Carbon Loophole: Why Is Wood Burning Counted as Green Energy?

by Fred Pearce, December 19, 2017 in Yale Environment360


In September, some 200 scientists wrote to the EU insisting that “bioenergy [from forest biomass] is not carbon-neutral” and calling for tighter rules to protect forests and their carbon. Yet just a month later, EU ministers rubber-stamped the existing carbon accounting rules, reaffirming that the burning of wood pellets is renewable energy.

Where The Temperature Rules The Total Surface Absorption

by Willis Eschenbach, December 22, 2017 in WUWT


Reflecting upon my previous post, Where The Temperature Rules The Sun, I realized that while it was valid, it was just about temperature controlling downwelling solar energy via cloud variations. However, it didn’t cover total energy input to the surface. The total energy absorbed by the surface is the sum of the net solar energy (surface downwelling solar minus surface reflections) plus the downwelling longwave infrared, or DWIR. This is the total energy that is absorbed by and actually heats the surface.

CONTAMINATED ICE CORES: EVERYTHING WE KNOW ABOUT PALEO-CLIMATE MAY BE WRONG

by University of York, December 20, 2017 in GWPF

For the first time scientists have directly observed living bacteria in polar ice and snow — an environment once considered sterile. “As microbial activity and its influence on its local environment has never been taken into account when looking at ice-core gas samples it could provide a moderate source of error in climate history interpretations.”

 

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

See also here

SEA LEVEL: Rise and Fall – Part 3 – Computational Hubris

by Kip Hansen, December 19, 2017 in WUWT


There have been so many very good essays on Global Sea Level Rise by persons all of whom have a great deal more expertise than I.   Jo Nova hosts a dozen or so excellent essays, which point at another score of papers and publications, for the most part clearly demonstrating that there are two contrarian positions on sea level rise in the scientific community:  1) Sea level has risen, is rising and will continue to rise at a rate approximately 8-12 inches (20-30 centimeters) per century — due to geological and long-term climatic forces well beyond our control;  and 2a) Other than explicit cases of Local Relative SLR, the sea does not appear to be rising much over the last 50-70 years, if at all.  2b) If it is rising due to general warming of the climate it will not add much to position 1.

Increased ionization supports growth of aerosols into cloud condensation nuclei

by H. Svensmark et al., December 19, 2017 in NatureCommunications


 (…)In conclusion, a mechanism by which ions condense their mass onto small aerosols and thereby increase the growth rate of the aerosols, has been formulated theoretically and shown to be in good agreement with extensive experiments. The mechanism of ion-induced condensation may be relevant in the Earth’s atmosphere under pristine conditions, and able to influence the formation of CCN. It is conjectured that this mechanism could be the explanation for the observed correlations between past climate variations and cosmic rays, modulated by either solar activity or supernova activity in the solar neighborhood on very long time scales. The theory of ion-induced condensation should be incorporated into global aerosol models, to fully test the atmospheric implications.

See also here

COSMIC RAYS-CLIMATE LINK FOUND

by Dr David Whitehouse, December 19, 2017 in GWPF


The idea of a significant solar influence on climate change via cloud cover produced by cosmic rays has been proposed many times but it lacked conclusive experimental evidence as well as a detailed theoretical framework. Some have labelled the idea controversial with, at best, a weak effect. The principle is that cosmic rays – high-energy particles that traverse the galaxy from supernovae – knock electrons out of air molecules. This produces ions – electrically positive and negative molecules in the atmosphere. The ions help aerosols – clusters of mainly sulphuric acid and water molecules – to form and become stable against evaporation – a process is called nucleation. The problem was that small aerosols need to grow nearly a million times in mass in order to have an effect on cloud formation. Until now, it was not known how this could happen.

See also here

Understanding the climate impact of natural atmospheric particles

by University of Leeds, December 4, 2017 in ScienceDaily


Scientists have quantified the relationship between natural sources of particles in the atmosphere and climate change. Their research shows that the cooling effect of natural atmospheric particles is greater during warmer years and could therefore slightly reduce the amount that temperatures rise as a result of climate change.Share:

 

More Research Points To “Temperature Decline In The Coming Decades And Centuries”

by P Gosselin, December 15, 2017 in NoTricksZone


Geologist Dr. Norman Page left a comment which I’ve decided to upgrade to a post. In it he writes solar and La Nina observations fit well with his recent paper showing that climate is controlled by natural orbital and solar activity cycles.

Dr. Page is among a growing number of scientists who share the general view that natural solar and oceanic cycles are mostly driving the climate, just as they always have in the past.

Shoreline Change in Atoll Reef Islands

in Friends of Science, December 2017


This study gives irrefutable evidence on the persistence of atoll reef islands in French Polynesia over the last five decades, as 92% of the 111 islands studied exhibited either areal stability or expansion since the 1960s. Only 8% of the 111 islands showed contraction in area. Tropical cyclone waves contributed to island upward growth, which reached up to 1 m in places, through the transfer of sediments up onto the island surface.

Calculating the Cost of Global Warming

by Andy May, December 14, 2017 in WUWT


Hopefully, the first two posts in this series, “Do humans harm the environment” and “Population Growth and the Food Supply” have convinced the reader that man-made climate change and global warming are not an existential threat to humanity or the planet. This leaves us in a discussion of the cost of global warming, which is something we can calculate. To do the calculation, we need to estimate the monetary damages caused by global warming, when they will be incurred, and the discount rate of money over that period of time. We will not attempt the calculation here, it is too complex, but we can discuss the parameters and some of the calculations done by others.

Is climate change REALLY the culprit causing California’s wildfires?

by L. Kummer, December 14, 2017 in A. Watts, WUWT


We’re told that climate change caused or intensified California’s wildfires — and that such fires are getting worse. As usual for such scary stories, these claims are only weakly supported by science — except for the ones that are outright fabrications. See what scientists say and decide for yourself.

Dueling science: One study says melting Antarctic ice sheet will flood US east coast, others say ‘uncertain’

by Anthony Watts, December 13, 2017 in WUWT


(…) All of these press releases appeared within a couple of hours of each other on EurekAlert, which is a Science PR clearing house. They will all inevitably get turned into stories by the media. Who could blame the public for being confused when we have such certainty/uncertainty battles like this going on in climate science?

It seems Yogi Berra was right.

It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.

Study: a ‘statistically significant downward trend since 1950 exists’ in hurricane landfalls

by Anthony Watts, December 9, 2017 in WUWT


This is going to rattle some cages, while at the same time vindicating Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. A new study in Geophysical research Letters studies hurricane activity in the Atlantic concludes that a “statistically significant downward trend since 1950 exists”.

An Energetic Perspective on United States Tropical Cyclone Landfall Droughts
Authors Ryan E. Truchelut, Erica M. Staehling

Retraction request for Harvey et al. attack paper on Dr. Susan Crockford

by Dr. S. Crockford, in A. Watts, December 5, 2017 in WUWT


Essay by Dr. Susan Crockford (republished from her website https://polarbearscience.com )on Retraction request to Bioscience: FOIA emails document another harsh criticism of Amstrup’s 2007 polar bear model

Today I sent a letter to the editors of the journal Bioscience requesting retraction of the shoddy and malicious paper by Harvey et al. (Internet blogs, polar bears, and climate-change denial by proxy) published online last week.

The letter reveals information about the workings of the polar bear expert inner circle not known before now, so grab your popcorn.

See also here

“Pseudoscience is embraced, it might be argued, in exact proportion as real science is misunderstood”… Except in the case of climate change.

by David Middleton, December 5, 2017


(…) Petroleum geologists tend to be sedimentary geologists and sedimentary geology is essentially a combination of paleogeography and paleoclimatology. Depositional environments are defined by physical geography and climate. We literally do practice in a different world, the past. Geologists intuitively see Earth processes as cyclical and also tend to look at things from the perspective of “deep time.” For those of us working the Gulf of Mexico, we “go to work” in a world defined by glacioeustatic and halokinetic  processes and, quite frankly, most of us don’t see anything anomalous in recent climate changes.

Do 40,000 volcanoes matter?

by JoNova, December 5, 2017


The scope of our ignorance on the sea floor is really something. There are 1,500 active volcanoes on land, but on the sea floor we are still discovering them all the time. at least 39,000 of them rise one kilometer off the sea floor, but there are suspicions there might be up to 3 million, holey moley. The Hilliers paper estimates that 24,000 submarine volcanoes were not yet discovered in 2007.  Wikimedia is trying to list them. Good luck.

La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse