Is the ozone "hole" shrinking at last?

As I pointed out recently, the ozone levels at Mauna Loa seem to be just oscillating across an an unchanging range, indicating no trend.  And ozone is well mixed so at least that non-trend (if not absolute levels) should also apply over the Antarctic.  And that does seem to be so.  The "hole" too just oscillates, expanding and contracting in a random way. And in October 2015 the Antarctic ozone hole reached a record size.  No shrinking there!  Which is very frustrating to Greenies.

But they were determined to find something to support their thinking so pulled together all the data they could find on the hole and tortured it with statistics.  They did something that is totally illegitimate in statistics:  Data dredging.   If you look hard enough at any set if statistics you can generally find SOME trend or correlation somewhere.  The problem is that  extending the data base in some way usually wipes out the trend or correlation.  There is a classic example of that here in a study of lynching in the American South.

So what did the authors dredge out?  It would be funny if it were not so pathetic.  They found a trend line going through the data for September only.  In Septembers since 2000, the ozone has been behaving itself, too bad about the other months of the year. How you can draw any inferences from that -- let alone the sweeping inferences they do draw -- I do not know.

And why 2000?  There's no theoretical reason.  It's just more data dredging.  It's also one of the classic tricks of chartmanship. If you are allowed to pick your starting and end points in a trend line, you can "prove" almost anything.

At the risk of beating a dead horse I will have one more laugh at these galoots.  What do they say about the VERY embarrassing October 2015 ozone hole?  They say the reading then was influenced by a volcano:  "the Calbuco eruption" in Southern Chile.  Being a suspicious soul, I looked up exactly when Calbuco erupted:  April 2015!  Something that happened in April had no effect until 6 months later!  Pull the other one! One would expect a big effect immediately after the eruption, tapering off in subsequent months.  Instead these Warmists ask us to believe the opposite happened. It's not even clever lying.

And, anyway, volcanoes are fairly common on a global scale and it is global ozone that is supposedly affected by wicked man-made chemicals -- so how come this eruption was so unusually significant?  Was it vast?  No.  It was just a level 4 event (out of 10). Clearly blaming Calbuco is a work of desperation.  The October 2015 ozone level was just another episode in the random walk that is the ozone "hole".  The Greenies bullied us out of our best refrigerant gases for nothing.

And their crookedness and deceptions never stop


Emergence of healing in the Antarctic ozone layer

Susan Solomon et al.

Abstract

Industrial chlorofluorocarbons that cause ozone depletion have been phased out under the Montreal Protocol. A chemically-driven increase in polar ozone (or “healing”) is expected in response to this historic agreement. Observations and model calculations taken together indicate that the onset of healing of Antarctic ozone loss has now emerged in September. Fingerprints of September healing since 2000 are identified through (i) increases in ozone column amounts, (ii) changes in the vertical profile of ozone concentration, and (iii) decreases in the areal extent of the ozone hole. Along with chemistry, dynamical and temperature changes contribute to the healing, but could represent feedbacks to chemistry. Volcanic eruptions episodically interfere with healing, particularly during 2015 (when a record October ozone hole occurred following the Calbuco eruption).

Science  30 Jun 2016: DOI: 10.1126/science.aae0061.  See here for another summary of their findings
 




Greenland ice cover now tracking above average


Top: The total daily contribution to the surface mass balance from the entire ice sheet (blue line, Gt/day).
Bottom: The accumulated surface mass balance from September 1st to now (blue line, Gt) and the season 2011-12 (red) which had very high summer melt in Greenland. For comparison, the mean curve from the period 1990-2013 is shown (dark grey). The same calendar day in each of the 24 years (in the period 1990-2013) will have its own value. These differences from year to year are illustrated by the light grey band. For each calendar day, however, the lowest and highest values of the 24 years have been left out.

SOURCE  






“Climate System Scientist” Claims Jet Stream Crossing the Equator is Unprecedented

by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

Paul Beckwith has a masters degree in laser optics, which he has somehow parlayed into being a “Climate System Scientist” to spread alarmism about the climate system.

But his post “Unprecedented, Jet Stream Crosses Equator” suggests he knows little of meteorology, let alone climate.

A “jet stream” in the usual sense of the word is caused by the thermal wind, which cannot exist at the equator because there is no Coriolis force. To the extent that there is cross-equator flow at jet stream levels, it is usually from air flowing out of deep convective rain systems. That outflow often enters the subtropical jet stream, which is part of the average Hadley Cell circulation.

There is frequently cross-equatorial flow at jet stream altitudes, and that flow can connect up with a subtropical jet stream. But it has always happened, and always will happen, with or without the help of humans. Sometimes the flows connect up with each other and make it look like a larger flow structure is causing the jet stream to flow from one hemisphere to the other, but it’s in no way unprecedented.

We’ve really only known about jet streams since around WWII…one of my professors, Reid Bryson, was one of the first to advise the U.S. military that bombers flying to Japan might encounter strong head winds. The idea that something we have been observing for only several decades on a routine basis (upper tropospheric winds in the tropics) would exhibit “unprecedented” behavior is rather silly.

I especially like this portion of Paul’s post: “We must declare a global climate emergency. Please consider a donation to support my work..”

Nice touch, Mr. Beckwith.

SOURCE  





Mulch could slow global warming: UBCO study

Something else not in the climate models

Researchers at the local campus of the University of British Columbia have discovered mulch is much more than a landscape accessory.

Craig Nichol, senior instructor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at UBC Okanagan, found using mulch in agriculture can cut nitrous oxide emissions by up to 28 per cent.

In the two-year study, emissions-recording chambers were put on bare soil and on soil covered by mulch. This was part of a larger study with Melanie Jones and Louise Nelson, also UBC researchers.

Mulched areas had a 74 per cent reduction in soil nitrates and reduced levels of nitrous oxide emissions. Nitrates are the source material for nitrous oxide emissions and can seep into groundwater, according to a UBC media release.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada says nitrous oxide from soil makes up one half of agriculture emissions that contribute to global warming. Emission levels are often higher in agricultural soil because of fertilizer and manure use.

“In addition to saving water, improving soil, combatting pests and stopping weeds, wood mulch actually reduces the release of a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide,” Nichol says. “Provided you are not driving great distances to obtain the mulch, it would appear that mulch could be a powerful tool in helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, particularly if used in these agricultural systems.”

SOURCE  





NOAA 1974 - Global Cooling Will Starve the World

"The poorest nations, already beset by man-made disasters, have been threatened by a natural one: the possibility of climatic changes ...perhaps throughout the world. The implications for global food and population policies are ominous..." - NOAA, 1974

In October 1974, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published an alarming article in their quarterly magazine stating that climatologists believed a recent global cooling trend would starve the world and send the planet into another ice age.

Most forecasts of worldwide food production have been based on the assumption that global weather will stay about the same as it has been in the recent past. But it has already begun to change.

In the Sahelian zone of Africa south of the Sahara, the countries of Chad, The Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, and Upper Volta are enduring a drought that in some areas has been going on for more than six years now, following some 40 previous years of abundant monsoon rainfall. And the drought is spreading—eastward into Ehtiopia and southward into Dahomey, Egypt, Guinea, Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia, Tanzania, and Zaire.

Many climatologists have associated this drought and other recent weather anomalies with a global cooling trend and changes in atmospheric circulation which, if prolonged, pose serious threats to major food-producing regions of the world.

Annual average temperatures over the Northern Hemisphere increased rather dramatically from about 1890 through 1940, but have been falling ever since. The total change has averaged about one-half degree Centigrade, with the greatest cooling in higher latitudes. A drop of only one or two degrees Centigrade in the annual average temperature at higher latitudes can shorten the growing season so that some crops have to be abandoned. [...]

...the average growing season in England is already two weeks shorter than it was before 1950. Since the late 1950's, Iceland's hay crop yield has dropped about 25 percent, while pack ice in waters around Iceland and Greenland ports is becoming the hazard to navigation it was during the 17th and 18th centuries. [...]

Some climatologists think that if the current cooling trend continues, drought will occur more frequently in India—indeed, through much of Asia, the world's hungriest continent. [...]

Some climatologists think that the present cooling trend may be the start of a slide into another period of major glaciation, popularly called an "ice age."

This is consistent with the documented media hysteria of the 1970s about global cooling and demonstrates, contrary to alarmist arguments - that many climatologists did agree with the media's representation of a coming ice age apocalypse.

SOURCE (See the original for links)





Coal company warns of mass layoffs

Murray Energy Corp. says it might lay off up to 82 percent of its workforce in September, due in part to President Obama.

Murray Energy, owned by outspoken executive and Donald Trump supporter Bob Murray, said the potential layoffs would affect 4,400 employees in six states. Murray said this week that his company has 5,356 workers, according to SNL Financial.

“These workforce reductions are due to the ongoing destruction of the United States coal industry by President Barack Obama, and his supporters, and the increased utilization of natural gas to generate electricity,” the company said in a Friday statement.
“Murray Energy hopes and expects to continue operating its mines, and will retain as many employees as practicable to ensure continued operation and to fulfill its obligations to its customers.”

The warnings came three days after miners in the United Mine Workers of America rejected the latest proposal for a new contract from Murray Energy and other unionized coal companies.

The coal industry employs fewer than 60,000 people, compared with the more than 80,000 jobs in 2008.

Murray has been an outspoken critic of Obama and his policies that hurt coal, calling him “the greatest destroyer America has ever had.” The company frequently files lawsuits against the Obama administration for its environmental regulations.

He predicted that Trump “will be the best president of our lifetimes.”

SOURCE  

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