"Not here to worship what is known, but to question it" - Jacob Bronowski. "Fake and vulgar" climate news from Germany in English - by Pierre L. Gosselin
Manfred Knake here at the European Institute For Climate And Energy (EIKE) writes that the sea level at the German coasts is not rising as fast as Germany’s DWD national weather service would like the public to believe it is. lately press releases related to climate by the DWD have been bordering on hysteria.
For example in June the DWD reported that a “tornado” over Hamburg, which quickly morphed in the media as a devastating weather event. Today it would be easy to argue that with some aspects, the DWD has turned into a political Organisation.
Just recently in the run-up to the G20 summit in Hamburg, the DWD issued a press release warning of dramatic peril from sea level rise coming stemming from global warming. It wrote that coastal cities will see “considerable risks for living space for hundreds of millions of people. built structures and insfratsucture worth trillions of dollars are imminently threatened by sea level rise. Today’s emissions will lead over the long term laxtensive coastal strips of land being being below the sea level.”
The DWD then went on to call for urgent “fact-based” action to be taken by world leaders.
The DWD in its press release mentioned that Germany’s coasts has seen sea level rise 10-20 cm over the last century, which is correct.
However the current rate of rise has in fact slowed down, according studies by the University of Siegen: 1.7 mm/year [5], Knake writes. Before that officials had assumed 2.5 mm/year. That means German coastal sea level rise is a full one third below what was previously thought.
The tide gauge at the Cuxhaven-Germany port shows no dramatic rate rise at all:
Quite to the contrary, sea level rise at Cuxhaven has in fact slowed down slightly. Source: Bundesamt für Schifffahrt und Hydrographie Hamburg.
Another huge fear is rising storm surges. But here too Knake shows that they have been decreasing signficantly over the past quarter century:
Another point of alarm (mis)used by the DWD is the increasing frequency and intensity of thunderstorms, but Knake also shows that the trend has been more the opposite of what the public is often to believe:
The trend for the number of thunderstorms in the summer (lower trend line), and the number of thunderstorms each year (upper line) have been slowing in Germany since 1900. Chart: by Stefan Kämpfe
If people and institutes want leaders to do the right thing, then a good place to start is to get back to reality and away from hysteria promotion.
By Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt
(Translation/editing of German text by P Gosselin)
The 60-year ocean cycles govern global temperature development. Yet climate models are still unable to reproduce the empirically well established relationship. Naturally this is all very embarrassing and has since become the object studies on cause-research.
Gerald Meehl et al looked into the problems in September 2014 in Nature Climate Change. The authors conceded errors and were annoyed that they had not achieved better hindcast results early on. Only when the models are able to reproduce the known developments are they good enough to be used for making prognoses for the temperature developments of the future. Actually this is something that is a matter of fact, but climate modelers simply brushed is all aside in the midst of all the climate panic.
Here Meehl et al have thus made a great contribution to science, as it clearly turns out. What follows is the paper’s abstract, Meehl et al. 2014:
Climate model simulations of the observed early-2000s hiatus of global warming The slowdown in the rate of global warming in the early 2000s is not evident in the multi-model ensemble average of traditional climate change projection simulations1. However, a number of individual ensemble members from that set of models successfully simulate the early-2000s hiatus when naturally-occurring climate variability involving the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) coincided, by chance, with the observed negative phase of the IPO that contributed to the early-2000s hiatus. If the recent methodology of initialized decadal climate prediction could have been applied in the mid-1990s using the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 multi-models, both the negative phase of the IPO in the early 2000s as well as the hiatus could have been simulated, with the multi-model average performing better than most of the individual models. The loss of predictive skill for six initial years before the mid-1990s points to the need for consistent hindcast skill to establish reliability of an operational decadal climate prediction system.”
Just a month later in October 2014, Sergey Kravstov et al documented in the Geophysical Research Letters the close relationship of the global ocean cycles. The team led by Judith Curry saw a sort of stadium wave effect: The ocean cycles in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans are all simultaneously active, however have a time shifts of years to decades with respect to each other. Here again the paper’s authors criticize the climate models, which are unable to replicate the oscillations. The paper’s abstract:
Two contrasting views of multidecadal climate variability in the twentieth century
The bulk of our knowledge about causes of twentieth century climate change comes from simulations using numerical models. In particular, these models seemingly reproduce the observed nonuniform global warming, with periods of faster warming in 1910–1940 and 1970–2000, and a pause in between. However, closer inspection reveals some differences between the observations and model simulations. Here we show that observed multidecadal variations of surface climate exhibited a coherent global-scale signal characterized by a pair of patterns, one of which evolved in sync with multidecadal swings of the global temperature, and the other in quadrature with them.In contrast, model simulations are dominated by the stationary—single pattern—forced signal somewhat reminiscent of the observed “in-sync” pattern most pronounced in the Pacific. While simulating well the amplitude of the largest-scale—Pacific and hemispheric—multidecadal variability in surface temperature, the model underestimates variability in the North Atlantic and atmospheric indices.”
Now two and half years later, on June 15, 2017, Sergey Kravtsov piled on yet another paper in the Geophysical Research Letters. He examined the climate simulations with respect to temperature oscillations and found something sobering: The models were neither able to get a hold on the amplitude nor the spatial distribution pattern.
The unavoidable consequence: The models in their current form are not suited to reproduce the real temperature trends, let alone project the future temperature trends.
That’s a bitter finding that policymakers prefer not to hear. Abstract of Kravtsov 2017:
Pronounced differences between observed and CMIP5-simulated multidecadal climate variability in the twentieth century
Identification and dynamical attribution of multidecadal climate undulations to either variations in external forcings or to internal sources is one of the most important topics of modern climate science, especially in conjunction with the issue of human-induced global warming. Here we utilize ensembles of twentieth century climate simulations to isolate the forced signal and residual internal variability in a network of observed and modeled climate indices. The observed internal variability so estimated exhibits a pronounced multidecadal mode with a distinctive spatiotemporal signature, which is altogether absent in model simulations. This single mode explains a major fraction of model-data differences over the entire climate index network considered; it may reflect either biases in the models’ forced response or models’ lack of requisite internal dynamics, or a combination of both.
Plain Language Summary:
Global and regional warming trends over the course of the twentieth century have been nonuniform, with decadal and longer periods of faster or slower warming, or even cooling. Here we show that state-of-the-art global models used to predict climate fail to adequately reproduce such multidecadal climate variations.In particular, the models underestimate the magnitude of the observed variability and misrepresent its spatial pattern. Therefore, our ability to interpret the observed climate change using these models is limited.“
The subject of ocean cycles is a very current topic in climate science.
In June 2017 anew paper by Shuai-Lei Yao et al appeared in Nature Climate Change. The authors examined the regional patterns of warming and pause phases of the last 150 years.
They summed up the findings very easily: During strong global warming phases, all oceans work in unison and contribute to the warming. And when global warming stagnates, as it is currently, the trends of the different oceans compensate each other. The oceans work against each other, one could say. Abstract:
Distinct global warming rates tied to multiple ocean surface temperature changes
The globally averaged surface temperature has shown distinct multi-decadal fluctuations since 19001, 2, 3, 4, characterized by two weak slowdowns in the mid-twentieth century and early twenty-first century and two strong accelerations in the early and late twentieth century. While the recent global warming (GW) hiatus has been particularly ascribed to the eastern Pacific cooling5, 6, causes of the cooling in the mid-twentieth century and distinct intensity differences between the slowdowns and accelerations remain unclear7, 8. Here, our model experiments with multiple ocean sea surface temperature (SST) forcing reveal that, although the Pacific SSTs play essential roles in the GW rates, SST changes in other basins also exert vital influences. The mid-twentieth-century cooling results from the SST cooling in the tropical Pacific and Atlantic, which is partly offset by the Southern Ocean warming. During the recent hiatus, the tropical Pacific-induced strong cooling is largely compensated by warming effects of other oceans. In contrast, during the acceleration periods, ubiquitous SST warming across all the oceans acts jointly to exaggerate the GW. Multi-model simulations with separated radiative forcing suggest diverse causes of the SST changes in multiple oceans during the GW acceleration and slowdown periods. Our results highlight the importance of multiple oceans on the multi-decadal GW rates.”
Understanding Multi-decadal Global Warming Rate Changes
A long-standing mystery is that, despite the persistently increased greenhouse gases emissions throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the globally-averaged surface temperature has shown distinct multi-decadal fluctuations since 1900, including two weak global warming slowdowns in the mid-twentieth century and early twenty-first century and two strong global warming accelerations in the early and late twentieth century. The multi-decadal global warming rate changes are primarily attributed to multiple ocean surface temperature changes, according to research by Institute of Atmospheric Physics and Australian Bureau of Meteorology. It is the net impact of multiple ocean surface temperature changes, rather than a single ocean basin change, that plays a main driver for the multi-decadal global warming accelerations and slowdowns. Understanding and quantifying the respective role of individual ocean basin in the multi-decadal global warming accelerations and slowdowns, under the forcing of the sustained increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, could help achieve a more accurate estimate of the future global warming rate to better meet the global warming target of the Paris Conference reached in December 2015–no more than 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels by 2100.
The new finding of the importance of multiple ocean surface temperature changes to the multi-decadal global warming accelerations and slowdowns is supported by a set of computer modeling experiments, in which observed sea surface temperature changes are specified in individual ocean basins, separately. The results are published in “Distinct global warming rates tied to multiple ocean surface temperature changes”, in the June 12 online issue of Nature Climate Change.
“Our results identify multiple ocean surface temperature change as a major driver for global mean surface temperature changes on multi-decadal timescales. The paramount importance of multiple ocean basins in determining the global warming rates provides a new insight to improving global and regional climate projections.” states the corresponding author Gang Huang from Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
“The results elucidate the relative contributions of individual ocean surface temperature changes to the multi-decadal global warming rate changes, and could help improve our understanding of global warming fluctuations under steadily increased emissions of atmospheric greenhouse gases.” says Jing-Jia Luo, the corresponding author of the study and climate scientist at the Bureau of Meteorology in Australia. “It reveals a fact that we need to explore climate change in a more global perspective. This could stimulate an integrated strategy and coordinated effort toward understanding the causes of regional ocean changes.”
“Our study provides a novel perspective for understanding and projecting individual ocean basin’s impacts on global warming,” explains co-author Dr. Shuai-Lei Yao from CAS Institute of Atmospheric Physics. “While the tropical Pacific was generally regarded as a key contributor to the multi-decadal global warming rate changes, other ocean basins, including the Indian Ocean, the Atlantic and the Southern Ocean, also exert important effects. “
By the way, a pioneering paper on ocean cycles was written by Klyashtorin & Lyubushin 2007 (pdf here), which had practical application, namely the fish supply cycles:
CYCLIC CLIMATE CHANGES AND FISH PRODUCTIVITY
To end, here’s an advisory on a very special ocean (bi-)cycle (Image here).
A commentary appearing here at the Swiss Baseler Zeitung (BAZ) slams a recently published British paper on moss growth in Antarctica that gave the impression the south polar continent was greening up due to climate change.
The BAZ writes that the paper is an example of “how today science is manipulated and used for political purposes“.
A team of scientists led by Dr. Matt Amesbury of the University of Exeter issued a press release claiming that Antarctica was “greening due to climate change.”
German language media outlets like Spiegel wasted no time in blaring out the dramatic news, giving unwitting readers the impression that the entire continent was rapidly losing all its ice and becoming vegetated. However, upon closer examination that “greening” of the South Pole is actually some moss growing near the very tip of the Antarctic peninsula, 65° south latitude!
The whole affair is a complete intentional public deception. It’s since become another classic example of scientists and media ruining the reputation of science over the long term for the sake of short-term climate hype and attention grabbing.
The BAZ calls the whole media handling “an abuse of science”.
The Basel, Switzerland-based Swiss daily writes that professor Fritz Vahrenholt decided to examine how the results of the British study morphed into spectacular reports of a “greening” Antarctica in the media. According to Vahrenholt,, and entire series of errors was committed by the scientists.
The first major error the media made was making the three tiny islands located near the tip of the Antarctic peninsula where the study took place look as if they were talking about all of Antarctica.
The BaZ:
Vahrenholt said that would be like making an increase in fires on a British island into the headline: ‘Europe is burning!'”
The second mistake, the German professor points out, is the media claim that the area of study did not suddenly turn green and that there’s been moss and plants on the islands “for hundreds of years” already.
Cooling since 2000
Another deceptive claim made is that the area has been warming, but the study examined the temperatures over periods ranging from 1950 to 2000. “Why not use the temperature data up to the present?” Vahrenholt asks. Looking at the complete temperature chart provided by the BaZ and Vahrenholt, one finds that summers in the the area of study have in fact been COOLING since before 2000!
Average summer temperature value of the three stations used between 1978 and 2016, with 20-year smoothing. Chart: Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt/BaZ.
Vahrenholt tells the BaZ that it’s clear why the study stopped at the year 2000: because that endpoint was purposely selected to produce the greatest rate of warming. And depending on which datasets are examined: “from 1999 to 2014 the Antarctic Peninsula even cooled at half a degree per decade”. Something that the British study simply left out.
Highly exaggerated climate models
The British University of Exeter scientists also identified other factors other than temperature impacting the growth of moss, but these were sloppily handled in the reporting of the results to the public. What was left was the preposterous impression of a greening Antarctic continent.
Vahrenholt also points out that the climate models for the Antarctic Peninsula have been massively over-projecting the warming, and that it in fact growing only at a tiny fraction of what was predicted.
The BaZ commentary concludes:
Amesbury and his team from the University of Exeter indeed did not tell lies, but important scientific data and relationships were left out so that their study would fit the scientific trend and prejudice of journalists.”
As a new scientific paper (Turney et al., 2017) indicates, the Southern Ocean encompasses 14% of the Earth’s surface. And according to regional temperature measurements that have apparently not been subjected to warming “corrections” by data adjusters, the Southern Ocean has been cooling in recent decades.
The Northern Hemisphere embodies the top half (50%) of the world’s surface. And according to many scientists’ temperature reconstructions using proxy evidence (ice cores, tree rings, etc.) from numerous locations North of the equator, there has been no net warming in the Northern Hemisphere since the 1940s.
Antarctica (2.7%) and the Indian Ocean (14.4%) together represent about 17% of the Earth’s surface. Neither Antarctica nor the Indian Ocean have been observed to have warmed since the 1970s, with Antarctica exhibiting a cooling trend.
Just these regions of the globe alone represent more than 75% of the Earth’s surface. A net non-warming (cooling) trend in these regions in recent decades is highly inconsistent with commonly accepted instrumental data sets (such as NOAA, NASA, and HadCRUT) which show an abrupt recent warming trend – especially since the 1980s.
Is Ice Core Evidence More Reliable Than Heavily Adjusted Instrumental Record?
Earlier this year, an intriguing paper published by Steiger et al. (2017) contrasted the instrumental temperature record (which showed dramatic recent warming) with the global-scale temperature record as revealed by “real proxy” evidence from ice cores. The reconstructions using proxy evidence showed a global warming trend during the first half of the 20th century, and then no significant net warming thereafter.
“Through several idealized and real proxy experiments we assess the spatial and temporal extent to which isotope records can reconstruct surface temperature, 500 hPa geopotential height, and precipitation. We find local reconstruction skill to be most robust across the reconstructions, particularly for temperature and geopotential height, as well as limited non-local skill in the tropics. These results are in agreement with long-held views that isotopes in ice cores have clear value as local climate proxies, particularly for temperature and atmospheric circulation.”
Interestingly, the Steiger et al., (2017) “real proxy” global temperature trends during the modern era seem to align with hundreds of other regional proxy temperature reconstructions that permeate the recently-published scientific literature.
Below is a compilation of about 65 graphs from peer-reviewed scientific papers indicating that recent decades are no warmer (and in several cases cooler) than the instrumental data sets suggest.
For large regions of the globe, cooling may have already begun.
“Occupying about 14% of the world’s surface, the Southern Ocean plays a fundamental role in ocean and atmosphere circulation, carbon cycling and Antarctic ice-sheet dynamics. … As a result of anomalies in the overlying wind, the surrounding waters are strongly influenced by variations in northward Ekman transport of cold fresh subantarctic surface water and anomalous fluxes of sensible and latent heat at the atmosphere–ocean interface. Thishas produced a cooling trend since 1979.”
“Cooling is evident over most of the Southern Ocean in all seasons and the annual mean, with magnitudes approximately 0.2–0.4°C per decade or 0.7–1.3°C over the 33 year period [1979-2011].”
“The decreasing temperature trend in late 20th century is consistent with trends noted in Nepal (Cook et al. 2003), Tibet (Briffa et al. 2001) and Central Asia (Briffa et al. 2001).”
“[O]ur spatial analysis of Antarctic meteorological data demonstrates a net cooling on the Antarctic continent between 1966 and 2000, particularly during summer and autumn.”
Greenland, Arctic – No Net Warming Since 1930s, Cooling Since 2005
“For the most recent 10 years (2005 to 2015), apart from the anomalously warm year of 2010, mean annual temperatures at the Summit exhibit a slightly decreasing trend in accordance with northern North Atlantic-wide cooling.”
“The SST anomaly field for June 2015 shows temperatures up to 2 °C colder than normal over much of the sub-polar gyre with values that are the coldest observed for this month of the year in the period 1948–2015 indicated by stippling.
“A prominent feature of this record is the ∼1°C warm anomaly that occurred between 1930 and 1950. …Carolina Slope SST does not exhibit the warming trend seen in the AMO since the 1970s suggesting that other factors also impact SST variability at our site.”
New Zealand, Australia – No Warming Trend Since 1950s
What follows later, below, is a short commentary by Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt and Dr. Sebastian Lüning recently appearing at Die kalte Sonne site here. Indeed, it’s truly mind-boggling how a single person or a trace gas now gets all the blame for every weather problem. The hysteria-filled Dark Ages of the Inquisition are back.
For example, The Mail here just reported how a team of scientists led by Professor James Hansen, NASA’s former climate science chief, even proposes a sort of final solution: immediately removing CO2 from our societies altogether, and then removing it from the atmosphere.
This is hysteria. Blaming 0.01% of the atmosphere (CO2) for bad weather is truly as insane as blaming all the world’s problems on 0.6% of the population (Jews) in the 1930s.
Manmade catastrophic climate change is a grotesque hysteria propagated by state-sponsored activist scientists and hundreds of billions a taxpayer money (99% wasted).
As a whole climate is a highly complex system involving almost countless variables. Singling out just one of these (a tiny one) and blaming all weather ills on it is an intellectual and scientific folly of breathtaking proportions.
Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are in fact at a geologically-historically puny 400 parts per million (and 100 parts per million of that may be attributed to man, i.e. 0.01% of the atmosphere). Historically the earth still finds itself at the very low end in terms of CO2 in the atmosphere. An honest look at the entire body of science shows us that CO2 is in fact a bit player at best, and at the current juncture catastrophic manmade warming science is entering the realms of mass fraud.
Historical “nearsightedness”
What follows is Vahrenholt’s and Lüning’s report in English. I’m glad to see that there are at least two German scientists (there are in fact others) who opted to stay off the loon bandwagon and want nothing to do with all the madness.
=============================
By Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt and Dr. Sebastian Lüning
In the “Blog der Republik” on June 9, 2017, the current drought in South Africa, no time was wasted with connecting it to climate change. No question about it, Trump is to blame for the water shortage!
Even that US-President Trump denies climate change, Capetown is suffering under dramatic drought. The South African metropolis of Capetown is suffering from one of the worst drought in 113 years. Drastic emergency rules will force water saving. To do this drastically increased prices and much communication work will contribute to the effort. Just a drop in the bucket and too late? Even though the drama had been foreseen years ago, policymakers relied solely on winter rains – which have not appeared once again. Now the citizens and economy are suffering […] And even as US President Donald Trump denies climate change, in South Africa the consequences cannot be ignored.”
It never ceases to amaze how little the commentators know about the history of the climate. Because of this historical nearsightedness, they construct adventurous interrelationships. Indeed the first question to be asked is whether winter rains had always been steady, or if there have been variations in the past. If the rain fluctuated, what was the driving mechanism behind it? Once again that brings us to our Project on Medieval Climate Anomalies, which records historic precipitation changes in addition to the temperature changes. One click on the project map is all it takes to identify the studies on winter rains of Capetown.
Studies of the offshore sediment boring GeoB 8323 as well in Lake Verlorenvlei, Princessvlei Lake and Katbakkies Pass show that winter rains were reduced over 200 years, 1000 years ago. These are the yellow-colored dots on the map (as well as a nearby red point). When you click on the dots, you can even open the most important diagrams that show the documented historical fluctuations in winter rain.
Yesterday at Twitter here meteorologist Joe Bastardi, a well-known climate science antagonist, directed our attention to the NCEP temperature situation for South America. Yikes!
The massive scale of the cold is of Amazonian proportions, with temperatures well below normal across the entire continent. Bastardi even called the cold “spectacular”.
Recently snow was reported to have fallen in Santiago, Chile. According to the Washington Post here, “heavy, wet snow weighed down tree branches, which snapped power lines. Up to 350,000 homes lost power“. In some places 40 cm of snow blanketed the ground. The AP also reported
Chile’s Meteorological Office said it was the biggest snowfall in the capital in 46 years.”
For Santiago, it was the first snowfall the city had seen since 2011. What follows is the 7-day forecast anomaly for the Latin American continent. Cold is forecast to remain:
Things in the Arctic, at the opposite hemisphere, are not improving. Paul Homewood here writes DMI June sea ice data shows “a steady recovery in extent since the low in 2010” and that sea ice extent is where it was 11 years ago.
Climate alarmism’s “canary in the coal mine” Greenland also is behaving opposite of what global warming scientists predicted. It’s surface ice mass budget has been hovering at near record high levels.
This paper has been added to a growing volume of peer-reviewed scientific papers that seriously question estimates of a high climate sensitivity to significant increases in CO2 concentrations.
The link above contains a compilation of over 60 scientific papers with “extremely low” (numerically ranging from 0.02°C to <1°C) estimates of the climate’s sensitivity to a 100% increase in CO2 concentrations (i.e., an increase from 285 ppm to 570 ppm).
A summarizing conclusion from the calculations may be that if we doubled today’s concentration (400 ppm) to 800 ppm, the consequent temperature response would be less than 1/4th of a degree Celsius. Even with a ten-fold increase in today’s CO2 concentration (400 ppm) to 4,000 ppm, the resulting temperature change would amount to just 0.8°C.
Over 200,000 discrete absorption lines of CO2 are used for the numerical calculations. If the absorbed energy is converted entirely into heat, we deliberately overestimate the heat retention capability of CO2. The thermal occupation statistics of the CO2 energy states plays a key role in these calculations. The calculated heat retention is converted into a temperature increase, ∆T. Doubling the present CO2 concentration only results in ∆T [temperature increase of] < 0.24 K. At the present rate of CO2 concentration increase of 1.2% per year, it will take almost two hundred years to reach ten times the present concentration yielding ∆T < 0.80 K.
CO2 ‘Very Weak’, IPCC Assumptions ‘Violate Reality’
Based on all these facts, we conclude that CO2 is a very weak greenhouse gas. We emphasize that our simplifying assumptions are by no means trying to minimize the absorption potential of CO2. To the contrary, they lead to overestimating the limiting values. The assumption of a constant temperature and black body radiation definitely violates reality and even the principles of thermodynamics.
[W]e conclude that the temperature increases predicted by the IPCC AR5 lack robust scientific justification. The main problem is probably caused by the lack of considering the occupation probabilities of the energy levels.
Temperature Changes In Response To Large CO2 Concentrations (800 ppm – 4,000 ppm)
We have calculated ∆Fmax and ∆Tmax for four concentrations namely 400 ppm, 800 ppm, 2000 ppm and 4000 ppm. The results are listed in Table I. They can be quite accurately fitted with logarithmic concentration dependence.
A doubling [to 800 ppm] of the present level of CO2 [400 ppm] results in ∆T [temperature change] < 0.24 K.
The tenfold value of [the present CO2 concentration, or 4,000 ppm] yields ∆T [temperature change] < 0.80 K.
At pre-industrial times, we had cco2 = 285 ppm. The resulting temperature increase [since pre-industrial] according to Eq. (11) only amounts to ∆T < 0.12 K.
Solar Activity Correlates With Temperature, Non-Positive Feedbacks
Lu [and co-authors, 2013] establishes a correlation of ∆T with solar activity, cosmic rays and ozone reactions with fluorocarbons in the stratosphere. According to his result, CO2 only plays a minor role in the temperature evolution since pre-industrial times. Our calculation is compatible with his finding.
There remains the question of the existence of feedback. This effect is thought to amplify or attenuate a small temperature change. Such mechanisms are easy to imagine, but they are extremely difficult to quantify and to observe. Lindzen has tried to observe feedback by complicated correlation studies. He found a tendency to negative feedback that attenuates induced temperature changes because, in this perspective, the weak CO2 concentration effect is not magnified.
Conclusion
Our results permit to conclude that CO2 is a very weak greenhouse gas and cannot be accepted as the main driver of climate change. The observed temperature increase since pre-industrial times is close to an order of magnitude higher than that attributable to CO2. We find that the increase of CO2 only might become dangerous, if the concentrations are considerably greater than 4000 ppm. At present rates of increase this would take more than 200 years. Therefore, demands for sequestering CO2 are unjustified and trading of CO2 certificates is an economic absurdity. The climate change must have a very different origin and the scientific community must look for causes of climate change that can be solidly based on physics and chemistry.
What follows is a list of reasons compiled by this German site here on why wind is a poor source of power.
There are eight disadvantages that cannot be ignored, the site writes. What follows are the eight reasons along with my own descriptions.
1. Unstable, erratic power supply
The wind doesn’t blow constantly, and so the supply is unstable and wildly fluctuating. In many locations the wind may disappear for days or even weeks at a time. Then in periods of high winds the power grid can become overloaded, or the turbines have to be shut down to avert serious mechanical damage. Overall wind turbines in Germany put out only a lousy 18% of their installed rated capacity.
2. Wind turbines are expensive
The ROI for turbines can take many years, and makes sense only in places where the wind blows often, e.g. coastal areas, offshore or hill tops. But that makes the installation far more expensive. Many investors have seen very disappointing results from wind projects. Moreover in Germany, electricity prices have skyrocketed over the past years in large part due to the mandatory feed-in of wind energy.
3. Excess power is extremely difficult to store
So far scientists and engineers are a long way from finding a solution for storing electricity. Batteries are expensive and heavy, and require massively extensive mining operations. Pump storage techniques are possible only in limited places, and they too are horribly inefficient. Converting wind-generated electricity into a gas such as hydrogen and then back into electricity when wind is calm is expensive and inefficient as well.
4. Destruction of natural habitat
As installing wind turbines in residential areas is problematic, wind parks often are located in rural or natural areas – even in the middle of forests. This entails the industrialization of natural habitats. Plants and wildlife lose their habitats, or are adversely affected. Areas are often deforested to make way for the turbines. Access roads rip though the forests, permanently damaging or even destroying the local biotope. The same is true for offshore turbines. Turbines often pose a hazard to endangered species.
5. Bird kill: death from turbine blades
If industrializing natural landscape were not bad enough, wind turbines are also a real hazard to migrating birds. Each year millions of birds are (unnaturally) killed by wind turbines worldwide. According to Nature, up to 440,000 birds are killed in the USA each year. Conventional power plants on the other hand, do not kill anywhere near as many birds. Wind turbines also kill many bats.
6. Danger from flying ice
In the wintertime, ice is known to form and build up on the blades, only later to dislodg and be thrown projectiles, posing a danger to people and property located nearby. Already near misses have been recorded.
7. Aesthetics and property values
In early times wind turbines were a fascination. But today they are much larger in size and people have grown tired of their ugliness. In North Germany, for example, it is often difficult to leave your home without having to see one. In Germany there have been literally hundreds on citizens initiatives against the construction of wind parks. People are fed up with the industrial blight in the middle of Natur that wind energy really is.
Wind turbines are not quiet. Moreover they produce infrasound: low frequency sound below the human threshold of hearing. However, infrasound is sensed by the inner ear as pressure pulses that have been scientifically found to make people ill and even damage their health.
The Vice President of the Germany-based European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE) Michael Limburg wrote that the recent ice chunk breaking off the Antarctic ice shelf has everything to do with natural cyclic calving, and that the media reporting has been mostly alarmist hype. EIKE writes:
Antarctic ice shelf breaking is a totally normal process – the Antarctic has in fact gotten colder over the pst 30 years.
Germany’s number one tabloid, Bild, blared out the headline on July 13: “South Pole Breaking Apart!” and quoted alarmist climate scientist Mojib Latif: who warned it is a “warning shot to mankind”.
Bild Leipzig July 13, 2017, thanks to Dietmar Ufer
Climate scientist Mojib Latif called it a “warning shot for mankind”. Source: Bild
Mostly drama and hype
However, EIKE writes that such media reports are mainly drama and hype, and that natural mechanical forces and oceanic currents are behind the calving. EIKE cites facts from the Bremen Germany-based Alfred Wegener Institute.
Antarctic sea ice extent has in fact been growing over the past 4 decades, defying global warming. Source: Die kalte Sonne.
EIKE reminds that the recent ice mass breaking off will have no effect on sea level at all because the ice had already been floating on the ocean surface, and that even if the broken off mass had fully displaced the sea water, the magnitude of the resulting global sea level rise would not have been detectable.
Compared to the total Antarctic ice mass, the broken ice chunk with its 1 trillion-ton mass is only 1/26,000 of the entire ice mass at the South Pole.
Sea level rise not accelerating
Moreover, sea level over the past years has slowed down, and not accelerated, EIKE writes:
Slowing sea level rise from 1993 to 2012, Chart: K.E. Puls
Sea level rise stable
Granted the EIKE chart used above is somewhat outdated, and sea level rise has not been slowing down. Paul Homewood here takes an objective look at sea level rise and writes that alarmists use “two tricks” to back up claims of accelerating sea level rise:
1) They splice the satellite record, which only started in 1993, onto the tidal gauge records.
According to satellites, sea levels have been rising at 3.4mm/yr. Whether this figure is right or not, no half competent scientist would dream of splicing two totally different sets of data together in such a way.
Worse still, their banner figure of 3.4mm includes what is known as glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), which accounts for the fact that the ocean basins are getting slightly larger since the end of the last glacial cycle.
In other words, if the basins were not
1) They splice the satellite record, which only started in 1993, onto the tidal gauge records.
According to satellites, sea levels have been rising at 3.4mm/yr. Whether this figure is right or not, no half competent scientist would dream of splicing two totally different sets of data together in such a way.
Worse still, their banner figure of 3.4mm includes what is known as glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), which accounts for the fact that the ocean basins are getting slightly larger since the end of the last glacial cycle.
In other words, if the basins were not getting larger, sea levels would rise more. To account for this, they add 0.3mm a year to their sea level figures.
This is all well and good, if it were not for the fact that tidal gauges do not include such an adjustment, so the comparison of satellites and gauges becomes incompatible.
2) They compare recent sea level rise with the 20thC average.
However, sea levels were not rising at an even pace during the last century. There were times when it was rising at rates similar to today, and others, notably between 1950 and 1980 when global temperatures were falling, which saw a lower rate of rise.
As the IPCC stated in its 2013 AR5 report:
It is very likely that the mean rate of global averaged sea level rise was 1.7 [1.5 to 1.9] mm/yr between 1901 and 2010 and 3.2 [2.8 to 3.6] mm/yr between 1993 and 2010. Tide gauge and satellite altimeter data are consistent regarding the higher rate during the latter period. It is likely that similarly high rates occurred between 1920 and 1950
So, the current rate of rise is not unprecedented, and does not “prove” that the rise will continue to accelerate. Indeed, if the 20thC record is anything to go by, it could well slow down again, as part of a natural cycle.”
Moreover a recent analysis of tide gauges, where people actually live, sea level was shown to be stable or falling at half of the locations.
Before getting to the yesterday’s Trump/Macron press conference, first I wish to bring up the nice reaction we got from Curtis Stone, the urban farmer I featured here a couple of days ago here in a less than flattering manner. (Now I wish I had not been so hard on him).
Hey Pierre, a friend of mine forwarded this article you wrote about me. I want to thank you for it and let you know that I agree with most of what you said in the article. That video you found on me is pretty old. I have changed my views a lot in the last number of years. I am very pro free market and also think man made climate change is BS! Anyways, thanks for the article. I had a good laugh reading it. I can’t believe how much I’ve changed since then.
Best.
Curtis Stone”
You see, people do grow out of phases. The good news is that once someone figures out a complex issue like climate, they never go back and ‘unfigure’ it out. The alarmists have lost one.
================================================
Macron Budges On Climate
New signals coming from Paris?
After Trump rejected the Paris Accord weeks earlier, Europeans huffed and vowed that the Paris Accord was not up for any negotiation. Signatories, led by Germany and France, them seemed to move to isolate the United States and President Donald Trump. But now it seems Macron his softened the line a bit.
Trump offering “commitments”, Macron open to talk
At mentioned “commitments” from Trump and that they were open to talk about the climate accord.
At the 16:20 mark of the video above when asked by a reporter about Trump possibly getting back onboard the Paris climate accord, Macron replied by confirming there were indeed “a number of disagreements” on the issue, but that the climate disagreement “should not have an impact on the other topics“.
The French President affirmed that they “share the same views some major common goals on many other topics, all other topics.” Macron the stated on climate:
Next, well of course President Trump…will tell you about it, but he’s made a number of commitments, that we are going to be working together and my willingness to continue to work with the United States and the President on this very major topic. I understand that it’s important to save jobs and that being said, we shall leave the United States of America work on what it’s roadmap and to continue to talk about it.”
Will “continue talking”
Before Macron emphasized his strong commitment to the Paris Accord, he added:
I believe there is a joint willingness to continue talking about this, and to try and find the best possible agreement.”
From the press conference we can gather that Trump “made some commitments, though no details on this were provided. Moreover it is made clear that they are going to keep discussing the issue, which means that the Accord may be not yet set in stone after all.
Rolling Stone‘s Jeff Goodell, on the other hand, was not quite so apt to dismiss the importance of the Antarctic ice “crack-up“. He insisted that there is a certain big-deal connection between the calving of the Larsen C ice shelf and both catastrophic sea level rise…
“Given that Antarctica contains enough ice to raise sea levels about 220 feet … the break-up for Larsen C is certainly a big deal.”
…and human-caused “cooking the planet”.
“It is also well-timed politically. Larsen C has broken off just a month or so after President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, when people around the world are wondering just how much time we have left before the climate spins out of control – and what to do about it. A story in New York magazine about how climate change is cooking the planet kicked up a lot of debate about the usefulness of fear in inspiring political change. Meanwhile, the responsibility for the Larsen C crack-up is already being doled out: Climate activists have launched a campaign to rename the now-liberated Larsen C ice shelf as the Exxon Knew 1 iceberg.”
Scientists: The Antarctic Peninsula Has Been Rapidly Cooling Since 1999
Apparently Jeff Goodell hasn’t been keeping up with the latest cryosphere science.
It is now well established in the scientific literature that the Antarctic Peninsula – the location of the Larsen C ice break-up – has been cooling since the 21st century began. In fact, the Antarctic Peninsula as a whole is cooler now than it was in 1979 (+0.32 °C per decade for 1979-1997, but -0.47 °C per decade during 1999-2014).
Glacier retreat in the region has begun to slow down or shift to surface mass gains.
And the ocean surrounding Antarctica as a whole (the Southern Ocean) has also been cooling since 1979, consistent with the overall trend of sea ice growth during this time period.
“Here we use a stacked temperature record to show an absence of regional [Antarctic Peninsula] warming since the late 1990s. The annual mean temperature has decreased at a statistically significant rate, with the most rapid cooling during the Austral summer.”
“However, a recent analysis (Turner et al., 2016) has shown that the regionally stacked temperature record for the last three decades has shifted from a warming trend of 0.32 °C/decade during 1979–1997 to a cooling trend of −0.47 °C/decade during 1999–2014. … This recent cooling has already impacted the cryosphere in the northern AP [Antarctic Peninsula], including slow-down of glacier recession, a shift to surface mass gains of the peripheral glacier and a thinning of the active layer of permafrost in northern AP islands.”
“Cooling is evident over most of the Southern Ocean in all seasons and the annual mean, with magnitudes approximately 0.2–0.4°C per decade or 0.7–1.3°C over the 33 year period [1979-2011].”
“The Antarctic sea ice extent has been slowly increasing contrary to expected trends due to global warming and results from coupled climate models. After a record high extent in 2012 the extent was even higher in 2014 when the magnitude exceeded 20 × 106 km2 for the first time during the satellite era. … [T]he trend in sea ice cover is strongly influenced by the trend in surface temperature [cooling].”
New Paper Indicates Subantarctic Glacier Retreat Higher In Late 1700s, 1100-1550 AD
A new scientific paper reveals that modern rates of glacier recession – including the recent fate of the Larsen C ice shelf – are well within the range of natural variability.
Van der Bilt et al. (2017) have produced a glacier reconstruction for Southern Ocean islands near Antarctica (South Georgia) indicating glacier recession was more pronounced than today during the late 18th century, and that the second highest glacier advance of the last 1,000 years occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. Only the peak glacier advances of the late 1600s were more extensive than the advances of ~50 years ago.
Similar to the recent Antarctic Peninsula and Southern Ocean cooling and nearly 4 decades of sea ice growth described above, this millennial-scale record of glacier retreat and advance supports the position that humans and variations in carbon dioxide concentrations do not play an influential role in determining the fate of polar ice.
Late Holocene glacier reconstruction reveals retreat behind present limits…
“Regional palaeoclimate evidence from the adjoining Southern Ocean region also reveal contemporaneous shifts. For example, reconstructed sea surface temperatures (SSTs) west of the Antarctic Peninsular rose 3 °C in less than a century (Shevenell et al., 2011). … Following the termination of a Late Holocene glacier maximum around 1250 cal a BP, warming created conditions unfavourable for glacier growth during the regional expression of anMCA [Medieval Climate Anomaly] between 950 and 700 cal a BP (Villalba, 1994). From 500 cal a BP [years before present], the Hamberg overspill glacier rapidly retreated behind its present-day position, possibly driven by local warming and/or major shifts in regional atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns (Moy et al., 2008; Shevenell et al., 2011; Abram et al., 2014; Foster et al., 2016).”
To further put yesterday’s ice “crack-up” news into a long-term context, scientists have found there was a widespread (∼280,000 km2 ) collapse of the “world’s largest” ice shelf that occurred between 4,000 and 1,500 years ago. Retreat rates averaged about 10 kilometers per century during this period.
Of course, this ice sheet collapse occurred while CO2 concentrations hovered near a stable 275 parts per million (ppm), which is about 130 ppm lower than today’s CO2 levels.
Succinctly, the Larsen C ice shelf calving event is not unusual, unprecedented, or even remarkable in the context of Antarctica’s long-term natural variability.
Widespread collapse of the Ross Ice Shelf during the late Holocene
“The Ross Sea is a major drainage basin for the Antarctic Ice Sheet and contains the world’s largest ice shelf. Newly acquired swath bathymetry data and sediment cores provide evidence for two episodes of ice-shelf collapse. Two novel geochemical proxies, compound specific radiocarbon dating and radiogenic beryllium (10Be), constrain the timing of the most recent and widespread (∼280,000 km2) breakup as having occurred in the late Holocene. … Breakup initiated around 5 ka, with the ice shelf reaching its current configuration ∼1.5 ka. In the eastern Ross Sea, the ice shelf retreated up to 100 km in about a thousand years. Three-dimensional thermodynamic ice-shelf/ocean modeling results and comparison with ice-core records indicate that ice-shelf breakup resulted from combined atmospheric warming and warm ocean currents impinging onto the continental shelf.”
We have all heard about the record-breaking ice mass balance and cold temperature reading of -33°C recently set in Greenland — the Arctic island that is supposedly the canary in the climate coal mine.
It turns out that things up there are colder than we may be led to believe and that the alleged warming there is fiction.
Hat-tip: Gerti
Struggling to explain
The Swiss online Baseler Zeitung (BAZ) here reports: “In Greenland July this year has been the coldest ever. That has left climate catastrophists struggling to explain it.”
Citing the Danish Meteorological Institute, the BAZ comments that the -33°C reading earlier this month was “the coldest July temperature ever recorded in the northern hemisphere“, smashing the previous record of 30.7°C.
Expanding ice mass, media ignore
The BAZ adds that also the “ice cover has grown strongly over almost all of Greenland“.
But this has been ignored, as the Switzerland-based daily also bravely writes that “most journalists and media leaders are active or passive members of the green-socialist Climate Church and the new religion of the post-Christian western world” and acknowledge only things that fit their world narrative. This likely explains why there’s been no word about the record cold in Greenland. Why? The BAZ comments:
It casts the central prophesy of a continuous and ultimately lethal global warming, for which we are ourselves to blame, into question.”
Greenland has been cooling
Recently NTZ reported here that Greenland in fact has been cooling over the past decade, as three recent studies alarmingly show us. According to one published in May of this year by a team of researchers led by Takuro Kobashi of the University of Bern, mean annual temperatures at the summit of Greenland have been showing “a slightly decreasing trend in accordance with northern North Atlantic-wide cooling“. See chart below.
Greenland’s temperatures headed in the wrong direction, defying climate model projections. Underlying chart source: Kobashi et al., 2017.
Warm optimum near an end?
The team by Kobashi also show that the Greenland Summit temperature have not risen in 90 years, and that Greenland was far warmer earlier in the Holocene:
Greenland temperatures were much warmer over past 10,000 years than they are today.
One has to wonder if the current optimum may be nearing an end. History shows that the earth’s surface temperature is in fact highly unstable and that most optimums don’t last much beyond 10,000 years. We need to ask ourselves what could be done to avert the catastrophe that a new ice age would bring with it. The overall trend does not bode well.
Urban farming seems to be one of the latest trends among activists obsessed with environmental-footprints, and is being billed by some as the solution for all the world’s ills.
In the following video urban farmer Curtis Stone is just the latest example of how people can get intoxicated by a dogma, become blind to their own hypocrisy, and be unable to even begin to grasp the complex socio-economic system we live in and rely on for our prosperity.
Of course there are a lot of positive points with what Stone preaches: short supply chains, fresh and nutritious produce and effective use of resources. But he makes the mistake of viewing his lifestyle as the world-saving religion that needs to be imposed onto everyone else. If only everyone became urban farmers like him, all the world’s ills would surely go away. The reality, however, is that nothing could be more naive.
“Urban farmer” Curtis Stone despises the “destructive” global economy, yet gladly relies on fossil-fuel powered equipment, petroleum-based attire, modern eyewear, and computers.Image cropped here.
Like so many artsy-activist types, Curtis fails to realize that his current lifestyle is made possible only by the free-market, industrialized global system itself. In the video he says:
Every action you take in the global economy is destructive to the environment, it is destructive – it causes social inequity, wipes out indigenous cultures, forests – you name it. Everything we do, whether it’s buying a can of Coke, driving your car, or whatever we do is destructive. I’m really excited about getting to the point where everything we do is a reflection of what happens in nature. Everything creates more life, creates more soil fertility, purifies the air.”
He then adds that we need to get away from the growth-based economy. His answer: “If we have things we can trade and we grow food and everybody is fed, that sounds like a good economy to me.”
Well, that just happens to be the free market economy, the very one he criticized just moments earlier. But Stone’s free-market version is one that resembles the Flintstones: scaled back with only limited small technology. It’s backwards, and it could never feed 8 billion people.
I’m OK, you’re not okay
Stone’s problem is that he still does not have an inkling of how the modern economy works and where the very tools, equipment and technical foundation he (obliviously) relies on come from.
Note how early in the video he recommends a 2-stroke-engine-powered rototiller. He also uses hundreds of square yards of plastic film, made from fossil fuel petroleum, to protect the plants from nature. The bicycle he rides neither fell from the sky nor grew from a tree, but is one that was produced by today’s modern, free market industrial economy, with its parts coming from all over the world. He wears sweat-shop-made clothing and footwear, and not fig leaves and ferns. His spectacles are probably made using European-ground lenses and frames made from wire drawn in Mexico. Early in the video he talks about how his “business” is run and how to earn money. He doesn’t pack his fresh produce in a sack made of hide, rather in plastic commercial food bins. Stone also uses his PC notebook to make his presentations across the country.
His view of today’s global economy is as narrow as it is hypocritical.
he fails to realize that it is the growth-based economy that allowed humans to go from clubs and stone wheels to a foot-propelled bicycle and plastic vegetable tubs. And had it not been for the rampant human stupidity and dogma getting in the way over the eons, mankind would surely have reached bicycles and rototillers hundreds of years earlier.
Clueless ingrate
If you want to convince anyone your philosophy is the real thing, then do what you are doing with nothing more than sticks and stones, and be successful at it. If you pull that off, then we’d believe you. Don’t preach like Al Gore does, and then hop on fossil-fuel powered private jets to spread your gospel. Travel to your speeches bare-footed, donning your best fig leaf. And never mind using a notebook and projector.
It’s wonderful Stone enjoys what he is doing and that many people appreciate all the fresh produce he grows and markets. Yes, some of his ideas are good and worth applause. Unfortunately, some people get a good idea and suddenly believe they are God’s Gift to mankind.
There are lots of other people out there doing good things; you’re not the only one. Stone, you need to climb down from your high horse and say thanks to those who made it possible for you, and not deplore them like a clueless ingrate jerk would do.
Arctic Region Cooler Now Than Most Of The Last 10,000 Years
It’s official. According to a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports,Greenland has been cooling slightly since 2005.
This trend development may be a harbinger of what may be in store for the coming years. Shifts in North Atlantic temperatures typically lead changes in the Arctic by a few years. And throughout the North Atlantic, rapid cooling has been underway since 2005, plunging below the levels reached in the 1950s.
“For the most recent 10 years (2005 to 2015), apart from the anomalously warm year of 2010, mean annual temperatures at the Summit exhibit a slightly decreasing trend in accordance with northern North Atlantic-wide cooling. The Summit temperatures are well correlated with southwest coastal records (Ilulissat, Kangerlussuaq, Nuuk, and Qaqortoq).”
A Few Thousand Years Ago, The Greenland/Arctic Region Was 3-5°C Warmer Than Now
“Shallow marine molluscs that are today extinct close to Svalbard, because of the cold climate, are found in deposits there dating to the early Holocene. The most warmth-demanding species found, Zirfaea crispata, currently has a northern limit 1000 km farther south, indicating that August temperatures on Svalbard were 6°C warmer at around 10.2–9.2 cal. ka BP [10,200 to 9,200 years ago], when this species lived there. … After 8.2 cal. ka, the climate around Svalbard warmed again, and although it did not reach the same peak in temperatures as prior to 9 ka, it was nevertheless some 4°C warmer than present between 8.2 and 6 cal. ka BP. Thereafter, a gradual cooling brought temperatures to the present level at about 4.5 cal. ka BP. The warm early-Holocene climate around Svalbard was driven primarily by higher insolation and greater influx of warm Atlantic Water, but feedback processes further influenced the regional climate.”
“This paper presents a multi proxy lake record of NW Greenland Holocene climate. … Summer temperatures (2.5–4 °C warmer than present) persisted until ∼4 ka [4,000 years ago] … Continual cooling after 4 ka led to coldest temperatures after 1.2 ka, with temperature anomalies 2-3°C below present. Approximately 1000 km to the south, a 2-3°C July temperature anomaly (relative to [warmer than] present) between 6 and 5 ka [thousand years ago] was reported based upon chironomid assemblages near Illulisat and Jakobshavn (Axford et al., 2013). Across Baffin Bay on northeastern Baffin Island, HTM [Holocene Thermal Maximum] summer temperatures were an estimated ~5°C warmer than the pre-industrial late Holocene and 3.5°C warmer than present, based upon chironomid assemblages (Axford et al., 2009; Thomas et al., 2007).”
“After the 8.2 ka event, Greenland temperature reached the Holocene thermal maximum with the warmest decades occurring during the Holocene (2.9 ± 1.4°C warmer than the recent decades [1988-2015]) at 7960 ± 30 years B.P.”
“The lack of glacio-lacustrine sediments throughout most of the record suggests that the ice cap was similar to or smaller than present throughout most of the Holocene. This restricted ice extent suggests that climate was similar to or warmer than present, in keeping with other records from Greenland that indicate a warm early and middle Holocene. Middle Holocene magnetic susceptibility oscillations, with a ~200-year frequency in one of the lakes, may relate to solar influence on local catchment processes. … Air temperatures in Milne Land, west of our study area, based on preliminary estimates from chironomids, may have been 3–6°C warmer than at present (Axford et al. 2013), and in Scoresby Sund itself, warm ocean fauna, including Mytilus edulis and Chlamys islandica, both of which live far to the south today, occupied the fjords (Sugden and John 1965; Hjort and Funder 1974; Street 1977; Funder 1978; Bennike and Wagner 2013; Fig. 13). … Recession of Istorvet ice cap in the last decade has revealed plant remains that show that the glacier was smaller than at present during the early stages of the Medieval Warm Period, but expanded during the late Holocene ca. AD 1150 (Lowell et al. 2013).”
No Net Warming For The Greenland Ice Sheet In 90 Years
“Following deglaciation, the GrIS[Greenland Ice Sheet] retreated behind its present margins (by as much as 20-60 km in some parts of Greenland) during the HTM [Holocene Thermal Maximum] (Larsen et al., 2015; Young and Briner, 2015).”
“The Greenland Ice Sheet retracted to its minimum extent between 5 and 3 ka [5,000 and 3,000 years ago], consistent with many sites from around Greenland depicting a switch from warm to cool conditions around that time.”
A Long-Term Context
Greenland has warmed 20-24 times the magnitude reached during the last century multiple times. During these abrupt warming events (10°C to 15°C temperature rise within decades), CO2 concentrations were stable and hovered below 200 parts per million. This indicates that the Arctic climate is not significantly influenced by CO2 variations nor human activity in general, as the past 100 years are well within the range of natural variability.
“In the past 500 years, Greenland temperatures have fluctuated back and forth between warming and cooling about 40 times, with changes every 25–30 years. … Comparisons of the intensity and magnitude of past warming and cooling climate changes show that the global warming experienced during the past century pales into insignificance when compared to the magnitude of profound climate reversals over the past 25,000 years. At least three warming events were 20–24 times the magnitude of warming over the past century, and four were 6–9 times the magnitude of warming over the past century.”
A Greenland record low shouldn’t come as a surprise since in the wake of the recent El Nino global temperatures measured by satellite now continue their freefall. UAH saw it’s lowest measurement in two years, with June coming in with an anomaly of 0.21°K, which was considerably lower than the 0.45°C anomaly recorded in May.
Especially the southern hemisphere, which comprises 81% of the globe’s water surface, has been cold recently. The surface temperature plummeted by 0.4°K over the course of June, coming in at an anomaly of just +0.09°C. Antarctica, according to NCEP, was especially cold in June 2017:
A reanalysis of the WMO 1981-2010 2mtemperature anomaly for June, 2017, shows widespread Antarctic cooling. Source: www.karstenhaustein.com/climate.php.
Also RSS satellite data is showing a clear downward trend since early 2016:
As does UAH, RSS shows little or no warming occurring over the past 20 years:
As RSS temperature continues its retreat from the natural ENSO-caused spike, the warming hiatus will resume and extend. By the end of this year, the hiatus will reach 20 years. Source: www.woodfortrees.org/from:1997.7/to:2016.08/trend.
Another interesting pint is that mid troposphere temperatures also fell sharply over June and are at the lower range of the spectrum seen over the past 16 years.
Plot of the UAH-AMSU temperatures at the middle troposphere, 400 hPA (approx. 7.5 km altitude), from January 2002 to July 2017. Source: https://ghrc.nsstc.nasa.gov/amsutemps/.
Greenland surface ice mass balance has also reached a record high, defying the often heard claims that it’s melting. Greenland’s ice mass so far is showing a surplus of some 700 billion tonnes – a record!
Arctic sea ice has also surprised many experts, who previously had been predicting record lows, or even its outright disappearance.
Ironically Arctic sea ice has shown a record May-to-May growth from 2016 to 2017. It was the strongest growth for that period since measurements began in 1979.
There has also been a sharp drop in troposphere temperatures above the oceans, which explain the global temperatures. Ocean cycles in large part drive the global temperature over year and decadal scales. Last month they fell to just 0.09°K above the WMO 1981-2010 mean, falling from 0.29°C a month earlier.
Ocean cycles driving global temperature, not trace gas CO2. Source: www.climate4you.com/ here: Sea surface temperature estimates: UAH.
RSS also shows a similar drop in temperature above the world’s oceans, with the anomaly falling from 0.38°K to 0.18°K.
By Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt
(German text translated by P Gosselin)
A group of researchers led by Adrian Martinez-Asensio have found an 11-year Schwabe solar cycle in the European sea level. The authors published their findings 19 November 2016 in the Geophysical Research Letters:
Decadal variability of European sea level extremes in relation to the solar activity
This study investigates the relationship between decadal changes in solar activity and sea level extremes along the European coasts and derived from tide gauge data. Autumn sea level extremes vary with the 11 year solar cycle at Venice as suggested by previous studies, but a similar link is also found at Trieste. In addition, a solar signal in winter sea level extremes is also found at Venice, Trieste, Marseille, Ceuta, Brest, and Newlyn. The influence of the solar cycle is also evident in the sea level extremes derived from a barotropic model with spatial patterns that are consistent with the correlations obtained at the tide gauges. This agreement indicates that the link to the solar cycle is through modulation of the atmospheric forcing. The only atmospheric regional pattern that showed variability at the 11 year period was the East Atlantic pattern.”
Already in May 2015 a group of researchers led by Daniel Howard found an influence by solar activity and ocean cycles on sea level trends in a paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research. The 2 factors made up minimum 70% of the annual fluctuations. The paper’s abstract follows:
The solar and Southern Oscillation components in the satellite altimetry data
With satellite altimetry data accumulating over the past two decades, the mean sea level (MSL) can now be measured to unprecedented accuracy. We search for physical processes which can explain the sea level variations and find that at least 70% of the variance in the annually smoothed detrended altimetry data can be explained as the combined effect of both the solar forcing and the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The phase of the solar component can be used to derive the different steric and eustatic contributions. We find that the peak to peak radiative forcing associated with the solar cycle is 1.33 ± 0.34 W/m2, contributing a 4.4 ± 0.8 mm variation. The slow eustatic component (describing, for example, the cryosphere and large bodies of surface water) has a somewhat smaller peak to peak amplitude of 2.4 ± 0.6 mm. Its phase implies that warming the oceans increases the ocean water loss rate. Additional much smaller terms include a steric feedback term and a fast eustatic term. The ENSO contributes a peak to peak variation of 5.5 ± 0.8 mm, predominantly through a direct effect on the MSL and significantly less so indirectly through variations in the radiative forcing.”
The German SAT.1 NRW site brings our attention to yet another glittering jewel of climate and environmental folly. This ranks close to the weed-covered solar park we reported on a few years back.
SAT.1 reports how a revolutionary zero-carbon, “sustainable” green home went from being an example for the future of green home architecture, to a hazardous waste site in just a matter of months.
2.4 million euro dream
The “unique” self-reliant house located in Lippstadt, Germany, was constructed entirely of “organic materials”, costing 2.4 million euros ($2.6 million). Building began in 2014. However during 2015 the house became completely infested with dangerous mold — and has since been condemned and now will need to be gutted out.
Initially the house had been the dream of its owners, Lars and Antje Rühe. Today, having put the family’s wealth into the house, the Rühe’s now find themselves on the brink of financial and marital ruin, SAT.1 reports.
Rain soaked during construction
The house is equipped with its own water supply, solar power, and a battery storage system costing over 100,000 euros and is capable of storing power for months. During the course of construction, the organic wood-based material used for insulating the house in place of traditional fiberglass got soaked with rainwater and quickly became a hotbed for mold.
Now a hazardous material site
The mold and its spores spread through the entire building and contaminated the insulation, which now has to be removed piece by piece and disposed of as hazardous material. So toxic did the house become that it had to be fenced off to keep the public off limits. Two million spores were measured in the air of the house – the limit is only 200.
Things got far worse: In order to keep the dangerous spores from making the neighbors ill, it is now deemed necessary to build an airtight, vacuum enclosure structure around the entire house – all equipped with an air filtering system. That alone, according to SAT.1, will run another half a million euros.
To be demolished, handled as hazardous waste
It’s not even sure if the house can be salvaged at all. According to the engineer who designed the home’s energy system, “every part will need to be packed and sealed, and then disposed of as hazardous waste“.
Germany’s No.1 daily Bild writes here that the house will in fact need to be demolished, which will cost 50,000 euros.
Next comes the legal battle to determine exactly who is responsible for the debacle. Apparently the building crew covered the house with a large tarp during its construction, but according to SAT.1, it leaked and the organic insulation soaked the water up “like a sponge“.
In the present era of agenda-driven journalism, major news outlets often attempt to persuade readers that weather events occurring now have never happened before…and they are worsened by human-caused climate change.
In 2015, Humans Caused Drought, Too Little Rainfall In California
“Scientists predict that “enhanced drought” will continue in California throughout this century because global warming has ‘substantially increased’ the likelihood of extreme droughts in the state.”
In 2017, Humans Causing Floods, Too Much Rainfall In California
Even the editor of the prominent scholarly journal Science has just claimed that the abundance of rainfall in California is now a trend brought on by human-caused climate change. Since when is a 7-month precipitation record a trend?
“Episodes of severe weather in the United States, such as the present abundance of rainfall in California, are brandished as tangible evidence of the future costs of current climate trends.”
Attempting to clarify how humans are simultaneously responsible for too much and too little rainfall, Michael Mann explains why warming causes more intense rainfall and widespread drought at the same time, and how this is ironic but not a contradiction.
“With warming, water is cycling more vigorously through our atmosphere. As it turns out, that implies more frequent, very heavy rainfall events, more intense weather potentially as a result of this amplified hydrological cycle. And ironically – although the atmosphere can hold more water vapor and can therefore produce larger amounts of rainfall in a given event – it turns out that these events become less frequent and the warmer surface also causes more evaporation of water into the atmosphere, drying soil surfaces, drying land surfaces. So in this warmer climate with an amplified hydrological cycle we actually see increased rainfall, intense rainfall flooding. But we can also see more widespread drought over continental regions. It might seem like a contradiction, but in fact both predictions follow from the intensification of the hydrological cycle.”
Long-Term Context Matters
It wasn’t all that long ago that journalists actually reported on climate change and weather events while considering a long-term context of natural variability rather than characterizing year-to-year weather change as unprecedented, the worst on record, and caused by humans.
.
For example, in 1992 the New York Times actually published an article indicating Medieval-era droughts were much more severe than now, lasting hundreds of years. The modern period has been “relatively wet” compared to the past in that region.
“BEGINNING about 1,100 years ago, what is now California baked in two droughts, the first lasting 220 years and the second 140 years. Each was much more intense than the mere six-year dry spells that afflict modern California from time to time, new studies of past climates show. The findings suggest, in fact, that relatively wet periods like the 20th century have been the exception rather than the rule in California for at least the last 3,500 years, and that mega-droughts are likely to recur.”
“Dr. Scott Stine, a paleoclimatologist at California State University at Hayward, used radiocarbon dating techniques to determine the age of the trees’ outermost annual growth rings, thereby establishing the ends of drought periods. He then calculated the lengths of the preceding dry spells by counting the rings in each stump. This method identified droughts lasting from A.D. 892 to A.D. 1112 and from A.D. 1209 to A.D. 1350. Judging by how far the water levels dropped during these periods — as much as 50 feet in some cases — Dr. Stine concluded that the [Medieval-era] droughts were not only much longer, they were far more severe than either the drought of 1928 to 1934, California’s worst in modern times, or the more recent severe dry spell of 1987 to 1992.”
The Historical Southwest U.S. Climate: 3.2°C Warmer During Medieval Times
“The paleoclimate modeled for Whitewing [Sierra Nevada, CA] during the Medieval period was significantly warmer and slightly drier than present . Medieval mean annual minimum temperature was warmer than current by 3.2°C, with large differences in winter (+3.5°C, January) and summer (+4.0°C, July). Mean annual maximum temperature was also greater in the Medieval period (+2.3°C), with greater differences in winter (+3.2°C, January) than summer (+2.6°C, July). Annual precipitation was less by 24 mm.”
“Long-term trends in the temperature reconstruction are indicative of a 125-year periodicity that may be linked to solar activity as reflected in radiocarbon and auroral records. The results indicate that both the warm intervals during the Medieval Warm Epoch (A.D. 800 to 1200) and the cold intervals during the Little Ice Age (A.D. 1200 to 1900) are closely associated with the 125-year [solar activity] period.”
Medieval Drought Lasted Hundreds Of Years And Was Much More Severe
“Paleoclimatic and model data indicate increased temperatures in western North America [∼AD 900–1300] of approximately 1 °C over the long-term mean. This was a period of extensive and persistent aridity over western North America. Paleoclimatic evidence suggests drought in the mid-12th century far exceeded the severity, duration, and extent of subsequent droughts.”
“The current California drought has cast a heavy burden on statewide agriculture and water resources, further exacerbated by concurrent extreme high temperatures. Furthermore, industrial-era global radiative forcing brings into question the role of long-term climate change on CA drought. How has human-induced climate change affected California drought risk? … The results thus indicatethe net effect of climate change has made agricultural drought less likely, and that the current severe impacts of drought on California’s agriculture has not been substantially caused by long-term climate changes.”
“Projected changes of a poleward extension of the subtropical dry zones simulated by climate models and the corresponding decrease of precipitation in the U.S. Southwest have not been found in observations to date because of the large natural climate variability.”
“The causes of the California drought during November to April winters of 2011/12 to 2013/14 are analyzed using observations and ensemble simulations with seven atmosphere models forced by observed SSTs. …[T]he precipitation deficit during the drought was dominated by natural variability, a conclusion framed by discussion of differences between observed and modeled tropical SST trends.”
“An analysis of the October 2013–September 2014 precipitation in the western United States and in particular over the California–Nevada region suggests this anomalously dry season, while extreme, is not unprecedented in comparison with the approximately 120-yr-long instrumental record of water year (WY; October–September) totals and in comparison with a 407-yr WY precipitation reconstruction dating back to 1571. Over this longer period, nine other years are known or estimated to have been nearly as dry or drier than WY 2014. The 3-yr deficit for WYs 2012–14, which in California exceeded the annual mean precipitation, is more extreme but also not unprecedented, occurring three other times over the past approximate 440 years in the reconstruction.”
Scientists: Natural Variability Dominates In Continental U.S. Drought
“Tree-ring records show that the twentieth century has been moist from the perspective of the last millennium and free of long and severe droughts that were abundant in previous centuries. The recent drought, forced by reduced precipitation and with reduced evaporation, has no signature of model-projected anthropogenic climate change.”
“[D]rought conditions over the period of instrumental records (since 1895) do not exhibit the full range of variability, severity, or duration of droughts during the last millennium. Thirteen decadal to multidecadal droughts (i.e., ≥10 years) occurred during the last millennium – the longest lasting sixty-one years and centered on the late twelfth century.”
“Megadroughts reconstructed over north-central Europe in the 11th and mid-15th centuries reinforce other evidence from North America and Asia that droughts were more severe, extensive, and prolonged over Northern Hemisphere land areas before the 20th century, with an inadequate understanding of their causes.”
“In this study, the nature and causes for observed regional precipitation trends during 1977–2006 are diagnosed. It is found that major features of regional trends in annual precipitation during 1977–2006 are consistent with an atmospheric response to observed sea surface temperature (SST) variability.This includes drying over the eastern Pacific Ocean that extends into western portions of the Americas related to a cooling of eastern Pacific SSTs, and broad increases in rainfall over the tropical Eastern Hemisphere, including a Sahelian rainfall recovery and increased wetness over the Indo–West Pacific related to North Atlantic and Indo–West Pacific ocean warming. It is further determined that these relationships between SST and rainfall change are generally not symptomatic of human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and aerosols.”
Little change in global drought over the past 60 years
“Here we show that the previously reported increase in global drought is overestimated because the PDSI uses a simplified model of potential evaporation that responds only to changes in temperature and thus responds incorrectly to global warming in recent decades. More realistic calculations, based on the underlying physical principles that take into account changes in available energy, humidity and wind speed, suggest that there has been little change in drought over the past 60 years.”
“Recent drought in 1993–2008 was still within the frame of natural climate variability based on the 306 yr PDSI reconstruction. The dry and wet phases of Lingkong Mountain were in accordance with changes in the summer Asian-Pacific oscillation and sunspot numbers, they also showed strong similarity to other tree-ring based moisture indexes in large areas in and around the CLP, indicating the moisture variability in the CLP [Chinese Loess Plateau] was almost synchronous and closely related with large-scale land–ocean–atmospheric circulation and solar activity.”
“Monthly precipitation (P) and potential evapotranspiration (PET) from the CRUTS3.1 data set are used to compute monthly P minus PET (PMPE) for the land areas of the globe. The percent of the global land area with annual sums of PMPE less than zero are used as an index of global drought (%drought) for 1901 through 2009. Results indicate that for the past century %drought has not changed, even though global PET and temperature (T) have increased.”
“Contrary to expectations, measurements of pan evaporation show decreases in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere over the last 50 years. When combined with rainfall measurements, these data show that much of the Northern Hemisphere’s terrestrial surface has becomeless aridover the last 50 years. However, whether the decrease in pan evaporation is a phenomenon limited to the Northern Hemisphere has until now been unknown because there have been no reports from the Southern Hemisphere. Here, we report a decrease in pan evaporation rate over the last 30 years acrossAustraliaof the same magnitude as the Northern Hemisphere trends (approximately −4 mm a−2). The results show that theterrestrial surface in Australia has, on average, become less arid over the recent past, just like much of the Northern Hemisphere.”
“Warming the troposphere enhances the cooling rate, thereby increasing precipitation, but this may be partly offset by a decrease in the efficiency of radiative cooling due to an increase in atmospheric CO2 (Allen and Ingram, 2002; Yang et al., 2003; Lambert et al., 2004; Sugi and Yoshimura, 2004). This suggests that global mean precipitation should respond more to changes in shortwave forcing than CO2 forcing, since shortwave forcings, such as volcanic aerosol, alter the temperature of the troposphere without affecting the efficiency of radiative cooling. This is consistent with a simulated decrease in precipitation following large volcanic eruptions [which cause cooling] (Robock and Liu, 1994; Broccoli et al., 2003), and may explain why anthropogenic influence has not been detected in measurements of global land mean precipitation (Ziegler et al., 2003; Gillett et al., 2004b), although Lambert et al. (2004) urge caution in applying the energy budget argument to land-only data.”
This post is one for the wind-energy-clingers, who refuse to admit how bad it really is.
A new German paper assesses wind energy in Europe . The results are devastating. It concludes that wind energy requires almost 100% backup and that the more capacity that gets installed, the greater the volatility.
The paper appearing at the VGB, authored by Thomas Linnemann and Guido Vallana, finds that “the total wind fleet output of 18 European countries extending over several thousand kilometers in north-south and east-west direction is highly volatile and exhibits a strong intermittent character.”
In other words the power supply across the European grid fluctuates wildly and thus cannot work well. The paper’s abstract continues:
An intuitively expectable smoothing of this wind fleet output to an amount, which allows a reduction of backup wind power capacity, however, does not occur. In contract a highly intermittent wind fleet power output showing significant peaks and minima is observed not only for a single country, but also for the whole of the 18 European countries. Wind energy therefore requires practically 100% back-up. As the (also combined) capacities of all known storage technologies are (and increasingly will be) insignificant compared to the required demand, backup must be provided by conventional power plants, with their business cases fundamentally being impaired in the absence of capacity markets.”
Extreme volatility
The paper then provides a solid analysis, and charts showing why this is the case. Below their Figure 1 illustrates the extreme volatility of onshore and offshore German wind energy over the year 2016:
Germany’s wind energy output ranges from over 30,000 MW to almost zero. Source: ENTSO
Germany’s wind parks have produced only a fraction of their rated installed capacity, rarely ever reaching 20% annually with an average of 17% since 1990:
The capacity utilization of German Windparks from 1990 to 2016. Source: BMWi
The paper concludes:
The available (secured) permanent electrical output of the German wind parks thus remains always below 1% of the installed rated capacity, or expressed in other words: Every year there was at least a quarter hour in which 99% of the rated capacity of the German wind parks was not available and where practically 100% of plannable backup energy dominated.”
Moreover an anylsis of weak wind phases over the 2010 to 2016 period shows that “there were at least 160 phases 5 days long or more where the output from German wind parks fell below 5000 megawatts and a 10-14 day phase of weak wind days occurred every year.
Unfortunately it has taken a huge disaster in London to wake up the many German politicians who have been self-drugged up on their green ideology for too long. Now they have been forced to face the harsh reality of their green gross negligence. While millions of endangered birds and animals remain threatened by windmills, it appears that the spectacular inferno may have finally gotten through on another front.
The German ruhrkultur.de here writes in an article titled Insulation madness brings home residents in wanton danger:
The Grenfell Tower fire catastrophe in London, with some 80 lives lost, has finally caused the public to become aware of a problem that has been ignored and swept under the carpet for too long: The insulation madness has led in principle and in large part to death in new buildings and renovated buildings.”
In a mad rush to rescue the planet from a dubiously theoretical year 2100 climate Armageddon, Germany over the years has been vigorously supporting the installation of exterior plastic foam insulation on many buildings over the past years. Unfortunately it is turning out that these materials laid on the exterior of buildings is a fire and health hazard.
Policymakers and bureaucrats had been warned, but in their cause of saving the climate and rescuing humanity, the warnings were smugly dismissed. The state would instead take its orders from Potsdam Institute (PIK) Science.
London, it turns out, is only the tip of green insulation fire hazard ice berg. Recently German authorities were forced to clear out an entire residential block in the western city of Wuppertal due to the inflammable insulation material placed earlier on the building. Frankfurt’s fire chief said that German residential buildings recently insulated in a like manner are not safe, contradicting what politicians, industry groups and insulation experts claimed in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower inferno.
With the millions of homes that have been fitted with the insulation to meet green energy requirements, many residents are in fact residing in “death traps” waiting to spring, ruhrkultur.de writes.
Facade fires “especially dangerous”
The ruhrkultur.de adds that since the exterior “insulation madness” began, firefighters have noted a strong increase in so called facade-fires, which are “especially deadly because they spread extremely rapidly and give residents hardly any time to escape.” It appears that long standing fire codes and regulations against the use of such building materials were not enforced so as not to impair the green national insulation endeavor. Now lives are at risk.
Driven by “climate rescue-campaign”
As mentioned earlier, a number of German experts warned of the high danger posed by the exterior insulation used to make residential buildings more energy efficient. But politicians of all parties and most of the public, ruhrkultur.de writes, were convinced otherwise, due to the “current, incredible massively driven ‘climate-rescue-campaign’ and the supposedly ‘necessary mass insulation measures’.”
The insulation campaign involves plastering large blocks of polystyrol or polyurethane based insulation material on exterior walls (see photo above), which ruhrkultur.de writes is tantamount to storing large amounts of gasoline in your home.
Toxic gases hazard
The inflammability of the material is not the only danger posed by the exterior foam-type insulation, but in many cases it has been treated with possibly toxic fire retardants, such as tetrabrombisphenol A (TBBA), hexabromcyclododecane (HBCD) and a variety of polybromide diphenylethers (PBDEs).
Also the campaign to weatherproof homes has led to a growing occurrence of dangerous, health-threatening black mold forming inside homes.
So what happens now?
Suddenly homeowners find themselves in houses made in a way that threatens them. How shall they be compensated for? Who has to be held accountable?
Recent Comments