The rise of algae in Cryogenian oceans and the emergence of animals

by Jochen J. Brocks et al., August 2017, in Nature


The ‘Rise of Algae’ created food webs with more efficient nutrient and energy transfers, driving ecosystems towards larger and increasingly complex organisms. This effect is recorded by the concomitant appearance of biomarkers for sponges and predatory rhizarians, and the subsequent radiation of eumetazoans in the Ediacaran period.

See also here

The Global Temperature Record Is A Farce

by Tony Heller, August 16, 2017 in DeplorableClimSciBlog


NASA says  97% of scientists agree that their temperature graphs are accurate, and NASA, NOAA, CRU and JMA all independently agree very precisely about global temperature going back to 1880.

This is quite remarkable, considering that NASA doesn’t agree with their own data, having doubled 1880-2000 warming over the past 15 years.

Record-shattering 2.7-million-year-old ice core reveals start of the ice ages

by Paul Voosen, August 15, 2017


Scientists announced today that a core drilled in Antarctica has yielded 2.7-million-year-old ice, an astonishing find 1.7 million years older than the previous record-holder

(…)

If the new result holds up, says Yige Zhang, a paleoclimatologist at Texas A&M University in College Station, the proxies will need to be recalibrated. “We have some work to do.”

Geologists warn us about dangerous volcanoes. Will we spend pennies for warnings?

by Larry Kummer, August 15, 2017


While we obsess about climate change and debate if we live in the Anthropocene, we prepare poorly or not at all for natural forces like volcanoes that can level cities. This is folly we can no longer afford. Experts recommend a simple first step to better protect ourselves. Let’s start listening, or nature will teach us an expensive lesson.

California is the State most at risk due to its volcanoes near major cities, as shown in this map from the website of the California Volcano Observatory

35 New Papers Affirm Warmth, Elevated CO2 Are Good For The Earth And Its Inhabitants

by Kenneth Richard, August 14, 2017 in NoTricksZone


Future Global Warming Scenarios ‘Potentially Beneficial’, Cooling May Cause Ecological ‘Declines’ / Human Health Risks ‘Extremely Sensitive’ To Temperature, With Cold Temperatures More Dangerous/Mass Extinctions Caused By Cold Temperatures (Ice Ages), Not Global Warming/ …

On Carbon Dioxide Toxicity

by Blair King, April 10, 2016


Specifically the Bureau of Land Management Health Risk Evaluation for Cabon Dioxyde  points out:

A value of 40,000 ppm is considered immediately dangerous to life and health based on the fact that a 30-minute exposure to 50,000 ppm produces intoxication, and concentrations greater than that (7-10%) produce unconsciousness (NIOSH 1996; Tox. Review 2005). Additionally, acute toxicity data show the lethal concentration low (LCLo) for CO2 is 90,000 ppm (9%) over 5 minutes (NIOSH 1996).

See also The Lake Nyos Disaster

See also here

An Inconvenient Split?

by Paul Matthews, August 13, 2017 in CimateScepticism


In many ways, the climate debate has hardly changed since I got interested in it about ten years ago. Public opinion wobbles up and down with hardly any real change. The same tired arguments and claims come round again: every climate conference is the last chance to save the planet; the Arctic ice is always about to vanish in one or two years, or ten years; climate scientists continue to be accused of selecting data sets to create hockeysticks and manipulating data; and teams of climate scientists keep producing reports saying almost exactly the same thing as the previous reports, which then get misrepresented and hyped by the media.

Scientists discover 91 volcanoes below Antarctic ice sheet

by Robin McKie, August 12, 2017 The Guardian


The Edinburgh volcano survey, reported in the Geological Society’s special publications series, involved studying the underside of the west Antarctica ice sheet for hidden peaks of basalt rock similar to those produced by the region’s other volcanoes. Their tips actually lie above the ice and have been spotted by polar explorers over the past century.

See also here and here

Des scientifiques découvrent 91 nouveaux volcans sous les glaciers de l’Antarctique

Statistical link between external climate forcings and modes of ocean variability

by Abdul Malik et al., July 31, 2017, Climate Dynamics, Springer


In this study we investigate statistical link between external climate forcings and modes of ocean variability on inter-annual (3-year) to centennial (100-year) timescales using de-trended semi-partial-cross-correlation analysis technique. To investigate this link we employ observations (AD 1854–1999), climate proxies (AD 1600–1999), and coupled Atmosphere-Ocean-Chemistry Climate Model simulations with SOCOL-MPIOM (AD 1600–1999). We find robust statistical evidence that Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation (AMO) has intrinsic positive correlation with solar activity in all datasets employed. The strength of the relationship between AMO and solar activity is modulated by volcanic eruptions and complex interaction among modes of ocean variability.

Cooling Deep Oceans – and the Earth’s General Background Temperature

by Wim Röst, August 13, in WUWT (Andy May)


Five million years ago, average temperatures were higher than they are now. During the Pliocene, the era just before the period of the Quaternary Ice Ages, ‘glacials’ did not yet exist because temperatures were too high. As cooling of the deep seas continued, temperatures became that low that large surfaces of the Northern Hemisphere became covered with snow. The earth’s albedo grew fast and large ice sheets started to develop

Uncovered: decades-old government report showing climate data was bad, unfit for purpose

Guest Opinion, Tim Ball, August 12, in WUWT


In 1999, the National Academy of Sciences, the research arm of the National Research Council, released a study expressing concern about the accuracy of the data used in the debate over climate change. They said there are,

“Deficiencies in the accuracy, quality and continuity of the records,” that “place serious limitations on the confidence that can be placed in the research results.”

The people who reached these conclusions and their affiliations at the time follows.

Exposing Staggering Ice Sheet Melt Deceptions

by Kenneth Richard, August 7, 2017 in NoTricksZone reposted Paul Homewood


In recent months, two new papers published in The Cryosphere have provided a condensed summary of the ice-melt and sea-level-rise consequences of global warming for the Arctic region.

1.  Between 1900 and 2010, the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) has melted so extensively and so rapidly that the GIS ice-melt contribution to global sea level rise has amounted to 1.5 centimeters for the entire 110-year period.   One-and-a-half centimeters.  That’s 0.59 of an inch!

2. It gets worse.  Between 1993 and 2010, the contribution to global sea level rise has been a disturbing 0.39 of a centimeter.  Almost 4/10ths of a centimeter.  That’s 0.15 of an inch!

Weather-related Natural Disasters: Should we be concerned about a reversion to the mean?

by Prof. Roger Pielke Jr, July 31, 2017, University of Colorado Boulder


The world is presently in an era of unusually low weather disasters. This holds for the weather phenomena that have historically caused the most damage: tropical cyclones, floods, tornadoes and drought. Given how weather events have become politicized in debates over climate change, some find this hard to believe. Fortunately, government and IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) analyses allow such claims to be adjudicated based on science, and not politics.  Here I briefly summarize recent relevant data.

Drilling set to begin in British shale

by Daniel J. Graeber, July 28, 2017


“With the decline of North Sea gas and our ever increasing reliance on gas imports, including shale gas imported from the United States, developing an indigenous source of natural gas is critical for U.K. energy security, our economy, jobs and the environment,” Cuadrilla CEO Francis Egan said in a statement. “We are proud as a Lancashire company to be at the forefront of that effort.

US Climate Report Edits Out Highly Embarrassing Section

by Paul Homewood, August 10, 2017, in WUWT


I mentioned in my previous post that the latest draft climate report, published in June, had seemingly left out a rather embarrassing table from the Executive Summary, one that had previously been written into the Third Draft, published last December.

As the link to the Third Draft had disappeared from the NYT, I could not show it.

However, Michael Bastasch, writing over at WUWT, did have the link, so we can now compare the relevant sections.

See also here

Draft Climate Report Leaked To NYT

by Paul Homewood, August 9, 2017 i


The report was completed this year and is a special science section of the National Climate Assessment, which is congressionally mandated every four years. The National Academy of Sciences has signed off on the draft report, and the authors are awaiting permission from the Trump administration to release it.

NYT Admits Its Front Page Climate Change Article Was Wrong,  see here

 ‘Pre-determined science’ Morano reacts to NYT’s ‘leaked’ federal climate doom report: ‘Political report masquerading as science’, see here

Underground magma triggered Earth’s worst mass extinction with greenhouse gases

by Howard Lee, geologist, August 9, 2017 in WUWT


Earth’s most severe mass extinction, the “Great Dying,” began 251.94 million years ago at the end of the Permian period, with the loss of more than 90% of marine species. Precise rock dates published in 2014 and 2015 proved that the extinction coincided with the Siberian Traps LIP, an epic outpouring of lava and intrusions of underground magma covering an area of northern Asia the size of Europe.

But those rock dates presented science with a new puzzle: why was the mass extinction event much shorter than the eruptions? And why did the extinction happen some 300,000 years after the lava began to flow?

The Effects of the Bray Climate and Solar Cycle

by Andy May, August 8, 2017 in WUWT


The Bray cycle is about 2450 years from beginning to end and the Bray Lows, which are the coldest portion of the cycle, are the most important events.

The world is currently within the Quaternary Ice Age and nearly as cold as it has ever been. The normal average temperature of the world is around 20°C, some 5°C warmer than today. To keep recent warming in perspective, it is important to understand that even if the worse predictions of the IPCC were to occur, we would only be returning to the average temperature of the last 560 million years

Phanerozoic Global Temperature from Scotese 2015,

link in the post (.pdf)

Warm periods in the 20th century are not unprecedented during the last 2,000 years

by Prof. Quansheng Ge, August 8, 2017 in ClimateChangeDispatch


Prof. Quansheng Ge and his group from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, collected a large number of proxies and reconstructed a 2000-year temperature series in China with a 10-year resolution, enabling them to quantitatively reveal the characteristics of temperature change in China over a common era.

See also here

La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse