NoTricksZone: "Not here to worship what is known, but to question it" – Jacob Bronowski. Climate and energy news from Germany in English – by Pierre L. Gosselin

New Study Shows CO2 Changes Lag Decadal-Scale Warming By ~1000 Years In The Northern Hemisphere

By Kenneth Richard on 16. July 2020

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From about 80,000 to 20,000 years ago, Greenland temperatures abruptly warmed by about 10°C in just a few decades on at least 20 occasions. And then, about 870 to 1,500 years later, CO2 rose.

Li and Born (2019) document 8-16°C climate warmings (Dansgaard-Oeschger events) in Greenland that extended to both hemispheres between about 80 and 20 thousand years ago. (Though global in scope, temperature changes were less pronounced outside Greenland.)

These abrupt warmings occurred within decades (or less). It has been suggested the warm-ups may have required no external forcing, as they’re considered an “unforced oscillation”.

Image Source: Li and Born (2019)

A new study (Shin et al., 2020) suggests the about 1,000 years after these warming events occurred, CO2 concentrations rose.

Despite the millennial-scale duration of this lag relative to the decadal-scale temperature changes, there are many who believe CO2 changes are a driver of warming.

“However, the CO2 decrease did not always start at exactly the same time as the onset of the DO warming, and the lag itself varied. For example, during Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3, atmospheric CO2 maxima lagged behind abrupt temperature change in Greenland by 870±90 yrs. During MIS 5, the lag of atmospheric CO2 maxima with respect to abrupt temperature warming in the NH was only about 250±190 yrs (Bereiter et al., 2012). … During MIS 6d which corresponds to CDM 6d.1 and 6d.2, CO2 concentrations show a much slower increase over a duration of ~3.3 kyr. Here, CO2 lags behind the onset of the NH abrupt warming by 1,500±280 yrs and 1,300±450 yrs, respectively (1,400± 375 yrs on average).”

Image Source: Shin et al., 2020

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Posted in CO2 and GHG, Paleo-climatology | Leave a response

Surprise: North Atlantic Region Has Cooled By Almost 1°C Over Past 120 Years

By P Gosselin on 15. July 2020

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By Die kalte Sonne

Atlantic region near Iceland has cooled over the past 120 years. Image: NASA (public domain)

(German text translated by P. Gosselin)

There are areas of the world that stubbornly resist “global warming”. These include an oceanic region near Iceland where sea surface temperatures have cooled by almost 1°C in the last 120 years.

Allan & Allan 2019 have examined the “cold blob” more closely and suspect that the summer ice melt will cause cold melt water to flow into the ocean, which will then lead to the winter cold of the sea area.

The researchers disagree with the model by Stefan Rahmstorf from Potsdam, who suggested a weakening of the Gulf Stream as the cause of the “cold blob”.

Here’s the abstract of Allan & Allan 2019:

Seasonal Changes in the North Atlantic Cold Anomaly: The Influence of Cold Surface Waters From Coastal Greenland and Warming Trends Associated With Variations in Subarctic Sea Ice Cover

Worldwide sea surface temperatures (SST) have increased on average by about 1 °C since 1900 with the exception of a region of the North Atlantic subpolar gyre near 50°N which has cooled by up to 0.9 °C over the same period, generating the negative feature on temperature anomaly maps which has been colloquially described by Rahmstorf et al. (2015, https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2554) as the “cold blob” (abbreviated here CB). This unique long‐term surface cooling trend is most evident in February, but in August net warming is observed even at CB epicenter and the CB itself is reduced to a mere “warming hole.” These seasonal changes in the intensity of the CB are the product of two separate factors: (1) a long‐term winter cooling specific for the CB region which appears to be associated with cooling of Greenland coastal waters in autumn, plausibly linked to summer meltwater from icebergs and sea ice and (2) summer warming effects which derive from (a) dramatic reduction in summer sea ice cover in the sub‐Arctic over the last 30 years that allows enhanced absorption of sunlight by the new open water in summer and (b) an unusual period of increased summer sub‐Arctic ice cover in the early twentieth century, which lowers the SST baseline measured from 1900, thus increasing the calculated linear rate of change of SST with time. Both of these effects could contribute to the observed Arctic amplification of warming.”

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Posted in Arctic | 2 Responses

Climate Models Unable To Show Link Between Arctic Warming And Harsh Mid-Latitude Winters

By P Gosselin on 14. July 2020

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Researchers can no longer blame inconvenient cold winters on Arctic warming. No scientific basis, new study shows.

Image: NASA (public domain)

By Die kalte Sonne
(German text translated by P. Gosselin)

The Arctic is warming faster than the mid-latitudes. It’s the so-called Arctic amplification (AA). According to a study by Polvani et al. 2020, half of the Arctic warming is due to ozone-depleting substances – and not CO2. This was of course a great surprise, as we have already reported here. So no wonder that the climate models are going crazy, since they have so far attributed almost the entire warming to CO2.

CO2 has been hopelessly overbooked, as it now turns out.

In Nature Climate Change, a paper by Cohen et al. 2020 has been published and it shakes another myth. In the past, researchers were too happy to tell us that strong Arctic warming leads to harsh winters in mid-latitudes. However, there is a problem: the models are largely unable to reconstruct this presumed relationship: The paper finds:

Divergent consensuses on Arctic amplification influence on midlatitude severe winter weather

The Arctic has warmed more than twice as fast as the global average since the late twentieth century, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification (AA). Recently, there have been considerable advances in understanding the physical contributions to AA, and progress has been made in understanding the mechanisms that link it to midlatitude weather variability. Observational studies overwhelmingly support that AA is contributing to winter continental cooling. Although some model experiments support the observational evidence, most modelling results show little connection between AA and severe midlatitude weather or suggest the export of excess heating from the Arctic to lower latitudes. Divergent conclusions between model and observational studies, and even intramodel studies, continue to obfuscate a clear understanding of how AA is influencing midlatitude weather.”

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Posted in Arctic | 11 Responses

‘Most Of The Globe’ Could Experience ‘No Warming’ For 30 Years Due To Temperature-Driving Internal Variability

By Kenneth Richard on 13. July 2020

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A new study documents the dominance of internal variability in decadal-scale global temperature changes and suggests we may experience a global cooling trend during the next 15 or even 30 years despite rising greenhouse gases.

Maher et al. (2020) acknowledge that internal variability in global surface temperature variations is “a difficult concept to communicate” because we have very few observations of its impact and so we must rely on assumptions about how the climate system might work.

Those who try to explain how internal variability affects global surface temperature often use the “Butterfly Effect” paradigm; they assume that small changes now can lead to larger changes decades from now.

Because global temperature trends are “largely determined by internal variability”, global cooling or another warming hiatus could very well be observed over the next decade. Actually, as Maher and colleagues explain, “even out to thirty years large parts of the globe (or most of the globe in MPI-GE and CMIP5) could still experience no-warming due to internal variability“.

Image Source: Maher et al., 2020

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Posted in Cooling/Temperature, Natural Variability | 8 Responses

Just Use A Mouthwash, Stupid! New British Study Suggests “Oral Rinsing” Effective Against COVID-19 Spread

By P Gosselin on 12. July 2020

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Expect this new study to be greeted by an angry mob with pitch forks and torches. Results Big Pharma, Bill Gates and social engineering technocrats don’t want to see.

So picture this: tens of thousands of scientists, doctors and health authorities worldwide spending billions and billions in a frenzied search for new medicines and vaccines – while imposing economy-crippling lock downs – all to combat the COVID 19 virus. Meanwhile, a large part of the solution is likely just sitting right there on the supermarket shelf – to be had for just a few bucks!

Use a mouthwash, stupid!

That may be just the case, believe it or not, according a a recently published study appearing in the British journal FUNCTION titled: “Potential Role of Oral Rinses Targeting the Viral Lipid Envelope in SARS-CoV-2 Infection“.

It may be that simply gargling regularly in fact goes a long way in combating the spread of COVID-19, and letting us do away with the face mask circus we’ve been going through lately.

Promising results

A team of scientists led by Valerie B O’Donnell reviewed known mechanisms of viral lipid membrane disruption by widely available dental mouthwash components that include ethanol, chlorhexidine, cetylpyridinium chloride, hydrogen peroxide, and povidone-iodine and assessed their potential ability to disrupt the SARS-CoV-2 lipid envelope, based on their concentrations.

Figure 1: Breaching the viral envelope. Source: O’Donnell et al 2020.

Direct evidence: “Potential way to reduce transmission”

The preliminary results are promising enough to warrant serious further investigation, the authors say. Moreover, citing already published research on other enveloped viruses, they conclude that several deserve clinical evaluation.

These studies “directly support the idea that oral rinsing should be considered as a potential way to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2,” the authors say.

Mixing science and politics

If this turns out to be so, there are going to be lots of “experts” out there looking awfully silly. But so it is so often when social engineering politics get mixed with science.

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Posted in Alarmism | 16 Responses

Central Europe Summer Refuses To Make Its Debut, “Permanent Alarmism Dulls The Senses”

By P Gosselin on 11. July 2020

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Former Tropical Storm Edouard brings bitter temperature drop to Germany

By Kalte Sonne
(Translated/edited and image added by P. Gosselin)

Stupidity clicks well in Germany. Alarmist messages about tropical storm Edouard now running through the Internet on numerous websites have been no better in quality than the earlier reports of an impending summer of heat shocks (The opposite has been true so far this summer).

On the other hand, reports like those by Fabian Ruhnau of Kachelmannwetter are beneficial, which assess former tropical strom Edouard somewhat differently, without neglecting the powerful thunderstorms:

“On Friday, a small, but rather weather-intensive low-pressure system will sweep over Northern Germany. It is ‘formerly EDOUARD’, the low was once a tropical storm, but is now just a normal low. In the run-up to the cold front, hot air reaches the south and southeast, where powerful thunderstorms can form. During the weekend the weather will calm down and get colder again.”

Image cropped from kachelmannwetter.com

The kneejeck digital excitement and constant alarms are clearly a sign of our times. But a very dangerous one, because permanent alarm dulls the senses.

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Posted in Alarmism | 5 Responses

Junk Journalism: NYT’s Claim “More Torrential Rains” In Japan Takes A Bath, No Basis

By P Gosselin on 10. July 2020

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The Kyushu region of Japan has been getting lots of rain lately, which has led to flooding and 62 reported deaths because local officials failed to properly heed warnings to evacuate.

The New York Times, however, blames it all on the “collision” of “demographic change and global warming” instead of incompetence by local authorities.

NYT claims: “More torrential rains”

“In recent years, climate change has spurred more torrential rains in Japan, causing deadly flooding and mudslides in a nation with many rivers and mountains,” reports Motoko Rich of the New York Times (NYT).

Unfortunately the NYT neither provides data nor cites any study showing this to be the case.

So we look at Japan precipitation trends going back decades – something the NYT journalists obviously neglected to do themselves (or they did, but then decided not to bring it up).

JMA data tell a whole different story

Using data from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), Japanese blogger Kirye first plotted the annual precipitation anomaly for Japan since 1898:

Data source: here

The plotted data above show how Japan’s precipitation has indeed trended downward somewhat since 1898, and not risen.

The most recent decade in Japan has seen precipitation levels similar to that of the 1950s, and the very early part of the 20th century. Nothing unusual is happening here.

Next we look at the JMA annual precipitation data for Hitoyoshi, Kumamoto Prefecture itself since 1948:

Data source: here

Here we observe very little trend change at all. The recent rainfall in the region over the past decade has been similar to that seen in the 1950s. Extremes are no more intense or frequent today than they were in the past.

No July precipitation trend changes

Going a step further into greater detail, we look at the southern Japan region’s rainfall for July, going back to 1948.

Data source: here

Also the here we have the same story: no major trend changes to speak of. Very wet July months in fact were just as frequent and more intense in 1950s.

Decreasing hot days

Finally we look at the region’s number of days recording a temperature of 30°C or higher.

Data source here

Here as well the REAL trend is in fact bucking what the NYT always likes to suggest: increasingly more hot days because of global warming.

Incompetent authorities after all

Later in the article, Rich does ultimately get around to the real cause of the recent flooding deaths in Kyushu: “The Japanese government issues standardized evacuation protocols, but they do not take into account the unique characteristics or terrain in different parts of the country, said Professor Tsukahara of Kyushu University.”

But all in all, very shoddy journalism here by the New York Times. They would do their readers a service by checking the data instead of lazily repeating old, exaggerated narratives.

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Posted in Alarmism, Drought and Deserts | 18 Responses

In 2006 The ‘Science’ Of Pandemic Mitigation Was Nearly The Opposite Of What It Is In 2020

By Kenneth Richard on 9. July 2020

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A 2006 peer-reviewed scientific paper (Inglesby et al., 2006) on pandemic mitigation policy said the efficacy of 3-feet social distancing is unknown, surgical masks do little to prevent virus droplet inhalation, and closing schools, restaurants, stores…have seriously adverse community consequences.

The paper refers to what policymakers should recommend if there is an influenza pandemic.

Keep in mind that the flu kills about 500,000 people a year worldwide and there have been some years when it has reached pandemic proportions, killing over a million people (i.e., 1957-’58, 1968-’69).

In 1918 the flu pandemic killed 50 million out of 500 million infections worldwide. At the time, that was one-third of the world’s population.

And yet at no time have we ever responded to a pandemic the way we have with COVID-19.

Image Source: Inglesby et al., 2006

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Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Responses

New Zealand Station Showed No Warming In 130 Years, Before Alterations To Show Warming

By P Gosselin on 8. July 2020

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UPDATE: Here’s an even earlier version of the NASA GISS data plot of Hokitika station before all the data altering began (hat-tip Iggie). It shows temperatures had been COOLING:

Source: NASA

By Kirye
and Pierre Gosselin

We continue to hear warming horror stories coming from the island of New Zealand, and the socialist by sales pitch how “climate change is the biggest challenge of our time“.

Yet this doesn’t seem to be the case in New Zealand. For example, we learned from Electroverse here that the Pacific island country “just recorded its coldest June temperature in 5 years”.

Moreover, when we examine NASA GISS data, we uncover where all the warming rumors come from: alterations to the recorded historical data.

The following chart shows the data from Hokitika Aerodome, going back more 130 years (It’s the only NASA station that has data going back over 100 years). Plotted are the unadjusted Version 3 data and the Version 4 unadjusted:

Data source: NASA GISS V3 and V4

The old data set showed no warming, until NASA GISS went back and rewrote it Orwellian style, and made up a warming trend and called it Version 4.

Tony Heller also reported earlier: “NASA didn’t like the fact that New Zealand wasn’t warming, so they simply changed the data.”

In summary: There really hasn’t been that much change at many locations around the globe. In fact the real changes are taking place in the NASA GISS datasets.

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Posted in Cooling/Temperature | 13 Responses

Flawed Models: New Studies Find Plants Take Up “More Than Twice As Much” CO2 Than Expected

By P Gosselin on 7. July 2020

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By Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt at Die kalte Sonne

(Translated by P. Gosselin)

June 7, 2020
Dear ladies and gentlemen

First, the global mean temperature of satellite based measurements was surprisingly much higher in May 2020 than in April. In contrast, the global temperatures of the series of measurements on land and sea decreased. The difference can be explained by the fact that under warm El-Nino conditions the satellite measurements lag about 2-3 months behind the earth-based measurements.

From November 2019 to March 2020 a moderate El-Nino was observed, which has now been replaced by neutral conditions in the Pacific. Therefore, it is to be expected that also the satellite based measurements, which we use at this point, will show a decrease in temperatures within 2-3 months.

The average temperature increase since 1981 remained unchanged at 0.14 degrees Celsius per decade. The sunspot number of 0.2 corresponded to the expectations of the solar minimum.

The earth is greening

In August 2019, I reported on a remarkable publication by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg: “Our main finding,” said Aexander Winkler’s researchers at the time, “is that the effect of CO2 concentration on terrestrial photosynthesis is greater than previously thought and therefore has important implications for the future carbon cycle.

According to this, the CO2 attenuation effect of plants is 60% higher than the average of climate models had assumed.

“In the last two decades, an average of 310,000 km² of additional leaf and needle area – roughly the size of Poland or Germany – has been created every year,” the researchers say. I had shared this important finding with the members of the German Bundestag at the time, which led Stefan Rahmstorf to conclude that I was “trying to fool the German Bundestag“. This assessment was taken up by some media such as the TAZ and ultimately led to my dismissal as sole director of the German Wildlife Foundation.

New confirmation: CO2 uptake by plants is increasing

In April ,2020, a research group led by the Australian scientist Vanessa Haverd published a paper in Global Change Biology which more than confirmed the findings of the Max Planck Institute. The researchers describe that plants have absorbed 30% more CO2 since 1900. The previous estimates were 17%. In their calculation for a mild increase in CO2 in this century (IPCC scenario 2.6), the researchers led by Vanessa Haverd arrived at a net uptake of 528 billion tonnes of CO2 by plants by 2100, compared to the 238 billion tonnes of CO2 previously calculated by climate models.

According to Adam Riese, this is more than twice as much. By way of comparison: In scenario 2.6, a total of 1000 billion tonnes of CO2 (IPCC, Chapter 6, p. 468) will be emitted in this century. Today the plant world absorbs about 30% of the anthropogenic CO2 annually, the oceans another 24%.

In contrast, the statement of the IPCC in its last report from 2013 (p.26 of the Summary for Policymakers) is diametrically different: “Based on Earth system models, there is a high confidence that the feedback between climate development and the carbon cycle in the 21st century is positive. As a result, more of the anthropogenic CO2 emitted will remain in the atmosphere. Maybe I need to write to the German Bundestag again.

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Posted in CO2 and GHG, CO2 Greens the Earth | 8 Responses

Schooled: Warmth-Sensitive Fish Teach Us They Swam In A 4-5°C Warmer Ocean About 5000 Years Ago

By Kenneth Richard on 6. July 2020

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Extensive hake (fish) skeletal remains in ocean waters too cold for this species to occupy today suggest past ocean temperatures were several degrees warmer.

Fish habitats are limited by specific temperature boundaries. In a new study, for example, Wheeland and Morgan (2020) found there was a pronounced ocean warming from the 1980s to late 1990s off the coasts of Greenland. This temperature shift changed the distribution of halibut habitat. Since then, however, there has been no net warming in the study region (through 2016).

Image Source: Wheeland and Morgan, 2020

In a new study, Bas et al. ( 2020) document a large presence of a temperature-sensitive fish species (hake) at 53°S (southernmost South America) when current hake venture no further south than 47°S. This latitude differential for hake habitat suggests the ocean was 4-5°C warmer than today about 5000 years ago (Mid-Holocene).

Image Source: Bas et al., 2020

Evidence for anomalously cold present-day sea surface temperatures in southern South America relative to past millennia has also been documented by Caniupán et al., 2014. This region’s temperatures may actually be nearly the coldest of the last 10,000 years – cooler than the temperature depths reached during the “global Little Ice Age”.

Image Source: Caniupán et al., 2014

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Posted in Oceans, Paleo-climatology | 4 Responses

No Need To Panic: Leading Scientists See Little Global Warming In The Works – Due To “Natural Variability”

By P Gosselin on 5. July 2020

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A commentary titled “‘Just don’t panic – also about climate change’” by Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt appearing at German site achgut.com tells us there’s no need for panic with respect to climate change, as leading scientists dial back earlier doomsday projections.

Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt. Image: GWPF

No warming until 2050

Vahrenholt claims a negative Atlantic oscillation is ahead of us and the expected second weak solar cycle in succession will reduce anthropogenic warming in the next 15-30 years. He cites a recent publication by Judith Curry, who sees a pause in the temperature rise until 2050 as the most likely scenario.

Vahrenholt and Curry are not alone when it comes to believing a natural-variability-watered-down warming is in the works. Also IPCC heavyweight Jochem Marotzke from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg takes a similar stand in a publication in the Environmental Research Letters.

In the paper Marotzke concludes that all locations examined show “a cooling trend or lack of warming trend”and that there is “no warming due to natural cooling effects” and that in calculations up to 2049. The researchers find “a large part of the earth will not warm up because of internal variability”.

Distancing from alarmists Schellnhuber, Rahmstorf

And recently The Max Planck Institute Director Marotzke said in an interview with Andreas Frey of the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung (FAZ) that there was no need to panic, thus clearly splitting from the doomsday scenarios put out by his alarmist colleagues Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber and Stefan Rahmstorf.

In the FAZ interview, Marotzke also said there was no need to worry that the port city of Hamburg would be flooded in 2100: “Hamburg will not be threatened, that is totally clear.”

Areas not going to be wiped out

Marotzke then told the FAZ that the fears that children have today for the future are not absolutely well founded, and that entire areas are not going to be wiped out, as often often suggested by alarmists.

Sensational French models

When asked why the French issued a press release warning of worse than expected warming, Marotzke said: “We thought, my God, what are you doing? Because it is very unlikely that the true climate is as sensitive as shown in the new models.”

When asked by the FAZ why the French had put out such dramatic numbers, Marotzke said: “I don’t know,” adding that the climate models are highly complex. “Too many calculation steps overlap, and sometimes we ourselves are amazed at what we do not understand“.

Speaking up against alarmist models

Vahrenholt summarizes the growing doubt by scientists such as Curry and Marotzke over the use of alarmist models:

One gets the impression someone is speaking out against the alarmist use of models. Perhaps Jochem Marotzke is aware that with the warming coming to an end in the next 30 years, model alarmists (Schellnhuber: “We only have 10 years left“) will have unpleasant questions to answer. When society realizes that the climate modelers have exaggerated in order to make a political difference, we will know who misled the politicians.”

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Posted in Climate Sensitivity, Models | 5 Responses

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