Another example of not telling the whole story:  The standard Green/Left deception technique

It's difficult to know where to start on commenting on the scare below but let me start by noting that an increased level of CO2 absorption by water is a sign of COOLING -- carefully not mentioned below.  And because there are great uncertainties in measuring ocean temperatures exactly that could be going on.

OK.  Next point.  If CO2 levels in the ocean are "too" high, global warming will cure it. Because warming water will cause the CO2 to outgas.  Just open a can of coke or Pepsi while it is at room temperature and watch it happen.  So global warming will cure the "problem", not worsen it

Point 3: There are plenty of studies showing that crustaceans and shellfish are not affected by acidity in the simple way Warmists assume.  They can in fact flourish in a more acid environmrent.  See here and here.

Point 4: The oceans are quite alkaline and it would take a huge change to make them acidic. Measured in the open ocean, sea water has a pH of about 8.2. According to computer models, doubling of atmospheric CO2 would decrease ocean pH to about 7.9, still alkaline, but less so.

Enough said?


The  North Atlantic absorbed 100 percent more man-made carbon dioxide over the last decade, than the previous one, researchers have found.

They say the find is a clear indication of the impact burning of fossil fuels has had on the world’s oceans in just 10 years.

The uptake of CO2 has massive impacts on the ocean's ecosystem, by decreasing the pH, and could affect as corals and mollusks, which require a certain pH level in the surrounding water to build their calcium carbonate-based shells and exoskeletons.

“This study shows the large impact all of us are having on the environment and that our use of fossil fuels isn’t only causing the climate to change, but also affects the oceans by decreasing the pH,” said Ryan Woosley, a researcher in the UM Rosenstiel School, Department of Ocean Sciences who led the research.

Decreasing pH in seawater can harm the ability of shelled organisms, from microscopic coccolithophores to the oysters and clams that show up on our dinner plates, to build and maintain their bony exteriors.

Burning oil, coal, and natural gas for energy, along with destruction of forests, are the leading causes of the carbon dioxide emissions

The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 355 parts per million in 1989 to just over 400 ppm in 2015. [Quibble:  Cape Grim has the level just under 400ppm]

To determine the total uptake and storage of carbon dioxide in the North Atlantic over the last several decades, researchers analyzed data collected from the same locations, but 10 years apart, to identify changes caused by man-made CO2.

The data were collected during two National Science Foundation-funded international ship-based studies, CLIVAR (Climate Variability CO2 Repeat Hydrography) and GO-SHIP (Global Ocean Ship-Based Hydrographic Investigations Program).

The oceans help to slow the growth of human produced CO2 in the atmosphere by absorbing and storing about a quarter of the total carbon dioxide emissions.

The researchers hope to return in another 10 years to determine if the increase in carbon uptake continues, or if, as many fear, it will decrease as a result of slowing thermohaline circulation.

The study, titled “Rapid Anthropogenic Changes in CO2 and pH in the Atlantic Ocean: 2003-2014” was published in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles.

SOURCE  





Global warming making dogs depressed?



Ya gotta laugh!  Since there has been no global warming for over 18 years this is a non-explanation</>

A boredom epidemic is sweeping through Britain’s dog population – and global warming could be to blame.

Across the country, there are reports of down-in-the-mouth mutts, and under-the-weather canines.

Leading pet behaviourists told The Independent that the number of depressed and unsettled dogs they have seen in recent months is unprecedented.

And they suggested that the spate of wet winters could be at the root of the problem, as owners cut down on the daily walks that are crucial to keeping dogs’ spirits up.

“I’ve been working with dogs for more than 20 years and I can’t remember a time when they’ve been this bored. I tend to see boredom in bursts but I’m seeing it chronically this winter,” said Carolyn Menteith, a dog behaviourist who was named Britain’s Instructor of the Year in 2015.

“They are just really, really, bored. People are quite happy to get their dogs out in frosty, hard weather but not when it’s muddy and horrible.”

“But we have over 200 breeds of dog in this country and an awful lot of them – especially family dogs like Labradors, retrievers and spaniels - were bred to do a job. So they are hardwired to work and need a lot of exercise.”

The lack of physical exercise – and mental stimulation that comes with it - is having noticeable consequences on the nation’s nine million dogs, she added.

Ms Menteith spends much of her time outside walking dogs and has noticed a significant change in the weather in the past five years or so – as cold, crisp winters gradually give way to “constant wet dreariness”.

She – like many scientists and meteorologists – puts this down to climate change and expects to see more bored dogs in the future as global warming unleashes increasingly frequent and intense bouts of winter rainfall.

SOURCE





Like Cheap Gas? How About a New Oil Tax?

Accompanying his proposed budget for the Department of Transportation, Barack Obama will issue a plan to increase the government’s investment in “clean energy” infrastructure by 50% with a $10 tax on each barrel of oil sold by the nation’s oil companies. The plan would supposedly fund high-speed rail, public transportation and research into self-driving vehicles in hopes of reducing the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. It follows the formula that the government uses when it taxes cigarettes. Higher prices will mean fewer people pick up smoking, and the revenue, in theory, goes to anti-smoking initiatives. A White House fact sheet on the transportation plan read: “By placing a fee on oil, the president’s plan creates a clear incentive for private sector innovation to reduce our reliance on oil and at the same time invests in clean energy technologies that will power our future.”

This is the man who, just a month ago in his State of the Union Address, took credit for the nation’s low gas prices. Don’t think for a minute that the oil companies would simply absorb this tax, either. For the last year, the oil industry has been sloughing off jobs. It’s not exactly a profitable business to be in at the moment, so the tax on oil companies will be picked up by everyone driving a car.

Taxes are like nicotine: Once the government is hooked, it’s hard to funnel the money into programs that will destroy the flow of money. While cigarette taxes are supposed to fund anti-smoking programs, much of that money has simply flowed into governments' general funds. Obama’s plan will do more to handicap the economy on which Americans currently rely than to create a green transportation infrastructure.

SOURCE  





Obama Admin. Just Contradicted Its Own Global Warming Alarmism

The White House’s global warming claims are now being contradicted by the Obama administration’s own scientists.

President Barack Obama’s administration has repeated the talking point over the year that man-made global warming has increased the incidence of heavy rainfalls across the U.S., but a new study casts doubt on this assertion.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists recently published a report claiming heavy daily precipitation trends “have been intimately linked to internal decadal ocean variability, and less to human-induced climate change.”

“Analysis of model ensemble spread reveals that appreciable 35-yr trends in heavy daily precipitation can occur in the absence of [man-made greenhouse gas] forcing, thereby limiting detection of the weak anthropogenic influence at regional scales,” NOAA scientists wrote.

NOAA’s new study, however, runs up against the Obama administration’s 2014 National Climate Assessment (NCA), which claims global warming is increasing heavy downpours.

While both studies agree heavy rainfall events have increased, the 2014 NCA suggests global warming is mostly to blame. NOAA, on the other hand, claims man-made warming played a minimal role in increasing heavy rains.

“Human-induced climate change has already increased the number and strength of some of these extreme events,” according to the NCA. “Over the last 50 years, much of the U.S. has seen increases in prolonged periods of excessively high temperatures, heavy downpours, and in some regions, severe floods and droughts.”

“Global analyses show that the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere has in fact increased due to human-caused warming,” reads the NCA. “This extra moisture is available to storm systems, resulting in heavier rainfalls. Climate change also alters characteristics of the atmosphere that affect weather patterns and storms.”

Concern about heavy rains and flooding has been growing in recent years. For example, the Midwest experienced heavy flooding over the holidays last year after being hit with torrential rain. There were also a string of tornadoes hitting towns across the country. The media immediately suggested global warming was at least partly to blame.

In October, South Carolina was hit with a “1-in-1,000 year rain event” as Hurricane Joaquin moved past the U.S. and out into the Atlantic Ocean. Again, it was not so subtly hinted in media reports that global warming caused heavy rains to increase, causing the state to experience massive amounts of flooding.

Nevertheless, it’s difficult to tie global warming to any single weather event, no matter how extreme. Cato Institute climate scientists Patrick Michaels and Chip Knappenberger noted the new NOAA study provides much-needed restraint to alarmist government climate reports.

“[B]asically they’re saying that the federal government’s assessment of the impacts of climate change greatly overstates the case for linking dreaded carbon dioxide emissions to extreme precipitation events across the United States,” Michaels and Knappenberger wrote.

“[T]hey think that folks (including the president and the authors of the National Climate Assessment) are far too premature in linking observed changes to date with our reliance on coal, oil, and natural gas as primary fuels for our energy production,” the Cato scientists noted.

“Whether or not at some later date a definitive and sizeable (actionable) anthropogenic signal is identifiable in the patterns and trends in heavy precipitation occurrence across the United States is a question whose answer will have to wait—most likely until much closer to the end of the century or beyond,” they added.

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Here’s Why Scientists Hide Their Doubts About Global Warming In The Media

A recent study looking into how scientists explain global warming uncertainty to the public has some interesting findings: Many scientists don’t actually talk about uncertainty when speaking to journalists.

In fact, scientists who regularly talk to the press are more likely to sound the alarm on global warming, and are often reluctant to publish research results in the media that don’t conform to the narrative of catastrophic warming.

Researcher Senja Post surveyed 300 German scientists and found that “the more climate scientists are engaged with the media the less they intend to point out uncertainties about climate change and the more unambiguously they confirm the publicly held convictions that it is man-made, historically unique, dangerous and calculable.”

Post also found that “climate scientists object to publishing a result in the media significantly more when it indicates that climate change proceeds more slowly rather than faster than expected,” which finding, in her words, “gives reason to assume that the German climate scientists are more inclined to communicate their results in public when they confirm rather than contradict that climate change is dramatic.”

“Such findings are saddening and shameful, highlighting a near-ubiquitous bias among climate scientists (at least in Germany) who willfully suppress the communication of research findings and uncertainties to the public when they do not support the alarmist narrative of CO2-induced global warming,” Craig Idso, a climate scientist at the libertarian Cato Institute, wrote in a Thursday blog post commenting on the study.

For German scientists, the more worried they were that human activities were causing catastrophic warming, the more likely they were to use the media to promote that narrative.

“Such deceit has no place in science,” Idso wrote.

That sort of arrangement makes sense to a degree. Reporters need people to read their articles, and if a reporter is covering global warming, the more alarming the headline — and quotes backing it up — the more eyes it’s likely to attract.

Scientists benefit from this by getting their name and research out there in a way that’s not mired in scientific jargon that immediately makes people’s eyes glaze over.

Dr. Richard Lindzen, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has written a lot on the perverse incentive faced by scientists in research fields as politicized as climate science.

In a 2013 paper, Lindzen argued scientists make “meaningless” claims about certain phenomenon. Activists and the media then take up claims made by scientists, and politicians respond to this alarmism by doling out more research funding. Lindzen called this cycle the “Iron Triangle.”

“Although there are many reasons why some scientists might want to bring their field into the public square, the cases described here appear, instead, to be cases in which those with political agendas found it useful to employ science,” Lindzen wrote.

“This immediately involves a distortion of science at a very basic level: namely, science becomes a source of authority rather than a mode of inquiry,” he added. “The real utility of science stems from the latter; the political utility stems from the former.”

SOURCE  





Climate Scientist Destroys WaPo Global Warming Alarmists

The Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang (CWG) blog attempted to link the recent East Coast blizzard to global warming Wednesday, only to be shot down by veteran climate scientist Chip Knappenberger.

“To me some folks at Capital Weather Gang are overly eager to link human-caused climate change to extreme weather events,” Knappenberger, a climate scientist at the libertarian Cato Institute, told The Daily Caller Caller News Foundation. “There is a lot of scientific research out there on the complexities of extreme weather events and undoubtedly there is much more still to come. In fact, the breadth of extreme weather literature is so large that, through careful selection, you can pretty much build any story you want to when it comes to how any particular type of event may (or may not) have been influenced by greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.”

CWG reported Wednesday that seven of the top ten snowstorms in the Washington, D.C.-area have occurred since 1979. The Gang used this fact to go ahead and argue the “tempo of big storms for the city has increased” due to global warming. The Post concluded that “the planet may be changing in multiple ways to help intensify the most severe East Coast snowstorms, even as the climate warms and becomes less hospitable for snow.”

Knappenberger disagreed and pummeled CWG with a blizzard of tweets detailing why the argument was overblown.

“The literature on most extreme weather types indicates that while enhanced atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases may play some role in the evolution of the development, intensity, track, etc. of the event, that the impact is both uncertain and dwarfed by natural variability,” Knappenberger continued.

CWG also tied blizzards to global warming by citing a 2012 opinion piece by meteorologist Jennifer Francis, but Knappenberger noted that Francis’ work has been contradicted by more recent climate research.

The three largest D.C. blizzards occurred in 1899, 1922 and 1979, with D.C.’s annual average snowfall steadily declining in recent years, according to The Washington Post. CWG acknowledged that in the early 1900s, D.C. averaged about 21 inches of snow per year, while it currently averages just 15.4 inches.

This isn’t the first time The Washington Post has tried to tie global warming to huge blizzards. The paper recently compared January’s East Coast blizzard to the film “The Day After Tomorrow,” where global warming causes a new ice age. In the movie, global warming shuts down ocean currents and creates weather catastrophes, including a worldwide blizzard.

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