by Eric Worrall, April 20, 2019 in WUWT
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; In climate science, when your model predictions are wrong, you wait for the world to correct itself.
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Archives de catégorie : better to know…?
Native American Wisdom on Polar bears and Kappiananngittuq:
by Jim Steele, April 19, 2019 in WUWT
In 2010 Nunavut’s Minister of Environment Daniel Shewchuk wrote, “Inuit hunters have a close relationship with the land and wildlife. They have observed that the overall population of polar bears in Nunavut is not declining as some suggest, but rather is thriving. No known environmental or other factors are currently posing a significant or immediate threat to polar bears overall. Furthermore, Inuit knowledge and science corroborate that the species can and will adapt to changing and severe climatic conditions, as it has done for centuries.”
The Inuit truly practice the concept of “it takes a village”. Hunters sit down in kappiananngittuq and respectfully share their observations of wildlife and their movements. Kappiananngittuq is the Inuit word for a “safe place to discuss”. Based on community discussions, Inuit have steadfastly claimed it is “The Time of the Most Polar Bears”. Overhunting has been one of the world’s greatest threats to wildlife. And the growing number of polar bears is testimony to wise hunting regulations now honored by the Inuit.
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CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE TEN WARNING SIGNS FOR CULTS
by GWPF, April 18, 2019
Have you thought to yourself that the Climate Change movement seems more and more like a religious movement?
I have, so I researched how to identify a religious cult. Rick Ross, an expert on cults and intervention specialist,developed a list of ten warning signs for unsafe groups, which is published by the Cult Education Institute. So let’s take a look at all ten signs and compare:
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Biofuels: a long-standing illusion
by Prof. S. Furfari, April 4, 2019 in EuropeanScientist
The idea of replacing petroleum products with alternative fuels produced from agriculture dates back to the 1973 and 1979 oil crises. But apart from the development of bioethanol from cane sugar in Brazil, the idea had not come to fruition because it was not economically viable. It was the frenzy for some kind of sustainable development in the mid-2000s, combined with a perfect storm of realities, that led to the emergence of a political interest in biofuels.
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We now know how insects and bacteria control ice
by University of Utah, April 14, 2019 in WUWT
Proteins help organisms form or inhibit ice crystals
Contrary to what you may have been taught, water doesn’t always freeze to ice at 32 degrees F (zero degrees C). Knowing, or controlling, at what temperature water will freeze (starting with a process called nucleation) is critically important to answering questions such as whether or not there will be enough snow on the ski slopes or whether or not it will rain tomorrow.
Nature has come up with ways to control the formation of ice, though, and in a paper published today in the Journal of the American Chemical Society University of Utah professor Valeria Molinero and her colleagues show how key proteins produced in bacteria and insects can either promote or inhibit the formation of ice, based on their length and their ability to team up to form large ice-binding surfaces. The results have wide application, particularly in understanding precipitation in clouds.
“We’re now able to predict the temperature at which the bacterium is going to nucleate ice depending on how many ice-nucleating proteins it has,” Molinero says, “and we’re able to predict the temperature at which the antifreeze proteins, which are very small and typically don’t work at very low temperatures, can nucleate ice.”
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The Disturbing Walrus Scene in Our Planet
by Ed Yong, April 8 , 2019 in TheAtlantic
In the autumn of 2017, about 250 walruses in Russia, having climbed up to rocky slopes overlooking a beach, just walked over the edge.
Usually, gravity is no enemy of the walrus. When these animals encounter hard surfaces, they rise up to meet them, hauling their two-ton bulks onto floating pieces of ice. When they fall, they flop off those low platforms into the accommodating water. So you might imagine that a walrus, peering off a tall cliff, doesn’t really understand what will happen to it when it steps off. It doesn’t expect to plummet for 260 feet, cartwheel through the air, bounce off the rocks, and crash abruptly. Climb, plummet, cartwheel, bounce: These are not walrus-associated verbs.
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A walrus falls from a cliff overlooking a Russian beach.SOPHIE LANFEAR
Flashback 2008 – Climate change study predicts refugees fleeing into Antarctica
by P. Homewood, April 13, 2019 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat
Climate change will force refugees to move to Antarctica by 2030, researchers have predicted.
Among future scenarios are the Olympics being held in cyberspace and central Australia being abandoned, according to the think tank report.
Forum for the Future, a research body committed to sustainable development, said they wanted to stir debate about how to avert the worst effects of global warming by presenting a radical set of ‘possible futures’.
There will be a shift towards greater energy efficiency, where desalination plants will run on solar power will turn the Sahara green.Refugees are expected to move to Antarctica because of the rising temperatures that will see the population of the continent increase to 3.5 million people by 2040.
As the world fails to act on climate change, researchers predict that global trade will collapse as oil prices break through $400 a barrel and electrical appliances will get automatically turned off when households exceed energy quotas.
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Why California burns — its forests have too many trees
by T.M. Bonnicksen, November 12, 2018 in San FranciscoChronicle
The reason wildfires are burning California with unprecedented ferocity this year is because our public forests are so thick. It is our fault. We don’t manage our forests, we just let them grow. That is the simple truth. However, it is easier to deny the truth and blame a warming climate instead of admitting our guilt and taking action to prevent wildfires.
Hot, dry weather doesn’t cause catastrophic wildfires. It only makes them worse. In order for any fire to burn, it must have fuel. To spread wildly, it must have abundant fuel. Efforts in the 20th century to prevent fire and preserve forests have been too successful — they have disrupted the ecological balance and allowed more and more trees to grow.
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End Of Snow Postponed
by Tony Heller, April 12, 2019 in ClimateChangeDispatch
A quarter-century ago, the world’s leading climate experts predicted the end of skiing.
The exact opposite has occurred. Ski areas are receiving record snow and some are staying open all year round.
It wasn’t always like this though. In 1932, the Winter Olympics almost had to be canceled because of a lack of snow.
13 Dec 1995, Page 13 – The Times at Newspapers.com
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Netflix Series ‘Our Planet’ Accused Of Fake Climate Change Claims
by Graham Lloyd, April 10, 2019 in ClimateChangeDispatch
Netflix’s acclaimed Our Planet series has come under fire for “tragedy porn” over images of walruses falling to their deaths from cliff tops, allegedly because of climate change.
The Our Planet footage, narrated by David Attenborough, showed dozens of the animals climbing up 80-meter-high outcrops in northeast Russia because of a lack of sea ice.
They were shown plunging onto the rocks below, with hundreds of dead animals piled on the shoreline. A voice-over by Attenborough claimed their poor eyesight made it hard for them to return safely to the ocean.
But a Canadian zoologist has dismissed the claims as “contrived nonsense” and said the walruses were most likely driven over the cliffs by polar bears.
Susan Crockford, of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, told The Telegraph UK: “This powerful story is fiction and emotional manipulation at its worst.”
The polar bear expert said that at the time the footage was shot in 2017 at Kozhevnikova Cape, Ryrkaypiy, in eastern Russia, the town was being besieged by polar bears.
According to The Siberian Times, 20 bears had surrounded the town, attracted by 5,000 walruses that had appeared at a local protection zone.
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Peak Ghawar: A Peak Oiler’s Nightmare
by David Middleton, April 10, 2019 in WUWT
Alternate title:
No… “The biggest Saudi oil field is [NOT] fading faster than anyone guessed”… Part Trois: Why Peak Oil Is Irrelevant and the Perpetually Refilling Abiotic Oil Field Is Abject Nonsense
Saudi Aramco’s recent bond prospectus has generated a lot of media buzz, particularly regarding the production from Ghawar, the largest oil field in the world. Reaction has ranged from “The biggest Saudi oil field is fading faster than anyone guessed,” (not even wrong) to more subdued reactions from Ellen Wald and Robert Rapier, that the prospectus doesn’t really tell us much Ghawar’s decline rate. One thing that the bond prospectus did do, is to paint a picture of the most profitable company in the world and one that is serious when it says it will produce the last barrel of oil ever produced on Earth.
How big is Ghawar? Has it peaked? Is it “fading faster than anyone guessed”? The answer to the first question is: FRACKING YUGE. The answer to the second question was not easily answerable before Saudi Aramco began the process of becoming a publicly traded company. The answer to the third question is: Of course not.
As Saudi Aramco proceeds towards a 2021 IPO, it has had to embrace transparency. This involved an audit of the proved reserves in their largest fields, comprising about 80% of the company’s value. The audit was conducted by the highly respected DeGolyer and MacNaughton firm (D&M). The audit actually determined that the proved reserves are slightly larger than Aramco’s internal estimate.
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2019 ENSO forecast
by J. Curry and J. Johnstone, April 9, 2019 in WUWT
CFAN’s 2019 ENSO forecast is for a transition away from El Niño conditions as the summer progresses. The forecast for Sept-Oct-Nov 2019 calls for 60% probability of ENSO neutral conditions, with 40% probability of weak El Niño conditions. – Forecast issued 3/25/19
Introduction
CFAN’s early season ENSO forecast is motivated by preparing our seasonal forecast for Atlantic hurricane activity. ENSO forecasts made in spring have traditionally had very low skill owing to the ENSO ‘spring predictability barrier.’
During fall 2018, there was warming in the Central Equatorial Pacific, leading to a weak El Niño Modoki pattern, which impacted the latter part of the Atlantic hurricane season. This transitioned to a weak (conventional) El Niño in February 2019 and the atmospheric anomalies became more consistent with a conventional El Niño pattern.
NOAA’s latest forecast: Weak El Niño conditions are likely to continue through the Northern Hemisphere spring 2019 (~80% chance) and summer (~60% chance).
CFAN’s ENSO forecast analysis is guided by the ECMWF SEAS5 seasonal forecast system and a newly developed statistical forecast scheme based on global climate dynamics analysis.
ENSO statistics
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Figure 1 illustrates the recent ENSO history as depicted by monthly Niño 3.4 anomalies from 1980 to February 2019.
Nuclear Power Can Save the World
by J.S. Goldstein et al., April 6, 2019
As young people rightly demand real solutions to climate change, the question is not what to do — eliminate fossil fuels by 2050 — but how. Beyond decarbonizing today’s electric grid, we must use clean electricity to replace fossil fuels in transportation, industry and heating. We must provide for the fast-growing energy needs of poorer countries and extend the grid to a billion people who now lack electricity. And still more electricity will be needed to remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by midcentury.
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CO2 Emissions Up As Europeans Switch From Diesel To Gasoline Cars
by K. Oroschakoff, April 6, 2019 in WUWT
The aftermath of the Dieselgate scandal is pushing drivers to switch from diesel to gasoline cars, undermining efforts to cut carbon dioxide emissions from road transport.
Average CO2 emissions from new cars rose in 2017 for the first time since 2010 — largely due to the fuel change, according to final data released by the European Environment Agency (EEA) on Thursday.
That’s bad news for the EU’s efforts to cut emissions by at least 40 percent by 2030. Cars are responsible for around 12 percent of total EU CO2 emissions, according to the European Commission.
The EEA said that average CO2 emissions from new cars sold in 2017 increased by 0.4 grams of CO2 per kilometer to 118.5 grams, up from 118.1 grams in 2016. Under EU rules, carmakers need to meet a fleet-wide target of 95 grams by 2021.
Since 2010, emissions from new cars have fallen by 15.5 percent, or almost 22 grams of CO2 per kilometer; but emission reductions slowed between 2015 and 2016.
The rise in car pollution in 2017 is “stark confirmation that car makers need to achieve further and faster improvements in manufacturing and promoting more efficient cars,” the EEA said.
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What would life be like without fossil fuels such as gas and oil?
by Anthony Watts, April 6, 2019 in WUWT
Leftists like Bill McKibben of 350.org suffer from irrational fantasies that lead them to believe that we can move society forward without all the benefits that petroleum brings to our modern society.
They’re dead wrong of course, and this short humorous video illustrates just what life might be like without the many products and energy sources that are derived from petroleum. My favorite is ink, which if we didn’t get from petroleum, we wouldn’t have to see print editions of NYT, WaPo, and the Lost Angeles Times, to name a few.
You also wouldn’t be able to read this article, because the very keyboard I am typing this on is made from plastic, which you guessed it, is derived from petroleum.
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According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), this is a list of petroleum products and their share of total US petroleum consumption in 2013.
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Gasoline 46%
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Heating Oil / Diesel Fuel 20%
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Jet Fuel ( kerosene) 8%
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Propane / Propylene 7%
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NGL / LRG 6%
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Still Gas 4%
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Petrochemical Feedstocks 2%
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Petroleum Coke 2%
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Residual / Heavy Fuel Oil 2%
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Asphalt / Road Oil 2%
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Lubricants 1%
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Miscellaneous Products / Special Naphthas 0.4%
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Other Liquids 1%
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Aviation Gasoline 0.1%
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Waxes 0.04%
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Kerosene 0.02%
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Nuclear power excluded from EU’s green investment label
by C. Stam & A. Prager, April 3, 2019 in EurActiv
The text voted in Parliament also excludes fossil fuels and gas infrastructure from the EU’s proposed green finance taxonomy, which aims to divert investments away from polluting industries into clean technologies.
In a bid to prevent “green-washing”, the Parliament text also requires investors to disclose whether their financial products have sustainability objectives, and if they do, whether the product is consistent with the EU’s green assets classification, or taxonomy.
While activists applauded the move, they said the classification voted by the European Parliament was too narrow and applies only to a limited set of recognisable green assets, such as wind and solar power companies.
“Brown list” rejected
An amendment to publish a “brown list” to name and shame investments seen as damaging for the environment was rejected by Parliament.
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2019 Hurricane season forecast: below average
by Anthony Watts, April 4, 2019 in WUWT
Dr. Philip Klotzbach of Colorado State University writes on Twitter:
Seasonal #hurricane forecast from @ColoradoStateU predicts slightly below-average season: 13 named storms, 5 hurricanes & 2 major (Cat 3+, >=111 mph) hurricanes. Primary reason for slightly below-avg forecast is anticipated continuation of weak #ElNino.
We anticipate that the 2019 Atlantic basin hurricane season will have slightly belownormal activity. The current weak El Niño event appears likely to persist and perhaps even strengthen this summer/fall. Sea surface temperatures averaged across the tropical Atlantic are slightly below normal, and the far North Atlantic is anomalously cool.
Our Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation index is below its long-term average. We anticipate a slightly below-average probability for major hurricanes making landfall along the continental United States coastline and in the Caribbean. As is the case with all hurricane seasons, coastal residents are reminded that it only takes one hurricane making landfall to make it an active season for them. They should prepare the same for every season, regardless of how much activity is predicted.
PROBABILITIES FOR AT LEAST ONE MAJOR (CATEGORY 3-4-5) HURRICANE LANDFALL ON EACH OF THE FOLLOWING COASTAL AREAS:
1) Entire continental U.S. coastline – 48% (average for last century is 52%)
2) U.S. East Coast Including Peninsula Florida – 28% (average for last century is 31%)
3) Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle westward to Brownsville – 28% (average for last century is 30%)
PROBABILITY FOR AT LEAST ONE MAJOR (CATEGORY 3-4-5) HURRICANE TRACKING INTO THE CARIBBEAN
(10-20°N, 88-60°W) 1) 39% (average for last century is 42%)
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La voiture à hydrogène est un miroir aux alouettes de la transition énergétique
by Olivier Daniélo, 2 avril 2019 in Reporterre
Il y a urgence à agir pour réduire les émissions de CO2. La marche et le vélo sont certes préférables à la voiture particulière. Mais parmi les différents types de voitures, quelle est la solution la plus efficace pour réduire les émissions de CO2 ?
Il existe un indicateur particulièrement intéressant pour tenter d’y répondre : la quantité d’énergie consommée pour réaliser par exemple 200.000 kilomètres. Energie non seulement pour propulser la voiture, mais aussi pour fabriquer la voiture elle-même et extraire dans les mines les matières premières nécessaires. Le bilan carbone est bien entendu corrélé au bilan énergétique. Les experts du groupe Volkswagen (VW) ont fait le calcul et ont présenté les résultats le 12 mars 2019 à l’occasion de la conférence de presse annuelle de ce mastodonte dont les décisions influencent l’industrie automobile mondiale.
Verdict : la voiture aux carburants synthétiques (eFuel et eCNG) consomme trois fois plus d’énergie primaire que la voiture électrique. Et celle à l’hydrogène, 1,7 fois plus. Ces 70 % supplémentaires représentent un impact à la fois économique et carbonique. La fabrication de la pile à combustible et du réservoir capable de résister à une pression de 700 atmosphères est énergivore. La voiture à hydrogène la plus vendue au monde (quelques milliers d’exemplaires) pèse 1.850 kg, soit 3 kilos de plus que la Tesla Model 3 Long Range (100 % batterie), qui a la même autonomie. Mais, c’est surtout le mauvais rendement de la chaîne hydrogène qui plombe le bilan global.
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Fabricating A Warming: NASA Now Altering ‘Unadjusted” Data To Create New, Warmer ‘Unadjusted’ Data
by P. Gosselin, March 31, 2019 in NoTricksZone
By Kirye
and Pierre Gosselin
One fellow climate blogger recently wrote on how he’s been been looking at GHCN ‘unadjusted’ data and noticed that scientists at NASA appear to have been altering them: “This is a fairly disturbing development,” he wrote.
Heating up Reykjavik and Nuuk
Cited as an example is Reykyavik, Iceland. According to Tony Heller here, “The current version V4 has massively cooled the past, to make it look like Iceland is warming.”
Heller then posted a chart showing the difference between v2 unadjusted and the new v4 ‘unadjusted’ for the Reykjavik station.
Heller also found here that the same appears to be the case for Nuuk, Greenland as well.
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Methane warming exaggerated by 400%
by Barry Brill, March 30, 2019 in WUWT
The IPCC’s AR5 estimated the global warming caused by a tonne of livestock methane would be 28 times that of a tonne of carbon dioxide. New research destroys that estimate.
The war on meat has been gathering pace amongst our Western elites. The Economist makes a detailed case for “plant-based food” in the interests of quelling climate change –
The FAO calculates that cattle generate up to two-thirds of the greenhouse gases from livestock, and are the world’s fifth largest source of methane. If cows were a country, the United Herds of Earth would be the planet’s third largest greenhouse-gas emitter.
These calculations are based on figures supplied by the IPCC’s AR5, which contends that the global warming potential (GWP) of methane over 100 years is no less than 28 times the global warming it expects to be caused by an equivalent weight of carbon dioxide. This estimate is up from the GWP of 21 put forward in the IPCC’s previous report.
All this is now challenged by a new and authoritative research paper, Allen et al (2017): “A solution to the misrepresentations of CO2-equivalent emissions of short-lived climate pollutants, under ambitious mitigation”. This paper finds that conventional GWPs misrepresent the impact of short-lived gases (such as methane) on global temperature – and recommends the adoption of a new metric, denoted as GWP*.
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REPORT: GREEN ENERGY ECONOMY IS SIMPLY ‘IMPOSSIBLE’
by Mark P. Mills, March 23, 2019 in GWPF
Hydrocarbons—oil, natural gas, and coal—are the world’s principal energy resource today and will continue to be so in the foreseeable future. Wind turbines, solar arrays, and batteries, meanwhile, constitute a small source of energy, and physics dictates that they will remain so. Meanwhile, there is simply no possibility that the world is undergoing—or can undergo—a near-term transition to a “new energy economy.”
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see the .pdf
EIA AEO shows U.S. CO2 emissions 1 billion metric tons below 2007 peak in 2050
by Larry Hamlin, March 23, 2019 in WUWT
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) has released its 2019 Annual Energy Outlook(AEO) report for the U.S. showing that the nations year 2050 CO2 emissions will be just over 1 billion metric tons per year lower than its peak year 2007 CO2 emissions of 6.021 billion metric tons which retains and sustains the CO2 reductions achieved because of market driven increased use of natural gas while reducing coal fuel use.
During this same time period the world’s developing nations are forecast to increase their CO2 emissions by more than 14.5 billion metric tons per year bringing their CO2 emissions levels to a total of about 6 times those of the U.S.
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Le “Changement climatique global’ ne cause pas de disparitions d’espèces
by Prof. Paul Berth, 22 mars 2019 in ScienceClimateEnergie
Contrairement à ce que les médias tentent de vous faire croire, le changement climatique global n’est pas une cause majeure de disparition d’espèces. Une récente étude publiée en mars 2019 dans le journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment vous le démontre : la cause majeure d’extinction est l’introduction d’espèces exotiques envahissantes (EEE) dans les écosystèmes. Ce phénomène, bien connu des biologistes et confirmé par l’IUCN(Union Internationale pour la Conservation de la Nature), est malheureusement peu connu du grand public.
1. Introduction
En se déplaçant d’un continent à l’autre, l’être humain a toujours emmené avec lui toute une série de plantes et d’animaux qui se retrouvaient ainsi en dehors de leurs limites biogéographiques habituelles. Avec le développement du commerce international ce phénomène ne fait que s’amplifier. Par exemple, à l’intérieur de l’Union Européenne, le nombre d’EEE aurait augmenté de 76% entre 1970 et 2007. Bien que l’impact écologique de la plupart des espèces introduites est inconnu ou semble négligeable, il est démontré que certaines introductions d’espèces ont provoqué des changements substantiels dans des écosystèmes[1]. Ces changements incluent souvent la disparition d’espèces locales[2]. On a d’abord pensé que ces phénomènes d’extinction étaient exagérés et que des espèces locales pouvaient également être à la base d’extinctions[3], et certains auteurs pensent même que les efforts déployés pour contrôler ou éradiquer les espèces étrangères introduites ne seraient pas nécessaires[4]. Cependant, personne n’a jamais vraiment testé si les espèces introduites provoquaient plus ou moins d’extinctions par rapport aux espèces locales ou aux autres causes d’extinctions. Cette question a donc été étudiée par l’équipe de Tim Blackburn (University College London, UK) dans une récente publication de mars 2019[5]. Ils ont pour cela utilisé la base de données des extinctions globales fournie par l’IUCN.
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Figure 1. Nombre d’extinctions animales récentes (catégories IUCN “extinct” [EX] et “extinct in the wild” [EW]) pour différents groupes d’animaux (chiffres issus de la Table 3a de l’IUCN). Les couleurs renseignent sur les causes des extinctions (“Driver”); par exemple le mauve foncé est employé pour les EEE (“Alien”), les extinctions causées par des espèces locales (“Native”) sont en mauve clair. La catégorie “Neither” comporte les autres causes d’extinction ou alors des causes inconnues (source, Blackburn et al. 2019).
Bjørn Lomborg on ‘climate strikes’ – normalization of extreme language reflects decades of climate-change alarmism
by Anthony Watts, March 19, 2019 in WUWT
It is little wonder that kids are scared when grown-ups paint such a horrific picture of global warming.
For starters, leading politicians and much of the media have prioritized climate change over other issues facing the planet. Last September, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres described climate change as a “direct existential threat” that may become a “runaway” problem. Just last month, The New York Times ran a front-page commentary on the issue with the headline “Time to Panic.” And some prominent politicians, as well as many activists, have taken the latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to suggest the world will come to an end in just 12 years.
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NOAA : “among the eight warmest Februarys on record”
by Tony Heller, March 19, 2019 in TheDeplorableClimSciBLog
NOAA says last month was “among the eight warmest Februarys on record” in much of the Earth.
According to NCEI’s Regional Analysis, South America, Europe and Oceania had a February temperature that ranked among the eight warmest Februarys on record.
There is no such word as “Februarys” – plural for February is Februaries. But besides the fact they are illiterate, they are also lying
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It looks like the world is burning up, with just a few slightly cool areas. It has an official government seal on it, so it must be accurate, right?
The map below shows where NOAA actually had surface temperatures in February.
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