Most Of Antarctica Has Cooled By Over 1°C Since 1999

We hear a lot about Arctic warming, Greenland in particular. How come we don't hear much about Antarctic cooling? Could there be a natural balancing going on that nobody wants to talk about?

New research indicates West Antarctica’s mean annual surface temperatures cooled by more than -1.8°C (-0.93°C per decade) from 1999-2018. In spring, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) cooling rate reached -1.84°C per decade.

Not only has the WAIS undergone significant cooling in the last two decades, but most of the continent has also cooled by more than 1°C.

Of 28 CMIP6 models, none captured a cooling trend – especially of this amplitude – for this region. This modeling failure “implies substantial uncertainties in future temperature projections of CMIP6 models.”

The post-1999 cooling trend has not been confined to Antarctica.

Sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the Eastern and Central Pacific (south of 25°N) also cooled from 1999-2018 relative to 1979-1997.

This cooling encompasses nearly half of the Southern Hemisphere’s SSTs.

The 1999-2018 mean annual surface temperature cooling of the Antarctic continent and nearly half of the Southern Hemisphere’s SSTs do not support the claims that surface warming is driven by human emissions of ‘greenhouse gases’.

After all, if the increase in ‘GHG forcing’ can’t explain the widespread cooling, why would the same concentrations of ‘GHG’s explain the areas with warming temperatures?

https://principia-scientific.com/most-of-antarctica-has-cooled-by-over-1c-since-1999/

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Are We Really In An Unprecedented Time Of Warming?

Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) events are one of the most striking discoveries in earth science related to past climate. They are named after the two climatologists, Willi Dansgaard and Hans Oeschger, who were instrumental in their identification.

These events are rapid climate fluctuations that occurred frequently during the last glacial period, illustrating a planet capable of swift and dramatic temperature shifts.

The discovery of D-O events can be traced back to the ice core drilling projects in Greenland in the late 20th century.

Analysis of the isotopic composition of ice cores, particularly the ratio of oxygen isotopes 18O and 16O, revealed evidence of abrupt climatic changes.

These isotopes served as proxies for past temperatures, with higher ratios indicating warmer periods.

The meticulous work of Dansgaard and Oeschger, along with their colleagues, in the 1980s led to the recognition that the Earth’s climate has not always been steady, but has seen dramatic swings, especially during the last glacial period around 115,000 to 11,700 years ago.

Comparison of temperature proxies for ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland for 140,000 years. Greenland ice cores use delta 18O, while Antarctic ice cores use delta 2H. Note the Dansgaard-Oeschger events in the Greenland ice core between 20,000 and 110,000 years ago, which barely register (if at all) in the corresponding Antarctic record. GRIP and NGRIP data is on ss09sea timescale, Vostok uses GT4, and EPICA uses EDC2. Source

One of the most well-known D-O events is the Bølling-Allerød interstadial, a warm period that occurred around 14,700 years ago, punctuating the last glacial period with a rapid shift to warmer conditions.

It was followed by the Younger Dryas, a sudden return to glacial conditions before the onset of the current Holocene epoch.

These episodes are recorded in Greenland ice cores, with corresponding evidence found in ocean sediment cores, showing worldwide effects.

Another notable example is the Older Dryas, which marked a brief return to colder conditions within the general warming trend of the last deglaciation.

Each D-O event is represented in the ice core data by a rapid warming transition, followed by a more gradual cooling period.

The evidence for D-O events primarily comes from the analysis of ice cores, where they are marked by layers containing different isotopic compositions, suggesting rapid temperature swings over decades or centuries.

For instance, the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) and the Greenland Icecore Project (GRIP) have provided detailed and high-resolution data that chart these fluctuations (refresher on oxygen isotopes).

Sediment cores from the North Atlantic also offer support, as they display changes in the deposition patterns, which coincide with the warming and cooling phases of D-O events.

D-O events are critical to our understanding of the Earth’s climate system. They serve as a reminder that climate can change abruptly and with significant global impacts.

While these events occurred during a glacial period, and their direct applicability to our current interglacial climate is debatable, they highlight the roles that oceanic and atmospheric circulations play in global climate and how these systems can undergo rapid transitions.

Modern warming of approximately 1.1°C since 1880 is rather mild when compared to past natural fluctuations like D-O events.

https://principia-scientific.com/are-we-really-in-an-unprecedented-time-of-warming/

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Another Statistician Becomes A Climate Skeptic

In 2015 the BBC ran a program called “Climate Change by the Numbers”, in which they picked three numbers they thought were representative of the ‘climate change’ issue and handed them to three professors previously uninvolved with that topic and asked them to spend half an hour explaining what they meant

The numbers were: the average warming since 1880 (0.85C), the degree of certainty that at least half the warming since 1950 is man-made (95 percent) and the cumulative amount of ‘carbon’ that can be emitted if warming is to remain below “dangerous levels” (one trillion tonnes).

The 95 percent certainty number was handed to Dr. Norman Fenton, a now-retired Professor of Risk at Queen Mary University and author of over 350 peer reviewed articles in probability and statistics.

He spent his half hour not discussing climate change, which he was not familiar with, but how models are constructed for other kinds of analysis like football scores, which he happened to be working on at the time.

He said it was an analogy for how climate science worked, only there wasn’t enough time to look at the topic in detail, but he assumed that somebody somewhere has shown that scientists are 95 percent certain etc. etc.

Some time later, however, he finally had the time to study it, and in a new report for the Global Warming Policy Foundation he says he got it wrong, the IPCC made a mistake and the 95 percent certainty claim is baseless.

Wanna bet the BBC won’t be asking him back?

The problem, explains Professor Fenton, is one that is sufficiently familiar to have a name, “The Prosecutor’s Fallacy”. It happens when people reverse the condition and the conclusion, and is also called the “fallacy of the transposed conditional” by professional philosophers trying to repel their audience with the same skill sometimes displayed by statisticians.

But here’s Fenton’s plain-language illustration:

“If an animal is a cat, there is a very high probability that it has four legs. However, if an animal has four legs, we cannot conclude that it is a cat.

It’s a classic error, and is precisely what the IPCC has done.”

In this case if warming is man-made, there is a very high probability that it is unusual. But just because it is unusual, we cannot conclude that it is man-made.

The logic in the IPCC report begins with the claim that, according to models, most warming is man-made. And if that proposition is true then, if there was no man-made impact, there would be less than a five percent chance of seeing the warming that has happened since 1950.

But since we see the warming, it means there is less than five percent chance there was no man-made impact, hence a 95 percent chance most of the warming was man-made.

Wrong, says Fenton. Backwards, in fact:

“The problem is that, even if the models were accurate (and it is unlikely that they are) we cannot conclude that there is at least a 95 percent chance that more than half the warming was man-made, because doing so is the fallacy of the transposed conditional.

All we can conclude is that there is at least a 95 percent probability we would not observe the warming we have seen based on the climate change model simulations and their multiple assumptions.”

But we have to take account of the possibility the models are wrong, he says, or that something other than ‘greenhouse gases’ can cause warming.

And just because there’s only a one-in-twenty chance of something happening, it doesn’t mean if it did happen it had to be man-made. It just means it was unlikely.

But unlikely things happen quite often; given how many things happen, it is highly unlikely that a lot of them wouldn’t be unlikely.

As Fenton adds, however unlikely warming may be, it has happened frequently in the past. And of course:

“previous periods of warming certainly could not have been caused by increased ‘greenhouse gases’ from humans, so it seems reasonable to assume – before we have considered any of the evidence – that the probability humans caused most of the recent increase in temperature to be very low; only the assumptions of the simulation models are allowed, and other explanations are absent.

In both of these circumstances, classical statistics can then be used to deceive you into presenting an illusion of confidence when it is not justified.”

The IPCC’s conclusion is just circular reasoning. All warming is man-made, we see warming, therefore it’s man-made. Unless it isn’t.

If Professor Fenton keeps digging he will find that the IPCC has already dealt with this objection about past warming by wiping out past climatic changes and making it look like temperatures never did anything until Henry Ford invented the Model T.

Although he seems to be aware of that issue too because he makes an offhand reference to the hockey stick and the statistical problems that have been identified with it.

It’s too bad that it took eight years for Professor Fenton to realize his error, but better late than never, and kudos to him for coming forward about it.

It may be too late to save the UK from freezing this winter with their heat pumps and their iced-over solar panels but at least it’s a step in the direction towards sanity.

https://principia-scientific.com/another-statistician-becomes-a-climate-skeptic/

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Greenie Billionaire Funds Khan’s low emissions tyranny

One of Britain’s wealthiest men has been bankrolling the campaign for low-emission zones and has made a £46 million donation to a climate network chaired by Sadiq Khan, The Telegraph can reveal

Sir Christopher Hohn, a financier whose investments include a stake in the owner of Heathrow Airport, has donated more than £670 million to climate campaigns via his philanthropic fund in less than a decade.

He is one of a handful of billionaires ploughing money into civil society organisations that lobby local and national governments to enact net zero or clean-air policies.

Sir Christopher and Michael Bloomberg, a former New York mayor, are “strategic funders” of C40 cities, a global network of nearly 100 mayors of the world’s leading cities who are united in action to confront the ‘climate crisis’.

Khan, the London mayor and chairman of the group, which has called for people to eat less meat, give up their private cars and take only one flight every three years.

Since 2013, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), co-founded and chaired by Sir Christopher, has given nearly $57million in grants to C40 cities, and Mr Bloomberg has donated $45 million to the organisation that he used to chair.

The London Mayor has been the C40 cities chairman since 2021, and a source at City Hall said that its more radical proposals were made before he was in post and were not targets.

CIFF is also a major funder of the Clean Air Fund and has donated more than £17 million to it. The lobby group claims on its website that it:

“drove the creation or expansion of eight Clean Air Zones (CAZ) in Bath, Brighton, Portsmouth and the London Ultra Low Emission Zone – with the potential to save millions of lives.”

Mr Khan has previously been accused of manipulating the Ulez public consultation by excluding 5,000 responses from the final consultation.

The funding details are revealed in a report on the Clean Air campaign, seen by The Telegraph, which calls for the public to be included in debates about radical policies.

Its authors, from Together and Climate Debate UK, say not enough is known about the funding behind organisations pushing through policies that have a major impact on people’s lives. Their report alleges that “undue proximity between billionaires and the centre of political power” excludes the public from conversations.

It suggests that “seemingly localist civil society organisations”, including the UK100 coalition of local councils, which has “lobbied for anti-car and air pollution policies”, are funded by billionaires and there “are no grassroots air pollution campaigns of consequence”.

It alleges “grants from fewer than 10 philanthropic foundations account for well in excess of a billion dollars of climate grant making per year”. This dwarfs funds available to grassroots campaigns and research and the amounts spent by political parties on campaigning.

The Telegraph has previously revealed that Sir Christopher, personally and through his philanthropic organisation, was a major funder of Extinction Rebellion. His hedge fund, TCI Fund Management, owns shares in Airbus and Ferrovial, which partially owns Heathrow Airport.

It can now be revealed that CIFF, his philanthropic arm, has funded a number of projects that have involved City Hall, including the Breathe London air monitoring project, which places sensors around the capital.

Shirley Rodrigues, Mr Khan’s deputy for environment and energy, joined City Hall from CIFF, where she had held a number of roles, including ‘acting executive director for climate change’.

The Telegraph has previously revealed that Ms Rodrigues has been accused of attempting to “silence” scientists who were critical of the impact of the Ulez, a charge she denied.

An earlier report by the campaign groups accused Mr Khan of misleading the public when he claimed pollution was responsible for the deaths of 4,000 Londoners a year to justify imposing the Ulez scheme.

Mr Khan did not respond to questions about billionaires’ funding, but City Hall officials insisted that all eligible Ulez consultation responses had been taken into account.

Since 2013, CIFF has donated $827 million to climate related causes and Mr Bloomberg’s Bloomberg Philanthropies has given $502 million. The foundations work internationally.

There is a “money-go-round” where donations are passed from one organisation to another, and the funding of campaign groups is often unclear, says Ben Pile, a report author.

“Policies such as the Ulez should be driven by the public, not by billionaires whose interests have not been properly explored,” said Mr Pile.

A similar organisation to the global C40 cities network exists for local councils. The UK100 Cities Network requires authorities that join it to pledge to go further and faster than the Government on Net Zero.

It is active in more than 100 councils.

An earlier version of its website stated it has received financial support from CIFF and the European Climate Foundation, which has in turn received money from Sir Christopher’s fund.

The report’s authors said:

“The public must be at the centre of political decision-making across all policy domains.

Though air pollution policies may seem to have been driven by grassroots campaigns and scientific evidence, we have investigated these organisations and found that they are in fact almost exclusively supported by a small number of philanthropic foundations that are active in climate change lobbying, which have made air quality a proxy issue for the same agenda.

The public has simply not been consulted, much less been free to participate in discussion about or vote on important questions.”

https://principia-scientific.com/xr-funder-billionaire-also-funds-khans-ulez-network/

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http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )

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