August ties July as hottest month ever on record (??)

Reality is so regularly unkind to Warmists that I knew that there had to be some fun in this. And there is.  Below are the actual gobal temperature numbers for 2016 as given by GISS -- in hundredths of a degree above the reference period.

Jan  Feb  Mar  Apr   May  Jun  Jul  Aug
115  132  128  108   93   80   85   98

So August did NOT equal July.  It substantially exceeded it.  And as they say below that was quite a surprise -- unexpected.  So CO2 must have LEAPED that month, according to Warmist theory?

Wrong.  According to Mauna Loa it DROPPED substantially.  In ppm, June was 406.81, July 404.39 and August was 402.25

You wouldn't read about it, would you (except that you just did).  The OPPOSITE of what Warmists claim has just happened.  Unusual warmth goes with REDUCED CO2.  Warmists can't take a trick!  So why we had a couple of unusually warm months nobody knows.  The only thing we DO know is that it was not due to a rise in CO2.

As a good scientist I do love looking at the numbers. I always have.  It gave me plenty of laughs in my own research career.  Most people conclude what they want to conclude -- regardless of what the numbers show.  I stick with the numbers.


In what has become a common refrain this year, last month ranked as the hottest August on record, according to NASA data released Monday. Not only that, but the month tied July as the hottest month the world has seen in the last 136 years.

August came in at 1.76˚F (0.98˚C) above the average from 1951-1980, 0.16C above August 2014, the previous record holder. The record keeps 2016 on track to be the hottest year in the books by a fair margin.

That August continued the streak of record hot months this year and tied July as the hottest month was somewhat unexpected. The seasonal temperature cycle generally reaches a peak in July, as it did this year. But August was so anomalously warm — more so even than July — that it tied that month’s overall temperature.

It was also thought that July would likely be the last record hot month of the year, given the dissipation of El Niño.

In NASA’s dataset, August marks the 11th record-setting month in a row. That streak goes back 15 months through July in data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Each agency handles the global temperature data slightly differently and uses a different period of comparison, leading to slight differences in the monthly and yearly temperature numbers. Overall, though, both datasets show clear agreement in the overall warming trend.

That trend is what Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and other climate scientists emphasize. It is that excess heat that has accumulated over decades thanks to rising levels of greenhouse gases that accounts for the bulk of this year’s record warmth, with El Niño providing only a small boost.

SOURCE  





Wheat, one of the world’s most important crops, is being threatened by climate change (??)

How brain-dead can you get?  Wheat crops are actually at record highs.  And what in the whole of farming says that warming is bad for wheat?  Outback Australia is a VERY hot place yet it is a major wheat producer.  And the study excluded effects from CO2 levels and water, both of which are good for crops and both of which would be more abundant in the hypothesized anthropogenically warmed world.  This is a champion example of concluding what you want to conclude and damn the facts


One of the biggest concerns about climate change is the effect it will have on agriculture. Many studies have suggested that rising temperatures could be harmful to farms around the world, although there’s plenty of uncertainty about how bad things will get and which food supplies we should worry about most.

Now, a new study published Monday in Nature Climate Change reiterates concerns that wheat — the most significant single crop in terms of human consumption  — might be in big trouble. After comparing multiple studies used to predict the future of global crop production, researchers have found that they all agree on one point: rising temperatures are going to be really bad for wheat production.

Scientists use a wide range of techniques to make predictions about the future of the environment, including a variety of models and statistical analyses. Often, though, there’s debate about which technique produces the most accurate results.

The authors of the new study, who included dozens of scientists from institutions in China, the U.S., Europe and elsewhere around the world, decided to compare three different methods used to assess the impact of temperature changes on wheat production. These included a type of statistical analysis that relies on historical observations of climate and global wheat yields to make inferences about the future, as well as two different types of model simulations.

For the purposes of this comparison, the researchers focused only on the effects of temperature, without incorporating other climate-related factors such as rising carbon dioxide levels or changes in precipitation. Specifically, all the techniques suggested that a global temperature increase of 1 degree Celsius would lead to a worldwide decline in wheat yield by between 4.1 and 6.4 percent. The world currently produces more than 700 million tons of wheat annually, which is converted into all kinds of products for human consumption, including flour for bread, pasta, cakes, breakfast cereals and more. A reduction of just 5 percent would translate to a loss of about 35 million tons each year.

And that could spell big trouble for the global food supply. A new report from the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) projected that world wheat production for the 2016/17 year would hit 741 million tons, nearly 500 million of which is destined to be used directly for human consumption. While global production of coarse grains, including corn, does outweigh the production of wheat, a significantly smaller proportion of it goes to human consumption worldwide, with the rest being used for animal feed and industrial purposes. According to the FAO, global human consumption of coarse grains comes to about 200 million tons annually.

The various studies also produce similar findings on a country level for the world’s largest wheat producers, including the U.S., China, India and France. For instance, all of the study methods suggested that China will see yield reductions of about 3.0 percent per 1 degree Celsius increase in global temperature. And India was projected to experience much greater declines of about 8.0 percent.

In general, the results suggest that warmer regions of the world will experience the greatest temperature-related losses. However, the agreement among the different study methods on exactly what these losses will be was less consistent for smaller countries than for the larger producers.

“The consistent negative impact from increasing temperatures confirmed by three independent methods warrants critical needed investment in climate change adaptation strategies to counteract the adverse effects of rising temperatures on global wheat production, including genetic improvement and management adjustments,” the researchers wrote in the paper.

There are still some major uncertainties, though. For one thing, the researchers note, the agreement among the different types of studies became less consistent above 1 degree Celsius of warming. And there was also less agreement at local and regional levels.

SOURCE  





The planet is going through a wilderness loss, study says

So what?  Why should it concern us?  Many nations are putting aside large areas as nature reserves.  Why is that not sufficient?  The only argument offered in the full paper is that untouched areas are better at storing carbon.  But you have to think carbon is a bad thing for that to matter


Just over 20 percent of the world can still be considered wilderness. A tenth of the planet’s wilderness was eradicated in the last two decades and conservation efforts are failing to keep pace with the rate of wilderness loss, according to a new study.

The loss recorded since 1990 is equivalent to an area twice the size of Alaska and half the size of the Amazon, according to the study published Thursday in Current Biology. Most of the depletion is happening in South America, which experienced a nearly 30 percent loss, and Africa, which lost 14 percent of untouched ecosystems.

“Even though 10 percent is quite a small number in some ways, it really means that if we keep this trajectory going we will lose all wilderness in the next 50 years,” said James Watson, lead author and director of science and research initiative at the Wildlife Conservation Society, in an interview with ThinkProgress.

”Without any policies to protect these areas, they are falling victim to widespread development,” he said. “We probably have one to two decades to turn this around.”

Wilderness is defined as largely intact landscapes that are mostly free of human disturbance. These areas do not exclude people; instead, they are free of large-scale land conversion, industrial activity, or infrastructure development.

The study, titled “Catastrophic Declines in Wilderness Areas Undermine Global Environment Targets,” is the first mapping of global change in wilderness over time, researchers said. To evaluate this decline, scientists measured changes in global wilderness maps that have become more accurate as satellite technology and global positioning systems have evolved. Researchers then compared their measurements against comparable data from the early 1990s.

According to the study, some 23 percent of the world can still be considered wilderness, and most of it is located in North America, North Asia, North Africa, and Australia.
“You cannot restore wilderness … the only option is to proactively protect what is left.”

But while the study notes protected areas have expanded over the past two decades, conservation has ultimately lagged. Since 1990, some 2.5 million square kilometers — slightly less than a million square miles — became protected worldwide. In contrast, about 3.3 million square kilometers of wilderness —roughly 1.2 million square miles — were lost.

“The amount of wilderness loss in just two decades is staggering,” Oscar Venter, co-author and researcher at the University of Northern British Columbia, said in a statement. “You cannot restore wilderness … the only option is to proactively protect what is left.”

The findings show an immediate need for policies to recognize the value of wild areas, researchers said, and address massive losses particularly as human-caused climate change continues.

Intact ecosystems like rainforests can regulate local and global weather through the absorption and creation of rainfall, and their exchange of atmospheric gases. Forests also sequester carbon that can otherwise exacerbate climate change.

“Losing these places means that we are going to suffer the consequences of climate change more,” Watson, who presented his findings during the International Union for Conservation of Nature now happening in Hawaii, said. “Especially more extreme events, such as storms and droughts.”

The study comes as mounting research shows humans are gobbling natural spaces at an accelerated pace. Earlier this year, the Center for American Progress and Conservation Science Partners found that every 2.5 minutes the American West loses a football field worth of natural area to human development.

And last year, a North Carolina State University researcher and others found that the Brazilian Amazon and the Congo Basin are the last two areas with major untouched forests on the planet. They also found that some 70 percent of all remaining global forest cover is within one kilometer, or 0.6 miles, of human development.

Watson said saving wilderness will happen if countries like the United States, Australia, Brazil, and others with vast natural resources take a prominent stand. And indeed, some countries are ramping up their conservation efforts. Just last month, President Obama expanded the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawaii, the world’s largest natural sanctuary.

And in South America, the Amazon Region Protected Areas, or ARPA program, is creating sustainable natural resource management reserves in Brazil, Peru, and Colombia, according to Thursday’s study. Meanwhile, the Canadian Boreal Forest Conservation Framework aims to protect at least 50 percent of the Boreal forest, the world’s largest land-based biome.

Still, much more needs to happen, researchers said, since losses continue in major wilderness strongholds in the Amazon, the Congo Basin, and the forests of New Guinea. “We are running out of space for wilderness and we are running out of time,” Watson said.

SOURCE  




William Briggs commentary: His actual employment letter to the NY Times

Below is an actual, legitimate letter to the New York Times, responding to its search for a new climate change editor. It may strike you as a tongue-in-cheek put-on, but its author assured that he really is interested in the position … and really did submit this letter as part of his employment application. He just couldn’t resist employing his typical sense of humor, which is not what most folks might expect from a statistician.

That humorous streak includes taking a few jabs at the NY Times, Climate Chaos Industry, and climate cataclysm computer modelers and “bamboozlers"


Dean Baquet and Sam Dolnick New York Times New York, NY

Re: Climate Change Editor

Dear Misters Baquet and Dolnick: Please accept my application for the position of Climate Change Editor, the details of which I saw online.

About the material your paper has been printing about global warming, I’ve concluded that you guys need me as badly as Bill Clinton needs an audience. Better, just as you want in a new editor, I’m “obsessed with finding new ways to connect with readers and new ways to tell this vital story.”

For instance, here’s an angle you haven’t so far considered. We could show readers that global warming models have failed at higher rates than Larry King’s marriages. Budget forecasts by President Obama are more accurate than the temperatures predicted by global climate models (GCMs). A smart man would trust a GCM as much as he would a politician’s campaign promise.

Five’ll get you twenty, your readers don’t know how lousy the models are. And I’d bet my first-year’s salary (I heard you pay well) that they’ll cheer when reminded that it was once a firm scientific principle that rotten models imply busted theories. In this case, it means the existence of serially unskillful GCMs are nearly certain proof that carbon dioxide is not the demon gas it’s been painted.

We’d run this headline: “Wonderful News: Global-Warming-Of-Doom Proved Almost Surely False.” We’d lead with a cheering paragraph that we don’t need to be as nearly panicked as your (and I hope soon my) paper has been.

I know what you’re thinking. Same thing our readers will be thinking. “But how can this be? I thought it was certain that the world was soon to end unless massive government programs were instituted.” We’d have them hooked! Guaranteed boost in circulation.

I envision a series in which we expose the schemers, hangers-on, band-wagoners, activists, fund-raisers, self-deluded, egos (I almost said “politicians,” which would have been redundant), and even frauds and bamboozlers whose claimed knowledge of fluid physics on a rotating sphere is as artificial as that thing perched on Donald Trump’s cranium. Let’s call out these folks who have turned “climate change” into an unhealthy living.

How many times have we heard psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, economists, and other un-trained scientifically ignorant (I use this word in its technical sense) academics lecture us on the horrors that await us under “climate change,” when they wouldn’t know a cloud parameterization from a sigma coordinate? I’ll tell you: too often.

I do know, though. It is the Times’s tremendous luck that I’m at liberty, ready, and willing to take on this monumental task. Together we can screw people’s heads back on straight and get them to worry about something really important. Like the rise of politics dictating science and the corrupting influence of money.

I am an actual bona fide scientist. I have published actual articles in the Journal of Climate, among many others. My specialty is in the value and goodness of models, and the expense and badness of bad science. I’ve written a best-seller (my mom bought two copies) on the subject: Uncertainty: The Soul of Modeling, Probability & Statistics. I know this is a presumptuous questions, but if I get the job can I get this reviewed in the Book Review? Might boost sales.

Climate models have the stink of old garlic on them, but they smell like the purest roses next to the putrescence of some models loved by academics driven beyond their ability to resist to publish (or perish). There is limitless material we can mine, exposing scientism, correcting massive over-certainty, putting science back on rational grounds.

Given its tone, it’s understandable if you think this application is a lark. It isn’t. I’m earnest. If offered, I’d take the job and do better with it than anybody else you’d find. With me, you’re assured of always getting my true and honest opinion. Bonus: Roger Kimball called me “the civilized world’s most amusing statistician.” Here’s a list of pieces I’ve written at The Stream: https://stream.org/author/williammbriggs/. All these were meant for a general audience. And I have hundreds at my place: http://wmbriggs.com.

Many of these are more technical or difficult, and do not illustrate how I’d write for a Times audience; nevertheless, they give you an idea of the scope and range of my interests.

I look forward to hearing from you. I can start any time. I’m only a few blocks north of your offices.

Sincerely yours,
William M. Briggs

SOURCE  





Senator Malcolm Roberts:  Maiden speech to the Australian Senate:

A speech giving a strong summary of climate skepticism. He represents a minor conservative party that is very critical of immigration.  The Greens walked out, much to his satisfaction, but most of the mainstream conservatives would have listened with interest.  Roberts has been studying the climate hoax for many years so is very familiar with his subject

    My qualifications include an honours engineering degree - covering atmospheric gases including carbon dioxide - from the University of Queensland. Also, an MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, famous for rigorous statistical analysis.

    In the real world I obtained statutory qualifications covering atmospheric gases with rigorous responsibilities for hundreds of people’s lives.

    My studies reinforced the importance of relying on empirical facts – hard data and physical observations – needed to prove cause and effect. My area of studies focused on earth sciences and geology.

    Australians should be able to rely on the information from Australian government bodies and institutions, but we can’t.

    I have used FOI requests, correspondence and reports from the heads of CSIRO, Bureau of Meteorology, UN, and universities to show there is no data proving human use of hydrocarbon fuels effects climate.

    We use Australia’s resources - that is gas, coal, oil — to produce energy. These resources contain hydrogen and carbon that produce water and carbon dioxide. Both are essential for life on earth. Yet the core climate claim is that carbon dioxide from human activity will catastrophically warm our planet.

    Like Socrates I love asking questions to get to the truth.

    So I ask the question; over the last 130 years what was the longest single temperature trend? Is not the inconvenient truth this .... that from the 1930’s to the 70’s during the period of the greatest industrialisation in human history when our carbon dioxide output increased greatly, atmospheric temperatures cooled for forty years straight?

    Another inconvenient fact; temperatures statistically have not been warming since 1995. Records show there have been warmer periods in Australia’s history then the current decade.

    Temperatures are now cooler than 130 years ago. This is the reverse of what we’re blatantly told by the Bureau of Metrology that has manipulated cooling trends into false warming trends.

    Mr President here are more undeniable facts proven by data; firstly, changes in the carbon dioxide level are a result of changes in temperature, not a cause. That’s the reverse of what we’re told. Second, we do not and cannot affect the level of carbon dioxide in air. Reverse of what we’re told. We cannot and do not affect global climate. Third, warming is beneficial – after all science classifies past warmer periods as climate optimums. Again, the reverse of what we’re told.

    It’s basic. The sun warms earth’s surface. The surface by contact warms the moving circulating atmosphere. • That means the atmosphere cools the surface. • How can anything that cools the surface warm it? It can’t. • That’s why their computer models are wrong. The UN’s claim is absurd.

    Instead of science, activists invoke morality, imply natural weather events are unusual, appeal to authority, use name calling-ridicule-and emotion, avoid discussing facts, and rely on pictures of cute smiling dolphins. These are not evidence of human effect on climate.

    If it is clear that climate change is a scam, and also our prosperity relies on the human endeavours of industry and production, then why is it that in this great parliament there are extremist advocates of an agenda to de-industrialise our nation? Let me make it clear, I will stand firm against any political organisation whose primary aim is to destroy our prosperity and future.

More HERE

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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