Here we go again -- Exaggerated new claim of Antarctic melting



As the image shows, and as we already know, virtually ALL the melting is in the margins of  the W. Antarctic sheet  -- showing that it is a quite local effect, not a global effect.  So far from being global, the effect does not even cover the whole of Antarctica.  To reinforce the point that the effect is a purely local one (probably due to vulcanism) note that there has been no GLOBAL warming for 17 years.  So the W. Antarctic warming cannot be due to something that does not exist

The Antarctic ice sheet is melting at its fastest rate in history, it has been revealed.

Three years of observations from ESA’s CryoSat satellite show that the Antarctic ice sheet is now losing 159 billion tonnes of ice each year – twice as much as when it was last surveyed.

The polar ice sheets are a major contributor to the rise in global sea levels, and these newly measured losses from Antarctica alone are enough to raise global sea levels by 0.45 mm each year.

These latest findings by a team of scientists from the UK’s Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling show that the pattern of imbalance continues to be dominated by glaciers thinning in the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica.

Between 2010 and 2013, West Antarctica, East Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula lost 134, 3 and 23 billion tonnes of ice each year, respectively.

The average rate of ice thinning in West Antarctica has increased compared to previous measurements, and this area’s yearly loss is now one third more than measured over the five years before CryoSat’s launch.

The data collected from 2010-2013 was compared to that from 2005-2010.

'We find that ice losses continue to be most pronounced along the fast-flowing ice streams of the Amundsen Sea sector, with thinning rates of 4-8 m per year near to the grounding lines – where the ice streams lift up off the land and begin to float out over the ocean – of the Pine Island, Thwaites and Smith Glaciers,' said Dr Malcolm McMillan from the University of Leeds, UK, and lead author of the study.

This area has long been identified as the most vulnerable to changes in climate.

SOURCE. The journal article is "Increased ice losses from Antarctica detected by CryoSat-2"




A Californiam epicenter?

I guess Gov. Moonbeam speaks Californian.  He make no sense otherwise.  As anyone familiar with Greek prefixes can tell you, an epicenter is a point above a center.  Nuclear bombs are normally exploded above a target, not on it.  Classics aside, however, Brown's  main point seems to be California's increasing wildfires.  They however are an effect of Greenie meddling, not global warming.  For some reason, Greenies seem to hate preventive burnoffs  -- and the result is predictable

California is at the “epicenter” of global warming and other climate change, with the state experiencing longer fire seasons, rising sea levels and droughts that threaten agriculture, Gov. Jerry Brown said Monday.

The governor made his remarks during a conference about the climate, as California was mopping up from a string of wildfires in San Diego County that caused more than $20 million in damage.

The event also came as scientists warn that higher temperatures will lead to more frequent and intense wildfires throughout the West, and after scientists confirmed that the huge West Antarctic ice sheet is beginning to collapse and could boost sea levels as much as 12 feet.

Brown said California has had almost twice the number of forest fires this year compared to normal levels, and the fire season is now 70 days longer than it was historically, adding that “we’ve got to adapt because the climate is changing.”

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Greenies Emit More GHGs

Startup founder Ian Monroe has developed a carbon footprint-tracking app called Oroeco, which calculates your emissions contribution based on lifestyle choices. What he found was almost too predictable. According to Monroe, "The average person who says they care about climate change actually has a substantially worse than average footprint. Generally that's because they tend to have a bit more money, and they tend to be people who like to think of themselves as multicultural and like to get out and see the world. Which means that they're flying around a lot, and all that flying generally outweighs any other green lifestyle choices that they've made." Say, that sounds an awful lot like Al Gore.

Monroe says, "Realizing the hypocrisy in my own life is exactly why I wanted to create this [app]." At least he's putting his money where his mouth is. That's more than we can say about ecofascists.

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German Government Falsifies IPCC Summary On Climate Policy

The UN’s climate report has debunked Germany’s green energy subsidies as useless. No one has noticed. That’s because the government has crudely falsified the official summary.

German consumers have subsidised renewable energy to the tune of hundreds of billions of euros. But is hasn’t done anything to protect the climate. That, in essence, is the conclusion stated in the recent UN climate report which was presented to the public in April. Mind you, no one so far has noticed.

One of the reasons for this unawareness is quite simple:  The German government has simply concealed the findings of the UN researchers in the official German summary. Other embarrassing passages from the IPCC document were turned into the opposite.

Action on climate change

But first things first : On April 14, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presented its most recent and, to date, most important report on climate change to the public. Although the first two IPCC reports assessed the causes and effects of climate change, the Working Group III report of its Fifth Assessment Report dealt with possible countermeasures.

For policy makers the advice by the IPCC is of utmost importance. Should governments respond to climate change with the introduction of CO2 taxes? Are subsidies for renewable energy advisable or is nuclear power more important? Or is setting up an emission trading system that forces industry and power plant operators to acquire emission allowances for each tonne of carbon dioxide they want to blow into the air more effective in the fight against the greenhouse effect?

These and similar questions were addressed by 235 leading researchers from 58 countries over a  four year period. Hence, when IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri and the Co -Chair of the IPCC’s Working Group III, Ottmar Edenhofer, presented the results on April 14 in the Auditorium Maximum of the Technical University of Berlin, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) listened carefully.

Clear four sides

The presentation was of course too short for a deeper analysis of the several thousand-page UN report. The “Technical Summary” alone comprises 99 pages of complicated science poetry in English. And even the IPCC’s “Summary for Policymakers” with its 33 pages of English remains a challenge for politicians with very tight times schedules.

Journalists, speakers and environmental NGOs were therefore grateful that the government agencies responsible for climate change made a pretty clear four-page summary of “key messages” of the IPCC report available.

Responsible for the German summary were four high-ranking government agencies: in charge was the Ministry of the Environment; also involved were the German IPCC Coordination Office in Bonn, the Environment Agency in Dessau and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research . The German translation, one would therefore think, is an authoritative source for the interpretation of the IPCC findings. No one suspected that the ministerial summary did not match the original in important ways.

Green power useless – if there is emission trading

In its report the IPCC emphasises the futility of subsidies for renewable energy parallel to an emissions trading system: “The addition of a CO2 reduction policy to a second policy does not necessarily lead to greater CO2 reductions,” it says in a literal translation of the IPCC’s Technical Summary: “In an emissions trading scheme with a sufficiently stringent cap other measures such as subsidising renewable energy have no further influence on total CO2 emissions.”

Thus, the IPCC now confirms what the Scientific Advisory Board of the Federal Ministry of Economics, the Monopolies Commission or the President of the Ifo Institute, Hans -Werner Sinn, have been saying for years: Under the fixed cap of European emissions trading with its precisely calculated amount of pollution rights renewable  energy subsidies only lead to a shift of CO2 emissions, but not to their reduction.

Where a wind farm displaces a German coal-fired power plant, for example, the total CO2 emissions of the plant in question are made available again to the market in the form of emission allowances. The supply is therefore greater and other European power plant operators, accordingly,  can operate cheaper, using this vacant contingent of allowances. The avoided CO2 emissions in Germany are then blown into the air by someone else. For climate policy, the only crucial issue is that the total amount of all distributed CO2 allowances in Europe is never exceeded.

Clear judgement missing in Summary

Yet the IPCC’s clear verdict regarding the climate-political futility of green energy subsidies that run simultaneously to emissions trading does not appear in the German summary. The only comment on this issue reads completely differently: “Emissions trading affects the impact of others measures, unless the number of allowed certificates are adjusted flexibly.”

The difference is obvious: the IPCC has declared CO2 emissions trading to be an effective instrument that makes subsidies for renewable energy unnecessary. The German translation reverses this conclusion and makes emissions trading the culprit that allegedly “constricts the impact of other measures.”

Also questionable is what the IPCC summary – allegedly – says about the design of emissions trading itself: “For the success of emissions trading rights it is necessary to achieve sufficient high prices for emission allowances in order to offer incentives for low-carbon energy sources,” says the Summary by the Federal Government. Therefore, the number of tradable emission rights must be “adapted flexibly”.

Ministry : “First explanation in an intelligible form “

With this account, the German authorities have twisted the IPCC statements into its opposite. Emissions trading is by definition a system in which a number of freely tradeable emission certificates is specified so that they might be subject to free market prices. The German translation has turned this system of fixed rates and flexible prices into a system of flexible quantities in order to enforce the highest possible price for emission rights.

That, however, is contrary to the operating principle of emissions trading. Moreover, the demand for a ‘flexible’ adaptation of tradeable emission vouchers stands in direct contradiction to the IPCC report according to which the maximum number of emission allowances must be “binding”.

The statement that high CO2 prices are “necessary” for the success of emissions trading, as the German translation would have us believe, is nowhere to be found in the original. Basically, and this is precisely the great advantage of emissions trading, the set CO2 targets are achieved even when the market results in low prices for emission allowances. In this way, climate policy can be cheap if you allow the market mechanism to work. The emissions trading system cannot be blamed for the fact that the EU has set a relatively undemanding CO2 reduction targets: the instrument itself is working nevertheless.

Asked to comment, the Environment Ministry pointed to the German IPCC Coordination Office. There, however, the issue is played down. The “core messages” were “not a literal or even official translation of the IPCC report,” said a spokeswoman regarding the document on which the logos of the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Research and the Federal Environment Agency can be seen.  It was “a first presentation of the report in an intelligible form.” The statements had been “derived” from various passages of the UN report . “It should also be noted that the ‘key messages’ have been developed in close collaboration with the authors of the IPCC report, and that elements of the report can be reflected only in highly abbreviated form. ”

IPCC : “That’s not what we wrote “

The IPCC scientists, however, have reacted very surprised when they were confronted by “Welt am Sonntag” with the German translation of their core messages. “That’s not what we wrote in the IPCC report ,” declared Ottmar Edenhofer who as Co-Chair of Working Group III has played a leading role in the formulation of the original IPCC report. “Basically, it is not for an emissions trading system to generate high prices.” “Only the original English version is important,” says Edenhofer, who is also deputy director and chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research ( PIK) . What “the ministries or other agencies do with it is not in my hands.”

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Should teachers use the classroom for campaigning on climate change?

John Shade is a retired industrial statistician who runs the blog ‘Climate Lessons‘ to share his concerns about materials and campaigns aimed at children about the climate. He was co-author of the report ‘Climate Control: Brainwashing in schools’ which we covered on this site and requested this opportunity to share more fully his concerns…

    Is the teaching of basic skills and basic knowledge not hard enough without adding the complication of deliberate political manipulation into the mix? Are teachers to be the willing servants of whichever government or ideological position happens to be currently fashionable or empowered? Are they also to willingly intervene between parents and their children in ways which seem intended to weaken the special bonds within a family?

    I am particularly concerned with climate change and the associated wish of some powerful groups, not least in international agencies and NGOs, to make use of children as political tools with which to promote fundamental views about life, and even lifestyle and political choices, on to their parents. There are materials out there aimed at scaring children about their future, and surveys show that many are in fact living with a fear that they may not survive thanks to environmental catastrophes heading their way. There are materials aimed at distancing children from their own parents by persuading them, the children, that their parents are part of ‘the problem’ and need to be changed.

    This combination of fear about the future and separation from previous sources of trust and guidance, are basic elements of brainwashing as described by Sowell (1993) in his book ‘Inside American Education’ where he provides several examples of such ‘stripping away of defences’ in schools in a range of programmes.

    Andrew Montford and I have written a report entitled ‘Climate Control: Brainwashing in schools’ (GWPF, 2014) in which we focus on eco-alarms in general, and climate-related ones in particular. This was reported on here on the Schools Improvement Net (2014), where it attracted a few generally disparaging comments. None addressed our concerns that there may be widespread targeting of children in our schools with what amounts to eco-propaganda or, at the very least, inadequate treatment of important topics. But why should teachers be engaged at all with such campaigning in their classrooms and in extra-curricular events for their pupils? By all means, let them campaign with other adults, and engage them in debate on controversial issues. But surely it should be beneath them to seek to take advantage of their position in the classroom to try to persuade their pupils of their views?

    ‘Save the World on Your Own Time’. This is the title of a book by Fish (2008), and, although the book is about tertiary education, the spirit of that title is relevant here. The blurb about it on Amazon notes ‘When teachers offer themselves as moralists, political activists, or agents of social change rather than as credentialed experts in a particular subject and the methods used to analyze it, they abdicate their true purpose.’

    An article in the Times Higher Education Supplement (THS, 2008) describes more of the content, e.g. ‘Many of the chapters sound like bluff common sense – “Do your job“, “Don’t try to do someone else’s job“, “Don’t let anyone else do your job” – ‘ and ‘In terms of what goes on in the classroom, Fish argues, “The line of virtue is very clear: are you asking academic questions or are you trying to nudge your students in some ideological partisan direction? ..’

    Back in 2007, the then Labour government chose to distribute an emotive and politically-loaded DVD about climate to all schools in England & Wales. It was called ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, and was full of self-serving propaganda presented by a politician apparently intent on being seen as a saviour of the planet. In my view this was an astonishing and disgraceful action by the government. How dare they try to manipulate the young in such a fashion! Sadly it was part of a broader effort by them to use schools, and thus teachers, as agents for the promotion of far-reaching societal and personal changes linked to climate scares and the often associated topic of ‘sustainable development’. Far from being agreed, or even well-defined, these are controversial areas today, as indeed they were back in 2007.

    So, gentle readers of this blog, do you think eco-activism should be given a free rein within schools? Do you think you should participate in raising fears, followed by giving detailed guidance on how your pupils should live, as well as on what they should think? Do you think it is part of your job to burden your pupils with ‘saving the planet’ and putting pressure on their parents?

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Totally dishonest Canadian scare

In its latest entry on "health repercussions for Canadians of a changing climate" in the Globe and Mail newspaper, Karen McColl raises the alarm bells on "substantial increases in occurrences of extremely hot seasons" in Canada.

Apparently, "Clean Air Partnership [CAP], a non-profit that addresses climate-change issues, says maximum temperatures in Toronto are expected to rise 7 C over the next 30 to 40 years." That is a remarkable claim. A predicted 7 degrees Celsius increase in maximum temperatures over a 30-year period in Toronto equates to a rate of 23.3 degrees Celsius per century. To say that is insanely large would be an understatement.

So how does the historical trend in maximum temperatures for Toronto compare with this hysterical claim? The results are not promising for the Globe and Mail. Using the benchmark Environment Canada Adjusted and Homogenized Canadian Climate Data (AHCCD) database, the mean of daily maximum temperatures during the summer months in Toronto has not increased one bit since 1920. In other words, over the past century, the mean maximum summertime temperatures in Toronto exhibit absolutely no trend. None whatsoever.

If you are familiar with linear regression statistics, the p-value for the correlation is 0.87, which is almost a perfect non-correlation. In fact, the correlation coefficient is negative (r=-0.02), meaning that if there was a trend, it would likely involve declining summertime maximum temperatures.

The p-value for July -- the hottest individual month -- average maximum temperatures (p=0.93, r=-0.01) in Toronto from 1920 to 2012 is even worse for the climate alarmists. As it is for August (p=0.92, r=-0.01). Once again, there is absolutely no evidence that mean maximum summertime temperatures in Canada's largest city are increasing, never mind increasing at the crazy-high rate of 23.3 degrees Celsius per century.

What about extreme maximum temperatures in Toronto? Using data from the Environment Canada Historical Climate Data online database for the WMO certified Toronto Lester B. Pearson International Airport site, there is absolutely no temporal correlation for extreme maximum temperatures between 1938 (when the dataset begins) and 2012 during either July (p=0.79, r=-0.03) or August (p=0.36, r=-0.10). Actually, there is a modest possibility that extreme maximum temperatures are declining in August.

And yet we read this in the Globe and Mail article that "'this is major,' said CAP deputy director Kevin Behan, adding that by 2040, Toronto may jump from having one heat wave every other year, on average, to two or three heat waves each year." Huh? The historical climate data for this city unequivocally show that summertime maximum temperatures (both average maxima and the extremes) are in no way increasing since the first half of the 20th century, and yet somehow extreme heat climatageddon will occur in only the next couple decades?

To show how local governments have gone off the deep end, the article goes on to state that "'Looking forward, everywhere is going to get hotter in Canada,' said Ewa Jackson, director of ICLEI -- Local Governments for Sustainability, an organization that works with about 250 Canadian municipalities." Everywhere? That's a bold statement.

Here is a table of the trends in average maximum and extreme maximum summertime temperatures at Canada's major cities since 1920 or the earliest year available in the databases.Canada temps

There is not a single increasing summer maximum temperature trend at any of these major cities. I repeat, not one.

But the article also claims that "in 2009, Health Canada worked with four pilot communities to develop heat-alert and response programs. Windsor, Ont., is expected to be particularly hard hit." Ah yes, Windsor, where there has been no significant change in extreme maximum temperatures during July (p=0.43) or August (p=0.70) since records began in 1940, nor in average maximum temperatures during either the summertime period as a whole, or July and August individually.

And municipalities, and even higher levels of government, are going along willingly with this hysterical nonsense. Why? Follow the money. Drumming up public concern over climate change equals more funding for infrastructure and staff and a host of other projects, both within the government and for politically well-connected contractors. Who is getting duped? The taxpayers.

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