Tuesday, September 13, 2016




Global warming causing bumpy aircraft rides?

Global Warming Causing Airline Turbulence! And guess what, it’s due to climate change!  From the Guardian:

“It is predicted there will be more and more incidents of severe clear-air turbulence, which typically comes out of the blue with no warning, occurring in the near future as climate change takes its effect in the stratosphere,” Dr Paul Williams, a Royal Society research fellow at Reading University, said last week. “There has already been a steady rise in incidents of severe turbulence affecting flights over the past few decades. Globally, turbulence causes dozens of fatalities a year on small private planes and hundreds of injuries to passengers in big jets. And as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere keep on rising, so will the numbers of incidents.”

Readers may recall that Paul Williams is the same guy who claimed that the jet stream was getting stronger a few months ago, even though other junk scientists such as Jennifer Francis and John Holdren say the opposite is happening.

It is also the same Paul Williams who has been in receipt of £700K worth of Royal Society Fellowship grants since 2009.

Unfortunately for the credibility of Dr Williams, he also wrote this paper in 2013.  In it, he states:



Worse still, FAA statistics show no evidence at all of turbulence worsening, despite air travel becoming more common:

More HERE  (See the original for links, graphics etc.)




Is The Ozone Hole Really Mending?

The ozone hole has become one of the great scientific stories of our time. In the mid-1980s it was realised that chlorofluorocarbons -  released from such things as refrigerators – were making their way into the stratosphere, concentrating at the poles and destroying the UV-protective ozone.

The problem called for an international response. The subsequent 1987 Montreal Protocol banned ozone-destroying chemicals, which has led to the size of the ozone hole at the poles stabilising. But is it starting to reduce in size? Are we seeing the first signs of recovery and an eventual restoration of normal ozone levels in a few decades?

A recent study published in the journal Science says, ‘yes’. The researchers claim to have detected the first signs of healing in the southern hemisphere’s ozone hole. They conclude that the ozone concentration has increased since 2000, and that since then the size of the ozone hole has decreased by 4.5 m sq km.

The ozone hole appears in the austral spring – September and October. In the polar night, cfc’s wait for the sunlight when they release chlorine atoms, which then destroy the ozone.

The researchers used balloon observations taken from the south pole and from a Japanese research station on the coast of Maud Land. They say that October may not be the best month to see evidence of healing. October shows the deepest ozone depletion, but is subject to large fluctuations due to the state of the atmosphere.

They argue that signs of increasing ozone concentration is only visible in the September data since 2000.

The research was widely reported across the media, but the researchers’ own low estimates of confidence  should have caused reporters to treat the story with more caution.

As the researchers themselves point out, data taken in October shows no improvement, and data from September shows an increase only at the 10% significance level, which is generally considered not reliable enough to make confident statements.

The problem is that there is too much variation on ozone from year to year to pick out, reliably, such a small trend in the data.

According to Susan Strathan of NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center, the paper’s results are, ‘a small piece of the puzzle, and we expect that in years to come we’ll see stronger evidence.’

Consequently, claims of an ozone recovery are premature. Many expect to see such a recovery in the future, but it hasn’t been reliably seen just yet.

SOURCE





Record September Heatwave in Britain over 100 years ago

The start of September 1906 saw one of the most exceptional heatwaves to ever occurred in the UK. It stands together with the heatwaves of August 2003, 1990 and 1911 and what is the most remarkable about it is that it occurred at the beginning of September.

The intense heatwave started at the end of August with low pressure to the west and this pumped a very hot continental southerly across the UK. Temperatures rocketed in the brilliant sunshine with 35C recorded on the 1st in London, 35.6C at Bawtry in South Yorkshire, 34.8C at Old Southgate in London and 34.7C at Wryde in Cambridgeshire on the 2nd, 34.2C at Westley in Suffolk on the 3rd. A cooler air flow toppled over the UK as the ridge over the UK began to retreat

30th August: 31.7C at Jersey, 30C at Maidenhead

31st August: 34.9C at Maidenhead, 34.8C at Wryde, Cambs

The heatwave reached it's peak at the beginning of September

1st September: 35.0C at Collyweston and New Malden

2nd September: 35.6C at Bawtry Hall, S Yorks; 34.8C at Old Southgate, London; 34.7C at Wryde

3rd September: 34.2C at Westley, Suffolk\

SOURCE  





It was hot in Australia too

From the "Hobart Mercury" of 14 January, 1905



Carbon dioxide level at the time was 290 parts per million.





CO2 SCAREMONGERING – HARDER NOW, AND RISKIER?

[...] A few days ago at Science Mag, a post notes the huge financial risks faced by universities in the States if their employees engage in scientific deceptions to obtain federal funding:

The Duke case “should scare all [academic] institutions around the country,” says attorney Joel Androphy of Berg & Androphy in Houston, Texas, who specializes in false claims litigation. It appears to be one of the largest FCA suits ever to focus on research misconduct in academia, he says, and, if successful, could “open the floodgates” to other whistleblowing cases.

Here, FCA denotes the ‘False Claims Act’, a piece of legislation that can require repayment of of up to three times the amount of any grant awarded by the government, and ‘produce a multimillion dollar payout to the whisteblower’:

False claims lawsuits, also known as qui tam suits, are a growing part of the U.S. legal landscape. Under an 1863 law, citizen whistleblowers can go to court on behalf of the government to try to recoup federal funds that were fraudulently obtained. Winners can earn big payoffs, getting up to 30% of any award, with the rest going to the government. Whistleblowers filed a record 754 FCA cases in 2013, and last year alone won nearly $600 million. The U.S. government, meanwhile, has recouped more than $3.5 billion annually from FCA cases in recent years.

Several comments below this Science piece suggest that academic climate campaigners may be in danger of costing their employers a fortune. The Climategate Revelations are cited as general evidence of deviousness in climate science circles – a position also taken by some climate research insiders such as Garth Paltridge in Australia who recently wrote this:

The general public learnt from the Climategate and “hockey-stick” scandals that activist climate scientists are quite willing to cherry-pick and manipulate real world data in support of their efforts to save the world. The scientists on their part have learnt that they can get away with it. Their cause is politically correct, and is shaping up well to be the basis for a trillion-dollar industry. That sort of backing automatically provides plenty of protection.

There is little doubt that vast sums of government money in the US have been disbursed for climate studies. There is little doubt that at least some of the associated research is of low quality. But have federal funds ever been ‘fraudulently obtained’? That would be for the courts to decide, if and when climate whistle-blowers emerge to make prosecutions.

Has this now very broad field (including economics, politics, and many areas of science) become that corrupt? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the answer turns out to be yes.

SOURCE  





Climate Cargo Cult Circles the Pacific

By Viv Forbes

The World Economic Forum in 2015 had a prophetic vision that unless the world mends its wicked ways “global warming will become catastrophic and irreversible”.

In July 2016 the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, claimed that global warming was as dangerous to the world as Islamic terrorism.

At the recent G20 summit in China, the world leader of the Global Warming Religion, Ban Ki-moon, canonised two new cardinals -- Cardinal Obama (who seeks political sainthood in his afterlife), and Cardinal Xi Jinping (who seeks to crucify western industry on the climate cross). Both signed the Paris Pledge.

Then at the ASEAN Economic Forum, ordained Minister Turnbull of Australia joined worshippers to pray for a saviour from Global Warming.

Global warming to hit Asia hardest -- “Hundreds of millions of people are likely to lose their homes as flooding, famine and rising sea levels sweep the region.”

Finally, at the Pacific Island Forum in Vanuatu last week, the Global Warming service commenced with a rousing rendition of the hymn “Repent and Pay, or the Seas will Devour Us”.

As a sign of his devotion, Australia’s Global Warming Minister Turnbull dropped a cool $80M into the Global Warming Collection Plate. Islanders who truly believe will now receive total donations of A$300M from the pious Australian government.

John Kerry was right -- this new Global Warming religion is spreading faster than radical Islam. It is the new Cargo Cult.

SOURCE  

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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.  

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