North Atlantic Ocean Rapidly Cooling…Cool Down And Growing Arctic Sea Ice May Follow

Very recent scientific publications show that the North Atlantic heat content and surface temperatures have been cooling significantly, and so may lead to a rebound in Arctic sea ice in the region. Already Arctic sea ice has stabilized over the past 10 years and Greenland has shown a surprising ice mass gain.

Climate scientists agree that variations in the North Atlantic temperatures and ocean currents have a great impact on sea ice in the North Atlantic Arctic region and Europe’s climate.

Dramatic fall in North Atlantic heat content

For example recent findings published in Nature by a team led by David J. R. Thornalley of Department of Geography, University College London, show that the heat content of the North Atlantic from zero to 700 meters depth has cooled the most dramatically since the 1950s:

North Atlantic ocean heat content (OHC) dives. Source: Thormalloy et al, Nature.

In the 1970s most scientists believed an ice age was approaching after the surface temperature of the North Atlantic had cooled sharply from its 1950s peak.

Another very recent publication appearing in the Geophysical Research Letters by a team of researchers led by D.A. Smeed of National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, UK shows that surface and subsurface temperatures of the North Atlantic have fallen to their lowest levels in in more than 30 years:

The researchers suspect that the decreased lower temperatures are related to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which is a powerful  system of currents in the Atlantic involving the northward flow of warm water in the upper layers of the Atlantic and a southward flow of colder, deep waters which are part of the thermohaline circulation.

Changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) have significant impacts on North Atlantic climate. Source: R. Curry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution/Science/USGCRP

The scientists theorize that melting Arctic sea ice may be responsible for the recent changes, but this remains highly speculative as the data to support this is extremely sparse. Meanwhile other scientists believe it has all more to do with multidecadal scale ocean cycles that have occurred throughout history.

Warming changes over to cooling

Another team of scientists led by Christopher G. Piecuch published a study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters here which shows that the subpolar North Atlantic (SPNA) upper ocean and sea‐surface temperature trends reversed from warming during 1994–2004 to cooling over 2005–2015.

The authors write that the region “is subject to strong decadal variability”, meaning natural cycles are at play. The authors present the following chart, which shows that the North Atlantic heat content has fallen sharply since 2010.

So is it any surprise that Arctic sea ice has stabilized in the wake of the North Atlantic cooling and that Greenland is putting on gigatons of added ice?

Veteran meteorologist Joe Bastardi of WeatherBell Analytics has said repeatedly that when ocean heat content in the regions adjacent to the Arctic falls, it’s only natural for sea ice to recover, and vice versa when ocean heat content rises. Arctic ice extent fluctuates along with the natural Atlantic and Pacific ocean cycles. It has little to do with trace gas CO2.

More HERE  (See the original for links, graphics etc.)





Climate: Failed Prognostications

“If the current pace of the buildup of these gases continues, the effect is likely to be a warming of 3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit [between now and] the year 2025 to 2050…. The rise in global temperature is predicted to … caus[e] sea levels to rise by one to four feet by the middle of the next century.” — Philip Shabecoff, “Global Warming Has Begun.” New York Times, June 24, 1988.

It has been 30 years since the alarm bell was sounded for manmade global warming caused by modern industrial society. And predictions made on that day—and ever since—continue to be falsified in the real world.

The predictions made by climate scientist James Hansen and Michael Oppenheimer back in 1988—and reported as model projected by journalist Philip Shabecoff—constitute yet another exaggerated Malthusian scare, joining those of the population bomb (Paul Ehrlich), resource exhaustion (Club of Rome), Peak Oil (M. King Hubbert), and global cooling (John Holdren).

Erroneous Predictive Scares

Consider the opening global warming salvo (quoted above). Dire predictions of global warming and sea-level rise are well on their way to being falsified—and by a lot, not a little. Meanwhile, a CO2-led global greening has occurred, and climate-related deaths have plummeted as industrialization and prosperity have overcome statism in many areas of the world.

Take the mid-point of the above’s predicted warming, six degrees. At the thirty-year mark, how is it looking? The increase is about one degree—and largely holding (the much-discussed “pause” or “warming hiatus”). And remember, the world has naturally warmed since the end of the Little Ice Age to the present, a good thing if climate economists are to be believed.

Turning to sea-level rise, the exaggeration appears greater. Both before and after the 1980s, decadal sea-level rise has been a few inches. And it has not been appreciably accelerating. “The rate of sea level rise during the period ~1925–1960 is as large as the rate of sea level rise the past few decades, noted climate scientist Judith Curry. “Human emissions of CO2 mostly grew after 1950; so, humans don’t seem to be to blame for the early 20th century sea level rise, nor for the sea level rise in the 19th and late 18th centuries.”

The sky-is-falling pitch went from bad to worse when scientist James Hansen was joined by politician Al Gore. Sea levels could rise twenty feet, claimed Gore in his 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, a prediction that has brought rebuke even from those sympathetic to the climate cause.

Now-or-Never Exaggerations

In the same book/movie, Al Gore prophesied that unless the world dramatically reduced greenhouse gasses, we would hit a “point of no return.” In his book review of Gore’s effort, James Hansen unequivocally stated: “We have at most ten years—not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions.”

Time is up on Gore’s “point of no return” and Hansen’s “critical tipping point.” But neither has owned up to their exaggeration or made new predictions—as if they will suddenly be proven right.

Another scare-and-hide prediction came from Rajendra Pachauri. While head of a United Nations climate panel, he pleaded that without drastic action before 2012, it would be too late to save the planet. In the same year, Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at the University of Cambridge, predicted “global disaster” from the demise of Arctic sea ice in four years. He too, has gone quiet.

Nothing new, back in the late 1980s, the UN claimed that if global warming were not checked by 2000, rising sea levels would wash entire countries away

There is some levity in the charade. In 2009, then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown predicted that the world had only 50 days to save the planet from global warming. But fifty days, six months, and eight years later, the earth seems fine.

Climate Hysteria hits Trump

The Democratic Party Platform heading into the 2016 election compared the fight against global warming to World War II. “World War III is well and truly underway,” declared Bill McKibben in the New Republic. “And we are losing.” Those opposed to a new “war effort” were compared to everything from Nazis to Holocaust deniers.

Heading into the 2016 election, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson warned that “a vote for Trump is a vote for climate catastrophe.” In Mother Jones, professor Michael Klare similarly argued that “electing green-minded leaders, stopping climate deniers (or ignorers) from capturing high office, and opposing fossil fueled ultranationalism is the only realistic path to a habitable planet.”

Trump won the election, and the shrill got shriller. “Donald Trump’s climate policies would create dozens of failed states south of the U.S. border and around the world,” opined Joe Romm at Think Progress. “It would be a world where everyone eventually becomes a veteran, a refugee, or a casualty of war.”

At Vox, Brad Plumer joined in:

Donald Trump is going to be president of the United States…. We’re at risk of departing from the stable climatic conditions that sustained civilization for thousands of years and lurching into the unknown. The world’s poorest countries, in particular, are ill-equipped to handle this disruption.

Renewable energy researcher John Abraham contended that Trump’s election means we’ve “missed our last off-ramp on the road to catastrophic climate change.” Not to be outdone, academic Noam Chomsky argued that Trump is aiding “the destruction of organized human life.”

Falsified Alarms, Compromised Science

If science is prediction, the Malthusian science of sustainability is pseudo-science. But worse, by not fessing up, by doubling down on doom, the scientific program has been compromised.

“In their efforts to promote their ‘cause,’” Judith Curry told Congress, “the scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has been drawn into the trap of seriously understating the uncertainties associated with the climate problem.” She continued:

This behavior risks destroying science’s reputation for honesty. It is this objectivity and honesty which gives science a privileged seat at the table. Without this objectivity and honesty, scientists become regarded as another lobbyist group.

Even DC-establishment environmentalists have worried about a backfire. In 2007, two mainstream climate scientists warned against the “Hollywoodization” of their discipline. They complained about “a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.” To which Al Gore (the guilty party) responded: “I am trying to communicate the essence [of global warming] in the lay language that I understand.”

“There has to be a lot of shrillness taken out of our language,” remarked Environmental Defense Fund’s Fred Krupp in 2011. “In the environmental community, we have to be more humble. We can’t take the attitude that we have all the answers.”

Most recently, Elizabeth Arnold, longtime climate reporter for National Public Radio, warned that too much “fear and gloom,” leading to “apocalypse fatigue,” should be replaced by a message of “hope” and “solutions” lest the public disengage. But taxes and statism don’t sound good either.

Conclusion

If the climate problem is exaggerated, that issue should be demoted. Enter an unstated agenda of deindustrialization and a quest for money and power that otherwise might be beyond reach of the climate campaigners. It all gets back to what Tim Wirth, then US Senator from Colorado, stated at the beginning of the climate alarm:

We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.

“Right thing” in terms of economic and environmental policy? That’s a fallacy to explode on another day.

SOURCE 





Donald Trump UK visit: US president is ‘putting British national security at risk’, say over 100 top climate scientists

More "projections"

The UK’s top climate change researchers have issued a desperate plea to Theresa May, urging her to challenge Donald Trump over climate change during his visit.

In a letter signed by over 100 scientists from across the country, they said the US president is putting the UK’s national security at risk by ignoring climate change and allowing carbon emissions to continue unabated.

Mr Trump famously withdrew his country from the historic Paris climate agreement in 2017, claiming it was “very unfair to the US”. As a result, emissions from the US energy sector are projected to rise rapidly over the next two years.

Trump faces frosty reception when he arrives in UK, poll suggests
The letter states: “As the US is the world’s second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, President Trump’s policy of inaction on climate change is putting at risk the UK’s national security and its interests overseas.”

The UK is already feeling the effects of a changing climate, with increasingly extreme and unpredictable weather hitting the nation’s shores in recent years.

Since 2000, the country has experienced its warmest and wettest years since records began, and scientists think this extreme weather trend will only get worse.

The 135 signees of the open letter point to the UK government’s own “National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review” as evidence for the existential threat posed by climate change.

That document, published in 2015, describes climate change as “one of the biggest long term challenges for the future of our planet”.

It outlines how rising sea levels and more frequent extreme weather events will cause havoc both in the UK and on a global scale.

Written when Barack Obama was still president, the review also describes how the UK “will work with the US to deliver more for global stability and our shared interests”.

Mr Trump has previously revealed a misunderstanding of some of the basic tenets of climate change, suggesting that the ice caps were now at “a record level”. He has even suggested that climate change is a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese.

Though Ms May has yet to raise the issue of climate change with Mr Trump, the UK’s has made considerable progress in tackling the issue, especially when compared to the US.

While both nations have seen their GDP per capita increase by around the same amount since 1990, the UK’s emissions have been slashed by over 40 per cent while across the Atlantic they increased by 2.4 per cent.

The scientists said this achievement should prove to Mr Trump that it is “possible to achieve economic growth while strongly reducing annual emissions of greenhouse gases”.

Other national leaders such as Emmanuel Macron of France have publicly criticised Mr Trump’s stance, and the researchers said the UK “should take advantage of its special relationship” to do the same.

“We do not believe that the best interests of the UK, or the rest of the world, would be best served by attempting to appease President Trump on this issue,” they concluded.

SOURCE 





Multilateral anti-Development Banks

USA finances prolonged poverty, misery, disease, and death through international banks

Paul Driessen and David Wojick

“Foreign Operations” appropriation bills now working their way through Congress supposedly provide funding to “advance U.S. diplomatic priorities overseas,” “increase global security,” and continue “life-saving global health and humanitarian assistance programs for the world’s most vulnerable populations.”

The bills include handsome funding for the World Bank and other so-called Multilateral Development Banks: some $1.8 billion in total. The United States is by far the World Bank Group’s largest donor, and a major funder of four other MDBs: the African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

In recent years, these banks have embraced manmade climate change alarmism as a key foundation for their lending policies. In particular, they refuse to fund the development of electric power generation via fossil fuels – thereby starving impoverished nations and families of desperately needed electricity.

Instead, the MDBs are pouring money into solar and wind power schemes that simply cannot produce affordable, reliable electricity on a large enough scale to help raise their client countries out of poverty.

In fact, they are ramping up their green madness. The five just-named MDBs, along with the European Investment Bank and Islamic Development Bank, recently released a joint report on what they call “climate finance” – which last year jumped a whopping 30% – to a staggering $34 billion dollars!

With over $13 billion in its coffers, the World Bank has the lion’s share of this green oppression money. But every one of these banks has greatly increased its climate focus, some even doubling it.

That is not just appalling. It is immoral and contrary to the supposed purposes of the appropriation bills. The MDBs have become anti-development banks, anti-vulnerable people banks. Their virtue-asserting “climate finance” terminology is more accurately described as climate callousness.

These tens of billions of dollars should help support projects that provide real, affordable, dependable power for the nearly 1.2 billion people around the world who still do not have electricity. Another 2 billion have electrical power only sporadically and unpredictably. In India alone, almost as many people as live in the USA still lack electricity. In Sub-Saharan Africa, nearly 700 million people (the population of Europe) rarely or never have electricity, and still cook and heat with wood, charcoal, and animal dung.

Every year, hundreds of millions become ill and 5 million die of lung and intestinal diseases from inhaling pollutants from open fires, and from lack of clean water, refrigeration and bacteria-free food. Largely because their nations lack energy to power modern economies, nearly 3 billion survive on a few dollars per day, and more millions die every year from preventable or curable diseases.

But the anti-development banks simply double down on their lethal policies. Their new report asserts: “The joint methodology for tracking climate change mitigation finance recognizes the importance of long-term structural changes such as the shift in energy production to renewable energy technologies, and the modal shift to low-carbon modes of transport.”

They’ve served notice that they stopped financing coal-fired power in 2010. Now they intend to stop financing oil and gas exploration by poor countries, and instead will push for total “decarbonization.”

Just like that. Fossil fuels gone from developing nation energy funding. No discussion. No vote. No actual evidence for climate cataclysms. No recourse. Just a policy decision by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats – supported by self-serving pressure groups, politicians and “green” energy companies.

These bankers, pols and activists couldn’t even run their own operations (or their homes) on sporadic, unpredictable, 14/4/265 wind and solar power. The companies couldn’t even manufacture their wind turbines and solar panels. Yet they demand that entire developing nations accept whatever jobs, medical facilities, schools, homes and living standards can be supported by this fairy tale energy.

It is an obscene global tragedy. These MDB policies condemn billions to poverty and millions to slow, agonizing death. America should no longer support any of this. No decent country should.

Thankfully for the sidelined nations, Chinese banks have begun helping to finance coal- and gas-fired power in Asia and Africa. In the process, they have gained tremendous political and strategic leverage, at the expense of the United States, Europe and MDBs. Other banks can and should do likewise.

All developing countries should avoid doing what rich nations are doing now that they are rich. Instead, they should do what rich nations did to become rich. They should remember that wealthy industrialized countries did not have MDBs to help them. They created institutions to finance the power generation and factories that created the jobs, middle classes, health and prosperity that paid for it all – and far more.

China, India and other emerging economies are doing the same thing. They are effectively telling the World Bank and other MDBs: “Get lost. We don’t need your funding, with all your anti-development strings. You eco-imperialist banks and activists will not hold us bank any longer. We are going to chart our own destiny, and take our rightful places among Earth’s healthy and prosperous people.”

The MDBs claim their policies reflect Paris Climate Treaty vision of “making financial flows consistent with low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development” – by coordinating climate “mitigation” (prevention) and “adaptation” programs. This moral preening ignores critical realities.

To be resilient in the face of climate change (natural or manmade), countries must be wealthy and technologically advanced. That is impossible with existing or foreseeable renewable energy on scales required to replace today’s fossil fuel energy and power up countries that are still in the dark ages – especially if the banks and their allies remain opposed to nuclear (and hydroelectric) power.

Moreover, the obsessive, unbending focus on alleged fossil-fuel-driven climate chaos ignores the enormous social, economic, health and other benefits that fossil fuels have bestowed on humanity over the past 150 years. It ignores the ways actual temperature and weather observations have been revised, “homogenized” and exaggerated to reflect alarmist narratives and computer models.

It ignores the unsustainable amounts of metals, hydrocarbons, concrete, and especially scenic and habitat land that would be required to convert the world to wind, solar, battery and biofuel power. And for what?

At this point, there is no convincing evidence (observations instead of models) demonstrating that carbon dioxide levels drive climate and weather; today’s temperatures, polar ice, sea level rise, storms or droughts are dangerously or profoundly unprecedented; humans can control all of this by limiting CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions; or anything on the horizon can replace fossil fuels anytime soon.

Indeed, on what basis was it decreed that a crisis or tipping point would be reached if Earth experienced 1.5 or 2.0 degrees Celsius (2.7 or 3.6 Fahrenheit) in higher average global temperatures since 1850, when the Little Ice Age ended and the modern industrial age began? Where is the real-world evidence?

For MDBs to remain focused on alleged climate and weather chaos, mostly in the distant future – while ignoring today’s massive, horrendous poverty, disease, malnutrition and death – is morally depraved.

President Trump, Senate Majority Leader McConnell, House Speaker Ryan and Secretary of State Pompeo need to end the insanity and manslaughter. They need to give this money to agencies and programs that will support fossil fuels and real life-saving actions for the world’s most vulnerable people.

Congress and the White House are a short trek from the World Bank headquarters. They should have no trouble delivering the message – and making it resonate with the other Multilateral Development Banks.

If Congress isn’t up to the task, perhaps Mr. Trump can redirect some of this money – or other billions that are being wasted on climate alarmism and renewable energy fantasies.

Via email from pdriessen@cox.net





Stupid recycling scheme

Costly -- like all Greenie schemes

Woolworths warns of 60 per cent price increases if Western Australia cash-for-cans scheme goes ahead

WOOLWORTHS has warned it could be forced to increase some drink prices by 60 per cent in Western Australia if the State Government pushes ahead with a container deposit scheme similar to the NSW government’s disastrous “Return and Earn” program.

In a written submission outlining its concerns about WA’s “cash for cans” plan slated to roll out in 2020, Woolworths said the estimated total cost to NSW households from Return and Earn would be $420 million, based on a “conservative” average levy of 12 cents per container.

Due to WA’s much larger size and smaller population, the supermarket predicted handling and administration fees would be “significantly more” at around 15 cents per container.

“The CDS will have a significant cost-of-living impact on our customers,” Woolworths government relations manager Richard Fifer wrote. “Based on an increase of 15 cents per item, a 24x600ml pack of Woolworths still water will rise from $6 to $9.60, which is an increase of 60 per cent.”

Woolworths said its experience with similar schemes in South Australia and the Northern Territory showed the “vast majority” of beverage containers were still returned through kerbside recycling, “reflecting the low engagement consumers have in seeking a refund”.

The NSW government’s scheme, launched on December 1, 2017, has been heavily criticised for pushing up the price of drinks without any environmental benefit, given 80 per cent of bottles and cans were already being recycled via yellow bins.

In April, The Australian reported the five biggest drinks manufacturers — Coca-Cola Amatil, Carlton United Brewers, Lion, Coopers and Asahi — were pocketing $34 million a month in unclaimed “deposits”.

Drinks manufacturers raised their prices to pay for the 10-cent “deposit” to be paid back to consumers if they return near pristine-condition bottles and cans “uncrushed, unbroken” and with “the original labels attached”.

The paper reported that just 13 per cent of eligible bottles and cans were being returned and Exchange for Change, the company formed by the five drinks makers to manage the scheme, simply hands the unclaimed money back to them.

As of May, more than 350 million drink containers had been returned to around 600 Return and Earn machines. In April, an interim report by the NSW Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal found prices had increased by 10-14 cents for soft drinks and water, 6 cents for beers and fruit juices, and 7 cents for ciders.

Queensland will introduce its own container deposit scheme in November. “We stand by the evidence provided in our submission to the WA government on the container deposit scheme last year,” a Woolworths spokesman said.

“Since our submission there has been constructive engagement between industry and government on the proposed design and implementation of the scheme. If this approach continues, we trust the consumer costs associated with the scheme can be minimised.”

SOURCE 

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