Climate change: About that massive ice melt … yeah, never mind
While “the science is settled” and name calling are about all the climate alarmists have in their mostly empty rebuttal quiver, real science continues to destroy their ‘settled science’.
I’m sure you remember all the doom and gloom emanating from the claims that massive amounts of ice was melting and would raise sea levels to catastrophic heights, don’t you?
Yeah, well, it appears – shock of shocks – that those making those claims didn’t use science at all. They apparently just kind of made it up if the American Geophysical Union’s latest research is to be believed:
"Previous ocean models … have predicted temperatures and melt rates that are too high, suggesting a significant mass loss in this region that is actually not taking place," says Tore Hattermann of the Norwegian Polar Institute, member of a team which has obtained two years’ worth of direct measurements below the massive Fimbul Ice Shelf in eastern Antarctica – the first ever to be taken.
[…]
It turns out that past studies, which were based on computer models without any direct data for comparison or guidance, overestimate the water temperatures and extent of melting beneath the Fimbul Ice Shelf. This has led to the misconception, Hattermann said, that the ice shelf is losing mass at a faster rate than it is gaining mass, leading to an overall loss of mass.
The team’s results show that water temperatures are far lower than computer models predicted …
In fact:
Overall, according to the team, their field data shows "steady state mass balance" on the eastern Antarctic coasts – ie, that no ice is being lost from the massive shelves there. The research is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
You don’t say? But, but “climate deniers are the same as Holocaust deniers”, “the sciences is settled”, “consensus”, the “vast majority of the world’s scientists agree”, “IPCC”, yatta, yatta, yatta.
Again we see the so-called science wasn’t based on science at all – it was based on computer models “without any direct data for comparison or guidance” which then naturally got the results the “scientists” were looking for.
I’d love to say I’m stunned, but I’m not.
We’ve known this was happening for how long now? It’s just that the evidence just keeps coming out, doesn’t it.
If you’re still an alarmist that believes in the “science” that was put out in the IPCC report and an “Inconvenient Truth”, then it isn’t science we’re talking about anymore – it’s religion.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Climate change skeptics have “the highest degrees of science literacy and technical reasoning capacity”
Shocking I know. In fact the findings are exactly the opposite of what those doing the study expected to find (via Nature.com):
As respondents’ science-literacy scores increased, concern with climate change decreased (r=−0.05, P=0.05). There was also a negative correlation between numeracy and climate change risk (r=−0.09, P<0.01). The differences were small, but nevertheless inconsistent with SCT, which predicts effects with the opposite signs.
[…]
Contrary to SCT predictions, higher degrees of science literacy and numeracy are associated with a small decrease in the perceived seriousness of climate change risks.
Or to simplify, the difference between the believing herd and thinking individualists.
Speaking of the herd vs individualists, that takes us to the second claim:
If cultural cognition is merely a heuristic substitute for scientific knowledge and system 2 reasoning, reliance on it should be lowest among those individuals whose scientific knowledge and system 2 reasoning capacity are highest. SCT thus implies that as science literacy and numeracy increase, the scepticism over climate change associated with a hierarchical individualistic world-view should lessen and the gap between people with hierarchical individualistic world-views and those with egalitarian communitarian ones should diminish.
Not valid:
Among egalitarian communitarians, science literacy and numeracy (as reflected in the composite scale Science literacy/numeracy) showed a small positive correlation with concern about climate change risks (r=0.08, P=0.03). In contrast, among hierarchical individualists, Science literacy/numeracy is negatively correlated with concern (r=−0.12, P=0.03). Hence, polarization actually becomes larger, not smaller, as science literacy and numeracy increase.
Contrary to SCT’s predictions, highly science-literate and numerate hierarchical individualists are more sceptical, not less, of climate change risks.
These results won’t slow down the alarmists or stop them from calling skeptics scientifically illiterate. But it will allow skeptics to laugh in their face when they do.
Another in a long line of alarmist myths about AGW put to death by …. science.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Polar bears refuse to cooperate in doomsday predictions for their species
One of the most appealing, albeit disingenuous pictures that the climate alarmists used to push their agenda was that of a polar bear on a small bit of melting ice. With that they claimed that global warming was melting the bear’s habitat and that they were close to extinction.
The debate about climate change and its impact on polar bears has intensified with the release of a survey that shows the bear population in a key part of northern Canada is far larger than many scientists thought, and might be growing.
The number of bears along the western shore of Hudson Bay, believed to be among the most threatened bear subpopulations, stands at 1,013 and could be even higher, according to the results of an aerial survey released Wednesday by the Government of Nunavut. That’s 66 per cent higher than estimates by other researchers who forecasted the numbers would fall to as low as 610 because of warming temperatures that melt ice faster and ruin bears’ ability to hunt. The Hudson Bay region, which straddles Nunavut and Manitoba, is critical because it’s considered a bellwether for how polar bears are doing elsewhere in the Arctic.
So in the most critical of polar bear habitats, the polar bear population is 66% higher than what the alarmists said it would be with the increase in temperatures.
But we’re supposed to give their doomsday prophecies credibility?
Of course other researchers disagree. Interestingly the Inuit communities disagree with the alarmist researchers.
By the way, as an aside, we never see pictures like this when the alarmists want to make us empathize with those cuddly little white bears do we?
Heh …
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Two more scientist change sides in the AGW debate
In fact, it seems as if it isn’t really much of a debate anymore.
First, let me be clear, the debate among scientists isn’t whether CO2 is a greenhouse gas or whether, even, it can cause warming, but instead on what real (if any) total effect it has overall on the climate. In other words, is there a saturation point where additional CO2 has little marginal effect, or does it build to a tipping point where the change is radical? Robust climate or delicate climate?
Evidence is building toward the robust climate theory, which would mean that while there may be more CO2 being emitted, it has little to no effect on the overall climate. That, of course, is contrary to the AGW crowd’s theory.
So, on to the latest high profile defections:
One of the fathers of Germany’s modern green movement, Professor Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a social democrat and green activist, decided to author a climate science skeptical book together with geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning. Vahrenholt’s skepticism started when he was asked to review an IPCC report on renewable energy. He found hundreds of errors. When he pointed them out, IPCC officials simply brushed them aside. Stunned, he asked himself, “Is this the way they approached the climate assessment reports?”
Vahrenholt decided to do some digging. His colleague Dr. Lüning also gave him a copy of Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion. He was horrified by the sloppiness and deception he found. Persuaded by Hoffmann & Campe, he and Lüning decided to write the book. Die kalte Sonne cites 800 sources and has over 80 charts and figures. It examines and summarizes the latest science.
Vahrenholt concluded, through his research, that the science of the IPCC (if you can call it that) was mostly political and had been “hyped.”
Germany’s flagship weekly news magazine Der Spiegel today also featured a 4-page exclusive interview with Vahrenholt, where he repeated that the IPCC has ignored a large part of climate science and that IPCC scientists exaggerated the impact of CO2 on climate. Vahrenholt said that by extending the known natural cycles of the past into the future, and taking CO2′s real impact into effect, we should expect a few tenths of a degree of cooling.
That, as I said, points to the “robust” climate model.
Once more to make the point before I leave the subject:
Skeptic readers should not think that the book will fortify their existing skepticism of CO2 causing warming. The authors agree it does. but have major qualms about the assumed positive CO2-related feed-backs and believe the sun plays a far greater role in the whole scheme of things.
As Dr. Roy Spencer says, CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Adding CO2 should cause warming. The argument is “how much” and that’s based on competing theories about the climate’s sensitivity. Skeptics think the sensitivity is very low while alarmists think it is very high. The building evidence is that rising CO2 has little warming effect in real terms regardless of the amount of the gas emitted. That there is a “saturation level”. If that’s true, and indications are it is, then there’s a) no justification for limiting emissions and b) certainly no justification to tax them.
That, of course, is where politics enter the picture. Governments like the idea of literally creating a tax out of thin air, especially given the current financial condition of most states. Consequently, governments are more likely to fund science that supports their desired conclusion – and it seems that in this case there were plenty who were willing to comply (especially, as Patrick J. Michael has noted, when that gravy train amounts to $103 billion in grants).
What Vahrenholt is objecting too is the IPCC’s key definition in which it clearly states that “climate change” is a result of and because of “human contributions”. As noted above, he thinks that the sun is a much greater factor (something mostly ignored in the models) and he finds past CO2 trends to forecast nothing like the IPCC’s forecast.
What we’re finding as this argument goes forward is that Patrick Michaels was right – “AGW theory functions best in a data free environment”.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Global cooling?
But, but, polar bears, rising oceans, melting ice, oh my:
The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years. The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century. Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.
For those alarmists still stuck in the alarmist convenient “science” of the 20th century, this is the inconvenient scientific truth of this century … no warming despite the fact that man-made CO2 levels have gone up. As David Rose remarks, “the ‘supposed’ consensus” is apparently wrong.
I’m sure you understand why this temperature data was released last week with little “fanfare”. Had it been the opposite finding, we’d have been treated to a parade of alarmists again claiming that we need to tax ourselves back to the stone age in order to save the planet.
Oh, and remember that big, hot, yellow thing that hangs in the sky that I have mentioned repeatedly should be factored in to the “science” of global warming vs. being ignored? Henrik Svensmark, Denmark’s National Space Institute seems to feel the same way:
World temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more. It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.
So alarmists can’t ignore this anymore. They can’t fall back on consensus, because consensus isn’t science. In fact, right now, given the new data, it is their reputations on the line, not that of the skeptics:
If temperatures continue to stay flat or start to cool again, the divergence between the models and recorded data will eventually become so great that the whole scientific community will question the current theories. The real issue is whether the model itself is accurate.
And, of course, indications are (many indications are) that they’re not. For instance:
The responsible thing to do would be to accept the fact that the models may have severe shortcomings when it comes to the influence of the sun,’ said Professor Curry. As for the warming pause, she said that many scientists ‘are not surprised’.
he argued it is becoming evident that factors other than CO2 play an important role in rising or falling warmth, such as the 60-year water temperature cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
‘They have insufficiently been appreciated in terms of global climate,’ said Prof Curry. When both oceans were cold in the past, such as from 1940 to 1970, the climate cooled. The Pacific cycle ‘flipped’ back from warm to cold mode in 2008 and the Atlantic is also thought likely to flip in the next few years .
Pal Brekke, senior adviser at the Norwegian Space Centre, said some scientists found the importance of water cycles difficult to accept, because doing so means admitting that the oceans – not CO2 – caused much of the global warming between 1970 and 1997.
One of the other indicators was to be found in the Lysenkoish conformity that was imposed on this branch of science by alarmists.
Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.
This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.
Certainly dissenting scientists weren’t sent to actual gulags but attempts were to made banish them to academic gulags with their credentials in tatters.
16 scientists wrote the above two paragraphs and then reveal what drove this breech of the scientific method was, as we’ve mentioned before, pretty mundane and fairly obvious if you just took the time to look:
Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word "incontrovertible" from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question "cui bono?" Or the modern update, "Follow the money."
Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.
These 16 scientists also give a little political advice that should be heeded:
Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world’s economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.
No compelling scientific argument?
See above.
For 15 years the earth has not been warming even while man-made CO2 levels have risen.
That’s scientific fact and it is time the alarmist crowd began dealing straight with the public using facts.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Climate Alarmists claim victory with an old and discredited data set on temperature
Kevin Drum is all excited. Writing at Mother Jones he tells us:
But Muller’s congressional testimony last March didn’t go according to plan. He told them a preliminary analysis suggested that the three main climate models in use today—each of which uses a different estimating technique, and each of which has potential flaws—are all pretty accurate: Global temperatures have gone up considerably over the past century, and the increase has accelerated over the past few decades. Yesterday, BEST confirmed these results and others in its first set of published papers about land temperatures.
Oh boy … confirmation. “I told you so” time. Finally got those deniers pinned to the wall.
Yeah, not really. Anthony Watts cites a paragraph from the Economist and then explains why this isn’t anything new:
Economist: “There are three compilations of mean global temperatures, each one based on readings from thousands of thermometers, kept in weather stations and aboard ships, going back over 150 years. Two are American, provided by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), one is a collaboration between Britain’s Met Office and the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (known as Hadley CRU). And all suggest a similar pattern of warming: amounting to about 0.9°C over land in the past half century.”
The nearly identical trends is no surprise as they draw from mostly the same raw data!
Same old data (that’s been questioned quite often given the location of many of the temperature stations in parking lots, fudging of numbers, cherry picking, etc), “new” trend analysis, same results.
Watts concludes:
The new Muller et al study, therefore, has a very major unanswered question. I have asked it on Judy’s [Curry] weblog since she is a co-author of these studies [and Muller never replied to my request to answer this question].
“Hi Judy – I encourage you to document how much overlap there is in Muller’s analysis with the locations used by GISS, NCDC and CRU. In our paper
Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229.http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-321.pdf
we reported that
“The raw surface temperature data from which all of the different global surface temperature trend analyses are derived are essentially the same. The best estimate that has been reported is that 90–95% of the raw data in each of the analyses is the same (P. Jones, personal communication, 2003).”
Unless, Muller pulls from a significantly different set of raw data, it is no surprise that his trends are the same.
More deception cloaked as “new” science from the alarmist crowd.
What a surprise indeed.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Poll–69% say AGW scientists may have falsified data
For the alarmists, such has Henry Waxman, the news isn’t getting any better:
The debate over global warming has intensified in recent weeks after a new NASA study was interpreted by skeptics to reveal that global warming is not man-made. While a majority of Americans nationwide continue to acknowledge significant disagreement about global warming in the scientific community, most go even further to say some scientists falsify data to support their own beliefs.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of American Adults shows that 69% say it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data in order to support their own theories and beliefs, including 40% who say this is Very Likely. Twenty-two percent (22%) don’t think it’s likely some scientists have falsified global warming data, including just six percent (6%) say it’s Not At All Likely. Another 10% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here .)
So … it appears that those who believe that there’s a consensus of people who are convinced man-made global warming is occurring, well the poll says not only “no” but “hell, no”. In fact the poll says for the most part they just don’t believe the so-called consensus of scientists because they are of the opinion that enough evidence has been presented that the findings may have been falsified.
Imagine that.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
The Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change
I’m really looking forward to attending this event put on by my good friend Jim Lakely and the Heartland Institute. I’ll be able to about the science that argues against the alarmist view of global warming from people I’ve been reading for years. I hope to be able to interview some of them. The theme this year is “Restoring the Scientific Method”, which is sorely needed among the purveyors of alarmism. Anyway, here’s how the event shapes up:
Sen. James Inhofe, R-OK, among the most prominent critics of global warming alarmism in Congress, will kick off The Heartland Institute’s sixth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC-6) with a breakfast keynote address at 8 a.m. June 30.
(If you can’t make it in person, Heartland will live-stream the entire conference. Tweet coverage: #ICCC6)
Inhofe will be joined at the Marriott Wardman Park in Washington, DC by dozens of state and federal legislators and climate scientists who dispute the claim that “the science is settled” on the causes, consequences, and policy implications of climate change.
Past climate conferences have taken place in New York City, Chicago, Washington DC, and Sydney, Australia and have attracted more than 2,000 participants from 20 countries. The proceedings have been covered by ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, the BBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Le Monde, and many other leading media outlets.
ICCC-6 will feature presentations by more than two dozen scientists, economists, and elected officials commenting on the latest research on the causes, consequences, and policy implications of climate change. Click here for an updated conference schedule. Our line-up of speakers includes:
- Timothy Ball, Ph.D., environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He was recently sued for libel by Michael Mann, a professor and prominent figure in the Climategate scandal.
- Alan Carlin, Ph.D., former senior analyst and manager at the EPA. In March 2009 he authored a highly critical internal review of the EPA’s draft report on endangerment from greenhouse gases, which led him to become a whistle-blower.
- Robert Carter, Hon. FRSNZ, research professor at James Cook University (Queensland, Australia), where he was head of the School of Earth Sciences between 1981 and 1999. He is author of Climate: The Counter Consensus.
- Scott Denning, Ph.D., professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University. Denning, who believes in man-caused global warming, spoke at ICCC-4 in 2010 and profusely thanked the organizers and attendees for a respectful, stimulating conference. (See this video.)
- Christopher Horner, J.D., senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed.
- Harrison Schmitt, Ph.D., former astronaut and U.S. Senator from New Mexico and the last man to set foot on the moon. Schmitt earned his Ph.D. in geology from Harvard University and is a member of Heartland’s Board of Directors.
- S. Fred Singer, Ph.D., founder and president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, is coauthor of Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years and Climate Change Reconsidered and professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia.
- Roy W. Spencer, Ph.D., principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, where he directs a variety of climate research projects. He is the author of several books, including most recently, The Great Global Warming Blunder.
- Anthony Watts, a 25-year broadcast meteorology veteran and currently chief meteorologist for KPAY-AM radio. He hosts the popular climate change blog Wattsupwiththat.com and a Web site at surfacestations.org devoted to photographing and documenting the quality of weather stations across the U.S.
Past ICCCs have featured presentations by members of Congress, the president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, and scientists who view themselves as “skeptics” as well as “alarmists.”
The theme of ICCC-6, Restoring the Scientific Method, acknowledges the fact that claims of scientific certainty and predictions of climate catastrophes are based on post-normal science, which substitutes claims of consensus for the scientific method. This choice has had terrible consequences for science and society. Abandoning the scientific method led to the Climategate scandal and the errors and abuses of peer review by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
More information is available at the conference Web site.
Get Twitter updates of the conference, and tweet your own coverage, by following @HeartlandInst and using the hashtag #ICCC6.
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As you might imagine, for the next few days, most of what I blog about will have to do with the subject that I’ve followed closely for years and is of extreme interest to me. Any questions that you might have are welcome. I’ll actually have two days to get them answered this time vs. the hour I had with Dr. Kissinger, so I should be able to put them too most of the players there. I’ve talked with Horner before during an interview on WRKO. I’ve read Singer and Spencer’s stuff for years and have also haunted Anthony Watts site at certain times to read or find explanations to the latest attempt by the alarmists on one subject or another.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
What do AGW alarmists and Harold Camping have in common?
Jeff Jacoby points out that climate change alarmists have fouled their nest so badly that the majority of the public in general has now concluded their cause is overhyped. Climate change, as a pressing priority, is receding in the public’s eyes. It simply doesn’t consider the warning credible. Why?
Well answer this – if Harold Camping came out today and claimed that the world was going to end on October 21st, after previously claiming it would end on May 21st, how much credence would you give his claim?
About as much as the scaremongers in the AGW game, one supposes, since much of what they warned would happen not only hasn’t happened but doesn’t appear likely to happen. As I noted yesterday, however, that doesn’t keep the scare machine from cranking out new and more horrible predictions.
Jacoby points to one made by Newsweek which is, well, laughable on its face.
“Worldwide, the litany of weather’s extremes has reached biblical proportions,’’ Newsweek intones, pointing to tornadoes in the United States, floods in Australia and Pakistan, and drought in China. “From these and other extreme-weather events, one lesson is sinking in with terrifying certainty. The stable climate of the last 12,000 years is gone.’’ This is what comes of burning fossil fuels for energy, which has increased atmospheric CO2 levels by 40 percent above what they were before the Industrial Revolution. “You haven’t seen anything yet,’’ Newsweek preaches. “Batten down the hatches.’’
Anyone spot the blatant bit of nonsense in there? We’ve never had a “stable climate” for the last 12,000 years. Jacoby quotes William Happer, distinguished Princeton physicist, on the reality of that time period:
“Carbon is the stuff of life,’’ he points out. “Our bodies are made of carbon.’’ Yes, atmospheric CO2 is higher today than it was before the industrial age — 390 parts per million now vs. 270 ppm then — but there was a time when “CO2 levels were several thousand ppm, much higher than now. And life flourished abundantly.’’ Indeed, greenhouse operators artificially boost CO2 concentrations in order to grow better flowers and fruit.
So why recoil from the modest increase in carbon emissions caused by fossil-fuel use? Because more CO2 means more climate change? Happer shoots down that idea. The earth’s climate is always changing, sometimes dramatically. During the medieval warming of a thousand years ago, temperatures were much higher than they are now; during the Little Ice Age six centuries later they were much lower. “Yet there is no evidence for significant increase of CO2 in the medieval warm period, nor for a significant decrease at the time of the subsequent little ice age.’’
It is like history and the climate records that go with it don’t exist for the alarmist crowd. If you can’t explain it, apparently it is now ok to ignore it. Thus the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age – inconvenient facts that refute the claim – seemingly never happened. Not if you want to push the “12,000 years” of “stable climate”.
As I’ve asked any number of times, when did the science that previously saw CO2 as a lagging indicator change it into a leading indicator or cause of warming? It hasn’t. Nor does it have the amplifying effect that the alarmists claim through their flawed models. In fact, none of the predictions they have made over the years have even come close to fruition for the reasons they state. And it is clear, as we actually have real scientists study the atmosphere and climate, that there is still a vast amount they are discovering about the climate. This, for instance:
Scientists at Marine Biological Laboratory say trees in a mini-forest where they simulated future global warming stored more carbon, a bonus offset for expected higher CO2 releases from the faster decay of organic matter in soil as Earth heats up.
Apparently as the atmosphere warms, trees store more carbon as “woody tissue”. Result?
But project leader Jerry Melillo of MBL said this study demonstrates for the first time that global warming would also be likely to increase the carbon storing potential of trees, by speeding up nitrogen cycling in the forest — more matter decomposing frees up more inorganic nitrogen compounds, such as ammonium (also known as garden fertilizer), causing greater tree growth and more tree tissue available to store carbon.
The increased carbon storage capacity of the trees in MBL’s Harvard Forest experiment was enough to outpace atmospheric CO2 gain resulting from the warmer soil, Melillo concluded.
And most likely, any human contribution, as small as it is, would also be absorbed. One could also theorize that other plant life might also store more CO2 than they do now. Of course, if true, that would likely mean that the human contribution (or CO2 for that matter) was not having the effect that alarmists attempt to claim, but instead the warming was due to other causes.
I’m sure, however, since this is a recent discovery, that the models don’t factor that in. Of course, they don’t factor in cloud albedo either – something not only critical to our climate, but fundamental. But hey, that would get in the way of the desired results, wouldn’t it?
AGW is slowly strangling on its own fouled science. As I pointed out yesterday and Jacoby points out today, that’s only increased the stridency of these cranks. Scaremongering is headed to new heights in the coming months. And, as it turns out, the basis for their “end of the world” scenarios is about as firm as that of Harold Camping and his end of the world claims.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Alarmist journalist links the recent tornado outbreak to AGW
Of course it is not unusual to find someone, somewhere who has swallowed the Al Gore driven AGW mantra whole who wants to tie extreme weather events to man-made global warming.
Bill McKibben, a journalist blogging at the Washington Post, gives it a new twist with a whole bunch of links to weather events that have to be – that’s right, have to be – caused by global warming (although he sarcastically pretends there are no such links in an attempt to shame skeptics by what he seems to consider obvious linkage).
Never mind the mean temperature globally hasn’t risen over the past decade, and the climate models that predicted all this have been proven to be wrong, that the conditions necessary for there to be a greenhouse effect from CO2 don’t exist nor have they ever, the “hockey stick” was broken years ago, that the data has been admittedly fudged or manipulated and that they couldn’t “hide the decline”, this is all because of global warming. Because “warm air holds more moisture than dry air”.
Of course most of his examples are really, honestly laughable on their face. For instance:
It is not advisable to try to connect them in your mind with, say, the fires burning across Texas — fires that have burned more of America at this point this year than any wildfires have in previous years. Texas, and adjoining parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico, are drier than they’ve ever been — the drought is worse than that of the Dust Bowl. But do not wonder if they’re somehow connected.
What happened to the moisture laden air? And how about his reference – the 30’s era dust bowl? It couldn’t be natural systems again asserting themselves, could it? No, of course not, because then the cause couldn’t be pinned on AGW, could it? El Nino and La Nina? Forget about them. You need to buy into this simplistic explanation of why bad weather events are happening.
If you did wonder, you see, you would also have to wonder about whether this year’s record snowfalls and rainfalls across the Midwest — resulting in record flooding along the Mississippi — could somehow be related. And then you might find your thoughts wandering to, oh, global warming, and to the fact that climatologists have been predicting for years that as we flood the atmosphere with carbon we will also start both drying and flooding the planet, since warm air holds more water vapor than cold air.
Well they’ve been predicting mega hurricanes for years as well, and we’ve had very mild hurricane seasons. We’re also supposed to be up to our rear ends in water right now, what with melting glaciers and ice pack, but we’ve found out that the data for that has been fudged too. And we had similar floods in – 1927 – well before the era in which we’ve supposedly polluted our planet to the point that it is now “striking back”. And what about the Johnstown flood of 1889? What were their cause?
Propose your own physics; ignore physics altogether. Just don’t start asking yourself whether there might be some relation among last year’s failed grain harvest from the Russian heat wave, and Queensland’s failed grain harvest from its record flood, and France’s and Germany’s current drought-related crop failures, and the death of the winter wheat crop in Texas, and the inability of Midwestern farmers to get corn planted in their sodden fields. Surely the record food prices are just freak outliers, not signs of anything systemic.
You don’t have to propose you own anything, you just have to inform yourself. For instance, the Russian heat wave:
The deadly heat wave that seared Russia last summer was driven primarily by a natural weather phenomenon, not man-made causes, government researchers said in a study Wednesday.
[…]
In their report, the scientists concluded that the extreme temperatures were caused by the formation of a blocking pattern, a massive high-pressure ridge that halted the normal movement of cooling storms from the west and allowed warm air to flow north from the tropics. Such anomalies are relatively common and the result of natural actions, though the intensity of the one over Russia was highly unusual.
The role of human-caused warming could not be discerned from the natural weather patterns behind the event, Dr. Dole said.
You see, it is much easier to speculate than to do the research necessary to understand weather and patterns, or to simply hit Google. They are indeed signs of something systemic, just not the system the Alarmists would prefer. But as you can see, that doesn’t stop them from attempting to “connect the dots” as they pretend.
The Alarmists have an agenda. They are clearly on the defensive. Their predictive power has been shown to be essentially worthless. So they’re back to claiming weather events prove their point. The twist is they want to link them all together even when they obviously have nothing to do with their claim – see Russia – because they think the more of these events they can claim, the greater the force of their argument.
Yeah, not working guys. Again, while everyone knows CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it doesn’t work as the models theorized it works and thus doesn’t have the amplifying effect they claim. Consequently, it isn’t doing what they want to claim it does. Secondly, man’s contribution to the overall amount of CO2 emitted naturally is miniscule and not worth doing anything about and especially, as noted, since CO2 doesn’t do what the Alarmist claim it does.
Finally, climate does change – always has. No one denies that. Most on the skeptical side of AGW simply don’t buy the Alarmist’s claims – because they certainly aren’t proven science – that man has anything to do with it. We write most of those claims off to hubris, not science.
[HT: Chad M]
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO