by Judith Curry, January 3, 2018 in ClimateEtc.
Short summary: scientists sought political relevance and allowed policy makers to put a big thumb on the scale of the scientific assessment of the attribution of climate change.
Despite What You’ve Heard, Global Warming Isn’t Making Weather More Extreme
by Anthony Watts, January 7, 2018 in WUWT
From Investors Business Daily
Climate Myths: We keep reading about how the extreme weather of 2017 is the “new normal” thanks to global warming — even if the weather in question is frigid air. But the data don’t show any trend in extreme weather events in the U.S. for decades. Science, anyone?
Geopolitical risks to US oil supply lowest since the early 1970s
by Rice University, January 5, 2018 in Sciencedaily
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The geopolitical risks to the United States’ oil supply are the lowest since the early 1970s, due to fracking, climate action and a more diverse global supply, according to a new paper. America’s energy prosperity contrasts with a more fraught period for energy-exporting countries where geopolitical challenges have been compounded by fiscal stress and rising domestic energy demand, the authors said.
After 20 Years, No New Global Temperature Record
by Cornwall Alliance, from Dr. Roy Spencer, January 2, 2017
2017 Third Warmest in the 39-Year Satellite Record
Global Satellite Monitoring of Temperature Enters its 40th Year
The Version 6.0 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for December, 2017 was +0.41 deg. C, up a little from the November, 2017 value of +0.36 deg. C
Secretary Zinke Announces Plan For Unleashing America’s Offshore Oil and Gas Potential
by Press Release, U.S. Department of the Interior, January 1, 2018
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke today announced the next step for responsibly developing the National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program (National OCS Program) for 2019-2024, which proposes to make over 90 percent of the total OCS acreage and more than 98 percent of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and gas resources in federal offshore areas available to consider for future exploration and development. By comparison, the current program puts 94 percent of the OCS off limits. In addition, the program proposes the largest number of lease sales in U.S. history.
485 Scientific Papers Published In 2017 Support A Skeptical Position On Climate Alarm
by K Richard, January 4, 2017 in NoTricksZone
These 485 new papers affirm the position that there are significant limitations and uncertainties inherent in our understanding of climate and climate changes, emphasizing that climate science is not settled.
SCIENTISTS: Global Warming Is Not Causing Harsh Winter Weather
by M Bastach, January 5, 2017 in ClimateChangeDispatch
Record snowfall, a “bomb cyclone” and cold Arctic air have once again stirred up the debate over global warming’s impact on winter weather.
Some climate scientists are pointing the finger at manmade global warming as a culprit behind recent wintry weather, but there’s not a lot of evidence or agreement that global warming is currently driving extreme cold and snow (…)
12 New Papers: North Atlantic, Pacific, And Southern Oceans Are Cooling As Glaciers Thicken, Gain Mass
by K Richard, September 11, 2017 in NoTricksZone
Contrary to expectations, climate scientists continue to report that large regions of the Earth have not been warming in recent decades.
According to Dieng et al. (2017), for example, the global oceans underwent a slowdown, a pause, or even a slight cooling trend during 2003 to 2013. This undermines expectations from climate models which presume the increase in radiative forcing from human CO2 emissions should substantially increase ocean temperatures.
The authors indicate that the recent trends in ocean temperatures “may just reflect a 60-year natural cycle“, the AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation), and not follow radiative forcing trends.
U.S. oil production booms as new year begins
by Thomas Heath, December 31, 2017 in Washington Post
U.S. crude oil production is flirting with record highs heading into the new year, thanks to the technological nimbleness of shale oil drillers .
The current abundance has erased memories of 1973 gas lines, which raised pump prices dramatically, traumatizing the United States and reordering its economy. In the decades since, presidents and politicians have made pronouncements calling for U.S. energy independence.
UAH: 2017 was third warmest year in satellite record
by Antony Watts, January 3, 2017 in WUWT
From the University of Alabama, Huntsville.
Global Temperature Report: December 2017
Global climate trend since Nov. 16, 1978: +0.13 C per decade
December temperatures (preliminary)
Global composite temp.: +0.41 C (about 0.74 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for December.
Northern Hemisphere: +0.50 C (about 0.90 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for December.
Southern Hemisphere: +0.33 C (about 0.59 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for December.
Tropics: +0.26 C (about 0.47 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for November.
Pennsylvania’s Gas Fields Ramp Up For More Drilling In 2018
by Ami Sick, December 29, 2017 in 90.5WESA
Activity in Pennsylvania’s gas fields slowed in recent years amid low prices, but operators ramped up drilling in 2017, and they’re expecting to drill even more in the new year.
Australia overdoes carbon reduction by 294mt: could cool world by 0.0002C extra (maybe)
by JoNova, January 3, 2018
Other countries are failing to meet their targets, but we’re not only achieving them, we’re overdoing it. And this is despite our obvious handicaps: like that we have rapid population growth, are further from everywhere and anywhere* except for Antarctica, and we’re the largest coal exporter in the world;
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Tamper, tamper! How They failed to hide the gulf between predicted and observed warming
by Christopher Monckton, January 3, 2018, in WUWT
The indefatigable Roy Spencer at the University of Alabama at Huntsville is the first to declare the global temperature anomaly for December 2017. As Fig. 1 shows, in the 39 years 1 month from December 1978 to December 2017, the planet has warmed by half a Celsius degree. But that is equivalent to 1.28 C°/century, or little more than one-third of the 3.3 C°/century predicted with “substantial confidence” by IPCC in 1990 and also by the fifth-generation general-circulation models of the Climate Model Intercomparison Project in 2013.
Ocean surface temperature variability: Large model–data differences at decadal and longer periods
by T Laepple and P Huybers, July 14, 2014 in PNAS
Determining magnitudes of sea surface temperature variability is important for attributing past and predicting future changes in climate, and generally requires the use of proxies to constrain multidecadal and longer timescales of variability. We report a multiproxy estimate of sea surface temperature variability that is consistent between proxy types and with instrumental estimates but strongly diverges from climate model simulations toward longer timescales. At millennial timescales, model−data discrepancies reach two orders of magnitude in the tropics, indicating substantial problems with models or proxies, or both, and highlighting a need to better determine the variability of sea surface temperatures.
Impact of Volcanic Eruptions on Decadal to Centennial Fluctuations of Arctic Sea Ice Extent during the Last Millennium and on Initiation of the Little Ice Age
by J Slawinska and A Robock, November 29, 2017 in AmerMeteorSoc
We evaluate different hypotheses of the origin of the Little Ice Age, focusing on the long-term response of Arctic sea ice and oceanic circulation to solar and volcanic perturbations. We analyze the Last Millennium Ensemble of climate model simulations carried out with the Community Earth System Model at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. We examine the duration and strength of volcanic perturbations, as well as initial and boundary conditions such as the phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, and their impact on decadal to multi-centennial perturbations of the cryospheric, oceanic, and atmospheric components of the climate system.
150 NON-Global Warming Graphs From 2017 Pummel Claims Of Unusual Modern Warmth
by K Richard, January 1, 2018 in NoTricksZone
In the last 12 months, 150 graphs from 122 peer-reviewed scientific papers have been published that undermine the popularized conception of a slowly cooling Earth temperature history followed by a dramatic hockey-stick-shaped uptick, or an especially unusual global-scale warming during modern times.
Yes, some regions of the Earth have been warming in recent decades or at some point in the last 100 years.
Some regions have been cooling for decades at a time.
And many regions have shown no significant net changes or trends in either direction relative to the last few hundred to thousands of years.
Succinctly, then, scientists publishing in peer-reviewed journals have increasingly affirmed that there is nothing historically unprecedented or remarkable about today’s climate when viewed in the context of long-term natural variability.
The following (partial) list has been organized by geographical region
Massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet has history of instability
by National Science Foundation, December 13, 2017
The East Antarctic Ice Sheet locks away enough water to raise sea level an estimated 53 meters (174 feet), more than any other ice sheet on the planet. It’s also thought to be among the most stable, not gaining or losing mass even as ice sheets in West Antarctica and Greenland shrink.
Freeman Dyson, 94 today, on scepticism
by Paul Matthews, December 15, 2017
At the excellent Curious Wavefunction blog of Ash Jogalekar, there’s an article (posted last year) about Freeman Dyson, who is 94 today.
He disapproves of faith in computer models and of the zealous dogmatism exhibited by some climate change activists, and both these points are extremely well taken. Ultimately Dyson is saying something simple; that science progresses only when there is a critical mass of skeptics challenging the status quo
The Great New Year’s Freeze Of 2017 Setting Cold Records …And Leading To Outlandish ‘Climate’ Claims
by Joe Bastardi, December 3, 2017 in NoTricksZone
Meteorologist Joe Bastardi warned of a cold snap gripping the Eastern US many weeks ago, in October, at his Weatherbell Analytics site, which I visit almost daily.
Today it’s all over the news: The Great Freeze of 2017 is smashing through the entire North American East, bringing with it a wave of record temperatures.
Sharks FREEZE and Niagara Falls turns to ice as US temperatures hit staggering -37 degrees
by Will Kirby, December 31, 2017 in SundayExpress
More than 220 million Americans are preparing for the coldest New Year in living memory as the cold snap that has swept across the northern states prompts chaos across the country.
Temperatures atop the highest peak in the north-east, Mount Washington, hit a shocking -37 degrees celsius – breaking the previous record at the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire of -35C which was set in 1933.
Wandering Thru The Tides
by Willis Eschenbach, December 30, 2017 in WUWT
I got to thinking about the records of the sea level height taken at tidal stations all over the planet. The main problem with these tide stations is that they measure the height of the sea surface versus the height of some object attached to the land … but the land isn’t sitting still. In most places around the planet the land surface is actually rising or falling, and in some places, it’s doing so at a surprising rate, millimeters per year.
2017 in review: polar bear prophesies of doom more at odds with current reality
by Polar Bear Science, December 29, 2017
Tales of doom and gloom about polar bears reflect what some people think might happen in the future, not what is happening right now. Currently, polar bears are doing just fine despite the low summer sea ice coverage they’ve experienced since 2007 (Crockford 2017a; York et al. 2016). In other words, there has been no global population decline as predicted: officially, the numbers were 22,000-31,000 (or 26,500 average) in 2015 (Wiig et al. 2015) but about 28,500 when estimates published since then are included (Aars et al. 2017; Dyck et al. 2017; Matishov et al. 2014; SWG 2016), up from about 22,500 in 2005).
Elsevier retracting 26 papers accepted because of fake reviews
by Victoria Stern, December 21, 2017
Elsevier has retracted 13 papers—and says it will retract 13 more—after discovering they were accepted because of fake reviews.
A spokesperson for Elsevier told us that the journals are in the process of retracting all 26 papers affected by the “peer-review manipulation” and “unexplained authorship irregularities.” Most share one corresponding author, a physical science researcher based in Iran.
So far, 13 of the papers were retracted this year: 10 in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy and three in Results in Physics. Of the remaining 13 papers, four others were published in Results in Physics, four in Journal of Crystal Growth, three in Journal of Alloys and Compounds, and one each in International Journal of Thermal Sciences and Fusion Engineering and Design.
Carbon isotopes, Part 2 : The Delta Notation
by David Kirtley, December 28, 2017, in SkepticalScicence
In Part 1, we learned about carbon isotopes: how 14C forms in the atmosphere, how different isotopes move through the Carbon Cycle, and how isotopic measurements reveal clues about our changing climate. In this post we will look at how measurements of changing isotopic ratios are described.
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Check out this NOAA link for more. And if you have more time check out the entire series on isotopes. I can’t recommend it enough!
NINE YEARS AGO… Al Gore Predicted North Pole Would Be Completely Ice Free by Today
by Jim Hoft, December 28, 2017 in GatewayPundit
NINE YEARS AGO THIS MONTH—
Al Gore predicted the North Polar Ice Cap would be completely ice free in five years.Gore made the prediction to a German audience in 2008. He told them that “the entire North ‘polarized’ cap will disappear in 5 years.”
This wasn’t the only time Gore made his ice-free prediction. Gore’s been predicting this since 2007.
See also here