Archives de catégorie : 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.

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.

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.

Meteorologist: Climate Change Not Increasing Hurricanes, Wildfires, Or Migration

by A. Watts, Apr 18, 2024 in WUWT


An article by the website ProPublica titled The Flooding Will Come “No Matter What” linked to Hurricane Katrina, storm refugees, and climate change, claiming that the storm was evidence of the beginning of a “climate migration” in America. [emphasis, links added]

The connection is false. Data refutes a climate connection to any particular hurricane or trend in migration.

The article does a lot of rambling coverage of a family that was displaced by Hurricane Katrina back in 2005, saying:

Another great American migration is now underway, this time forced by the warming that is altering how and where people can live. For now, it’s just a trickle. But in the corners of the country’s most vulnerable landscapes — on the shores of its sinking bayous and on the eroding bluffs of its coastal defenses — populations are already in disarray.

The article goes on to follow the trials and tribulations of a single family who had their home destroyed during Hurricane Katrina.

ProPublica believes this case is evidence of climate change causing a “migration,” because the family has not moved back to the same location.

The article itself cites no data or study to support its claim about Hurricane Katrina. Rather, it simply states the author’s opinions as if they were established facts.

Later the article similarly describes families displaced by the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif., as climate refugees, writing:

As the number of displaced people continues to grow, an ever-larger portion of those affected will make their moves permanent, migrating to safer ground or supportive communities. They will do so either because a singular disaster like the 2018 wildfire in Paradise, California — or Hurricane Harvey, which struck the Texas and Louisiana coasts — is so destructive it forces them to, or because the subtler “slow onset” change in their surroundings gradually grows so intolerable, uncomfortable or inconvenient that they make the decision to leave, proactively, by choice.

First, it should be noted that weather events such as hurricanes are not proof of climate change, and ProPublica is falsely conflating short-term weather events with long-term climate change.

Further, as discussed in Climate at a Glance: Hurricanes, even the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admits to finding no increase in the long-term frequency or severity of hurricanes.

Also, after Katrina, the United States went through its longest period in recorded history without a major hurricane strike and recently experienced its fewest total hurricanes in any eight-year period.

There has been no increase in the number or intensity of tropical cyclones since 1972 as the planet has modestly warmed. Indeed, for some basins, the data suggests tropical cyclone frequency has declined over the past century.

Data presented in more than 100 previous Climate Realism posts herehere, here, and here, for example, clearly show that hurricane trends have been relatively flat over the past 50 years of modest warming, and the trend in powerful Atlantic hurricanes is downward (see the figures below).

Net Isotopic Signature of Atmospheric CO2 Sources and Sinks: No Change since the Little Ice Age

by D. Koutsoyiannis, March 14, 2024 in MDPI – (Open Access)


Abstract

Recent studies have provided evidence, based on analyses of instrumental measurements of the last seven decades, for a unidirectional, potentially causal link between temperature as the cause and carbon dioxide concentration ([CO2]) as the effect. In the most recent study, this finding was supported by analysing the carbon cycle and showing that the natural [CO2] changes due to temperature rise are far larger (by a factor > 3) than human emissions, while the latter are no larger than 4% of the total. Here, we provide additional support for these findings by examining the signatures of the stable carbon isotopes, 12 and 13. Examining isotopic data in four important observation sites, we show that the standard metric δ13C is consistent with an input isotopic signature that is stable over the entire period of observations (>40 years), i.e., not affected by increases in human CO2 emissions. In addition, proxy data covering the period after 1500 AD also show stable behaviour. These findings confirm the major role of the biosphere in the carbon cycle and a non-discernible signature of humans.

Antarctica Is Colder, Icier Now Than Any Time In 5000 Years. The Last Warm Period Was 1000 Years Ago.

by K. Richard, Apr 15, 2024 in NoTricksZone


More evidence emerges that Antarctica has undergone rapid glacier and sea ice expansion in recent centuries, in line with the long-term and recent Antarctic cooling trend.

West Antarctica’s mean annual surface temperatures cooled by more than -1.8°C (-0.93°C per decade) from 1999-2018 (Zhang et al., 2023).

Not just West Antarctica, but most of the continent also has cooled by more than 1°C in the 21st century. See, for example, the ~1°C per decade cooling trend for East Antarctica (2000 to 2018) shown in Fig. ES

 

According to a new study, about 6000 years ago Antarctica’s Collins Glacier’s frontline was a full 1 km southwest of its current extent. The frontline advanced to today’s extent ~5000 years ago.

“Previous studies proposed that 6000 yr BP, the frontline position of the Collins Glacier was located 1 km further south west than the present, and that the current frontline was first attained at approximately 5000 yr BP.”

The glacier then continuously retreated south of the modern extent for another 4000 years, with peak ice loss 1000 years ago (as shown in the 1000-year “Proglacial lake environment” image). In the last 1000 years this glacier has rapidly re-advanced back to the glaciated extent from 5000 years ago, which is in line with the sustained cooling trend ongoing since the Medieval Warm Period.

What Heatwave?

by P. Homewood, Apr 14, 2024 in NotaLotOfPeopleKnowThat


I hope you did not blink, otherwise you may have missed it!

Brits are set to bask in a ’72 hour’ heatwave, according to some forecasters, but not everyone will be feeling the heat as two parts of England are expected to miss out on the sizzling temperatures.

Weather maps reveal that while many will enjoy a mini April heatwave, some will still face April showers. According to WX Charts, which uses Met Desk data for its predictions, temperatures could soar to a balmy 21C at times this month.

The charts indicate that Londoners can expect to enjoy highs of 20C from today until Saturday, with East Anglia and the East Midlands not far behind at 19C. Cities like Birmingham, Nottingham, Manchester, and Sheffield are also set to experience a warm 18C.

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/72-hour-heatwave-hit-parts-28989573

Sure enough temperatures reached 21C in Essex, but I don’t know anyone who would actually describe this as a heatwave:

Don’t Be Alarmed About Unusually Warm Temperatures

by A. Epstein, Appt 13, 2024 in ClimateChangeDispatch


Myth: Recent, unusually warm temperatures show that fossil fuels are making our climate more and more dangerous.

Truth: Even with recent temperatures, which are a temporary anomaly, not the new normal, cold is a bigger problem than heat and fossil fuels keep us safer from both. [emphasis, links added]

Leading outlets are portraying the recent streak of warmer-than-expected months as ominous and deadly, and offering anti-fossil-fuel policies as a solution.

In reality, cold is a far bigger problem than heat—and anti-fossil-fuel policies will make us more endangered by both.

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.

Three More New Temperature Reconstructions Document A Warmer Medieval Period

by K. Richard, Apr 11, 2024 in NoTricksZone


he North Atlantic, the Pacific Northwest (USA), and northern Finland were all warmer than today between 1000 and 2000 years ago.

Today’s (2000 CE) July air temperatures in the Azores – archipelago islands in the middle North Atlantic, ~1400 km west of Portugal – are visually shown to average about 10 to 11°C in a newly published reconstruction (Raposeiro et al., 2024).

This average air temperature is about 1 to 2°C warmer than this location’s Little Ice Age climate, or the coldest period (~9.1°C from 1750-1800) of the last 2000 years. However, the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) had temperatures reaching into the 13-15°C range, which is 3-4°C warmer than modern.

 

A temperature reconstruction from a lake in the USA’s Pacific Northwest (Baig, 2024) indicates glacial temperatures were only 1.0 to 1.6°C colder than the modern temperature, 12.2°C. Temperatures reached 13.7°C, or 1.5°C warmer than today, ~2500 years ago, and then fluctuated between 12.6 and 12.2°C from 1900 years ago until today, a period encompassing both the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age.

Another lake sediment temperature reconstruction using branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (brGDGTs) from northern Finland (Otiniano et al., 2024) suggests the modern temperature (represented as the blue diamond) is among the coldest of the last ~8000 years. Temperatures were much warmer than modern about 1200 to 1500 years ago, and throughout the period from 7000 to 3000 years ago.

3 New Studies Confirm Sea Levels Were 5 to 9 Meters Higher 7,000-5,000 Years Ago Than Today

by K. Richard,  Apr 1, 2024 in ClimateChangeDispatch


Modern relative sea levels are near the lowest in the last 7,000 years.

Two studies, independently published, identified Mid-Holocene sea levels in northern Norway (north of the Arctic Circle) as being 7 to 9 meters higher than today before declining to the present (Balascio et al., 2024, Nielsen et al., 2024). [emphasis, links added]

This region of the Arctic was warm enough to support human settlements and boat harbors during the Medieval Warm Period.

As the climate deteriorated into the Little Ice Age cooling centuries after the Medieval warmth, the accompanying sea level fall led to abandoned residences, ships, and harbors.

The seas had become too shallow to sail in.

MWP 1.5C Warmer Than 1900–Says HH Lamb

by P. Homewood, Apr 1, 2024 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat


The Central England Temperature series is the longest running in existence, but still only goes back to 1659, pretty much the depth of the Little Ice Age, so it tells us little of real meaning.

However there exist many very real measures of temperatures going back much further – and I am not referring to the fraudulently used tree rings and the like.

HH Lamb published this chart in his book “Climate: Past, Present and Future” in 1977:

The State of the Great Barrier Reef 2024(.pdf)

by P. Ridd, Mar 2204, in AustralianEnvironmentFoundation


Table of Contents
Chapter 1: What is the Great Barrier Reef? 4
Chapter 2: The Great Barrier Reef and its coral: The Data. 11
2.1 The area and number of coral reefs on the Great Barrier Reef 11
2.2 Coral Cover: the amount of coral on the Great Barrier Reef. 11
2.3 Coral growth rates (calcification) 19
Chapter 3: Hot-water ‘bleaching’ on the Great Barrier Reef 23
3.1 Introduction 23
3.2 Are bleaching events a new phenomenon? 23
3.3 Corals and their algal friends. 25
3.4 Bleaching is not usually lethal: it is a survival strategy. 27
3.5 Analysis of past GBR bleaching events. 29
3.6: Excuses for Failed Bleaching Predictions 31
3.7 Corals Like it Hot. 33
Chapter 4: Impact of agriculture on coral 35
4.1 Introduction. 35
4.2 Water flushing time of the GBR. 36
4.3: Nutrient ‘pollution’. 38
4.4 Sediment ‘pollution’. 42
4.5 Pesticides. 49
Chapter 5: Stretching the GBR to the coast. 54
5.1 Introduction. 54
5.2 Inshore Reefs. 54
5.3 Mangrove Swamps. 61
5.4 Seagrass beds. 63
5.5 Coastal Freshwater ecosystems. 68
5.6 Importance of Coastal ecosystems to the Great Barrier Reef. 69
Chapter 6 Summary and conclusions 71
Appendix Usefulness of coral cover measurements. 74
About the Author 79
Acknowledgments

Calls for inquiry into Climate Change Committee

by P. Homewood, Mar 11, 2024 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat


More New Studies Indicate There Has Been No Climate-Induced Precipitation Trend Since The 1800s

by K. Richard, Mar 11, 2024 in NoTricksZone


CO2-induced global warming was supposed to intensify the hydrological cycle and extreme precipitation. It hasn’t.

New research (Mitchell and Knapp, 2024) at a southeastern United States study site indicates there has been no significant trend in either total precipitation or intense rainfall events (IRE) over the last 250 years (1770-2020).

However, there was more IRE precipitation from 1936-1959 than from 1960-2020. In fact, the most recent 60 years has the lowest record of extreme precipitation during the study, with averages of 81.20 mm for 1770–1935, 230.45 mm for 1936–1959, but just 168.27 mm during 1960–2020.

No, CNN, Climate Change Is Not Driving Doomsday Glacier’s Decline

by S. Burnett, Mar 5, 2024 in ClimateChangeDispatch


A CNN story implies that supposed human-caused climate change is causing the Thwaites Glacier to melt, causing sea level rise. This is false.

Data show that Antarctica has not been warming. Also, the study CNN cited itself shows the glacier has declined dramatically and recovered repeatedly in the past, all without human contribution, suggesting the present decline is part of a natural cycle. [emphasis, links added]

At approximately the size of Florida, the Thwaites Glacier is the broadest glacier on Earth. The Thwaites Glacier is often referred to as the “Doomsday Glacier,” based on the belief that a complete collapse would cause as much as two feet of sea level rise over time.

The CNN story, “The ‘Doomsday Glacier’ is rapidly melting. Scientists now have evidence for when it started and why,” discusses a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which determined when the present decline began.

“By analyzing marine sediment cores extracted from beneath the ocean floor, researchers found the glacier began to significantly retreat in the 1940s, likely kicked off by a very strong El Niño event — a natural climate fluctuation which tends to have a warming impact,” reports CNN.

“Since then, the glacier has been unable to recover, which may reflect the increasing impact of human-caused global warming, according to the report.”

Although the commencement of … Thwaites’ decline may now have been determined, any prognostications about future trends for the glacier are pure speculation, unsupported by historical evidence or data about present Antarctic trend.

The underlying reports determined that the Thwaites glacier’s decline commenced in the 1940s probably prompted by a powerful El Nino event that warmed the abutting waters.

….

Carbon NetZero: A Ridiculous Solution to an Imaginary Problem VIDEO

Dr. Patrick Moore, March 4, 2024 in FriendsofScience  


VIDEO 57’54”

3 900 vues 28 févr. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlcAKE04YvM

Carbon NetZero: A Ridiculous Solution to an Imaginary Problem – Dr. Patrick Moore presents a bit of his personal history as a Greenpeace Warrior, and now a compendium of his work as a warrior for common sense on climate and environmental problems. Drawing on some of the work from his book “Fake and Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom,” Dr. Moore exposes many of these climate and environmental myth

Warming Earth Has Changed U.S. Hardiness Zones

by  K. Hansen, March 4, 2024 in WUWT


Several times I have had readers at WUWT ask in comments:  “If the climate is changing, why haven’t the planting zone maps changed?”

Well, they have and they do.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture issues a new U.S.D.A. “Plant Hardiness Zone Map” periodically.  A new version of the map was just released on Nov. 15, 2023.  I became aware of it because my wife is an avid gardener and follows our local agricultural County Cooperative Extension news.

When she followed the link to the new Plant Hardiness map and checked our very local area, she was surprised to see that it had “warmed” here by 5°F.   Here is the bit of the page she was looking at:

She was a bit perplexed by this news, as we have been having not “hot” years but cooler years recently. It took me a minute to sort through it to see that the drop down was not clear on what temperature change they were talking about.  That temperature change elevated us one half a zone from zone 5b to zone 6a.

 

 

EXCLUSIVE: A Third of U.K. Met Office Temperature Stations May Be Wrong by Up to 5°C, FOI Reveals

by C. Morrison, March 1, 2024 in TheDailySceptic


Nearly one in three (29.2%) U.K. Met Office temperature measuring stations have an internationally-defined margin of error of up to 5°C. Another 48.7% of the total 380 stations could produce errors up to 2°C, meaning nearly eight out of ten stations (77.9%) are producing ‘junk’ or ‘near junk’ readings of surface air temperatures. Arguably, on no scientific basis should these figures be used for the Met Office’s constant promotion of the collectivist Net Zero project. Nevertheless, the state-funded operation frequently uses them to report and often catastrophic rises in temperature of as little as 0.01°C.

Under a freedom of information request, the Daily Sceptic has obtained a full list of the Met Office’s U.K. weather stations, along with an individual class rating defined by the World Meteorological Office. These CIMO ratings range from pristine class 1 and near pristine class 2, to an ‘anything goes’ or ‘junk’ class 5. The CIMO ratings penalise sites that are near any artificial heat sources such as buildings and concrete surfaces. According to the WMO, a class 5 site is one where nearby obstacles “create an inappropriate environment  for a meteorological measurement that is intended to be representative of a wide area”. Even the Met Office refers to sites next to buildings and vegetation as “undesirable”. It seems class 5 sites can be placed anywhere, and they come with a WMO warning of “additional estimated uncertainties added by siting up to 5°C”; class 4 notes “uncertainties” up to 2°C, while class 3 states 1°C. Only 13.7%, or 52 of the Met Office’s temperature and humidity stations come with no such ‘uncertainty’ warnings attached.

The above graph shows the percentage totals of each class. Class 1 and 2, identified in green, account for just 6.3% and 7.4% of the total respectively. Class 3 identified as orange comes in at 8.4%. The graph shows the huge majorities enjoyed by the darkening shades of red showing classes 4 and 5. It is possible that the margins of error identified for classes 3, 4 and 5 could be a minus amount – if for instance the measuring device was sited in a frost hollow – but the vast majority are certain to be pushed upwards by heat corruptions.

 

Meteorologist Debunks TIME Mag’s Claim That Jan 2024 Was Hottest On Record

by A. Watts, Feb 19, 2024 in ClimateChangeDispatch


An article in TIME Magazine (TIME) claims that January 2024 was the hottest ever on record for the planet. Titled, 2024 Had the Hottest January on Record Following 2023’s Hottest Year on Record the article is based on a single source of temperature data.

Data from multiple other sources of temperature measurements refute this claim. [emphasis, links added]

TIME refers to the Copernicus EU climate service as the source for its alarming claim. Copernicus EU issued a press release claiming:

January 2024 was the warmest January on record globally, with an average ERA5 surface air temperature of 13.14°C, 0.70°C above the 1991-2020 average for January and 0.12°C above the temperature of the previous warmest January, in 2020.

The month was 1.66°C warmer than an estimate of the January average for 1850-1900, the designated pre-industrial reference period.

The problem with that is that they are using a reference period of 1850 to 1900 that no other climate data source uses; a period, not coincidentally, more than 100 years of global warming ago when the Earth was cooler than today.

For example, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) produced a map of the globe that shows a significantly lower global temperature for January 2024.

The GISS global value was just 1.20°C compared to the 1.66°C claimed by Copernicus is different because NASA GISS is using a base period of 1951 to 1980.

Copernicus seemingly cherry-picked the reference period to fit the climate crisis narrative, and TIME was too uninterested in seeking and presenting the truth to investigate the extraordinary claim, instead reporting it as an unchallenged fact.

The Hockey Stick Trial: How Science Died In A D.C. Courtroom

by R .Darwall, Feb 20, 2024 in ClimateChangeDispatch


“Science,” wrote the philosopher Karl Popper, “is one of the very few human activities – perhaps the only one – in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected.”

The sub-title of Popper’s 1963 book Conjectures and Refutations, in which he argued that science progresses through inspired conjectures checked by attempts to refute them through criticism, is “The Growth of Scientific Knowledge.” [emphasis, links added]

Now, a six-person jury in Washington, DC has refuted Popper’s formulation of the uniqueness of science, finding in favor of climate scientist Michael Mann in the defamation suit he brought against Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn dating back to 2012.

Central to Mann’s case was his attempt to reconstruct global temperature over the previous millennium – the iconic “hockey stick” graph.

The graph shows global temperatures purportedly falling for centuries and suddenly shooting upward with the advent of the Industrial Revolution.

Mann’s hockey stick representation was derived principally from selected tree-ring data based on the assumption that tree rings constitute accurate proxies for temperature and are not contaminated by confounding factors such as rainfall, seasonal variability, and levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The results that Mann produced are also sensitive to decisions on and application of statistical techniques.

There can be little doubt of the hockey stick’s historical importance in developing and propagating what became the dominant scientific paradigm of climate change.

Climate Model Bias 1: What is a Model?

by A. May, Feb 29, 2024 in WUWT


There are three types of scientific models, as shown in figure 1. In this series of seven posts on climate model bias we are only concerned with two of them. The first are mathematical models that utilize well established physical, and chemical processes and principles to model some part of our reality, especially the climate and the economy. The second are conceptual models that utilize scientific hypotheses and assumptions to propose an idea of how something, such as the climate, works. Conceptual models are generally tested, and hopefully validated, by creating a mathematical model. The output from the mathematical model is compared to observations and if the output matches the observations closely, the model is validated. It isn’t proven, but it is shown to be useful, and the conceptual model gains credibility.

Models are useful when used to decompose some complex natural system, such as Earth’s climate, or some portion of the system, into its underlying components and drivers. Models can be used to try and determine which of the system components and drivers are the most important under various model scenarios.

Besides being used to predict the future, or a possible future, good models should also tell us what should not happen in the future. If these events do not occur, it adds support to the hypothesis. These are the tasks that the climate models created by the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP)[1] are designed to do. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)[2] analyzes the CMIP model results, along with other peer-reviewed research, and attempts to explain modern global warming in their reports. The most recent IPCC report is called AR6.[3]

In the context of climate change, especially regarding the AR6 IPCC[4] report, the term “model,” is often used as an abbreviation for a general circulation climate model.[5] Modern computer general circulation models have been around since the 1960s, and now are huge computer programs that can run for days or longer on powerful computers. However, climate modeling has been around for more than a century, well before computers were invented. Later in this report I will briefly discuss a 19th century greenhouse gas climate model developed and published by Svante Arrhenius.

Besides modeling climate change, AR6 contains descriptions of socio-economic models that attempt to predict the impact of selected climate changes on society and the economy. In a sense, AR6, just like the previous assessment reports, is a presentation of the results of the latest iteration of their scientific models of future climate and their models of the impact of possible future climates on humanity.

Introduction

Modern atmospheric general circulation computerized climate models were first introduced in the 1960s by Syukuro Manabe and colleagues.[6] These models, and their descendants can be useful, even though they are clearly oversimplifications of nature, and they are wrong[7] in many respects like all models.[8] It is a shame, but climate model results are often conflated with observations by the media and the public, when they are anything but.

Green Billionaires Press Hollywood to Promote Armageddon Climate Messages in Movies

by C. Morrison, Feb27, 2024 in TheDailySceptic


 

Green billionaires are pouring money into discreet campaigns to persuade Hollywood writers to catastrophise the climate in future film and television scripts. One of their main vehicles is Good Energy, which tells writers that showing anger, depression, grief or other emotion in relation to the climate crisis, “can only make characters more relatable”. Los Angeles-based Good Energy is funded by numerous billionaire foundations including Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Sierra Club and the Climate Emergency Fund; the latter operation is part-funded by Aileen Getty and is one of the paymasters of the Just Stop Oil pests.

Good Energy aims to weave climate alarm into all types of film-making, “especially” if it is not about climate. With the support of Bloomberg, it recently published ‘Good Energy – A Playbook for Screenwriting in the Age of Climate Change’. It claims the Playbook is “now the industry’s go-to guide to incorporating climate into any storyline or genre”. As with almost all green campaigning groups, Good Energy would not exist without the support of billionaire funding. These operations seek a supra-national collectivist Net Zero solution to a claimed climate emergency. Good Energy acknowledges it would not exist without this funding, adding, “as collaborators and champions, each has provided a unique contribution for which we are endlessly grateful”.

La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse