During week 37, NSIDC ages Arctic ice by one year.  Note how NSIDC aged the ice last year in Mid-September.

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That means the Arctic is now largely full of multi-year ice. Except for new ice from the last couple of days, all of the ice is multi-year ice.

In 2009, experts announced the end of multi-year ice.

Multiyear Arctic ice is effectively gone: expert | Reuters

Year after year, NASA fraudster Gavin Schmidt says it is the hottest year ever, and that the Arctic is warming faster than any place on earth. Yet Arctic ice is growing.

Either Gavin is lying, or the freezing point of water has changed.

via The Deplorable Climate Science Blog

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September 24, 2017 at 03:41PM

Efforts to block and sabotage pipelines hurt jobs, economic growth, middle class, human safety Paul Driessen The radical environmentalist war on fossil fuels has opened a new front: a war on pipelines. For years, activist zealots claimed the world was rapidly depleting its oil and natural gas supplies. The fracking revolution (horizontal drilling and hydraulic…

via Watts Up With That?

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September 24, 2017 at 02:23PM

The German election results are coming in, and one thing is clear: Angela Merkel’s coalition government lost big. The preliminary figures show:

CDU/CSU center right – 33.0%
SPD socialist – 20.8
Left – 8.7
FDP free democrats – 10.5
Greens – 9.1
AfD hard right – 13.3
Other – 4.6

Here we see that the German center-leftist parties (SPD socialists, Greens and Leftists) have seen their power erode further, pulling in a total of only 38.6%, while the more center-right oriented parties (Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU, FDP Free Democrats and the hard right wing AfD) pulled in near 57%.

Four years ago in 2013 the result was far more balanced: 51% for the center/right side and 44.9% for the center/left parties, i.e. only a 6.1% margin.

The big winners are the business-friendly libertarian FDP Free Democrats and the right wing AfD.

The shift to the right means that the brakes are likely going to be put on the Energiewende and on efforts “to rescue the climate”. FDP leader Christian Lindner has been a vocal opponent to onshore wind park approvals in rural areas and forests and has also been critical of the subsidies paid out to green energies.

Though always ready to provide lip service on behalf of climate protection, the Paris Treaty and green energies, Angela Merkel has also softened her rhetoric against fossil fuels during the campaign. When looking at Merkel’s record on the environment, it speaks much greater volumes than her words do.

Germany has not cut back on greenhouse gas emissions in 7 years.

And even though she says she remains committed to greening up the country’s energy supply, Merkel clearly has shown to be content taking a middle way between green demands and the needs of the industry.

The latest election results will likely have Merkel taking an even more pragmatic, business-friendly approach.

AfD rises

Among the big winners of the election is the right wing, anti-immigration AfD party. During the campaign the AfD was committed to eliminating subsidies to wind and solar energy, and called for more support for fossil fuels and nuclear power.

Wind power has become a substantial issue among German environmentalists as a number of them opposed to wind-park construction have sided with the AfD.

The AfD is also the only party that has dared to challenge global warming science. The emerging AfD party is a sure sign of growing opposition to Germany’s Climate Religion. Expect tougher times for green projects in the upcoming legislative period.

Tough coalition talks ahead to form new government

Environmental policy in Germany over the next four years will of course depend on the make-up of Merkel’s next government. The question that remains: Which party is Merkel going to form a coalition government with?

A coalition between her party and the business friendly FDP falls short of a majority, so expect Merkel to court the SPD into forming yet another grand coalition government. But this time don’t expect the SPD to play along, as they’ve announced they’re no longer interested.

Coalition with the Greens

So Merkel is left to try to entice the Greens to join the coalition together with the FDP. Merkel would have no qualms working with the climate-alarmist, wide-open border Greens. She’d be absolutely content leaving the Environment Ministry under the control of the Greens and putting the business-friendly FDP in charge of the Economics Ministry and letting the 2 junior parties slug it out while appearing to be above the fray for the next 4 years. That’s how Merkel works.

It’s going to be tough. The Greens have said they will accept being a coalition partner only if the CDU agrees to end coal power by 2030, a condition that hopefully the FDP will refuse.

The CDU/CSU has already excluded any chance of forming a coalition with the AfD due to “extreme right wing tendencies“. Doing so would mean the end of the love-affair the media have with Merkel.

via NoTricksZone

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September 24, 2017 at 01:47PM

by Judith Curry

A few things that caught my eye this past week.

Concepts for dealing with complexity of weather and climate. [link]

Nature: Halfway to doubling of CO₂ radiative forcing (3.7W/m²), but doubling CO₂ ppm comes later due to log RF relationship [link]  …

Sources, Seasonality, and Arctic-Antarctic Parity in the Hydrologic Cycle Response to CO2-Doubling [link]

More-Persistent Weak Stratospheric Polar Vortex States Linked to Cold Extremes [link]

Deep Uncertainty Surrounding Coastal Flood Risk Projections: A Case Study for New Orleans [link]

The greening of the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau under climate change [link]  

Methods and model dependency of extreme event attribution: The 2015 European drought [link]

Roles of wind stress & thermodynamic forcing in recent trends in Antarctic sea ice & Southern Ocean SST https://buff.ly/2jS8DzZ 

Can measurements of near-infrared solar spectral irradiance be reconciled? New ground-based assessment [link]

Tropical ocean contributions to California’s surprisingly dry El Niño of 2015-16 — Indian/WPac SST spatial pattern [link]

Madden-Julian Oscillation remotely accelerates ocean upwelling to abruptly terminate 1997/1998 El Niño [link]

New observations will help models better reflect seasonal air-sea exchanges of #CO2. [link]  

Variability and quasi-decadal changes in the methane budget over the period 2000–2012 [link]

New MIT research reveals spiral upwelling pathways and timescales of deep, overturning waters in the Southern Ocean. [link]

Fingerprints of Sea-Level Rise on Changing Tides in the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays [link]

Modelling past, present and future peatland carbon accumulation across the pan-Arctic region [link]

The evolution and volcanic forcing of the southern annular mode during the past 300 years [link]

On the causes of trends in the seasonal amplitude of atmospheric CO2 [link]

There are inherent uncertainties in all sea ice (e.g., extent) data sets. This presentation provides a nice overview [link]  …

Warming & wetting climate during last century revealed by an ice core in NW Tibetan Plateau [link]

Understanding the effect of #Arctic sea ice decline on the AMOC  [link]…

Driving Roles of Tropospheric and Stratospheric Thermal Anomalies in the Arctic Superstorm in 2012 [link]

Synchronous volcanic eruptions & climate change ∼17.7 ka linked by stratospheric ozone depletion [link]

Are the climate models running too hot?  [link]

Climatic and synoptic characterization of heat waves in Brazil [link]

Carbon budget controversy

Nature:  Limiting global warming to 1.5C may still be possible [link]

Richard Millar:  Why the 1.5C warming limit is not yet a geophysical impossibility [link]

NEW #ClimateChange calculations could buy the Earth some time, if they’re right [link]

Climate change predictions — what went wrong? [link]    …

How robust is Figure 10 in AR5 SPM? [link]

So there was a pause after all, says the Met Office, and the models have run too hot, as sceptics said: [link]

Different Ways of Thinking about Carbon Budgets, Three problems with Millar et al [link]

Possible good news about climate change leads to confused coverage [link]

How to interpret the news about an extended carbon budget politically? [link]

Social science and policy

About science

AGU’s new data policy [link]

Forcing consensus is bad for science and society [link]

Must read article from David Spiegelhalter: Risk and uncertainty communication [link]  “Acknowledge the limitations of the information conveyed in its quality and relevance.”

Timidity and a hostility to competition have left Europe a scientific wasteland [link]

Filed under: Week in review

via Climate Etc.

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September 24, 2017 at 11:31AM