Month: February 2017

Richard Lindzen Petition to President Trump: Withdraw from the UN Convention on Climate Change

Richard Lindzen Petition to President Trump: Withdraw from the UN Convention on Climate Change

via Watts Up With That?http://ift.tt/1Viafi3

Guest essay by Eric Worrall Dr. Richard Lindzen has sent a petition to President Trump, asking the President to withdraw the United States from the United Nations Convention on Climate Change. The petition contains the names of around 300 eminent scientists and other qualified individuals, including physicists, engineers, former Astronauts, meteorologists, immunology specialists, marine biologists, […]

via Watts Up With That? http://ift.tt/1Viafi3

February 25, 2017 at 12:48PM

The Great Greenland Meltdown Con

The Great Greenland Meltdown Con

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAThttps://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com

By Paul Homewood

 

image

http://ift.tt/2lz0cXf

 

Another day, another ludicrous Greenland meltdown scare story:

 

From “Science”:

 

From a helicopter clattering over Greenland’s interior on a bright July day, the ice sheet below tells a tale of disintegration. Long, roughly parallel cracks score the surface, formed by water and pressure; impossibly blue lakes of meltwater fill depressions; and veiny networks of azure streams meander west, flowing to the edge of the ice sheet and eventually out to sea.

The scientists flying over the world’s largest thawing chunk of ice have selected a particularly auspicious summer to be studying the melt. The edges of Greenland’s 1.7-million-km2 ice sheet regularly melt in summer, even in years when the ice sheet as a whole grows because of snowfall in its higher, colder center. But in 2016, the melting started early and spread inland fast. By April, 12% of the ice sheet’s surface was melting; in an average year the melt doesn’t reach 10% until June. And just before the scientists’ journey, a violent river of meltwater, one of hundreds coursing out from the ice sheet, swept away a sensor, bolted to a bridge to measure the water’s turbidity. It was the second time in 4 years such a device had fallen victim to the liquid fury of the glaciers. "I’ve been doing these trips for years, but I’ve never seen so much water," the helicopter pilot told the researchers.

In Greenland, the great melt is on. The decline of Greenland’s ice sheet is a familiar story, but until recently, massive calving glaciers that carry ice from the interior and crumble into the sea got most of the attention. Between 2000 and 2008, such "dynamic" changes accounted for about as much mass loss as surface melting and shifts in snowfall. But the balance tipped dramatically between 2011 and 2014, when satellite data and modeling suggested that 70% of the annual 269 billion tons of snow and ice shed by Greenland was lost through surface melt, not calving. The accelerating surface melt has doubled Greenland’s contribution to global sea level rise since 1992–2011, to 0.74 mm per year. "Nobody expected the ice sheet to lose so much mass so quickly," says geophysicist Isabella Velicogna of the University of California, Irvine. "Things are happening a lot faster than we expected."

http://ift.tt/2lz0cXf

 

They begin with the early melt last April, but forgot to say that was due to a warm and wet weather front from the Atlantic. NSIDC explained that similar events have happened in the past, and after a few days the melt had stopped.

Maps of melting and graph of melting extent

http://ift.tt/1Y21Ht8

 

Over the year as a whole, the accumulated surface mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet was close to the long term average. This year, of course, it is running well above average.

 

accumulatedsmb

Top: The total daily contribution to the surface mass balance from the entire ice sheet (blue line, Gt/day). Bottom: The accumulated surface mass balance from September 1st to now (blue line, Gt) and the season 2011-12 (red) which had very high summer melt in Greenland. For comparison, the mean curve from the period 1990-2013 is shown (dark grey). The same calendar day in each of the 24 years (in the period 1990-2013) will have its own value. These differences from year to year are illustrated by the light grey band. For each calendar day, however, the lowest and highest values of the 24 years have been left out.

http://ift.tt/1mEP0Xq

 

Meanwhile, temperatures last year in Nuuk, close to where the study took place, were the lowest since the 1993.

Apart from the anomalously mild year of 2010, temperatures since 2000 have been similar to the 1930s and 40s.

 

image_thumb35

http://ift.tt/2ef9JPs

 

The DMI’s SW Greenland Series, most recently updated to 2013, shows that recent summer temperatures have also been similar to the 1930s.

 

image

http://ift.tt/2eif7FM

 

Last summer, the mean temperature at Nuuk was 6.9C, which according to GISS is only the 28th warmest since 1900, and well below the summers of 1931 and 1948 which reached 8.0C. 

 

As the Science article points out, there has been some calving of glaciers, But this needs to be put into perspective.

We know from ice cores that the 19thC was the coldest period since the end of the ice age.

Other studies, such as this one from Kelly & Long, support this fact. They also say that the Greenland ice sheet and mountain glaciers reached their maximum extents since the early Holocene during the Little Ice Age.

It is little surprise then that glaciers have been gradually receding since then.

 

These Greenland scare stories usually have certain common denominators:

 

1) Helicopter photos of melt pools and running water.

2) A few years of satellite data of ice sheet mass loss.

3) A focus on a day or two of warm weather.

 

None of them put these into any sort of perspective, or explain that such events are perfectly common. Instead they pretend that this is all something new and deadly, simply because nobody has been around to spot it before.

They get away with it because the public are too gullible and the media too complicit.

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT http://ift.tt/16C5B6P

February 25, 2017 at 06:57AM

Blockbuster Paper Finds Just 15% Of CO2 Growth Since Industrialization Is Due To Human Emissions

Blockbuster Paper Finds Just 15% Of CO2 Growth Since Industrialization Is Due To Human Emissions

via NoTricksZonehttp://notrickszone.com

Has the IPCC made a profoundly flawed assumption?

Take a look at what Kenneth has just found. This very new paper that follows has just been published, and will certainly raise a lot of eyebrows in the climate science field. It turns out that the human CO2 contribution in the atmosphere may very well have been hugely overstated. -PG
=================================


CO2 Has Risen By 110 ppm Since 1750

 The Human Contribution Is Just 17 ppm 



Harde, 2017

Abstract:

Climate scientists presume that the carbon cycle has come out of balance due to the increasing anthropogenic emissions from fossil fuel combustion and land use change. This is made responsible for the rapidly increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations over recent years, and it is estimated that the removal of the additional emissions from the atmosphere will take a few hundred thousand years. Since this goes along with an increasing greenhouse effect and a further global warming, a better understanding of the carbon cycle is of great importance for all future climate change predictions. We have critically scrutinized this cycle and present an alternative concept, for which the uptake of CO2 by natural sinks scales proportional with the CO2 concentration. In addition, we consider temperature dependent natural emission and absorption rates, by which the paleoclimatic CO2 variations and the actual CO2 growth rate can well be explained. The anthropogenic contribution to the actual CO2 concentration is found to be 4.3%, its fraction to the COincrease over the Industrial Era is 15% and the average residence time 4 years.


Conclusion:

Climate scientists assume that a disturbed carbon cycle, which has come out of balance by the increasing anthropogenic emissions from fossil fuel combustion and land use change, is responsible for the rapidly increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations over recent years. While over the whole Holocene up to the entrance of the Industrial Era (1750) natural emissions by heterotrophic processes and fire were supposed to be in equilibrium with the uptake by photosynthesis and the net oceanatmosphere gas exchange, with the onset of the Industrial Era the IPCC estimates that about 15 – 40 % of the additional emissions cannot further be absorbed by the natural sinks and are accumulating in the atmosphere.

The IPCC further argues that CO2 emitted until 2100 will remain in the atmosphere longer than 1000 years, and in the same context it is even mentioned that the removal of human-emitted CO2 from the atmosphere by natural processes will take a few hundred thousand years (high confidence) (see AR5-Chap.6-Executive-Summary).

Since the rising CO2 concentrations go along with an increasing greenhouse effect and, thus, a further global warming, a better understanding of the carbon cycle is a necessary prerequisite for all future climate change predictions. In their accounting schemes and models of the carbon cycle the IPCC uses many new and detailed data which are primarily focussing on fossil fuel emission, cement fabrication or net land use change (see AR5-WG1-Chap.6.3.2), but it largely neglects any changes of the natural emissions, which contribute to more than 95 % to the total emissions and by far cannot be assumed to be constant over longer periods (see, e.g.: variations over the last 800,000 years (Jouzel et al., 2007); the last glacial termination (Monnin et al., 2001); or the younger Holocene (Monnin et al., 2004; Wagner et al., 2004)).

Since our own estimates of the average CO2 residence time in the atmosphere differ by several orders of magnitude from the announced IPCC values, and on the other hand actual investigations of Humlum et al. (2013) or Salby (2013, 2016) show a strong relation between the natural CO2 emission rate and the surface temperature, this was motivation enough to scrutinize the IPCC accounting scheme in more detail and to contrast this to our own calculations.

Different to the IPCC we start with a rate equation for the emission and absorption processes, where the uptake is not assumed to be saturated but scales proportional with the actual CO2 concentration in the atmosphere (see also Essenhigh, 2009; Salby, 2016). This is justified by the observation of an exponential decay of 14C. A fractional saturation, as assumed by the IPCC, can directly be expressed by a larger residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere and makes a distinction between a turnover time and adjustment time needless. Based on this approach and as solution of the rate equation we derive a concentration at steady state, which is only determined by the product of the total emission rate and the residence time. Under present conditions the natural emissions contribute 373 ppm and anthropogenic emissions 17 ppm to the total concentration of 390 ppm (2012). For the average residence time we only find 4 years.

The stronger increase of the concentration over the Industrial Era up to present times can be explained by introducing a temperature dependent natural emission rate as well as a temperature affected residence time. With this approach not only the exponential increase with the onset of the Industrial Era but also the concentrations at glacial and cooler interglacial times can well be reproduced in full agreement with all observations. So, different to the IPCC’s interpretation the steep increase of the concentration since 1850 finds its natural explanation in the self accelerating processes on the one hand by stronger degassing of the oceans as well as a faster plant growth and decomposition, on the other hand by an increasing residence time at reduced solubility of CO2 in oceans.

Together this results in a dominating temperature controlled natural gain, which contributes about 85 % to the 110 ppm CO2 increase over the Industrial Erawhereas the actual anthropogenic emissions of 4.3 % only donate 15 %. These results indicate that almost all of the observed change of CO2 during the Industrial Era followed, not from anthropogenic emission, but from changes of natural emission.

The results are consistent with the observed lag of CO2 changes behind temperature changes (Humlum et al., 2013; Salby, 2013), a signature of cause and effect. Our analysis of the carbon cycle, which exclusively uses data for the CO2 concentrations and fluxes as published in AR5, shows that also a completely different interpretation of these data is possible, this in complete conformity with all observations and natural causalities.

 

via NoTricksZone http://notrickszone.com

February 25, 2017 at 06:46AM

A Great Free Market Moment: ‘Presidential Executive Order on Enforcing the Regulatory Reform Agenda’ (February 24, 2017)

A Great Free Market Moment: ‘Presidential Executive Order on Enforcing the Regulatory Reform Agenda’ (February 24, 2017)

via Master Resourcehttps://www.masterresource.org

“At a minimum, each Regulatory Reform Task Force shall attempt to identify regulations that (i) eliminate jobs, or inhibit job creation; (ii) are outdated, unnecessary, or ineffective; (iii) impose costs that exceed benefits; (iv) create a serious inconsistency or otherwise interfere with regulatory reform initiatives and policies; ….”

The just-signed Executive Order, “ENFORCING THE REGULATORY REFORM AGENDA” (February 24, 2017), is a great free market moment, one rivaling Ronald Reagan’s EO dated January 28, 1981, that began: “I am ordering, effective immediately, the elimination of remaining Federal controls on U.S. oil production and marketing.” Reagan explained:

For more than 9 years, restrictive price controls have held U.S. oil production below its potential, artificially boosted energy consumption, aggravated our balance of payments problems, and stifled technological breakthroughs. Price controls have also made us more energy-dependent on the OPEC nations, a development that has jeopardized our economic security and undermined price stability at home. Fears that the planned phaseout of controls would not be carried out, for political reasons, have also hampered production. Ending these controls now will erase this uncertainty.

With an estimated 145 new rules and regulations affecting the oil and gas industry in recent years, part of the accelerating Obama energy plan to chip away at economic advantages of carbon-based energy, one can agree with this statement by the American Petroleum Institute: “Today’s action by President Trump will unleash innovation across the nation, and it will allow our economy to grow, help lower energy costs for consumers, and help American workers.”

Trump’s new EO builds on his  Executive Order 13771 (February 3, 2017) that requires agencies to eliminate two existing regulations for each new enacted one.

Trump’s new initiative also continues a bipartisan tradition of periodically checking the excesses of regulation. President Obama’s Executive Order 13563 (January 18, 2011) ordered agencies to conduct a regulatory “lookback” to eliminate regulations that were either unnecessary or redundant. President Bill Clinton’s Executive Order 12866 (September 30, 1993) required that every new regulation be analyzed to make sure “that the benefits of the intended regulation justify its costs.”

——————————-

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to lower regulatory burdens on the American people by implementing and enforcing regulatory reform, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1.  Policy.  It is the policy of the United States to alleviate unnecessary regulatory burdens placed on the American people.

Sec. 2.  Regulatory Reform Officers.  (a)  Within 60 days of the date of this order, the head of each agency, except the heads of agencies receiving waivers under section 5 of this order, shall designate an agency official as its Regulatory Reform Officer (RRO).  Each RRO shall oversee the implementation of regulatory reform initiatives and policies to ensure that agencies effectively carry out regulatory reforms, consistent with applicable law.  These initiatives and policies include:

(i)    Executive Order 13771 of January 30, 2017 (Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs), regarding offsetting the number and cost of new regulations;

(ii)   Executive Order 12866 of September 30, 1993 (Regulatory Planning and Review), as amended, regarding regulatory planning and review; 

(iii)  section 6 of Executive Order 13563 of January 18, 2011 (Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review), regarding retrospective review; and

(iv)   the termination, consistent with applicable law, of programs and activities that derive from or implement Executive Orders, guidance documents, policy memoranda, rule interpretations, and similar documents, or relevant portions thereof, that have been rescinded. 

(b)  Each agency RRO shall periodically report to the agency head and regularly consult with agency leadership.

Sec. 3.  Regulatory Reform Task Forces.  (a)  Each agency shall establish a Regulatory Reform Task Force composed of: 

(i)    the agency RRO;

(ii)   the agency Regulatory Policy Officer designated under section 6(a)(2) of Executive Order 12866; 

(iii)  a representative from the agency’s central policy office or equivalent central office; and

(iv)   for agencies listed in section 901(b)(1) of title 31, United States Code, at least three additional senior agency officials as determined by the agency head.

(b)  Unless otherwise designated by the agency head, the agency RRO shall chair the agency’s Regulatory Reform Task Force. 

(c)  Each entity staffed by officials of multiple agencies, such as the Chief Acquisition Officers Council, shall form a joint Regulatory Reform Task Force composed of at least one official described in subsection (a) of this section from each constituent agency’s Regulatory Reform Task Force.  Joint Regulatory Reform Task Forces shall implement this order in coordination with the Regulatory Reform Task Forces of their members’ respective agencies.

(d)  Each Regulatory Reform Task Force shall evaluate existing regulations (as defined in section 4 of Executive Order 13771) and make recommendations to the agency head regarding their repeal, replacement, or modification, consistent with applicable law.  At a minimum, each Regulatory Reform Task Force shall attempt to identify regulations that:

(i)    eliminate jobs, or inhibit job creation;

(ii)   are outdated, unnecessary, or ineffective;

(iii)  impose costs that exceed benefits;

(iv)   create a serious inconsistency or otherwise interfere with regulatory reform initiatives and policies;

(v)    are inconsistent with the requirements of section 515 of the Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act, 2001 (44 U.S.C. 3516 note), or the guidance issued pursuant to that provision, in particular those regulations that rely in whole or in part on data, information, or methods that are not publicly available or that are insufficiently transparent to meet the standard for reproducibility; or

(vi)   derive from or implement Executive Orders or other Presidential directives that have been subsequently rescinded or substantially modified.

(e)  In performing the evaluation described in subsection (d) of this section, each Regulatory Reform Task Force shall seek input and other assistance, as permitted by law, from entities significantly affected by Federal regulations, including State, local, and tribal governments, small businesses, consumers, non-governmental organizations, and trade associations.

(f)  When implementing the regulatory offsets required by Executive Order 13771, each agency head should prioritize, to the extent permitted by law, those regulations that the agency’s Regulatory Reform Task Force has identified as being outdated, unnecessary, or ineffective pursuant to subsection (d)(ii) of this section. 

(g)  Within 90 days of the date of this order, and on a schedule determined by the agency head thereafter, each Regulatory Reform Task Force shall provide a report to the agency head detailing the agency’s progress toward the following goals:

(i)   improving implementation of regulatory reform initiatives and policies pursuant to section 2 of this order; and

(ii)  identifying regulations for repeal, replacement, or modification.

Sec. 4.  Accountability.  Consistent with the policy set forth in section 1 of this order, each agency should measure its progress in performing the tasks outlined in section 3 of this order. 

(a)  Agencies listed in section 901(b)(1) of title 31, United States Code, shall incorporate in their annual performance plans (required under the Government Performance and Results Act, as amended (see 31 U.S.C. 1115(b))), performance indicators that measure progress toward the two goals listed in section 3(g) of this order.  Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (Director) shall issue guidance regarding the implementation of this subsection.  Such guidance may also address how agencies not otherwise covered under this subsection should be held accountable for compliance with this order.

(b)  The head of each agency shall consider the progress toward the two goals listed in section 3(g) of this order in assessing the performance of the Regulatory Reform Task Force and, to the extent permitted by law, those individuals responsible for developing and issuing agency regulations.

Sec. 5.  Waiver.  Upon the request of an agency head, the Director may waive compliance with this order if the Director determines that the agency generally issues very few or no regulations (as defined in section 4 of Executive Order 13771).  The Director may revoke a waiver at any time.  The Director shall publish, at least once every 3 months, a list of agencies with current waivers.

Sec. 6.  General Provisions.  (a)  Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i)   the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii)  the functions of the Director relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b)  This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c)  This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

DONALD J. TRUMP

THE WHITE HOUSE,
    February 24, 2017

 

The post A Great Free Market Moment: ‘Presidential Executive Order on Enforcing the Regulatory Reform Agenda’ (February 24, 2017) appeared first on Master Resource.

via Master Resource http://ift.tt/1o3KEE1

February 25, 2017 at 05:24AM