|
|
For all those other ideas…
8.9 out of 10 based on 12 ratings
Millions of people are alive today because the net emissions of carbon dioxide have increased. These extra emissions have provided essential fertilization for crops around the world. Craig Idso has released a new report calculating that the extra value that the rise in CO2 has produced from 1961 – 2011 is equivalent to $3.5 trillion dollars cumulatively. Currently the extra CO2 is worth $160 billion dollars annually. Big-biccies. Projecting forwards, increasing CO2 levels could be worth an extra $9.8 trillion on crop production between now and 2050. Virtually every economic analysis to date does not include the agricultural gains. There are also benefits in health, as warmer winters reduce mortality by more than hotter summers increase deaths. The real economic question then, is “Can we afford to slow CO2 emissions at all?”
While there are negative externalities projected by some climate modelers, their models are unvalidated, proven wrong, and based on unsupported assumptions about clouds and humidity. Compare that to the agricultural gains, which are not just demonstrated in laboratory greenhouses, but confirmed in the field, and with global satellite estimates of increased biomass.
Obviously, the only sensible thing to do at this point is continue our emissions of carbon dioxide. At some point in the future, after climate models start working, and proper calculations of externalities can be estimated, we will probably want to tax projects which sequester CO2 and remove it from the atmosphere.
My only hesitation is that if Murry Salby is right, Big-Oil don’t have a lot to do with it. We can thank Mother Nature instead. Scrap that tax too. ;- )
How much better does it get?
A 300ppm increase in CO2 would increase crop mass by between 4% – 77%. (It doesn’t matter much to your melons, but is marvelous for your carrots and pretty darn good from your grapes too.) Most crops would be 30-40% larger. (I guess the Greens will be excited we won’t need to raze so many forests to convert to cropland, right?)
 Table 2. Mean percentage yield increases produced by a 300-ppm increase in atmospheric
CO2 concentration for all crops accounting for 95% of total food production.
Despite this basic, well-known research being replicated-ad-nauseum no one has really thought to count this as a serious cost benefit until now.
Absent (or severely underrated) in nearly all social cost of carbon (SCC analyses), however, is the recognition and incorporation of important CO2-induced benefits, such as improvements in human health and increases in crop production. With respect to human health, several studies have shown that the net effect of an increase in temperature is a reduction in sickness and death rate (Christidis et al., 2010; Wichmann et al., 2011; Egondi et al., 2012; Wanitschek et al., 2013; Wu et al., 2013). A warmer climate, therefore, is less expensive in terms of health care costs than a colder one. With respect to crop production, literally thousands of laboratory and field studies have documented growth-enhancing, water-conserving and stress alleviating benefits of atmospheric CO2 enrichment on plants (Idso and Singer, 2009; Idso and Idso, 2011). For a 300-ppm increase in the air’s CO2 content, such benefits typically enhance herbaceous plant biomass by around 30 to 35%, which represents an important positive externality entirely absent from today’s state-of-the-art SCC calculations.
It is only food, after all.
However, this is serious money
Keep reading →
9.6 out of 10 based on 64 ratings
A small win for determined citizens?
Dailymail.co.uk: “After blighting the Yorkshire Dales for more than two decades, four giant turbines have been removed from the stunning landscape – the first ever windfarm in Britain to be scrapped.
Keep reading →
9.5 out of 10 based on 86 ratings
Those who depend on silencing opponents have already lost the intellectual war. But they cling to the hope that they can keep the news of their loss from spreading.
“Should newspapers ban letters from climate science deniers?
The Guardian
Graham Readfearn
The LA Times decides not to print letters from readers claiming there’s no evidence for human-caused climate change”
Note the example Readfearn chooses of a letter most dangerous and unworthy:
“Here’s an excerpt from a Letter to the Editor, printed earlier this week in The Australian newspaper.
“While [temperatures] have been higher than before the past 15 years, they have not increased in line with fossil fuel emissions, just as they failed to do over the 1948-77 period. This makes incorrect the theory that fossil fuel emissions cause temperature increases.” Des Moore, South Yarra, Victoria.
Wrongheaded and simplistic views like this …”
Except it’s not wrongheaded and Readfearn is the one who is simplistic, not Des Moore. (As it happens, the unworthy know-nothing denier was probably the same Des Moore who used to be the deputy secretary of the Australian Federal Treasury). Would Australia really be better off if we silenced people like Des Moore from public debate? If people as influential as he is are wrong, wouldn’t it be better if their views were printed, and then truth politely explained in replies? The truth is (and Readfearn must know this on some level) those who think Moore’s point is utterly, completely wrong know they can’t defeat it with rational polite debate, which is why they ache for censorship.
The world has been at a warm plateau for 15 years, but CO2 emissions were “worse than we thought”. According to 97% of models, the world should have warmed faster. It didn’t, and while that in itself doesn’t tell us much about how much effect CO2 has, it does tell us that the models don’t have a clue. Seems like a fair point for national discussion especially when it is already a national tax. Moore rather cuts to a key point (the correlation of CO2 and temperature is a weak one. If something else drove temperatures down lately, perhaps that same factor drove things up earlier.) If only we knew…?
In context, Moore was merely reiterating a point made by another unworthy denier, the former head of Australia‘s National Climate Centre at the Bureau of Meteorology (that would be William Kininmonth). In Readfearn’s world, journalists with no science degree can write whole articles about the climate, but editors should be wary of letters from climate and economics experts. Readfearn, it seems, thinks we should all slavishly obey authority in climate science, except for when the authority doesn’t agree with Readfearn.
Readfearn’s simplistic views
After all these years, Graham Readfearn still apparently doesn’t realize what the climate change debate is about. In his view, if humans cause any climate change at all it is equivalent to humans causing a disaster. It’s a binary black-and-white world for simple minds, no numbers involved. Half-a-degree equals three, equals six. It’s all the same.
“Some letter writers have accepted that humans cause climate change, a conclusion backed by multiple lines of evidence from thousands of studies around the world going back a century or more.”
Some readers haven’t.
Sure the role of CO2 as a greenhouse gas is backed by multiple lines of evidence, but the feedbacks that might make this into a disaster are guesses backed by contradictory, weak, or indirect findings.
The grown-ups in the room are asking “how much”, and Readfearn’s answer is “yes!” (“You’re a denier”.)
We skeptics aren’t afraid of letters, so here’s the full exchange. Just look at the fuss that ensued over William Kininmonths innocuous statement:
[October 12] The IPCC was not able to give a confident explanation for the lack of global warming over the past 15 years, yet some climatologists claim an ability to predict the year when average temperatures will be outside their historical ranges (“Extremes to be the new norm as weather turns”, 10/10). Does hubris come naturally to climate scientists, or is it a required trait for those entering the profession?
William Kininmonth, Kew, Vic
————————————————
The Australian was happy to publish this name-calling, confused reply. (And how many skeptics called for editors to ban confused irrelevant letters?) Kininmonth was probably using the same verifiable facts from NASA as Roylance, but Roylance wasn’t even discussing the trends, he was talking about something else entirely, records.
[Oct 14] WHAT’S the difference between a computer and a global warming denier? You only have to punch information into a computer once.
William Kininmonth’s repetition of the disproved myth about “the lack of global warming over the past 15 years” (Letters, 12-13/10) proves the joke’s punchline, as NASA’s empirical data shows that “2012 was the ninth warmest of any year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. With the exception of 1998, the nine warmest years have all occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 ranking as the hottest years on record”.
Unless Kininmonth can give a “confident explanation” as to why his easily disproved opinion should triumph over NASA’s verifiable facts, then it is crystal clear to whom “hubris comes naturally”.
Chris Roylance, Paddington, Qld
————————————————
[October 15] IN asserting William Kininmonth incorrectly claimed a lack of warming over the past 15 years, Chris Roylance clearly fails to understand the debate about temperatures (Letters, 14/10).
While they have been higher than before the past 15 years, they have not increased in line with fossil fuel emissions, just as they failed to do over the 1948-77 period.
This makes incorrect the theory that fossil fuel emissions cause temperature increases. In fact, the temperature increase from 1977 to 1998 resulted from natural changes.
Des Moore, South Yarra, Vic
Right now we can’t be sure that the rise from ’77 – ’98 was natural rather than man-made, so I would’ve added the words “more likely” to the last sentence. But since dozens of commentators declare daily that it was man-made without being able to point at empirical evidence, if we start censoring opinions on this, the fans of man-made global warming will suffer more cuts than skeptics will.
———————————————–
[Oct 16] CHRIS Roylance takes a swipe at Bill Kininmonth for daring to speak of “the lack of global warming over the past 15 years” (Letters, 14/10).
Roylance gives a confused account of records of individual years and perhaps overlooks the fact that Kininmonth as a retired Bureau of Meteorology scientist is well-qualified to analyse trends. Roylance also overlooks the fact that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth report acknowledges the lack of warming, calling it a hiatus, although not analysing causes.
Informed scientists will also pay attention to recent peer-reviewed publications from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Both papers recognise the temperature hiatus and analyse possible natural causes in terms of ocean dynamics.
They predict a further 10 or 20 years of hiatus respectively – sound science which is subject to scrutiny, and falsifiable or provable with another decade of observations.
Michael Asten, Monash University, Vic
————————————————
[Oct 16] If global temperatures rise for 50 years, then plateau for 15, of course all the temperatures on the plateau will be higher than those on the rising part of the graph. So Chris Roylance (Letters, 14/10), it is no surprise that the nine warmest years occurred on the plateau.
It’s time we stopped all this hottest-year-on-record stuff, and addressed the crucial issue of why global temperatures have disconnected from CO2 levels.
Michael Guppy, Moruya, NSW
————————————————
And it goes on… here Roylance is back in confusion — thinking that a steady flat trend (at a high point) can’t possibly produce more “hottest year” records, even though that is exactly what it implies. His “demonstrably false” declaration is obvious nonsense.
[October 17] THERE is no ambiguity in a statement purporting “the lack of global warming over the past 15 years”, so if the hottest years in recorded history have occurred within that timeframe, then the statement is demonstrably false, and no amount of obfuscation by Michael Asten or Michael Guppy (Letters, 16/10 ) can disprove that.
I am cognisant and respectful of Bill Kininmonth’s previous history, but presumably Asten is aware that NASA is also “well-qualified to analyse trends” , so if Kininmonth’s opinion is to triumph over NASA’s data, he should submit his facts through the established process to determine their veracity.
And rather than shooting the messenger, perhaps those who persist with the no-warming mantra could also provide facts that disprove what the British Met Office had to say when this myth first appeared: “Anybody who thinks global warming has stopped has their head in the sand.”
Ignoring every credible scientific organisation on Earth and the extreme weather events that they say are linked to anthropogenic global warming in favour of nit-picking pedantry over the minutiae of climate modelling that can never be 100 per cent correct is idiocy, especially when the only thing humanity has to lose from reducing emissions is money.
Chris Roylance, Paddington, Qld
————————————————
PS: Dear Chris, since it’s “only money”, can you give me yours? – Jo
9.3 out of 10 based on 122 ratings
Three things everyone needs to know about carbon capture.
- Coal supplies 29% of the worlds total energy (and oil supplies 31%).
- In the last five years governments world-wide promised to spend $22 billion on carbon capture and storage (CCS). $5b in the US.
- CCS increases the cost of electricity by 70%. (Yes, you read that correctly, seventy percent). That’s about $60/ton of carbon reduction.
TonyfromOz has been sending me gobsmacking details and statistics on this bizarre practice for months, and I must post them in their full glory as soon as possible. Historians of the future will gape at this strange religious ritual and ask how much we gave up in order to stuff a plant fertilizer down a deep hole in an effort to change the weather. – Jo
——————————————————
Carbon capture and storage—the Edsel of energy policies
 … By Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Times
The war on climate change has produced many dubious “innovations.” Intermittent wind and solar energy sources, carbon markets that buy and sell “hot air,” and biofuels that burn food as we drive are just a few examples. But carbon capture and storage is the Edsel of energy policies.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS), also called carbon capture and sequestration, is promoted by President Obama, the Department of Energy (DOE), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for coal-fired power plants. In September, the EPA proposed a limit of 1,100 pounds of CO2 emissions per megawatt-hour of electricity produced, a regulation that would effectively ban construction of new coal plants without CCS.
Keep reading →
9.1 out of 10 based on 72 ratings
This means nothing of course. Just weather. (No, actually I do mean that, though I expect those who look for excuses to complain will say I’m not allowed to discuss weather conditions. It’s a “dog-whistle”, or something.) For balance I’ll point out it’s been record hot on the East Coast of Australia. (Sydney’s “third hottest October day since records began 154 years ago.”)
But seriously, it’s interesting (and sad) that snow in Dakota killed 100,000 head of cattle, that early heavy snow has fallen in Europe (nearly a meter in Switzerland), it’s been called the worst start to “winter for 200 years”. The snowfall in Germany was the largest at the start of winter since records started in 1800.
Probably most interesting of all is that long range forecasters are issuing catastrophic warnings (they are quite extreme) but the UK Met says that’s “irresponsible”, and that trying to predict the weather that far in advance is “crystal ball” gazing. (Oh really?) They didn’t seem so concerned about predicting hot horrors on longer timeframes…
It’s been an early cold winter already in Europe
NoTricksZone “Most Severe Winter Start In 200 Years!” + Euro Municipalities Now Ignoring Foolish Predictions Of Warm Winters
“German RTL television last night here (starting at 4:30) called it the “most severe start of winter in 200 years!“, saying many meteorologists were caught by surprise. Up to half a meter of snow fell at some locations.
Unexpected snowfall brings early winter chaos to Bavaria
DW: “Winter has come early in Bavaria. Unexpected heavy snowfall has brought traffic to a halt in southern Germany, as well as Austria and Switzerland, and left thousands of people without power.
Germany’s DWD weather service recorded 35 centimeters of snowfall, the most at the beginning of the winter half-year since measurements began in 1800. Some parts of Switzerland experienced as much as 80 centimeters of snowfall.
Long range forecasters are predicting savage, record cold in the UK
Piers Corbyn, managing director of WeatherAction is offering their October forecasts at half price due to “imminent extreme events in Britain, Ireland, EU and USA”. But other long range forecasters are bleak as well, like Vantage Weather:
“We are looking at a potentially paralysing winter, the worst for decades, which could at times grind the nation to a halt.
Exacta Weather predicts the worst winter for more than 100 years:
Express UK: “BRITAIN is braced for the “worst winter in decades” with the first major snowfall expected in weeks. He blamed the ‘poorly positioned” jet stream which is expected to be ‘blocked” south of the UK, allowing a continual flow of freezing Arctic air. James Madden, forecaster for Exacta Weather, said it was likely to be the worst winter for more than 100 years. He said: ‘A horror winter scenario is likely to bring another big freeze with copious snow for many parts.
The UK Met Office disagrees and “blasts weather reports of “worst winter in decades'”
The Met Office says these forecasts are “irresponsible”, though I can’t say the Met Office inspire confidence in their ability to do any better:
Northdevonjournal.co.uk “Met Office spokesman Nicky Maxey was critical of the reports, saying those producing them were “gazing into their crystal ball”. “The science simply doesn’t exist to accurately predict so far in advance. Weather is too unpredictable.”
Meanwhile Europe is switching back to coal and may face an “energy crisis”
Keep reading →
8.4 out of 10 based on 81 ratings
Glaciers that tore trees in half and then froze the stumps are receding again in Alaska to reveal those old remnants of a warmer era. I like these little “concrete” anecdotes, though their true meaning depends on exactly how old these remains are, and whether that timing correlates with warming in other places.
Ancient trees emerge from frozen forest ‘tomb’
Retreat of the Mendenhall Glacier reveals the remains of trees which grew more than 2,000 years ago
The Mendenhall Glacier’s recession is unveiling the remains of ancient forests that have remained frozen beneath the ice for up to 2,350 years.
 ….
The most recent stumps she’s dated emerging from the Mendenhall are between 1,400 and 1,200 years old. The oldest she’s tested are around 2,350 years old. She’s also dated some at around 1,870 to 2,000 years old.
Keep reading →
8.9 out of 10 based on 97 ratings
[See our concise and updating story of the bet here.]
Commenters often ask us if I am prepared to make a bet and put “your money where your mouth is.” The answer is: been there — done that. We (as in David Evans and I) already have and a long time ago. As far as I know, it’s one of the largest private bets going on the climate*. David bet against Brian Schmidt, $6,000 to $9,000, in early 2007 on outcomes over 10, 15 and 20 years.
The bet was made a year before I started blogging. It was literally the first action we took as skeptics (instigated and hammered out almost entirely by David, with my support). So we have $6,000 exposure — betting that global temperatures would not rise faster than 0.15C per decade, as judged by GISTemp. How are we doing on this bet? Judging by the trend at the moment, pretty well. Brian is still optimistic that he will win on the later outcomes. (This is part of the reason we are particularly interested in trends from 2005, which is when the bet temperatures begin to count.) Kudos to Brian both for being one of the few willing to make a bet, and for being so polite and amiable about it.
Indeed there was a funny moment in the early days of this blog, where Brian Schmidt was so keen to arrange more bets, he turned up here and asked me if I was brave to bet against him. I replied that technically I already had. (He didn’t realize I was married to David Evans, and fair enough, I think that reply was the first time I mentioned it on the site).
The backstory of the bet
In early 2007 when David realized that there was no empirical backing for the theory of man-made global warming, his first instinct was to see if he could place a bet on it. (David says…”It was the hype of 2007, and I figured there must be a way to make money out of this nonsense. A friend made money by shorting the big Danish wind turbine company, and three times!”) Like most self-employed people, we are of the entrepreneurial spirit — we don’t need a boss, and are happy to compete and take risks. To a large extent David’s ability to assess risks, and find “gaps ahead of the market”, is what made this blog possible (though it’s been a very thin margin of late as the Australian gold sector has hit record volatility, but that is another story).
One of the odd things at the time was how hard it was to make a bet. Despite the Great-Global-Mass-of-Consensus that existed in 2007, whereupon everyone (nearly) believed in man-made global warming, it was surprisingly difficult for David to find anyone willing to actually put money down on the theory. I remember him approaching a few who were not remotely willing to take the gambit. Seemingly, everyone who lived off their ability to judge risk (and make bets) was already a skeptic, even then, and so they weren’t going to bet against us. On the other hand, those who passionately believed the theory of man-made catastrophe were seemingly not the personality type to make bets. They fervently believed they could not be wrong, but almost no one (apart from Brian Schmidt) was willing to place a stake.
It was only after David placed the bet in March-April 2007 that he published his reasons why, and was noticed by the skeptical community (specifically the Lavoisier group). Not at all surprisingly, some skeptical groups reached out to say “hello”. Later David scathingly unleashed an op-ed article in The Australian, which drew more attention and seems to have alerted a lot of people. By the end of 2007, Ray Evans (Lavoisier Group) found himself unable to attend the UNFCCC event in Bali, so he suggested David go in his place. I was a nobody in the climate world, the silent observer, but I had to be there, so I paid to go; there was too much fun to be had. (“Bali 2007” where 12 skeptics met 12,000 believers, what more could I ask?) We had Marc Morano, Christopher Monckton, David Archibald, Vincent Gray, Will Alexander, Craig Rucker (CFACT) and most of the dedicated excellent NZ contingent. It was brilliant. We made good friends.
So much for those big-oil funded denier theories
The history of the bet shows how meaningless the accusations of “influential links to right wing think tanks” are — the cause and effect is completely back to front. We were skeptics before we knew what the Heartland Institute was, before we’d been to an IPA meeting, a CIS conference, or a Lavoisier event — we had already put our own money on the table. (And Exxon-Chevron-Shell-BP were a no-show both before and after.) As it happens, in the history books, Heartland deserve accolades for getting disparate independent thinkers together in the same room, even for a few days, and connecting the volunteers. I will be forever grateful for the chance to meet such upstanding souls of intelligence and integrity as I have met through this debate. It’s a great sieve…
Why did David make the bet?
The bet was announced on April 24, 2007 on a guest post on Brian Schmidt’s blog: Backseat Driving. (David says now, that at the time, it just seemed very curious that everyone commended Brian and himself for having a civil discussion about global warming. He realizes now that it was a warning of just how acrimonious and distasteful the nature of this “debate” was, but back then, he didn’t realize it was so rare.)
The Conditions of the bet
“We have three bet periods -10, 15, and 20 years – and two bets for each period – an even-odds bet and a 2:1 bet in David’s favor. The even-odds bet centers around a temperature increase rate of 0.15C/decade with a 0.02 void margin on either side (bet voids if temps increase between .13 and .17C/decade). The 2:1 bet centers on 0.1C/decade with a .01 void margin. Even-odds bets are for $1,000 each, and the 2:1 bets increase over time, with Brian betting $1,000, $2,000 and $3,000, and David betting half that. Brian’s exposure is $9,000; David’s is $6,000. We’re using five-year averaged Nasa GISS data. More info here.”
Because these are five year centered averages, the first round settles in 2020.
David explained his thoughts (which have developed quite a bit since then) on Brian’s blog on April 30th. Here they are as they were then. They stand the test of time pretty well. Brian’s thoughts on it are listed on his blog.
David Evans: “I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use change and forestry (Google on “FullCAM”). When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive, but since then new evidence has weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause. I am now skeptical. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
Keep reading →
8.9 out of 10 based on 72 ratings
…
7.2 out of 10 based on 31 ratings
Nicola Scafetta has a new paper (in long line of papers) on a semi-empirical model which has a better fit than Global Circulation Models (CGM) favored by the IPCC. We ought be careful not to read too much into it, but nor to ignore the message in it about the grand failure of the GCM’s. Scafetta used Fourier analysis to find six cycles, then uses those six cycles to produce a climate model he runs for as long as 2000 years which seems to match the best multiproxies. In terms of discovering the absolute truth about the climate, this is not an end-point way to use Fourier analysis, as it is just “curve fitting” With six flexible cycle frequencies (plus amplitude and phase) there are 18* 6 tuneable parameters, more than enough to model any wiggly line on a graph, and there are scores of astronomical cycles to pick from. *.[Nicola Scafetta replies to this below, pointing out he uses the “6 major detected astronomical oscillations”, and their phases are fixed. I am happy to be corrected. His model is more useful than I thought. Apologies for the misunderstanding. – Jo]
But Scafetta’s work suggests it’s madness not to pay attention to astronomical cycles, and points to major flaws in the IPCC simulations. Compare the two types of models: Scafetta’s simple model uses [natural astronomical] cycles and assumes there is a connection [there might be, it is speculative] but curve fits to produce predictions**. The unverified IPCC models assume CO2 has a powerful influence (backed up by laboratory experiment, but not backed up with empirical data from the climate) — then the IPCC assume powerful positive feedbacks that more than double the effect of CO2 (without empirical evidence to support those assumptions) and in a sense, curve-fits volcanic, solar, and aerosols to flex the line to match the data. We know the IPCC models don’t work, they don’t hindcast the last 2000 years, and didn’t predict the last 20. It obvious from Scaffetta’s work that we ought be investigating these natural cycles, and that the IPCC models are hopelessly incomplete.
1. The IPCC depends on the claim that their models include all the important forcings. Their attribution claim has always been “we can’t model the recent temperature rise without using CO2 forcings”. This is argument from ignorance, and Scafetta shows just how ignorant it is.
2. IPCC models don’t produce natural cycles. IPCC models are missing important natural forcings (if only we knew what they were). Scafetta takes the thermometer records, and the paleoclimate records, points at natural cycles, some of which are well known and long established, some of which are purely speculative, and shows how the IPCC models do not produce the same natural cycles. If those cycles (or ones like them) have a physical cause it means the IPCC models don’t include those forcings. A monster flaw.
3. Look at the “pause”, the long plateau in temperatures. The IPCC favoured models failed to predict it (von Storch). The natural cycles might explain the flatness in global surface temperatures since 2000. A simple solar-astronomical-model based on these natural patterns outperforms the inadequate, over-rated, billion-dollar-IPCC models. The caveat being that in a chaotic system the true natural cycles may be difficult to discover.
4. Natural cycles may be driven by the orbits of planets and their effects on the sun. This is speculative, but very much worth discussing. According to Scafetta, there may be natural cycles of 9.1, 10–11, 19–22 and 59–62 years. (Several of these cycle lengths also appear in Ian Wilson’s work on a mechanism where lunar tides in our atmosphere may help trigger ENSO conditions). It is believable that the resonant effect of the orbits of planets acts on the solar dynamo, in ways we do not yet know, affecting it’s luminosity and magnetic field, and that these small solar changes are then amplified on Earth’s climate. (See, e.g. Svensmark and cosmic rays, or Lam et al 2013, who found the solar wind may influence Rossby waves and atmospheric pressure.)
5. Monopolistic science funding has taken years to not find the answer. Many research programs and grants have focused on making a CO2 driven model work. How much money have governments spent figuring out role of natural cycles in a climate that has always changed? If governments could tax planets, there might be 23 solar-system coupled climate models, and they might just work a whole lot better than the CO2 ones.
IPCC Climate models don’t match the turning points
I have long said that it was obvious the CO2 theory does not fit the data because the models were not able to reproduce any turning points in our climate. The models don’t explain why the world was warm in the medieval times, cool 300 years ago in the little ice ages, nor do the models explain the shorter 30 year cool periods in the last 150 years either.
Fig 17 (below) shows how climate models (GCM simulations) fail during the last 13 years, overdo the volcanic cooling spikes, fail to reproduce the well known cooling period from 1880-1910.
 Fig 17 A reproduction of Fig. 1 in Gillett et al. (2012)with additional comments that highlight the major mismatches between the GST record (black) and a set of simulationsmade with
CanESM2. The figure highlights problems common to all CMIP5 GCMs. From Scafetta (2013a).
8.8 out of 10 based on 60 ratings
” I’m over and over
tryin’ to excuse your point of view
I’m over and over
Your slant and bias too
I’m over and over
being treated like a fool
And I’m over and over
continually funding you..”
“When it’s over you’ll discover
What a free market can do
Keep reading →
8.6 out of 10 based on 84 ratings
“…the role of the Sun is one of the largest unknowns in the climate system”
Meteorologists are already aware that changes in the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) can affect the polar regions of Earth. Now, for the first time Lam et al report the magnetic field appears to influence atmospheric pressure in the mid latitudes. Lam compared the average surface pressure at times when the magnetic field is either very strong or very weak and found a statistically significant wave structure similar to an atmospheric Rossby wave. They claim to show that this works through a mechanism that is a conventional meteorological process, and that the effect is large enough to influence weather patterns in the mid-latitudes. The size of the effect is similar to “initial analysis uncertainties” in “ensemble numerical weather prediction” (which I take to mean “climate models”).
They are suggesting that small changes in this solar influence on the upper atmosphere could produce important changes through “non-linear evolution of atmospheric dynamics”.
Jo suggests that IPCC-favoured climate models don’t include any solar magnetic effect at all, which is just one of many reasons why they don’t work.
The large scale wandering convolutions of the jet stream around the planet are Rossby waves (usually 4 – 6 in number). Some of these become very pronounced and detach into cells of warm or cool air. Jet streams have been recorded traveling at nearly 400km per hour and the path of the jet stream is known to steer cyclonic storm systems in the air below.
Rossby Waves in the Polar Jet Stream
Abstract
The existence of a meteorological response in the polar regions to fluctuations in the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) component By is well established. More controversially, there is evidence to suggest that this Sun–weather coupling occurs via the global atmospheric electric circuit. Consequently, it has been assumed that the effect is maximized at high latitudes and is negligible at low and mid-latitudes, because the perturbation by the IMF is concentrated in the polar regions. We demonstrate a previously unrecognized influence of the IMF By on mid-latitude surface pressure. The difference between the mean surface pressures during times of high positive and high negative IMF By possesses a statistically significant mid-latitude wave structure similar to atmospheric Rossby waves. Our results show that a
mechanism that is known to produce atmospheric responses to the IMF in the polar regions is also able to modulate pre-existing weather patterns at mid-latitudes. We suggest the mechanism for this from conventional meteorology. The amplitude of the effect is comparable to typical initial analysis uncertainties in ensemble numerical weather prediction. Thus, a relatively localized small-amplitude solar influence on the upper atmosphere could have an important effect, via the nonlinear evolution of atmospheric dynamics, on critical atmospheric processes.
 Figure 1 The field significance is strongest in the Southern Hemisphere, but also high (< 5%) for all regions except the equatorial.
Keep reading →
8 out of 10 based on 61 ratings
I’m very glad to see this point being made in the mainstream media. Earth is a water planet (yet the models don’t do clouds, rain, snow or humidity well). This is pitched for The Washington Times audience, not a science blog, but it’s a point well made, and it’s good to see the point about positive feedback from water vapor, which I (and David Evans) have been making for so long, is getting out to the mainstream press. Readers will also find the North Atlantic hurricane statistics on predictions versus outcome rather stark. – Jo
————————————————————————————————————————-
Climate change is dominated by the water cycle, not carbon dioxide
By Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Times
 … Climate scientists are obsessed with carbon dioxide. The newly released Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that “radiative forcing” from human-emitted CO2 is the leading driver of climate change. Carbon dioxide is blamed for everything from causing more droughts, floods, and hurricanes, to endangering polar bears and acidifying the oceans. But Earth’s climate is dominated by water, not carbon dioxide.
Earth’s water cycle encompasses the salt water of the oceans, the fresh water of rivers and lakes, and frozen icecaps and glaciers. It includes water flows within and between the oceans, atmosphere, and land, in the form of evaporation, precipitation, storms and weather. The water cycle contains enormous energy flows that shape Earth’s climate, temperature trends, and surface features. Water effects are orders of magnitude larger than the feared effects of carbon dioxide
Sunlight falls directly on the Tropics, where much energy is absorbed, and indirectly on the Polar Regions, where less energy is absorbed. All weather on Earth is driven by a redistribution of heat from the Tropics to the Polar Regions. Evaporation creates massive tropical storm systems, which move heat energy north [and south says Jo] to cooler latitudes. Upper level winds, along with the storm fronts, cyclones, and ocean currents of Earth’s water cycle, redistribute heat energy from the Tropics to the Polar Regions.
The Pacific Ocean is Earth’s largest surface feature, covering one-third of the globe and large enough to contain all of Earth’s land masses with area remaining. Oceans have 250 times the mass of the atmosphere and can hold over 1,000 times the heat energy. Oceans have a powerful, yet little understood effect on Earth’s climate.
Even the greenhouse effect itself is dominated by water. Between 75 percent and 90 percent of Earth’s greenhouse effect is caused by water vapor and clouds.
Yet, the IPCC and today’s climate modelers propose that the “flea” wags “the dog.” The flea, of course, is carbon dioxide, and the dog, is the water cycle. The theory of man-made warming assumes a positive feedback from water vapor, forced by human emissions of greenhouse gases.
The argument is that, since warmer air can hold more moisture, atmospheric water vapor will increase as Earth warms. Since water vapor is a greenhouse gas, additional water vapor is presumed to add additional warming to that caused by CO2. In effect, the theory assumes that the carbon cycle is controlling the more powerful water cycle.
Keep reading →
8.7 out of 10 based on 126 ratings
This song is growing on me. It didn’t grab me in the first verse, but I was definitely smiling by the middle. A rollicking… satire.
I could see this going down very well at the right party. :- )
Thanks to James Black, a Tropicarnival music award winner, see his site. This song is part of an album “Songs From Inside The System”, and I hear it started as a short poem here. Support the musician who doesn’t follow the same meme as so many others, there are plenty more songs yet to be written about our collective craziness.
My favourite lines:
“Paying your carbon taxes,
paying trillions to the goldman saches,
surrender your neurology,
to the church of climatology,
that science garbology,
is new world theology.
Keep reading →
8.7 out of 10 based on 65 ratings
…
7.8 out of 10 based on 22 ratings
Popular Science — a 141 year old science and technology publication — have announced they’re shutting down their comments entirely. Apparently they can’t cope with open debate of contentious scientific areas like climate change.
As usual, there are pat lines about “fostering debate” even as they close it down.
“It wasn’t a decision we made lightly. As the news arm of a 141-year-old science and technology magazine, we are as committed to fostering lively, intellectual debate as we are to spreading the word of science far and wide. The problem is when trolls and spambots overwhelm the former, diminishing our ability to do the latter.”
Actions speak louder than words.
Of the two posts used to justify the silencing, the first was about climate, and had all of 16 comments — two of which were spam (see Ninna and Lili) — the rest mostly skeptical, and one used crass language. The other post was about abortion (90 comments) — yes, killing the unborn is going to generate debate. Is that it?
The real problem here is their mission statement (as contained in the quote above) is profoundly unscientific. A scientist’s job is not to “spread the word of ‘science’ “, it’s to find the truth. A science communicator’s job is not to spread the word either. Because there is no “word” to spread — there is only debate, argument and evidence in the endless quest to find the truth. The best science journalists interview the people with the most insight to share from both sides. They save their readers time, by putting the points that matter right in front of them.
Pop Science sure thinks it has dumb readers and points to research showing a few bad comments can fool them:
Keep reading →
8.9 out of 10 based on 110 ratings
It’s clear science journalists need some help. The IPCC are saying “The ocean ate my global warming” and most environment reporters just cut-n-paste this excuse — they fall for the breathtaking joules-to-the-22nd-figures — not realizing they convert to a mere 0.07C over nearly 50 years (as if we could measure the average temperature of the global oceans to a hundredth of a degree!). Worse, the warming we do find is so small, it supports the skeptical calculations, not the IPCC’s ones. I ran a tutorial for journalists at the end of the post, and asked Bob Tisdale (author of Climate Models Fail ) if he had some other questions. He did, oh boy, and here they are. Thanks to Bob. – Jo
—————————————————————————————————–
Joanne Nova asked me to suggest questions the media should be asking the IPCC about their 5th Assessment Report (AR5). I’ve provided a few examples along with background information.
This post will discuss the slowdown in global warming since 1998 (or the halt since 2001) known as the hiatus. While the hiatus in warming had been the topic of many blog posts around the blogosphere over the past few years, public awareness of the pause in surface temperature warming skyrocketed with David Rose’s 13 October 2012 Daily Mail article titled “Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released… and here is the chart to prove it”.
————————————
1. Why did the IPCC simply glance over the well-known hiatus period in their Summary for Policymakers?
Background Information:
In their Summary for Policymakers of their 5th Assessment Report, the IPCC made only very brief references to the cessation of warming, coming to no conclusions about it.
In their approved Summary for Policymakers dated 27 September 2013, the IPCC states on page SPM-3:
In addition to robust multi-decadal warming, global mean surface temperature exhibits substantial decadal and interannual variability (see Figure SPM.1). Due to natural variability, trends based on short records are very sensitive to the beginning and end dates and do not in general reflect long-term climate trends. As one example, the rate of warming over the past 15 years (1998–2012; 0.05 [–0.05 to +0.15] °C per decade), which begins with a strong El Niño, is smaller than the rate calculated since 1951 (1951–2012; 0.12 [0.08 to 0.14] °C per decade)5. {2.4}
And on page SPM-13:
The observed reduction in surface warming trend over the period 1998–2012 as compared to the period 1951–2012, is due in roughly equal measure to a reduced trend in radiative forcing and a cooling contribution from internal variability, which includes a possible redistribution of heat within the ocean (medium confidence). The reduced trend in radiative forcing is primarily due to volcanic eruptions and the timing of the downward phase of the 11-year solar cycle. However, there is low confidence in quantifying the role of changes in radiative forcing in causing the reduced warming trend. There is medium confidence that internal decadal variability causes to a substantial degree the difference between observations and the simulations; the latter are not expected to reproduce the timing of internal variability. There may also be a contribution from forcing inadequacies and, in some models, an overestimate of the response to increasing greenhouse gas and other anthropogenic forcing (dominated by the effects of aerosols). {9.4, Box 9.2, 10.3, Box 10.2, 11.3}
The discussion by the IPCC includes the terms “low confidence” and “medium confidence”, indicating the IPCC hasn’t a clue about what caused the halt in warming.
————————————
2. In Figure SPM.1, the IPCC shows that hiatus periods can last for 3 to 6 decades. Why then is there no mention of that possibility in the future?
9 out of 10 based on 81 ratings
For years we’ve been warned via the media that there was a risk of irreversible global catastrophe. Is the IPCC stepping back from those forecasts too? The words abrupt, irreversible, and tipping point didn’t make it into the Headline Points in 2013.
Reader Katabasis at Bishop Hill reports on the Royal Society meeting where abrupt and irreversible changes were discussed. Katabasis notes that in the IPCC Chapter 12 Table 12.4 many of the catastrophic changes being forecast are described as “unlikely” or “very unlikely” or even “exceptionally unlikely”. The only one now considered “likely” is that the Arctic might be ice free 40 years from now (which is a big step back from “ice free by 2013” as some commentators predicted). Moreover confidence is low.
Will IPCC authors now correct Gore, Flannery, or other commentators when they tell us that CO2 emissions will probably lead to abrupt or irreversible ice sheet collapse, or collapses of the monsoonal circulation or Atlantic currents. Note the IPCC is saying “low confidence” for long term megadroughts, and monsoon changes, which means, “we don’t know” rather than “unlikely”. But why spend billions to prevent something you have low confidence will happen?
 Table 12.4: Components in the Earth system that have been proposed in the literature as potentially being susceptible to abrupt or irreversible change. Column 2 defines whether or not a potential change can be considered to be abrupt under the AR5 definition. Column 3 states whether or not the process is irreversible in the context of abrupt change, and also gives the typical recovery time scales. Column 4 provides an assessment, if possible, of the likelihood of occurrence of abrupt change in the 21st century for the respective components or phenomena within the Earth system, for the scenarios considered in this chapter. Source: AR5-Chapter 12. Table 12.4 page 78
Katabasis asked Matt Collins:
“What the IPCC says, and what the media says it says are poles apart. Your talk is a perfect example of this. Low likelihood and low confidence for almost every nightmare scenario. Yet this isn’t reflected at all in the media. Many people here have expressed concern at the influence of climate sceptics. Wouldn’t climate scientists’ time be better spent reining in those in the media producing irresponsible, hysterical, screaming headlines?”
Tumbleweed followed for several seconds. Then Matt said:
“Not my responsibility”.
Bishop Hill commenter matthu:
Is that Matthew Collins: Government employee? Joint Met Office Chair in Climate Change?
Is he saying that it is not his responsibility to correct widely held misconceptions about the likelihood of imminent abrupt and irreversible climate change as the result of carbon dioxide?
Keep reading →
8.7 out of 10 based on 61 ratings
And the public conversation finally starts to move on to discussing not whether the IPCC is wrong, but why it was wrong, and what we need to do about it. Credit to Judith Curry and the Financial Post. I’ve posted a few paragraphs here. The whole story is in the link at the top. – Jo
Judith A. Curry, Special to Financial Post
Kill the IPCC: After decades and billions spent, the climate body still fails to prove humans behind warming
 The IPCC is in a state of permanent paradigm paralysis. It is the problem, not the solution
The IPCC has given us a diagnosis of a planetary fever and a prescription for planet Earth. In this article, I provide a diagnosis and prescription for the IPCC: paradigm paralysis, caused by motivated reasoning, oversimplification, and consensus seeking; worsened and made permanent by a vicious positive feedback effect at the climate science-policy interface.
In its latest report released Friday, after several decades and expenditures in the bazillions, the IPCC still has not provided a convincing argument for how much warming in the 20th century has been caused by humans.
We tried a simple solution for a wicked problem:
We have wrongly defined the problem of climate change, relying on strategies that worked previously with ozone, sulphur emissions and nuclear bombs. While these issues may share some superficial similarities with the climate change problems, they are “tame” problems (complicated, but with defined and achievable end-states), whereas climate change is “wicked” (comprising open, complex and imperfectly understood systems). For wicked problems, effective policy requires profound integration of technical knowledge with understanding of social and natural systems. In a wicked problem, there is no end to causal chains in interacting open systems, and every wicked problem can be considered as a symptom of another problem; if we attempt to simplify the problem, we risk becoming prisoners of our own assumptions.
Keep reading →
8.7 out of 10 based on 129 ratings
Have you or your children challenged a teacher about something scientific? Were you treated fairly? Are you a teacher – if so, what are your thoughts on the new curriculum?
I would like to find out more about what is happening in our schools. I’m considering the new National Australian Curriculum, but comments related to the old curriculum and non-Australian curriculums are useful too. What kind of culture do our schools create. I would most appreciate both personal stories (privacy ensured) and comments about curriculum and educational matters. If you can’t write in comments, please email joanne AT this domain.
This link is probably the best for people who want to fossick : Australian Curriculum
Keep reading →
7.7 out of 10 based on 50 ratings
|
JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
Jo appreciates your support to help her keep doing what she does. This blog is funded by donations. Thanks!
Follow Jo's Tweets To report "lost" comments or defamatory and offensive remarks, email the moderators at: support.jonova AT proton.me
Statistics
The nerds have the numbers on precious metals investments on the ASX
|
Recent Comments