Thanks, Frontline News, For Debunking Alarming Claims Made About Antarctica’s Temperature and Ice Trends
A recent article from Frontline News, written by Chris Morrison originally for The Daily Sceptic, describes the difficulties climate alarmists are having explaining why Antarctica is not warming as quickly—if at all—as climate models suggest it should. There is a substantial amount of evidence that Antarctica is not warming as predicted or otherwise responding as climate models have projected during the period of recent climate change. There is also vigorous debate concerning why Antarctica is experiencing relatively little melting.
The article, “Scientists struggle to understand why Antarctica hasn’t warmed in over 70 years despite rise in CO2,” goes into great detail about the large amount of evidence showing how temperature and ice trends in Antarctica refute claims that the continent is on a path of catastrophic warming and ice loss.
“The lack of warming over a significant portion of the Earth undermines the unproven hypothesis that the carbon dioxide humans add to the atmosphere is the main determinant of global climate,” explains Chris Morrison.
Morrison points out that a 2020 study of Antarctica climate data found that the continent has actually seen a modest expansion of sea ice over the past seven decades, as well as net-zero warming across most of the continent. The only area displaying any warming at all is the Antarctic Peninsula region in the western part of the continent, however sea ice coverage in that region, Morrison explains, “is running at levels seen around 50 years ago.” Included in the article is the graphic below, from the Singh and Polvani study, which visually demonstrates the isolated warming trend of the Peninsula amid the cooling trend the rest of the continent is experiencing.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-020-00143-w
Why Antarctica is not behaving as climate models suggest it should is an open question. Some researchers have suggested that the sheer depth and thickness of the ice across Antarctica dampens the continent’s sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 additions and the general warming trend. An explanation for the anomalous heating of the West Antarctic ice sheet and peninsula is discussed in the Climate Realism post, “Antarctic ‘Doomsday Glacier’ Is Really Doomsday for Climate Alarmism.” The rise in temperatures there may be due an increase in volcanic activity beneath the western ice sheet warming local waters.As discussed in this Climate Realism post, here, multiple studies show that much of the continent has experienced cooling over the last few decades, with the exception of three temperature stations on the Antarctic Peninsula.
Despite data showing the contrary, mainstream media alarmists largely persist in pushing a climate-alarm narrative, hyping any ice calving that occurs along the vast coastline of the continent, without mentioning the full context of the ice loss.
In Climate at a Glance: Antarctic Ice Melt, the cumulative ice loss often publicized most widely is compared to the total ice mass of Antarctica. When the data is combined, total ice loss per year comes out to only 0.0003 percent of the total ice mass.
“Attempting to connect every natural variation in weather and long-term climate to just one trace gas produced by humans leads to some unconvincing explanations, not least when climate models are involved,” concludes Morrison, discussing how Antarctica’s behavior contradicts what climate model projections indicate should be occurring there. This is a lesson that could be applied elsewhere in discussions of climate change, as well.
The Earth’s climate is complex and nuanced, which is something that much of mainstream journalism fails to represent. It is always noteworthy when outlets like Frontline News acknowledge and discuss the fact that there is much uncertainty, indeed much unknown, concerning the how, why, and potential impacts of ongoing climate change. There is, or at least still should, be a lively debate concerning the causes and consequences of global warming in the press.
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The Ministry Of Climate Truth Strikes Again
The Christian God is said to know your every thought, word and deed (Matthew 5:21-37). In the new religion of climate change and Gaia worship, every word is identified by ‘intelligent’ computers, assessed for theological compliance, compiled into bite-sized ‘fact checks’ – and sold to interested government and private parties.
In this new world, the high priests of science have spoken, the matter is settled, and canceling is frankly too good for heretics.
Since 2019, a U.K. company called Logically (founded by Lyric Jain in 2017, when he was just 21) has raised about £30 million ($36M) to track what it calls “information threats” across 120 million domains and over 40 major social media platforms.
Both climate and medical discourse is targeted using, it is said, artificial intelligence. A recent report was published suggesting that climate change ‘misinformation’ had been impacted by COVID-19 related ‘conspiracies’.
Major company clients are said to be Facebook, TikTok and Instagram.
Bespoke packages are available for governments and private companies who fear their ‘brand’ may be under threat – and a recent Big Brother Watch report revealed that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) entered into two contracts with the company worth £1,264,392 to monitor “disinformation” in 2021 and 2022.
Big Brother Watch found that Logically “strayed significantly from [its] ‘disinformation’ remit to monitor and delegitimise domestic political dissent in [its] reports.”
Fake news is said by Logically to have plagued governments all over the world for the last five years, “undermining the democratic process and fueling populist political movements.”
The company says that governments “are recognising an urgent need to tackle harmful and misleading online content.”
As the catastrophic implications of Net Zero become generally apparent, it might be noted that political elites may well need all the help they can get in neutralizing growing popular opposition.
In March 2021, Logically launched its ‘flagship’ threat intelligence platform “offering both analytical capabilities and countermeasure deployment to tackle mis- and disinformation.”
The company says its mission is to protect democratic debate by providing access to “trustworthy information.”
On the climate front, misinformation is defined as “communication that contradicts or distorts the scientific evidence and expert consensus that the planet is warming as a result of human activity, and that this will lead to significant instability and damage to the environment.”
The notions contained in this definition are of course anti-science – it is hard to find words that differ so much from the traditional Popperian view that all science should be testable and able to be proved false.
If a conclusion cannot be proved wrong – as with climate models attributing single weather events to long-term climate change – it is simply an opinion, not a scientific hypothesis.
Contradicting – or rather critically appraising – what is considered scientific evidence is what scientists do as they seek to discover the truth.
Expert consensus is of course a purely political term. Perish the thought that the expert consensus should ever be contradicted. Like the Pope in Rome, the pronouncements of ‘experts’ when it comes to climate change are deemed infallible.
‘Fact-checking’ is much in vogue these days. There is obviously money to be made since the major social media platforms have partnerships with a variety of suppliers including mainstream media operations.
Last year the Daily Sceptic was hit with what appeared to be a short but concerted campaign of climate fact checks from companies such as Climate Feedback, USA Today, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
These followed hot on the heels of fact checks of our lockdown and vaccine coverage by companies like Logically. Interested readers can look in the Daily Sceptic’s archive and note we replied to each attack, pointing out that no identifiable published facts had been proved to be untrue. (See Will Jones’s reply to a Logically fact check here.)
Needless to say, the stories attracted various labels such as incorrect, false or misleading. After two particularly inept tries by Reuters, a polite note was sent to the company along the lines of “this nuisance must now cease.”
It appears to have stopped, for the moment, but the damage has been done.
In spite of our stout rebuttals, legitimate, fact-based stories in the Daily Sceptic – and other inquiring publications – are plastered with warnings or worse, downplayed and canceled in the online public spaces.
To give just one example, NewsGuard, a company that gives news publishing sites a score out of 100 according to how safe they are to advertise on, has given the Daily Sceptic 37.5 points because, in the words of one of its executives:
NewsGuard determined that based on the site having repeatedly published significantly false claims in articles and headlines and presenting other sources’ provably false claims as factual, the site fails our criteria for ‘does not repeatedly publish false content’ and ‘avoids deceptive headlines’, in addition to failing the criterion of ‘gathering and presenting information responsibly’.
In other words, we’ve been judged untrustworthy because of the fact checks carried out by Logically and others. That’s why we struggle to get a decent quantity of advertising (Google Ads has blocked us).
Logically appears to have been very busy of late building up a large portfolio of fact-check work. The methods used appear to revolve around extensive computer trawls picking up pre-programmed phrases disputing the ‘settled’ nostrums of climate science.
For instance, natural causes play a part in the climate changing, and global temperatures have risen little in the last two decades. The company then tries to refute the story with other material picked up on the web.
Climate change and medical science seem to be big growth areas for Logically, but there are some odd selections in the examples of ‘disinformation’ the company offers in its marketing material.
For instance: “Satellites don’t exist and the Earth is flat”, “Buzz Aldrin admitted that the moon landing didn’t happen”, and “World Economic Forum promotes paedophilia and claims paedophiles will save the world.”
It is possible that there are one or two people who need clarification on these matters, but a more cynical explanation is that a few nutjobs are inserted to cast doubt on anyone who dissents from climate dogma, including those making factually robust claims.
For instance, the claim that climate change is not responsible for the 2022 Pakistan floods. This particular fact check by Logically doesn’t get off to the best start since it repeats the falsehood that one-third of the country was submerged on August 31st.
Any topographical map shows that this could not be true. According to satellite photographs and easily obtainable UN relief agency data, the figure was 8%.
Climate change ‘deniers’ are said to have created a ‘false narrative’ about the floods in Pakistan, claiming that climate change is not the prime cause.
The unhinged view of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is quoted, claiming the country is going through a “monsoon on steroids.”
The problem with attributing single-event weather catastrophes to long-term changes in the climate caused by humans is that there is no proof. In fact, observations show that such events in Pakistan were frequent in the past.
The above graph, published recently by the World Bank, shows that rainfall has been stable in Pakistan for over a century.
Last year’s floods were a tragedy with about 1,000 lives lost. But in the recent past – 1950, 1992, 1993 and 2010 – more lives were lost in floods. Flooding in Pakistan is not helped by recent massive deforestation.
A different tack is taken when examining claims that global warming ran out of steam over two decades ago. Climate sceptics are said to allege that there has been no warming recently, “even claiming that global temperature has decreased.”
As regular readers of the Daily Sceptic will know, we state that rises in global temperatures have slowed considerably since the turn of the century, and we quote accurate satellite data.
The latest UAH dataset up to January this year shows the current pause extending to eight years and five months.
Surface datasets have been retrospectively adjusted upwards and show a higher warming trend. They are also subject to considerable urban heat corruptions.
Logically says it is a misrepresentation to quote from such a short period. Misrepresentation, even, to refer to the first great pause of the 21st century that lasted from around 2000 to 2012.
Of course, climate trends become established over lengthy periods. However, at a time when humans populations are being freaked out by politicians and green activists quoting imaginary climate model projections of up to 5°C warming by 2100, it is relevant to note that warming in the first 22 years of the century is barely more than 0.1°C.
The logic behind Logically’s intelligence, artificial or otherwise, is that quoting years of data to show the global temperature is stable after a short warming period is wrong, but attributing a single weather event in Pakistan to unproven long-term human-caused changes in the climate is somehow good science.
What price misinformation?
https://principia-scientific.com/the-ministry-of-climate-truth-strikes-again/
*************************************************Green groups targeting blue-collar lobstermen are largely funded by dark money
Environmental groups that have led litigation targeting the lobster fishing industry have been heavily funded by various liberal dark money groups that don't disclose their individual donors, a Fox News Digital review of tax filings found.
The organizations — the Center For Biological Diversity, Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) and Defenders Of Wildlife — first filed a joint federal lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in 2018, arguing a rule issued by the agency years earlier failed to properly protect the endangered North Atlantic right whales from lobster fishing equipment. In April 2020, a federal judge ruled in favor of the groups, ordering the NMFS to issue tighter restrictions.
"Right whales have been getting tangled up and killed in lobster gear for far too long," Kristen Monsell, the oceans program litigation director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said at the time. "This decision sends a clear signal that federal officials must protect these desperately endangered animals from more painful and deadly entanglements before it’s too late."
As a result of the decision, the Biden administration moved forward with new regulations on lobster fishing equipment in May 2021. The coalition of environmental groups then filed another lawsuit challenging the new rule and, in July 2022, again received a favorable judgment from a federal court. CLF senior attorney Arica Fuller applauded the ruling, saying it made clear that "fishery managers must do more to protect" right whales.
However, as a result of the litigation and tighter rules, Maine lawmakers and business leaders have argued that thousands of lobster fishing jobs are at risk. The updated NMFS restrictions stated that fixed gear fisheries like the Maine lobster fishery must reduce their risk to whales by a staggering 98%. The first restrictions were rolled out in May and more restrictions are planned for December 2024 and 2030.
"Friendship, Maine, is the name of the town that I grew up in and that I live in now and where all the previous generations in my family fished and operated from," Dustin Delano, a fourth-generation lobsterman, told FOX Business in December. "Basically, the lobster industry is the backbone — that's what everything was built around and that's pretty much the only option we have here. Without it, I don't think there would be much left."
Overall, Maine's lobster industry — which by state law is made up entirely of small business operators — provides the U.S. with about 90% of the nation's lobster supply, making the industry a top economic driver in the state, and boosting other related industries as well. In 2021, Maine's lobster fishery generated $724.9 million of revenue, the largest amount in state history.
The three groups that have led litigation pushing for greater restrictions on the industry have a long history accepting funding from left-wing groups with unknown wealthy donors, according to a Fox News Digital review of tax filings.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/green-groups-targeting-blue-collar-lobstermen-funded-dark-money
*************************************************Australia: Southern coral reefs thriving as COVID dive project uncovers 'enormous amount of coral'
This gives the lie to Warmist claims that Northern GBR coral is threatened by runoff from the land on Cape York Peninsula. There is very little development on most of the peninsula. Yet we read below that a very heavily developed part of the Southern Queensland coast supports thriving corals. So which is it? Does development along the coastline damage coral or not? It's actually arguable that development BENEFITS coral growth
Researchers have uncovered an abundance of healthy, thriving coral along a heavily developed coastline — far beyond what the team expected when they first pitched the project.
University of Queensland researchers and dive club volunteers wanted a project to focus on as COVID restrictions took hold and limited their ability to work and travel.
A pitch was made to re-examine 11 reefs off Queensland's Sunshine Coast, particularly around Mudjimba Island and the popular tourist destination of Mooloolaba.
Associate Professor Chris Roelfsema brought together researchers and 50 volunteers from the UQ dive club to help.
Dr Roelfsema said what they found was incredible.
"We looked at so many different sites — every time we put our heads underwater, the volunteers went down and they did surveys," he said. "And they saw coral, and every time it was a significant amount of coral, and we didn't expect it.
"We noticed that there was an enormous amount of coral there that we didn't realise was there — and not in a couple of spots but in the 11 spots we visited.
"And that's a big deal that there's so much coral so close to a major urban area."
The project involved 8,000 hours of training, collecting, and analysing data obtained from the underwater landscapes.
Beyond simply the amount of coral revealed by the two-year survey, the team also found little sign of crown-of-thorns starfish — which prey on coral — and almost no hint of coral bleaching.
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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
