural climate change is a central theme: Variations in the transport of energy from the tropics to the poles have been neglected as a cause of climate change, and solar activity variations affect climate by modulating this transport. The author tells us: –Transporting more energy from a greenhouse gas-rich region, the tropics, to a greenhouse gas-poor region, the poles, increases the amount of energy lost at the top of the atmosphere. The effect resembles a reduction in the greenhouse gas content.– The book presents the Winter-Gatekeeper Hypothesis on how variations in solar activity regulate Earth’s energy transport and in so doing affect atmospheric circulation, the rotation of the planet, and the El Niño/Southern Oscillation. This book is oriented toward students and academics in the climate sciences and climate anthropology and should also appeal to readers interested in the science of natural climate change. The repercussions of Climate of the Past, Present and Future are far reaching. By uncovering a strong natural climate change component, it provides a novel view of anthropogenic climate change, fossil energy use, and our future climate; a view quite different from the IPCC’s gloomy projections.
climate-debate, unclassified

Impacts and risks of “realistic” global warming projections for the 21st century

by N. Scafetta, Feb 2024, in GeoscienceFrontier

  • Highlights

    The IPCC AR6 assessment of likely impacts and risks by 21st-century climate changes is highly uncertain.

    • Most climate models, however, run too hot, and the SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5 scenarios are unlikely.

    • New climate change projections for the 21st century were generated using best-performing climate models,

    • Empirical climate modeling of natural cycles, and calibration on lower troposphere temperature data.

    • Net-zero emission policies are not necessary because SSP2-4.5 is sufficient to limit climate change hazards to manageable levels

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climate-debate

Impacts and risks of “realistic” global warming projections for the 21st century

by N. Scafetta,  March 2024, in GeoscienceFrontier

Highlights

•

The IPCC AR6 assessment of likely impacts and risks by 21st-century climate changes is highly uncertain.

  • •

    Most climate models, however, run too hot, and the SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5 scenarios are unlikely.

  • •

    New climate change projections for the 21st century were generated using best-performing climate models,

  • •

    Empirical climate modeling of natural cycles, and calibration on lower troposphere temperature data.

  • •

    Net-zero emission policies are not necessary because SSP2-4.5 is sufficient to limit climate change hazards to manageable levels.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

No Trends In Extratropical Cyclones – IPCC

by  P. Homewood, Jan 2, 2024 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

image

We constantly hear that storms are getting worse because of global warming. These claims are not referring to hurricanes and tropical storms, but the sort of storm which hits the UK several times every winter.

These are known as Extratropical Storms. The clown Jim Dale made this very claim again this week after Strom Gerrit. According to him, it is all to do with warm oceans, which pep up these storms. If this was correct, there would never be any storms in the Arctic. But claims such as this show a basic misunderstanding of meteorology; astonishing for somebody who claims to be a meteorologist!

NOAA explain the difference between tropical and extratropical cyclones (ETCs):

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climate-debate

Climate Expert: ‘Decidedly Unscientific Justifications’ Used To Keep Worst-Case Scenario Alive

by R. Pielke Jr, Oct 23, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Physicist Richard Feynman once described a key difference between religion and science as follows: “Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.” Scientific reasoning and provisional truths that result are based on evidence, not simply belief.

As the debate has grown over the continued misuse of outdated climate scenarios in research and policy, I’ve noted a tendency for defenders of RCP8.5 to rely on decidedly unscientific justifications for its continued misuse. [emphasis, links added]

Among defenders of the indefensible are leading scientists and even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

For instance, the recent IPCC AR6 report acknowledged our recent work on scenario plausibility but reasserted the value of RCP8.5:

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climate-debate

Monday Mirthiness – Mike Mann’s Hockey Team ‘will keep those papers out somehow’

by A. Watts, Aug 28, 2023 in WUWT

Remember the famous quote from the head of the UK Climate Research Unit, Dr. Phil Jones that was laid bare in ClimateGate?

…I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow, even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!

Dr. Phil Jones – ClimateGate emails

These guys never learn. Josh writes on Twitter:

Mikey’ The Trick’ Mann at work…Another story about ‘scientists’ trying to bury papers and evidence they don’t like. It’s Climategate deja vu. Read about it here https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2023/08/how-science-is-done-these-days/

and here: The Climategate Gang Rides Again!

 

Shameless abuse of science…but then again, we know Mann has no shame, only hubris

climate-debate, COP25

China Abandons Paris Agreement, Making U.S. Efforts Painful and Pointless

by D. Furchgott-Roth, Jul 26, 2023 in TheHeritageFondation

It was a bad week for anyone who thought China would cooperate on emissions reduction. President Xi Jinping reiterated that his country would set its own path on the issue and not be influenced by outside factors, according to the Washington Post and Bloomberg. This contradicts Xi’s 2015 Paris Agreement pledges to reduce its carbon emissions at the latest after 2030.

Xi’s remarks came while climate envoy and former secretary of state John Kerry was visiting Beijing to reopen a dialogue. This was shortly after Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived, and just before former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, the architect of opening China to the West 50 years ago, came for a visit.

The clear signals from China are a deliberate slap in the face to America and provide a rationale for a bill sponsored by Representative Chip Roy (R., Texas) to defund Kerry’s climate-change office at the State Department. The bill is cosponsored by over two dozen other House Republicans.

This should not be news, because Xi gave the same message last fall. In October 2022, he said that China would not abandon coal-fired power plants before renewables could substitute for the lost fossil fuel. But this substitution will not occur because fossil fuels generate substantially more energy than renewables.

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unclassified

A Twitter Debate on Clintel’s IPCC AR6 Critique

by A. May, July 5, 2023 in WUWT

In May 2023, Clintel published a book (see figure 1) criticizing AR6 (IPCC, 2021), a publication that was supposed to summarize climate science research to date. We found that AR6 was biased in its reporting of recent developments in climate science, and they ignored published research contrary to their narrative that humans have caused all the warming since the Little Ice Age (the so called “preindustrial”), and that recent warming is somehow dangerous. Comments and reviews of the Clintel volume can be seen hereand on Judith Curry’s website here.

This post discusses a twitter debate about possible mistakes in the Clintel volume, specifically the Chapter 6 (written by Nicola Scafetta and Fritz Vahrenholt) discussion of the evidence that changes in the Sun affect Earth’s climate. We argue that recent evidence supports a role for the Sun in modern climate change, and the IPCC argues that the Sun has not contributed to recent (since 1750, see AR6, page 959, figure 7.6) warming or recent climate change.

We will see that Theodosios Chatzstergos, who also argues for no contribution from the Sun seems to confuse opinions with facts, and considers opinions different from his own as “mistakes.” This is a common problem with younger scientists, and undoubtably it is a product of poor scientific training in universities today. Opinions, regardless of who holds them, are not facts. Differing opinions, based on the same pool of evidence, are not mistakes, they are just different opinions. It is easy to see how “climate science” has devolved into “climate politics.”

Dr. Judith Curry praised the Clintel volume on twitter, which led to criticism from Dr. Theodosios Chatzstergos. Chatzstergos claims that Scafetta and Vahrenholt’s Chapter 6 had several errors, claims that I discuss in detail below.

Chatzstergos Point 1:

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climate-debate

NOAA Confirm UAH Tropospheric Temperature Trends

by P. Homewood, Apr 13, 2023 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

image

An important new study on climate change came out recently. I’m not talking about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Synthesis Report with its nonsensical headline “Urgent climate action can secure a liveable future for all.” No, that’s just meaningless sloganeering proving yet again how far the IPCC has departed from its original mission of providing objective scientific assessments.

I’m referring instead to a new paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres by a group of scientists at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) headed by Cheng-Zhi Zou, which presents a new satellite-derived temperature record for the global troposphere (the atmospheric layer from one kilometre up to about 10 km altitude).

The troposphere climate record has been heavily debated for two reasons. First, it’s where climate models say the effect of warming due to greenhouse gases (GHGs) will be the strongest, especially in the mid-troposphere. And since that layer is not affected by urbanization or other changes to the land surface it’s a good place to observe a clean signal of the effect of GHGs.

Since the 1990s the records from both weather satellites and weather balloons have shown that climate models predict too much warming. In a 2020 paper, John Christy of the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH) and I examined the outputs of the 38 newest climate models and compared their global tropospheric warming rates over 1979 to 2014 against observations from satellites and weather balloons. All 38 exhibited too much warming, and in most cases the differences were statistically significant. We argued that this points to a structural error in climate models where they respond too strongly to GHGs.

But, and this is the second point of controversy, there have also been challenges to the observational record. Christy and his co-author, Roy Spencer, invented the original method of deriving temperatures from microwave radiation measurements collected by NOAA satellites in orbit since 1979. Their achievement earned them numerous accolades, but also attracted controversy because their satellite record didn’t show any warming. About 20 years ago scientists at Remote Sensing Systems in California found a small error in their algorithm that, once corrected, did yield a warming trend.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

A Misunderstanding Of Clouds Is Driving Global Warming Fervor

by R. Barmby, Apr 10, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

I’ve looked at climate change from both sides now, and I have found common ground between proponents and skeptics of the belief that climate change is largely caused by humans.

When it comes to forecasting global temperatures, distinguished experts in both camps agree a dominant variable cannot be simulated in computer models because clouds get in the way.

Among the proponents is Dr. Bjorn Stevens, a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report 5 (2014). Dr. Stevens is also the director at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany, and a cloud expert. [emphasis, links added]

In a recent interview, he acknowledged the contribution of clouds to global warming is overestimatedin the IPCC’s “Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis.”

“Clouds are tricksters,” he said, referring to their complexity. However, he said, many scientists use oversimplified representations of clouds in modeling “as a guide because they are easier to simulate. This makes the climate models less accurate.”

On the skeptic side is Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, a former lead author for IPCC Assessment Report 3 and now a vocal critic of the IPCC.

In a recent podcast, the interviewer noted that Lindzen had published sufficient research papers to earn 80 PhDs. (Lindzen humbly declined the praise.)

Lindzen, professor emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, points out that IPCC models rely on the assumption that water vapor and clouds amplify the greenhouse gas effects of CO2 in order to achieve forecasts of catastrophic global warming.

The IPCC theory is that a warmer atmosphere will have a higher content of water vapor – itself a greenhouse gas – that adds to the warming caused by CO2.

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climate-debate

Why You Should Ignore The Latest IPCC Climate Report

by R. Barmby, Mar 31, 2023 in ClimateChangheDispatch

You have a fever with jaundice, feel crappy, and are vomiting.

You go to the emergency room at the local hospital.

The ER doctor does not run any tests, but based on the symptoms his diagnosis is acute alcoholism and prescribes abstinence or you will drink yourself to death.

“What about some tests, or a second opinion?” you ask. The doctor informs you that “the administration in this hospital has two rules: firstly, the only diagnosis we give out for these symptoms is chronic alcohol abuse; and secondly, we delete any data to the contrary from your file.”

You check into rehab but the fever, jaundice, and nausea persist. Six days later you die from acute fulminant viral hepatitis (Hep B). But sober.

A reasonable person would not accept a diagnosis dictated by the hospital administration and the deletion of conflicting data. Especially if you knew acute alcoholic hepatitis and acute viral HBV hepatitis present the same symptoms and it takes blood tests to differentiate them with certainty.

And that’s why you should ignore the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reportbecause two similar rules govern their analysis and reporting. The cure is also similar: Net Zero CO2 by 2050.

The IPCC Report Cycle

The IPCC’s 1988 mandate from the United Nations was to review, “The state of the knowledge of the science of climate and climatic change”.

In that mandate, the UN expressed “concern that human activities could change global climate patterns, threatening present and future generations…” and also includes the conjecture “…emerging evidence indicates that continued growth in ‘greenhouse’ gases could produce global warming…”

For the last 35 years, the IPCC has developed this mandate into an industry of perpetual reporting on a six-year cycle designed to instill constant fear of human-caused global warming.

The foundation of each reporting cycle, which in its whole is termed an Assessment Report (AR), is the report from Working Group I (WG I) as that is the physical sciences basis addressing the UN mandate.

It is then followed by a report from Working Group II (WG II) which assesses the impacts of climate change and then Working Group III (WG III) dictates what needs to be done to mitigate the damages caused by climate change.

Each of these reports consists of between two thousand to three thousand pages, and each is condensed into a Summary for Policy Makers (SPM). Ultimately a Synthesis Report combining all three Working Groups is issued, again with its SPM.

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climate-debate

The Latest UN Climate Report Is Bumper-Sticker Climate Science

by J. Curry, Mar 29, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued a new Synthesis Report, with fanfare from the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres:

“The climate time-bomb is ticking but the latest IPCC report shows that we have the knowledge & resources to tackle the climate crisis. We need to act now to ensure a livable planet in the future.”

The new IPCC Report is a synthesis of the three reports that constitute the Sixth Assessment Report, plus three special reports. [emphasis, links added]

This Synthesis Report does not introduceany new information or findings.

While the IPCC Reports include some good material, the Summary for Policy Makers for the Synthesis Report weakly emphasizes justified findings on climate impacts driven by extreme emission scenarios and politicized policy recommendations on emissions reductions.

The most important finding of the past five years is that the extreme emissions scenarios RCP8.5 and SSP5-8.5, commonly referred to as “business-as-usual” scenarios, are now widely recognized as implausible.

These extreme scenarios have been dropped by the UN Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Climate Agreement.

However, the new Synthesis Report continues to emphasize these extreme scenarios, while this important finding is buried in a footnote:

“Very high emission scenarios have become less likely but cannot be ruled out.”

The extreme emissions scenarios are associated with alarming projections of 4-5°C of warming by 2100.

The most recent Conference of the Parties (COP27) is working from a baseline temperature projectionbased on a medium emissions scenario of 2.5°C by 2100.

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climate-debate

Climate Expert: The Misinformation In The IPCC, Part 1

by R. Pielke, Mar 29 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Today, in the first of two posts, I explain how the IPCC made several misleading claims related to tropical cyclones.

The IPCC’s failures are both obvious and undeniable.

I will walk you through them in detail. Once again, I conclude that the IPCC needs reform. Mistakes can creep into massive assessments, to be sure, but the failures I document below are unacceptable. [emphasis, links added]

The first failure never rose above the depths of Chapter 11 of its AR6 Working Group 1 (WG1) report. The second is a bit technical and is much more significant – having made its way into the Summaries for Policymakers (SPMs) of both WG1 and the Synthesis Report released last week.

Before proceeding, let me reiterate that the IPCC is not just one report or one group of people. It is many things and comprised of many different people. Its products are of uneven quality, and even individual chapters in the same report can be of very different scientific quality.

For instance, in general, IPCC AR6 WG1 did a nice job on the physical science aspects of extreme weather, whereas IPCC AR6 WG2 was chock full of massive problems. …snip…

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climate-debate

Media Regurgitates IPCC’s ‘Final Warning’ on Climate Change – Without Realizing We’ve Already Passed 1.5°C

by A. Watts, Mar 25, 2023 in WUWT

Originally posted at ClimateREALISM

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published the final part of its sixth assessment report (AR6) on Monday, March 20. Predictably, the media rushed to repeat the claims made in the report with their own scary, woefully overwrought, headlines. Here is a sample: The Washington Post – World is on brink of catastrophic warming, U.N. climate change report says; NBC News – Now or never: One of the biggest climate reports ever shows time is running out; The Guardian – Scientists deliver ‘final warning’ on climate crisis: act now or it’s too late; and finally Inside Climate News, with inarguably the worst headline New IPCC Report Shows the ‘Climate Time Bomb Is Ticking,’ Says UN Secretary General António Guterres.

Each of mainstream media outlets predict that “climate doom” is just around the corner, and they’re all wrong.

The reason? The newest IPCC report laments the fact that Earth will soon pass the 1.5°C level of temperature rise, seen in the projection in Figure 1. The current extrapolation is to reach 1.5°C by April 2035.

 

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Based on that projection, the IPCC and the media predict very bad things will happen if we don’t “act now before it’s too late.” The most recent report in the AR6 series contains no new information, rather it reiterates the warnings made the physical science portion of the report issued in the summer of 2021, which also mentioned approaching 1.5°C.

Interestingly, the “before it’s too late” language has been used since 2005, when worry about just 1°C was the big doomsday news:

NASA scientist Jim Hansen introduced the “too late” language about climate change in 2005, arguing that “We have to stabilize emissions of carbon dioxide within a decade, or temperatures will warm by more than one degree [C]… we don’t have much time left”.

We heard the same type of language in 2007, when the IPCC released their Fourth Assessment Report. The headlines in The Guardian said “time is running out” and warming “could be irreversible.”

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climate-debate

The IPCC’s Dangerous Dance With Climate Misinformation And Political Demands

by R. Pielke Jr., Mar 23, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an important institution. I have often said that if it did not exist, it would have to be invented. The IPCC is often referred to as a model for how to do a scientific assessment.

Consequently, we should have the highest standards for evaluating its work, not least because climate change is important, and effective mitigation and adaptation policies are essential. [emphasis, links added]

Below I share a brief few critiques of the culminating report of the current IPCC cycle, called the Synthesis Report. The new report covers six IPCC reports published over the past nine years.

Before proceeding, it is crucial to understand that the IPCC is not a single entity or group of people. It is many different groups doing many different things, with many strengths — for instance, WG1 on extremes was particularly good.

The IPCC also has some notable weaknesses — its reliance on out-of-date scenarios most obviously. The Synthesis Report was written by a small group of people.

For better or worse, the work of this small group of people reflects upon the entire IPCC and the years of effort leading to this week’s report.

If I were an IPCC participant not involved with the Synthesis Report, I’d be pretty upset. My view is that the IPCC has strayed far from its role to assess the scientific literature in support of policymaking.

It has increasingly taken on a stance of explicit political advocacy and as it does so it has ignored and even misrepresented relevant science.

The IPCC needs a complete overhaul.

Below are some more detailed thoughts on the Synthesis Report.

Scientific Assessment Minus the Science

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climate-debate

Rainfall, Cyclone Data Show No Clear Upward Trend, Contradict IPCC Claims

by P. Gosselin, Mar 19, 2023, in NoTricksZone

Feel helpless when trying to assess the veracity of “climate doom is looming” claims? Don’t give up trying to understand the relevant basics because you don’t need to be a scientist to do so.

There is a rather simple way to get an idea about what this is all about. Even without a scientific background, most people have at least a good common sense. And that’s all it takes to get a grasp of how energy flows back and forth between earth’s surface and the skies.

Today in Part 5, we look at the linkage between the allegedly CO2-driven rise of air and sea surface temperatures on the one side and the disconnect between these increases and their strangely weak to insignificant impact on rainfall and hurricane intensity”.

Preceding chapters see Part 1 1), Part 2 2), Part 3 3), Part 4 4).

Variability of cloud effects vs “greenhouse gas” effects

In the last chapter, we have seen that there are some discrepancies between the global warming trend as claimed by the official climate science and the local evolution of rainfall, which should be a direct consequence of higher temperatures since this causes more evaporation. This seems not to be the case e.g. for Germany, see Fig. 1:

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Science Yields Surprises! Island Nations Growing… “Atoll, Island Stability Is Global Trend”!

by P. Gosselin, Mar 8, 2023 in WUWT

IPCC high-end sea level predictions for 2100 are “highly erroneous”. 

Global warming alarmists like to claim that Pacific island nations are on the verge of disappearing – due to rising sea levels caused by polar ice melting due to global warming, which in turn supposedly is caused by rising concentrations of “heat-trapping” trace gas CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels.

These coral reef island nations risk going under real soon, unless we wean ourselves from fossil fuels soon, they say.

Coral reef island nations are emerging, not disappearing

But yesterday Kenneth here presented a new paper appearing in Nature, (Kench et al., 2023), which looks at whether the coral reef islands are in fact seeing unprecedented and undergoing accelerating physical changes that risk outrunning human adaptation measures. The authors analyzed the dynamics of a Maldivian reef island at millennial to decadal timescales.

Recent changes not unprecedented

The researchers found that “island change over the past half-century (±40 m movement) is not unprecedented compared with paleo-dynamic evidence”.

Nothing unusual is happening. The global data suggest that almost all islands are in fact growing, and not  disappearing under water like climate alarmists mistakenly believe.

“Recent shoreline changes (±40 m/50 years) are ‘dwarfed’ by the shoreline changes (±200 m/100 years) that occurred throughout previous centuries,” the study’s authors write.

 89% of all the globe’s islands are stable, or growing!

Moreover, just 4 years ago, another peer-reviewed publication appearing in a renowned journal found similar results: 89% of the globe’s islands and 100% of large islands have stable or growing coasts! According to Duvat, 2019:

“88.6% of islands were either stable or increased in area, while only 11.4% contracted. It is noteworthy that no island larger than 10 ha decreased in size. These results show that atoll and island areal stability is a global trend, whatever the rate of sea-level rise.”

Moreover, Khan et al (2018) found: “Prediction of 4–6.6 ft sea level rise in the next 91 years between 2009 and 2100 is highly erroneous.”

better to know...?, climate-debate

How IPCC’s 1990 Predictions Expensively Failed

by C. Monckton of Brenchley, Nov 8, 2022 in WUWT

It is now almost a third of a century since 1990, when IPCC made its first predictions about the weather. Since IPCC (2021) continues to predict the same 3 C° midrange long-term warming (equilibrium doubled-CO2 sensitivity, or ECS, broadly equivalent to 20th-century anthropogenic warming from all sources) as in 1990, it is high time someone examined IPCC’s medium-term predictions to shed light on the plausibility of its long-term predictions.

IPCC’s key medium-term prediction in 1990 was as follows –

“Based on current model results, we predict:

  • “under the IPCC Business-as-Usual (Scenario A) emissions of greenhouse gases, a rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century of about 0.3 C° per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2 C° to 0.5 C° per decade). This is greater than that seen over the past 10,000 years. This will result in a likely increase in global mean temperature of about 1 C° above the present value by 2025 and 3 C° before the end of the next century. The rise will not be steady because of the influence of other factors.”

IPCC also predicted as follows –

This second business-as-usual prediction was that there would be 1.8 C° warming from preindustrial times to 2030. Deducting the 0.45 C° warming up to 1990, the prediction amounted to 1.35 C° or about 0.34 C°/decade. Thus, IPCC predicted 0.3-0.34 C°/decade medium-term warming. However, only 0.14 C°/decade has occurred since 1990

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climate-debate

he IPCC’s Climate Math Doesn’t Add Up. Will Anyone Notice?

by R. McKitrick, Oct 14, 2022 in ClimateChangeDispatch

The high and rising costs of climate policy — now including the inability of jurisdictions that bet big on renewables to guarantee enough energy for their citizens to survive the coming winter — don’t just entitle us to question the basis for it: they demand we do so.

Ultimately, the justification for renewables is the view that carbon dioxide emissions have a big effect on the climate that will cause devastating harm at some point in the future. [bold, links added]

Scientists measure the effect using a concept called “Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity” or ECS, which estimates how much long-run average warming will occur as a result of doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Some important new evidence pointing to a low ECS value just emerged in the scientific literature.

ECS has long been uncertain. In 1979 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimated it to be between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius, with a best estimate of 3.0 degrees C.

That range, which runs from “no big deal” to “very bad outcomes,” was accepted by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its first report in 1990 and thereafter until 2007 when, citing greater warming projections in newer models, it raised the bottom end to 2.0 degrees C.

But over the next few years, literature developed using, not model simulations, but observed warming rates since the late-1800s to estimate ECS.

Its results typically centered around 2.0 C or less. So in 2013, the IPCC reduced the bottom end of the range back to 1.5 C and declined to offer a best estimate. In other words, after three decades climate science hadn’t narrowed the uncertainty at all.

The economic implications of ECS being 2 C rather than 3 C are enormous.

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climate-debate

Regime Pseudoscientists Enforce Climate Change Narrative

by M. Rectenwald, Oct 12, 2022 in ClimateChangeDispatch

It does this by pathologizing said subjects and their views.

For example, the field has been mobilized to discredit so-called conspiracy theorists by attempting to identify the mistaken mental processes that conspiracy theorists exhibit. [bold, links added]

The methods and results of such studies have proven to be less than stellar, to say the least.

Now, the field is also being wielded to discredit “climate change deniers.”1 By pathologizing the thinking processes of these stubbornly mistaken subjects, the views of said subjects can be safely dismissed.

After all, the theory of anthropogenic climate change (ACC) is obviously true, or so says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the planetary authority on the matter.

Likewise, those who doubt or deny ACC must be crazy. The point of psychological studies is to discover just what is wrong with these people and how, if possible, to change their minds.

Of course, such studies focus exclusively on the “deniers,” without ever considering climate change believers and whether something is wrong with them. The field lacks even a semblance of symmetry.

Never mind that “the science” is dubious or that climate change is ludicrously being blamed for heart attacks, obesity in children, increased violence, and terrorism, among other medical and social maladies.

Believing in a causal connection between a questionable climate change theory and these phenomena must be perfectly rational, according to this kind of research.

Such is the thrust of a recent study of Australian climate change skeptics conducted by a lecturer in psychology and a professor of geology at the University of the Sunshine Coast.

Entitled “Associations of Locus of Control, Information Processing Style and Anti-reflexivity with Climate Change Scepticism in an Australian Sample,” the study examines climate change skeptics in terms of thinking styles rather than “values” and “sociodemographic” factors.

Since past research has found values and sociodemographic factors to be intractable, the researchers in this study seek to identify factors that presumably can be changed and that should likewise prove useful for the study.

climate-debate

Satellite Temperature Data Show Almost All Climate Model Forecasts Over the Last 40 Years Were Wrong

by C. Morrison, Oct 8, 2022 in DailySceptic

A major survey into the accuracy of climate models has found that almost all the past temperature forecasts between 1980-2021 were excessive compared with accurate satellite measurements. The findings were recently published by Professor Nicola Scafetta, a physicist from the University of Naples. He attributes the inaccuracies to a limited understanding of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS), the number of degrees centigrade the Earth’s temperature will rise with a doubling of carbon dioxide.

Scientists have spent decades trying to find an accurate ECS number, to no avail. Current estimates range from 0.5°C to around 6-7°C. Without knowing this vital figure, the so-called ‘settled’ science narrative around human-caused climate change remains a largely political invention, not a credible scientific proposition. Professor Scafetta has conducted extensive work into climate models and is a long-time critic of their results and forecasts. In a previous work, he said many of the climate models should be “dismissed and not used by policymakers”. Along with around 250 professors, he is a signatory to the World Climate Declaration which states there is no climate emergency and also notes climate models are “not remotely plausible as global tools”.

Scafetta’s latest work grouped 38 major climate models into low, medium and high ECS values, ranging between 1.8°C and 5.7°C. He found that models in the medium and high category “ran hot” in over 95% and 97% of cases respectively. The lower models were said to have done better when compared to global warming calculated for the period by the major surface datasets of 0.52-0.58°C. But the UAH satellite data showed warming up to 30% less during this period, suggesting even the low warming models produced “excessive warming” from 1980-2021.

According to Scafetta, these results are showed that the ECS figure could be as low as 1.2-2°C. Particular concern is expressed about surface temperature records that “appear to be severely affected by non-climatic warming biases”. Scafetta concludes that surface-based temperature records are likely to be affected by warming biases, such as the urban heat island effect due to expanding urban development, and subject to natural oscillations that are not reproduced by climate models. He concludes: “The global warming expected for the next few decades may be even more moderate than predicted by the low ECS-GCMs [Global Circulation Models], and could easily fall within a safe temperature range where climate adaptation policies will suffice.”

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See also : Satellite Temperature Data Show Almost All Climate Model Forecasts Over the Last 40 Years Were Wrong

better to know...?, climate-debate

Press Release: Important new paper challenges IPCC’s claims about climate sensitivity

by P. Homewood, Sep 20, 2022 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

London, 20 September – A new paper reduces the estimate of climate sensitivity – the amount of warming expected for a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations – by one third. The results therefore suggest that future global warming will be much less than expected.
The paper, by independent scientist Nic Lewis, has just appeared in the journal Climate Dynamics. It is an important challenge to the official view of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Lewis has critiqued a 2020 assessment of climate sensitivity by Sherwood et al., which strongly influenced the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, in 2021. Lewis commented:
“It is unfortunate that Sherwood et al.’s assessment of climate sensitivity, which underpinned the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, contained such serious errors, inconsistencies and deficiencies in its methods”.
After correcting the Sherwood et al. methods and revising key input data to reflect, primarily, more recent evidence, the central estimate for climate sensitivity comes down from 3.1°C per doubling of CO2 concentration in the original study to 2.16°C in the new paper.
This large reduction shows how sensitive climate sensitivity estimates still are to input assumptions, and that values between 1.5°C and 2°C remain quite plausible.

  • Climate sensitivity represents the long-term global temperature increase caused by a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration. There are different measures of climate sensitivity. Both the Sherwood and Lewis papers estimate the so-called ‘effective’ climate sensitivity, which reflects a new equilibrium state projected from centennial changes after a doubling of the CO2 concentration. This measure is considered the most relevant one for predicting climate change in the coming two centuries.
  • Climate sensitivity has always been a very important, but also highly uncertain, parameter in the climate change discourse. Earlier IPCC reports assessed its value as likely to be somewhere between 1.5°C and 4.5°C, with a best estimate of 3°C. However, prompted by the Sherwood paper, the 2021 Sixth Assessment Report moved that range upwards, to 2.5 to 4°C. Although for outsiders this might sound boring, for insiders it was a revolutionary change.
  • Lewis’s corrections and revisions lead to a likely range of 1.75 to 2.7°C, which is not only lower but is also much less uncertain than either the 2021 official IPCC assessment or the very similar Sherwood et al. estimate (2.6 to 3.9°C).
  • Nic Lewis is the lead or sole author of ten peer-reviewed papers on climate sensitivity. He was a participant in the 2015 workshop that kicked off the World Climate Research Programme project that led to the Sherwood et al. 2020 paper, but he was not a co-author of that paper.

Lewis commented:
“The substantial reduction in assessed climate sensitivity upon updating key input data suggests that the increase in the bottom of the climate sensitivity range in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report was unjustified”.
Lewis’s paper is entitled ‘Objectively combining climate sensitivity evidence’. It can be freely downloaded here. A detailed explanatory article about the paper is available here.

climate-debate

DEBUNKED: Europe’s claimed ‘worst drought in 500 years’

by P. Homewood,  Aug 20, 2022  , in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

Roger Pielke Jr debunks Europe’s “Worst Drought in 500 Years Claim”:

 

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Conclusion

In Western and Central Europe — basically Atlantic France all the way to Moscow, north of the Mediterranean region and south of the North Sea region — the IPCC and the underlying peer reviewed research on which it assesses has concluded that drought has not increased and, logically, that increased drought cannot be attributed to human-caused climate change. The only exception here is that the IPCC has medium confidence in an increasing trend of soil moisture deficits in some subregions, however the IPCC has low confidence that this trend can be attributed to human-caused climate change. Looking to future, at temperature changes of 2C and more, at present the IPCC does not expect the current state of scientific understandings to change. But stay tuned — that’s why we do science.

The full post is here.

See also : DEBUNKED: Europe’s claimed ‘worst drought in 500 years’ – Peer-reviewed studies, data & IPCC reveal ‘drought has not increased’ & ‘cannot be attributed to human-caused climate change’