Do Warmists actually think? Mismatch between CO2 and temperature changes

It sometimes seems not. This post is a reaction to the generally correct statement in the excerpt below to the effect that CO2 levels have been rising steadily for a long time now. The problem is the second statement: That increased CO2 levels cause warming. In combination, those two statements are inconsistent with the evidence. In particular, warming levels behave quite differently from CO2 levels. The two are simply not correlated. They don't covary. And without correlation there is no causation.

For instance, CO2 levels DID rise steadily in C21 but temperatures did not. It was only in 2015 under the influence of El Nino that temperatures rose. And as luck would have it, that was precisely the one year in which CO2 levels stagnated. 2015 CO2 levels at Mauna Loa just fluctuated up and down from month to month around the 400ppm mark.



The 4th column is the actual average CO2 level in ppm. So at no point in C21 did temperatures and CO2 levels rise at the same time. They were two independent phenomena.

The figures from Cape Grim showed more change but from August on the CO2 level was stuck on 398 ppm. And late 2015 was precisely the time when El Nino was most influential and the temperature rise was greatest. Putting it another way, any warming from August on (inclusive) was NOT an effect of a CO2 rise -- because there was no CO2 rise. That rather knocks out most of the warming in 2015 as due to CO2. So again, temperature and CO2 did not mirror one another.



The Warmists below just don't see that a steady CO2 rise accompanied by no temperature rise is a problem.  They are robotic propagandists not scientists


Within the next couple of weeks, a remote part of north-western Tasmania is likely to grab headlines around the world as a major climate change marker is passed.

The aptly named Cape Grim monitoring site jointly run by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology will witness the first baseline reading of 400 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, researchers predict.

"Once it's over [400 ppm], it won't go back," said Paul Fraser, dubbed by CSIRO as the Air Man of Cape Grim, and now a retired CSIRO fellow. "It could be within 10 days."

The most recent reading on May 6 was 399.9 ppm, according to readings compiled by the CSIRO team led by Paul Krummel that strip out influences from land, including cities such as Melbourne to the north

Mark Butler, Labor's shadow environment minister, said the Cape Grim landmark reading was "deeply concerning".  "While the Coalition fights about whether or not the science of climate change is real, pollution is rising. And it's rising on their watch," Mr Butler said.

Cape Grim's readings are significant because they capture the most accurate reading of the atmospheric conditions in the southern hemisphere and have records going back 40 years.
With less land in the south, there is also a much smaller fluctuation according to the seasonal cycle than in northern hemisphere sites. That's because the north has more trees and other vegetation, which take up carbon from the atmosphere in the spring and give it back in the autumn.

So while 400 ppm has been temporarily exceeded at the other two main global stations since 2013 - in Hawaii and Alaska - they have dropped back below that level once spring has arrived because of that greater seasonal variation.

David Etheridge, a CSIRO principal research scientist, said atmospheric CO2 levels had fluctuated around 280 ppm until humans' burning of fossil fuels and clearing of forests set in process rising levels of greenhouse gases almost without pause since about 1800.

"It's been upwards pretty much all of the time," Dr Etheridge told Fairfax Media. "This is a significant change, and it's the primary greenhouse gas which is leading to the warming of the atmosphere."

SOURCE





Ben Rhodes spins climate change

“Climate refugee” claims reflect deliberate mendacity and belief that we and reporters are stupid

Paul Driessen

Employing his college degree in fiction writing, White House communications strategist Ben Rhodes wrote deceitful talking points on the Benghazi attack and one-sided Iran nuclear deal – and later bragged about manipulating “clueless reporters.” Perhaps he’s also orchestrating administration climate spin.

Rising ocean tides will bring “waves of climate refugees” to America and Europe, President Obama has declared. “Environmental migrants” are already fleeing shrinking islands in the Pacific, and it is a “dereliction of duty” for military officers to “deny the reality” of dangerous manmade climate change.

Even if we act in accord with the Paris climate “accords” (none dare call it a treaty) and “can stem the increase” in global temperatures, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell insists, “very rapid” climate changes “are expected to force the relocation of hundreds of Alaskans from their homes.”

Manmade climate change is a “threat multiplier,” a Pentagon report asserts. It will “exacerbate” many of the challenges the United States faces today, including infectious diseases and terrorism, destructive extreme weather events, disputes over who has rights to dwindling land areas and basic resources like water and food, and intense disagreements over how to absorb millions of climate refugees.

Echo-chamber journalists disagree only over the identity of America’s first climate refugees: Alaskan Natives in Newtok being inundated by rising seas and melting ice and tundra – or 25 Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw families whose little island in the Mississippi Delta has been eroding away since 1950?

Not to be outdone, ultra-liberal radio talk show host Thom Hartmann told me, “You’ve got five million climate change refugees fleeing into Europe right now because of droughts in Syria.” When I called this nonsense and said they are trying to escape war and ISIS butchers who are beheading little children, for the tenth time in a ten-minute interview, he railed that I “should be in jail” as a “climate denier.”

Unfortunately for Rhodes & Company, inconvenient truths eviscerate manmade climate chaos claims.

Throughout Earth and human history, climate change has ranged from regional to hemispheric, from beneficial to harmful to destructive. It has included Roman and medieval warm periods, little ice ages, and five “mammoth” glacial epochs that buried continents under mile-high walls of ice. Natural climate change inflicted a Dust Bowl that sent millions of Americans scurrying in search of better lives, and decades- or centuries-long droughts that brought entire civilizations to their knees.

Roman, Mayan, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Chinese and other cities and cultures prospered in warm periods and collapsed in cold and drought eras, climate historian Dennis Avery observes. This happened “over and over, in a centuries-long rhythm of affluence followed by long success, followed by long and utter failure.” Entire cities in the eastern Mediterranean were abandoned for centuries.

Storm activity rose by 85% in the second half of the 16th century, during the Maunder Sunspot Minimum, while the incidence of severe storms increased four-fold, writes historian Brian Fagan. British Navy logbooks show more than twice as many major land-falling Caribbean hurricanes during the cold decades of the 1700’s as during the warm years of 1950–2000.

Little ice ages and extended droughts brought crop failures and mass starvation, Avery notes. Rome shrank from a million inhabitants in its heyday to barely 30,000 a century later. The Mayan civilization plunged from perhaps 15 million to one million, as its cities were abandoned in a century-long drought.

Climate mood swings in the past 50 years have been far less dramatic than in previous millennia. Few people will have to flee the tiny portion of future climate change that might be attributable to humans.

The Climate Crisis Consortium ignores these eons, millennia and centuries of natural climate change. It wants us to believe Earth’s climate was stable and benign until the Industrial Age – and humans can now control climate and weather merely by controlling carbon dioxide levels. It’s all Hollywood nonsense.

Oceans have risen 400 feet since the last ice age glaciers melted. Pacific islands rose with them, as corals expanded their habitats with every new inch of sea water. Seas are now rising at seven inches per century – and EPA’s anti-coal Clean Power Plan would prevent barely 0.01 inches of rise over the next 100 years.

Greenland’s icecap is shrinking because of subterranean magmatic activity – not global warming. Arctic regions have long experienced warming and cooling cycles, as recorded by Francis McClintock and other whalers and explorers, dating back some 300 years. Polar bear populations are at an all-time high: 25,000.

Antarctic ice masses continue to grow, and the continent’s average annual temperature of minus-55 F means it would have to warm by 88 degrees year-round for that ice to melt. Even Al Gore in his wildest rants doesn’t say that is likely. So his beachfront home is safe from the 20-foot sea rise he has predicted.

Meteorologist Anthony Watts concludes that the only reliable long-term surface record comes from 400 official US rural thermometer stations that were never corrupted by location changes, airport heat or urban growth. Those stations show no significant warming for the past 80 years. The “record warming” we keep hearing about comes from data that have been “adjusted” or “homogenized” (ie, manipulated) upward to conform to computer model projections, IPCC proclamations and White House press releases.

Other studies have concluded there has been no increase in the severity or frequency of thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes or winter blizzards for decades. Indeed, no Category 3-5 hurricane has struck the United States since October 2005 – a record lull that exceeds any hurricane hiatus since at least 1900.

Malaria was common in the USA, Europe and even Siberia until the 1950s, when window screens, DDT and better medical practices wiped it out. It has nothing to do with global warming or climate change. Its continued prevalence is due to incompetent health ministries that refuse to learn from past successes.

The notion that a warmer world with more atmospheric CO2 will bring crop failures and famines is sheer delusion. Higher carbon dioxide levels are actually “greening” the planet and making crops, forests and grasslands grow faster and better. New hybrid and biotech seeds, combined with modern fertilizers and farming practices, are yielding bigger harvests, even during droughts, as India is proving right now.

There is no manmade climate crisis. Solar, galactic and oceanic cycles rule – not carbon dioxide. The biggest threat to agriculture and humans would come from another little ice age, not moderate warming.

In reality, the enormous amounts of energy packed into coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear fuels create the wealth, and power the wondrous technologies, that give us the greatest advantages mankind has ever enjoyed – to survive, adapt to and deal with climate changes and weather events.

The worst thing we could do is lock up that reliable, affordable, compact energy – and switch to expensive, heavily subsidized, wildly unpredictable wind and solar energy … and to biofuels that require millions of acres of land and billions of gallons of precious water.

Those who control energy control lives, livelihoods and living standards. Allowing climate alarmists and anti-energy zealots to dictate what energy sources we can use, and how much each of us is “permitted” to have, would put all of us at the mercy of their unaccountable whims, ideologies and fraudulent science.

Their callous policies are already killing millions of people every year in impoverished nations, by depriving them of the energy and technologies that we take for granted. Do we really want to be next? Shouldn’t we be helping the world’s poor take their rightful places among the healthy and prosperous?

The only “evidence” the alarmists have for a looming climate cataclysm are Al Gore movies, Mike Mann hockey sticks, computer “scenarios” that bear no resemblance to Real World events, and more spin and scare stories from White House novelist Ben Rhodes.

We need a president who will send the Paris climate treaty to the US Senate, where it can be properly vetted and rejected … overturn EPA and other regulations that are based on manipulated data and falsified pseudo-science … and lead the world back from the precipice of climate lunacy.

Via email

     



Climate Scientist: Heat From Global Warming Won’t Trigger Refugee Crisis

A new study claiming temperature increases will drive “500 million people” out of the Middle East and North Africa has already drawn the ire of a few scientists.

The study, published Monday in the journal Climatic Change, predicts that global warming would drastically change the regions’ enviroment, causing huge heatwaves. These temperature increases would force a population of 500 million to migrate to other areas, causing considerable political instability. The study indicated that a mass migration would occur even if the world manages to meet President Barack Obama’s goal of limiting global warming to 2.0° Celsius.

On the other hand, rising temperatures from global warming could likely only cause minor changes in behavior, a dissenting climate scientist told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Chip Knappenberger, a climate scientist at the libertarian Cato Institute, thinks rising temperatures will cause people to change their behavior, not cause mass migration. Knappenberger previously authored scientific research, published in the scientific journal Nature, saying increasing numbers of heat waves causes people to adapt their behavior to the changing conditions, ultimately leading to fewer deaths and little migration.

“Too often, stories of projected larges-scale negative outcomes from global warming run contrary to known and reasonable anticipated responses. This seems to be another such instance,” Knappenberger told The Daily Caller News Foundation.”When it comes to questions about heat and human health, it turns out that we are very good at adapting to it—an adaptation that becomes better the more we are exposed to extreme heat.”

Knappernberger and many other climate scientists, believe that humans are very adaptable to extreme heat and can easily handle temperature changes, especially if the heat waves are a regular occurrence.

“Across the U.S., for example, the population has become much less sensitive to heat waves over the past 40-50 years—even as the frequency/magnitude of heat waves has increased. In fact, the hottest places in the country exhibit the lowest rates of heat-related mortality. In hot places, Miami, Dallas, Phoenix, for example, people know how to live with the heat,” Knappenberger continued. “I imagine that the same is true in the Middle East and Northern Africa—traditionally hot places where the lifestyles are well-adapted to such conditions.”

In developed countries, hot cities have the lowest rates of heat-related mortality while cooler cities in the northeast have the highest rates. Once people get accustomed to heat, they take the actions necessary to survive it. Scientific studies show heat waves that occur a few years after especially deadly heat waves result in far fewer deaths as the population has readily adapted.

Knappenberger concluded: “As air conditioning becomes more widespread— made possible through cheap and reliable energy sources— this adaptation can come close to becoming complete,” Knappenberger concluded.

Heat deaths in wealthy countries have been declining since 1960 despite predicted temperature increases.

SOURCE





A study from the University of Edinburgh shows that electric and hybrid vehicles emit as many, if not more, atmospheric toxins than fossil fuel-burning vehicles

The study, conducted by Victor Timmers and Peter Achten at the University of Edinburgh, and published by the journal Atmospheric Environment, found that heavier electric vehicles produce as many pollutants as their lighter weight conventional vehicles.

Electric vehicles tend to produce more pollutants from tire and brake wear, due in large part to their batteries, as well as the other parts needed to propel them, making them heavier.

These pollutants are emitted when electric vehicle tires and brakes deteriorate as they accelerate or slow down while driving. Timmers and Achten’s research suggests exhaust from traditional vehicles is only about one-third of the total emissions.

Further, the particulate matters are worse than fuel emissions, because they cause more health problems.

“We found that non-exhaust emissions, from brakes, tires and the road, are far larger than exhaust emissions in all modern cars,” Achten wrote in the study.

He continued: “These are more toxic than emissions from modern engines so they are likely to be key factors in the extra heart attacks, strokes and asthma attacks seen when air pollution levels surge.”

The study does not include the production of energy needed for each vehicle, from coal or other fossil fuel sources. It only calculates the driving of the car.

The increase in pollutants are generated from factors like tire wear dust and brake pad dust, and tend to increase as the electric vehicles and hybrids get heavier — due in part because of the added weight of the cars’ lithium batteries.

Adversely, the study shows the popularity of electric vehicles are unlikely to have much of an effect on the level of pollutants. In fact, electric vehicles actually emit 90 percent of particulate emissions, while traditional vehicles push out 85 percent of particulate emissions in traffic.

These proportions will only increase as electric vehicles become more popular.

The study’s authors concluded that future policies should focus more on the weight of electric and hybrid vehicles.

The Edinburgh study comes on the heels of research conducted in March by the investment firm Devonshire Research Group, a company that specializes in valuing and devaluing tech firms, showing that Tesla electric vehicles are “not as sustainable as they may seem.”

The study also shows that Tesla’s CEO, techno-wonder Elon Musk, could expose the company to “serious brand risk and an unknown legal exposure.”

In fact, according to the research, everything about the Tesla — from its headlights, to its chassis, to the way it is produced — contributes to environmental degradation.

SOURCE






Damaging emails from Warmists released

Unfolding is the latest chapter in the sad state of climate science and the tragic consequences scientists face when they decide to go political without having the experience to do so.

One has to wonder what these people were thinking when they expected dissenters to just roll over and waive their precious free speech rights.

A Virginia judge has ruled in favor of The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) in a Virginia Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against George Mason University, which was ordered yesterday to release documents and e-mails related to a group of scientists calling for the prosecution of organizations that promote manmade climate change skepticism – all under the US Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).

WUWT sees the scandal surrounding the controversy as one that is even more serious than the 2009 “Climategate” – an affair where e-mails exposed climate scientists exaggerating climate trends, manipulating the peer-review process, and skirting the freedom of information act.

A total of 5 PDFs have been released concerning George mason University, and with climate scientist Jagadish Shukla with a leading role.

As one reads the e-mails, it quickly emerges that some of the involved scientists (unwittingly) meandered out of their academic realm, with which they are comfortable and familiar, and into a political one that is very unfamiliar to them. Their scheme was ultimately aimed at intimidating and silencing scientific dissent.

Early on they were even advised that their case was very weak, and probably best left aside. For example Ed Maibach admitted (000003) that they really didn’t have much of a case:

Yet he seemed unable to resist the opportunity of getting “lots of media attention” (000006):

Maibach even fancied front page coverage in the Washington Post. What harm could it do to try?

We also see Shukla announcing (000003) how he decided to become politically active, that he was “new” at it, and wrote that the issue is more about politics than science:

Moreover he added that he had a “dedicated activist” on board for the science-based, world-saving political endeavor on which they were about to embark:

Clearly the political arena was a new one for scientist Shukla – one he seriously underestimated. Unfortunately he would soon find out, that at that the level he was entering, it was absolutely no place for political amateurs.

Threatening organizations and scientific dissenters with the powerful crime-fighting RICO Act was taken extremely seriously by dissenting individual scientists, bloggers, organsations etc. They in turn responded accordingly and moved vigorously to defend their rights against what they viewed as a serious fundamental human rights threat. Before too long revelations and allegations surfaced – and the arena became heated.

By early October, after serious allegations were made about Shukla’s salary and compensation, the blowback became too harsh. Shukla penned a letter (000033) backpedaling, claiming that their letter to IGES outlining their RICO effort was “misinterpreted” and that it “was not at all the case“:

He asserted the scientists didn’t mean to send the message that by involving RICO they were trying to silence individual and blogger dissent. Their purpose, instead, was only to punish organizations that might be funding the dissent. Those on the other side saw it differently. Indeed, words do need to be chosen carefully.

Moreover in the letter Shukla claims “much published credible evidence“, giving the impression of a solid case. Yet recall how in July he was told (000003) by Maibach that they had little to go on, that the chances of the Department of Justice (DOJ) pursuing the case were “slim to none”.

As one reads all the e-mails, it becomes apparent that the scientists-gone-activist have really woven themselves into a real mess, now that they have been exposed.

It’s a painful way for scientists to learn that it’s better to stick to science – and to let the politicking to others.

In any case they sought publicity – and now they’re getting it.

SOURCE






No balance.  Media rarely mention that in many ways global warming would be a good thing

BJØRN LOMBORG

Last week, a study in the prestigious journal Nature revealed just how much CO₂ increases have greened the Earth over the past three decades. Because CO₂ acts as a fertilizer, as much as half of all vegetated land is persistently greener today. This ought to be a cause for great joy.

Instead, the BBC focused on warning that the paper shouldn’t make us stop worrying about global warming, with threats like melting glaciers and more severe tropical storms. Many other major news outlets did not even report on the study.

Our climate conversation is lopsided. There is ample room to suggest that climate change has caused this problem or that negative outcome, but any mention of positives is frowned upon. We have known for decades that increasing CO₂ and precipitation from global warming will make the world much greener – by the end of the century, it is likely that global biomass will have increased by forty percent.

Similarly, we know that many more people die from cold than from heat. The biggest study on heat and cold deaths, published last year in Lancet, examined more than 74 million deaths from 384 locations in 13 countries from cold Sweden to hot Thailand. The researchers found that heat causes almost one-half of one percent of all deaths, while more than 7 percent are caused by cold.

As global warming pushes temperatures up, more people will die in heat waves; a point emphasized by campaigners like UN climate chief, Christiana Figueres. What we don’t hear from her is that fewer people will die from cold. One study for England and Wales shows that heat kills 1,500 annually and cold kills 32,000. By the 2080s, increased heat-waves will kill nearly 5,000 in a comparable population. But ‘cold deaths’ will have dropped by 10,000, meaning 6,500 fewer die altogether.

Only mentioning the negatives distorts and degrades the political conversation. Any reasonable person can recognize both positives and negatives among the policy proposals of both Tories and Labour. It is an extreme partisan that insists either side offers only negatives.

Yet, this is the position enforced by the climate alarmists – last seen in a letter to The Times from Lord Krebs and company, essentially telling the newspaper to stop reporting less-than-negative climate stories. While it is true any individual news story rarely represents the whole truth, it is revealing that such campaigners don’t send out similar letters to correct the daily deluge of alarmist stories.

The idea that climate is bad for all good things and good for all bad things belongs in a morality play. In the real world, we should look at all the available information. When the BBC warns of more severe tropical storms, it has some validity. The UN’s climate panel expects to see fewer but stronger hurricanes. But it is an incomplete picture.

As the world develops, it has become much less vulnerable: a hurricane hitting Florida kills few people while a similar event in Guatemala kills tens of thousands. Indeed, climate-related deaths have dropped from half a million per year in the 1920s to less than 25,000 per year in the 2010s. A recent Nature study expecting more severe hurricanes from global warming still found that damages would halve from 0.04 per cent to 0.02 per cent of global GDP, because the increased ferocity would be more than made up by increased prosperity and resilience.

When the BBC warns of melting glaciers it is reminiscent of Al Gore’s concern that 40 per cent of the world get drinking water from the Himalayas, and melting glaciers mean “those 40 per cent of the people on Earth are going to face a very serious shortage.” Yet, a new study of 60 climate models and scenarios shows this warning fails to take into account the fact that global warming will mean precipitation increases. Indeed, water flow will actually increase over this century, which is likely beneficial in increasing “water availability in the Indus Basin irrigation scheme during the spring growing seasons.”

If our climate conversation managed to include the good along with the bad, we would have a much better understanding of our options. Climate economics does just that, taking all the negatives (like rising sea levels and more heat deaths) and all the positives (a greener planet, fewer cold deaths). A climate economics approach finds that today – contrary to the alarmists’ massive insistence on negatives-only stories – global warming causes about as much damage as benefits. Over time, climate becomes a net problem: by the 2070s, the UN Climate Panel finds that global warming will likely cause damage equivalent to 0.2 per cent to 2 per cent of global GDP. This is certainly not a trivial cost, but nor is it the end of the world. It is perhaps half the social cost of alcohol today.

This suggests that a policy which could eradicate global warming for 1 per centof global GDP would probably be a good deal. Unfortunately, we do not have such a deal on the table. The Paris climate treaty will cost around 2 per cent of global GDP and fix much less than a tenth of the problem. Less effective but more ambitious climate policies cost at least 6 per cent of global GDP per year and likely much more. Wind and solar, which covers less than half of one percent of global energy, costs dozens of times more than their climate benefits. Electric cars provide perhaps a thousandth in climate benefit of their substantial public subsidies. Biofuels are just hugely costly while increasing emissions.

When we shift the climate conversation to describe positives along with negatives, and focus on costs and benefits of policies – essentially treating this challenge like any other policy agenda – it becomes obvious how many of today’s accepted climate policies are poor.  Little wonder climate campaigners do not want this sort of conversation.

SOURCE

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