Month: May 2017

Uncategorized 9 May 2017

By Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt
(German text translated/edited by P Gosselin)

Prof. Mojib Latif is a widely sought out speaker for events and the German media, and he never passes up the opportunity to warn the public of the impending climate catastrophe. However at his his daytime job he is also a scientist, and there he publishes research results on a regular basis. On many occasions we have noticed that in his scientific papers he appears to be far less dramatic and more balanced than he is in the media. Some examples follow:

On April 5, 2017, in the Geophysical Research Letters there’s yet another example to behold. With his colleagues Latif examined the tropical Pacific. In the eastern and central parts temperatures have cooled over the past two decades. Climate models are having a hard time recreating this development. Latif and his group looked at this case and assumed that natural climate variability is behind it. They have not been able to find an anthropogenic impact on the temperature development in this region.

They conclude that the climate models would be too uncertain to make forecasts concerning the acting circulation in the region.

With that in mind, wouldn’t it be nice if Latif mentioned this the next time he appears on a talk show? But don’t hold your breath thinking this will happen anytime soon.

It’s the two faces of Mojib Latif. It’s unclear how her goes about justifying this scientifically and ethically. What follows is the abstract with the highlighted main points:

Role of Internal Variability in Recent Decadal to Multidecadal Tropical Pacific Climate Changes

Mohammad Hadi Bordbar, Thomas Martin, Mojib Latif and Wonsun Park

While the Earth’s surface has considerably warmed over the past two decades, the tropical Pacific has featured a cooling of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in its eastern and central part, which went along with an unprecedented strengthening of the equatorial Trade Winds, the surface component of the Pacific Walker Circulation (PWC). Previous studies show that this decadal trend in the Trade Winds is generally beyond the range of decadal trends simulated by climate models when forced by historical radiative forcing. There is still a debate on the origin of and the potential role that internal variability may have played in the recent decadal surface wind trend. Using a number of long control (unforced) integrations of global climate models and several observational datasets, we address the question as to whether the recent decadal to multidecadal trends are robustly classified as an unusual event or the persistent response to external forcing. The observed trends in the tropical Pacific surface climate are still within the range of the long-term internal variability spanned by the models but represent an extreme realization of this variability. Thus, the recent observed decadal trends in the tropical Pacific, though highly unusual, could be of natural origin. We note that the long-term trends in the selected PWC indices exhibit a large observational uncertainty, even hindering definitive statements about the sign of the trends.

Highlights:

Pacific Walker Circulation strongly varies internally

Anthropogenic signals in the tropical Pacific sector are hard to detect

There is large model uncertainty about the future of the Pacific Walker Circulation”

via NoTricksZone http://notrickszone.com

May 9, 2017 at 02:02AM

Uncategorized 9 May 2017

US Shale Industry Roars Back To Life After Oil Slump

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

Members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet have a new catchphrase for how they see the future role of the US: not just “energy-independent”, but “energy-dominant”. As Ryan Zinke, the interior secretary, put it at an industry conference in Houston last week: “Dominance is what America needs.”

It would be tempting to dismiss that talk as hype, except that every week the US energy sector is coming up with evidence to justify that ambition. The latest round of earnings reports from US exploration and production companies, the leaders of the shale revolution, has shown fresh evidence of their resilience and growth potential.

The resurgence of the US shale industry after the oil slump of 2014 was a key factor in how crude prices fell sharply last week, to back below $50 per barrel. The market is concerned about whether efforts by Opec, the producers’ cartel, to tackle a supply glut by curbing output will be undermined by reinvigorated US shale companies.

These companies are proving that they are able not just to stay in business, but increase production as well, with oil prices close to today’s levels of about $47 per barrel for benchmark US crude.

The great weakness of the shale industry has always been that the companies have typically not generated enough cash to pay for their capital spending, and have relied on debt and equity sales to finance their growth. But producers have typically cut their costs by about 40 per cent in the past three years, and many are now at or close to the point where they are covering their spending from operating cash flows.

Before the oil crash of 2014, Harold Hamm, the billionaire majority owner and chief executive of Continental Resources, used to say that prices below $70 per barrel could not be sustained for any length of time, because neither Saudi Arabia nor the US shale industry could bear it.

Now Continental is planning for 20 per cent annual production growth financed by its own cash flows with oil at $50 to $55, and says it can invest enough to keep output stable even with crude in the low $40s.

Mr Hamm told analysts on a call last week: “The United States has retaken its place as a world energy leader, and we will compete effectively in this new regime.”

Across the shale industry, drilling activity is increasing even faster than it did in the final stages of its first boom, up until 2014.

Full post

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

May 9, 2017 at 01:41AM

Uncategorized 9 May 2017

The Heatwave Of May 10, 1896

via The Deplorable Climate Science Blog
http://ift.tt/2i1JH7O

On May 10, 1896 most of the Eastern US was over 90 degrees. More than three fourths of USHCN stations were over 80 degrees. New Bedford, Massachusetts was 96 degrees, which is 43 degrees warmer than today’s forecast high. Portsmouth, Ohio was 98 degrees, 40 degrees warmer than today’s forecast. The hottest place in the country was Paris, Illinois at 99 degrees.

The five hottest May 10ths in the US were 1896, 1963, 1962, 1936 and 1916. The last five years have all been close to record cold, and this year will also be cold.

If that sort of heat occurred now, climate scientists would say they were 99% certain it was due to man-made CO2, and that government needs to take action. This is because climate scientists aren’t scientists and they don’t do science.

via The Deplorable Climate Science Blog http://ift.tt/2i1JH7O

May 9, 2017 at 01:35AM

Uncategorized 9 May 2017

Bring Back Free Market Environmentalism

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

“Property rights make the environment an asset rather than a liability by giving owners an incentive for stewardship…markets and the exchange process allow people with different priorities regarding the use of natural resources to cooperate rather than fight.”

With rallying cries to continue funding scientific research and pursue eco-friendly policies, environmentalists are leading the charge against President Donald Trump and his perceived anti-science agenda. Mottos like “Science not Silence” and “#NoSidesInScience” are echoed on the March for Science website, and the activists are advocating for increased public funding and urging lawmakers to adhere to scientific evidence.

While the March for Science movement does claim to be non-partisan, it’s hard not to connect its emergence with the advent of the Trump administration and its plans to cut the budgets of the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Park Service, and other science and environmental programs.

There has been plenty of apocalyptic talk regarding the future of the environment over the past thirty years or so, particularly with regard to climate change. But the doom and gloom has reached a fever pitch now that Trump is president and the Republicans control both the House and the Senate.

For instance, in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Denis Hayes, president and chief executive of the Bullitt Foundation and coordinator for the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, warned that, “Defunding science is the intellectual equivalent of eating our seed corn.” And Gina McCarthy, the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, voiced her concerns in Cosmopolitan. She argued that the EPA has been vital in protecting the environment and warned that, “thanks to the Trump administration’s dangerous scorched-earth strategy, essential programs that keep us safe are at risk of being shut down.”

Many liberals believe the government is crucial for protecting the environment. But is government really the best means for achieving this goal? After all, it was the EPA that accidentally poisoned the Animas River in Colorado back in 2015, and the Tennessee Valley Authority has repeatedly gotten into hot water for their coal-fired plants, which have allegedly leaked toxic pollutants into nearby groundwater. Then there was the excruciatingly slow response to the Flint, Michigan water crisis, where thousands of local residents drank contaminated water despite assurances from the local government that it was safe.

Government solutions rarely bear fruit; the free market and the innovation of individuals offer better solutions. Consider the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), which embodies the philosophy of free market environmentalism. PERC aims to protect the environment by focusing on property rights and the rule of law. As the website puts it:

“Property rights make the environment an asset rather than a liability by giving owners an incentive for stewardship…markets and the exchange process allow people with different priorities regarding the use of natural resources to cooperate rather than fight.”

Donald Leal, a Senior Fellow Emeritus with PERC and Terry Anderson, the former President and Executive Director of PERC, championed the partnership between the free market and environmentalism in their 1991 book Free Market Environmentalism. The authors pushed for free market solutions to environmental problems, such as supporting private water trusts and leasing fishing rights to fishermen. Writing for the Hoover Institution in 2015, Anderson sums up free market environmentalism this way: “The problem is that the environment, like the economy, is constantly in flux, and we humans have to adapt our actions to those changes. Tackling environmental problems requires agility, which is what entrepreneurship is all about.”

The government is not known for being agile. As Anderson points out, those with entrepreneurial spirit can react faster and with greater precision to a myriad of issues than government bureaucrats. A prime example is the advent of pop-up wetlands that help migratory birds struggling to make their lengthy journeys due to droughts find sanctuary. The Nature Conservancy has devised a plan to temporarily create wetlands for these migratory birds. By using a pilot program called BirdReturns, the Nature Conservancy creates pop-up wetlands by paying rice farmers to flood their fields. The program relies on satellite imagery, paired with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s crowdsourced bird watching program eBird, to determine which rice fields should be flooded. By offering payment to willing farmers, the Nature Conservancy manages to help migratory birds while also respecting private property rights.