Archives de catégorie : climate-debate

better to know...?, climate-debate

The ‘Climate Emergency’ is a Myth, Says Nobel Prize Winner John Clauser. Here’s Why He’s Right

by Dr R. Kalveks, June 8, 2024 in DailySceptic

In a recent lecture, Nobel Laureate physicist John Clauser exposed how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models and analyses, which are relied upon by politicians and activists to support claims of a ‘climate crisis’, do not meet basic standards of scientific enquiry. Clauser received his Nobel prize in 2022 for the observational measurement of quantum entanglement and understands well the problem of distinguishing a physical signal from background noise.

Clauser shows that, when corrected for the IPCC’s error prone arithmetic and statistics, the observational data do not support the power imbalance claimed to be responsible for global warming. Furthermore, the outputs of climate models are at variance with the observational record. Clauser discusses the roles of convection, clouds and their variability in providing a negative feedback mechanism, and proposes that this acts as a thermostat that stabilises surface temperatures. Clauser’s conclusion is that claims of a ‘climate crisis’ lack scientific substance and that Net Zero policies are an unnecessary hindrance.

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Energy Flows in the Climate System

It is useful to start with a simplified depiction of the solar energy flow that reaches the Earth, its transformation by the Earth’s climate system and the resulting (mostly thermal) energy flow that leaves the Earth’s atmosphere. This is shown in Figure 1, taken from a recent IPCC report.

The IPCC diagram shows an energy imbalance, being the difference between the incoming visible and UV solar radiation 340 W/m2, less the amount reflected (100 W/m2), less the outgoing infra-red (IR) thermal radiation (239 W/m2). The claimed imbalance at the Top of the Atmosphere is 0.7 W/m2 (give or take 0.2) and the IPCC asserts that this is driving the continuing warming of the climate system.

Table. 1. Top of Atmosphere Energy Flows. Energy flows at the top of the Earth’s atmosphere, with their errors as per Figure 1. The balance is calculated from its components.

The radiation measurements necessary for this calculation are carried out at different wavelengths by instruments carried by satellites, and observational errors are inevitable. Combining the uncertainty ranges in the incoming, reflected and outgoing streams shown in Table 1, by using the standard statistical Root Mean Square rule, shows that the error margin in the calculated imbalance is actually 3 W/m2, some 15 times greater than the 0.2 W/m2 error margin claimed by the IPCC. In short, there is no observedenergy imbalance. The claimed imbalance of 0.7 W/m2 is swamped by observational error, and, from a scientific perspective, it is described by Clauser as a “fudge”.

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climate-debate

New Study: Central Europe Was ‘2-5°C Warmer Than Present’ Throughout Most Of The Holocene

by K. Richard, July 22, 2024 in NoTricksZone

There were millennia during the past glacial (when CO2 levels were under 200 ppm) that were as warm or warmer than today.

Four central Europe reconstructions, using collected evidence from disparate biomarkers, indicate there were periods (for example, 54,000 to 51,000 years ago, the Bølling–Allerød interstadial, 14,700 years ago) during the last glacial when temperatures were as warmer than (or similar to) today (Zander et al., 2024).

Temperatures throughout the Holocene (8,000 to 4,000 years ago), when CO2 hovered around 265 ppm, were 3.5°C (and up to 5°C) warmer than today. Modern temperatures are among the coldest of the last 10,000 years.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Carbon Dioxide and a Warming Climate are not problems

by A. May & M. Crok, May 29, 2024 in AmJEconSociology

Dear signatories of the Clintel World Climate Declaration

 

We are very excited to announce the publication of our peer reviewed paper titled “Carbon dioxide and a warming climate are not problems“. It was published in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology. The paper was written by Andy May, retired petrophysicist and currently climate writer and blogger, and Clintel director Marcel Crok.

Crok and May coordinated the ambitious Clintel project to analyse the IPCC AR6 report, which last year led to the publication of the Clintel book The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC. In the book we document serious errors and biases in the latest IPCC report.
The new paper is largely based on the many interesting findings of that book.

The new paper gets a lot of attention, mostly positive and some critical (of course). This has led to an impressive attention score (which gives an indication of how much the paper is being discussed on blogs and on X/twitter). The paper is already in the 99th percentile.

 

It was a little expensive (2330 euros) to make the paper open access so we decided not to do that this time. But our submitted version can be downloaded for free.

Signatories of the World Climate Declaration could help us boosting the paper even further by writing about it on blogs and/or discussing the paper on X (twitter).

Andy May has been responding very promptly to some of the criticism on the paper, see here, here and here.

 

The full abstract of the paper can be read below:

Continuer la lecture de Carbon Dioxide and a Warming Climate are not problems →

climate-debate

Cooling The Niño

by W. Eschenbach, July 14, 2024 in WUWT

This is a two-part post. The first part is to correct an oversight in my recent post entitled Rainergy.

The second part is to use that new information to analyze the effect of clouds on the El Nino region.

So, to the first part. In my post Rainergy, I noted that it takes ~ 80 watts per square meter (W/m2) over a year to evaporate a cubic meter of seawater. Thus, the evaporation that creates the ~1 meter of annual rain cools the surface by – 80 W/m2.

Then the other day I thought “Dang! I forgot virga!”

Virga is rain that falls from a cloud but evaporates completely before it hits the ground.

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climate-debate

Causality Analysis Finds Temperature Changes Have Determined CO2 Changes Since The Phanerozoic

by K. Richard, July 15, 2024 in NoTricksZone

Popular claims that CO2 changes drive temperature changes currently or throughout the distant past “are based on imagination and climate models full of assumptions.”

A comprehensive new study details a stochastic assessment determination of the sequencing of CO2 variations versus temperature variations since the 1950s, over the last 2,000 years (the Common Era), and throughout the last 541 million years.

The robust conclusion is that the causality direction – with the understanding that causes lead and effects lag – clearly shows the temperature changes lead and CO2 changes lag on yearly, decadal, and centennial/millennial scales. In other words, “the reverse causality direction [CO2]→T should be excluded.”

The claim that CO2 increases drive temperature changes is thus a “narrative” only, as the claim that “humans, through their emissions by fossil fuel burning, are responsible for the changes we see in climate” can be regarded as a “non-scientific issue.”

 

The author has had a series of peer-reviewed scientific papers published supporting this same T→CO2 conclusion (Koutsoyiannis et al., 2022, Koutsoyiannis et al., 2020, Koutsoyiannis et al., 2023, Koutsoyiannis, 2024, Koutsoyiannis, 2024) in just the last few years.

Since these papers challenge the prevailing anthropogenic global warming (AGW) narrative so acutely, Dr. Koutsoyiannis has understandably been the recipient of antagonism bordering on vitriol from AGW proponents. This includes comments from peer-reviewers. So, in an apparent effort to foster transparency, he has made the peer reviewers’ comments on this latest paper public. Here is the link to these commentaries:

Peer reviewers’ exchanges with Koutsoyiannis in “Stochastic assessment of temperature–CO2 causal relationship in climate from the Phanerozoic through modern times.”

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climate-debate

Hunga Tonga volcano: impact on record warming

by J. Vinos, July 9, 2024 in WUWT

1. Off-scale warming

Since the planet has been warming for 200 years, and our global records are even more recent, every few years a new warmest year in history is recorded. Despite all the publicity given each time it happens, it would really be news if it didn’t happen, as it did between 1998 and 2014, a period popularly known as the pause.

Figure 1. Berkeley Earth temperature anomaly

Since 1980, 13 years have broken the temperature record. So, what is so special about the 2023 record and the expected 2024 record? For starters, 2023 broke the record by the largest margin in records, 0.17°C. This may not sound like much, but if all records were by this margin, we would go from +1.5°C to +2°C in just 10 years, and reach +3°C 20 years later.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Peer reviewed skepticism

by D. Wojick, July 9, 2024 in WUWT

A fine skeptical journal article waded through green pal review. Wonder of wonders!

The journal is the American Journal of Economics and Sociology. The article title is perfectly clear: “Carbon dioxide and a warming climate are not problems”.

See https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajes.12579

But it is an “Early View Online Version of Record before inclusion in an issue” so get it before it gets too hot for the Journal. I understand it is very popular so the green screams are deafening.

Alas it is paywalled but the lengthy free Abstract is as clear as the title. Here is the conclusion:

“Observations show no increase in damage or any danger to humanity today due to extreme weather or global warming (Crok & May,  2023, pp. 140–161; Scafetta,  2024). Climate change mitigation, according to AR6, means curtailing the use of fossil fuels, even though fossil fuels are still abundant and inexpensive. Since the current climate is arguably better than the pre-industrial climate and we have observed no increase in extreme weather or climate mortality, we conclude that we can plan to adapt to any future changes. Until a danger is identified, there is no need to eliminate fossil fuel use.”

The authors are Andy May and Marcel Crok and as the first parenthetical reference above indicates they are building on prior work. Their 53 References are not paywalled and quite interesting. Continuer la lecture de Peer reviewed skepticism →

better to know...?, climate-debate

Media Reports Earth’s ‘1.5C Temperature limit’ was ‘breached for 12 months in a row’ – Nothing Bad Happened

by A. Watts, July 10, 2024 in WUWT

Originally posted at ClimateREALISM

Recently, several media outlets claimed that June 2024 was the hottest June on record globally and that it topped off a string of 12 or 13 warmer than normal months, which they blamed on human-induced climate change. Each of the news stories made false claims of reaching climate tipping points, extreme weather events, and that the extended streak of hot temperatures proved a “climate crisis” was at hand.

Here are some of the headlines: Temperatures 1.5C above pre-industrial era average for 12 months, data shows (The Guardian,) June sizzled to a 13th straight monthly heat record, but July might break string (National Public Radio,) and World in line for hottest year as 1.5C limit breached for 12 months in a row (Financial Times.)

That ongoing 1.5C temperature limit scare-story has people around the world rattled. For example, this infographic from The Asia-Pacific branch of the International Union of Food workers (IUF) says (bold author’s):

Global warming caused by human activities reached approximately 1°C over the past 170 years, increasing at 0.2°C per decade. Scientists warn that an average rise of more than 1.5°C in the surface temperature of the earth compared to pre-industrial levels will be catastrophic for the environment and human health.

But despite 12 months of the globe being above the so-called temperature limit, nothing bad happened on a global scale. Claims of climate catastrophe once we passed the so-called 1.5C temperature limit, never happened. The limit was nothing more than a political talking point from the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, as described in this Associated Press article: The magic 1.5: What’s behind climate talks’ key elusive goal. The AP wrote, “in a way both the ‘1.5 and 2 degree C thresholds are somewhat arbitrary,’ Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson said in an email. ‘Every tenth of a degree matters!’”

Now, despite surpassing that arbitrary limit, the “crisis” progressive politicians and alarmists in the mainstream media have been warning about failed to materialize.

First let’s check the global temperature. The source of all these news stories comes from a recent press release by Copernicus, part of the European Commission. A graph by Copernicus, seen in Figure 1 below, illustrates the “limit” and the 12-month temperature peak:

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climate-debate

High-frequency climate forcing causes prolonged cold periods in the Holocene.

by E. van Dijk et al., May 08 2024, in Nature (OPEN ACCESS)

Abstract

Understanding climate variability across interannual to centennial timescales is critical, as it encompasses the natural range of climate fluctuations that early human agricultural societies had to adapt to. Deviations from the long-term mean climate are often associated with both societal collapse and periods of prosperity and expansion. Here, we show that contrary to what global paleoproxy reconstructions suggest, the mid to late-Holocene was not a period of climate stability. We use mid- to late-Holocene Earth System Model simulations, forced by state-of-the-art reconstructions of external climate forcing to show that eleven long-lasting cold periods occurred in the Northern Hemisphere during the past 8000 years. These periods correlate with enhanced volcanic activity, where the clustering of volcanic eruptions induced a prolonged cooling effect through gradual ocean-sea ice feedback. These findings challenge the prevailing notion of the Holocene as a period characterized by climate stability, as portrayed in multi-proxy climate reconstructions. Instead, our simulations provide an improved representation of amplitude and timing of temperature variations on sub-centennial timescales.

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Major problems identified in data adjustments applied to a widely used global temperature dataset

by Ceres Team, Feb 22, 2022 in CeresScience

new climate science study, involving a panel of 17 experts from 13 countries, has just been published in the scientific journal, Atmosphere. The study looked at the various data adjustments that are routinely applied to the European temperature records in the widely used Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) dataset over the last 10 years.

 
 
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climate-debate

Climate Propaganda Cabals Ramp Up the Heat for Summer

by K. Hansen, June 18, 2024 in WUWT

Covering Climate Now [CCNow], the Columbia University-based climate propaganda outfit, which claims the ability to reach over 2 billion people worldwide with its ready-to-use, ready-to-share and content-directed climate alarm stories, is ramping up and issuing directives to climate journalists around the world.

Here are the main points that they insist that journalist around the world make in each and every story about Summer.

“Reporting Guidance: 2024’s Extreme Heat

Climate change is making extreme heat more frequent and more severe. Here are resources, sample copy, and tips to help you meet the moment.”

Now, I am a climate journalist myself and I admit that I am not entirely sure exactly what they mean by “tips to help you meet the moment”, nonetheless, I will share those tips with readers here.  Why?  So that when you see them repeated in your local newspapers, hear them on the radio, or watch some TV weatherman rattle them off, you’ll know the true source of the exaggerated statements and general misinformation.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

With Summer Heat Waves, The Media’s Having A Field Day Pushing Climate Change Lies

by Editorial Board, One 18, 2024  in ClimatChangeDispatch

city sun heat wave

There’s a summer heat wave going on, which gives journalists the opportunity to fill up their stories with climate change boilerplate. [emphasis, links added]

It no longer matters whether any of it is true. Just the opposite, in fact. If you point out the truth, you’re accused of being a denier.

Sure, the data doesn’t show an increase in the number or intensity of hurricanes or tornadoes or wildfires. Yet every time one or the other strikes, the press robotically connects that event to “climate change.”

Every tornado season, we hear about how climate change is making them more frequent and more deadly. Except the facts don’t support the narrative.

 

Source: ustornadoes.com
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climate-debate

IPCC Refuses Repeated Calls for Dialogue with Critical Scientists

by A. Blok, Apr 29, 2024 in Liberum

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ignores crucial peer-reviewed literature and cherry-picks evidence to promote doom scenarios on climate change. These are just some of the findings of Climate Intelligence (Clintel) founder emeritus professor Guus Berkhout (84) after critically analyzing IPCC’s scientific reports. “They refuse my request for an honest and open debate. The result is a very one-sided, fear-mongering story.”

By Arthur Blok
In 1925, a group of internationally renowned scientists gathered in Haarlem at the invitation of the Royal Dutch Society of Sciences (KHMV), the Netherlands’ oldest scientific society. The scientists celebrated the golden doctorate of Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz, who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman.

Among its participants were Albert Einstein, Paul Ehrenfest, and Madame Curie, to name a few. Until today, the society holds annual meetings to promote science in its broadest sense, inviting the world’s most prominent to discuss, interpret, and share their findings. Since its inception in 1752, the KHMV has advocated that sharing knowledge is one of science’s core principles.

Berkhout and his Clintel—a global climate change and policy foundation—are loyal to that principle. Since 2019, they have taken the lead in speaking against the discourse of climate fear spread by politicians, movements, and the mainstream media. Berkhout even went as far as calling the so-called man-made climate emergency a hoax.

The Dutch emeritus professor has now targeted the IPCC and its members. The IPCC is a United Nations (UN) intergovernmental body that aims to advance scientific knowledge about climate change caused by human activities. Based on the research results, governmental policies should be designed and executed to stop climate change.

In the past year, Berkhout sent three personal letters expressing his worries to the IPCC chair, Professor Dr James Skea, but to no avail.

“I received only a small note from their secretariat saying they do not have the mandate to accept my proposal for cooperation. While the request in my first letter was strictly a request for debate and interaction, it was quite a remarkable reaction for a scientific panel”, he said.

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climate-debate

Climate models can’t explain 2023’s huge heat anomaly — we could be in uncharted territory

by G. Schmidt, Mar 19, 2024 in Nature

Taking into account all known factors, the planet warmed 0.2 °C more last year than climate scientists expected. More and better data are urgently needed.

When I took over as the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, I inherited a project that tracks temperature changes since 1880. Using this trove of data, I’ve made climate predictions at the start of every year since 2016. It’s humbling, and a bit worrying, to admit that no year has confounded climate scientists’ predictive capabilities more than 2023 has.

For the past nine months, mean land and sea surface temperatures have overshot previous records each month by up to 0.2 °C — a huge margin at the planetary scale. A general warming trend is expected because of rising greenhouse-gas emissions, but this sudden heat spike greatly exceeds predictions made by statistical climate models that rely on past observations. Many reasons for this discrepancy have been proposed but, as yet, no combination of them has been able to reconcile our theories with what has happened.

For a start, prevalent global climate conditions one year ago would have suggested that a spell of record-setting warmth was unlikely. Early last year, the tropical Pacific Ocean was coming out of a three-year period of La Niña, a climate phenomenon associated with the relative cooling of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. Drawing on precedents when similar conditions prevailed at the beginning of a year, several climate scientists, including me, put the odds of 2023 turning out to be a record warm year at just one in five.

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climate-debate, Cooling

Significant West Antarctic Cooling in the Past Two Decades Driven by Tropical Pacific Forcing

by X. Zhang et al., 2023, Apt 30, 2024  in BullAmerMeterologicalSoc

Abstract

During the second half of the twentieth century, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) has undergone significant warming at more than twice the global mean and thus is regarded as one of the most rapidly warming regions on Earth. However, a reversal of this trend was observed in the 1990s, resulting in regional cooling. In particular, during 1999–2018, the observed annual average surface air temperature had decreased at a statistically significant rate, with the strongest cooling in austral spring. The spring cooling correlates significantly with the second leading modes (EOF2) derived from empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis on the sea level pressure over Antarctica during 1999–2018, associated with the negative phase of the interdecadal Pacific oscillation with an average of cooling of central and eastern tropical Pacific surface sea temperature (SST) anomalies. The EOF2 results in the enhanced cold southerly winds on the continental WAIS through the cyclonic conditions over the Amundsen Sea region and a blocking high in the Drake Passage and northern Antarctic Peninsula, causing the WAIS cooling trend.

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climate-debate

El Nino Fueled ‘Unprecedented’ West African Heatwave, Not Climate Change

by L. Lueken, Apr 19, 2024 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Multiple media outlets, including the BBC and Reuters, claim that a recent West African heatwave would be “impossible” without global warming. This claim is misleading and not supported by real-world data. [emphasis, links added]

The study cited in both articles is merely an attribution modeling study, which is not proof of the influence of climate change.

In their article on a recent heatwave in West Africa and the Sahel, Reuters reports“[t]emperatures soared so high in Mali and Burkina Faso they equated to a once in 200-year event, according to the report on the Sahel region by World Weather Attribution (WWA).”

Reuters continues: “The severity of the heatwave led WWA’s team of climate scientists to conduct a rapid analysis, which concluded the temperatures would not have been reached if industry had not warmed the planet by burning fossil fuels and other activities.”

One of World Weather Attribution’s statisticians even went so far as to say that heatwaves of that intensity wouldn’t happen at all in the region in a “preindustrial climate.”

This claim is utterly unfounded, as those parts of Africa are known for being at least semi-arid, subtropical, and prone to drought and heatwaves.

While temperature records are not very lengthy or complete for many parts of Africa, April is known to be the hottest month of the year for Burkina Faso in particular, and many parts of the Sahel region in general, where temperature maximums on average are above 40°C – which is what the recent heatwave brought, meaning there is no justification for claiming the recent heatwave is historically unprecedented.

Climate Realism has frequently noted that WWA’s “rapid attribution” studies are more in the realm of fantasy than fact, as they depend on virtual models of climate conditions that do not actually exist in real life.

The model of the climate that an event like the recent Sahel heatwave is compared to represents how scientists guess things would have been had it not been for the burning of fossil fuels.

During Burkina Faso’s dry season, fishermen abandon their canoes on site while waiting for the waters to arrive. Photo by YODA Adaman on Unsplash
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better to know...?, climate-debate

Climate Change Is Normal and Natural, and Can’t Be Controlled

by F.B. Soepyan, Apr 22, 2024 in WUWT

NASA claimed that “Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate” and “human activity is the principal cause.” Others proposed spending trillions of dollars to control the climate. But are we humans responsible for climate change? And what can we do about it?

“The climate of planet Earth has never stopped changing since the Earth’s genesis, sometimes relatively rapidly, sometimes very slowly, but always surely,” says Patrick Moore in Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom. “Hoping for a ‘perfect stable climate’ is as futile as hoping the weather will be the same and pleasant, every day of the year, forever.”

In other words, climate change is normal and natural, and you can forget about controlling it.

For instance, a major influence of weather and climate are solar cycles driven by the Sun’s magnetic field over periods of eight to 14 years. They release varying amounts of energy and produce dark sunspots on the Sun’s surface. The effects of solar cycles on Earth vary, with some regions warming more than 1°C and others cooling.

Climatic changes occur as a result of variations in the interaction of solar energy with Earth’s ozone layer, which influences ozone levels and stratospheric temperatures. These, in turn, affect the speed of west-to-east wind flows and the stability of the polar vortex. Whether the polar vortex remains stable and close to the Arctic or dips southward determines whether winters in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere are severe or mild.

In addition to solar cycles, there are three Milankovitch cycles that range in length from 26,000 to 100,000 years. They include the eccentricity, or shape, of Earth’s elliptical orbit around the Sun. Small fluctuations in the orbit’s shape influence the length of seasons. For example, when the orbit is more like an oval than a circle, Northern Hemisphere summers are longer than winters and springs are longer than autumns.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Official Temperature Data Isn’t ‘Data’ At All

by H.S. Burnett, Apr 21, 2024 in WUWT

IN THIS ISSUE:

  • Official Temperature Data Isn’t ‘Data’ At All
  • Video of the Week: This is hilarious! Is there nothing that climate change can’t do?
  • Human Impact on the Carbon Cycle Is Minimal
  • Islands Still Growing in the Midst of Climate Change
  • Podcast of the Week: Save the Whales, Kill the Turbines – The Climate Realism Show #104
  • Climate Comedy
  • Recommended Sites
climate-debate

Climate Change Is Normal and Natural, and Can’t Be Controlled

by F.B. Soepyan, Apr 19, 2024 in CO2Coalition

NASA claimed that “Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate” and “human activity is the principal cause.” Others proposed spending trillions of dollars to control the climate. But are we humans responsible for climate change? And what can we do about it?

“The climate of planet Earth has never stopped changing since the Earth’s genesis, sometimes relatively rapidly, sometimes very slowly, but always surely,” says Patrick Moore in Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom. “Hoping for a ‘perfect stable climate’ is as futile as hoping the weather will be the same and pleasant, every day of the year, forever.”

In other words, climate change is normal and natural, and you can forget about controlling it.

For instance, a major influence of weather and climate are solar cycles driven by the Sun’s magnetic field over periods of eight to 14 years. They release varying amounts of energy and produce dark sunspots on the Sun’s surface. The effects of solar cycles on Earth vary, with some regions warming more than 1°C and others cooling.

Climatic changes occur as a result of variations in the interaction of solar energy with Earth’s ozone layer, which influences ozone levels and stratospheric temperatures. These, in turn, affect the speed of west-to-east wind flows and the stability of the polar vortex. Whether the polar vortex remains stable and close to the Arctic or dips southward determines whether winters in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere are severe or mild.

In addition to solar cycles, there are three Milankovitch cycles that range in length from 26,000 to 100,000 years. They include the eccentricity, or shape, of Earth’s elliptical orbit around the Sun. Small fluctuations in the orbit’s shape influence the length of seasons. For example, when the orbit is more like an oval than a circle, Northern Hemisphere summers are longer than winters and springs are longer than autumns.

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climate-debate

Now You Sea Ice, Now You Don’t

by W. Eschenbach, Apr 20, 2024 in WUWT

I got to thinking about sea ice and the climate models. Here’s what we know about polar sea ice extent, showing data that starts with the satellite era when we began to have accurate observations of the poles.

Figure 1. Arctic, Antarctic, and global sea ice extent. Colored lines are CEEMD smooths of the underlying datasets.

Now, there are some rather large curiosities regarding the sea ice extent records.

  • The North Pole is a liquid ocean covered with sea ice, with most of the ice polewards of 70°N. The South Pole is a giant chunk of frozen rock surrounded by sea ice, with almost no ice polewards of 70°S. So why do both poles have about the same extent of sea ice?
  • From the start of the satellite era up until ~2015, Arctic sea ice extent was decreasing and Antarctic sea ice extent was increasing … and as a result, total global sea ice extent was relatively constant, with 2014 having about the same global sea ice extent as 1978. Why?
  • Around 2015, Antarctic sea ice extent started dropping rapidly … but Arctic sea ice stopped dropping and leveled off up to the present. Why?
  • After dropping precipitously for a couple of years, Antarctic sea ice extent leveled off again … and as a result, global ice extent also leveled off. Why?

Here’s the interesting part. Nobody knows the answers to any of those questions. And I suppose predictably, since they’re based on our (mis)understandings of the climate, none of the climate models either forecasts or hindcasts sea ice extent doing anything even remotely similar to the actual observations.

So I’ll leave this here as a testament to just how little we understand the magnificent global heat engine that we call the climate …

climate-debate

Net Zero CO2 Emissions: A Damaging and Totally Unnecessary Goal

by R. Spencer, Apr 18, 2024 in GlobalWarming

The goal of reaching “Net Zero” global anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide sounds overwhelmingly difficult. While humanity continues producing CO2 at increasing rates (with a temporary pause during COVID), how can we ever reach the point where these emissions start to fall, let alone reach zero by 2050 or 2060?

What isn’t being discussed (as far as I can tell) is the fact that atmospheric CO2 levels (which we will assume for the sake of discussion causes global warming) will start to fall even while humanity is producing lots of CO2.

Let me repeat that, in case you missed the point:

Atmospheric CO2 levels will start to fall even with modest reductions in anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

Why is that? The reason is due to something called the CO2 “sink rate”. It has been observed that the more CO2 there is in the atmosphere, the more quickly nature removes the excess. The NASA studies showing “global greening” in satellite imagery since the 1980s is evidence of that.

Last year I published a paper showing that the record of atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa, HI suggests that each year nature removes an average of 2% of the atmospheric excess above 295 ppm (parts per million). The purpose of the paper was to not only show how well a simple CO2 budget model fits the Mauna Loa CO2 measurements, but also to demonstrate that the common assumption that nature is becoming less able to remove “excess” CO2 from the atmosphere appears to be an artifact of El Nino and La Nina activity since monitoring began in 1959. As a result, that 2% sink rate has remained remarkably constant over the last 60+ years. (By the way, the previously popular CO2 “airborne fraction” has huge problems as a meaningful statistic, and I wish it had never been invented. If you doubt this, just assume CO2 emissions are cut in half and see what the computed airborne fraction does. It’s meaningless.)

Here’s my latest model fit to the Mauna Loa record through 2023, where I have added a stratospheric aerosol term to account for the fact that major volcanic eruptions actually *reduce* atmospheric CO2 due to increased photosynthesis from diffuse sunlight penetrating deeper into vegetation canopies:

What Would a “Modest” 1% per Year Reduction in Global CO2 Emissions Do?

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climate-debate

They Never Used To Have Heatwaves in Mali!

by P. Homewood, Apr 18, 2024 in NotALotOfPeopleKnowThat

A deadly heatwave in West Africa and the Sahel was “impossible” without human-induced climate change, scientists say.

Temperatures soared above 48C in Mali last month with one hospital linking hundreds of deaths to the extreme heat.

Researchers say human activities like burning fossil fuels made temperatures up to 1.4C hotter than normal.

A number of countries in the Sahel region and across West Africa were hit by a strong heatwave that struck at the end of March and lasted into early April.

The heat was most strongly felt in the southern regions of Mali and Burkina Faso.

In Bamako, the capital of Mali, the Gabriel Toure Hospital said it recorded 102 deaths in the first days of April.

Around half the people who died were over 60 years of age, and the hospital said that heat played a role in many of these casualties.

Researchers believe that global climate change had a key role in this five-day heatwave.

A new analysis from scientists involved with the World Weather Attribution group suggests the high day time and night time temperatures would not have been possible without the world’s long term use of coal, oil and gas as well as other activities such as deforestation.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

L A Times Cherry Picks & Misrepresents NOAA Climate Data to Exaggerate March 2024 U.S. and Global Temperature Outcomes

by L. Hamlin, Apr 19, 2024 in WUWT

The L A Times article and headline shown below exaggerate the March 2024 U.S. and global temperature outcomes by cherry picking and misrepresenting data that mischaracterizes what the data actually shows.

 

The Times article makes the following claims regarding the U.S. for the period January through March 2024:

“In the United States, March was the 17th warmest in the 130-year data record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The average temperature in the contiguous U.S. was 45.1 degrees — 3.6 degrees above average.”

The Times article does not present readily available NOAA measured  Maximum Contiguous U.S Temperature for the month of March from 1895 through 2024 as shown below.

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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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