Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

[Rammpal]

"...Those are averages. BD is way ahead of that curve...."

Wrt. GW/CC, so-called advanced nation/first world is already giving its middle finger to the rest of the world, vis-a-vis, cost, vis-a-vis, Paris Agreement.
i.e.: you're on your own.

Now, with BD, who's responsible for its continued survival, i.e.: staying above water... quite literally ?

[chetak]

Just look at the Top3 figures.

What do they do with so much electricity?

Never turn off any switch? & then cry climate change & drag us too?

[panduranghari]

Global Warming—The Big Picture: A Review of Brian Sussman’s “Climategate”

August 6, 2010 | by Mark W. Hendrickson | Topic: Economics & Political Systems
https://www.visionandvalues.org/2010/08 ... mategateq/

“Climategate: A Veteran Meteorologist Exposes the Global Warming Scam” By Brian Sussman | WND Books (April 22, 2010) | 240 pp. | List Price: $25.95

Climategate is thorough, knowledgeable, timely, and very well written. I have been reading about global warming for 20 years, yet this book included important information and details that were new to me.

The title of the book requires clarification. Climategate is not a book-length dissection of the “climategate” scandal that erupted last November when a huge bunch of incriminating e-mails between key global warming advocates came to light. Instead, it gives a big-picture treatment of the science, politics, economics, ideological underpinnings, and personal agendas behind the global warming issue.

The author of Climategate, Brian Sussman, is a trained meteorologist who was a TV weatherman in California for many years. He currently hosts radio station KFSO’s top-rated morning talk show in the San Francisco Bay area.

For most of his book, Sussman writes in a breezy, folksy, upbeat style that makes learning important information enjoyable. The tone shifts to earnest eloquence toward the end, when he warns us about the great dangers to liberty and prosperity posed by the ruthlessly ambitious elitists behind the global warming scam.

The most prominent of these elitists is, of course, Al Gore, who—according to Sussman—is well on his way to becoming the world’s first anti-carbon billionaire. Gore’s elitism is encapsulated in his statement, “There are times when a small group has to make difficult decisions that will affect the future of everybody.” Gore is all too happy to accept his self-appointed responsibility to restructure our lives.

Sussman provides plenty of evidence that Gore and other global warming activists bend, if not mutilate, truth and science in pursuit of money, power, and prestige. For example, in Gore’s Oscar-winning horror film, An Inconvenient Truth, the graph showing an apparent correlation between global temperature and CO2 in the atmosphere is shown briefly, so that viewers won’t have time to notice that increases in CO2 occurred after increases in temperature, thereby demolishing the assertion that CO2 causes global warming.

Sussman also recounts how an English court found that Gore’s “film contains nine scientific errors” in the context of “alarmist” and “exaggerated” content. That court ruled that An Inconvenient Truth amounted to “political brainwashing” for partisan, nonscientific objectives, and further ordered that the movie could not be shown to British schoolchildren without being accompanied by a 56-page instruction guide which points out where Gore’s claims “do not accord with mainstream scientific opinion.”

Climategate is a wide-ranging exposé of characters and special-interest groups that have exploited the global warming scare for self-serving purposes. For example, Sussman reports that the grandstanding dictator of the Maldives has demanded billions of dollars from the developed world on the grounds that human-caused global warming threatens to cause his low-lying chain of islands to disappear. In fact, the sea level there is falling.

One group exposed by Sussman is the Society of Environmental Journalists. SEJ provides lists for journalists preparing stories on global warming. One list recommends trusted advocates of global warming; the other blackballs scientists who are global warming skeptics.

Sussman also explains some of the measuring errors that have clouded the global warming issue. For example, adding new weather stations near urban heat islands, and arbitrarily “expanding” the Arctic to include an additional four million square miles of territory farther south from the North Pole, both produce an illusory increase in average temperatures.

Climategate includes the most detailed explanation I have yet seen of how untenable the anthropogenic CO2-as-culprit theory is. Sussman gathers the scientific information about the relative heat-trapping capacity of different atmospheric gasses, shows CO2’s percentage of the whole (both with and without the major greenhouse gas, water vapor) then factors in mankind’s share of total global CO2 emissions. Bottom line? Humans are responsible for about one-ninth of one percent of the greenhouse effect (and, as Sussman briefly explains, the greenhouse effect is only one of several factors that influence earth’s temperature).

Sussman’s chapter summarizing the pros and cons of the various sources of energy provides an excellent primer on the subject. His information about how corporate and political insiders stand to make billions in controlling the government-rigged energy market under a cap-and-trade scheme while regimenting Americans under a yoke of Big Brother-like, high-tech monitoring devices is chilling.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of this book. Climategate provides a comprehensive debunking of global warming mythology. It sounds a timely warning about how grim our future will be if powerful elitists and special-interest groups succeed in imposing their agenda on us. If you only understand global warming in bits and pieces, this is the book that puts it all together for you in the proper perspective and context.

[panduranghari]

Is the climate changing?
Of course. The climate always has changed and always will.

Is the earth getting warmer?
We should hope so for at least two reasons: First, the world emerged from the Little Ice Age in the 19th century, so it would be worrisome if it weren’t getting warmer. Second, all the history indicates that humans thrive more during warmer periods than colder ones. It is likely, though, that earth has warmed less than many official temperature records indicate for a variety of reasons, including: few long-term records from either the southern hemisphere or the 71 percent of the planet that is covered by water; distortions from the urban heat-island effect and other faulty siting (e.g., temperature sensors next to asphalt parking lots, etc.; the decline in weather station reports from Siberia after the fall of the Soviet government; the arbitrarily ceasing to include measurements from northern latitudes and high elevations, etc.) The most accurate measures of temperature come from satellites. Since the start of these measurements in 1979, they show minor fluctuations and an insignificant net change in global temperature.

Is the earth getting dangerously warm?
Probably not, since the earth was warmer than it is now in 7000 of the last 10,000 years. By the way, does anybody know what the “right” amount of global heat is?

Are we humans causing the warming by our carbon emissions?
Actually, most of the “greenhouse effect” is due to water vapor, which makes one wonder why the EPA hasn’t designated H2O a harmful pollutant that they must regulate. Meteorologist Brian Sussman’s calculations in his book “Climategate” show humanity’s share of the greenhouse effect as .9 of 1 percent. It’s even possible that CO2 may not affect global warming at all. During many stretches of planetary history, there has been no correlation between the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and global temperature. In other long stretches, the variations of the two factors followed a significant sequence: increases in CO2 followed increases in warmth by several centuries. You don’t need to have a degree in climate science to know that, in a temporal universe, cause does not follow its effect.Even global warming alarmists have tacitly conceded that CO2 is not the primary driver of climate change when they responded to the relative cooling in recent years by changing their story and telling us that the earth is likely to cool for a few decades in spite of still-increasing atmospheric CO2. Translation: other factors outweigh CO2 in their impact on global temperatures. Those other factors include variations in solar activity (accounting for 3/4 of the variability in earth’s temperature according to the Marshall Institute); changes in earth’s orbit and axis; albedo (reflectivity, meaning changes in cloud cover which are influenced by fluctuations in gamma ray activity); and volcanic and tectonic activity in the earth’s crust. For humans to presume that they are more than a gnat on an elephant’s rump in terms of impact on climate change is vain and delusive.

Shifting gears, let’s assume that the alarmists are right and that man-made CO2 emissions are making the world warmer. If so, what changes would they hope to accomplish and at what cost?
During the cap-and-trade debates in 2009 and 2010, proponents cited scientific studies predicting that curtailing American CO2 emission reductions would shave a few hundredths of a degree off future temperatures. And the costs? The United Nations published an estimate that the total planetary cost could reach $552 trillion (approximately a decade’s worth of global GDP) over the course of the 21st century. One is tempted to say that proposing so colossal a cost for so minuscule an alleged benefit is insane; remember, for plants, animals, and people, warmer is better. When one begins to grasp the magnitude of the burden that people would bear as a result of spending so much to tilt at the carbon dioxide windmill, it’s worse than insane; it’s criminal.

Who would benefit from this catastrophically expensive agenda?
Only the political and politically connected elite—the Goldman Sachs outfits that would reap billions from trading carbon permits; the Al Gores and corporate and political insiders that would amass fortunes from their ties to a government-rigged energy market and investments in politically correct technologies. And think of the power that governments would have if they controlled energy consumption. By controlling energy, you control people. No wonder governments have spent tens of billions of dollars promoting this scenario and supporting political panels like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to disseminate the desired “findings.”

Who would lose if governments gain the power to order a significant reduction in CO2 emissions?
Around the world, millions of people at the margins of survival would die. It would be a dispersed holocaust. Millions of others would suffer unnecessary impoverishment and deprivation. Even in wealthier countries, people who are affluent enough to afford the monetary costs could find their lives heavily regimented by government bureaucrats monitoring and limiting how many miles they may travel and what activities they may undertake.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhendri ... 4a155339f6

Simple question and answer format, covers the gist of the argument - is it propaganda or is it reality?

[NRao]

From the Vikrant thread.

Nope didn't miss them. Already seen them countless times.
Questions... what kind of weed is that floating on the surface...
don't tell me its hyacinth. This is not fresh water I am looking at ... is it ?

Khalsa, that is indeed hyacinth. But dead/dying because of salt water.

(Google map CSL. You will see that the yard is in a large lagoon called Lake Vembanad. The lagoon extends further south into lush agricultural lands called Kuttanad. Rivers empty into it. There is a long salt-water barrage build across the lake/lagoon in 1970s, called "Thanneermukkam Bund" to prevent saline water being bought in by tides and screwing up lowlying agricultural land. So the lake becomes freshwater on one side (south) and sea-water on the other side (north, where CSL is at) of barrier. Flip side of the barrier is that Hyacinths spread rapidly due to fertilizer runoffs on the fresh-water side. This hyacinth was usually killed off by salinity from sea water, but the barrage prevents that nowadays. These weeds spill over the barrage onto north side and slowly die off due to salnity. Tides slowly carry the dying weeds out to Arabian sea, but not before passing by our Viky.... phew, that was long!)

So, seems like way back in the 70s sea water was a threat in that part of Kerala.

[A_Gupta]

There are positive feedback loops in the processes that determine climate that can abruptly change the climate. The evidence from the past:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/index.html

[NRao]

Amid smoggy days in London, growing calls to clean up Europe’s toxic air

By Griff Witte December 20 at 4:27 PM
LONDON — It’s Christmastime on Oxford Street. Brilliant displays of white lights rain from above. Decked-out shoppers dash from one gaudy sale to the next. And Johnny ­Conquest breathes in poison.

“The air is horrible. The taxis stop right here, and when they take off, boom, you can taste it,” says the 67-year-old as the heavenly smell of the caramel peanuts he hawks from a humble street stall mingles with the sickly stench of diesel. “I’m on the worst corner in London.”

In at least one important respect, it may be the worst in the world.

London has come a long way since the days when its infamous coal-fired pollution shrouded Sherlock in a permanent haze or struck at least 4,000 residents dead in less than a week.

But the city’s overreliance on diesel-powered vehicles has given it a dubious distinction: a global leader in nitrogen dioxide, a particularly noxious pollutant that shortens the lives of thousands of Londoners a year.

Londoners talk about their city's noxious air pollution Play Video1:21
London’s over-reliance on diesel-powered vehicles has made it a global leader in nitrogen dioxide. (Griff Witte, Karla Adam/The Washington Post)
Here and in cities across environmentally minded Europe, NO2 levels are substantially higher than in North America, or even in Asian and African megacities whose names have become bywords for dirty air. And that is all because of decades of government incentives designed to spur the purchase of supposedly cleaner diesel cars and trucks.

“It’s a complete policy failure,” said Gary Fuller, who directs an air-quality-study center at King’s College London. “No one could defend this.”

Rather than try, European mayors are declaring war on diesel, hoping to give their cities a clean start.

This month, mayors of three major European capitals, plus Mexico City, announced ambitious plans to ban all diesel vehicles within the next decade.

[Paris is so smoggy that the city will pay for your bus fare]

“We can no longer tolerate air pollution and the health problems and deaths it causes, particularly for our most vulnerable citizens,” said Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who was joined in the pledge by the mayors of Athens and Madrid.

London’s new mayor, Sadiq Khan, has not gone as far — yet. But he has made reducing air pollution a central pillar of his young administration, more than doubling funding for clean-air campaigns with a billion-dollar commitment and announcing plans that will radically transform the city’s fleet of iconic — but diesel­-dependent — taxis and buses.

London is shrouded in fog on Dec. 1. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
“With nearly 10,000 Londoners dying early every year due to air pollution, tackling poor air quality is a public health emergency,” Khan said in announcing the moves.

The scale of the challenge has been on display recently in cities across the continent. Paris this month experienced its worst air-pollution episode in a decade, with a thick blanket of ugly air smothering the City of Light for days. Municipal leaders temporarily made public transit free to cut cars from the roads.

In Milan, safe limits on dangerous fine particles were breached each day for a week, prompting the city council to stiffen a ban on the worst-polluting diesel vehicles. Wood-burning fires also were forbidden, a decision that echoed that of a town near Naples, which last year outlawed pizza-making in a bid to cleanse its choking air.

London, too, has been feeling the effects, with air-quality-monitoring stations this month showing some of the worst pollutant levels in recent years. The forecast for the coming days prompted one green activist to quip that Santa should take care not to exert himself during his rounds in Britain.

But as a habitual London visitor, Santa will have seen worse over the city’s long history.

Air quality has been a problem in London since at least the Middle Ages. Rapid industrialization and urban growth lent a chronically smoky backdrop to literature throughout the Victorian period. In December 1952, coal-belching homes and factories enveloped London in smog so thick that air, rail and road traffic was halted for five days as cows dropped dead in their fields and people suffocated on the streets.

That event — known as the Great Smog — inspired the world’s first clean-air legislation four years later. The regulation of furnaces and fireplaces, plus the banning of coal in key areas, ushered in dramatic improvements. But it also gave lawmakers the illusion that the problem of urban air pollution had been solved.

A fateful bet on diesel has brought it back with a vengeance. Governments across Europe have aggressively promoted diesel vehicles, reasoning that diesel’s lower carbon-dioxide output makes it gentler on the planet than gasoline. In London, the streets are filled with diesel-powered buses and taxis. Continent-wide, diesel accounts for about half the car market.

[In Scotland, gusts of wind usher in a quiet energy revolution]

But diesel has one glaring disadvantage: It is a major source of NO2, a pollutant that stunts lung growth and has been linked to a range of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. The diesel push has meant that although air in Europe is far cleaner overall than in many parts of the globe, it still can be — and often is — deadly.

“It’s been a public health catastrophe on an unimaginable scale,” said Simon Birkett, founder and director of the advocacy group Clean Air in London. “We’ll probably never know the full extent of the impact.”

In particularly traffic-swollen areas of central London, it took just the first eight days of 2016 to breach the European Union’s NO2 limits for the entire year.

Samantha Walker, policy director for Asthma UK, said that such high concentrations of pollutants can bring on an attack in minutes and that prolonged exposure among children can cause health impacts that last a lifetime.

Citing those health costs, Khan, London’s mayor since May, has launched plans to expand zones in the capital where only low-emission vehicles can tread, and to replace thousands of diesel-powered buses and taxis with hybrid and fully electric vehicles.

Birkett, the activist, said Khan deserves plaudits for such moves. But he also urged the mayor to go further by joining Paris, Madrid, Athens and Mexico City in pledging to eliminate diesel vehicles altogether by 2025.

“There’s an opportunity here to re-engineer cities,” Birkett said. “We need to ban diesel just like we banned coal 60 years ago.”

Fuller, the King’s College scientist, said an outright diesel ban would be “a huge challenge” for any city given the dependence on diesel for public transit and delivery trucks.

Air-quality solutions, Fuller said, need to be “holistic,” with a focus not just on what comes out of a vehicle’s tailpipe but also on persuading people to abandon their cars altogether in favor of public transit, walking and biking.

In a sprawling and ancient city such as London, that is not always easy. For years, officials have batted around the idea of pedestrianizing Oxford Street, London’s blinged-out central shopping district. There is just one problem.

“There’s nowhere else for the traffic to go,” said Conquest, the sidewalk peanut vendor.

Instead of a walker’s paradise, Oxford Street remains a vehicle-clogged dystopia, with some of the world’s worst NO2 levels. Buses and taxis chug along emitting diesel fumes day and night, while tall buildings trap the noxious gases for pedestrians to breathe.

Conquest, a slight and spry man who has been selling his wares on Oxford Street for 50 years, said he has been lucky. He stays in shape and has been spared the health effects that have hobbled so many others. But he says he does not doubt that decades spent breathing toxic air have taken their toll.

“I run marathons,” he said. “I would have won a few of them if I hadn’t been standing on this ­corner.”

[NRao]

Paris is so smoggy that the city will pay for your bus fare

People cross the Champs-Élysées as Paris suffers a pollution spike. (Michel Euler/AP)
PARIS — As the fabled City of Light faces its highest pollution levels in more than a decade, authorities have banned half of its drivers from city streets and made public transportation free to accommodate the overflow.

Experts say the unusually smoggy skies are a function of emissions from power plants, traffic and heating — particularly wood fires — kept closer to ground level by low winds and high pressure.


The Eiffel Tower is shrouded in haze as the sun comes up on Thursday. (Ian Langsdon/European Pressphoto Agency)
On Thursday, only cars with even-number license plates were allowed to drive, in an effort to limit traffic emissions. On Wednesday, only those with odd-number license plates were allowed. Public transportation has been free since Tuesday. It is the fourth time in 20 years that Paris has had to impose this sort of traffic ban in response to dangerous pollution levels. The free public transport is costing the city an estimated $4.3 million a day, according to the Local news outlet.

Anne Hidalgo, Paris’s Socialist mayor, has wasted no time in using the situation to underscore her long campaign against car emissions as a threat to public health. On Tuesday, she tweeted a picture of the Eiffel Tower, barely distinguishable beneath a widespread haze.

Anne Hidalgo ✔ @Anne_Hidalgo
#Paris aujourd'hui. La preuve de la nécessité de réduire la place de la voiture en centre-ville #pollution
8:38 AM - 6 Dec 2016 · Paris, France
2,363 2,363 Retweets 1,498 1,498 likes
“Paris today. The proof that we need to reduce the presence of cars in the city,” she wrote.

Last week, Hidalgo reaffirmed her pledge to ban diesel vehicles from the French capital by 2025, in conjunction with other capital cities such as Athens, Madrid and Mexico City.

“Every year, 2,500 people die in Paris because of air pollution,” she said. “We cannot remain inactive in this situation.”

This is not the first time Paris has imposed such measures in response to high pollution levels, with similar traffic bans in 2015, 2014 and 1997.

Many drivers, though, have paid no attention to the traffic bans, and police issued approximately 1,700 fines on Tuesday, the Local reported.

[NRao]

Pre-Christmas melt? North Pole forecast to warm 50 degrees above normal Thursday

Posting just one image, there are plenty of others that support the article

It’s not normal, and it’s happening again.

For the second year in a row in late December and for the second time in as many months, temperatures in the high Arctic will be freakishly high compared to normal.

Computer models project that on Thursday, three days before Christmas, the temperature near the North Pole will be an astronomical 40-50 degrees warmer-than-normal and approaching 32 degrees, the melting point.

On some forecast maps simulating Arctic temperatures, the color bar does not even go as high as predicted levels.


GFS model forecast temperature difference (in Celsius) from normal in the Arctic on Thursday. (University of Maine Climate Re-analyzer)
The warmth will be drawn into the Arctic by a powerhouse storm east of Greenland. The European weather model estimates its lowest pressure will be around 945 millibars, which is comparable to many category 3 hurricanes.

“That’s pretty intense,” said Ryan Maue, a meteorologist with WeatherBell Analytics.


European model forecast low pressure center of 946 millibars east of Greenland Wednesday helping draw mild air into the Arctic through the Nordic sea. (WeatherBell.com)
Maue explained that depleted sea ice cover east of the Nordic Sea helps create a passageway for warm air to surge north uninhibited. “You have more real estate available to advect the warm and moist air northward,” he said.


Simulation of high altitude temperatures from European model shows mild air from the south streaming through the Nordic sea towards the North Pole. (WeatherBell.com)
Arctic sea ice levels are at a record lows. In November, the Arctic usually gains ice, but over a period of five days it saw 19,000 square miles of ice cover vanish, which NOAA called “almost unprecedented”.

Zachary Labe, a doctoral student researching the Arctic at the University of California-Irvine, said that the lack of ice in this region has allowed ocean temperatures to warm to levels well above normal.

“The warm ocean acts as a buffer to keep the air temperatures from getting colder,” Labe said.

Air temperatures in the Arctic above 80 degrees north (latitude) have been much warmer than normal since roughly September.

(Danish Meteorological Institute, adapted by Capital Weather Gang)
(Danish Meteorological Institute, adapted by Capital Weather Gang)
The “persistence and magnitude of above average Arctic temperatures continues to remain quite impressive” Labe said on Twitter.

The month of November was an incredible 18 degrees warmer than normal in the Arctic, the National Snow and Ice Data said.

Richard James, who holds a doctorate in meteorology, found November produced the most anomalously warm Arctic temperatures of any month on record after analyzing data from 19 weather stations.

[Abnormally warm Arctic spurs planet to second-warmest November on record]


Temperature difference from normal in Arctic in November. (Climate.gov)
In the middle of the month, the temperature averaged over the entire Arctic north of 80 degrees latitude spiked to 36 degrees above normal.

[The North Pole is an insane 36 degrees warmer than normal as winter descends]

Ted Scambos, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said that he was struck that an area “the size of the entire contiguous U.S. had temperatures that far above the norm, all at the same time.”

The anomalous warmth to close out 2016 follows a very a similar event at the end of 2015 when Arctic temperatures surged over the melting point.

Watch global temperatures change from 1880 to now Play Video0:31
[From Dec. 2015: Freak storm may push temperatures over 50 degrees above normal at North Pole]

The question the research community is grappling with is whether these huge temperatures spikes are becoming more common.

“I don’t think anyone can for sure say,” said Labe. “The variability in the Arctic is tremendous. It usually does bring in brief periods of very warm weather [compared to normal].”

WeatherBell’s Maue agreed, saying the big Arctic storms which have drawn mild air into the Arctic both this year and last year are part and parcel of Atlantic weather variability.

A study published in the journal Nature on Dec. 15 said these events have happened once or twice a decade going to back to the 1950s.

While it’s premature to say if these events are becoming more frequent, the intensity of the warm air reaching the Arctic is almost certainly increasing.

“[T]he warmest midwinter temperatures at the North Pole have been increasing at a rate that is twice as large as that for mean midwinter temperatures at the pole,” the Nature study said. “It is argued that this enhanced trend is consistent with the loss of winter sea ice from the Nordic Seas that moves the reservoir of warm air over this region northwards making it easier for weather systems to transport this heat polewards.”

When these excessive warm anomalies occur in the Arctic, the cold air which is usually present must go somewhere. In November, it piled up in Siberia and that is poised to happen again:

And eventually some of the cold air in Siberia crossed the pole and dived into North America in mid-December. Only time will tell if history is to repeat itself.

[Mort Walker]

^^^The data may well have been manipulated for political and economic gain. I would be cautious and see if temperature data correlates to upper atmospheric, astronomical and geophysical data. Right now we're at solar minimum.

[panduranghari]

Top Russian Scientist: ‘fear a deep temperature drop — not global warming’

The sun defines the climate, not carbon dioxide. So says eminent Russian space scientist, Habibullo Abdussamatov (Dr. Sc. – Head of Space research laboratory of the Pulkovo Observatory). Also Head of the Russian/Ukrainian joint project Astrometria, Abdussamatov (pictured) is featured on page 140 of the 2009 U.S. Senate Report of More Than 700 Dissenting Scientists Over Man-Made Global Warming. habibullo

Below Dr Abdussamatov explains why carbon dioxide is “insignificant” in climate change (translated from Russian by Lucy Hancock).

Key Excerpts: Observations of the Sun show that as for the increase in temperature, carbon dioxide is “not guilty” and as for what lies ahead in the upcoming decades, it is not catastrophic warming, but a global, and very prolonged, temperature drop. […] Over the past decade, global temperature on the Earth has not increased; global warming has ceased, and already there are signs of the future deep temperature drop. […]

It follows that warming had a natural origin, the contribution of CO2 to it was insignificant, anthropogenic increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide does not serve as an explanation for it, and in the foreseeable future CO2 will not be able to cause catastrophic warming. The so-called greenhouse effect will not avert the onset of the next deep temperature drop, the 19th in the last 7500 years, which without fail follows after natural warming. […] We should fear a deep temperature drop — not catastrophic global warming. Humanity must survive the serious economic, social, demographic and political consequences of a global temperature drop, which will directly affect the national interests of almost all countries and more than 80% of the population of the Earth. A deep temperature drop is a considerably greater threat to humanity than warming. However, a reliable forecast of the time of the onset and of the depth of the global temperature drop will make it possible to adjust in advance the economic activity of humanity, to considerably weaken the crisis.

Excerpts: Experts of the United Nations in regular reports publish data said to show that the Earth is approaching a catastrophic global warming, caused by increasing emissions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. However, observations of the Sun show that as for the increase in temperature, carbon dioxide is “not guilty” and as for what lies ahead in the upcoming decades, it is not catastrophic warming, but a global, and very prolonged, temperature drop.

Life on earth completely depends on solar radiation, the ultimate source of energy for natural processes. For a long time it was thought that the luminosity of the Sun never changes, and for this reason the quantity of solar energy received per second over one square meter above the atmosphere at the distance of the Earth from the Sun (149 597 892 km), was named the solar constant.

Until 1978, precise measurements of the value of the total solar irradiance (TSI) were not available. But according to indirect data, namely the established major climate variations of the Earth in recent millennia, one must doubt the invariance of its value.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, German and Swiss astronomers Heinrich Schwabe and Rudolf Wolf established that the number of spots on the surface of the Sun periodically changes, diminishing from a maximum to a minimum, and then growing again, over a time frame on the order of 11 years. Wolf introduced an index (“W”) of the relative number of sunspots, computed as the sum of 10 times number of sunspot groups plus the total number of spots in all groups. This number has been regularly measured since 1849. Drawing on the work of professional astronomers and the observations of amateurs (which are of uncertain reliability) Wolf worked out a reconstruction of monthly values from 1749 as well as annual values from 1700. Today, the reconstruction of this time series stretches back to 1611. It has an eleven-year cycle of recurrence as well as other cycles related to onset and development of individual sunspot groups: changes in the fraction of the solar surface occupied by faculae, the frequency of prominences, and other phenomena in the solar chromosphere and corona.

Analyzing the long record of sunspot numbers, the English astronomer Walter Maunder in 1893 came to the conclusion that from 1645 to 1715 sunspots had been generally absent. Over the thirty-year period of the Maunder Minimum, astronomers of the time counted only about 50 spots. Usually, over that length of time, about 50,000 sunspots would appear. Today, it has been established that such minima have repeatedly occurred in the past. It is also known that the Maunder Minimum accompanied the coldest phase of a global temperature dip, physically measured in Europe and other regions, the most severe such dip for several millennia, which stretched from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries (now known as the Little Ice Age).

The search for a relationship between large climate variations and phenomena observed in the Sun led to an interest in finding a connection between periods of change in the terrestrial climate and corresponding significant changes in the level of observed solar activity, because the sunspot number is the only index that has been measured over a long period of time.

Determinative role of the Sun in variations in the climate of the Earth

The Earth, after receiving and storing over the twentieth century an anomalously large amount of heat energy, from the 1990’s began to return it gradually. The upper layers of the world ocean, completely unexpectedly to climatologists, began to cool in 2003. The heat accumulated by them unfortunately now is running out.

Over the past decade, global temperature on the Earth has not increased; global warming has ceased, and already there are signs of the future deep temperature drop (Fig. 7, 11). Meantime the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over these years has grown by more than 4%, and in 2006 many meteorologists predicted that 2007 would be the hottest of the last decade. This did not occur, although the global temperature of the Earth would have increased at least 0.1 degree if it depended on the concentration of carbon dioxide. It follows that warming had a natural origin, the contribution of CO2 to it was insignificant, anthropogenic increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide does not serve as an explanation for it, and in the foreseeable future CO2 will not be able to cause catastrophic warming. The so-called greenhouse effect will not avert the onset of the next deep temperature drop, the 19th in the last 7500 years, which without fail follows after natural warming.

The earth is no longer threatened by the catastrophic global warming forecast by some scientists; warming passed its peak in 1998-2005, while the value of the TSI by July – September of last year had already declined by 0.47 W/m2 (Fig. 1).

For several years until the beginning in 2013 of a steady temperature drop, in a phase of instability, temperature will oscillate around the maximum that has been reached, without further substantial rise. Changes in climatic conditions will occur unevenly, depending on latitude. A temperature decrease in the smallest degree would affect the equatorial regions and strongly influence the temperate climate zones. The changes will have very serious consequences, and it is necessary to begin preparations even now, since there is practically no time in reserve. The global temperature of the Earth has begun its decrease without limitations on the volume of greenhouse gas emissions by industrially developed countries; therefore the implementation of the Kyoto protocol aimed to rescue the planet from the greenhouse effect should be put off at least 150 years.

[…]

Consequently, we should fear a deep temperature drop — not catastrophic global warming. Humanity must survive the serious economic, social, demographic and political consequences of a global temperature drop, which will directly affect the national interests of almost all countries and more than 80% of the population of the Earth. A deep temperature drop is a considerably greater threat to humanity than warming. However, a reliable forecast of the time of the onset and of the depth of the global temperature drop will make it possible to adjust in advance the economic activity of humanity, to considerably weaken the crisis.

[NRao]

Arctic heatwave could break records

Temperatures at the North Pole could be up to 20 degrees higher than average this Christmas Eve, in what scientists say is a record-breaking heatwave.

Climate scientists say these unseasonably warm weather patterns in the Arctic region are directly linked to man-made climate change.

Temperatures throughout November and December were 5C higher than average.

It follows a summer during which Arctic sea ice reached the second-lowest extent ever recorded by satellites.


Arctic sea-ice thicknessImage copyrightESA/CPOM/LEEDS UNI
Image caption

Arctic sea ice extent is monitored and measured by satellite imaging

Dr Friederike Otto, a senior researcher at Oxford's Environmental Change Institute told BBC News that in pre-industrial times "a heatwave like this would have been extremely rare - we would expect it to occur about every 1,000 years".

Dr Otto added that scientists are "very confident" that the weather patterns were linked to anthropogenic climate change.

"We have used several different climate modelling approaches and observations," she told BBC News.
"And in all our methods, we find the same thing; we cannot model a heatwave like this without the anthropogenic signal."

Temperatures are forecast to peak on Christmas Eve around the North Pole - at near-freezing.

The warm air from the North Atlantic is forecast to flow all the way to the North Pole via Spitsbergen, giving rise to clouds that prevent heat from escaping.

And, as Dr Otto explained to BBC News, the reduction in sea ice is contributing to this "feedback loop".

"If the globe is warming, then the sea ice and ice on land [shrinks] then the darker water and land is exposed," she said.

"Then the sunlight is absorbed rather than reflected as it would be by the ice."

Forecasting models show that there is about a 2% chance of a heatwave event occurring every year.

"But if temperatures continue to increase further as they are now," said Dr Otto, "we would expect a heatwave like this to occur every other year and that will be a huge stress on the ecosystem."

Dr Thorsten Markus, chief of NASA's Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory, said the heatwave was "very, very unusual".

"The eerie thing is that we saw something quite similar (temperatures at the North Pole of about 0C in December) almost exactly a year ago," he told BBC News.
The freeze and thaw conditions are already making it difficult for reindeer to find food - as the moss they feed on is covered by hard ice, rather than soft, penetrable snow.

Asked if the conditions on Christmas Eve were likely to affect Santa's all-important journey, Dr Markus said he was confident that his sled would cope with the conditions.

He added: "Santa is most likely overdressed though. Maybe in the future we'll see him in a light jacket or plastic mac."
Follow Victoria on Twitter

[NRao]

From ExxonMobile, nonetheless.

ExxonMobil and FuelCell Energy progressing one-of-a-kind carbon capture fuel cell solution

FuelCell Energy and ExxonMobil have announced the site of a pilot plant to test a novel research concept that uses fuel cell technology to capture carbon dioxide.

This new technology has the potential to substantially reduce costs and lead to a more economical pathway toward large-scale application globally.

The site selection comes just a few months after ExxonMobil and FuelCell Energy announced their ambitious research program to test fuel cell technology for carbon-dioxide capture.

Actual testing in a real-world setting is critical to eventually turning this idea into reality. And that’s exactly what the companies are hoping to do at Southern Company subsidiary Alabama Power’s 2.7-gigawatt James M. Barry power plant in Bucks, Alabama.

FuelCell Energy and ExxonMobil are working on front-end engineering and design of a pilot plant, which will test carbon capture from natural gas-fired power generation. {Even gas based plants contribute to CO2}

When testing begins, flue gas from the Barry power plant will be piped into the fuel cell, where it will be combined with natural gas. The fuel cells will concentrate and capture carbon dioxide and, in the process, generate electricity, unlike other carbon-capture methods which consume energy.

ExxonMobil vice president for research and development Vijay Swarup said the site selection is a key step in the research program.

“Breakthroughs like the deployment of carbonate fuel cells at power plants are essential for reducing emissions while at the same time increasing power generation and limiting costs to consumers,” he explained. “We continue to work with FuelCell on the scientific fundamentals in the lab while we look to progress the feasibility of this small-scale pilot.”

Scroll through our illustration to learn more about fuel cells and how they could help make carbon capture a cost-effective reality.

[A_Gupta]

Global Sea Ice Area:
http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.p ... l#msg96987

[NRao]

The agony of Earth's hottest year: 'I miss that cold-cold weather'

Sick of the cold? Tired of ice? This little Inupiat village -- about 30 miles from the Arctic Circle -- would gladly take a dose of both.

"I miss that cold-cold weather," said Hazel Fernandez, 62. "It's too weird. It's too warm."

Outside, Shishmaref, Alaska, looked like this:

My phone showed the temperature at 24 degrees Fahrenheit.

But that felt downright steamy to Fernandez and others.

She was wearing sneakers instead of insulated boots or sealskin mittens.

Old timers prefer weather that's 20 or 30 below.

Globally, 2016 is expected to be the hottest on record -- breaking the record set in 2015, which broke the record from the year before that. (Breitbart News and others are cherry picking data to tell you otherwise.) In all, scientists say humans have warmed the planet about 1 degree Celsius since around the time of the Industrial Revolution. This heat, which we're causing by burning fossil fuels and trapping warmth in the atmosphere, is contributing to a host of dangerous weather around the world. A flood this August in Louisiana, for example, killed 13 people. Scientists say that event was made 40% more likely -- and 10% more intense -- because of climate change.

Perhaps nowhere are the consequences more apparent than here in the Arctic, which is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. In mid-November, temperatures across the far north were up to 35 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, shocking scientists.

On December 22, the North Pole was a stunning 50 degrees above average.

[Neshant]

Good old fashioned raw temperature data tampering & massaging University of East Anglia style (of Climategate fame) going on at NOAA?


______
Is 100% Of "US Warming" Due To NOAA Data Tampering?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-2 ... -tampering

[A_Gupta]

Bloomberg April 2016
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ssil-fuels

Wind and solar are crushing fossil fuels.

[Vasu]

Global Natural Catastrophes Cost Insurers $50B in 2016: Munich Re

Insurers paid out around $50 billion for natural disaster claims last year, almost double 2015’s payout of $27 billion, reinsurer Munich Re said in its annual natural catastrophe review on Wednesday.

Earthquakes in Japan and devastating floods in China – only 2 percent of whose losses were insured – were the most expensive natural catastrophes of 2016. But the year saw the second-fewest fatalities from natural disasters in 30 years.

Some $125 billion of losses were uninsured.

With more disasters and more disaster insurance being taken up, this will change the entire industry. Unfortunately, I think most actuarial sciences have yet to catch up with disaster risks.

[panduranghari]

Actuarial science has not caught up with science yet and also with reality.

[SaiK]

http://www.seeker.com/potential-for-col ... 30556.html

watch the video as well

[A_Gupta]

The Oceans are steadily warming. Also a good article on how science works.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arc ... ng/512189/

PS: for those who have difficulty in accessing the article, the gist is:

1. NOAA data appeared to show a decade-long slowdown in the pace of ocean temperature increase over the 2000s.

2. "In June 2015, NOAA published an update to its long-running dataset of historical global temperatures."

3. The reason was that in merging ocean temperature readings from ships and buoys, the NOAA had allowed a bias into the data. Previously "“The way that NOAA makes an ocean record is they take data from a lot of different sources, and they smush it all together into a single record. They do this so they can have a long, continuous record back to 1880 or so,” Hausfather told me."

4. "Ships are tricky because they have historically measured the sea surface in different ways. During the mid-20th century, most sailors measured the water temperature using “bucket measurements”: They hauled a bucket over the side, dipped it in the water, brought it up, and put a thermometer in it."

5. "More recently, most ships measure the ocean temperature mechanically through an “engine-intake valve.” Ships pump water into their hull in order to cool the engine room, and a thermometer measures its temperature on the way. This can introduce bias to the numbers, though: Because engine rooms get hot, engine-intake-valve readings are skewed warmer than the actual ocean."

6. "That’s partly why, since the 1990s, the governments of the world have deployed a fleet of new sensors to measure the changing sea. Buoys, satellites, and autonomous sensors called Argo floats all patrol the ocean and measure its conditions. This has dramatically changed the makeup of NOAA’s temperature record: Whereas 95 percent of NOAA’s readings came from ship engine rooms in the early 1990s, 85 percent now come from buoys."

7. "Given the same patch of ocean, a thermometer on a buoy will produce a colder measurement than a thermometer on an engine-intake valve. This introduces some bias to the record—bias which, for years, NOAA never corrected."

8. “The problem was, NOAA previously was just sticking the buoy data in with the ship data—and not accounting for the fact that the buoy data was about a tenth of a degree cooler than the ship,” says Hausfather.

9. "This was Karl’s insight: He and the NOAA team found that, once this discrepancy was corrected for, the slowdown disappeared from their record. In fact, removing this discrepancy was the main focus of their infamous 2015 study."

10. Now there is a second study confirming the 2015 study.
Quote:
"The team behind Wednesday’s Science Advances paper wanted to test this idea. There’s all this disagreement over correcting for bias, they thought. What if you looked only at records that didn’t need to be corrected? So Hausfather and his colleagues compared the new NOAA data to what they call “instrumentally homogenous records”—that is, records created by sensors that did not change throughout the period in question. In this case, those sensors are free-drifting buoys, Argo floaters, and infrared-sensing satellites.

What they found is that the single-instrument records matched the new NOAA global temperature records almost precisely. Almost all the single-instrument records showed that the pre-2015 NOAA records had a cooling bias."

11. "And that means they showed no global warming slowdown."

That is what is provoking a lot of political and social media outrage from climate change deniers, including an "investigation" by the US Congress.

[NRao]

China to invest $360 billion in renewable power in 2016-2020

[NRao]

A Big Test for Big Batteries

[Neshant]

The Sun, Not CO2, Determines Our Climate

http://blog.heartland.org/2016/12/the-s ... r-climate/

[NRao]

Posting to indicate how irregular temp rise/fall are.

[Dipanker]

Earth Sets a Temperature Record for the Third Straight Year

Marking another milestone for a changing planet, scientists reported on Wednesday that the Earth reached its highest temperature on record in 2016 — trouncing a record set only a year earlier, which beat one set in 2014. It is the first time in the modern era of global warming data that temperatures have blown past the previous record three years in a row.

[UlanBatori]

Just as a hypothetical pooch. Suppose I discover a magic solution to cool down the planet by, oh, say 0.1 degree per year for the next 10 years. Essentially reverse global warming.

Sure, I would be hailed as a Super Herrow and win the Magsaysay AWard. And would be roundly cursed by the entire GW Lobby which would be headed for an Extinction Event.

But that's neither here nor there. My pooch is: WHO WOULD PAY FOR SUCH A VENTURE? IOW, where's the bijnej ROI?

Would YOU voluntarily donate Re. 0.03 to my enterprise, like you donate to Wikipedia?
Would any company donate? Problem is, global cooling is not the same as CO2 reduction - and only CO2 reduction is counted as worth money. In fact, if the Earth suddenly starts cooling, fossil burning would go up, hence CO2 would go UP not down, though the problem of Climate Change would be under control.

Pls enlighten onlee. Very serious thought experiment and poo-throwing opportunity.

[UlanBatori]

I note that Pakistan is Record Warmest. Isn't this because of all the vacuum explosions and Shia Mosque bonfires, I wonder.

[NRao]

* Reduction of CO2 (or anything else) is to arrest "global warming" - so it does not do further damage. Anything lost is gone.

* Try crowd funding.

* Fossil fuel is not coming back.

Technologies have improved dramatically (check out India's stance). Cost of renewable is nearly as much as fossil, if not better. And renewable technology can only get better.

From my observation, the next gen is not going to embrace our failure/s.

* In my city we have had the option of contributing towards renewable - for some 5/6 years now. And, that fund has grown.

[NRao]

Here we go.

The US Congress has rolled back the Stream Protection Rule. The first, of perhaps many such regulations, to be rolled back.

This should be a great yardstick to see what happens in the environment area. And it should not take too long to see the elasticity of such rules on the economy or jobs.

One thing, of importance, to note, is that China and India have gone in the opposite direction to the Trump thinking.

[Mort Walker]

The DT administration will soon put a stake in the heart of climate change with "What a Guy Rick Perry".

Read suggested legislation:
Tax on Wind and Solar

[NRao]

President Trump, Military Split on Climate Change

A video in that article is worth the time.

New Briefer: Why the U.S. National Security Community Takes Climate Risks Seriously

[NRao]

UK wind farm costs fall almost a third in 4 years

The green energy industry has hit another milestone as offshore wind companies reveal their costs have tumbled much faster than expected and should soon be level with gas or coal-fired power stations.

Wind farms built out at sea have always had higher costs than conventional power generators based onshore, partly because they are newer and have to withstand harsh weather conditions.

But the cost of electricity from projects in the UK plunged by nearly a third in four years to an average of £97 per megawatt hour during 2015-16, according to a report on schemes built by Dong Energy and other developers.

[NRao]

Offshore Wind Moves Into Energy’s Mainstream

Off this venerable British port city, a Danish company, Dong Energy, is installing 32 turbines that stretch 600 feet high. Each turbine produces more power than that first facility.

The number of major players has also expanded, creating more competition. A joint venture of Vestas, the Danish turbine maker, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan, is now competing with Siemens, which had long dominated the market for building offshore turbines. Others, like the American giant General Electric and Chinese manufacturers, are also jumping into the game.

[NRao]

Have been coming across extremely interesting articles, from a few years ago, where various parties had predicted diff things. What I find interesting is that these articles have now become a base line to see what has worked and what has not.

Here is one such article that hit the fan in Nov, 2014. Two engineers from Google had a say: What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change. (Interestingly, the sub title: "Today’s renewable energy technologies won’t save us.", was modified and transmitted across the world as "Renewable energy 'simply WON'T WORK': Top Google engineers".) Nonetheless, it is a very interesting article and take by two qualified scientists.

Point being, even old doom and gloom articles serve a very important purpose: they provide a datum from which we can calibrate.






Then at the other end of teh spectrum is this very interesting article from a post doc at UT Austin. What is interesting is that this guy has researched and provided the cheapest energy by *county* across the US!!!!! He has a ton of data and very intersting conclusions (and perhaps even proposals).

pdf: New U.S. Power Costs: by County,
with Environmental Externalities

A companion article from UT-Austin: Dec 16, 2016 :: Natural Gas and Wind are the Lowest-Cost Generation Technologies for Much of the U.S., New UT Austin Research Shows

And, here is a map they published:



Wish the selection of colors was better.

Even in Wyoming? Where gas and wind are projected to be cheaper.

[Neshant]

How world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... -data.html

[NRao]

Republican elders float carbon tax, plan White House lobbying campaign

Hoping to jump-start the debate on climate change, a group of high-profile Republicans that includes three former Cabinet secretaries is calling for a substantial new carbon tax, and then to offset the pain higher prices cause the middle class by returning all money raised to American taxpayers.

There you go.

[NRao]

Fuel in a nutshell

[NRao]

New York seeks to develop U.S.'s biggest offshore wind projects

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo this week proposed to develop up to 2,400 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind power by 2030 capable of powering 1.25 million homes as the state seeks to lead the nation in renewable energy production.

The offshore wind proposal came after the Democratic governor said on Monday that Entergy Corp's 2,069-MW Indian Point nuclear power plant in Westchester County would shut by 2021 and the state planned to replace its power output with renewable and low carbon energy sources.

[NRao]

Scientists have just detected a major change to the Earth’s oceans linked to a warming climate

A large research synthesis, published in one of the world’s most influential scientific journals, has detected a decline in the amount of dissolved oxygen in oceans around the world — a long-predicted result of climate change that could have severe consequences for marine organisms if it continues.

The paper, published Wednesday in the journal Nature by oceanographer Sunke Schmidtko and two colleagues from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany, found a decline of more than 2 percent in ocean oxygen content worldwide between 1960 and 2010. The loss, however, showed up in some ocean basins more than others. The largest overall volume of oxygen was lost in the largest ocean — the Pacific — but as a percentage, the decline was sharpest in the Arctic Ocean, a region facing Earth’s most stark climate change.