Trump wins

Polar bears celebrate. Al Gore goes into hiding.  The Global Warming and Climate Change agenda has now been put on hold. The USA will lead the world away from this fanatical religion





Last 5 years were hottest on record: UN

The usual dishonesty. The real news is that temperatures have in fact plateaued, except for a minor blip in 2015 caused by the El Nino weather cycle.  Here are the actual global mean temperature anomalies in degrees Celsius as given by GISS for the 5 years concerned:

2011 .61; 2012 .64; 2013 .66; 2014 .75; 2015 .87

You will see that the temperatures for the first three years in the series differed only in hundredths of a degree, essentially meaning no change. And the remaining two differed only in tenths of a degree.  It's essentially a picture of stasis:  no change worth talking about

Note also that the temperatures for 1998 (.63), 2002 (.63), 2003 (.62) and 2005 (.69) were very similar to the recent temperatures, again indicating no change

And the 2011, 2012 and 2013 temperatures were DOWN on the 2010 figure (.72).  Handy that they took 2011 as their starting point, isn't it?  Wouldn't want to upset a neat picture of rises, would we?

And isn't is wonderful what you find when you look at the actual numbers?  You would guess none of what I have just pointed out from the alarmist guff below


The past five years were the hottest on record with mounting evidence that heat waves, floods and rising sea levels are stoked by man-made climate change, the United Nations weather agency says.

Some freak weather events would have happened naturally but the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Tuesday said greenhouse gas emissions had raised the risks of extreme events, sometimes by a factor of 10 or more.

"We just had the hottest five-year period on record, with 2015 claiming the title of hottest individual year. Even that record is likely to be beaten in 2016," WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement.

Among the worst extremes, a 2011-12 drought and famine in the Horn of Africa killed more than 250,000 people and Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines killed 7800 in 2013, the WMO said.

Superstorm Sandy caused $US67 billion ($A87 billion) of damage in 2012, mostly in the United States, it said in a report issued to a meeting of almost 200 nations in Morocco tasked with implementing a 2015 global agreement to combat climate change.

The last five-year period beat 2006-10 as the warmest such period since records began in the 19th century.

The heat was accompanied by a gradual rise in sea levels spurred by melting glaciers and ice sheets. The changes "confirmed the long-term warming trend caused by greenhouse gases", the WMO said of the report.

And the amount of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, reached 400 parts per million in the atmosphere for the first time in records in 2015, it said.

Last year was the first in which temperatures were one degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, partly because of an El Nino weather event that warmed the Pacific.

The 2015 Paris Agreement set an overriding target of limiting warming to "well below" 2 degrees above pre-industrial times, ideally just 1.5 degrees.

But pledges so far to curb greenhouse gas emissions are too weak and put the globe on target for about 3 degrees, UN data shows.

SOURCE





Extensive flooding of coastal cities on the way?

The stuff below is the most total and utter rubbish.  It is all based on the expected level of CO2 in the atmosphere.  They assume exactly what is never found:  That temperatures will rise in synchrony with CO2 levels

I append the journal Abstract to the article below.  Note: The "Representative Concentration Pathway" refers to the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.  There are 4 such pathways, all assuming very different levels of CO2.  It's all guesswork, in other words. The authors below have mostly used the most extreme estimate (8.5).

It's a deliberate attempt at alarmism, not the sort of cautious  and balanced presentation one normally expects in an academic journal article.  They had to use extreme estimates in order to have anything at all to say


With global climate talks kicking off in Marrakech, Morocco on Monday, a new study provides a sobering warning about what may happen to coastal mega-cities if decisive global emissions cuts are not made soon.

Based on a scenario in which countries fail to sharply rein in emissions of global warming pollutants, coastal cities are likely to see the fastest rate of sea level rise in human history before the end of the current century, the study found.

This damaging scenario is not just limited to a future generation in the year 2100 but has already begun.

What's more striking is that the study shows that more than more than 90 percent of the world's coastal areas will see more than the global average sea level rise.

The study paints a particularly dark scenario for the densely populated cities of South and Southeast Asia, where low-lying coastal cities could be eaten away by the sea, displacing millions.

The study, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that if global warming pushes past 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels, about 80 percent of the global coastline may see more sea level rise than the global average.

The study is the first to make specific sea level rise projections for 136 coastal cities starting with 2 degrees Celsius of warming and above, according to lead author Svetlana Jevrejeva of The National Oceanography Center in Liverpool.

Jevrejeva and her colleagues found that 2 degrees of warming would yield an average global ocean rise of 0.6 feet. But in the sprawling city of Lagos, Nigeria, for example, that much warming would likely cause 0.7 feet of sea level rise with a worst-case-scenario of 1.1 feet.

Two degrees Celsius is also defined as the upper limit to global warming under the Paris Climate Agreement, which went into effect on Nov. 4, but that limit is likely to be reached by 2045, based on emissions trends.

"If the Paris Agreement fails and the worst-case scenario comes to pass, South Florida and the boot of Louisiana would not likely survive this century. Many more places, from Boston to Shanghai, would be gravely threatened,” said Ben Strauss, a sea level rise researcher at the nonprofit group Climate Central who is unaffiliated with the new study.

The meeting in Marrakech is aimed at speeding up emissions cuts and generating more ambitious targets so that the Paris goal is met.

This study asks what would happen to global sea levels if we blow past the target.

If the climate were to warm by 5 degrees Celsius, or 9 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels by 2100 — which is roughly the path we're on now — New York City could see more than a meter, or about 3.6 feet, of sea level rise with an even higher upper limit, when factoring in sources of uncertainty.

"If warming continues above 2 degrees Celsius, then, by 2100, sea level will be rising faster than at any time during human civilization," the study says.

SOURCE

Coastal sea level rise with warming above 2 °C

Svetlana Jevrejeva et al.

Abstract

Two degrees of global warming above the preindustrial level is widely suggested as an appropriate threshold beyond which climate change risks become unacceptably high. This “2 °C” threshold is likely to be reached between 2040 and 2050 for both Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 and 4.5. Resulting sea level rises will not be globally uniform, due to ocean dynamical processes and changes in gravity associated with water mass redistribution. Here we provide probabilistic sea level rise projections for the global coastline with warming above the 2 °C goal. By 2040, with a 2 °C warming under the RCP8.5 scenario, more than 90% of coastal areas will experience sea level rise exceeding the global estimate of 0.2 m, with up to 0.4 m expected along the Atlantic coast of North America and Norway. With a 5 °C rise by 2100, sea level will rise rapidly, reaching 0.9 m (median), and 80% of the coastline will exceed the global sea level rise at the 95th percentile upper limit of 1.8 m. Under RCP8.5, by 2100, New York may expect rises of 1.09 m, Guangzhou may expect rises of 0.91 m, and Lagos may expect rises of 0.90 m, with the 95th percentile upper limit of 2.24 m, 1.93 m, and 1.92 m, respectively. The coastal communities of rapidly expanding cities in the developing world, and vulnerable tropical coastal ecosystems, will have a very limited time after midcentury to adapt to sea level rises unprecedented since the dawn of the Bronze Age.

SOURCE





Solar Radiation Sufficient! No Greenhouse Effect Of Certain Atmospheric Gases!

Written by Dr Jerry L Krause

Since its inception Principia Scientific International (PSI) has published many articles attempting to discredit, if not refute, the hypothesis termed the greenhouse effect of certain atmospheric gases (GHE).  Recently there has been a fury (too many to cite) of articles which seem to be getting closer to accomplishing this feat.  However, most all these articles are based upon reasoned arguments.  I do not consider the Science founded by Galileo and Newton to have be based upon reasoned argument.  The science founded by Galileo and Newton is based upon scientific laws.

What is a scientific law?  First, before defining a scientific law, it seems useful, no necessary, to consider a bit of confusion which seems to exist as to what Science is, or does.  This confusion possibly exists because Galileo, Newton, and their commentaries were better known to be natural philosophers instead of simply as being scientists.

Since a common definition of a philosopher is one who seeks to learn the Truth, some consider Science to be a method used to discover the Truth.  William M. Briggs, in a recent PSI article—http://principia-scientific.org/no-scientific-method/—stated:  “There is no method particular to Science to discover the Truth.”  Richard Feynman, in an address at the 1955 fall meeting of the National Academy of Sciences reminded his audience that “scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty—some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.

A scientific law is merely a summary of similar observations for which there has never been observed an exception.  It is not a hypothesis, not a theory, not an explanation; it merely predicts what will be observed in specific circumstances.  It cannot be proven by reason and it can only be disproved by an observation that is an exception to the summary.  Hence, as Einstein stated:  “No amount of experimentation can ever prove right, a single experiment can prove me wrong.” So, it seems no amount of observation (experimentation) can ever prove a scientific law, a hypothesis, a theory, an explanation to be the Truth, but a single observation (experimental result) can prove each of them to be False.

Given this input from scientists, Karl Popper, a 20th Century philosopher of Science, concluded that any proposed Scientific hypothesis has to have a testable prediction (result) to be a viable hypothesis.  The GHE hypothesis has such testable result which is well-accepted by its proponents.  It is that if there were no greenhouse gases capable of absorbing the radiation being emitted by the earth’s surface due to its temperature, the earth’s average temperature would be about 33oC less than its observed average temperature.  So, all one has to do to prove the GHE hypothesis to be false is to refer to observations of the earth’s natural system which demonstrate that the earth’s average temperature cannot be less that which is observed.

In a previous article—http://principia-scientific.org/new-scientific-law-greenhouse-effect/—I had called attention to a scientific law of meteorology that had not yet recognized as being a scientific law.  It was:  “The surface temperature of an object, at thermal equilibrium with the atmosphere in contact with it, can be no lower than the dewpoint temperature (the temperature at which the atmosphere is saturated with water vapor) of the atmosphere in contact with it.”  Since the average dewpoint temperature of the atmosphere has to be equal to, greater than the average temperature of the earth and this dewpoint temperature had nothing to do with water’s ability to absorb a portion of the radiation being emitted by the earth’s surface, I momentarily considered that is scientific law proved the GHE hypothesis to be false.

However, the proponents of the GHE quickly pointed out that the current dewpoint temperature was only due to the earth’s greater than expected temperature.  Which I had to accept to be valid argument.

Then I discovered that I and many others had overlooked something much more obvious than the scientific law involving the atmosphere’s dewpoint temperature.  Another quote attributed to Einstein is:  “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”  I have no desire to hide the fact that Carl Allen Brehmer drew my attention to an observed fact about which Anthony Bright-Paul later wrote:  “Let’s take the Sahara. The Sun shines down and the radiation passes through the Oxygen and Nitrogen that makes up 99% of the atmosphere and encounters the surface of the Planet – in this case sand. We all know that radiation has to encounter mass to produce heat. So the sands get pretty hot. You can see David Attenborough in one of his films standing there and saying that the temperature of the sand was circa 70ºC and the air above it was 40ºC. Pretty damn hot, eh?” (http://principia-scientific.org/facebook-physics-heat-retention/)

Actually, there are two observed facts which are overlooked; one is commonly known and the other not so commonly known.  The first is the maximum diurnal air temperature of 40ºC (104oF) which has been observed at many locations as a record temperature for a given day of the year.  But does anyone doubt that it could be common every day maximum temperature for the Sahara Desert?  The second is the maximum temperature, 70ºC (158ºF), of the desert sand.

Carl, an amateur scientist, did an experiment in which he measured the air temperature and the topsoil temperature continuously from mid-June to mid-July in 2012 somewhere in the vicinity of Chino Valley, AZ, USA.  During this period he observed an average maximum diurnal topsoil (surface?) temperature of about 55ºC (131ºF) and an average maximum diurnal air temperature of about 34ºC (93ºF).

There can be little doubt that the maximum temperatures referred to by Anthony and observed by Carl are solely due to the incident solar radiation upon the earth’s surface at these two different locations.  Hence, there can be little doubt that these maximum temperatures could not be 33ºC less if there were no greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.  It seems clear that maximum temperature of a day is due to ‘sunshine’ and the minimum possible temperature of a day is due to the atmosphere’s dewpoint temperature.  Hence, common observations prove the GHE hypothesis to be absolutely false.  And there can be no argument about this.

SOURCE




America needs to use more energy, not less

During the 2016 election, both candidates promised to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. Donald Trump made the recovery of jobs lost to China and Mexico a cornerstone of his campaign. Hillary Clinton’s website states: “While too many politicians and experts in Washington gave up on American manufacturing, Hillary never did.”

“The rhetoric,” reports US News, “has struck home with Americans across the country—particularly those currently or formerly employed in the embattled U.S. goods-producing and manufacturing sectors, who have repeatedly borne the brunt of corporate efforts to move work overseas.”

Because many of the lost jobs are due to automation and technological improvements—which have enabled more production from fewer workers—there is skepticism on both sides of the aisle as to whether these lost jobs can actually come back. However, I believe, most Americans don’t want to see more of our jobs disappear. Harry Moser, founder and president of the Reshoring Initiative, which aims to bring manufacturing back home, is optimistic. He told me that we are now losing about as many jobs to offshoring, as we are recovering: “We’ve gone from losing somewhere around 200,000 manufacturing jobs a year in 2000 to 2003 to net breaking even. Balancing the trade deficit will increase U.S. manufacturing by about four million jobs at current levels of productivity”

According to MarketWatch.com, the percentage of people who work in manufacturing is at a record low of 8.5 percent—which compares to “20 percent in 1980, 30 percent in 1960 and a record 39 percent during World War Two.”

While there are many factors driving offshoring, lower wages give countries like China and Mexico a competitive advantage. Energy costs, however, give the U.S. an advantage as “manufacturers need a lot of energy to make their processes work,” stated Gary Marmo, director of sales for New Jersey’s Elizabethtown Gas. He says: “A typical office building will use 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 therms a year. A good sized manufacturing plant will probably use that same amount in just a couple of days.” Electricity frequently represents one of the top operating costs for energy intensive industries such as plastics, metals, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals—and, according to a recent study comparing costs in the U.S. and China, electricity is about 50 percent higher in China.

Because manufacturing is energy intensive, bringing industry back to the U.S. and/or attracting businesses to relocate here, will increase our energy consumption. As my column last week on the Clinton Foundation and Haiti makes clear, industry needs energy.

President Obama has derided U.S, energy use: “The U.S. uses far more electricity than its North American neighbors combined,” but the U.S. also does more with our energy. Comparing the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and energy consumption numbers for the U.S. and Canada, for example, both use a similar volume of energy but the U.S. has substantially higher GDP. A study of global energy consumption versus GDP found: “energy is so intrinsically linked to GDP that energy policy more or less dictates how our economy performs.”

Mike Haseler, the study’s author, explains: “rising GDP is an indication of a prosperous economy”—which is why economic commentators cite GDP number when they say: “President Barack Obama may become the first president since Herbert Hoover not to serve during a year in which the growth in real GDP was at least 3 percent.  Yet, in the name of climate change, through government policy, many countries are trying to discourage energy use by forcing costs up. Haseler states: “They are cutting energy use as the economy of Europe collapses because European industry can no longer compete with countries where energy prices are not artificially raised by senseless ‘green’ policies.”

The energy advantage is not just an issue between countries, it is a factor in where companies locate within the U.S. “High electricity bills are a strong disincentive to create new jobs associated with a new or expanded product line,” writes Don Welch, president of New Hampshire based Globe Manufacturing Co, LLC. New Hampshire’s electric prices are 55.6 percent higher than the national average. Welch’s company is the leading producer of firefighting turnout gear. He explains: “higher electricity costs not only add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of making our products—firefighting suits and equipment—but it’s money we could otherwise re-invest in the business, including creating new jobs here in New Hampshire. New Hampshire’s high electricity prices are a drag on our economy. It puts New Hampshire companies like mine at a competitive disadvantage compared to companies in other parts of the country.” Because Globe also has plants in three different states, he clearly sees the difference energy costs make in doing business. Welch says: “I already know that the electric bill I am paying at my facility in Oklahoma is half of what I pay in New Hampshire.” If he is going to add a product line, energy costs are a big factor in deciding where to expand.

John F. Olson, president and CEO of Whelen Engineering Company, of Charlestown, NH, and Chester, CT agrees. In a letter to the editor, Olson wrote: “Manufacturers are in competition with other U.S. manufacturers, or even worse, offshore competition in China. New Hampshire manufacturers have the most expensive electricity in the country.”

If we can bring back manufacturing jobs—or at least stem the flow of them from our country—we need to be encouraging low-cost energy and making more of it available. Moser believes: “balancing the trade deficit should be the number 1 national priority.” He told me that would take a 25 percent increase in manufacturing—which would require about a 10 percent increase in energy usage. Yet, climate change policies demand that we take greater cuts than the developing countries like China and India. If our energy costs continue to go up, as they have in New Hampshire, we’ll lose the best competitive advantage we have.

Moser explains: “Manufacturing has the highest multiplier effect among the major sectors. Every job created in manufacturing creates additional jobs in other sectors that supply, support and service manufacturers.”

To bring manufacturing back to the U.S., or encourage expansion, we need energy that is abundant, available and affordable — and we’ll need to use more, not less. If we want to balance our trade deficit, boost GDP, and have a prosperous economy, energy is the key. As I am known for saying: “energy makes America great!”

SOURCE




Risk estimates from climate models are largely political, not scientific

Resulting in biased advice to insurance companies

While catastrophe modeling may seem an objective science that relies on data to tell the story, more often than not politics plays a role on loss projections and sets the tone for both the insurance and reinsurance market, according new research co-authored by Roger Pielke, Jr.

According to a study “The Truthiness about Hurricane Catastrophe Models,” Pielke and his co-author Jessica Weinkle argue that catastrophe models are “politically stylized views of the intractable scientific problem of precise characterization of hurricane risk.”

Citing examples from past events and outcomes, the paper published last month says that model creators “use choice and preference for outcomes to develop a model” when they are faced with conflicting scientific theories.

Those choices, in turn, include “political positions on relevant knowledge and the risk that society ought to manage.”

Specifically, Pielke says that the most obvious example of this effect is “the invention” of the RMS 2006 “medium term” forecast that predicted an on average 40% increase in hurricane damage on for the Gulf Coast, Florida and the U.S. Southeast over 5 years.

That forecast, along with the 2011 update, created huge changes to insurers’ and reinsurers’ probable maximum loss [PML] and, as a result, their capitalization even though Pielke’s argument that various shifts in modeled estimates of risk since that time.

“As we show in an example in the paper, using an idealized portfolio and 2011 models, the PML varied by a factor of 6.  All loss estimates within that huge range have a legitimate scientific basis. Science alone did not narrow that range – extra-scientific factors would need to play a role,” Pielke says. “The simplest way [to prevent politicizing models] is to accurately characterize the modeled solution space.”

We should not be afraid to show uncertainties; it is valuable information.

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.  

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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