Durable Original Measurement Uncertainty

by Kip Hansen, October 14, 2017 in WUWT


Temperature and Water Level (MSL) are two hot topic measurements being widely bandied about and vast sums of money are being invested in research to determine whether, on a global scale, these physical quantities — Global Average Temperature and Global Mean Sea Level — are changing, and if changing, at what magnitude and at what rate. The Global Averages of these ever-changing, continuous variables are being said to be calculated to extremely precise levels — hundredths of a degree for temperature and millimeters for Global Sea Level — and minute changes on those scales are claimed to be significant and important.

The End Of The Ocean Acidification Scare For Corals

by McCulloch et al., 2017, October 2017,  in co2science


Paper Reviewed: McCulloch, M.T., D’Olivo, J.P., Falter, J., Holcomb, M. and Trotter, J.A. 2017. Coral calcification in a changing world and the interactive dynamics of pH and DIC upregulation. Nature Communications 8: 15686, DOI:10.1038/ncomms15686

(…) The implications of the above findings are enormous, for they reveal that “pHcf upregulation occurs largely independent of changes in seawater carbonate chemistry, and hence ocean acidification,” demonstrating “the ability of the coral to ‘control’ what is arguably one of its most fundamental physiological processes, the growth of its skeleton within which it lives.

See also here

Antarctique: des milliers de bébés manchots meurent de faim en terre Adélie

by l’express, 13 october 2017


La découverte a été effectuée par des scientifiques français du CNRS, dans ce groupe qui vivait sur l’île de Petrels, en terre Adélie. Hormis les deux bébés manchots survivants, ils n’ont retrouvé que des corps d’animaux affamés et des oeufs non-éclos. Ces chercheurs, soutenus par le Fonds mondial pour la nature (WWF), observaient depuis 2010 cette colonie. Selon eux, l’étendue inhabituelle de la banquise a contraint les parents à aller plus loin chercher leur nourriture. Leur progéniture ont succombé à la faim.

Ce n’est pas le pétrole qui disparaît, c’est la demande de pétrole

by Philippe Simonnot, 12 october 2017 in Le Causeur


Le prix du baril de pétrole, qui était de 1 dollar en 1972, est monté à près de 150  dollars en 2013, avec des projections qui le voyaient aller jusqu’à 300  dollars. Et le voilà retombé aujourd’hui aux alentours de 50  dollars. Pour expliquer une évolution aussi spectaculaire, il faut comprendre que le pétrole a été à un moment  un prix politique, mais que la loi du marché a pris sa revanche

SEA LEVEL: Rise and Fall- Part 2 – Tide Gauges

by Kip Hansen, October 7, 2017 in WUWT


There are two important points which readers must be aware of from the first mention of Sea Level Rise (SLR):

  1. SLR is a real concern to coastal cities, low-lying islands and coastal and near-coastal densely-populated areas. It can be real problem. See Part 1 of this series.

  2. SLR is not a threat to much else — not now, not in a hundred years — probably not in a thousand years — maybe, not ever. While it is a valid concern for some coastal cities and low-lying coastal areas, in a global sense, it is a fake problem. 

News From Vostok Ice Cores

by Richard Taylor, October 6, 2017 in WUWT


A Russian team, however, has been active establishing a chronology of deuterium from snow-cores and -pits near the Vostok station (A.A. Ekaykin, et al., 2014). A summary (www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/study/22532) with digital data became available in May, 2017. The data include annual measurements from 1654 to 2010, providing an overlap with the ice-core record that enables an assessment of present conditions from the perspective of ice-core record.

La propagande climatique est… “En Marche !”

by Vincent Benard,  4 octobre 2017, in Objectifeco


Le 21 septembre dernier, En Marche, parti politique du président Emmanuel Macron, publiait sur son site une page pleine de chiffres se voulant effrayants sur les risques liés au réchauffement climatique. Or, nous allons constater que les chiffres présentés sont soit faux, soit présentés de façon totalement fallacieuse. Vous me direz que ce genre de publication n’est pas nouveau. Certes. Mais là, cela vient directement du parti du président en exercice, et donc il convient d’essayer d’y répondre, sachant que de telles publications sont rarement dénuées d’arrières pensées politiques.

So What Happened to Expertise with the IPCC?

by John Ridgway, October 6, 2017 in WUWT


It was late evening, April 19, 1995, that the crestfallen figure of McArthur Wheeler could be found slumped over a Pittsburgh Police Department’s interrogation room table. Forlorn and understandably distressed by his predicament, he could be heard muttering dumbfounded astonishment at his arrest. “I don’t understand it,” he would repeat, “I wore the juice, I wore the juice!” (. . .)

Arctic Ice Natural Variability

by Javier, October 5, 2017 in WUWT


A year ago I wrote an article at WUWT analyzing the recent upward trend in summer Arctic sea ice extent. Despite challenges of statistical irrelevancy, the trend has continued another year. Arctic ice experts, that have repeatedly predicted the demise of summer ice, don’t have an explanation for a 10-year trend that contradicts their predictions, beyond statistical variability or unexplained natural variability.

NEW STUDY: CLIMATE SCIENCE CONTROVERSY IS GOOD FOR SCIENCE

by Ferenc Janko et al., , September 2017, in GWPF


Debate and controversy concerning the issue of climate change generally results in the hindering and obstruction of social and governmental action on this issue. This paper analyses the scientific background, i.e. the reference list of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report ‘‘The Physical Science Basis’’ and an alternative climate change report of a US think tank institute ‘‘Climate Change Reconsidered II. Physical Science’’.

See also here

Natural climate variability, part 2: Interpretation of the post 2000 temperature standstill

by N. Scaffetta et al., September1, 2017 in Int.J.Heat.Technology


The period from 2000 to 2016 shows a modest warming trend that the advocates of the anthropogenic global warming theory have labeled as the “pause” or “hiatus.” These labels were chosen to indicate that the observed temperature standstill period results from an unforced internal fluctuation of the climate (e.g. by heat uptake of the deep ocean) that the computer climate models are claimed to occasionally reproduce without contradicting the anthropogenic global warming theory (AGWT) paradigm. In part 1 of this work, it was shown that the statistical analysis rejects such labels with a 95% confidence because the standstill period has lasted more than the 15 year period limit provided by the AGWT advocates themselves.

See also here

Thanks to Shale, U.S. CO2 Emissions Continued to Decline in 2016

by Nicole Jacobs, October 3, 2017 in ClimateChangeDispatch


The report, which bases its CO2 emissions estimates off International Energy Agency (IEA) and BP data through 2016, found the global CO2 levels essentially remained flat in 2015 and 2016. As BP noted earlier this year, the global trend is “well below the 10-year average growth of 1.6% and a third consecutive year of below-average growth” and that “during 2014-16, average emissions growth has been the lowest over any three-year period since 1981-83.”

Tropical explosive volcanic eruptions can trigger El Niño by cooling tropical Africa

by M. Khodri et al., October 3,  2017 in Nature


Stratospheric aerosols from large tropical explosive volcanic eruptions backscatter shortwave radiation and reduce the global mean surface temperature. Observations suggest that they also favour an El Niño within 2 years following the eruption. Modelling studies have, however, so far reached no consensus on either the sign or physical mechanism of El Niño response to volcanism

Global Temperature Report: September 2017

by Anthony Watts, October 2, 2017 in WUWT


Warmest September in satellite temperature record

Boosted by warmer than normal water in the equatorial eastern Pacific Ocean that peaked in June and July, global average temperatures in the atmosphere rose to record levels in September, according to Dr. John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. Not only was it the warmest September on record, it was also the warmest month (compared to seasonal norms) in the 38-year satellite temperature record that wasn’t associated with an “officially recognized” El Niño Pacific Ocean warming event.

Global nickel anomaly links Siberian Traps eruptions and the latest Permian mass extinction

by Michael R. Rampino et al., October 2017, in Nature


Anomalous peaks of nickel abundance have been reported in Permian-Triassic boundary sections in China, Israel, Eastern Europe, Spitzbergen, and the Austrian Carnic Alps. New solution ICP-MS results of enhanced nickel from P-T boundary sections in Hungary, Japan, and Spiti, India suggest that the nickel anomalies at the end of the Permian were a worldwide phenomenon.

See also here and here

Did life on Earth start due to meteorites splashing into warm little ponds?

by McMaster University, October 2, 2017 in ScinceDaily


Life on Earth began somewhere between 3.7 and 4.5 billion years ago, after meteorites splashed down and leached essential elements into warm little ponds, say scientists. Their calculations suggest that wet and dry cycles bonded basic molecular building blocks in the ponds’ nutrient-rich broth into self-replicating RNA molecules that constituted the first genetic code for life on the planet.

Tropical Cyclone Trends

by Australian Gov. Bureau of Meteorology, September 2017


Tropical cyclones in the Australian region are influenced by a number of factors, and in particular variations in the El Niño – Southern Oscillation. In general, more tropical cyclones cross the coast during La Niña years, and fewer during El Niño years.

Analysis of historical tropical cyclone data has limitations due to a number of changes in observing practices and technology that have occurred over time. With new and improved meteorological satellites our ability to detect tropical cyclones has improved, as has our ability to differentiate tropical cyclones from other tropical weather systems such as monsoon depressions, which in the past may have been incorrectly named as tropical cyclones. A particularly important change occurred in the late 1970s when regular satellite images became first available from geostationary satellites above the Earth’s equator.

See also here

Incredible moment more than 230 polar bears descend on a Russian beach to feast on a giant whale carcass

by Will Stewart,  September 29, 2017 in ‘The Sun’ 


The extraordinary sight was witnessed by tourists on an Arctic cruise aboard the Finnish-built MV Akademik Shokalskiy.

A source at Wrangel Island Nature Reserve said: “There were at least 230 polar bears, including single males, single females, mothers with cubs and even two mothers with four cubs each.”

Experts called the sight of so many polar bears together “unique”. The huge number could in fact amount to as much one per cent of the entire world’s population of the creatures.

La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse