Posts Tagged ‘global warming’

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Climate can only be observed as weather

November 19, 2014

One weather event is not climate but climate can only be observed – ultimately – as weather. Climate is an integration of local weather over space and time. Supposed climate change which does not show up as changes to local weather to give conditions which lie outside the range of normal variability of that local weather, is no change.

Anthropogenic global warming when it is a conclusion which can only be based on “adjusting” raw data or is only that predicted by a model, but which cannot be actually observed, is of little relevance and of no importance. It is certainly a rather stupid basis for policy.

There has been no global warming of any kind (anthropogenic or otherwise) – even with adjusted data – for over 18 years. The anthropogenic component – supposed to be due to on man-made emissions of carbon dioxide – is not discernible, even though carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion have increased by some 70% in that time.

The politically correct “policy” of reducing fossil fuel combustion would seem to be of no significance and of little relevance. This particular weather event in North America only adds to the body of evidence that is not consistent with global warming.

Reuters: All 50 U.S. states feeling freezing temperatures

Temperatures in all 50 U.S. states dipped to freezing or below on Tuesday as an unseasonably cold blast of weather moved across the country, while heavy snow prompted a state of emergency in western New York.

In the U.S. South, states were bracing for a record chill from the Arctic-born cold that swept the Rocky Mountains last week.

Every U.S. state, including Hawaii, was bitten by temperatures at the freezing point of 32 degrees F (0 C) or below, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.

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Signs of global cooling accumulate while IPCC denies evidence and relies on models

November 2, 2014

Rational argument cannot penetrate faith.

Ask for evidence and you get model results. Ask for proof that the models are valid and you get hindcasts based on adjusted data. Ask for evidence of man-made emissions causing global warming and the answer is that it must be so for there is no other explanation. There isn’t if you don’t want to see it.

The IPCC believes that model results – even where the models are wrong – provide “conclusive” evidence of not just man-made global warming but that it is due to the emissions of carbon dioxide. It is politics not science. And the politics from India and China have ensured that the IPCC accepts fossil fuels till 2100!!!

For there is – in fact – no actual evidence in the form of data or measurements. There are only model results. There are only model forecasts where the track record shows that every IPCC forecast has been wrong. Fossil fuels – especially gas – will be around and will continue for many hundreds of years unless cheap fusion comes earlier.

Instead of real data showing support for the models, the evidence is accumulating that not only are the models wrong, but also that there are more indications that a global cooling is underway rather than global warming. Real measurements and real data show:

  1. that global temperatures have been stagnant for 18 years while carbon dioxide emissions have increased by 70% and carbon dioxide concentration has increased just under 15%,
  2. that therefore carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has had no significant effect on global temperature,
  3. that the emissions and absorption of carbon dioxide from “natural” causes has an uncertainty of around 10%
  4. that man made carbon dioxide emissions make up less than 5% of all carbon dioxide emissions and their contribution to carbon dioxide concentration is of the order of 40% (assuming that there is no lag between accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and absorption mechanisms from the atmosphere),
  5. that global temperatures actually show a small downward trend over the last 10 years,
  6. that global temperatures of the past have been corrupted by being adjusted or otherwise homogenised with the intent (conscious or unconscious) to cool the past,
  7. that man-made carbon dioxide emissions have been overestimated and in reality are much lower as a proportion of natural emission sources,
  8. that natural carbon dioxide absorption processes are larger than assumed,
  9. that Antarctic ice cover is at the highest levels ever recorded,
  10. that Arctic ice cover has returned to be within 1 SD of the long term 1980-2010 average,
  11. that the rate of sea-level rise is still at the same rate as the long-term recovery from the last glacial,
  12. that snow cover in the northern hemisphere is increasing
  13. that ice cover on the Great Lakes is increasing,
  14. that there is more forest cover now than when the alarmism began, and
  15. that polar bear numbers are healthy and increasing,

Add to this that a VEI5+ volcano eruption has not occurred since 1991 and is long overdue. It will most likely show up along the Pacific Ring of Fire or in Indonesia. Consider also that the Bárðarbunga  volcano in Iceland has been producing sulphur dioxide at a rate which in 9 weeks has pumped twice as much SO2 into the atmosphere than all of Europe does in a year. Bárðarbunga  volcano is far from VEI5+ levels and the eruption could continue for months. The SO2 emissions are not all reaching the stratosphere but will surely lead to increased cloud formation around sulphur aerosols and cloud levels will probably be high through at least next year. It becomes increasingly clear that further cooling effects are already in the “natural” pipeline of events. Some new glacier formation has been observed in the Scottish highlands. Some Alpine and Himalayan glaciers have started to increase and while others still decrease, the observation of increase where there has been none before is highly significant. The Great lakes have seen unprecedentedly high ice cover levels. Snow cover in the northern hemisphere is high and is lasting longer into spring than for some time.

But the models and the presuppositions and the misconceptions of the religious high priests cannot be easily denied by the faithful and have an inertia of their own. The IPCC  remains delusional and in denial about reality. It continues to play its global warming fiddle but it is badly out of tune and its alarmist cacophony is being overtaken by real events.

It may not be a glacial age that is starting but another Little Ice Age looks like it is on its way.

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Reanalysis reveals no significant global warming in New Zealand in the 20th century

October 31, 2014

New Zealand has one of the longest temperature-time series available.  In the past it has been reported that this data-set  confirms the view of global warming of just under 1ºC per century. But that is now highly suspect. A new paper reanalysing the data has been published and shows that the trend is less than one-third of what has been previously assumed.

de Freitas, C.R., Dedekind, M.O. and Brill, B.E. 2014. A reanalysis of long-term surface air temperature trends in New Zealand. Environmental Modeling and Assessment, do1 10.1007/s10666-014-9429-z.

Abstract: Detecting trends in climate is important in assessments of global change based on regional long-term data. Equally important is the reliability of the results that are widely used as a major input for a large number of societal design and planning purposes. New Zealand provides a rare long temperature time series in the Southern Hemisphere, and it is one of the longest continuous climate series available in the Southern Hemisphere Pacific. It is therefore important that this temperature dataset meets the highest quality control standards. New Zealand’s national record for the period 1909 to 2009 is analysed and the data homogenized. Current New Zealand century-long climatology based on 1981 methods produces a trend of 0.91 °C per century. Our analysis, which uses updated measurement techniques and corrects for shelter-contaminated data, produces a trend of 0.28 °C per century.

Dr. Craig Idso writes:

De Freitas et al. report that, whereas the previous analysis yielded a trend of 0.91 ± 0.30°C per century, their analysis – which used updated measurement techniques and corrects for shelter-contaminated data – produces a trend of only 0.28 ± 0.29°C per century, which is a heck of a lot less than what had previously been believed to have been the case.

The significance of de Freitas et al.’s work is two-fold. First, the authors report that the old, contaminated data with the inflated warming trend has been “widely used as inputs for societal design and planning purposes” all across New Zealand. Second, de Freitas et al. note these data are “extensively used in hindcast verifications for regional and local models.” However, as the saying goes, “garbage in equals garbage out.” Therefore, at best, the corrected New Zealand temperature trend, which is three times smaller than the uncorrected version, calls into question all results, findings, conclusions, and policies built upon or derived from the old contaminated data record. And at worst, it invalidates them.

Given the great importance of starting with the proper baseline, one would hope that with so much at stake in terms of economics, personal freedoms, and governance, much greater care and scrutiny would be applied to ensuring the quality and reliability of near-surface air temperature records. But obviously, such has not been the case for New Zealand. And it begs the question as to where else temperature records might be less than par.

To obtain a “global temperature”, raw temperature data from available sites is massaged, applied to geographical grids, corrected, adjusted, “filled-in” and otherwise homogenised. But the algorithms used to make these adjustments inevitably carry the preconceptions and misconceptions of the adjusters. As raw data is reviewed it is becoming increasingly obvious (in the US, in Australia in Germany and now in New Zealand) that “adjustments” that have been made over the last 20 years have been plagued by “confirmation bias”. Rather than a clear-cut warming record what is apparent is that many data-sets have been adjusted to “cool the past”.

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Evidence for man-made global warming has vanished

October 14, 2014

Where is the real evidence of man-made global warming? Where are the signs? Where are the measurements?

The simple fact is that in spite of what computer models might say, without global warming, there is no man-made global warming.

I am more persuaded by evidence than by climate models which have only demonstrated that they do not work. The man-made global warming hypothesis has a number of crucial assumptions which are all proving to be unproven, lacking evidence or just plain wrong.

  1. Global temperature is increasing, and
  2. Increasing carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is due to man-made effects, and
  3. Increasing CO2 concentration does give measurably increasing global temperature, and
  4. Increasing man-made carbon dioxide emissions does give significant and measurable increases in global temperature.

Every one of these assumptions is suspect and- at best – uncertain.

“Global Warming” has warped to be “Climate Change” so that any slightly unusual weather event can be claimed to be man-made. The hypotheses are never falsifiable. But the bottom line remains that all the change can be put down to man-made emissions which increase the heat trapped on earth, which then cause global temperatures to rise and fuel the “climate changes” observed. But all man-made climate change vanishes without man-made global warming to power it.

The signs of global warming were touted as being ice melting, sea level rising, loss of polar wildlife and sundry other secondary catastrophes. The poster-children of the global warming religion were the loss of polar ice, the corresponding rise of sea levels, disappearing islands, and the extinction of polar bears.

Just consider the real evidence.

Antarctic sea ice cover has reached the highest levels ever measured and has reached record levels for each of the last 3 years

NSIDC: This year’s Antarctic sea ice maximum was 1.54 million square kilometers (595,000 square miles) above the 1981 to 2010 average maximum extent, which is nearly four standard deviations above this average. The 2014 ice extent record is 560,000 square kilometers (216,000 square miles) above the previous record ice extent set on October 1, 2013. Each of the last three years (2012, 2013, and 2014) has set new record highs for extent in the Antarctic.

Arctic sea ice cover has recovered from the low of 2012 and is now within the 2SD band of the 1981-2010 average. It is up 84% from 2012 and the trend is upwards.

ScreenHunter_3480 Oct. 09 15.16

The trend for Arctic ice is upwards

Global sea ice cover is unchanged and shows no discernible trend since 1979.

Global temperatures have not risen for 18 years. In recent years there may even be a cooling trend.

Forbes:Remote Sensing Systems(RSS) also compiles data from the satellite instruments, though RSS measures a slightly different range of the lower atmosphere. RSS reports a similar temperature history,available here. In the RSS compilation, we see not just a recent temperature plateau, but actual cooling. Again, the pace of warming throughout the entirety of the record is approximately 1 degree Celsius per century.

In the last 18 years man made carbon emissions have increased by about 70%. Over the same period carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has risen by about 10% and global temperatures have not risen at all. On this data there is no correlation between global temperature and carbon dioxide concentration let alone carbon dioxide emissions.

Polar bear numbers are higher than for 50 years and walrus numbers are very high as well.

Sea level increases are no higher than the long term rise due to coming out of a glacial age. A rise of 2 inches by 2050 is on the cards.

Where is the evidence of man-made global warming?

 

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Global warming (what else?) caused ISIS, spread Ebola and will change male-female ratio!

October 3, 2014

Global warming – which has now been absent for 18 years – has been blamed for many things. In fact projects – in any field – which have managed to claim a possible link with global warming have had a much greater probability of being funded. Now global warming is blamed for the rise of ISIS, the spread of Ebola and even for altering the male-female ratio among humans.

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In just the last few days these articles have appeared and pass for serious commentary in supposedly serious media!

  1. Charles B. Strozier and Kelly A. Berkell, How Climate Change Helped ISIS

  2. Elijah Wolfson, Ebola and Climate Change: Are Humans Responsible for the Severity of the Current Outbreak?

  3. Rachael Rettner, Climate Change Could Alter the Human Male-Female Ratio

Not only are global temperatures not increasing (and maybe decreasing), but there is no linkage between observed “extreme” weather and global warming.

Climate Depot:

Hurricanes: 3,264 Days Without a Major (Cat 3 +) Hurricane Strike – ‘Nearly 9 years…the last being Wilma in October, 2005′

Tornadoes:U.S. Tornado Count Plummeting to Record Low Levels Three Consecutive Years

Droughts:New Research Confirms Human CO2 Not Causing A Global Drought Increase – ‘Droughts in the U.S. are more frequent and more intense during COLDER periods’

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Di Caprio puts on an act for climate change

September 26, 2014

I am always more than a little suspicious when a “celebrity” starts supporting some “benevolent” cause. My suspicions are directed primarily at the cause – not so so much at the celebrity. The celebrities are celebrities because they want to be. Their narcissistic urges are usually very well developed. But any “cause” which has to enlist the use of celebrities – with no particular qualifications other than being well known – to prop up its justification for existing is demeaned and damaged by the exercise. The celebrities of course get the extra exposure they so yearn for.

Whether it is Victoria Beckham on Millenium goals or George Clooney on Poverty or Arundhati Roy on dams or now Leonard Di Caprio on Climate, I find the causes are damaged while the celebrities satisfy their narcissistic urges. Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger must be the kiss of death for the causes he supports. In fact studies have shown that the good causes of the famous ‘benefit themselves more than the charities. 

The chief beneficiaries of star-studded attempts to raise the profile of a good cause are the celebrity themselves, according to sociologists, who say the appearance of altruism makes them more popular with the public.

Two pieces of research by UK academics argue that “the ability of celebrity and advocacy to reach people is limited” and that celebrities are “generally ineffective” at encouraging people to care about foreign causes.

But the publicity surrounding Di Caprio this week has been particularly gratuitous and unconvincing. He attended President Obama’s speech about Climate at the UN on Tuesday:

RCP: ……… But it was President Obama who provided the most visible sign that the talks were heading in the wrong direction. Arriving late, the president looked as if he’d rather be anywhere else. The president’s tone in speaking to his fellow leaders and delegates was as if he were talking to a meeting of congressional Republicans. Five years had passed since the failure of the previous round of talks at Copenhagen, he said. Since then, the scientific understanding had advanced. What was once a distant threat had, the president claimed, moved firmly into the present, although the president did not mention that global temperatures have been flat for a decade and a half and that there had been little scientific advance to explain it.

Those words were prologue to the president’s blunt warning. The U.S. is stepping up to the plate, the president declared. The U.S. must be joined by other nations. Nobody gets a pass, especially the big emerging economies, climate change code for India and China, whose leaders were giving the summit a pass. Solving climate change was a matter of taking a lead, the president said, making the improbable claim that giving a lead is what the United Nations General Assembly is for.

There were quite a number of empty seats in the chamber as the president spoke. Secretary of State John Kerry played with his BlackBerry. Many looked bored. At the end of the president’s remarks, the most enthusiastic applause came from DiCaprio. Perhaps that’s because he’s good actor. The climate change talks might be attracting dwindling audiences. But there’s one thing you can bet on: the climate change show will run and run. 

Ah Well.

Maybe there is a silver lining in the celebrity cloud.

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Climate models demolished as Arctic ice recovers, Antarctic ice reaches new maximum and global temperatures drift downwards

September 22, 2014

The Royal Society (which is one of the institutional high priests of the global warming cult) is holding a meeting on the Arctic today. It is quite revealing to see how climate models – which are being steadily demolished by reality – continue to be defended by the global warming establishment. Denying reality while defending imperfect, obsolete, climate models seems to be the name of the game.

Someday the Royal Society may display healthy scientific skepticism again. But right now they are entirely focused on finding excuses for why reality is wrong.

Models before data.

These graphs of ice extent from SunshineHours.

Arctic ice extent has passed its minimum and is growing again.

arctic_Sea_Ice_Extent_2014_Day_263_1981-2010

Arctic Ice extent has passed minimum for 2014

Antarctic ice is reaching extents never before seen in the satellite age.

antarctic_Sea_Ice_Extent_2014_Day_263_1981-2010

Antarctic ice extent has not quite reached maximum for 2014

Zoomed Antarctic ice extent

antarctic_Sea_Ice_Extent_Zoomed_2014_Day_263_1981-2010

Antarctic ice extent Zoomed

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Antarctic sea ice extent at the highest ever measured

September 16, 2014

Antarctic ice extent is at all time high levels. Since satellite measurement began in 1978, such high levels of ice extent have never been measured.

An area about three times the size of Australia, in the Antarctic region, is now covered by sea ice.

And even the growing ice is blamed by the acolytes on global warming in the atmosphere (which they seem to forget has been absent for 18 years)!! Of course the missing warming is said to be hiding in the deep oceans (among many other places) but not – it would seem – in the Antarctic.

CEO of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC, Tony Worby, said the warming atmosphere is leading to greater sea ice coverage by changing wind patterns.

Sunshinehours:

Antarctic Sea Ice Extent Sept 15 2014 – 1,224,000 sq km above the 1981-2010 mean. Data for Day 257. Data here.

18,000 sq km higher than yesterdays record. And 170,000 sq km higher than 2013’s all-time record.

Antarctic sea ice extent 2014 day 257 image sunshinehours

Antarctic sea ice extent 2014 day 257 image sunshinehours

abc.net

Satellite image showing Antarctic sea ice

A satellite image of Antarctica showing sea ice extent. The red line is the average for September – Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC

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Posted in Alarmism, Antarctic, Climate | 1 Comment »

Obsessive fixation on global warming leads to unpreparedness for an ice age

September 14, 2014

This is a postscript to my previous post about the inevitability of this interglacial giving way to glacial conditions, Here Professor Bob Carter addresses how the obsessive fixation with “gentle” global warming leads to an unpreparedness for global cooling in a letter to The Australian:

Heading for ice age

GRAHAM Lloyd has reported on the Bureau of Meteorology’s capitulation to scientific criticism that it should publish an accounting of the corrections it makes to temperature records (“Bureau warms to transparency over adjusted records”, 12/9). Corrections which, furthermore, act to reinforce the bureau’s dedication to a prognosis of future dangerous global warming, by turning cooling temperature trends into warming ones — a practice also known to occur in the US, Britain and New Zealand.

Meanwhile, we have a report by Sue Neales that the size of our grain harvest remains in doubt following severe frosts in southern NSW killing large areas of early wheat crops and also damaging wheat and canola crops in South Australia and Victoria (“Trifecta of calamities to deplete. crop harvest”, 12/9)

Is it unreasonable to be surprised that none of your writers, much less the government, has noticed that leading solar astrophysicists, such as Habibullo Abdussamatov from Pulkovo Observatory in St Petersburg, have for years been commenting on the declining activity of the sun?

These scientists are projecting a significant cooling over the next three decades, and perhaps even the occurrence of another little ice age.

Obsessed as they are with a gentle global warming trend that stopped late last century, should the expected solar cooling eventuate, policy makers will rue the day they failed to heed the advice of independent scientists on climate change issues.

Bob Carter, Townsville, Qld

 

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CO2 increasing + no increase of global temperature = idiot climate policies

September 9, 2014

The UN has a special summit on climate on 23rd September and the alarmist wind-up has started (though the leaders of India, China and Gernany will not attend). The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has kicked off on the hype with a bulletin pointing out that CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has reached 396 ppm(v/v) which is an increase of 3 ppm from the previous year. It is – they say – the fastest rate of increase since 1984.

The WMO is just another advocacy group and their conclusions seem to be based more on wishful thinking rather than on any knowledge.

(My comments in red)

Comment 1: If this rate of increase occurred also thirty years ago in 1984 when the world’s consumption of fossil fuels was an order of magnitude less than today then the increased use of fossil fuels is clearly not as great a contributor to CO2 concentration in the atmosphere than previously thought.

BBC: A surge in atmospheric CO2 saw levels of greenhouse gases reach record levels in 2013, according to new figures. Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere between 2012 and 2013 grew at their fastest rate since 1984. The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) says that it highlights the need for a global climate treaty. ….. 

According to the bulletin, the globally averaged amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 396 parts per million (ppm) in 2013, an increase of almost 3ppm over the previous year. “The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin shows that, far from falling, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere actually increased last year at the fastest rate for nearly 30 years,” said Michel Jarraud, secretary general of the WMO. ….. However, global average temperatures have not risen in concert with the sustained growth in CO2, leading to many voices claiming that global warming has paused.

Comment 2: The logical conclusion is that CO2 concentration has little impact on global temperature. The undoubted “greenhouse” effect of CO2 is clearly being suppressed by other negative feedbacks.

“The climate system is not linear, it is not straightforward. It is not necessarily reflected in the temperature in the atmosphere, but if you look at the temperature profile in the ocean, the heat is going in the oceans,” said Oksana Tarasova, chief of the atmospheric research division at the WMO.

Comment 3: This is now “global warming” restricted by magic mechanisms to hiding in the deep oceans and which is no longer visible in the atmosphere!!!! “Climate science” is trying to rewrite the laws of thermodynamics and heat flows.

The bulletin suggests that in 2013, the increase in CO2 was due not only to increased emissions but also to a reduced carbon uptake by the Earth’s biosphere. The scientists at the WMO are puzzled by this development. That last time there was a reduction in the biosphere’s ability to absorb carbon was 1998, when there was extensive burning of biomass worldwide, coupled with El Nino conditions.

“In 2013 there are no obvious impacts on the biosphere so it is more worrying,” said Oksana Tarasova. “We don’t understand if this is temporary or if it is a permanent state, and we are a bit worried about that.”

“It could be that the biosphere is at its limit but we cannot tell that at the moment.” The WMO data indicates that between 1990 and 2013 there was an 34% increase in the warming impact on the climate because carbon dioxide and other gases like methane and nitrous oxide survive for such a long time in the atmosphere.

Comment 4: Fundamentally the WMO does not know very much about the biosphere and its impact on CO2, and even less about the impact of CO2 on global temperature. Why is the WMO then advocating action on parameters, the effects of which are unknown?

The only things that the WMO bulletin demonstrates are that the linkage between CO2 concentration and global temperature is unknown (if it is even significant), and that the linkage between fossil fuel combustion and atmospheric CO2 concentraion is uncertain.

Hardly a sound basis for the idiotic demonisation of fossil fuel combustion.

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