Posts Tagged ‘climate change’

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Floods and Global Warming is fashion not science

February 18, 2011

There is the attempt to link current weather to long term climate, to use computer models to achieve the evidence, and to alarm the public and policy makers that climate change is real and here.

Roger Pielke Jr. points out:

Nature published two papers yesterday that discuss increasing precipitation trends and a 2000 flood in the UK.  I have been asked by many people whether these papers mean that we can now attribute some fraction of the global trend in disaster losses to greenhouse gas emissions, or even recent disasters such as in Pakistan and Australia. I hate to pour cold water on a really good media frenzy, but the answer is “no.”  Neither paper actually discusses global trends in disasters (one doesn’t even discuss floods) or even individual events beyond a single flood event in the UK in 2000.  But still, can’t we just connect the dots?  Isn’t it just obvious?  And only deniers deny the obvious, right? ….

In short, the new studies are interesting and add to our knowledge.  But they do not change the state of knowledge related to trends in global disasters and how they might be related to greenhouse gases.  But even so, I expect that many will still want to connect the dots between greenhouse gas emissions and recent floods.  Connecting the dots is fun, but it is not science.

And Andrew Revkin goes to town in his New York Times blog about how uncertainties and caveats disappear when a political corner is being fought:

….. In scientific literature you rarely see statements so streamlined and definitive. For climate science, this is the equivalent of a smoking gun. News indeed. Add in the extreme floods last year (a period not included in the study) and you have more relevance, although Roger Pielke Jr. this morning notes the importance of distinguishing between analysis of certain kinds of extreme precipitation events and disastrous flooding.

The problem is that the Nature paper is not definitive at all, as you’ll see below.

None of this detracts from the importance of this work, or the overall picture of an increasingly human-influenced climate, with impacts on the frequency of gullywashers.

But this does raise big questions about the standards scientists and journals use in summarizing complex work and the justifiable need for journalists — and readers — to explore such work as if it has a “handle with care” sign attached.

This is not about “ false balance.” This is about responsible reporting.

A previous instance occurred in 2006, when a paper in Science on frog die-offs in Costa Rica included this firm and sobering statement:

Here we show that a recent mass extinction associated with pathogen outbreaks is tied to global warming.

Things were far more complicated, of course, as you can read in my 2008 piece on Vanishing Frogs, Climate and the Front Page.

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Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Weather | Comments Off on Floods and Global Warming is fashion not science

Carbon dioxide rip-off has cost Australia $5.5 billion – so far

February 14, 2011

With easy money like this floating around and waiting to be siphoned off it is not difficult to see why the global warming fraud continues! And of course these $5.5 billion are small change compared to the amounts that have been scammed in Europe.

And to make it worse, carbon dioxide emissions are a little less than insignificant for global temperatures.

The Sydney Morning Herald:

Billions blown on carbon schemes

SUCCESSIVE federal governments have spent more than $5.5 billion over the past decade on climate change programs that are delivering only small reductions in greenhouse gas emissions at unusually high costs for taxpayers and the economy.

An analysis by the Herald of government schemes designed to cut emissions by direct spending or regulatory intervention reveals they have cost an average of $168 for each tonne of carbon dioxide abated. ……

The analysis of 17 programs with a total cost of $5.62 billion shows many of the schemes are at odds with the goal of tackling climate change at the lowest cost to the economy. ………

The weighted average cost of the 17 programs was $168 a tonne. They will deliver about 25 million tonnes of carbon abatement in 2020 – less than 10 per cent of that needed to meet the government’s target of reducing emissions in 2020 by 5 per cent on 2000 levels.

The worst offenders have included Labor’s rebates for rooftop solar panels, which cost $300 or more for every tonne of carbon abated, and the Howard government’s remote renewable power generation scheme, which paid up to $340 for each tonne.

Read the article.

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Posted in Alarmism, Australia, Climate, Environment, Scientific Fraud, Weather | Comments Off on Carbon dioxide rip-off has cost Australia $5.5 billion – so far

La Niña and NAO driving current stormy weather

February 8, 2011
During cold La Niña episodes the normal patter...

La Nina Regional impacts: Image via Wikipedia

It may seem obvious (or it should be) that it is ocean currents that dominate weather and man-made effects pale into insignificance in relation to these. But it has been more politically correct to find that every kind of weather event is due to man-made global warming.

But as this article in PhysOrg shows, perhaps the oceans (and the sun) are beginning to get their due (but of course they don’t really care whether anybody believes in them or not – they just carry on).

The term La Niña refers to a period of cooler-than-average sea-surface temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean that occurs as part of natural climate variability. This situation is roughly the opposite of what happens during El Niño (“the boy”) events, when surface waters in this region are warmer than normal. Because the Pacific is the largest ocean on the planet, any significant changes in average conditions there can have consequences for temperature, rainfall and vegetation in distant places. Scientists at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), part of Columbia’s Earth Institute, expect moderate-to-strong La Niña conditions to continue in the tropical Pacific, potentially causing additional shifts in rainfall patterns across many parts of the world in months to come.

These shifts, combined with socioeconomic conditions and other factors, are making some countries more vulnerable. However, La Niña and El Niño conditions actually allow for more accurate seasonal forecasts and help better predict extreme drought or rainfall in some areas. ………..

“Based on current observations and on predictions from models, we see at least a 90 percent chance that La Niña conditions will continue through March,” said IRI’s chief forecaster, Tony Barnston.

Climate scientists have found La Niña’s fingerprints on a number of extreme weather events such as the devastating flood that occurred in Pakistan in 2010, as well as flooding in West Africa, South Africa and most recently in Queensland, Australia, where an area equal to the combined size of France and Germany was underwater. La Niña is also to blame for Cyclone Yasi, one of the strongest to hit Australia, which came ashore on Feb. 2. Cyclone Yasi is the second most damaging Australian cyclone on record after Cyclone Tracy, which struck in 1974.

But La Niña isn’t to blame for the recent severe weather affecting the Northeast. Winter weather for these regions is often driven not by La Niña but by large-scale weather patterns over the U.S., the northern Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic. These are often short-term, and are generally predictable only a week or so in advance. They are the culprits responsible for the dip in temperatures and spike in snow storms in the Midwest and Northeast.

…………

Since 1950, the world has experienced six major La Niña events, wreaking havoc in countries around the world. In 2000, for example, floods associated with La Niña affected 400,000 people in southern Africa, caused at least 96 deaths and left 32,000 homeless.

La Niña conditions typically persist for 9 to 12 months, peaking sometime during the end of the year. But 2010 was a lively year for climate scientists: For the first four months of this year, El Niño conditions prevailed in the tropical Pacific, but that quickly changed, and by June, a La Niña pattern had emerged.

“Last year’s transition from El Niño to La Niña was about the most sudden we’ve ever had,” Barnston said. “When we had rapid flips like this in the past, we sometimes ended up having a two-year La Niña, such as right after the El Niño episodes of 1972 to 1973 and 1997 to 1998.”

Barnston cautions that the likelihood of this happening with the current La Niña is unknown. “Even if we do have a second year of La Niña developing in northern summer 2011, we expect at least a brief return to neutral conditions from May to July of 2011.”

Related:

https://ktwop.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/la-nina-begins-to-show-up-in-global-temperature/

https://ktwop.wordpress.com/2011/02/05/la-nina-will-last-well-into-2011-and-could-extend-into-2012/

https://ktwop.wordpress.com/tag/la-nina/

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Posted in Climate, Oceans, Weather | Comments Off on La Niña and NAO driving current stormy weather

Do super storms indicate that earth’s magnetic polarity is about to switch?

February 8, 2011


A geomagnetic reversal is a change in the orientation of Earth’s magnetic field such that the positions of magnetic north and magnetic south become interchanged. These events often involve an extended decline in field strength followed by a rapid recovery after the new orientation has been established. These events occur on a scale of tens of thousands of years or longer, with the latest one (the Brunhes–Matuyama reversal) occurring 780,000 years ago.

On average geomagnetic reversals occur about every 500,000 years so it would seem that a reversal is overdue. How long a reversal takes and whether a reversal can happen very rapidly is not known. That the earth’s geomagnetic field is due to the flow of liquid metals in the earth’s interior – the dynamo theory – is also very likely. The sun’s magnetic reversals seem to happen at every sunspot maximum with an average period of 11 years between reversals giving a 22 year magnetic cycle.

The movement of Earth's north magnetic pole across the Canadian arctic, 1831-2001. Credit: Geological Survey of Canada.

The movement of Earth's north magnetic pole across the Canadian arctic, 1831--2001. Credit: Geological Survey of Canada.

The position of the magnetic poles is also continuously changing with a current drift (increasing) of the magnetic North Pole from N. Canada towards Siberia at about 40km /year. But this movement may be in some cyclic fashion and is unlikely to be directly connected to the half-million year reversals. For the last 200 years the strength of the earth’s magnetic field has been decreasing and could be the precursor of the overdue reversal.

How the earth will behave during a magnetic reversal is a known unknown and provides the basis of much speculation and cataclysmic theories which cannot be tested. The cataclysmic pole shift hypothesis is one such theory which predicts that the earth’s rotation will reverse, the magnetic field will reverse and mankind will be obliterated – probably in 2012!!

But it is thought that reversals take a few thousand years to complete, and during that time–contrary to popular belief–the magnetic field does not vanish.  Magnetic lines of force near Earth’s surface become twisted and tangled, and magnetic poles pop up in unaccustomed places. A south magnetic pole might emerge over Africa, for instance, or a north pole over Tahiti. Weird. But it’s still a planetary magnetic field, and it still protects us from space radiation and solar storms.

Terrence Aym suggests that we may be seeing the beginning of a reversal (and of course since this is overdue it may well occur at any time):

Forget about global warming—man-made or natural—what drives planetary weather patterns is the climate and what drives the climate is the sun’s magnetosphere and its electromagnetic interaction with a planet’s own magnetic field.

File:Magnetosphere rendition.jpg

Artist's rendition of Earth's magnetosphere: NASA via Wikipedia

Magnetic polar shifts have occurred many times in Earth’s history. It’s happening again now to every planet in the solar system including Earth. The magnetic field drives weather to a significant degree and when that field starts migrating super storms start erupting.

The superstorms have arrived.

The Earth’s northern magnetic pole was moving towards Russia at a rate of about five miles annually. That progression to the East had been happening for decades.

Suddenly, in the past decade the rate sped up. Now the magnetic pole is shifting East at a rate of 40 miles annually, an increase of 800 percent. And it continues to accelerate.

Recently, as the magnetic field fluctuates, NASA has discovered “cracks” in it. This is worrisome as it significantly affects the ionosphere, troposphere wind patterns, and atmospheric moisture. All three things have an effect on the weather.

Worse, what shields the planet from cancer-causing radiation is the magnetic field. It acts as a shield deflecting harmful ultra-violet, X-rays and other life-threatening radiation from bathing the surface of the Earth. With the field weakening and cracks emerging, the death rate from cancer could skyrocket and mutations of DNA can become rampant.

Another federal agency, NOAA, issued a report caused a flurry of panic when they predicted that mammoth superstorms in the future could wipe out most of California. The NOAA scientists said it’s a plausible scenario and would be driven by an “atmospheric river” moving water at the same rate as 50 Mississippi rivers flowing into the Gulf of Mexico……

According to some geologists and scientists, we have left the last interglacial period behind us. Those periods are lengths of time—about 11,500 years—between major Ice Ages. One of the most stunning signs of the approaching Ice Age is what’s happened to the world’s precessional wobble. The Earth’s wobble has stopped. ..

….. So, the start of a new Ice Age is marked by a magnetic pole reversal, increased volcanic activity, larger and more frequent earthquakes, tsunamis, colder winters, superstorms and the halting of the Chandler wobble.

Unfortunately, all of those conditions are being met.

Read original article


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Indian Environment Ministry challenges IPCC and CO2 conclusions

January 21, 2011
Cropped from image of Jairam Ramesh the Indian...

Jairam Ramesh: Image via Wikipedia

That there is little love lost between Rajendra Pachauri and the Indian Minister of Environment Jairam Ramesh is no secret. (Pachauri made the ill-advised and stupid remark about “voodoo science” regarding Ramesh and the Ministry’s claims debunking the IPCC ststements on Himalyan glaciers). Now according to the Hindustan Times the Ministry of Envirionment has produced a paper concluding that solar effects on clouds represent about half the warming effects attributed to CO2:

India has once again challenged the UN’s climate science body – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — through a new scientific paper. The Environment ministry sponsored paper says that human induced global warming is much less than what the R K Pachauri headed IPCC had said. The cause is reduced impact of Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs) on formulation of low clouds over earth in the last 150 years, says a paper by U R Rao, former chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation, released by Environment minister Jairam Ramesh. ….

Analyzing the data between 1960 and 2005, Rao found that lesser GCRs were reaching the earth due to increase in solar magnetic field and thereby leading to increase in global warming. “Consequently the contribution of increased CO2 emission to be observed global warming of 0.75 degree Celsius would only be 0.42 degree Celsius, considerably less than what predicted by IPCC,” the paper said to be published in Indian Journal Current Science had said. This is about 44 % less than what IPCC had said.

Ramesh in 2009 had released a similar scientific paper saying that the IPCC’s claim that most Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035 was wrong. A few months later, after a review the IPCC regretted the error. If Ramesh latest bid gets globally recognition, it can alter the rules of UN run climate negotiations of 200 nations.

Impact of GCRs on global warming had been highly controversial since 1998, when Henrik Svensmark of Danish National Space Center said it was causing global warming. A decade later a joint European study debunked the claim, saying there was no co-relation. …

“I just want to expand scientific debate on impact of non-Green House Gases on climate change,” Ramesh said, when asked whether he was again challenging the IPCC. “Science is all about raising questions.”

International climate science is mainly western driven and collaborates the view of the rich world that gases such as Carbon Dioxide (CO2) are the main contributor for global warming. Any scientific work challenging the view has been debunked as work of a sceptic.

“Climate science is much more complex than attributing everything to CO2,” said Subodh Verma, climate change advisor in the Environment ministry.

And, its first impact has come from IPCC chairperson R K Pachauri, who has told the government, that impact of GCRs on global warming will be studied in depth in the fifth assessment report to be published in 2013-14. In its earlier four assessment reports, IPCC had not studied the impact of GCRs in detail.

The Global Warming establishment does not much like this paper. But they have now been reduced to claiming that everything – even directly conflicting evidence – supports the theory of man-made CO2 on global warming:

V Ramanathan of US based Scripps Institute of Oceanography at University of California said the Rao’s paper strengthens the case for greenhouse a primary driver for global warming. “The observed rapid warming trends during the last 40 years cannot be accounted for (by) the trends in GCRs,” he said, in his comments on Rao’s paper.

Science is indeed all about asking questions.

It seems to have been forgotten that anyone who  is not a sceptic deep down  is not – and can not be – a scientist.

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Posted in Alarmism, Climate, India, Science, Solar science | Comments Off on Indian Environment Ministry challenges IPCC and CO2 conclusions

And yet another irreproducible, irrefutable result!!

January 10, 2011

From EurekAlert:

New paper in Nature Geoscience examines inertia of carbon dioxide emissions

New research indicates the impact of rising CO2 levels in the Earth’s atmosphere will cause unstoppable effects to the climate for at least the next 1000 years, causing researchers to estimate a collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet by the year 3000, and an eventual rise in the global sea level of at least four metres.

The study, to be published in the Jan. 9 Advanced Online Publication of the journal Nature Geoscience, is the first full climate model simulation to make predictions out to 1000 years from now. It is based on best-case, ‘zero-emissions’ scenarios constructed by a team of researchers from the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (an Environment Canada research lab at the University of Victoria) and the University of Calgary.

The Daily Mail headline proclaims

(and perhaps – following Nostradamus – we should only use quatrains !)

Sea levels will rise by at least 13ft in next 1,000 years, claim scientists

Global sea levels will rise

By at least 13ft in the next 1,000 years

As a result of carbon dioxide emissions,

Scientists have warned.

 

The ‘unstoppable’ impact of global warming

Will cause a catastrophic collapse

Of the West Antarctic ice sheet

By the year 3000.

 

“Ongoing climate change following a complete cessation of carbon dioxide emissions” by Nathan P. Gillett, Vivek K. Arora, Kirsten Zickfeld, Shawn J. Marshall and William J. Merryfield will be available online at http://www.nature.com/ngeo/index.html

Or perhaps it should have been published here:

The Journal of Irreproducible Results


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Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Science | 1 Comment »

Frigid December 2010 was no local phenomenon

January 6, 2011

The frigid December of 2010 was widespread across the Northern Hemisphere and cannot be dismissed as just a local phenomenon.

Sweden: Coldest December in Sweden in 110 years: http://www.thelocal.se/31072/20101226/

UK: 2010 UK’s coldest December since records began: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12122497

Ireland: Met Eireann – coldest December on record: http://www.tv3.ie/article.php?article_id=50973&locID=1.2.&pagename=news

Germany: German Unemployment Unexpectedly Climbs in Coldest December for 40 Years: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-04/german-unemployment-unexpectedly-climbs-during-coldest-december-since-1969.html

USA

Illinois’ December was colder and had more snow than average: http://www.bnd.com/2011/01/05/1539495/december-was-colder-and-had-more.html

Virginia: Explaining the weather: December was a bitter one: http://www2.newsadvance.com/weather/2011/jan/04/explaining-weather-december-was-bitter-one-ar-752921/

Florida:

  1. December coldest on record: http://www.news-journalonline.com/news/local/east-volusia/2011/01/05/december-coldest-on-record.html
  2. Tallahassee marks coldest December on record: http://www.tallahassee.com/article/20110103/NEWS01/101030308/NWS-Tallahassee-marks-coldest-December-on-record
  3. N. Carolina: Asheville’s December was 2nd coldest: http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20110104/NEWS/301040038

Korea: Seoul Has Coldest December in 30 Years, Says Weather Bureau: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-27/seoul-has-coldest-december-in-30-years-says-weather-bureau.html

China:

Mass evacuations as China’s south battles ‘big freeze”: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12117729

Heavy snow grips northern China: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8228676/Heavy-snow-grips-northern-China.html

India:

Cold wave continues to grip North India: http://www.sify.com/news/cold-wave-continues-to-grip-north-india-news-national-lbfmEdjjaig.html

Bangalore is cold but the outskirts are getting colder: http://www.dnaindia.com/bangalore/report_bangalore-is-cold-but-the-outskirts-are-getting-colder_1483567

Chill in Calcutta: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110105/jsp/calcutta/story_13392877.jsp

Australia:

NSW had its wettest year in half a century: http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/nsw-had-its-wettest-year-in-50-years-20110105-19fr7.html

AUSTRALIA has just experienced its wettest year since 1974 and its coolest year of the 21st century: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/last-year-australias-wettest-in-36-years-coldest-in-10/story-e6frg6nf-1225979674792

 

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Posted in Climate, Uncategorized, Weather, Winter | Comments Off on Frigid December 2010 was no local phenomenon

Why Munich Re’s report on natural catastrophes in 2010 is alarmist and self-serving

January 4, 2011

Munich Re – like all insurance companies – is in the business of alarmism. The insurance business relies on the total risk perceived by all the buyers of insurance products being significantly higher than the actual risk that materialises. The bigger this difference the greater the insurance company’s profits.

In a new press release Munich Re presents its overall picture of natural catastrophes in 2010.

Several major catastrophes in 2010 resulted in substantial losses and an exceptionally high number of fatalities. The overall picture last year was dominated by an accumulation of severe earthquakes to an extent seldom experienced in recent decades.

The facts are not in doubt but Munich Re’s opinionated conclusion and the introduction of global warming into the same breath as earthquakes and extreme weather is intellectually bankrupt and blatantly self-serving:

The high number of weather-related natural catastrophes and record temperatures both globally and in different regions of the world provide further indications of advancing climate change.

Munich Re’s business is best served if the perception of risk is very high, the actual risk is much lower than than that perceived and more and more people take to insuring these exaggerated risks. Munich Re – as other insurance companies – have become expert at taking real data, blending it with unjustified opinions and then applying a totally bogus “pondus” to exaggerating the perceived risk.

(more…)

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Posted in Alarmism, Business, Climate, Natural Disasters | 4 Comments »

Time Magazine and its unwavering view of climate change

January 1, 2011

From Watts Up with that: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/01/time-magazine-and-global-warming/#more-30704

Unwavering !

 

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Posted in Climate | 1 Comment »

Japan shelves carbon emissions trading scheme

December 29, 2010

Japan joins the growing list of nations who have shelved, postponed or cancelled carbon trading schemes (and there is not a single carbon trading scheme anywhere which is not built on fraud).

Reuters reports:

Japan postponed plans for a national emissions trading scheme on Tuesday, bowing to powerful business groups that warned of job losses as they compete against overseas rivals facing fewer emissions regulations.

The government has submitted a climate bill to parliament that includes a one-year deadline to design a national trading scheme. After Tuesday’s delay, that bill faces revisions in the next parliamentary session that begins in January.

The decision is a blow to the European Union’s hopes that other top greenhouse gas polluters will introduce emissions trading schemes and follows setbacks to similar efforts in the United States and Australia.

A U.N. meeting in Cancun, Mexico, this month failed to clear uncertainty over a global climate framework beyond 2012. This is likely to cause some big emitters to take their time in rolling out tougher greenhouse gas regulations, particularly for carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

Neighboring South Korea has delayed the introduction of its emissions trading laws into parliament until February because of business concerns.

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Posted in Alarmism, Business, Fraud, Japan | 1 Comment »

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