Month: March 2017

Uncategorized 7 Mar 2017

Oops: One Of Greatest Mass Extinctions Was Due To An Ice Age And Not Global Warming

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)http://www.thegwpf.com

The Earth has known several mass extinctions over the course of its history. One of the most important happened at the Permian-Triassic boundary 250 million years ago. Over 95% of marine species disappeared and, up until now, scientists have linked this extinction to a significant rise in Earth temperatures. But researchers have now discovered that this extinction took place during a short ice age which preceded the global climate warming. It’s the first time that the various stages of a mass extinction have been accurately understood and that scientists have been able to assess the major role played by volcanic explosions in these climate processes.

Permian-Triassic boundary in shallow marine sediments, characterised by a significant sedimentation gap between the black shales of Permian and dolomites of Triassic age. This gap documents a globally-recognised regression phase, probably linked to a period of a cold climate and glaciation. Credit: © H. Bucher, Zürich

Earth has known several mass extinctions over the course of its history. One of the most important happened at the Permian-Triassic boundary 250 million years ago. Over 95% of marine species disappeared and, up until now, scientists have linked this extinction to a significant rise in Earth temperatures. But researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, working alongside the University of Zurich, discovered that this extinction took place during a short ice age which preceded the global climate warming. It’s the first time that the various stages of a mass extinction have been accurately understood and that scientists have been able to assess the major role played by volcanic explosions in these climate processes. This research, which can be read in Scientific Reports, completely calls into question the scientific theories regarding these phenomena, founded on the increase of CO₂ in the atmosphere, and paves the way for a new vision of Earth’s climate history.

Teams of researchers led by Professor Urs Schaltegger from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the Faculty of Science of the UNIGE and by Hugo Bucher, from the University of Zürich, have been working on absolute dating for many years. They work on determining the age of minerals in volcanic ash, which establishes a precise and detailed chronology of Earth’s climate evolution. They became interested in the Permian-Triassic boundary, 250 million years ago, during which one of the greatest mass extinctions ever took place, responsible for the loss of 95% of marine species. How did this happen? for how long marine biodiversity stayed at very low levels?

A technique founded on the radioactive decay of uranium.

Researchers worked on sediment layers in the Nanpanjiang basin in southern China. They have the particularity of being extremely well preserved, which allowed for an accurate study of the biodiversity and the climate history of the Permian and the Triassic. “We made several cross-sections of hundreds of metres of basin sediments and we determined the exact positions of ash beds contained in these marine sediments,” explained Björn Baresel, first author of the study. They then applied a precise dating technique based on natural radioactive decay of uranium, as Urs Schaltegger added: “In the sedimentary cross-sections, we found layers of volcanic ash containing the mineral zircon which incorporates uranium. It has the specificity of decaying into lead over time at a well-known speed. This is why, by measuring the concentrations of uranium and lead, it was possible for us to date a sediment layer to an accuracy of 35,000 years, which is already fairly precise for periods over 250 million years.” Ice is responsible for mass extinction

By dating the various sediment layers, researchers realised that the mass extinction of the Permian-Triassic boundary is represented by a gap in sedimentation, which corresponds to a period when the sea-water level decreased.

The only explanation to this phenomenon is that there was ice, which stored water, and that this ice age which lasted 80,000 years was sufficient to eliminate much of marine life. Scientists from the UNIGE explain the global temperature drop by a stratospheric injection of large amounts of sulphur dioxide reducing the intensity of solar radiation reaching the surface of Earth. “We therefore have proof that the species disappeared during an ice age caused by the activity of the first volcanism in the Siberian Traps,” added Urs Schaltegger. This ice age was followed by the formation of limestone deposits through bacteria, marking the return of life on Earth at more moderate temperatures. The period of intense climate warming, related to the emplacement of large amounts of basalt of the Siberian Traps and which we previously thought was responsible for the extinction of marine species, in fact happened 500,000 years after the Permian-Triassic boundary.

Full story

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

March 6, 2017 at 09:33PM

Uncategorized 7 Mar 2017

Climate Alarmists Use Photoshop And Fraud To Deceive

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)http://www.thegwpf.com

Watts Up With That has a funny instance of warmist deception.

You may have seen the headline, I did: Antarctica hits record high temperature at balmy 63.5°F. Where? Base Esperanza. Where is Base Esperanza in relation to what we normally think of as Antarctica? A long, long distance away:

Base Esperanza is close to Tiera Del Fuego and not far from Africa, so warm temperatures there are not exactly shocking. Plus, the weather phenomenon that caused the recent high temperature is well understood and has nothing to do with global warming:

Esperanza presents a prime example of how temperatures can rise dramatically without any increased input of heat. Argentina’s Esperanza weather station is situated on the most extreme equatorward tip of the Antarctic peninsula and its mean monthly temperature for March is -3.6 C. [About 25 degrees Fahrenheit] But Esperanza’s location subjects it to episodic warm northwesterly winds which is why it is also infamous for its foehn wind storms that can dramatically increase temperatures by 10 to 40 C degrees in a matter of hours.

This record 17 C (63.5 F) temperature recently recorded, is 20 C above average, and as expected the record temperature is the result of foehn winds. Foehn winds warm temperatures via adiabatic heating (no heat input) as descending winds passing over the nearby mountains warm from adiabatic compression. It is meaningless weather as regards penguins.

Now we get to the really fun part: the photo that accompanied the alarmist MSN article:

This alleged picture is very silly. Having lived in Minnesota for more than 40 years, I am an expert in how piles of snow and ice melt. They don’t melt from the bottom, leaving a shape like an anvil that–I suppose–eventually topples over. They melt from the top, leaving a gentle mound, such as I see in the cul-de-sac in front of my house every spring. The one way a formation might look like this is if it is being worn away at the bottom by waves. But that, of course, has nothing to do with global warming.

Then, too: what are the penguins doing on top of that weird anvil formation? As Jim Steele points out, “Climbing such a structure would be a difficult technical climb for an experienced mountaineer.” Are we to assume that the penguins have been there for weeks or months as the snow under them melted weirdly away? No. Penguins go into the ocean to hunt, daily. More from Steele and WUWT:

Furthermore when Adele penguins come ashore to breed they avoid the ice if possible, only crossing snowfields as the seek ice-free breeding territories. Lastly if you magnify the picture 500%, the penguins become extremely pixilated, the ice chunk less so, and the background rocks even less so, a fingerprint of 3 different photographs with different resolutions that have been overlain.

So the whole thing is a fake.

It is fun to trace the provenance of the photoshopped penguins. Before that photo was on MSN, it was published by the Christian Science Monitor in June 2016. But it originated with Reuters.

On Google Images, we find that it was published by Reuters on January 1, 2010, so it had nothing to do with any alleged warm spell at Base Esperanza in 2017. The caption says:

Two Adelie penguins stand atop a block of melting ice on a rocky shoreline at Cape Denison, Commonwealth Bay, in East Antarctica January 1, 2010.

That is not, as noted, a “block of melting ice.” And Cape Denison is over by Australia, thousands of miles from the site of the allegedly alarming global warming at Camp Esperanza. The photoshopping apparently dates back to the original Reuters photo, something that the folks at Reuters should look into.

Full post

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

March 6, 2017 at 09:03PM

Uncategorized 7 Mar 2017

Claim: the Earth has no thermostat

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

Claim: the Earth has no thermostat | Watts Up With That?

From PURDUE UNIVERSITY comes this stretch of a paper that looks to be nothing more than a headline grabber. Interestingly, the study covers 56 million years ago, and somehow they seem to think the atmosphere will behave the same today. Current observations say otherwise.

Evidence disproving tropical ‘thermostat’ theory

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — New research findings show that as the world warmed millions of years ago, conditions in the tropics may have made it so hot some organisms couldn’t survive.

Longstanding theories dating to the 1980s suggest that as the rest of the earth warms, the tropical temperatures would be strictly limited, or regulated by an internal ‘thermostat.’ These theories are controversial, but the debate is of great importance because the tropics and subtropics comprise half of the earth’s surface area, greater than half of the earth’s biodiversity, as well as over half the earth’s human population. But new geological and climate-based research indicates the tropics may have reached a temperature 56 million years ago that was, indeed, too hot for living organisms to survive in parts of the tropics.

That conclusion is detailed in the article “Extreme Warmth and Heat-Stressed Plankton in the Tropics during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum,” published by the online journal Science Advances and co-authored by Matthew Huber, professor in the Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences Department at Purdue University and member of the Purdue Climate Change Research Center. Huber’s contribution focused on climate modeling and interpreting paleoclimate data within the context of modern theoretical understanding. Part of this work was performed while Huber was also at the University of New Hampshire.

The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) period occurred 56 million years ago and is considered the warmest period during the past 100 million years. Global temperatures rapidly warmed by about 5 degrees Celsius (9 F), from an already steamy baseline temperature, and this study provides the first convincing evidence that the tropics also warmed by about 3 degrees Celsius (5 F) during that time.

“The records produced in this study indicate that when the tropics warmed that last little bit, a threshold was passed and parts of the tropical biosphere seems to have died,” Huber said. “This is the first time that we’ve found really good information, in a very detailed way, where we saw major changes in the tropics directly associated with warming past a key threshold in the past 60 million years.”

The study is unique because of the quality of the geological records utilized. Geological records from the PETM are difficult to find, especially from an area of the tropics, Huber said. The research was based on a shallow marine sedimentary section deposited in Nigeria.

“We don’t find 50-million-year-old thermometers at the bottom of the ocean,” Huber said. “What we do find are shells, and we use the isotopes of carbon and oxygen within the shells, complemented by temperature proxies from organic material, to say something about the carbon cycle and about the temperature in the past.”

Two research methods were used to judge the temperature during the PETM, one utilizing isotopes in shells, while the other examined organic residues in deep-sea sentiments. The biotic records left behind from living organisms indicate they were dying at the same time the conditions were warming.

If the tropics are not able to control its temperature and do not possess an internal thermostat, that should reshape future thinking about climate change, Huber said.

“If you say there’s no tropical thermostat, then half of the world’s biodiversity — over half of the world’s population, the tropical rainforests, the reefs, India, Brazil — these populous and very important countries have nothing to prevent them from warming up substantially above conditions that humans have been used to,” he said.

The trends in temperature increases in the tropics are similar to those found in other parts of the world, but other records have been very sparse and limited until now.

###

Huber’s work has been funded by the National Science Foundation through grants EPS 1101245 and OCE 0902882. The model used in the study is developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which is also supported by the NSF. Computing was provided by ITaP’s Research Computing.

Full paper. Open Source: http://ift.tt/2n03hQJ

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

March 6, 2017 at 06:01PM

Uncategorized 7 Mar 2017

Alex Epstein Wants to Debate (and he is a polite debater)

via Master Resourcehttps://www.masterresource.org

John Holdren, James Hansen, Joe Romm: Since you are sure that planetary warming necessitates government rationing of fossil fuels, why not debate and expose the fallacies of the climate optimists, or the ‘deniers’ as you like to call them?

Alex Epstein stands ready (and he tried with Holdren, who surely has more time now as a private citizen.

I was reminded of this when Alex sent out this email last week about a twitter challenge to Bill ‘The Science Guy” Nye:

Why Bill Nye “The Science Guy”?

Because he is the most prominent opponent of fossil fuels that has shown any inclination to debate.

My top 2 dream debates are Al Gore (whom I have offered $100,000) and Elon Musk (who blocked me from Twitter for asking a few tough questions).

Bill Nye, on the other hand, is occasionally willing to debate opponents on TV, at least for a few minutes. And I believe I could do a lot of good by making an example out of him.

For the last several years, Bill Nye “The Science Guy” has been one of the top 10 public attackers of fossil fuels. Next month on Netflix he will release a show “Bill Nye Saves the World”…and you can guess he will be “saving” it from fossil fuels. He has millions of social media followers, many of whom have associated him with scientific thinking since they were in grade school. And I get lots of social media requests to address the things he says.

If Nye’s followers and their networks are made aware of a live event or recording in which Nye’s position is shown to be unscientific (and immoral) and are exposed to a pro-human, big picture way of thinking about fossil fuels, it could create a measurable shift in how the youth view fossil fuels.

That’s the plan. Let’s see if we can get him to accept. If you want to help out, message him on Twitter or Facebook or through his website, challenging him to debate me.

Colleges are Debating Climate Policy

The costs and benefits of increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and the costs and benefits of government policies to restrict fossil fuel usage, not only should be but is the subject of vigorous debate. The 2016 – 2017 Resolution of the college Cross Examination Debate Association (membership below) is:

Resolved: The United States Federal Government should establish a domestic climate policy, including at least substantially increasing restrictions on private sector emissions of greenhouse gases in the United States.

The debate is unavoidable and on!

Conclusion

Add another name to the list of prominent fossil fuel foes who should be willing to take on Alex Epstein: Michael Brune. The head of the Sierra Club stated last November: “We’re waiting for action, and Trump is kidding nobody on climate as he simultaneously stacks his transition team and cabinet with climate science deniers and the dirtiest hacks the fossil fuel industry can offer.”

With the climate activists out of political power, they must regroup and turn to open debate and persuasion. Alex Epstein is ready when you are, Misters Brune, Gore, Hansen, Holdren, Musk, Nye, and Romm.

———-

The following institutions are members of the Cross Examination Debate Association:

Arizona State Augsburg College Baylor University Binghamton Blue Ridge Community College Boston College Butler University California, Berekely City College of SF Clarion Concordia College Cornell University CSU Fullerton CSU Northridge Dartmouth Emory University Emporia State Fresno State Georgetown George Mason University Georgia State University Gonzaga Harvard Idaho State University Illinois College Indiana James Madison Johnson County Community College Johnson County Community College Kansas City KS Community College Kansas State Lakeland College Liberty University Lindenwood Long Beach City College Miami (FL) Michigan State University Missouri State University New School New York Northwestern State University Northwestern University Oklahoma Pepperdine University Pittsburgh Rochester Rutgers Samford University San Francisco State University Southwestern Stanford University Towson Trinity University UMKC University of Arizona University of Central Oklahoma University of Florida University of Georgia University of Houston University of Iowa University of Kansas University of Kentucky University of Louisville University of Mary Washington University of Miami (FL) University of Michigan University of Minnesota University of North Texas University of Northern Iowa University of Puget Sound University of Southern California University of Texas University of Texas, Dallas University of Texas – San Antonio University of Tulsa University of Washington University of Wisconsin University of West Georgia University of Wyoming University of Notre Dame UNLV US Military Academy Vanderbilt Vermont Wake Forest Wake Forest Wayne State University Weber State University West Virginia Wichita State University William and Mary

The post Alex Epstein Wants to Debate (and he is a polite debater) appeared first on Master Resource.

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March 6, 2017 at 05:23PM