Scafetta prediction widget update
By Dr. Nicola Scafetta
It is time to update my widget comparing the global surface temperature, HadCRUT3 (red and blue), the IPC 2007 projection (green) and my empirical model (black thick curve and cyan area) based on a set of detected natural harmonics (period of approximately: 9.1, 10-11, 20 and 60 years) which are based on astronomical cycles, plus a corrected anthropogenic warming projection of about 0.9 oC/century. The yellow curve represents the harmonic model alone without the corrected anthropogenic warming projection and represents an average lower limit.
The proposed astronomically-based empirical model represents an alternative methodology to reconstruct and forecast climate changes (on a global scale, at the moment) which is alternative to the analytical methodology implemented in the IPCC general circulation models. All IPCC models are proven in my paper to fail to reconstruct all decadal and multidecadal cycles observed in the temperature since 1850. See details…
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Who is committing fraud here?
Richard Treadgold, whose blog Climate Conversations appears to be the sole active NZ blog devoted entirely to climate change denial, is rehashing an old argument (SeeWell, where’s your evidence, Renowden?). He claims:
“Global warming has not happened for about 15 years, unless you take a micrometer to the thermometer. And if you have to do that just to detect warming, then it’s hardly dangerous, is it?”
Of course this has been explained to him and his mates many times. Either his brain is just not capable of comprehending the simple story – or he continues to raise it despite the fact it has been well refuted. After all, if your real purpose is political, to manufacture doubt, honesty is your last concern. That’s why he claims climate scientists are committing “fraud” on this question (and others).
I dealt with the issue in my post “What, me worry?” –…
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Game Over for the Climate – NYTimes.com
GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”
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If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.
Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.
That is the long-term outlook. But near-term, things will be bad enough. Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.
If this sounds apocalyptic, it is. This is why we need to reduce emissions dramatically. President Obama has the power not only to deny tar sands oil additional access to Gulf Coast refining, which Canada desires in part for export markets, but also to encourage economic incentives to leave tar sands and other dirty fuels in the ground.
The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of random weather, as I predicted would happen by now in the journal Science in 1981. Extremely hot summers have increased noticeably. We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events — they were caused by human-induced climate change.
We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life. But add too much, as we are doing now, and temperatures will inevitably rise too high. This is not the result of natural variability, as some argue. The earth is currently in the part of its long-term orbit cycle where temperatures would normally be cooling. But they are rising — and it’s because we are forcing them higher with fossil fuel emissions.
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 280 parts per million to 393 p.p.m. over the last 150 years. The tar sands contain enough carbon — 240 gigatons — to add 120 p.p.m. Tar shale, a close cousin of tar sands found mainly in the United States, contains at least an additional 300 gigatons of carbon. If we turn to these dirtiest of fuels, instead of finding ways to phase out our addiction to fossil fuels, there is no hope of keeping carbon concentrations below 500 p.p.m. — a level that would, as earth’s history shows, leave our children a climate system that is out of their control.
We need to start reducing emissions significantly, not create new ways to increase them. We should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month. The government would not get a penny. This market-based approach would stimulate innovation, jobs and economic growth, avoid enlarging government or having it pick winners or losers. Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices. Not only that, the reduction in oil use resulting from the carbon price would be nearly six times as great as the oil supply from the proposed pipeline from Canada, rendering the pipeline superfluous, according to economic models driven by a slowly rising carbon price.
But instead of placing a rising fee on carbon emissions to make fossil fuels pay their true costs, leveling the energy playing field, the world’s governments are forcing the public to subsidize fossil fuels with hundreds of billions of dollars per year. This encourages a frantic stampede to extract every fossil fuel through mountaintop removal, longwall mining, hydraulic fracturing, tar sands and tar shale extraction, and deep ocean and Arctic drilling.
President Obama speaks of a “planet in peril,” but he does not provide the leadership needed to change the world’s course. Our leaders must speak candidly to the public — which yearns for open, honest discussion — explaining that our continued technological leadership and economic well-being demand a reasoned change of our energy course. History has shown that the American public can rise to the challenge, but leadership is essential.
The science of the situation is clear — it’s time for the politics to follow. This is a plan that can unify conservatives and liberals, environmentalists and business. Every major national science academy in the world has reported that global warming is real, caused mostly by humans, and requires urgent action. The cost of acting goes far higher the longer we wait — we can’t wait any longer to avoid the worst and be judged immoral by coming generations.
Risk, Emotion, and Global Warming
Momentum, even if humanity is to reach a global consensus, not much time left enough time to stop this rogue locomotives. Landscape of global consensus on how to resolve the issues climate change is strained.
It is obvious that in this world, according to considerations of national interests and economic interests of enterprises, the odds are not very noticeable.
In my latest essay for the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF), I talk about why I think the public is seriously and systematically underestimating the risks from global warming. I believe that it has to do in part with the cognitive biases that are inherent to risk perception. Changing the way we talk about risk, then, may help get the rest of us on board.
You can find my other JREF essays (like this controversial one on free will) here.
Risk, Emotion, and Global Warming
I am not going to lie to you; I am freaked out about climate change. At least politicians today can say something to the effect of “it’s something that the next generation must face down,” seemingly abdicating their own responsibility. But I am a part of that next generation. Climate change is something that I am going to have to deal with, and…
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James Lovelock should be applauded
James Lovelock, the scientist most famous for the Gaia hypothesis*, once wrote an article published by The Independent and entitled “The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years”. He wrote:
My Gaia theory sees the Earth behaving as if it were alive, and clearly anything alive can enjoy good health, or suffer disease. Gaia has made me a planetary physician and I take my profession seriously, and now I, too, have to bring bad news.
The climate centres around the world, which are the equivalent of the pathology lab of a hospital, have reported the Earth’s physical condition, and the climate specialists see it as seriously ill, and soon to pass into a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years. I have to tell you, as members of the Earth’s family and an intimate part of…
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Game over
Undoubtedly, Hansen is known as an effective character of the present century. He created a new wave of modern scientific ideas. No matter that all comments are the proof, it is important that, based on his theories, finally, Man will focus on climate change.
An Convenient Lie?
Al Gore, often seen as Messiah of Enviromental Change, had an incredible impact on society with his movie “An Unconvenient Truth”. The former Vice-President and loser in the presidential election campaign against George W. Bush sees climate change as the biggest threat there is nowadays.
But how truthful can someone be, who worked and spent his whole life in politics? To seperate thruth from fiction and for the sake of impartial leverage, Christopher Walter Monckton, former policy advisor to Margaret Thatcher during her years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom found out 35 errors in the argumentation of Al Gore’s Movie.
Another One Reverses On Climate Change And CO2
German veteran meteorologist Klaus Eckhart Puls writes a piece at the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE) on what he calls the “glaring contradiction between IPCC prognoses and reality”. Rather than increasing 0.2°C per decade, global temperatures over the past decade have actually declined.
Physicist & Meteorologist Klaus-Eckart Puls: ‘One day I started checking the facts and data –first I started with a sense of doubt but then I became outraged when I discovered that much of what the IPCC and the media were telling us was sheer nonsense and was not even supported by any scientific facts and measurements. To this day, I still feel shame that as a scientist I made presentations of their science without first…
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April 2012 CO2 Concentrations: 396.18ppm
The Scripps Institution of Oceanography measured an average of 396.18ppm CO2 concentration at their Mauna Loa, Hawai’i’s Observatory during April 2012.
396.18ppm is the highest value for Aprilconcentrations in recorded history. Last year’s 393.28ppm was the previous highest value ever recorded. This April’s reading is 2.90ppm higher than last year’s. This increase is very significant. Of course, more significant is the unending trend toward higher concentrations with time, no matter the month or specific year-over-year value.
The yearly maximum monthly value normally occurs during May. Last year was no different: the 394.34 concentration was the highest value reported last year and, prior to the past two months, all time. If we extrapolate last year’s value out in time, it will only be 3 years until Scripps reports 400ppm average concentration for a singular month (likely May 2015).
Judging by the year-over-year increases seen per month in the past 10 years…
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Nature’s Past Experiment?
An experiment of nature on the effect of intense global warming has already occurred in the Eocene 38-55 million yrs. ago; the so-called Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum.(1) There were no massive extinctions comparative to that of Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) period defining the Mesozoic/Cenozoic eras at 65Myrs. At Paleocene-Eocene divide, paleo-stratigraphic results show that there was deep water benthic foraminifera mass extinction associated with increased temperature and hence dysoxic (less oxygenated) waters.(1) But most of the marine and terrestrial extinctions occurred with cooling at the end of Eocene, and into Oligocene epoch.(1) The consequences of the present alleged significant (or short trend?) warming are unknown in regards to extinctions. However nature already has conducted one experiment in regards to intense global warming, with seemingly not overwhelming catastrophic results. TMM
1. Hallam Tony, Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities Oxford Univ Press 2004, and references therein.
Other sources consulted.
2. Raup David M., Extinction:…
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The Unsettled Science of Ocean Warming and Acidification
The world’s climate alarmists would have us believe that they know all they need to know about earth’s climate system and its biological ramifications to justify an unbelievably expensive and radical restructuring of the way the industrialized world both obtains and utilizes energy. But is this really so?
In an eye-opening “perspective” article published a couple of years ago in the 9 December 2009 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, three researchers from the Marine Biogeochemistry Section of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany, describe their assessment of various possible responses of the global ocean’s seawater carbonate system, plus its physical and biological carbon pumps, to ocean warming and associated changes in vertical mixing and overturning circulation, as well as the closely-allied phenomena of ocean acidification and carbonation.
All of these phenomena, many of which are nonlinear and extremely complicated, are interlinked; and Riebesell and his colleagues thus conclude, from their objective review of the pertinent scientific literature, that the magnitude and even the sign of the global ocean’s carbon cycle feedback to climate change are, in their words, “yet unknown.”
They note, for example, that “our understanding of biological responses to ocean change is still in its infancy.” With respect to ocean acidification, in particular, they write that the impact it will have on marine life “is still uncertain,” and that the phenomenon itself is but “one side of the story,” the other side being what they call “ocean carbonation,” which, as they describe it, “will likely be beneficial to some groups of photosynthetic organisms.” Thus, they write that “our present understanding of biologically driven feedback mechanisms is still rudimentary,” and that with respect to many of their magnitudes, “our understanding is too immature to even make a guess.” What is more, they imply that even what we do think we know could well be wrong, because, as they elucidate, “our present knowledge of pH/CO2 sensitivities of marine organisms is based almost entirely on short-term perturbation experiments, neglecting the possibility of evolutionary adaptation.”
So who are you going to trust? Genuflexing gurus? … who kneel at the altar of the earth goddess Gaia? … who just know that CO2 is bad for the planet? Pontificating preachers? … who claim to have obtained a similar testimony during some environmental epiphany? Celebrated scientists? … for whom the all-powerful climate model is their Holy Grail? Or, will you give heed to much more down-to-earth researchers … who value real-world data and who appreciate the almost unbelievable complexity of the world of nature? … who are not afraid to declare their lack of understanding of all that we know to be of importance to the phenomena of climatic, oceanic and biological change, as well as the likelihood that there is much of importance relative to these matters that we still do not understand?
We do not know to whom you look for guidance in these important matters; but we look to those scientists who are not afraid to acknowledge the limitations of what they think they know, and who will not be goaded into implying they know enough to justify something as drastic as what the world’s climate alarmists are trying to force upon all of humanity, especially when the science of the subject is so clearly unsettled.
Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso
Reference
Riebesell, U., Kortzinger, A. and Oschlies, A. 2009. Sensitivities of marine carbon fluxes to ocean change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106: 20,602-20,609.
ENSO: A Permanent Feature of a Future Warmer World?
Reference
Davies, A., Kemp, A.E.S., Weedon, G.P. and Barron, J.A. 2012. El Niño-Southern Oscillation variability from the Late Cretaceous Marca Shale of California. Geology 40: 15-18.
Background
The authors write that “variations in the frequency and amplitude of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) recorded in both instrumental and paleoclimate archives have led to speculation that global warming may cause fundamental changes in this preeminent mode of global interannual climate variability (Fedorov and Philander, 2000).” More specifically, they state that there is speculation that “warmer climates may promote a permanent El Niño state (Wara et al., 2005; Fedorov et al., 2006).”
What was done
In a study designed to further explore this possibility, Davies et al. analyzed the latest Cretaceous laminated Marca Shale of California, which permits, as they describe it, “a seasonal-scale reconstruction of water column flux events and, hence, interannual paleoclimate variability,” during what is known to have been a “past ‘greenhouse’ climate state.”
What was learned
The four researchers report that “significant spectral peaks obtained from lamina-derived time series analysis of the Marca Shale closely resemble those of modern and historical ENSO variability.” In addition, they indicate that “the parameters from which the time series are derived (biogenic- and terrigenous-lamina thickness and bioturbation index) appear directly related to the marine production and flux, incursion of oxygenated waters, and input of terrigenous sediment that would be influenced by ENSO-type mechanisms of interannual variability.”
What it means
In light of their recent findings, Davies et al. say there is “little support for the existence of a ‘permanent El Niño’ in the Late Cretaceous, in the sense of the continual El Niño state depicted by Fedorov et al. (2006),” and they say this evidence “builds on results from the Cretaceous Arctic (Davies et al., 2011) and from younger Eocene and Miocene warm periods (Huber and Caballero, 2003; Galeotti et al., 2010; Lenz et al., 2010) to emphasize that there was robust ENSO variability in past ‘greenhouse’ episodes and that future warming will be unlikely to promote a permanent El Niño state,” which point they also emphasize in the final sentence of their abstract, where they say that their evidence for robust Late Cretaceous ENSO variability “does not support the theory of a ‘permanent El Niño,’ in the sense of a continual El Niño-like state, in periods of warmer climate.”
References
Davies, A., Kemp, A.E.S. and Palike, H. 2011. Tropical ocean-atmosphere controls on inter-annual climate variability in the Cretaceous Arctic. Geophysical Research Letters 38: 10.1029/2010GL046151.
Fedorov, A.V., Dekens, P.S., McCarthy, M., Ravelo, A.C., deMenocal, P.B., Barreiro, M., Pacanowski, R.C. and Philander, S.G. 2006. The Pliocene paradox (mechanisms for a permanent El Niño). Science 312: 1485-1489.
Fedorov, A.V. and Philander, S.G. 2000. Is El Niño changing? Science 288: 1997-2002.
Galeotti, S., von der Heydt, A., Huber, M., Bice, D., Dijkstra, H., Jilbert, T., Lanci, L. and Reichart, G.J. 2010. Evidence for active El Niño Southern Oscillation variability in the Late Miocene greenhouse climate. Geology 38: 419-421.
Huber, M. and Caballero, R. 2003. Eocene El Niño: Evidence for robust tropical dynamics in the “hothouse.” Science 299: 877-881.
Lenz, O.K., Wilde, V., Riegel, W. and Harms, F.J. 2010. A 600 k.y. record of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO): Evidence for persisting teleconnections during the Middle Eocene greenhouse climate of Central Europe. Geology 38: 627-630.
Wara, M.W., Ravelo, A.C. and Delaney, M.L. 2005. Permanent El Niño-like conditions during the Pliocene warm period. Science 309: 758-761.
Reviewed 9 May 2012
Our views on global warming – sources and opinions
This is just unbelievable that scientists so far, even in the few cases or trivials, have not reached consensus.
Global warming: New threat to Antarctic ice shelves
Warming air temps likely to trigger a chain reaction that could undermine stability of glaciers
By Summit Voice
SUMMIT COUNTY — While British researchers recently showed how warming ocean currents are melting ice sheets in West Antarctica, other areas may also be susceptible rapid and potentially catastrophic disintegration — especially the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf fringing the Weddell Sea.
Rising air temperatures in the region will break down a hydrological boundary of cold water, allowing warmer water to infiltrate beneath the ice. The model projects that huge masses of the as-yet stable ice shelf could become unstable and slide into the ocean in the next 50 to 60 years.
A new study by scientists with the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research suggests the shelf could start to melt rapidly in this century and no longer act as a barrier for ice streams draining the Antarctic Ice…
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A global cooling on the way?
Around 2,800 years ago, the Earth went through an abrupt period of cooling, caused by the sun with a ‘solar minimum’ activity, and the same could happen again soon, DailyMail reported.
Scientists at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geo-sciences using modern methodological approach analysed lake sediment in Lake Meerfelder Maar in the Eifel(Germany), and found direct evidence of a sudden cooling caused by a ‘solar minimum’.
The current solar activity is said to be in a maximum mode with solar storms, sun spots etc. that can be a factor boosting the global warming and climate change. The scientists assume that this hyper activity period will be followed by a quiet Sun, causing a Solar minimum with cooling effect.
So, is it – the so called ‘Global Cooling’ – the nature’s remedy for the ongoing global warming?! And can we assure ourselves that the predicted bad effects of Global warming will be automatically nullified by the opposite effects…
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Global Warming impact on Plants.
According to the poppies in our garden, flowers are blooming a full month earlier this year than usual:
Climate impact on plants could be underestimated – study
PARIS — Experiments that try to simulate global warming’s impact on plants badly underestimate what happens in the real world, according to a study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The investigation backs anecdotal evidence from farmers and gardeners, especially in the northern hemisphere, who say seasonal plants are stirring into life far earlier than in the past.
Artificial experiments into global warming usually entail encasing a plant in an open-top greenhouse-like chamber, or in a canopy that has a small heater in its roof, in order to replicate rising temperature.
These experiments have determined that flowering and leafing occur between 1.9 and 3.3 days earlier for every one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in temperature increase.
But the study says the…
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John Christy VS Gavin Schmidt on Global Warming/Climate Change
They both agree in this video that the ignorance in climatology research of climate change is vast.
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Paying Too Much for Energy? The True Costs of Our Energy Choices
Source: Brookings Institution
Energy consumption is critical to economic growth and quality of life. America’s energy system, however, is malfunctioning. The status quo is characterized by a tilted playing field, where energy choices are based on the visible costs that appear on utility bills and at gas pumps. This system masks the “external” costs arising from those energy choices, including shorter lives, higher health care expenses, a changing climate, and weakened national security. As a result, we pay unnecessarily high costs for energy. New “rules of the road” could level the energy playing field. Drawing from our work for The Hamilton Project, this paper offers four principles for reforming U.S. energy policies in order to increase Americans’ well-being.
+ Full Paper (PDF)
BIGTIX 