The Climate Crisis Is Now Detectable in Every Single Day of Weather Across The Planet

They obviously THINK they can detect it but logically they cannot. In my studies of analytical philosophy in my student days one of the topics I took an interest in was the nature of causality.  I even had a well-received paper on the topic published in an academic journal.

And the most respected statement on the nature of cause was by David Hume, who said that "constant conjunction" was the whole of causality.  Note that word "constant".  If X causes Y then ALL instances of X will be followed by Y.  So you have to have a setup where you can examine whether all instances of X precede Y.

But that does not remotely happen in climate studies. The presumed cause -- increased CO2 levels -- is NOT always followed by warming. There is even doubt whether the two are correlated at all. So the claim below that CO2 levels CAUSE various instances of weather is simply false. There is no constant conjunction between the two.

It can reasonably be claimed that weather is caused by many things -- which obscures the causal relationship, but there should be observed constant conjunction once you allow for all other influences.  But Warmists never to my knowledge even attempt that analysis.  Until they do there is simply no observed constant conjunction and hence no known causal relationship between any weather event and CO2 levels


The climate changes we humans have inflicted on the planet are now so deeply embedded, they are showing up in our daily weather.

Researchers from Switzerland and Norway now claim to have detected the "fingerprint" of climate change in every single day of weather in the global record since 2012.

The distinction between climate and weather is one that scientists have been hammering on about for years. And while the two are closely intertwined, they are generally considered distinct, with weather referring to short-term conditions and climate referring to longer trends.

Swiss climate scientist Reto Knutti told The Washington Post he's not sure the difference is so distinct anymore. "Weather is climate change if you look over the whole globe," he argues.

That means weather on a local scale still doesn't show a climate change signal. But if you roll these regions out into a global perspective, the variations in temperature and humidity do hold the stamp of humanity. And they are clearly distinguishable from what would happen naturally.

So, some regions of the world can still get really cold - they can even break temperature records - but if it's simultaneously warmer than average in other parts of the world, it won't impact the overall climate trend.

Using machine learning along with climate models and data, Knutti and his colleagues found daily mean weather values from 1951 to 1980 barely matched up with those from 2009 to 2018.

Examining yearly data, the authors noticed the stamp of climate change on global weather went back to 1999. And from 2012, it could be seen every single day. And the signal of climate change is now so big it's greater than global daily weather variability.

"Weather at the global level carries important information about climate," explains Knutti. "This information could, for example, be used for further studies that quantify changes in the probability of extreme weather events, such as regional cold spells."

In recent years, scientists have detected stronger links between global warming and changing weather patterns, and while it's difficult to blame any one storm on climate change, the overall pattern for heat waves, droughts and storms is clear.

The new findings suggest climate change is more deeply rooted than we thought, but if we can figure out how to link long-term trends with short-term weather events, it could help us prepare for the worst.

"This gives rise to new opportunities for the communication of regional weather events against the backdrop of global warming," says Knutti.

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Glacier Park in Montana Set to Remove ‘Glaciers Will All Be Gone By 2020’ signs

Montana’s Glacier National Park is being forced to remove all signs that read “glaciers will all be gone by 2020,” after the doomsday scenario didn’t happen.

Some of the signs were already removed last year as it became clear the prediction wasn’t going to unfold. Now the rest of the signs will have to be taken down too.

Glacier National Park spokeswoman Gina Kurzmen “told MTN News that the latest research shows shrinking, but in ways much more complex than what was predicted. Because of this, the park must update all signs around the park stating all glaciers will be melted by 2020,”

In the late 90’s and early 2000s, scientists predicted that man-made global warming would cause melting glaciers, leading to rapidly rising sea levels that would sink coastal cities and towns.

The more dire forecasts have proven to be totally inaccurate and some glaciers are now growing. Back in June, NASA reported that the Jakobshavn Glacier in western Greenland had thickened and “has grown for the third year in a row.”

The glacier prediction is by no means the only forecast global warming alarmists have got spectacularly wrong. At the end of the 70’s, climate experts said that a new ice age was coming. It didn’t happen.

Paul Ehrlich’s prediction that hundreds of millions of people would die of starvation due to crop failure by the 1980’s also didn’t happen.

The 2004 prediction that major European cities would be underwater and that Britain would be plunged into a Siberian climate by 2020 didn’t happen.

Al Gore’s doomsday warning that the Arctic would have ice free summers by 2013 didn’t happen either.

Maybe since these “experts” been caught lying time and time again, we should stop listening to them.

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Recycling is becoming so expensive for towns that some are thinking the unthinkable — they may stop doing it

WESTFIELD, Mass. — On a recent afternoon here, with urgency in the air, local officials huddled to consider what until recently was unthinkable. Should they abandon their popular curbside recycling program? Or spend millions to build a plant to process plastic and paper on their own?

With the recycling market across the country mired in crisis, a growing number of cities and towns are facing a painful reckoning: whether they can still afford to collect bottles, cans, plastics, and paper, which have so plummeted in value that in some cases they have become effectively worthless.

“We’re looking at going from paying nothing to paying $500,000 a year,” said Dave Billips, the director of public works in Westfield, referring to the city’s recycling costs. “That’s going to have a major impact.”

It’s a reckoning hitting home across Massachusetts. Boston, for example, is now paying nearly $5 million to have recycling collections carted away, up from just $200,000 in 2017. City officials said they do not plan to end the program.

The crisis began two years ago when China announced it would no longer accept large amounts of paper and plastic from the United States, which for years had exported huge collections of material there and elsewhere in Asia, because much was contaminated and unusable.

That decision has sent tremors through the recycling industry, leading to steep declines in the value of paper, plastic, and other recyclables. Waste Management, the nation’s largest recycling company, used to earn as much as $80 a ton for paper it collected; today, it gets nothing, officials said. The value of cardboard has plunged 70 percent, and it now costs more to recycle glass than the company can make selling it.

“There are once-in-100-year floods; this has been the equivalent to a once-in-500-year flood,” said Steve Changaris, northeast region vice president of the National Waste and Recycling Association, a trade group for waste companies. “We saw a loss of 40 percent of the market that consumed these materials.”

That collapse has reverberated widely. Until this year, Westfield and most other communities in Western Massachusetts paid nothing for recycling. Some even earned revenue from the region’s largest recycling plant, which turned their discarded paper and bottles into profits.

But the equation has changed, and by the end of January 74 communities across Western Massachusetts must decide whether to sign a new and much more expensive contract with a state-owned recycling facility in Springfield, whose contractor has said it was forced to raise its prices drastically.

“With current commodity prices at historic lows, the sale of those commodities does not cover the cost of processing,” said Garrett Trierweiler, a spokesman for Waste Management, which operates the Springfield plant for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. “As a result, new contracts for processing recyclables are typically written to cover the cost.”

As China has retreated from the international recycling business, other markets had taken some of America’s refuse. But now some of those countries have introduced policies similar to China’s to limit contaminated materials, drastically reducing US exports. Recyclables are often considered contaminated when they aren’t properly cleaned.

For example, Indonesia announced last year it would accept only minimal contamination in mixed paper — everything from newspaper to corrugated cardboard — sparking a drop in US waste exports to that nation by 95 percent, according to the National Waste and Recycling Association.

Just this month, India announced a similarly strict policy, halting all imports of mixed paper. After China changed its policy, India had become the dominant importer of mixed paper, taking in 40 percent of North American exports.

In Massachusetts, Michael Camara, chief executive of ABC Disposal Service, said the crisis shows no signs of relenting. The company’s recycling plant in Rochester, facing a 41 percent drop in prices, now has hundreds of bales of material waiting to be shipped to a processor, and the amount grows by the day.

“It’s a horrific situation, with high costs and limited demand,” he said. “At this point, it’s unclear whether we’ll be able to stay in business. Something needs to change.”

State environmental officials, who last year spent $7 million to help municipalities maintain and promote recycling programs, said they have sought to offset the financial impact on communities in Western Massachusetts by shortening the length of their contracts and opening up the plant in Springfield to 27 other towns in the region. But little else can be done, they said.

Municipalities with programs that do not separate their recyclables, so-called single-stream collection, will have to pay on average about $150 a ton over a three-year contract to have their waste accepted at the plant; those where residents separate paper and plastic into different bins will have to pay nearly $100 a ton over a five-year contract.

“The new contract will be more expensive for communities due to a changed international market,” said Joe Ferson, a spokesman for the Department of Environmental Protection. “These costs are in line with what many communities across the state, region, and country are paying.”

Ferson said the department hasn’t been informed that any communities are pulling out of the agreement, which would likely require Waste Management to raise costs even more for those that sign their contracts. But some communities — including the largest in the region — now say that they are indeed likely to pull out.

In Springfield, which produces some 7,000 tons of recycling a year, officials said the new recycling contract would force the city, which now pays nothing, to pay $1.2 million a year, an untenable sum.

“That’s a huge number for us,” said Chris Cignoli, director of the city’s Department of Public Works. “We don’t have that kind of money. Nobody does.”

He has begun informing colleagues in neighboring towns that Springfield is considering other options, meaning a potential 35 percent reduction in single-stream recyclables sent to the state plant. Such a decision could force the state to end single-stream recycling at the Springfield facility, because it relies heavily on collections from that city, he said.

“It seems highly unlikely that we’re going to sign,” Cignoli said. “That means other communities are going to have to get their own houses in order.”

In Holyoke, where in good years the city earned as much as $70,000 from its recycling program, officials were also scrambling to find another option. If officials agree to the new contract, they’re facing annual costs that start at $160,000.

“This is beyond what we can bear,” said Michael E. Bloomberg, chief of staff to the mayor, adding the city is unlikely to sign on to the state plan.

“In a city that’s fighting to find every penny it can for education, public health, and potholes,” he said, “we’re now having a reckoning.” Both Holyoke and Springfield are instead considering lower-cost offers from contractors.

At the recent meeting at the Public Works Department in Westfield, municipal officials raised concerns about being locked into an agreement with the state for another five years. As officials huddled around a conference table, many were exasperated.

Their discussion ranged from eliminating curbside recycling to whether to pass the costs on to residents in the form of higher disposal fees. Neither seemed viable, Billips said.

In the end, they decided to analyze the costs of delivering their recycling to another contractor farther away. They asked a consultant to look at the costs of converting the city’s transfer station into a facility that could accommodate recycling.

There were concerns raised about the alternatives, and little time left to decide what the city should do.  “This whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth,” Billips said.

SOURCE





Scientific Misconduct At James Cook University Confirms My Worst Fears

Peter Ridd

Seven scientists expose massive scientific incompetence –  or worse – at James Cook University

The paper by Timothy Clark, Graham Raby, Dominique Roche, Sandra Binning, Ben Speers-Roesch, Frederik Jutfelt and Josefin Sundin (Clark et al., 2020) is a magnificent example of a comprehensive and very brave scientific replication study. The 7 scientists repeated experiments documented in eight previous studies on the effect of climate change on coral reef fish to see if they were correct.

Clark et al. (2020) found 100% replication failure. None of the findings of the original eight studies were found to be correct.

All the erroneous studies were done by scientists from James Cook Universities highly prestigious Coral Reef Centre. They were published in high profile journals, and attracted considerable media attention.

The major findings of the original studies that were found to be wrong were that high CO2 concentrations cause small reef fish to

* lose their ability to smell predators, and can even become attracted towards the scent of predators,

* become hyper-active,

* loose their tendency to automatically swim either left or right, and,

* have impaired vision.

This is the second time these 7 authors have got together to reveal a major scientific scandal. They were the whistle blowers of the infamous Lonnstedt scientific fraud in 2018. Lonnstedt, originally a PhD student at JCU, is also one of the scientists involved with these latest erroneous studies. She was found guilty of fabricating data in Sweden.

JCU has failed to properly investigate possible scientific fraud by Lonnstedt. Government funding agencies should insist that the highest responsible officer at JCU be sacked to send a message that institutions must take fraud seriously and not try to cover it up.

I was fired from JCU in 2018 after stating that work from JCU’s coral reef centre was not trustworthy. The latest work by Clark et al. (2020) is more evidence that those comments had considerable substance.

I was awarded $1.2M for wrongful dismissal by the Federal Circuit Court in 2019. JCU has appealed the decision which will be heard in May.

Replication and Science Quality Assurance

Clark et al. (2020) is exactly the type of replication study that I have been requesting for other scientific evidence regarding the Great Barrier Reef.

Such replication studies have been opposed by all the major GBR science institutions.

Clark et al. (2020) shows a 100% failure rate of the replication tests, which is higher than the science standard of about 50% failure rate for most peer reviewed literature.

Clark et al. (2020) demonstrates, yet again, the inadequacy of peer review as a quality assurance check for scientific evidence that may be used to develop important public policy decision.

I have been proposing an “Office of Science Quality Assurance” that would be in charge of replication and audit studies to test scientific evidence to be used for government policy decisions.

The replication tests were performed on work mostly authored by scientists from JCU’s ARCCoE.

The 100% failure rate of these tests indicate that there is a serious quality assurance (QA) problem within that organisation.

I have been saying since 2015, in both public statements and the scientific literature, that the ARC COE has a QA problem. The head of the ARC COE made complaints to the Vice Chancellor of JCU about these public comments.

Those complaints led to my dismissal from JCU in 2018 after an almost unbroken 40 year association with the university.

Clark et al. (2020) demonstrates beyond doubt that my statements on Quality Assurance had considerable substance.

Scientific Fraud

No direct evidence of fraud was presented in Clark et al. (2020)

There is, however, considerable evidence of very lax scientific standards such as the lack of videoing of the behavioural experiments. This is a remarkable omission considering that videoing experiments is very easy. Combined with a 100% replication failure rate, it is clear that there was not an institutional culture of high scientific standards and integrity at the JCU ARCCoE.

Oona Lonnstedt, a PhD student at JCU, was trained within this lax institutional culture. She is an author of one of the studies tested in Clark et al. (2020).

She was later proven to be fraudulent by the very same authors of Clark et al. (2020) for work she did in Sweden.

There is compelling evidence that other work she did at JCU on Lionfish may be fraudulent.

The response of JCU to Lonnstedt’s fraud

JCU has failed to properly investigate Lonnstedt’s PhD and Post-Doc work at JCU since she was found guilty of fraud in Sweden. JCU has repeatedly said it would investigate with an external review but it appears that the committee to do this has not been appointed almost 2 years after she was found guilty of fraud in Sweden.

Scientific fraud is a serious issue. The integrity of science is at stake.

Failure to investigate fraud when there is a strong prime facie case that it has occurred is a far greater crime than fraud itself. It is a failure at the highest levels of an institution.

It demonstrates that fraud will be tolerated at James Cook University.

Source

The journal abstract

Ocean acidification does not impair the behaviour of coral reef fishes

Timothy D. Clark et al.

Abstract

The partial pressure of CO2 in the oceans has increased rapidly over the past century, driving ocean acidification and raising concern for the stability of marine ecosystems1,2,3. Coral reef fishes are predicted to be especially susceptible to end-of-century ocean acidification on the basis of several high-profile papers4,5 that have reported profound behavioural and sensory impairments—for example, complete attraction to the chemical cues of predators under conditions of ocean acidification.

Here, we comprehensively and transparently show that—in contrast to previous studies—end-of-century ocean acidification levels have negligible effects on important behaviours of coral reef fishes, such as the avoidance of chemical cues from predators, fish activity levels and behavioural lateralization (left–right turning preference).

Using data simulations, we additionally show that the large effect sizes and small within-group variances that have been reported in several previous studies are highly improbable. Together, our findings indicate that the reported effects of ocean acidification on the behaviour of coral reef fishes are not reproducible, suggesting that behavioural perturbations will not be a major consequence for coral reef fishes in high CO2 oceans.

SOURCE 





Australia: Good For You, Craig Kelly

Peter O'Brien

The [conservative Federal] Coalition needs Craig Kelly but they certainly don’t deserve him.  The pile-on against [PM] Scott Morrison, for his vacation, his ‘lack of leadership on climate change’ and his alleged responsibility for the bushfires, has been of Trump Derangement Syndrome proportions.

Kelly comes out in a combative interview with ITV talking head Piers Morgan and (a) defends the PM regarding his vacation, (b) points out that the bushfires have nothing to do with climate change and (c) that in terms of emissions reductions we are doing more than most countries.

And what thanks does he get?  Minister for water resources, drought and a lucky dip of other portfolios, David Littleproud, says:

That’s just a sideshow. He doesn’t represent the views of the government and you know what I couldn’t give a rat’s what he said, it’s irrelevant, let’s just focus on those people that are out there that need our help.

This is the same Littleproud who, only months ago, opined that he ‘didn’t know if climate change was manmade’, only to scuttle behind a ‘clarification’ when challenged by that bastion of objectivity The Guardian:

… he “totally” accepts that worsening droughts are linked to climate change, as he signalled more taxpayer support for regional communities was coming as Australia’s big dry “escalates”.

Now there’s a man of conviction for you.

Sometime ago I postulated in this forum that logic dictated there must be someone in the Liberal ranks who was sceptical about CAGW and I lamented that they did not speak out.  Craig Kelly took me to task on this and I was pleased to acknowledge  in a subsequent article, that Kelly had given voice to the sceptic position and has been doing so ever since.  His mastery of this brief is second to none among the political class.  He can cite chapter and verse of the relevant research to support his case whereas the best the wets in the Liberal Party can come up with in response to Kelly’s specific points is along the lines of Treasurer Frydenberg’s anodyne contribution to this latest furore:

Our view of climate change is that it’s real. We accept the science.

While Mr Frydenberg said fuel loads had been a factor in the bushfires, he said climate change was causing hotter, drier summers.

Which is exactly what the Greens want him to say so that they can go on beating the government over the head for achnowledging the ‘problem’ while not doing enough, by their yardstick, to remedy it. Let me summarize Craig’s argument.

Order Peter O’Brien’s Bitter Harvest here

Firstly, even committed warmist Dr Andy Pitman has conceded there is no direct link between drought and ‘climate change’. Like Littleproud, he then demonstrated quite the talent for back-scuttling.   ‘Climate change’ is in quotation marks because Pitman was talking about one particular form of climate change – the kind caused by atmospheric warming as a result of human emissions.  He has to say that, because a warming climate of this nature will produce a wetter world.  That is why most of the world’s rainforests are in the warmer tropical zone.

The current bushfire emergency has come about because of three factors:

# the prolonged drought

# the accumulation of fuel, and

# the malice and/or carelessness of almost 200 people charged with starting fires

In as much as high temperatures have contributed to the problem, if they really are records  (a doubtful proposition, given the revelations of Jennifer Marohasy et al regarding the BoM’s adjustments acolytes), they are only marginally higher than in previous decades and would  have had no greater impact now than in the past.

But on the subject of CAGW itself, no-one has done a useful cost/benefit analysis of CO2 mitigation.  That is because no-one knows just how much warming will occur in the future, how much of it will be due to man-made CO2 emissions (as opposed to natural climate variability) and how much of it will be beneficial.  So the ‘precautionary principle’ argument is often made, illustrated by rhetorical devices such as comparing the price of CO2 mitigation with that of insuring one’s house – something most people do without thinking twice.  That decision is almost instinctive but how much one is prepared to pay requires more thought. But analogies are often imperfect – sometimes laughably so, as recently demonstrated by Peter Van Onselen.  We don’t insure our homes to prevent bushfires but to recompense us in the event that one damages or destroys our house.

A better analogy, but again imperfect, is a military operation.  If your country is threatened with invasion there are two options – strike first in a do-or-die pre-emptive action, or prepare your defences, build up your strength and allow the enemy to exhaust his resources before launching a counter strike.  You would only adopt the first strategy if the danger was ‘clear and present’.  That is not the case with CAGW, despite the hysteric frothing of Piers Morgan and his sidekicks in the clip above.  In the CAGW sense I’m talking about adaptation – more dams, more robust infrastructure etc — because what we do know with certainty is that, regardless of CAGW, we will continue to see floods, droughts, bushfires and cyclones.

Even if they’re not prepared to diss the CAGW myth entirely, any half-smart conservative government would leap on Craig Kelly’s contributions to enable them to craft a case for making haste slowly and directing resources to the cause of adaptation rather than mitigation. On climate change the Coalition is half-pregnant and that is their problem.

Good on you, Craig Kelly.

SOURCE

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