NASA says sea levels will rise by a metre over the next century

And what is the basis of that prophecy?  It's not an academic journal article.  It's just a press release, which is here.  And the whole scare is based on one alleged fact: "Seas around the world have risen an average of nearly 3 inches since 1992".

One writer has looked carefully at the data concerned and concludes:

"There is nothing abnormal about sea level rising by 3 inches over a 23-yr period.  Nor is a 3 mm/yr sea level rise over a multi-decade period unusual.  There is simply no anomaly requiring an explanation.  The claim that the 3 inches if sea level rise from 1992-2015 is inline with 3 feet of sea level rise in the 21st century is patently false and demonstrably disprovable.  The accurate statement that sea level is rising faster now than it was 50 years ago is cherry-picking of the highest order."


EXPERTS fear an ice sheet the size of Queensland is melting so quickly it will cause massive storm surges capable of decimating Australia’s coastal cities within the next century.

Satellite images recently captured by NASA show large sections of Greenland and Antarctica are vanishing at a much faster rate than previously thought.

Because of this scientists now believe sea levels will rise by a metre over the next 100 to 200 years. And this is not good. Dr Steve Rintoul from the CSIRO told news.com.au if the NASA predictions prove true Australia could expect more devastating flash floods similar to the one suffered by Brisbane four years ago.  [The Brisbane floods were due to negligent use of Brisbane's big flood-control dam (Wivenhoe).  They were not a "flash flood"]

He said as the average sea level rose, so did the risk of destructive storm surges. “What that means is that the frequency and severity of coastal flooding increases and those floods are more serious as the average sea level rises,” he said. “Most Australians live along the coast, and this is where we are going to feel the impact of sea levels rises.

“There is also about 150 million people that live within one metre of present day sea level, and so if sea levels rise by one metre, those people will be displaced. Many of our major cities around the world are close to sea level and also much of our industry and infrastructure is also close to the coast.

The implications of rising sea levels are quite serious because a one metre rise would cause serious disruption not just to people on low level islands but to infrastructure and the economy in countries that have a coastline.” ... blah blah blah

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A Prayer For The Earth: Answering The Pope’s Call. A One Act Mini-Play

Statistician Briggs is being naughty

Father: “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

Penitent: “Bless me father, I have sinned. It’s been about six months since my last confession.”

Father: “Go on…”

Penitent: “I visited a prostitute twice. I gave her counterfeit money the second visit. I took drugs maybe three, four times. I haven’t gone to mass since my last confession. I didn’t make my kids go, either. But that’s because my ex took them after we divorced. Um…last time I was at mass, I dropped the wafer thing, which I know is not supposed to happen. Uh…”

Father: “Anything else?”

Penitent: “Well, I was in a hurry last week, so…”

Father: “There is no shame here, my son. You must confess all.”

Penitent: “I was late for work, so I didn’t recycle. I threw a pop can in the regular trash. And…well, I knew it was wrong. I hid the can under some coffee grounds so the EPA police wouldn’t see it. That’s it, that’s everything.”

Father: “That’s it?”

Penitent: “Yes.”

Father: “This is very bad.”

Penitent: “I know.”

Father: “Failing to recycle hurts the Earth, you know.”

Penitent: “Yeah.”

Father: “And that can was also money. The deposit. You threw away money, money that could have helped The Poor™.”

Penitent: “I figured one of those bums or illegals might fish it out. They’re always going through the trash.”

Father: “No person is illegal, my son.”

Penitent: “Even those who break the law? No—I’m kidding. I’m joking. Nervous tension. You know how it is.”

Father: “Our bishop said we must be on ‘environmental alert‘. That we must examine our lifestyles with respect to the Earth. We need to meditate on how Brother Sky and Sister Moon feed and nurture us. The bishop said we need to ‘have a greater awareness of environmental and ecological issues’. He wants us to moderate our lifestyles. That’s it. That’s key. I’ve thought a lot about that and I feel we need to put the Earth first and foremost in our lifestyles. With every action, we need to ask, ‘Is this good or bad for the Earth?'”

Penitent: “It was just one can, and—”

Father: “That’s how it starts! A can is tossed into the wrong bin might seem like a small crime, but it’s a gateway. It opens the door. It starts you on a dark path. Today it’s a can, tomorrow you use a large wattage light bulb when you could have got by with one half as bright. And once you do that, what’s to stop you switching on the air conditioning? Next thing you know you’re leaving the car on idle at red lights, forgetting, even, that you have a carbon footprint. You mustn’t forget that your behavior influences others. If everybody threw cans away, the planet itself could face global warming! We could see a temperature rise of nearly a quarter of a degree by the century’s end. And then where would we be?”

Penitent: “I know. I am sorry.”

Father: “Yes, I can sense that you are. It’s well that you came in, and today of all days. It proves the Earth is watching out for you. Today, in case you have forgotten, is the day the Holy Father set aside to pray for the Earth. To pray for the ‘Care of Creation’. The Pope wants us to ask God’s forgiveness ‘for sins committed against the world in which we live.’ Your blithe can was one of these sins. ”

Penitent: “I see that.”

Father: “Pope Francis said we are experiencing an ‘ecological crisis’. He said, ‘living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience.’ No more cans in the trash!”

Penitent: “Yes. I mean, no, father. Never again.”

Father: “Very well. I can feel that you are contrite. The Pope wants us to ‘reaffirm [our] personal vocation to be stewards of creation.’ So for your penance I want you to meditate on what the Earth means to you. And re-read the EPA’s Steps to an Environmentally Pure Life. Make that your prayer for Creation.”

Penitent: “I will.”

Father: “I absolve your from your environmental sins. Go in peace and sin no more.”

Penitent: “Thank you, father.”

SOURCE





Cooling coming?

New study Shows Climate Dominance By The 200-Year Solar Cycle …Cooling coming in the 21st Century!

Abstract

A large number of investigations of paleoclimate have noted the influence of a 200 year oscillation which has been related to the De Vries/Suess cycle of solar activity. As such studies were concerned mostly with local climate, we  have used extensive northern hemispheric proxy data sets of Büntgen and of Christiansen/Ljungqvist together with a southern hemispheric tree-ring set, all with 1 year time resolution, to analyze the climate influence of the solar cycle. As there is increasing interest in temperature rise rates, as opposed to present absolute  temperatures, we have analyzed temperature differences over 100 years to shed light on climate dynamics of at least the last 2500 years. Fourier- and Wavelet transforms as well as nonlinear optimization to sine functions show the dominance of the 200 year cycle. The sine wave character of the climate oscillations permits an approximate prediction of the near future climate.”

I can't see how they can use data from only 100 years to examine a 200 year cycle but maybe I am missing something.  If they are right we have just passed the peak of the cycle and are in for declining temperatures from now on

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UK: Anti-fracking protesters to be labelled 'extremists' by police thanks to Government terror strategy

And the attention-seekers are squealing

Anti-fracking protesters could be viewed as potential extremists under the government’s new counter-terrorism strategy, police have told teachers.

The bizarre advice was offered during a training session as part of the Prevent strategy, which aims to stop youngsters being brainwashed by Islamic extremists.

The group of 100 teachers were told that people campaigning against fracking in their local area could be regarded as having extreme views.

They were also warned that environmental activists and anti-capitalists could be deemed a threat, with the Green MP Caroline Lucas given as an example.

Dylan Murphy, a history teacher present at the training day, said: ‘The thing that set alarm bells ringing in my head was when he started talking about environmental activists. ‘I thought, “Are you equating anti-fracking protests and environmental protesters with neo-Nazis and terrorists?”’

Yesterday, critics voiced concerns that officers appeared to be widening the remit of counterterrorism strategies in schools to include protest groups.

Amanda Brown, assistant general secretary of the NUT teaching union, said: ‘I’m quite alarmed that a police officer, who people would trust and think is offering the right advice, would say that it might be considered as extremism that someone is expressing their right, in a democracy, to express a view.’ [Demonstrators do more than express a view]

The training session was delivered to teachers from several different schools in Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, the Times Educational Supplement reported.

One teacher said the officer referred to the behaviour of Ms Lucas – who was arrested for her part in blocking a road at an anti-fracking demonstration in 2013 – as an example of extremism.

A source at West Yorkshire Police confirmed that the officer at the session had referred to the MP as an example but did not intend to suggest that she was a violent extremist.

The source also confirmed that the attending teachers, drawn from across the Kirklees district, were warned about anti-capitalist and environmental extremists, as well as far-Right and al-Qaeda-inspired extremism.

Ms Lucas said she is ‘shocked’ and is planning to write to the police to complain.

‘Equating peaceful political demonstrations with violent extremism is both offensive and deeply misguided,’ the MP said. ‘It’s this kind of thinking that has led police in this country to waste vast amounts of taxpayers’ money in infiltrating environmental groups.’

Under controversial new guidelines, teachers are required to monitor their pupils and flag up any concerns they may have about radicalisation.

The latest version of the Prevent strategy was published in 2011 and lists international terrorism as well as terrorism connected with Northern Ireland and the extreme Right, as threats.

No mention is made of environmental or anti-capitalist groups.

The government has defined extremism in its Prevent strategy as: ‘Vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.’

Russ Foster, assistant chief commissioner at West Yorkshire Police, said: ‘The police acknowledge the right of people to protest in a lawful manner. However, should an individual seek to use violence in furtherance of their view, then Prevent would seek to engage with them.’

SOURCE





Of Photo-Ops, Glaciers, and Climate Change

Last week, President Barack Obama traveled to Alaska to opine on the perils of climate change. The backdrop for his rumination was the Exit Glacier, which has retreated 187 feet in the past year (and 1.25 miles in the last 200 years). “This is as good of a signpost of what we’re dealing with when it comes to climate change as just about anything,” he said.

Obama isn’t the first politician to use a retreating glacier as a backdrop both to opine on the perils of warming and to advocate for active government intervention in the economy to mitigate the supposed effects of climate change.

Back in 2007, Nancy Pelosi, majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives and a bipartisan group of representatives, traveled to Greenland for a day, in theory to learn about global warming and observe Sermeq Kujalleq (Jakobshavn Glacier), “the world’s fastest glacier” near Ilulissat. It has become a mandatory stop of the global warming tour. As this Greenlandic tourist website proclaims:

Climate change becomes more of a hot topic each day. The Ilulissat Icefjord, and the Greenland Ice Cap that produces it, are increasingly in the spotlight. We Greenlanders are thankful for the growing interest in an issue that we live with and adapt to constantly, but even more so, we are proud to be at the center of important research with global implications. Visiting the Ilulissat Icefjord is not only about seeing a large calving glacier or melting icebergs before it’s too late. It is a unique opportunity to be active in the climate change conversation here at ‘ground zero’ and to let your experiences in Greenland inspire your life back home.

I visited Ilulissat shortly after Pelosi and spent several days there due to a strike by Air Greenland. Wandering the town after spending several hours exploring the glacier on foot, by air, and by boat, it was hard to conclude that Pelosi did not spend too much time studying global warming. She was in town for a day, and almost every store in town had a thank you note from the Majority Leader from her time shopping. And while the speed of Sermeq Kujalleq is impressive and might be worrying if representative of all glaciers, Pelosi, and crew neglected to mention is that the adjacent Sermeq Avannarleq (“The dead glacier”) is remarkably stable.

Back to President Obama. The Exit Glacier may be in retreat, but other Alaskan glaciers are growing. What Obama did essentially was cherry-pick to force conclusions that the evidence would not necessarily support (much like he did to justify the Iran deal). And that assumes that climate change and global warming would actually be as bad for the economy and humanity as some of the doomsayers preach. After all, as I’ve argued over at the American Enterprise Institute, between 1900 and 2000, the average global temperatures rose 0.65 Celsius. During the same period, global average life expectancy pretty much doubled to over 60 years old. Average global per capita income increased almost ten-fold over the same period from $680 to $6,500. If rate of warming is the concern, the end of the “little ice age” between the 14th and 19th century should have brought a retraction in global health and economy, but it didn’t. Likewise, height of Islamic civilization coincided with the “medieval warm period.”

A few months ago, I was talking to a Navy meteorologist about her job. She had done her training at Pennsylvania State, one of the best programs for meteorology. She was explaining how difficult it was: she needed to study the same hard science and advanced mathematics as other scientists, but while physicists, biologists, chemists, and others can strictly control laboratory conditions to isolate variables, meteorologists and climatologists cannot. That makes predictions—and often the science itself—far more difficult. While evidence suggests some anthropogenic impact on warming, politicians and scientists emphasizing the human aspect are undercut by the repeated failure of their models to predict warming trends, even if such failures might simply be the result of the extraordinary complexity of the atmosphere.

With the Iran deal apparently done (if the Iranians themselves don’t throw a wrench into it), both President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have suggested they will focus their remaining efforts on tackling climate change. Let’s hope that Obama and Kerry will be prepared for a more serious debate and will have the self-confidence and mastery of the facts to argue rather than mudsling or engage in vacuous photo-ops on the taxpayer dime.

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Global warming or natural variability?

A new paper attributes spring floods in Texas and Oklahoma to manmade global warming. Still, critics say it could also be an issue of natural variability.

It's long been said that human-driven emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere make the earth warmer. As temperature increases, so does the amount of moisture in the atmosphere. In times of rain, that results in more water coming down. Meanwhile, some scientists believe that human-caused warming of the oceans adds to El Niño cycles, something that also affects the atmosphere. A new paper published in Geophysical Research Letters ties these things together as a cause of May 2015 floods in Texas and Oklahoma.

Chip Knappenberger is a former research coordinator at the Virginia State Climatology Office and is now serving as assistant director of the center for the study of science at the Cato Institute. He says it's possible the authors of the paper are misidentifying things.

Knappenberger: "Well, it is easy, I think, to fool yourselves into thinking you're finding a global-warming signal in the realm of natural variability, because natural variability is a tricky thing,” he says.

“It takes all sorts of forms and timescales, and if you're not fully aware of all that, you can find something that looks like what you think anthropogenic global warming signals look like somewhere in that noise of natural variability. It seems to me, looking over this study, that there is a possibility - a pretty strong possibility - that is what's going on here."

This is not the only research tying manmade global warming to natural disasters. Knappenberger doubts this will be the last that will be heard about such findings.

"They're never going to see otherwise because there is this notion that anthropogenic global warming has this sort of magical quality,” he tells OneNewsNow. “No matter what you're looking for, you can typically blame it on global warming. From droughts to floods to blizzards to record heat to tornadoes, it's a contrast of opposites, but you can always come back to Aha! Anthropogenic global warming is the cause of that.

"So, when you get down to it, it has a very magical quality that way, and things with magical qualities tend to run with how you think science should be. If you can explain everything with one theory, it's probably not likely what's going on."

Even so, atmospheric scientists point to man's burning of fossil fuels as the principle driver of global warming or climate change.

"Putting more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere through human activity does have an effect on the overall atmosphere and weather systems,” Knappenberger acknowledges. “But whether you can identify that effect and whether that effect rises above the natural noise to become significant in a way that we should worry about it is where the argument lies.

"I'm here to say that natural variability still plays a large role especially on local and regional spatial scales, more so than [does] global warming."

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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