The ENTIRE West Antarctic ice sheet could collapse and raise global sea levels by 10ft, claim researchers

LOL.  But will the second coming of Christ occur before then?  One might as well say so.  Both prophecies are equally well-founded -- i.e. founded in faith alone.  It's just another fantasy from Schellnberger's absurd Potsdam Institute, which ignores the fact that the Antarctic ice is in fact GROWING.  Even NASA says so.  That may not last but what will happen in the distant future is unknown
 
Last year, scientists claimed that glaciers in the Amundsen Sea of West Antarctica had reached a point of 'unstoppable' retreat.

They said these glaciers were locked in a thaw linked to global warming that may push up sea levels for centuries.

Now, a new study has add fresh urgency to the issue, after suggesting melting of the Amundsen sea's glaciers would lead to the collapse of all of West Antarctica.

A small amount of melting in the next 60 years, could destabilise the entire ice sheet and the rise of global sea levels by 9.8ft (3 meters), according to the Potsdam Institute in Germany.

The results could be catastrophic. A full discharge of ice into the ocean could lead to a 3 metre (9.8ft) rise in sea-levels, scientists have warned.

Currently, more than 150 million people globally live within just 1 meter of the sea. In the US, a 3 meter rise in sea levels would swallow cities such as New York and Miami.

The research, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used an advanced climate model to study what will happen if these glaciers collapsed.

The Amundsen Sea has long been thought to be the weakest ice sheet in the West Antarctic. But this study is the first to look specifically at how losses in the Amundsen Sea could affect the entire ice sheet in the long term.

According to the computer simulations, a few decades of ocean warming can start an ice loss that continues for centuries or even millennia. At current melting rates, the ice sheet will hit a critical point in about 60 years, it said.

'What we call the eternal ice of Antarctica unfortunately turns out not to be eternal at all,' says Johannes Feldmann, lead author of the study at the Potsdam Institute. 'Once the ice masses get perturbed, which is what is happening today, they respond in a non-linear way. 'There is a relatively sudden breakdown of stability after a long period during which little change can be found.'

'A few decades can kick-start change going on for millennia.'

A recent Nasa study found that the Antarctic ice sheet is adding more ice than it's losing, but this won't be the case in the long-term.

Ocean warming is slowly melting the ice shelves from beneath, those floating extensions of the land ice.

Large portions of the West Antarctic ice sheet are grounded on bedrock below sea level and generally slope downwards in an inland direction. Ice loss can make the grounding line retreat.

Scientists say the early stages of collapse have already begun and there's nothing we can do to stop it.

Antarctica is gaining more ice than it loses from its glaciers, new research by Nasa claims.  It says Antarctica's ice sheet is currently thickening enough to outweigh increased losses caused by melting glaciers, which is attributed to global warming.

The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that Antarctica is losing land ice overall.  But it also warns that losses could offset the gains in years to come.

The increase in Antarctic snow began 10,000 years ago and continues in East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica by an average of 0.7 inches (1.7cm) per year, according to the space agency.

Researchers analysed satellite data to demonstrate the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.

'We're essentially in agreement with other studies that show an increase in ice discharge in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Thwaites and Pine Island region of West Antarctica,' said Jay Zwally, a glaciologist with Nasa Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland and lead author of the study published in the Journal of Glaciology.

'Our main disagreement is for East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica – there, we see an ice gain that exceeds the losses in the other areas.'

This exposes more ice to the slightly warmer ocean water - further accelerating the retreat.

'In our simulations 60 years of melting at the presently observed rate are enough to launch a process which is then unstoppable and goes on for thousands of years,' Feldmann says.

This would eventually yield at least 3 meters of sea-level rise.

'This certainly is a long process,' Feldmann says. 'But it's likely starting right now.'

'So far we lack sufficient evidence to tell whether or not the Amundsen ice destabilisation is due to greenhouse gases and the resulting global warming,' added co-author and IPCC sea-level expert Anders Levermann, also from the Potsdam Institute.

'But it is clear that further greenhouse-gas emission will heighten the risk of an ice collapse in West Antarctica and more unstoppable sea-level rise.'

'That is not something we have to be afraid of, because it develops slowly,' he said.

'But it might be something to worry about, because it would destroy our future heritage by consuming the cities we live in - unless we reduce carbon emission quickly.

SOURCE




Two Reasons to Reject Obama’s ‘Clean Power Plan’ for Climate Change

It is difficult to see how a U.S. envoy to Paris for the climate deal will convince the United Nations that Americans support President Obama’s promise to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

The cornerstone of Obama’s promise to the U.N. is called the “Clean Power Plan.” Developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the plan is a set of regulations on new and existing power plants that, realistically, would eliminate the use of coal-powered electricity and force states to meet targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions set by the agency.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in both the Senate and House of Representatives took leadership on the issue and put forth resolutions of disapproval of the Clean Power Plan.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee is set to vote this week on that chamber’s measures. Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., chairman of the energy and power subcommittee, said:

    "These resolutions serve to halt EPA’s unauthorized actions and ultimately are about protecting ratepayers across the country from increased electricity prices, reliability threats, and jobs".

Obama surely will veto any revocation of the Clean Power Plan that makes it to his desk. However, the votes in Congress hardly represent a wasted effort.

The votes will send a clear message to Americans—as well as the nations meeting next month for the the U.N. climate summit known as the Paris Protocol—that the Obama administration’s unilateral attempt to fundamentally change our economy and energy sector isn’t acceptable.

Here are two simple but compelling reasons to reject the Clean Power Plan, even if some in Congress believe that a need exists to address climate change:

1. The Clean Power Plan does next to nothing to reduce global temperatures. Obama hasn’t given Americans, or the world, an answer to perhaps the most important question: What kind of impact will the agency’s plan to counter global warming have? Models created by the EPA itself show that the climate impact of the Clean Power Plan is less than 0.02 degrees Celsius in warming avoided over the next 85 years.

It’s enlightening when the EPA and another of the loudest advocates for action on climate change say as much.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy testified before Congress that the Clean Power Plan isn’t about reducing global temperatures, but about “an investment opportunity” and “the tone and tenor” of the Paris climate negotiations.

Jim Hansen, a professor at Columbia University who used to head NASA’s climate arm at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, called the Clean Power Plan “practically worthless,” even though it is the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s climate agenda. Hansen is far from what Obama calls global warming or climate change “deniers.”

2. The Clean Power Plan attempts to address global warming in a destructive way. Those on both sides of the aisle and of opposite convictions about global warming or climate change have opposed the plan for the simple, immensely important reason of how the Obama administration is attempting to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Rather than go through the legislative process, the administration has pushed the Clean Power Plan through regulation from the EPA. This fact alone should strike observers as rather odd, given that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the agency tasked with regulating the electric grid, along with the nonprofit North American Electric Reliability Corp., barely were consulted as the EPA drafted the rules.

The Clean Power Plan has many legal problems. Nicolas Loris, the Herbert and Joyce Morgan fellow at The Heritage Foundation, writes that the plan exceeds the EPA’s statutory authority, violates federalism, unconstitutionally coerces states, and doubly regulates existing power plants against the express will of Congress.

Although the EPA repeatedly has claimed that the Clean Power Plan gives states “flexibility,” it is hard to see how there is room for flexibility in federal targets that must be met with a federally approved plan.

An Obama ally and mentor agrees. Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor, put it eloquently in saying that representative government, not the pros and cons of addressing climate change, is at issue:

    "At its core, the issue the Clean Power Plan presents is whether EPA is bound by the rule of law and must operate within the framework established by the United States Constitution. … Accordingly, EPA’s gambit would mean citizens surrendering their right to be represented by an accountable and responsive government that accords with the postulates of federalism".

Regardless of political party or position on climate change or global warming, Congress should be commended for standing up to unelected bureaucrats who are attempting to re-engineer America’s energy economy and drive up prices for households and businesses with little to no climate benefit in return.

SOURCE





Top French Weatherman Fired For Denying Global Warming

Top French weatherman Philippe Verdier was fired Saturday for publishing a book critical of the climate change narrative.

Verdier’s story first gained traction in early October following reports that he was forced to take a vacation after his new book Climate Investigation published. In the book, Verdier accuses global warming scientists of misleading the public and using scare tactics to force conformity on the issue, reports France 24. He specifically goes after the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), alleging that they have “politicized” climate change and intentionally published false data.

“I am being punished for exercising my freedom of expression,” said Verdier. He was reportedly summoned two weeks ago to a meeting with top executives from French news channel France Televisions and received his official notice of termination on Saturday.

Verdier said he was inspired to write the book following a meeting he had with the French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. Fabius met with the country’s top meteorologists to tell them to start pushing the global warming narrative by highlighting stories about the impact of climate change, according to France 24.

“I was horrified by this speech,” said Verdier, who then set out to rebuke the climate change status quo by exposing the corruption within the movement. Verdier says there is a lot of pressure within the system to silence any dissent on this issue, especially with the upcoming COP21 climate summit in Paris this December.

“I put myself in the path of COP21, which is a bulldozer, and this is the result,” said Verdier. He also notes that there could be many positive effects of global warming for France including a boost in tourism, cheaper energy prices and better health.

SOURCE





GMOs as a solution to global warming?

A sincere Greenie discovers both a problem and a likely solution.  But he knows he is pissing into the wind

Rice is the single most important grain worldwide for human nutrition.  Rice accounts for one- fifth of all calories consumed.

As a hippie child I learned the macro-biotic diet was the healthiest way to eat; as a result I hated brown rice and veggies for a long time.  At middle age I now prefer brown rice and struggle to eat a mostly plant-based diet. I have watched most of the food documentaries about how meat and dairy are causing multiple environmental and health problems.

Great, a diet of rice and veggies is the answer. As a vegan eating a plant-based diet I will not harm the environment.  But after researching causes of global warming I discovered I was WRONG.

Rice causes over 10% of anthropogenic (human-made) methane production, or 1.5% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas.  Methane is 20 times worse for the environment than carbon-dioxide.

Global rice production uses about one-third of the earth’s fresh water.  Surprised?  So was I.

So what can be done and why isn’t anyone talking about this?   Eliminating rice is the not the answer.  Living in China, I have seen that a huge part of the population eats rice three times per day.  This must continue or people will starve.  China and India account for almost half of global rice production.  China has cut methane production by 70% since the mid- ’80s by draining the rice paddies in the middle of the growing season.  This practice has increased rice yields and saves water—a win-win for the farmers and the environment and a viable solution to rice methane production.

But an even more effective solution to the problem is “Brice” (my word for rice that has been genetically modified by adding a barley gene).  Researchers in China have inserted a barley gene into rice, creating a GMO hybrid that decreases methane production by up to 97% and increases the rice production by 43%.  Imagine the implications.  Land use and water use for rice could be cut by over 40% and methane emissions almost eliminated using this GMO Brice at current rice production levels.  Problem solved?

GMOs are called “Frankenstein Food” by some.  The consensus on the science supports the idea that GMOs are not harmful to humans or animals used for food.  This science is debated by proponents of organic food, some of whom financially benefit from increased organic food sales just as some GMO proponents benefit financially from the increased sales of GMOs.  Much of the opposition to GMOs is centered on pesticide- and herbicide-resistant strains of corn and soybeans.  Brice is not that type of GMO.

Traditional hybrids, which have been around for centuries, are GMOs; the genes of corn plants have been greatly “modified” from the ancient native maize.  If a GMO like Brice can reduce human made global warming emissions by over 1%, reduce water and land use, then I am all for it.

The solutions to global warming are out there but we all need to talk rationally about the problems and the many causes of global warming.  This should not be a polarizing political issue.  The fact is that rice is responsible for 1.5% of human-made greenhouse gas emissions.  While we are debating whether or not global warming exists we are wasting time that could be spent in finding and implementing real solutions.  Global warming is a human-made problem with human-made solutions. Brice is a real solution, and one we could adapt today.

SOURCE




The Calcification of Climate Science

According to Lord Christopher Monckton, Thomas R. Karl’s much-feted paper refuting “the Pause,” the inexplicable 19-year standstill in the earth’s average global surface temperature, has a small problem: To disappear the warming hiatus as Karl and his co-authors purport to do, you have to repeal the laws of thermodynamics. (Not even the current president can do that.)

Karl and his colleagues, whose work appeared in the June issue of Science, “updated” previous data sets used to assess changes in surface temperatures, which supporters maintain is merely Science being self-critical and Scientific. Others — a lot of others — say different. E. Calvin Beisner rounds up criticisms at the website Watts Up With That, and quotes with approval the verdict of Georgia Tech climate scientist Judith Curry:

"This short paper in Science is not adequate to explain and explore the very large changes that have been made to the NOAA data set. . . ."

 So while I’m sure this latest analysis from NOAA will be regarded as politically useful for the Obama administration, I don’t regard it as a particularly useful contribution to our scientific understanding of what is going on.

This would be an in-the-weeds scientific scuffle were it not that Karl is director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Center for Environmental Information and the study was the work of his outfit.

Since even the apocalypse-minded Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has acknowledged the hiatus, NOAA’s startling findings caught the eye of Lamar Smith, chairman of the House’s Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, the job of which is to oversee the work of NOAA and other federal scientific bodies.

In mid July, the committee requested that NOAA pass along a host of data related to the study, noting in its letter to NOAA administrator Kathryn D. Sullivan, “The conclusions brought forth in this new study have lasting impacts and provide the basis for further action through regulations. With such broad implications, it is imperative that the underlying data and the analysis are made publicly available to ensure that the conclusions found and methods used are of the highest quality.”

NOAA cooperated — until it didn’t. After partially fulfilling the committee’s request (for “documents and information related to NOAA’s new updated global datasets, as well as the communications referring or relating to corrections to sea temperature data from ships and buoys”) in August, NOAA let pass two extended deadlines for the missing information, prompting a subpoena.

This week, though, NOAA announced that it has no plans to comply with the subpoena. The agency cited “confidentiality concerns and the integrity of the scientific process,” according to The Hill.

Protestations about “the integrity of the scientific process” would be more credible were NOAA not a prominent funder of Jagadish Shukla, a George Mason University climatologist who, besides being the lead signatory of a letter recommending that the federal government use RICO laws to prosecute skeptics of anthropogenic climate change, has pocketed $5.6 million in taxpayer dollars since 2001 as head of the Institute of Global Environment Society — an almost entirely government-funded venture, the staff of which constitutes Shukla, his wife, his daughter, and one other scientist.

Earlier this month, Smith’s committee opened a separate investigation into Shukla and IGES.

Democrats are decrying Republican “intimidation tactics.” The ranking member of the committee, Texas Democrat Eddie Bernice Johnson, has said that the inquiry “seems more designed to harass climate scientists than to further any legitimate legislative purpose.”

But that presumes that climate scientists are devoted, first and foremost, to science. In his classic book Against Method, Paul Feyerabend railed against the ossification of scientific conscience, chastising scientists who, among other malpractices, mindlessly accepted “the consistency condition which demands that new hypotheses agree with accepted theories.” “Science,” he wrote, “is an essentially anarchic enterprise.”

Occasionally, science even becomes so institutionally crabbed as to require the intervention of outside forces. “This is,” he wrote, “an important point. It often happens that parts of science become hardened and intolerant so that proliferation must be enforced from the outside, and by political means.

Of course, success cannot be guaranteed — see the Lysenko affair. But this does not remove the need for non-scientific controls on science.”

Early Caution on Global Warming Climate science has grown diamond-hard. When scientists are not tweaking data to reach more-desirable results, they are shaming and expelling dissenters.

Climate scientists like Shukla have turned their research into lucrative Gambino-style operations, while scientists in remote fields have realized that by putting “climate change” in their grant proposals (“What impact will climate change have on the sperm count of three-legged African hedgehogs?”), they can pull in more-generous government sums.

Pursuing hypotheses that question the prevailing consensus has become nearly impossible. Feyerabend called for “theoretical anarchism” among scientists. It should betray the calcified state of climate science that it may require the U.S. Congress to make that possible again.

SOURCE





Harold Black: ‘Global warming' is not exactly ‘settled science'



I am a global warming skeptic.

This skepticism has probably generated more negative responses from readers than I have received on all other issues combined. It is as though I attacked someone's religion.

But of course I did, because like religion, no conflicting evidence can change its adherents' minds.

As an academic, I became skeptical when global warming was proclaimed as "settled science" by its proponents. Of course, there is no such thing as "settled science."

New discoveries happen all the time that make scientists question their existing hypotheses. New medical studies invalidate previous studies. Is coffee good or bad for you? Is exercise good or bad? Is wheat germ good or bad? Is alcohol good or bad? The answer is "Yes."

So those who proclaim "settled science" are either ignorant or are doing so in order to stifle inquiry and criticism. This is illustrated by the claim championed by the president that "97 percent of scientists agree: climate change is real, man-made and dangerous."

However, that well-worn claim has been soundly rejected (except of course by true believers). Even a casual Internet search would reveal that there is no scientific unanimity on global warming.

Also, anyone who knows any scientist is hard pressed to find two who agree on anything. (How many economists does it take to reach a conclusion?)

Now, the global warmers have reached a new low in their attempt to shut up the other side when Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island advocated prosecuting global warming skeptics under RICO (the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act).

After checking the senator's website, it was confirmed that this was not an April Fool's joke. He stated that "Fossil fuel companies and their allies are funding a massive and sophisticated campaign to mislead the American people about the environmental harm caused by carbon pollution," and as such should be prosecuted under RICO.

Instead of being laughed out of the Senate and roundly ridiculed, the senator was actually supported by a letter from 20 academics sent to Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Thus, not only does a U.S. senator not support the First Amendment protecting freedom of speech, neither do these academics.

Now, I am sure that these professors have pure intentions and were not influenced by the billions the government has spent on climate change funding. But as a professor, I loved a spirited exchange of ideas. Isn't that what the university is for?

Of course, in reality too many universities stifle speech deemed as being not politically correct. I was reminded of the "Rocky and his Friends" episode when the bad guy, Boris Badenov, sought to incapacitate America by spraying its leaders with goof gas.

First, he tested it on a college campus and turned genius professors into babbling idiots. Then, he got to Washington and heard a debate on the Senate floor. He looked to his colleague Natasha Fatale and said, "Someone beat us to it."

Indeed, someone again has seemingly sprayed the senator and 20 professors with goof gas.

Lastly, How many climate scientists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Just one. But all the rest will write a research proposal seeking funding to study its environmental impact."

SOURCE

***************************************

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

*****************************************