Scientists discover an extra 5 million square kilometers of forest , just like that.

Scientists apparently can’t predict where forests are right now, but weather patterns one hundred years from now, no problem. It’s nearly 60 years since the first satellite was launched, and we are still figuring out basic stuff down here on the surface — like which bits are forest.

People are willing to set up a two trillion dollar global market to trade carbon, but their carbon models are so primitive that giant “oops” moments are still happening on a regular basis. In 2014 Indian accountants discovered they’d missed nearly half the carbon given off from their lakes and rivers. In 2015, an accounting error reduced China’s emissions by twice Australia’s output. Then later that year Yale guys found 2.6 trillion trees. Blame global warming. Forests are appearing everywhere. Trees are even growing on farms capturing 0.75 gigaton of carbon that no one noticed til last year.

Billions of dollars of carbon credits are winking in and out of existence with every scientific study. Bank that botany! A single paper could change national GDP.

How did they find 5 million square kilometers of trees? They stopped assuming that satellite photos would be enough and they did a field survey instead. They went there. (Let’s call this crazy idea “observation” — it might catch on.)

 

Found: ‘lost’ forests covering an area two-thirds the size of Australia

A new global analysis of the distribution of forests and woodlands has “found” 467 million hectares of previously unreported forest – an area equivalent to 60% of the size of Australia.

The discovery increases the known amount of global forest cover by around 9%, and will significantly boost estimates of how much carbon is stored in plants worldwide.

The new forests were found by surveying “drylands” – so called because they receive much less water in precipitation than they lose through evaporation and plant transpiration. As we and our colleagues report today in the journal Science, these drylands contain 45% more forest than has been found in previous surveys.

…previous surveys were based on older, low-resolution satellite images that did not include ground validation.

There is no hint of irony here:

 Climate models suggest that dryland biomes could expand by 11-23% by the end of the this century, meaning they could cover more than half of Earth’s land surface.

h/t David B, GWPF

9.8 out of 10 based on 75 ratings

162 comments to Scientists discover an extra 5 million square kilometers of forest , just like that.

  • #
    Peter Miller

    Well that’s a relief, it means we can safely multiply the number of ships ferrying trees, in the form of wood chips, across the oceans to burn in power stations like Drax.

    Sarc/off:

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    • #
      James Bradley

      No worries, the Green Blob have just discovered El Tia and L Tio that will have mui, mui greater affect on climate then El Nino and La Nina – these are the Cranky Uncle and Aunty of all drought bringing and flood destroying oscillations… funny… never heard of them before.
      http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/introducing-el-tio-and-la-tia-the-climate-cycles-that-could-mean-were-about-to-get-a-lot-hotter/news-story/8aa28495a43e534389826f1c7ebef788

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      • #
        el gordo

        A negative IPO caused the hiatus and when it switches to positive we are all going to die in hell, I’ll check out the science behind the theory.

        60

      • #
        bullocky

        From the news.com.au article:
        ‘When in full swing, El Tio can exacerbate the effects of an El Nino and a La Nina while La Tia can reduce them.’

        What ever nappened to CO2?

        113

        • #
          Rereke Whakaaro

          What ever nappened to CO2?

          I think my dog ate it.

          Dogs do that, when they have a nap, and the nap ends.

          Which is curious, and curiouser, since I don’t happen to have a dog. But if I did, it would.

          140

          • #
            bullocky

            A succinct explanation, Rereke.
            The whereabouts of the CO2 wont require, therefore, the legendary detection skills of either Kevin Trenberth or the Norwich Police!

            110

          • #
            James Bradley

            No, no, Rereke The Pause… not The Paws.

            70

          • #
            jorgekafkazar

            You can have my dog. I got it from a chap named Schroedinger. It’s still in the original box.

            50

            • #
              Environment Dkeptic

              What they found was the recent plantation forest’s of genetically modified gum and pine growing like fungus world wide. How could it be otherwise??

              30

              • #
                Environment Skeptic

                oops…What they found was the recent plantation forest’s of genetically modified gum and pine growing like fungus world wide. How could it be otherwise??

                20

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        • #
          Mary E

          CO2, that evil noxious gas spewed by humans everywhere they go, is still there – it is behind the worsening of the effects of the Nino, Nina, Tio and Tia. If it weren’t for our spewing greenhouse gases all over, we’d hardly notice the climate cycles – they’d be gentle breezes wafting across the planet, maintaining a steady and balmy temperature globally, except at the poles, of course, which would return to being giant popsicles and whisky-diluters.

          60

      • #
        el gordo

        The pause in temperatures over the past two decades is connected to a strengthening of the Walker circulation and a negative IPO, a reenactment of the period between 1940-75.

        This is the tricky bit, the world actually cooled during those 35 years, but on this occasion temperatures have been as flat as a tack. Is the hiatus a sensitivity issue or something to do with dodgy data?

        101

      • #

        This comment jarred considerably, but is a full reflection of how the Green Blob operates (my emphasis):

        “El Tio, the cranky uncle, is responsible for increasing global temperatures in decade to decade cycles while the negative phase, La Tia the kind aunty, is responsible for slow down periods,”said Dr Healey.

        One is responsible for global warming and the other for just a slow down, not for global cooling? What the duck?

        81

        • #
          el gordo

          Indeed, it didn’t cool like it should under natural variability, so its a lukewarm world we inhabit.

          40

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    • #
      wert

      Well that’s a relief, it means we can safely multiply the number of ships ferrying trees, in the form of wood chips, across the oceans to burn in power stations like Drax.

      CO2 fertilization means we can increase wood chip use a lot without necessarily harming the forest it is coming from. This is true, not sarcasm. But, greens have no idea on how capitalism works, so they create unintended destruction by giving tax money to chip industry.

      30

      • #
        wert

        Oh I can’t see the diff between b and b-quote.

        40

      • #
        Roger

        Problem with the theory of increasing wood chip use is that the time taken for the new trees to grow and to capture (sequestrate) the CO2 relased by burning there predecessors is many, many years. That means that CO2 emissions do increase significantly .

        40

        • #
          wert

          There is no time there at all. The forest is capturing CO2 all the time. There are trees of all ages and high densities in forest, so that you can fell trees and actually increase the forest growth speed to its optimum at the same time.

          Study forestry, don’ be fooled by greenies.

          30

  • #

    Forests growing everywhere? You’d think, wouldn’t you,
    that this would make the Greens happy, but then, it’s not
    easy being green. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbCI68eSNsA

    161

    • #
      Oliver K. Manuel

      This report confirms: The primary purpose of “consensus science” is to keep the public always frighten and unaware of NATURE’s benevolence:

      https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2017/05/12/the-matrix-revealed-victimized-inspired/#comment-224885

      80

      • #
        Oliver K. Manuel

        Thank you, JoNova, for helping us maintain contact with reality, despite the increasing flux of false government propaganda!

        60

    • #

      The Green Blob has never been able to see the forest for the trees.

      121

      • #
        Leonard Lane

        bemused, I am. It is funny in an ironic way. If any of these “scientists” would have consulted one or two of the major climate-ecosystem definition at any time in the last half century or more they would have known the “results” that were just “discovered.” Countless thousands and thousands of scientists knew of these semiarid shrubs and trees and other ecosystems.
        A good example of the most widely known climate classification for different biomes is given here:
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6ppen_climate_classification

        40

        • #

          Thanks for that info.
          I put it into my favourites and will check it with my PHD forester son.
          It’s amazing, only just discovered trees and shrubs, that were discovered decades ago, but were either unknown to or deliberately ignored by thousands of “scientists”?
          This sounds like scientists desperately hanging on to the gravy train fed jobs or the usual fake CAGW activists.

          121

  • #
    Spetzer86

    Now we’ll need a degree in “Observational Studies” so we can develop qualified experts in observation.

    190

    • #
      Another Ian

      But they’ll have to employ sceptics to teach it

      70

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      I hold a degree in Observational Studies in relation to the Cronosphere.

      In fact, there are rumours of my appointment to Fellow of the Royal Society of Chronometer Observers. I am bound to be quite excited, when that time eventuates.

      60

    • #
      Another Ian

      And there are numerous “Official Observers” already associated with the gliding movement

      20

  • #
    ossqss

    Never fear. Those numbers need to be homogenized appropriately by the authorities? /Sarc

    142

    • #
      sophocles

      Those numbers need to be homogenized appropriately by the authorities?

      … and while that’s happening all proposed carbon taxes will not be iscounted by the rate those forests will reduce CO2. Betcha!

      Hmm, maybe Al Gore will buy them up so he can remain “Carbon Neutral” and still illuminate his mansion?

      20

      • #
        sophocles

        Errata: iscounted => Discounted

        … mutter mutter, must get a new keyboard mutter …

        20

  • #
    tom0mason

    Modern scientists still discovering things by the quaint old methods of observation and measurement.
    Have they verified these results against the models?
    Heretics!

    282

    • #
      tom0mason

      Recent studies by Book-Cooker et al., show 97% of science is against tree growth.
      The study made use of archive materials going back many months, and across all disciplines of science, social science, political science, science fiction, and pseudoscience.
      This meticulous study took a year of careful study (including tea-breaks) to craft into world-class example of refined prolix and outstanding sophistry of the highest order. It is now widely quoted by non-academics as a shining example of modern research.

      Co-author Dr. Stephensky Lewdigetsawadout was unavailable for comment.

      71

  • #
    RAH

    That study goes on about how endangered the those trees in the dry lands will be, but of course without mentioning that increased CO2 helps make them more drought resistant.

    191

    • #
      wert

      The so called mainstream media has a huge problem in accepting CO2 fertilization as a real phenomena. And it is partially so because scientists quoting it are aggressively attacked by the Big Green.

      30

  • #
    Yonniestone

    In The Conversation link the comments still confuse carbon and CO2 while even when the process of photosynthesis is raised its dismissed as irrelevant as its only a short time “carbon is stored” completely missing the point this cycle occurs daily as the sun rises and falls.

    Considering a glowing comment on Communism and China received the response – ‘couldn’t agree more long-term benevolent dictatorships are the way to go!’- its little wonder of the confusion where earths systems are concerned, to debate such mindsets would be to indulge the pig and mud analogy for eternity.

    163

    • #
      David Maddison

      From 2014:

      http://amp.dailycaller.com/2014/01/15/un-climate-chief-communism-is-best-to-fight-global-warming/

      UN climate chief: Communism is best to fight global warming

      January 15th, 2014
      United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres said that democracy is a poor political system for fighting global warming. Communist China, she says, is the best model.

      China may be the world’s top emitter of carbon dioxide and struggling with major pollution problems of their own, but the country is “doing it right” when it comes to fighting global warming says Figueres.

      213

      • #
        Yonniestone

        Its always the end justifying the means for the haters of democracy, social transformation without representation is the ideology but repression without social conscience is the result.

        152

        • #
          el gordo

          Yonnie democracy is an unstable system and quite different to the steady state.

          20

          • #
            Yonniestone

            Democracy in the form of a republic with sovereignty is still a good model otherwise Trump wouldn’t have had a chance, the third way you mention has elements adopted by Australia via Medicare, welfare, public schooling, public hospitals, state power generation to name a few.

            Unfortunately the existence of the left in systems where freedoms are demanded gives it a platform to expand due to the very foundations of the system, I once thought that left and conservative politics had a yin yang existence in Australia and perhaps at one stage it did however where the left will grow is through 5th column insurgency completely bypassing what we would consider an open and air process.

            I never hear doctors say a little bit of cancer is a good thing.

            111

            • #
              el gordo

              In relation to climate change the Westminster system has let the people down, both majors are brainwashed and its a dictatorship. There is little our political cell can do against the overwhelming forces of fake news, corrupt science and career politicians.

              We are already in a benevolent dictatorship and it won’t be so bad when they eventually get around to supplying the bread and circuses.

              60

            • #
              Wayne Job

              “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the rest” Winston Churchill.

              20

        • #
          wert

          end justifying the means for the haters of democracy

          China is not reducing CO2 emissions. It is past the UK and so emits as much as Western countries per capita. Figueres was dead wrong on this comment. Or maybe she meant China is a democracy? Laughable. The UN is a full of fools.

          31

          • #
            el gordo

            ‘Or maybe she meant China is a democracy? ‘

            Its not a western style democracy, but after thousands of years they have developed a structure, its their preferred political culture.

            Of course its alien to us of European heritage.

            21

            • #
              clipe

              Tell that to the Taiwanese.

              40

              • #
                el gordo

                Chiang Kai-shek ruled Taiwan with an iron fist until 1975 and the people are no worse off under Beijing.

                20

            • #
              clipe

              Chiang Kai-shek ruled Taiwan with an iron fist until 1975 and the people are no worse off under Beijing

              Are you serious?

              20

              • #
                theRealUniverse

                Chiang Kai-shek (English aborted pronunciation) Jiang Kai Ze, (mandarin) was a idiot tyrant who killed thousands in China before 1949 and let the Japanese, by hardly fighting them at all after they invaded China (north) in 1933. Not until he was forced to fight then Mao actually fought and almost single handedly beat the imperial Japanese invaders by using clever guerilla warfare. The West actually owes Mao a favor for helping hold the Japanese war machine from taking over the whole of SE China ,SE Asia and eventually Aus and NZ. After 1949 he then killed thousands of Taiwanese and forced them to speak mandarin, they hated him.

                20

              • #
                Bob Cormack

                Of course, it’s going to be hard to poll the 50 – 75 million Chinese that Mao killed, whether they were “better off” than the Taiwanese.

                10

      • #
        Leonard Lane

        One only needs to know the Communist purges and wars that killed perhaps 100 million or more people in the 20th century and is now continuing into this century, i.e. Venezuela North Korea.
        We Do Not have to try Communism. That experiment has been conducted many times 1917 and the results are always the same. Revolution and slaughter of the existing government, establishment of a dictatorship (wherein the violence, repression, and murder have ranged from horrible human suffering and murder to unbelievable suffering, death, genocide, and then turning on their own people).
        United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres is either incredibly ignorant and naive about Communism or she is a monster.

        102

        • #
          Mary E

          United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres is either incredibly ignorant and naive about Communism

          She is one of the “elite” and believes that she will automagically be raised to the ruling echelon. History shows otherwise – many of the founding revolution end up jailed or killed by those who feel the movement needs purified – i.e., THEY should be the ones in charge.

          And too many modern socialists forget that Mussolini started as a socialist. He was so far to the left of the major group, however, that he ended up on what people now consider the far-fringe-right, fascist. In my mind, he was just a socialist with delusions of god-hood, and was a pure socialist a la Plato’s Republic (Military and “wise” upper class, everyone else is a slave, cull the weak when the ranks swell too much)

          60

        • #
          Bob Cormack

          Not to mention that fact that the most environmentally devastated lands were all managed by Communist governments.

          This continues in China today — just ask anyone who’s been to Beijing what the air is like. Apparently, the Communist government doesn’t want to pay for smokestack scrubbers — that might slow down the pace that they can build coal power plants. Who cares what the populace thinks or wants?

          Astonishing that Progressives think that they would like such a system. They must all have convinced themselves that they would be among the ruling class, which would have the power and money to insulate themselves from the consequences. (They should study the history of purges of the “comrades” once someone took absolute power under Communism — the cadres always were the first to die.)

          10

    • #
      el gordo

      As you know I’m a big fan of the Third Way and ideally they (benevolent dictatorship) will turn our arid deserts into Chinese market gardens.

      22

      • #
        Graeme No.3

        Judging by the results in China the result is more likely to be market gardens turned into polluted deserts.

        70

        • #
          el gordo

          They would ideally like to acquire fresh pastures free of factory pollution , for the sake of their families.

          Laissez faire crony capitalism produced the greatest economic revolution the world has ever seen, there has been some collateral damage.

          21

  • #
    David Maddison

    http://reason.com/archives/2016/02/16/global-warming-fund-a-slush-fund-for-wor/amp

    Global Warming Fund a Slush Fund for World’s Dictators

    Third World tyrants salivate at the prospect of largesse from the green climate fund.

    42

  • #
    tom0mason

    “…467 million hectares of previously unreported forest…”

    UN-IPFC models now indicate Trees will destroy all life before the end of century

    From a press release from the The Intergovernmental Panel on Forestry Change
    ¯

    New modeled increase of dangerous trees have risen from 0.038ppm of the earths surface to nearly 0.039ppm of the earths surface,and most of the increase is due to humans. The models show that most of these dangerous trees have been planted by humans since early times, and that now they are on the increase. It has already been shown by Professor Handsen’s comparative studies that this goes against the norms of planetary existence, ensuring that earth does not progress normally to a Venusian state. He has also show that some of these trees stay in the environment for time scales of many months or even years!
    From the calculations released by the UN-ICFC modeling center, indications are that at this rate the earth will be devastated by unrestrained forestry growth destroying highways and byways and even invading the very cities where our children live. Studies also show that these dangerous trees support infection spreading avian parasitic life. The models also indicate that the trend in the rate of growth of these trees show that there will be no land left for future generation to inhabit, as the whole planet will be one large dense forest.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Anthropological Global Foresting (AGF) groups have been funded worldwide help get the message out to schools and communities everywhere. They’re efforts include incentivizing community leaders to take action in stopping this dangerous spread of arboreal life.
    To this end they advocate a new resurgence in building, especially windmills, as these have the dual benefit of necessary tree-felling and usefully interfering with the life cycle of infectious avian life, and calming stormy weather.

    Needless to say some pro-arboreal life advocates are against these measures, claiming trees are are actually good for the environment and ignoring the ‘settled science’ of AGF. But they have failed to prevent the community group ‘Action Force Against Rogue Trees’ (AFART) who have already taken matter into their own hands, and burned down 3 major forest growths in Chicago this year.

    250

    • #
      Leonard Lane

      tom0mason. What a bunch of loonies you have described. “Let’s kill the tress and birds.” Can the honeybees and other pollinators be far behind on the death list.
      In more enlightened times, environmentalist went across the landscape planting trees to “save the Earth”.

      60

      • #
        tom0mason

        Leonard Lane,

        Bees and butterflies humm…

        You’re right!
        Nothing is too small to be considered when we’re saving the planet.

        60

    • #
      sophocles

      You forgot about the huge increase in the fungi infecting and infesting the humus around those trees roots, such as …um … mushrooms!

      … mmmm … I wonder if they’re magical …?
      🙂

      20

    • #
      John Robertson

      You missed the key bit,citing a relationship between increased CO2 levels and plant mobility,ala Ents, seeking revenge for the axe,fire and wooden houses…
      When CO2 levels,produced by evil men of course, reach x%(pull number out of..)the trees will awaken from their long slumber and stump forth…
      A fine piece of catastrophism the Gang Green will lap up.

      save the planet, kill the trees..along with the desert dwellers, soaring raptors and green spaces…
      Gaseous gangrene is where its at,our “planet saviours” being proof this disease has a human face.

      10

  • #
    Ruairi

    To miss a half trillion trees,
    Is an ‘oops’ and a flawed expertise,
    Which wouldn’t inspire,
    That those who inquire,
    Will find the lost heat in the seas.

    180

  • #
    Radical Rodent

    Oh no! Not only is man-made CO2 boiling the atmosphere, but it means we are about to be taken over by trees! It is worse than we thought!

    60

  • #
    What Class?

    Trees, Don’t you love ’em? The lungs of the planet and the natural CCS system. Cheap, too. All you need to do to get more is put more CO2 into the atmosphere.

    100

  • #
    Another Ian

    Any estimate of how much of that area is in Australia and Queensland in particular?

    50

    • #
      Annie

      Having been given the distinct impression by the ever-present media panic-merchants that Queensland’s forests were being rapidly cleared, what do I find when flying from Brisbane to Darwin? Miles and miles and hours and hours of flying over forest! There’s a fair old whack of them in Victoria too.

      70

  • #

    Anyone who lives around wattles, lantana, gums, tobacco, cockspur, privet, mistletoe, tea tree etc can tell you all about frenetic regrowth. Without an economic imperative to clear you can’t stop forestation. You may not get the pristine forest that used to be there…but that pristine forest wasn’t really pristine anyway.

    In Oz, after the wattles have crumbled and the lantana has been shaded out, those thuggish gums will always win, having stabbed, smashed, slurped, shaded and starved the competition (as well as each other)…unless you can get some moso bamboo to make a gallant stand on a cool slope.

    I for one welcome our eucalypt overlords.

    140

    • #
      AZ1971

      …unless you can get some moso bamboo to make a gallant stand on a cool slope.

      I find it interesting that more hasn’t been said, done, or researched about planting giant bamboo as a way of sequestering that nasty carbon “pollution”. The stuff grows 100-feet in a year. Surely all of that photosynthesis can be harvested for some good, whether turning it into compost or biochar or even biomass for electricity generation.

      I’ve long thought that it makes logical sense to utilize plants with extreme growth curves to offset urban heating and cooling costs, produce biomass for any number of purposes, and also retract some (albeit a very small ‘some’) of the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere. The same could be done by seeding the oceans with iron, as it would produce algae bloom which would be vastly beneficial to the lower rungs of the food chain and thus, provide feed to larger predators. These are simple, economical things that we as humans could do without running the risk of completely mismanaging the planetary biome and provide some real insurance against all the doom-and-gloom which alarmist media whores spout as inevitable. I’m sure they would be supportive, right?

      50

      • #
        Graeme No.3

        Supportive???? And destroy a profitable end-of-world-as-we-know-it scare?

        50

      • #
        Ken Stewart

        ” I’ve long thought that it makes logical sense to utilize plants with extreme growth curves ”

        Like sugar cane perhaps?

        40

      • #

        In a (rare) perfect spring, my moso can go from zero to 100 feet in SEVEN WEEKS. (Okay, it then needs around five years for optimum hardening…but, hombre, I love those seven weeks.)

        40

      • #
        el gordo

        Industrial hemp is good to go.

        ‘Industrial hemp uses the sun’s energy to convert atmospheric CO2 into hydrocarbons and water. This absorbed CO2 is only released back into the atmosphere when hemp is composted or burned. According to a July press release from NoCo Hemp Expo, each ton of hemp removes 1.63 tons of CO2. The state of Colorado alone has planted over 8,700 acres of hemp, “resulting in an average of 10 tons per acre of carbon dioxide being removed from our atmosphere.”

        40

        • #
          Rereke Whakaaro

          Jesus wore hemp.

          I know this because, as a young man, I read it on the packet of some very peculiar cigarettes.

          40

          • #
            el gordo

            Gautama Buddha ate hemp seeds because its a whole food, contrary to general perceptions he was in fact thin and not obese.

            40

    • #
      sophocles

      You can make musical instruments out of bamboo …
      and Sliderules, too. (Hemmi of Japan 🙂 )

      40

  • #
    Oliver K. Manuel

    There is no limit on the advances of phony science!

    Regretfully, the US NAS (National Academy of Sciences) is Presidenf Trump’s most powerful opponent, and . . .

    The US NAS will have to be stripped of all authority to review programs and budgets of federal research agencies if the swamp around Washington DC is to be drained and cleaned.

    https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2017/05/12/the-matrix-revealed-victimized-inspired/#comment-225004

    40

  • #
    Robert Wykoff

    This is not good news at all. Trees are the leading cause of forest fires

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    • #
      el gordo

      Australian gums are a health hazard and should be severely culled in residential environments.

      60

      • #
        Will Janoschka

        CH4 + 3O2 -> CO2 + 2H2O + insolation -> CH4 + 3O2!! ..Ha
        CH4 + 3O2 -> CO2 + 2H2O + insolation -> C + 2H2O + O2. !!
        If you want to store the coal until it gets cold, C + O2 -> CO2 + warm!! Spontaneous storage of insolation; LiPo really doesn’t store anything well!!
        What does that do to Clown Trenberth’s insolation energy budget?? 🙂
        Bye, bye, earthlings. Other predators know NOT FUTZ WITH momma!!

        20

      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        It’s not the gums that are the hazard. It’s the teeth.

        30

    • #
      Will Janoschka

      And coal is but forests that have not yet caught fire yet! The only thing recyclable is methane (swamp gas) CH4 + 3O2 -> CO2 + 2H2O + insolation -> CH4 + 3O2!!
      What does that do to Clown Trenberth’s insolation energy budget?? 🙂

      20

  • #
    David Maddison

    Invalid survey technique to fake support for Marxist narrative I’d say.

    This is a survey about women’s supposed reactions to the latest Australian federal budget.

    http://www.mamamia.com.au/women-react-to-the-budget-2017/

    QUOTE
    A further 68 per cent of women said they were disappointed climate change was left off the table, after they failed to invest further funding in their climate policy, the Emission Reduction Fund.
    END QUOTE

    43

  • #
    David Maddison

    Science used to be all about observation but due to the dumbing down of science training (and everything else) plus the vast amounts of climate catastrophe funds to be had, modern “scientists” don’t seem to be able to look out the window.

    63

    • #
      Another Ian

      David

      They are “empixellated”

      40

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Modern “scientists” avoid looking out of the window. because they tend to see their own reflection as well. Nobody likes to admit that they are seeing a dumb person in that reflection.

      20

      • #

        In large institutions group think is king,
        seems to the the human failing thing.
        Scientist in cloud towers
        whiling away the tenured hours
        tend to ferget their models aren’t
        the reality.

        Likewise, silk shirted coteries in
        whispery corridors of power
        do not concern themselves with
        the uncertainty,
        mission consensus or maybe
        global governance is their thing.

        10

  • #
    David Maddison

    From an IPCC official there is this alarmingly frank and disturbing 2010 statement by Ottmar Edenhofer: “But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy….One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.”

    See original German at http://www.nzz.ch/klimapolitik-verteilt-das-weltvermoegen-neu-1.8373227 and translation at http://www.eike-klima- energie.eu/uploads/media/IPCC_Edenhofer__Climate_Policy_Is_Redistributing_The_World__s_W ealth_.pdf In his Wikipedia entry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottmar_Edenhofer he admits he was influenced by Karl Marx, among others.

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    TdeF

    Great news. More trees. However there is an underlying Green myth here that needs addressing.

    Trees are not the only plants to capture CO2. The ancient enemies of trees are grasses, which contrary to popular myth are every bit as good as trees in converting CO2 into Oxygen and Carbohydrates. Many druidic groups worship trees and the Germans love trees. German parks are often just every shade of green trees but not a single flower. German workers have to see a tree.

    There is a problem. Humans cannot eat trees. We live on grass seeds. So while the Greens want to cover the earth in trees, they would have nothing to eat, except in Asia where thanks to symbiosis with monkeys, the trees are fruit trees.

    The other is that at least half the worlds’ CO2 conversion to O2 is by phytoplankton. Trees and animals came from the ocean. It is stuffed with oxygen and CO2 and tiny animals which continually reprocess CO2 into O2. It is still the great generator of O2 and has captured so much free CO2 that there is precious little left in the thin atmosphere above.

    So while it is nice that observational scientists have realised the world’s forests are much bigger than they thought, the grasses and bushes are every bit as important. It is the total mass of living things which has captured CO2, even the extra 5 billion living humans on the earth since 1900 and all their animals. Every living thing is a result of carbon capture and the total mass is increasing.

    Besides, where is this rolling disaster? We have had an extra 1.5C for 120 years now and everything seems exactly the same. Still you have to be a Climate Scientist to really understand the disaster we are experiencing. As I do not find trees delicious, I will stick to grass seeds and Obama’s eat small steaks solution to his Climate Disaster is absurd. Apparently the cause of the war in Syria is CO2, not Obama. That sounds like an excuse.

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    • #
      Annie

      A rapidly growing pasture is very efficient too.

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      • #
        Annie

        Not to mention the tasty results from grazing sheep and cattle!

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        • #
          ROM

          I’m still around but have been tied up in a very stressful personal situation at the moment.

          To back up TdeF’s comment @ #20.

          He is right again and beat me to it again!

          Trees don’t feed more than a very small percentage of mankind’s numbers.

          The seed and vegetative products of Grasses feed most likely more than at least 75% of mankind’s numbers.

          Grasses include Wheat, Barley, Oats, Corn / Maize , Rice, Sorghum. Millet and a large number of other grass species whose seed and vegetative growth is used locally by the various ethnic groupings across the world.[ http://igc.int/downloads/gmrsummary/gmrsumme.pdf ]

          The Pulses ie; beans, peas , chickpeas, lentils, soyabeans and etc probably account for most of the the rest of mankind’s food needs.

          Oilseeds such as canola oil,, soyabean oil and then Palm oil and olive oil which are products of trees, and etc are primarily additive products to the main grass originated food crops.

          To quote from Jo’s headline post

          The discovery increases the known amount of global forest cover by around 9%, and will significantly boost estimates of how much carbon is stored in plants worldwide.

          “and will significantly boost estimates of how much carbon is stored in plants worldwide”.

          May I say “crap” to that claim.

          Will significantly boost ESTIMATES

          In short the so called scientist who is making that claim is just doing nothing but guessing as is usual in anything to do with climate alarmist science and is showing his glaring biases without producing any evidence to back his claim.

          Some work was done in the late 1990’s and early noughties on how much “Carbon”, the real stuff this time, is actually sequestered when comparing grasses and forests.
          Then it became very unfashionable to begin to ask questions on what happens to all that Carbon we humans were supposedly exhuming from burning some 130 million year old ferns and primitive trees and etc as we burnt their remains aka coal.
          —————————–
          Just a quote or two from a couple of articles on this.

          Links Between Grasslands and Carbon Storage

          <
          &

          From a global perspective, grasslands store approximately 34% of the global terrestrial stock of carbon while forests store approximately 39% and agro-ecosystems approximately 17 percent (World Resources Institute 2000). Unlike forests where the vegetation is the primary source of carbon storage, most of the grassland carbon is stored in the soil (Janzen et al 2002).

          And Australia’s Chief Scientist circa 2008 who ever that was!

          Which plants store more carbon in Australia: forests or grasses?

          Australia has 149 million hectares of forest. Of this, 147 million hectares is native forest, dominated by eucalypt (79%) and acacia (7%), and 1.82 million hectares is in plantations[i]. Grassland covers around 440 million hectares of land in Australia[ii].

          The size of the difference in the total carbon storage between grasslands and woodlands depends not just on the amount of land covered by the plants, but on the capacity of the individual ecosystems to store carbon, and the depth to which the carbon sink is tested. The sinks can be the plant material above ground, below ground (roots), and soil that is enriched in carbon by dead plant material.

          Based on data from typical perennial grasslands and mature forests in Australia, forests are typically more than 10 times as effective as grasslands at storing carbon on a hectare per hectare basis.

          The pea under the thimble trick here by the Chief scientist is that he DID NOT compare the sequestration of Carbon under Grasses over a time period that was of a similar length of time to a forest’s lifetime and similar to, and covered the growth, maturing and decline and eventual rotting down or destruction by bacteria, fungi and termites and the consequent release of a high proportion of that tree sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere.
          A time period in Australian conditions for forests and trees that might be anywhere, depending on the species, from a couple of decades long to a few hundred years in length.

          He made a blanket statement that reeks of comparing the grasses ability to sequester carbon on an annual basis as compared to trees and a forest’s lifetime of decades to centuries.

          There is also another factor that I put to a scientist at one of our agricultural seminars some years ago, which to his credit, after a few seconds of silence he answered honestly.

          When trees, grasslands and etc burn they leave behind immense amounts of what could be catergorised as non organic carbon, carbon that resulted from extreme temperatures baking the organic matter as compared to carbon that results from the plant processes themselves.
          Such fire created submicron in scale carbon residue particles can last for hundreds or thousands of years.

          That scientist in reply to my question admitted in front of a couple of hundred farmers that they have great difficulty in sorting out when they test for carbon in soils, in defining what is organic carbon resulting from plant processes and what is carbon resulting from high temperature fires and the burning, baking of organic matter, all over aeons of time, particles which are very sub micron in size.

          So when it comes to testing soil for that all important “carbon” content level, the holy grail of those soil enthusiasts in universities everywhere you only get what you pay for.

          And a few good crops of non grass medic or clover pastures plowed back in when near their pre seed set maximum flowering period and the soil carbon levels and soil nitrogen levels go right up ready to boost yields and quality for the next couple of grain crops.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Don’t forget that around one year ago Turnbull appointed a Green to help architect Turnbull’s desire of a “new society”.

    http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2016/05/on-tuesday-8-december-2015-lucy-and-malcolm-turnbull-hadthe-ceo-of-uniting-carelin-hatfield-doddsover-to-kirribilli-house-th.html

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    • #
      TdeF

      That was when he was planning his Green/Liberal alliance and secret preference swap, dumping Labour and the Nationals to oblivion. Nothing about principles or ethics, just a grab for political power. It is all about winning, at any cost. Rich only child and banker Malcolm is no businessman and was easily outsmarted again and Di Natale nearly became deputy PM, except for one seat. Good thing Malcolm alone saved Tony Abbott from oblivion, or was it the other way around? Who could expect Daniel Andrews would trash Labor in Victoria so quickly. Like Gillard before him, Malcolm turned a landslide victory into a single seat government.

      Anyway, super Green Malcolm is now chasing the Labor heartland to the amazement of everyone except those who know Malcolm’s family has been solid Labor for generations, leaving Shorten nowhere to go. Whatever happens, the control of Labor by the Unions and the Liberals by the NSW faction led by Michael Photios means the wishes and good of the people of Australia are utterly irrelevant. Malcolm does not even bother campaigning. As Jeremy Corbyn is showing in England, with the growth of the professional political classes who have never had any other job, you do not have to please the people, just control the party.

      On the war on CO2 called Climate Change, Malcolm and Bill are in lockstep. Who needs manufacturing and farming when you can work for the public service?

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    TdeF

    In this focus on trees, my concern is the growth of the observational scientist classes. These are vast numbers of graduates in looking at stuff and drawing conclusions by extrapolation, not hypothesis, testing and proof. So any conclusion is fact because they get a degree in ecology or botany or sociology or even psychology. In their world, statistics equals proof. Consensus equals proof. In opinion is automatically correct if you are an observational scientists.

    You would have to listen to Tim Flannery’s assessment of his massively failed hot rocks scheme or nuclear power or ‘the oceans stole my warming’ to realise how real rational science and deep understanding, mathematics, physics, chemistry, rational fact based science is no longer necessary to form a definitive opinion. ‘I think therefore it is true’ has displaced Rene Descartes. Worse, I have a degree in the Science department and this makes me a real scientist, expert in all science. This was the logic in the Wizard of Oz when the strawman was given a degree. Unfortunately you have environmental scientists now and climate scientists like the Climate Council, not one of whom is a meteorologist.

    97% of all Climate Scientists identify as Scientists. Almost none are.

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    • #
      TdeF

      I think this is also implied in Jo’s post. What sort of scientists leaves out an area of forest over half the size of Australia or Brazil? What sort of due diligence, exacting calculations are being done when you can forget a forest of that size? What sort of dingbat thinks trees are more significant than grasses. When did they include the green phytoplankton, the world’s largest grassy plain which feeds all the fish in the sea? (Almost all of which are carnivores from the krill to the killer whales).

      While these observational scientists worry about life on earth and our climate, it is the climate above the water which covers 75% of the world’s surface which matters. Trees and grasses are relative latecomers to life on earth. Broadleaf trees in particular as the oldest trees are pines with needle leaves, a single trunk and cones which open only in a fire.

      So you get the distinct impression of major calculations being the work of school children, not scientists. Sorry, the dog ate my forests. No Nobel Peace prize for you then, Mr Gore. Clearly any other prize would require actual scholarship.

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    Neville

    Jo’s post is just one of many that throws doubt about all of their CAGW scare stories.
    SLR is probably the biggest scary story of all of their so called problems caused by so called CAGW, but does it really show any co2 forced UNNATURAL change since 1900?
    This new post from WUWT seems to challenge any change caused by extra co2 emissions and offers a number of new studies to back up that claim.
    Anyway observations should override silly scary stories, unless we’ve really descended into the realm of fairies and witchcraft.

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/05/11/npr-bungles-sea-level-rise-story/

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    • #
      TdeF

      It’s hard to believe people are measuring sea level to ten microns, .01mm. At what time of the day is that?

      This is a bit like measuring the world temperature to 0.001C when a world temperature does not exist, it is only a concept, an artificial number averaged as it is from pole to pole, season to season, midnight to midday, land to water to mountains and at so many heights. There is a new science out there based on a confusion of reading resolution with accuracy and catastrophic predictions from tiny variations. No temperature is accurate to 0.001C except in the most strictly controlled laboratory. No sea level is accurate to 0.01mm, far less than the minuscus in a tube.

      Our Federal BOM (1909) has conveniently discarded State records before 1910 without explanation and homogenized later records to ‘correct’ them. Why? You do not have to be accurate to 0.001C to tell a story and you could conclude that high resolution and adjusting data based on a self justifying model is blinding people as to meaning. Really, sea level to 0.01mm? Changing data to suit a story? That stops being science and you start seeing effects which do not exist, even manufacturing the changes you predict.

      The world has not warmed significantly despite the new accuracy of our thermometers. The seas are not rising any more than they ever did. Worse, there is no variation in that rate or in CO2 levels, so the Green industry has failed to make the slightest difference in anything except for the massive flow of trillions to the profiteers of doom.

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      • #
        Will Janoschka

        TdeF Mar 13, 2017 at 10:08 am

        “It’s hard to believe people are measuring sea level to ten microns, .01mm. At what time of the day is that?”

        Those that do bother to ‘measure’, rather than fantasize; always understand the ‘error bars’. ‘Tis part of learning how to measure.
        All the best!-will-

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        • #
          TdeF

          Agreed, but when was the last time you saw error bars on media graphs? Or that errors were mentioned when talking about the hottest year ever? It is decided on 0.001C in a made up number. The Eurovision song contest is closer to rational science.

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          • #
            David Maddison

            There isn’t usually any error bars on the IPCC climate “models” – and for good reason – they would exceed the range of the temperature axis.

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      • #
        Will Janoschka

        “Green industry has failed to make the slightest difference in anything except for the massive flow of trillions to the profiteers of doom.”

        Green industry knows exactly what they are doing and why they are doing such! Do not believe this is but sloppy ‘science’! Try intentional premeditated SCAM! -will-

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      • #
        Will Janoschka

        Will Janoschka (May13,2017:11:29) 16 8b chars; perfect for encryption irreversibly changing each minute!

        Green industry knows exactly what they are doing and why they are doing such! Do not believe this is but sloppy ‘science’! Try intentional premeditated SCAM! -will-

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      • #
        Allen Ford

        This is a bit like measuring the world temperature to 0.001C when a world temperature does not exist, it is only a concept, an artificial number averaged as it is from pole to pole, season to season, midnight to midday, land to water to mountains and at so many heights.

        As an intensive variable, can temperature be “averaged” in any meaningful way?

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        • #
          Will Janoschka

          “As an intensive variable, can temperature be “averaged” in any meaningful way?”

          Temperature is never a ‘variable’;..Temperature is a ‘measurement’ of mass ‘sensible heat, of a fixed mass’. Temperature can never be averaged; in any meaningful way as mass ‘specific heat’ is an independent variable (orthogonal) to temperature?” 🙂
          All the best!-will-

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        • #
          Will Janoschka

          BTW, water not uranium has the highest specific heat! Both H2 and He “may be higher”! I wish the Cal Tech folk would stop pissing off ‘momma’! 🙁

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    pat

    meanwhile, MSM is busy spinning Arctic Council meeting as strictly a Paris/CAGW/SDG affair. here’s a small sample:

    CBC: Freeland praises Tillerson’s work on Arctic Council climate change statement
    “We know that climate change is having a powerful impact and we believe that only concerted international action is going to do what it takes to fight climate change.
    “We got to a very good place on climate change in this agreement.”…
    Freeland said Tillerson played a “strong and positive role in holding the chair in all eight Arctic countries in getting to a public declaration that we were all able to sign, which includes very clear recognition of the Paris agreement” as well as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals…

    Daily Caller: Trudeau Government Says Tillerson On Board With Climate Change
    Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland says Secretary of State Rex Tillerson demonstrated his support of the Paris accord on climate change when he signed the Fairbanks Declaration 2017 that followed a summit Thursday in Alaska to highlight global warming…

    Washington Examiner: House climate caucus welcomes Tillerson’s Arctic declaration
    “It is significant the former-Chief Executive Officer of the world’s largest oil company recognizes the threat climate change poses,” Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo, the Republican co-chair of the caucus, said in a statement alongside Deutch. “Given the trillions of dollars in cleaner energy investments and countless good-paying American jobs that would result from remaining in the Paris Agreement, I again urge President Trump to make sure our country keeps its commitment to lead.”

    11 May: Reuters: Timothy Gardner: Tillerson gives nod at Arctic meet to climate change action
    Russia has beefed up its military presence in the Arctic to levels not seen since the fall of the Soviet Union, as global interest in the region’s oil, gas and rare earth metals heats up.
    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-arctic-summit-idUSKBN1870FT

    FOLLOWING IS ONLY DETAILED ACCOUNT FOUND SO FAR, BEHIND PAYWALL.
    TO READ ALL, SEARCH HEADLINE & GO TO CACHED VERSION:

    12 May: E&E: Margaret Kriz Hobson: U.S. agrees only to acknowledge Paris Agreement exists
    Diplomats from other countries in the Arctic Council said the Trump administration sought last-minute changes to the ministerial statement to reflect the White House’s reluctance to commit to serious climate change policies.
    A Finnish official said the Arctic Council foreign ministers came to Fairbanks this week believing that the ministerial declaration had been settled during negotiations held earlier this month.
    “But then, yesterday, we got to know that the U.S. wanted to open up some paragraphs,” explained René Söderman of Finland’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
    “There was a question around how strong the language could be for the Paris [accord], and on the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals,” Söderman said. “There were discussions on renewable energy and so on.”

    Some Arctic nations wanted to insert language from the Paris Agreement into the ministerial statement, now known as the Fairbanks Declaration. The statement is designed to highlight the accomplishments of the U.S. chairmanship and lay out Finland’s plans to assume council leadership.
    But during a last-minute negotiating session Wednesday, “we were able to push the U.S. back as much as possible,” Söderman said. “And they were able to [push] back as much as possible.”
    In the end, the declaration makes a single reference acknowledging the existence of the Paris deal. “It could have been stronger language, but with a U.S. government that still has the Paris accord under consideration, this is as far as they could go,” he said.

    During the Fairbanks meeting, the eight Arctic Council foreign ministers all signed the new document but not before many of them forcefully advocated for implementation of the Paris accord and adoption of aggressive environmental policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
    Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs Margot Elisabeth Wallström cited a recent Arctic Council study showing that within two decades, increased warming in the northern countries is likely to cause the Arctic Ocean to be largely ice-free during the summer. That report, “Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost in the Arctic,” says the economic damages from Arctic warming could amount to as much as $90 trillion (Climatewire, April 25).
    Wallström argued that the Paris Agreement and the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development “provide a science-based path away from these risks. … Like no other generation before us, we have the knowledge, technology and the capacity to save our planet.”

    Alaska’s Republican senators, who hitched a plane ride with Tillerson from Washington to Fairbanks, each had a distinct perspective on the importance of the Arctic Council declaration and the Paris accord.
    Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski argued that the Arctic Council ministerial statement is impressive simply because Tillerson was willing to sign the document at a time when the president “has not been overwhelming in his embrace of the realities of climate change.”…
    Murkowski said she is “agnostic” on whether the United States should remain in the Paris pact.
    “In fairness, I think we probably have more leverage if we stay in,” she said…
    “My hope is that after seeing this declaration, Secretary Tillerson will be able to go back to the administration and make the argument that it’s important to clarify our climate policy,” Murkowski said.

    On the other hand, Alaska’s junior senator, Dan Sullivan, was less convinced that the United States should remain in the Paris Agreement.
    Sullivan acknowledged that the Arctic is being affected by climate change. But he argued that the international climate agreement would hurt the U.S. economy.
    “One of the big flaws of the Paris accord is that the commitments made by China are much less stringent and serious than the ones made by the United States,” he said. “And they’re the biggest producer of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, and they’re our biggest economic competitor. I think a lot of Americans have serious issues with that.”
    Sullivan said he opposes environmental policies to quickly decarbonize the world economies. Such proposals are advocated by environmental groups and some Nordic nations.
    “Right now, my constituents here are going through a rough economic patch,” he said, referring to Alaska’s $3 billion budget deficit, caused when oil prices declined.

    In addition, the Arctic nations granted observer status to Switzerland and to six nongovernmental groups, including the OSPAR Commission, Oceana, the World Meteorological Organization and the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea…
    https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060054474

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    Amber

    Oh come on now millions of sq miles of new trees discovered ? This sounds like a NOAA / NASA “adjustment ” problem .
    More CO2 = more green . Who knew . Did Exxon tell it’s share holders ?
    And by the way who are the genius’s that calculate the year to year growth of trees and other vegetation ?

    The question is why are the greens so anti-green ?

    Is it just the money or their burning desire to eradicate billions of people from the plant ? Civilly though obviously .

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    • #
      ROM

      Amber @ # 25

      Quoted;

      their burning desire to eradicate billions of people from the plant

      I try to be very polite when it comes to the green’s policies of eliminating and reducing the global population by a few billions of human souls all to “Save the Planet.”
      .
      I will give way to any Greens who espouse the Green’s population reduction and elimination policy and will politely step aside in order for them to personally have the honour of being amongst the leaders and first to begin and demonstrate the elimination and reduction of the global human population process.
      .

      ‘In my view all such Green’s policies should be demonstrated and acted upon by the committed greens themselves so that the populace can be reassured that the greens actually mean what they claim to believe about their policies and are not just green on the outside and a rather rotten mixture of a putrescent red miasma on the inside.

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  • #
    pat

    3 pages: 12 May: Reuters Africa: Timothy Gardner: At Arctic Council meeting, hidden tensions over region’s resources
    As foreign ministers from countries with territory in the far North celebrated an agreement on fighting climate change this week, one topic seethed below the surface: growing competition for Arctic resources and sea lanes as the ice melts…

    Senator Dan Sullivan, a Republican from Alaska, told Reuters he briefed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson – who hosted Thursday’s Arctic Council meeting – on a Pentagon report on Arctic strategy, portions of which were made public in February, as they flew from Washington to Fairbanks for the summit.
    “The Russians are certainly making a play in the Arctic that is doing anything but lowering tensions,” said Sullivan, who had pushed the Pentagon to issue the report.
    Recommendations in the report included bolstering the ability of U.S. forces in the Arctic to defend the homeland and exercise sovereignty and strengthening alliances and partnerships in a region awash with natural resources…

    U.S. scientists estimate the Arctic contains about one third of the world’s undiscovered but technically recoverable natural gas and 13 percent of its oil of the same category. Oil prices are not high enough now to justify drilling in harsh Arctic waters, only a fraction of which are charted to modern standards. But oil prices change, and last month President Donald Trump issued an executive order to open up Arctic drilling…

    Other Arctic resources include rare earth metals, coveted by electric car makers who use them in motor components. The metals are now mostly mined in China.
    As sea temperatures rise, fish stocks are moving north, as are fishing boats, because billions of people rely on the food for protein.
    In addition to building up its military presence in the Arctic, Russia is also building three icebreakers to add to its fleet of 40 which includes six nuclear-powered ones.
    The United States has only one major icebreaker, which is 40 years old, and hopes to complete the first of six new ones by 2023. As sea ice melts due to global warming, sea lanes open, but ice can rapidly freeze over…

    The report did not mention China’s interest in the Arctic, but the country is making moves. It became an observer member of the Arctic Council in 2013. And in April, news broke that Denmark spurned a offer from a Chinese mining company last year to buy an abandoned naval base in Greenland…READ ON
    http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFL1N1IE03T

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  • #
    pat

    11 May: Sputnik News: Finland Takes Over Arctic Council Chair, With All Eyes on Russia
    All eyes are on Russia, which is investing US$180 billion in the Arctic region, and at an event in London the Finns have promised to broker peace and prosperity in the Far North…
    “Major international players are now focusing on the Arctic more actively. This leads to rivalry and clashes of interests and ambitions of various countries, including those from beyond the Arctic region,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said on its website…

    Around US$400 billion is being invested in the Arctic region, with the lion’s share of that coming from Russia.
    According to a report by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, findings indicate that the Arctic Ocean could be largely free of sea ice in summer in only two decades.
    Already shipping companies are seeing the attraction of using the Northern Sea Route — sometimes called the North-East Passage — which allows vessels to cut two weeks off the journey between Europe and Asia.
    There is massive potential for “blue growth” in the Arctic.

    Pokela, a business consultant who was commissioned by the British government to explore opportunities for Britain in the Arctic, said Russia had opened six new military bases in the Arctic region, was opening up rivers like the Ob and the Yenisei to navigation and was investing heavily in energy and mining in Siberia and the Arctic.
    He also pointed out they were planning a floating nuclear power plant at Pevek, which is due to come into operation next year.
    Later Pokela told Sputnik why he was so optimistic about relations between Russia and other countries in the Arctic:
    “At the Arctic Economic Council’s recent meeting, Mr. Lavrov said he welcomed and supported it. It’s positive to have a dialogue on Arctic initiatives at the moment. It’s warmer there than in other parts of the world. For example, there are no practical tensions between Norway and Russia over oil and gas boundaries. That has been agreed a few years ago.”

    But he said the sanctions which had been imposed on Russia were preventing economic and scientific co-operation between Arctic countries.
    In 2014, Rosneft and ExxonMobil jointly discovered oil in the Kara Sea, but the American company was forced to pull out after sanctions were introduced and Pokela said the Trump administration had recently refused ExxonMobil’s request to reconsider…
    https://sputniknews.com/russia/201705111053504415-finland-arctic-council-chair/

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    4 Graphs That Demonstrate Why The IPCC Climate Models Will NEVER Be Accurate

    If I am correct in properly identifying the motives and intent of the [“perpetrators”], the divergence between the ground measurements and satellite data will continue to widen with time. In 10 years, an understanding of the crime detailed above and an update of the following chart is all Congress should need to present an open and shut case against the climate alarmists that have defrauded the American taxpayers, corrupted real science, and destroyed the credibility of our media and educational system.
    https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/05/13/4-graphs-that-demonstrate-why-the-ipcc-climate-models-will-never-be-accurate/

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    pat

    12 May: Politico: New York Times publisher sends personal appeal to those who canceled over Bret Stephens
    By Hadas Gold
    New York Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. is making a personal appeal to subscribers who canceled because the paper hired Bret Stephens, a conservative columnist who has questioned some of the science behind the theory of climate change and the dangers it poses.
    In an email sent Friday afternoon and obtained by POLITICO, Sulzberger addresses subscribers who specifically mentioned the hiring of Stephens as a reason that they ended their subscriptions.
    “Our customer care team shared with me that your reason for unsubscribing from The New York Times included our decision to hire Bret Stephens as an Opinion columnist. I wanted to provide a bit more context,” the email begins…

    In the letter to former subscribers, Sulzberger says it’s important to underscore that the newsroom functions separately from the opinion department, and that New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet “has sharply expanded the team of reporters and editors who cover climate change.”
    “No subject is more vital,” Sulzberger said.
    Sulzberger then lists several articles about climate change, including a photo essay about rising waters threatening China’s cities; environmental rules, regulations and other policies rolled back during Trump’s first 100 days in office; and a recent issue of the Sunday magazine dedicated to the climate’s future…
    “This journalism is unrivaled in its ***sophistication and imagination,” Sulzberger wrote…
    http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2017/05/12/new-york-times-bret-stephens-column-cancel-paper-238338

    ***sophisticated to your mind NYT; imaginative? definitely. but unconvincing propaganda nonetheless.

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    pat

    what to say?

    12 May: Daily Mail: Shivali Best: Oceans are at the ‘edge’ of losing all oxygen: Event could lead to mass sea life extinction that will last a MILLION years
    Scientists studied the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event, from 183 million years ago
    The event depleted oxygen in Earth’s oceans and mass extinction of marine life
    The researchers believe a similar event is on the brink of happening again
    And while the drop in oxygen comes to a natural end, it isn’t for a million years
    University of Exeter scientists fear the modern ocean is ‘on the edge of anoxia’ – when the oceans are depleted of oxygen…
    Lead researcher PhD student Sarah Baker said it was now ‘critical’ for modern humans to limit carbon emissions to prevent this…
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4499064/Oceans-edge-starved-oxygen.html

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    pat

    11 May: CarlinEconomics&Science: Why the UN Climate Models Are Inherently Unreliable, and Should Be Abandoned in Favor of More Top-Down Approaches
    Alan Carlin
    http://www.carlineconomics.com/archives/3575

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  • #
    pat

    13 May: HuffPo: Chris D’Angelo: Scientists Quit EPA Advisory Board In Protest
    They cited “deep concerns” about EPA leadership
    Liz Perera, the Sierra Club’s public health policy director, applauded the two scientists for “putting their feet down in the face of Trump and Pruitt’s complete and total disdain for science, reality and the very foundations of our government.”
    Carlos Martín, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute’s Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center, and Peter B. Meyer, president of the E.P. Systems Group, a Pennsylvania-based environmental analysis firm, said in a letter to EPA staff on Friday that it was “with certain regret and concern — and in protest” that they step down from a Board of Scientific Counselors subcommittee on sustainable and healthy communities. Martín posted the resignation letter to Twitter on Friday morning…

    Pruitt this week dismissed half of the members of EPA’s 18-member Board of Scientific Counselors, which advises the agency’s Office of Research and Development on scientific research programs. Among those Pruitt booted were subcommittee co-chairs Courtney Flint and Robert Richardson, who Martín and Meyer described as “leading scholars.” Their removal came as a “shock” and “suggests that our collective knowledge is not valued by the current EPA administrators,” Martín and Meyer wrote…

    “Like so many of our colleagues in the broader research community, we have deep concerns about the leadership at EPA and its continued obfuscation of scientific evidence and the research enterprise,” they said…

    Liz Perera, the Sierra Club’s public health policy director, applauded the two scientists for “putting their feet down in the face of Trump and Pruitt’s complete and total disdain for science, reality and the very foundations of our government.”
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/scientists-quit-epa-advisory-board-protest-us_us_5915e12fe4b0fe039b3459b6

    for CAGW believers?

    12 May: Medscape: Alicia Ault: Climate Change a Major Mental Health Threat, Experts Warn
    Climate change is a major threat to mental health, the American Psychiatric Association (APA), warns. The association has joined the growing ranks of physician groups that are sounding the alarm about the multifactorial effects that rising seas, temperature extremes, and changing environments are having on individuals’ physical and mental health.

    In a new position statement, the APA focuses on the profound impact of climate change on mental health, which may include the development or exacerbation of mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or substance abuse…
    Climate change and its weather-related consequences are occurring more frequently, becoming more destructive, are are occurring in places where they were not as common before, Joshua C. Morganstein, MD, the lead author of the position statement, told Medscape Medical News…

    Dr Morganstein and coauthor Robert Ursano, MD, who are both members of the APA’s Psychiatric Dimensions of Disaster Committee and are practicing psychiatrists in Bethesda, Maryland, also contributed to the chapter on mental health in a recent key federal report on climate change, The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment…
    http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/879974

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      Mary E

      Oh my. 2 scientists had a hissy and took their ball home because a new coach changed the line-up? And to top it off, signaled their virtue by alerting the media? How gauche.

      And as far as climate change being a mental stress (or emotional) – wait until the glaciers return, or a bus-sized meteor smacks into the middle of, say, London, or New York. Hell, even in the middle of the Sahara. That’ll cause some climate issues, oh yeah. All the rest is reaction to a constant bombardment of despair and lies.

      You know what it is that exacerbates current mental/emotional disorders? Panic. And who is causing panic? The global doom-mongers, those carny-charlatans of advocacy and impending catastrophe, in tandem with the idiot news-people who must have headlines with at least 3 !!! exclamation points, real or implied, about every potential passing of gas from the fringe of the IPCC. Global warming, climate change, that isn’t the cause. It is the never-ending stream of [SNIP “BS from those”] who can’t walk outside and see what the weather is really up to, or take 20 minutes to see if the paper they are citing really says “that” or was written by other than students of some crackpot English major turned Climate Scientist by dint of association with a guy who’s nephew’s girlfriend’s aunty once planted a tree.

      [Check email Mary. — J ]

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    pat

    12 May: ClimateChangeNews: Climate negotiators rally to protect IPCC science funding
    National delegates in Bonn rejected a proposal by UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to stop funding science reports from its core budget
    By Karl Mathiesen in Bonn
    Indignant countries at climate talks in Bonn have demanded that the UN climate convention continues funding the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading authority on climate science.
    A draft 2018-19 budget from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) proposes to eliminate its funding for the IPCC, asking countries to support the body with direct voluntary payments…

    Rarely so united at these talks, the majority of parties rejected the secretariat’s proposal…

    The IPCC has struggled for funding in recent years. In 2016, it gathered $4.3m from donor countries and various UN bodies, including the UNFCCC…READ ON
    http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/05/12/climate-negotiators-rally-protect-ipcc-science-panel-funding/

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    pat

    still in denial they lost the election:

    12 May: Propublica: Trump’s Expected Pick for Top USDA Scientist Is Not a Scientist
    Sam Clovis likely to be named undersecretary of the USDA department that manages research on everything from climate change to nutrition.
    by Jessica Huseman
    Clovis has never taken a graduate course in science and is openly skeptical of climate change. While he has a doctorate in public administration and was a tenured professor of business and public policy at Morningside College for 10 years, he has published almost no academic work.
    Clovis is better known for hosting a conservative talk radio show in his native Iowa and, after mounting an unsuccessful run for Senate in 2014, becoming a fiery pro-Trump advocate on television…

    Catherine Woteki, who served as undersecretary for research, education and economics in the Obama administration, compared the move to appointing someone without a medical background to lead the National Institutes of Health…
    Woteki holds a Ph.D. in human nutrition and served as the first undersecretary for food safety at the USDA during the Clinton administration…

    Clovis has repeatedly expressed skepticism over climate science and has called efforts to address climate change “simply a mechanism for transferring wealth from one group of people to another.”…
    https://www.propublica.org/article/trumps-expected-pick-for-top-usda-scientist-is-not-a-scientist

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    pat

    12 May: HuffPo: Ben Brown: Global Warming Is A National Security Risk. Why Don’t We Treat It Like One?
    Here are the facts: Climate change kills more people than terrorism. It has worsened the war in Syria and it will soon create a refugee crisis that army generals have called “the greatest threat to the 21st century.”
    Climate change isn’t just an inconvenience, it’s a global security threat…

    If we’re to affect real change, we have to shift the perspective. And that means looking at climate change as a devastating national security threat…
    Rising temperatures cause droughts and food scarcity…
    http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ben-brown/global-warming-is-a-natio_b_16535456.html

    just a smattering of today’s MSM CAGW stories:

    Study: Chicago’s Forests Threatened by Climate Change
    Addressing climate change could be key to African peace, leader says (Reuters)
    Uganda: Umeme Blames Power Outages On Climate Change At AGM
    Addressing climate change could be key to African peace, leader says (Salon)
    Climate Change: Is it affecting our allergies?
    Climate Change Effects: Hurricane Winds Threaten Bird Migration
    Climate Change Is Creating Climate Refugees
    Climate change fuelling Mpumalanga and Limpopo malaria outbreak
    Turmoil in Haiti sign of climate change
    Is climate change killing Zanzibar’s seaweed industry? (Deutsche Welle)

    hilarious…read all:

    13 May: Australian: Bernard Salt: Martyrs to the cause
    You have to feel sorry for the environmental fraternity. They had everyone scared witless that Armageddon was upon us a decade ago during the drought. But then the rains came and the issue of sustainability, which had reigned supreme for the better part of a decade, was pushed down the anxiety list.
    Plus, by this time people were becoming fatigued by the relentless doom and gloom of climate change. There’s only so many stories of ice caps melting that one can handle before boredom sets in. I know it’s a terrible situation, environmental fraternity, but hear me out because I’m trying to help you…

    And there’s only so much anxiety people can take before they switch off. I mean, you can’t be worried sick about climate change and resilience and diversity and disruption simultaneously, can you? And even if you could, funding has to be divided between them.

    The way forward, environmental fraternity, is to listen to the advice of senior politicians and business consultants who bang on about the need for agility in the workforce. Begin your career in sustainability, then reinvent yourself as a skills and resilience expert, then saddle up for the diversity debates and then, pièce de résistance, pop up as a disruption raconteur. Don’t argue the toss about the merits of each issue; rather, have a sequential monogamous relationship with each and every cause. How’s that for agility!…
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/weekend-australian-magazine/martyrs-to-the-cause/news-story/1645f7f20639c57923bb02eb5f88b854

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      TdeF

      I have heard disrupt, agility, scrum, innovation and other key words so often, I wondered who was pushing it. This seems to be Christensen‘s 1997 book on forensic examination of failed companies. So I have bought a copy. Also his most recent work. It all seems to be taught at MBA school, so every board member seems to believe this stuff. Useless for predicting the future, it is about why companies have failed.

      The best review of this significant work is in the New Yorker. Personally I think the analysis is shallow. However Christensen has a new book.

      My point is that even Malcolm Turnbull uses this stuff. Being agile. Disruptive. It is the new speak of executives and bankers and financiers. It is based around the failure of so many companies which were too big to fail, like Nokia, Sears, Novell, Compaq, Pan Am, … It is reckoned that big companies live only 16 years now not sixty.

      So you have to translate all this verbage, this secret language of the MBAs. Waffle dressed up as knowledge.

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        TdeF

        You can always watch the videos on disruptive innovation. Just type it into Google. Endless. Hundreds of videos.
        You may have to watch one just to be sure, but the New Yorker article is best.

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    pat

    writer below:
    Jude Clemente: I am Principal at JTC Energy Research Associates, LLC. I hold a B.A. in International Relations from Penn State University, with a minor in Statistical Analysis. I got my M.S. in Homeland Security from San Diego State University, with a focus on Energy Security, and an MBA from St. Francis University, with a focus on Energy Economics. My research specialization includes North American and international trends in liquid fuels, natural gas, coal, renewables, electricity and GHG emissions – and their connection to human development. I have over 200 professional publications in a variety of energy-related media, notably Pipeline & Gas Journal, Carbon Capture Journal, Journal of Energy Security, Power, World Oil, Public Utilities Fortnightly, and the Journal of Energy and Development. I have also been a writer and editor for reports commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy, International Energy Agency, and other major energy research organizations.

    links/graphs…read all:

    2 pages: 13 May: Forbes: Jude Clemente: Why More Coal, Oil, And Natural Gas Investments Are Needed
    “I think that, in the end, these hydrocarbons are a huge resource for humanity. And I don’t think we’ve got any good substitute. People think that all these hydrocarbons are going to be stranded and the whole world’s going to change. I think we’re going to use every drop of the hydrocarbons, sooner or later.” Berkshire Vice Chairman Charlie Munger (LINK).

    The “stranded asset” push against the need for more coal, oil, and natural gas investment is impractical and contradicts the advice of the Paris-based International Energy Agency, the energy adviser for the 35-member OECD.
    That’s because fossil fuels still have no significant substitute. And simply put, the growing energy needs of a mostly undeveloped world are so immense that it’s certain that coal, oil, and gas will continue to play a foundational role in the world’s energy economy, “for as far as even the most advanced modeling systems can predict.”

    Although growing in importance but still strictly sources of electricity, favored wind and solar don’t compete in the majority of the world’s energy economy, an ever-growing complex that expands as our global goal of more economic growth is met.
    And their natural intermittency means that wind and solar power even on good days are only available 25-35% of the time. Unfortunately, the faculty of non-dispatachable energy systems like renewables displacing dispatchable sources like coal, oil, and gas is often overstated, and even more unfortunately an overstatement that usually comes from the 17% of the global population that thrive in the richest, most developed, and fossil fuel-reliant nations on Earth (i.e., OECD members)…

    For example, as the world’s most vital fuel, we’re going to need all the oil investment that we can get (I’ve documented this LINK). “Conservative estimates predict that we will need to offset 20 million barrels per day in combined demand growth and natural decline over the next five years,” (LINK)…

    And we environmentalists that want the world’s poor to have the same privileged lives that we Westerners enjoy should be cheering more gas in particular, which importantly…actually gains market share in the 450 Scenario!…
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/judeclemente/2017/05/11/why-more-coal-oil-and-natural-gas-investments-are-needed/#34b6bad83429

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    Roger

    Quote : “Climate models suggest that dryland biomes could expand by 11-23% by the end of the this century, meaning they could cover more than half of Earth’s land surface.”

    Observations have shown that deserts are shrinking as plants require less water with slightly higher CO2 levels and are able to recolonise dry desert areas.

    NASA assessment range from 10% – 20% increase in the biomass of plants and trees in the last 15 years or so as a direct result of the higher levels of Plant Food (CO2) in the atmosphere.

    A real win-win – reduced deserts and increased food for people and animals.

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      Dave

      Plus C4 crops are booming
      Already adapted to water shortage
      The extra CO2 aids in production!

      Corn, sugarcane, sorghum, and millet love the CO2 plant food!

      Deserts are full of CAM plants and are reaping the benefits!
      The extra CO2 is NOT man made – it is a result of slightly warmer oceans!

      It’s going to get colder very soon, & these C4 plants will be able to survive with the extra CO2!

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      TdeF

      Climate models suggest. Scientists say. It is all such amazing waffle. There is no problem. CO2 is the only suggested problem. Greenhouse Gas. Pollution. Runaway. Tipping point. Climate Crisis.

      There is a total logical disconnect between increasing CO2 and Climate Change?
      If steadily increasing CO2 (despite 350,000 windmills) cannot even heat the place, how does it change the climate?

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    CheshireRed

    Those science chaps would be welcome to pop around to my place and root down the back of my sofa to find an extra £5 million ‘just like that’ anytime. Very welcome indeed.

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    Ocean Warming Dominates The Increase In Energy Stored In the Climate System
    The IPCC claims that the oceans are by far the largest heat sink in the climate system. The IPCC claims that the oceans are warming. Data proves the oceans drive atmospheric temperatures, not vice verse. The problem is, the IPCC can’t explain how CO2 warms the oceans. If the IPCC can’t explain how CO2 is warming the oceans, it can’t explain how/why the atmosphere is warming.
    https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/05/13/ocean-warming-dominates-the-increase-in-energy-stored-in-the-climate-system/

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    TdeF

    There is so much unexplained. Not just forests. Consider the coral bleaching, blamed entirely without actual explanation on CO2 induced Climate Change.

    Does anyone really believe that the sudden bleaching happened without actually changing the air temperature? How did CO2 exclusively heat the water in the Coral Sea when in the last twenty years the world temperature has not changed? Does no one even ask the simplest questions? Why aren’t such local variations in water temperature natural, a consequence of ocean circulation? Where is the evidence?

    There is so much claimed for Climate Change but how does CO2 cause localized changes in water temperature? Does anyone apart from politicians like Barack Obama really believe such random things without any explanation? Or do computer ‘climate models’ predict localized heating of water somewhere, somehow?

    CO2 caused bleaching is made up science. The media do not question it and nobody even stops to explain how it works. Anything which changes is automatically, Climate Change and Climate Change has been true since the formation of the IPCC in 1988. You could say Climate Change happened because the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change needed it. Without Climate Change, the IPCC would not exist.

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    clipe

    Climate scientist Michael Mann, who wasn’t involved in the study, said…

    “There are more tree rings than previously thought”

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      Greg Cavanagh

      Climate scientist Michael Mann, who wasn’t involved in the study, said…

      “There are more hocky sticks than previously thought”

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    thingadonta

    Most increase in vegetation is in Africa, and note Africa was wetter and more vegetated during most of the (warmer) Holocene, with the Sahara smaller and wetter.

    So warmer means Africa generally gets wetter, which is better for most of the poor rural in Africa, but have you ever heard this from the mainstream climate camp???

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    Tony Hansen

    “The new forests were found by surveying “drylands” – so called because they receive much less water in precipitation than they lose through evaporation and plant transpiration”…
    Just wondering how might that work?

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      thingadonta

      it means the rate of evaporation (and plant transpiration) is much higher than the rainfall. So if 10mm falls, 20mm would have evaporated anyway, and there aren’t enough plants present to hold any water that does fall, so it’s even more dry.

      However because the study shows there is some plants around, some water is in fact held by these plants, so perhaps they shouldn’t be called ‘drylands’.

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        Tony Hansen

        Where does the extra 10mm come from if evapo-transpiration is higher than precipitation?

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    TRILLIONS of PUBLIC Dollars Spent on Conclusions Reached Based Upon “Made Up Data.”

    It turns out that the “expert scientists” literally “make up” the data (see introductory graphic). Taxpayers are literally being asked to spend trillions of dollars based upon models that use “made up” data. Unfortunately, that isn’t a joke. The total cost including direct, indirect and opportunity costs is simply staggering.
    https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/05/14/trillions-of-public-dollars-spent-on-conclusions-reached-based-upon-made-up-data/

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    […] Jo Nova notes something that scientists just suddenly noted […]

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    Amber

    Never met anyone that thinks climate doesn’t change. Yet we have a whole industry dedicated to the notion
    that we must stop or slow down climate change (global warming rebranded ) apparently because they believe humans are able to make it warm up
    and they don’t want it to if humans are responsible . If Mother Nature does it as it has for billions of years …
    well that’s nature and absolutely no problem . After all even Al Gore with all his powers can’t yet shut off sun spots and volcanos can he ?

    Prior to the wide spread use of fossil fuels did humans believe they could control the earths temperature ?
    Sure absolutely , human sacrifice , burn witches etc etc . Trying to control earth’s climate has always been a popular fantasy
    and now it is extremely profitable too . Carbon trading ,carbon credits ,government grants , interest free loans, bird blenders etc
    all claiming to help control the earths temperature or at least the slice humans are apparently causing .

    Fossil fuels are just the latest demon in a long list of adopted demons that humans use as an excuse to control other people and push their own agenda .

    Money , globalization , are the main ones but the truth is a warming cycle has more merit than drawbacks and any minuscule effect humans have
    is temporary at best .

    Find some other valid social /environmental issues to address because humans over inflated sense of influence or perceived right to set the
    earths thermostat is as invalid as it has always been .

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    Geoffrey Williams

    Someone please help . . . .
    when I look at the following NASA website dated March 22nd 2017:

    https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/sea-ice-extent-sinks-to-record-lows-at-both-poles

    It clearly say that “sea ice extends to record lows at both poles NASA” What is going on? Appreciate some guidance . . .

    Regards GeoffW

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