The truth about the global warming pause

by David Whitehouse, June 29, 2017


Between the start of 1997 and the end of 2014, average global surface temperature stalled. This 18-year period is known as the global warming pause, also sometimes referred to as the global warming hiatus. The rise in global temperatures that alarmed climate campaigners in the 1990s had slowed so much that the trend was no longer statistically significant. It has been the subject of much research and debate in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

More Evidence of the Great 21st Century Warming Pause

by Y. Xie, J. Huang and Y. Liu, June 26, 2017 in CO2Science


One of the many conundrums facing climate alarmists — who predict that dangerous future global warming will result from increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2 — is the existence of the aptly-named “warming hiatus.” Also referred to as the “warming pause,” this phenomenon describes a nearly two-decade-long leveling off of global temperatures despite a ten percent increase in atmospheric COconcentration since 1998. The significance of these observations resides in the fact that all climate models project that temperatures should not be levelling off, but should be increasing (despite interannual variability) in direct consequence of the ongoing rise in atmospheric CO2.

‘Bulges’ in volcanoes could be used to predict eruptions

by University of Cambridge, June 28, 2017 in ScienceDaily


Using a technique called ‘seismic noise interferometry’ combined with geophysical measurements, the researchers measured the energy moving through a volcano. They found that there is a good correlation between the speed at which the energy travelled and the amount of bulging and shrinking observed in the rock. The technique could be used to predict more accurately when a volcano will erupt. Their results are reported in the journal Science Advances.

“No evidence” is a useful scientific finding

by Michel de Rougemont, June 28, 2017 in WUWT


We hear that global warming is highly dependent on the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, this gas that is required to sustain life on Earth and that is also emitted when burning flammable stuff, such as wood, coal, mineral and organic oils, or methane.

If you are told “this depends on that”, you are invited to examine available data observed over time to draw a representation of this on the y-axis vs. that on the x-axis.

So, in all logic, you should be interested in a representation of the temperature evolution in dependence of the atmospheric CO2 concentration.

Yes, you should, but, looking hard into the latest IPCC Report (the fifth of Working Group I, to be precise), no diagram of that sort can be found among its 1535 pages.

Bacteria Are Eating Most Of The 2010 BP Oil Spill

by Andrew Follett, June 28 in ClimateChangeDipatch


The study found that dispersants broke up the oil into tiny droplets, making them less buoyant and unable to float to the surface. This meant that the oil formed a layer deep below the surface of the water, making it easier for microbes that live in the deep ocean to eat it. However, scientists weren’t able to measure the exact amount of oil eliminated by the microbes.

Due largely to these oil-eating bacteria, the Gulf of Mexico recovered from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill faster than scientists thought possible and has returned to pre-spill levels of environmental health.

A map that fills a 500-million year gap in Earth’s history

by Prof.  A. Collins and PhD A. Merdith, June 27, 2017


Earth is estimated to be around 4.5 billion years old, with life first appearing around 3 billion years ago.

To unravel this incredible history, scientists use a range of different techniques to determine when and where continents moved, how life evolved, how climate changed over time, when our oceans rose and fell, and how land was shaped. Tectonic plates – the huge, constantly moving slabs of rock that make up the outermost layer of the Earth, the crust – are central to all these studies.

Along with our colleagues, we have published the first whole-Earth plate tectonic map of half a billion years of Earth history, from 1,000 million years ago to 520 million years ago.

See also here  and here (in French)

COLLAPSE OF THE EUROPEAN ICE SHEET CAUSED CHAOS

by Maja Sojtaric, June 27, 2017


The Eurasian ice sheet was an enormous conveyor of ice that covered most of northern Europe some 23,000 years ago. Its extent was such that one could have skied 4,500 km continuously across it – from the far southwestern isles in Britain to Franz Josef Land in the Siberian Arctic. Suffice to say its existence had a massive and extremely hostile impact on Europe at the time.

This ice sheet alone lowered global sea-level by over 20 meters. As it melted and collapsed, it caused severe flooding across the continent, led to dramatic sea-level rise, and diverted mega-rivers that raged on the continent. A new model, investigating the retreat of this ice sheet and its many impacts has just been published in Quaternary Science Reviews.

Hydraulic fracturing rarely linked to felt seismic tremors

by University of Alberta, June 26, 2017 in ScienceDaily


For the past two years, U. Alberta geophysicist Mirko Van der Baan and his team have been poring over 30 to 50 years of earthquake rates from six of the top hydrocarbon-producing states in the United States and the top three provinces by output in Canada: North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, West Virginia, Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan.

With only one exception, the scientists found no province- or state-wide correlation between increased hydrocarbon production and seismicity. They also discovered that human-induced seismicity is less likely in areas that have fewer natural earthquakes.

Is The Average Variation Of Clouds CO2?

by E.M. Smith, June 26, 2017


Until cloud and precipitation data are adequate AND accounted for properly AND the error bands are low enough to cover 1/10 degree increments, we can’t say there is ANY effect from CO2 on temperature. It is at most a conjecture, and not a very good one. You can not ignore the major driver of changes of temperatures (as shown in the above graph) and then attribute temperature changes to something else by supposition.

Should Scientists and the Media Exaggerate Global Warming?

by Cliff Mass, June 17, 2017


Should scientists and the media exaggerate the current and future impact of human-forced global warming to encourage people “to do the right thing”?

A number of scientists and media folks believe the answer is yes.

For me, the answer is an emphatic no, for reasons I will explain below.   Let’s consider some of the arguments for and against and you can decide for yourself

The ‘hiatus’ in global warming is the hottest topic in climate science right now, whether alarmists like it or not

by David Whitehouse,  Financial Post, June 22, 2017


Some are adamant that the “hiatus” does not and never has existed, and will never change their minds. But the evidence is irrefutable. As a large number of influential climate scientists have just said in the journal Nature Geoscience, since the turn of the century there has been a substantial slowdown in warming that computer climate models did not predict or can explain. In fact, such models predict a warming twice that observed.

Lowest Solar Activity In 200 Years Accompanied By High Northern Hemispheric Snow And Ice

by P. Gosselin from F. Bosse and F. Vahrenholt, June 18, 2017


In May the sun was very quiet as sunspot number was a mere 18.8, which is only 36% of what is typical for the month this far into the cycle. Seven days saw no sunspot activity at all.

The following chart shows the current cycle, Solar Cycle 24 (red), compared to the mean of the previous cycles (blue) and the similarly behaving SC 5 (black).

It’s clear that the current cycle is significantly weaker than the mean and far weaker than the cycles we saw throughout most of the warming 20th century.

A 500-Year Record of Sea Level from Goa, India

by N.-A. Mörner, June 2017, in J. Coastal Research


Fortunately, as revealed in a number of recent studies, proof of such an acceleration of sea level rise remains elusive (see the many reviews we have posted on this topic under the subheading of Sea Level here). The latest work to demonstrate that there is nothing unusual, unnatural or unprecedented about current rates of sea level rise comes from a paper written by sea level expert Nils-Axel Mörner (Mörner, 2017) and published in the Journal of Coastal Research.

Evidence of variability of atmospheric CO2 concentration during the 20th century

by Ernst-Georg Beck, Discussion paper, May 2008


Since the 19th century, use of chemical methods has provided reliable atmospheric CO2 gas analyses results that have been obtained predominantly from the northern hemisphere. These direct chemical analyses results provide information on past atmospheric CO2 concentrations in addition to the modern direct atmospheric CO2 measurements since 1958 and the indirect reconstructions of past atmospheric CO2 from ice cores. Comprehensive literature indicates that the chemical methods have provided a systematic accuracy within ± 3 Vol% since 1857.

Serge Galam : « La peur est le plus mauvais moteur d’enseignement qui soit »

Interview par V. Anger-de Friberg, 8 février 2011, in Agora Vox


Serge Galam, directeur de recherche au CNRS, est physicien, théoricien du désordre et inventeur de la sociophysique. Il travaille sur la propagation démocratique d’opinions minoritaires, le phénomène des rumeurs, les effets du mensonge et de l’opposition systématique dans la formation de l’opinion publique, le soutien passif au terrorisme, les dictatures démocratiques, la formation des coalitions et la nature millénariste du réchauffement climatique.

AGU: Extraordinary storms caused massive Antarctic sea ice loss in 2016

by Lauren Lipuma, June 23, 2017, in WUWT


In a new study, scientists puzzled by the sudden ice loss matched satellite images of Antarctica with weather data from the second half of 2016 to figure out what caused so much of the ice to melt. They found that a series of remarkable storms during September, October and November brought warm air and strong winds from the north that melted 75,000 square kilometers (30,000 square miles) of ice per day. That’s like losing a South Carolina-sized chunk of ice every 24 hours.

Conférence de Richard Lindzen à l’ESCPI

in Climato-Réalistes, 24 mai 2017


Richard Lindzen a donné mardi 23 mai 2017 à l’ESCPI (École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris) une conférence intitulée « Les origines et les bases de l’alarmisme climatique » .

Au cours de cette conférence le Professeur Richard Lindzen montre que les affirmations sur le changement climatique sont très exagérées et inutilement alarmistes.

Cette conférence est la réplique de celle qui avait été donnée aux Etats-Unis le 25 avril 2017 sous l’intitulé : « Thoughts on the Public Discourse over Climate Change ».

Le texte en français de cette conférence (traduction de Camille Veyres) est accessible ici.

Elévation du niveau de la mer : la précision millimétrique des observations satellitaires est-elle crédible ?

by ‘Uskek’ , 16 juin 2017, in Climato-Réalistes


Les mesures satellitaires  prétendent mesurer l’élévation du niveau de la mer avec une précision millimétrique. Or La précision des radars altimétriques s’exprime en centimètres. Comment  dans ces conditions parvient-on à mesurer un taux d’élévation du niveau de la mer de 3,4 mm par an sur la période 1993-2015 ?

Les modèles du réchauffement global sont faux, la « pause » est réelle, reconnaît Ben Santer, alarmiste du climat

by Reinformation.TV, 21 juin 2017


Un papier scientifique publié cette semaine par Nature Geoscience du groupe « Nature », peu suspect de complaisance à l’égard des climatoceptiques, constate que le réchauffement climatique a été surestimé par les modèles de prédiction qui justifient l’action concertée contre les émissions de gaz à effet de serre. L’article a la particularité d’avoir pour auteur principal Ben Santer, l’un des pionniers du mouvement qui accuse l’activité humaine du réchauffement climatique.

Norway offers oil firms record number of Arctic blocks

by AFP/UKnews, June 21, 2017


Norway on Wednesday proposed to open up a record number of blocks in the Barents Sea to oil exploration despite protests from environmentalists and others fearing possible damage to the Arctic region.

The Norwegian oil and energy ministry offered oil companies 93 blocks in the Barents Sea and nine others in the Norwegian Sea, all located beyond the Arctic Circle.

A REVIEW OF ‘SKEPTICAL SCIENCE’ ALLEGED MYTHS

by Ken Gregory in Friends of Science, June 22, 2017


Pdf version available here

A website called ‘Skeptical Science.com’ is popular among climate alarmists. The website alleges to refute claims by climate skeptics that global warming is not a crisis. The website features a list of 10 “Most Used Climate Myths” by climate skeptics at the top left part of the webpage.  I review and rebut each rebuttal of the 10 alleged myths.

 

La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse