Sunday, June 04, 2023
New study reveals Antarctic ice area has GROWN by 5305 km2 from 2009-2019
A new study by a team of climate scientists and published by the European Geosciences Union reveals that the Antarctic ice shelf area has grown by 5305 km2 from 2009-2019, gaining 661 Gt of ice mass over the past decade.
The new observations confirm the findings of eminent meteorologist Professor J. Ray Bates whose research has shown that trends in polar sea-ice levels give little cause for alarm.
In a paper published just over a year ago by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Professor Bates contrasted climate model simulations - which predict significantly decreasing sea ice levels in both hemispheres - with empirical data and observed trends in Arctic and Antarctic sea ice.
Professor Bates said:
"In 2007, Al Gore told us that Arctic sea ice levels were ‘falling off a cliff’. It’s clear now that he was completely wrong. In fact, the trends in sea-ice are an antidote to climate alarm.”
Professor Bates also says that little reliance should be placed on model simulations of future sea-ice decline:
"Climate models failed to predict the growth in Antarctic sea ice, and they missed the recent marked slowdown of sea-ice decline in the Arctic. It would be unwarranted to think they are going to get things right over the next 30 years.”
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Ice Around Antarctica’s Thwaites ‘Doomsday’ Glacier Was Eight Times Thinner Around 8,000 Years Ago
Sensational new scientific findings at a site on the West Antarctica ice sheet near the Thwaites ’Doomsday’ Glacier indicate that current ice levels are up to eight times thicker than they were around 8,000 years ago. A group of 13 scientists led by Greg Balco of the Berkeley Geochronology Centre carried out extensive field work in the Amundsen Sea Embayment between the Thwaites and Pope glaciers and found current thickness levels of 40 metres compared with measurements in the recent past ranging from 2-7m. The work is of major importance since it casts new light on the cycles of ice production and loss that have always occurred in an area riddled with buried volcanoes.
The scientists noted that “subglacial bedrock exposure” analysis gives “direct, unambiguous evidence for ice thinning and subsequent thickening of at least 35m during the past several thousand years”. Furthermore, the work shows that ice thinning is a natural process that is reversible. It is noted that this is an important finding given the concerns that ice sheet thinning at the nearby glaciers including Thwaites may lead to significant deglaciation across the West Antarctica ice sheet, and subsequent sea level rise.
The scientists also refer to evidence from other field work that shows rapid early and middle Holocene ice thinning up to around 7,000 years ago throughout the Amundsen sea area. In addition, they found that there was no evidence to suggest that the ice has been thicker than its present levels for over 4,000 years. Record recent highs no less – hold the front page, or maybe not!
It is almost certain that these findings will be ignored in the mainstream media where the political requirements of ‘settled’ science have led to an effective ban on the discussion of natural geological influences on the climate. Antarctica is a difficult area to drum up climate alarm about since warming has been “nearly non-existent” over the last seven decades of recorded history. Changes around the massive Thwaites glacier are one of the key poster stories designed to spread global climate fear, and promote the solution of the collectivist Net Zero project.
The recent Singh and Polvani paper shows recent warming only in the west of the continent. Of course, it begs the question for those who attribute all climate change to humans burning fossil fuel – why would a well-mixed atmospheric gas like carbon dioxide produce just one warming spot in Antarctica, and have no effect over the rest of the ice-covered continent? A more plausible explanation for the localised warming is the presence of volcanoes, particularly in the light of the recent discovery of an additional 91 of them in the region. In total, there are 138 identified volcanoes in the West Antarctica Rift System, with heights ranging from 300 to 12,600 ft.
The No Tricks Zone science site adds to the discussion by noting that while the Earth’s crust has an average thickness of 40 km, the Thwaites-Pine Island-Pope glacier region has a thinner covering between 10-18 kms, exposing the base of the ice to 580C tectonic trenches. NTZ references work in Dziadek et al (2021) that the “elevated geothermal heat flow band” is exerting a “profound influence on the flow dynamics of the Western Antarctica Ice Sheet”.
Thwaite has been tagged the ‘Doomsday Glacier’ since perceived instabilities can be whipped up to promote fear about massive potential sea level rises. When the BBC green activist-in-chief Justin Rowlatt flew to the area, he witnessed an “epic vision of shattered ice”. To him, the Antarctic is the “frontline of climate change”. He went on to note that it was a place “where the equilibrium that has held our world in balance for tens of thousands of years is beginning to slip and crash”. The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich recently posted a film on YouTube saying, “Within decades the massive Thwaites glacier in West Antarctica could collapse.” The Guardian was recently worried that “cracks and fissures” made breakup more likely.
NTZ notes there are many scientifically established natural causes of ice melt in the region. The new Balco study is said to categorically undermine claims that the ice melt occurring is “unusual, unprecedented, or unnatural”. Interestingly, the Balco-led scientists suggest that possible stability during the past thinning/thickening phases was provided by a “glacioisostatic rebound feedback”. This means that the Earth’s surface naturally rises from underlying layers as huge weights of ice are removed. This effect is common across the planet, where some land mass is rising as a result of the lifting of the recent period of glaciation.
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Americans Rebelling Against Biden’s Green New Deal Policies
“Drill, baby, drill”: When Donald Trump blurted this during the recent CNN Town Hall, the crowd went wild. Remember?
American energy independence and energy dominance were key successes of Mr. Trump’s first term. There was virtually no inflation, interest rates were low, and, along with tax cuts and deregulation, the moribund Obama economy came to life. That was then, this is now.
President Biden has waged war on fossil fuels for two and a half years, doing everything he can to shut the spigots. So, inflation re-emerged, rising 15 percent, with energy up 33 percent and grocery prices up nearly 20 percent.
Energy is not the only inflationary source, but Mr. Trump has the overall story basically right. Last night, appearing with Sean Hannity on Fox News, the former president repeated his attack on Mr. Biden.
“So we were energy independent,” he said. “Think of it, three years ago, and what people don’t know is that we have, I call it liquid gold, because it’s gold. It’s better than gold. We have liquid gold under our feet more than any other nation, more than Saudi Arabia, more than Russia. We’re energy independent.
“Within six months we would have been energy dominant and we were going to sell energy to Europe and lots of other places. And we’re going to make so much money doing it because it’s such a big world, you know, it’s such a big business. It’s all encompassing. And that’s what started the inflation. I mean, the energy we stopped drilling and all of a sudden gasoline’s going up to $5 or $6 a gallon in a car.”
Now here’s the good news: Americans are rebelling against Mr. Biden’s radical left, green new deal policies that have inflicted pain on the economy, jacked up inflation, and caused real take home pay for middle-class, blue-collar working families to decline for more than two years straight.
A recent poll sponsored by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity shows that 79 percent agree we shouldn’t make energy more expensive. Only 19 percent disagree. The same poll shows that 77 percent of respondents don’t want to be forced into electric vehicles. Only 23 percent want an EV mandate.
Finally, when asked how much they would personally be willing to pay each year to address global warming, the median response was $20. Mr. Biden, of course, is spending trillions of dollars. Pollster Mike McKenna notes that all these responses are moving away from the Biden war against fossil fuels.
There’s even some more good news: The scourge of ESG may be coming to an end. ESG is short for environmental, social, and corporate governance. It is a left-wing rallying cry embodying radical climate change as well as far-left investment and even cultural issues.
At two recent shareholder meetings, for ExxonMobil and Chevron, ESG supporters got whupped. Shareholders defeated a bunch of proposals to cut greenhouse gas emissions, put out new reports on climate benchmarks, and disclose oil spill risks. Last year, those proposals were very popular.
Incidentally, similar climate proposals were defeated at the annual meetings for BP and Shell. Big investment companies like Vanguard and Blackrock have pulled back. SEC regulatory proposals that would practically dictate that companies run on the basis of climate are in disfavor.
A leading Federal Reserve governor just gave a hard-hitting speech saying the Fed’s job is monetary and financial stability, not policing climate change.
As the Russian war in Ukraine continues to rage, Europe is now changing its tune on fossil fuels, making natural gas a legitimate and acceptable clean-burning fuel. Let’s hope that the tide is in fact turning.
Because if it does, and common sense policies are restored, America will be more prosperous, with far less inflation.
https://www.nysun.com/article/americans-rebelling-against-bidens-green-new-deal-policies ?
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Gas heating ban could topple Germany’s government
Ah Germany, land of economic resilience, political consensus, low debt, social compliance, manufacturing prowess, beer gardens and lederhosen. But for how much longer?
Alone among G7 advanced economies, Germany has recently slipped into recession, and hard though it may be to believe, the Government is in some danger of being toppled by, of all things, a mass revolt against heat pumps.
Germany has long had a problem with energy policy; so utterly destructive has its machinations become that it makes our own failings in this department – which are myriad – look like a paragon of common sense by comparison.
Boilergeddon, or what Germans have labelled the “heat hammer”, is just the latest, farcical example of the destructive chaos that the unthinking and unmitigated pursuit of environmental goals has unleashed on the German economy.
To reach its climate change targets, Germany’s coalition government had been planning to bring in a new law that would ban the installation of new gas and oil fired boilers from the beginning of next year onwards.
The upshot is not just a mad dash among households to install traditional gas fired boilers while they still can, but a collapse in the Government’s poll ratings and an increasingly acrimonious standoff between two of the coalition partners – the Greens and the more enterprise friendly Free Democrats.
Energy policy is not the only issue on which they are at loggerheads. Far from it, with the very foundations of Germany’s postwar economic success and affluence seemingly collapsing beneath their feet. But it is the most high profile.
As a foretaste of what may be to come in the UK, which is planning a similar ban for new-build houses the year after next, and is considering a blanket prohibition on all properties from 2035 onwards, the German experience in attempting to impose heat pumps on an ever more reluctant population makes for particularly alarming reading.
Generally ineffective and often fiendishly expensive both to install and to run, heat pumps have been widely branded an unacceptable obligation among German voters, who are up in arms at the idea of being compelled to buy them.
Such has been the ferocity of public reaction to Germany’s “heat hammer” that a grovelling climbdown now looks likely.
The debacle has piled on the agony and self doubt in an economy whose heavy reliance on the internal combustion engine has left it stranded as the world rushes at breakneck speed towards electrified forms of transport.
“We’ve been naïve as a society because everything seems fine,” Martin Brudermüller, chief executive of BASF, recently told Bloomberg. “These problems we have in Germany are accumulating. We have a period of change ahead of us; I don’t know if everyone realises this.”
Pride of place in the catalogue of errors that increasingly defines public policy in Germany goes to energy strategy, which is a mass of contradictions and misjudgments.
As if determined to keep shooting itself in the foot, Germany last month closed the last three of its remaining nuclear power plants, thereby fulfilling an election pledge by the Greens, who hold the energy portfolio, and for whom the abolition of nuclear power is a long standing obsession verging on a religiously held belief.
While others are desperately trying to crank up their nuclear generation to meet net zero targets, Germany has gone haring off in the other direction and closed down some of the most efficient nuclear power plants in Europe.
This final act of stupidity comes hard on the heels of the shock of having to wean the nation off Russian gas supplies, addiction to which counts as another piece of genius in German energy policy, this one engineered by the Putin-loving former Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder.
There was at least one mistake which I suppose the Germans didn’t make. Unlike Britain, they didn’t dynamite their remaining coal fired power stations, so that there is at least some generating capacity to fill the gap left by Putin.
Yet to be closing down near zero-emitting nuclear plants while simultaneously reopening CO2 spewing coal plants? This can hardly be called environmentalism.
Mind you, Britain hardly looks a great deal better on that front.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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