La transition énergétique, inutile, dispendieuse, injuste

by Rémy Prud’hommme, 22 février 2019 in ClimatoRéalistes


INTRODUCTION

Le paysage énergétique du globe et de la France a peu changé durant les siècles antérieurs au 19ème siècle. Napoléon et César se déplaçaient, s’éclairaient, se chauffaient, s’habillaient à peu près de la même façon. Depuis le début du 19ème siècle, en revanche, ce paysage change rapidement et radicalement. Les énergies traditionnelles (hommes, animaux, vent, eau) ont été presque éliminées, et remplacées par des énergies nouvelles (charbon, pétrole, électricité, nucléaire). Dans le domaine des transports, par exemple, la marche à pied, le cheval et le bateau à voile ont été supplantés par le chemin de fer, puis l’automobile, puis l’avion, et par le bateau à moteur. Ces changements ont largement contribués à l’extraordinaire amélioration du niveau de vie enregistrée au cours des deux derniers siècles, dans les pays dits développés d’abord, puis, depuis un demi-siècle dans les pays dits en développement.

Captured carbon dioxide converts into oxalic acid to process rare earth elements

by Michigan Technological University, February 22, 2019 in ScienceDaily


Until now, carbon dioxide has been dumped in oceans or buried underground. Industry has been reluctant to implement carbon dioxide scrubbers in facilities due to cost and footprint.

What if we could not only capture carbon dioxide, but convert it into something useful? S. Komar Kawatra and his students have tackled that challenge, and they’re having some success.

New York Times hit with backlash for labeling Princeton physicist a ‘climate denialist’

by Valerie Richardson, February 21, 2019 in TheWsahingtonPost


Princeton professor emeritus William Happer’s role in forming a White House climate security committee didn’t sit well with a number of media outlets, including The New York Times, which called the eminent physicist a “denialist.”

The headline prompted a backlash from those who object to applying a derogatory label associated with Holocaust disbelief to scientists and others who challenge worst-case climate-change scenarios.

Do volcanoes or an asteroid deserve blame for dinosaur extinction?

by Univ. of California – Berkeley, February 21, 2019 in ScienceDaily


Based on new data published today in the journal Science, it seems increasingly likely that an asteroid or comet impact 66 million years ago reignited massive volcanic eruptions in India, half a world away from the impact site in the Caribbean Sea.

But it leaves unclear to what degree the two catastrophes contributed to the near-simultaneous mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs and many other forms of life.

The research sheds light on huge lava flows that have erupted periodically over Earth’s history, and how they have affected the atmosphere and altered the course of life on the planet.

A propos des indicateurs de température par satellites (2/2)

by JC Maurin, 22 février 2019 in ScienceCimatEnergie


Afin d’élaborer les indicateurs de température, on utilise des radiomètres MSU, AMSU ou ATMS embarqués sur des satellites, puis on construit l’indicateur à partir des mesures et de diverses corrections. On obtient ainsi un indicateur qui concerne la quasi-totalité du globe, contrairement aux indicateurs terrestres basés essentiellement (avant 1980) sur quelques milliers de stations américaines et européennes. Au sujet des mesures par satellites, et sans être spécialiste dans ce domaine, un physicien peut néanmoins donner quelques éléments d’appréciation qu’ignore parfois un lecteur intéressé par la climatologie. Le but de la seconde partie de l’article sera atteint si ce lecteur a appris des éléments nouveaux, il pourra ensuite approfondir la question par lui-même.

First measurable snow in Las Vegas since 1937.

by Anthony Watts, February 21, 2019 in WUWT


NWS Las Vegas writes:

The Las Vegas Valley Snow Event: What happened? Did we see this coming? Yes and no. We had been seeing very small chances for snow in the valley for a few days, but it wasn’t until Sunday afternoon that the hi-resolution models were consistently indicating that western parts of the valley could see up to 3 inches and up to an inch elsewhere. That’s when the decision was made to issue the Winter Weather Advisory.

New Papers Find Significant COOLING In W. Virginia, Appalachia, And The Yellow Sea Since The Early 1900s

by K. Richard, February 21, 2019 in NoTricksZone


Between 1900 and 2016, climatic trends were characterized by significant reductions in the maximum temperatures (−0.78°C/century; p = 0.001), significant increases in minimum temperatures (0.44 °C/century; p = 0.017) [overall -0.34°C/century], and increased annual precipitation (25.4 mm/century) indicative of a wetter and more temperate WV climate. Despite increasing trends of growing degree days during the first (p ≤ 0.015) and second half of the period of record, the long-term trend indicated a decrease in GDD [warm growing degree days] of approximately 100 °C/days.”

Kutta and Hubbart, 2019

Coral Reefs in West Hawaiʽi Showing Signs of Recovery

by P. Homewood, February 21, 2019 NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat


Surveys identified 25 coral species in West Hawaiʻi. Lobe coral (Porites lobata), one of the area’s most dominant species, proved to be the most resilient—with only 50% bleaching in 2015. Cauliflower corals (Pocillopora meandrina) were hardest hit—with 98% bleaching—but recent surveys show that they are beginning to recover.

Geologic Evidence of Recurring Climate Cycles and Their Implications for the Cause of Global Climate Changes—The Past is the Key to the Future

by  Don J. Easterbrook,  2011 in ScienceDirect


The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of warm climate from about 900 A.D. to 1300 A.D. when global temperatures were apparently somewhat warmer than at present. Its effects were evident in Europe where grain crops flourished, alpine tree lines rose, many new cities arose, and the population more than doubled. The Vikings took advantage of the climatic amelioration to colonize Greenland, and wine grapes were grown as far north as England where growing grapes is now not feasible and about 500 km north of present vineyards in France and Germany. Grapes are presently grown in Germany up to elevations of about 560 m, but from about 1100 A.D. to 1300 A.D., vineyards extended up to 780 m, implying temperatures warmer by about 1.0–1.4 °C (Oliver, 1973).

New Explanation For Missing Global Warming? Scientists Claim Extratropical Volcanoes Underestimated!

by P. Gosselin , February 19, 2019 in NoTricksZone


Readers should note that among climate modelers volcanoes and atmospheric aerosols have been a favorite way of fudging climate models to explain away inconvenient cooling periods that weren’t supposed to happen in a system that is supposed to be dominated by trace gas CO2.

Extratropical volcanoes influence climate more than assumed

Study shows surprisingly strong cooling after volcanic eruptions in mid and high latitudes

NASA hides page saying the Sun was the primary climate driver, and clouds and particles are more important than greenhouse gases

by P. Homewood, February 18, 2019 i


Here’s the text from the original page (my bolding).

NASA 2010: What are the primary forcings of the Earth system?

The Sun is the primary forcing of Earth’s climate system. Sunlight warms our world. Sunlight drives atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. Sunlight powers the process of photosynthesis that plants need to grow. Sunlight causes convection which carries warmth and water vapor up into the sky where clouds form and bring rain. In short, the Sun drives almost every aspect of our world’s climate system and makes possible life as we know it.

Earth’s orbit around and orientation toward the Sun change over spans of many thousands of years. In turn, these changing “orbital mechanics” force climate to change because they change where and how much sunlight reaches Earth. (Please see for more details.) Thus, changing Earth’s exposure to sunlight forces climate to change. According to scientists’ models of Earth’s orbit and orientation toward the Sun indicate that our world should be just beginning to enter a new period of cooling — perhaps the next ice age.

Repost from JoNova

WHAT DO KIDS WANT? CLIMATE ACTION. WHEN DO THEY WANT IT? DURING DOUBLE MATHS

by Rod Liddle, February 17, 2019 in GWPF/SundaTimes


Such a hectic life these kids lead. On Friday, my lovely 13-year-old daughter was out on the streets of Canterbury with her schoolmates demanding something be done, right now, about climate change, because adults are letting us down and it’s our future and it isn’t fair that horrid right-wing old white men are deliberately destroying the planet.

The next day she was at Gatwick with her mum, off for a half-term ski trip to Norway. I hope she got the irony: all those emissions, just so she could have a chance to snap her femur in half. Still, at least she wasn’t going to the Alps, where the wilderness has been murdered by skiers, the mountains stripped of forest and festooned with lifts and blue runs created by snow machines. Is there a more environmentally ruinous pastime than skiing?

Predicting climate change

by Charles the moderator, February 16, 2019 in WUWT


Thomas Crowther identifies long-disappeared forests available for restoration across the world. He will describe how there is room for an additional 1.2 trillion new trees around the world that could absorb more carbon than human emissions each year. Crowther also describes data from thousands of soil samples collected by local scientists that reveal the world’s Arctic and sub-Arctic regions store most of the world’s carbon. But the warming of these ecosystems is causing the release of this soil carbon, a process that could accelerate climate change by 17%. This research is revealing that the restoration of vegetation and soil carbon is by far our best weapon in the fight against climate change.

The living parts of the planet make it unique from all other parts of the solar system, and they drive every aspect of biogeochemical cycling. It is essential that we represent these living processes into our understanding of current and future biogeochemical cycles in order to understand and predict climate change.

Polar bears walking the streets on Novaya Zemlya are habituated garbage bears, not victims of climate change

by P. Homewood, February 15, 2019


This story could very well be headlined: «When internet came to Novaya Zemlya».

Locals started to post photos and video of the more than 50 polar bears in their neighborhood. Over the last week, social media as well as online newspapers globally have gone mad over the news coming out from one of the remotest towns on the planet, the closed military settlement of Belushaya Guba.

The little-known town on the Russian Arctic archipelago have since last autumn been struggling with polar bears walking the streets and around the corners of apartment- and office buildings. Even walking by a baby-stroller inside an entrance, one of the video-recordings show.

Regional authorities have declared a state of emergency after the bears no longer react to noice- and light signals from guards trying to scare them off.

Belushaya Guba, like the entire Novaya Zemlya, is closed off military area. The newly upgraded air base Rogachevo is just a few kilometers outside of town.

Land Of The Warming Sun: Japan Has Seen Solar Radiation Rise 10% Over Past 60 Years!

by P. Gosselin, February 17, 2019 in NoTricksZone


Today any warming found anywhere almost always gets blamed on heat supposedly getting trapped by rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Moreover, activist scientists insist we ignore all other powerful factors such as solar and oceanic cycles.

In fact these activists have become so extreme that they insist that record cold today is caused by warming.

But as people learned already in the first grade, the earth’s surface warms when the sun shines on it, and tends to cool when clouds obstruct the sun.

Solar radiation at the surface has risen over the past decades

In Japan, the Japanese Meteorology Agency (JMA) has 8 stations that measure solar radiation reaching the surface, and many other for recording temperature.

Data from the 8 stations recording solar radiation are plotted since 1999 (i.e. 20 years) as follows:

Data source: JMA

New Findings From German Scientists Show Changes in Precipitation Over Europe Linked To Solar Activity

by P. Gosselin, February 15, 2019 in NoTricksZone


A significant number of scientists say that the Earth’s climate is in large part impacted by solar activity, and less so by trace gas CO2 concentration. German scientists present new findings showing a link between solar activity and precipitation in Europe.
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How Changes on the Sun Influences Rain

A balanced level of precipitation provides the basis for a wide range of economic and social activities in Europe. Particularly agriculture, drinking water supply and inland waterway transport are directly affected. However, the amount of rain fluctuates strongly from year to year. While it may pour torrentially in one year, rain may remain absent for weeks in other year. The population is used to this variability and usually knows how to deal with it.

But what is behind the strong changes? A system, or pure atmospheric noise?

What would happen to Earth’s Climate and Weather if we had no Moon?

by A. Watts, February 15, 2019 in WUWT


A provocative hypothetical question: What if the Moon was not there? Video follows.

This giant rock lights up the night and can even change colors. So what would we do without it? Would we all need night vision goggles? How would it affect the ocean tides? Our seasons? Or our sleep cycles? Or would the consequences be far more drastic?

As the closest celestial body to our planet, the moon exerts a gravitational pull that governs much of what happens here on Earth Take the sea, for example. If you like surfing, you can thank the moon when the moon’s gravitational pull tugs on our spinning Earth, the oceans respond, giving us high tides in some parts of the world, and low tides elsewhere.

Carbon gas storage cavern is the best way to obtain clean energy from a fossil fuel

by Charles the moderator, February 13, 2019 in WUWT


The Research Center for Gas Innovation is developing technology to separate CO2 and methane in oil and gas exploration and store it in offshore salt caverns

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo

A set of technologies that is expected to have its first results four years from now is designed to resolve one of the world’s greatest oil and gas exploration challenges today: carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) emission in the atmosphere.

The innovation, the result of a patent deposited in 2018, consists of injecting the CO2 and CH4 that comes from wells during oil extraction into salt caverns as a way to reduce the amount of carbon gas in the emissions.

Analysis Finds Oceans Have Become LESS ‘Acidic’ With Rising CO2, Challenging The ‘Acidification’ Narrative

by K. Richard, February 14, 2019 in NoTricksZone


A modest long-term (1800s-present) declining trend in ocean pH values predominantly occurred prior to 1930, or before anthropogenic CO2 emissions began rising precipitously. Since 1930, seawater pH trends have risen slightly, meaning sharply rising CO2 has been coincident with less, not more, ocean “acidification”

 

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Image Source (lower graph): Wei et al., 2015

 

 

Le réchauffement climatique d’origine anthropique

by G. Geuskens, 14 février 2019, in ScienceClimatEnergie


Le climat peut changer, comme il l’a toujours fait et continuera à le faire sous l’action de variables naturelles. Les activités humaines peuvent-elles avoir une influence comme le prétend la théorie du réchauffement climatique d’origine anthropique ? Cette théorie est basée sur l’existence d’un hypothétique effet de serre défini comme un phénomène radiatifcausé par des gaz tels la vapeur d’eau ou le CO2 qui absorbent une fraction du rayonnement infrarouge émis par la Terre et le réémettent  ensuite dans toutes  les directions et notamment vers la surface terrestre dont la température serait, de ce fait, plus élevée qu’en l’absence de gaz absorbant l’infrarouge. L’effet de serre résulterait donc essentiellement de l’émission par les molécules de CO2 d’un rayonnement  de fluorescence  dans le domaine infrarouge [1]. Cette définition est claire et scientifiquement valable car conforme au principe de réfutabilité défini par Karl Popper. Nous l’examinerons à la lumière de théories physiques bien établies et de faits expérimentaux connus.

1. Le CO2 dans les basses couches atmosphériques

A propos des indicateurs de température par satellites (1/2)

by J.C. Maurin, 8 février 2019, in ScienceClimatEnergie


A partir des notions intuitives de chaleur et température, les physiciens (Carnot, Thomson, Clausius, Maxwell, Boltzmann) arrivèrent progressivement à la notion scientifique de température thermodynamique. La Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures  adopta en 1927 l’échelle thermodynamique proposée en 1911, puis l’unité kelvin en 1954.
La notion de température thermodynamique nécessite que l’équilibre thermique soit atteint, ce qui n’est pas le cas dans l’atmosphère de la Terre. Il n’existe pas une « température thermodynamique de l’atmosphère ». A défaut, on utilise une « moyenne des températures » mesurées en divers points de l’atmosphère. Mais la température thermodynamique étant une grandeur intensive, une moyenne, quelle que soit son élaboration, ne peut jouer qu’un rôle d’indicateur. L’usage est néanmoins d’utiliser le kelvin pour les indicateurs. On exprimera de préférence les variations des indicateurs sous forme relative. L’indicateur va être dépendant de l’échantillonnage (spatial et temporel) des mesures et surtout de son mode d’élaboration.

Refutation of the the Belgian climate manifesto by the Climate Intelligence Foundation.

by Dr. Hans Labhom, February 8, 2019, in WUWT


Terrifying climate propaganda

Irresponsible misuse of models

Science differs from religion because theoretical claims have to be verified with observations. If model results can predict measurements in advance (which is quite different than explaining them afterwards!) then you can say the model validated and then apply it in practice. But if that is not the case, then you cannot sell the model as truth and using it in practice is irresponsible.

Far more complicated than simple, linear CO2 relationship

The current climate model (‘IPCC model’) systematically yields highly overstated predictions compared to measurements and can therefore not be used to form climate policy – especially if that policy results in extremely high costs and destabilises vital parts of the energy infrastructure.
We are not just saying that. Already some of the most renowned scientists have preceded us (e.g. Freeman Dyson, Frederic Seitz, Robert Jastrow, William Nierenberg), including Nobel Prize winners (e.g. Ivar Giaever and Robert Laughlin). They also argue that the earth’s climate is far too complicated to be explained by a simple one-dimensional CO2 relationship.

GWPF Call For Insect Decline Paper To Be Withdrawn

by P. Homewood, February 11, 2019 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat


London, 11 February: The scientific paper behind newspaper claims that insect populations were threatened with extinction was based on data known to be unreliable. That’s according to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which today called for the paper to be withdrawn.

The paper, by US scientists Bradford C Lister and Andres Garcia, claimed that a rapid decline in insect populations in a rainforest in Puerto Rico was the result of rising temperatures. The Washington Post called the study “hyperalarming”, while the Guardian discussed climate change causing “insect collapse”.

However, the authors’ evidence that temperatures had, in fact, risen turns out to be based on a single weather station, which was known to be unreliable because of undocumented changes to equipment and location resulting in a substantial and abrupt increase in recorded temperatures in September 1992.

Since 1992, temperatures at this station have actually declined.

La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse