Climate Change Is About to Transform Earth Into an Unrecognizable, Alien Landscape (?)

And pigs might fly.   When Warmists start getting their prophecies right will be the time to take notice of them.

It is true that warming, if it happens, would have some effect.  It might make more places on earth like my old home of Cairns in tropical Australia, where the average summer temperature is much higher than any average Warmists predict for the earth.  But Cairns is a tourist destination and people move there to live.  Warm climates are great!

Cairns used to be the port for a rich agricultural hinterland but these days the main industry is tourism. The big international jets roar into Cairns international airport throughout the day, delivering their consignments of tourists -- mostly Japanese and Chinese. Cairns even has omiyage shops specifically for Japanese tourists

But there are lots of sharks and crocodiles and other nasty beasties in the tropics so warming might require more people to learn how to keep safe from them


Within the next 100 years, Earth as we know it *could be* transformed into an unrecognizable, alien world, with ecosystems around the globe falling apart. After looking at over 500 ancient climate records, scientists have said current climate change is comparable to what the planet went through when it came out of the last ice age—and the seismic shift in biodiversity that took place then will likely happen again.

At the end of the Last Glacial Maximum—when ice sheets covered most of North America, Asia and northern Europe—the planet warmed up by between four and seven degrees Celsius. Over the course of 10,000 years, the ice melted and entirely new ecosystems emerged, eventually developing into what we see today.

Climate scientists are currently predicting that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rate (the so-called "business as usual" scenario) then the planet will have warmed around four degrees Celsius by 2100.

In a study published in Science, an international team of researchers looked at hundreds of paleontological records, examining how terrestrial ecosystems responded to climate change 20,000 years ago in a bid to establish how the planet might adjust to similar warming in the next 100 to 150 years. They looked at potential changes using different climate scenarios—from warming being limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius through to business-as-usual.

Findings showed that unless there are huge reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, terrestrial ecosystems around the world are at risk of “major transformation,” with most of these changes taking place over the next 100 years.

“Terrestrial vegetation over the entire planet is at substantial risk of major compositional and structural changes in the absence of markedly reduced [greenhouse gas] emissions,” they wrote. “Much of this change could occur during the 21st century, especially where vegetation disturbance is accelerated or amplified by human impacts. Many emerging ecosystems will be novel in composition, structure, and function, and many will be ephemeral under sustained climate change; equilibrium states may not be attained until the 22nd century or beyond.”

Study co-author Jonathan Overpeck, from the University of Michigan, said there will be a huge ricochet effect that will eventually threaten water and food security. "If we allow climate change to go unchecked, the vegetation of this planet is going to look completely different than it does today, and that means a huge risk to the diversity of the planet," he said in a statement.

"We're talking about global landscape change that is ubiquitous and dramatic, and we're already starting to see it in the United States, as well as around the globe. Our study provides yet another wake-up call that we need to act now to move rapidly towards an emission-free global economy."

SOURCE






Endangerment Finding delenda est

Replacing Clean Power Plan with less harmful ACE rule does not fix fraudulent CO2 science

Paul Driessen

As the Punic Wars dragged on, Cato the Elder reportedly concluded every speech to the Roman Senate by proclaiming “Carthago delenda est” – “Carthage must be destroyed.”

Ample evidence suggests that the Obama era Environmental Protection Agency’s “Endangerment Finding” was devised in violation of basic scientific and transparency principles that ignored or excluded extensive evidence that contradicted its preordained outcome. The EF was then used to justify anti-fossil fuel rules that seriously harmed the energy security, jobs, health and welfare of millions of Americans.

The Finding must be reexamined. If these contentions are validated, it must be reversed and demolished.

In its 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that EPA must determine whether emissions of carbon dioxide and certain other atmospheric gases “cause or contribute” to “air pollution” that may be “reasonably anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” If the agency found the answer was yes, then it had to regulate those emissions. The Bush EPA failed to take action.

However, candidate and President Obama had promised that he would eliminate coal-based electricity generation and “fundamentally transform” America. It was thus a foregone conclusion that his EPA would quickly find a dire threat existed. On December 7, 2009, EPA issued its Endangerment Finding (EF): that carbon dioxide (CO2) and five other “greenhouse gases” (GHGs) were pollutants that did indeed “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations” of Americans.

The Obama EPA then promulgated its “Clean Power Plan,” which shut down numerous coal mines and coal-fired power plants, eliminated thousands of jobs and severely impacted factories, families and communities across the United States. The CPP also spurred the shift to unreliable wind and solar power.

However, any CPP climate change, health and welfare benefits are at best undetectable, in part because the rest of the world – from China, India, Indonesia and Southeast Asia to Australia, Germany and Poland – continue to build thousands of coal-fired power plants and put millions of vehicles on the road.

Recognizing this, President Trump pulled the USA out of the Paris climate treaty. His EPA has proposed to replace the Obama Clean Power Plan with an “Affordable Clean Energy” (ACE) plan that lets states take the lead in devising GHG emission reduction programs that best serve their individual energy needs.

These are important steps. But they are not enough, because they perpetuate the false claim that plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide is a “dangerous pollutant.” Even worse, leaving the EF in place would enable any future anti-fossil fuel administration to impose new economy-strangling, welfare-degrading rules.

Worst of all, leaving the Finding unchallenged and ignoring the way it was concocted and implemented would sanctify some of the most fraudulent and dictatorial Deep State bureaucratic actions in history.

In devising its EF, the Obama EPA did no new research and made no effort to examine the full range of studies and evidence readily available on natural versus manmade climate change. It just cherry-picked Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports; deliberately excluded studies that contradicted its predetermined finding; and relied on temperature and extreme weather predictions by computer models.

The IPCC itself had long ago ended any pretense of trying to understand the interplay of natural and human influences on Earth’s climate. Instead, for political reasons, it had decided to focus on human fossil fuel use and GHG emissions as the only important factors influencing modern climate change. Its reports reflect that approach – and ignore the growing and readily available body of contrary studies and evidence, such as volumes of studies summarized by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change.

The Obama EPA team even removed one of its most senior experts, who had prepared a contrarian report.  “Your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision,” his supervisor told him. EPA consulted with alarmist scientists and environmentalist groups, but ignored moderates and IPCC critics.

The computerized climate models relied on by EPA are programmed to reflect the assumption that rising atmospheric CO2 levels are the primary factor determining climate and extreme weather. However, the average prediction by 102 models is now a full 1 degree F above what satellites are actually measuring.

In fact, even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels climbed well above the supposed 350 ppm “tipping point” (they reached 405 ppm in 2017), except for noticeable short-term temperature spikes during El Niño ocean warming events, there has been virtually no planetary warming since 1998 or at least 2002.

Moreover, Harvey finally ended a record 12-year absence of Category 3-5 hurricanes making US landfall. Tornados are no more frequent than in the 1950s. Droughts differ little from historic trends and cycles. Seas are rising at just seven inches per century, and Antarctic and Arctic ice are largely within “normal” or “cyclical” levels for the past several centuries. Indeed, reports of vanishing Arctic ice go back nearly a century and low ice levels were documented by Francis McClintock and other explorers long before that.

In many cases, older temperature records were adjusted downward, modern records got bumped upward a bit, and government-paid scientists relied on measurements recorded near (and contaminated by) airport jet exhausts, blacktop parking lots, and urban areas warmed by cars, heating and AC vents.

Humans might well be “contributing” to temperature, climate and weather events, at least locally. But there is no real-world evidence that “greenhouse gases” have replaced natural forces or are causing unprecedented climate chaos or extreme weather; no evidence that those emissions are “endangering public health and welfare” or that humans can control Earth’s perpetually fickle climate by controlling emissions.

Far from being a “pollutant,” carbon dioxide is the miracle molecule without which most life on Earth would cease to exist. The more CO2 in the air, the faster and better crop, forest and grassland plants grow, and the more they are able to withstand droughts, diseases, and damage from insects and viruses.

In fact, a slightly warmer planet with more atmospheric CO2 would be tremendously beneficial for plants, wildlife and humanity. A colder planet with less carbon dioxide would greatly reduce arable land extent, growing seasons, wildlife habitats, crop production and our ability to feed humanity.

Equally important, over 80% of US energy still comes from fossil fuels – and the countless benefits of those abundant, reliable, affordable fuels (and their CO2 output) exceed the EPA’s alleged “social costs of carbon” and “human health and welfare impacts” by at least 50 to 1, and perhaps as much as 500 to 1.

On a closely related matter, contrary to the “97% consensus” myth, scientific debate continues unabated over recent and future global warming, cooling, storms, droughts, sea levels and other “adverse effects” from oil, natural gas and coal use. Computer models and alarmist climate specialists say the threats are serious. Real-world observations and moderate to skeptical climate experts vigorously disagree.

The Obama EPA’s Endangerment Finding ignored all of this. It likewise dismissed the extravagant raw material requirements of expensive wind, solar and biofuel “alternatives” and their adverse impacts on wildlife and wildlife habitats. That makes the 2009 process even more suspect and fraudulent.

There is no demonstrable, much less dire or unprecedented, danger to American health and welfare from continued CO2 emissions. The danger is from anti-fossil fuel policies justified by the EF and IPCC.

Simply put, in concocting its Endangerment Finding, the Obama EPA violated the cost-benefit analysis policies and basic standards for honest, open, informed, replicable science. With so much of America’s energy, economy, environment, health and welfare at stake, this cannot be allowed to continue.

The Trump Administration must disavow the “CO2 drives climate change” tautology and stop viewing the Endangerment Finding as “established” law and policy. It is no more established or acceptable than were the Supreme Court’s reprehensible 1857 Dred Scott and 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decisions.

It is time to reexamine the Endangerment Finding, give it the intense Red Team scrutiny it deserves, and relegate it to the dustbin of history. The Endangerment Finding delenda est.

Via email






How The War On Climate Change Slams The World’s Poor

When a "solution” to a problem causes more damage than the problem, policymaking has gone awry. That’s where we often find ourselves with global warming today

Activist organizations like Worldwatch argue that higher temperatures will make more people hungry, so drastic carbon cuts are needed.

But a comprehensive new study published in Nature Climate Change led by researchers from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis has found that strong global climate action would cause far more hunger and food insecurity than climate change itself.

The scientists used eight global-agricultural models to analyze various scenarios between now and 2050. These models suggest, on average, that climate change could put an extra 24 million people at risk of hunger.

But a global carbon tax would increase food prices and push 78 million more people into the risk of hunger. The areas expected to be most vulnerable are sub-Saharan Africa and India.

Trying to help 24 million people by imperiling 78 million people’s lives is a very poor policy.

We’ve heard similar stories before: In a few short decades, climate policy has often created more damage than the benefits it attempts to deliver.

Ten years ago, a biofuels craze swept rich countries with the full-throated support of green activists who hailed any shift away from fossil fuels.

Food crops were replaced to produce ethanol, and the resulting spike in food prices forced at least 30 million people into poverty and 30 million more into hunger, according to UK charity ActionAid.

If we want to eradicate hunger, there are more effective ways. Around 800 million people are undernourished today, mostly because of poverty.

The single most significant initiative that could be undertaken tomorrow is not a policy that slows the global economy, but one that cuts poverty: a global trade deal.

The Doha free-trade deal was allowed to collapse with just a fraction of the attention given to global climate-change negotiations.

Reviving Doha would lift an extra 145 million people out of poverty by 2030, according to research commissioned by Copenhagen Consensus.

It could make the average person in the developing world $1,000 better off every year — allowing them to not only better feed themselves and their children, but also afford better health care, more education and lead more prosperous lives.

The EU’s climate policy under the Paris agreement, meanwhile, will realistically cost the bloc about $600 billion each year for the rest of the century, yet at best it delivers a trifling temperature reduction of just 0.09°F by the end of the century.

When comparing the massive cost with the slight delay in climate damage, each dollar spent delivers just three cents of climate benefits — i.e., lower hurricane damage, fewer heat waves, less agricultural stress.

Forcing poor countries to reduce emissions does even more harm because cheap, abundant energy brings prosperity.

Example: Activists argue Bangladesh should cut coal expansion. That would deliver global climate benefits worth nearly $100 million. But the forgone boost to the Bangladeshi economy would cost about $50 billion.

Aside from the immorality of obliging poor nations to avoid policies that would reduce poverty, the big problem with forcing carbon cuts is that green energy is not yet the savior that it is portrayed as.

Even after decades of heavy investment in subsidies to support green-energy production — costing more than $150 billion just this year — the International Energy Agency finds that wind provides just 0.6 percent of energy needs, and solar 0.2 percent.

By 2040, even if all of the grand promises in the Paris agreement on climate change were to be fulfilled (which seems unlikely), the IEA finds these figures will inch up to just 2.1 percent and 1.5 percent.

The flawed Paris agreement, which is the closest we have to a global scheme, will achieve at best merely 1 percent of what would be needed to keep temperature rises under 2°C, according to the UN.

It’ll cost $1 trillion to $2 trillion annually. This is money that can’t be spent on improving nutrition, health or education.

We need to get smarter about climate change. My think tank asked 27 top climate economists to explore all the feasible policy responses, and the conclusion was that the best long-term investment is in green energy R&D. For every dollar spent, $11 of climate damages would be avoided.

That makes much more sense than today’s climate approach, which mostly does more harm than good.

SOURCE





2 yachts fail to get through the NW passage. Blocked by ice

We are standing at the gates of the Bellota Strait all the time. If you follow our position (skiff.pl/position), you probably noticed that we have already changed a few times. This is due to the fact that ice is constantly prowling here - thin but wide ice floes (something like floating pancakes such as a playground), as well as massive junks with a draft of up to 10m.

There are strong currents here. Through this ice packets are rushing once, back and forth. In order not to let them disperse, we have to be vigilant all the time. That's why we have anchor watches around the clock - one person is still sitting on the deck and watching if anything affects us. If it is a small piece, then we push it away with an ice pole. If it's big, then we start the engine and make a dodge. In extreme cases, we change the anchorage. And from here we are already in the fourth place this week.

September started, and that means that the end of the navigation season in the Arctic will take place in 3-4 weeks. If we do not move further west in the next few days, it is time to return to Greenland.

Yesterday after receiving more ice maps we decided to give up trying to cross the Northwest Passage. Further waiting meant that the risk of losing the yacht, and perhaps not only, was already too great. The weather has set the bar too high this year. According to Canadian meteorologists, the melting of ice on our route is delayed by up to 6 weeks. This means that the passage will probably not open at all, and in other parts of it strong storms and short days would prevent fast sailing to more safe waters.

We fought like lions. We got as far west as we could. At the gates of the Bellota Strait, at Fort Ross, we were the first and now - together with the French yacht Atka - we are leaving last this season. Ahead of us, 15 units sailing from the east left us. Only a 120-foot Infinity is fighting from the west. We turn back, but what we experienced, what we saw, we experienced and learned about the Arctic, as well as ourselves, is priceless.

Now, however, we must concentrate on a safe return to Greenland. Ahead of us are over 1000 miles of sailing through the Arctic waters with winter on the back of the neck. The Arctic probably liked us too, because something does not want to let us out - at the moment the ice from the north cuts off our way back. Let's hope, however, that it will not take long. So do not stop keeping your fingers crossed!

SOURCE





Apaches Stave Off Wildfires With Timber Industry, Active Forest Management

The catastrophic blazes that thrive in eastern Arizona’s thickly forested yet arid landscape have a way of fizzling once they jump from the dense national forests to the Apache reservations, and that’s not by chance.

On a scorching summer day with fire danger at the extreme level, forestry superintendent Michael Gutierrez and his crew spent the morning chain-sawing the overgrown junipers surrounding Seneca Lake on the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation.

Soil conservationist Paul Buck discussed his experiments in fighting tough alligator juniper using the terrestrial version of the herbicide Round-Up, and forest manager Dee Randall explained how the scrubby trees could be converted into slabs and sold for furniture as part the tribal timber business.

Such wildfire prevention techniques might alarm environmentalists, but the San Carlos Apache have their own agenda: Keep the forests healthy, protect their sacred sites, and bring back the plants and grasslands that flourished before the reservation was established in 1934.

“The Apaches believe the health of the people is tied to the health of the land,” said Mr. Randall. “We want the reservation to look the way it did in the pre-reservation days. Everything we do is just to help us get a more healthy forest. That’s the whole goal.”

The Apache learned the hard way. The two worst fires in Arizona history — the 2011 Wallow Fire and the 2002 Rodeo-Chediski Fire — erupted in the backyard of the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, twin sister of the San Carlos reservation and home of the White Mountain Apache Tribe.

Robert Lacapa, a White Mountain tribal member who recently retired after a life in fire and forestry, said the tribe overhauled its approach after the Rodeo-Chediski Fire blackened 468,638 acres of national forest and tribal lands.

“After Rodeo-Chediski, what we did differently is we looked at the areas that survived the burn,” said Mr. Lacapa, a former Bureau of Indian Affairs forest manager at the Fort Apache Agency. “A lot of them survived because we had done fuel treatments — prescribed burns, timber harvests, timber stand improvements, multiple projects.”

The conclusion: “Multiple treatments are more effective than one. You need to do multiple treatments,” Mr. Lacapa said.

The strategy paid off nine years later during the Wallow Fire. The most destructive fire in state history, the Wallow charred 538,049 acres in Arizona and New Mexico but faded when it crossed into the reservation’s tidier woodland mosaic.

“Biggest wildfire in Arizona history couldn’t burn Fort Apache Reservation,” The Arizona Republic said in a July 2017 headline.

It was the same with the Rattlesnake Fire, which started in April on the Fort Apache side and spread to the San Carlos. Nearly all of the damage was on the neighboring Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. The wildfire ultimately burned 26,072 acres at a cost of about $11 million.

Steve Best, the Apache-Sitgreaves forest supervisor, credited the tribe for putting in the work to tackle the needles, branches and fallen trees that litter the forest floor to the tune of 2 tons per acre per year.

“On the Rattlesnake Fire, it didn’t burn hardly any on the White Mountain Apache side because it burned up to their prescribed burn and pretty much went out,” said Mr. Best. “If we would have treated our side of the fence at the same time they treated their side of the fence, the whole thing might have been just a little fire.”

Tale of two forests

Divided by the Salt River, the Fort Apache to the north and San Carlos to the south might be better described as small countries. Both about the size of the Big Island of Hawaii, the reservation terrain ranges from the Sonoran Desert to mixed-conifer forests to Mount Baldy at 11,421 feet, with enough winter snow to support a ski resort.

From the ground, the millions of forested acres belonging to the Apache tribes, the Apache-Sitgreaves and the Tonto National Forest look like one massive, contiguous woodland, but Mr. Lacapa said the aerial perspective tells another story.

“If you were to look at a Google Earth view, you can tell actually where the fence line is because of treatments,” he said. “It’s more dense on [the Forest Service] side and less dense on the other.”

The Apache-Sitgreaves holds an average of 700 Ponderosa pines per acre on its 2.1 million acres with densities ranging from 300 to 3,000 trees. Before settlements began in 1865, there were about 24 to 124 pines per acre, said Randy Fuller, natural resources staff officer.

“Our current densities are anywhere from 10 to 20 times their historical densities,” said Mr. Fuller.

The Apaches have sought to bring their pine stands closer to 50 trees per acre. At Seneca Lake, Mr. Gutierrez said, he wants to reduce the number of junipers per acre from about 50 to eight.

One reason for the difference: The Apaches have greater control over their forests. More than 200,000 acres of the Apache-Sitgreaves is designated wilderness, tightly packed woods that cannot be thinned, burned or otherwise managed by law except in emergencies.

The rest of the national forest can be treated subject to approval under the National Environmental Policy Act, but projects are frequently held up by litigation or appeals. Although tribal forest projects also must receive National Environmental Policy Act clearance, they don’t receive the same scrutiny from the public, which in the tribe’s case consists of fellow Apache.

“Our constituency is on the reservation, and we have about 16,000 tribal members,” said Mr. Lacapa. “Nobody from New York. Nobody from California. Our primary interest group is right here. Unfortunately for the Forest Service, they can get somebody back East or back West that can put a stop to any of their NEPA.”

That worries him. “The public has really limited their effectiveness in using prescribed burns and harvesting as tools,” said Mr. Lacapa. “And that’s really bad for us. It’s not just about what we can do here locally [on the reservation], but on a landscape basis.”

Logging in the national forests has plummeted in the past 40 years, by 80 percent in some areas, but not in the reservation woods. The White Mountain Apache Tribe operates the largest sawmill in the region and the San Carlos are working to update their aging mill while they continue to log and sell timber.

San Carlos tribal timber specialist Marvin Victor described the logging operation as a win-win for the tribe.

“It’s important to us not only because we have this connection to the Earth as Apaches, but we can create revenue off of it,” said Mr. Victor. “The way I look at timber sales from a fuels standpoint is that we’re thinning out the forest by taking the larger-diameter trees and making revenue off of that. Fire prevention-wise, it works out perfectly.”

Like many other Apache, Mr. Victor has a background in firefighting. Most of those working in forest management were once “hotshots,” elite firefighters who battle the nation’s worst wildfires. The San Carlos tribe operates one of the most famous crews, the Geronimo Hotshots.

Reducing forest density has additional benefits. Trees are enormous water hogs, which means reducing their numbers helps keep the woods from drying out. More water means healthier trees, and healthier trees are more resistant to the bark beetles that have ravaged millions of acres throughout the West.

“Beetles fly, and their flight distance is really quite short,” said Mr. Randall. “The needles have to be almost touching. We had a pretty good infestation, so we had to go in and salvage a lot of flagging, infested trees. Again, we’re just trying to mimic nature.”

Their forests are sources of pride. Jere Classay, a White Mountain member, couldn’t help but brag as he showed off the features of the shady Corduroy timber unit, a pristine stand high in the mountains of the Fort Apache reservation.

“This is our end state,” said Mr. Classay, a Bureau of Indian Affairs fuels specialist. “It has all our treatments: logging, mechanical and prescribed fire. Widely spaced trees, high crowns, few ladder fuels. Imagine if a wildfire started here. It would be hard to crown.”

All this comes as music to the ears of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who has made it his mission to fight destructive wildfires with more aggressive forest management, locking horns with environmental groups fighting his agenda by blaming the blazes on global warming

SOURCE

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